Power: Building it without taking it. A great essay.

http://www.narconews.com/Issue35/article1121.html

(snip)

Revolutionaries of the past would tell us that a guerrilla force entering a capital city with 200,000 supporters would be in a prime position to spark off an insurrection, occupy parliament, and take power. But the Zapatistas sought none of this. Unarmed, standing on a ramshackle wooden stage with their backs towards the Congress building, they spoke to the crowd in calm, poetic voices: “We are not those who aspire to make themselves powerful and then impose the way and the word. We will never be them… We are not those who wait, naively, for justice to come from above, when it only comes from below…liberty which can only be achieved with everyone…democracy which supports all of us and is fought for all the time….”

(snip)

Yet the world must be changed. This we know and desire more and more urgently as we witness the destruction and despair brought by capitalism engulfing every corner of our lives. We are in desperate need of another politics. But it is no longer the politics of the clenched fist, the punch of power. Ours is the politics of interlaced fingers, a politics that develops when the “I” and the “you” come together as “we,” when people clasp their hands, warm palms touching, fingers woven together, and build a rebellion that deeply interconnects us, a rebellion of relationships which embraces differences, a rebellion that desires to share rather than to take power.

(snip)

“Power to,” however, is power that affects something in our own lives, close to us, within reach. It is not power that demands others do things for us, but power which enables our own doing. It is empowerment, power that flows without restriction, builds relationships, opens up spaces for possibility, enables others to develop their own “power to.” It is the power to create that radiates from direct democracy and direct action, the productive power that flows between the groups and individuals that make up the network of movements of movements.

(end)

I find the message refreshing and real.

I am not being sarcastic. Talk to me.

If you want to know what to do, if you want to know how to do it,
read it.