Nonviolent Method 18: Displays of Flags and Symbolic Colors

So, today we’re gonna look at Nonviolent Method Number 18: Displays of Flags and Symbolic Colors. 

Now, I went to a rally for the climate movement on February 19^th and everybody was wearing black.   I’m sorry but black has been done to death.  Yes, everything looks good in black but it doesn’t really set you apart as a supporter of the movement.  I mean everybody wears black.  It just makes everybody look like a bunch of hipsters.  Black doesn’t really make a statement like it used to.

So, I might like to suggest a couple alternate colors.  One would be green.  You know, the Green movement.  Hello!  We want to protect God’s green Earth.  I’m big on green.

The Iran uprising two years ago used green and it was really cool! 

But there’s one color I’m even bigger on.  Now just hear me out cuz it might sound a little weird at first.  It’s…Purple! 

Now you’re like “Why purple, Pete?”  ‘Cuz!  First of all, it stands out, not that many people wear it, so if they had a movement or rally one day and everybody was wearing purple, people’d notice that! 

You know if you had a purple flag people would be like “Oh, wow, I get it.”  If you had a black flag people’d be like “What, you’re a pirate?  You’re death?  You’re against ants?”  Black has come to represent so many other things!  We can do better. 

The other thing is polar bear’s tongues are purple.  And since polar bears have become a symbolic representative of why we need to stop climate change, even though it affects everybody, polar bears are the first ones getting big time affected.  So, since polar bears have purple tongues, I suggest we use the color purple.

Before actions we could hand out purple popsicles.  This would have two effects, one: everyone loves grape popsicles (I guess you could do grape juice too, or wine, or even blueberries.  Why don’t they call ‘em purple berries!  Urrh…)  And then you could tell the people who are with you because they’d have purple tongues.  And we could do that Maori warrior thing where they stick out their tongues to look scary. That’d be a fun thing to resurrect.

If we all showed up outside of Exxon-Mobil and did the Maori thing with our purple tongues, that’d just scare the crap out of ‘em, right?  Well, okay it probably wouldn’t but it would make for a great picture, and we’d get on the news and we’d show the world we had a sense of humor, which is important.  The leaders of Serbia’s Otpor learned that if you had 200 people marching down the street that wasn’t news, but if you had 200 people doing something ridiculous – THAT was a picture!

So that’s my pitch for purple, but I’m open to green too, and I know that lesbians do lavender, but lavender is different from purple, so, I don’t think we’d be steppin’ on anybody’s toes here. 

Anyway the other part of this method is flags.  The first flag I would suggest using is Old Glory – ‘cuz you’re trying to protect America’s future! I’m aware that somewhere along the line the hardcore right-wingers appropriated the American flag for themselves – which is so not fair to Betsy Ross!  Could you imagine?!  “Hey, that’s my flag, you can’t use my flag for your stupid…ignorant buttheadedness!  Seriously, stop it!”  The people who created the American flag created the American government – they like our government, they don’t hate it like these flag usurpers.

And you’re not just protecting America, you’re protecting America’s standing for all of history.  We don’t’ want to go down in history as the country that spewed the most greenhouse gases and stopped all action on climate change – we want to go down in history as the cool country that saved the day!

So that’s my pitch for Old Glory.  Alternates could be, say, a flag of a Pissed-Off Polar Bear…(Okay I won’t self-promote) Uh…a flag of 350, a flag of, like, the Earth Guardians (who I very much admire), the clenched fist of resistance.  Or you could do mock flags.  Go to a Tea Party rally and they’re holding up that cool Don’t Tread On Me snake flag, which again they’re trying to appropriate, don’t let ‘em!  Make fun of ‘em!  Make the snake a sheep, because they go along and believe anything the Fox News noise machine wants them to believe, like the melting ice cap is no big deal! 

“Don’t Tread On Me-eh-eh-eh!”.

Okay, so that’s Displays of Flags and Symbolic Colors.

Method 17: Mock Elections

Okay, so, today we’re going to look an Method Number 17: Mock Elections. 

Now, in the book “Methods of Nonviolent Struggle”, by Gene Sharp, which is excellent and you should buy it, by the way, the examples of Mock Elections were very serious things!

(I know that “Mock” is kind of a funny word: “Oh, you’re mocking me!”…”Oh, you’re meawking me!”…”Stop it!”…”Schma-pit!”  Right?  But the Mock elections in the book were actually very serious things.)

Back before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, blacks “supposedly” had equal citizenship, but in the southern states, there were all these voting laws, that made it so that only like 43 percent of the state’s adults could actually vote, and that 43 percent wasn’t the black folks!  So essentially blacks couldn’t vote! 

So back in the sixties in Mississippi they did mock elections to show people that if black people were allowed to vote the politicians would be completely different. 

(I know that I’m a big white bear so people might think I’d be more sympathetic to the whites – but come on!  Bears are fair!  I’m cool with black bears and grizzlies, and even koalas – even though they aren’t even bears.)

I’m off topic…so how would you do an effective mock vote for the climate movement?

Gee, let’s think.  What is the one giant segment of American society that has zero political participation?  Hmmm…..

Young  people!  Hello!  We could do a mock election for young people.  Just have one question: Should we do something about climate change?  I think you’d have have an overwhelming “Yeah!”  A landslide! 

