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, April 8, 2016

Collective letter: some possible ideas for going forward

Click here to access article by the ROAR Collective for ROAR.

I occasionally post articles that I condemn. This is one of them. 

Notice throughout the piece that it is solely interested in reforming capitalist rule of societies in order to make the lives of the vast majority of non-capitalists better. This is a major detour from what the original orientation of ROAR (Reflections on a Revolution) before it became co-opted by a Dutch equity fund called Democracy & Media Foundation. It is a detour that leads not to revolution but to reformism. Gone are any articles that relate to revolution and in their places we see mostly liberal pieces complaining about actual functioning capitalism. This article (signed by a number of "left" activists) illustrates once again what happens when a revolutionary organization is taken over by a capitalist organization. It also furnishes more evidence justifying my original concern about this reorganization that I expressed back in February.