Free Mondays and Escalating Our Resistance to Focus on IMMEDIATE Change
Yesterday was the first Free Monday, and we need to understand the significance and to go forward.
We had the first Free Monday yesterday on Labor Day, a day when everyone has off anyway. And, as far as I know, I was the only one participating.
That’s fine. Greta Thunburg spent many days protesting alone in front of the Swedish Parliament. These things can take time to grow.
What is Free Mondays? It’s the start of REAL resistance by disobeying the rules that empower and sustain our opponents. By defying the people and systems that control our lives. This goes beyond marches. This goes to the heart of oppression. This goes to removing the power of elites to control us, and to making our own decisions about what we do and when.
Free Mondays says — with actual action — that We The People decide. We are deciding what a workweek is, and what we will do with our days. We are declaring Mondays to be OURS, not theirs.
Of course, people have been gaslit for a long time to believe they are powerless. We are taught that resistance is futile, and that we have to wait for our “leaders” to save us. We are encouraged to simply give up. Because of all this, most people — if they hear about it — will believe that Free Mondays is a joke. They can be snarky and dismissive.
I don’t care. Change is not for them. They will be laggards, not catalysts for a better world.
We need to rally the people who are ready for change, who can balance action with reasonable caution, but don’t shirk and don’t look away. And we need those who aren’t yet ready to act to support this effort,to speak out in support and to keep a spotlight on the evil of the fascist regime. WE must not ASK for change — we must TAKE it.
What Happens Next?
We need people to participate in Free Mondays, to make these actions visible.
The core of Free Mondays is spending some time in front of your home — NOT at work — with a sign describing the tactic of staying home to begin reclaiming OUR time and lives. You will greet neighbors and hand out flyers. Play music. Read a book. Play board games. Do whatever you enjoy. Free Mondays is leisure time, and a celebration. It is also social time, a time to strengthen community ties.
We understand that maybe you can’t do this. The difficulty IS the point. But some of us can take Mondays off (at least some Mondays) as personal days or sick days or floating holidays. In some work places, you might just be able to take the day off without much objection — as long as it’s unpaid.
And then there are self-employed people and gig workers. They may have more flexible schedules and can take Mondays off more easily. Finally, some people don’t work: they are retired or students or unemployed. These people can setup celebrations of support in front of their homes as well.
Why? In addition to some of us showing guts, we are starting to create a new norm. We are setting up the idea that working Mondays is optional, a choice the people make. We are taking the first step towards ACTUAL people power. This is well beyond lobbying.
Ideally, this grows the way Occupy grew, where we see this happening everywhere, and it’s impossible to ignore and it makes the authorities very, very nervous. But unlike Occupy, we are in front of our own homes, not at huge gatherings where we can be beaten and arrested by police pretending to restore public order.
Can we grow this movement? Can YOU help grow this movement?
Start by downloading the flyer you can hand out at Free Mondays in front of YOUR home. And tell others about this.
Upcoming: The Unthinkable
Seizing control of the workweek seems unthinkable — until we do it. If we get behind this effort, if we DO it, it will be a turning point for our society and our civilization. And, even as we continue Free Mondays, we can add more “unthinkable” actions — overwhelming the idle, wealthy and “powerful” decision-makers.
The details of execution for future actions will need to be worked out, and we may even change course while engaging in new tactics. But we have many options, each advancing our autonomy and our cause.
What they all have in common is they aren’t mere reactions to specific abuses by the old dying order. These actions are seizing the initiative, creating new realities and situations and putting We The People ever further beyond control by elites.
Some possibilities include:
- Ending debt with a declared Jubilee Year.
- Food gardening everywhere — including rooftops and lawns — to increase our independence and our ties with neighbors, by sharing gardening activity and food.
- Actively supporting neighbors with regular services to provide for those needing food, medicine or other assistance. People helping people as a new norm, not a special project.
- Some kind of targeted tax resistance, to be followed by a wider tax resistance.
- Free Fridays, so that OUR time exceeds our servitude to the “bosses.”
Our secret power — and it must stop being a secret! — is that We The People have ALL the power because we do all the work and pay most of the taxes. The elites depend on us and when we remove our active cooperation — and encourage their armed enforcers, who are our friends and relative and ALSO victims of elites to join us — we can shut down their failed “civilization” and setup one that serves human needs.
We can free ourselves completely. Those of us who are waking up will settle for nothing less.
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NOTE: If you are considering holding your own Free Monday(s), I want you to know how mine went. It was enjoyable and fun and — I believe — successful. It’s a curious sight, seeing someone on the stoop of his home, reading a book, playing music and displaying a sign urging people to stay home Mondays.
I had many pleasant conversations. And I handed out flyers which people were clearly reading with interest and they continued down the street.
I would like to add things like balloons and board games and chalk to draw on the sidewalks. I want MORE of a community activity and celebration. But start simply, get the hang of it and slowly build it up. Unless you are ambitious and ready to go all out from the start! This does not need to go on all day. Even an hour or two would be excellent, especially of you do it for more than one Monday.
Please post photos and video. of your Free Mondays events with the hashtag #FreeMondays.
