Saturday, September 17, 2016

The System Isn’t Broken, Its Fixed

The System Isn’t Broken, Its Fixed

“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”

This is not a quote relating to Governor John Hickenlooper or the CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. In fact, it is the first listed grievance in the American Declaration of Independence against the King of England, something the colonies would eventually go to war over, and win. 

Now that the Colorado Supreme Court has decided that the laws protecting our communities and people from fracking are invalid, the administrators around these communities will do everything within their power to enforce that decision. We will be told that the scenario is unfortunate, but that we are collectively powerless and the only role we can play is to choose the terms of our own environmental destruction. This is the line you are already hearing from a political system that favors the opinion of seven robed individuals over the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and you shouldn’t buy a word of it.

We have come to a point in our history of full spectrum disenfranchisement. The people making decisions are not doing so on our behalf, and the rules of the game are being written to keep us at an ever-increasing distance from basic self determination. This is by design, and entirely so that policies grossly threatening to human and natural life can be forced upon us with a minimum of effort.

The politicians at every level are the embodiment of this divide, as they can no longer represent any common person and carry out the policies of the corporations at the same time. The dominant political parties and what is being described as a democratic process to find new rulers has become a farce playing out one state after another in plain view for all to see. The rich and powerful are becoming prolific authors of new rules, from stripping us of ballot initiative rights to enacting broad international corporate pacts that will carry power to ever greater and more invisible heights.

We, as families, parents, workers, and community members are under no moral obligation to a system of law that we did not write, that has no consideration with what is best for our children and environment, and that will only cause harm to everything we value. We do not owe the Colorado Oil and Gas Association our health and land, and we owe nothing to the politicians that are asking us to submit both to this toxic, corrupt, and brutal industry. We are not the subjects of the corporations, Governors, judges or the rich, and we have no reason moral or otherwise to hear or obey them.

As we move into a fuller disillusionment with this farce of a democracy, let’s make some decisions of our own. Let’s begin a history where the laws of capitalism are broken and the laws of the people are upheld. Let’s disturb the peace and refuse a negotiated surrender to politicians and industry. Bring your kids, your coworkers and your neighbors and let’s start a revolution of our own.



Monday, September 5, 2016

We No Longer Have to Accept This

We No Longer Have to Accept This
Standing Rock Camp, North Dakota

As desperate as the world situation is today, I'm finding it more difficult to feel hopeless. I believe that the forces of the people and the planet are beginning to find their resolve. For so long we have been kept submissive, divided, distracted, afraid and confused, holding on to the superficial moments while the big wars are lost in sequence. One can begin to feel those constraints weakening. 

I can’t help but feel that there is growing courage beginning to be born. Of course all of the elements leading to what could be a first major victory won't join at once. But the binds are coming off and the grit and fighting power that were always there are starting to be felt. And they are being acted upon. 

Boulder County, Colorado Fracking Hearings
The country has seen the dogs that were sent after the people of the Standing Rock Reservation this week. We have to remember when the system comes at us with threats, with dogs, guns, prisons, or the simple implied loss of our job that we need to feed our family, what they are doing is attempting to take away our will to fight. They are trying to convince us to repress our own hearts and our basic connection with each other and the planet we live on. They are attempting to weaken the best parts of our humanity so we will submit to a situation and a system that has nothing to offer us and forces only the most destructive and hopeless future. 

Ferguson, Missouri
But our opponent also has to maintain a will to fight, to drill, to imprison, to pull the trigger. When that will is broken, whether it be in Ferguson, in North Dakota, in Boulder County, Chicago or anywhere we are opposing the machine of this impossible system, we will make an undeniable victory and send the enemy into retreat. And this will create the foothold of the next victory. The tide will begin to turn and our strength and resolve and convictions will return to us. This is why they have to achieve an unbroken chain around us. One weak link is all that it will take to begin the removal of all its weight. 

We are starting to test them now and the whole world will vacillate between fear and confrontation. It is impossible to see where it will all lead, but one thing is certain. Sitting motionless will become the most impossible thing in the times to follow.