Amped Status's List: Activism

"Bill Gates's so-called philanthropy of ‘pouring money into Africa to feed the poor’ is not what it seems. Gates is working with Monsanto/Bayer and other corporations to push old paradigm Green Revolution agriculture onto the continent. That means GMOs, chemical inputs and patents— all of which enslave farmers and prevent them from stewarding eco-systems in ways that are essential to our survival. Gates is a colonialist. Not OK. #VandanaShiva explains #onessvstheonepercent"

"As the US election looms, the gun-toting III% Security Force stands ready for an anti-Democrat uprising. The group has been accused of neo-Nazism, but one of its leaders tells RT they merely protect the will of the people.

“There is a coup taking place right now, there’s a collective effort to overthrow our way of life as we know it – people are starting to realize it’s not a conspiracy theory.

“If we don’t come together as one, we’ll be living in a post-American world by 2021.”

That’s the view of Chris Hill, commanding officer of the III% Security Force’s Georgia branch. The Three Percenters are a constitutional militia with chapters across the US, their name originating from claims that only three percent of colonists took up arms against Britain in the American revolution.

According to them, over the last few months membership has rocketed by 150 percent, with 50 to 100 applicants per day – spurred on by developments like Minneapolis City’s pledge to dismantle their police department and Joe Biden’s promise to stand up for Muslim communities if he enters the White House. 

Hill, also known as General BloodAgent, said: “It’s like our Founding Fathers stated, we believe we should come together, to lend our arms and council whenever a crisis arises.

“We advocate and defend our goals and beliefs with regards to our way of life, our constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.”

The group, whose members are rarely seen in the public eye without military fatigues and firearms, sees its role as protecting the people, allowing them to rise up and take control. They spend a fifth of their time on political activism and the rest doing primitive survivalism, military infantry training, hunting, rescue and first aid.

They believe they have been made deliberately obsolete in modern America, a feeling only exacerbated by the national Defund the Police movement and the Democratic Party’s pledge to reform the police force.

Speaking to RT, Hill, a former marine, explained: “How do you get rid of a militia in the United States? You render them useless and over time they fade away.

“Now we’re seeing the Founding Fathers had it right, this is something we should have never let the fire burn out on. We have a short amount of time to reignite it.

“We will be whenever we need to be, wherever God sees fit. Every day we can reach out to another American citizen and say, ‘Are you in favor of communism and anarchism? We have a right to repel that.’”

Claims of neo-Nazism
The group, while evidently on the far end of the political right wing, bristle at their depiction in the mainstream media of being racist neo-Nazis, such as a New York Times article which said “their America is one where Christianity is taught in schools, abortion is illegal, and immigrants hail from Europe.” 

In one example, the GSF were accused of “terrorizing” county officials in Georgia out of a meeting to build a new mosque, and linking the place to ISIS – a charge Hill denies. 

But his group takes reports of things like Muslim community patrols forming in New York after the Christchurch shooting, as signals that attempts to introduce Sharia law are underway. 

Still, in Hill’s view, the group is pro-immigration, supports religious freedom, and would not lead with violence. The big caveats are that the immigration must be legal and the newcomers must assimilate. Like many on the American political right, he refers to undocumented migrants as an invasion.

“I am 100 percent against illegal immigration,” he explains. “The government is cast with a job and part of that is to prevent an invasion, it doesn’t specify armed or unarmed, but if 20 million people are in this country illegally, how can you look at me with a straight face and say we haven’t been invaded?

“Legal immigration is fine, as long as whatever caused you to flee, leave that shit where you came from. Learn the language, our practices, our traditions – do not try to advocate for other religious, ideological or political beliefs enforced in whatever country you came from.

“I’m not saying you have to be Christian, in America you are free to practice any religion you like. But if anyone doesn’t want to assimilate or come here legally, I’d put them in a catapult and fling them into the Gulf of Mexico.”

Death threats
Views like this, and his prominence in the movement, have made Hill a big target for some. He says he and his family regularly receive death threats, forcing him to change his phone number on occasion. He believes they come from the anti-fascist group Antifa, which US President Donald Trump wants to officially label a domestic terrorist organization for its alleged role in the recent riots and the harassment of various conservative figures and their supporters."

"The DEA says the “Boogaloo Boys” is a growing extremist group aiming to overthrow the government. As you’re about to see on this week’s “On The Frontlines with the DEA” the group has criminal ties to Texas.

What are the Boogaloo Boys?

Federal agencies including the DEA are now working together to stop groups like the Boogaloo Boys which they say hijack peaceful protests across the country. Just within the last couple of days, two men believed to be a part of the “Boogaloo” movement were charged with the murder of two law enforcement officers in Oakland, California, during a George Floyd protest.

