How do we save democracy, world peace, the climate and nature? Democracy wins the people and vulnerable groups through local protests historically. If they are of sufficient public interest, they spread.
Today's capital is built on fragile international systems such as just-in-time. These are very sensitive to disruptions. Should local protests spread, this could have a major impact.
Could red-green concerts with good bands be good ways to engage people and raise money for progressive movements?
#democracy #peace #climatecrisis #nature #local #environmental crisis #protest #concert #Woodstock
Om The shift or Avaaz regularly organized protests about what is on people's minds all over the country or the world at the same time, it might not matter if only a few meet in each place. Only people gather regularly for a few important world issues. These could be
- Song the state creates money and do tax very progressive to save the people and nature. End austerity policies. Create freedom, equality and redistribution.
- Save the climate and nature. Eliminate all fossil fuels, eliminate nuclear power and introduce recycling factories for centralized recycling of garbage. Invest in the installation and development of green and renewable energy.
- Recreate strong and generous social security, pension and benefit systems for all those in need.
- Recreate one strong national defense for non-alignment in peace and neutrality in war.
- Eliminate the housing shortage and regulate eliminate the high housing costs.
- Create good jobs for everyone at all levels. Eliminate unemployment with the public sector.
- Bisect working hours with maintained salary.
- End the globalist suicidal trade competition with a new green and social Bretton Woods.
The problem is that you have to start locally. The labor movement did that, the anti-colonial movements did that.
– The First International actually began with some union leaders from France and England getting together and pledging each other support. But nothing happened until the bronze casters in Paris went on strike and the cooperation that began organized warnings against strikebreaking in France and neighboring countries. The bronze casters won. And then it became fashionable to join the First International to get help against strikebreakers.
– The Indian independence movement, which set the pattern for them all, began in and of itself with various high-ranking figures gathering in congresses to most submissively ask the colonial power for reforms. But nothing happened until Gandhi organized a supply strike among the indigenes of Champaran in Bihar and linked the demand for higher prices with the colonial power's monopolistic practices. The farmers won, and the example spread.
– The global campaign for land reform began with a few farmers in the Mexican village of Anenecuilco occupying a sugar plantation while the authorities were busy elsewhere. The land occupations spread and after a few years (and many trips) the state was forced to legislate for land reform. And then it spread to the rest of the world.
– The Swedish labor movement, which had certainly been going on for decades, had difficulty getting anything out of its hands and even lost its general strike in 1909. But what made it a success and gave it the strength to initiate the world's most far-reaching welfare construction was that a union meeting in Västervik tangibly seized food stocks in 1917 at a time when wholesalers preferred to export food to the trenches where it paid better. Västervik inspired people in about a hundred other places, with a quarter of a million participants, to do the same, which quickly led to almost one hundred percent union organizing and a world record in strikes.
So everything starts locally and spreads. Of course not “spontaneously” as anarchists believe, you have to work for it. But to get the anchoring, those who are really concerned about something have to take the initiative.
Frances Tuuloskorpi, for example, believes that it is our habit of organizing things over people's heads, or outside the environments where people exist, that is to blame for the fact that resistance to rentier rule is as weak as it is, see https://francesblogg.com/2011/08/13/kampen-och-ofarliggorandet/.
Of course, it's worst if you make party politics out of it from the very beginning.
History doesn't always repeat itself in exactly the same way. Maybe Skiftet and Avaaz are what we have available today? I often say that people, organizations and societies have only one way to get ahead and that is at the bottom of their incompetence.
The shift and Avaaz are not forcing the government to change its routines. It can pretend it's raining. It can probably even redirect mail from there directly to the spam filter.
It's true that it's simple and doesn't require any work, but I usually say that if you don't invest anything, there will be no profit.
There is a funny illustration to my thesis that it is the changed routines that change society, it can be read in Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs. There she tells of a huge demonstration against the Algerian War, at least a million participants. But it was nothing, she thought, it just showed that almost no one cared. And apparently that was also the authorities' interpretation, because the war continued for a few more years until it became too expensive to continue.
In France, it's routine to fight in the streets. That's why it no longer has any effect.
Yes, it is obvious that a party acts for its own gain and order. We are in an important time of world order.
What happened before ancient Egypt. Our time is similar to their worldview
Today, pyramids are also being built - economic pyramids.
A symbolic image of that future can be found on the back of the American seal about the world pyramid from 1782. An aspiration for the future.
Not a quest for a higher civilization for humanity.