Rivera Sun's Blog: From the Desk of Rivera Sun, page 34

Riding the Wave of Action

Wave of Action begins on April 4th and continues until July 4th.

by Rivera Sun

Surfing is an art. Life today sweeps us up in the swells of tremendous change. Terrifying undertows and riptides are brewing beneath the surface of our socio-political situation. The rise and fall of waves of change palpably upheave beneath us.

And like dedicated surfers, we are all waiting to catch the perfect wave.

On April 4th, the worldwide Wave of Action launches, rolling out sequences of nonviolent actions, gatherings, and events for three months until the final crescendo on July 4th. With over 600 organizations around the world participating, it seems likely that the swell of activity will demonstrate how much the Movement of Movements for social, economic, political and environmental justice has grown.

On Occupy Radio, my co-host David Geitgey Sierralupe and I interviewed Dave Degraw, one of the co-collaborators who built the platform for the truly crowdsourced endeavor. He likens the Wave of Action as a frame. It brings attention to the amazing work already being done by activists and communities around the world. (Listen to the podcast.)

When asked about the types of events, Dave Degraw simply cannot summarize. “You name it,” he says, “and someone’s doing it.” From Move-Your-Money Bank Rallies to Meditation Flashmobs, the Wave of Action is encompassing and appealing to a diverse crowd of people . . . not all of whom are the usual suspects for activism. All of us in the Movement of Movements have articulated the need to broaden our outreach efforts and build more participation from our fellow citizens. The Wave of Action deliberately attempts to emphasize inclusivity and has seen three major groups of people responding: the former Occupy or Anonymous activists, the rising tide of indigenous rights movements like Idle No More, and the Sacred Activism circles that emphasize consciousness and envisioning a new paradigm.

Ride the Wave of Action!

Over the next three months, we will see if this massive experiment in creating a frame for our beautiful and often media-perplexing diversity works. If it does, the Wave of Action stands a chance to break through the mass deception of the American mainstream media just as the Occupy Movement did. Even more important, this constant stream of action for a prolonged period of time could very well be the push that nonviolent action needs in order to break through to popular awareness.

We can all help by using social media and alternative journals to bring attention to the efforts of the Wave of Action. The coordinators ask people to use the hashtags: #WaveOfAction #GlobalSpring #ReOccupy #BeTheChange. As citizen journalists, we can share news of the wave, pass on images, videos, and tweets. We can cheer on the endeavors of our fellow activists and use the Wave of Action website to find local events in our area.

Just like a surfer, with a little bit of timely paddling, we can leap up on this wave and ride it like a pro.

Occupy Radio interviews Dave Degraw on the Wave of Action. Listen here: http://occupythemedia.podomatic.com/entry/2014-04-01T23_07_21-07_00

Author/Actress Rivera Sun is a co-founder of the Love-In-Action Network, a co-host on Occupy Radio, and, in addition to her new novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, she is also the author of nine plays, a book of poetry, and her debut novel, Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars, which celebrates everyday heroes who meet the challenges of climate change with compassion, spirit, and strength. www.riverasun.com

Boycott Corporatocracy

“There is a place between passivity and violence. I’ll meet you there.” – Rivera Sun

by Rivera Sun

The recent Supreme Court ruling removing limits to campaign financing should be the final straw on the camel’s back of the American people. Democracy in our country is a standing joke . . . and the trend of politics-for-sale is no longer funny. Wealthy elites and mega-corporations have created a modern day Court of Versailles in which the super-wealthy profit from the abject poverty of the rest of us. The Marie Antoinette’s of our day cut food stamps for impoverished children while crying, “Let them work for their cake!”

Washington D.C. is an upper-class court of avaricious elites manipulating the population into wage-slavery and debt servitude. The 2016 Presidential election will be a charade of Money vs. Money as the two leading oligarchical families vie to return to the White House. Regardless of who wins, the outcome is the same: the rich will get richer; the poor will get poorer. The elite will win; the people will lose.

Let’s call the whole thing off. No elections. No millionaire candidates. No sickening advertisements full of lies and false promises. The wealthy elites can save their money. We aren’t buying it this year.

We, the people, will boycott the election.

Throughout history, populaces around the world have thwarted dictatorial control by boycotting corrupt elections and denying the regime all legitimacy. The Serbian Revolution was won on the pivotal day of elections by the people’s denial of legitimacy to the alleged winners. Throwing the falsified newspaper announcements out the window of the Capitol Building, the people denied the regime access to power and inserted a temporary government until valid elections could be run.

The United States could use this technique of boycotting corrupt elections as part of a strategy to remove money from power and reverse 150 years of Supreme Court precedence in which corporations claim personhood and money is speech.

Here is how this works. We must:

1) Publically state, en masse, our rejection of the Supreme Courts decision.

2) Declare our intention to boycott the corrupt elections

3) Call upon the Third Parties to emulate Olympic athletes, and refuse to participate in competitions sponsored by tyrannical governments.

