>2 things: I said I was using shorthand and generality in my response to you.
>"Localism" can stand examination quite well. At some point I'd like to
>explain it, I am disheartened that is is not a familiar term to you.
Localism is not totally unfamiliar to me, but if it were and even owning
that it is, it's precicion of terms I was seeking... so we aren't talking
past each other, but agreeing on the meaning of what we're saying.
>
>also I would feel much better if your "actually existing conditions" made it
>clear that "physical" has an awful lot to do with "biosphere".
It certainly does include bioshere. How could it not? It's interesting
that you assume it doesn't.
>
>Uhhh, yeah. I thought I was arguing the same thing. I keep hearing this "the
>revolution is first" stuff, however. How does that square with your
>statement above? We need to have a mind to survival before the fuel runs
>out and all this becomes moot. Are we STILL just arguing the same concepts
>in different languages.?
I don't think I've ever argued for something called "revolution first."
This is a straw man, at worst, or a colossal misundertanding at best. I'm
simply saying:
1. Human beings are the only species with the agency to do something about
the crisis.
2. Human beings exist in a specific yet evolving set of social, economic,
political, ideological, and environmental conditions.
3. Those conditions circumscribe the possibilities of that agency.
4. The problem is global and will require global (read, mass) movements to
address.
5. History has shown that human beings are unlikely to confront power
unless they feel there is less to lose by confronting than there is by
submitting to the status quo, or that there is a real possibilit that
confrontation has a chance to prevail.
6. The environmental-economic-political (can't be separated) crisis is
being caused by concentrations of power that are jealously protecting their
own interests, and who have shown they will resort to any means, including
mass murder and ecocide, to stay in power.
If you can accept these premises, then what conclusions can you draw?
>>Pretty arbitrary date. Meanwhile, the US has mobilized its awesome
>>military machine to gain control over remaining reserves. The stock market
>>has shattered, precipitating a crisis that brings class war out into the
>>open. In my own country, the US, existing divisions are exploited to turn
>>the working class against each other. Fascism has begun to emerge more
>>openly. Rebellion in Indonesia, Haiti, the Balkans, Ecuador. OPen war in
>>the Middle East.
>
>I'd feel better if your list had included the deaths of whales or the loss
>of all the amphibians. Still seems too anthropocentric to me, but that is
>prolly "carping".
I'm giving you that. But whales and amphibians can not fight for
themselves. I live in North Carolina. Our easternmost counties are "black
belt" counties, with our greatest concentrations of African-Americans.
Exploitation, repression, and poverty are and always have been part of the
scenery. When things get worse, these folks will suffer sooner and their
suffering will go deeper than other people in the state. Serious political
organizers are attracted to this region because their conditions make them
the potentially most mobilizable force for mass actions and demands. Bob
Dylan wrote, "If you ain't got nothin', you ain't got nothin' to lose."
But without going into it, the sitation is more complex. Before action,
there must be consciousness and solidarity, based on the most pressing
crisis (there are many). There are existing division to overcome, which
takes work and patience and time, and there is fear to overcome, which
takes work, and reassurance, and patience, and time. We mobilized them
over a period of around five years, to take on the biggest agribusiness
concern in the state, over environmental issues. Even won a couple of
partial victories (it's still goin on). But we had to let THEM determine
what the priorities were. For them, the issue was ground water, which was
sickening their children and themselves, and proximity of facilties with
attendant air quality problems, to their communities. No deep ecology.
Self-interest. Self-defense. NOW!!! later on, as the situation evolved,
and people began to learn in the process of their struggle, awareness of
larger environmental issues was developed and integrated into that
struggle, and many of them are part of the multi-state environmental
justice movement, whose manifesto reads quite a bit like the points of deep
ecologists.
This is what I'm talking about when I say first things first. You can't
skip these processes for organizing. It's not a question of MY priority
against YOUR priority. It's a question of reality and NECESSITY. There
has to be something for people to plug into in order to develop mass
movements. And mass movements require leadership, but that leadership has
to be responsive to the masses of the led. The concsiousness you need
before taking action is not developed overnight, and it is not motivated
out of academic curiosity. It begins with felt crisis.
