The Party’s Over: Beyond Politics, Beyond Democracy

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Reid Mukai

Nowadays, democracy rules the world. Communism is long dead, elections are taking place even in Afghanistan and Iraq, and world leaders are meeting to plan the “global community” we hear so much about. So why isn’t everybody happy, finally? For that matter-why do so few of the eligible voters in the United States, the world’s flagship democracy, even bother to vote?

Could it be that democracy, long the catchword of every revolution and rebellion, is simply not democratic enough? What could be the problem?
Every little child can grow up to be President

No, they can’t. Being President means occupying a position of hierarchical power, just like being a billionaire: for every person who is President, there have to be millions who are not. It’s no coincidence that billionaires and Presidents tend to rub shoulders; both exist in a privileged world off limits to the rest of us. Speaking of billionaires, our economy isn’t exactly democratic-capitalism distributes resources in absurdly unequal proportions, and you have to start with resources if you’re ever going to get elected.

Even if it was true that anyone could grow up to be President, that wouldn’t help the millions who inevitably don’t, who must still live in the shadow of that power. This imbalance is intrinsic to the structure of representative democracy, at the local level as much as at the top. The professional politicians of a town council discuss municipal affairs and pass ordinances all day without consulting the citizens of the town, who have to be at work; when one of those ordinances displeases citizens, they have to use what little leisure time they have to contest it, and then they’re back at work again the next time the town council meets. In theory, the citizens could elect a different town council from the available pool of politicians and would-be politicians, but the interests of politicians as a class always remain essentially at odds with their own-besides, voting fraud, gerrymandering, and inane party loyalty usually prevent them from going that far. Even in the unlikely scenario that a whole new government was elected consisting of firebrands intent on undoing the imbalance of power between politicians and citizens, they would inevitably perpetuate it simply by accepting roles in the system-for the political apparatus itself is the foundation of that imbalance. To succeed in their objective, they would have to dissolve the government and join the rest of the populace in restructuring society from the roots up.

But even if there were no Presidents or town councils, democracy as we know it would still be an impediment to freedom. Corruption, privilege, and hierarchy aside, majority rule is not only inherently oppressive but also paradoxically divisive and homogenizing at the same time.
The Tyranny of the Majority

If you ever found yourself in a vastly outnumbered minority, and the majority voted that you had to give up something as necessary to your life as water and air, would you comply? When it comes down to it, does anyone really believe it makes sense to accept the authority of a group simply on the grounds that they outnumber everyone else? We accept majority rule because we do not believe it will threaten us-and those it does threaten are already silenced before anyone can hear their misgivings.

The average self-professed law-abiding citizen does not consider himself threatened by majority rule because, consciously or not, he conceives of himself as having the power and moral authority of the majority: if not in fact, by virtue of his being politically and socially “moderate,” then in theory, because he believes everyone would be convinced by his arguments if only he had the opportunity to present them. Majority-rule democracy has always rested on the conviction that if all the facts were known, everyone could be made to see that there is only one right course of action-without this belief, it amounts to nothing more than the dictatorship of the herd. But even if “the” facts could be made equally clear to everyone, assuming such a thing were possible, people still would have their individual perspectives and motivations and needs. We need social and political structures that take this into account, in which we are free from the mob rule of the majority as well as the ascendancy of the privileged class.

Living under democratic rule teaches people to think in terms of quantity, to focus more on public opinion than on what their consciences tell them, to see themselves as powerless unless they are immersed in a mass. The root of majority-rule democracy is competition: competition to persuade everyone else to your position whether or not it is in their best interest, competition to constitute a majority to wield power before others outmaneuver you to do the same-and the losers (that is to say, the minorities) be damned. At the same time, majority rule forces those who wish for power to appeal to the lowest common denominator, precipitating a race to the bottom that rewards the most bland, superficial, and demagogic; under democracy, power itself comes to be associated with conformity rather than individuality. And the more power is concentrated in the hands of the majority, the less any individual can do on her own, whether she is inside or outside that majority.

In purporting to give everyone an opportunity to participate, majority-rule democracy offers a perfect justification for repressing those who don’t abide by its dictates: if they don’t like the government, why don’t they go into politics themselves? And if they don’t win at the game of building up a majority to wield power, didn’t they get their chance? This is the same blame-the-victim reasoning used to justify capitalism: if the dishwasher isn’t happy with his salary, he should work harder so he too can own a restaurant chain. Sure, everyone gets a chance to compete, however unequal-but what about those of us who don’t want to compete, who never wanted power to be centralized in the hands of a government in the first place? What if we don’t care to rule or be ruled?

That’s what police are for-and courts and judges and prisons.
The Rule of Law

Even if you don’t believe their purpose is to grind out nonconformity wherever it appears, you have to acknowledge that legal institutions are no substitute for fairness, mutual respect, and good will. The rule of “just and equal law,” as fetishized by the stockholders and landlords whose interests it protects, offers no guarantees against injustice; it simply creates another arena of specialization, in which power and responsibility are ceded to expensive lawyers and pompous judges. Rather than serving to protect our communities and work out conflicts, this arrangement ensures that our communities’ skills for conflict resolution and self-defense atrophy-and that those whose profession it supposedly is to discourage crime have a stake in it proliferating, since their careers depend upon it.

Ironically, we are told that we need these institutions to protect the rights of minorities-even though the implicit function of the courts is, at best, to impose the legislation of the majority on the minority. In actuality, a person is only able to use the courts to defend his rights when he can bring sufficient force to bear upon them in a currency they recognize; thanks to capitalism, only a minority can do this, so in a roundabout way it turns out that, indeed, the courts exist to protect the rights of at least a certain minority.

Justice cannot be established through the mere drawing up and enforcement of laws; such laws can only institutionalize what is already the rule in a society. Common sense and compassion are always preferable to the enforcement of strict, impersonal regulations. Where the law is the private province of an elite invested in its own perpetuation, the sensible and compassionate are bound to end up as defendants; we need a social system that fosters and rewards those qualities rather than blind obedience and impassivity.
Who Loses?

In contrast to forms of decision-making in which everyone’s needs matter, the disempowerment of losers and out-groups is central to democracy. It is well known that in ancient Athens, the “cradle of democracy,” scarcely an eighth of the population was permitted to vote, as women, foreigners, slaves, and others were excluded from citizenship. This is generally regarded as an early kink that time has ironed out, but one could also conclude that exclusion itself is the most essential and abiding characteristic of democracy: millions who live in the United States today are not permitted to vote either, and the distinctions between citizen and non-citizen have not eroded significantly in 2500 years. Every bourgeois property owner can come up with a thousand reasons why it isn’t practical to allow everyone who is affected to share in decision making, just as no boss or bureaucrat would dream of giving his employees an equal say in their workplace, but that doesn’t make it any less exclusive. What if democracy arose in Greece not as a step in Man’s Progress Towards Freedom, but as a way of keeping power out of certain hands?

Democracy is the most sustainable way to maintain the division between powerful and powerless because it gives the greatest possible number of people incentive to defend that division.

That’s why the high-water mark of democracy-its current ascendancy around the globe-corresponds with unprecedented inequalities in the distribution of resources and power. Dictatorships are inherently unstable: you can slaughter, imprison, and brainwash entire generations and their children will invent the struggle for freedom anew. But promise every man the opportunity to be a dictator, to be able to force the “will of the majority” upon his fellows rather than work through disagreements like a mature adult, and you can build a common front of destructive self-interest against the cooperation and collectivity that make individual freedom possible. All the better if there are even more repressive dictatorships around to point to as “the” alternative, so you can glorify all this in the rhetoric of liberty.
Capitalism and Democracy

Now let’s suspend our misgivings about democracy long enough to consider whether, if it were an effective means for people to share power over their lives, it could be compatible with capitalism. In a democracy, informed citizens are supposed to vote according to their enlightened self-interest-but who controls the flow of information, if not wealthy executives? They can’t help but skew their coverage according to their class interests, and you can hardly blame them-the newspapers and networks that didn’t flinch at alienating corporate advertisers were run out of business long ago by competitors with fewer scruples.

