Insurgent American’s 35-Point Practical Guide for Action

http://www.insurgentamerican.net/intellectual-hardball/insurgent-america...

(1) Make food.
Even if its a windowsill or roof garden with a couple of tomato plants.
Make a yard garden. Grow your own food, just a bit. You can expand on
this later. Check out Food Not Lawns for inspiration. Start small, and don’t over stretch yourself. Succeeding early is important.

(2) Take “one more step” to oppose militarism. If
you are not sporting a button or bumper sticker against the war, then
start doing that. if you’re doing that, but not writing — Congress,
letters to the editor, op-eds, email lists — then start writing. If
you’re doing that, then give money to an antiwar effort. If you’re
doing that, then start to attend local meetings. You get the idea. Take
just one more step. Stopping this war will have unimaginably
good ripple effects and empower all people’s movements everywhere. More
ideas and up-to-date info at Bring Them Home Now!

(3) Create a blog. Blogs can be a lot more than
vanity sites. They are a form of democratic communication that allow us
all to be simultaneous teachers and learners, and they increase the
density and survival redundancy of our communications networks. They
are communications infrastructure. More blogs, more links, more
sharing, more community, better coordination. Basic Blogging for Women is very helpful, for everyone, and we can also open a discussion thread here at the IA forums.

(4) Commit to study. One of the most common — and
in our opinion, flawed — complaints we hear among activists and
frustrated, impatient political junkies, is that there is too much
writing and discussion and not enough action. Here’s what we have to say about that. Nonsense! Human agency is not simply in outwardly messing around with one’s environment. It is being a conscious
agent of change. If we are walking around blindfolded, we are taking
action; but if we want that action to be efficacious, then we need to
see, figuratively speaking. Studying is a critical form of action.
Commit to study something new, and expand your understanding of a topic
or issue every chance you get. The criticality of this is the reason we
include our Analysis-Synthesis section here at IA. New situations require new actions, which require new forms of understanding.

(5) Surf the Web Anonymously Its a good idea to
put a layer of protection between you and the world online. One way
to-do this is by creating a free email account and not associating your
own name with it. Create a online handle and use that instead of your
real name. Another way is by using a Proxy Server to anonymise your web surfing. Torpark is a free Windows application that can help you do this. For more information about surfing the web anonymously check out Tor from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Remember Nothing on the web is completly anonymous. If someone has the resources they can find out anthing they want. We can make it a lot harder for them though.

(6) Learn to fix something new. Divesting of our
dependency means becoming better McGivers. We have to learn how stuff
works, and how to tinker with it. Our dependency rest in large part on
the idea that every tiny task is subdivided our to an expert, who we
pay to do it for us. That means we have to have money, and we know
where that goes. Our own experience is that learning to tinker with one
thing gives us insights on how to tinker with a lot of things. Learn
something new on a schedule. Commit to learn how to fix something new
every month, every six months, no matter. Whatever works for you. How
to change the rings in a leaky faucet. How to change a tire. How to
caulk a bathtub. How to built a live trap for rabbits or a bird house.
Anything. The Bob Vila site has all sorts of good advice on this.

(7) Start an email list. This can be a simple
one-way list to which you send out things; or it can be a listserv,
that functions as a discussion group. FIRST LAW… make your first
message one that asks everyone if it’s okay, and says how often you
will post. People hate spam. Get their permission, and if they ask to
be removed, do so without hesitation of complaint. Use blind courtesy
copy (BCC) to put people’s email addresses in, so their addresses
aren’t shared with the world. Once established, lists are a very
important way to develop corporate media bypasses. Caution: Avoid
sharing whole articles on lists… just teasers that suggest what the
piece is about, followed with a link. Library Support Staff has a good site on this.

(8) Join a local organizing effort. Working with
people from your same geographic area is the absolute most effective
and sustainable way to do social change action. Not only does the
geographic proximity make meeting more do-able, people build actual
friendships that way, and organizations that are bound by real
friendship are both durable and cohesive. If you live in a metro area,
look in the “community calendar” sections of your free entertainment
weekly. One can also use the internet to find groups working nearby.
Don’t use the term “progressive” in your search parameters, however.
It’s in a lot of corporate names, and the meaning of that term is very
loose. Name the issue that keeps you engaged. A good handbook for local
organizing is Organizing for Social Change, with lots of basic how-to advice and useful copy-able forms.

