Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I am no longer a fan of civil disobedience. Oh, I remain a big fan of disobeying morally reprehensible laws. But I do not believe that the lawbreaker has any moral obligation to turn him/her/their self into authorities.

Indeed, any authority willing to imprison someone for a moral act is not a legitimate authority.

Unlike the era of, say, the Civil Rights movement, I believe that today we should not seek to fill the prisons with righteous people. We should seek to free the righteous people who are imprisoned.

Today, these are immigrants—both legal and “illegal”—and those arrested for documenting, supporting or protecting them. We should be demanding their freedom right now and every day and every moment.

Not Persuading. Speaking and Acting.

We should not be wasting our time and energy trying to persuade our oppressors with moral arguments. That is an exceedingly bad use of our energy and diverts us from the urgent task at hand: ridding ourselves of fascism and plutocracy, establishing justice, and creating a benevolent civilization while rescuing our grievously damaged planet.

That’s a big agenda. I can’t prioritize “persuading fascists to be nice” on my to do list. In fact, I think it’s absurd to even include it.

Debate is useless. We know right from wrong, and we need to act to ensure that wrongs are righted. Talking among ourselves regarding strategy—evaluating what’s working and what is not and what to try next—THAT makes sense. But debating our opponents is ridiculous. We can’t waste our time listening to their nonsense.

Deterrence Is Necessary, Along With Self-Defense

When ICE invades our cities and communities, on their violent crime sprees, they’ve had it pretty easy. Now it’s getting tougher. They are finding their victims to be hostile. Crowds are getting in their way, yelling at them, blocking them and documenting their brutality. Sometimes ICE is forced to retreat.

Our eyes are open and we see the lie of “law enforcement” to be a thin and insulting cover for crimes against humanity. committed openly and documented by witnesses. The public understands that the regime and media lackeys are lying. We know that ICE is a terrorist organization and the federal government is a terrorist regime.

Our mission is to NOT feel terrorized. Our mission is to make our opponents afraid, To make them worry. To make them insecure. To make them doubt their ability to control us.

In fact, our mission to ensure that they cannot control us. This requires courage and fortitude. It doesn’t require martyrdom.

What did Patton say in that movie? “We don’t want to die for our country; we want the other poor bastard to die for his.” Something like that. Fascists should be afraid to behave like fascists. It must be made very dangerous for them.

We need a competent and disciplined militia—armed citizens—to go wherever ICE goes, and to protect citizens, and immigrants—whether documented or not. We need for ICE to expect to be challenged and to feel that their violent acts put THEM in danger.

In fact, we it this to be a fact. We need for ICE violence to endanger ICE.

Nonviolence Retains A Lead Role, But Not Exclusivity

Most people dislike violence. I dislike violence. I am incapable of participating in it. But, properly restrained and limited to defensive roles, I am not opposed. In fact, properly used I support it as a limited tool within a broader strategy.

I want every ICE agent, BEFORE they assault or kidnap someone off the street, to be worried that an unseen sniper may just pick them off if they attack. That HE, and not some poor immigrant, may be wounded or killed in the street.

We are under attack. We are victims and the only way to stop being victims is to defeat our foes. We may not like the situation (I know I don’t), but we have no choice but to face it.

To win, we must use whatever tools we possess and use them effectively. We—in advance—commit ourselves to holster any weapons that our opponents use freely. We cannot bring a knife to a gun fight.

That said, in most cases violence favors our opponents. They have more weapons, more firepower and less moral restraint. (I would say they have NO moral restraint.) In an exclusively violent confrontation, we would lose. Absolutely. We would have no chance.

But in a mixed battle, with a variety of tactics, we can win. In fact, if we execute properly, we have a huge advantage. For one thing, we have numbers. And the morality of our cause—freedom, security, justice—while useless against our foes, helps us grow our numbers and win allies both domestically and abroad.

We need multiple groups, multiple tactics and unflinching determination.

Resistance groups must not fight each other—even when we disagree. Our fights help the enemy. We can prefer certain strategies and align ourselves and our actions with those who share our approach. But we should not criticize (especially publicly) activists with other strategies.

All of us fighting for human dignity, fighting fascism and plutocracy and exploitation—we are on the same side. To win, our tent must be wide. A purity test would be suicide.

The biggest faction is and must be a nonviolent one. But even the nonviolent groups must be tough, unrelenting and truly aggressive. Even Gandhi said he was “never passive anything.”

There’s an important, I would say essential middle ground between protests and violence. That is sabotage. I think up to now sabotage has played too little a role. Damaging materials needed by our foes is a very important part of our strategy. Whether we are destroying their weapons or infrastructure or whatever, I feel we can make it harder and harder for them to abuse us by attacking and destroying inanimate objects.

To those who think we should not damage property, I respectfully say “you are not part of the struggle.” I say that you are too “pure” to resist and are, most likely unintentionally, useful idiots for our oppressors. I don’t mean this as an insult. I myself have been guilty of exactly that. And I won’t criticize any group or individual by name publicly for condemning sabotage.

We must learn and grow.

Vision and Victory

Much is going right for us. Organizers Indivisible.org and fiftyfifty.one have put together and coordinated a series of huge and growing nationwide demonstrations. They built a movement out of nothing. A substantial one. In my opinion, they have laid the groundwork.

But public protests and other actions promoted by these groups alone will not win. We need more.
We need armed self-defense. We need sabotage. We need more demonstrations. We need allies both domestic and abroad.

We need to kill the beast of fascism with a million cuts coming from every direction relentlessly and unpredictably. We need to overwhelm the enemy. But we must think ahead, too. We must think past “victory” or risk disaster.

Too many successful movement give way to new dictators. We must end systems of oppression and prevent the emergence of new ones. This is a critically important task.

I believe we need a vision. I believe that we need to end greed, elitism and concentration of power by eliminating concentrations of power. We need a civilization with the core unit being local—neighborhoods and communities.

We would not be organizing unseen people who we never see or meet. We’d be organizing ourselves. No abstractions. Our decisions affect us.

When we do something that works, it can be a model for other neighborhoods. When we do something that doesn’t work, it can be a warning for other neighborhoods.

Today, the greatest evils of our civilization are (in my opinion): 1 – Lives wasted in senseless labor, nearly always to benefit an undeserving elite; 2 – Destruction of our planet, threatening global suicide of our species and the other species that share this Earth; 3 – Lack of Meaning, and a hopeless attempt to find meaning in our “work.”

We need a vision to address all three of these evils, and I’ve introduced such a vision.

The Saners Vision

Our group, The Saners, has been promoting a vision of a better civilization. This vision has been summarized in a short video, just over 2 minutes. The society we envision is one where we trade stuff for time. In other words we get fewer goods in exchange for more time, remembering that that life IS our time.

Producing fewer goods, only what’s needed and NOTHING for profit, reduces our labor time by perhaps 80%. We can then spend much more time living. We will also do far less damage to the Earth—immediately. What do we do with our new found time? Work to heal the Earth.

What do we do with our new found time? Play. Read and write. Tell stories. Make love. Look at the stars and wonder. Spend time with loved ones. Make new relationships. Spend time alone. Research and study and learn and discover. Care for ourselves. Care for each other. Make music. Paint.

LIVE.

This kind of living, doing what we feel compelled to do as human beings, living in accord with our Nature—that is a meaningful life. So, this vision addresses all three evils: ending servitude, restoring the biosphere and living meaningful lives.

I say, let’s go for it. You?