A Popular Movement For Higher Taxes? Now That Would Be a Story

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/02-8

“The American people are on our side,” says Rep. Keith Ellison, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “The time is now.”

Ellison was talking to a small group of writers and activists about higher tax rates for U.S. corporations. Although he was upbeat, Ellison acknowledged that winning those tax increases would be an uphill fight.

That kind of effort can’t succeed without widespread public action behind it. Can an organized movement be created to support tax increases for corporations?

Stories

When organizer and Harvard professor Marshall Ganz says that social change begins with the telling of stories, he’s not necessarily talking about the stories in this graph. Although taxation can seem like a dry subject, even a simple image like this one resonates with powerful and troubling tales:



This graph tells the story of a nation that is starving its government of funds for urgently-needed social services. In human terms, that’s the story of a child struggling to learn in an oversized classroom with flaking paint. Or of an elderly man in a one-room apartment whose Meals On Wheels deliveries stopped arriving weeks ago.