Basic Movement Strategy

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I want to continue combining ideas toward the development of a basic strategy. Here’s some suggestions for the arrangement of many of the things we’ve discussed at this blog. I place them within the strategic framework laid out in this post. The emphasis throughout is on action, on things we can do.

 

1. ***Engage in “apolitical” economic relocalization as much as possible.***

 

For food relocalization, this includes setting up farmers’ markets, community gardens, regional food distribution networks, seed libraries, trying to close energy and waste loops, develop localized biodiesel generation for use on-site and for local distribution; on an individual level, encourage the Victory Garden and Freedom Seed movement. Set up Garden Share programs, tool banks, anything else which can assist people whose spirit is willing but wallet or schedule is weak.

 

Those are food examples, and the same principle can be extended to many other sectors – energy, transportation, education, health care. In all sectors we should be trying to exchange skills and in general learning as much as we can about living without fossil fuels and without centralized government (and perhaps facing the hostility of the latter).

 

Time banking and other alternative currency schemes can help coordinate these. Just yesterday I added an offer to help with seed saving as part of my profile on our new Time Bank.

 

Alternative currency programs are also part of our effort to free ourselves of the tyranny of the dollar. The banks and government want to use taxation to forcibly keep us within the dollar economy, while at the same time they want to abolish physical cash and force all our dollar transactions through electronic toll booths. All this is taking place within the context of the ongoing liquidation of the real economy, where it will be more and more difficult to earn dollars at all. This is the debt indenture trap they’ve laid for us. The way to escape is to escape the dollar itself as much as possible.

 

So relocalization has to mean organization of the informal economy. Cooperatives, gift exchanges, some kinds of alternative currencies, time banks – all these can help. Barter itself is in theory taxable, and we can expect the kleptocracy to seek out any attempts to organize it. So at least legally the key to the position is organizing, not barter, but reciprocal gifting.

 

But the political battlefield, not the legal, which is the real battlefield.

 

2. ***Among committed citizens, form a nucleus for political relocalization. Systematic political education goes on among this group. This group must also formulate a politically and spiritually inspiring philosophy and mindset to accompany the toolkit of actions.***

 

This nucleus will develop the political philosophy of the economic relocalization. It will also contribute to developing a general philosophy for the entire movement.

 

Some aspects will be to articulate the necessity for Food Sovereignty, as a physical (Peak Oil) and political imperative; the basic nature of the kleptocracy; develop something like the Bridge strategy; develop political declarations (like No Taxes on the Non-Rich; Total Austerity for the Criminals, Not One Cent More From the People); the philosophy of positive freedom and direct democracy; an American Revolutionary mythology.

 

We’ll develop a full awareness of the Land Scandal.

 

We’ll articulate the real nature of money and how to Take Back Our Money.

 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we should each take responsibility for reporting on a topic.

 

In the meantime, we communicate information about the state of our polity and economy. Here I think we could fruitfully divide our labor if we had a significant number of blogs dedicated to similar transformational goals. These blogs could confederate under a “brand name”, link to one another, and delegate among themselves responsibility for regular reporting on particular topics.

Here’s some examples of what I think are the most important subjects: The state of the Bailout, failure of bank reform, corporate welfare, unemployment (and the phoniness of “job creation”), inequality of wealth and income, the SCOTUS and courts, globalization, the state of the money supply (including MMT), energy issues, the Permanent War, civil liberties, the Land Scandal, the health racket bailout, net neutrality and other Internet issues, intellectual property, corporatist ideology, and Food Sovereignty (farm issues, biofuels, GMOs, the Food Control structure).

That list isn’t meant to be exhaustive, but those are the things that immediately came to mind.

And then there’s the many affirmative topics of agroecology and sustainable food production, distributed and decentralized energy, alternatives to money, land redemption, tallying protest actions, home schooling toward a goal of better citizenship, alternative medicine, non-fossil fuel crafts, every kind of decentralized and/or non-capitalist production, every kind of community-building endeavor, democratic ideology. Again, those are just some examples.

So for example if we had fifty bloggers, each could agree to take special responsibility for one or two of those and to regularly report on it. Of course everyone would also be free to write on anything else as well.

 

Some commenters weren’t so thrilled at this idea when it sounded like the same old discussion of corporate and government crimes. So how about a more practical emphasis: We should, where it comes to each and every issue, compile a log of what people are doing about it. We should strive to be aware of all actions, what’s working and what fails, and why. And we should report on what we personally are doing, and how well it’s working.

 

This nucleus also should assiduously practice political skills of polemical writing, public speaking, debate, etc. Last year I offered a suggestion for how to organize this.

 

Here’s one possibility for idea coordination, which could also have many other benefits. Are readers familiar with Toastmasters? It’s an organization for the practice of public speaking. I’ve never been to a meeting myself (the times I checked there was no chapter within a convenient distance), but I’ve read about it. I guess the members are mostly careerists looking to hone their business and backslapping skills. But we could use these skills as well.

