Are you feeling kind of down after the election, thinking that the struggle to counteract the Corporatist Media and the tsunami of campaign mystery money is starting to look hopeless?
Well, philosophy suggests and history demonstrates that The People are amazingly resourceful in the never ending struggle to save the Elite from themselves. If left unchecked, the greedy bastards would destroy the matrix that births them and that sustains them even as they wage war against it. It's Class Warfare, genocide and suicide wrapped up in a big bonbon that only they intend to enjoy. But being compassionate, The People are always looking for ways to bring things back into balance and restore a kind of chaotic order, not from the top down, but from the bottom up. Many of these ways involve autonomous efforts to enhance communication and connection at the ground level.
Are you frustrated, pissed off and looking for something to do that's cheap, easy and effective? Take a look below.
First, something to uplift our Spirits
Calling upon our Better Angles
Sharron Angle recommended Second Amendment Remedies for frustrated TeaPublicans, but DKos user Fishgrease has a better idea in his Booming the Airwaves I and II. Why not reinvent the Soapbox using cheap Chinese throwaway consumer products to take back our rightful portion of the public airwaves and communicate and connect on the ground while we are going about our daily business.
The Internets resulted in an explosion of communication, sharing and self-promotion, dramatically changing the game. As The Elite plot to control and stifle that new freedom, it's perhaps not too soon to start dreaming up some new kinds of soapboxes.
Broadcast radio comes to mind but in its megawatt form it is prohibitively expensive and is nearly monopolized by right wing programming. Progressive radio is still alive, but barely, and not at all in many rural parts of the US. Recent and ongoing attempts to hang onto a small piece of FM pie through community micro broadcasting are much more affordable but have met with resistance from the Corporate Media with the help of the FCC. The story of Free Radio Berkeley is compiled by Ron Sakolsky and Stephen Dunifer in their Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook which is available online as a (fre)ebook. Dunifer's FREE SPEECH - A Fable lays out the larger context of the ongoing radio wars.
While micro broadcasting has proven to be an effective community builder, it remains illegal in the eyes of the FCC and is probably more than most of us would want to tackle. The genius of Fishgrease's idea is to use a cheap MP3 player and a cheap and legal FM transmitter (the kind that lets you listen to your CD's or IPod on an FM radio anywhere in your house or car) to broadcast progressive content as you drive through the countryside or walk around town. Not much range but if enough people get involved the coverage could be enormous.
If you're interested in this kind of subversive activity you really must read Booming the Airwaves for yourself. Fishgrease explains it much better than I can and the comments contain some suggestions for pushing the legal envelope if you are more daring. Also, there's now a website under construction that heralds a project called Free Radio Me, a name that is an apparent hat tip to Free Radio Berkeley. This project has as its Mission Statement:
OUR MISSION: Transmit progressive content from our homes, vehicles and persons, always. We will transmit legally on open channels. We will transmit wherever we go, whatever we do.
A Nocturnal Vision
But read Booming the Airwaves at your own risk because the idea is so provocative that it may blossom into an obsession. After I was exposed I spent a couple of sleepless nights planning my own experiments. Then the dreams started.
Soon after falling asleep the other night I found myself uncarnated as an ex Graywater Merc subcontracted out to Concast, Inc. whose motto had become "All the Content That's Fit to Think." Salary paid with US tax dollars of course, laundered through the FCC. I'd been sent to hunt down a nano broadcaster who was operating in Michigan's UP, a region that, despite its Socialist, Communist, and Wobbly Labor history, had recently been turned a cheery Corporatist Red. Praise the Megawatts and pass out the Campaign Cash! Bully pulpit, "one dollar, one vote" and all that.
I was hunting Belluna Grrrl who was famous for using inexpensive and easily available weather balloons to lift her damn Freedom Stik even higher so that its seditious signal could reach more listeners. Who could have predicted the nano broadcasting plague and its misuse of cheap Chinese consumer electronics to outflank the FCC and their branch of the Mighty Wurlitzer.
In some subcultures the Freedom Stikers were also called Greasers in honor of the madman who had birthed that propaganda transmitter-on-a-stick. The Stik was the reincarnation of the soapbox which had been surprisingly troublesome because just about anyone could afford one. We'd all thought that the soapbox had finally been put to rest. The subversive use of a wooden box had been legislated away in the name of decorum and order. The Bloggers and other Netizens had tried to resurrect it but they had been regulated and deregulated into silence in the name of the Free Market and its Invisible Hand. But a new radio frequency menace was afoot, spawned in the Heartland and now infecting all parts of the Republic, Inc.
As my Hummer crested the next ridge the target came into view. A shocking pink weather balloon was flying high with its damned payload dangling like a dagger poised to be thrust into Concast's expanding balloon of profit. The orb was tethered to what appeared to be some sort of recumbent mountain bike, upon which sat its silver haired guardian, keeping watch and having lunch. This was truly my lucky day.
But as I gunned my monster ride to run her down she reacted with surprising speed, cutting the chord that kept the balloon from escaping and then pedaling like mad until she disappeared into the forest. Damn Isaac Newton and his Second Law of Mechanics! Sometimes I think I've reached the point of diminishing returns with all the weight training and steroids and massive machinery. Perhaps these rebels are onto something?
I watched the balloon and its throwaway cargo sail over the treeline and then I remembered the tall mast on Belluna Grrrl's recumbent ride. It flew a colorful banner, designed no doubt to advertise the rider's presence in traffic. But starting to feel that churning in the gut that usually precedes things going all FUBAR, I quickly turned up the volume on my scanner and in no time found the nano signal broadcasting its taunting message. "This is KMWR, Krazy Michigan Wolverine Radio, signing off. Remember. The Wolverine Dances with the Fish. The Wolverine Dances with the Fish. Be here now. Be somewhere else later. Is that so difficult?"
I woke up in a pool of sweat.
Keep Hope Alive but don't Forget to Just Do It
As much as we sometimes need some audacious hope, at other times we just have to get down in the mud and dirty our hands. DawnN, a DKos user who commented on Booming the Airwaves, put it brilliantly:
"I would submit that there is no hope - do or don't do is all we've got. Fishgrease does stuff. He constellates other do-ers around him. This is gonna go."
As the Zen Master said, "When you're standing on the bridge, pants aflame, looking down into the flowing river, it's no time to ponder how they caught on fire or to wish you had a cellphone so that you could call the fire department, hoping you've paid your fire protection fee since the department has been privatized."
Do or don't. I guess it's up to us. Meet you on the airwaves. Or on the road.