So You Want to Start a Resistance

February 7, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Talk of "resistance" ebbs and flows as political parties enter and leave power. The one constant among this turbulent process is the futility and impotence of these so-called "resistance" movements ignited and left to burn.

When President Donald Trump took to the White House in January 2017, such calls were once again made to "resist" the new president and all the perceived evils he represented.

However, so confused and detached from reality are these calls, that no such resistance has even the remotest possibility of improving America's plight, with a much more likely possibility of actually making that plight worse.

The Deep State: From Whence Real Power Flows

According to Wikipedia, the deep state is described as:

...a political situation in a country when an internal organ ("deep state"), such as the armed forces and civilian authorities (intelligence agencies, police, administrative agencies and branches of governmental bureaucracy), does not respond to the civilian political leadership.

And the reality is, within every nation exists a deep state of one sort or another. Excluded from Wikipedia's definition are "internal organs" comprised of corporate-financier interests with unwarranted wealth and influence on scales that likewise allow them to "not respond to the civilian political leadership," or even directly and fully control that civilian political leadership altogether.

Beyond mere conspiracy theories, leaked e-mails made available by Wikileaks from 2008 - one month before President Barack Obama won the 2008 election - reveal how Citibank's Michael Froman provided a list to John Podesta laying out virtually the entire cabinet of the soon-to-be president.

The New Republic's October 2016 article, "The Most Important WikiLeaks Revelation Isn�t About Hillary Clinton," would report (emphasis added):

The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner. 

This was October 6. The election was November 4. And yet Froman, an executive at Citigroup, which would ultimately become the recipient of the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial crisis, had mapped out virtually the entire Obama cabinet, a month before votes were counted. And according to the Froman/Podesta emails, lists were floating around even before that.

Citibank's parent company, Citigroup, reported annual net profits for 2016 at around 15 billion US dollars. This is enough money to provide 1 million dollars in bribes to every member of the US Congress, in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and still maintain the vast majority of its wealth. And Citigroup is just one of many immense, corporate-financier monopolies not only cohabitating upon Wall Street, but cohabitating upon the boards of directors and sponsorship lists of America and Europe's most influential policy think tanks.

Prominent US policy think tanks include but are not limited to:

• The Brookings Institution
• RAND Corporation
• The Heritage Foundation
• Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Council on Foreign Relations
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Center for American Progress
• Crisis Group
• Freedom House
• The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
• The Atlantic Council 

Think tanks are forums within which unelected corporate-financier funded policymakers devise and promote policy on behalf of their benefactors. They represent the collective interests of multiple multi-billion dollar multinational corporations, banks, and other institutions. They often have ties directly to corporate-media platforms, with corporate-media figures either included within think tank boards of directors, or their media platforms servings as corporate sponsors, or often, both.

Policy is not only devised and promoted from within think tanks and by media platforms associated with them, but this policy inevitably ends up in the hands of corporate lobbyists, who in turn, place it in the hands of both US legislators and staff in the White House itself.

The Hill in an article titled, "Top Lobbyists 2016: Hired Guns," enumerates specific lobbying firms, while The Hill's article, "Top Lobbyists 2016: Corporate," enumerates specific, prominent lobbyists and the corporations they work for.

While many Americans may envision the US President bent over a desk, penning US policy in the Oval Office at night, in reality, US policy is merely rubber stamped by presidents and congress members - many times having not even read the bills and policies they are signing off on.

This is the very definition of a deep state that not only ignores civilian political leadership, but exercises absolute control over that leadership's selection and administration.


Fighting the Deep State

Realizing then, that is it not "Obama" or "Trump" that we are actually protesting, or even conservatives or liberals, but the deep state and the corporate-financier special interests that constitute it regardless of who occupies the White House, Congress, or any side of any given mainstream debate, it becomes clear that protests against "Trump" and other politicians or parties we disdain are beyond futile.

Instead, taking on the deep state more directly is required, but how?

The Global Fortune 500 includes:

• Big-Retail
• Big-Energy and Oil 
• Big-Auto 
• Big-Pharma 
• Big-Ag and Processed Food Giants  
• Telecom and Tech Giants 
• Big-Banks, Insurance, and other Financiers  
• Big-Defense
• Big-Media  

The corporations listed among the Fortune 500 also, without coincidence, sponsor the aforementioned, unelected policy think tanks.

They are able to wield such power and influence because of the immense, unchecked wealth they hold as well as their control over the very necessities modern civilizations requires to function. They hold this wealth, in turn, because they are uncontested monopolies in their respective industries to which hundreds of millions of people around the globe pay their paychecks to each and every month.

