The Common Ills: What Else You Can Do

What Else You Can Do
By David Swanson

http://davidswanson.org/what-else-you-can-do/

You’ve been radically misled to believe that the only thing, or the most important thing, or one of the super important things you can do is vote. Voting in a functioning democracy would be a fairly important thing to do, but wouldn’t somehow eliminate the thousands of important things that would also need doing. Voting in a broken democracy is a mildly important thing to do, for the reasons you know by heart, but also for this reason: Seeing so many people so eager to do something alerts everyone else to the fact that you give a damn.

“I’ve been waiting two years to do something!” This remark, common on Tuesday, must sound joyous to many ears. But if you study history and notice that change comes primarily from organizing, educating, protesting, marching, disrupting, disobeying, and creating things anew, and if you’ve spent the past many years trying to get more people to do those things, then all the “All I can do is vote, oh helpless me” comments may have you pulling your hair out.

There are circumstances in which you can do very little. We are moving in that direction. But we are not there. We are still able to speak, write, assemble, and agitate — and vote. I have to think that more of us would do more if we recognized the gravity of the situation. The planet’s climate can no longer be saved, but the agony can be slowed and eased. Nuclear apocalypse is closer than ever before, but can be averted. Fascism can be undone, but not without actions that extend far beyond voting.

I’m not against elections. I think we should have one someday, with no private money, with no corporate media, with no gerrymandering, with fair ballot and debate and media access and public financing, with substantive platforms, with hand-counted paper ballots, with election day holiday and free food and drink, with instant runoff, with automatic registration — elections meeting world standards. In fact, if I had my druthers, we’d abolish the Senate, enlarge the House, govern largely by public initiative, turn the president into an executive, lower the voting age, abolish the electoral college, and so forth. But even with the broken system we’ve got, I’m not against voting. I’m against imagining that voting is all you have to do, and that because somebody sticks an “I voted!” flag sticker on you, your country loves you and everything is going to be OK.

Your country is sending its military to the border to protect you from poor children hundreds of miles away who were made homeless with help from your country, because your country loves you. Well, not your country exactly, but the patriots in charge of it. They love you, although they would kill you in a heart beat.

Remember when your government proposed to kill you in Operation Northwoods? It was similar to the actual effort to kill you in Operation Tailwind, which had something in common with Operation Dick, as well as Operation Constitutional Scholar, not to mention the delaying of the end of WWII in order to use nukes, including on Hiroshima where captured U.S. pilots were killed alongside hundreds of thousands of mere non-Americans. Your country spends the majority of the money it makes decisions on each year on an enterprise that it knows endangers you. Its name is militarism. Its participants are killed first and foremost by suicide. They are your government killing itself.

Your country is first in the world in a number of things, including environmental destruction of various sorts, in which the U.S. military takes the lead; locking people up in prisons; and the most disastrous policies in the wealthy world on guns, healthcare, poverty, etc. If your country isn’t killing you quickly, it is doing so slowly; in other countries people live longer. Please don’t imagine that you have to defend this atrocity because you created it. You didn’t. You let it happen. But it is run by an oligarchy that we just go on year after year pretending is a democracy or a republic.

Congress has long since marginalized itself. Nobody even thinks to expect Congress to halt an attack on starving children from Honduras, not because nobody cares, but because it’s Congress, which its biggest fans and its own members admit has basically shut down.

So, I don’t object to one day spent on an unaccountable voting system, choosing this or that generic platform-free candidate. I don’t mind people getting their chance to vote against a president without the bother of having a second presidential candidate on the ballot whom they’d like to vote against as well. But don’t imagine it’s a substitute for impeachment. Don’t imagine it’s a fill in for nonviolent revolution. Don’t imagine that in this bus careening toward a cliff, it’s more than a change of windshield wipers.

When it’s done, we should all be curious — better late than never — to find out what the people elected intend to do and what we can compel them to do instead. Here are some questions I think we should pose to them:

