Chapter 20 — Resistance Lives in the North
A serial novel in the form of correspondence among a family while the world as we know it collapses around us. I recommend you start at the Introduction:
https://readmedium.com/climate-for-change-introduction-5331d5ab9313
But you can start anywhere you want.
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Chapter 20
Hand-written on scraps of paper (delivered by Charlie):
Dear Family,
Thank you so much for your letters. It means the world to me. Daisy and Jeremy were thrilled to receive letters from their families. Of course, people in my cabin are jealous. I told them that if we could get a list out to my mom, they might be able to get a letter the next time Charlie goes home. What if she had a whole mailbag full? Would it raise suspicion? We will have to figure that out if the moment comes.
I have decided not to try to escape. Instead, we are going to try to undermine the system from within. Jeremy and I held a secret meeting with representatives from the other cabins last night. We brainstormed what we can do. Charlie attended the meeting with three other guards that she trusts. It was scary for some of the guests, but we told them that we would need to trust them in order to do what we want to do.
During the meeting, we talked about how we need to get good information to all of the guards in order to win them over to our side. We also need to re-re-educate ourselves. We are going to divide up and have systematic classes at night in the cabins. Luckily, among the guests, we have many sons and daughters of professors, tradespeople, and farmers. We will be educating ourselves about how best to run society as we transition to a post fossil fuel economy. We can all agree that the heavy-handed authoritarian methods of General Stewart are not sustainable for people. In addition to serious classes about changing the world, we also have people lined up to teach art, music, poetry, and storytelling — beauty is important, too. We will invite all the guards to most of the classes in an effort to win them over, but we also have a second curriculum that happens in secret, which is run by some of the children of activists and some of the military kids. The secret classes are in improvised explosive devices and military tactics, as well as in civil disobedience and non-violent disruption of power. The main plan is to use non-violent ways to slowly convince the guards that General Stewart is an authoritarian asshole who doesn’t have the best interests of the people in mind. That is the long-term plan. If that doesn’t look like it is going to work, then we are also developing other options.
For us to be learning military tactics while also learning non-violence at the same time has created a rift in the camp community. The people arguing for preparing for violent overthrow of the camp say that the General uses violence to suppress the people, and if we use non-violence, then we are essentially giving up. They say that we need to fight fire with fire. I am sympathetic to these people. Having grown up hunting at your farm and learning to use firearms from an early age, I know the power of a gun. I know how quickly an animal can turn from alive to dead, and I know the fear I feel when I see someone draw a gun. I am sympathetic with them because there is a part of me that would like to cause that kind of fear in someone else. I am enraged by all that General Stewart has done. I dream of revenge.
The other side of the debate is held by people who claim that non-violent resistance is the only way to get the kind of world we want. They say that the reason we have had an authoritarian climate change-denying PFL replaced by an authoritarian climate change-accepting General is because both leaderships have violence as a foundation for their worldview. The civil disobedience group holds that unless we adopt a non-violent worldview, we will just recreate the same situation again and again. Violence can only give birth to more violence. They are trying to teach us that all humans are born good, smart, and creative and that to believe in nonviolence is to believe that all humans are able to change. It is about having faith in humanity. Their methods of non-violent disruption are powerful, too. It is not about rolling over and letting the authoritarians walk all over you. It is all about interrupting power. I want the world to be a better place, so although I really want to indulge in revenge, I am gravitating towards non-violent resistance.
There is a faction of the non-violent resistance group that is Native American. They have been schooling us about how their people have been in a state of resistance for over 400 years. Most recently, many of them have been involved with protesting against fossil fuel pipelines. They have been urging us to have courage and put our lives on the line. They say white people are addicted to comfort. I am inspired and overwhelmed by our Native friends’ stories. It is clear to me that the pain that we are all feeling from the authoritarian changes and the removal of our basic rights is nothing new to them. Their attitude is that the chickens have come home to roost. The white culture of greed and violence gave birth to the climate change that caused the collapse we are living through, and this same culture of greed and violence gave birth to the authoritarian government that people are reeling from and that put us all in this camp. Their point is that whatever response we have to this moment in time must also address the dominant culture of greed and replace it with a culture of generosity and healing. Any response must also address the culture of violence and replace it with a culture of powerful, non-violent self-determination. I have deep respect for these people.
