01091 Open Source Resistance and Protest

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Open Source did not originate in the modern software movement. It is an ancient concept — recipes have always been open source, for example.

Actions by groups within the developing software industry gave clearer definition and an ideological impetus to the concept. In the modern world, open source movements are the new normal.

Open Source is a hallmark of those working for an economy of abundance in opposition to those who profit from artificially created and coercively maintained economies of scarcity.

So it was only a matter of time before open source protest became a reality, and that’s what we saw in 2011 with the birth and development of the Occupy! movement throughout the world. The Occupy! Movement changed the content of political discourse in the United States. In the Arab world, authoritarian governments have been overthrown.

What are the characteristics of these open source resistance movements?

Big Tent. They exist outside of the traditional political categories, transcending left, right, libertarian, leftist, Marxist, and anarchist ideologies. They are all big tents. This is one of the reasons they are potentially dangerous to the established systems. Rulers specialize in divide and conquer. When their subjects unite around the common theme of resistance to the rulers, the primary defense of the ruling elite crumbles.

Leaderless structure. The general assembly structure works and seems to eliminate some of the needs that we usually look for conventional leaders to satisfy. The movement has shown social wisdom by rejecting “leaders” attempting to hijack the movement for their own selfish ends. This lack of conventional leadership makes it hard for mainstream media, businesses, and politics to cope with or resist the movement.

Rooted in place and geographies. They attempted — and succeeded — in occupying physical territories in the corridors of power. People come together in such places and spend time with each other. They actually talk with each other, unmediated by media including microphones, radios, computers, and internet networks.

No specific ideological demands. This drove both media and politicians crazy. The Official Rules for Protest Movements are that groups are to organize, protest, present specific demands that allow the groups to be properly categorized on the left-right spectrum, and then they can be appropriately marginalized. The refusal to submit detailed demands subverts this dominant rule book. Since the rule book advantages those with power, this particular subversion is an effective tactic.

They developed their own infrastructures. They copied, publicized, and reproduced everything that worked. They developed support systems for their “temporary autonomous zones.” They maintained these infrastructures even as the first generation of occupation sites dispersed. Affinity groups came together and provided support for primary occupation activities.

John Robb is a permaculture thinker who writes on the development of modern movements of resistance to state oppression. He notes that a strategy to successfully defeat your opponent requires isolating your opponent across three vectors — physical, mental, and moral — while at the same time improving your own connectivity across those same vectors.

The game plan is therefore to isolate your opponents from allies and support networks. You mentally disrupt your opponents with a rapid pace of operations, novel and unusual situations that aren’t planned for in advance and that prevent your opponent from acquiring adequate accurate knowledge about events. You morally isolate your opponents when you provoke them to violate their own moral rules and laws.

The Occupy movements of 2011 grew out of permaculture design concepts, even though most of its participants weren’t aware of permaculture. Robb’s analyses helps us see how permaculture, as a design movement, cultivates resistance to the dominant paradigm.

By providing design tools and strategies that encourage local interdependence and the formation of resilient communities, we over time withdraw our consent and end our physical, moral, mental, and economic support of the structures of dominance and violence and greed that are in control of this world. This isolates the “One Percenters,” and deprives them of income and wealth and power.

By utilizing novel strategies such as the leaderless Occupy movement, we confuse the ruling authorities, sowing doubt and disorganization amongst their own ranks.

This action inevitably produces immoral responses from the government. From forcing people to chop down fruit trees in urban areas, to pepper spraying peaceful, nonviolent protestors, the immoral actions of ruling authorities cause people to lose faith in them and to doubt their legitimacy. Once the authorities destroy their own legitimacy, it is all down hill.

Ask the Romanoff’s about that. Or Gorbachev.

iPermie is an instruction manual for how to occupy your own life and begin your own leaderless resistance to the system that destroys people and the planet with careless abandon. Since we always start with our own doorstep, occupy your own lifestyle first and then help others to do likewise. Form small groups around mutually agreed purposes — affinity groups — and make alliances. Erect a big tent.

Revolution begins with ideological resistance. That’s one of the functions stacked on iPermie. Here we take advantage of the contagion of ideas to spread the word that a new and better world is not only possible, it is on its way. This supports a growing tide of resistance rooted in an unsentimental holistic understanding of the domination/subjugation system. As people learn what is happening to them, they become more interested in putting an end to such manipulations.

The second stage of revolution is disobedience. Another function stacked on iPermie is “Manual of Civil Disobedience.” Most people think of civil disobedience as mass rallies, and that has always been part of civil disobedience. Yet . . . Gandhi was as concerned about what the Indian people did and didn’t do as he was about the British. He targeted the way that the Indian people lived their lives and cooperated with the British administration. By encouraging Indians to break the law and make their own salt, for example, he undermined British revenues and authority. By peacefully provoking the authorities to violent responses, they undermined the moral legitimacy of British rule.

These same principles hold true in our era.

The road to effective civil disobedience is how you live your life. As you withdraw your consent — and your financial and emotional and political support — from the established system of greed, domination, and violence, you lay the foundation for a better, more beautiful and peaceful and productive future.

iPermie offers you the resources you need to design your life to resist and rebuild, regenerate and renew, give hope to the hopeless, and to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.