Episodes
Friday Aug 28, 2020
The 2020 Shift - Global Justice, Local Revolt and Ultimate Anarchy
Friday Aug 28, 2020
Friday Aug 28, 2020
When we launched the Waking Justice project last year, we understood that we were launching during a busy election year. And one that many folks consider “maybe the most important election ever,”.
To that end, our articles and podcasts have explored what seems to be the most essential question in this election: does it even really matter which party wins anymore? That may seem like an absurd question for some. But for those who have been in the trenches for a while fighting for Global Justice– they seem fully convinced: the system is now completely rigged to resist any - substantive - change. And after a year of exploring such claims, we are now in full agreement.
For example, we’ve explored peer-reviewed research like the recent Princeton Study which shows that over the past half century, average working-class citizens have had “a near-zero, statistically non-significant impact on US public policy.” But when corporate elites want to stop a new policy, “there’s a 100% chance they’ll get their way.”
We’ve explored the work of various independent journalists who expose how “corporate elites have corrupted all levers of democratic reform in America, including both political parties, [the election system], the courts, academia, and the mass media.”
We’ve explored how BigOil and BigDefense are warmongering for oil to prop up the petrodollar to profit BigBanks. How BigMeat&Dairy props up America’s Disease-for-Profit Food system to profit BigChemical and especially BigPharma. How BigMeat&Dairy is the #1 cause of global infectious disease pandemics as well as the Sixth Great Mass Extinction of Species now underway. And how BigMeat&Dairy and BigOil are the leading drivers of the global climate crisis.
We’ve shown how the corporate takeover of our democracy has reduced BigPolitics to mere - political theater - where “BigTech ushers in the audience while BigMedia directs the show.”
We’ve explored the landmark Swiss Study that reveals how all the top companies across all these industries are all mutually reliant and interdependent: they invest in each other’s stocks and appoint their people to each other's boards of directors.
In fact, the controlling shares of most all the top companies across all major industries are owned by just a handful of major investment companies. It’s basically just one big corporate plutocracy - or what many call a “Corporatocracy.”
We’ve discussed how the US-led Corporatocracy is actually just the latest incarnation of the same old patriarchy that has dominated societies for millennia. In America, it emerges as “neoliberal, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy”, as feminist scholar bell hooks explains it. And in America, patriarchy retains all the age-old structures of oppression including structural racism, structural sexism, structural classism, and structural speciesism. But under corporate plutocracy, these systems have become commodified, made profitable, and mass-produced - exponentially:
- Structural Racism morphs into the so-called “War on Drugs”, the for-profit prison industry, and the militarization of community policing. Police shootings become a leading cause of death among Black men.
- Structural Sexism morphs into the pornification of mainstream culture. The sex-trafficking of women and children becomes a multi-billion dollar industry in the US. And sexualized male violence against women increases exponentially.
- Structural Speciesism morphs into what indie journo Lee Camp calls the industrial scale “torture-farming” of animals for our disease-for-profit food system. Activists who try to expose its cruelty are indicted as domestic terrorists.
- Structural Classism morphs into Austerity politics, the plunder of the social safety net, and skyrocketing income and wealth inequality. Election after election, each successive President–regardless of their party– transfers more wealth from the working class to the Top1% than their predecessor.
Taken altogether, it’s why Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges concludes that “the ruling elites and the corporations they serve are the principal obstacles to change.” And since they won’t give up power democratically, he says, “we will have to take it through other non-violent means– and that means revolution.”
We agree with Chris Hedges’ assessment. It is beyond delusional to still believe that voting and protest marches can ever make real change. We’re not saying don’t vote and protest-– those actions are vital to awaken the masses. We’re just saying that we must combine those actions with real political power. And the only real power that the working class has in a “corporate plutocracy” is mass economic boycott.
Especially now– the interdependencies and mutual investment among this “Corporatocracy” are its greatest strengths. But also its greatest weakness: when one industry suffers, they all suffer, and they all know it. It’s why economic boycott is the most effective means to challenge the U.S. Corporatocracy.
Indeed, mass organized boycott is the only collective will that has ever effectively challenged such entrenched and moneyed power:
- It was Gandhi’s Salt and Textile boycotts in the 1920s that helped win India her independence from Great Britain.
