An Angry Country Rethinks Its Stance on Civil Disobedience
Here’s a piece from the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, announcing that, after 120 years of endorsing only strictly legal actions, the organization for the first time will be embracing civil disobedience. Two quick observations, if I may:
• It’s interesting that most Americans embrace the notion of civil disobedience as it applies to the past; we regard a great many of these people all through our history as heroes – starting, of course, with the Founding Fathers of the U.S. — and we have similar feelings of warmth for the people who followed their path – the Thoreaus and Abolitionists of the 19th Century and the women suffragettes and M.L. Kings of the 20th. Our current president talks about the glory of Seneca, Stonewall, and Selma. Yet some of the same supporters of past disobedience are prone to regard the present-day “Occupy” people or those blocking the Keystone XL Pipeline as “rabble-rousers” or “socialists” or worse. I find this curious.
• This announcement from the Sierra Club is one of hundreds of news stories appearing over the last couple of years that indicates a rising tide of anger against the direction that civilization is taking. As readers have come to know, I think this anger is well-placed. We live in a world that is utterly dominated by the corruptive influence of Big Money, and there seems to be no way to revert this trend. Want an example? If you’re in Congress, insider trading is perfectly legal! Want another dozen examples? Just write me and ask.
I’d like to see your comments on the subject.
The article lacks specificity.
From a few hours ago:
http://fox2now.com/2013/01/25/dozen-anti-coal-protestors-arrested-outside-peabody-energy/
Given that you and I both live in coastal california, I have no doubt you are familiar with our local octagenarians regularly engaging in sit-ins, getting hauled off by military police at Vandenburg, etc. I would guess its a badge of honor amongst most of them. Sierra Club doesn’t get out much if they are thinking civil disobedience is stepping it up to the big time. As you have mentioned before in varying ways, being on the right side of history may not get you fondly remembered, but it doesn’t get you expunged from the books like the opposition.
The forces of expediency are on the high ground at the moment. People, in general, seem to treat this topic more along the lines of political intrigue, than the reality of our blind and ignorant terraforming.
The biggest hit at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting was entitled something along the lines of “Is the Earth F**cked.”
As to what to do about the trajectory of pollution, one of the things mentioned was the possibility of indigenous people rising, with support from others whose ways of life have been taken.
Idle No More is a movement connecting people around the planet, with flashmobs at malls, among other convocations.
Meanwhile, there are offshoots of Occupy meeting in private places and donated space to trade on a “gift-economy” model.
Money has been sucked off-shore while our elites pretend there is little inflation.
How can it surprise them that we do not look to the pandering crony-press for truth when they try to tell us lies about ourselves?