4) Call on majority party officeholders and candidates to take a position of conscience and join us in the boycott.

5) Deny all legitimacy to the individuals elected through corrupt elections.

6) Refuse cooperation with the authorities until new elections with campaign financing limits, removal of corporate contributions, and fair access for all candidates of all economic classes are guaranteed.

Outrageous as this may sound, this course of action is far saner than complying with the corporate and wealthy elite and lending them credibility by our participation in their totally corrupt system. It is more rational than expecting this system to correct itself. It is more sensible that waiting for the Supreme Court to reverse its ruling. And, it is more likely to succeed in demonstrating the refusal of the American people to submit to the tyranny of wealth than to lie down like dogs and pray for a miracle.

Chris Hedges has been openly calling for rebellion for years. I am now telling you how to begin. Although there are many other components of a comprehensive strategy, this suggestion should give a sense of the scope of nonviolent force necessary to remedy this situation. If we continue to participate in this abject whoring of democracy to wealth, we will find ourselves in Nov 2016, casting votes in an election in which only the uber-wealthy can compete; in which the rich man’s voting machines churn out the rich man’s results; and in which the people of this nation have no vote.

In 2013, former President Jimmy Carter publically stated that, “America does not have a functioning democracy at this time.” It certainly does not have one now.

We have come full circle in the course of human events. Instead of a king, we have a handful of oligarchs. Instead of the Crown, we have Corporations. But, once again, the rights of the people are illusory. The systems of justice have betrayed us. The powerful enslave us to poverty while they profit from our misery. The time for rebellion has come.

I urge us to boycott the elections of wealthy elites and corporatized candidates. I ask us to declare our opposition to the Supreme Court’s rulings publically. I request that we, as a people, deny all validity to officials elected through the abject tyranny of money. I encourage us to step beyond voting for the “lesser of two evils” and boycott the whole system of evil.

If we must, we can set up parallel elections. Equal, open, limited financing, multiple party elections with reliable voting technology, and certified by the United Nations and the Carter Center, which watchdogs elections around the world (yet cannot currently guarantee the results of American elections). The results of these parallel elections can be proclaimed by the people to be the legitimate officeholders. As I mentioned earlier, this process has been used around the world, successfully and powerfully.

And yes, my friends, I am urging revolution . . . nonviolent, powerful, organized revolution. The time has come. Our causes are just. Our grievances are real. We, the people, should not – we will not – for the sake of our children, our planet, and our future, we cannot tolerate this utter corruption of democracy.

Boycott Corporatocracy! Boycott Corrupt Elections!

Author/Actress Rivera Sun is a co-founder of the Love-In-Action Network, a co-host on Occupy Radio, and, in addition to her new novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, she is also the author of nine plays, a book of poetry, and her debut novel, Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars, which celebrates everyday heroes who meet the challenges of climate change with compassion, spirit, and strength. www.riverasun.com

We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For! A talk by Rivera Sun

Please enjoy this 1:30min excerpt from Rivera Sun’s talk at Unity of Taos on the stepping into the lineage of nonviolent struggle.

http://www.riverasun.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/On-the-lineage-of-Nonviolence.mp3

Extinction Is No Joke

Extinction is no joke. Climate scientists say we have ten years, at most, to make a massive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. If we do not, climate change will signal lights out for the human species.

I am thirty-one years old. Climate change and global warming have been making headlines since I was ten. I have witnessed mass deception, outright lies, and utter inaction by our leaders for my entire lifetime. Just as my parents grew up in the shadow of the atomic bomb and nuclear warfare, I came of age under the looming death threat of climate change.

Like many of my generation, I am disillusioned and cynical about traditional politics. I doubt that institutional change will adequately address this issue. To me, it appears that our power-mongers are maneuvering us into a crisis, then preparing to profit from the emergency. This behavior does not surprise me. It is nothing new.

Instead, I find myself searching for a realistic plan of action. History is chock-full of inspiring examples of nonviolent struggles, but Gandhi’s Salt March during India’s struggle for self-rule stands out as particularly relevant to our current issues. In 1930, the British prohibited the making of salt to ensure the profitability of their monopoly of this essential preservative ingredient. When Gandhi and his allies began making salt despite the ban, they neatly combined constructive action and civil disobedience to the unjust law in a symbolic, practical, and economically effective manner.

Today, we face a tyranny that far outstrips the British monopoly on salt. The stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry threatens the continuation of life on Earth. One aspect of this is our electric utilities, which were granted legal monopolies by the power of our governments, and have colluded with industry and the wealthy elite to stifle the development of renewable energy. As catastrophic climate change hurtles ever closer, we can no longer wait for politicians to save us. They have failed a thousand times and will fail a thousand times again. The actions of conscientious citizens must escalate to a level of nonviolent force commensurate to the severity of our crisis.

