(photo from Victoria BC, Feb 23 2010. aren't we usually counting flowers this time of year, and lording it over the rest of canada?)
Last night I attended the launch of Transition Town Fernwood. I walked with Christina, a neighbour and friend, through our neighbourhood and into Fernwood where another friend, Anke, presented slides and explained the TT movement to a small roomful. Larry was there (Larry’s affectionately known as the most well-known activist in our city, he’s everywhere!), and one of Christina’s students (she teaches organic gardening), and Denise, a woman from our neighbourhood who I’d met at last summer’s South Jubilee picnic. I also saw Max in the audience, and one or two other familiar faces.
The Transition Town movement, in a nutshell, is about visioning a post-carbon world. What will it look like? How will we create it, community by community? There’s no point in waiting for government to build it, we’ve just got to get to know our neighbours, learn and share our skills, turn our common greenspaces into gardens, that sort of thing. It’s communism, in its purest form.
I felt a tiny bit sad and guilty, leaving my International Twitter friends during their crisis overseas. For days I’ve received communiqués from Marwa and Arwa and Menna in Egypt, Mohammed and FroBro in Bahrain, the Libyan Youth Movement and others I’ve learned I can trust to share accurate and up-to-the-minute information, photos, videos, and analysis. I also watch, with a critical eye, reports from the Al-Jazeera network. Not once, since the Egyptians took to the streets January 25th, have I turned to the corporate or state media for “news.”
I’ve never in my life felt so empowered. With the Transition Movement, I’m confident we will not only survive peak oil, but peacefully dismantle oppressive hierarchies in the process. With online person to person communication I can see clearly what’s happening, uncluttered by pseudo-analysis from self defined “experts.” I’m confident the TT movement with spread and grow …. once the majority of people realize the simplicity of the situation.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. It’s not about Sunni and Shiite, Christian and Muslim and Jew, though those are convenient labels that have been used for centuries to foment mistrust and division. I’m an atheist, I pray to the benevolent universe, the creation (of which I believe we are all an equally important part), so I know no allegiance to any particular religious organization. I’m also an anarchist, so I’m not beholden to any particular political party or ideology. And, finally, I’m a survivalist. I love this earth, and I believe that if we care for her, she will provide for us. The uprisings we’re witnessing, in the middle east and around the world, aren’t about religion or political ideology, they’re a primal cry for equity and fairness and the right to simply survive, with dignity and self-respect.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that our world’s climate is changing, that there’s an enormous gap between the rich and poor, that we’re witnessing shortages of oil, food, and water. Those who call themselves “leaders” are often power hungry and oppressive to some degree or another, using deception and lies to maintain themselves atop a fabricated hierarchy. I believe I could join any popular peoples’ uprising anywhere in the world and discover that this is why they’re risking their lives and livelihoods. They understand this, and they want change.
Yesterday a couple of twitter friends joked that they appreciated Mubarak so much more after listening to Gadafi’s rambling speech. I listened to it in its entirely, via Al Jazeera, at the same time watching the twitter feed and posting up to the moment translations for my facebook friends. I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry, I tweeted at one point …. it was so clear that the man is suffering some form of alzheimer’s or dementia. A leader like that is not long for this world, I thought. Something will surely change soon, and the horrible murders of innocent Libyans will end. And then I heard, via corporate and capitalistic media, that Latin American leaders were supporting Gadafi. This didn’t make sense to me. Central and South America have been leading the way, in this part of the world, replacing despots with benevolent dictators. Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez are enormously outspoken against the excesses of capitalism, they realize that the endless growth capitalism demands is killing our world and impoverishing its people. They’re nationalizing resources, kicking the fat cat corporate butts out of their countries, using the new national revenue to provide health care and education and housing for the people. In Venezuela, an oil rich nation, Chavez is insisting on alternate energy project development. I don’t know what Ortega’s been up to lately, but last I checked he was fighting Reagan’s mercenaries in a bloody civil war. It didn’t make sense that these guys would support the slaughter of civilians.
I read Fidel Castro’s analysis of the Libyan situation, and his warning against inviting NATO into the game. Of course, I thought, the capitalists whose GDP rises whenever anything is bought and sold, including weapons, will be looking for a way to capitalize on this disaster. Naomi Klein has taught us all about Disaster Capitalism and its insidiousness and manipulative ways. And I learned long ago never to trust anyone whose motive is profit. People who’ve set up their lifestyles to depend on large amounts of cash flow are naturally perpetually worried about maintaining their status, at any cost. They’ll claim they’re doing their dirty work for humanitarian reasons, pop their little happy pill so they can live with themselves, and the world continues its plunge into perpetual darkness. This is one reason there are no millionaires in Cuba. The Cuban Revolutionaries overthrew a gambling and prostitution hierarchy and replaced it with a system so insistent on equity they pay their farmers higher salaries than their doctors. Of course I wouldn’t trust NATO to solve Libya’s crisis. What’s needed is a massive mutiny, all around the world. A Transition Movement the likes of which the world has never seen. A profound shift in the hearts and minds of every citizen living on this planet.
But something else Fidel wrote struck a nerve.
“One can be in agreement with Gaddafi or not. The world has been invaded with all kind of news, especially through the mass media. We shall have to wait the time needed to discover precisely how much is truth or lies, or a mix of the events, of all kinds, which, in the midst of chaos, have been taking place in Libya. What is absolutely evident to me is that the government of the United States is totally unconcerned about peace in Libya and will not hesitate to give NATO the order to invade that rich country, possibly in a matter of hours or a few days.”
I thought that, in light of the capitalist and corporate (and even twitter!) reports that Latin American leaders were supporting this horrible demented man who had been hiring mercenaries and ordering the slaughter of his own countrypeople, I thought a stronger stand against Gadafi was called for. I realize that, in his younger and perhaps more sober years, Gadafi had realized the evil of US imperialism and stood strong against them, and this made him a hero in many’s eyes. But surely those days are behind him and events of the past week indicate he’s lost his mind completely? But maybe Fidel is right …. maybe there’s more to this story than simply blaming one man for all the evil of a regime. I began to wonder … who else benefits from maintaining an oppressive hierarchy that rules over its people? And then the clouds parted and various scenes from Shakespearean tragedies began to float into my (thankfully) university educated brain.
Of course. Of course they want us to hate. It keeps their wars alive, it keeps their weaponry and revenue flowing. They’re offering us a simple solution – hate Gadafi, even though (and especially because) he dared stand up to US imperialism and say NO.
I suggest there’s an even simpler solution. I’m not sure people who’ve never experienced poverty and/or oppression will ever understand or want to participate in it. But I believe that many people do, more and more of them with every passing day. And I thank them for their efforts in the streets, in the organic fields, occupying government buildings, organizing the transition town work groups, on the social media networks, and all the other places I find friends building the post-carbon, post-patriarchal world.
The real experts are in the streets. Tune in, Feb 23rd and 24th, to Canada’s 13th annual homeless marathon. http://ckut.ca/homeless