For now a decision has been made to move forward on both tracks. We have decided that violence against guards is counterproductive to winning them over to our side, but we need to be ready to defend ourselves, so we have been working on self-defense countering moves and ways to disable someone who might be physically aggressive towards us. We have also considered singling out the two most sadistic guards for targeted violence. The pro-violence group is biding its time, and for now they are content that we are doing training in self-defense.
We have a lot of ideas ahead for non-violent resistance. We have prioritized asking for more food. One idea is a hunger strike. That does seem a little ironic, since we are already hungry, but it is connected to food. We are also considering work stoppages or slow-downs. There is some talk about sabotage.
In other news, our cabin just got a little less crowded. The log cabin-style barracks that we have been building are finally finished. I felt a sense of pride on the day when they moved out because I have helped build those cabins. I hope that after this is all over, the camp will be able to use the new cabins for children again. I’m guessing they will take down the guard towers and razor wire fences. I will miss the people who moved out of our cabin, especially since some of them were instructors in our little university, but having more space and having it not smell so bad will be good.
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It is now past the dead of winter, but we have recently had several days where the temperature hasn’t gotten above zero. The wind howls at night sometimes and blows the snow into massive drifts. One day we woke to find the whole side of our cabin snowed in up to the roof. We have had to shovel pathways throughout the camp that are starting to seem like tunnels.
I haven’t seen Daisy in weeks, but I heard from Charlie that she has organized her camp into classes and resistance, just like ours.
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I had two interesting dreams last night. Grandpa told me about his dreams, so I thought I would try to pay attention to my own dreams.
In the first dream I am walking on this garden hillside. It had frozen the night before, so the plants crunch under my feet. There is a ceremony coming up for a community that I have joined. I see a wooden container with water in it, and I reach down to wash my hands in it. A woman comes to tell me that I have just used the ceremonial holy water to wash my hands. I feel sorry, but I notice there is still some water in the wooden vessel, a vessel which I can see now looks old and ornately decorated. I hope that the ceremony can continue with less holy water. There is an old man with white hair who approaches the area where I am. The people gather around. The old man starts singing and chanting and holds up the wooden container in one hand and a wooden ladle in the other. He is dipping the ladle in the water and flinging it out and over the garden. The people are dancing with him. I am alone, watching on his left. All at once, he leads the dancers straight at me. I worry that I am in the wrong place and will get run over, so I move down the hill. Then the dancers back up. Then he leads the dancers straight at me again. I move again, worried that I am ruining the ceremony. Then I move to where there is a group of women close by. They are all dancing, and when I join them, they start dancing in a circle. I join that dance and soon the circle is becoming a spiral and we are all closing into the center. I realize in that moment that there is no pre-programmed dance in this ceremony and that I cannot ruin it because I am part of a big collective improvisation.
In my second dream, I am staying at your farm. I wake up to hear big equipment outside working on your gravel road in front of the farm. I hear the beep, beep, beep, every time the equipment backs up. I look out the window, and I see a yellow tractor with a front-end loader full of sand go driving by. I decide to go outside. When I get there, I see that somehow the sand and gravel from the road in front of your house is all gone. Left behind are big boulders that are completely cleaned off. The boulders are arranged and flat on the tops so that the big equipment can still drive on them. I wonder at first if the people driving the equipment have stolen the sand and gravel, and they are using it for something else. In the dream I realize that the people driving the equipment are trying to fix the problem, and that some amazing big rainstorm had washed away the gravel and sand.
Grandpa, you always tell me that the situation of the main character in a dream is the “situation as it is” for your ego and that the other characters in the dream represent unexpressed parts of yourself, and the resolution in the dream represents a unique solution to the situation the ego is in. I’m going to try to apply that technique to my dreams.
I think in the first dream I am not sure of my place in the community. I worry that I am in the way or not doing what I am supposed to be doing. The old man is the wise part of myself that is the opposite of my ego. He is in the center of the community, and he is confidently making decisive actions. The resolution of the dream sees me embrace the dancing, improvisational side of myself. In the dream I feel a sense of relief at not having to do everything correctly. This allows me to dance freely.
