Dick Bennett's Anthologies focused on Stopping US Wars & Nuclear Holocaust and Stopping Warming & Climate Calamity, including examinations of their causes, consequences, and cures
Sometimes people
misuse the word “utopian” to mean impossibly or even dangerously idealistic.Here are definitions from my Webster’s New World College Dictionary: “Utopian:
having the nature of, or inclined to draw up schemes for, a utopia;
idealistic, visionary; founded upon ideas envisioning perfection in social and
political organization.”IdeaslisticVisionary:By these definitions is the Green New Deal utopian—idealistic, visionary?Absolutely.Is it unrealistically, excessively and therefore impossibly and even
harmfully utopian?
It’s an age-old
debate, much hinging on the meaning and necessity of the word “perfection.”Think of all the literary utopias with their
page after, chapter after chapter analyses of ideas and practices manifestly
harmful to their existing society, and their alternatives.Each one was dismissed by the ruling class
of the time, from More’s Utopia to
Morris’s News from Nowhere toHuxley’s Island.
But the similar
GND Resolutions in the Senate and House have been received favorably by one of
the two ruling Parties—the Democrats.Not wholeheartedly, but President Biden would move the USA from its
present, ruinous fossil fueled and unequal economics toward a decidedly better
carbon-free and fairer society(For the
People Act, Better Care Better Jobs Act, and other social safety net
legislation, to be paid for by taxes on corporations and rich individuals).
In a recent
article in The Nation, Jeet Heer
discusses how much more dominant has been dystopian writing imagining the end
of the world—from Cormac McCarthy’s The
Roadto Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games:“nuclear war, rising oceans, biotech gone mad,
totalitarian dictatorship.What’s
lacking is any positive road map for building a better world.”Leaving aside to another day the inaccuracy
of that statement and the dilution of the definition of utopia, do the GND Resolutions (and, like the Bible and the US
Constitution, already possessing a library of commentary) provide that “road
map.”Assuredly they do, in two main advances:
fossil fueled capitalism must be replaced by a GREEN
New Dealof sustainable energy if
we are to rescue our climate and civilization, and this NEW DEAL must be fairer
than the grossly unequal one in which we live, if most people are to share in
the benefits of the GREEN NEW DEAL.
Why do some
people add the qualification “impossible” to idealism?Perhaps it is because of their ideological
hostility to any challenge to the status quo that idealism presents
(capitalism, individuals triumphing over other individuals, most humans
unemployed or underemployed, incessant wars), or they choose to be confined by
their lack of idealistic, visionary imagination (a cooperative world of
government service, full employment, world peace).The GND does
the obvious by envisioning a better world based upon reality but transcending
it.
Jeet Heer
perceives “utopian imagination…reviving. . . .calling for a universal basic
income, a Green New Deal, open borders, a
super TVA to modernize America’s infrastructure, and abolition of police and
prisons.. . . Not all will pan out—nor
do they need to. The utopian impulse exists to spark discomfort with the status
quo and agitation. “
References:
Jeet Heer.“Utopia
Allows Us to Dream Together.”The Nation (7-26/8-2, 2021), 12-14.
Stand in solidarity with activists around
the world by sharing a message—that animals have as much interest in being
free as humans do and that they share our capacity for experiencing pain,
love, fear, and happiness.
Animal rights activists around the world are speaking up thisWorld Day for the End of Speciesism (August 28).Speciesism is the human-held
idea that all other species are inferior to ours. In this oppressive belief
system, those with power justify exploiting or killing their fellow beings who
are less powerful—for experiments, for taste, for a fashion trend, for
entertainment, or for other reasons.
Here are five ways you can help get
the message out that animals have an inherent worth, they have as much interest
in being free and staying alive as humans do, and they share our capacity for
pain, hunger, fear, thirst, love, joy, and loneliness.
1. Organize a
protest. We can give you
free supplies, like posters, and help you promote your event. Submit this form with
all your details and include “Protest to End Speciesism,” and we’ll connect you
with a staffer who can guide you every step of the way.
Socially distant
protesters marched in the Baltimore neighborhood of Shreesh Mysore, who cuts
into barn owls’ skulls for wasteful “curiosity” experiments.