Imagine global wealth and influence represented by a game board. The US-European Fortune 500 have nearly covered the entire board with their pieces, with very few exceptions being competing circles of special interests in Russia and across Asia, particularly in China.

To truly fight the deep state, it is imperative to remove their pieces from the board and replace them with pieces of our own.

How Organic is Pushing Big-Ag Off the Board 

While many people believe revolution involves burning cities, unfurling flags, and joining huge mobs of rebels and protesters, the reality is that positive change only comes from patient hard work, incrementally removing unjust, domineering edifices from society, and replacing them with better, localized, and more equitable structures.

There is perhaps no better example of this than the organic agricultural movement.

Resulting from a backlash against massive global-spanning and insidiously unjust chemical and genetically-modified agricultural monopolies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, Dow, and Bayer, the modern organic food revolution is predicated on local grassroots networks spanning the world, consisting of millions of people - both producers and consumers, media platforms educating and informing the public, farmers' markets, organic farms and collectives, local retailers, as well as processing companies producing value-added products and more.

Village by village, town by town, city by city, and country by country, organic agriculture has spread for a variety of reasons.

First - the direct socioeconomic benefit it brings those who are engaged in growing and selling. Instead of one massive corporation concentrating profits from around the globe into the hands of a board of directors and their corporation's shareholders, organic agriculture - through local entrepreneurship - distributes those profits more evenly, directly to the people growing, processing, and selling the food.

Second are the health benefits, not just for consumers eating cleaner food, but also for the farmers growing it spared the hazardous effects of chemicals used in big-ag farming. Additionally, the environment is spared pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, as well as genetic pollution associated with big-ag farming.

And finally, there is the positive macro-economic impact of localized organic farming - involving a more distributed and localized agricultural system that can better prepare for and protect itself from market fluctuations, natural disasters, and other factors that have an immense and devastating impact on farmers trapped within big-ag monoculture.

The organic food industry has been steadily growing, taking a larger and larger percentage of the market away from big-ag each year. In other words, taking big-ag's pieces off the game board, and replacing them with organic agriculture's pieces.

And as the organic food movement grows, it becomes easier in many places for individuals and groups of people to enter into the market - further eroding big-ag's position on the board.

Big-ag has attempted to strike back through policymakers it controls, its army of lobbyists, and influence over the media to attack, undermine, and even outlaw aspects of the organic industry to reassert itself. However, it is in vain. Those entering into the organic industry outnumber those invested in big-ag a million to one - and are entering into organic agriculture out of passion and self-preservation, not profits alone.

A similar tale has unfolded due to information technology empowering individuals with the ability to compete with establishment media monopolies. The alternative media  has slowly replaced the game pieces of big-media monopolies, wiping out some entirely, and pushing others into corners where they now desperately fight to retain credibility, profitability, and audiences.

Taking on the Rest of the Deep State 

In order to replicate this success across all other industries and aspects of modern human civilization the deep state currently dominates, the same sort of incremental building-up of our own institutions, businesses, networks, and paradigms is required.

Image: The Game Board of global geopolitical, socioeconomic power. 

As technology advances, it will empower people on a much more local level to directly compete with the biggest and most powerful monopolies on Earth. Solar power and advances in battery technology will allow larger numbers of people to make either personal or local power grids independently of both state and corporate energy monopolies.

Manufacturing technology is increasingly making it possible to manufacture locally, short-circuiting corporate-financier dominated, global-spanning supply chains and all aspects they encompass. It also allows for a larger number of players to enter into and compete in industries that have for over a century been dominated by immense, centralized monopolies every where from big-auto to aerospace corporations, and big-retail.

Crytocurrencies and blockchain technology is making it possible for people to develop their own independent monetary instruments, circumventing centrally controlled banks, financiers, and state monetary systems.

While some of these solutions are just finding their way onto the game board, dwarfed by those of existing monopolies, the incremental, patient, but persistent organic agriculture movement as well as the alternative media are case studies proving that it is not only possible, but likely inevitable. As technology makes it easier for us to take a share of the market and the benefits that come with it for ourselves, we will - and at the expense of existing monopolies.

Still Not Convinced?

For those still not convinced - imagine this scenarios:

Americans take to the streets, protesting against President Trump and his policies, burning down their own cities, brutalizing their neighbors, fighting with police resulting in arrests and injuries on all sides - only to end up going home and changing exactly nothing. 

Because when they go home, they continue paying into the very system they were just out protesting - by shopping at Walmart, filling up their big-auto cars with big-oil gasoline, drinking Starbucks, pecking away at the screens of their slave-made Apple iPads, fueling the actual source of social injustice - the concentration of wealth in the hands of corporate-financier monopolies - that gestated a politician like Trump and all those that inhabit his administration.

