Happy Canadian Thanksgiving. For those who are celebrating Columbus Day, here’s an extended excerpt from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island’s beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts.2 He later wrote of this in his log:

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned…. They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane…. They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.

Columbus wrote:

“As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.” The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold?

The Indians, Columbus reported, “are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone….” He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage “as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask.” He was full of religious talk: “Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities.”

Because of Columbus’s exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans’ intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were “naked as the day they were born,” they showed “no more embarrassment than animals.” Columbus later wrote: “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.”

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

The chief source-and, on many matters the only source of information about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty. In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length:

“Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…”

Las Casas tells how the Spaniards “grew more conceited every day” and after a while refused to walk any distance. They “rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry” or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. “In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings.”

Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” Las Casas tells how “two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.”

The Indians’ attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports. “they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could tun for help.” He describes their work in the mines:

“… mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside….

After each six or eight months’ work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.

Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation…. In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile … was depopulated…. My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write….”

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, “there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it….”

Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas–even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?) is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure–there is no bloodshed-and Columbus Day is a celebration.

The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as “the United States,” subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a “national interest” represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.

The question has been raised (obviously elsewhere, but particularly in this forum) about who should should get the vote of undecided voters in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.  What I believe to be the Implicit underlying question is whether to vote for a 3rd-party candidate whose policies are more aligned with popular opinion, such as Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney.  The question should be somewhat more nuanced – not “Who should undecided voters vote for?”, but “Where should voters cast their ballot for a 3rd-party?”.  (For those who are having difficulty deciding between Obama or McCain, this response will likely not be helpful.)

Fellow contributor Uri Strauss continues to make the pitch to vote for Ralph Nader, based on the popularity of his platform and the agreement on “virtually everything” of the Democrat and Republican presidential platforms.  There is no question for him, and for many others, as to who to vote for – the two major parties offer few, if any, differences in policy, and therefore we should choose a 3rd-party candidate.

There is a critical assertion made in this argument which should be repudiated because, once repudiated, it would lead to more effective strategies for enacting popular policies in the country, and the world (by virtue of U.S. power).  That assertion is that the U.S. government is a constitutional democracy.  This assertion is false, both in theory and in practice, and left unrecognized, popular movements will face little, if any, electoral success.

Not Exactly a Democracy

The United States, institutionally, is a democratic representative government – not a democracy.  The difference is stark: a democracy is one in which the population decides policy.  A representative government is one in which (in theory) the population selects representatives to decide policy.  The historical necessities or difficulties of either form of government can be debated, but that there is a significant difference cannot, as it is a matter of fact.

The United States, in practice, is an undemocratic form of government, with representatives of the population beholden to the business/ownership class of the country on all significant policy issues.  This is almost indisputable to a majority of the population, as reflected in disapproval ratings of 75% for Congress, and a 27% approval rating for the President.  Overall trust in government is tied with the lowest point, measured in 1973, with only 26% of the population answering the question “are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed” in the affirmative.   Yet another Gallup poll has the satisfaction with the current course of the country at 17%. These are not new (as the source graphs will show) and in a true democracy, would not be tolerated, and certainly not for such a long time.

Trust in US government at 26%

Our Elections are Rigged

Additionally and unsurprisingly, elections for representatives are not free and democratic.  The Supreme Court has ruled that not only are wealthier citizens entitled to more “free speech”, but that corporations, the largest concentrations of wealth in the country, are allowed to use that wealth to influence elections.  That wealth is perhaps the most dominant factor in elections has been true for some time, however these decisions codified that truth.  Other non-legal forms of exclusion of potentially popular candidates compound the difficulty of being a valid candidate.   Because democracy depends on the exchange of information, and because the ability to convey information (via mail, radio, television) costs vast sums of money, it is self-evident that only candidates with money are able to viably compete in elections.  These facts are so uncontroversial that this year’s record projected costs of $1.2 billion for the presidential campaigns and $1.16 billion for congressional races merely underscore the point.

