An Inspiring To Do List
The Saners is an idea machine. We have more projects than we can carry out. We see protests, yes, but we also see cultural actions and community organizing as essential.
We know that The Saners, with less than a thousand signed up activists cannot do it all. But we have a variety of skills and can seed projects that, perhaps, other groups can take over and make their own. A short description of our various project ideas are here for your consideration.
Protest
You know this one. You may very well have attended one or more of the recent series of national protests. You can and should attend future ones.
Ah, but what? What good does protest do? Our adversaries don’t change their behavior in response. The ignore us. So why should we protest?
Protest is a necessary but, but itself, insufficient act for removing tyrants. What it does is makes dissenters visible to each other. It makes it very, very clear that we aren’t alone. This brings quiet protesters and potential protesters out into the open. This grows our numbers. This makes our crowds bigger each time.
This turns dissent from a quiet useless act into the vanguard of a growing revolution. As a historic fact, nonviolent protests succeed about twice as often as violent ones. This is, in part, because nonviolent movement tend to be bigger; more people want to join nonviolent movements. Another historic fact: nonviolent movements that involve 3.5% of the population always succeed. This isn’t a guaranteed formula. But it is a historic fact.
So, protests grow movements and increase their chances of success. This is why you should go. This is why protests should be nonviolent and fun. There should be must and laughter and games. Protests should be like festivals or block parties. They are communities getting together amicably. They are people meeting and playing together.
Yes, the purpose is a serious one. But a fun and playful and nonviolent event that sends a moral or political or economic message encourages attendance. And bigger movements is a significant factor that determines success.
Support Indivisible and Fifty Fifty One
Indivisible and Fifty Fifty One are groups that are organizing an ongoing series of protest. They have built a huge coalition of people opposed to kings, opposed to cruelty and inhumanity. A coalition that values human life and the biosphere of the planet that sustains us.
You can any set of beliefs—it doesn’t matter. As long as you are opposed to cruelty and abuse and are ready to stand up for those values, you are in.
So, visit the sites (Indivisible.org and FiftyFifty.One) and join. Attend public protests. And engage in other nonviolent activities (and sometimes Inactivities) to weaken fascism and strengthen community.
In addition, these groups offer training in nonviolent resistance—hard learned lessons from movements of the past. These can make you, and all of us, more effective in defeating evil and promoting the general wellbeing.
BeFriend
That people everywhere can be friends is an important realization. Indeed, despots and thugs depend on us to learn to hate one another. It is harnessing this hatred that gives dictators their influence. They thrive on hatred and fear and, for that reason, instigate both.
BeFriend is intended to be a bold, in-your-face rejection of cultivated hatred. We imagine people at outdoor cafes, picnics and other public places eating, drinking and playing together. Listening to music Tossing a frisbee.
And accompanying them is always a sign or table tent.
It identifies that get together as part of the BeFriend project, where nominal “enemies” get together publicly and have a great time, and perhaps invite others passing by to join in. We can have Indians and Pakistanis, Russians and Ukrainians, Israelis and Palestinians. Together embracing friendship and rejecting violence. Extending a helping hand to all victims, and turning their backs on anyone promoting oppression or violence.
One great way to reverse cruelty is to emulate the opposite. This gives people and opportunity, indeed and obligation to choose sides. Not the side of one group over another, but of one humanity against a plethora of inhumane fools.
Promote Movement Education
Take courses and training and read educational materials about effective movement strategies and tactics. Yes, the way forward isn’t clear and unambiguous—but history has offered lessons and when we know more, we do better.
Indivisible.org offer training. We can all learn how to be better resisters. We can all learn how to fight tyranny more effectively. We can learn this because brave and bold pioneers tried things, and learned lessons the hard way. We can learn from Gandhi and King. But we can also learn from less famous and perhaps less genius figures. People who were not geniuses but led with courage and imagination and determination. People who may not be brilliant speakers and yet lead by example.
Such people, most of whom remain anonymous to us, sparked and sustained the nonviolent removal of dictators and the advancement of human rights everywhere.
We can be like them. We can be our best selves. There’s free training for that.
See: https://indivisible.org/indivisible-trainings
I also recommend resources by CANVAS—an organization led by the people who founded Otpor!—the revolutionary group that removed the Serbian dictator Milosevic. See their materials at: https://canvasopedia.org
Green Dot Campaign & Symbols
Like protests, wearing and displaying symbols and messages are an important part of building a movement. They expand visibility. They let people know easy things they can do to participate. They awaken people to the fact that they are not alone. How many people desire an end to fascism, an end to abusive regimes and systems? How many people are willing to take action, to resist, to build a better civilization?
Literally billions.
