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Remembering Peter Camejo
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Sep 15, 2009 02:29am |
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| Category | Perspective |
| Author | Matt Gonzalez |
| News Date | Monday, September 14, 2009 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | It is without question that Peter was one of the important members of the American Left of the last half-century. He had combated injustice his entire life and helped plant the seeds for many progressive ideas that are popular now.
None of the things we fight for today: gay marriage, equal rights for women, fair wage laws, immigrant rights, universal health care, would exist had there not been men and women like Peter pushing from one side — agitating and making people uncomfortable. It amazes me how once these ideas are commonplace, we celebrate the politicians who joined the effort at the last moment, when victory was all but assured. There’s little credit given to how we got on the beachhead in the first place.
What does it mean to stand up against something that won’t budge, long before it’s poised to be the majority sentiment?
Peter knew the system would crumble someday. Politics as we know it will someday buckle under the pressure of human desires for a more egalitarian and democratic world. And when it happens, the “successful” politicians will not be remembered. They were the ones that took the easy path. Worked for change on the margin. Wanted the winner’s circle at all cost. Even if it meant denying what they knew to be the truth.
Peter believed the two-party system was a failure, pure and simple. He mused how years from now historians will scratch their heads and wonder how was it that people put up with its oppressiveness? Its days are numbered. Just as slavery was, just as the overt subjugation of woman was, just as concentrated capital’s refusal to pay decent wages and give human beings the benefits they deserve cannot be sustained for much longer.
Peter stood up to say that both parties defended corporations such that the differences, we’re told matter, hardly alleviate any true suffering. |
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