Occupy Everything

To celebrate the 100th post of this blog, the author and his team of trained squirrels created a political cartoon, using corporate media tools, an iMac, and electricity from a plug that draws power from a coal fired plant out in Ohio or wherever….

Occupy Everything

Olde Tyme Protest in the Digital Age

The idea came to me some days ago that the large-scale protests are not the best way to get out a message. Visiting the protest I was reminded of so many others I had been to. I do enjoy that this can happen, I would rather have scrappy kids and old people out there than nothing. However, I would like to see some change come from this. So, wearing my best thinking cap, I came up with a few ideas about a system that would put a fixed number of protesters in several locations, allow locations to be created dynamically, and take the burden of organizing off of a few key people and spread it to many, using technology to crunch the numbers and create or close locations and topics. Part message board, part Zagat of dissent, part craigslist of anger. I am working on putting together a team to explore this idea. For one thing, our way of doing things will come to an end, but perhaps we can just push it a little, and allow that soft landing some of us don’t expect, but I am sure even the most hardened Doomer hopes for.

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Transcendence With A Cause…

Compare and contrast the present with the past:

Rebels With A Cause (documentary on YouTube)

It is stongly recommended that this film be both viewed in its entirety and circulated widely, as it ostensibly paints stark parallels and a potential picture of a future of little change, if the same track and tack are maintained. That’s what your animation echoes.
The SDS and Weather Underground, etc., despite their best efforts still “appealed” or oriented themselves toward the state.

It seems less a question of protesting or violence or lack thereof, but one of literally walking away from a broken system and creating a completely new one with the lessons learned.

I believe this is key as many including you are also realizing.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it”
~ Georgle Santayana

Lastly, Gandhi developed the concept of nonviolent revolution, to be seen not as a programme for the seizure of power, but as a programme for transforming relationships. The concept sits neatly with the observation of… Gustav Landauer: ‘The state is a condition, a certain relationship between beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.’
…
In its first decade several themes, theories, actions… began to come to the fore and were given intellectual expression by… Paul Goodman: …the rediscovery of community, community action, radical decentralism, [relocalized resilience/permaculture] participatory democracy, the organisation of the poor and oppressed inter-racially, and the building of counter-culture and counter-institutions (such as new co-ops, collectives and communes [re-villagization/local currencies/Transition Towns]).”
~ Geoffrey Ostergaard, Resisting The Nation State [my edits in square brackets]

The state has moved into many new areas as they become significant, such as… promoting nuclear power. This expanding role of the state helps prevent the rise of any significant competing forms of social organisation…

The obvious point is that most social activists look constantly to the state for solutions to social problems. This point bears labouring, because the orientation of most social action groups tends to reinforce state power. This applies to most antiwar action too. Many of the goals and methods of peace movements have been oriented around action by the state, such as appealing to state elites and advocating neutralism and unilateralism. Indeed, peace movements spend a lot of effort debating which demand to make on the state: nuclear freeze, unilateral or multilateral disarmament, nuclear-free zones, or removal of military bases. By appealing to the state, activists indirectly strengthen the roots of many social problems, the problem of war in particular…

Many people’s thinking is permeated by state perspectives. One manifestation of this is the unstated identification of states or governments with the people in a country which is embodied in the words ‘we’ or ‘us.’ ‘We must negotiate sound disarmament treaties.’ ‘We must renounce first use of nuclear weapons.’ Those who make such statements implicitly identify with the state or government in question. It is important to avoid this identification, and to carefully distinguish states from people…
~ Brian Martin, ‘Uprooting War’

Protesting, and in full view of police/gov’t and industry seems a bit like lining oneself up like a mechanical duck at an old fair’s shooting gallery… while the shooters get more practice and better at hitting their targets.

According to him, the dystopia of the Wachowski Brothers’ Matrix trilogy is already here: the technological-industrial ‘machine’ is already running the world, a world where individual humans are but insignificant little cogs with barely any autonomy. No single human being – neither the most powerful politician, nor the most powerful businessman – has the power to rein in the system. They necessarily have to follow the inexorable logic of what has been unleashed.
~ G Sampath on John Zerzan

I think it is time– en masse– to take the red pill, unplug, walk away and starve the machine.

Here’s a good home from where to begin everywhere/everything:
http://www.permacultureglobal.com

schwerpunktinternational says:

13/10/2011 at 09:14

Thanks for the links and the thoughts. I will put that into the mix. I believe more and more every day we must not change the system, but walk away from it. Hard to do. I see more people reaching for the red pill but even those who do, the red pill takes a bit of work to wash down, swallow, and hold down before it changes one’s life.

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