Likewise, voting means choosing between options, according to which possibilities seem most desirable-but who sets the options, who establishes what is considered possible, who constructs desire itself but the wealthy patriarchs of the political establishment, and their nephews in advertising and public relations firms? In the United States, the two-party system has reduced politics to choosing the lesser of two identical evils, both of which answer to their funders before anyone else. Sure, the parties differ over exactly how much to repress personal freedoms or spend on bombs-but do we ever get to vote on who controls “public” spaces such as shopping malls, or whether workers are entitled to the full product of their labor, or any other question that could seriously change the way we live? In such a state of affairs, the essential function of the democratic process is to limit the appearance of what is possible to the narrow spectrum debated by candidates for office. This demoralizes dissidents and contributes to the general impression that they are impotent utopians-when nothing is more utopian than trusting representatives from the owning class to solve the problems caused by their own dominance, and nothing more impotent than accepting their political system as the only possible system.

Ultimately, the most transparent democratic political process will always be trumped by economic matters such as property ownership. Even if we could convene everyone, capitalists and convicts alike, in one vast general assembly, what would prevent the same dynamics that rule the marketplace from spilling over into that space? So long as resources are unevenly distributed, the rich can always buy others’ votes: either literally, or by promising them a piece of the pie, or else by means of propaganda and intimidation. Intimidation may be oblique-“Those radicals want to take away your hard-earned property”-or as overt as the bloody gang wars that accompanied electoral campaigns in nineteenth century America.

Thus, even at best, democracy can only serve its purported purpose if it occurs among those who explicitly oppose capitalism and foreswear its prizes-and in those circles, there are alternatives that make a lot more sense than majority rule.
It’s no coincidence freedom is not on the ballot

Freedom is a quality of activity, not a condition that exists in a vacuum: it is a prize to be won daily, not a possession that can be kept in the basement and taken out and polished up for parades. Freedom cannot be given-the most you can hope is to free others from the forces that prevent them from finding it themselves. Real freedom has nothing to do with voting; being free doesn’t mean simply being able to choose between options, but actively participating in establishing the options in the first place.

If the freedom for which so many generations have fought and died is best exemplified by a man in a voting booth checking a box on a ballot before returning to work in an environment no more under his control than it was before, then the heritage our emancipating forefathers and suffragette grandmothers have left us is nothing but a sham substitute for the liberty they sought.

For a better illustration of real freedom in action, look at the musician in the act of improvising with her companions: in joyous, seemingly effortless cooperation, they create a sonic and emotional environment, transforming the world that in turn transforms them. Take this model and extend it to every one of our interactions with each other and you would have something qualitatively different from our present system-a harmony in human relationships and activity. To get there from here, we have to dispense with voting as the archetypal expression of freedom and participation.

Representative democracy is a contradiction.

No one can represent your power and interests for you-you can only have power by wielding it, you can only learn what your interests are by getting involved. Politicians make careers out of claiming to represent others, as if freedom and political power could be held by proxy; in fact, they are a priest class that answers only to itself, and their very existence is proof of our disenfranchisement.

Voting in elections is an expression of our powerlessness: it is an admission that we can only approach the resources and capabilities of our own society through the mediation of that priest caste. When we let them prefabricate our options for us, we relinquish control of our communities to these politicians in the same way that we have ceded technology to engineers, health care to doctors, and control of our living environments to city planners and private real estate developers. We end up living in a world that is alien to us, even though our labor has built it, for we have acted like sleepwalkers hypnotized by the monopoly our leaders and specialists hold on setting the possibilities.

But we don’t have to simply choose between presidential candidates, soft drink brands, television shows, and political ideologies. We can make our own decisions as individuals and communities, we can make our own delicious beverages and social structures and power, we can establish a new society on the basis of freedom and cooperation.

Sometimes a candidate appears who says everything people have been saying to each other for a long time-he seems to have appeared from outside the world of politics, to really be one of us. By persuasively critiquing the system within its own logic, he subtly persuades people that the system can be reformed-that it could work, if only the right people were in power. Thus a lot of energy that would have gone into challenging the system itself is redirected into backing yet another candidate for office, who inevitably fails to deliver.

But where do these candidates-and more importantly, their ideas and momentum-come from? How do they rise into the spotlight? They only receive so much attention because they are drawing on popular sentiments; often, they are explicitly trying to divert energy from existing grass-roots movements. So should we put our energy into supporting them, or into building on the momentum that forced them to take radical stances in the first place?

More frequently, we are terrorized into focusing on the electoral spectacle by the prospect of being ruled by the worst possible candidates. “What if he gets into power?” To think that things could get even worse!

But the problem is that the government has so much power in the first place-otherwise, it wouldn’t matter as much who held the reigns. So long as this is the case, there will always be tyrants. This is why it is all the more important that we put our energy into the lasting solution of opposing the power of the state.
But what are the alternatives to democracy?
Consensus

Consensus-based decision-making is already practiced around the globe, from indigenous communities in Latin America and direct action groups in Europe to organic farming cooperatives in Australia. In contrast to representative democracy, the participants take part in the decision-making process on an ongoing basis and exercise real control over their daily lives. Unlike majority-rule democracy, consensus process values the needs and concerns of each individual equally; if one person is unhappy with a resolution, it is everyone’s responsibility to find a new solution that is acceptable to all. Consensus-based decision-making does not demand that any person accept others’ power over her, though it does require that everybody consider everyone else’s needs; what it loses in efficiency it makes up tenfold in freedom and accountability. Instead of asking that people accept leaders or find common cause by homogenizing themselves, proper consensus process integrates everyone into a working whole while allowing each to retain his or her own autonomy.
Autonomy

To be free, you must have control over your immediate surroundings and the basic matters of your life. No one is more qualified than you are to decide how you live; no one should be able to vote on what you do with your time and your potential unless you invite them to. To claim these privileges for yourself and respect them in others is to cultivate autonomy.

Autonomy is not to be confused with so-called independence: in actuality, no one is independent, since our lives all depend on each other. The glamorization of self-sufficiency in competitive society is an underhanded way to accuse those who will not exploit others of being responsible for their own poverty; as such, it is one of the most significant obstacles to building community.

In contrast to this Western mirage, autonomy offers a free interdependence between people who share consensus.

Autonomy is the antithesis of bureaucracy. There is nothing more efficient than people acting on their own initiative as they see fit, and nothing more inefficient than attempting to dictate everyone’s actions from above-that is, unless your fundamental goal is to control other people. Top-down coordination is only necessary when people must be made to do something they would never do of their own accord; likewise, obligatory uniformity, however horizontally it is imposed, can only empower a group by disempowering the individuals who comprise it. Consensus can be as repressive as democracy unless the participants retain their autonomy.

Autonomous individuals can cooperate without agreeing on a shared agenda, so long as everyone benefits from everyone else’s participation. Groups that cooperate thus can contain conflicts and contradictions, just as each of us does individually, and still empower the participants. Let’s leave marching under a single flag to the military.

