While many of us are horrified at the way that the world has been hijacked by big business, politicians and the corporate supported scientists, by the way that the natural ecologies of the planet have been recoded as raw materials for use in manufacturing and as a repository for toxic waste disposal, I cannot but wonder at the general lack of outrage expressed by the ordinary rank-and-file citizenry.

In trying to think this through, I am left considering that the general population may feel disempowered, possibly aware that something is very, very rotten in the way that this civilisation has been configured, but not sure what they can do. Perhaps too many feel like they face these issues alone, and therefore against the tide of common opinion they do nothing because they cannot conceive of anything to do. The papers will publish their cutesy little "10 things you can do to save the planet", and so those who are concerned and who care are left recycling and turning off appliances, their revolutionary spirit and their angst reduced to maintaining the infrastructure of the system that has gotten us into this disaster in the first place. How demeaning and demoralising is that?

But, what alternatives would the "ordinary" person see if they looked up from the newspapers and TV sets? They would see some radicals who go off and protest. Generally, those protests change nothing, and the ordinary person surely must know this. How many letters and petitions must be signed before the fact that they change nothing becomes an activist's best kept secret? However, judging by middle England's opinion, many radicals and activists are discounted as dreadlocked "great unwashed", with whom they will not relate and hence feel alienated from those who do propose alternatives to the white/greenwash they are subjected to day in and day out.

The corporatist media has made such a thorough job of reducing the aspirations and agenda of anarchists to the level of cartoon figures bearing large beards and round bombs that mainstream society either doesn't take them seriously, or if it does, regards them as a threat. Perhaps justifiably so. Anarchism would be geared toward undoing the hierarchical power pyramids that stratify social arrangements. Mainstream society would not remain as it is today if this were to be accomplished.

The question I want to raise in this piece then concerns developing a strategy whereby the ordinary person is engaged and empowered to start critically analysing and challenging the status quo, and thereby lends weight of numbers, finance, and voice to what is typically now the preserve of more radical activists.

Change is always threatening, and any battles waged must always be fought on two fronts, at least. On the one hand, there is the system that needs changing, the system that forces the destruction of the biosphere and the capacity for the planet to sustain life itself. This requires that the economic system be dismantled, the political system that supports and maintains the economic system must also be dismantled and reforged on the basis on anti-authoritarian horizontal arrangements. The system of force (the police and the army) needs to be undone and the personnel retrained and deployed to socially more egalitarian and useful fields.

But, the second front on which the battles must be waged are different than those just described. This second front will require different techniques, for this front is not so much the enemy but rather often well-meaning people who are merely trying to get through life with the least amount of hassle, trying to succeed according to the existing rules of the game. This second front poses the most difficult challenge in some ways, because they need to be brought along with the upsurge in actions that will undermine and undo the power hierarchies. In fact, if the mainstream are not brought along with the changes, the changes are either in danger of stalling or, even worse, becoming the very same system of imposed organisation and arrangement (albeit less ecologically destructive) that we are challenging the oligarchy for.
If the post-revolutionary system is imposed autocratically on those who don't want to know – i.e. the mainstream – then how does it differ from the system against which we revolted? These are not idle musings, but certainly questions to be raised and considered carefully.

These are similar questions that the “coalition of the willing” considered prior to the invasion of Iraq – the question was phrased as winning the “hearts and minds” of the ordinary Iraqis. We who seek to change the system should consider a similar question as well, no matter that the objectives are different than those of the US/UK-led coalition's. We also seek regime change, and we need to ensure that those who are left exposed by that change – the “common” person – is not compromised nor forgotten about in the process. We need to bring them along. They will be resistant. After all, it is their very way of life that is being threatened, even though we of course claim that we are liberating them from the Global Economic shackles they have been forced to wear for generations, to the point that they have come to integrate these shackles into their dominant reality narratives, that these shackles are in fact regarded as the source and expression of their freedoms!

We will, and do, encounter resistance far and wide. We have to compete with the mainstream media, the talking heads, the politicians, the corporations, and the economists each of which has very deep pockets to craft seamlessly soothing messages that the current state of affairs in the world is the very best one can hope to gain. It is all too easy for the mainstream populations to be put off, to feel alienated by the so-called “radical” element of protesters. The Middle England press readers refer to these groups as the “great unwashed”, “benefit recipients” and basic “hooligans”, ad hominem tactics to be sure, but effective at introducing a schism between the protesters and the mainstream. These tactics certainly work – and is a classic tactic of divide and conquer. But it does require that the revolutionary movements find a way of reaching out to those who recognise that something is wrong with the way things are, a way of connecting with those widely held doubts, and engage in exploring and opening up those doubts with critical analysis and problem-solving workshops.

Alongside this constructive engagement, we must get smarter about using the press and media. Guerilla News is worthwhile, and yet most of the time, it is preaching to the choir. The questions must now shift to figuring out how to extend the reach of the messages of change. As mainstream awareness of climate change continues to both spread and deepen, becoming more sophisticated, we find ourselves given an opportunity. In fact, the mainstream media in their thrill at selling news on the back of the Apocalypse are even doing the job for us to some extent. However, the mainstream media do not really explore the alternatives that might contribute to something different. To do so would be for them to bite the hands that feed (the corporate advertisers, for example) as well as to lose any favour they have curried with politicians. They are clearly not the right vehicles for promoting changes. Nonetheless, they are – from our perspective – potentially “useful idiots” insofar as their financial investments in selling stories of the Apocalypse can be commandeered as talking points.

These messages serve as points for departure, with which to explore and deconstruct how we now globally come to be at the point we are at, regardless of how many times we have been reassured that the politicians and corporations know what's best, that we can trust in and rely on corporate funded science to save the day and improve our lot in life. We are potentially missing a trick if we don't make use of the corporate media gore fest and subvert it into an incrementally more radical deconstruction and analysis of the state of the world under global capitalism. The economy isn't working; corporate science isn't working; western democracy isn't actually democratic; people aren't being represented, only those with big lobbying budgets are; the better life, the progress, the increased leisure time we were all promised has not transpired. Instead, our leaders, our corporations treat us as imbeciles: fat, soft consumer puppets who dance along merrily and blindly to the tune of the newly improved line of products, the latest gizmo, the latest celebrity scandal, the latest film, the latest political leader. It is time that all of this sleight of hand and consumption-induced narcosis is turned back onto itself, and demonstrated to the common person so that they can see it for what it is with their own eyes.

But, to do this successfully, we need to be able to initiate contact by speaking the language of the mainstream people, the mainstream spokespeople, otherwise we will end up alienating those we want to (and need to) bring with us. If we want a mass uprising, we need to get the masses on board. We cannot do it with a handful of full-time activists and student groups. For one thing, these groups are easily targeted by the police forces and segregated, and in so doing the message becomes lost in the medium, easily decried as disaffected youth with whom many mainstream people cannot relate and hence don't have sympathy for. A more graduated strategy needs to be developed – one approach for challenging the politicians and economists, another for recruiting “ordinary” women and men to the cause, to get them thinking critically about the issues and how to challenge and change the ways things are done.

I don't have any specific answer to this unfortunately. So, what I am hoping for is that by opening up this point here on Indymedia people might pool their thoughts and through this organically grow a strategy to constructively engage those who are not that far away in their concerns and fears, wishes for something better and more egalitarian, but who feel disempowered by the "approved" interventions that don't work and the activists, with their mainstream media damaged reputations from whom they feel alienated and unrepresented.