How to Beat Coronavirus Capitalism

I've joined a couple of online sessions with Naomi Klein this week. Safe to say she's a woman who has a clear sense that she is no longer a voice crying in the wilderness. I'd not come across Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor before. She too is tremendously impressive here. I do recommend this broadcast.  In Islington we've had two great online discussions this week.. The first after "Shock Doctrine" was our first 'Zoom Movie Night' and the second after watching this when we were joined by the magnificent Ruthie Shallcross​.  (Lovely to see you xx).  Perhaps the only certainty at the moment is that nothing will ever be the same again. Whatever world emerges from the period of physical distancing we are experiencing, we will all, individually and collectively have been changed and that change will bring almost limitless possibilities.



From the transformed relationships we will have with the neighbours we have come to know and discover through to profound changes in the the geopolitical discourse and relationships that shape the entire world.. Whilst the public faces of the forces of conservatism and reaction haven't so far covered themselves in glory we  can take no comfort from that. The second rate numpties in the White House, in Downing Street are the window dressing. The people who put them there have been, as Milton Friedman told them to forty years ago been waiting for this moment, have been waiting and are ready.



As has already happened in China, on Thursday the US Environmental Protection Agency announced on Thursday they would no longer be policing or enforcing legislation regulating extraction, safety  in the workplace, pollution, employment or the live of indigenous communities.  The limited rights in these areas that have been so hard fought for look set to be discarded in the pursuit of private weath.



Those who would wish it so, are skilled. They are smart and they are savvy. They are highly organised and disciplined. But so can we be. We must be or we fail.



Watch and listen to folk like Naomi Klein, like Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor . Sure, watch them from the sofa or in bed at the moment but get three or four people together afterwards. Online, or on the 'phone, In corresponce or by email. Doesn't matter. What does matter is that we collectively start to imagine. Start to imagine the world as it will become in the ".afterwards".  Those concerned with amassing private wealth and the power it buys are doing just that. Right now. Tonight. They have money, and they have guns. They have the apparatus of the state and largely compliant legislatures. And they have the fear and exhaustion of the people. It's an impressive armoury.



What we must not do is add to it.  The most valuable tool of all, which they will be banking on, is the failure of our imagination.



Let's not give them that. So start swimming or we'll all sink like stones.



https://open.spotify.com/track/52vA3CYKZqZVdQnzRrdZt6