Compared with this second scenario:

Americans begin working locally, starting and supporting local businesses, organizing themselves to create local institutions that carry out the affairs of their community that government and large corporations refuse to address.

In 4-8 years, a level of self-sufficiency will exist in such communities, cutting off both the government they despise and the corporations that created and influence it from the money, time, attention, and energy of millions of people. These resources, kept locally, would be used to move the country forward directly as the people - not Wall Street and Washington - sees fit.  

And because no "revolution" of fire, blood, and bullets took place, the government would atrophy and shrink where it was unwelcomed by the people, and survive and continue to function where it was needed - and where it still functioned, people who now hold leverage in their local communities with their own two hands, could demand and receive the administration that suited them - not special interests - best.  

In the end, there would not be lawless mayhem, but a government brought back into balance, brought back because of the leverage the people empowered themselves with locally through constructive activism, entrepreneurship, local institutions, and decentralized networks. 

 Americans must realize by now, having protested the war in Iraq in 2003 only to be completely ignored and have the war rage for now 16 years under both a Republican and Democrat president, and having protested almost continuously since President Trump's election in 2016, that protests alone accomplish nothing.

Without leverage, the special interests that dominate American politics have absolutely no reason to listen. By cutting these interests off from the very source of their strength - and channeling that strength instead into local movements like organic agriculture, alternative energy, local manufacturing, alternative media and entertainment, and alternative currencies - we empower ourselves with overwhelming leverage - not only to exact our demands from our elected officials, but to implement policy locally without conferring with or receiving "approval" from Washington in the first place.

For those who delude themselves into believing they can replicate the success of "revolutions" like the 2011 "non-violent" "Arab Spring," they need to consider the above equation of real power, then reexamine the "Arab Spring" to see whether or not that was truly a grassroots "revolution," or simply foreign-backed regime change fueled by billions of dollars from US-European special interests through a variety of channels - including very violent subversion.

While the actual path to resisting and overcoming unwarranted wealth and power is not as glamorous as a Hollywood summer blockbuster, an incremental transition in which we shift the direction our own resources flow, away from Wall Street and Washington and instead back into our communities locally, will not only improve our communities and enrich ourselves, but also completely and truly "drain the swamp" US President Trump has only dredged deeper and stocked with even more creatures.  

Agorist Challenge: Fixing Flint Michigan's Poisoned Water

January 17, 2017 (Tony Cartlaucci - LocalOrg) - Did you know nearly 100,000 people in Flint Michigan are still drinking poisoned water?

That should be no surprise. The government and institutions charged and trusted to ensure the residents of this Michigan city had safe drinking water already demonstrated criminal levels of negligence and corruption, causing the problem to begin with. Expecting these same people and the system they represent to solve the problem lingers somewhere between the unreasonable and the absurd.

US President Barack Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint over a year ago - meaning that the problem isn't just corrupt, negligent, and criminal politicians in Flint - but that the incompetence and impotence goes all the way to Washington.

A year on and the "solutions" presented have ranged from simply forcing residents to buy bottled water and unsustainable charity providing those bottles, to superficial, even deceptive measures like replacing home faucets instead of the miles of poisoned plumbing running through the city.

As for actually fixing Flint's plumbing, government estimates range from "millions" to "billions" indicating no serious thought has been given to even so much as planning an infrastructure overhaul.

It is most certainly a showcase for the absolute failure of government. But could it be a showcase for something more positive?

A Showcase For Alternatives 

Anarchists and agorists propose that there is virtually no problem that cannot be solved through the market - voluntary exchanges between free citizens contributing to a better future. The few, semi-permanent solutions that have presented themselves in Flint have certainly leaned more toward this direction.


Atmospheric water generator (AWG) company, EcoloBlue, donated 250 of their machines to the residents of Flint. However, at 1,200 dollars a piece, and requiring proprietary filtration systems, it is hardly the right fit for this particular market.  Beyond charity or a large government subsidy, these machines will not reach many more people.

However, AWGs produce water in precisely the same way a conventional dehumidifier does. It cools down a condenser so that moisture in the air condenses on it, then falls into a collection basin below. AWGs however include an additional filtration stage and a dispensing system. They also feature food-grade materials across all of their surfaces which conventional dehumidifiers may not.

The EcoloBlue units also include features that may not be as necessary and have helped contribute to their relatively steep price. These include hot and cold water dispensing capabilities and a computerized touch-screen monitoring and control system.

