Kim Robinson - New York 2140

“At that point they will be asking the government to bail them out. That’s us. We’re the government. At least in theory, but yeah. We are. So we can decide what to do then. We will have to tell our government what to do at that point. If our government tries to back the banks instead of us, then we elect a different government. We pretend that democracy is real, and that will make it real. We elect a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That was the whole idea in the first place. As they used to tell us in school. And it’s a good idea, if we could make it real. It might never have been real, up till now. But now’s the time. Now’s the time, people!”

Amelia took a deep breath, listened to the voices chattering desperately in her ear: Charlotte and Franklin in rapid counterpoint, having a little real-time editing war over what she should say. Amelia just repeated whatever sounded good to her in what she managed to catch of their discourse. Kind of a mélange of the two of them, but so what.

“I know this all might sound radical. A little extreme. But we have to do something, right? Or nothing will change. It will keep going on with them wrecking things. And this householders’ strike is the kind of revolution where they can’t shoot you down in the public square. It’s called fiscal noncompliance. It uses the power of money against money. In fact it’s a very neat trick, if you ask me. You may be thinking that it’s such a neat trick that it probably wasn’t my idea, and that’s true. I’m an airship pilot with an animal show in the cloud. Here I am! So, yeah. Still just Amelia Black. But I’ve seen the damage done. I look down on it all the time. I carry the animals away from it. And I’m looking down at it now. There’s a pile of dead animals in the park… And I’ve talked with friends who have been working up this plan. And I think it’s a good one. It’s not just silly Amelia making another bonehead move—I mean, wait here just a second…

“…Because at this point it’s democracy versus capitalism. We the people have to band together and take over. We can only do that by mass action… It’s a case of all for one and one for all. If enough of us do it they can’t put us in jail, because there will be too many of us. We’ll have taken over. They’ve got the guns but we’ve got the numbers.

“…So, tell everyone you know about this, and feel free to share this show and its message, to forward it and all that… And anyone who stops payment on their odious debts and tells us about it, immediately becomes a full member of the Householders’ Union. They’re happy to have everyone join them, so do it. Send in your information, membership is free right now. They might ask for union dues later. They’ll fix your credit rating later. For now they’ve got it covered. And it’s definitely a case of the more the merrier. You know, I’ve noticed that everything that is really worth doing, it’s always the more the merrier.

“…Maybe not everything. What I hope we’ll end up with is a big householders’ union, or a co-op, or whatever you want to call it. Used to be called government, and maybe it will be again, once we get people in office who will actually work for the people rather than the banks… So, yeah. The more of you join in, the better our chances will be! So talk it over with your family and friends. Let’s try it and see what happens! And if it doesn’t work, you know, whatever. We can all talk it over in jail. If there’s enough of us, maybe this whole island here will be the jail. So it won’t be that different from the way things are now, right?

“…Oh. Hey, my friends are telling me that I should probably quit while I’m ahead. That is so often true! So that’s it for this episode of Assisted Migration with Amelia Black . See you next time!”

Strategic defaulting. Class-action suits. Mass rallies. Staying home from work. Staying out of private transport systems. Refusing consumer consumption beyond the necessities. Withdrawing deposits. Denouncing all forms of rent-seeking. Ignoring mass media. Withholding scheduled payments. Fiscal noncompliance. Loud public complaining.

The interesting volume Why Civil Resistance Works makes the case that nonviolent civil resistance of various soft kinds is demonstrably more successful than violent resistance when it comes to actually achieving the stated goals of the resistance and changing things for the better. Chenoweth supposes this greater success for nonviolent resistance movements happens precisely because they are less violent, and therefore more likely to win agreement and compliance from the governments being opposed, and from the people whose welfare is supposedly in question. Seizing the state to achieve economic justice is seen as the principal success of these kinds of movements. General strikes and people massing in urban centers are usually understood to be the classic forms of civil resistance, but all the other methods listed above fit the definition, and have been effective in the past.

So, in the summer of 2142 people started doing all these things. The actors were many, as there was no cohesion or agreement on either means or ends. It began spontaneously soon after Hurricane Fyodor struck New York, when the emergency response to that catastrophe did not include the requisitioning of the empty residential towers of the city. This was the spark that lit the train of subsequent events. Riots in New York spread around the world at varying levels of intensity, depending on local circumstances. And in tough times it takes riots, Clover insists in Riot. Strike. Riot , to drive the point into capital’s thick skull that a change is on its way and must occur, indeed is occurring.

The coastlines naturally led the way in this rioting, being most stressed, but even in Denver significant percentages of the population joined the various householders’ unions and refused to pay rents of all kinds, mortgages and student loans especially. This form of resistance was expectedly popular. Purchase of nonessential consumer goods also dropped massively everywhere, crippling business growth by way of a perfectly legal fuck-you, which after all was merely a case of people not spending money they didn’t have for things they didn’t need. So, although there were only scattered mass demonstrations and occupations of city squares, and the results of the fiscal noncompliance were hard to see and report, there was a powerful sense of some underwater current in the global civilization now pulling it out into an unknown sea. History was happening. When that happens you can feel it.