Well, at least join me in spirit, if you can't be at San Francisco Union Square at 1:00pm today to engage in direct action democracy!
Flash mobs have recently become a powerful tactic for political protest, particularly under repressive conditions. In the midst of a harsh crackdown on protests in Belarus in 2011, for instance, dissidents calling themselves “Revolution through the Social Network” began organizing impromptu demonstrations where protesters would simply gather in public spaces and clap their hands in unison. The result was the bewildering sight of secret police brutally arresting people for the simple act of clapping their hands — a powerful challenge to the legitimacy of an increasingly irrational regime
- Beautiful Trouble | A Toolbox For Revolution
Anyways, at least it will be a peaceful revolution of one, if nobody else shows up. But I will not despair. There are direct action protest rallies being organized for the Fourth of July. reddit is doing a great job at it:
restorethefourthSF
I joined reddit last night and will be sharing my ideas over there as well. My ideas go along the line that elaborate preparations for specific-day rallies are not going to be enough. You have to create friction in the system on an ongoing, constant, and relentless basis.
That means impromptu (flash mob-type) gatherings all over the country, that ebb and flow, that are spontaneous, that one moment have five people, and the next 2,000, and later 200, and then 10,000.
Our government institutions have been taken over by a global corporatist mafia. The financial system is a criminal racketeering enterprise. The total-information-awareness surveillance police state is meant to subjugate, control, and enslave the population at the behest of truly dangerous and psychopathic billionaires and their fascist corporatist cartels.
Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform—the primary role of liberal, democratic institutions—we are left defenseless against corporate power.
- Chris Hedges / "Rise Up or Die"
It's taken some time, but finally people are dropping the "Oh, you're just a conspiracy theory" knee-jerk reaction, and slowly but surely coming to the realization that those behind the curtain (as in the Wizard of Oz), are just sick, greedy sociopaths hell-bent on enslaving the population, driven by megalomania and unquenchable greed--same as always in history when it comes to tyranny.
I'll be sharing some additional thoughts on twitter during the day... And if for some miracle, people do show up at SF Union Square today at 1:00pm to participate in an impromptu protest demanding the restoration of the Fourth Amendment, I'll take pictures as well.
About SPARK! - SPARK! is an essay I will write on a regular basis specifically meant to help spark a peaceful uprising against the rising proto-fascist state in the United States. There will never be any calls to violence or law-breaking of any kind in this series. All actions advocated in SPARK! are based on lawful, constitutionally-protected rights.
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