Elections for political offices in the U.S. are not about who is the best candidate – it is about avoiding the lesser of two evils.  Large legal and class forces push elections in that direction, as does the actual voting mechanism: 1 vote for 1 candidate.  The latter could easily be addressed with Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which is in use in parts of the U.S. and around the world, but for obvious reasons faces great difficulty for adoption in higher political office elections.

So the situation that we are in is one in which tremendous legal and institutional forces, in combination with large concentrations of wealth, shape for us an election in which there are only two viable candidates.  The question then arises: are there significant differences between the two?

Are There Significant Differences?

I’ll leave the discussion as to differences in past elections (Gore vs. Bush, Kerry vs. Bush), but for the current election, I certainly agree that Barack Obama and John McCain are almost on par with the destruction they will wreak in foreign policy, environmental policy, criminal justice policy, drug policy, and many more issues in which they truly are in agreement on “virtually everything”.  However, there are at least three issues which they have nearly oppositional policies which are of great significance to many, if not all, people in this country (and elsewhere).  While this is not a comprehensive description of their differences, those differences are:

• Employee Free Choice Act: Obama is a co-sponsor of this legislation, which would make unionization orders of magnitude easier than current labor law.  With the EFCA, up to 57 million working Americans could form unions, which has historically shown to be tremendous engines of democracy in society.  John McCain opposes this legislation, and would almost certainly veto it.
• Supreme Court and federal courts: The federal courthouses of the U.S. have been filled with extraordinarily right-wing judicial appointments by the Bush administration, as have two seats on the Supreme Court.  The next president will likely nominate between one and three Supreme Court Justices with the three most liberal justices being replace.  Obama has stated that he would replace these judges with ones like them, whereas McCain has stated he would nominate judges similar to the most reactionary Justices on the court now (and in recent history).  These are the highest courts in the land, and no one can reasonably argue that an Obama administration’s choices would be more humane and less rabidly ideological than a McCain administration.
• “Roe v. Wade” and other reproductive rights:  Implicit in the decisions each respective candidate would make regarding the Supreme Court is whether Roe v. Wade will stand another challenge.  In addition, the policies of Obama and McCain regarding other reproductive rights are oppositional on virtually every issue – McCain even continues to support the scientifically-proven fallacy of “abstinence-only education”.  A McCain administration presents a clear danger to women’s civil rights and the basic sexual health of every citizen.

If we are to be rational voters with an interest in doing the least harm to the country, then we must recognize the inconvenient truth that who is elected President will at least have this significant impact on the country.  And if we care about that impact, then we have to do what we reasonably can to get the better candidate elected (Obama, in this case).

This does not apply, of course, if there is a viable 3rd-party candidate.  But, for the reasons given above, and several more, there is not.  Even Ralph Nader does not dispute that he will not win this election.  So we have to consider either Obama or McCain.

Therefore, in states where the election is going to be close (and there’s many this election cycle), “progressives” and everyone else should vote for Obama, and encourage others to do so.  However, in states – such as Massachusetts, with a 55-39% Obama lead – where the vote will likely not be close, folks with an interest in supporting 3rd-party candidates getting a little more even playing field (through access to public funds if they receive 5% of the popular vote) should vote for the Nader/Gonzalez ticket (McKinney/Clemente is not polling anywhere near 5%).

What Really Matters

The real issue at hand is not a single presidential election – it’s what happens in between elections, and far from Washington D.C., that is important.  Real change, rather than silly electoral campaign slogans, come from engaging and changing the hearts and minds of the population.  The U.S. is a fertile ground for grassroots organizing and massive, truly democratic movements.  We should be spending our time and resources (and far less posts debating Obama v. McCain) focusing on coordinating our friends and neighbors to address the issues that face us and the world.  Howard Zinn recently wrote, more eloquently than I, that:

Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes-the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

…None of this should surprise us. The Democratic Party has broken with its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and the Sixties. We should not expect that a victory at the ballot box in November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin fundamental illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism.

So we need to free ourselves from the election madness engulfing the entire society, including the left.

Yes, two minutes. Before that, and after that, we should be taking direct action against the obstacles to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.