"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."-- Mahatma Gandhi
"Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting
political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and
reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel
a road not of their choosing." From Alinsky's Rules for Radicals
If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.
Sun Tzu
Argue for your limitations and they are yours- Richard Bach
This evening I attended the first organizational meeting/general assembly of Occupy Tallahassee. An old Dinosaur of battles long forgotten one might wonder, why? Any number of reasons maybe. The old battles were never won and maybe the cobweb covered idealist dares to dream that, "maybe this time...". Then again being among the young of overflowing romantic idealism stirring the sweet adrenaline of revolution is a temptation hard to resist. We always like to believe we have at least one more fight for a noble cause within us.
And the cause is indeed noble. And there, without vigilance, it can end as swiftly as it begins.
My intention in showing up was mainly to observe. Will I participate? In some manner I am sure. After all this is a cause we, and others, have been writing about for years. Bringing America back to the people. However we are not so naive as to believe that the ones who control the wealth and the people without the wealth are going to easily give it up over a few street demonstrations. Occupy New York has shown us that little excuse is needed to violate a constitutional right or two.
For some of us that is no surprise. After all we have seen it before. The play book has been written. And if a younger generation wants to re-invent peanut butter, then more power to them. I find their enthusiasm contagious. Their desire to succeed is admirable and much respected. However, did we mention vigilance? Because it is very much a two way street.
Sometimes planning and organization and getting it "right" can destroy the original mission. If your heart is committed and your cause is just then sometimes you just have to trust that your movement will succeed. If you feel a need to micromanage it, then you do not trust your movement or your army. In a movement of truth, no one individual is indispensable.
As an aside, I heard a young lady in the crowds say, "I can't afford to go to jail!" To that lady I would say, go home, you are not ready. There were people taken to jail in New York who were not even demonstrating. You can plan the event, but you can not control it, as there are variables and contingencies which you can not predict or control that will force a change in any plan, thus the saying, "adapt and overcome!" Again, you can only fall back on what you believe in all your heart is right.
But herein lies my fear. During the discussions the subject came up of "media control." With the idea that certain people be designated as persons who can be trusted to speak to the media? Our question? Who determines who can be trusted to speak to the media and what is it that they can be trusted to say to the media? A sanitized, homogenized, piece of revolutionary political correctness maybe? Because you are afraid that a camera may be put in the face of somebody that may say something that is, "stupid" (by whose definition?) or not "approved of?" (who are the approvers)?
That smacks of some sort of Orwellian double speak by which one say's we want to free ourselves from those who would enslave us by chaining ourselves to new oppressors.
My Friends, if that is in your heart, if that is a policy you truly wish to implement, then you have already lost because you have proven yourself no different than those you refer to as the enemy.
FREEDOM IS RISKY BUSINESS, You are free to be intelligent as others are free to be less than intelligent. But if your revolutionary "club" would instill membership requirements pertaining to those who can fight for your version of Freedom, then you have insured that you will become the next enemy.
I can say this because I watched as four kids in Kent, Ohio were shot dead during a demonstration. I then watched a mass exodus of college kids ran back to class because, damn, this revolution stuff got to real, to fast.
I only say this because I have seen many movements corrupted, most often by those in the movement. I care about those who dream that things can be better. I want them to succeed. But revolutions must first be won in the hearts and minds of the individual before they ever hit the streets. Because after hitting the street, your life may never be the same. It is not a game!
The danger inherent in this quote is that it sounds eerily like the U.S. today,
It was written by Joseph Goebbels, a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
That my friends is what we are up against. And that is what we must stop!Add to Technorati Favorites
