100 Slaves 100 Enemies

What’s holding us back is the last century of intense efforts to atomize people, to drive them towards the superficial things in life, like consumption. You have to fabricate consumers. You have to make people hate governments.

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Go back to the days when organizations and movements had to be built from scratch. There’s never some shining leader who comes along and says, “I’m going to lead you out of the woods.” These things are built up by consciousness-raising groups.

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I think small actions here and there and elsewhere are fine, but they have to coalesce.

Take the antiwar movement again. When I got started giving talks in the early 1960s, I was talking to small groups of people in somebody’s living room or maybe a church basement. Or we’d have to set up a meeting at the university with 20 different issues just to get people out to hear about the Vietnam War.

This is one thing they don’t teach you in school or write about in the papers; it’s too dangerous. People aren’t supposed to know what they can achieve, working together.

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The hard part is always going from understanding among individuals and small groups to integration and focused action. That takes effort and commitment. It doesn’t happen by itself; there are no manuals.

Kick-starting the environmental movement: An interview with Noam Chomsky | Briarpatch Magazine – Fiercely independent (& often irreverent) news & views..

found via The Comsky Archive – comsky.info

“Showdown In Chicago”: Protesters Crash Bankers Convention, VIDEO, IMAGES.

Showdown In Chicago – October 25-27

I’m not going to make it to Chicago, but I’ll be keeping an eye on news coming out of that city next week. I’m sure it won’t get anywhere near the coverage it should.

banksterusa.org: Real Economy Project

Tools for taking your anger out on the financial industry that just ripped you off.

Shepard Fairey drops a line about his latest Obama image this time appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone. He makes the valid point that we cannot just sit back and wait for any politician to fix things for us. We have to take action ourselves.

However, I think that the Rolling Stone cover actually illustrates how difficult that will be. Fairey puts all this work and thought into the cover and includes the bold question (pardon me while I close the Netflix pop-up ad that is blocking my view of the web site I am trying to look at), “Will he take bold action or compromise too easily?”

It’s a good question. Unfortunately, I find myself distracted by the little banner Rolling Stone has chosen to put in the upper right hand corner, blocking out part of their own name: MICHAEL JACKSON THE LATEST REVELATIONS.

If I were cynical, I would say, “We’re doomed.” But I’m not so I’ll just say, “Easier said than done.”

Shepard Fairey: Helping Obama Write the Unwritten Future.