9.20.2010

Small Acts of Resistance Awakening Individuals


All action starts small and grows. Step 1 can be into the cash economy. Ask for your cash deal everywhere, especially in BC where i live, pay cash for every service. Get paid in cash, if you can't, think of changing things so you can. Become a plumber or a gardener or a roofer or a million things that exist in the underground cash economy. Buying local and spending cash is an immediate way to spit in the Empire's drink.

Another rung up the resistance ladder might be growing your own everything, self-employment and getting out of debt. Debt kills both your assets and your spirit, Just Say No, sell the condo, cash in your equity, get outta the city, don't give the bankers and government another dime.

There's little overall effect these baby steps can make compared to the calamity of capitialism beyond awakening individuals. But that awakening is growing and small acts of resistance are too. We live in interesting times, as the Chinese curse threatens, and the best path for me will be knee deep in mud for others, for me it feels good to have less, to want less, to 'Drop Out' of the capitialist system that is consuming our mother earth, to read, to learn, to live freely through small acts of resistance.

"Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman

The planet's plunder will continue in the name of progress until the corporate greed machine encounters enough resistance to break its momentum. Each time an individual freely chooses the cash economy they take back a little extra money and gain alotta self-esteem.

Investing emotional and intellectual energy in electoral politics is a waste of time. Resistance means a radical break with the formal structures of American society. We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform.-Chris Hedges