“The Boogaloo Boys, which portray themselves as a pro second amendment militant group but they are seen as a little bit more as a radical group,” said Dante Sorianello, the assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in the San Antonio district.

The Boogaloo movement, named from a 1980’s movie, is characterized by members who carry weapons and wear Hawaiian shirts according to law enforcement. Authorities believe they are preparing for a second civil war that will overthrow the United States.

Closer to home, the movement recently took a hit after the DEA arrested a bodybuilder, Phillip Russell Archibald, in the Austin area with alleged ties to the group.

“June 8, the DEA Austin office that falls under my purview arrested an individual by the name of Archibald in a steroid trafficking case in which he was distributing steroids in central Texas in the Austin area and further north up in Lancaster, Texas where he resides,” said Sorianello.

Archibald allegedly used his social media accounts to advocate vigilante “guerrilla warfare” against the national guardsmen patrolling Black Lives Matter protests.

“We coordinated our efforts with the FBI in his arrest but he was arrested at that time on the trafficking the steroids by the DEA,” said Sorianello.

According to prosecutors, agents searched Archibald’s residence, where they found steroids and multiple firearms. While some experts on extremists say the Boogaloo movement is still evolving, its philosophy varies depending on geography and the underlying belief of individual members or those they follow on social platforms. The Department of Justice says it found evidence against Archibald in his recent Facebook posts in which he claimed to be “Hunting Antifa” and threatened to “kill” looters.

“He had quite a few followers with that group,” said Sorianello.

While these followers all want a second civil war to reset American society, experts say, their desired new society varies — some want to embrace racism, others want to focus on armed libertarianism. In your neighborhood, on the streets, Fox San Antonio and the DEA will keep you informed and safe."

""They tend to only work when the choices are few or obvious. They do work when the situation lends itself to a black and white vote," Tony explains.

On the evening of 21 June, close to 4,000 protesters voted in a Telegram group to determine whether the crowd would return home in the evening or continue to protest outside Hong Kong's police headquarters. Only 39% voted to take the protests to the police headquarters - but there was still a six-hour siege of the building. Other apps and services have also helped the protesters organise their activity.

In public areas, posters and banners advertising forthcoming events are spread over Airdrop, which lets people share files with nearby iPhones and iPads.

This week, a group of anonymous activists raised more than half a million dollars on a crowdfunding website. They plan to place advertisements in international newspapers calling for Hong Kong's extradition bill to be discussed at the G20 summit. The demonstrators say technology has made this a leaderless protest movement.

Hidden identity
"The deeper cause is a result of the distrust towards the authorities," said Prof Edmund Cheng, from Hong Kong Baptist University. "Many protest leaders in the Umbrella Movement have been prosecuted and imprisoned," he said, referring to pro-democracy protests in 2014.

In April this year, nine leaders of those protests were found guilty of inciting others to cause a public nuisance.

"There are several potential charges you could be facing if you were to participate with an obvious organised movement or protest," says Tony.

Image copyrightEPA / GETTY IMAGES
Many of Hong Kong's protesters go to great lengths to avoid leaving a digital footprint.

"We are just using cash, we don't even use ATMs during the protest," says Johnny, a 25-year old who has been attending demonstrations with his partner.

He uses an old mobile phone and fresh Sim card each time he attends a protest.

Another group administrator - who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals - said some people use multiple accounts to hide their online footprint.

"Some of us have three or four phones, an iPad, desktops and notebooks. One person can control five or six accounts. People won't know they are the same person and also multiple people use one account," they told the BBC.

Protection
Tony believes that decision-making via group votes could protect individuals from charges. He argues chat group administrators have no affiliation to political parties and have no control over what members post in their groups.

"The government is not going to arrest every single participant in this movement. It is not feasible to do so," he says.

But he recognises that law enforcement may pursue other avenues.

"They will pick influential targets or opinion leaders and make an example of them so that they could warn off the other participants."

On 12 June, one administrator of a Telegram group was arrested for allegedly conspiring with others to storm Hong Kong's law-making complex and barricade the surrounding roads.

"They want to let others know that even if you hide on the internet they may still come to arrest you in your home," said Bond Ng, a Hong Kong lawyer who represents several arrested protesters."

"In June, hundreds of thousands of young protesters connected by messaging apps took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest the encroachment of China’s central authorities on life in their city.

Four months on, antigovernment demonstrations have swept more than a dozen countries. From Chile and Bolivia to Lebanon and Spain, millions have taken to the streets—sometimes peacefully, often not.

Thousands...