Finally, autonomy entails self-defense. Autonomous groups have a stake in defending themselves against the encroachments of those who do not recognize their right to self-determination, and in expanding the territory of autonomy and consensus by doing everything in their power to destroy coercive structures.
Topless Federations

Independent autonomous groups can work together in federations without any of them wielding authority. Such a structure sounds utopian, but it can actually be quite practical and efficient. International mail delivery and railway travel both work on this system, to name two examples: while individual postal and transportation systems are internally hierarchical, they all cooperate together to get mail or rail passengers from one nation to another without an ultimate authority being necessary at any point in the process. Similarly, individuals who cannot agree enough to work together within one collective can still coexist in separate groups. For this to work in the long run, of course, we need to instill values of cooperation, consideration, and tolerance in the coming generations-but that’s exactly what we are proposing, and we can hardly do worse at this task than the partisans of capitalism and hierarchy have.
Direct Action

Autonomy necessitates that you act for yourself: that rather than waiting for requests to pass through the established channels only to bog down in paperwork and endless negotiations, establish your own channels instead. This is called direct action. If you want hungry people to have food to eat, don’t just give money to a bureaucratic charity organization-find out where food is going to waste, collect it, and share. If you want affordable housing, don’t try to get the town council to pass a bill-that will take years, while people sleep outside every night; take over abandoned buildings, open them up to the public, and organize groups to defend them when the thugs of the absentee landlords show up. If you want corporations to have less power, don’t petition the politicians they bought to put limits on their own masters-take that power from them yourself. Don’t buy their products, don’t work for them, sabotage their billboards and offices, prevent their meetings from taking place and their merchandise from being delivered. They use similar tactics to exert their power over you, too-it only looks valid because they bought up the laws and values of your society long before you were born.

Don’t wait for permission or leadership from some outside authority, don’t beg some higher power to organize your life for you. Take the initiative!
How to Solve Disagreements without Calling the Authorities

In a social arrangement that is truly in the best interest of each participating individual, the threat of exclusion should be enough to discourage most destructive or disrespectful behavior. Even when it is impossible to avoid, exclusion is certainly a more humanitarian approach than prisons and executions, which corrupt police and judges as much as they embitter criminals. Those who refuse to respect others’ needs, who will not integrate themselves into any community, may find themselves banished from social life-but that is still better than exile in the mental ward or on death row, two of the possibilities awaiting such people today. Violence should only be used by communities in self-defense, not with the smug sense of entitlement with which it is applied by our present injustice system. Unfortunately, in a world governed by force, autonomous consensus-based groups are likely to find themselves at odds with those who do not abide by cooperative or tolerant values; they must be careful not to lose those values themselves in the process of defending them.

Serious disagreements within communities can be solved in many cases by reorganizing or subdividing groups. Often individuals who can’t get along in one social configuration have more success cooperating in another setting or as members of parallel communities. If consensus cannot be reached within a group, that group can split into smaller groups that can achieve it internally-such a thing may be inconvenient and frustrating, but it is better than group decisions ultimately being made by force by those who have the most power. As with individuals and society, so with different collectives: if the benefits of working together outweigh the frustrations, that should be incentive enough for people to sort out their differences. Even drastically dissimilar communities still have it in their best interest to coexist peacefully, and must somehow negotiate ways to achieve this…
Living Without Permission

…that’s the most difficult part, of course. But we’re not talking about just another social system here, we’re talking about a total transformation of human relations-for it will take nothing less to solve the problems our species faces today. Let’s not kid ourselves-until we can achieve this, the violence and strife inherent in conflict-based relations will continue to intensify, and no law or system will be able to protect us. In consensus-based structures, there are no fake solutions, no ways to suppress conflict without resolving it; those who participate in them must learn to coexist without coercion and submission.

The first precious grains of this new world can be found in your friendships and love affairs whenever they are free from power dynamics, whenever cooperation occurs naturally. Imagine those moments expanded to the scale of our entire society-that’s the life that waits beyond democracy.

It may feel like we are separated from that world by an uncrossable chasm, but the wonderful thing about consensus and autonomy is that you don’t have to wait for the government to vote for them-you can practice them right now with the people around you. Put into practice, the virtues of this way of living are clear. Form your own autonomous group, answering to no power but your own, and chase down freedom for yourselves, if your representatives will not do it for you-since they cannot do it for you.
Appendix: A Fable

Three wolves and six goats are discussing what to have for dinner. One courageous goat makes an impassioned case: “We should put it to a vote!” The other goats fear for his life, but surprisingly, the wolves acquiesce. But when everyone is preparing to vote, the wolves take three of the goats aside.

“Vote with us to make the other three goats dinner,” they threaten. “Otherwise, vote or no vote, we’ll eat you.”

The other three goats are shocked by the outcome of the election: a majority, including their comrades, has voted for them to be killed and eaten. They protest in outrage and terror, but the goat who first suggested the vote rebukes them: “Be thankful you live in a democracy! At least we got to have a say in this!”

An Open Letter to the People of Brazil

Posted on September 14, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Robert J. Burrowes

As I read of the latest coup in Brazil, once again removing a democratically elected leader from power, my anger surged. Not again! However, as I see and read about the ongoing massive protests, as well as calls by prominent community leaders to mobilize in defense of your country’s democracy, I feel great hope for Brazil. Having been a nonviolent activist for many years, I would like to support Brazilian activists to develop a nonviolent strategy that will increase your chances of success.

On 31 August 2016, the Brazilian elite executed a political coup to remove your democratically elected president Dilma Rousseff from office in a desperate attempt to halt corruption investigations in which they are clearly implicated. See ‘Democracy Is Dead in Brazil‘ and ‘The Real Reason Brazil’s Democratically Elected Dilma Rousseff Was Impeached‘.

Behind the scenes, of course, the United States elite was heavily involved. With vast quantities of highly profitable fossil fuels, mineral and forest resources, as well as fresh water at stake, the US elite (and its allied elites) is not going to stand aside while Brazil
and BRICS endeavour to create a more just world for at least some of its human inhabitants. See ‘Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff: Brazil’s Parliamentary Coup and the “Progressive Media”‘.

Despite what has happened and as your ongoing street protests demonstrate, you know that you do not have to accept this outcome. You also know that you do not have to wait until the 2018 election to register your disapproval of this coup.

In fact, you can reverse this coup and restore the president you first elected in 2010 to finish her current term so that her party can face your judgment in 2018. And this is what Joao Pedro Stedile, a founder and leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil has called on you to do. See ‘MST: Social Movements Must Rise up Against Coup Govt in Brazil‘.

If you do this, you will also have widespread support among your solidarity allies around the world as indicated in this letter: ‘Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone Sign Letter Against Brazil’s Coup‘.

Given my own support for your right to elect any president of your choice (and to remove them if necessary at a subsequent election), I invite you to consider planning and implementing a nonviolent strategy to remove the coupmakers in your country and restore the president that you elected.

If you are interested in doing so, I have outlined a strategy for removing coupmakers on the website Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy which is a straightforward presentation of the more detailed explanation offered in the book ‘The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach‘.

If you want an idea of the twelve components of strategy that you will need to plan, you can see them on the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel. If you want a taste of how this strategy works (at the tactical level), you will get it by reading ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions‘.

Vitally, the strategic goals need to include mobilizing people in strategically focused ways and causing the police and military to withdraw their support for the coupmakers. It will usefully include causing key local and foreign corporations to withdraw their support too. This would usually include corporations involved in the weapons industry, the mainstream media, banks and the resource extraction of fossil fuels, strategic minerals, forest products and fresh water. To make it clear, I have listed a provisional set of strategic goals that you might consider modifying as appropriate below.

Of course, as suggested above, you will need a comprehensive strategy and it might take some time to plan and then fully implement.

However, if you do plan and implement a comprehensive strategy, you have every chance of reversing this coup with minimal loss of life. For example, the article ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression‘ identifies 20 things that you can do to minimize the risk that your mobilizations will be violently repressed. This article was written after a careful study, throughout history, of nonviolent mobilizations that were met with extreme violence.

