We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, July 6, 2012

Pëtr Kropotkin:The Spirit of Revolt

Click here to access article from Eagainst (Greece). 

This website frequently delves through the dustbin of history to find real gems. This one features an essay by a famous anarchist first published in 1880. It is clear to me that his ideas are as relevant today as they were then. To be sure some conditions have changed and they require different methods of organizing; but the same spirit of resistance to an oppressive, death and destruction based system and class structure is still revealing itself throughout the world. Today, the resurrection of that life-affirming spirit is more urgent than ever before.
Men of courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action, — men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile, and death are preferable to a life contrary to their principles, — intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to dare in order to succeed, — these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the masses are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in hand, to the conquest of their rights.