state with a social movement of some sizable plurality can take on some of these corporations. At that level you can seriously raise the question, "Whose natural resources are these? For what purpose are they going to be used?" One of the more meaningful criticisms of regional confederation is that it would give the corporations easy pickings. That is a legitimate point. The only answer is that they are getting easy pickings an)^ay. If you do not want to spend time and energy fighting them, then forget all this rhetoric. Minnesota managed to control the Mesabi iron ore range, got a royalty out of every ton Carnegie took out of it, and built a great system of education with the money. There is no reason Oregon or the Pacific Northwest region can't do that with a whole bunch of resources. RAIN: So you think serious electoral efforts should be built at state and local levels? Pages RAIN Aug.-Sept. 1982 "The primary responsibility of progressive people is to articulate a different image of reality, a different model of America." Williams: 1 do. There is a fundamental feeling in this country that the government has gotten out of hand. 1 would hope young people would be willing to go into politics in order to articulate an alternative analysis of the system, to make the elementary contribution of spreading the word and building the kind of local and state power that is behind every significant reform movement in this country's history. RAIN: Do you see potentials for coalition-budding with elements regarded as conservative? Williams: In terms of an overall consensus or a true soaal movement, no. But I think it is a mistake not to actively support groups like the Mormons in their opposition to the MX. From my experience, it is counter-productive to come on gung-ho with traditional socialist rhetoric. You would be better off to address sj?ecific issues with specific alternatives. If you talk to people in that idiom, they begin to see it is not just the specific issue but part of a whole system. RAIN: How else can these new political visions be communicated? Williams: Gaining access to mass media is crucial. When I was working in the civil rights movement in 1945-46, we had a hell of a time running regional or even local means of communication. We put out a weekly newspaper with a mimeograph machine. Today, with technological improvements, it is easier to reach people than it used to be. RAIN: Through regional communication networks and alternative media? Williams: Yes. Building those was one of the more enduring achievements of the New Left movement of the 1960s, perhaps its most important achievement. RAIN: You concluded Roots of the Modem American Empire with an admonition "that we be very careful about winning when it requires us to become more like what we find so unacceptable. For those kind of victories can easily change us into small businessmen promoting a marginal product." You wrote that in 1969. It sure sounds like a lot of what has happened since. Williams: That certainly happened with the anti-war movement of the 1960s. l^e movement started with the Port Huron Statement, which put the war in a radical and coherent framework. Then it became single-issue politics remarkably quickly. In fact, the movement largely contributed to ending the war. Great, but the alternatives that are explicit or implicit in the Port Huron Statement got shuffled off into just more of the New Deal. That is now a marginal product. The conservatives know that. Social Security is a good example. Instead of defending the present system, we should push for full social insurance like they have had in Europe for 75 years. The federal government could provide a basic support level, and regions could add to it based on factors that vary from region to region like the cost of heat. There are all kinds of ways you can buUd solutions on regionalism. It is not simpleminded cutting up of America into 15 countries. RAIN: In America Confronts a Revolutionary World, you said the change to a regional society would come with violence. Could you be more specific? Williams: I think you will get the kind of violence you had against the civil rights movement in the South. You might have violence in the High Plains if strip mining is not controlled and regulated by state or federal governments. I would not anticipate the kind of centralized takeover that is the classic model of revolutions. I can foresee, although I would not predict where and when, that if you get a real left-liberal-democratic-socialist power base in this country, there probably will be attempts to use state militia. Tm certainly not advocating military confrontation with the federal government. That's foolish. RAIN: I have this picture of a kind of "normal" American person, not "left" or "progressive" or any of those words. But they don't like the federal government. They don't like the corporations. They know they're getting ripp>ed off. Do you see among these people a potential for a new progressive populism? Williams: Yes. Living in a nonacademic community, I can see that kind of social awareness and anger has increased remarkably in the last five years. The educated working class and the middle class know they are being had most of the time, an awareness they have not had in any serious sense since the mid-1930s. I do not see any reason to anticipate its decline under current circumstances. People are getting angrier and angrier, and more frustrated. They are pa)dng a lot more attention. I am cautiously optimistic. The primary responsibility of progressive people is to articulate a different image of reality, a different model for America. If you do that in terms of a different, strong central government, you're going to turn most people off because they have had enough of strong central government. □□
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