Creating a barebones design that both fits the market in Flint and provides reliable, decentralized, and most importantly clean water production for people, should not be a difficult challenge to meet for local entrepreneurs, innovators, and makers - or even EcoloBlue itself.

An opensource design, based on a simple dehumidifier with stainless steel condensers and a widely available, generic water filtration system could easily be developed and fabricated in virtually any machine shop or makerspace in the state. While the costs will need to be low, the market for efficient, simple, and opensource water generators may make up in volume what is lost in big-ticket sales. Small businesses that form around this project could branch out, building a line of products to target different markets and price ranges over time.

Larger units operated by business owners and community centers like churches and clubs, could bottle and dispense/deliver clean water to residents as a stop gap. There is a potential to create water-independence in Flint like some communities have created for food and energy elsewhere.

It is the prefect project for technologically informed anarchists and agorists to prove their principles in practice, facing and overcoming a challenge government has demonstrably failed to meet. It is also a perfect opportunity to gain a foothold in the area of water independence, a crucial but often overlooked aspect of moving from centralization to localization.

Fighting a Forgotten Battle 

Michigan-based Libertarian politician Tiffany Hayden has spent a large amount of time attempting to draw attention to the Flint water crisis - with many people believing - thanks to the corporate media - that the crisis is long over.

She has also attempted to approach local charity organizations, lobby the government, and stir up public support for action - any action - to address the crisis.

She laments that even residents who are literally drinking poisoned water, have been lulled into apathy by handouts, superficial remedies, and an overall lack of awareness and leadership. Because lead poisoning is gradual, residents do not make an instinctive link between the poisoned water they are drinking and the problems it is causing in terms of health - both mental and physical.

While proponents of anarchy and agorism tell Hayden that asking the government to solve a problem of the government's own creation is futile - making a valid point - and "free market" solutions are the alternative - no tangible solutions have actually been proposed, let alone implemented.

Solving the Flint water crisis, however, would go far in validating anarchy and agorism as no longer ideologies, but an actual tool set used to solve real world problems when politics and politicians inevitably fail.

The problem facing free-market proponents attempting to prove their principles work better in practice than the existing system, is how to approach and "sell" clean, opensource, decentralized water independence to the people of Flint and beyond.

And if charity or crowdfunding is employed during the Flint water crisis, it should be focused on permanent solutions that provide permanent water independence - not bottles of water that are literally here today and gone tomorrow and benefiting only corporations like Nestle, Pepsi, and Coke instead of local businesses.

Inspiration

Elon Musk has dedicated himself to two apparent goals - making humanity a multiplanetary species, and creating solar-electric infrastructure. His electric car company, Tesla Motors, approached enthusiastic people first, then with successive models, he made his cars both more appealing to regular people and more accessible.

Throughout the growth of all of his businesses, he carefully balanced market realities against his own ideals. In other words, ideals that ignore market realities will remain intangible ideals. And pursuing market realities without ideals becomes aimless and unsustainable. He has stated that he believes nearly all problems can be solved in the markets.

Luckily for those attempting to move into water independence, the technological hurdles are not quite as steep as launching rockets into space or designing and manufacturing thousands of electric cars. And because Flint is already undergoing a long-term water crisis, those making machines to address the crisis can likely find labs at local universities to help test the water their machines produce to ensure it is not only safer than Flint's poisoned water, but safer than anything available, even in a bottle.

Resources

Below is a list of makerspaces in Michigan that likely have the tools and talent, and perhaps even the business acumen to approach and overcome this crisis. Solving it will not only provide them with viable small businesses, but will also highlight for a wider audience the growing role in their community their makerspaces play as important local institutions.

• GR Makers: (Grand Rapids) https://www.grmakers.com/
• Geek Group: (Grand Rapids) http://thegeekgroup.org/
• Steamworks: (Flint) http://www.flintsteamworks.org/
• Jackson Makerspace: (Jackson) http://jacksonmakerspace.org/wp/
• i3Detroit: (Detroit) https://www.i3detroit.org/
• Omni Corps Detroit: (Detroit) https://omnicorpdetroit.com/blog/
• Maker Works: (Ann Arbor) http://maker-works.com/
• All Hands Active: (Ann Arbor) http://www.allhandsactive.org/
• Tech Shop: (Detroit) http://www.techshop.ws/ts_detroit.html
• Lancing Makers Network: (Lancing) https://www.lansingmakersnetwork.org/

An introduction to atmospheric water generators via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_water_generator

LocalOrg seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.

There's a Real Revolution Taking Place, and It's Already Making a Difference

November 17, 2016 (via The Corbett Report) - James Corbett of The Corbett Report lays out the dimensions of a very real revolution already taking place. It is built upon pragmatic, technical solutions that liberate us from centralized monopolize of power, industry, finance, and society.