So my idea was that people who share a dedication to a political cause could form their own such groups. Nominally it would be a public speaking/book discussion group. But it could also serve as the vehicle for coordination of ideas and messaging, including people taking on particular tasks.

The way I just described that involves meeting in real life, wherever there were enough people within driving distance of one another. But something similar (of course without the public speaking component) could be done online as well. FireDogLake has its regular book salons, to give one example.

 

This could either be one way for the nucleus to organize its activities. Or conversely, forming a public speaking/book club could be the initial form which then evolves into a political nucleus.  

 

3. ***To whatever extent possible, this nucleus becomes involved in local politics. But this may not be an initial priority everywhere.***

 

One conventional activity which is being embraced by communities is the passage of model ordinances on subjects like local food sovereignty and rejection of corporate personhood. These are not only vigorous declarations of local power, but they’re great exercises in participatory democracy. We should always be seeking to initiate actions which are worthwhile in themselves and which extend this political participation.

 

There’s also getting worthwhile initiatives on local ballots, and running for office where feasible. There’s also the ways in which politically conscious relocalizers can get the word out to the community at large.

 

One example is the kind of community lecturing program I described for the Land Scandal.

 

Another is the idea of placing all this political consciousness-raising within the framework of a new Constitutional Convention. Or, we could declare ourselves an alternative community council, Continental Congress, Citizen Congress.

 

One promising development is the recently passed Local Community Radio Act. (I’m still not sure how this got passed, given how atypical it is. I know somebody who’s gung-ho about it, so I asked him. He said it was the result of years of citizen pressure. I hope that’s true, although that kind of pressure doesn’t seem to work in other places these days.) Where possible we have to get on the local radio.

 

4. ***To whatever extent government and corporate power hinder the activities of (1), the political activists take any opportunity for broader political education of various producers and perhaps the public.***

 

Government and corporate oppressions will provide opportunities to use the occasion to publicize the full philosophy and program.

 

We also need to figure out how to organize civil disobedience, both open (preferred, where willingness and/or a critical mass makes this desirable) and covert. One example is refusal to purchase the health racket Stamp. Another, even more critical, will be resisting any attempts to deploy the new powers granted by the Food Control bill in totalitarian ways.

 

We should also think about how to fight back, at the local governmental and if necessary at the street level, against private thugs.

 

5. ***Wherever necessary and possible, the locally involved political activists take on responsibilities of local and regional government, gradually achieving objective legitimacy. But actual assertion of authority against parasitic “official” structures would have to wait for later.***

 

Many community volunteering efforts already take up the slack where, according to the civics textbooks, government should be doing its job. This will only accelerate as the Depression sets in, need increases, and governments are further starved of the federal funds they’ve come to rely upon.

 

While economic relocalizers may go about their business unaware of, or complacent about, the way they’re performing quasi-governmental functions, our political nucleus should always be looking for ways to increase recognition of these functions by the community. As we become acclaimed as reliable service providers and political educators, the goal becomes to gradually become an alternative government which would then be in a position to make policy and where necessary challenge the abdicated authority of the de jure government.

 

6. ***To whatever extent possible, these organizations, at whatever level of development, would come together to consult in a kind of federation. To whatever extent possible, they could coordinate and assist one another.***

 

Here’s where online organizing can help with all the things I just described. All the physical localities, no matter how geographically far-flung, can become neighbors online. They can share information and results, confederate their local councils and Conventions, function as Committees of Correspondence.

 

One particular need is coordination among rural, suburban, and urban regions. Some of the problems here were described well in this thread.

 

The goal would eventually be a federated movement encompassing all of America and becoming international as well. 

 

7. ***This structure would then gradually make its presence known to the public, mostly through “apolitical” education about the economy and relocalization, but also political education, wherever it seems that would be fruitful.***

 

In the same way that each local nucleus works to build political awareness in its own region, so the confederation tries to do the same thing on a broader level. These processes may be simultaneous, and on particular issues progress is likely to be faster on some fronts (some regions advance faster than others; some regions advance faster than the national consciousness which is faster than other regions).

 

8. ***Then, once the next, terminal crash comes, and/or the general deterioration into permanent depression accelerates, the movement will be prepared to offer a home, a means of self-help, and a realm of action, to any size mass of people ardent and desperate for a solution.***

 

Every advocate of an alternative to a powerful, entrenched status quo seeks to make the people as a whole conscious of this alternative. We want to get the ideas out there. Then, as the saying goes, when the crisis comes, people grab something from the ideas which are laying around. Our goal is to get the people to grab our idea. If we skillfully and aggressively argue our case and provide exemplary instruction in the way we live our lives and carry out our actions, we have an excellent chance.

 

Because our ideas are the right ones.