- It was the mass strikes and picket lines in the 1930s that won US workers a 40 hour work week, sick pay and overtime pay.
- It was the bus boycotts and restaurant sit-ins by Black Americans in the 1960s that helped win major Civil Rights reforms.
- It was the Grape Boycotts and Salad Boycotts of the 60s and 70s that helped Migrant Farm Workers win important safety reforms and a fair living wage.
- And it was the divestment boycotts on college campuses in the 1980s that finally helped end Apartheid in South Africa.
Those were all great wins for Global Justice, but they did not happen overnight. They took years, even decades of sustained mass actions. For example, Gandhi’s Salt and Textile boycotts began in the 1920s, but India didn’t win her independence until 1947! ...And the huge gains for working class Americans in the 1930s were the culmination of almost two decades of ongoing mass picketing, strikes, and boycotts.
If we expect to wage an effective revolt against this Corporatocracy, we must prepare ourselves and our movement for years and decades of sustained mass boycott. Otherwise we are just bullshitting ourselves about any real hope for real change.
Indeed, now more than ever, the Corporatocracy is well prepared for any long term disruption to industry. For example, the Trump administration just approved a $6 Trillion dollar giveaway to corporations as part of the Covid-19 stimulus package. And that was on top of Trump’s record $1.5 Trillion in tax cuts for corporations. Fortune Magazine says the Trump administration has just orchestrated “the Biggest Cash Grab for Wealthy Elites in Modern History”.
And do you know who held that record before Donald Trump? Barack Obama. During his administration, Obama transferred a record $4.5 Trillion in corporate welfare to Wall Street Banks. At the time, it was heralded as “the greatest transfer of wealth from the working class to the Top 1% in US history.”
Within just the past decade, Obama and Trump have transferred over $12 TRILLION dollars of free money to US corporations. And that’s in addition to the 100s of BILLIONS in corporate welfare that the ruling elites are already stealing from our tax base each and every year.
To be crystal clear- over the past half century, Americans have been conned and fleeced by corporate elites to fund their takeover of our democracy. As Chris Hedges has said: “the corporate coup d'état of American democracy is now complete– the corporations have won.” And, as we said above, it is beyond delusional to still believe that we can ever fix this corrupted system by working within it.
Indeed, as Buckminster Fuller has said: “you never change things by fighting the existing system. To change things, you build a parallel new system that makes the existing system obsolete.”
That is the revolution we seek.
And it’s why we have sharpened our focus on what many believe is the most strategic work we can all be doing right now: working together to build a just and sustainable new system that makes this existing system of corruption obsolete.
So what exactly does the work of building “a new social system” look like?
When Gandhi* rallied the people of India in nonviolent revolt against Britain, there were three key strategies that he used: self-rule (“Swaraj”), self-reliance (“Sadeshi”) and self-scrutiny (“Satyagraha”). Following is a quick explanation of each— and with a special note to readers:
*We are familiar with concerns about Gandhi’s racism during his early career in South Africa- and we share those concerns unequivocally. Our focus here is specifically on the strategies and tactics that Gandhi used decades later in his career, in his fight for India’s independence. His model for non-violent revolution has inspired countless revolutionaries the world over including Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. As Mandela once wrote, “Both Gandhi and I suffered colonial oppression, and both of us mobilized our respective peoples against governments that violated our freedoms...“Gandhi is “the archetypal anticolonial revolutionary,” he said.
Gandhi’s first principle of non-violent revolution is self-rule which stressed self-governance, not by national groups organizing to elect a government hierarchy, but by local citizens organizing at the local level to build a network of resilient, self-reliant communities.".
Gandhi’s second principle of self-reliance guided their community development. It emphasized the production and consumption of local goods and services, especially to replace those of British corporations whenever possible. Swadeshi helped stop the corporate looting of local economies through targeted boycotts- and then they used targeted “buycotts” of local-produced goods to build community wealth, resilience and independence.