"

"The waves of protests breaking out in country after country around the world beg the question: Why aren’t Americans rising up in peaceful protest like our neighbors? We live at the very heart of this neoliberal system that is force-feeding the systemic injustice and inequality of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism to the people of the 21st century. So we are subject to many of the same abuses that have fueled mass protest movements in other countries, including high rents, stagnant wages, cradle-to-grave debt, ever-rising economic inequality, privatized healthcare, a shredded social safety net, abysmal public transportation, systemic political corruption and endless war.

"

"We are witnessing tech giants—Google, Facebook, You Tube, Twitter—hiding and de-listing news they deem “fake.” On one level, this is an obvious attempt to control political content. But on a much deeper level, this is an effort to shore up THEIR REALITY. They want to consolidate their Army of believers and expand its ranks. Outsiders and their ideas and analyses are a threat.

Outsiders, heaven forbid, might decide to launch other creative realities that bleed into the consensus and dissolve it.

The independent and free individual mind has its own immune system. It responds when it detects the intrusion of collectivist concoctions.

“Alert! Fake collective reality is showing up. Take action. Resist. Reject.”

Yes, but then?

The individual then has the power to invent his own future, according to his own vision. This is where the journey really gets interesting.

This is where new space and new time emerge, and the space of consensus shrinks and withers.

This is where the Army of Reality has no answer.

Each individual has his own invention of reality—a project and an enterprise that spills over the conventional boundaries.

Each enterprise is quite different. Each approach is quite different.

What’s similar is the available energy for the work.

Where does that energy come from?

It comes from the individual himself.

When imagination and the creative impulse are unleashed, energy appears in large quantities. New and fresh energy.

Frontier energy.

Cutting-edge energy that quite naturally and automatically begins to shred Army of Reality energy.

Life renews. Life begins again.

The fabric of old limiting ideas falls apart, and the individual steps out on to a unique launching platform.

His own.

This is the voyage that can never be stopped.

Because it doesn’t depend on the fake news and fake consensus and the fake illusion of power of The Group.

"

"U.S. MILITARY FORCES deployed to the southern border are monitoring domestic protesters, including anti-border wall groups, according to an internal Pentagon document obtained exclusively by The Young Turks and The Intercept. The military, the document reveals, has focused particular attention on an interfaith group peacefully protesting the Trump administration’s child separation policy.

The document includes what’s called a “threat estimate,” an assessment detailing the risk of perceived border threats. Among those threats are protests by members of religious groups against “the detention of families and children,” as well as anti-ICE protests and protests by “anti border-wall extremists.”

Asked why they were monitoring an interfaith group, Defense Department spokesperson John Cornelio replied, “DoD works closely to support Federal law enforcement agencies along the Southwest border. Law enforcement agencies share information regarding migrant caravans and protestors with DoD consistent with applicable laws and policies for DoD force protection purposes.”

Jake Laperruque, senior counsel for the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, said of the document: “The ‘threat estimates’ focused on protesters are highly disturbing. Cataloging individuals protesting government policy creates serious risk of abuse, and even without misconduct, monitoring protesters is likely to chill the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

“‘Make America Great Again’ shouldn’t mean returning to J. Edgar Hoover-style surveillance,” Laperruque wrote in an email.

The “Commander’s Update Briefing,” dated August 1, 2019, enumerates three “events of interest.”

The first event of interest is described as “anti-border wall extremists” who “made threats to law enforcement and border wall construction projects.”

“The extremists belong to a known anti-border wall group alleged to have direct action camps in the McAllen, TX area,” the document states. The group in reference appears to have been the Rio Bravo Action Camp, a training camp hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America’s Rio Grande Valley Chapter, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, along with several activist groups, according to its website. The action camp’s training appears to focus on nonviolent forms of resistance, including civil disobedience and street protests.

The threat estimate says of the second event of interest: “An identified group plans to protest the detention for families and children at Fort Sill. An identified religious group in St. Louis, MO, sponsors the group and is subsidizing travel expenses for protestors. The group is charging a 65.500-225.00 USD as a donation to ride a bus to Lawton.”

A number of religious groups based in St. Louis — about half of them Jewish — met in September to organize opposition to the mistreatment of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. This meeting gave rise to the creation of Heartland for Human Justice, an interfaith group that on August 1 — the same date as the “Commander’s Update Briefing” — went to protest Fort Sill, which had recently announced that it would detain about 1,400 migrant children.

The threat estimate regarding the religious-backed protest also includes notations for the number of individuals believed to be attending the demonstration, as well as changes to that number — possibly data culled from Facebook events, which collect such information.

“As of 1 Aug 19, 11(-1) individuals are attending and 18 (+1) are showing interest,” the threat estimate states. The “-1” and “+1” notations appear to refer to changes in the number of individuals attending or showing interest in the event.

