The Net Is More Than An Organizing

Most Of You Didn't Think That Helping People Share Books Would Be A Subversive Act...yet The Fact Is That You Have Chosen A Profession That Has Become Radical.

We Live In This Culture Of Endless Extraction And Disposal: Extraction From The Earth, Extraction From People's Bodies, From Communities, As If There's No Limit, As If There's No Consequence To How We're Taking And Disposing, And As If It Can Go On Endlessly. We Are Reaching The Breaking Point On Multiple Levels. Communities Are Breaking, The Planet Is Breaking, People's Bodies Are Breaking. We Are Taking Too Much.

It Seems To Me That Our Problem Has A Lot Less To Do With The Mechanics Of Solar Power Than The Politics Of Human Power—specifically Whether There Can Be A Shift In Who Wields It, A Shift Away From Corporations And Toward Communities, Which In Turn Depends On Whether Or Not The Great Many People Who Are Getting A Rotten Deal Under Our Current System Can Build A Determined And Diverse Enough Social Force To Change The Balance Of Power.

That Is The Meaning Of The Trump Brand - Being The Boss Who Is So Rich And So Powerful He Can Do Whatever He Wants. So The Way In Which He Ran For President Was To Embody That Idea As Fully As He Possibly Could With His Outrageousness. I Don't Think He Actually Thought He Would Win. I Think The Original Idea Was Purely A Marketing Idea. It Seemed A No-lose Situation, Because He Would Get So Much Free Publicity. And This Has Always Been His Genius - I Shouldn't Use The Word "genius" When Talking About Trump - But He's Always Understood The Value Of Free Publicity.

But We Need To Be Very Clear: Because Of Our Decades Of Collective Denial, No Gradual, Incremental Options Are Now Available To Us.