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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Gene Sharp's Nonviolent Method #1: Public Speeches

So at some point this year the President is going to ask us to step up to support his push to do something about climate DISRUPTION.  And we gotta be ready when that happens! 

Currently this movement follows only a couple leaders, and apparently they don’t have the resources to drum up actions more than a couple times a year.  SO, we all need to use our own creativity, resources, and friends to step in and come up with our own Nonviolent Actions.   So you’re gonna need to know all the nonviolent weapons at your disposal!

In Gene Sharp’s book The Methods of Nonviolent Action, he outlines 198 different methods.  Here’s the list.  Good lord!  Those are just a bunch of words!  Just reading that list is kind of a useless exercise for nonviolent activists.

That’s why Sharp included 300 pages worth of examples, which gives you a much more tangible feel of how these things work…and a lot of them could work for the climate movement!

Today, we’ll look at Method #1: Public Speeches.

Now, lots of times public speeches are lame!  The Serbian resistance movement Otpor decided right from the get-go that their movement wasn’t gonna do speeches! 

But they can work.  It depends on who’s giving the speech and when and where. 

For instance, if you stand on a street corner and give a speech about climate change, it’s not likely to be effective.

BUT, if you’re, President Obama, and you go on at length about climate change in your 2nd inauguration speech, that would qualify as surprising and therefore effective. 

I mean, everyone was like “Holy crap, he talked more about climate change than anything else!  My God, he really means to do something about it!”

It was also big news when mayor Bloomberg endorsed Obama after Hurricane Sandy hit his city.  It depended on the moment!

One of the guys Gene Sharp talks about was a Catholic Priest in Nazi Germany named Bernard Lictenberg who told his congregation that he wished to share the fate of the Jews who were being sent off to concentration camps.  That was brave.  And the Nazis did send him off to Dachau, and he did share their fate.  But thousands and thousands of people were dying, and he did the only thing he could.

Now, no minister in America is gonna get killed if they speak to their congregations for action on climate change, but a lot of people in those congregations do NOT believe in it and do NOT want to hear about it.  So it would be a great moral stand for a member of the clergy to do that.

Also, Republican politicians would be really brave and would have an eye-opening impact if they stood up in favor of action.  You know they can’t ALL believe climate change is just a hoax. 

I mean they got kids and grandkids and they need to do the right thing for them.  They don’t want those grandkids to one day say “Yeah, grampa was a senator but I don’t want to talk about him”

“Why not?”

“He was a climate denier dirtbag!” 

“Oh, that’s horrible!  Now America is a dried up wasteland”.

“I KNOW!  Stupid grandpa!”

Seriously that’s how they’re gonna be remembered.  (Polar bears already talk about ‘em like that.  It’s brutal!)

So public speeches can work depending on who gives the speech and when and where. 

Tomorrow we’ll talk about Method Number 2: Letters of Opposition or Support.

“Oh wow!  He’s gonna talk about correspondence!  Can’t wait!”

Well tune in anyway, we all need to learn all these methods.


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