Laperruque said of the data, “I don’t know why some of this information is needed – some of the activities (where protesters are coming from, sponsors, other activities outside the border, etc) have no connection to ensuring safe interactions. I can’t think of any reason for cataloging that information other than to monitor protesters activities more broadly, and potentially identify them.”

The third event of interest is a 10-day “Border Resistance Convergence event,” which, the report notes, “has been scheduled for El Paso, Texas. The Border Resistance Convergence social media event is promoting rhetoric calling for the end of migrant detention and the termination of the current immigration policy.”

While news media reports on the Border Resistance Convergence event appear limited to right-wing media outlets like The Blaze and Big League Politics, It’s Going Down, a left-wing group that describes itself as a “digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist … movements” interviewed the organizers of the event in July. The event was supposed to have taken place from July 21 and September 1.

“This was solely a call for people to protest against what was happening in ICE facilities in El Paso. This had nothing to do with antifa or violent actions,” a representative for It’s Going Down told TYT and The Intercept.

"From a festival that helps artists trade work for healthcare to a regional micro-currency, Kingston is trying to build an inclusive and self-sufficient local ecosystem"

"More than 70 leading public health groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, agree that the climate crisis is also a health emergency.

So far 77 organizations representing nurses, doctors, hospitals, volunteers and public health professionals have signed on to The Call to Action on Climate, Health and Equity: A Policy Action Agenda, released Monday. The agenda urges government, business and community leaders to take a series of actions designed to promote health and fight climate change.

"

"A freedom of information request has revealed that Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, is involved in the war against BDS (the non-violent boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights).

The human rights and Palestine solidarity organization BDS South Africa takes these reports seriously, especially in light of the fact that Israel’s Mossad is notorious for carrying out assassinations, kidnappings and other under-handed crimes against activists across the world. Consequently, BDS SA will be approaching the Ministry of State Security (SSA) to investigate this matter.

A few years back already, Al-Jazeera News, through leaked intelligence documents, reported how former Israeli spies reportedly hand-delivered a note to South Africa’s then Finance Minister threatening a cyber attack “against South Africa’s banking and financial sectors” if the SA government did not “discontinue” its support of the BDS campaign within 30 days. The ex Israeli spies also demanded the removal and prosecution of some individuals linked to the  BDS movement in South Africa. These dirty tricks, threats, smears and other tactics are unacceptable."

"Protests have erupted in Ecuador after the right-wing government allowed anti-narcotic planes of the United States to use San Cristobal airport of the Galapagos Islands, an archipelago renowned for its biodiversity and for inspiring Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Dozens of people gathered in the capital city Quito Monday to protest against the decision which they described as a threat to the world heritage site and an attack on Ecuador’s sovereignty. It is also unconstitutional to allow the presence of a foreign army in the country.

According to article five of the 2008 Constitution, Ecuador declares itself as a territory of peace, where "the establishment of foreign military bases or foreign installations for military purposes will not be allowed. In addition, it is prohibited to cede national military bases to foreign armed or security forces."

This is not the first time that U.S. military planes operated from Ecuador.

On September 2018, a Lockheed P-3 Orion intelligence-gathering plane from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency began to operate from Ecuador. While a Boeing 707 aircraft from the U.S. air force, carrying a long-range radar surveillance and control center (AWAC), will now also be “patrolling” the Pacific off Ecuador's coast.

Former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa criticized the measure saying, “Galapagos is NOT an ‘aircraft carrier’ for gringo use. It is an Ecuadorian province, world heritage site, homeland.”

Correa closed a U.S. military base in Manta in 2008 and amended the constitution to ban foreign military presence in the South American country. He also ordered all U.S. defense staff to leave the country in 2014.

Ecuador’s foreign minister Jose Valencia defended the government decision and said that Correa’s argument “maliciously distort what was completely legitimate international cooperation against drug trafficking.”

Since current President Lenin Moreno took power after leftist Correa in 2017, the Ecuadorean government became increasingly pro-U.S. and started doing away with progressive policies, while politically persecuting current and former officials who held office during Correa's government, including the former president himself.

"Earlier today it was reported by Redhawk at Standing Rock in North Dakota that two police officers have turned in their badges in support of the water protectors.

“There have been at least 2 reports of police officers turning in their badges acknowledging that this battle is not what they signed up for. You can see it in some of them, that they do not support the police actions. We must keep reminding them they are welcome to put down their weapons and badge and take a stand against this pipeline as well. Some are waking up.”"

"The Roman Stoic Seneca called anger a “hideous and wild” emotion that “drags the avenger to ruin with itself.” Roman Catholics have considered it one of the seven deadliest of sins.

