All Must Be Unleashed To Rouse Our Fellow Humanity From Their Stupor As They Sleepwalk Toward The Cliff Edge

Image by Glenn Halog via Flickr

The Essays of The Man From the North by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
March 16, 2018

Not every problem we face can be solved by the magic wands of benevolent legislators. In those halls of power, you’re more likely to encounter twisted curses than blessings and cures. Instead, you must study the interconnected web that weaves our world together. There you will find effective pivot points of change. Every piece of the destructive system is tied to people, workers, supplies, knowledge, money, social behaviors, opinions, profits, transportation and more. Each of these sectors offers many places to push for change.

In the opinions of donors and members, you will find ways to shift an organization’s actions. In the quarterly reports of corporations, you will find ways to drop their profits until they change their practices. Using boycotts and picket lines outside stores, you can send a shudder of fear through the company ranks, all the way up to shareholders who can vote to shift the policies. The supply chains of industry can be blockaded, disrupted, boycotted, withheld, slowed down in the effort to throw grit in the cogs of the destructive machine. In the financial lifeblood of loans, you’ll discover how to cut off the flow of money that fuels systems of injustice.

The list goes on. The possibilities for struggle are endless. We are currently using only a fraction of our people power. We foolishly rely on a scant handful of the many leverage points we could use. We would be wise to broaden our struggles and work for change in places beyond pressuring politicians. All pieces of a system can shift … and all pieces of this system must be shifted.

Every strand of the interconnected web must be twanged in the harp strings of the great song of change. Discordant or harmonious, raucous or melodic, beautiful music or mad cacophony; all must be unleashed to rouse our fellow humanity from their stupor as they sleepwalk toward the cliff edge of extinction. Study the gears that turn the world closer to its doom and find the ways to halt them. You will find the links to unhinge, the cracks to shatter, the ropes to untie, the people to redirect.

Remember to act with friends, not alone. Gather others and work together. Our strength lies in our numbers. The hour is upon us when we must mobilize with the thunderous wing strokes of flocking birds, individual and yet united. Keep an eye to the whole. Watch what others are doing. Offer solidarity and support. Look for moments of strategic collaborations.

And most of all, do not wait for someone else to lead you. Be a leader alongside others. Step into the beauty and the strength of leaderful organization. Join hands, link arms, step in stride together. We will rise like an ecosystem of change, diverse, complementary, powerful, flexible, adaptable, and as indomitable as the return of life in spring.

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Author/Actress Rivera Sun syndicated by PeaceVoice, is the author of The Dandelion Insurrection and has just launched the sequel, The Roots of Resistance, and is the cohost of Love (and Revolution) Radio. Website: http://www.riverasun.com

The Man From the North is a fictional writer in Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection and the sequel, The Roots of Resistance. The novel takes place in the near future, in “a time that looms around the corner of today”, when a rising police state controlled by the corporate-political elite have plunged the nation into the grip of a hidden dictatorship. In spite of severe surveillance and repression, the Man From the North’s banned articles circulate through the American populace, reporting on resistance and fomenting nonviolent revolution. This article is one of a series written by The Man From the North, which are not included in the novel, but can be read here.

from the archives:

Now Is The Time For Revolutionary Change–Reject Greed-Based Destruction

Abby Martin: Corporate Lobbyists Use Intimidation, Not Bribery

Make No Mistake: The Rule Of The Rich Has Been A Deadly Epoch For Humanity

End the Occupation of the Corporate State

Corporations Are A Mixture Of Humanity’s Greatest Nightmares

How Big Corporations Game Our Democracy Into Their Plutocracy by Ralph Nader