What would you like the U.S. discretionary budget to look like? With 60% now going to militarism, what percentage would you like that to be?
What program of economic conversion to peaceful enterprises would you support?
Would you end, continue, or escalate U.S. war making in: Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Pakistan? Libya? Somalia?
Would you end the exemption for militarism in Kyoto, Paris, and other climate agreements?
Would you sign / ratify any of these treaties: Paris Climate Agreement? Convention on the Rights of the Child? International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights? International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights optional protocols? Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women? Convention Against Torture optional protocol? International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families? International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance? The Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities? International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries? Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court? Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity? Principles of International Cooperation in the Detection, Arrest, Extradition, and Punishment of Persons Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity? Convention on Cluster Munitions? Land Mines Convention? Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons? Proposed treaties banning the weaponization of space and banning cyber crimes?
Would you halt or continue expenditures on the production and so-called modernization of nuclear weapons?
Would you end weapons sales and the provision of military training to any governments? Which?
Would you close any foreign bases? Which?
Would you halt or continue the practice of murder by missiles from drones?
Do you recognize the ban on war, with exceptions, contained in the United Nations Charter? And the ban on threatening war?
Do you recognize the ban on war, without exceptions, contained in the Kellogg-Briand Pact?
Will you end discriminatory bans on immigrants?
Should actual, non-military, no-strings-attached foreign aid be eliminated, reduced, maintained, or increased? How much?
84% of South Koreans want the war ended immediately. Should the United States block that?
Should NATO be maintained or abolished?
Should the CIA be maintained or abolished?
Should the ROTC be maintained or abolished?
Should domestic police forces be trained by, collaborate with, and be armed by militaries?
Should the U.S. military pay sports leagues, secretly or openly, to celebrate militarism?
How large should the U.S. military’s advertising budget be, and how much should the U.S. government spend promoting the concepts of nonviolent dispute resolution and the abolition of war?
Will you keep the United States in the INF Treaty?
Will you impeach and remove Trump and Pence?

I’m sure you can think of dozens more concrete questions on various topics never asked or at least never answered during the election campaigns. They might include the election reform measures mentioned above. Remember that the way you use elections is not by electing people but by achieving the credible ability to unelect people.

Now, let’s get to work. There are thousands of great local, national, and global organizations that you should consider at least as important as any electoral candidate. Here are two I work for and recommend. Here is a tiny fraction of the powerful tools waiting to be picked up and put to use. Like all tools, they can be ignored or put to harmful use. Putting them to good use, together, strategically, is our only path out of catastrophe. I quote:

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT PROTEST AND PERSUASION
Formal Statements
  1. Public Speeches
  2. Letters of opposition or support
  3. Declarations by organizations and institutions
  4. Signed public statements
  5. Declarations of indictment and intention
  6. Group or mass petitions

Communications with a Wider Audience
  7. Slogans, caricatures, and symbols
  8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
  9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
  10. Newspapers and journals
  11. Records, radio, and television
  12. Skywriting and earthwriting

Group Representations
  13. Deputations
  14. Mock awards
  15. Group lobbying
  16. Picketing
  17. Mock elections

Symbolic Public Acts
  18. Displays of flags and symbolic colors
  19. Wearing of symbols
  20. Prayer and worship
  21. Delivering symbolic objects
  22. Protest disrobings
  23. Destruction of own property
  24. Symbolic lights
  25. Displays of portraits
  26. Paint as protest
  27. New signs and names
  28. Symbolic sounds
  29. Symbolic reclamations
  30. Rude gestures

Pressures on Individuals
  31. “Haunting” officials
  32. Taunting officials
  33. Fraternization
  34. Vigils

Drama and Music
  35. Humorous skits and pranks
  36. Performances of plays and music
  37. Singing

Processions
  38. Marches
  39. Parades
  40. Religious processions
  41. Pilgrimages
  42. Motorcades

Honoring the Dead
  43. Political mourning
  44. Mock funerals
  45. Demonstrative funerals
  46. Homage at burial places

Public Assemblies
  47. Assemblies of protest or support
  48. Protest meetings
  49. Camouflaged meetings of protest
  50. Teach-ins

Withdrawal and Renunciation
  51. Walk-outs
  52. Silence
  53. Renouncing honors
  54. Turning one’s back

THE METHODS OF SOCIAL NONCOOPERATION

Ostracism of Persons
  55. Social boycott
  56. Selective social boycott
  57. Lysistratic nonaction
  58. Excommunication
  59. Interdict

Noncooperation with Social Events, Customs, and Institutions
  60. Suspension of social and sports activities
  61. Boycott of social affairs
  62. Student strike
  63. Social disobedience
  64. Withdrawal from social institutions

Withdrawal from the Social System
  65. Stay-at-home
  66. Total personal noncooperation
  67. “Flight” of workers
  68. Sanctuary
  69. Collective disappearance
  70. Protest emigration (hijrat)

THE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION: ECONOMIC BOYCOTTS

Actions by Consumers
  71. Consumers’ boycott
  72. Nonconsumption of boycotted goods
  73. Policy of austerity
  74. Rent withholding
  75. Refusal to rent
  76. National consumers’ boycott
  77. International consumers’ boycott

