Extinction rebellion; report on recent meetings; progressives are failing

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November 1, 2018

Previous letter (10/23/18): "Upcoming discussion and planning meetings; Heinrich TV ad promoting labs and military"

Dear friends --

We held meetings in four cities this week.

We had four very interesting meetings in as many New Mexico towns and cities earlier this week.

Interestingly, the best-attended were in Taos and Jemez Springs, not Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Updates were provided on plutonium pit production plans, proposed abrogation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and related nuclear weapons topics.

In Taos, we were hosted by Cultural Energy (KCEI, 90.1 FM, 112 Civic Plaza Drive, Taos, NM 87571), a critically-important organ of consciousness and connection in northern New Mexico. Help support them if you can.

Considerable discussion focused on the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities (RCLC), a particularly obnoxious manifestation of New Mexico's dysfunctional political affection for the nuclear-armed gang on "The Hill" (see: "Stockholm Syndrome"). Through the RCLC this gang has now "occupied" local and tribal governments, claiming those governments and various local politicians as their own, as far as LANL's interests are concerned.

Time will tell if citizens in Northern New Mexico can refocus their governments well away from "blood and a nightmare" -- as a New Zealand mayor once put it to us -- toward real, material respect for human beings in a living landscape. These two worlds are as incompatible as, say, Edward Teller and Gustave Baumann. There will be no positive future in the region if the Weapons Lab Mafia is not dethroned one way or another, because the fundamental purposes of nuclear weapons are injustice, violence, and intimidation. For these purposes, nuclear weapons are used every day.

For Trish and I the real highlights of these meetings came from those of you who attended. Your insights, pertinent questions, and concerns broadened and enriched us. Thank you.

A well-organized rebellion has begun against extinction in the UK.

Yesterday was the first day of action in the UK's "Extinction Rebellion," an international movement which aims to use civil resistance to force governments to mobilize emergency responses to climate breakdown and the broader ecological crisis ("UK Scientists Risk Prison to Urge Action," 31 Oct 2018).

As their website explains:

We are in an ecological crisis caused by climate change, pollution and habitat destruction; a mass species extinction on a scale much larger than the one which killed the dinosaurs is underway. Our course is set to societal collapse, the killing of millions, likely billions of people - human extinction is possible. The future is bleak and our children are not safe.

Change to avert the worst of the disaster is still technically and economically possible. The changes won’t be simple but there is nothing more important or worthwhile. It involves creating a world which is less frenetic and more beautiful; making the necessary changes will also create jobs. This is an emergency situation – action is urgent.

Our Government isn’t acting in accordance with what science and history tells us. Therefore our Government is criminally negligent. We have a moral duty to rebel, whatever our politics. Social science shows us that peaceful civil disobedience is an effective way to bring about change. Our lives have meaning and purpose when we follow our conscience and are willing to make sacrifices to protect what we love. We ask others who feel the same way to join our peaceful Rebellion.

An inspiring Guardian article of 26 Oct  ('We have a duty to act': hundreds ready to go to jail over climate crisis; Rowan Williams backs call for mass civil disobedience ‘to bypass the government’s inaction and defend life itself’, by Matthew Taylor) provides background and interviews with some of the leaders:

A new group of “concerned citizens” is planning a campaign of mass civil disobedience starting next month and promises it has hundreds of people – from teenagers to pensioners – ready to get arrested in an effort to draw attention to the unfolding climate emergency.

The group, called Extinction Rebellion, is today backed by almost 100 senior academics from across the UK, including the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

In a letter published in the Guardian they say the failure of politicians to tackle climate breakdown and the growing extinction crisis means “the ‘social contract’ has been broken … [and] it is therefore not only our right, but our moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty, and to rebel to defend life itself.”

Those behind Extinction Rebellion say almost 500 people have signed up to be arrested and that they plan to bring large sections of London to a standstill next month in a campaign of peaceful mass civil disobedience – culminating with a sit-in protest in Parliament Square on 17 November.
Roger Hallam, one of the founders of the campaign, said it was calling on the government to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025 and establish a “citizens assembly” to devise an emergency plan of action similar to that seen during the second world war.

On top of the specific demands, Hallam said he hoped the campaign of “respectful disruption” would change the debate around climate breakdown and signal to those in power that the present course of action will lead to disaster.

“The planet is in ecological crisis – we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event this planet has experienced,” he said. “Children alive today in the UK will face the terrible consequences of inaction, from floods to wildfires, extreme weather to crop failures and the inevitable breakdown of society. We have a duty to act.”

Extinction Rebellion is part of the Rising Up activist group, and organisers have spent the past few months holding public meetings in towns and cities across the country. [much more at the link, recommended]

We believe this is an excellent blueprint for action here in New Mexico and across the US.

Surely it is obvious that building a life-affirming, life-preserving society, let alone mitigating and surviving climate change, are incompatible with support for nuclear weapons and the global empire which requires them.

