Ed’s One-Page Manual for Long Haul Activism

Life Style

• avoid car ownership: walk, use your bike
• avoid debt, the lure of credit cards
• consume little
• work in coalition; live & work non-hierarchically
• establish community roots, a sense of place
• develop skills (computer, layout, media, writing, copy-editing, public speaking, languages….)
• reduce distraction, resist addiction
• seek “right livelihood”; avoid co-optation; be sand in the gears, not a cog in the machine
• reduce complicity, vested interests
• avoid banks: use credit unions
• reduce/resist federal taxes
• eat mindfully: favor local food & produce, avoid franchise & fast food
• bite less, chew more: avoid burn-out, pace yourself
• mate mindfully
• have – or not have – children mindfully

Consciousness

• cultivate nonviolence
• treat all – especially adversaries – with respect
• make truth-telling reflexive
• overcome your “-isms”: race/class/gender/tribe/nation…
• transcend US exceptionalism
• become media savvy; get beyond the mainstream media bubble
• read widely
• learn a strategic language (Spanish, Arabic, Pashtun…)
• study the human condition: interact with and seek to understand the “other”
• think globally, protect the planet, preserve sentient life, preserve wilderness
• go beyond the affluent, industrial, capitalist bubble
• travel with progressive delegations to “hot spots” (WfP, F.O.R., CPT, SOA Watch, Global Exchange…)
• connect the dots: resist compartmentalization, calculate consequences
• think critically: ask why, ask cui bono? “follow the money,” question authority
• take useful risks, make useful sacrifices
• embrace arrest: consider doing “prison witness”