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What We Can DO
Mar. 11th, 2020 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bobquasitIt occurs to me that if we all do the same thing, we can make a huge impact. If all of us who see that humanity is going to die if we don't take drastic action can agree on a course of action, we can be effective. We all tried supporting Bernie. That didn't work, but it wasn't because we failed; it's because we were fighting on the system's terms.
OF COURSE we lost. The game was rigged from the beginning. But if we fight on our OWN terms...we can win.
The occupy Movement scared the living s*** out of the establishment, both parties. They rolled out tanks in a coordinated nationwide attack to shut it down. They revealed the iron fist behind the velvet glove, and they usually try to avoid doing that. Why did they take that chance?
Because Occupy wasn't playing their game. They were beyond the control of the Establishment. They met face to face, making it harder for the establishment to monitor or troll them. They had no leaders (despite the best efforts of the Democratic party to claim leadership), so there was no one to corrupt or intimidate. They met in public spaces, so that the vast oppressed people of this country could see them and know that they weren't alone. THAT'S why Obama coordinated the nationwide crushing of the Occupy Movement: they were a real threat to the power of the elite.
What does that tell us?
I think it tells us that we have the power to threaten them, if we use it right. More than that: we can overthrow them. It's just a matter of fighting on our ground and our terms, not theirs.
Right now there's a hell of a lot of people who are (like me) angry and scared. There are more of us than we realize. A hell of a lot of people understand that what's happening is going to end up killing us all. So if we all can find a way to act together effectively...without being co-opted by Democratic groups or leaders or allowing trolls to overrun us...
We can win. All it will take is to figure out what approach to take. Maybe we need to revive the Occupy Movement, with improvements so that it can't be wiped out by denying it access to public spaces. Maybe we all need to join something like Extinction Rebellion or some other mass protest group. I think it's pretty clear that politics is not the way to go. Starting a new party is a nice fantasy, but it by itself will never be able to get the kind of power and traction in time to save billions of lives. That's not to say that we can't have a new progressive political party. It's just saying that depending on any one angle of attack is a mistake. We are multitudes; the numbers are on our side. We can take more than one avenue of approach at the same time. A new Occupy. Mass protests. A new political party, maybe. But altogether, the goal has to be survival. Because it's down to that, now.
