As I trav­el around the coun­try I’m asked the same ques­tion:  What can we do—is there a chance of winning?

I’m asked this ques­tion by women and men, by Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats, by Lib­er­tar­i­ans and Tea Par­ty mem­bers, by young and old, by rur­al and urban res­i­dents.  My answer is always the same.  We can do a lot and yes, we will win. 

Now, that’s a pow­er­ful state­ment and has to be backed up with tac­tics or it’s just emp­ty rhetoric.

In address­ing you who are in lead­er­ship and orga­niz­ing posi­tions, it’s nec­es­sary to dis­cuss strat­e­gy.  A good idea act­ed on at the wrong time is wast­ed.  An action with no fol­low-up is lost.  An asser­tion with­out a sol­id ground­ing in facts destroys credibility. 

The shock­ing truth that we all deal with on a dai­ly basis is that UN Agen­da 21/Sustainable Devel­op­ment is the action plan to inven­to­ry and con­trol all resources, both human and nat­ur­al, all means of pro­duc­tion, and all infor­ma­tion in the world.  Twen­ty years ago the Agen­da for the 21st Cen­tu­ry was agreed to by our gov­ern­ment and then imple­ment­ed through exec­u­tive order in 1993.  It hides in plain sight—masquerading as region­al plans, cli­mate action plans, as scenic byways, as smart meters, as domes­tic sur­veil­lance, as land trusts, as Out­come Based Edu­ca­tion, as sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties strate­gies, as public/private part­ner­ships, as com­pre­hen­sive or mas­ter or gen­er­al plans.  Because it is a stealth plan we are at a tremen­dous dis­ad­van­tage in bring­ing it to the public’s aware­ness.  We are smeared in the media and in our neigh­bor­hoods, called con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, and dis­re­gard­ed.  We’re sub­ject­ed to a dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign that is Delphi’ing the entire world. 

What you and I know is that it takes courage to fight this, and that is against us, too.  Because most peo­ple are afraid.  We live in a cul­ture of fear.  Glob­al warm­ing, ter­ror­ism, food short­ages, eco­nom­ic collapse—these are all part of UN Agen­da 21/Sustainable Development.

Yes, these are the times that try men’s souls.  As I’ve said, it’s as if there has been a foot­ball game going on for the last 20 years and most of us didn’t know it.  The oth­er team has been mak­ing touch­downs while we’ve been in the lock­er room.  But now we’re suit­ed up, we’re out on the field, we’re up on the board.  That game anal­o­gy is a good one because all over the US we’ve got teams form­ing and they don’t know what to do.

In real­i­ty, though, it’s not a game.  This is war.  The Amer­i­can Plan­ning Asso­ci­a­tion knows it.  The Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion knows it.  The Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Coun­ties knows it.  The League of Cities knows it.  Bank of Amer­i­ca knows it.  The Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment knows it. We need to know it.

We are deal­ing with a blood­less coup.  An admin­is­tra­tive coup d’état imple­ment­ed through reg­u­la­to­ry means. UN Agen­da 21/Sustainable Devel­op­ment is top-down.  GLOBAL. REGIONAL. NEIGHBORHOOD.  None of those tiers is elect­ed.  This is gov­ern­ment by unelect­ed boards and com­mis­sions man­aged through mon­ey and pow­er. We need to have aver­age cit­i­zens refus­ing to go along to get along with region­al plans.  We reject glob­al gov­er­nance. We need to re-occu­py our gov­ern­ment as free Amer­i­cans and refuse to be divid­ed with arti­fi­cial dis­trac­tions.  Our lib­er­ty is at stake.

Now, there’s no ques­tion that this is daunt­ing.  So we need to use strat­e­gy to win.

I’d like to share some tac­tics that work.

ONE:  Know what you’re talk­ing about.  This seems obvi­ous but you’d be sur­prised that many well-mean­ing peo­ple fly on emo­tion.  They use slo­gans instead of facts.  This is a mis­take. Edu­cate your­self to the point that you can answer Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How on the big pic­ture.  For exam­ple, when you are chal­lenged while inform­ing your neigh­bors about UN Agen­da 21/Sustainable Devel­op­ment, and you’re told that ‘it’s a non-bind­ing agree­ment that has no impact here in the US’ counter that.  Counter it with the 1993 Exec­u­tive Order that cre­at­ed the President’s Coun­cil on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment sole­ly in order to imple­ment UN Agen­da 21 in the US.  Trace for your lis­ten­ers that process that went direct­ly from George Bush sign­ing the agree­ment in 1992, to the 1993 PCSD, to all fed­er­al agen­cies chang­ing their poli­cies to con­form to Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment prin­ci­ples, and then down into the states and local gov­ern­ments through Grow­ing Smart Leg­isla­tive Guide­book, fed­er­al grants, and pri­vate awards by part­ner orga­ni­za­tions. From there, bring it right into your town’s com­pre­hen­sive plan. Do this every time.  Destroy that tin-foil hat smear once and for all.

