Bleak Beauty Blog

There are times in the course of our lives when we must speak out, and we must act. The world is burning. Our civilization is threatened in an unprecedented way. Neither the Nazi’s nor the dropping of the Atom Bomb posed as great a threat to human kind as this moment does to civilization itself. Only a mass movement can halt the threat to Planet Earth, our home. In the United States there are targets; The Republican Party and the Fossil Fuel industry. The other target is the media. We must turn the voters against the Republican Party and we must shut down the fossil fuel industry. Only a mass movement can do this.

Nonviolent demonstrations, marches and boycotts must occur now and be widespread. One demonstration in Texas is worth ten demonstrations in California. All other issues, Historical Justice, Police Violence, LGBTQ rights, abuses in China, even the war in Ukraine, pale before this. People of conscience  must unite behind this single issue now. Our planet, our lives and the future of all we hold near and dear are threatened with extinction.

The Southern Civil Rights Movement was the most successful mass movement of our life time.Though it often provoked violence, it was non-violent. At the same time, Malcolm X, presented an alternative to the mass movement in the streets. He did it in the media. “The ballot or the Bullet.” The antiwar movement on the 1960’s and 1970’s brought two million students into the streets in a single day. Yet that movement also included the Weathermen, a fringe group that placed bombs and was responsible for the deaths of innocent people. A mass movement must have the broadest possible inclusion. This is not an issue of Left vs Right. Or religion vs non-religion.  It is a fight to save our planet and our lives. The movement cannot be successful without relentless coverage and pressure expressed in the media. Climate catastrophe needs to be the story, the only story, on the front page, for years to come.

There needs to be a violence against property component to the movement. It is necessary to “blow up a pipeline” and to physically attack the offices of the fossil fuel industries. People will go to jail. And some people will die. We will all die if the world does not change its course immediately. We cannot be constantly attacking China. We partnered with Stalin to defeat Hitler. We must partner with China to bring this monster to a halt. What China does in the South China Sea pales in importance to China building more coal firing plants. And we need leaders. We need powerful speakers, young woman and men, to step forward, to risk jail, to appear in the media as often as they act, so that people, especially young people hear their message. We need boycotts and we need strikes. We need to shut the country down and do whatever it takes, especially in Republican controlled states and cities, to demand our governments act now.  

    No person should urge anyone else to go to jail, unless they are willing to go to jail. It would be an honor.