As Political Police Become More Aggressive, Resistance Consciousness Will Have To Be Turned To

What does it take to convince concerned persons that traditional methods of rebellion and dissent are fast becoming obsolete?


"If they stop us one way then we must find another way... We have to take the initiative. We can no longer become and remain reactionary..."

Bad news is everywhere, but the worst of it is our dawning awareness that everything we throw at terroristic power (re: the state and its usually unaccountable institutions), everything we try to say, has to go through YEARS of grueling work to build single issue momentum before it can even be viewed as "worthy" of mainline power's note and superficial discussion. And even then, such will be considered far from "reputable". No, you go that route and it's war every step of the way. That route eats away at our excellent ideals and replaces them with rigid cynicism, if they even survive past age 30.

The entire method of conscious Leftists is to "Speak Truth To Power", to subordinate groups to become servants of the status quo, thereby strengthening it. Anarchists and others have tried to speak about this for decades.

A growing number of critical thinkers are realizing the futility of such an effort *in the face of aggression cropping up all over the map abroad AND at home.* Whether it's the sudden detainment of over 700 Arab men and boys into concentration camps for flimsy reasoning, the increased violence of policesoldiers during nonviolent demonstrations, or now legal COINTELPRO-style tactics being instituted by virtually unaccountable political police agencies, the situation is indeed grim for those who wish serious change could take root.

Cut to *Resistance Consciousness*.

A method of awareness where individuals teach other individuals how to think critically on broad terms. To "connect the dots" to the patterns of ways in which the masses are systematically fooled. And teaching such on topics which *affect individuals across the board personally*.

That's the key.

One doesn't NEED leaders. No one has to risk the kinds of activities which force "leaders" into traps, like those we find in history in the labor movement, where leaders were told to either start selling out to business owners or be discredited by a highly mobilized military of media and covert warfare. Those charismatic enough to lead in their own ways, perhaps as writers, CAN do so, but not find themselves saddled with all the other alleged responsibilities formal "leaders" are supposed to have.

One doesn't need above-ground organization. No need to elect officers and get side-tracked in organizational survival interests. No need to keep membership lists secret. Underground groups CAN learn to sidestep COINTELPRO-style infiltration and provocation, while using to their advantage the values of organization.

Anyway, this is meant only as a source of alternative imagination, in a world where so many seem to believe that there is only *way of doing things* in the resistance paradigm.

More from a relatively still unknown, yet longtime veteran of resistance activities beginning formally in the American Indian Movement, John Trudell (excerpts from his speech "We Are Power"):


"We must be willing in our lifetime to deal with reality. It's not revolution; it's liberation. We want to be free of a value system that's being imposed on
us... Liberation --we want to be free. But in order for us to be free we have to assume...our responsibility. We are going to have to struggle for it. We are
going to have to work [and be] committed to it. We must never underestimate our enemy. Our enemy is committed against us 24 hours a day. They use
100% of their efforts to maintain their ...status quo. 100% of their effort goes into deceiving us and manipulating us against each other...

"...We are going to have to start working more realistically with a resistance consciousness, a resistance, something we can pass on as strength to the coming generations--a resistance where organizational ...[and] individual egos don't get in the way, a resistance where the infiltrators and the provacateurs and the liars and the betrayers...do not get in the way. We will not get our liberation if we do not seriously analyze the experiences of our own lifetimes.

The other side ...has studied. They understand what we were up to in the 1960's. They understand what we wanted in the early 1970's...They create
certain events, and they manipulate the economics, and they manipulate circumstances because they want us to react the same way that we did in the
1960's so that they can come in and they can smash our movements. We must become of a resistance consciousness. We must say that we will not
allow you to smash us. Even if it means that we have to deal with the part of you that you have planted in me...




"...It takes more than good intentions. It takes committment. It takes that in some point in our lives we are going to have to decide that we have a way of life and we are
going to live that way of life. Even when our enemies totally surround us, even when [they] act against us with brutality and harshness, with lies and bribes, we are going
to have to stand with our way of life. ...We cannot reach a point in our lives [where] we're going to sit back and say: "Well, we will make this compromise with the other
side..."

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Some comments about what John said, and then I resume below:


EGO: The notion of "ego" is becoming popular with many these days, and usually what seems to be meant is that individuals should silence their intuitions and critical experience and just conform to the "norms" of traditional organizational ways of doing things. So i wonder how John and others define this. i equate "ego" with the
self. The self that doesn't allow itself to become a number, a unit, or some other commodity, nor an automatic subordinate to some pre-existing belief system just for the convenience of manipulative leaders to run you as a soldier; the self
that helps sustain our private hunger for sanity and ability to think independently. Perhaps what John means is the ego that drives the authoritarian (who
allegedly "KNOWS" all the truth, etc.). Or perhaps Mr. Trudell is talking about how hysterical self/ego mind-sets shouldn't be allowed to consume the energies of groups.



THE USE OF THE WORD ENEMY: i think it is problematic and self-defeating because it doesn't seem to take into consideration the idea that most people who subordinate their individualities to the authoritarian status quo have been highly manipulated and fooled. Many secretly question and disagree with such institutions, yet they've seldom if ever known how to do anything about this predicament they find themselves in. If anything, we should only attack MINDSET and BEHAVIOR, not create our own version of rigidity and reducing the individuality of millions of potential John Stockwells and Philip Agees (both ex-cia officers who went public).

COMPROMISE WITH THE OTHER SIDE: This seems to be true through-out the 20th century. We should try to understand why oppressed groups/individuals do it, and what the consequences are. I suspect that rigidly drawn "sides" by itself has something to do with this.
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Trudell: "We are going to have to talk to all the people who will listen to us...We're going to have to find ways to talk to the people we can't talk to
now...

"...We must always deal with reality. [The non-Indian establishment has] been able to use the element of fear to control their masses of people... We must not be drawn into their
traps... It is time for us to think...We have to learn to put up and deal with the hard times just like the good times... We have to learn and underderstand
that they want us to be lazy in our minds and lazy in our spirit and lazy in our body. They want us to be able to give up hope easily. They want us to quit
thinking. [just obey, work, consume, and fear and hate when told]...If they stop us
one way then we must find another way... We have to take the initiative. We can no longer become and remain reactionary...



"And if we have gotten it into our consciousness to accept [the interference we've had since the time we were born], then we have got a lot of work to
do...But we have the ability to do it...the Earth did not put useless things here...

"[The opponent mind-set] has been attacking the Indigenous People and they have been misusing the white people, and they are trying to push us into a
position where all we think about is ourselves...They want to isolate us and call us names (labels, identities, etc.). They want to attack us. They want to
use terrorism to intimidate. We must build a resistance in our hearts that says we will not accept it, we will not accept it.



To get a better understanding of exactly what kinds of challenges John Trudell and his Indian contemporaries have faced in their modern struggles for liberation, read:
STICKMAN by Paola Igliori; Inanout Press; NY 1994
a large portion of information on Trudell can be found at: www.intheheart.net/links.html