Here's How I Persuaded 500 of My Zip-Code Neighbors to Publicly Declare They Aimed to Remove the Rich From Power to Have Real, Not Fake, Democracy With No Rich and No Poor
And why you CAN and should do the same thing
The sign that my 500 zip-code neighbors (only some of whom are shown below) are proudly displaying in these 500 online photos (click on any online photo to zoom in and read the sign) reads:
We the People want affordable housing for all. To get it we aim to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor.
There are two very important questions I want to answer about these photos.
#1. How did I persuade all of these people to publicly declare their (what I call) egalitarian revolutionary aim?
#2. Why is it important for YOU to persuade YOUR zip-code neighbors to do this too?
Here’s the answer to question #1.
I printed the sign and then stood in front of my large grocery store (or CVS drug store) and simply asked people who walked by if they agreed with the sign and would pose for a public photo holding the sign. And lots of people said, “Sure.” (Many others said they agree with the sign but didn’t want to pose for a public holding it. A typical reason was fear their employer would see the photo. Another reason was, “Oh no, I don’t have my make up on today.” The funniest reason was an old guy who said, “I can’t. I’m in the witness protection program.”)
But guess what. Hardly anybody said, “I disagree with the sign.”
My point is that I never had to say anything to persuade anybody to agree with the sign. They already agreed with it. Don’t believe me? Print an identical sign and do what I did and see how people respond in your neighborhood.
Only read the following italicized paragraphs if you believe in some so-called “conspiracy issue” crimes
If my sign had started out with the words, “We the People want the government to stop urging people to take the Covid-19 vaccination because that vaccination was designed for the purpose of killing millions of people, not saving lives. To do this we aim…” then—obviously!—I would not have succeeded in getting very many photos at all.
Ditto if my sign had started out with the words, “We the People want the government to stop killing us with huge fires started with Direct Energy Weapons (DEW) like the one in Maui, Hawaii recently. To make this happen, …”
Ditto if my sign had started out with the words, “We the People want the government to stop killing us with secret chem trails…”
The difference between a) the lack of affordable housing on the one hand versus b) “conspiracy theory” crimes such as (as some good people—not me—believe in with certainty) the deliberate killing of people with the Covid-19 vaccines or DEW-produced fires, etc. is this.
Everybody knows from their own direct experience that there is an inexcusable lack of affordable housing and instead new luxury housing is sprouting up everywhere like mushrooms after the rain, and people are ALREADY furious at this way that the rich treat the have-nots like dirt, and don’t need to be persuaded about anything to feel this way when the subject of affordable housing is raised. These crimes are what I call non-secret crimes because people know about them from personal experience.
In contrast, there are what I call secret crimes, crimes that only supposed experts know about.
If we assume just for the sake of argument that the secret crimes believed in by the “conspiracy theory” people are true (about which I am agnostic) and that these secret “conspiracy” crimes are even in some sense more evil and harmful than the non-secret crimes such as the crime of building luxury but not affordable housing, it would STILL be the case that hardly anybody KNOWS that these secret crimes are real and thus hardly anybody is already furious at them and hence hardly anybody will want to hold up a sign saying that they want to remove the rich from power in order to stop such secret crimes.
It’s not that people who care about non-secret crimes such as the lack of affordable housing have (what I call) egalitarian aims that are any less radical or noble than the aims that “conspiracy theory” people have. Not at all! But unfortunately some “conspiracy theory” people wrongly believe that is so. They believe that only they have truly radical and noble egalitarian revolutionary aims. They believe that people who are “only” angry at non-secret crimes that everybody knows about from personal experience—such as the lack of affordable housing and the 20 specific other examples of how the rich treat the have-nots like dirt described in my article here—are on a lower moral plane and don’t really aim to make a truly just, equal and democratic society. This wrong view of my 500 neighbors and of most ordinary people is, frankly, elitist!
Why didn’t my sign just start out with “We aim to remove the rich from power…etc.” instead of starting by talking about the lack of affordable housing?
Here’s why. If the sign had omitted the part about affordable housing, far fewer people would have been interested in posing for a photo or talking to me. This is because people feel totally hopeless about removing the rich from power, etc. because they (wrongly) believe that hardly anybody else wants to do that. The mass (and so-called “alternative”) media absolutely censor, 24/7, any expression of wanting to remove the rich from power, etc. This creates the belief in people—including my 500 neighbors—that in wanting to remove the rich from power, etc., they are all alone. I prove they are in fact the vast majority here.
Therefore, when people hear somebody (like me) talk only about removing the rich from power, etc., they view that person as a bit delusional, as somebody well-intentioned but not somebody to devote much time to doing anything with. But when the subject starts off being about the lack of affordable housing, people’s intense anger at that makes them eager to talk to me and hear what I’m all about. And since they already think it would be wonderful to remove the rich from power, etc., even if impossible, their anger at the lack of affordable housing makes them willing, eager even, to display the sign in a public photo.
Here’s the answer to question #2: Why is it important for YOU to do what I did?
By taking these 500 photos I was able to make a banner with all of the photos:
I displayed this banner in the Brighton, MA Faneuil branch library (my neighborhood library) October 29, 2019. The banner contains photos of more than 500 people--all in Brighton, MA, zip code 02135—each posing for their photo by proudly holding a sign saying "We the People want affordable housing for ALL. To get it we aim to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor." People at the library loved it! (Some of them had their photo in the banner.)
To see the individual photos displayed in high definition so you can read the sign that people are holding CLICK HERE (there are many pages.) To view a YouTube video slide show of these photos with my narration CLICK HERE.
I also displayed this same banner at the grocery store where many of the photos were taken. People loved seeing people they recognized in the banner!
Why is this public display of the photos so important?
As mentioned above, most people think that in wanting to remove the rich from power, etc., they are all alone. This makes people believe that it is pointless, foolish, to take concrete steps to build a movement aiming explicitly to remove the rich from power. (Read here why it is VITAL to make this aim explicit.) Feeling that one is alone in having an egalitarian revolutionary aspiration makes people think that the best one might be able to do is win some band-aid reform that will make things a tiny bit better; and it makes people think that to even win such a band aid reform requires keeping absolutely silent about an egalitarian revolutionary aim so as to avoid (supposedly) “scaring away” public support. But actually to remove the rich from power or even build a movement for that explicit goal? Fugettaboudit!
When people learn that in fact they are the VAST MAJORITY in wanting to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, then EVERYTHING CHANGES. Then there is a sea change in what people think is possible and what they begin to actually fight for, as I learned in 1969. Then people begin to build the egalitarian revolutionary movement.
This is why it is so important to do things—like display a banner with photos of lots of people declaring their egalitarian revolutionary aspiration—that help people learn they are not alone in wanting to remove the rich from power. This is why I urge YOU to take similar photos of your neighbors.