2. Display a
poster.Print our “End Speciesism” mini-poster and display it
on your front door, window, balcony, or mailbox or in your office or any other
highly visible place. Don’t have a printer? Write the message in chalk on your
sidewalk. Post your photo on social media using the hashtag
#EndSpeciesism and tag @PETA.
3. Submit a letter
to your local newspaper. Often,
the pen (or keyboard) is mightier than the sword. Expose speciesism for what it
really is—the ugly and false belief that we have the right to abuse and kill
animals—by writing to a local news outlet. Personalize the sample letter below,
or write your own. Send copies of your published letters to ActionTeam@peta.org. See
our letter-writing tips!
This sample letter may give you some ideas:
It’s 2021, but highly social monkeys are still caged alone in
laboratories, billions of cows and chickens are still cut to pieces in
slaughterhouses, and whales and dolphins are still trapped inside marine
prisons. It’s time to recognize that all animals—from humans to hens—can feel
pain and fear, want freedom, love their offspring, have personalities, and
value their own lives.
August 28 is World Day for the End of Speciesism. Like sexism,
racism, and other forms of discrimination, speciesism is an oppressive belief
system in which those with power draw boundaries to justify exploiting their
fellow beings who are less powerful. Kind people can combat this by buying only
cosmetics that weren’t tested on animals, choosing vegan food and fashion,
staying away from animal circuses and marine parks, and otherwise rejecting any
exploitation of animals.
4. Use PETA’s “End
Speciesism” filter on Instagram. Get the message out as far and wide as possible by saying
on your Instagram story that animals are not research tools, food, fabric, or
toys. Go to PETA’s Instagram account from
your mobile device, tap the smiley face shown in the image below, and then
choose “End Speciesism” to use the filter.
5. Share this video
on Facebook and other social media platforms: “RZA: We’re Not Different in Any
Important Way.” RZA
explains how speciesism—like sexism, racism, and other forms of prejudice—is a
toxic mindset that we need to break free of. Share his
video along with a message explaining what you’re doing to help end speciesism,
such as “I’m helping to #EndSpeciesism by only purchasing products that weren’t
tested on animals.”
World Day for the End of Speciesismis a great time to stand in
solidarity with other activists around the world. But you can take
action for animals all year long with PETA.
Stay up to date on the latest vegan trends and
get breaking animal rights news delivered straight to your inbox!
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
“Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing
leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of
these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking
the question: Why should animals have rights?” READ MORE
— Ingrid E. Newkirk, PETA President and
co-author of Animalkind
(Web version in English. French, Spanish & more languages
coming soon!)
(Subscribe to this Newsletter) Animal Rebellion in Czech Republic gets caught in a web of lies
Dear rebels,
Back in the summer of 2019, a small
group of UK rebels felt something was missing from the exciting wave of
climate activism that XR had ushered into the world.
Our first International Rebellion had
pushed the climate emergency into popular culture, and we were busy
linking the climate crisis with other systems of human oppression - the
crises of Capitalism, and Colonialism, and the Patriarchy.
But one oppressive ideology was not
being mentioned. Speciesism - the belief that one species of animal can
be morally superior to and so dominate another.
Animal Rebellion in front of the ministry of
agriculture, Warsaw, Poland
These rebels felt that speciesism was key to understanding how humanity
dislocated itself from the natural world, how the climate crisis came
about, and how to solve it. Quite simply, farming animals is one of the
most ecologically destructive, oppressive and wasteful activities our civilisation does, and it is
a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions.
So they formed Animal Rebellion, a sister group to Extinction
Rebellion, that retained our movement’s culture, tactics, and demands -
but with one small addition. Their 2nd demand explicitly called for an
end to the animal agriculture and fishing industries.
Today Animal Rebellion chapters are
active in over 30 countries, including Spain, Mexico, and Taiwan, and the movement is growing in every
region of the world. They have targeted agri-conglomerates, blockaded
meat subsidising parliaments, and campaigned for plant-based meals in
schools - with actions involving international collaboration as well as
campaigning side-by-side with XR.
Animal Rebellion Taiwan march for
climate and animal justice
In Action Highlights you
can see how the two movements formed a rebel alliance to launch the
Spring Rebellion in the Netherlands, and learn more about Animal
Rebellion’s vision for a plant-based society in Must Reads.
Elsewhere in this issue we have a
report on a global action targeting Norwegian embassies to highlight
that government’s gratuitous greenwashing. We also cover a digital
strike in the Philippines where rebels are fighting to stop a dam
project that will devastate biodiversity.