Instead, the people in power make no accommodations for young people at all, it’s all about “How can I help my rich contributors today?”  “How can we make sure people don’t have to pay taxes today to protect the future?”  And lots of adults are just kind of like falling in line with that, “Yeah!  It’s all about today!”  A**holes.

So a mock election for young people would be cool. 

Or how about a new tactic…a focus group election.  So you get a focus group together and ask them “Hey, vote on how serious it is that we act urgently on climate change.”

And you could even do it by tiers “Oh, we really need to do something”, “Oh we sorta need to do something”, “I don’t really know about it”, “It’s not worth doing something” or “F*** you, go to hell, I don’t even believe it exists.”  Right?

And then show them the worst case scenarios of how bad climate change can be – just the basic scientific facts – it could unravel like this. Which it could!

Then you also include with that the mounting evidence that not only could it happen, but it’s kinda likely it’s gonna happen.  And then do a re-vote.  I bet you the numbers change!  (Except, of course, for the “f*** you” people.)

Anyway, that’s Method Number 17: Mock Elections.  Tomorrow: Method Number 18: Display of Flags and Symbolic Colors.  Can’t wait!

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Nonviolent Method Number 16: Picketing

Alright, Nonviolent Method Number 16 is Picketing. 

Now, this is another method that’s kind of been done to death and people really don’t think it’s effective.  If you see a bunch of hotel employees picketing in front of a hotel, you generally kind of think “Well that’s a waste of time”. 

When the BLM is doing an auction for oil and gas leases and environmentalists are outside holding up signs saying “This is wrong!”, nobody inside the auction is gonna give a crap.  All you’re doing is standing outside freezin’ your nuts off!  (Or boiling, as the case may be.) Cuz the only people who see it are the people who are driving by right then and there and they may honk in approval but SO WHAT?!  It’s not effective.  

So how do you make it effective?

You make it interesting, you make it go viral.  You wear a funny costume or do something funny or clever or creative or interesting.  The Internet is the new public square, and if something goes viral, that’s gonna reach a lot more people than a protest outside the federal building.  But in order for it to go viral it needs to be particularly creative AND it needs a push from the rest of the movement.

For instance, your pickets could be the size of fortune cookies, that no one will see up close, but you could enlarge it on video and post it on YouTube and that could, in the right hands, be funny! 

Or you could do something huge, like, you know how at football games sometimes they have thousands of placards that everyone in the section of the stadium holds up and it says something like “Go Terps”, or “Go Bears!”  (I like that one, “Go Bears!”) 

As long as someone caught that on video that would be impressive, like if you did it in front of the fossil fuel headquarters or the climate denier “think tanks” or the big media organizations, and it was really big and coordinated and impressive – that would be cool!  (So long as you got someone to videotape it from above). 

Another thing you could do with pickets is you could psychologically work the opposition.  Stand outside the “think-tanks” holding up signs with the names of the “think-tank” staff inside who’s job it is to stop climate solutions from happening.  Let them know you know who they are.  Let the world know who they are!  These people make a good living helping destroy the world.  These people deserve a slice of infamy for that, right?  Their neighbors should know who they are.  Their neighbor’s kids should know who they are.  Everyone in their towns should know who they are.

I mean, this is removal of consent, we’re not gonna sit here and keep making nice while you’re in there destroying everybody’s futures! 

During the Indian independence movement they did pickets outside of every establishment that cooperated with the British, so people would know. 

We could do that with restaurants and bars and sports clubs that are subjecting its clients to Fox News, ‘cuz Fox New is horrible about the climate.  They do more stories about climate change than any other network but almost all the stories are like “Climate change is bullshit!”

So these people need to be shamed, it’s not cool – ‘course it’s not cool to picket either, so you gotta make it cool.

Schools and universities they’re doing divestment campaigns right now to help the climate movement – you could definitely picket outside of administration buildings “If You Care So Much About My Future – Please Take Your $ Away From People Who Are Destroying It!”

You could even picket gas stations, or, indirectly power companies.  When you send your bill back, write on the outside of the envelope “____ Energy supports climate destruction!”, so the mail carriers and their billing department is clued in to that company’s greedy, rapacious nature!

A lot of people are poor and can’t afford solar panels and wind turbines so they’re stuck with the grid that’s killing us, but I don’t think of these people as hypocrites, they’re no-alterna-crites!  The fossil fuel companies have used their power and influence to crush the development of sustainable energy and transportation for decades, so a lot of people can’t realistically go off the grid, but we still need ‘em in our movement, so don’t belittle them because they’re not as “pure” as you, welcome them to the fold!  We need everybody in America and the world on our side here, all lined up against the climate deniers who are forcing us all to stick with dirty energy even though it’s now obvious it’s KILLING THE WORLD!

So, anything you can do to spread the message of noncooperation, you need to do!

So that’s Method Number 16: Picketing. 

The Climate Movement Needs to Realize it's Potential

Nonviolent struggle is a way to mobilize our power potential and sever our opponent’s sources of power.

Now, it would be easy to sever our opponents’ sources of power if we mobilize our own potential.

Potential is a Greek word (actually I don’t know if it’s Greek or not, but it is a word), and it means “capable of being, but not yet in existence”.

Well then, let’s look at the climate movement’s potential.  Which segments of society will be directly hurt by global warming, so it’s in their best interests to get involved? 