These include solutions regarding the decentralization of manufacturing, energy, finance, and much more:

• Solutions: The Peer-to-Peer Economy
• Solutions: 3D Printing
• Anarchy in Action: Spontaneous Order
• Dear Government, Deliver Us From Freedom
• P2P Solutions: An Open Source Investigation
• Solutions: Freedom Cells
• Solutions: Agorism
• Solutions: Make Your Own Media  

Other articles, like this one from LocalOrg, relay a similar message, and together this quiet, "untelevised" revolution is already making a difference around the world - whether it is the organic food movement shifting the tides against big-ag, or the alternative media shifting the balance of power away from state-sponsored propaganda.

You do not need to wait for the next election to oppose a system you see as corrupt. There are things you can do in your everyday life to deny this system your time, money, attention, and money, and direct it all towards building the sort of world you truly want to live in. 

Read more at The Corbett Report here.  

Fighting the (Real) Deplorables

November 13, 2016 (LocalOrg) - Across America, protests have broken out. They are small, poorly organized, and poorly led. They lack any realistic goal, so clearly, lack any actual plan to achieve any sort of goal. And unfortunately, they have become violent, embodying the very sort of hate, intimidation, and victimization the protesters claim they are fighting against.

The truth is, as the protests currently exist, no matter how long they persist or how big they get, they will accomplish nothing positive, and instead, invite a wide variety of very serious negatives. 

All Americans, and those overseas looking in, must logically admit that neither Hillary Clinton nor now President-elect, Donald Trump, truly represented the American people. Neither were drawn from the people, neither have a record of service to the people, and both have been deeply entrenched in a corrupt system dominated absolutely by corporate-financier special interests. In many ways, both Clinton and Trump in fact constitute those special interests.

This reality means that it is not  "Clinton" or "Trump" that either side was voting for or against, but different aspects of the same corrupt system they find abhorrent and in desperate need of changing. It was not "Clinton" or "Trump" that people were voting for, but their opponents they were voting against. It was not the arguments each candidate made that convinced them, it was the arguments of candidates and commentary by the corporate-media that repelled them.

It is a singularly corrupt system, using smoke and mirrors to convince at least a part of society to support at least a part of its continued existence, under either "right" or "left" cover.

Hillary Clinton once infamously declared:

...you could put half of Trump�s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables...

But the truth is, it is not Trump supporters, and not Clinton supporters - none of the American people who are "deplorables."

It is the system that is deplorable. It is the corporate-financier special interests who are deplorable for monopolizing and dominating every aspect of the American people's lives for profit and power. It is the politicians who are deplorable for selling themselves to these interests while posing as public servants and representatives. It is the corporate media who helps both special interests and their pet politicians pander to the public, mislead them, confuse them, and most deplorable of all, divide them against one another.


Fighting the Deplorables 

Here is where most commentary trails off into a rhetorical rant, peddling political ideals that are just as meaningless as a solution as the rhetoric that has created the problem at hand. Instead, it is far more constructive to explain to you that while a small handful of elite have taken a majority stake in both America and the world for their own benefit and at the cost of everyone else, there are very specific actions you can take right now to take your own stake, and use that to introduce an element of balance to both national and international power.

At the heart of Washington there lies an engine of corporate-financier special interests. They are not simply men and women with immense amounts of money and power. They are men and women who control essential things required for civilization's continued existence, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, transportation, defense, technology, education, commerce, and monetary systems.

To take your own stake in the game, you must do so by creating alternatives to these vast monopolies.

Toe-to-Toe With the Deplorables 

Big-agriculture, big-retail, big-oil, big-retail, big-pharmaceutical corporations, and big-banks (and many more). Any corporation or institution that enjoys a commanding monopoly over the essential functions of modern human civilization falls into the category of "deplorables." They hold the levers of modern civilization within their hands, and they are the ones that have directed us along the course we currently find ourselves on. They, not one half of the population they have convinced to think differently than the other before pitting both halves against one another, are the problem.

Replacing them is the solution.

1. Big-Agriculture: Food is an obvious essential every living being on Earth requires to sustain themselves. The control over a people's food supply has been instrumental for defining the "haves" and the "have nots" throughout human history. It is the most essential element to safeguard in order to achieve supremacy over another, and it is the most essential element to undermine when dismantling the source of another's power.

