An estimated Twenty-seven ships to set sail for Gaza from multiple ports to break Israel’s siege on the enclave.
This will be activist Greta Thunberg’s second mission, having been taken captive by Israel earlier this year when her ship and fellow crew members were sprayed with illicit chemicals and boarded unlawfully in international waters. The Handala and her crew also suffered a similar fate earlier this summer.
Dozens of people gathered on Saturday at the port of Barcelona where a flotilla will set sail for Gaza on Sunday. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg is hoping to break… the naval blockade imposed by Israel along the coast of the Gaza Strip since 2007… (AP video and production by Hernan Munoz)
Additional information:
The Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza: Everything you need to know
Largest flotilla for Gaza hopes to pressure Israel to end blockade
While you make some good points, have you heard the expression ”talk is cheap”? There’s no lack of talk.
There certainly is a lack of talk. The bulk of Trump supporters only get ‘news’ from a curated rightwing media source. They do not know about the situation in Gaza or the U.S. support for it. They do not know that Trump is threatening Canada’s sovereignty. They are not all inherently evil for supporting the right wing, they are ignorant of reality. Communication and education is key. And we can’t beat the billionaires unless we find a way to allow truthful communication to actually happen.
The billionaires are probably pretty content with people trying to figure out ”truthful communication” while the people who stormed the Capitol keep winning.
Of course actions speak louder than words, but very few people know how to act in the interest of the common good effectively - I’d argue even fewer know how to share their methods and drive, while also being capable of reaching and inspiring others to find their own answers.
We need to have conversations about effective action organically, many times over, instead of being led like the donkey in the carrot and stick metaphor when it comes to facing and solving the problems we face as a society, species, and world.
I strongly disagree.
In a lot of ”very complex” issues, the answers are really simple, and we all know fully well how to solve them.
This is particularly true of the large existential problems we are facing. With climate change, for instance, we have known the solution for a long time: stop burning fossil fuels.
What to do about it has been clear, straightforward and simple all along, but not easy – it would have taken sacrifice to achieve it. We’d have to live more simply, do away with consumerism and have to put things on hold while we find sustainable ways to do them. And we probably would have had to take enormous risks to our own lives, to stop those that wouldn’t aggressively cut down on fossil fuels voluntarily. Without any guarantees of success.
Even transitioning to a solar punk utopia would have been hard, including for those on board from the start.
All while the alternative to the solution is to to have long warm showers at will, enough cheap food that we can get really fat and still throw half of it away, intercontinental air travel that costs less than a bus pass, and so on.
It’s not because we have talked too little or that the discourse hasn’t been good enough that we can’t seem to solve it – our most brilliant minds have talked endlessly for a generation about climate change and how to address it. It’s simply because quitting our fossil fuels addiction is a bitter fucking pill to swallow. And pointless if you do it alone.
The same goes for the ”slow” slide into fascism all over the West, a.k.a. the steady concentration of wealth in the hands of dumber and dumber financial elites. (Not that it’s a separate issue from climate change.)
If you want to beat it, whether peacefully or not, you eventually have to accept that your next meal won’t be guaranteed and that, you might get beaten, arrested or even killed – hungry, tired and cold.
As our American friends have showed us, on this matter, the stakes of disruptive protests are not very appealing – it’s better to continue going to the office, get that paycheck that keeps the lights on, holds off the bank from taking your home and lets the fridge stay full, even if that means paying taxes to and serving those you protest in the weekends and in social media posts.
Tackling these issues does not require exceptional individuals, but a lot of ordinary ones working together, accepting that it’s probably gonna suck really bad. Even so, there is already an abundance of extraordinary people out there, notably Greta Thunberg (of this thread fame).
And yes, it does also take talk to bring those people together, but that talk won’t get you around the hard parts.
First - I must thank you for responding, and I do think we agree a bit more than you think, and I respect your viewpoint.
Collective action is needed to face, address, and solve our problems - especially climate change. It needs to manifest imminently. The solutions to our problems are usually simple, as you suggest, but translating those solutions into physical reality requires collaboration and coherence. We simply aren’t meaningfully collaborating in ways that change our collective trajectory, nor are we coherent.
Many believe voting is enough, many argue to me that organizing around established political parties will eventually change them for the better (translating to real change at some point), and many believe that change or progressive policy isn’t popular enough to merit consideration. These viewpoints are common in political spaces, and they show me that people don’t understand the dire urgency of our collective situation - even if they are politically active. This isn’t just about the rise of fascism and individuals like Trump - it’s about our fresh water, it’s about our agriculture and ability to grow food and eat, it’s about whether or not we are able to be comfortable broadly (or even live at all on an increasingly inhospitable planet).
I believe that simply demanding change or simply voting every few years, in the absence of a larger movement, isn’t enough. Neither is online discourse enough, nor is local action and collaboration enough.
Every action and person plays a role, but I feel it is critical for more people to understand who currently wields the power to shape our societies, and the radical change that is needed to take back our collective power. One expert or leader isn’t going to save us. Even a wave of new, progressive leaders or experts rising to prominence won’t be able to save us. Most people think they can still ignore the elephant in the room - out of control capitalism and broken economies - that are 100% beyond reform. We need a clean slate. People are about a half of a century or so too late to seriously advocate for reform, and many don’t realize this simple fact - myself included from time to time.
As you loosely suggest, collective action requires us to face uncomfortable truths, and I feel it is important for others to understand that our comfort has been weaponized against us, so the few can profit and lord over us.
Our societies have been shaped around unhealthy and unsustainable systems to enable our comfort; but where we mostly differ is my belief that there are already many solutions all around us, just waiting to be watered and allowed to grow to enable our comfort. The switch just needs flipped, but first people need to realize the switch is even there. And I believe it does take some level of discourse to come to those understandings, despite the many decades that we’ve already had to discuss these issues. I’m not saying we need to wait for anything, but more productive discourse and greater collaboration will help make these solutions more obvious and clear for the majority of people, myself included.
I don’t think many billions need to die for change to manifest, I don’t feel like change overshadowed by violence (organized or otherwise) is desirable to wish for or is necessary, and I don’t think just talking about what options we have is enough.
There has to be a way forward that doesn’t result in total chaos and destruction, and there has to be a way forward beyond accepting that only capitalism and fossil fuels can grant us comfort. It is important to realize that fossil fuel use is an addiction, but I don’t believe the comfort we are used to is unsustainable if we put our heads and hands together.
Maybe people do need to become uncomfortable to also come to some of the realizations we generally have, but I don’t want to believe that is necessary.