In Defense of Action
by Parker Clay
Photo by Natalia Danjon
You're a coward. Yeah, you, reading this. I don't mean it as an insult; I've been a coward, too. Actually in a lot of ways I still am. Cowardness is drilled into us from day one. Don't make noise, don't make a scene, don't destroy things, don't spray-paint that wall, don't disrupt the status quo. Be civil. Be Nice. Be docile. They want us to be cowards so they can reap the benefits of the status quo that's keeping us all in our place and destroying the planet. But what is a broken window or a burning cop car in comparison to a starving country or a continental wildfire or a category five hurricane? At what point is it immoral not to act? They don't account for that human carnage in the violence of their balance sheets, sanitized genocide in quarterly statements that fund the bombs of capitalism, a never-ending war in the name of profit and oppression. The machine runs on our cowardice. Don't worry, the system will take care of itself while you pacify yourself with Netflix and Instagram. What they don't want you to know is that they can boil a billion frogs a day so long as they hide it behind a suit and a smile. They're lighting matches everywhere, holding the flame to tinder, daring us to stop them. Now there's smoke on the horizon, my friend, and the fire is spreading. Will you grab a hose? Will you join me?
Parker Clay is an anonymous, ecosocialist dirtbag doing what they can somewhere in the continental US