(9) Plan your way out of debt. This might seem
selfish as a “thing to do,” but people who are deeply in debt are
enslaved. They cannot do anything except seek money to keep up with
debts. Before we can assist the liberation of others, we first need to
liberate ourselves. Beware. There are many debt consolidation schemes
and self-serving self-help gurus out there who just want to own your
debt. When the economic swan dive happens, it comes as inflation
followed by deflation and joblessness. Priority of effort in debt
liquidation is to pay off living space. But to get there, the first
thing that has to go is credit cards… which are part of a vast criminal
enterprise. A very useful guide to getting out of debt — even if it is
self-help (some are put off by that) — is Carolyn White’s Debt No More.

(10) Contribute to the nearest Environmental Justice effort.
Environmental Justice is a term referring to people-of-color-led fights
against the targeting of poor communities as a dumping ground for the
toxic effluvia of industrialism. It is the most vital and strategic
anti-imperial struggle going on inside the United States. Just
as the world system is comprised of an imperial core with exploitable
peripheries, some of those peripheral colonies exist inside the US.
Because of the structural inequalities of this core-periphery dynamic,
people-of-color-led organizations like this will never have access to
the same resources as white-led, or predominantly white-membership
organizations. If you can’t give them volunteer time and support, send
them money. A National Directory of EJ outfits is online.

(11) Conduct a banner drop. A banner drop
is a tactic whereby a big cloth banner is made, then publicly opened
“dropped” without prior warning, often in violation of some kind of
law. If you are kind of attracted to risk, if you are an effective
planner, and if you have a small, reliable crew, banner drops are a
good way to learn basic, small-unit, tactical planning. If you have a
crew that has done it more than once, others will rely on you as the
specialists to employ this tactic as part of larger campaigns. Banners
can be very simple to very fancy. Just remember that it will not stay
up forever. Hostile civilians or cops will take it down by-and-by. Code
Pink has actually developed a pretty good primer.
Cell phones or walkie-talkies (cheap nowadays) should always be used to
post lookouts at all avenues of approach into the drop site. Banners
should be constructed (especially if dropping over a freeway overpass)
to ensure they can’t fall and cause an accident. At rush hour, in the
right place, with a website url for follow-up, this is a very effective
(and kind of fun) tactic. A good crew can organize and conduct one
every two weeks if they make this their raison d’etre.

(12) Make a cable access program. If local activists haven’t made use of cable access programming (television we can use!),
then call the local cable access office and find out how to get on.
Usually there is a small membership fee, and a moderately priced
program of instruction to ensure you don’t break the stuff in the
studio. If you already have cable access activists (or local
independent radio), then consider developing programming for it.
Ten-minute spots, 15, and for the standard a 28-minute spot. Those with
good technical skills for video and audio are strongly encouraged to
use those skills to get the voices of local activists and local
initiatives some publicity. (You can put the audio and video you make
for cable on the web too.)

(13) Get a bicycle and use it. Self explanatory. Check you local Craigslist
for used bikes. It saves gas, is non-polluting, encourages others to do
the same, and makes you healthy. Invest in a rear-view mirror, padded
gloves, a decent helmet, and a big, international orange hunter’s vest
to alert zombie drivers of your presence.

(14) Try a 100-mile diet. From the 100-mile diet
site: When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient
has typically traveled at least 1,500 miles from farm to plate. That’s
a total disconnection from where our food is coming from. What would it
be like to eat locally for one year? Link to the site. Doing this puts you into touch with your local resources, and is a great educational tool for effective food praxis.

(15) Learn to orienteer. Orienteering can be
competitive (as a sport) or recreational (more often simply called land
navigation). It means learning to read topographical maps and using
them in conjunction with a compass and protractor to actually navigate,
on foot, over land. It is not only an invaluable skill that is quite
enjoyable (if you’re the physical type), it is very important as a
way-of-knowing, an epistemological framework,
for anyone who might one day consider actual underground activity as
part of a politics of resistance. Understanding terrain is the very
basis of any science of underground/military resistance (for purely
theoretical reasons, of course). There s a fine online instruction manual,
but the key is to actually do it. If there are course, orienteering
clubs, or someone you know who spent a good deal of time in the
infantry, then find a way to get out on the ground and navigate using compass and map. As a sport, orienteering is considered a high-endurance activity that combines non-linear brain-power with great physical conditioning.

