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”
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