Communitarian Activism
Thoughts and visions, theory, analysis, and action
"Ready for anything!" - - Official Communitarian Activist gear
A note on Communitarian Activism
I was initially proud to live in and be part of what was then the largest concentrated radical activist community in the U.S. which was Humboldt County during the 1980's through to the first decade of the new millennium. We were going to change the world by stopping corporate raiding of natural resources, old growth trees in Humboldt County's case. But it didn't take long for me to discover there was a big problem with Humboldt County activism, it became a classic example of collective pathological narcissism in political form: "Enviros" couldn't be bothered with ecological facts as they had only One Agenda, destroy the corporate timber companies, one in particular, Pacific Lumber Co. Most of the environmental activist community were young people and most came from big cities to fight against the corporate enemy. I was older and one of the few activist who had actual homesteading experience which was where I learned first hand the environmental truth that unregulated homestead development was actually doing far worse damage to Humboldt eco-systems, especially the vital salmonid spawning grounds, than any eco-destruction the horrible corporate timber company was doing.
Not able to keep my mouth shut I told the environmental community they were after the wrong people. And not surprisingly, I found myself persona non-grata with Humboldt County environmental activists. A long story, 20 years of running counter to local activist anti-corporate agenda, until an EPA study of the sedimentation sources of the South Fork of the Eel River confirmed what I had been saying all along. After that, the enviro community gradually fell apart except for those environmentalists who had become professionals making a living off of litigation of corporate timber companies. Then came the Trump phenomena and rightwing activists supporting him which more or less pushed Leftist environmental activism aside, in Humboldt County and across the nation except for periodic Native American protests. But the truth remains, radically wrong activists corrupted the environmental movement by substituting Leftist ideology in place of ecology and by not recognizing their own ecological blindness because of collective narcissism. Radically wrong activists froze the counterculture revolution at the protest level instead of going beyond protest to development truly workable cooperative community alternatives to the corporate capitalist system.
A note on Communitarian Socialism:
It's different
While the Conservative Right always tries to scare citizens away from socialist government ideas the reality of modern societies pushes back and demands an equable sharing of national resources under the ownership of all U.S. citizens, not the ownership of a wealthy few. Government services deemed vital to community functioning also must not be under the control of a wealthy few. It's a simple idea: society is composed of citizens who govern themselves democratically, not by plutocrats using their wealth to create industries that channel profits back to the Super Rich. Unlike most socialist programs, Communitarian Socialism with its two-tiered economic system, one democratically socialized for services and products deemed vital to community and individual well-being, and one for non-essentials that makes room for a commercial economy where individual incentive and creative innovation are allowed freedom of expression.
Communitarian Activism
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