The tools of nonviolent struggle can – and should – be used to propel the sudden, massive shift to renewable energy. We must use them to set the timeline, the terms of the transition to renewables, and the change in political power that this shift requires. We, the people, must wield these tools strategically, placing our actions on the pivot points of change. The efforts of 350.org to stop the Keystone XL pipeline and their fossil fuel divestment campaign are tremendous endeavors, and we can support them by waging civil disobedience on another front.

Just as 350.org used the Pledge of Resistance to the KXL pipeline to send a clear, unequivocal message of our opposition to the pipeline and to organize nonviolent actions if needed, so can we use a Declaration of Demands to warn our utilities of the economic necessity of providing renewable energy. With the financing rates for solar and renewable energy installations dropping down into the range of the average monthly utility bill, we can now say, “we want renewable energy or we will leave the utility and install individual and community arrays by the thousands.”

Stating our intention to engage in effective acts of civil disobedience to the unjust laws restricting the growth of local renewables, we can prepare a powerful campaign of constructive programs to install local, renewable power in our communities.

In such a campaign, these are some of the laws that must be broken:

We must form local, distributed small-scale utilities, despite the legal status of current monopolies.
We must install solar and renewable energy for our community, despite contractual restrictions by our utilities.
We must install off-grid energy sources, despite the prohibitions on off-grid living in certain places in the US.
We must carefully analyze the ordinances that are used to prevent the development of renewable energy in our communities . . . some ordinances rest on sincere health and safety rationales; others are merely excuses to continue the stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry.

The breaking of the law in order to further renewable energy development is an action that steps far beyond the forms of civil disobedience that occur when protesting outside the White House. It goes further than acts of protest and persuasion. It undermines the economic viability of the utilities, builds community self-reliance, creates local energy sovereignty, and propels climate justice tangibly forward.

This style of civil disobedience is on par with Gandhi’s Salt March. It stands to go down in history as a Great Movement of ordinary Americans in clear rebellion to the tyranny of our elite; a courageous struggle of our citizens on behalf of the world. In supporting this movement, we send a clear message that we, the governed, no longer consent to be ruled by greedy, destructive power-mongers. We do not consent to the extinction of humanity through the use of fossil fuels. We do not consent to the destruction of the Earth.

Instead we are courageously saying that, in this time of great change, we will rabble-rouse for our future. We will make beautiful trouble on behalf of all peoples. We will roil this continent with upheaval for justice. We will rock the foundations of our nation with coordinated nonviolent action. We will disobey with great love the systems of destruction. We will wage struggle until the legal and social structures that lead us toward disaster are changed. We will be modern-day Gandhi’s, King’s, Chavez’, and Jesus’. We will be active, engaged, and above all else, we will be kind, be connected, and be unafraid.

 

This essay was inspired by interviewing Bill Brown, earth scientist and speaker for the Climate Reality Project on Occupy Radio (listen here). Bill also serves as a consultant for Renewable Taos, a Northern New Mexico advocacy group for local, renewable energy.

Author/Actress Rivera Sun is a co-founder of the Love-In-Action Network, a co-host on Occupy Radio, and, in addition to her new novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, she is also the author of nine plays, a book of poetry, and her debut novel, Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars, which celebrates everyday heroes who meet the challenges of climate change with compassion, spirit, and strength. www.riverasun.com

Repelling the Corporate Invasion

“This is the final showdown between the force of greed and the power of love. Either we are going to stop this extraction, or we are going to perish.” The Dandelion Insurrection – a novel by Rivera Sun

It is not an exaggeration to say that Canada and the United States are facing an invasion of extractive energy corporations. They seek to conquer these occupied territories just as the early Europeans did and extract the resources while subjecting the populaces to genocide. This may sound like strong language, but that is only because the public discourse on this subject has been anemic, at best. When the continued use of fossil fuels threatens extreme regional environmental degradation, severe health consequences for local communities, and also the extinction of the entire human species due to carbon-emission induced global warming leading to catastrophic climate change, even the language of “invasion” and “genocide” is inadequate to describe the reality.

In light of this crisis, our nation-to-nation relations become of extreme importance. The people of the United States, Canada, the First Nations and the tribal governments within the US all face this threat together.

When my Occupy Radio co-host, David Geitgey Sierralupe, and I interviewed Heather Milton-Lightening, the co-director of the Indigenous Tar Sands Resistance out of the Polaris Institute in Ottawa, ON about the historical and present-day relations between the First Nations and Canada, she told us that respect between indigenous and non-indigenous people is fundamental to building a successful resistance to extractive energy industries. (listen to the podcast)

Transnational corporations, like Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron, exist dangerously outside the jurisdiction of any single nation-state. Protected by layers of trade agreements and corporate-controlled courts, they have little accountability for their actions or tangible consequences for their abuses. They disregard the democracies of even the most powerful nations, and abjectly ignore the rights of First Nations and tribal governments.

When the people of any nation say “no” to extractive energy companies, the governments either sell them out (as in the case of Navajo Nation, where tribal officials strike deals to continue coal and uranium mining) or the industry invades their territories using the military might of the US or Canada to back up their questionable legal claims. When appealed to, international law has done little to effectively halt the corporations or sanction the nations that support them. So, the situation boils down to on-the-ground resistance of tiny indigenous nations and local communities struggling to defend themselves from the invasion of powerful, militarized entities.

