RE: Are we enough to stop the Oligarchs?

But this energetic self defense has done more for me in so-called 'dangerous' parts of the world.

Nor is it strictly a monetary method. Even to recognize the humanity of another person through a greeting and a smile, this has one thousand times had a greater effect for me on a worrisome situation than most everything I have learned in wrestling or martial arts combined.

Hard yes. I don't have a lot of money to give, but even just smiling and saying "hi" to homeless folks I meet has gotten some SURPRISED reactions. I literally had one guy say, "Thank you for acknowledging my humanity." I mean. What does that say about our society?

On the site Nextdoor (local social media), because my part of Denver is very much, the rich and poor are really close together, you can see the bourgeois rich people ethic vs. the rest of us. We've got people doing mutual aid and posting about how others can help, and those who are posting asking people to call the cops because - GASP - some homeless people have pitched their tents in the parking lot of an abandoned business. Where else are they supposed to go?! They HAVE nowhere else to go. And it's an abandoned business, so they are literally in no one's way. You just don't want to see and acknowledge their humanity. RAWR

I feel safer among the nice homeless people I've met than the rich assholes who don't think that poor people should have the right to exist in their presence. That person is the real danger, and yet I'm sure they think they are an upstanding citizen.