A tale of blind doctors and good illnesses
Those of us who haven’t lived through direct, overt horrors can still look out and think it’s not here yet, there’s still time. The reality is there’s not.
We will fight the forces of death with life! We will fight colonial violence, capitalist greed, and ecological destruction with our memories, our witness, our songs, and our bodies! We will not give up! We will stop Line 3, and we will build a better future without it!
On the way to court on the second day, we all saw each other again for the first time. We were so excited, playing around, singing and laughing…afterwards the guards were way more pissed off than before. They were really mad about it!
Climate change is an invitation for all of us to recognize the reality that we’re in, and to ask essential questions of ourselves and each other. What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of our death? How do we wish to live, and how do we wish to die? There’s no getting away from it.
All the analysis of the violence in the world seems to occur with the complete removal of human activity. It seems to exist purely as a form of speaking over people, a game of chess with no pieces, a world with nobody in it but foreign policy experts and talking heads.
There is the potential to create an international solidarity network based on basic principles that most people believe in. But you have to listen and not be dicks.
If the relatively small number of refugees can be used today as an excuse for restricting freedom of movement, building walls and impenetrable borders, increasing the powers of the security state, and fomenting divisions based on race, religion, or national origin, what will tomorrow bring when the effects of climate change and ecological collapse cause vast movements of people around the globe?
If the relatively small number of refugees can be used today as an excuse for restricting freedom of movement, building walls and impenetrable borders, increasing the powers of the security state, and fomenting divisions based on race, religion, or national origin, what will tomorrow bring when the effects of climate change and ecological collapse cause vast movements of people around the globe?
Legal or not, we will never stop trying to fly, free like the birds in the sky.
There’s a big difference between our approach and how the charities work. You can talk about people’s miserable conditions of life. But why are those problems there in the first place? Why are the police going around beating people up in Calais? Why are people hiding in tents in the woods? It’s because of the border.
Those of us who haven’t lived through direct, overt horrors can still look out and think it’s not here yet, there’s still time. The reality is there’s not.
This is not itself a revolution; it’s just an alternative. But an alternative economy, milieu, society, and politics is quite important for creating a revolution. Squats can be a material, solid, and enduring space for providing and creating these prefigurations of a better world.
If more people are able to disengage even in some small way—not by moving out to the woods or forsaking the world entirely—and were able to find agency in the way that they direct their attention, it might remind us of the value of certain kinds of conversations and reflections, and help us have them.
Right now we’re seeing increasing division and fear defining our politics. We can find another political narrative that re-frames that relationship. We may already be on our way, but it’s clearly not an easy task.