Such traditional warnings are part of the reasons many Americans today feel a deep sense of unease, perceiving that the nation is now descending deeper into what many call a politics of rage. It threatens what observers have for centuries seen as America’s boundless optimism, its particular civic faith that the future can be better and that Americans have a duty to make it that way."

“For all her material comforts and ubiquitous technological devices, America is a profoundly uneasy place today,” says Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank in Auburn, Ala. “This results directly from what we can only call the politicization of everything – from where you live and what kind of work you do to whom you date to whether you get married.”

Such a “politicization of everything” is a malady creating self-segregating, politically homogenous communities throughout the country, where even neighborhoods are becoming red or blue.

Politics has been straining more friendships and marriages, surveys say. Republican pollster Frank Luntz was troubled to find in one of his surveys exploring political dialogue that about a third of the 1,000 voters surveyed said they stopped talking to a friend or family member after the 2016 election. More than half of Democrats say the Republican Party makes them “afraid,” a Pew Survey reported in 2016. Nearly as many Republicans say the same of the Democratic Party....

Though complex and volatile, the human emotion of anger has been relatively easy to foment and exploit by those with political power, experts say. “But the politics of rage ultimately outstrips its instigators’ ability to control it,” says Professor Koehn. “Anger has been used across the political spectrum throughout history, but I think it’s been stirred up particularly vehemently in our present moment.”

And this present moment is in the midst of a digital revolution that has not only transformed human communications and the availability of information; it has also had a particular impact on the public nature of human rage.

“What I think exacerbates anger, or at least is part of the heart of the problem and part of the complexity of the problem, is social media,” says Mark Smaller, past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association and an expert who studies online bullying and the rise of incivility. “People can respond through social media online on the one hand in a way that is sort of anonymous, and people can behave online in a way that they would not necessarily behave if they’re face to face with somebody.”

“And I think social media promotes a certain kind of group psychology that can easily promote or facilitate divisiveness,” Mr. Smaller says.

Without the natural regulating effects of face-to-face encounters, the physical rush of unmediated fury can also easily become addictive, scholars say, drowning out the more demanding emotional responses of empathy and moral reflection.

Social media as ‘lighter fluid’

Anger has thus in many ways become an emotional contagion, polluting what is now a key part of the democratic public sphere, experts say.

“We never had that particular lighter fluid of social media available as a conduit, as a flame creator, in the history of global politics,” says Koehn, author of “Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times.” “We’ve never seen that before, so it can spread so quickly, and the boundaries of decorum and acceptability are becoming so nonexistent.”

And social media companies and content providers, experts note, have created platforms in which outrage is good for business.

“Social media systems – they gauge success simply by time-on-site,” says Tim Weninger, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who studies disinformation and fake news. “Their metrics don’t gauge time-on-site being happy or being altruistic or sharing only factual information; they just gauge time on site.”

Professor Weninger strongly disagrees that any of his friends or colleagues who work at social media companies would ever design a system that explicitly takes advantage of the addicting properties of outrage.

“A site is supposed to be value neutral,” Weninger continues. “Or at least, the values here are ad revenues and time on site. So if a social media company is making a change in their platform, it’s most likely because they found out, hey, we can get another 30 seconds on the site from users, which means this much more revenue. That’s all they really care about.”

Social psychologists and political scientists make subtle distinctions in the ways human beings express anger. “Narcissistic rage” can be both addicting and all-consuming for an individual, and on social media, expressions of such rage can spread like a contagion.

Still, when people can regulate and better control their expressions of anger, a “righteous anger” can be an appropriate response of an individual encountering injustice – the idea behind “Evil only triumphs when righteous people do nothing.” Such an anger is also both politically useful and often necessary to motivate a group with shared values and goals, scholars say.

The ancient thinker Aristotle, in fact, saw a place for anger in politics. “Anybody can become angry, that is easy,” he wrote in “The Art of Rhetoric.” “But to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power, that is not easy.”...

Unlike most other negative emotions, such as fear or sadness, which are part of the “avoidance center” in the brain, anger is an “approach” emotion that actually motivates people to act on and to try to fix perceived problems in their environments.

“A major finding across several decades of research in social science is that the most common and robust trigger of anger is perceived injustice,” says Professor Lambert. “It can sometimes trigger other emotions, but anger is always central to that kind of perception.”

Which makes it an effective “action-oriented” emotion, he says.

But the issue isn’t necessarily the kind of anger rooted in righteous indignation against injustice, but the explosive expression of “narcissistic rage,” experts say.