Big-agriculture, including corporations like Bayer, Dow, BASF, DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, John Deere, Tyson, and many others, not to mention the big-retailers they are partnered with to move their products and services, not only monopolize the American food supply, but threaten food security globally. They have not only deeply infiltrated governments, but have exerted unwarranted and insidious influence across the media directly, and indirectly through "independent third parties" that perform lobbying services without disclosing their status as lobbyists.

Solutions: Fighting big-agriculture is easy, and it's already a fight that is well on its way toward victory.  Networks of organic farmers, farmers' markets, urban agriculture networks, together with the alternative media and organic advocates, have already begun changing the tide, raising public awareness about:

• The benefits of healthy, clean, organic food;
• The empowerment that comes with community agriculture;
• The economic benefits of more equally distributed agricultural entrepreneurship and; 
• The sociopolitical impact of taking a stake in our collective food security. 

And getting started is easy. There are entire networks that not only produce locally grown food for their communities, but have created infrastructure to teach absolute beginners how to get involved in agriculture, both rural and urban. Permaculture Voices hosts a variety of speakers sharing the work of their networks and is a good place to find one that suits you most. 

One particularly impressive urban farmer is Curtis Stone of Canada. He is living proof that local agriculture is not only a theoretical solution to shifting the balance of power in the people's favor, it is a practical solution tangibly making a change.

Something as simple as tearing up your lawn and planting a garden can be the pathway toward creating a sustainable and profitable business. At the same time, you are redirecting money locally your community would otherwise be channeling into big-ag by providing them with a superior alternative. It can be done, regardless of rules, regulations, and social pressures placed in your way, you simply need to be creative and determined enough to find the solutions - and likely, someone in the existing and ever-growing organic food movement has already faced and overcome such challenges. Seek them out and learn from them. There is no excuse.

If you have energy to walk around in the streets all night destroying your neighborhood, you have energy to get together the next day and plant a community garden or start your own independent, socially responsible and prosperous farming operation. Be the change you want to see in the world.

If you don't aspire to be a farmer, there are other things you can do:

• Support local farmers and farmers' markets; 
• Grow a fraction of your own food in a home garden, even 1% is better than 0%, 
• Be more conscious when you buy, not only to shift the sociopolitical and economic paradigm, but for your health and;
• Start a blog to advocate local, national, and international networks you see making a difference - the more voices out there, the harder it is for corporate-funded propaganda to drown them out.

Creating a larger and more powerful organic movement, distributed among communities, but collectively representing the same basic principles of healthy, affordable, local food, creates another point of leverage against existing monopolies - the weight of policy demands backed by a physical network of producers, farmers, alternative media networks, and loyal customers who don't just buy their food to eat, but buy it because they know it is better, and comes from their very own community.

It is a powerful point of leverage that is already putting demonstrable strain upon big-ag, forcing them to expose themselves, their methods, and true ambitions on public display, resort to ever increasingly desperate tactics, and expend vast amounts of resources to maintain what is becoming an unsustainable monopoly.

Big-ag is happy to ignore protesters waving signs. They cannot ignore growing segments of the population eating food produced outside their monopoly. They can either reform, or live in a world increasingly moving on into the future without them.
2. Big-Oil: Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, coal companies, and the corrupt despots of the Persian Gulf who have built evil empires upon their fields of crude, blacken our skies and our lungs with their toxic fuels. Our power plants and cars have burned these toxic fuels for decades. While alternatives exist, and indeed, some nations - like Iceland - have moved beyond petrochemicals and coal, big-oil and energy monopolies have used their power and influence to perpetuate their monopolies and the centralization of energy production at the detriment of human civilization.


Whether or not you believe such fuels are contributing to climate change is irrelevant. You need only stand on a city street corner for 5 minutes during rush hour to feel your health being destroyed, or look at the wars and compromising political partnerships and rivalries our governments have become entangled in to realize an alternative is necessary.

Solutions: Localizing energy production is not as easy as growing your own food - which is in itself probably not as easy as some might think. But it is also not impossible. Energy cooperatives exist all over the world already, ranging from wind and solar power to biogas production.

In Farmers Weekly's article, "Farm Power: Community energy is the future," explains:

Involving local communities in renewable energy schemes can help farmers get projects off the ground and deliver benefits well beyond the farm gate. 

Community energy schemes are still in their infancy in the UK compared with elsewhere in Europe, but momentum is clearly building. 

More than 5,000 community groups have undertaken energy initiatives in the last five years and the publication of the UK�s first Community Energy Strategy (CES) last year promised a �step change� for the sector and a significant expansion over the next three years.

The article goes on to detail just how such cooperatives work.

Additionally, there are companies like US-based Solar City that produces and installs solar panels on household rooftops, Tesla that produces electric cars and battery banks called Powerwalls for storing energy at home. These high profile companies have inspired many others across the country and around the world to begin moving solar power deeper into mainstream power production.

