Home: Freedom! Site Links to Other Groups
This is a set of links to groups and causes that I support.
Click a link on the left and you will go to a page describing the
group, and one or more links to appropriate pages.
Most groups are on the upper left side of the Nolan Chart. This is a
good way to check your own political type -- some people are
surprised when they find out. The Nolan
Chart Quiz is used by
political science classes and printed in newspapers around the
country. There is no bias to it other than that of only having 10
questions.
Table of Contents
Quakers
War Tax Resistance
Rainbow Family
IWW
Anarchism
Libertarian Party
ACLU
Homelands
Quakers, or Friends, try to speak to that of God in everyone. It is a
non-creedal religion, meaning we don't have a set recital of what we
believe, and generally we are encouraged to think for ourselves.
Many free-thinkers become Friends.
Here is a link to a page that tries to cover the broad spectrum of
Quakerism.
There are basically four types of Friends in the US these days, the
result of various religious struggles. These are:
Liberal Friends, who are generally part of Friends General
Conference (eastern) or Pacific Yearly Meeting and its children
(western). Liberal Friends usually have unprogrammed meetings and
do not generally have pastors.
Friends United Meeting Friends, who are part of Friends United
Meeting. This is a broad group that includes some Yearly Meetings
that are part of FGC and EFI. FUM Friends may have programmed or
unprogrammed meetings and may have pastors.
Evangelical Friends International Friends, who are evangelical and
have much interplay with other evangelical Christians. EFI Friends
always have programmed services and pastors.
Conservative Friends, who are often considered closest to the
Quakerism of the old days. Conservative Friends have
unprogrammed meetings and no pastors.
Freedom! Site War Tax Resistance Links
Do you pray for peace, but pay for war?
Many people regularly pay their taxes, without thinking about what
the money is spent on. Much of it -- over 50% by some calculations --
is spent on war making, servicing the war debt, and training for war.
Some people refuse to pay their taxes. Often they choose to give the
money to a good organization in place of payng war taxes. The
government doesn't like this, and often sends computer generated
notices demanding that they pay. It doesn't work -- War Tax
Resisters are among the least likely to be scared by that.
The National War Tax Resistance
Coordinating
Committee, or
NWTRCC, is a loose group of war tax resisters of various types.
Write them for information. They have a gathering twice a year.
Freedom! Site Rainbow Family Links
What's the Rainbow Family of Living Light? It's a bunch o people who
all have navels.
Members of the Rainbow Family, among other things, camp in the
woods, usually in a national forest, for the period roughly from July
1 to July 7 each year, with people coming early to set up and
staying late to clean up.
The Gathering is the largest libertarian gathering that I know of. With
5,000 to 20,000 people it dwarfs the Libertarian Party National
Convention, the runner up. It operates on pacifist and libertarian
communist principles, though I doubt you'd gt many at the gathering
to say so. Everyone contributes, everyone shares, everything flows
pretty smoothly.
Explore the Rainbow Family and
the
Gathering, and other activities
like potlucks, newsletters and hotlines, at this site. Welcome home!
The Industrial Workers of the World has
been
organizing workers,
especially low wage workers, for 94 years now. Totally worker
controlled, with a fetish for democratic process, the IWW is the only
union I know of that advocates worker ownership from the bottom
up.
The IWW calls for worker control, of the job shop and of the union. It
calls on workers to take responsibility for their own liberation, and
not to count on anyone else for it. The IWW is explicitly
anti-capitalist, believing that the boss is living off the sweat of the
worker.
The IWW has been the target of various smear campaigns over the
years. In World War I, for example, the IWW saw no reason for
workers of one country to kill workers of other countries and called
for "anti-militarist propaganda in times of peace, and in war the
General Strike in all industries."
Thousands of Wobblies went to prison over that. Interestingly, the
rank and file were held at one prison, where they organized
themselves according to standard IWW practice and committed
themselves respectably from all reports. The union's "heavies", who
were held at another prison, apparently got to feuding among
themselves and did not come off that well.
