"The white sheep don't trust the black sheep and it's all the shepard's idea."--John Trudell



Those who haven't heard the new legal developments of our society's political police (whom have a long history of *illegal* attacks on *legal* social challengers, re: "COINTELPRO"), should inform themselves via: www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=13246&c=206 Their article talks about such things as the f.b.i.'s new powers to *legally* break into your home without your knowledge and "rifle through" your private life.

To combat or avoid the usual scenario of the political police continuing to successfully suppress dissent, resistance, and rebellion (articulate or not), we are going to have to adopt the methodologies of peoples whom have been dealing with far worse state and colonial aggression for a long time. And at the same time, avoid the pitfalls of violent reaction.

Who can we learn from?

We can learn from many many groups. Not only militant ones, or those apparently forced to use violent means. We can learn from formal organizations like the Weather Underground and East Timorese resistance, as well as informal communities like our biological families. We can even learn from religious ideals and our own desires to promote human excellence. It's all up to *our imagination*! How we limit or don't limit our imagination. And how much we wake up to the way we reflect and don't reflect the imagination foisted upon us since we were kids.

Methods

There are two main methods i can think of for dealing with and actively challenging colonization and institutional aggression. The first is the idea of engaging in a *resistance of consciousness*, and the second is a technique called "mass jiu-jitsu".

Resistance consciousness

Resistance of consciousness, or "resistance consciousness", can incorporate a host of ways of becoming aware, from the privately spiritual to the intellectual and anywhere in between or beyond. The basic idea is that we become a people who will not allow others to smash us, overtly, covertly, psychologically, and etc.

A valuable one for most people reading here would probably be what Noam Chomsky calls "undertaking a course of intellectual self-defense"--namely a conscious decision to try to inform oneself of the realities, and *metas* of social-serving institutions and the people who own and manage them.

You can inform yourself about single issues that crop up--like how psychiatry is consistently attacking kids with so-called disorders like "Oppositional Defiant Disorder", or how one corporation after another consistently puts profit before people and nature--or you can do what i prefer: Understand the over-arching *meta game* of the framework and structures that allow this state of affairs to perpetuate.

That is, stuff like understanding professional and "scientific" *ideology*, the psychology of social and cultural managers and their beliefs about everyone else besides them being "stupid", alienation in colonized societies, the *manufacture of consent* (and why elites utilize this method instead of speaking to us as equals), *internalized values* and so on.

Then we can start putting a *big picture* together about how people become so divided off from their original fabulous potential as kids to being so severely alienated from each other that they *forget the value* of *doing to others as they would like others to do to them*.

"Social and cultural managers", "policymakers", "elite" and not-so-elite implementers (like cops), and the "Owning Class" are severely alienated, but their rigid upbringing (forced to abandon "youthful" ideals early on like the rest of us, but differently), their armored lives, and their alienation all "protect" them from becoming aware of their *own* victimization and their later *reflection* of that continuing hell that remains inside them.



We can learn a lot from both institutional analysts like Chomsky (specifically, see www.chomsky.info and www.zmag.org/chomsky ) as well as the many articulate dissidents in general whom have dared to speak up about their first-hand experiences. People like John Trudell, John Stockwell, Dr.Thomas Szasz, Grace Llewellyn, and many others can shed much light on the *everyday war* on all.

*Resistance of consciousness* also entails more informal or "inarticulate" consciousness, such as those we see in the solidarity of biological relations (re: family commitment) and *watching out* in the neighborhood for cops and others subordinating their excellent individualities to war.

This is getting long, so i'll try to sum up.

Mass jiu-jitsu

Saul Alynsky touches on "mass jiu-jitsu" in his book _Rules For Radicals_ and i see that the creative, nonviolent, CONFRONTATIONAL techniques he mentions quickly there *is really only the tip of the ice-berg* of what is possible.

Farting

One direct action his "back of the yards" group did was eat a lot of "the fruit that will make you toot" (beans) and then go into a roomful of people they wanted to target were, and fart the place up with the kind of smell that was *inside their experience* of the way they were treated by some of the people in the room, but fully *outside the experience* of the status-quo.

Good Peasant, Bad Peasant

This one could be used on soldiers called cops who are way out of line in ghetto areas and the like. Those who normally must interact with cops show basic professionalism (with whatever other further ice one dares) when a cop or social worker or other colonizer-type is *out of line* in behavior, attitude, or alienation. And when/if such persons prove increased thoughtfulness of their fellow human beings, *everyone* goes all out to *reinforce* the *positive*, including holding a celebration outside of a precinct for a certain cop, delivering pizza to a cop bar, etc. The more radical your imagination the better, since we don't simply want to "be nice" with them and allow their alienated conditioning to continue uncritically (with them thinking of themselves as "above" the rest of us, "morally").

Crucial Arts

This is the idea of escaping the ghettos and corralls of how art, "entertainment", and general creativity has been diluted and colonized.

Bands and poets and comedians who ESCAPE THE STAGE and business games, and become part of *direct actions* at demos, spontaneous parades, hikes across town, door-to-door caroling, etc. The limits of which are UP TO YOUR IMAGINATION.

And the idea of *Realizing the value of being radically beautiful with each other*. Or "Realize the VALUE of being radically excellent with each other".

Focusing on the spirit and desires that brought us into these communities of dissent, critical thinking, and change-wanting in the first place! And allowing such spirit to be our GUIDING VISIONS. Not the largely obsolete and over-run tactics and "Us vs. Them" fundamentalist ideology that has plagued so-called "radicals" for too long.

We must realize the value of creating bridges with individuals, while not allowing ourselves and our spirits to be smashed!