Popular Resistance

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”—Edmund Burke

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.” –Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King

“Now is the time for action. We will not be deterred, as modeled here by Food Not Bombs, by those who try to stop us. And we will find more effective and strategic ways to create a world based upon our values. We are popular resistance, and we will persevere.”—popularresistance. org

Preamble

Thanks to a reader, I have become aware of popularresistance.org, an Internet newsletter, designed to inform and unite various factions on the left and right against the elite representatives of capitalism.

As Stratfor and other agents of propaganda, subsidized by the government, focus on whiplashing and dividing the public, we citizens must resist the perils of becoming “resident aliens” in our own country, i.e. citizens without representation. Votes in congress by the democratic and republican leadership continue to support internal spying by NSA (National Security Administration). Meanwhile, homegrown representatives, like Udall and Lujan continue to align themselves with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA): jobs for bombs programs, programs that impoverish taxpayers for the sake of capitalist elites.

The “good faith bad conscience” expressions of liberals and democrats on the so-called left, who support racial, gender, and financial equality or conservatives on the right, who say they support privacy, a free market, and self-sufficiency belie themselves by acquiescing in a system of financial and monetary controls, aimed at enriching the elite—the wealthy, their acolytes and foot soldiers in Congress or in police departments.

A vote for NSA spying underscores how elite Washingtonians believes in mind control and police state tactics. We need only look at incarceration rates, drone attacks, faux stand-your-ground justice, Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, the continuation of torture, and local police attacks against mentally challenged citizens in Albuquerque to see how the atmosphere in American is increasingly one of fear and repression. The elites are afraid, not of terrorists, but of their own citizens.

When the elected representatives throw bones to the populace, immigration reform, gender equality, and speak of economic fairness, they mean for the propaganda machine to divert attention from the aim of turning the 99% into indentured servants, whether via low wages, student loans, or by busting unions, and reading your messages or listening to your phone calls.

Food not Bombs is symbolic of the threat, raised by citizens, to capitalism. Charity and justice, compassion and equality before the law threaten the elite with notions that are traditional in both religious and political terms. If we citizens become self-sustaining whether through victory gardens or by spending ten percent less each year at corporate America’s blood-sucking enterprises, we can erode corporate American power and re-impose the rule of law aimed at justice for individuals and groups, like citizens, who have been disenfranchised by the oligarchs and their foot soldiers. Feeding folks for free is a direct attack on corporate capitalism—a good example of how to subvert corporate governance by withholding profits from the pirates.

We should advocate for nothing less than the vision embodied by the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and its amendments, the latter a patriotic and moral guide to social behavior. Since Senator Harry Byrd of West Virginia died, nobody in government seems to read the founding documents that should remind elected representatives of their duty not to mammon but to principles of freedom and justice. On the right, Boehner, Reid, McConnell, and Pelosi stand at attention and, like Mr. Hope and Change, Barack Obama, they pose as creatures of capital–[diabolical] creatures with a human face.

Even as popularity ratings for congress and the president sink, due to the miasma of corruption, the lust for money and power, it is, as we in Taos know, so difficult, to oppose our own representatives and say the unsayable. They seem like such decent people, the individuals we’ve met at fundraisers and community meetings, the ones like Udall, who say all the right things. Ben Ray might be young enough to recover his political soul but Tom seems lost. The latter makes this or that promise: next year, if we can get 50 votes or 60 votes, we can stop the filibuster or we can reform immigration or fix the environment. But he supports NNSA and stabs the majority of his constituents in the back with nuclear weapons and plutonium triggers–and more unlawful support for NSA.

Forgive the canaries for telling the truth. Free whistleblowers like Bradley Manning; let Edward Snowden come home. As Benjamin Franklin said when he signed on and blew the whistle on the British government: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”