Suggested Strategic Goals in a Nonviolent Strategy to Liberate Brazil

Strategic goals that would usually be appropriate for resisting a political or military coup include those listed below although, it should be noted, the list would be considerably longer as individual organizations should be specified separately.

Of course, individual groups resisting the coup would usually accept responsibility for focusing their work on achieving just one or two of the strategic goals. It is the responsibility of the struggle’s strategic leadership to ensure that each of the strategic goals, which should be identified and prioritized according to your precise understanding of the circumstances in Brazil, is being addressed.

(1) To cause the women in [women’s organizations WO1, WO2, WO…] in
Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities]. For example, simple nonviolent actions would be to wear a
national symbol (such as a badge of your national flag or ribbons in the
national colors), to boycott all corporate media outlets supporting the
coup and/or to withdraw all funds from banks supporting the coup. For
this item and many items hereafter, see the list of possible actions you
can take here: ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.
https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/tactics-and-peacekeeping/198-tactics-of-nonviolent-action/

(2) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T1, T2,
T…] in Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities]. For example, this might include withdrawing their labor
from an elite-controlled or foreign-owned bank/corporation operating in
Brazil.

(3) To cause the small farmers and farmworkers in [organizations F1, F2,
F…] in Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in
[your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive
program activities].

(4) To cause the members of [religious denominations R1, R2, R…] in
Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(5) To cause the members of [ethnic communities EC1, EC2, EC…] in Brazil
to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your nominated
nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(6) To cause the activists, artists, musicians, intellectuals and other
key social groups in [organizations O1, O2, O…] in Brazil to join the
liberation strategy by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(7) To cause the students in [student organizations S1, S2, S…] in
Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(8) To cause the soldiers in [military units M1, M2, M…] to refuse to
obey orders from the coupmakers to arrest, assault, torture and shoot
nonviolent activists and the other citizens of Brazil.

(9) To cause the police in [police units P1, P2, P…] to refuse to obey
orders from the coupmakers to arrest, assault, torture and shoot
nonviolent activists and the other citizens of Brazil.

(10) To cause businesspeople who conduct small businesses in
[organizations SB1, SB2, SB…] in Brazil to refuse to cooperate with the
coupmakers by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(11) To cause businesspeople who operate multinational franchises in
[organizations MF1, MF2, MF…] in Brazil to refuse to cooperate with the
coupmakers by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(12) To cause businesspeople who manage local branches of large
multinational corporations in [organizations MNC1, MNC2, MNC…] in Brazil
to refuse to cooperate with the coupmakers by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(13) To cause large farmers and ranchers in [organizations FO1, FO2,
FO…] in Brazil to refuse to cooperate with the coupmakers by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

(14) To cause the foreign managers and technical workers [working for
resource extraction corporations X1, X2, X…] who are from [the United
States and other relevant countries where the elite supports the
coupmakers in Brazil] to withdraw from Brazil.

(15) To cause the workers [in trade union or labor organizations T4, T5,
T…] in [the United States and other relevant countries where the elite
supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to interrupt the supply of military
weapons to Brazil.

(16) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T7,
T8, T…] in [the United States and other relevant countries where the
elite supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to interrupt the transport of
[military personnel/military weapons] to Brazil.

(17) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T10,
T11, T…] in [the United States and other relevant countries where the
elite supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation
struggle by refusing to handle [a particular resource] extracted and
exported from Brazil.

(18) To cause the workers [in trade unions or labor organizations T13,
T14, T…] working in [the United States and other relevant countries
where the elite supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to support your
liberation struggle by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(19) To cause the women in [women’s organizations WO4, WO5, WO…] in [the
United States and other relevant countries where the elite supports the
coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation struggle by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

(20) To cause the members of [religious denominations R4,R5, R…] in [the
United States and other relevant countries where the elite supports the
coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation struggle by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

(21) To cause the solidarity activists in [activist organizations A1,
A2, A…] in [the United States and other relevant countries where the
elite supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation
struggle by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(22) To cause the members of [your exile communities E1, E2, E…] in [the
United States and other relevant countries where the elite supports the
coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation struggle by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

(23) To cause the students in [students organizations S4, S5, S…] in
[the United States and other relevant countries where the elite supports
the coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation struggle by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

In the struggle to make this world the place of peace, justice and environmental sustainability that it could be, the people of Brazil have been playing an inspirational role. You do not need to let this coup be more than a temporary setback. You also have solidarity allies around the world and many of us are willing to assist you, if you decide to let us play a role too.

For the liberation of Brazil,

Robert

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding
and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in
an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a
nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
—
Websites:
http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com (Nonviolence Charter)
http://tinyurl.com/flametree (Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth)
http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence (‘Why Violence?’)
https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Campaign Strategy)
https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy)
http://anitamckone.wordpress.com (Anita: Songs of Nonviolence)
http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com (Robert)
https://globalnonviolencenetwork.wordpress.com/ (Global Nonviolence Network)

The Courage to Speak Truth to Power

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Zoe Blunt

Source: DGR News Service

The more we challenge the status quo, the more those with power attack us. Fortunately, social change is not a popularity contest.

Activism is a path to healing from trauma. It’s taking back our power to protect ourselves and our future.

From a spoken-word presentation in Victoria BC, 2009

Thank you for the opportunity to launch my speaking career. Some of you may know me as a writer and an advocate for social and environmental justice. Others may know me as a cat-sitter, odd-jobber, and temp slave. (Laughter)

I knew when I started out as an activist that I would never be a millionaire and I was right. But I have a certain freedom and flexibility that your average millionaire might envy.

The market demand for social justice advocates is huge right now. It’s a growth industry. And the job security is fantastic – there is no shortage of urgent issues demanding our attention. Experience is not necessary, people come to activism at every age and stage in their lives. It’s that easy!

OK, it’s not actually that easy. (Laughter) But it is a fascinating time to be a “radical.”

There is a great tradition of courage and action here on Vancouver Island. There is potential for even greater future action, so we are doing everything we can to nurture that potential. Building community, linking up networks, teaching, learning, coming together, healing – this is all part of the movement.

For most of my adult life, I suffered from social phobia. I was afraid of authority, filled with self-doubt, paralyzed by anxiety. Getting interviewed live on national TV doesn’t make that go away. But hiding under the covers doesn’t cure it either. So my insecurities and I just have to get out there and do our best.

What compels me is the knowledge that we’re rewriting the script – the one that says, “You don’t make a difference. It is what it is, you can’t fight city hall, the big guys always win.” We can remember that we are not powerless. And when we choose to stand up, it is a huge adrenaline rush – bigger than national TV or swinging from a tree top. That’s the reward – that flood of excitement that comes from taking back our power and using it effectively, for the collective good.

It helps to get love letters from friends and strangers who want to thank me for standing up for what’s important, and who get inspired to take action themselves.

But it’s not all warm fuzzies and celebratory toasts. We face backlash and punishment and threats to our lives and safety.

I led a workshop for new activists this year, and I asked them, “Who are your heroes?”

They named a dozen. Gandhi. Martin Luther King. Tommy Douglas. Rosa Parks. These folks led amazing, heroic movements, but our discussion focused on the ferocious backlash they faced. British media reports on Gandhi when he was challenging the monarchy had the same tone as white Southerners responding to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. It was vicious. “Uppity and no-good” were some of the polite terms. They were targeted with hate speech and death threats. We hear the same now about whistleblowers. And feminists and environmentalists. It can be terrifying.

The more we challenge the status quo, the more the entrenched powers attack us. The more effective we are, the more they attack us. As Gandhi said: “First the ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

The fight for justice and liberation won’t be won by popularity contests.