(16) Visit a Congressperson. This may sound
generic; and it is. Many people have never done this, so they have this
vague imagination of governance and who performs it…. which intimidates
people (as it is probably meant to). Keep track of local organizing
efforts on issues (now, the war), and join the next group of people who
are going to visit this elected official in her/his office. They do
this all the time. Going with them will be a real education, we assure
you. You will not only see the actual office (generally unimpressive)
and the actual person (often just as unimpressive), you will see how
other interact with this rep as well as lose the feeling of being
intimidated. Little known fact: Actual visits by groups of five or more
people create real concern for elected officials. The American Mathematical Society (?) has a good guide for these visits. Do not use these visits to show how revolutionary you are.
Others in your group may not be down for that, it doesn’t serve any
purpose except to stroke one’s own ego, and it’s disrespectful of other
members of your own group. If you want to be sharp with the Rep, then
do so in letters or during pickets at the office (another great tactic,
that we’ll fold in here).

(17) Visit a State Representative. Same as above.
These folks are people you should know, write to, and visit with some
frequency, or they’ll give away your figurative farm. And they can be held to higher levels of accountability because they are dependent on votes from relatively a small geographic area nearby.

(18) Learn to shoot. Don’t be afraid of firearms.
Don’t be cavalier with them either. One can own, learn, and practice
with firearms without joining the Male Death Cult of Amerika (MDCA).
Women should know how to use firearms. Having the knowledge is putting
something in the bank, so to speak, in case one is ever forced in the
future to defend oneself or one’s community. Once the need arises, it
is too late to acquire firearms and learn them. Movies and TV make it
look easy. It is not. Unfortunately, everything that seems to be
written on the subject is drenched in testosterone; so whatever one
reads…. take what you need, and leave the rest. This applies to getting
instruction, too. Do not purchase a firearm without studying; and to
not use a firearm without training. Insurgent American will
gladly respond to questions on this subject (we have a firearms person
in residence, so to speak). Many colleges and universities have
competitive shooting programs. This is a very good way
(especially for young women) to learn with a small caliber (usually
.22) weapon. Pellet rifles and pistols can be used in urban
environments to maintain proficiency without shooting/scaring the
neighbors.

(19) Use Social Network websites to organize. Even
though many social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld,
etc. are run by corporations they can still be used for positive
communication and affinity group creation. Use free services in ways
they are not intended. These sites can help you find others with your
passion for change. Though lots of them center around hooking up and
sharing embarrassing pictures you’d be amazed at how easy it is to find
other serious adult radicals. Have some sort of contact with like
minded people is very important. These sites can also give you another
way to share your message. Don’t use just one.

(20) Back up your computer files then encrypt them.
If you use a computer you create data. That data can tell others a lot
about you. Even the data that sits on your personal computer and is
never shared online. If you create important files about your mission
protect them by making backup copies. You can burn them to CD-R, copy
them to flash drives, put them on file servers, and more. Try to take
copes of your data to another location besides your home. If anything
were ever to happen, like a fire, you’d still have copies. Be sure you
can restore your files and use them as you would the originals. If you
have sensitive data you don’t want others to see, encrypt it. There’s lots of free software that will help you do this for the Mac and PC.

(21) Start a worm farm. The key to rebuilding the soil required to feed urban, suburban, and ex-urban populations in the future will be vermiculture.
It is absolutely the fastest and cleanest way to rehabilitate soil that
can sustainable grow food. By “farm,” we really mean a bin that can fit
under your kitchen sink. It does not smell bad, is non-toxic, and it
lives on kitchen scraps. Bigger bins are also do-able. If there is to
be a future for modern cities after the oil crash, then that future
will be predicated on Lumbricidae. Kids love these things, and
they are great educational tools. They also can provide a small second
income (at the right scale) to get others started, or to sell fishing
bait.

(22) Become a paramedic or licensed practical nurse. One founder of this site was a Special Forces medic
in the Army. He was authorized, when deployed, to do pretty much
everything a doctor might do (including trauma protocols), and his
training was — while very intensive — only about a year long. Anyone
with a basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology, a basic familiarity
with pharmacology, a broad knowledge with available references of the
most common ailments, and some advanced first aid techniques can
provide the vast majority of medical care required by most people most
of the time. Combined with a good preventive medicine program,
communities will eventually depend on these people more than a rarified
supply of physicians. Learning these skills as a paramedic or practical
nurse is making an investment in future communities, as well as
providing an essential skill-set for future underground work
(theoretically, of course).

(23) Become a gunsmith. Having and understanding
firearms to defend ourselves and our communities can create another
line of dependency — for the construction, maintenance, and repair of
firearms. Most gunsmiths are already articulated into the social
networks that include (1) law enforcement and (2) the Male Death Cult
of Amerika (MDCA). It is a valuable skill in other respects, because it
familiarizes the gunsmith with machine-shops that can locally
manufacture lots of little thingies that autonomous communities will
need. Gunsmithing
is also a very well-paid craft in the general economy. There are quite
a few online course, but the best training comes with resident
instructors. Most community college systems have gunsmithing courses. This is strongly recommended by IA as a non-traditional craft for women as a power paradigm reversal.