This movement toward self-reliant communities and away from dependency on corporations was guided by Gandhi’s third core principle of “Satyagraha” or self-scrutiny. According to this philosophy, practitioners of self scrutiny achieve [quote] “correct insight into the real nature of an evil situation - by observing a nonviolence of the mind; by seeking truth in a spirit of peace and love, and by undergoing a rigorous process of self-scrutiny.” [unquote]
… … There are obviously many parallels to what the people of India faced 100 years ago, to what poor and working class folk now face in America today. And Gandhi’s three-fold path to revolution is (still) the best, most competent strategy forward for the liberation of our minds and bodies, our communities, and our society - from occupation by the US Corporatocracy.
The Corporatocracy is a top-down, centralized social system that concentrates wealth at the top and distributes power downward as a means of social control.
For a jUHst and sustainable new society, we must build a parallel new social system that’s decentralized, works bottom-up, and distributes wealth and power equitably to ensure prosperity for all... As Gandhi advised, the core building blocks of such a decentralized society are resilient, self-reliant communities… ...
But in America, our communities are in deep crisis. We already have “the highest disparity of wealth inequality of any nation in history.” And now, as the covid pandemic persists, experts predict that “the New Normal” for Americans will mean continued record unemployment, skyrocketing evictions, homelessness, food insecurity and loss of healthcare. And with escalating state-sponsored violence in cities across the country– by both local police and federal paramilitary– our communities are devolving into chaos, poverty and martial law.
In real-time, the once-great American middle class is now collapsing before our eyes, and the Corporatocracy is doing nothing to stop it- much less the escalating climate crisis and mass extinction of species now underway, which barely even register anymore in mainstream discourse …
Altogether, it’s why we must re-prioritize our activism at home, with urgency, to help build the real revolution: a revolution where local citizens take responsibility in caring for each other. And where local activists strategize and organize together to meet the fundamental needs in their community, including housing, healthcare, security - and especially food...
Indeed, we believe that a jUHst and sustainable local food system is the foundation of community resilience.
It’s a food system where local farms, food sheds and community gardens use sustainable, plant-based agriculture that restores local ecology and carbon sequestration rather than destroys it... It’s a food system that produces fresh, nutritious foods and distributes those equitably to ensure nutritional security for all its citizens. It creates good green jobs in local farming and community gardening, local food co-ops, local food crafting, and community education on healthy eating and preventive nutrition. And it exponentially increases the velocity of local money to help build community wealth.
So, for our part– going forward– we are focusing the Waking Justice podcast on two new series. The first is our series on community resilience. We’ll explore all aspects of community resilience such as housing, healthcare and community policing. But we’ll focus mainly on activists who are working to develop their local food economy. We’re calling this series “Local Revolt” as we’re fully convinced that the real revolution is a local revolt, community by community; it’s a strategic, nonviolent revolution that builds community resilience on the foundation of a jUHst and sustainable local food system.
We’re also doing a second podcast series that explores the practice of self-scrutiny that Gandhi referred to as “Satyagraha”. It seems more important than ever now that we learn how to practice this [quote] “rigorous process of..seeking truth” that Gandhi advised, “[about] this evil situation,” that we now find ourselves in...
[[ We’re calling it “Ultimate Anarchy” because we believe that the ultimate act of revolution is the commitment of a person to their own “self rule”; to decolonize their mind and body of this toxic, patriarchal consumerist culture that we’re all born into.
And by “anarchism”, we don’t mean “destruction, violence and chaos” as the corporate media typically portrays it. The term anarchy is actually derived from the greek word “an-archon”. It means “without rulers”. It’s the negation of the greek suffix for “-archy” as in without-monarchy, or without-plutarchy, or without-patriarchy, etc...
(You can see why the ruling elites and their corporate media would want to distort the true meaning of anarchy, right?)
In our Ultimate Anarchy podcast series, we explore the rich diversity of approaches to self- introspection that have been modeled by anarchists and revolutionaries from all walks of life, including the great spiritual traditions - as well as the arts and sciences of every age and culture.
If you want to learn more about this important work, please go to our website at WakingJustice.org. You can sign up for our free e-newsletter. And we’ll email you a weekly digest of our ongoing articles and podcasts, including the Ultimate Anarchy series as well as our main series on Local Revolt, community resilience and community-based food systems.
It’s time to build the real revolution, y’all. Join Us. Peace.
Comments (0)
To leave or reply to comments, please download free Podbean or
No Comments
To leave or reply to comments,
please download free Podbean App.