If, right now, you went online and searched ‘uprising’, you’d have a hard time wading through the search results. You’d get scores of links to the uprisings of Arab Spring, where masses of people thronged together to overthrow their government. You’d get hundreds of videos of Wisconsonites occupying their Capitol building, demanding an end to the war on the poor. You’d get a glut of footage from Los Indignados, Spaniards who were outraged by their nation’s obscene corporate economy and did something about it, turning their town squares into giant experiments in human creativity, community and resistance. And finally, you’d find livestreams from an occupied Wall Street, an occupied DC, and news of hundreds of solidarity occupations digging in all over the world. All this, and only halfway down page one! What do these uprisings–and so many others I didn’t mention–have in common? A hatred of war? Of corporatism? Of injustice?Yes. All of those things. But there’s something else that unites them: They are all democracy movements.
A few years ago, I’d tell people I was a democracy activist and they’d stare at me blankly. There was an inevitable follow-up question. “So . . . what do you do?” I’d respond simply. I’d tell them that I stood up for people’s right to decide their present and future together, to have control over the decisions that most affected them, to have dignity and self-determination, and to practice radical, collective creativity. I’d see a glimmer of recognition, and we’d start what was always a very long conversation.
In the last few years, that glimmer became a sparkle, and then a light, and then a constellation of movements working independently but united behind one cause: only people are people, and the people decide! And, after a bitterly disappointing decade, there’s now something in the air that reminds us how to breathe.It was in that spirit that Jake, Sir Ash, Henia, Dylan and I set out for the Democracy Convention in Madison, Wisconsin, right in the shadow of the now-notorious Capitol building. This was no normal convention, with the usual stuffy experts and their usual stuffy expertise. This was a convention for the express purpose of discussing people power–specifically, how to get some. And the attendees did not disappoint, representing a wide array of schemers and dreamers with a heavy dose of determination and some serious self-respect.
"A Revolution of Consciousness" -- Watch and read Sir Ashley's speech from the convention
We hit up workshops on the co-op movement. We learned how to Take Back the Land. We talked about race, class, and gender. And we planned out the general demise of the corporate machine.
When we weren’t representin’, we were presentin’. Sir Ash taught us what a future without fossil fuels could look like, and the value-shift necessary to get us there. Henia, Jake and Dylan led folks through a rigorous nonviolence training. I taught about corporate rule and spoke on reform vs. revolution. And guess what? Revolution won.
Read my Declaration of Democracy I gave at the Democracy Convention
In the meantime, we went to lunch with other dreamers. We talked of crafting a Port Huron statement for our generation. We talked about the world we wanted, and the world we didn’t. And most importantly, we reminded ourselves what it felt like to be a living, breathing and deciding human beings.Not too bad for a weekend’s work.
Now we’re home, and you’ve been here, working hard. It’s time to light the democracy fires here. It’s time to say a holy no to tar sands in Southern Utah. It’s time to tell Kennecott what they can do with their smog. It’s time to occupy everything that’s ours in common but owned in private. It’s time to transition, to talk about what we want. It’s time to build a community so strong and ferocious–so intrepid and tender–that we can change faster than the climate does, adapting and resisting and creating a whole new world.
Now let’s begin.
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