"In a certain way, narcissistic rage is anger that is deregulated from a social context,” says Smaller, now a practicing therapist. “Now it’s personal, and transformed into a personal injury, which we call in our business a narcissistic injury.”

“And it’s often hard to solve that injury,” he continues. “So what we’re seeing today in political discourse, and in discourse amongst family members during Thanksgiving or over the holidays, is not just a different point of view, but how can you have that point of view and still value me?

“If you’re in the middle of a narcissistic rage kind of reaction, sometimes it feels like the only way I can express this rage is to make somebody feel the way I feel,” Smaller says. “In other words, the narcissistically injured person may want somebody else to feel that kind of pain or injury, too. And with the availability and access to guns, that rage can easily get transformed into potentially violent behavior. And, yeah, we’re living in very scary times because of that.”

Signs of optimism
Part of the solution, some observers say, is to re-cultivate the civic virtues that foster democratic debate, and a civility that tempers righteous anger and makes the addictive properties of narcissistic rage less acceptable in online public discourse.

“I think Trump’s election dealt a blow to American optimism, especially among baby boomers, ’60s veterans, and people who have attained influential positions in academia and the media, but it has not killed it among young people,” says Mark Naison, professor of African American studies and history at Fordham University.

“Many young activists, filled with a belief their generation can make a difference, have won electoral victories no one thought possible,” says Professor Naison, founder of the Bronx African American History Project, one of the largest community-based oral history projects in the US.

True, there are many adult liberals who are filled with outrage. “But in New York City, the election victories of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Max Rose for Congress, and [others] – all of whom people thought were 100-to-1 shots against established candidates – shows a level of passion and energy among young people that can only be attributed to their optimism.”

Naison also points to the energy and passion of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who have been active in national gun control movements. And although anger played a large role in motivating voters in the 2018 election, as a record number of 126 women will take their seats in Congress next year, many of the movements behind them are filled with a sense of purpose and good old-fashioned American optimism.

Others, however, worry that in the midst of such a moment of rage in American politics, the most successful public figures are those who most artfully can express and evoke human rage. Today there’s no one playing the role of a public “countervailing force” who provides a leadership rooted in optimism, says Koehn, the professor at Harvard Business School.

"A man lit himself on fire near the White House on Wednesday afternoon — and he was caught on video appearing to calmly stroll through a park before cops extinguished the flames.

Witnesses saw the man erupt into a bright orange fireball at the Ellipse, a tourist-filled park that sits north of the Washington Monument, around 12:20 p.m."

"A MAN who set himself on fire near the White House in Washington D.C. on Wednesday afternoon has passed away.

Witnesses were left stunned as they described seeing a man appear to burst into flames in front of their eyes as they described the man ‘calmly’ walking around in a park while ablaze before a policeman rushed in to extinguish the flames."

"Those coming of age today will face some of the greatest obstacles ever encountered by young people.

They will find themselves overtaxed, burdened with excessive college debt, and struggling to find worthwhile employment in a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion. Their privacy will be eviscerated by the surveillance state. They will be the subjects of a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies and government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice.

As such, they will find themselves forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.

It’s a dismal prospect, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, we who should have known better failed to guard against such a future.

Worse, we neglected to maintain our freedoms or provide our young people with the tools necessary to survive, let alone succeed, in the impersonal jungle that is modern America. 

We brought them into homes fractured by divorce, distracted by mindless entertainment, and obsessed with the pursuit of materialism. We institutionalized them in daycares and afterschool programs, substituting time with teachers and childcare workers for parental involvement. We turned them into test-takers instead of thinkers and automatons instead of activists.

We allowed them to languish in schools which not only look like prisons but function like prisons, as well—where conformity is the rule and freedom is the exception. We made them easy prey for our corporate overlords, while instilling in them the values of a celebrity-obsessed, technology-driven culture devoid of any true spirituality. And we taught them to believe that the pursuit of their own personal happiness trumped all other virtues, including any empathy whatsoever for their fellow human beings.

No, we haven’t done this generation any favors.

Based on the current political climate, things could very well get much worse before they ever take a turn for the better. Here are a few pieces of advice that will hopefully help those coming of age today survive the perils of the journey that awaits:"

Be an individual. For all of its claims to champion the individual, American culture advocates a stark conformity which, as John F. Kennedy warned, is “the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.” Worry less about fitting in with the rest of the world and instead, as Henry David Thoreau urged, become “a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.”

Learn your rights. We’re losing our freedoms for one simple reason: most of us don’t know anything about our freedoms. At a minimum, anyone who has graduated from high school, let alone college, should know the Bill of Rights backwards and forwards. However, the average young person, let alone citizen, has very little knowledge of their rights for the simple reason that the schools no longer teach them. So grab a copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and study them at home. And when the time comes, stand up for your rights before it’s too late.