As yet another major report lands with the verdict that our
governments are failing to address the climate emergency, we have to
harness the power of as many rebels as possible to bring about the
system change we all want, even if there are differences about how we
get there.
As Extinction Rebellion increasingly
becomes a movement of movements, so too will this newsletter. We hope
you enjoy the temporary shift in perspective that this Animal Rebellion
themed issue brings.
The corporate forces
that have seized control of our political and economic systems will, unchecked,
drive us into extinction for profit. All we have left is nonviolent,
disruptive civil disobedience. A rebellion.
"It is our sacred
duty to rebel in order to protect our homes, our future, and the future of all
life on Earth." (Photo: Mr.Fish)
Monday, Oct. 7. marks
the start of what the British-based group Extinction Rebellion is calling
the International Rebellion. Thousands of people will occupy the centers
of some 60 cities around the globe, including Madrid, Amsterdam, Paris and New
York, to stage nonviolent occupations of bridges and roads for at least a week.
The goal is to paralyze commerce to force the ruling elites to respond to the
climate emergency. I will be at Battery Park in New York to join them Monday
morning.
The protests, which
organizers say will likely lead to hundreds of arrests, will employ a variety
of tactics, including activists who will superglue themselves to trains,
subways and buildings as well as build temporary encampments to disrupt
traffic. The New York event will open at 9:30 a.m. Monday with a
“funeral march” from Battery Park. At 2 p.m. Monday, organizers will set up
base in Washington Square Park and use it as a staging area. Activists will
congregate at the park and fan out in groups across the city to carry out
protests. The disruptions during the week in New York will occur in a variety
of locations, including in the Financial District and at the New York Stock
Exchange, Columbia University and major cultural institutions. In Chicago,
there will be an attempt to occupy City Hall and Daley Plaza. London activists,
who shut much of the city down in April for 10 days and saw 1,000 arrests, are
planning to hold out for three weeks.
“It is our sacred duty
to rebel in order to protect our homes, our future, and the future of all life
on Earth,” Extinction Rebellion writes. This is not hyperbolic. We have, as every
major climate report states, very little time left. Indeed, it may already be
too late.
“People have to go to
the capital city,” said Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and a
researcher at King’s College London, when we spoke earlier this year. “That’s
where the elite is, the business class. That’s where the pillars of the state
exist. That’s the first element. Then you have to have a lot of people
involved. They have to break the law. There’s no point in just doing a march.
They have to literally close down the streets. They have to remain nonviolent.
That’s absolutely crucial. Once you get violent, police and the state have an
excuse to remove you. It’s got to be cultural. You make it into a sort of
Woodstock affair. Then thousands more people come onto the streets.
“There’s a fundamental
difference between breaking the law and not breaking the law. It’s a binary
difference. When you break the law, then you’re massively more effective in
terms of material and psychological influence as well as media interest. The
more dramatic the civil disobedience, the better. It’s a numbers game. You want
people blocking the streets, but you need 10, 20, 30 thousand. You don’t need 3
million. You need enough for the state to have to decide whether to use
repression on a mass scale or invite you into the room. The gambit, of course,
particularly in the U.K., is that the state is weak. It’s been hollowed out
by neoliberalism. They’re going to find themselves
overwhelmed. We will get in the room.”
The group stresses
what it calls a “pre-social-media age” strategy for organizing. It has created
decentralized structures to make decisions and issue demands. It sends out
teams to give talks in communities. It insists that people who participate in
the actions of Rebellion Extinction undergo “nonviolent direct-action” training
so they will not be provoked by the police or opposition groups.
“Most of the recent
mass mobilizations have been social-media-fueled,” Hallam said. “Consequently,
they have been chaotic. They are extremely fast mobilizations. Social media’s a
bit like heroin. It’s a high, but then it collapses, like we’ve seen. It
becomes chaotic or violent. A lot of modern social movements put stuff on
social media. It gets clogged up with trolls. There are lots of radical-left organizations
arguing about different privileges. We’ve circumvented that and gone straight
to the ‘common people,’ as you might say. We’ve held meetings in village town
halls and city halls. We go around the country in a 19th-century sort of way,
saying, ‘Hey guys. We’re all fucked. People are going to die if this isn’t
sorted out.’ The second half of the talk is: There’s a way of dealing with this
called mass civil disobedience.