First, there’s the people who need WATER.  They will be completely screwed, because the snowpack that accumulates on mountain peaks is diminishing year by year.  That’s not just bad for skiers, it’s terrible for drinkers of WATER, because the snowpack’s meltwater turns into the streams, lakes, and rivers that provide our water. 

Another group who will be completely screwed are those who eat FOOD.   You see, America’s crops depend on those rivers too.  They also need rain, but as the temperatures go up every year, there’s less and less rain to nourish the crops, which in turn means less food and water for whatever animals those humans devour.

A third group that will completely, entirely fucked are those people who breathe OXYGEN.  You see, half the oxygen produced in the world is made by phytoplankton, tiny organisms who live in massive numbers in the world’s oceans.  But, since 1950, there’s forty percent less phytoplankton!  That means 20 percent less oxygen is being produced.  That’s with ocean surface temperatures going up just one degree, it’s gonna go up more!  Also, the other half of our oxygen is produced by forests and grasslands, and climate change is helping kill off those too! 

So, anyone in our society who depends upon water, food, and oxygen, are POTENTIAL climate activists.

Of course we’re a long way from that cuz only 16 percent of Americans are really concerned right now about climate change, and barely any of them are actually DOING anything to stop it!

But let’s consider their POTENTIAL.  Chances are, they’re well aware that this could mean the collapse of civilization and that, depending on how fast the permafrost melts, it could actually happen within DECADES. So, I’d think, that 16% should be willing to do just about anything to stop climate change.  Especially if they’re young!

So, here we’ve got 40 million people who could be called upon to join a nonviolent movement immediately.  THAT’S potential! 

If we could get 40 million people to start doing nonviolent action to stop climate change, we could force the government to act upon it. 

But we gotta be smart!  We have to know how systematic nonviolent struggle works,  Everyone who cares about the future of civilization and life on earth needs to know it.  This movement will be stronger if ALL the activists, not just the leaders, know exactly how to use nonviolent action for maximum effect.  The leaders we’ve got don’t have that much for us to do.  But the climate’s unravelling at breakneck speed, so we can’t just keep sitting around and waiting for their next call to action!  We need to come up with our own actions to help the movement grow in numbers and in strength.  Like the Freedom Riders did!  Martin Luther King did not want the Freedom Rides to happen, but it ended up galvanizing the Civil Rights movement.  In fact the original Freedom Rider leaders gave up, but others stepped in and took it to another level. 

But to accomplish similar things climate activists need to know everything about Nonviolent Struggle and how it works. 

For one thing, we need to be fearless and bold, we’re taking on powerful forces here and a lot of stone-cold crazies.  But, hell, we’re saving the planet, so it’s time to nut-up!

We need to be fluid and fast, so we can react to unforeseen events, like extreme weather or our opponent’s mistakes. 

And we have to be FUN, because if you’re not having fun you burn out and you’re not cool.

Okay, great.  Now, for openers, repeat after me:   Groouumph!  Okay, that was pretty good.  It’s more in the back of the throat, though.  We’ll work on it.

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Nonviolent Method Number 15: Group Lobbying

Aye, begorrah!  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Today we’re looking at Nonviolent Method Number 15: Group Lobbying. 

Now, lobbying works incredibly well if you’re the fossil fuel industry, and you have, like, four highly paid lobbyists for every member of the Congress and the Senate. 

But, even though they have a huge number advantage, they don’t with the general public, more people want to do something about climate change than not.  Of course, they’re not highly paid, they’re not paid at all, so people’d be reduced to lobby on their own – on their own time and on their own dime!

And considering Congressmen and Senators are gone most of the time and really can only meet with your during work hours, it’s gonna take you away from work to talk with them, so it’s gonna cost you to do lobbying, unless you’re like a bartender!  But even bartenders can’t get access like lobbyists can.  These guys are bigwigs and only meet with people who can make political contributions, like fossil fuel lobbyists. They don’t care if you’re their constituent as long as you’re writing them a check with a lot of zeroes in it. 

But this method is not called lobbying, it’s called Group Lobbying.  During the Vietnam War there was a group that went and visited their congressman every Wednesday – somebody from that group would go. 

OR you could have a giant mass of people show up on a certain day to lobby.

Frankly, I gotta say, I don’t have a lot of faith in this idea.  ‘Cuz, unless they know you’re their constituents, they’re not gonna care, and even if you’re their constituents they’re probably not gonna care.  (It probably helps if you look like you come from their state.  If you’re from Oklahoma you should show up with a farmer’s tan, maybe.   Or if you’re from Maine show up dressed as a lobster man.  Probably not, actually.)

If you’re gonna do group lobbying don’t do it in Washington.  Wait until your Senator’s home so it’s a lot more likely that the masses of people showing up at his door are actually from that place. 

Once Obama really starts his push for climate action, I’m pretty sure all the fossil-fuel funded think tanks will get all the Nugent nitwits to get out and support Senators who are friendly to destroying the world and also to show up and scream at Senators and Congressmen that wanna save the world.  They did this when Obama first tried to pass climate legislation and it worked.  Senators chickened out and backed down.  So of course they’re gonna do it again.

And we gotta represent in equal numbers.    ‘Cuz essentially those old guys are shouting any hope you’ll have of living in a world that was as good as the one they’ve had.  We gotta stand up for the world with just as much passion as they do standing up for stupidity.

