Do or Do Not Do
....folks keep asking what to do (white folks in particular keep saying they don't know what to do)...
And, I have said it for so long, to me it feels like a song... but, again, if you are wanting to see the actual end of white supremacist capitalist oppression and imperialist dominator culture, if you are really ready to do whatever it takes to stop it, permanently, then you must know, we have to begin seriously talking about power. We must shift the conversation to the cause of racism (institutional and all), the cause of all the cultural -phobias and -isms, the root cause of every oppression: Power.
The boot on your neck is that of power. And power is exercised as a relationship.
Currently, our power relations are lethally askew and imbalanced.
To really fight for any kind of revolution at this point - and you do realize that revolution is a simultaneously destructive & constructive process that ends in total change, right? - if what you really want is a revolution, you must know that it will be illegal, extrajudicial, and beyond the pale. There will be casualties; there will be pain. No permits exist for revolutions and the powers that be will call you everything but child of god – malign you, discredit you – and will deliberately seek your "neutralization," lest your brand of sedition wake the masses. It will not leave your life, as it is, intact. And most importantly, this revolution to right the power relations will not leave white folks in power.
(See... feel that little clinch in your heart when I said that? That's why we haven't had anyone speaking out on a public forum (or any forum) of any "revolution" outside of our current cultural and societal paradigms, sturctures, and systems. Folks don't really want to abdicate their power, even though they realize it's being used to abuse everyone else and the ecosphere as a whole, to the point of [near] extinction.)
So, if you're still following me thus far and accept these "Terms & Conditions" as, at least, making some sense to you, here's my answer to "what do we do?"
Do nothing.
Do less than nothing; stop doing.
At some point, folks will have to determine that – as an ancient African American proverb of the womenfolk sagely states –"we can do bad by ourselves" and commence to forming groups – not to protest, not to march, not to "organize" – but to determine how to take care of our human needs WITHOUT a governmental grid to do it for you. (Sounds a little like growing up and "adulting" doesn't it?)
This will be tough, no doubt. And, completely new and will call for sacrifices untold. Your life will change wholly and irrevocably – from what days you'll have hot water and electricity, to when you can finally use the last remaining car to go visit a family member and how you handle emergencies and where food will be at any point, because it might not be trucked in anymore, oh, and how to procure clean, potable water. But, consider this... if you don't do this willingly, deliberately, and for yourselves, the economic collapse that is looming as you read this will make this task appear like a day at the beach (which will probably be abandoned due to sea level rise anyway).
And it's not far off. I'm mean like a-matter-of-months not far off.
I can't emphasize that enough.
I know this sounds far-fetched to a great many folks, yet do remember, it's happened in other places. We just haven't (or have) had the privilege to have it happen here...
yet.
Stop paying your taxes (tribute).
This is really rogue, now, y'all.
Remember, these aren't measures to "send a message" to the government – we really don't have time for that anymore. These measures are to actually dismantle a system of oppression and to grind our current way of 'government' to a halt.
A systemic problem requires systemic solutions. And this way of setting up government currently feeds into an exploitative civilization style and this is literally and actually killing the ecology and killing humans and killing human ability to remain a member of this ecology.
We're extincting ourselves with what we call modern industrial civilization and the governments therein do not serve us, but rather serve us up to the industrial machine for fodder.
We must decentralize governmental structures and realign the power relations within them.
Besides, your taxes (mainly) fund the wars anyway.
Stop working.
You heard me.
Stop working. It is your labor that produces the profits that the capitalist machine wants and needs to continue functioning.
Again, this isn't about sending messages, this is about destroying a system of inequity, theft, and pillage and replacing it, en toto.
But... but, where will I get money?
Humanity has lived out the majority of its life on this planet without it and the markets it controls. We can figure it out. Promise.
Then we need to actually take control of the industrial systems so that with our last bits of oil we dismantle things that will require industrial processes and equipment to do so.
Sounds easy right? ... Yeah, sorry about that.
But think about it, there are multiple ecological crises converging right now. All will threaten our industry and infrastructures anyway. The question is, who do you want handling these crises?
You and your local bonded community or a large governmental daddy controlled by corporations that will literally lay you low for a petrodollar?
Stop factory farming by no longer consuming their products.
Yeah, I could've just said go vegan, but that's really not what I mean at all. You can catch all the animals you want – yourself, locally – and go to town on all the carcasses and animal products you can handle. It's these factory farms, y'all. They’re raping not only the animals, they are raping our planet in the ways we have to use the environment (I refuse to call them ‘natural resources, like they are only meant for us humans) in order to support this industry of torture and abuse for taste and appetite.
We are in a death spiral y’all and ignoring this will, indeed, be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Nancy Reagan wasn’t wrong… “just say no.” And, I’ll add, “do no.”
It’s time to “not do” some things as we attempt to undo a great many things.
