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Agorism

Join the Liberty Rapid Response Team

What if we could take the liberty focus that New Hampshire enjoys, like a searchlight on a rotating base, and focus it on another location? What if we could, this month, place that focus on Vermont? Next month, Delaware. The month after that, Cleveland. Early next year, we might take it to Los Angeles, New York and eventually places like Egypt, Turkey and Syria. The only limits are our imagination, our attitudes and our wallets. Here is a plan for doing just that.

When I think about how to accelerate our movement towards a freer, more just, prosperous, peaceful and egalitarian society (i.e., the agorist evolution), for some reason, my mind takes me to Pete Eyre and Ademo Freeman. They are at the center of lots of constructive and even surprising activism. That must be why, after talking on Cop Block Radio last night about the need to innovate, I dreamed of Pete and Adam. In my dream, we were sitting around a table and they were demanding to know when I was moving to New Hampshire.

I don’t remember a lot of dreams but this one has stuck with me. For some reason, it keeps popping into my mind. It’s nagging me, actually. I thought about the reason why I won’t move to New Hampshire right now (I need to raise my son without undue risk of being thrown in prison). Then I thought, why can’t I just go and spend a month in New Hampshire? Other people have moved on a transient basis. Why can’t I?

What would I do during that month? I would focus full-time on marketing libertarianism, organizing libertarians and supporting existing liberty organizations. I would go full-bore to build upon the great work that other Free State Project (FSP) members have already done there and continue to do everyday.

Listening to some FSPers talk, you would think that crossing the border from Massachusetts into New Hampshire, one became healed of all afflictions, the birds suddenly chirped melodiously, the sun came out from behind the clouds and you instantly become a better version of you. But it’s just another imaginary state line. New Hampshire is not The Promised Land™. It is, however, a currently unrivaled laboratory in which to experiment with liberty activism.

What if we could take the liberty focus that New Hampshire enjoys, like a searchlight on a rotating base, and focus it on another location? What if we could, this month, place that focus on Vermont? Next month, Delaware. The month after that, Cleveland. Early next year, we might take it to Los Angeles, New York and eventually places like Egypt, Turkey and Syria. The only limits are our imagination, our attitudes and our wallets.

We will send three to fifteen committed, experienced and well-educated liberty activists on each trip. We will spend one to four weeks at each location. While there, we will run educational workshops, distribute literature, do media interviews, engage in counter-economics, videotape government employees, give sidewalk soapbox speeches, produce videos documenting our work, live-tweet our activities, carry out a final project with our students and whatever else is appropriate to our goal and the local context.

The goal is to spark a new or grow a nascent liberty movement in the spotlighted area. Our task is to teach people the basics of libertarianism, incite in them the courage to live free, demonstrate how these principles can improve their lives, connect them with the global liberty community for ongoing support and be inspirational examples for them as beings who already get liberty and hold a burning desire to see it realized.

We can share techniques for self-sufficiency, create an incubator for agorist businesses, train unemployed people, inform targets of police harassment and brutality of how to counter that treatment and much more. The principles and practices of liberty are powerful and ruthlessly germane to everyday problems across the globe.

Think of it as a rapid response team for liberty. A Liberty Corps. An Expeditionary Force. If we are to have any hope of achieving the libertarian or agorist vision in our lifetime, we have to think at this level and, just as importantly, we have to actually make big ideas like this happen.

We must make our struggle not just local and national but also global. At a tactical level, the more of us there are, the more liberty cells that are agitating and growing, the harder it is for government agents to zero in on one of them and shut it down. As agorist communities grow up around the globe, it will make the agorist counter-economy more vibrant and resilient through competition. Imagine if we could buy, not just a few odd products and services from agorist vendors, but if we could select from a global menu, with providers everywhere from Mumbai to Milwaukee.

On a philosophical level, if we allow governments to limit us with their imaginary lines and their passport control checkpoints, then we are ceding ground. The only borders we seek are property lines among homes and businesses. By making connections across these imaginary lines we weaken their power. We strengthen our global voice in support of freedom and against oppression.

As our Liberty Rapid Response Team(s) (LibRRT) accumulates resources and expertise, we can become more agile. When protests break out in Los Angeles or Lima, we can have people there the very next day to conduct nonviolence training, create professional media such as pamphlets and videos and generally assist them with their goals of achieving greater freedom, in whatever form is most appropriate for that local context. Around the world, people are under- and unemployed. They live in grinding poverty. They are subject to coercion and oppression on a daily basis. But they don’t have the vision we do. They do not know in their hearts that they are free, independent beautiful human beings and/or they don’t know how to realize their vision. We can do something about that, something huge, beautiful and effective.