‘Course we can’t be assholes.  First of all, they’ve got that market cornered.  So we have to be brave and resolute and classy.  And, I’m tellin’ ya, funny works too!  People look silly when they’re trying to shout down puppets and people wearing polar bear hats.  It puts them in awkward predicament.

Anyway, for what it’s worth that, is Method Number 15: Group Lobbying.  Join us tomorrow for a scintillating talk about Method Number 16: Picketing.

And I thank you.

NONVIOLENT METHOD 14: MOCK AWARDS

Today I’m going to announce the award for Climate Ostrich of the Month: The first recipient will be Faried Zakariah, who just wrote a column in Time Magazine called “Build that Pipeline!”

Clearly this guy has his head in the sand and has no idea how bad climate change will be. 

In October, I would have given the award to Candy Crowley of CNN, who, just weeks before Hurricane Sandy hit, decided that climate change wasn’t a relevant enough topic to ask about during the presidential debates.  An audience member had the question to ask, but Candy, in her infinite wisdom, opted instead to ask yet another question about the economy.  (This is because Candy lives in a beltway bubble that insulates her from anything outside the 24-hour news cycle.  Poor Candy, and poor EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD!)

SHE has her head in the sand too!  So, the Mock Award idea, is Nonviolent Method #14: Mock Awards. 

This was used in the sixties when the Ecology Action campaign of Boston gave out a “Polluter of the Month” award.  (Although I think they only gave it out one time.)

I also think there should be a Climate Hall of Shame, so everyone knows who the biggest obstacles to climate solutions are.  Clearly the Koch Brothers, former Exxon-Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, ultra-right-wing profiteers like Lord Monckton (who’s not really a lord!) and Chris Horner and Marc Marano and Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts and Joseph Bast and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, as well as DIShounorable Senator James Inhofe and Congresstoadies James Sensenbrenner and Joe Barton, to say nothing of Dick Cheney (who considers himself a, quote, “man of principle”, as long as “principle” can be defined as “the unwavering support of people who LINE YOUR POCKETS a the expense of truth, justice, and the American Way”).

I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch, but that’s what the “comments” section is for!

The Hall of Shame is for posterity and for today, but the Ostrich Award is for the Here and Now, 'cuz media-celebrities need to know that their Ostrich-like behavior is KILLING THE WORLD!

Anyway, that’s Method 14: Mock Awards.

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Nonviolent Method #13: Deputations

Nonviolent Method Number 13 is Deputations.  Now, I read that, and I kind of think “Oh!  I’ve seen this in movies.  The sheriff goes to a guy and pins a badge on his shirt and says “Okay.  Here.  Now you’re a deputy.”

But that’s not how this method works.  With deputations a selected group of people take a grievance to somebody who is generally a big part of the problem. 

The best example they have in the book was in 1899 the Czar of Russia was ruling over Finland, and Finland was like “That sucks!”, and so he ordered all the men of Finland to fight for the Russian army, and they were like “We don’t even like you guys!”  So they got this petition signed by pretty much every man in Finland and got a deputation of 500 guys to take that petition to the Czar, and the Czar was like “I’m not gonna see them!”

So it didn’t really do any good, BUT that doesn’t mean it never does any good.  There was example from China where it worked.  Actually the second time it worked, the first time they all got 50 lashes from bamboo rods, but when they back AGAIN, even after all the lashes, that made an impression.  “Geez, these deputies are bad-ass!”

But if we were gonna do it, who would our deputation comprise of?  Well, we could send A) farmers and ranchers whose livelihood is being destroyed by the drought and heat that climate change has brought on; or, B) we could send a deputation of kids saying “Hey!  This is our futures, man!”, or C) a deputation of moms saying “Hey!  This is our kids’ futures!” 

But who do you send the deputation to? 

Well, I think it’s pretty obvious you don’t send it to the climate denier think tanks, ‘cuz they clearly wouldn’t give a crap about farmers or moms or kids.  Though they might be more than happy to dole out 50 lashes from bamboo rods.

It MIGHT work to send deputations of parents and kids to the fossil fuel companies, because they do supposedly have a public image to look after, but I’m not even sure that’s true.  Exxon-Mobil for years was the number one contributor to climate denier think tanks and politicians.  And yeah, people hated them, but they were still the richest company in the world.  

Now it MIGHT work if farmers from Oklahoma, and Texas, and Nebraska, and Kansas went to their national senators and representatives with a group of parents and kids and said “Enough!  We’ve got to stop climate change.”  It might work.

But I think what would work the best would be a deputation of parents and kids going to the big network news organizations and then saying “Hey!  You gotta cover this, this is serious.  You’re abrogating your duty.  People need to know how bad this could be.  They need to know about all the money that’s being spent to confuse the issue.  They need to know who’s behind that.  They need to know what the scientists are saying, and about the studies that show this is worse than everybody thought.  They need to know about how fast this could actually happen – a matter of decades and not a matter of a century.  They need to know how much the temperatures could go up here in the U.S. because everybody seems to think it would be that bad here, which is bullshit.  They need to know how the melting permafrost is gonna amplify this past the point we can do anything about it.  Just that.  Those minor points they’ve neglected to share with the American people!

THAT would be an effective deputation!  Tomorrow we’ll talk about Method Number 14: Mock Awards.


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Nonviolent Method #12: Skywriting and Earthwriting

Ya ever look up at the sky and see one of those planes that write with smoke”  You know, like “Marry me, Jenny”.  But of course by the time it’s done, the smoke has kind of dissipated so it’s something like “Mfimmt me, Jenny”.  That’s called skywriting.