While in some cases, solar power is still a huge investment compared to living on the grid, prices are dropping toward a future where that isn't the case. Many already find solar power to be a better solution than drawing from centralized power grids, and in places where grids don't reach, solar already dominates power production.

Solar power and other community or individually owned and operated power grids decentralizes another of human civilization's essential building blocks. The people themselves possessing complete control over this particular block, further lends them leverage against monopolies that for decades have used their control over energy to impose their will upon the fate of entire nations.

There is a learning curve to overcome when getting into alternative energy but there are many people already out there doing it both for profit and to make a difference. Just as there are people among the organic movement willing to share their knowledge with those willing to seek them out and learn, so too are there people in the alternative energy community. Seek them out, and learn.

3. Big-Retail: Our food, our manufactured goods, our technology, and much more often comes from big retailers. In the US it is WalMart and Target. In Europe and Asia it includes BigC, Tesco, Carrefour, and other retailing monopolies. When these mega-stores open up, people trade in local socioeconomic independence for cheap junk consolidated for convenience in a single location.

But what seems like a blessing at first, becomes a curse over time. Pretty soon, towns dominated by these big-retailers find themselves completely at the mercy of them and a handful of "chain" restaurants and specialty stores. Local development is nonexistent, because the summation of wealth is often created by working for these stores, and paid to them - much like exploitative and abusive "company stores" during the Industrial Revolution.

Solutions: However, manufacturing can be brought back to our communities through advances in manufacturing technology and innovative institutions often called "makerspaces" or "hackerspaces."

Computer controlled manufacturing such as 3D printing, laser cutters and computer-controlled routers have become small and cheap enough for individuals to use in their homes, but more often than not, they are found in makerspaces where even absolute beginners can get help in designing and manufacturing their ideas. The technology is not well suited for mass production, but it doesn't need to. It can deliver short-runs of items, or create other manufacturing systems that can be used for larger scales of production (molds, vacuum forming, etc).

China, famous for being the "factory of the world," already has seen the advancement of manufacturing technology chip away at its domination over mass production. Companies that once used Chinese factories to produce items can now afford their own machines which not only cuts out shipping costs, but gives them greater control over quality and customization.

Makerspaces are popping up all over the world. In North America and Europe they are virtually everywhere. Search online for the one nearest you. The people there are friendly and eager to expand their already growing community and are hungry for challenges related to the practical application of the tools, talent, and machinery they have in their spaces.

For both ordinary people and aspiring entrepreneurs, makerspaces often serve as the starting line for entire companies and new innovations. Waiting for mega-corporations like Apple, IBM, Google, and others to lead us along is no longer necessary. When you want something, instead of paying into the local "company store," why not learn a new skill, make it, and perhaps even start a small business making more for your friends, family, neighbors - and with crowd sourcing like Kickstarter, to the rest of the world?

We have gone into great detail specifically on decentralizing big-retail, including profiling some of the progress that was already made as early as 2012. Since then, so much more progress has been made, and the community is simply waiting for the rest of society to end their dependence on consumerism, and try their hand at being producers, designers, makers, and doers.

And while there is an upper limit to what you can get at a big-retail store today, there is no upper limit to what can be made locally leveraging modern computer controlled manufacturing. Opensource car designs are being built in America in "microfactories" by a company called Local Motors and represents a proof-of-concept in decentralizing something as formidable and centralized as the auto industry.

4. Big-Pharmaceuticals: Like big-ag, big-pharma is undoubtedly a deplorable. Corporations like GlaxoKlineSmith (GSK), Bayer, Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and many, many more, have been not only accused, but convicted in courts of law around the globe for some of the largest cases of healthcare fraud and abuse in human history. Yet they are still charged by governments around the world with the research, development, production, and distribution of medications human beings rely on to live.

What's worse is that much of the "research and development" big-pharma is engaged in, is late-stage preparations to bring drugs to market - drugs that have been developed through public funding for years, sometimes even decades. These special interests have infiltrated regulatory and government bodies so deeply, they are able to acquire, then criminally exploit the results of publicly funded research for immense profits.

Worse still, many of the products produced and distributed by big-pharma are either ineffective, or outright dangerous, many times being subscribed for symptoms and uses they were not even approved for.

Solutions; While harder than both food production and energy independence, decentralizing human healthcare is still not impossible.

Community labs (a list of labs around the world) built around the concept of do-it-yourself biology (DIYbio) are also spreading around the world. Makerspaces - with their special mixture of talent and technology - are able to quickly produce prototypes and opensource versions of expensive proprietary hospital and lab equipment otherwise inaccessible to community healthcare infrastructure. If enough people interested in healthcare and biology assemble at a particular makerspace, a lab is usually established.

