The voices of citizens are rising from the streets of Washington and fracking sites in Colorado. They are rising from towns and cities such as Ferguson and Baltimore where police murders are terrorizing poor people of color. They are rising in Los Angeles from underpaid workers and the Dreamers. And these voices will, if we sustain and join them, become a deafening crescendo. They will create the kinds of movements that alone make social and political change possible.
We all have the capacity to refuse to cooperate. We do not have to be complicit in the collective suicide of the species. We can bring democracy into the streets. By joining boycotts, demonstrations, strikes, hunger fasts and popular movements, by carrying out acts of civil disobedience, we ignite our souls, we create another narrative, another way of being, and we expose the dead hand of authority.
The elites are in trouble. They have lost credibility. Neoliberalism and globalization have been unmasked as tools of corporate exploitation. The billions spent on propaganda to maintain the illusion of democracy and the benefits of the "free market" no longer work. The endless wars, which have not made the United States, Europe or the Middle East more secure, are now unmasked as blood-drenched arms markets for a war industry bloated with trillions of taxpayer dollars.
The war industry and the fossil fuel industry, like all corporate systems of exploitation, are at their core systems of death. They assault a planet that needs to swiftly build green infrastructures and egalitarian social systems that make life possible. The battle before us, as anyone who follows climate science understands, is urgent. It is about defeating these systems of death. It is the battle for life. We may lose. These systems are powerful and ruthless. But if we do not resist, we extinguish hope.
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