In my second dream, I think of the road as my life. My ego is terrified that the sand and gravel are gone. It is clear that this experience in prison has exposed me. Living in this camp has taken away all of my comfort and everything that I thought was important. However, what is underneath has not changed. I have a core that is solid rock. There are parts of me that can function just fine on top of my solid core. Those are represented by the tractors and the people driving them. If I trust those parts, then I can restore myself to wholeness by filling in the gaps with fresh sand and gravel.
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Great news Grandpa! Our hunger strike worked! Well, at least we got their attention. We were able to organize 90% of the guests. We all went to the dining hall and walked through the line, but we turned our plates over and rejected the food that was offered. We didn’t speak at all during the meal. We didn’t ask for anything. We did it for two more meals. After that, the camp director asked to speak with a leader. I surprised myself and everybody around me when I volunteered to negotiate. Instead of negotiating, she had me and the other volunteers taken to a room and locked in. She left us there for a full 24 hours with only water. There was a bucket to go to the bathroom in. It was cold, and there was no bed. When she finally came in, she said they were going on their seventh meal with no one eating. We now had 100% of the guests and many of the guards on hunger strike. She asked us what we wanted. We told her it was simple — more food, even if it is only more potatoes or grits. We told her that we were all losing weight, and I showed her my belt, where I have had to cut more notches into it as I have lost weight. She said that if we lift the hunger strike, she would have more food for us by the end of the week.
It was the first time I had ever even seen the camp director. She had what looked like a new military uniform on, and she herself looked well fed. I’m doubtful she even comes to the camp that often. When I lifted up my shirt, she seemed surprised at how skinny I am. I told her to check with the guards, who have been on rations that are only slightly better than ours. They are getting skinny, too. As we were parting, we asked her for warmer clothes, especially socks. She said she would try to see what she can do.
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Later that week we started having cornbread at every meal. It is not the rich cornbread that Grandma makes with lots of eggs and buttermilk, and we don’t have any butter or honey to put on it, but it does fill us up, and it is calories. They have also increased the portion size of beans and potatoes for whenever we have beans and potatoes. I felt deflated that this is all that we got for several days of hunger strike, but many people have come to find me and thank me personally. I myself think that I feel stronger and less hungry because of the extra food, but it has only been a couple days, and I am coming off of a hunger strike. The biggest thing is that we have a sense of victory. More people are showing up to our nighttime classes, too.
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Yesterday the camp director brought me in with some of the other negotiators and explained that we prisoners could augment our protein if we wanted to have work crews do ice fishing. We said that we would get the guests together to see who has experience catching fish through the ice. Today I gave her a list of supplies we will need.
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Today I had a random guard who I didn’t recognize come up to me and thank me for getting an increased food ration. He said that they increased the guards’ ration, too. We had a conversation about how bad the situation is under General Stewart. I wouldn’t have felt free to speak except that he brought it up. He said that he has a cousin in Minneapolis who has disappeared. His family is beyond worried. He said that he feels terrible keeping us in this camp, but that he doesn’t think he can quit. He also doesn’t think quitting would make a difference, since they would just send someone to replace him. His family needs the money, and it isn’t easy to quit the military. I told him that it might be useful to have him on the inside anyway. We made a plan to check-in next week.
Now that the camp has a good supply of firewood and are finished with the new barracks, they have us working on fortifying the defenses for the camp. We have been using pickaxes to dig trenches in the frozen ground. We have been installing more razor wire. We have been setting landmines.
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I was in the latrine, and I saw that tucked in the wall behind the seat there was a piece of paper. When I pulled it out, I saw that it was a partial copy of the VeRU issue that you did with Mel and Jorge. I felt proud that you did it and amazed that it made it up here. Next week Charlie has home leave again, and we have the list of prison camp guests ready for you. Many people have also written letters, which she is planning to smuggle out to you.
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I have been over a week on the expanded rations, and I am feeling much better. Our ice fishing crew has been bringing in northern pike and crappies. It is not much, but the cooks have made hearty fish soup out of the meat, and it is probably the best soup I have ever had. It also doesn’t hurt that the sun came out this week. There were a couple days that the temperature rose above freezing, and it was glorious. There is snow melting everywhere, and I can even take off my coat while I am working.
That is all for now. Resistance lives in the north!
Ben
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Next chapter:
https://readmedium.com/chapter-21-the-visiting-team-175b8417a538
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