All
You Need Is Love
(...and a small, well-trained army)
By Mickey Z.
07 November, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Warning: This article has not
been approved by the Department of Homeland Security. Read at your own
risk.
Thomas Jefferson sez: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
In his most recent book, a two-volume set called ³Endgame,²
author Derrick Jensen tells of a discussion he had with a longtime activist.
"She told me of a campaign she participated in a few years ago
to try to stop the government and transnational timber corporations
from spraying Agent Orange, a potent defoliant and teratogen, in the
forests of Oregon," Jensen writes. All too predictably, the dedicated
demonstrators assembled to protest the toxic spraying were, "like
clockwork," ignored by the helicopter pilots. Both humans and landscape
ended up thoroughly doused with Agent Orange-time and time again. The
protest campaign obviously had no effect, so a different approach was
taken. "A bunch of Vietnam vets lived in those hills," the
activist told Jensen, "and they sent messages to the Bureau of
Land Management and to Weyerhauser, Boise Cascade, and the other timber
companies saying, 'We know the names of your helicopter pilots, and
we know their addresses'
"You know what happened
next?" she asked.
"I think I do,"
Jensen responded.
"Exactly," she
said. "The spraying stopped."
******
To me, the following quote reads like poetry...so that's how I'll present
it:
Whenever any form of
government
becomes destructive
to these ends,
it is the right of the people
to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new government,
laying its foundation
on such principles
and organizing its powers
in such form,
as to them
shall seem
most likely
to effect
their safety
and happiness
(Thomas Jefferson)
******
In her excellent 1995 book, ³Bridge of Courage,² Jennifer
Harbury quotes a Guatemalan freedom fighter named Gabriel, responding
to a plea to embrace non-violent resistance: "In my country child
malnutrition is close to 85 percent. Ten percent of all children will
be dead before the age of five, and this is only the number actually
reported to government agencies. Close to 70 percent of our people are
functionally illiterate. There is almost no industry in our country-you
need land to survive. Less than 3 percent of our landowners own over
65 percent of our lands. In the last fifteen years or so, there have
been over 150,000 political murders and disappearances... Don't talk
to me about Gandhi; he wouldn't have survived a week here. There was
a peaceful movement for progress here, once. They were crushed. We were
crushed. For Gandhi's method to work, there must be a government capable
of shame. We lack that here."
Repeat after me: We lack that here.
******
Another "poem" of sorts:
You've got to learn
that when
you push people around,
some people push back.
As they should.
As they must.
And as they undoubtedly will.
There is justice
in such symmetry.
(Ward Churchill)
Love is the answer...but as in tennis, sometimes it means "nothing."
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at: http://www.mickeyz.net.
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