Thursday, March 11, 2010

Second Brainstorm for the Chico Mendes Justice and Sustainability Tour!

A great example occurred to me the other day as I was watching the news on Democracy Now! An Iraqi artist/activist named Waafa Bilal has tattooed his back with the names of Iraqi cities, 5000 red dots representing dead American soldiers, and 100,000 dots in invisible ink representing dead Iraqis. He has done this in an attempt to display the devastation in human life caused by war, in this case the Iraq War, but war in general yields the same results.

I can relate to this, I love what he is doing, to make sacrifices, to carry out an action with some fanatical passion, which is often a good thing, to put on a manifestation loaded with emotional and ideological significance, with nothing to hide, nothing to colorcast in moderation, and everything to expose. We have to express the part of ourselves that makes us want to martyr ourselves. Only negative people wrongly assume that extreme actions are always bad. When people don't listen, it helps to do something tremendous to get their attention. Its also a matter of personal contribution, its not enough for me to do average deeds. I have a need, in my life, to do something epic and extreme to get a point across. This will be my masterpiece of expression and contribution to the struggle for social justice and Revolutionary change.

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A small detail which I can add to the tour itself is that I would welcome friends and companeros to join me for the tour, in its entirety or in parts.

The fundraising and awareness work will take place in large part before departure, building links for endorsements and sponsors will be carried out in the next year to year and a half. Sponsors will eventually figure important, but the first order of business will be to get as many endorsers on board as possible to strengthen the campaign.

After departure, fundraising and hopefully awareness events also will continue with a domestic administration team charged with making sure that everything is running smoothly and positively on the North America end of things.

Perhaps a lot of these ideas right now seem broad and unpolished, but that is the goal of the brainstorms, to keep on building and perfecting the campaign. No more ideas for the immediate. The next steps will be to begin networking for endorsements.

The various countries I will be going through, the various stops, and various communities will cumulatively add as a collection of experiences to the weight and momentum of the tour.

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