Pete Reacts to the Climate Organizations' Presidents' Day Protests: Can't You Find a Better Target Than Obama's White House?

Perhaps you’ve heard the news that the climate organizations this weekend are protesting outside the White House. 

To me, this is like whales protesting the Sea Shepherds!  I mean, the president has come out swinging in his second inaugural address and State of the Union in favor of sweeping climate action. 

Now, some will say they’re doing it for maximum visibility.  No!  They announced this in November, and probably were planning it way longer.  They just have an inability to change their plans.

A young environmentalist once told me it took six months to plan an action.  Bullshit!  Bill McKibben could get thousands of people to do something next weekend if he asked. 

And it’s not like, having asked all these people to come to DC, they have no other targets.  Why not go after the people who have been the biggest obstacles to doing something about the climate?  Go to those Koch brothers’ funded think tanks that are spreading all the disinformation!  You’re not gonna get on TV but, news flash, you’re not gonna get on TV at the White House either!  But at least you’ll be going after the real culprits.  

But if you really want to get on TV, start protesting the major networks, who still aren’t reporting on these huge things.  I mean, yesterday it came out that only a fifth of the sea ice remains from 1980 levels!  This is a gigantic story, with much more long term importance than anything, but the media isn’t reporting it.  So protest the networks, hammer away at the networks!  Maybe they’ll cover you, maybe they won’t, but, start targeting who’s really keeping climate awareness from happening!

The thing about these climate organizations that keeps them from being a movement is they still use “organization think”.  Organizations think it takes six months to plan an action.  Well it doesn’t!

And you’ve gotta be able to react to a changing political landscape.  Last summer all the extreme weather provided a great opportunity for the organizations of the "movement" to really make political hay in the coming elections, but they didn’t do a damn thing! 

Now you’ve got the president standing up to do something about this, and these organizations are still protesting him like nothing has happened over the last month.  Like he was Romney or something!  And if you look forward at what seems to be on the agenda for these organizations this year, it appears to be just more of the same!  They made all these plans of what to do this coming summer before Obama presented them with this golden opportunity.  So do they react to this golden opportunity?  No!  They’ve already made plans! 

What the hell?!

There’s a thing called rapid response and unless these organizations tap into the concept we’re not going to be able to give the president the citizen action that he needs.

Anyway, climate organizations: Throw away your game plans and react to the new reality.  It might just save the planet.

- Pete the Pissed-Off Polar Bear


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Pete the Pissed-Off Polar Bear Chimes in on Nonviolent Openness vs. Secrecy

So I wanted to talk about Openness and Secrecy in Nonviolent Struggle. 

It basically boils down to this: Openness is smart, secrecy is dumb.  

Let me elaborate.

First of all, anything you write in an email, or say on the telephone, might be read by

government agents.  George W. Bush made sure of this with his so-called Patriot Act. 

 “Oh look at me I’m a patriot!  You now have no privacy, just like the founders intended!” 

That naked picture you sent to your boyfriend?  It’s made the rounds at Langley.

Also, if you really were to become a concern to anyone really powerful, like, say, the

richest companies in the history of the world, they would soon have people joining your

organization.  “Hello!  I want to help!  I have money, what would you do to the richest

company on earth if you could get away with it?  Shoot for the moon, dude!  Let’s do

something illegal.  Hee hee hee!  You can trust me, honest!”

So, you should expect spies.  If you’ve got secrets, then everyone would get all paranoid! 

“Is it you?  Are you the mole?”  “I think it’s him!”  “I think it’s you!”  “I trusted you, ratfink!” 

This is no way to run a popular uprising!  Just be open and honest, “Here’s what we’re

 doing?  Ya hear me, Koch Brothers?”  “Hey Glenn Beck, guess what we’re gonna do!”

Now of course if you lived in, say, Kas-beck-i-stan, you’d need to be secret or your

opponents would kill you!  But the U.S. and Canada, are free!  If you’re a human

anyway.  There are some places polar bears can’t go or they’d shoot us with

tranquilizer darts, which is worse than it sounds.  You don’t just fall asleep, when you’re

out they do anal probes and stuff like that, or put big collars on you.  Try sneaking up on

a seal with a big black collar around your neck! 

Anyway, here no one’s gonna kill you unless some crazy Tea Party dude with an arsenal

decides to take matters into his own hands, but that would really make their side look bad

so they’ll try and discourage that, prob’ly anyway.  It’s hard to figure out that kind of

crazy.

Another thing that’s dumb about secrecy is only the inner circle knows what’s going on

next.  We Pissed-off Polar Bears wanted to help the climate movement with their protests

during the elections last year.  Turned out they had no protests planned.  They’re very

opaque, they don’t do a good job of laying out their strategy, so you don’t know if they

have it handled or not.  These are important things to know!

  

If you want a lot of people to help you demonstrate, you should be really visible!

The point is, Nonviolent struggle is based on bravery and discipline.  When you’re open

about what you’re doing, you become free from the fear of arrest.

In the Indian Independence Jawaharlal Nehru or whatever his name was, I actually

know a walrus named Jawalrus Nehru, anyway this guy Nehru said that once they got rid

of secrecy their feelings of oppression and frustration melted away.  They actually felt

sorry for the guys who were spying on them because they had no secrets to discover.

This movement needs to get rid of it’s feelings of frustration and start having fun!  Ya 

hear that ExxonMobil!  The party’s over!  Gruuumph!  More tomorrow.

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Dirty Energy and the "Monolith" Theory of Power

Most people think there's not a whole heck of a lot we can do to stop the dirty energy companies from destroying our climate.  These corporations have all the political power and all the money.  We can keep asking them to be "nice" and quit using all their power and money to stop any progress on climate change, but by now it's pretty obvious they have no intention of doing that.  So they are, in our imaginations, a monolith, huge and indestructible.  

But that's a myth, and it ignores how power really works.  Power, at least political power, is held by men who are actually extremely dependent upon legions of other people.  Take the Koch brothers.  They're just a couple old guys with a lot of money.  Chances are if you were challenged to fight either one of them mano a mano, you'd decline because you'd know it wouldn't be a fair fight and you'd look silly beating up an old guy.  

But we think of them as incredibly powerful!  Their power depends upon thousands of people helping them out.  The people are willing to do it because the Koch brothers pay them, but consider their employees in Wichita, Kansas, and also in Oklahoma, and Texas.  This entire area has suffered through two consecutive summers of devastating heat and drought.  Surely these people are troubled by a nagging realization that climate change is no hoax.  And surely they know people in their communities who are not employed by Koch Industries but who they see going through extreme hardship because of the drought.  

At some point these people are going to realize they're working for the bad guys.  At that point some of them may not be quite as gung-ho about doing their jobs.  Koch Industries might then have a problem on their hands because their system isn't working as efficiently as it had been, it'll hurt their profits, and they'll be forced to reconsider their opposition to climate legislation.

So next time you think about the dirty energy corporations, don't think of them as powerful, think of them as incredibly dependent and needy.  Then think of their enablers.  That's who we need to win over!

C.H.


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