We’re not gonna do that.  We’d be hypocritical to do such an extravagant waste of fossil fuels to write a message over a city that’s gonna last for like a minute. 

Skywriting is part of Nonviolent Method number 12: Skywriting and Earthwriting.

I’ve actually been looking forward to this day ‘cuz there’s not much there.  It’s kind of the equivalent of a polar bear day off.  I could actually hunt for seals today, because skywriting is out, and earthwriting – the only times it’s really been tried it’s been ineffective. There was this farmer in California who lived near an airbase, and there were all these sonic booms over his house, and so he protested and protested…and the Air Force was like “Whatever”.  So then he wrote in his field in giant black letters “QUIET!”, and the Air Force was like “Whatever.”  It didn’t stop the sonic booms.

So I’ve been trying to think “How could it be effective?”   Maybe you could get a bunch of boulders and strew them across a mountain that just had a forest fire, in a formation that says something like “No Hoax!”  Or farmers whose crops have been ravaged by drought, could plow up their dessicated fields and write the words “Climate Drought”.  (‘Course, it’s easier to write “No Hoax” ‘cuz it’s shorter.)

Another thing for earthwriting, you know how Mount Rushmore has the faces of Presidents, you could carve up a big rock with all the faces of people who stopped climate solutions from happening so future generations would know they were the dirtbags that screwed up the planet. ‘Course you’d have to make ‘em look stupid, or mean, like they’re all picking their nose or kicking little children.  Essentially they’re doing much worse.  There not kicking children, they're actually destroying their futures.  Anyway, nobody'd be able to look at that rock and think “Wo, those guys were cool”.  

I’m NOT serious about carving up rocks, by the way, because as a polar bear I actually worship the environment, and as an environmentalist I like to keep rocks the way they are. 

So that’s Skywriting and Earthwriting, for what it’s worth, and I’m glad to be done with it.

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Method 11: Records, Radio, and Television

Today we’re gonna look at Nonviolent Method number 11: Records, Radio, and Television.

Gene Sharp writes “Phonograph records may convey ideas through music, speeches, or declaration.”

Well, let’s just forget about records, because who does records anymore, right?  Nobody!  I mean everything's on like audio files now, and YouTube and stuff. 

Sharp continues: “Much of the American rock music of the 1960’s conveyed the sense of dissatisfaction, as did Bob Dylan in his song “Blowin’ in the Wind”. 

Boy, could we use that, right?  A popular culture that says “Hey, enough of this!  We’ve gotta stop this!”  That’s really what we need – to create a new popular culture!

So we need climate-related protest songs, like:

How many fires can a heat wave start

Before they talk about climate change?

Yes and how many hurricanes must swallow up cities

Before…they talk about climate change?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in GODDAMN ANOTHER TORNADO, LOOK OUT!

Okay, obviously you’d have to find a songwriter other than me. 

Or you could have Rap artists doing songs about climate change:

Well my name’s Pete and I’m just not about nice

You wouldn’t be either if they melted all your ice!

I know, I’m white, but c’mon, I’m a POLAR BEAR! 

Obviously you would need people with, like, TALENT to do this.

And if you were to change the culture it would dovetail with what happened in the sixties.  

Before all the anti-war stuff started the most popular bands were, like, the Platters, or Four Guys Wearing Sweaters.  But with the changing culture new artists emerged!

So all you budding young artists out there who are passionate about doing music that matters – hang in there baby, we need to get the next David Geffen to make you guys famous.  (Or, heck, maybe the current David Geffen!)  And in the meantime, just start posting!

Another good example from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968 was the amazing amount of roles that radio took on for the society.  Radio stations not only conveyed information about what was happening, but they “broadcast declarations of opposition, called for specific acts of resistance, warned against violence and urged for peaceful discipline, opposed collaboration, cautioned against rumors, and took over certain emergency administrative functions”.  (That’s all from Gene Sharp.)

Radio nowadays is so corporate that it’s not gonna do that but there is the internet, there's blogs, there are websites.  We need to use the internet and podcasts as a resource to do for this movement!  People gotta know what’s goin’ on, they gotta know how to protest, and how not to protest, and who not to protest with.  You don’t want a bunch of guys wearing ninja hoods and throwing rocks at your rally, because those are the guys that they’ll put on TV and it’ll make your whole movement look bad and scary to people, when really what you want to do is get people to join you! 

Listen, our opponents want us to wear masks and throw rocks and make bombs, but we’re smarter than that.  They’re the ones who go to health care town halls with automatic weapons on their hips.  I mean, old guys may admire Ted Nugent but everyone else think he’s a jerk!

We’re the good guys!  This is a cause that everybody in America – parents, kids, teachers, businessmen, churches – everybody should be in on this…WE’RE TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD!

And as for television – who even watches television anymore?  You got YouTube, you got Twitter, you can broadcast all the content you want for free to everybody…I mean it would be ideal if television was covering this story, but let’s not get too hung up on it.  We’ve definitely got to protest television, and protest them a lot, but until they give climate change the coverage it deserves, we do have alternative ways to get our message out. 

Anyway, that’s Method Number 11: Records, Radio, and Television.  Tomorrow, we’ll talk about Method Number 12: Skywriting and Earth writing. (Good Lord, That’s gonna be a short one!)