Every campaigner finds their own way of dealing with the counter-attacks. Some laugh it off. Some pray, some cry on their friends’ shoulders. Some go on the counter-offensive, some compose songs, some write long academic papers deconstructing their opponents’ logic. The important thing is, they deal with it, and they don’t give up.

We take care of each other as a community. Because we are all so fragile. Because there is so much trauma and despair everywhere and it affects everyone. But inside that despair, in all of us, there is a solid core of love for the earth and the knowledge that we can act in self-defense. That’s where we find strength.

It’s humbling to note that the economic downturn has done more to preserve habitat and stop climate change than all of our conservation efforts of the past years combined. We take responsibility for recycling and turning down the thermostat, but who is responsible for the scale of destruction from the Tar Sands? That project is the equivalent of burning all of Vancouver Island to the ground. It negates everything we could hope to do as individuals to fight climate change.

How do we deal with that horrible reality? I couldn’t, for the first year of the campaign. I didn’t want to look at the pictures and hear the news stories about the water and air pollution and the rates of illness among the Lubicon Cree people. The scale and the horror of it were too great.

I’ve worked on toxics campaigns and I dread them. Old-growth campaigns are inspiring, because where the action is, the forest is still standing – it’s beautiful and magical and we’re defending nature’s cathedral from the bulldozers and chainsaws. The good earth is here, and the evil destructive forces are over there. It’s clearcut, so to speak. But when a toxics campaign is underway, the damage has been done. The landscape is poisoned and people have cancer and spontaneous abortions, and the birds, the fish, the animals, are dead and dying. It is a scene of despair.

If it sounds traumatizing, it is. And we are all traumatized.

Look at this landscape – concrete, pavement, bricks and mortar, toxic chemicals, but underneath, the earth is still there. We have whole ecosystems slashed and burned without so much as a by-your-leave. We’ve lost whole communities of spruce, marmots, murrelets, arbutus, sea otters, and geoducks. These are terrible losses.

And we humans suffer on every level. Is there anyone here who doesn’t know someone who’s had cancer? Who hasn’t seen the damage caused by diseases of civilization? Who here hasn’t been forced to do without for lack of money? Are there any women here who have never been sexually harassed or raped or assaulted?

(Silence)

Something fundamental has been taken from us here. How do we deal with these losses?

I consider myself fortunate because after a lifetime of abuse from my family and male partners, I participated in six months of Trauma Recovery and Empowerment at the Battered Women’s Support Centre in Vancouver.

And I got to know the stages of trauma recovery:
Acknowledge the loss, understand the loss, grieve the loss.

And the stages of grief:
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

These steps are a natural and necessary response to the loss of a loved one, and also to the loss of our humanity and the places we love.

There are people living in national sacrifice zones, people who burn with determination to make change. They are angry, and they have a right to be. I am angry because I’m not dead inside, in spite of all they’ve done to me. Anger is part of the process of grief, and it’s useful. It grabs us by the heart when people are hurting the ones we love.

For me, part of the process is taking action – rejecting helplessness and taking back power. Stopping the bleeding and comforting the wounded.

I fall in love with places and I want to protect them. I fell in love with the Elaho Valley and some of the world’s biggest Douglas Firs in 1997. That forest campaign was a pitched battle, far from the urban centers, against one of the biggest logging companies on the coast at that time.

In the third year of the campaign, I walked into my favourite campsite shaded by majestic cedars. I saw the flagging tape and the clearcut boundaries laid out, and I realized it was all doomed. I could see the end result in my mind’s eye: stumps and slash piles as far as the eye could see, muddy wrecked creeks, a smoldering ruin.

I realized no one was going to come and save this place – not Greenpeace or the Sierra Club, no MP’s private member’s bill, or whatever petition or rally was being planned back in the city. It was as good as gone. All we had to do was stand aside and do nothing, and this incredible, irreplaceable forest would be just a sad memory.

But after that realization, and after the despair that followed, I had a profound sense of liberation. If it is all doomed, then anything we do to resist is positive, right? Anything that stops the logging, even for a minute, or slows it down, or costs the company money, or exposes it to public embarrassment and hurts its market share, is positive – it keeps the future alive for that one more minute, one more hour, one more day. It was a revelation.

Acceptance, for me, meant being able to act to defend the place I loved. It meant standing up to the bullies and refusing to let them take anything more from me.

In the third year of the Elaho campaign, it was just a handful of people rebuilding the blockades, defying the court orders and continuing the resistance. We didn’t quit when the police came, or when we were called “terrorists” and “enemies of BC.” We didn’t quit even after 100 loggers came and burned our camp to the ground and put three people in the hospital.

The attack was a horror show. People were in shock. But a crew was back with a new camp five days later. By then, the raid was national news. And our enemies had nothing left to throw at us. The loggers didn’t know what to do next. Short of killing us, what more could they do?

We had called their bluff.

We didn’t know about the negotiations going on behind the scenes. We didn’t realize that we had already cost the loggers more than they could hope to recoup by logging the entire rest of the valley. (They were operating on very slim profit margins.) We found out when the announcement came that the logging would stop. And it never started again. We won. Now the Elaho Valley is protected by the Squamish Nation — and by provincial legislation — as a Wild Spirit Place.

The violence of the mob showed the level of fear and desperation of the losing side. It was their weapon of last resort and it didn’t work. And they lost.

In the fourth year of the stand for SPAET – the campaign to stop the development and protect the caves, the garry oaks, and the wetlands on Skirt Mountain – we faced the same tactics. We were called “terrorists,” and in 2007, the developers sent 100 goons to rough up people at a small rally. And again, most of our comrades are still in shock. There’s only a handful of us still bashing away at the next phase of development.

We are winning. The other side has thrown everything they have at us and they have nothing left.

There are still sacred sites on SPAET. The cave is still there, buried under concrete.

Meanwhile, the developer’s little empire fell apart, either because of our boycott campaign, bad karma, or because it was operating on the slimmest of shady margins. We took the next phase of development to court. Our campaign, and the economic downturn, turned out to be enough to scare off investors and cancel the project, at least for now.

This work is difficult, painful, and traumatic. So the first step to courage is to acknowledge that pain and loss. We need to name what has been taken from us. Then we can cry, and rage, and grieve. We can name the ones who are doing the damage. We can reach down inside and find our core strength and our truth, and use it. That’s where courage comes from.

Martin Luther King said, “Justice shall roll down like waters, righteousness like a mighty stream.” But I’m impatient. I want to see that mighty stream now – what’s the hold-up? What’s holding us back, when there’s so much to do?

We’re not heroes, actually – none of us is smart enough, or tough enough, or connected enough, to take this on alone. We don’t have superpowers. We are only human, we struggle and suffer and sometimes, we win.

Some folks assume I have some vision, some over-arching game plan, some magic power that gives me an edge. Nope. Most of the time I am just flailing around on the political landscape, taking potshots when I see an opening. Sometimes it’s intuition, and it pays off. When we are right, it is amazing. When we win, it sets a precedent for the future.

In order for evil to prevail, all that’s required is for good people to do nothing. Don’t be one of those good people.

Activism is part of the healing. It’s taking action to protect ourselves and our future.

Thank you for the opportunity to tell these stories today.

(Applause)

Also read how Zoe Blunt moved from “flailing around on the political landscape” to strategic activism: Deep Green Resistance: Words as tactical weapons

Why Chaos Always Seems To Have Such Grand Potential

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Reid Mukai

tahrir

By Shauna Janz

Source: Collective Evolution

We have been experiencing “chaos as grand potential” throughout our entire history. From the first potential of life that exploded from the stars and hurled across a universe in chaotic fashion, to the evolution of all species on our Earth, to the splitting of cells that form life in a mother’s womb.

Growth and evolution emerge from chaos.

