Former US President Jimmy Carter recently declared that "America at the moment does not have a functioning democracy.â With the revelations of the NSA's indiscriminate surveillance of US citizens, and the Obama Administration's War on Whistleblowers, this point has a lot of support. Chicago Area Peace Action sponsored an urgent conversation on these intertwined topics of surveillance, the free press, and democracy.
Chicago Area Peace Action
Jensen presented via Skype. His first words were lost but the text is below:
"Our democracy? Really? Is the U.S. system a democracy, and if so, does it belong to us? This leads to uncomfortable questions: What do we mean by democracy, and who do we mean by us? My thesis tonight is that there is little consensus on these matters, and that left/progressive organizing requires blunt assessments of rather grim contemporary realities.
From grade school on, we are taught that the United States is a constitutional republic founded on democratic principles, and that over time the scope of this democracy has expanded...."
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