Sounds familiar, hmm? History is filled with repetitions of this story: Tibet and China, Latvia and the USSR, Hawaii and the United States . . . the cycle of invasion and conquest includes the Vikings, the Romans, the Aztecs, the Comanche, the Spaniards, and the present day Israelis, among many others.

The silver lining of this history is that humanity has also developed some tools for dealing with invasion and occupation. One of these is violence; the other is nonviolent action. Developed collectively from people of many nations, cultures, races, and spiritual faiths to overcome oppression, occupation, invasion, injustice, inequality, and tyranny; nonviolence has proven to be a very useful set of tools, particularly in the cases of small nations challenged by much larger nations.

When diplomacy, negotiation, and political process have broken down and an invasion is taking place, the peoples of all nations have the right to resist. This fundamental right applies not only to the First Nations, whose sovereignty is acknowledged by the Canadian Constitution and the United Nations, and the tribes of the US (whose legal status is as “sovereign territories” of the United States), but also to all US or Canadian citizens when faced with a military coup or factional take-over of their government.

With the very real invasion of mega-corporations threatening the continuation of all peoples on Earth, can the citizens of our nation acknowledge the uncomfortable truth of our past and the challenges of our present to help us strive for a common future?

History is a story that we constantly tell and retell. Successive waves of awareness and ignorance sweep the rocky shores of public perception. The story of North America, or Turtle Island, as it is called by many indigenous peoples, is a painful story, but if we can learn from both the shameful and powerful aspects of our past, we can use “history as a weapon” to protect our common future on this planet. As transnational corporations surge forward into a new chapter of exploitation, perhaps we can work together to make this the last chapter of domination and colonization, and the first of a new era of respectful relations between all human beings on planet Earth.

 

Listen to the podcast: Occupy Radio: Broken Promises, Poisoned Land, First Nations Fight to Restore Their Nationhood

Author/Actress Rivera Sun is a co-founder of the Love-In-Action Network, a co-host on Occupy Radio, and, in addition to her new novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, she is also the author of nine plays, a book of poetry, and her debut novel, Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars, which celebrates everyday heroes who meet the challenges of climate change with compassion, spirit, and strength. www.riverasun.com

Freezing to Death Hurts: Homeless In America

“Freezing to death is not an unpainful experience. Being cold is very painful.” – Carey

Homelessness is on the rise. Despite the fact that we have more than enough houses to adequately shelter our population, three and half million homeless men, women, and children live and sleep in the streets. Imagine how it feels to be freezing to death, looking at one of the 18.5 million vacant houses in America . . . homes that are owned by banks that bought the foreclosed properties with bailout money that came from our taxpayer dollars.

It rankles the soul.

On Occupy Radio this week, homeless advocate Jean Stacey likened the unhoused to the canaries in the coal mine of our nation. They are signs that something has gone terribly wrong. (Listen here)

Some argue that the something is the economy, but I’d say there’s nothing wrong with the economy as far as the wealthy are concerned. 95% of the 2009-2012 income gains dove into the pockets of the wealthy 1%1. The rest of America saw little sign of economic recovery. For many, poverty is just one step closer.

Nearly half of our population is poor.

100 million Americans fall into the low-income category, and another 50 million live below poverty. That’s staggering. It’s worthy of a national crisis. Why don’t we know about this? Perhaps because poverty is all too common.

If a father and mother both work to meet the bills, but fall behind on their credit card payments, they’re impoverished. If a student goes hungry at the end of the month to scrape together the rent money, he’s impoverished. If an old woman’s social security doesn’t cover her heating bill in the winter, she’s impoverished. Every child receiving free or reduced cost lunches at school is living near, at, or below the poverty line. The stories sound familiar, don’t they? They’re normal. Here in the United States, we can’t see the forest of poverty because of all the trees.

But think of this: if the income in the US were distributed equally, every man, woman, and child would receive $50,000 per year.5

Do you make that? I don’t. My partner and I together don’t earn that much. In fact, if we were making a combined $100,000 per year, we could afford to give a house to the homeless . . . only, would there be any unhoused people?

Occupy’s message of the 1% broke the notion of income inequality into our minds, but the shocking scale of the greed displayed by our nation’s elite has yet to sink in. Culturally, we persist in believing that a) we are not poor, and b) our poverty is our own fault. With enough hard work, we think, we should be able to make ends meet.

Let’s do some math: at $8.50/hr – a dollar and a quarter more than the federal minimum wage – you can work 40hrs a week and still only make $17,680. The average cost per living per person in the United States is $20,194, according to the US Census Bureau. At that rate, no amount of hard work will pull you out of poverty.