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Nonviolent Method # 10: NewsPapers & Journals

Today we’re gonna talk about Nonviolent Method number 10: Newspapers and Journals.

Now a lot of times through history, like with the Indian Independence Movement, you needed newspapers and journals to get the word out. 

Gandhi had a paper called Young India that all the people who wanted Independence read.  And it’s a good way for people to organize and keep people informed about the movement.

But now in modern America newspapers are basically dead.  They’re all corporate-owned and slashing staff and even the New York Times and Washington Post are like “Oh, let’s cut our environmental coverage!”

But we’ve got all kinds of alternative press that we can use.  We can use Blogs, Vlogs, and websites, and aim to get covered by the city sheets and campus press, and, if you can manage to get on it, even the Huffington Post.  Good luck with that, by the way! 

Otpor in Serbia relied on alternative press to get their messages out, but alternative newspapers are getting increasingly less alternative, due to new corporate ownership and their budget slashing. 

Even campus press is now corporate owned, which is bullshit!  “Oh, we’re the voice of the students and...Comcast.”

And by “city sheets”, I’m talkin’ about weekly papers like the LA Weekly, or Madison’s Isthmus, or Denver’s Westword, most cities have ‘em, but even they are now mostly corporate-owned, so they’re smaller with a lot less stories.  So maybe you couldn’t get alternative press to cover you like you used to.

But who cares!  We’ve got the internet!  We can use blogs, vlogs, and websites to promote what we’re doing. 

Now, it helps if you post every day.  I frequently go to 350.org’s page, and read the post that they put up a week ago.  People don’t keep comin’ back if it’s not every day.  If you’re gonna lead the movement that’s one of the realities of how to communicate via the internet.  I’m just startin’ to post everyday, it’s a pain in the ass, but you gotta do it.

One thing Bill McKibben did on his Do The Math tour is he got everybody’s phone number so he could just text out to ‘em when there’s something going on.  Which is smart, I wish I could do that. 

But still, the movement needs sites that post every day, because even if you’re not doing something every day there should always be something going on with the movement.  Somebody should be doing something every day.  I mean, we’re only trying to save the world, right?  Today there should be something happening in Ann Arbor and Annapolis and Albuquerque.  And tomorrow there should be something in Kalamazoo and Kansas City.  

If actions are always happening everywhere, not only is it cool for people to read about but it gives them ideas too, and hopefully inspires them.

Another funny thing would be to have fake New York Times and Washington Post websites, where they’re like “Oops, we forgot to cover the most important story in the history of humanity.  Our bad!”

Anyway, that’s Newspapers and Journals updated to the 21^st century and the internet.

You gotta realize Gene Sharp wrote this book in, like, 1972, when there was like, just one giant computer.  So it’s different now.

Tomorrow we’re gonna do Nonviolent Method number 11: Records, Radio, and Television.


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To Beat Big Oil All You Gotta Do is Remove Their Sources of Power!

Watch video at: http://youtu.be/wRy6JXZPrKs

If you’re concerned about climate change, you’ve probably thought “How do you take on the fossil fuel industry?!  They have all that money! They have all that power!  All the Republicans in Washington vote their way every time!  It’s IMPOSSIBLE!”

Oh, stop that!  Nothing’s impossible.  Yes, all those things are true, BUT, the people who are stopping climate solutions are not giant ogres with titanic strength.  They’re mostly a bunch of old guys with bad cholesterol.  

Their “power” comes from the people who cooperate with them!  Fossil fuel employees cooperate because they get their paychecks from them. Congressmen and Senators cooperate because they afraid of getting primaried—that’s a new verb—means they’re afraid they’ll seem too reasonable!  And the people who watch Fox News cooperate because they’ll do anything Fox News tells ‘em! “This is Sean Hannity saying “Touch my loins”, “Okay Sean!” “This is Megyn Kelly saying…”  

I’m not listening!  Even I’d  probably what Megyn Kelly asked me!  She’s too pretty I can’t stand it!

And yet, global warming is, literally, destroying the world!  Not just the ice pack that I roam in search of an honest meal, but the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD! 

Texas: Check. 

Oklahoma: Check. 

Wall Street: Check.

Everyone who denies climate change cannot expect to run off to a blissful kingdom where gentle rains fall and abundant crops grow and rivers run full.  They cannot all escape to some giant Koch Brothers’ Survival Cave under Cheyenne Mountain.  

There’s no refuge!  Climate change is gonna clock them all upside the head forever and always if we don’t stand up and do something about it SOON.

That would qualify as incentive!  The banking CEO who gets Republican lawmakers to vote his way may decide they need to do something about climate change.  The rancher, who loves Fox News, may tell his senator that he and his neighbors are losing everything to the heat. the fossil fuel employee may decide that his paycheck pails in comparison with a livable planet for his kids! 

But how do we get those people riled up enough to help?

Gee, let’s see….If only there was some way we could get them all to realize climate change is not some hoax.   Hmmm…. 

Duh!  It’s gonna be HOT again next summer!  We’ll have more disastrous storms!  Hell, New York City may get hit with ANOTHER hurricane.  It’s happened two years in a row, why stop there?!

But listen, humans, the real challenge is not to change the hearts and minds of the people who DON’T believe.   What’s gonna make all the difference is when the people who DO believe change THEIR hearts and minds.  We need to be strong!  Brave!  Determined!  Active, not passive!  Committed to removing your consent from a system that's slowly but surely killing everything we cherish about the world. 

