4.30.2010

Yes We Can Live Without Capitalism

Capitalism is the great satan. The enviroment is being destroyed so a few already obscenely rich can get richer. There are many who understand the planet's plight, some who speak out against it and a few who take direct action against our common enemy.

One of the few is Ecic Duran who for several years took out loans that he never intended to pay back and donated all of the money to social movements constructing alternatives to capitalism. Here's a great interview with Duran about his Robin Hood scheme: Counterhegemonic Economy: An Interview with Eric Duran by Scott Pierpont

Sub-commandante Marcos and the Zapatistas of Chiapas offer us another example of how direct action is a wellspring of hope in a desert of dispair. While myopic Norte Americanos drive gas guzzling SUV’s to the concrete entombed mall parking lots to consume plastic crap made by slave labour and shipped to them in planet destroying supertankers, the gentle Mayan descendents of Mexico’s southern region build real communities based on co-operation, organic food production, a grass roots political revolution.

This ‘other’ way is the true way, the ancient way of our ancestors, and the way of the future, if there is to be one for our grandchildren.


We milk the cow of the world, and as we do, we whisper in her ear, "You are not true"
-Richard Wilbur Epistemology

"The Other" Way  - The success of the Zapatistas will play as a political movement outside their Chiapenco strongholds. But it is the schools, clinics, co-operatives, workshops, "high quality public services" and community organizing that rebut the rhetoric of "a revolution that couldn’t deliver"-and prove another world really may be possible in the Zapatistas’ Chiapas.