Speak truth to power. Don’t be naive about those in positions of authority. As James Madison, who wrote our Bill of Rights, observed, “All men having power ought to be distrusted.” We must learn the lessons of history. People in power, more often than not, abuse that power. To maintain our freedoms, this will mean challenging government officials whenever they exceed the bounds of their office.

Resist all things that numb you. Don’t measure your worth by what you own or earn. Likewise, don’t become mindless consumers unaware of the world around you. Resist all things that numb you, put you to sleep or help you “cope” with so-called reality. Those who establish the rules and laws that govern society’s actions desire compliant subjects. However, as George Orwell warned, “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they rebelled, they cannot become conscious.” It is these conscious individuals who change the world for the better.

Don’t let technology turn you into zombies. Technology anesthetizes us to the all-too-real tragedies that surround us. Techno-gadgets are merely distractions from what’s really going on in America and around the world. As a result, we’ve begun mimicking the inhuman technology that surrounds us and have lost our humanity. We’ve become sleepwalkers. If you’re going to make a difference in the world, you’re going to have to pull the earbuds out, turn off the cell phones and spend much less time viewing screens.

Help others. We all have a calling in life. And I believe it boils down to one thing: You are here on this planet to help other people. In fact, none of us can exist very long without help from others. If we’re going to see any positive change for freedom, then we must change our view of what it means to be human and regain a sense of what it means to love and help one another. That will mean gaining the courage to stand up for the oppressed.

Give voice to moral outrage. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” There is no shortage of issues on which to take a stand. For instance, on any given night, over half a million people in the U.S. are homeless, and half of them are elderly. There are 46 million Americans living at or below the poverty line, and 16 million children living in households without adequate access to food. Congress creates, on average, more than 50 new criminal laws each year. With more than 2 million Americans in prison, and close to 7 million adults in correctional care, the United States has the largest prison population in the world. At least 2.7 million children in the United States have at least one parent in prison. At least 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year. Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist. On an average day in America, over 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams. It costs the American taxpayer $52.6 billion every year to be spied on by the government intelligence agencies tasked with surveillance, data collection, counterintelligence and covert activities. All the while, since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.6 trillion to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and police the rest of the world. This is an egregious affront to anyone who believes in freedom.

Cultivate spirituality, reject materialism and put people first. When the things that matter most have been subordinated to materialism, we have lost our moral compass. We must change our values to reflect something more meaningful than technology, materialism and politics. Standing at the pulpit of the Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. urged his listeners:

[W]e as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motive and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Pitch in and do your part to make the world a better place. Don’t rely on someone else to do the heavy lifting for you. Don’t wait around for someone else to fix what ails you, your community or nation. As Gandhi urged: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Say no to war. Addressing the graduates at Binghampton Central High School in 1968, at a time when the country was waging war “on different fields, on different levels, and with different weapons,” Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling declared:

Too many wars are fought almost as if by rote. Too many wars are fought out of sloganry, out of battle hymns, out of aged, musty appeals to patriotism that went out with knighthood and moats. Love your country because it is eminently worthy of your affection. Respect it because it deserves your respect. Be loyal to it because it cannot survive without your loyalty. But do not accept the shedding of blood as a natural function or a prescribed way of history—even if history points this up by its repetition. That men die for causes does not necessarily sanctify that cause. And that men are maimed and torn to pieces every fifteen and twenty years does not immortalize or deify the act of war... find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow-man.

Finally, prepare yourselves for what lies ahead. The demons of our age—some of whom disguise themselves as politicians—delight in fomenting violence, sowing distrust and prejudice, and persuading the public to support tyranny disguised as patriotism. Overcoming the evils of our age will require more than intellect and activism. It will require decency, morality, goodness, truth and toughness. As Serling concluded in his remarks to the graduating class of 1968:

“Toughness is the singular quality most required of you... we have left you a world far more botched than the one that was left to us... Part of your challenge is to seek out truth, to come up with a point of view not dictated to you by anyone, be he a congressman, even a minister... Are you tough enough to take the divisiveness of this land of ours, the fact that everything is polarized, black and white, this or that, absolutely right or absolutely wrong. This is one of the challenges. Be prepared to seek out the middle ground ... that wondrous and very difficult-to-find Valhalla where man can look to both sides and see the errant truths that exist on both sides. If you must swing left or you must swing right—respect the other side. Honor the motives that come from the other side. Argue, debate, rebut—but don't close those wondrous minds of yours to opposition. In their eyes, you're the opposition. And ultimately ... ultimately—you end divisiveness by compromise. And so long as men walk and breathe—there must be compromise...

