MEDIA ROOTS- The revolution starts in your own backyard.
Cindy Sheehan, along with over 160 other leading peace advocates held a conference call on February 6th, 2011 to strategize for a new collaborative effort of localization called "Re-creating Revolutionary Communities", or RevComs.
The plan is to put words into action. Cindy's book, Myth America: the Twenty Greatest Myths of the Robber Class , breaks apart the societal and cultural myths that keep the oppressed dependent on their oppressors, and lays out the case for communities to revolutionize their environment, economy and society.
RevComs intends to overwhelm and permanently overcome the corporate controlled political and economic system that perpetuates exploitation and destruction by providing resources and guidance to local communities as they connect and build outside the grid. It is a truly grassroots effort that requires people to get active and to work collectively and creatively with their neighbors.
In the conference call, Cindy described the vision of how citizens can re-claim the resources in their environment and communities:
"We can do this by appropriating for ourselves what should already be under our control: community banking, community farming, supporting farmer's markets, electing progressive revolutionaries to local school boards and city councils, having a barter/trade economy and creating cooperatives for every system we can""
Cindy also emphasizes the necessity for people to look outside of the "use and throw away" paradigm of the current consumerist, capitalist institutions. Citizens who want to create a self-functioning community need to re-evaluate the way they consume and must focus on waste reduction: re-using what we already have and recycling that which we already use.
RevComs aims to be the umbrella organization that helps to guide and connect community initiatives happening across the nation and eventually the world. There are already hundreds of projects happening all over the country-- the first step is to discover what they are, followed by getting involved and helping to strengthen them. If your community lacks this foundation, Cindy stresses the need to get creative with entrepreneurial endeavors and new collaborative projects in the community.
Re-creating Revolutionary Communities believe that the answer to globalization is localization. People need to see the fruits of their labor and the benefits of community involvement. Waiting for federal change every four years keeps people disempowered and disillusioned with actions that struggle to affect visible change. Undoubtedly, there will be people who dismiss the potential of RevComs to help emancipate citizens from the ties of multi-national corporations or corrupted policies, and still others who disregard the movement as "doomed to fail'. Cindy responds to the naysayers:
"With this we cannot fail, because we will be touching people's lives in a positive way" when Yoko [Ono] was on my show she said we have to drop the pebble in the pond and the ripples will go to infinity" Everybody that went before us that tried to make positive change did make positive change. They did not fail. I shudder to think where our society would be today if we didn't have people like Martin Luther King Jr" I know that many of those people" were thinking the same way that we thought. They were thinking that they failed, they were thinking that they didn't change society. But they changed it in a very profound way. The only way we are guaranteed failure is if we don't do anything. That is the beautiful, wonderful miraculous thing about this project: that we will have a 100% success rate."
RevComs will begin putting this plan into action during the first round of community gatherings slated for the first week in March 2011. The meetings are going to start locally, with anticipation of then going regional, and eventually national.
The seeds of revolution are already being sewn, now it's up to you to join in.
To learn information, gather resources or to get involved with Re-creating Revolutionary Communities, please visit their website at http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2011/01/re-creating-revolutionary-communities.html or become a part of their facebook community here.
Writing and art by Abby Martin, check out more art at http://www.AbbyMartin.org
Check out an exclusive Media Roots interview with Cindy Sheehan.
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