What are YOU avoiding when you step behind the camera? Or remain in the moving car? Or stand behind the window? In front of the TV?

It is not enough to just know about it. Not anymore.

The cops are a sideshow

Published: Thursday 02 April 2009 23:50 by Cascadian

I’ve seen this again and again since the WTO conference in my hometown of Seattle ten years ago. There’s a confrontation between protesters and police, usually started by the police (but that’s ultimately irrelevant). People spend all their energy arguing who’s to blame and what tactics were or were not OK by each side, and the global powers that be mostly get forgotten.

At least in Seattle the non-violent direct action protesters and the sheer numbers in the streets that day actually prevented WTO business from going forward. Usually the meetings go forward as planned AND everyone wastes time arguing police vs. protester tactics.

The essential point is this: the cops are not your enemy, even when they’re going out of their way to beat you up. They’re just the instruments of power, designed to maintain the status quo and hopefully maintain order at the same time. Most of the individual cops don’t have an opinion about the G20 or the WTO or whatever it is at all. They’re a tool that either is used for you or against you.

Challenging the cops just makes it easier for them to line up for their appointed role as protectors of the status quo, which currently means the interests of global capital. The way you make revolutionary change is to bypass the cops, or if that isn’t possible, turn the cops to your side by changing the underlying balance of power. Except in rare circumstances property destruction and violence doesn’t change that balance of power, because the powerful will always have more tools of coercion. Instead, real change requires you to persuade enough people both inside and outside the existing power structure that things have to change. When that happens, all of a sudden the balance of power is on the side of the people in the streets, and it’s the bankers that have to worry about being dragged off to jail.

But that’s hard, and not as viscerally satisfying as chucking a bottle at a black-clad storm trooper.

What useless battles are you fighting? Re-direct your energy, focus on what is important.

According to Jerry, the five main stages in overcoming a chrisis, are:

1. Face facts.
2. Choose life, not death.
3. Reach out.
4. Get moving.
5. Give back.

What I found most valuable in this conversation is this little sentence:

Giving keeps us from slipping back into a victim mentality.

So true! Generosity reminds us that we always have something to share. Switches our internal state from lack to abundance, from victim to joy.

You’ve heard these a million times: “Be the change you want to see into the world!”, “Be abundant and you will attract abundance.”

And this is how you do it. Share yourself. Volunteer, even for an hour. Give what you love giving and enjoy abundance working through you.

Also, unlike others, he says “I never give good press to a bad thing… I don’t romance my pain.”

You don’t need to step on a landmine to transform your life. Another man went there and did that and shared his experience so we can learn. Let’s just take a moment to appreciate his gift.

This man’s story is amazing and tremendously inspiring. Buy the book here, read the full interview here.