It's time to get to work. Today Eleanor Goldfield published another excellent episode of Act Out. In it she details the great amount of effort corporations are putting, lately, into writing legislation for state legislatures to enact. In particular, this episode focused on legislation targeting protesters. As I listened to her describing the lengths these people are taking to marginalize and criminalize dissent, I could only think, it's time for us to get to work. It's time for us to do something.
I mean, come on people! Are we just going to sit here and watch while they build this prison around us? Okay, maybe the prison is already mostly built, but there are still holes in the walls! Are we just going to sit here while they stop up the holes? Will we do nothing while they fill up the few remaining gaps separating us from our freedom?
"But", you will say, "what can we do?"
We can start getting organized. We can start holding Saturday meetings, much like the Yellow Vests are doing. We don't need to meet all in one place. We can start by meeting at local parks, growing a movement.
In the long term we need to do something pretty major. We need to develop a new society within our current society. We build a system within the system. In the end, we want a system that performs all the essential functions of society. When we have built a new system, our own system, then we can completely separate from the current one. We drop out, and we invite others to join us. This is how we can sap this capitalist leviathan of its might. We drain it of its resources: Us. But in the short term we just start by getting organized.
It's not going to be easy, but what is? Oh, I know what is, sitting around and waiting for these evil bastards to build a prison up all around us. That would be easy. We could just go on watching our favorite tv shows, having nice relaxing weekends, and enjoying our dinners every night; all the while our leaders are busy constructing a prison around us. That would be easy, sure, until the prison is finished anyway. Then things will get hard.
So let's not let it happen. Let's start getting organized. Let's form a global organization from the ground up. As I described in The Peaceful Revolution, we can build a global network of activists from the ground up with a simple decentralized human algorithm. All it takes is a first step, a commitment to try. We just need to spread this message, that on some Saturday in the near future, we the people are going to start getting together in parks and city squares all around the world, and we are all going to start getting organized into a real movement. We are going to get organized first locally, then regionally, then globally. Once we are organized, then we can agree on plans for what to do next, but it all starts with a large push toward organization.
This is all it takes. Now it's time to get started.
Cover photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash.