Here's a list of IWW servers. Contact one or all of them.
www.iww.org.au: Australian IWW
bari.iww.org: Berkeley, California IWW
fletcher.iww.org: San Francisco, California IWW
www.stliww.org: Saint Louis, Missouri IWW
hillstrom.iww.org: Salt Lake City, Utah IWW
iww.ca: Canadian IWW
jones.iww.org: Baltimore, Maryland IWW
parsons.iww.org: Boston, Massachusettes IWW
I realized I was an anarchist when I was 16. I was struggling with
what course to take with the draft (I refused to register and did
13
months) and started thinking about what would happen to me in
Russia.
In the US I was looking at a hefty jail sentence, up to five years. In
Russia, I would also be looking at a jail sentence. Why were both the
US and Russia, which I had been taught were enemies, insisting that I
do something that the Bible and other moral teachings say is wrong?
I puzzled on that for a while, and finally figured it out. The US and
Russia are both political states, and each claims the right to kill
people. As a pacifist, I do not give anyone the right to kill.
At that point I realized that I was an anarchist. I have a fundamental
disagreement with the basic nature of the state. A "state" that could
not kill would not be a state, really -- it would be extremely different
from the way things work today. A non-violent state couldn't collect
taxes, for example, it could only encourage voluntary donations. It
certainly couldn't draft people under penalty of imprisonment.
I later found that there were other anarchists around, and began
some reading. But not that much -- frankly, I find a lot of anarchist
reading boring. I prefer the action.
One thing I discovered is that there are at least three general types
of anarchists: those of the left, who also fight capitalism; those of
the right, who also fight communism; and the pacifists, who also
oppose war. There are many permutations.
Here are some anarchist links. I have
tried
to include links from the
left and the right. Right now I don't know of any pacifist anarchist
links other than my own pages, but when I find some I will include
them. Note that all of my links include anarchists to some degree.
http://www.spunk.org/index.html
http://flag.blackened.net/
http://flag.blackened.net/agony/links.html
http://www.spunk.org/resource.html
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ctb/anarchy/
http://www.anarchistcommunitarian.net/
http://www.isil.org
http://members.aol.com/vlntryst/ (The Voluntaryist)
http://www.alf.org/
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/1797/
http://www.LibertarianNation.org/
http://www.russellmeans.com/
http://anti-state.com/
Freedom! Site Libertarian Links
The Libertarian Party is one of the
largest
third parties in the USA. It
has been on the ballot in all 51 states three time since 1980, and
looks like it will continue. It has had members of the legislature in
three different states, including an official Libertarian Minority in
New Hampshire. In terms of slow, steady progress it is atop the
third party world.
This link to the Libertarian Party will take you to the national LP
home page.
The Libertarian Party has affiliates in every state. Some of the ones
I've been in touch with include:
Libertarian Party of North Carolina
Here's links to libertarian organizations
not necessarily affiliated with the party.
http://www.daft.com/~rab/liberty/lib-orgs.html
http://free-market.net/
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, is dedicated to
supporting the Bill of Rights.
Some will say that it ignores the Second Amendment, but from what
I've seen that is a state by state matter, with some acknowledging it
as important and others talking about it being "group right" that has
something to do with the National Guard.
I was on the board of the ACLU of Travis County, Texas for a couple
of years and found it an interesting experience. First lesson: the
ACLU has little more legal resources than I do. It can't be a free
lawyer even on civil liberties cases. For a good case it can do
wonders, but almost all its workers are volunteers. Surprise!
Here is a link to the national ACLU
page.
This page has links to resources on secession, homelands, and
practical libertarian methods.
I don't know if a geographically based system will make sense, as the
internet thrives, but here are resources that are based on that model:
Homelands Page lists
secessionist
and other movements in countries
and areas around the world.
Secessionist Resources [now Secession.Net] is an interesting site.
The Free Nation Foundation has a
newsletter
and holds conferences on
the practical aspects of creating a libertarian society in a new
country.