In the US, there already is a program where makerspaces are actually being established within hospitals, allowing nurses, technicians, and doctors to prototype and manufacture solutions to problems they encounter during their work. This concept is beginning to spread around the world to other hospitals where makerspace mainstays like 3D printing are being used for everything from creating physical models of patients' organs to assist in the planning stages for difficult surgeries, to creating customized hooks, fasteners, and attachments for existing equipment that are expensive or impossible to replace otherwise.

Makerspaces are also increasingly collaborating with university labs, hospitals, and other healthcare providers and institutions. This tangible progress in human healthcare helps open up the technology used to administer and advance it, lowering the overall costs in providing it to patients - a much more sustainable solution than subsidies alone.

The collective knowledge communities acquire during these collaborations helps decentralize healthcare.

In terms of pharmaceuticals, there are even groups working on opensource bioreactors (basically just glass containers with computer controlled temperature, stirring, and mixing functions) and computer software to make brewing pharmaceuticals as cheap and as easy as a cooking recipe. While this exists more on the cutting edge of healthcare decentralization, it proves that it is possible, and the more people that get involved, the quicker it will go from cutting edge to commonplace.

If you have an interest in medicine, biology, or human health, simply use your Internet search engine of choice and find a group active near you.

5. Big-Banks: Currency is the lifeblood of commerce. Regardless of your economic system of choice, money is necessary to make it function. Control over currency and funding grants institutions and special interests immense power over commerce, and thus virtually every aspect of human civilization. Decentralizing this power introduces balance and reduces the scale of abuse one can exercise through any given monetary system.

Alternatives are difficult to establish, but not impossible. And while current alternatives are not perfect, if one's interest is in monetary policy and monetary systems, then there is a growing community they can join to improve these alternatives.

Solutions: Cryptocurrencies and crowd funding are two such innovations that are giving people alternatives to current monetary systems as well as the raising of funds for projects. Bitcoin is just one of several cryptocurrencies and there are a growing number of crowdfunding platforms including Kickstarterand Patreon.

Cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding help oil this system of alternatives growing from increasingly high-tech, decentralized solutions to the corrupt monopolies at the source of our sociopolitical and economic troubles.

It should be noted that many alternative media sites, not only political, but covering all subjects, from science and technology, to entertainment and education - increasingly rely on sites like Patreon to channel funding from their viewers and expand their work in a sustainable and responsive way to what their audiences want. This stands in stark contrast to the sponsored media currently dominating Western audiences' attention, presenting them messages and perspectives that suit the corporate-financier interests funding them, not the people consuming their content.

Displace the Deplorables 

These are just 5 areas and but a handful of solutions among many where people are already working hard, all over the world, to build the sort of world they want to live in - a world in contrast to the injustice of centralized power and profits we currently live in. The immense problems we face today were not created by one person overnight, nor will they be solved by one person overnight. It will take many people, focusing in many different areas, patiently over time to collectively move the vector sum of human efforts toward something more equitable, just, and beneficial to us all.

Of these 5 areas, you need not cover them all. If you committed yourself to just one of them, and worked incrementally over the next year to achieve even the scarcest of results, you will be further ahead than if you did nothing at all. Efforts, no matter how small, add up over time. When many people are working in parallel, these small incremental steps add up even more.

The only sure way to fail and effect no change at all is to resign yourself to the system currently at hand. Doing nothing, or worse yet, going out into the streets to create chaos, adds up over time as either nothing, or the destruction of what little you already have.

Just as when we were children seeking greater independence, we were unable to obtain it by simply shouting, stomping our feet, and throwing a tantrum. We were required to grow up, acquire skills, apply them effectively, and create a life of our own, in our own way, to suit us rather than have a life imposed upon us by those we depended on. Likewise, as a society, we need to grow up, take an actual stake in this world of ours for ourselves.

By controlling our food, water, energy, local manufacturing, monetary policy, and even our own healthcare, we invest in and derive from these efforts to our own, direct benefit.

We must become the change we want to see in the world, not stomp our feet until someone delivers it to us. It is not "a way" to solve our problems. It is the only way problems can ever be solved. Do not join the protests, do not react to them. There is far too much work to be done to be distracted by them. Offer those who ask you about the protests to join you in a real revolution, one in which we set off to build the world we seek to live in with our own two hands rather than "demand" with our mouths.

LocalOrg seeks to explore local solutions to global problems by empowering people locally with education and technology to not only survive, but to thrive.