When Less is More
As the public drowns in a tsunami of mal-news, I watched home bound resistance take a heroic form yesterday: people participating by zoom, learning the dance steps that would allow them to join a world-wide video of Extinction Rebellion dancers affirming joy and liberty. I asked myself, is dance a weapon? Is it an appropriate response to Cuomo allying New York State with Bill Gates and his program to shape the offerings of our schools to future generations? Is it a match for the corporation that continues to build the Keystone XL Pipeline despite losing its construction permit, despite the pipeline’s path crossing sovereign Indian lands? Is it defense against the army of armed thugs invading a Lansing Michigan state house to demand a “re-opening” of business as usual, no matter what the COVID mortality levels might be? Could such a picayune effort hold against the tide of three Indianapolis police shootings in 24 hours of two black people, and one white pregnant woman?
In college I had an old Chaucer professor whose favorite saying was “The constant dripping of water weareth away even stone.” From that time on, I took his wan that aprille very seriously. I recognized that what I later learned was a shrewd karate move could be a very effective defense: don’t oppose, yield if you want to see an opponent thrown off balance. At this time, yielding may be one of our strongest moves. But yielding requires a certain willingness to accept the conditions that come with it.
A Natural History of Less
I learned about the advantages poverty has to offer from an installation artist friend who always bought second hand so she’d have more to give away to folks who really needed help. That made so much sense to me that when Katrina came home to roost in 2005, I met and helped so many people who’d had the rug torn out from under them that I learned to give away some rugs of my own by downsizing all my possessions by half. Even so, I still live in more abundance than nine tenths of the world’s population.
To a large extent the Earth’s carrying capacity is a zero sum game, if not minus zero as the human race continues expanding with no end limit in sight. The concept that by having more, other human beings are forced to do with less is an alien thought to many American beneficiaries of such policies as the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, and chronic warfare for access to the rest of the world’s resources, who seem to have little awareness that their standard of living has accrued from the deprivation sustained by many, including those inhabiting the very same national territory as they, Native Americans in particular.
What might Less look like? For starters it might mean earning less, an option that, with the pandemic, has become reality, with unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression. Earning less means paying less or no tax, and paying less or no tax, aside from bumping one up into the same class as corporations and millionaires, means not buying the bombs and bullets whose function is to kill. Less might be weaning oneself from eating meat. Meat consumes the Earth’s forests, the lungs by which it breathes and consumes water and air resources which are already strained beyond capacity. Less might mean either humbling ones appetite, or learning how to cook tofu. It means not owning a cell phone, because by doing so, one agrees that 50 million birds a year will have to die from collisonions with cell towers, and that with the 5-G roll out, people with electro magnetic sensitivity will have to die because they no longer have a place to live.
And (see last week’s newsletter edition) it might mean abjuring the use of toilet paper for the more simple use of soap and water. In conclusion, it means becoming aware of every single resource one consumes, including television and computer time for the amounts of energy they use.
Sometimes yielding becomes the best offense.
Read: Low Income/simple Living as War Tax Resistance at
https://popularresistance.org/low-income-simple-living-as-war-tax-resistance/
Impeach AG BARR at
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/impeach-remove-attorney-general-barr/?source=moveon
Tell airhead Pelosi sanctions kill at
https://oneclickpolitics.global.ssl.fastly.net/messages/edit?promo_id=8748
Demand Congress support the U.S. public post office at
UK lawmakers urge Johnson to sanction Israel if West Bank annexation goes ahead.
UK Supreme Court strikes down an anti-divestment rule. The ruling can not be appealed.
U.S. court dismisses $900 million lawsuit against the Palestinian Authority and PLO.
Ireland sends money to Native American Community hit by C-19, returning historic favor.
Wet’suwet’en clans endorse governance agreement with Canada and British Columbia.
Not one registered nurse has died in Canada.
Nigerian Senate orders federal government to suspend planned deployment of 5 G citing growing health concerns to immune system.
Community expresses solidarity with Cuba after embassy attack.
30 former U.S. national security officials say Democrats should oppose Israeli occupation, settlement expansion.
Victory for basic democracy as judge orders New York to reinstate Sanders, Yang, and others to 2020 primary ballot.
In the vacuum of federal action, U.S. states scramble to address hunger crisis.
Explosive complaint by ousted HHS official claims he was pressured to give contract to administration-friendly pharma firm.
Center for Food Safety files suit demanding government implement safety standards to protect food workers on the front lines.
Big Oil fears Keystone XL ruling means end of easy pipeline permits.
California sues Uber and Lyft for misclassifying drivers as independent contractors.
S.F. Supervisors order speedy closure of unsafe Hall of Justice jail.
Tenants take on Philly gentrifier.
Over 190,000 families and growing pledge to withhold rent payment May 1st.
The Board of Sonoma County California Clean Power voted not to buy a 20% share of power from the Diablo nuclear power plants.
Minnesota’s Bemidji State University steering committee makes indigenous studies course a requirement for all students.
After week of shilly shallying, the two white supremacist lynchers of Armaud Arbery are indicted.