(24) Design a single-residence water conservation system. A roof is a huge water collection device that is waiting ot be activated by a few modifications. Leaky things in and around the house
cost hundreds of dollars a year. Non-sensored water-use appliances
(like washing machines) can waste immense sums of water. Urinating
outside saves a five-gallon flush. There are myriad ways to conserve
water (and to more efficiently water gardens). Design your own system,
and continue to build out on it. Most importantly, talk about what you
are doing with others and help them get started.

(25) Host a monthly movie night. There are tons
of good, thought-provoking documentary and art films that are
available. There is nothing like a regular potluck get-together (dinner
and a movie) to consolidate relationships and stimulate both taste buds
and gray matter. Groups like the Media Education Foundation have plenty of material to get started. Even Netflix can provide plenty of films at very reasonable rental rates.

(26) Organize a community garden. Community gardens grow food and community. Get it? From the American Community Garden Association:
“Community gardens exist in many urban areas, providing bits of green
space amid the concrete and allowing city dwellers to reap the benefits
of their labor. For a small fee, you can rent a plot for the season,
and can grow whatever vegetables and annual flowers you’d like.
Community gardens usually provide everything you need: garden tools,
water, even expert advice! Many gardens also participate in community
programs, such as Plant a Row for the Hungry. ”

(27) Join a politically acceptable church, temple, or mosque - and offer to develop a community garden. Before the secular humanists choke; let me explain, as a heathen who is about to join a church. Political acceptability
is the operative term. If their program fits your values, who cares how
exactly they approach the mysteries of the universe? The practice is
the important thing, and it determines the ideas far more than ideas
determine practice. On the issue of churches and other faith
communities, let us whisper one magic word in your ear… infrastructure.
Think about it. The Progressive Faith Con Blog has a very good blog roll to do some background reading.

(28) Develop and implement an energy conservation plan for your home. “To read the latest news on energy-efficient, durable, comfortable, green homes, sign up for a full membership to Home Energy Magazine online.”

(29) Conduct or attend a women’s self defense course.
Unfortunately, gender as a system of social power still faces women
with the ubiquitous threat of misogynistic violence. Reliance on men
for “protection” is part of the whole protection-for-obedience
structure of gender relations. Women need to be able to defend
themselves physically, and by any means necessary. This is integral to
women’s self-determination. AWARE has a very good list of links on this topic.

(30) Organize or join an effort to “opt out” of military recruitment in local schools.
The No Child Left Behind Act has ordered public schools — under threat
of losing federal funds — to give students’ contact information to
military recruiters. There are many efforts to actively exercise the
“opt out” clause on this act. Read more at the Resource Center for Nonviolence.

(31) Organize or join an effort to get public schools to dump junk food and buy/feed local, organic.
“Concern about the quality and nutritional value of school foods seems
to be at all-time high, and for good reason. Too many American children
are obese, undernourished, suffering from diet-related diseases such as
diabetes, or hungry. With diets that provide too few critical nutrients
and, often, too much fat, salt and sugar, children suffer in their
daily lives and in their ability to reach their full potential for
health and accomplishment as adults.” Read more.

(32) Organize or join an effort to stop high-stakes testing in schools. Only for the stout-hearted who are ready for a long fight. But the stakes are indeed very high. Read this.
Children in public schools are not being given the capacity to think,
but to conform. And they are being “sorted” in the process.

(33) Use the closest farmers market. Self
explanatory. Look it up on the web. This supports local growers and
keeps monetary resources closer to your community instead of drifting
up into the coffers of the multinationals. It is the first step toward
developing a community supported agricultural (CSA) system.

(34) Organize a regular intercultural cook-on-site potluck.
Intentionally sharing traditional skills for cooking meals and sharing
food across cultural lines is a very good community builder. If there
is more than one language involved, ensure there is translation
available. Music and dance can be served up the same way, as a
teaching-learning dialectic, often with the food.

(35) Contribute volunteer time to a local rape and domestic abuse hotline or shelter.
Self explanatory. The left has been AWOL on this issue, and no movement
worthy of the name can ever again ignore that women, more than half the
population, face widespread, violent, and systemic abuse most
frequently in their homes and with their “intimates.” The oppression of
women is paradigmatic — seen as “conquest” — for the “conquest” of
colonies (imperialism) and the “conquest” of nature (ecocide). Gender
as a system of social power must be confronted at its roots, and
broken. These facilities and services are the front lines.