Instinct tells them roving bands of thugs attacking citizens and law-abiding individuals indiscriminately, whether government sanctioned or not, is wrong. Instinct tells them disrupting lives of highly productive peoples
providing essential services, whether officially
acknowledged by the government or not, is wrong. Instinct tells them where the rights of one are violated, whether in the streets or inside the courts, the rights of all are threatened. Reason is not the impetus behind such
understanding or action: acute stress response, the survival mechanism mediated by the
sympathetic nervous system, actively and effectively prepares the body and ultimately the mind for external threats being posed. It is fight
or flight.
This is why as the protest movements increase
it becomes clear the shared driver is fear, created as that is through the government’s institutionalized use of violence and terror
against its own people. It is for this reason that individual protest movements must move beyond expressing individual resistance to engaging in collective action. And one way in which this becomes possible is to view these not as simple individual protests but as small revolutionary movements that need greater definition so to find common ground. Through such a means it becomes possible to see and understand how standing against unlawful engagements of paramilitary groups, unlawful searches and seizures, and unlawful detentions or unlawful killings of American citizens and migrants seeking asylum are small revolutionary movements. It becomes possible to see and understand how reacting against tax policies that support the goals of America’s oligarchs or an individual wishing to act as a king or against the overthrow of sovereign nations are small revolutionary movements. It becomes possible to see and understand how even economic strikes against e-commerce
companies or internet service providers or artificial intelligence companies designed to get the attention of our elected officials by striking at their profit centers are small revolutionary movements. Each finds its justification and
legitimatization from the revolutionary activities that caused our country’s founding, and which provided us with the right to continue within such a tradition.
But again, it needs to be understood that being small and targeting single issues, they do not in-and-of-themselves get at the structural
problems of the republic or at that of unbridled capitalism. It is for this reason all need to constitute and convey more about causes and
interrelationships, and that means identifying a theory or model around which separate protests can coalesce and become a mass, if not revolutionary, movement.
Such is not an easy task, particularly when trying to heal the wounds imposed upon the populace by this tyrant. So, it is only natural that one would look around the world for systems that are currently in place in both large and small countries, not to mention larger metropolitan areas and even smaller cities, which could serve as examples for building upon and renewing progressive reform that could be adopted here in America. One quickly thinks of socialism, democratic socialism, and
When two-thirds of the population believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, but elected officials fail to act, it is time for change. When elected officials seek personal fame and fortune through what existing frameworks provide without regard for how the vast majority of their constituents are faring, it is time for change. When alternative models for more responsible governance exist but rhetoric and propaganda deny their day in the court of public opinion, it is time for change. In fact, it is time for more. It is time for revolution, for true revolutionary reform.
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