Less Reaction, More Action

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

11 May 13

love Wisconsin, and the fighting spirit of the people who live here. As Ed Schultz said during a show in Madison, "It's called the Badger State because you fight like hell." But the one thing that's been paralyzing us here in the Deep North more than anything else isn't the cold, but the reactive nature of the left. When Wisconsinites showed up by the hundreds of thousands in spite of the achingly cold weather in the Winter of 2011 to stand up for workers, both Scott Walker and his corporate puppet masters hid in the shadows, terrified of what the people would do in large numbers. Since the unsuccessful recall attempt, the movement, somewhat deflated, has likewise remained in the shadows, terrified of what Walker, a gerrymandered GOP legislature, and the well-heeled corporate power circle running the show will do next.

Occupy Wall Street experienced something similar. At the peak of the movement's power and influence in the Fall of 2011, Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD backed down from a threat to evict the thousands occupying Zuccotti Park for alleged "cleaning." Occupiers took up brooms and mops, cleaned the park themselves, and vowed to clean up the mess on Wall Street rather than leave the space they occupied. Though we had our victory that night, eventually the police would move in during the cover of night, sequester credentialed journalists into an obfuscated corner, and forcibly arrest over 200 nonviolent protesters after rousing them from their sleep. Municipalities soon followed suit all over the country, and the movement lost its central organizing spaces. Since then, we've largely been reacting to politicians, their corporate owners, and their horrific actions with our protests, while they plug their ears and pretend not to hear us.

Now imagine if, instead of angrily reacting to the horrible things these corporations and their bought and paid-for congressmen do to us on a daily basis, we started taking radical action that made them angrily react to us on a daily basis. When we go from reacting to acting, our power grows exponentially and all the entrenched powers can do is huddle under a table in fear of the awe-inspiring populist wave crashing upon them.

Students in NYC are occupying Cooper Union demanding their education remain free. Fast food workers have been on strike in St. Louis, demanding their employers treat them like human beings and pay them a living wage. Students and teachers alike are in the streets of Chicago, protesting the closing of the schools that define their communities and a corrupt mayor who's lying to them. Students in Philadelphia walked out in protest of budget cuts that are cheapening their education. A massive student-led movement spanning over 400 campuses is actively pressuring university administrations to divest their school endowments from the fossil fuel industry, with recent success at the Rhode Island School of Design. And in Madison, Wisconsin, students occupied their chancellor's office demanding the school cut their contract with a food vendor known for willfully abusing its employees.

Activists in Baltimore are celebrating the anniversary of Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign by marching all the way to Washington to protest the cruel, intertwined systems of mass incarceration, police brutality and private prisons. The weekend after, a group of long-term unemployed activists are marching 150 miles from Philadelphia all the way to DC to go after the corporate lobbyists and special interests that have taken our government hostage. On May 25, people in over 30 countries are participating in the March Against Monsanto, shining light on the corporation that's poisoned food supplies and bribed politicians to keep quiet about their crimes.

Documentarians like Crystal Zevon of Searching for Occupy and Vicky Bruce and Karin Hayes of We're Not Broke are capturing this powerful movement on camera and sharing it on the big screen. Livestreamers are bringing it to our screens in real-time. Citizen journalists like Dustin Slaughter, Allison Kilkenny, and Steve Horn give us second-by-second updates of our movement's progress on social media. The tacticians of our movement like Citizens for Tax Justice and the Center for Media and Democracy are assembling and distributing new knowledge that enriches our words and provides sustenance for our arguments. Bold and fearless elected officials like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are crafting the policies that will be the bedrock of the new society we dream of and fight for.

The politicians, the corporations and the media they own want us to believe we're all alone, that the movement is dead, that there's no hope, that all we can do is helplessly scream at our screens and buy more crap to make us feel better about the horrible ways of the world. What they desperately don't want is for the fed-up populace to take their anger to the streets and demand radical change.

It's time to make them react to us for a change.

Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.

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