Success becomes more likely—nearly inevitable—when the number of participants grows to a certain level. We need to exceed that level, by a wide margin. We can.
One of th easiest ways to make quick and visible progress is by wearing and displaying symbols. The Saners promote wearing and displaying their symbol of a healthy Earth—a green dot. Something you can easily draw or buy a box of green stickers at a stationery store.
Fifty Fifty One promotes displaying a light in your front window—a quiet symbol which, once familiar, sends a message. Historically, this has been a meaningful tactic.
See this from Fifty Fifty One: https://www.fiftyfifty.one/act-now
General Strike
A general strike is a very powerful move. Sometimes, just by itself, it can bring down a regime.
Dictators can’t rule if the country doesn’t cooperate. In fact, so-called “strongmen” are weak and absolutely impotent unless they have enough people loyal to them; those are the people who do everything.
A tyrant is just a pompous moron who issues orders.
A general strike exposes his impotence and can finish him off. It’s a one-step solution to ending tyranny. But it’s a hard one to implement.
Noncooperation has its costs. People are—sensibly—nervous about participating. But sometimes it happens and it is absolutely worth the effort.
Many groups are working towards a general strike. One in particular is making a well-thought-out effort and The Saners are supporting that effort. (We implicitly support every such effort!)
We are proud to be official partners of GeneralStrikeUS.com. As of this writing, 368,000 have signed strike cards.
You can add your name now. If you are ready, do it here: https://generalstrikeus.com/strikecard
Tax Resistance
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like paying for terrorists to invade our communities and kidnap people. I don’t like paying for torture and concentration camps. I don’t like seeing my paid benefit beings cancelled and my tax dollars handed to billionaires and their evil enterprises. I don’t like funding bigotry and violence and cruelty.
I think that, in some way, we should resist paying for ongoing crimes against humanity. We don’t want to be complicit.
There are three level of resistance: 1. speaking out; 2. slight defiance 3. outright refusal to comply.
For most, speaking out will be enough—limiting risk, but still taking action. We can put a note in our tax returns to the federal government letting them know that you are paying under duress and oppose any money going to ICE or toward any activity using coercion and violence against people, and that the fascist government is immoral and illegal.
The second level would be what I call “a day late and a dollar short.” These resisters would pay their taxes on April 16th and short the government by a dollar. A note explaining the resistance would be included.
The gutsiest, boldest level would be to not pay at all. I think that if the first year we get a large number of people doing the first two, then the next year nonpayment might really happen on a significant scale.
Dictators and fascists need our money and—even more—need to keep us in line with fear. Even while limiting our risk, we must absolutely refuse to be cowed by fear. When we aren’t afraid, dictators are. And they should be.
Moral Force
I believe this is the most powerful—and underrated—contribution of all.
This is a two-part approach—actively doing good, and boldly and persistently exposing cruelty. This is something we can and should do everyday. It should be routine.
The truth is, almost nobody wants to be the bad guy. That’s why evil need to create a fictional narrative in which their brutality is portrayed as heroism. Thus, kidnapping and torturing brown people is described as saving America from an invasion of aliens. This is, of course, pernicious nonsense used to justify crimes against humanity.
Even most of the people perpetrating the violence and supporting the violence know it. That’s why they repeat their false narrative endlessly and ignore or at least pretend to disbelief the truth. Bad people are desperate to think of themselves as good.
In fact, they have an opportunity to actually BE good. They can switch sides. We are giving them that opportunity. We invite them to be their better selves, to respect all people, and to behave with kindness and empathy instead of cruelty and an inhuman brutality.
To exercise moral force, you need to ask yourself throughout the day, “what kind act would it be easy for me to perform right now?” It might be saying nice things about a stranger’s dog, or buying a bottle of cold water to someone who looks hot on a summer day. It might be paying for the modest order of the person ahead of you buying a snack. Whatever comes to mind and is easily done.
This is simple human empathy, but when this becomes widespread and more frequent, it’s a positive cultural revolution. It becomes ordinary for people to do something extra, to expand kindness. It provides an even more unambiguous and powerful counter-force to our cruel opponents.
When you see someone being cruel, you can say something like “You can be better than this. Is this really who you are? Or are you a kind person who’s been swindled into behaving like a brute?” Show that you can see a good person within. Introduce the notion of rejecting cruelty, and embracing one’s better self. This will sink in and have an effect. It may or may not be visible, but it awakens conscience and, at minimum, will make it harder for that person to be cruel.
It is these kinds of action that, at the critical moment, have stopped armed enforcers working for strongmen from shooting into crowds of civilians. Kindness, as a routine act, saves lives. We should all do this. This is big; it’s more than a political act. It’s a way of life—a world-changing one.