Another way of thinking about chaos is the process of positive disintegration – originally used in psychology by Kazimierz Dąbrowski, who viewed tension and anxiety as a necessary part of any personal growth process. This term has also been used by Joanna Macy to describe how living systems evolve; when continued feedback tells a system that it has become dysfunctional, the system responds by changing.

In other words, when old ways of doing things are no longer adaptive or effective, we are catapulted into a disintegration process, or chaos, so that new ways of doing things can emerge that are positive for a sustainable life.

Chaos is a necessary part of the process any living system, individual, or community goes through to adapt, evolve, and remain sustainable in their environment.

For people, that environment may be our own personal body/mind, our families, our workplace, our society, or our collective global community.

From the chaos, or disintegration, comes the grand potential for something wholly new to arise – something that surpasses the old way of being and has become a more inclusive and integrated way of being.

I am reminded of Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart, dedicated to finding hope when we are suffering from change or loss; when we are in the midst of disintegration. Through her soothing words, she assists her readers to remain open and aware through the confusion and anxiety of chaos.

Pain and grief often inhabit the space of chaos. As familiar ways prove no longer useful, we are thrust into a space of unknowing and chaos before new ways can fully develop.

I reflect on the grief I have experienced in my own life, and on the grief in others that I have witnessed and supported. When loss and change erupt in our lives, we are left in the emotional wake to re-create who it is we are in our changed world.

We are left to find a new way to make meaning and to find adaptive strategies to live on and continue to thrive. It may mean letting go of certain roles or identities, or it may mean embracing new ones and honouring the process.

This doesn’t happen overnight. Before new ways emerge, we are left in confusion. We are left in anxiety. We are left in pain and grief.

In this chaotic space we may feel fearful, uncertain, and out of control. We may react and grasp for anything that might give us a sense of comfort or control, or allow us to numb out from feeling at all.

We see this on a personal scale as well as on a global scale – whether grasping for escape through another drink, Netflix series, or new pair of shoes, or whether grasping for control through declaring another war or engaging in oppressive acts against others.

Positive disintegration can only happen if we stay aware, open, and conscious to see the potential that lies within the chaos, and to then act to create new ways that are sustainable.

If we learn to navigate our own personal grief and chaos in conscious ways remaining calm, open, and trusting, then we gain the ability to navigate the grief and chaos in our world in the same way.

Remaining conscious and open is absolutely necessary because globally we are in the midst of a significant disintegration process, and we need to change how we live.

We know that the capitalist industrial growth complex that currently defines our global economics and social systems has become dysfunctional. We are witnessing extreme abuses of power, violence. and tactics of separation – all rooted in fear and grasping for control.

We are all experiencing the impacts of this global chaotic time – grief, anxiety, uncertainty. We are also witnessing efforts to make changes for a sustainable and equitable future.

Joanna Macy calls this time “The Great Turning.” In her book Coming Back to Life – Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World she exemplifies many of the ways we are seeing the process of positive disintegration carry out in our world.

From direct action and legislative work to slow down the process of environmental and social destruction, to academics and grassroot groups working to educate about the impacts of our capitalist industrial system, to the cognitive revolutions and spiritual awakenings that deeply shift our consciousness toward a sustainable way of being on this Earth — we have the ability to stand strong in the winds of chaos, to choose openness and compassion, to hold fast to our vision of a vibrant and sustainable future, and to act in loving ways, now.

We are seeing new forms of sustainable practices emerge, witnessing the resurgence of ancestral ways of knowing, and experiencing shifts of consciousness.

There is no one person that will save our planet or human family. It takes the whole global community to respond, which means it takes each and every one of us to step forward in our own ways to shine our light and hold hope, trust, and compassion through this time of chaos.

Each one of us has a gift – has words to share, actions to motivate, art to show, or ways of being that exude love, trust and connection.

There is a place for everyone – whether it is the frontlines of direct action and resistance, raising conscious and compassionate children, or actively healing your own wounds – these all contribute to the healing of our world.

Joanna Macy says, you cannot “fix” the world, but you can take part in its self-healing. Healing wounded relationships within you and between you is integral to the healing of our world.

Each one of us who chooses love over fear, feeling over numbing, and compassionate action over apathy, contributes to the emergence of a sustainable new way of being in our world.

I invite you to reflect on the ways you are responding in your own life to a global future of love and sustainability. What are the gifts you bring to this world? How are you actively living your gifts every day?

And I thank you for remaining open and compassionate amidst this time of chaos as grand potential.

The System: Deserving Contempt, Resistance and Undermining

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Reid Mukai

By Rob Kall

Source: OpEdNews.com

Let’s face it, the system is pathologically broken, designed to hurt and exploit the middle class. it is contemptible. The courts are contemptible, the Judges are contemptible, the politicians– almost all of them– are contemptible, the political parties are contemptible. The mainstream media are contemptible. The vast legion of police and police leaders who violate the law or protect lawless cops are contemptible. The laws that are passed by lobbyist-bought or intolerant fundamentalist influenced politicians are contemptible.

So where do we turn to fight back, to bravely move forward towards hope and progress?

First, we don’t put all our eggs in the electoral basket. That is a delusional idea. Okay, so vote, even donate to really strong progressive candidates. But don’t delude yourself into thinking that any effort or donations to electoral activity is enough. Consider electoral action to be comparable to lightly tapping the brakes on a deadly car crash that is already under way.

The fact is the system is not only toxic and broken, it is biting back aggressively at people who speak out in the ways that people fighting for democracy have traditionally fought back. Chris Hedges says,

” All acts of resistance–including nonviolent protest–have been conflated by the corporate state with terrorism. The mainstream, commercial press has been emasculated through the Obama administration’s repeated use of the Espionage Act to charge and sentence traditional whistle-blowers.”

Hedges wrote, last year, about Jeremy Hammond, before he was convicted and sentenced for hacking:

” He said he is fighting as “an anarchist communist” against “centralized state authority” and “exploitative corporations.” His goal is to build “leaderless collectives based on free association, consensus, mutual aid, self-sufficiency and harmony with the environment.” It is essential, he said, that all of us work to cut our personal ties with capitalism and engage in “mass organizing of protests, strikes and boycotts.” Hacking and leaking, he said, are part of this resistance–“effective tools to reveal ugly truths of the system.”

And further discussing Hammond, Hedges says,

” He said resistance must be a way of life. He intends to return to community organizing when he is released, although he said he will work to stay out of prison. “The truth,” he said, “will always come out.” He cautioned activists to be hyper-vigilant and aware that “one mistake can be permanent.” But he added, “Don’t let paranoia or fear deter you from activism. Do the down thing!”

if you want work towards a positive future– one that supports social, economic and ecological justice, fairness and safety– you must stand up to the system– hack it, whistleblow it, expose it, resist it, defy it, undermine it and do all you can every day to wake people up to the malignant, pathological threat assault THEY and their families and communities are currently being subjected to.

James C. Scott, anarchist scholar and Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University. writes, in his book, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity and Meaningful Work and Play

“One day you will be called upon to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Everything will depend on it. You have to be ready. How are you going to prepare for that day when it really matters? You have to stay “in shape” so that when the big day comes you will be ready. What you need is “anarchist calisthenics.” Every day or so break some trivial law that makes no sense, even if it’s only jaywalking. Use your own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable. That way, you’ll keep trim; and when the big day comes, you’ll be ready.”

Keith Farnish, author of Undermining and Times Up, talks about how the system systematically engages in a plethora of ways to not only disconnect us but that make us forget that we were connected or desperately need to be connected to be fully human. We have to fight back, but he writes,

“…you can’t attack these great systems, these great structures head on, it’s really not going to work, you’re not powerful enough to do that.