Ready for some more math? Warren Buffet makes $1.54 million per hour each day (yes, even while he’s sleeping). That works out to be just over $25,694 per minute. Which means that Warren Buffet makes enough money while taking a shit to buy a small house. (Or a fancy one, depending on his level of constipation.) In the course of a year, he could pay the cost of living for 628,000 Americans, including himself.

We have a crisis in America . . . and it’s not the rising tide of homelessness. The crisis is the moral depravity that allows unchecked greed to devastate people’s lives. The crisis is that a schoolteacher pays more in taxes than our major corporations. The crisis is that the dollar has more civil liberties than citizens. The crisis is that we do not live in a democracy; we suffer under a representational republic controlled by avaricious oligarchs.

This crisis cannot be solved by soup kitchens and shelters alone. It will take coordinated, concentrated nonviolent struggle for social, political, and economic equality. It will take thousands of citizens working together to redress the inequalities and reverse the slow demise of justice. The wealthy elite have turned their doublespeak upon the phrase “class warfare”, but they do not understand the nature of language.

A war is a struggle between two sides. Perhaps, in our modern era of warfare, they have forgotten how to confront a formidable opponent. After all, with a military budget the size of the entire world’s combined, the US elite survey the globe with smirking superiority. But when it comes to sheer numbers, the struggle between the super-wealthy 1% and the 99% is, indeed, a war. Its battles may be fought nonviolently, with boycotts, strikes, divestments, political maneuvers, and legal showdowns, but a conflict of ideologies is unfolding in our country.

You can see it on the street corners, in the alleyways, and crowded apartment buildings. The casualties of this war fill the homeless shelters and assistance program offices. The elite are losing ground. Hunger, homelessness, poverty and sickness all work against their propaganda efforts. They call out the parades and pageants, but the people line the streets in rags. The poor don’t want to watch armored limousines roll past; they want food for their children and shelter from the storm.

We all hear the canary in the coal mine crying . . . but will we act before the silence falls?

Listen to Occupy Radio as cohosts Rivera Sun and David Geitgey Sierralupe interview Bruce Wright, Jean Stacey on Eugene, OR’s Whoville Sanctuary and the criminalization of homelessness. Listen here: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/occupy-radio

Author/Actress Rivera Sun is a co-founder of the Love-In-Action Network, a co-host on Occupy Radio, and, in addition to her new novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, she is also the author of nine plays, a book of poetry, and her debut novel, Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars, which celebrates everyday heroes who meet the challenges of climate change with compassion, spirit, and strength. www.riverasun.com

1 Wall St. Journal Business Section http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/09/10/some-95-of-2009-2012-income-gains-went-to-wealthiest-1/

Business Insider: What Warren Buffett Makes Per Hour

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-warren-buffett-makes-per-hour-2013-12

A Roadmap Compass to a New World

This week on Occupy Radio, cohosts Rivera Sun and David Geitgey Sierralupe interview Michael Nagler, founder of the Metta Center for Nonviolence. Listen to the podcast here.

Those of us engaged in protesting the current failing system sometimes forget to remember the good things happening in our society, such as solar technology, local economies, and small-scale, organic agriculture. As a result, we can become plagued with a sense of hopelessness and despair as we engage in boycotts, strikes, blockades, and protests.

This week on Occupy Radio, my co-host Getch and I interviewed Michael Nagler, the founder of the Metta Center for Nonviolence about the Roadmap Compass, a new online, interactive tool that can help us gain a sense of perspective, hopefulness, and collaborative strategy between our various movements.

The Roadmap Compass is a visual symbol – a wheel with a set of concentric rings and six spokes outlining areas of attention: Climate Protection, Environment, Vibrant and Needs-Based Economies, Democracy and Social Justice, Nonviolent Resistance (including peace building), and New Story Creation. The Roadmap model focuses on solutions, constructive programs, and positive change. If you click on the various sections, the interactive tool connects you to discussion groups where you can see inspiring efforts toward a sustainable, equal, and just society.

The Roadmap’s emphasis brings together all three aspects of what Joanna Macy calls “The Great Turning”, which refers to this moment in human history where we are transitioning from a post-industrial growth society into a sustainable, life-affirming society. In the Great Turning, the three components of change are: holding actions, such as protests, boycotts, and strikes, that halt the worst of the destruction; new system creation, as in solar energy or barter networks; and changes to underlying cultural beliefs, like decolonization efforts, peace studies, and contemplative practices.

Both the Great Turning and the Roadmap Compass offer the activist community a sense of awareness of the role our efforts play in the whole transformation of society. In these models, all contributions toward positive change are placed in perspective to one another, allowing us to find solidarity in unexpected quarters of our culture. Farmers, teachers, parents, small business owners, inventors, and alternative media all offer forms of support for the changes we seek. As we grasp this broader understanding of our movement, we can begin to see that a revolution of the heart is, indeed, sweeping through our world, and a broad-based movement toward life is erupting.

