What True Democracy Looks Like
It comes from the bottom-up, not the top-down
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.
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Just reading Vandana Shiva's Terra Viva and reminded again of the Chipko movement in India. That is what would be required here..... Ya sure! And I don't really understand what has totally mesmerized people into sitting by and letting themselves become slaves rather than actors, losing our land and all that makes life worthwhile...
I resonate with much of what was shared here, the only difference in my approach is that I no longer hold onto the term and concept of "democracy" as something worth protecting, re-forming or re-defining. To me, democracy (as a system of government for nation-states) is inherently immoral.
The only large scale regional (multiple community scale) democracy I can think of that I have any resect for and feel we should emulate in some ways (and apply in community scale Voluntaryism based organizational structures) is the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (which is the longest lasting participatory democracy in the world). However, one of the things that differentiates the Haudenosaunee Confederacy from modern day "democratic" nationstates is that the Haudenosaunee Confederacy did not not use violent coercion in order to extract taxes from it's members. Also, unlike modern day "democratic" nation states, in their culture they had no notion that anyone could be born higher or lower in status than anyone else or that anyone could have authority to use violent coercion over anyone else.
Even when a Chief asserted that an action should be taken by community members, there were no police or jails to enforce them to do so with violence, and they would only choose to listen to said democratic regional community leader if they presented a convincing argument as to why people should do what they are suggesting.
For some additional context, let us take a look at what the inhabitants of New France made of the Europeans who began to arrive on their shores in the sixteenth century.
At that time, the region that came to be known as New France was inhabited largely by speakers of Montagnais-Naskapi, Algonkian and Iroquoian (Potawatomi) languages. Those closer to the coast were often fishers, food foresters and hunters, and many also practiced horticulture (and regenerative agro-forestry); the Wendat (Huron), concentrated in major river valleys further inland, growing maize, squash and beans around fortified towns and food forests composed of Hickory/Oak orchards with diverse fruit and medicinal herb species underneath.
..While French assessments of the character of (what they described as) ‘savages’ tended to be decidedly mixed, the indigenous assessment of French character was distinctly less so.
Father Pierre Biard, for example, was a former theology professor assigned in 1608 to evangelize the Algonkian-speaking Mi’kmaq in Nova Scotia, who had lived for some time next to a French fort.
Biard did not think much of the Mi’kmagq, but reported that the feeling was mutual:
“They consider themselves better than the French: “For,” they say, “you are always fighting and quarrelling among yourselves; we live peaceably. You are envious and are all the time slandering each other; you are thieves and deceivers; you are covetous, and are neither generous nor kind; as for us, if we have a morsel of bread we share it with our neighbor.” They are saying these and like things continually.’“
What seemed to irritate Biard the most was that the Mi’kmaq would constantly assert that they were, as a result, ‘richer’ than the French. The French had more material possessions, the Mi’kmaq conceded; but they had other, greater assets: ease, comfort and time.
Twenty years later Brother Gabriel Sagard, a Recollect Friar,” wrote similar things of the Wendat nation. Sagard was at first highly critical of Wendat life, which he described as inherently sinful (he was obsessed with the idea that Wendat women were all intent on seducing him), but by the end of his sojourn he had come to the conclusion their social arrangements were in many ways superior to those at home in France.
In the following passages he was clearly echoing Wendat opinion:
“They have no lawsuits and take little pains to acquire the goods of this life, for which we Christians torment ourselves so much, and for our excessive and insatiable greed in acquiring them we are justly and with reason reproved by their quiet life and tranquil dispositions.”
Much like Biard’s Mi’kmaq, the Wendat were particularly offended by the French lack of generosity to one another:
‘They reciprocate hospitality and give such assistance to one another that the necessities of all are provided for without there being any indigent beggar in their towns and villages; and they considered it a very bad thing when they heard it said that there were in France a great many of these needy beggars, and thought that this was for lack of charity in us, and blamed us for it severely.’
Sagard’s account of his stay among the Wendat became an influential bestseller in France and across Europe: both Locke and Voltaire cited Le grand voyage du pays des Hurons as a principal source for their descriptions of Turtle Island (indigenous) societies. The multi-authored and much more extensive Jesuit Relations, which appeared between 1633 and 1673, were also widely read and debated in Europe, and include many a similar remonstrance aimed at the French by Wendat observers..
I feel it is worth highlighting here that, the indigenous Turtle Islander’s attitudes are likely to be far closer to many of our attitudes (as modern day people) than seventeenth-century European ones.
These differing views on individual liberty are especially striking. Nowadays, it’s almost impossible for anyone living in a so called ‘liberal democracy’ to say they are against freedom — at least in the abstract (in practice, of course, our ideas are usually much more nuanced). This is one of the lasting legacies of the Enlightenment and of the American and French Revolutions. Personal freedom, we tend to believe, is inherently good (even if some of us also feel that a society based on total individual liberty — one which took it so far as to eliminate police, prisons or any sort of apparatus of coercion — would instantly collapse into violent chaos). Seventeenth-century Jesuits most certainly did not share this assumption. They tended to view individual liberty as animalistic. In 1642, the Jesuit missionary Le Jeune wrote of the Montagnais-Naskapi:
“They imagine that they ought by right of birth, to enjoy the liberty of wild ass colts, rendering no homage to any one whomsoever, except when they like. They have reproached me a hundred times because we fear our Captains, while they laugh at and make sport of theirs. All the authority of their chief is in his tongue’s end; for he is powerful in so far as he is eloquent; and, even if he kills himself talking and haranguing, he will not be obeyed unless he pleases the Savages.
..From the beginning of the world to the coming of the French, the Savages have never known what it was so solemnly to forbid anything to their people, under any penalty, however slight. They are free people, each of whom considers himself of as much consequence as the others; and they submit to their chiefs only in so far as it pleases them.”
In the considered opinion of the Montagnais-Naskapi, however, the French were little better than slaves, living in constant terror of their superiors. Such criticism appears regularly in Jesuit accounts; what’s more, it comes not just from those who lived in nomadic bands, but equally from townsfolk and regenerative forest gardeners like the Wendat. The missionaries, moreover, were willing to concede that this wasn’t all just rhetoric on the Americans’ part. Even Wendat statesmen couldn’t compel anyone to do anything they didn’t wish to do. As Father Lallemant, whose correspondence provided an initial model for The Jesuit Relations, noted of the Wendat in 1644:
I do not believe that there is any people on earth freer than they, and less able to allow the subjection of their wills to any power whatever — so much so that Fathers here have no control over their children, or Captains over their subjects, or the Laws of the country over any of them, except in so far as each is pleased to submit to them. There is no punishment which is inflicted on the guilty, and no criminal who is not sure that his life and property are in no danger…”
I think a lot of what Alex describes here could also be described as Voluntaryism in action.
Democratic system of governance that utilize violent coercion (through giving humans deadly weapons and a monopoly on violence, aka "police", and commanding them to kidnap, aka "incarcerate", peaceful dissenters and steal their property using violence if they disagree, aka "taxation") are immoral and should be abandoned and boycotted (as Alex suggests). Only difference is I suggest abandoning the word democracy all together.
For more on how Voluntaryism differs from Democratic statism and why that distinction is important, read:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/why-involuntary-governance-structures