On issue after issue, powerful economic and political forces — including “culture warriors” — are vigorously bullying people, corrupting elections, hurting workers and children, disrupting ecosystems and Mother Earth’s climate, and causing other damage.
Many people who have better values are feeling overwhelmed and powerless. Some yield to despair and give up.
But we can indeed fight back — nonviolently — by organizing strategically savvy grassroots movements to solve the problems and replace bad public policies with good ones.
This requires a positive attitude. Hope is not really a statistical probability that we have a certain percentage of likelihood of winning. Rather, hope is the recognition that IT IS POSSIBLE to win — and that IF WE USE SMART NONVIOLENT STRATEGIES — we are MORE LIKELY to win.
Actually, MOST PEOPLE reject the cruelty that is being imposed upon us. MOST PEOPLE want a humane society that respects and protects all people’s human rights and protects ecosystems and the climate.
Public opinion polls have been showing that A BIG MAJORITY of people want positive, progressive changes, such as:
- Eliminating “Big Money” from political campaigns
- Passing strong laws to sharply reduce gun violence
- Protecting equal rights for women, racial minorities, LGBTQ persons, poor people, and people with disabilities
- Reducing the gap between extremely rich people and the 99%
- And so forth
What we need to do is CONVERT PUBLIC OPINION into ACTUAL PUBLIC POLICIES. This requires NONVIOLENT GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING to BUILD STRATEGICALLY SAVVY GRASSROOTS MOVEMENTS.
I’ve written about this in the “Organizing” part of this blog — https://parallaxperspectives.org/category/organizing-activism-also-see-nonviolence-outreach.
Also, I keep offering FREE ONLINE WORKSHOPS to help people strengthen their insights, skills and strategies for building nonviolent grassroots movements. Look for publicity to be posted to this blog soon.