It’s not enough to know this infor­ma­tion; you have to get it out to the pub­lic.  We are still at square one in terms of aware­ness.  The best way to do this inex­pen­sive­ly, quick­ly, and com­pre­hen­sive­ly, is with fly­ers.  One hun­dred two-sided fly­ers cost $10.  In one hour you can reach at least 200 adults by putting fly­ers on doorsteps.  You don’t waste time argu­ing, you can be anony­mous, and you’ll have a huge impact.  With six hun­dred dol­lars and ten peo­ple we blan­ket­ed a town of 170,000 with 7,000 strate­gi­cal­ly placed fly­ers.  Fly­ers infu­ri­ate those con­trol­ling your town because they can’t be refut­ed with­out actu­al­ly acknowl­edg­ing that the fly­ers are out there.  You make your case unin­ter­rupt­ed, with each house­hold read­ing the infor­ma­tion inde­pen­dent­ly. We tar­get sin­gle fam­i­ly homes, small busi­ness­es, rur­al areas, and wealth­i­er areas, because these are the peo­ple who are tar­get­ed by UN Agen­da 21. Take your city map and divide it up into sec­tions. Assign those sec­tions. Keep track of which streets have been cov­ered. If you don’t have the peo­ple to do the walk­ing then hire teenagers.  You’d pay $50 to have some­one mow your lawn or clean your house—pay them to walk fly­ers around your town.  Our move­ment is most­ly over the age of 55.  We need to involve young peo­ple.  We need to involve all races, creeds, and par­ties. We need crit­i­cal mass.  Our biggest weapon is get­ting the infor­ma­tion out so that peo­ple imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize Agen­da 21 when they see it.  Take fly­ers with you every­where you go and drop them on tables, put them on bul­letin boards, pass them out at sport­ing events.  Make them clear, bold, sim­ple, and official-looking.

I’ll tell you how effec­tive this is.  We used fly­ers to inform town res­i­dents on a city plan for manda­to­ry green retro­fits and manda­to­ry inspec­tions on every build­ing. Pri­or to our fly­er­ing, most cit­i­zens had not heard a word about it.  We killed that plan. We used fly­ers to bring the pub­lic to pre­vi­ous­ly unat­tend­ed meet­ings on rede­vel­op­ment where we then turned the tide and were then able to raise a half mil­lion dol­lars to fight our city in a law­suit.  We used fly­ers to inform the pub­lic that their tax dol­lars were going to pay for a pri­vate park­ing struc­ture at the mall.  We were effec­tive.  We won a lot of our bat­tles.  Here’s some­thing else about fly­er­ing.  It can be anony­mous.  I spoke in Cleve­land, Ten­nessee a while ago, and some­one in the audi­ence decid­ed to use fly­ers to noti­fy res­i­dents of a rede­vel­op­ment plan to take their homes by emi­nent domain.  The may­or of the town was furi­ous when new­ly-informed cit­i­zens start­ed to object.  At a city coun­cil meet­ing he asked for a vote of the coun­cil to order the police chief to investigate—to find out who had put out the fly­er.  The local Tea Par­ty hired an attor­ney who has now sent a threat­en­ing let­ter to the city object­ing to spend­ing tax­pay­er dol­lars to inves­ti­gate a legal action, an act of free speech.  The city is in a heap of trou­ble now.  This is a win for us.

Anoth­er part of this tac­tic is to iden­ti­fy some­one in your group who is the spokesper­son.  This will be your calm, intel­li­gent, well-groomed, artic­u­late speak­er who is the most sol­id on infor­ma­tion. Always refer press to this per­son. Every­one wants to see their name in the paper but this is not the time for ego.  Tell your group that any inquiries from the press must be referred to your spokesper­son.  And then stick to it.

Your spokesper­son knows that the press, no mat­ter how charm­ing and friend­ly they seem, are intent on show­ing the Resis­tance in as unflat­ter­ing a light as pos­si­ble.  The spokesper­son is alert, sharp, and ready for the dou­ble-edged ques­tion, the sly insin­u­a­tion, the mis­di­rec­tion of the dis­cus­sion.  If you’re the spokesper­son and are asked: ‘Why do you object to zon­ing?’ you know that this loaded ques­tion means that the reporter will say that your group would sup­port build­ing any­thing anywhere—like a pig farm next to a church.  You under­stand more about this than the reporter does, and you explain that you are not against zon­ing, but the city’s gen­er­al plan changes land use with­out prop­er­ty own­er noti­fi­ca­tion. Whole areas of the city are being redes­ig­nat­ed as tran­sit ori­ent­ed development/ or mixed use. The exist­ing zon­ing must then be brought into com­pli­ance with the gen­er­al plan. Result? Legal non-con­form­ing uses and reduced prop­er­ty val­ues.  It lit­er­al­ly makes exist­ing zon­ing irrel­e­vant. OK?  What I just did is demol­ish a whole line of questioning. 

