Hi All!
The Interrogator is in the house, and hopes that you have the right answers. If you don’t appreciate this authoritarian tone, there is something that you can do about it, before you won’t be able to do anything about it.
Are you putting all your hope in the midterms, having faith that your fellow man is informed and will show up? Do you not know that we are all bozos on this bus? Did each and every one of you vote in the 2024 election?
Are you watching without seeing? Are you hearing without listening? Do you sign petitions, contact your representatives, go to meetings, serve on boards, push words out of your mouth? These are good works, but do you realize that they don’t have high visibility, therefore low-impact?
Do you vote?
Have you ever been or are you now a member of a union?
Do you want to have to have your “papers” when you go out?
Do you know your family, neighbors, coworkers, friends? Would they report on you if they think they have something to gain by doing that, or lose by not doing that, in an authoritarian regime*? Are you ready for the American version of the old East German Staasi?**
Do you practice a religion that isn’t the Christian Nationalists’ brand of Christianity–Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Baha’i? Do you remember the “good people” who chanted, “Jews will not replace us!”, in Charlottesville, where Heather Heyer died by vehicular manslaughter by a right-wing extremist? What makes you think you will be immune from this scourge if the authoritarian, Christian Nationalists win? Do you realize that they are running the actions from the White House right now?
Are you living on dividends in a paid up house, the right religion, and on the fence about authoritarianism? The authoritarians, like the honey badgers, don’t care.^ Do you think your privilege bubble will save you when the authoritarians come for you? Grand as you are, you are not in their club. Who will be left to save you?***
Since when are you not a patriot?
Do you know how to get things done?
Do you know how to work for a goal?
How many Resisters does it take to change a regime?
Did you know that about 65% of the people who come out to protest with us come from towns other than Closter? Can you also come rally with us?
Why aren’t you protesting for democracy? Get out on the street. We are the marketing arm of the resistance. We need you; we want you. How many others say that about you? We have great song lists. Almost everyone has an hour a week.
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“The Pareto principle: across many settings, a small share of participants does most of the work. Each person who joins makes joining safer and more worthwhile for the next, because larger numbers lower the risk to everyone and raise the odds that the movement succeeds.
There are two factors that determine success: a committed minority, and the relationships through which its actions reach the wider population.
The network effect explains why people join a movement already under way, but not how one starts. Lower risk and better odds come only as more people join, so the first to act have neither. In a 1978 model of collective action, Mark Granovetter showed why overwhelming public support for change can still fail to produce a movement. [Think gun control, reproductive rights.]
If each person waits for enough others to act before acting, and no one is willing to go first, that support stays latent, no matter how large. A few people willing to act before anyone else are what allow the rest to follow. Their presence matters more than the eventual size of the movement.
For those of us who want change, the lesson is to act, and to act where others can see it. The people who would join are waiting to see someone go first. Every visible early action lowers what the next person needs to see before they move. Going first, in the open, is itself what brings the next person in.
This is the pattern behind the fall of East Germany. Susanne Lohmann, in “The Dynamics of Informational Cascades: The Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig, East Germany, 1989 to 1991,” World Politics 1994, tracked 42 Monday demonstrations across five cycles and showed the cascade in real time. The earliest protesters were high-grievance radicals who turned out when repression was most likely. Their visible turnout showed everyone else how much opposition existed, which lowered the cost for moderates to join, until the regime lost its viability.”****
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We are Closter Patriots, a marketing arm of the resistance against authoritarianism!
Care, Show Up, Make Change!
Friday evenings, 5pm to 6pm, Piermont Road and Vervalen Street, Closter, NJ
Saturdays midday, 12pm to 1 pm, Piermont Road and Vervalen Street, Closter, NJ
New Rally in River Vale! Saturdays, 11am to 12:30pm, corner of Westwood Ave. and River Vale Road. Be there and support a new organizer effort. Great corner, with a lot of shade. Signs available. Wide sidewalks accommodate chairs, nearby food and facilities, high visibility. Come!
Bonnie
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism
**https://duckduckgo.com/?q=staasi&ia=web
^https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJF84oz93jw
***https://duckduckgo.com/?q=niemoller+quote&ia=images&iax=images&iai=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.azquotes.com%2Fpicture-quotes%2Fquote-first-they-came-for-the-jews-but-i-did-nothing-because-i-m
****cmarmitage@substack.com