Found: Community of Resistance

Last night, Candlelight Collective did a screening of the film, What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire.

We saw many new faces at the Collective. While our events are usually heavily attended by youth, this event saw quite the opposite: Only about 4 youth out of 25 or more people. This especially excited me, because sometimes i feel like we're alone in our "radicalism" and that we have no sympathizers in this ultra-conservative town. Well we had to wait until after the movie to see just how sympathetic these folks really were.



After the wonderful, heart-breaking and renewing 2 hours of the film, we pulled our chairs around for a discussion. It kind of went like this: "So, what are we going to do about this". Some folks talked about personal lifeboats, others talked about strengthening community, and--and this really made my evening--real, political resistance. We talked about a culture of resistance and how we're going to cultivate one. We talked about what people are already doing to resist this culture. We talked about what they are going to do. We talked about youth assuming positions at the front lines as leaders and about everyone else supporting them. We talked honestly and we talked constructively.

Now, i cannot express how happy i was to have this event. This is the FIRST time in my life that i have been able to speak in to a rather large group of people I don't know very well, and talk honestly about bringing down civilization. The responses were more than sympathetic, they were positive, constructive, voices of people whom are on our side, the side of the living. More, these people already knew that this culture was unsustainable and that we needed drastic change; they just thought they were alone.

Maybe this was just one night of awe-inspiring-unbelievable congregation; one night speaking of facing the apocalypse head on with resistance and love. Maybe all this was is discussion and we won't be seeing these folks much more after this. But, this was our first foot-in-the-door for building a culture of resistance. This was an opportunity that we seized and we will continue to seize any in the future. We all know this culture has to be stopped and we intend to get to work; let's hope these folks and more will be joining us in the fight.