When asked ‘What’s wrong with sus­tain­abil­i­ty?’ You say “Do you know where that term came from?  The Unit­ed Nations 1987 report ‘Our Com­mon Future’.  Did you know that sin­gle fam­i­ly homes, pri­vate vehi­cles, appli­ances, meat eat­ing and tillage are con­sid­ered unsus­tain­able?’  When you’re asked about UN Agen­da 21 always link it to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and region­al plans.  One Bay Area IS Agen­da 21.  Pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships, Smart Growth, the Wild­lands, Com­mu­ni­tar­i­an­ism. Man­u­fac­tured con­sen­sus for the ‘com­mon good.’  All region­al plans are the same and are Agen­da 21. 

Stay focused on your local issues.  Who are the con­sul­tants, what are the pro­grams, who are the play­ers, where does the mon­ey come from and go to? What are the plan names, what oth­er cities have the same plan, same con­sul­tant, same grants? Con­tact Resis­tance fight­ers in those cities and share infor­ma­tion. Iden­ti­fy the orga­ni­za­tions and cor­po­ra­tions in the pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships. Who are the board mem­bers? Are these the same peo­ple who will prof­it from the project? Expose this on your fly­ers.  Look at address­es, law firms, spin-off groups and match them up.  In my town I dis­cov­ered that a num­ber of non-prof­its were shar­ing the same suite of offices.  I inves­ti­gat­ed the own­er­ship of the build­ing and the oth­er ten­ants and found a tremen­dous amount of reveal­ing con­nec­tions.  Read your local paper dai­ly.  It’s full of Agen­da 21. The more you know, the bet­ter fight­er you’ll be.

TWO: Turn the tables on your oppo­si­tion.  Don’t do the expect­ed.  Do the unex­pect­ed.  When a coali­tion of groups anti-Delphi’d One Bay Area (SF) Del­phi meet­ings the con­sul­tants were com­plete­ly thrown off bal­ance. Use tim­ing.  When you are strate­giz­ing in your group make sure that you know and trust all par­tic­i­pants.  If you’re work­ing in coali­tion make a pact to keep your plans pri­vate unless you agree to con­sult with some­one.  No one should email or share your projects and tim­ing with any­one.  Don’t give your ene­my an oppor­tu­ni­ty to block you before you get off the ground.  Don’t release infor­ma­tion until it is strate­gi­cal­ly right.  Take action after study­ing the tim­ing.  Then fol­low up.

In Cotati, CA, and Williams­burg, VA, peo­ple who were not able to get our mes­sage into the main­stream media opened their own news­pa­pers.  Whether as indi­vid­u­als or as a group, explore media pos­si­bil­i­ties that are uncon­ven­tion­al or go around main­stream media.

If you win, celebrate—send out fly­ers, do a press release; get it on local com­mu­ni­ty media.  But be ready with anoth­er action so that you don’t lose your peo­ple through inac­tiv­i­ty.  Break your strug­gle into pieces that can be won.  If you lose turn the loss into a win.  The San Car­los city coun­cil meet­ing is a per­fect exam­ple of that.  The city put their mem­ber­ship in ICLEI on the agen­da and many of us spoke elo­quent­ly in favor of sev­er­ing that mem­ber­ship.  Vice May­or (now May­or) Matt Gro­cott gave a fan­tas­tic speech.  Then the coun­cil mem­bers vot­ed one by one to keep their mem­ber­ship in ICLEI.  Although we lost that night, Steve Kemp filmed it and the whole coun­try got to see the dis­gust­ing dis­play of city offi­cials ignor­ing the facts and their con­stituents.  That is a win.

THREE:  Iden­ti­fy spies.  Use them.  The oppo­si­tion will go direct­ly to your peo­ple and try to turn them against your group.  With the use of flat­tery, board appoint­ments, or sub­tle threats peo­ple can be turned.  Infil­tra­tors may enter as new mem­bers. They will often be the peo­ple who cau­tion you not to act, who tell you that you’re wrong about the motives of the coun­cil mem­bers or city attor­ney or staff, or tell you to not to men­tion Agen­da 21/Sustainable Devel­op­ment.  They will be there at all strat­e­gy meet­ings. They may do noth­ing or they may take con­trol. Test them by giv­ing them false information—tell them that you plan to do an action and then change your plan.  Watch to see how much oppo­si­tion shows up at the event.   Move these peo­ple out of your inner cir­cle.  Use them to trans­mit infor­ma­tion to the oppo­si­tion or drop them from your group. 