>>Propose first that those who will be most directly and painfully affected
>>prepare for their self-defense. That we who are not in the line of fire
>>exercise solidarity with them. Begin now to articulate to those who are
>>already in crisis WHY they are in crisis and where that crisis is leading.
>>Develop cadres of leadership now that can provide the organizational
>>structure for resistance, so when all other hope is lost, there is
>>something in place for those sinking into misery and repression have
>>somewhere to go.
>
>
>Would that include exercising solidarity with "neo-malthusians"?
Solidarity with anyone who can reciprocate. I don't know what
neo-malthusian really means. If you go to those groups I just described
and start telling them about population reduction, however, you will get an
immediate and vitriolic reaction. They have been the "subject" of a lot of
"population" schemes. They despise the Sierra Club. They want to talk
about resources used per capita by the rich, before people start (which
they inevitably do) talking about birth rates--about which there is deep
and acrimonious history. So solidarity takes dialogue and work and more
dialogue and more work... These are the realities of organizing.
You can't write it off because it's difficult, and you can't expect to add
their strength to yours to make demands, if you enter into a relationship
where you jockey your academic credentials around and cop a patronizing
attitude. You have to listen to and respect them as well. Not saying
YOU'd do that. It's what I've seen again and again.
>Thanks for the proposal, however. I think we should REALLY discuss the
>nature of that self defense as one of the FIRST things on the agenda as soon
>as we quit calling each other names.
>
>>Public education is important, which means
>>both finding the resources to conduct that public education, then
>>overcoming the information hegemony exercised by our rulers. As a
>>political organizer by trade, however, the first steps are always recruit,
>>train, organize... your cadres, without which there is no mass movement,
>>without which there is no solution.
>
>Howabout if we don't have time and need to protect critical habitat in order
>to assure some self defense against the enviromental crash?>
That can only be done by organized people. Do you have enough with you to
do it? It begins with a phone call or attendance at a meeting. It also
means that "if you wan't me with you in your struggle, you have to be with
me in mine." So when a factory fire kills 23 workers in Hamlet, NC, you
better be there on the streets, demonstrating, handing out leaflets, and
bumping up against the cops. If you're not, when you need them to fight
for a wetland that's not in their region, you can forget it.
>> >What do you propose that will lead to ending population overshoot by
>>2035?
>>
>>We won't. We've already passed the point of no return.
>
>Yeah. I agree, [sigh]. That's why I'm harping on local communities that can
>save themselves here and there.
>
>> >
>> >OR ... what do you propose that will lead to mitigating the consequences
>>of
>> >those threats after 2035?
>>
>>A mass transfer of political power. But that begins today with
>>recruitment, education, training, organization...
>
>
>I accept that. Would it be okay to ask you for what you asked of me? First
>practical steps?
>
>>Let's prepare to survive first, then get rid of the "problem" politically,
>>then take power, then we will have the wherewithall.
>
>This may be the heart of my disagreement with you. If we don't have some
>critical habitat and some repair to the biosphere very very soon, the idea
>of "wherewithall" totally disappears, ... just when you are looking around
>to want to have it.
We might be disagreeing more with our perceptions and our past histories
than with each other. I admit that my first, more acid postings were
directed at those Sierra Club types that fucked up our coalition with thier
arrogance three years ago than with you. You may have me confused with
some pig-headed, dogmatic SWP type you've encountered.
It's not a mutually exclusive proposition. We don't begin with biosphere
or revolution. Here we began with hog factories and union drives.
Stan
"If insurrection is an art, its main content is to know how to give the
struggle the form appropriate to the political situation."
-Vo Nguyen Giap
"Rather than seeking comparabilities in statistical terms among what are
all too often superficial features of different situations, comparabilities
must be sought at the level of determinate mechanisms, at the level of
processes that are generally hidden from easy view."
-Eleanor Burke Leacock
"Every day one has to struggle that this love to a living humanity
transform itself into concrete acts, in acts that serve as examples, as
motivation."
-Ernesto "Che" Guevara
"Mask no difficulties."
-Amilcar Cabral
_______________________________________________
Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
