This essay is free to everyone. I have tried to give voice to a deep unspoken desire that is widely shared. Please repost this on social media and everywhere. A change is coming, and you and I will bring it to fruition.
Twenty million people or more, people living in the United States who may have no official papers, are people. We welcome them and will protect them, and treat them with the dignity and respect every human being deserves.
Corporations are not people. They are tools of abuse and exploitation. They deserve no respect and we will be withdrawing our participation from them, both as workers and consumers.
People require food, clothing, shelter and medicine to live. Materially, we require little else. Unlike leaders and authorities, we ordinary people produce everything, the necessary and the frivolous. Every bit of it has a cost, in both our time and in damage to our Earth. So, going forward, we will respect the miracle of life and consciousness by not throwing it away producing useless junk in factories and cubicles.
Instead, we will only produce what’s needed, and freely distribute it to people everywhere so we can all live peacefully together in the sane, caring civilization we demand and require.
We will produce nothing extra, and certainly produce nothing for “profit” at the behest of undeserving elites, whether they are plutocrats, authoritarian parties, or dictators.
This end of unneeded labor will empower people everywhere to finally be free in a real sense: where we go and what we do will be decided by each of us, not by those who believe they are our masters.
We declare today that we choose to be in charge of ourselves.
Instead of throwing away decades of our lives in senseless servitude, we will work only a small amount — voluntarily — producing what our bodies require. Our time is ours.
Much has been made of the idea that we need work, need structure, and that people enjoy work and find meaning in it. We identify with job titles and would feel lost without our routines. People can be confused and depressed in retirement.
These are invented problems. This confusion and moodiness is taught to us, just as we were taught to crave an endless supply of consumer goods. Just as we are taught to hate and fear the imaginary “other.” It is true that we must and will learn to live as free people. This is not a problem. This is the greatest opportunity a person could ever receive.
We will create that opportunity and we shall wholly embrace it.
The United States, a country that eloquently espoused great ideas and great values that it failed to deliver, is now on a rampage of hatred and destruction and cruelty. More accurately, the fools who have seized power of the government are on this rampage.
We are not a part of that. And because we do all of the work, we ourselves can decide how to proceed. Part of our plan is to hold a general strike — to grind everything to a halt. Our systems and leaders and, ultimately, the values of our current civilization are a colossal failure and a complete catastrophe.
Organizers of the planned strike want to reform existing systems and pressure current leaders to behave better. We deeply respect the organizers and will work with them. We will strike.
But our group, The Saners, believe that the current system is beyond reform and must be replaced completely by the freedom and caring we espouse. Our lives and our dignity are non-negotiable.
We will achieve our aims using nonviolent noncooperation. The old order cannot continue to exploit people who refuse to cooperate. Nor can it control us using police and other enforcers. We will speak with and embrace the enforcers who are, after all, our spouses and children, siblings, friends and other loved ones. In the end, they will support and not attack us.
Our labor and our ability to withhold that labor is a great power. But our greatest power is our imagination, and in particular our power to imagine a better way to live and to then embody it. Our resolve is unstoppable.
We will change the world. We will protect the wellbeing and dignity of all people everywhere, and we will heal and protect the biosphere of our planet. We will work and play together and live lives of meaning.
This is our mission. We have begun. This ends only with victory.
Visit and sign a strike card at https://generalstrikeus.com/. Join The Saners at https://wearesaners.org/