You need to be more like POLAR BEARS goddamnit!  And I don’t mean nice, gentle coca-cola polar bears, but Pissed-off polar bears!  Nonviolent pissed-off polar bears.  

Alright!  Now, we’re talkin’!

Groouumph! 

Nonviolent Method #9: Leaflets, Pamphlets, & Books

Today we’re gonna look at Method number 9: Leaflets, Pamphlets, and Books.

And I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking “Oh, leaflets are so 1700’s”.

And I’ve been there, you’re walkin’ down the street and some yahoo gives you a leaflet and you’re like “Ah, dude, no thanks,” and he’s like “Oh, come on take one”, and even if you take one, you’re like “Okay, where’s the next trashcan”, right?

Leaflets are, by and large, bullshit.  You gotta have a repressive regime or something where it’s really daring to hand out leaflets, otherwise people don’t want a leaflet.

I mean, if you’re gonna do a leaflet, it better be eye-catching, it better be funny right from the get-go.

When the Nazis invaded Poland they distributed a bunch of leaflets saying “Oh, the Germans are so great, look at all we’ve achieved.”  So the Poles took that leaflet, and using the same exact design they created a biting satire.  So the Germans thought it was their leaflets people were reading!  “Oh, look, there’s our leaflet again,” but they didn’t realize that what people were reading was “Oh, Germans are dorks!”

If I was gonna use leaflets, I would hand ‘em out to people who were walkin’ into fossil fuel companies or Koch brothers think tanks or, even the network news organizations or their local affiliates – they need to know how bad climate change could really be.  All most people have heard about climate change is “Oh, in a hundred years it could be 3 degrees warmer.”  Big whoop!  Why not try “In a hundred years it could be 18 degrees warmer.  In 20 years it could be 3, 4, 5 degrees warmer!”  No one knows, this has never happened before, people don’t know how fast it’ll unfold.  Scientists are giving their cautious best guesses.  Cautious!  And more and more evidence shows scientists have been underestimating this.  Besides, what if you were 5 degrees warmer and had a temperature of 103.6 degrees and people were all “Big whoop”, and you’d be all “YEAH, big whoop, get me to the hospital, bitch!” 

So the news organizations need to report on what’s really happening because no one knows it, people are seriously uninformed!  Therefore you hand out fliers outside news organizations, you get the oil employees to understand who they’re aiding and abetting, you get the think tank secretaries to realize they’re working for a bunch of the ideologue jerks who are essentially destroying to the world for her kids…or his kids. There are plenty of rugged guys who work as secretaries.  No disrespect.

Also, you could leaflet government bureaucrats at the Department of the Interior or the State Department, people who can green light or slow down fossil fuel requests, and leaflet state government bureaucrats who approve things like fracking permits too!  Let ‘em have it with how bad climate change could be, but always be sure point out that practically all the climate scientists got your back!

Another example is about books, which are quasi worthless because a lot of people have written a lot of books about climate change, “It’s happening!”  “It’s a hoax!”  Whatever!  Books take a long time to read so you’re basically only gonna get people who agree with you to make that time commitment.

The book example I like was in the 18th Century this Russian guy N.G. Chernyshevsky wrote this book in prison called What Is To Be Done, and the censor thought it had already been approved by other censors so he just green-lit it and it got published and then became a blueprint for how to do a revolution.  Very cool, right?

Well, just so happens that I’m hoping this blog kinda helps the climate movement that way.  I mean, in my own humble polar bear way, this is why I’m doing this! 

So, there ya go, that’s method number 9, Leaflets, Pamphlets and Books.  Tomorrow we’ll do method number 10: Newspapers and Journals.

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Nonviolent Method #8: Banners, Posters, & Displayed Communications

Nonviolent Method Number 8: Banners, Posters, and Displayed Communications, has been much used by the environmental movement.  The Ruckus Society and Greenpeace like to climb to the top of towers and unfurl gigantic banners so people can go “Oh, look, there’s a sign hanging from the Statue of Liberty!  Wow that’s clever.”

But, unfortunately, it hasn’t proved to be something terribly effective.  It’s remarkable, but it’s ineffective.  Kudos to them for climbing to the top of great edifices, but at this point, it seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of reward. 

According to my research, it seems like these things really only work when a lot of people are doing it, or a lot of signs are going up.

After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the people of Prague put up protest signs all over the city, but then the Russians were like “Well that’s bullshit, we’re gonna tear up all their signs and put our own signs up!”  So one night they went out and they tore down all the signs and put up their own signs.  But at some point during the night the Czechs got wind of what was happening and so they went out and started tearing down the Russian signs and re-replacing them with Czech signs, so by the morning Prague was covered in Czech signs all over again!  That’s pretty scrappy!  They probably had a lot of signs pre-made to do it that fast.

In Rotterdam in 1942, people put up signs urging people to show respect to the Jews that had to wear the yellow stars.  That was very cool and very brave.

Otpor in Serbia turned every Slobodan Milosevic election poster against him by slapping “He’s finished” stickers on top of them. 

Advertisements have been cleverly turned on their heads by looking the same at first glance, but having very different messages.

In India, in 1930 and ’31, sidewalks and even paved streets were used as blackboards for revolutionary messages. 