“The only way that we’re going to really get to return humanity to a decent way of living is to look at those tools of disconnection and get people to realize what’s going on. Allow people to be connected again because once you connect people, once you take away all the things that are masking that need that humanity really has to be connected, then you end up with awareness.”

So, to fight disconnection and get people reconnected you have to fight the ways that the system disconnects people from each other and from the positive aspects of community, family and humanity that keep us being fully human.

Farnish says technology keeps us distracted– that people don’t like to hear that almost everything they’ve ever believed in is wrong and they will do everything in their power to retain those beliefs.

“anyone can be an underminer”

“the vast majority of the time I am doing community work which is a form of undermining because what that community work does is allow people to appreciate what’s local to them.”

The thing is Farnish’s goal for undermining goes all the way– to the point that the industrial world is totally undermined and no longer working. That would put people in a situation where they depended entirely on local resources. He says that’s necessary .

“… we need to be looking smaller, yes we need to be banding into communities that are self sufficient, there’s no way we can exist in using any form of mass anything, which is destructive. Therefore we have to start breaking things down into smaller chunks.

We need to be more self controlling. We need to understand that global government and even national government are only in it for the interests of the greater corporate world. But once you start getting local, we call it local government, local administration, then you get a lot more control back. So I can see the argument and that is an inevitable outcome of undermining these great industrial worlds.”

Farnish is not talking about toning things down. He’s talking about shutting them down:

” Greenpeace is saying you can have less damaging technologies, well yes, relatively, 10% less damaging, 20% less damaging, they still screw everything up. They’re still killing the planet.”

The quotes from Keith Farnish come from my interview with him, here. I said,

” I’ve talked for a couple of years now about the idea that when the dinosaurs died it wasn’t that the little tiny mammals, the little mice, the one-foot high horse, the birds, they didn’t attack the giant dinosaurs and replace them; they out-survived them. Think in terms of what you’re talking about here, this dinosaur of industrial corporate civilization.”

Farnish replied,

” Yes, I can see that. I think it’s a very good metaphor. We have a situation where these dinosaurs, yep I think that’s a good way of, although saying that, I mean, they were natural beings and they were wiped out in a mass extinction event. We’re coming to a massive extinction event, I think this is true, but it’s a mass extinction event caused by something that is entirely unnatural.This idea that you’ve got niches that the people can go into in order to create a new world, yes that’s one way of looking at it but as you say those niches weren’t created until the dinosaurs went. Now, industrial civilization, we can wait for it to collapse if we want. We can say, okay we’ll wait it out. But the problem with waiting it out is when it does collapse, there’s nothing left. It’s done so much damage, there’s already this mass extinction event which is inevitable.

Or we can say industrial civilization is something that we have to get rid of before this mass extinction takes place. Before the Earth is in a state that we can no longer live there. Before it collapses while we are totally dependent on it. That’s another side of things because if we remain dependent upon civilization, when it collapses we’re gone as well.

So we have to learn how to start walking away. We have to become less dependent on it. We have to become connected outside of industrial civilization. So the small mammals, the shrew-like creatures, they didn’t do that. They waited it out. There was a mass extinction event, that mass extinction event actually wiped out the vast majority of the shrew-like creatures as well, fortunately there were a few that managed to survive but who knows what might have come about if that mass extinction hadn’t taken place.

I can guarantee that if humans would have been around at the time, they wouldn’t have survived that mass extinction event either. “

And I threw in another ” another biological metaphor into the conversation.

“There are some insects that plant their eggs in another insect or mammal and then when the egg hatch, they consume the living breathing creature, killing it in the process, and I kind of conceptualize that the way towards a future where corporations and industrial civilization are no longer the dominating destroyers is absolutely not one where there is direct confrontation but rather where we begin building alternative infections that grow into positive structures and constructions where they lead to the acceleration of the death of this industrial civilization.”

Keith Farnish relied,

“Yes, I mean I have used the metaphor on the website of spiders spinning their webs in the eaves or mice making their homes under the floor boards, quietly and industriously. You’re quite right. We need to be doing things all the time. We need to be creating communities, we need to become self-sufficient. All of these things need to be taking place as a replacement, as a viable replacement for what is going to go and that’s something that we should be starting now.Regardless of whatever we do, because in a way that is both a method by which we can live in the future and also a way we can undermine the system. So for instance, if you grow your own food, you’re not going to buy your food from the supermarket because you’ll learn to love that food that you’ve grown. You’ll treasure that, you’ll protect that. The supermarket becomes something that’s other worldly. It’s something that other people use.

If people don’t shop at supermarkets then supermarkets close down. That’s a great lump of civilization gone. The mass consumerism, this idea that you can only get your food in approved places of mass consumption…. “

I said to Keith Farnish, in our interview,

“… your book on undermining goes into a lot of detail on many many different ways and different approaches on how to undermine, starting with just a black magic marker and changing the message on a poster to blocking the entrances to shopping malls. They can get very risky or they can get minimally risky but a lot of them involve in some ways breaking the law.”

Farnish replied:

“Yeah. The law, I think we’ve got to distinguish between what’s legal and what’s lawful here. Laws in, certainly laws in Western countries are, they are statutes, they are things that have been put there by politicians to control you to make sure that you do whatever the system wants you to do. There are certain things like murder, taking someone’s property although you do question where the property came from in the first place, obviously harming someone directly in some way, taking away their liberty, that kind of thing, these common features of human morality, and that’s what I would consider to be a law and they’re the laws by which humans should live.

Yes breaking the law, if we can use that phrase is something that underminers will inevitably do, and it’s incredibly liberating. It’s a wonderful thing. In the vast majority of cases you’re not going to get in any trouble for it if you’re careful and I do provide some instructions on how to be careful but we are going to have to break the law because the laws are about controlling people.

Laws are about benefiting the corporate world and if we’re going to change things then those legal instruments that are being put in place to control people have to be broken apart. They have to be challenged constantly otherwise nothing will change and that is why we have to distinguish between what is lawful? What is something that is naturally right and moral for humans to do and where that overrides what politicians and corporations have put in place to make themselves rich or make themselves powerful.

If you stop a factory polluting the river you could be breaking the law but morally you’re doing the right thing.

So I say to you. What are you doing with the rest of your life? What can you do to make humanity better? What can you do to make the world a little bit better for your children and your grandchildren?

The answer is, a hell of a lot. My hope is that this article will stretch the boundaries of your imagination. You have the potential for a bigger vision and you’ll have to fight for it. Many of the tools of disconnection that Farnish refers to are built to restrict and limit your imagination. You can do ANYTHING. Some of those anythings may cost you more than you are willing to pay. But at the least, please, please expand your view and think of all the possibilities. Snowden was not the first whistleblower. Neither was Daniel Ellsberg.

And please, don’t try to do this alone. Connect, connect, connect. That’s the way bottom-up change is made to happen. Simply connecting in new ways to the same or new people in your communities can be revolutionary, can be undermining can be resistance. Like Jim Scott says. Do something every day. Raise your voice. Expose the lies of the dominating system. Take public the secrets that the billionaires, the corrupt politicians hold tight. Refuse! Refuse to follow the rules that most people accept as mandatory. A few years back police were arresting people who shot videos or photos of them. But people kept at it, exposing their acts, rejecting their orders to stop, REFUSING to give up their rights. Now, not only has the law made it clear that you CAN videotape police, but the police are beginning to record themselves. I’m sure it will be a battle, getting public access to ALL police recordings. But it could happen. Stand up and refuse. In his brilliant book, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, James C. Scott says, “Any public refusal, in the teeth of power, to produce the words, gestures, and other signs of normative compliance is typically construed– and typically intended — as an act of defiance.” Scott points out, “ON very rare occasions when what has been orchestrated as a mass public demonstration of domination and enthusiastic consent erupts into a public display of repudiation from below, the ‘formidable shadow of general impotence’ becomes what can only be described as a symbolic rout.”

