Only Total Non-Compliance Can Achieve Freedom: How to Build Communities

From my perspective, the last few years have been pretty bleak for activists, the alt media, and people who care about a future. People want to be free, and the overwhelming force of the state is not about to let people just exit the system and be free. It makes people feel hopeless.

Mark Passio expressed the feelings of many activists well in this video: a lot of us are getting cynical, wanting to do something truly meaningful and effective to create a future.

So how do we really create a future? How can we become free without facing the consequences of breaking the illegitimate laws designed to keep us from ever becoming free, or break free from the poverty imposed on us?

The problem is, government is good at getting us in a position where we are f**cked no matter what. If you don’t pay taxes, you’re going to end up in a cage if you get caught, kidnapped at gun-point by representatives of the state. If a person is caught breaking the laws that are put in place to keep us from ever becoming free, the consequences could be all consuming: so people must outsmart the system.

If you want to live in another land, another country, you have to deal with the armed forces that guard the people who claim ownership over that country. The airtight borders of every “country” prevent people from freely moving around.

People are herded through customs, through facial recognition technology in machines, granted passports by the almighty authorities to move as they should be able to freely, if they comply.

The state is often an airtight, all powerful crushing force: this is especially apparent if you look at sanctions, borders, taxes, and things of that nature.

However, deep in the crevices of a country, where the authorities don’t find it practical to enforce a law, there exists an opportunity to turn the “law” on its head.

When it becomes impractical to enforce a law, when it no longer is a strategically viable use of the state’s force, it will often not be enforced: and that opens up the opportunity to further strengthen the community, strengthen the ability to disobey unjust laws and reject the illegitimate authority of government.

If too many people regularly break a law, police will not enforce it.

There is one fact of community that is on our side in the fight for freedom: if too many people in one area break a certain law, it will not be enforced.

When this happens, it could mean a community is stronger than government: in this case, the balance of power can be pushed further and further, until a community functions however they want and government doesn’t try to stop them.

For example, it is my understanding that in certain South American countries, cannabis is illegal, but the law is never enforced. People freely grow and consume cannabis, and unless the law wants a specific individual or there is a particular agenda, they will be left alone because most people do it. The law exists but it is not enforced.

In California, cannabis isn’t legal for recreational use (until the law legalizing it goes into effect), but for years police didn’t enforce the law in most places. It is essentially legal.

I think it’s all about creating a culture of non-compliance.

Concentrating like-minded individuals in tight communities, or freedom cells: buying land or cheap houses

A hardcore solution to our disappearing freedom is concentrating determined individuals in tightly knit communities, or better yet Freedom Cells.

If enough people lived together in a community, and they all broke the law together and, for instance, grew cannabis, they might be able to render the law useless by making it impractical to enforce.

Of course, social sense, aloofness, and things like this are all essential factors: if this community had a disrespectful attitude toward police (even though they may deserve disrespect), they could become targets.

If the community minded it’s own business and calmly explained that they’re not hurting anyone when questioned by authority, it might make things better. However, that usually doesn’t matter to the enforcement arm of the state. It would take serious strength in numbers to not be cracked down upon in the US, and police are being militarized to specifically combat dissent like this.

This video is an introduction to the concept of Freedom Cells.

What if a group of 7 people bought a row of houses in a Midwestern US city where houses are cheap, or the little bit of land a house broken beyond repair rests on to build something new?

What if 7 more people bought seemingly irreparable houses on the next block and communicated with the nearby Freedom Cell?

Though it seems impossible, this is the way to build a large community where everyone is down to live disconnected from the system, supporting each other in a loose, decentralized way, but tight and unified when it comes to security and things that require unity.

If this community of people all saved their money for a while and bought a plot of arable land, they could grow food and start to exit the grocery store paradigm.

Growing food sounds impossible, but it just takes determination. The people could start off one season growing just enough food to have a week or two of sustenance. Then in a few years, they could work up to growing a month or two of sustenance for each person who participated.

Then one day, perhaps they’d manage to grow enough food to almost support themselves entirely year-round.

Poverty

Who can afford to dedicate their lives to building a community, living outside the system, never buying goods from a corporation like Wal-Mart, never using dollars, ect?

Almost none of us, apparently. We’re backed into a corner and the only solution is deprivation and frustratingly hard work grinding and saving money.

We already know the solution to this problem, but people lack the discipline and determination to overcome poverty: and understandably so. It’s easy to get depressed living in these conditions, and many of us are bound to obligations with other people that make exiting the system seem impossible.

But exiting the system while being poor is not impossible. If a person puts their mind to it, they can do it. They can save the small amounts of money left over from their job until it is possible to buy some land to grow food on, and/or live on.

Several people could sleep in their cars for a year, and save all their rent money to pitch in on a plot of land where they build a community, or grow food, or do whatever they want.

How much money could 7 determined people save if they work a job living in their car for a year? If they used a hot plate and a generator to cook beans and rice every day for a year, spending as little as possible, how great of a community could they build in the end?

The solution to this feeling of hopelessness is extreme dedication and a little bit of deprivation: but the deprivation doesn’t have to be so bad.

(Image credit: Grow Test)