Nov 03 2009

How Would Gandhi Blog?

Or MLK?

These two world altering engineers of social and political change have to be the models for political activism in the 21st Century. Both took a poor and disenfranchised constituency, organized, trained, and mobilized them. One causing enough publicity, shame, civil unrest, and gained just enough mainstream political allies to “overthrow” the British Empire.

The other did the same in gaining the end of Jim Crow laws and obtaining voting rights for African Americans and indeed all minorities in a deeply racist country.

It must be pointed out that both were seen as an alternative to the very real threat of armed revolt by the more militant of their constituencies.

And that both were brutally attacked in the press and the halls of power….and that both were assassinated.

But putting those unpleasantries aside, today’s directed thought, lol, is this…

If MLK or Gandhi was just starting out now and had the internet….even though many of their constituents didn’t….

What would Gandhi blog?

And what if their were no specific Gandhi or MLK figure to lead these movements? No single figure to galvanize the movement? Has their ever been a movement without a charismatic leader?

We are at a similar point in addressing the energy for change that is welling up around the world, people want change and we obviously need new structures for that change to flow through from the outside of the established political halls of power. Planet vs Profit is just one meme, one idea for channeling what we certainly hope will be a world changing People Powered Movement that seems to be on the horizon.

How can we help it to realize it’s potential?

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  1. Photobucket

  2. thanks —

    Cassiodorus

  3. not only a slow day here but a lot of irony goin’ around elsewhere.

    So Im trying to half – follow but half not, the big brou ha ha between FDL/Jane and dKos. All that just makes me wonder, and I honestly don’t know much about any of it, about blogness in general.

    The minute money is involved, people go apeshit. Who owns it? and so then has The Power? Markos over there, exclusively.  So if FDL pays a blogger to go blog at DK… whatever…. Im confused. I have NO head for business, I swear.

    Here its more community, and hugely smaller so different. Anyway… how does internet blogging compare/contrast to concepts with Public Radio, Listener Sponsored? Why arent there Reader-Owned/Sponsored blogs?

    Isnt that what Gandhi would do? I dont know.

    Il try to re-focus here.

  4. heres Sparrow Moon’s astro-take…lol

    Our first year under the Saturn-Uranus struggle could also bring and end to the War in Iraq. Uranus is in Pisces, the humanitarian, and Saturn is in Virgo, the servant. But, we have to get busy and get the ball rolling, because by Fall 2009, we will be beginning to feel the effects of Pluto coming to a T-square with these 2 planets. It was bad when Pluto was conjunct Uranus back in ’64 through ’67, but when Pluto squares these two, things could get “nuclear.” Pluto likes to destroy and rebuild, so get your politicians listening now.

    We may be able to use this planetary influence to our benefit. If we get organized and get busy, get our politicians and corporations to listen, we may just leave our space a little better for the next generation. Or, we may give them a depression or even a major war to cleanup after. Its up to us.

    {her blurb on this is much longer, see source}

  5. especially for bloggers……..

    they were geared for newspapers……

    but that format would work great here……

  6. saw Joan of Arc last night…..

    really liked it…..

    slightly different dilemma but interesting…..

    it portrayed her as essentilly non violent yet in the midst of extreme carnage…….

    strange and difficult juxtaposition……

    very interersting……

    so many of the recent conversations here have bounced around the nature of emergent leadership issues when a movement begins…….

  7. “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems”

    or maybe

    “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

    or

    “You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.”

    one more

    “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”

  8. “It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”

  9. “If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred”

  10. but people are getting arrested for the health care plan Gandhi would have approved… please support them…

  11. of a doer, leading by example, for however literate and lawyerly he may have been.

    We’ve got to have a leader/leaders who are actually living the kind of life/lives that will show us a way to the future, again IMHO.

  12. It was folded over into that dystopian version of western capitalism, so no Mo didn’t really win anything.

    • Robyn on November 4, 2009 at 23:07
    • #

    …would spend their time patiently trying to teach.  I like to think that I try to channel them when I write what I do, adding a little art, poetry and music for the Chuckles the Clown effect:

    A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.

    That last part is an effort to attract some readers…because if their are no students, then there is no teaching happening.

  14. Just my opinion.

    From reading about 7 books about Gandhi.

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