“Nonviolent
discipline, as the research shows, is the No. 1 criterion for maximizing the
potential for success. This is not a moral observation. Violence destroys
movements. The Global South has been at it for a few decades. Violence just
ends up with people getting shot. It doesn’t lead anywhere. You might as well
take your chances and maintain nonviolent discipline. There’s a big debate
within the radical left over the attitude toward the police. This debate is a
proxy for the justification of violence. As soon as you don’t talk to police,
you’re more likely to provoke police violence. We try to charm the police so
they’ll arrest people in a civilized way. The metropolitan police [in London]
are probably one of the most civilized police forces in the world. They have a
professional team of guys who go to social protests. We’ve been in regular
communication with them. We say to the police, ‘Look, we’re going to be
blocking the streets. We’re not going to not do that because you ask us not
to.’ That’s the first thing to make clear. This is not an item for discussion.
They know it’s serious. They don’t try to dissuade us. That would be silly.
What they are concerned about is violence and public disorder. It’s in our
interest as civil disobedience designers not to have public disorder, because
it becomes chaotic.”
“You’re basically
holding the economy of a city to ransom,” he said of the shutdowns. “It’s the
same dynamic as a labor strike. You want to get into the room and have a
negotiation. Extinction Rebellion hasn’t quite decided what that negotiation is
going to be. We’ve got three demands—the government tells the truth, the carbon
emissions go to zero by 2025, which is a proxy for transformation of the
economy and the society, and we have a national assembly which will sort out
what the British people want to do about it. The third demand [calling for a
national assembly] is a proxy for transforming the political structure of the
economy. It proposes a different, concrete form of democratic governance, based
around sortition rather
than representation. This has had a big influence in Ireland and Iceland. The
optimal transition is going to be from the corrupted ‘representational’ model
to a sortition model in the same way aristocratic law shifted to
representational law at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 19th century.
“The intelligent
people on the political left have woken up to the fact that we’ve got an
existential emergency that could destroy human society in the next 10 years.
It’s in the cards. A lot of us have already gone through the grief process. But
these [newly awakened] people just had that enlightenment. They’re in shock.
They’re maintaining a veneer of ‘It’s sort of OK.’ This is what the Green Deal [a United Kingdom government policy
initiative] is about. It is an attempt to pretend that industrialization can
stay the same. We can all still be wealthy. We can all still have great jobs.
It is like Roosevelt’s New Deal. But the New Deal was based on the idea that we
can carry on plundering nature and nothing’s going to happen. Maybe that was
right in the 1930s, but it’s not right anymore. It’s a matter of physics and
biology. We simply cannot maintain these levels of consumption. They haven’t
reckoned with that. One of the main reasons the climate debate has not gotten
into a serious mode over the last 30 years is because people who are in charge
of informing the public are terrified of telling the public that they can’t
have the high consumer lifestyle anymore. It’s a taboo. But like any addiction,
there comes a moment of truth. We’re there now.”
“For 30 years we’ve
had one political metaphysic, reform,” he said. “You either reform or you are
irrelevant. But now, we have two massive, exponentially increasing structural
faults—the inequality problem and the climate problem. A lot of people—because
of path dependency dynamics—have worked for 30 years in
this lost-cause sort of space. They’re desperate for change. For 30 years,
they’ve been putting their money on reform. The tragedy—and you can see this in
the history of political struggle going back hundreds of years—is there’s a
flip where the reformists lose control. They’re still living in the past world.
The revolutionaries, who everyone thinks are ridiculously naive, suddenly come
to the fore. It’s usually a quake. It’s not a gradualist thing. It’s a double
tragedy because it’s a quake and the revolutionaries usually aren’t organized.
I think that’s what’s happening now. It has very big implications for
[resistance against] fascism. Unless you have a clearheaded mass mobilization
on the left, which is connected with the working class, you’re not going to be
able to stop the fascism.”
These protests are a
welcome antidote to the choreographed and ineffectual climate marches of the
past in which protesters dutifully stayed in police-designated areas and
dispersed after a few hours. The goal is not simply to protest but to throw a
wrench into the machine. The group has 10 working
principles that center on
nonviolent resistance. These principles are:
We have a shared
vision of change: to create a world that is fit for generations to come.