Next Steps

  1. Self-select leaders: If you want to be a part of this, share your ideas below in the comments section.
  2. Build a pool of aid workers: Self-select a sizable pool of individuals who are interested in going on missions (i.e., aid workers).
  3. Pick our first location: Our first few should probably be in North America.
  4. Set a date for our first mission: So that we have a tangible deadline and the urgency that accompanies that.
  5. Develop a budget: I suspect we could carry off a first mission for $5,000 FRN/USD or less. We will need to cover travel and lodging costs, media production costs, one-time startup costs and incidentals. Aid workers must be compensated for their work.
  6. Design ways to defray costs: By trading with individuals in the spotlighted areas, the organization can eventually become self-sufficient. Just by reporting on local events for a global audience, we might even turn a profit.
  7. Develop a training program: Develop an internal training program in libertarianism, agorism, privacy tools, alternative currencies, unschooling, activism, the success philosophy, public speaking, mentoring, languages and all the other skills aid workers will need.
  8. Present a progress report: Present a progress report to the community.
  9. Raise funds
  10. Plan long-range: Based on community support, engage in long-range planning so that we have something tangible to work towards.
  11. Carry out our first mission
  12. Initiate a feedback cycle: Collect information during and immediately after the first mission so that we can evaluate our work and continuously improve it.
  13. Prepare the donors report
  14. Start again on the next mission

I would like to locate this project under the Shield Mutual umbrella. At this time, however, you have not grown Shield Mutual enough in terms of paying customers in order to finance much more than a trip to the supermarket. In the future, I am certain that this project will become part of the Shield Mutual vision. For now, it will need independent community support in order to become a reality.

Is this only Fantasy?

This may sound like fantasy to you. But what is impossible yesterday is routine today. If we don’t stretch our imaginations now, the ideal of a peaceful, prosperous and free world will never arrive. Each successive generation will continue to hit the snooze button on our respective wakeup calls. Our slide into tyranny will accelerate. And we will reach a point of no return. What will you do to make your vision a reality? What comforts are you willing to put on the line for liberty? Tell me in the comments below.

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” – Robert A. Heinlein

“Every noble work is at first impossible.” – Thomas Carlyle

“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” – Charles F. Kettering

“In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.” – Miguel de Cervantes

“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.” – Anthony Robbins

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho

“It always seems impossible until its done.” – Nelson Mandela

“To believe a thing impossible is to make it so.” – French Proverb

“Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.” – G. M. Trevelyan

“Impossible only means that you haven’t found the solution yet.” – Anonymous

“The only place where your dream becomes impossible is in your own thinking.” – Robert Schuller

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” – Christopher Reeve

“There is nothing impossible to him who will try.” – Alexander the Great

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney

By George Donnelly

I'm building a tribe of radical libertarians to voluntarize the world by 2064. Join me.

36 replies on “Join the Liberty Rapid Response Team”

To begin with, I would focus on just one or two cities/towns based upon the number of willing activists. It makes more sense to choose (for example) Little Rock, Arkansas over Salt Lake City if more activists reside in/near Little Rock than SLC. Once a track record is established, it will attract more supporters and allows an expansion of operations.

I call it the ripple effect. Drop a pebble into a pond and you’ll notice how it spreads out.

What ever comes of this a POA (Plan of Action) needs to be written up and agreed upon by all those taking part.

Here is my idea of how to get this to work.

1. Once the POA is written up put the idea out there asking for donations.

2. Two or three teams are needed to make this happen.

Team 1. is the internet marketing team.

Find places to hold the events and book the venue and anything that is associated with it. Deal with and manage the website, flyers, tickets, they blog, they tweet, post on facebook, solicit funds, get vendors to attend the event, get bands like Rebel Inc / system of a down or someone that would draw a big crowed, sell tickets and deal with customers who want info . They manage all the back office stuff including the corresponding with the other teams. This is the main communication team and they pass on details and organize and plan stuff with feedback from Team 2 and Team 3.

Team 2. is the outreach team. Team 2. is out in the field at the cities where future venues are going to be held. They pass out fliers, hold a short workshops explaining about a major event that is about to hit their city and explain what the event is and do as much promotion as possible and get people to go the website and get them to sign up and buy tickets, t-shirts, badges, buttons, books, video like freedom to facism etc. anything that will bring in extra money to support this tour of THE WORLD!

Team 3. The organizers of the event.

This is the team that sets up, welcomes people, shows vendors where to set up, shows people where to camp, hands out the schedule of events, basically manages the even from putting up tents and stages to tare down and packing it up and moving it to the next venue.

I would like to see some well known bands at these events to promote peace, freedom, prosperity, agorism, alternative living, growing food, self sufficiency, solar workshops, wind turbines, intellectual speakers, weapons classes, martial arts, survival, etc etc.

If money can be raised to start I say that we buy some old school buses and tear out the seats and rig them up, have them painted with the tours website on it. Buses are cheap you can buy them at auctions cheap and they can be converted for very little money.

Also I would like to see a documentary made of this and it could be pre-sold to make money in order to fund this operation.

I also have more ideas this is my two cents for now.
– James Cox

All teams would be responsible for making short youtube videos and posting them to youtube and letting Team 1 know so that Team 1 can edit them or use them to make promotional videos.

we will need camera’s, cell phones, laptops, and internet access.

