We live now in October 2004, a crucial time when, politically speaking, the earth is about to quake.
The context is about to shift for all social movements and authentic journalists everywhere.
Among them: the drug policy reform movement and the Authentic Journalism renaissance.
None will be the same after the second of November, when an election in the United States will either embolden the administration of George W. Bush to become more extreme in its anti-democracy dreams, at home and abroad. Or it will elect John F. Kerry, once an organizer of a social movement himself, with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, whose victory some errantly hope will allow them to go back to sleep on November 3 and leave the driving to him.
For those who know better, the path of social change, either way, will have to take fast new directions as never before.
That's why Narco News begins, today, a seven-part series of essays, for the first time online, by the Notes from Nowhere collective (Katherine Ainger, Graeme Chesters, Tony Creland, John Jordan, Andrew Stern and 2004 Narco News Authentic Journalism Scholar Jennifer Whitney) from their book, "We Are Everywhere" (Verso Press).
These are essays that make us think about strategies and tactics...
And because we all must think and strategize together, today we launch a conversation among our copublishers and journalists on The Narcosphere about what is to be done after the United States elections are over.
Part One of this series, "Emergence: An Irresistible Global Uprising," begins today (along with an introductory essay I wrote to relate what these essays, the strategies and the tactics they recount have to say to the drug policy reform movements and the Authentic Journalism renaissance):
http://www.narconews.com/
No matter which way go the November 2 elections in the United States, anybody anywhere who wants to change the world, or to simply change the course of human events in his and her community, will have to adapt and evolve different tactics and strategies applicable to the new set of societal circumstances that are about to appear.
The old ways of doing it are broke: they don't work anymore.
The book "We Are Everywhere" and the movements it describes provide a starting point through which any movement can begin to ask hard questions and develop effective solutions for the "tune up" we'll all need just a few weeks from now.
The seven parts of this series will appear every Thursday and Monday, today through November 11, on the pages of Narco News.
And our friends over at Salón Chingón - the student-teacher association of the Narco News J-School - have now set up the Authentic J-Store to sell copies of this important book... and other "Gifts for Authentic Journalists and the People Who Read Them," which is linked from each of these essays.
At Narco News, we don't endorse candidates or political parties. But as journalists, we are certain that no matter what happens in the United States on November 2, nothing will ever be the same for journalists, activists, or citizens, no matter what country we live in. That's a big reason we are publishing these essays NOW: because the tired old (and boring) menu items of participation in political and social change are falling by the wayside, and the hour has come to rewrite the menu.
By reading and responding to these essays, and the Narcosphere conversation to come from them - copublishers, start your engines! - I believe we can truly begin to "think outside the box" rather than just, as too many are blabbering... talking about thinking about talking about thinking about thinking outside the cliché.
Think about it!
And participate in the conversation.
Because We Are Everywhere...
Including you...
And us...
From somewhere in a country called América,
Al