We set our mission on
what is necessary, mobilizing 3.5% of the population to achieve system change –
using ideas such as “momentum-driven organizing” to achieve this.
We need a regenerative
culture, creating one that is healthy, resilient and adaptable.
We openly challenge
ourselves and this toxic system, leaving our comfort zones to take action for
change.
We value reflecting
and learning; as we follow a cycle of action, reflection, learning and planning
for more action, we learn from other movements and contexts as well as our own
experiences.
We welcome everyone
and every part of everyone, and work actively to create safer and more
accessible spaces.
We actively mitigate
for power, breaking down hierarchies of power for more equitable participation.
We avoid blaming and
shaming; we live in a toxic system, but no one individual is to blame.
We are a nonviolent
network; using nonviolent strategies and tactics is the most effective way to
bring about change.
We are based on
autonomy and decentralization, collectively creating the structures we need to
challenge power.
Anyone who follows
these core principles and values can take action in the name of Extinction
Rebellion.
You can see interviews
I did with Hallam, who was jailed two weeks ago by British police in preemptive
effort to curtail the rebellion here, here and here.
The longer we live in
denial, the worse it will get. There is no way out. Floods, droughts, monster
hurricanes, cyclones, extreme heatwaves, crop failure, mass displacement and
the breakdown of society are now inevitable. This is our future. The democratic
methods for change—voting, lobbying, petitions, education and protests—have proved
to be spectacular failures. The corporate forces that have seized control of
our political and economic systems will, unchecked, drive us into extinction
for profit. All we have left is nonviolent, disruptive civil disobedience. A
rebellion. And if we fail, we will at least obliterate our despair, find solace
in a community of resisters and restore our emotional health and our dignity by
fighting back against those who are engineering the ecocide.
Banging drums and chanting, they took over the
tourist hotspot of Trafalgar Square and marched down the Mall, the broad
tree-lined avenue that leads to Buckingham Palace.
Climate change protesters blocked traffic
across London's government district of Westminster Monday as they launched two
weeks of peaceful civil disobedience to call for urgent action to curb carbon
emissions.
Police said they had
arrested 135 activists from the Extinction Rebellion group by 11:30 a.m. local time. The
group expects 10,000 people will come to the capital from across Britain to
join the two-week protest, which is part of a coordinated international
movement. There were similar climate protests Monday in Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam,
Madrid and other cities around the world.
Large crowds of protesters blocked some of
Westminster's largest and busiest roads, bridges and squares, carrying banners
with slogans such as "Climate change denies our children a future unless
we act now.”
Banging drums and chanting, they took over the
tourist hotspot of Trafalgar Square and marched down the Mall, the broad
tree-lined avenue that leads to Buckingham Palace. Some activists glued or
chained themselves to cars parked in the middle of roads or street lamps,
making it hard for police officers to detain them.
"We're here because the government is not
doing enough on the climate emergency," said protester Lizzy Mansfield.
"We only get one planet and so we're here to try and defend it."
Extinction Rebellion rose to prominence in
April when it disrupted traffic in central London for 11 days. More than 1,000
activists were arrested, of whom 850 were prosecuted for various public
disorder offenses. So far, 250 have been convicted.
The Metropolitan Police has adopted more
proactive tactics this time. Police chiefs said last week they would mobilize
thousands of officers to handle the protests and that anyone who broke the law,
even as part of non-violent civil disobedience, would be arrested.
On Saturday, officers used a battering ram to
enter a building in south London where the activists had been storing materials
to use during the two-week protest. Eight people were arrested during the raid.
Extinction Rebellion said the police response
showed that British authorities considered the group a significant movement. Early
Monday, a group of activists locked themselves to a mock nuclear missile
outside the Ministry of Defence, calling on the government to redirect funds
spent on Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent towards policies to combat climate
change. "Climate not Trident" read a banner by the fake missile.
Richard Dyer, a retired doctor from Scotland
who was taking part in the street protests, said he regarded it as an extension
of his medical career because climate change was the biggest threat yet to
public health.
"People in the environmental movement and
climate scientists have been trying to persuade the public and government to
take serious action and nothing has happened," he said. "We want to
use any way we can to make people and governments sit up and notice."
END: EXTINCTION REBELLION, ANTI-SPECIESISM DAY
AUGUST 28