Are you tough enough to face one of the uglier stains upon the fabric of our democracy—prejudice? It's the basic root of most evil. It's a part of the sickness of man. And it's a part of man's admission, his constant sick admission, that to exist he must find a scapegoat. To explain away his own deficiencies—he must try to find someone who he believes more deficient... Make your judgment of your fellow-man on what he says and what he believes and the way he acts. Be tough enough, please, to live with prejudice and give battle to it. It warps, it poisons, it distorts and it is self-destructive. It has fallout worse than a bomb ... and worst of all it cheapens and demeans anyone who permits himself the luxury of hating.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the only way we’ll ever achieve change in this country is for the American people to finally say “enough is enough” and fight for the things that truly matter.

It doesn’t matter how old you are or what your political ideology is. If you have something to say, speak up. Get active, and if need be, pick up a picket sign and get in the streets. And when civil liberties are violated, don’t remain silent about it.

Wake up, stand up, and make your activism count for something more than politics.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

"A bill making its way through the Texas legislature would make protesting pipelines a third-degree felony, the same as attempted murder. 

H.B. 3557, which is under consideration in the state Senate after passing the state House earlier this month, ups penalties for interfering in energy infrastructure construction by making the protests a felony. Sentences would range from two to 10 years. 

The legislation was authored by Republican state Rep. Chris Paddie. It passed the state House May 7 on a 99 to 45 vote, with two abstentions. The bill is being cosponsored in the state Senate by Republican state Sen. Pat Fallon. 

In remarks on the state House floor during the bill's passage, Paddie sought to assuage the fears of those who believe the legislation will target non-violent protest.

"This bill does not affect those who choose to peacefully protest for any reason," said Paddie. "It attaches liability to those who potentially damage or destroy critical infrastructure facilities."

But opponents of the measure don't agree, pointing to the bill's language.

"It's an anti-protest bill, favoring the fossil fuel industry, favoring corporations over people," Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations, told The Austin American-Statesman.

The legislation is "is criminalizing conscientious, caring people who are the canaries for their communities," activist Lori Glover told The Texas Observer.

A hearing on the law in the state Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Economic Development on Wednesday drew opponents of the measure to speak out against the law, but it's unclear if their testimony will make a difference.

The Texas bill is just the latest piece of legislation at the state level to target pipeline protests. In the wake of a spike in anti-pipeline actions over the past few years, Grist reported Tuesday, a number of states have come down on environmental activists.

The effort to punish pipeline protestors has spread across states with ample oil and gas reserves in the last two years and, in some cases, has garnered bipartisan support. Besides Louisiana, four other states — Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa — have enacted similar laws after protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline generated national attention and inspired a wave of civil disobedience.

The bill is drawing national attention as well.

"Texas aims to make pipeline protest a third-degree felony, same as attempted murder," climate activist Bill McKibben tweeted on Friday.

In a tweet, the advocacy group Public Citizen described the legislation as "an oil and gas backed effort to squash environmental protest."

"This needs to be a nation-wide story," the group said.

"Loss of political agency: no matter who you vote for, the dysfunctional, grossly unequal status quo grinds on unchanged. No matter how many more bonds you pass, giving local governments billions of dollars to fix traffic congestion, homelessness, public education, crumbling infrastructure, rundown parks, etc., nothing ever actually gets better.

Financial insecurity: if you happen to master entering and exiting the asset bubble inflations and bursts just right, you can maintain some financial security--but don't make a single mistake in buying or selling the bubble du jour, or you'll be wiped out.

Nonsensical narratives: Here's a simple test to prove the derangement caused by the ceaseless hyping of nonsensical narratives: stop watching "the news" and indeed all social media and all corporate media--go cold turkey other than following your local college and high school sports.

Do you feel less upset, less stressed, less deranged, less angry, less hopeless? Of course you do.

I could go on, but you get the picture: everyday life is eroding, getting harder and less free for the bottom 95%. And even the top 5% has increasingly had enough: working hard and doing what you're told is no longer yielding the promised American Dream of security, agency and liberty."

THE CALLS FOR action were mounting. It was mid-June, and the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which saw thousands of migrant children separated from their parents, was producing waves of outrage. By the end of the month, hundreds of protests were planned in towns and cities across the country. As the plans moved forward, others took notice.

In the days leading up to the protests, a private intelligence company that works with the Department of Homeland Security was monitoring the activity on the ground. Documents shared with The Intercept by the American Immigration Council, obtained through a freedom of information request, show that LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a Virginia-based firm, gathered information on more than 600 demonstrations across the country, information that was then shared with DHS and state-level law enforcement agencies."