What True Democracy Looks Like

It comes from the bottom-up, not the top-down

The clearcut outside the author’s home. Photo by Max Wilbert.

I wasn’t surprised by the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election. As Chris Hedges wrote on November 6th, “whole segments of American society are now bent on self-immolation. They despise this world and what it has done to them. Their personal and political behavior is willfully suicidal. They seek to destroy, even if destruction leads to violence and death. They are no longer sustained by the comforting illusion of human progress, losing the only antidote to nihilism.”

This is the face of an empire in decline, no matter which political party is in power: oligarchic, racist, and violent. Further, democracy is a fading ideal. As a pair of researchers from Princeton and Northwestern Universities found, “economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

This has been the case for my entire adult life, and in no small part is the reason why my work has been largely revolutionary in character, rather than reformist. Today, I want to share a short essay written by another revolutionary, my friend Alex Eisenberg, a brilliant writer, poet, and activist. Alex recently published the following post on her Patreon.

Last Tuesday, as many were holding their breath on the outcome of the national election, I trekked down to Olympia, Washington to resist a last minute effort by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Board of Natural Resources (BNR) to push through the approval of 11 timber sales (including many hundreds of acres of Legacy forests) before candidate Dave Upthegrove (who vows to protect our Legacy forests) inevitably won the election. It was truly an act of greed on the part of our government (especially our Land Commissioner of eight years, Hilary Franz, who made this her last major move as an elected official) to open up an unprecedented number of our oldest remaining forests in Washington State to be sold to the highest bidder, on the eve of a potentially huge change in policy around protecting these forests.

Watching these proceedings, while not surprising or out of line with what I understand about our "democracy," was incredibly infuriating and disheartening. 98% of people in attendance (in person and on zoom) were there in favor of protecting these forests or deferring the decision until Upthegrove took office. Yet the ratio of those in favor of protecting the forests and those in favor of logging them was not reflected in the comment period, where logging industry shills, DNR-hired scientists, and misled public education representatives were given the majority of the speaking time, while activists and the general public were allowed 3 or 4 fewer speaking slots.

Not that it mattered.

It was clear the decision had been made prior to public comment when after the comment period was closed the chair of the Board of Natural Resources and incumbent Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, presented a lengthy pre-prepared statement about why these sales are necessary, why the SEPA (State Environmental Policy Act) science determining there will be no significant impact is sound, why the DNR are the good guys, and a slew of other bullshit and lies which at best glossed over our more detailed and specific concerns.

Naturally, I could not stay silent, and found myself yelling "LIES" after almost every statement. A chorus of others did so as well. We escalated into calling out their false statements with facts and eventually resorted to shaming them for their shamelessness (which I am only partly ashamed of, lol).

The vote followed their pre-programmed propaganda, with one of the four women on the board (including the dishonorable Hilary Franz, the dishonorable Lisa Janicki, Wendy Powers-Schilling, Clare Ryan) motioned in favor of the sales. There was a counter-motion made and seconded by the two men on the board (Jim Cahill and the honorable Chris Reykdal), who exemplified a shocking amount of heart, genuine concern, and meaningful effort, to defer the decision until after the election. This motion was promptly shut down by the four women.

The men made and seconded another motion to defer the decision on at least the forests described as Legacy forests. This was also shut down. Then the motion was made again to approve all the sales at once (minus one that had been deferred behind closed doors during the break). This passed 4 to 2.

We could have fought more. We could have exerted more effort to disrupt the rest of the meeting, to push back, but after a few minutes more of yelling and shaming the board members, people started leaving. Being that I was already in the mode of yelling and interjecting, adrenaline flowing freely through me, I didn't think before I raised my voice again, this time not toward the board, but toward the people. Many of those that were walking toward the exit stopped and turned, and some of those still packing up looked up from their things, and listened as I said something along the lines of:

"Protecting the forests and the future is our responsibility now, not them." I pointed at the board. "They made their decision and now we get to make ours. We have the power and responsibility now, because we know what is right and what needs to be done. If everyone here shows up for direct action, we can stop these cuts. And it is up to us to do it, since they refuse to look at the truth."

This is how I feel. This is how I feel about the presidential election. This is how I feel about all of it--including Upthegrove winning. Changes in elected officials and policy aren't enough. Regular protest, casting a ballot, showing up at a meeting--none of it is enough. True democracy lies in the courage of the people to enact the will of the people through our organizing, our effort, our action--direct action, illegal action, real action toward resisting the oligarchy.

It is past time for us to quit disowning our power, whether to "saviors" or to "enemies". It is past time for us to stop doing just the bare minimum of writing letters (which are ignored), showing up at meetings (which is ignored), voting (which is whatever), and all the other half measures of begging the people in power to listen to us. We are the people. We are the majority. We have the power.

When the forest was being cut down outside my home, I stopped that machine mid-cut through a tree with nothing but my body. One single human body. Thankfully it was still a human driving that machine, and not AI. Thankfully that human had a heart. The tree still got cut down eventually, but that moment will never be robbed from me. It was one of the clearest experiences of my life that I have power. True power. Power that rises directly from my instinctual inner knowing about what is actually right, beyond the "choices" I am given.

There are so many converging issues that threaten any semblance of democracy that we have, regardless of who is in office. AI-powered war, hyper-reliance on devices that can be turned to weaponry, militarized cop cities being built as part of a broader effort to suppress our ability to protest the increased consolidation of power and the ramping up of extractive and exploitative economies. The technocratic oligarchy would still be taking over even if we ended up with a "democratic" woman of color as president. The results of the election may change certain highly consequential things, but the conditions of widespread oppression in this country remains the same.

While I understand the fear of the harm the incoming administration can and will do, I wish more people understood and took seriously the harm the past administrations--all administrations--have done and will continue to do. If it takes someone openly owning fascism, rather than pretending to champion democracy like the rest of them, to wake people up to the need to reclaim their organizing power, then so be it. I am not sure even that will do it, as it seems a lot of people would rather retreat into the dis-empowerment of resignation, holding their breath, "waiting it out". But there is no time to wait. There has been no time.

True democracy looks like people deciding a forest will not be cut down, regardless of what the suits decide, and doing whatever it takes to make that happen. True democracy looks like people summoning the courage to exert a collective will outside the narrow confines of a bullshit "democratic" process that ultimately ignores their voices and their needs and their visions. True democracy knows that the powerful serve the powerful, and refuse to be a part of that in any way they can.

One small example of people taking matters into their own hands.

In case you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, overshoot, greenwashing, and resistance. It’s written (mostly) by me, Max Wilbert, the co-author of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It and co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. In return for supporting my activism, paid subscribers receive access to occasional private posts containing behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts.