Let’s Become Ungovernable

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A flier adaptation of Ungovernable2017’s pledge

OUR PLEDGE

We pledge to create a resistance movement that makes Trump unable to govern our oppression; unable to deceive the people, to make people accept his reign of hatred. We refuse to give hatred a chance to govern, a chance to roll back civil and human rights, a chance to deport millions of people, a chance to create camps and registries for Muslims, a chance to expand the prison industrial complex, a chance to expand its drone wars, or a chance to turn back the gains won by our struggles. We pledge resistance to this renewed attack on our communities. As we resist, we will create new autonomous infrastructures for collective self-subsistence, new relationships premised on building common power, independence and self-reliance, and new ways of being human. What we will not do is sanction and/or normalize “overt” white supremacy.

Let’s start now.

WHY WE RESIST

We resist because we refuse to allow Trump and his views on climate change and his deep investment in the oil industry lead us to the brink of human destruction with his “drill baby drill” and “burn baby burn” orientation. We will not allow the 6th great extinction to advance on our watch.

We resist because the United States has always been a problematic project and we refuse to go backwards on the limited political, economic, and social gains that have been won by Indigenous and oppressed peoples, women, religious minorities, LGBTQI communities and individuals, workers, children, and in the protection of our life-giving environment. We refuse to accept the wanton reintroduction of white supremacy, right wing populism and fascism, state sanctioned patriarchy, and the expansion and consolidation of a neo-Confederacy.

We resist because we will not allow US imperialism to go unchallenged. We refuse to allow the Trump regime to allow for the ethnocide of the Palestinian people, to start a war of aggression with Iran, to legitimize a puppet regime in Haiti, to escalate tensions with China, to support a coup d’état in Venezuela, to threaten and sanction the progressive governments of Bolivia and Ecuador, and the list goes on.

We resist because we must. We resist knowing that one or two assemblies or days of action will not stop any of the destructive plans of the Trump regime and the neo-Confederates that now control ¾ of the state governments. They’re just a beginning: ways for us to come together, resist together, and to start the hard work of building a new political force and program that will help us co-construct a liberated future. Let’s become ungovernabLe

“BUILD AND FIGHT; FIGHT AND BUILD”—A PROPOSAL FOR THE FUTURE

We cannot afford to “wait and see” what the Trump regime is going to do, or “give them a chance”. His cabinet appointments clearly indicate that we have to take him for his word, and that he clearly meant all of the racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, queer hating and misogynist rhetoric that he espoused. He fully intends to make the United States a White republic again.

We know our enemies are prepared to demonize any and all opposition. They will ramp up surveillance to even greater levels, unleash massive amounts of repression and White terror on progressive social movements and non-compliant populations, and use various types of economic threats to subject people to their will.

Hoping and praying for things to work themselves out for the better won’t work. Efforts at trying to isolate yourself, your family, and your community and shield it from the repression that is coming won’t work. Trump and the reactionary forces that he embodies and represents must be defeated, politically, socially, and economically. Solidarity and joint struggle are our greatest forms of both offensive and defensive resistance. But, the solidarity must be practical, strategic, and visionary.

To defeat Trump and the neo-Confederates we need a strategy that builds collective power and momentum as it fights, and leverages this power as a means to continue fighting. As is obvious to anyone who has ever turned their building’s water or gas back on after the City shut it of, the so-called “economic” questions of material need are always immediately caught in relations of political power. This is why we must never separate questions of mutual aid from mutual struggle. Both dimensions, the Build and the Fight must have offensive and defensive dimensions to them. Below are just a few preliminary ideas on what we think must be built and/or strengthened going forward, to not only survive the Trumpocalype, but to build the world we and our children and great grandchildren need.

THE BUILD

•Build community farms and food distribution centers to address basic subsistence needs of the people in our communities.

•Build production or supply chain networks and energy networks, and forge regional alliances to ensure food security and sovereignty on municipal and larger scales.

•Build and reclaim common spaces in which to incubate new initiatives and work out collective plans, to practice sharing power with each other, caring for each other, and collaborating in horizontal ways.

•Build cooperatives (worker, consumer, and community) to address the basic material and service needs of the people in our community.

•Build autonomous assemblies and/or other types vehicles for finding one another, elaborating shared perceptions and commitments, and expanding the struggle for autonomy, equality and self-reliance.

THE FIGHT

•Build self defense committees and educational campaigns to protect our friends, families and communities from state and reactionary militia repression and terror.

•Build sanctuary networks to defend immigrants, muslims, organizers and the persecuted.

•Build autonomous communication and information sharing institutions and networks to ensure safe and direct connection amongst the people in our communities and networks.

•Build broad civil action units to engage in massive civil disobedience, occupation and general strike actions to disrupt the advance of political reaction

•Learn how to blockade and paralyze circulation infrastructure (pipelines, airports, freight trains, freeways, etc.), so that when revolts kick of we can make them irreversible by preventing any return to the normal situation.

It is urgent that a radical force of political resistance rise up and move us out of the forest of gloom that is presently surrounding us. None of these initiatives can be built overnight and they cannot be done individually. They require organization on various different scales and scopes. We have to begin here and now, with those immediately around us.

BECOME #UNGOVERNABLE

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