If we expand our minds far enough, we can also see that even the Earth, the ecosystems, the plants and the animals are our allies in this great time of social change. Every tree that continues to produce oxygen, the mycelium fungi cleaning up toxic oil spills, and the evolution of species like the pizzlies (a cross between grizzlies and polar bears) are all attempts to find balance in a wildly out-of-whack time. The whole Earth is striving toward life along with an increasing number of awake and aware human beings.

“We’re not a handful of radicals . . . we’re all of Life, itself!” – The Dandelion Insurrection – a novel by Rivera Sun

Tools like the Roadmap Compass shift our conception of our activist movements from disempowered, isolated, exhausted and overworked struggles into a larger perspective in which those engaged in holding actions are the nonviolent guardians of our growing life-affirming society. We are peaceful warriors who will do no harm, but who will also not allow the devastation of people and the planet to continue. From this viewpoint, we are not merely an oppositional struggle; we offer a beautiful alternative to the dominant culture. We are not merely blocking the old, we are holding out a vision of hope for us all. We stand like gatekeepers on the threshold of the coming world, welcoming our fellow human beings – if only they will put down their weapons, their hate, greed, and their systems of destruction.

The bulk of our populace has been fed nothing but apocalypse, denial, and lies from the mass media apparatus. If they know what is going on, they are frightened and in despair. If we consistently present the solutions – and there are many – they will rally in droves to stand up for Life, Earth, and our children’s futures. As our civilization crumbles, we can help this breakdown become a breakthrough. By holding out a compelling vision of the new systems while opposing the destruction of the old, the activist community can sway the mainstream public into positive efforts toward change.

The life-affirming society we are working toward has demonstrated its resilience and resistance to destructive systems since the dawn of humanity. Its organic, life-based processes have endured throughout centuries of colonization, domination, warfare, and exploitation. The parasitic cultural mentality that sought to conquer Earth and control everything, including nature, is fighting a losing battle. From the outset, the dominator culture has been grossly outnumbered by the innumerable humans, plants, animals, and natural systems that have risen up again and again to ensure the continuation of life. Even as we stand on the brink of extinction, remember: we are many, they are few. And, in truth . . .

“We’re not resisting them . . . they’re resisting us!” – The Dandelion Insurrection

 

Listen to Occupy Radio’s interview with Michael Nagler http://occupythemedia.podomatic.com/entry/2014-03-05T23_59_04-08_00

Author/Actress Rivera Sun is a co-founder of the Love-In-Action Network, a co-host on Occupy Radio, and, in addition to her new novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, she is also the author of nine plays, a book of poetry, and her debut novel, Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars, which celebrates everyday heroes who meet the challenges of climate change with compassion, spirit, and strength. www.riverasun.com

The Changing Times

Katherine Power holding the Newsweek cover story of her experiences.

Occupy Radio co-host Rivera Sun reflects on interviewing fugitive philosopher Katherine Ann Power

In the late 1960′s, Katherine Ann Power engaged in an armed robbery to finance a revolutionary movement to overthrow the US Government. While leaving the bank, one of the men in her group shot and killed a police officer, Walter Schroeder. Katherine fled and lived as a fugitive on the FBI Most Wanted List for twenty-three years.

She was born the same year as my father.

When Katherine Power was a child, the “Green Revolution” connoted pesticides, not solar panels. Science was busily breaking the world down into little parts. Neil Armstrong hadn’t even dreamed of walking on the moon. My father, who would one day grow up to be a Vietnam War resister and a civil rights marcher, was taking his first toddling steps around the newly subdivided Levittown (the prototype of suburbia) on Long Island.

Though I grew up with stories of the 1960′s, the full scope of the times eluded me until speaking with Katherine for our Occupy Radio show. “There was a bombing somewhere in the US every day,” she said. “Kissinger later stated that the country was on the verge of civil war. Revolution was on the table.”

These perspectives weren’t taught to me in public school . . . and we were growing up in a very different world. “Ecosystem” was the new buzzword at elementary school. Acid rain was falling. Global warming arrived like the new kid on the block. The Internet was a tech whiz’s wet dream while most of my contemporaries moaned over the crashes of gold and black screens. We shared email accounts with our reluctant parents.

Hurtle forward one more generation to Katherine Power’s grandchildren, the children of today. Their parents text message as they drive, navigating by the voice commands of the dashboard GPS while a podcast warns them that climate change caused by carbon emissions will wipe out the forests of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest before their kids finishing paying back their college tuitions.

Katherine says that the scientists of her time claimed to have an answer for everything. The scientists today can’t get a word in edgewise as corporate mouthpieces insist that climate change isn’t real or it isn’t caused by fossil fuels, or even if it was, it’s too late now, there’s nothing we can do, and these are just the End Times prophesized in the Apocalypse.

When I was thirteen years old, my parents bought land in Northern Maine, including a half-acre on the St. John River, bordering Canada. “You could walk across,” my father muttered. I rolled my eyes in teenage scorn, thinking he was referring to the shallowness of the water. Of course you could walk across . . . but why would anyone want to?