We’re talking about parades, ceremonies, public events. Even a moment of televised disruption can open the consciousness of millions and expose the lie of of power and the vulnerability of the elites running the performance. This can be highly planned, like Medea Benjamin did when she interrupted President Obama, or it can be spontaneous, when you discover an unexpected opportunity. I interviewed Medea on how to do it, here.

One last thing. Don’t get stuck with absolutism. You don’t have to change your life completely. Your organization does not have to totally change. Every resistant, undermining, bottom-up step you take as a conscious act contributes to progress. It may take thousands or millions of people doing millions or billions of small acts. But that’s possible. It is the ONLY way that most of the changes in the world happen. Matter of fact, don’t expect your single action will be THE one. Consider your acts to be like drops of water eroding a massive edifice.

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and website architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), and publisher of Storycon.org, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and an inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com

Listen to over 200 of Rob’s Podcast interviews here.

Anonymous Calls for Worldwide Wave of Action #www

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Reid Mukai

Via: Anonymous

The modern paradigm may still seem insurmountable “because it possesses an outward front, the work of a long past, but is in reality an edifice crumbling to ruin and destined to fall in at the first storm.”
— Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

The decentralized movement toward freedom is raging across the world. It cannot be stopped. The tipping point is near. Despite the lack of coverage in the mainstream media, actions are springing up on an increasing basis. A wave of transformation is rising. The zeitgeist is shifting in our direction.

At this point, given all the nonviolent direct actions that are currently being planned, it makes strategic sense for us to organize them, in a decentralized way, in a way that the mainstream media cannot ignore. A slightly more coordinated approach is all it will take.

The Awakening Wave

The last time we all rallied together in a loosely knit collective fashion, the Occupy movement was born and the 99% meme brought the corruption of our political and economic system, along with the grotesque inequality of wealth, into mass consciousness in a profound and lasting way. It was the opening act, the awakening wave.

Since the Occupy camps were crushed by brutal police state force, the movement has splintered in many different directions. This is now proving to have been a blessing in disguise. It gave us time to learn from our mistakes, figure out what worked best and forced us back into the autonomous actions that built the movement in the first place. We have now experimented with different tactics and thought through longer-term strategies.

Meanwhile, the repressive conditions that inspired Occupy in the first place have become even more oppressive. Now more than ever, governments no longer have the consent of the governed. A critical mass has lost faith and trust in our existing institutions. The present paradigm has outlived its usefulness. It has been overrun with corruption and rendered obsolete. Our political, economic and legal systems are doing much more to limit our potential than enhance it.

It’s Time For A Worldwide Wave of Transformation

Let’s pick a three-month span, perhaps throughout this coming spring, and unite our collective actions into an unprecedented Worldwide Wave that cannot be ignored by anyone.

Let’s crowdsource a relentless global wave of action that protests the corrupt, while also rallying around and celebrating effective alternatives and solutions to the vast problems we are confronted by. Imagine thousands of nonviolent guerrilla armies swarming corrupt targets and rallying for viable solutions for a sustained three-month cycle. If we begin preparing now, a massive spring offensive can lead to a summer of transformation.

Staying true to the vital nature of the movement, you lead, in your own way. Pick whatever issues concern you most and run with them, knowing that likeminded people throughout the world will also be fighting in solidarity, in whatever way they can, at the same time you are.

Not Focused Enough?

In an attempt to dismiss and undermine us, status quo propagandists will once again criticize us by saying that our message of systemic change is not focused enough or lacks coherent goals. This feeble attempt to keep people from joining in with us will be overcome by our widespread and consistent actions, which will lead by example and inspire the cultural shift in mass consciousness that we urgently need. Our diverse crowdsourced actions will boldly demonstrate our will to expose, fight and overcome tyrannical systems. By rallying around viable solutions and protesting what we are against, the goals and freedoms that we aspire to will organically become self-evident to all.

Throughout history, when people have fought against tyranny and oppression, they didn’t have one perfect utopian model outcome agreed upon beforehand. They just knew that the invading and old systems were detrimental to their wellbeing and had to go. We are now in that position.

Don’t let the propagandists fool you. We do not need corrupt corporations or aristocratic government rulers anymore. They are obsolete. People throughout this interconnected technological world have already come up with much more effective systems to replace the tyrannical one that is currently dominating our lives. There are already many effective solutions to our problems, solutions that are held back by the entrenched forces of shortsighted greed. Once a small percentage of us withdraw our participation from corrupt entities and opt out of tyranny, the old and obsolete systems of rule will quickly fall away.

Extensive empirical evidence demonstrates that nonviolent movements toward freedom result in positive outcomes. Research has proven that it only takes approximately 3% of the population engaging in various forms of nonviolent action to create significant meaningful change, for the betterment of society. We now have the necessary critical mass of aware people who are ready, willing and capable.

Guerrilla Tactics

This time the police state will not be able to crush us. We will not have stationary targets. We will be everywhere, fluid and evasive. The movement will be an unstoppable crowdsourced, decentralized and autonomous revolutionary force.

We will engage in a diversity of nonviolent tactics, from large-scale mobilizations to small daily acts. Most of you already know the actions and tactics that are needed. Without revealing too much strategic information, here are a few basic actions to get a fire going in your mind:

-Mass gatherings, demonstrations;
-Marches, parades;
-Flash mobs, swarms;
-Shutdown harmful corporate and governmental operations;
-Worker Strikes;
-Hunger strikes;
-Sit-ins;
-Strategic defaults, debt strikes;
-Foreclosure prevention;
-Boycotting corrupt corporations;
-Monkeywrench corrupt corporations;
-Move your money out of the big banks and the stock market;
-Use alternative currencies and economic systems;
-Cancel your cable television and support independent media;
-Use independent online tools that don’t sell your info and protect your privacy;
-Online civil disobedience, Anonymous operations;
-Leak information on corruption;
-Use alternative energy;
-Build your own urban and hydroponic farms, or get your food from them;
-Support local businesses;
-Join local community organizations;
-Take part in food banks and help develop community support systems;
-Start or join intentional and autonomous communities;
-Experiment with new governing systems, Liquid Democracy;
-Create Temporary Autonomous Zones
-Host teach-ins;
-Organize socially conscious events;
-Make conscious media;
-Guerrilla theater;
-Guerrilla gardening;
-Guerrilla postering, messages on money;
-Help inspiring groups and organizations spread their message;
-Random acts of kindness and compassion;
-Mass meditations, prayer sessions and spiritual actions.

The list goes on and on. You know what you can do to play a part. Do whatever you feel inspired to do. Amplify what you are already doing. Think about what you are willing to do to be the change that we urgently need to see in the world, and then do it.

Don’t get bogged down in infighting and caught up in negativity. Ignore the saboteurs. Collaborate with people who inspire you. Keep moving forward with an indomitable will, a compassionate spirit and radiate a positive attitude. Moods are contagious. Be passionate and have fun!

Our ability to take part in civil disobedience is multiplied by our ability to easily record the actions on video and spread them throughout the Internet. By flooding social media with these inspiring videos, we will create a positive feedback loop that translates into more action on the ground.

Radical change is urgently needed, so let’s make transforming the world the cool thing to do. Let’s create a culture of transformation. Let’s blaze a contagious nonviolent wave of action through mass consciousness, signaling the end of the old world, ushering in a new paradigm.

Now is the time.

~~*~~

Ride the Worldwide Wave of Transformation
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#www

Tweak this meme! This is a draft call to action, a work in progress. Feel free to make changes to it and spread it around however you see fit.

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Anonymous Calls for Worldwide Wave of Action #www