While Washington pundits are talking up a new civility, many progressives are bracing for the old servility — a bipartisanship that is servile to a corporate elite that is unquenchably greedy and more powerful than ever.  

But this is not a time for despair. It’s a time for new activism — built upon one of the great achievements of the last decade: the rise of independent media.

Every day, millions of people in the U.S. get their journalism from independent news outlets that expose not just the extremist antics of Republicans, but also the corporate corruption among Democrats. These informed Americans — fearful of Speaker Boehner and alarmed by a White House now administered by a JPMorgan Chase executive — represent a huge base ready to mobilize in new ways.

That’s the basis for the launch of a new online organization — RootsAction.org — an initiative endorsed by such respected independent progressives as Daniel Ellsberg, Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk and Coleen Rowley.

Our first action — in collaboration with Daniel Ellsberg — is a petition to President Obama to end the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

RootsAction is a response to the quietude among many liberals that followed so many cave-ins from the Obama White House and Democratic leaders in recent years. Our strategy is based on using the Internet and social media as pathways around political discourse dominated by media conglomerates.

The Internet has spurred a flourishing of spirited indy news outlets and websites that are not only independent of corporate control, but also independent of corporate politicians of both major parties.