I am thirty-one years old now. The NSA has records of the phone calls of my entire adult life. The Supreme Court – not the people, not the Electoral College – appointed Bush, Jr. in my first presidential election. There has been a major catastrophic oil spill every five to ten years of my life. I watched the North Pole melt and the island nation of the Maldives submerge. I heard former President Jimmy Carter state “America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time.” Governments are not just speeches and white-toothed waving politicians. Governments wage wars for profit, persecute truth speakers and whistleblowers, ignore the outcry of the people, corrupt justice, and destroy those who oppose them.

I understand now why the ability to walk to another country might be a useful thing.

Revolution is on the table, once again. It is being discussed with increasing seriousness as our representative republic fails to adequately meet the populace’s needs. As poverty and unemployment rise, so do the voices arguing about the most successful strategies for evicting corruption from the seats of power. As corporations spend billions on elections, grooming candidates in a mockery of democracy, the words “direct”, “participatory”, and “people’s” democracies are being kicked around.

One significant change has swept our society since the 1960′s. Blame it on elementary school explanations of ecosystems, or a planet writhing in climate change before our very eyes, or perhaps even the rise of Wikipedia, a living encyclopedia maintained by people . . . but the world looks different to us now. When my father and Katherine were children, the universe was explained like giant clockworks. Scientists were dissecting it to see what made it ticked. Now, millions of people understand that it is the relationships of a highly interconnected web is what makes this world whirl round. Reductionism will never add up into an explanation for a living system that is constantly changing.

We understand that robbing a bank or assassinating a single leader will not catalyze the massive social and political change we know is necessary. Our efforts must be myriad, multi-nodal, legion, and pervasive. We must relinquish guns and reach out our hands to one another. We know there are really no borders to flee across. Our global problems require global struggles. There is nowhere safe to hide. Our own towns and communities are now the front line of the struggle.

Katherine Ann Power’s life journey brought her through extremism, violence, fleeing, hiding, surrender, conviction, imprisonment, and release. The most remarkable part of her journey is that she has not lost hope. She has grown wiser through her life, learning to look deeply into the causes and conditions of destruction and suffering. She and her contemporaries have much to offer all of us struggling for social change at this time: experience, wisdom, and most of all perspective.

“Change cannot be forced,” Katherine says.

In the quiet space between the words, I hear her say, I know, I’ve tried.

Change is a dance we can all join hands in. It cannot be forced, but we can work together to put something beautiful in motion.

Author/Actress Rivera Sun sings the anthem of our times and rallies us to meet adversity with gusto. In addition to cohosting Occupy Radio, Rivera is also the author of the novel The Dandelion Insurrection, nine plays, a book of poetry, and her debut novel, Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars.

Listen to Occupy Radio: Fugitive Philosopher: Katherine Ann Power

http://occupythemedia.podomatic.com/entry/2014-01-16T01_19_47-08_00

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/occupy-the-medias-podcast/id663019726

Occupy Radio airs each week on Wed 7pm PST at http://kwva.uoregon.edu/listen-live/. Podcasts come out on Thurs at http://occupythemedia.podomatic.com

“At the Heart of the Problem”

 

Food & Water Watch founder Wenonah Hauter and Rivera Sun swap books. Food & Water Watch is a national organization involved in preventing fracking, GMO’s, and protecting clean water.

“We don’t have a fracking problem. We have a democracy problem.” – Thomas Linzey, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Every week on Occupy Radio, my co-host and I discuss the issues of our times: corporate politics, economic injustice, environmental destruction, the police state, government surveillance, and more. Over the episodes, one thing has become clear: we, the People, aren’t happy with the direction this country is headed.

Congressional approval ratings are locked in the single digits. Government counter-insurgency agencies are already planning to suppress the “next Occupy movement”. Advocacy and action groups are abandoning “petition politics” in frustration. Those striving for change are reaching for more innovative and effective strategies.

As we look out onto a fresh new year, the question begs to be asked . . . if we don’t like what we’ve got, what do we want?

From reform to revolution, the proposals proliferate. Some of our guests, like Wenonah Hauter, the Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, can articulate precise reforms to current policies that could make tremendous change. However, even as she dissects the current Farm Bill like a surgeon, Wenonah (like any decent doctor) makes it clear that she doesn’t want to be removing cancerous tumors from our political policies forever. She wants a healthy, vibrant democracy embodied in our populace. Her doctor’s orders for cleaning up our nation’s political lifestyle include grassroots organizing and an active citizenry. We, the People, are the white blood cells in the immune system of checks and balances.

The classic model of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government that we are taught in civics classes fails to acknowledge the full scope of the political power held by the citizens. The official, schoolbook civics relegates us to electing representatives, petitioning like political beggars, and being conscripted to juries to uphold laws that we had little say in making.

The power of the People, however, goes far beyond those limited roles. Without our consent, willing or unwilling, and our continued obedience, the authority of our government collapses. This power (the power to disobey) is our greatest strength. The resultant actions of our disobedience are well-studied in the realms of nonviolent struggle: the refusal to carry out orders, slow downs of bureaucratic processes, boycotts, strikes, blockades that cut off essential flows of supplies and communications, repudiation of the government’s authority and legitimacy . . . the list is quite extensive.