Action by Workers and Producers
78. Workmen’s boycott
79. Producers’ boycott

Action by Middlemen
80. Suppliers’ and handlers’ boycott

Action by Owners and Management
  81. Traders’ boycott
  82. Refusal to let or sell property
  83. Lockout
  84. Refusal of industrial assistance
  85. Merchants’ “general strike”

Action by Holders of Financial Resources
  86. Withdrawal of bank deposits
  87. Refusal to pay fees, dues, and assessments
  88. Refusal to pay debts or interest
  89. Severance of funds and credit
  90. Revenue refusal
  91. Refusal of a government’s money

Action by Governments
  92. Domestic embargo
  93. Blacklisting of traders
  94. International sellers’ embargo
  95. International buyers’ embargo
  96. International trade embargo

THE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION: THE STRIKE

Symbolic Strikes
97. Protest strike
98. Quickie walkout (lightning strike)

Agricultural Strikes
99. Peasant strike
100. Farm Workers’ strike

Strikes by Special Groups
  101. Refusal of impressed labor
  102. Prisoners’ strike
  103. Craft strike
  104. Professional strike

Ordinary Industrial Strikes
  105. Establishment strike
  106. Industry strike
  107. Sympathetic strike

Restricted Strikes
  108. Detailed strike
  109. Bumper strike
  110. Slowdown strike
  111. Working-to-rule strike
  112. Reporting “sick” (sick-in)
  113. Strike by resignation
  114. Limited strike
  115. Selective strike

Multi-Industry Strikes
116. Generalized strike
117. General strike

Combination of Strikes and Economic Closures

118. Hartal
119. Economic shutdown

THE METHODS OF POLITICAL NONCOOPERATION
Rejection of Authority
  120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
  121. Refusal of public support
  122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance

Citizens’ Noncooperation with Government
  123. Boycott of legislative bodies
  124. Boycott of elections
  125. Boycott of government employment and positions
  126. Boycott of government depts., agencies, and other bodies
  127. Withdrawal from government educational institutions
  128. Boycott of government-supported organizations
  129. Refusal of assistance to enforcement agents
  130. Removal of own signs and placemarks
  131. Refusal to accept appointed officials
  132. Refusal to dissolve existing institutions

Citizens’ Alternatives to Obedience
  133. Reluctant and slow compliance
  134. Nonobedience in absence of direct supervision
  135. Popular nonobedience
  136. Disguised disobedience
  137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
  138. Sitdown
  139. Noncooperation with conscription and deportation
  140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
  141. Civil disobedience of “illegitimate” laws

Action by Government Personnel
  142. Selective refusal of assistance by government aides
  143. Blocking of lines of command and information
  144. Stalling and obstruction
  145. General administrative noncooperation
  146. Judicial noncooperation
  147. Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents
  148. Mutiny
Domestic Governmental Action
  149. Quasi-legal evasions and delays
  150. Noncooperation by constituent governmental units

International Governmental Action
  151. Changes in diplomatic and other representations
  152. Delay and cancellation of diplomatic events
  153. Withholding of diplomatic recognition
  154. Severance of diplomatic relations
  155. Withdrawal from international organizations
  156. Refusal of membership in international bodies
  157. Expulsion from international organizations

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT INTERVENTION
Psychological Intervention
  158. Self-exposure to the elements
  159. The fast
  a) Fast of moral pressure
  b) Hunger strike
  c) Satyagrahic fast
  160. Reverse trial
  161. Nonviolent harassment

Physical Intervention
  162. Sit-in
  163. Stand-in
  164. Ride-in
  165. Wade-in
  166. Mill-in
  167. Pray-in
  168. Nonviolent raids
  169. Nonviolent air raids
  170. Nonviolent invasion
  171. Nonviolent interjection
  172. Nonviolent obstruction
  173. Nonviolent occupation

Social Intervention
  174. Establishing new social patterns
  175. Overloading of facilities
  176. Stall-in
  177. Speak-in
  178. Guerrilla theater
  179. Alternative social institutions
  180. Alternative communication system

Economic Intervention
  181. Reverse strike
  182. Stay-in strike
  183. Nonviolent land seizure
  184. Defiance of blockades
  185. Politically motivated counterfeiting
  186. Preclusive purchasing
  187. Seizure of assets
  188. Dumping
  189. Selective patronage
  190. Alternative markets
  191. Alternative transportation systems
  192. Alternative economic institutions

Political Intervention
  193. Overloading of administrative systems
  194. Disclosing identities of secret agents
  195. Seeking imprisonment
  196. Civil disobedience of “neutral” laws
  197. Work-on without collaboration
  198. Dual sovereignty and parallel government

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

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Tuesday, November 06, 2018

What Else You Can Do