Serious, awakened engagement is needed, now.

By this week's fourth meeting, discussion turned toward nonviolent direct action. It is sorely needed, among other forms of serious engagement.

Serious engagement is not, however, what educated liberal and progressive New Mexicans tend towards. We dissent but seldom seriously engage, let alone disobey. We prefer -- to pick a particularly forgettable activity -- to hold signs on street corners. Demonstrating, holding signs, and the like, would be more -- a lot more -- valid in a democracy. They (and we) once were.

It is hard for us to think in ways not directly or indirectly driven by one or another Democratic Party agenda or propaganda theme. These are all designed to help establishment politicians -- war machine supporters and de facto climate deniers, every one -- win elections.

Dear friends, we need about a factor of 10 increase in political engagement in New Mexico in order to have better social, political, ecological, and economic outcomes. But neither will doing ten times more of the same thing get us there. Only a small fraction of this tenfold greater engagement should be electoral, because that process is so deeply broken.

In a recent essay ("Time to Wake Up: the Neoliberal Order is Dying", 26 Sep, Counterpunch) Jonathan Cook touches upon what might be called "the selections behind the elections" (h/t Suzie Schwartz, emphasis added):

In what passes for news, the media offer a large stage for powerful individuals to fight elections, pass legislation, take over businesses, start wars, and a small stage for these same individuals to get their come-uppance, caught committing crimes, lying, having affairs, getting drunk, and more generally embarrassing themselves.

These minor narratives conceal the fact that such individuals are groomed before they ever gain access to power. Business leaders, senior politicians and agenda-setting journalists reach their positions after proving themselves over and over again – not consciously but through their unthinking compliance to the power-structure of our societies. They are selected through their performances in exams at school and university, through training programmes and indentures. They rise to the top because they are the most talented examples of those who are blind or submissive to power, those who can think most cleverly without thinking critically. Those who reliably deploy their skills where they are directed to do so.

Their large and small dramas constitute what we call public life, whether politics, world affairs or entertainment. To suggest that there are deeper processes at work, that the largest of these dramas is not really large enough for us to gain insight into how power operates, is to instantly be dismissed as paranoid, a fantasist, and – most damningly of all – a conspiracy theorist.

These terms also serve the deception. They are intended to stop all thought about real power. They are scare words used to prevent us, in a metaphor used in my previous post, from stepping back from the screen. They are there to force us to stand so close we see only the pixels, not the bigger picture.

In New Mexico, very little of what "passes for news" discusses any of the big-picture crises we face. This leaves 99% of our leading politicians and citizenry in the position of naive children allowed to play games largely at the mercy of powerful out-of-state actors who are setting the rules. This state has exactly one (1) dedicated environmental reporter -- the outstanding Laura Paskus (e.g. "The next governor must prioritize water and climate change," 30 Oct). Twenty years ago, there were several -- all competent and hard-working, some inspired and brilliant. There is only so much one person can do. Most environmental news stories never happen.

Remember vinyl records? Sometimes a scratched record would play the same bit of music repeatedly. To move on, one had to lift the needle and set it in a fresh groove. Dear friends, our present configuration of "progressive" narratives, organizations, and issues resembles a broken record, one which is driving a lot of the audience bonkers. The Donald Trump presidency came about from not changing the groove, as a result of Democratic Party moral and intellectual failures.

If we "progressives" continue along our present lines, our overall situation will only get worse as the unreality of some of our political ideas collide further with various intractable realities -- political, economic, and ecological. Humility is appropriate for us. Collectively, we really do not understand our situation and are in more or less complete collective denial about our future.

We say we don't want war in general -- war in the abstract -- but we donate to, work for, and reliably vote for warmongers. We remain silent about the war machine -- which is, by the way, the largest single institutional user of fossil fuels on the planet -- in our midst.

We say we want to mitigate global warming, but we do not actually have a practical, equitable plan or vision for powering down our society. And we won't talk about the incompatibility of economic growth with the survival of nature and our own species.

We don't talk much if at all about increasing taxes to replace the state's oil and gas revenues, while winding down that industry. Progressives can think of many ways to spend oil and gas revenues.

We refuse to talk about the war industry controlling the Democratic Party in New Mexico, including its progressive wing.

Environmental groups, with comfortable constituencies that include many of our overpaid nuclear lab workers, swoon over our warmonger senators and provide them with crucial political cover, all the better to corrupt and debase the state with nuclear spending, while making nothing whatsoever of value.

To the extent we in government and civil society do not respond authentically and truthfully to the converging crises we face, we lose legitimacy.

We want to help, however we can, and are ready to talk with you and your organizations. We will work with serious volunteers and interns. We seek both. We urge you to examine the possibilities in your own lives and in the organizations of which you are a part.

Thank you all,

Greg and Trish, for the Study Group