These methods are available to citizens struggling in dictatorships, democracies, and corporate-political regimes, alike. As citizens learn to wisely use the methods of nonviolent struggle, knowledge of effective political and social power is diffused into the populace, making the People the ultimate authority of a nation.

It is no wonder that we aren’t taught this in school.

While the armed insurrection of the first American Revolution replaced a unjust monarch with a small, empowered elite sitting at the helm of a Constitutional Republic (as my right-wing friends are quick to remind me), the potential of an effective, nonviolent struggle at this time points to an opportunity for a much greater democratic society than Americans have ever experienced.

A growing preference for “power with” versus “power over” has brought us to an interesting moment of reflection. Have we outgrown the rationale for representative democracy? The Founding Fathers (and their contemporary fans and supporters) feared the “rule of the mob”. At this point in time, however, it is safe to say that the “rule of the elite” is propelling the mass of the populace into poverty, sickness, homelessness, and environmental collapse.

My fellow Americans, we are an arrogant, belligerent, opinionated, and often ignorant lot . . . but I would rather share power with you than be stripped of all power by an entrenched two-party facade that serves only contending corporate interests. However, as I contemplate the realities of direct democracy (also called participatory or People’s democracy), the concept of sharing political power with my compatriots brings me to a sobering realization.

We have a democracy problem, yes, but, more importantly, we have a people problem.

Fundamentally, corruption, abuse, greed, and destruction in politics lie within the hearts of the people – both the elite who rise to power and the general populace that continues to endorse them. It is not a matter of replacing candidates. It is not even an issue of switching from representative democracy to direct democracy (though the latter would reflect societal shifts much more swiftly).

To resolve our political problems, we must engage in inner, outer, and utter revolution. Our competitive, capitalist, dog-eat-dog mentality is perpetuating enormous suffering around the globe. Our antagonistic, egocentric attitudes devolve discourse into shouting matches. Our willing destruction of the planet, our communities, our nation, and even ourselves is bringing us to the brink of species suicide. Without addressing these serious shortcomings, government by the people, of the people, will be no more beneficial that government controlled by corporate greed. The methods of nonviolent struggle wielded by a depraved and hatred-based society will ultimately be as destructive as state warfare and tyranny.

Instead, we must become people who will endure on Earth . . . a civilization based on compassion, interconnection, caring, collaboration, sustainability, respect, peace, equality, liberty, and justice for all. We must become the People of our ideals. Only when we grow in inner strength and outer compassion will we become capable of resolving the serious issues that our egotism and greed have created. Political power, in the hands of such wisdom, promises a world that human beings have yet to experience . . . a world of a compassionate, self-governing People.

Author/Actress Rivera Sun sings the anthem of our times and rallies us to meet adversity with gusto. In addition to cohosting Occupy Radio, Rivera is also the author of the novel The Dandelion Insurrection, nine plays, a book of poetry, and her debut novel, Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars.

Catch the Occupy Radio podcast with Wenonah Hauter, Thomas Linzey, and many others through the links below. Occupy Radio airs each week on Wed 7pm PST at http://kwva.uoregon.edu/listen-live/. Podcasts come out on Thurs at http://occupythemedia.podomatic.com

Wenonah Hauter dissects food and politics

Thomas Linzey ignites insurrection with Community Rights Ordinances 

Philippe Duhamel outlines nonviolent strategic actions plans as civilian defense from industry and tyranny

Jamila Raqib dives into the political power of nonviolent struggle

Think global, act local . . .

The Love-In-Action Network welcomes you!

The Love-In-Action Network launches!

Join us as we launch the pioneer groups . . . We are calling into action those whose hearts cry out for justice, and those whose spirits know that the continued survival of our species depends on our concerted efforts now. We call into action those who follow all spiritual paths based in love and those who may not subscribe to an organized faith, but practice compassion in all that they do. We call those who would be Love-In-Action on this Earth to join together in a network of locally organized, interconnected groups that are known collectively as the Love-In-Action Network. Read more . . .

 

“The Imagine-a-nation of Lala Child” -written and performed by actress/author Rivera Sun

The Imagine-a-nation of Lala Child

Rivera Sun’s Solo Show Comes to Taos, NM

Welcome to 1890 Lovely, Kansas, a drought-stricken all-negro town, where a Chinese man rides a dust storm into ten year old Lala’s home and wins her Mamalou’s heart, spurring the gossipy shock of everybody else. Lala’s lyrical and imaginative child’s eye lends fresh perspective to ages old racial issues, washing us all with the sweet wisdom of an old soul in a small body. Full of humor and lively dancing, adults and children alike enjoy this gem of a performance.

NOW PLAYING AT:

The Metta Theatre, Taos, NM

Jan 8, 9, 10th Thu-Sat 7pm

Sun Matinee 4pm

Tix $12 Call 575-776-3973 for reservations