Direct Action: An Historical Novel
changing the world – one arrest at a time!
Photos of direct actions and other convergences by Luke Hauser from circa 2000-2015.
Includes Occupy, Black Lives Matter, peace and anti-war actions, climate justice, immigrant rights, and more.
Click here for index of actions.
History of Nonviolent Direct Action in the US: https://youtu.be/s6XTNv2Caus
A brief excursion through 200 years of US activism, with a focus on post-1980 nonviolent activism.
I originally made this video in connection with my book “Direct Action,” and updated it following the Fall 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
It offers one version of the nonviolent activist lineage that helped shape today’s protest movements.
– George Franklin aka Luke Hauser aka…
Mother Nature dismantles Trump’s wall – perfectly illustrating why Direct Action author Luke Hauser has long espoused scrapping the whole stupid idea of a wall and instead building a dome.
From the UK Guardian – the finest English language news-site on the interweb:
“A section of Donald Trump’s much-vaunted border wall between the United States and Mexico has blown over in high winds, US border patrol officers have been reported as saying.
“The steel panels, more than nine metres (30ft) high, began to lean at a sharp angle on the border between the Californian town of Calexico and Mexicali in Mexico amid gusts on Wednesday.
“The section of wall was under construction at the time, with concrete anchors being put in place. But the strong winds blew the panels over onto the Mexican side of the border before the concrete had cured, according to reports.”
Photo – Top Ten News
Also – Luke Hauser argues for scrapping the wall and building a dome
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Build a wall to stop homo sapiens from traveling across the continent?
The Rocky Mountains didn’t stop people. The Bering Strait didn’t stop people.
And you think a wall will do it? Maybe if you include lots of decorative razor wire?
Let me pause briefly to explain capitalism.
Sometimes there’s a demand for a product, or for labor, or for a better place to live – and as if by magic, a supply crops up to fill it!
It’s almost like there’s an invisible hand benignly guiding the whole operation.
People want flat-screen TVs? Capitalism fills the demand (and fills the Earth with the old models – more on that presently).
People want illegal drugs and non-prescription pharmaceuticals? There’ll be a supply – you can bet your stock-market money on it.
People demand better snack bars? Voila, Nugo bars, with 12 grams of protein and they taste like a Snickers bar! Now that’s progress!
So – when US farmers need cheap labor, when US yuppies need cheap house-cleaners, or when the CIA ransacks Latin American countries and induces people to trek hundreds of miles in search of a livable home – gee, small surprise that a supply rises to fill the demand.
Walls will never stop the law of supply and demand. There’s never been a wall, or a sea, that could stop humans bent on their destination.
Nor will walls stop 911-style fanatics or Oklahoma City-type domestic terrorists, which some people think might be a greater threat than the Southern border.
(Nor will walls stop rising sea levels. But that’s another – if closely related – story)
No, if we want to secure the Beloved Capitalist Homeland (ie, the patches of Earth that on maps are labelled “USA”), a wall will simply never work.
We need a dome.
And not just any dome, but one designed by American ingenuity and technological prowess.
A noble dome, projecting our justice-loving essence upward and outward toward a hostile world that hates us because we are so free.
Picture it – a shiny bubble of ultra-high-tech plasticene, crowning our purple mountains’ majesty, above the fruit-filled plains where our much-revered corporate farms grow the bio-engineered self-harvesting foodstuffs that will sustain us after we fire all of the immigrant laborers.
And the jobs it will create! The plastics industry will boom. Engineers will grow rich computing and testing the exact parabolic arch of the dome. Universities will wax fat on the research handouts.
Even manual laborers will find work cleaning and polishing the dome’s inviolable surface.
We face a national crisis! The government is stymied by legislative paralysis, party politics, lack of vision, and the Bozo in the Oval Office.
We The People must act to ensure our domestic security. If we begin constructing a dome, the American electorate will rally to our righteous cause, and the government will be compelled to assist us!
Please contribute generously, and we will begin building a dome now! Or at least talking a lot about it!
Email small, unmarked bills to: BuildTheDomeNow@Scammail.us
Freedom now! Build the Dome!
Decorative razor wire photo from Military Times.
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“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” – Matthew 25:40
I grew up in the Protestant church (UCC/Presbyterian). I worked at Presbyterian youth camps as a young adult. I even attended a Presbyterian seminary with the idea of being a youth or social worker.
In the end, I had to admit my utter and complete lack of belief in God was an impediment to an effective and fulfilling career.
More than that – I didn’t want to be associated with, or to in any way promote, what the public face of Christianity was becoming in those years – an Evangelical wasteland that denies critical thought in favor of groveling before a supreme Lord whose only concern is whether you believe Christ is your personal savior.
But I’ve always found Jesus of Nazareth – the human, not the putative deity – to have interesting things to say.
“Love your enemies. Do good to those who persecute you.” Maybe I can’t LIVE that, but it’s challenging just the same.
The Least of These
During the 2018 immigration crisis (a crisis of heart, not of law), I’m reminded that I am an immigrant – I immigrated from a racist, homophobic hellhole in the lower Midwest to the marginally more enlightened coast. Thank God for that!
I’m also reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:40: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
And its partner in 25:45: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”
That seems pretty straightforward, if you ask me.
Add to that the nearby words from 25:41: “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” – and I’d be a bit concerned about how I treat “the least of these.”
It certainly makes me examine my own life, even if I don’t believe in a final judgment.
I’ve seen some comments from conservatives saying in effect, “When Jesus said that, he didn’t mean illegal immigrants!”
To which I answer: “I hope you plan to die at the same moment as your lawyer – because you’re going to need him when you get to the pearly gates.”
Judge Not?
I also recall Jesus’ words: “Judge not, that you not be judged.”
My answer: “Thanks for the warning – I’ll take the risk!”
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