photo top: Hilary Klein background photo: David Hanks

Andrew Stern / www.andrewstern.net
On the day before the anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a demonstration took place in Baghdad in tandem with protests
around the world against the violence of the occupation on March 19, 2004.
acknowledgment that the
central political project of
our era is the rethinking of
what it means to be human
on planet earth.
— HOW TO CHANGE THINGS —
We have to confront the
cancer and pull the doomsday
economy out of its
suicidal nosedive. The move
toward a politics of reality is
the essence of a fight for the
Infernal Noise Brigade, March 19, 2004, San Francisco.
future itself. Indian writer
and activist Vandana Shiva
said it eloquently in her speech at the World Summit on Sustainable
Development countersummit in August 2002: “There is only one struggle
left, and that is the struggle for survival.”
Ecology must be a key ingredient in the future of pan-movement politics.
But to achieve this, we must ensure that earth-centered values don’t get
appropriated by white, middle-class messengers and become artificially
separated from a comprehensive critique of all forms of oppression. A
global ecology movement is already being led by the communities and
cultures most impacted by the doomsday economy, from international
campesino movements to urban communities resisting toxic poisoning to
the last indigenous homelands. Those of us dreaming of more global North
counterparts to these earth-centered movements have much to learn from
listening to the voices of frontline resistance.
The Western Shoshone people—the most bombed nation on earth who
have survived half a century of U.S. nuclear colonialism on their ancestral
lands in what is now called Nevada—have mobilized under the banner,
“Healing Global Wounds.” This inspiring slogan reminds us that despite the
horrors of brutality, empire, and ecological catastrophe the strongest
resistance lies in the ability to think big.
In facing the global crisis, the most powerful weapon that we have is our
imagination. As we work to escape the oppressive cultural norms and
flawed assumptions of the corporate system we must liberate our
imagination and articulate our dreams for a life-affirming future. Our
actions must embody these new “realities” because even though people
might realize they are on the Titanic and the iceberg is just ahead, they
still need to see the lifeboat in order to jump ship. It is by presenting
alternatives that we can help catalyze mass defections from the
pathological norms of modern consumer culture. 29
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Jason Justice
POST-ISSUE ACTIVISM