I think that a CFA (Call for Action) needs to be put out there once a POA has been drawn up to see how many people around the US are able and willing to help make this happen. Maybe a question sheet should be drawn up to see where peoples skills lie, like a strengths and weakness form that will relate to what people are needed to do. Also can they do this full time on the road cradle to grave, just in their town full time and help with the event from cradle to grave in their town, or just a few hours each day while the event is on. – James Cox

This could be done on the website I don’t know if there are apps for this but basically it would be like a resume on the site so that you could pull the data for people and what they are willing to do like customer service, guest registration, put up stuff take it down, sell t-shirts merchendice for the tour etc. etc. – James Cox

Kind of like a LinkIn type of thing??? Just so we would know how people want to be involved and how much time that they can put into the project. – James Cox

This needs to be streamed LIVE as much as possible and when it is not live video is being plaid that has already been recorded. An internet TV channel should be set up and also radio as well. There are different mediums that can be used now blogtalkradio for just voice, JustinTV, StickCam, Google+ Hangouts, Ustream there are lots of mediums that can be used to broadcast the event and to pump info out there to show that this is a living breathing movement. Ads could also be run to generate money. – James Cox

People would make a donation to see certain events broadcast like a pay per view or they would pay a subscription fee.

Ben Swann’s Truth in Media Project is working on this. Well-produced high-quality videos; basically it will be a TV channel for the Liberty movement. We should reach out to him to see if once he’s up and running he’ll be willing to help us out with this aspect.

As an early goal, something to focus our efforts and serve to explore all the things we are going to need and all the things that could go wrong, we should launch two missions.

(1) Send a three-person team for one week into an urban US area that already has a sizable and active libertarian community. This place should have a good mix of cultures, ethnicities and languages so that we can demonstrate the utility of our project to all kinds of people and not just the traditional libertarian audience of middle class white suburbanites. We should spotlight one or two neighborhoods for maximum impact.

Places that come to mind:

Philadelphia
Phoenix
Austin

(2) Send a three-person team to a city outside of North America where they are either English or Spanish-speakers. I think Latin America is especially interesting.

I have to stress that leaders and aid workers are going to have to pass a rigorous training course before being able to go out there and do this. That includes me.

George your “Send a three-person team for one week into an urban US area that already has a sizable and active libertarian community. ” What I think would be an even better idea is if we sent the team to an area that was NOT libertarian and WAS multicultural some where like NYC the melting pot of America. (L)ibertarians notice that I use big L those that still believe in the system are almost there they are on the fence. But what about trying to change the hearts and minds of someone that truly believes that ‘government” is totally necessary versus NOT necessary at all. If the team can convert or should I say educate some people from NYC with different backgrounds this will tell us something. – James Cox

When I say a different background I mean from a different culture or country. – James Cox

I would add Detroit to the mix because that’s a city which is increasingly relying on the voluntary sector, since government is pretty much dead in the water. They have much to gain, but very little to lose.

As of late, my focus has been less on standard fare “liberty activism”, and more focused on self sustainability, and sustainability with regard to neighborhoods and small communities. This is very much similar to Karl Hess and his “community technology” approach.

In some instances, it is wholly appropriate to take a “man the barricades” approach to activism, but it seems to me that most people simply aren’t interested in what we have to say about liberty. The common person appears to be more concerned about quality of life issues. This means good schools for their children, spending non work hours with friends and family, wanting cultural vibrancy in their communities instead of cookie cutter suburbs, and concerns over GMO foods (among other things).

I don’t think marketing is enough either. We need to build libertarian a business base, especially in key areas such as schools and entertainment.

I’m quickly becoming familiar. It seems to lack focus on the education industry, the key to society, and puts too much focus on the black market.

George I luv your Ideas ..for spreading Liberty ..but I think those trips the group would need a good lawyer ..you know what they do when we hand out leaflets etc ..its an excuse for ignorant doughnut brained cops to beat people up and you know they are always looking to create a crime when there is none ! Do you know of any Liberty loving cops or lawyers ??

I love this idea.

I couldn’t agree more. Having a team to come in during certain situations or government ordeals would be highly effective IMO.

Not only would you need folks on the ground in the targeted area but a good team of stationary folks is something Pete and I lacked (and realized) while we were on the road. Someone to push press releases, social networking, marketing and maybe sales (if needed, for video ads and so on).

I’d be interested in playing one of those – stationary – roles but the more difficult part is finding someone to be the activists carny. I know what life on the road is like and it will chew some people right up, especially with work of this nature.

And thanks for the kind words George, I admire your ambition and courage on all matters freedom.

I agree with everything that Ademo says. When I did FIJA away from home I had no support team and it would have been nice for someone to write the press releases and deal with setting up appointments all the back office stuff. One major thing monitoring you the person on the street and checking in with you making sure that you have not been kidnapped, following live streams and getting updates out there ASAP is crucial. – James Cox

I’d like to get involved. I’m in the process of transitioning to New Hampshire in the next month or so, but I love this idea and I think outreach in other cities and countries is an excellent idea. I also fully support an excursion in Latin America as there is no shortage of government-failure there. I speak Spanish and Portuguese fluently and I have family in Brasil (another place currently rioting). Let me know if you can use me.

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