Evarist Bartolo | Sunday, 10 May 2009

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The greatness of small things

Last Sunday 18,000 people gathered in Madison Square Garden to celebrate Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday. I must admit that as I watched him singing at the concert I did not know he was still alive. I was not aware that last January he joined Bruce Springsteen in singing the Woody Guthrie song ‘This land is your land’ in the finale of Barack Obama’s inaugural concert in Washington DC. When I followed him in my twenties he was already in his sixties as he sang protest songs like ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ against the Vietnam War and in support of international disarmament, and ‘If I had a hammer’ in favour of social justice. He popularized the famous spiritual song ‘We shall overcome’ which became the anthem of the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King.
In the last 30 years I have not followed the American folk music scene at all so I lost track of Seeger completely and did not know that apart from singing for peace and equality he had also become involved in environmental campaigns. The proceeds from last Sunday’s concert are being used to clean up and restore the Hudson River. Watching the news of that concert revived my interest in him and in the last few days I found out that over the years he was attacked of being a Stalinist. It was only two years ago, 54 years after the death of Joseph Stalin that he wrote the song ‘Big Joe Blues’: “I’m singing about old Joe, cruel Joe/ He ruled with an iron hand/ He put an end to the dreams/ Of so many in every land/ He had a chance to make/ A brand new start for the human race/ Instead he set it back/Right in the same nasty place/ I got the Big Joe Blues/ (Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast)/ I got the Big Joe Blues/ (Do this job, no questions asked)/ I got the Big Joe Blues”).
He also admitted that his critics were right when they condemned him of being blind to the oppression in the Soviet Union: “I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in the USSR in 1965”. Aware of this background and the years it took him to become finally disenchanted and disillusioned with grand utopias that turn into horrible nightmares, but at the same time not becoming bitter and cynical and still involving himself in transformative politics I could understand what he told the crowd last Sunday: “Personally, I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.”
I think politics would become a lot healthier and regain the confidence and trust of more citizens if we were to commit ourselves to do the millions of small things that would make such a difference to so many people in their every day life. But the politics of small things should not mean very weak efforts at changing reality and not fixing what is broken. It should mean addressing the concrete needs of people with effective practical policies instead of trying to deceive them with magical solutions promoted mostly during the electoral campaign and then promptly forgotten.
The Brazilian theologian Frei Betto is right when he says: “Emptied of their ideological content such as the consistency of ideals, politics are transformed into mere business for the access to power. Those with more public visibility are elected even though they may be lacking in ethics, principles and projects. It is the victory of the market over humanitarian values. Visibility, power of seduction and vast campaign resources enter in instead of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It is the predominance of marketing over principles. And, as everyone knows, the secret of marketing is not the sale of products, but of the illusions in which they are wrapped, for they nurture the mind with fantasies even though they do not fill the stomach.”
Instead of promising fresh starts, new dawns… as if we are going to recreate the world every after election we should focus on working to deliver change in things that matter. Whatever big plans we may have, must be broken down into small steps that we can take day after day: making public transport work, resourcing classes and schools to give our students the competencies they need to succeed in life, reducing poverty, eliminating discrimination, having decent roads, delivering effective health care where you do not have to wait so long to be given the necessary treatment… Citizens are becoming increasingly tired of the politics of overpromising and under-delivering.
Perhaps, now that the utopias symbolised by the Berlin Wall and Wall Street have collapsed, both the right and the left can rediscover a politics of thoughtful action that combines doable ideas with deep pragmatism and common sense. But to do that, even as get on in years we must have open minds and be ready to continuously embrace the new.

evarist_bartolo@yahoo.com

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