"This Is An Uprising" the most important book to read right now.

This book is dense but at the very end in a chapter titled "Conclusion" the key points of successful non-violent resistance are summarized as such:

"Momentum driven organizing uses tools of civil resistance to consciously spark, amplify, and harness mass protest. It highlights the importance of hybrid organizations... which can build decentralized networks to sustain protest mobilizations through multiple waves of activity. It goes beyond transactional goals by also advancing a transformational agenda, and it wins by swaying public opinion and pulling the pillars of support. It is attentive to the symbolic properties of campaigns, showing how these can sometimes be just as important as instrumental demands, if not more so. It uses disruption, sacrifice, and escalation to build tension and bring overlooked issues into the public spotlight. It aspires, at its peak, to create moments of the whirlwind, when outbreaks of decentralized action extend far outside the institutional limits of any one organization. It is willing to polarize public opinion and risk controversy with bold protest, but it maintains non-violent discipline to ensure that it does not undermine broad-based support for its cause. And it is conscious of the need to work with other organizing traditions in order to institutionalize gains and foster alternative communities that can sustain resistance over the long term."

Got that? Good, now lets bring down Big Oil!

Summer of 2012

I had returned to California after the long trip across country and was feeling, well, a bit randy. It was a hot summer and Big Sur was charged as ever with energy that drew me in. Celebrating my 27th birthday aboard the Raindancer with my Dad, brother Forrest and great friend Sam. We smoked and joked on the calm seas as we cut along, three sails in the wind. Later Sam and I found ourselves buzzed to our boots in the dark wood of a Big Sur bar. I was smoking my lungs off, laughing, drinking, cackling, birthday stuff. The next weekend found us dancing and drumming beneath the full blue moon wild and free. We were on our way to Oakland to play a show with our new outfit 'Nature Fortress', a name we came to in the hulk of a large driftwood shelter on the soft sand out at the Cove. We woke in the morning feeling fresh, having slept a little by the river and using its cold water to splash the sleep from our faces. The venue in the city was small, attended by the local activist crowd. We played our short set of technical chanty melodies and never missed a beet. At least one guy was really impressed. That night we drove all the way back to Big Sur and hurled ourselves into a crowd who gathered electrified, jostling at the foot of some space-time traveling band from Tokyo. I worked my way to the front with my double sided wolf sweatshirt and danced like a lunatic. I had a charge going that drew in the eyes of the curious and before long I was sitting by a lovely lady getting a little touchy feely. Out of the blur and on to the road we went, south to Esalen. Miraculously the gate guard just let us in, no charge no questions. We went straight for the pools and it being three in the morning found ourselves alone, bonded at the lips, really enjoying the night. We made our way back to the valley in the pale dawn and slept maybe an hour tangled on the car seat. I found Sam sleeping in his Honda in the morning and I closed the door as I sat down beside him feeling like I had just stepped off of a carnival ride of carnal bliss.