Sympathetic shop owners could totally help spread the message by putting the signs in their window.  I mean, that would be a smart long-term business strategy for them:  support averting planetary disaster! 

Another cool thing they did in Prague was they painted “U.N.: S.O.S.” on buses.  It was a great way to let people all over town in on the resistance.  

You could put signs on your own car, which is like, legal.  You know that’s kind of cool to do something that’s actually legal.  It could say something like “Join our climate group” and your website.

This should really be done in university towns.  Because, again, what’s the point of an education if the world’s gonna be more or less screwed by the time you’re, like, thirty!

So you could like hang banners from dorm windows and stuff.

Or you could just wear t-shirts that have the message you’re trying to portray.  This works especially well for people who are drop-dead gorgeous.  “Look at her!  What does her shirt say?  Oh, I’m gonna go there!”  People are so shallow!

You don’t have to be gorgeous, you just have to be interesting.  You could have one guy freeze like a statue, and another guy project onto his white t-shirt little silent videos of the melting Arctic and stuff.  People would stop and check that out.  “What’s the deal with these frozen guys?”

They actually have little hand-held projectors that you can project onto anything basically.  You could project stuff onto walls outside theaters and sports arenas where people are lined up at night.  There’s a good way to get the message across. 

“I’m not graffiti-ing, they’re waiting to see a movie so I’m showing them a movie!”

Anyway, those are just some examples of Banners, Posters, and Displayed Communications.

Tomorrow, we’re gonna look at method #9, Leaflets, Pamphlets, and Books.


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Nonviolent Method #7: Slcgans, Caricatures, and Symbols

Today we’re gonna talk about Nonviolent Method number 7, Slogans, Caricatures, and Symbols.

Now, a little editor’s note here: the preceding nonviolent methods, number 1 through 6 that we’ve done, they all fall into the Formal Statements category, and now we’re moving onto a much more exciting category, which is Communications with a Wider Audience.  These are basically designed to gain converts and get sympathy from the other side, and even garner support for the nonviolent group.  Considering only at this point 16 percent of the people really understand how serious climate change is, we really need to cast a wider net, right?  So Communications with a Wider Audience is basically just what the doctor ordered. 

Alright, so Method number 7: Slogans, Caricatures, and Symbols.  This one’s pretty cool, alright?  A lot of these examples are cool.  In 1941 and ’42 in Berlin, there was this awesome group of Jewish youths called The Baum Group.  They’d go out at night and paint resistance symbols on walls and stuff, and it was really dangerous!  Even though none of them ever got arrested it was really dangerous.  But just the ability to do it was considered a test of your revolutionary ardor.  We need that.  We need revolutionary ardor for the climate movement. 

We need people with some stones!  And we also need to ignite the youth.  Young people should be the coolest people in this movement.  After all, most of their adult lives they’re gonna be completely screwed by climate change so they have the most to lose, right?  So they need to lead! If you’re a young person in some little town you need to get people on your side and start goin’ out and doin’ stuff.  Or find the people who are! 

Also in World War II there were these Polish resistance youths called the Little Wolves (I like that, the Little Wolves…  Maybe we’ll have the Little Polar Bears.  I dunno, it doesn’t sound quite as scary, even though a little polar bear could take a little wolf any day…but we’re nonviolent, so we’re not gonna talk about that.)  But the Little Wolves would go out with cans of indelible paint and write on fences, and even on German trucks, and sometimes even on the coats of the Germans themselves.  When they weren’t lookin’ they’d sneak up really quietly, and paint the stuff on their back, and then run away.  I don’t know how they did it, but they did it, right?  So every morning Warsaw would wake up to all these cool messages that this band of little wolves would paint overnight.  That’s so cool, right? 

More recently, in Serbia, this group Otpor would go out every night and just paint and paste the neighborhoods with stuff.  Now, they learned pretty quickly that, even if they only had a few people, those few people could go out at night with cans of spray paint and get the whole city’s attention the next day.  So it made the little group look big!

And they had a clinched fist symbol that could easily be made into a stencil and so you could just slap it against anything and spray paint it on and there was this fist of resistance, right?  Everywhere! 

And as they grew people kinda knew who they were, “Oh it’s the Otpor guys!”  I mean, they didn’t know who they were specifically, but they knew what the movement was about. 

And they got more sophisticated as time went on.   They found that the smaller the message the better.  Eventually they’d have signs that would just say “It’s Coming”.  And by then everybody knew what “It” was!  So they were really smart.

We need good, short messages for our movement.  You know, stuff like “No Hoax!”

Now you gotta be really careful when you go out and do stuff like this because the U.S. has all these tough anti-graffiti laws.  

And I don’t know what the stickers laws are, but if you could get cool stickers, like, I dunno, a Pissed-Off Polar Bear, you know…you could help spread the message fast.  Just slap it on a sign, or on a wall, or something. 

Symbolism really counts.  People are into that.  There’s a reason that corporations spend billions for a tag line and a logo.  This movement spends too much time speaking in paragraphs!  On that note, I’d better shut up!

So remember, it's a great way to spread the message, it’s fun, it’s a great way to show your revolutionary ardor, but you gotta be careful.

Also, if you really want to get inspired about this, go rent the movie about Banksy and Shepard Fairey called Exit Through the Gift Shop.  But only watch the first half.  The second half’s dumb. 

Alright!  Next time we talk about Nonviolent Method Number 8: Banners, Posters, and Displayed Communications.


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