The Reverse Shrug – Withdrawing the vital support needed by dictatorial government, large corporations, and Wall Street.

Republicans and other right-wingers have recently been in the business of accusing liberals and left-wingers of fomenting class warfare. Those on the left should stop attempting to deny this. They should openly acknowledge that class warfare is indeed the reality, accept that reality, and act accordingly. The following is an outline of a proposal for “acting accordingly.”

The original point of labor unions was to be able to withhold a vital input from the economic system, namely, labor. They employed this leverage to gain benefits. With the destruction of unions and with mass unemployment, labor no longer has any leverage. Since “labor” is made up of ordinary folks, i.e., the lower and middle classes, this means that ordinary folks have no leverage: they must support themselves somehow, and the means for doing this lies in the hands of the enemy. The only way that labor can regain leverage is to own and operate the businesses and enterprises that produce real wealth (food, shelter, clothing, energy, and so on) and that provide services. This does two things: it provides labor with a means for supporting itself without having to sell itself to the enemy, and labor can then purchase products and services from its own organizations, bypassing the enterprises owned and run by the enemy. Thus, ordinary folks can now deny the enemy a critical input – labor – and refuse to buy its product as well. This is a new Atlas doing the shrugging: now Atlas is ordinary folks.

The enemy will respond, obviously. There are several ways that it can respond.

Since the enemy controls the banking industry, it can withhold the capital required by worker cooperatives to invest in and run their businesses. Thus there must also be worker-owned banks.

Since even worker-owned banks can be shackled, by the enemy's limiting the amount of official currency in circulation, there will be a need for an alternative currency, so that the amount of money in circulation can be controlled by the people, not by the enemy's banks. The enemy will attempt to make this alternative currency illegal, so there will be no alternative money actually printed or minted. All transactions will be represented by electronic bookkeeping entries.

Once the “shrug” begins to have its effect, the enemy will attempt to use force to crush the worker-cooperatives, worker-owned banks, and so on. Ordinary folks need to be well-armed. During the Depression, when banks attempted to foreclose on farms, the local farmers showed up in defense of their fellow farmers, armed, to prevent these “transactions” from taking place. In many cases, they were successful. Ordinary folks need to be aware of this model and be prepared to replicate it.

A significant potential obstacle is that worker-owned cooperatives will be dependent upon enemy-owned suppliers for inputs of raw materials. And those suppliers may refuse to supply the cooperatives. It will be important that many cooperatives be established more or less at the same time, so that one cooperative can be supplied by another cooperative. (There may be less of a problem here than I am suggesting, since the enemy is, at bottom, greedy. He/she will sell his/her stuff to anyone, as long as there's a profit, even if only in the short term.)

Another Epiphany

Blogs are supposed to facilitate conversations among people. In mine, I talk to myself. From an efficiency perspective, this is ridiculous. Clearly I can talk to myself without wasting computing, storage, and energy resources. Not to mention time.

I am done wasting those resources. From now on I will talk to myself more efficiently.

Bye, Toadman.

Okay, bye Toadman.

GoGreenTriad

goGreenTriad, the "green" online service of the Greensboro News & Record, has (among other things) information related to sustainable agriculture and gardening. It is worth checking on a periodic basis. Here's the link: http://www.gogreentriad.com/

Agriculture-related Audio

Here are some audio segments related to sustainable agriculture that you might want to check out: http://www.mygreenearthfoundation.com/greenblog/?p=70

Free Program on Growing Food Locally

GROWING IN COMMUNITY
Gardening to Nourish Self and Neighbor
Saturday 2/28/09
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

12:30 - 1:45 Opening Address: "Why Garden/ Why Now?"

Bryan Building, Room 128
Key Note: Mr. Michael Schut, Environmental Program Manager, Seattle Tilth, Economic and Environmental Affairs Officer, Episcopal Church, USA, and author of Food and Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread

1:45-2:00 Refreshments Break

2:00-3:15 "Making Your Garden Grow: A Step by Step Overview”

Bryan Building, Room 128
Presenter: Dr. Charlie Headington, Lecturer, UNCG Department of Religious Studies, Permaculture Designer and Head of Greensboro Montessori Gardening Program

3:30--4:45 Break Out Round Table Discussions and Brainstorming

"Starting an Edible School Yard"
“Starting a Neighborhood Community Garden”
"Starting a Faith Community Garden"
"Growing Your Own Food at Home"
"Growing Food at Your University"
"Knowing Your Farmers and Understanding Their Needs"

Open and free to the public


Sponsored by the Warren Ashby Dialogue Program, College of Arts and Sciences, UNCG,

For more information, contact John R. Sopper, Grogan College Program, UNCG 334-5898, jrsopper@uncg.edu

Community Gardening in Greensboro

There is a growing interest in establishing community gardens in Greensboro. The idea is to share public and private resources to support local community vegetable gardens, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and industrial farming. The vegetables produced should be fresher, more nutritious, and safer. Done right, community gardening can improve the quality of soils rather than depleting them.

For those interested in learning more, or getting involved, contact Karen Neill at the Guilford Center, N.C. Cooperative Extension, 375-5876, or Julie Lapham, at 379-1000. You can also check out the article entitled "Civic aims, food costs spur interest in community gardens" at http://www.gogreentriad.com/.

Useful Vegetable Gardening Books

Now that we can add peanut butter to the list of dangerous products distributed by "conventional" agriculture in this country, you might once again be considering "growing your own." I have found the following to be useful in my adventures in vegetable gardening:

--Mel Bartholomew, Square Foot Gardening (Rodale Press, 1981). There are newer versions of this book (for example, All New Square Foot Gardening), and I assume that these are at least as good as the original.
--Bradley and Ellis, ed., Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (Rodale Press, 1992). This is out of print but used copies can be found.
--Bob Thomson, The New Victory Garden (WGBH Educational Foundation, 1987). This is out of print but used copies can be found.
--E.L.D. Seymour, ed., The Wise Garden Encyclopedia (Wise, 1951). This comes in several more recent editions, but -- to my knowledge -- all are out of print. Used copies can be found.

When it is time (and it is!) to get serious about ordering your seeds, you might want to consider purchasing non-hybrid seeds, so that you have the "seed saving" option available to you. My source of old-time, non-hybrid seeds is Heirloom Seeds, located in Pennsylvania. The Heirloom Seeds website is: http://www.heirloomseeds.com/.

I.O.U.S.A.

If you haven't seen it, the 30 minute version of I.O.U.S.A. is available on the web, and it can also be downloaded. This, along with the Crash Course referenced in a prior post ("The End of Nonsense"), is part of your essential education. Please note that, as seems all too common lately, most of your elected officials (Ron Paul excepted) are worse than useless--they are patently dangerous. Here's the link to the movie: http://www.iousathemovie.com/.