FOUR: Rec­og­nize apti­tude in your group and nur­ture it.  But don’t con­fuse ego with apti­tude.  This is not a pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test or a way to gain per­son­al pow­er.  We are in ser­vice to our coun­try.  There are no gen­er­als in this fight and no heroes.  Help peo­ple to do their best. If you have researchers have them work on read­ing the local Gen­er­al Plan and Cli­mate Action Plan.  If you have ana­lysts have them inves­ti­gate the impacts of these plans.  If you have artists then have them design a fly­er or a poster to alert the pub­lic.  If you have jog­gers or walk­ers have them put those fly­ers on porch­es.  Have video­g­ra­phers in your group bring their equip­ment to every meet­ing and film it. Those of us with chil­dren and grand­chil­dren should be encour­aged to bring those young peo­ple to events where they will be thanked and invit­ed to speak about their expe­ri­ences of cen­sor­ship and manip­u­la­tion in school and social groups.   Younger peo­ple use social media effec­tive­ly.  Ask them to help get this infor­ma­tion out to their friends.  Spon­sor a cash prize for the best five minute video on UN Agen­da 21/Sustainable Devel­op­ment in your town and put notices up at the local schools.  Have an awards ban­quet and a showing. 

Encour­age cit­i­zens to get involved and guide them to activism.  If you have access to funds use them to fund out­reach.  I am often invit­ed to speak to Tea Par­ties, Lib­er­tar­i­ans, and prop­er­ty rights groups, and they gen­er­al­ly pay my expens­es.  But what about those uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges that can’t pay our expens­es?  There are lots of young peo­ple there who are not being reached.  Pro­vide access by fund­ing speakers.

FIVE:  Pub­li­cize the names and acts of col­lab­o­ra­tors.  Con­se­quences.  Who is sup­port­ing and financ­ing UN Agen­da 21/Sustainable Devel­op­ment in your town? We researched our new neigh­bor­hood pres­i­dent and dis­cov­ered that he was a for­mer employ­ee of the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA), and had designed and head­ed up a pro­gram to part­ner the EPA with local com­mu­ni­ties to ‘rebuild democ­ra­cy.’  Our city paid to have him go up and study Seattle’s Depart­ment of Neigh­bor­hoods, a top-down Del­phi-using agency. This is the kind of thing you want to broad­cast.  When a coun­cil mem­ber votes to sup­port a $20 mil­lion bike bridge at the same time that there is no mon­ey to keep your street­lights on, make a fly­er with a mug shot of that coun­cil per­son on it. Use this to defeat him at the next elec­tion.  Con­sid­er tar­get­ed recalls.  Show col­lab­o­ra­tors that there are con­se­quences.  We are work­ing on a cat­a­log of sup­port­ers of UN Agen­da 21/Sustainable Devel­op­ment includ­ing the Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion, Siemens, Bank of Amer­i­ca, IBM, and Google. 

If you are vol­un­teer­ing for a group or mak­ing finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions, whether for a non-prof­it or a reli­gious group, do some check­ing on it.  For exam­ple, is your reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion a mem­ber of Reli­gious Cam­paign for For­est Con­ser­va­tion?  This mul­ti-denom­i­na­tion­al non-prof­it is offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized by the Unit­ed Nations as an NGO and advo­cates for an end to com­mer­cial log­ging.  Pull your finan­cial sup­port from any group that is sup­port­ing UN Agen­da 21, ICLEI, smart growth and region­al boards.  Refuse to pay dues, refuse to vol­un­teer, and put out a fly­er inform­ing mem­bers.  Use that mon­ey you would have con­tributed to make flyers.

The flip side of this is to sup­port elect­ed offi­cials who are on our side.  I was just con­tact­ed by a coun­cil­man in Mon­tana who was fight­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in a fed­er­al grant pro­gram.  He said it looked like UN Agen­da 21 to him.  He was right.  But where were the cit­i­zens to sup­port him and three oth­er coun­cilmem­bers when they vot­ed to turn down fed­er­al mon­ey?  They lost by one vote.  How can those coun­cilper­sons say they’re rep­re­sent­ing their con­stituents when no one shows up? 

Elect­ed offi­cials need to put out a newsletter–put out a call for the com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port them when they’re refus­ing fed­er­al grants.  This is big, isn’t it?  It could ruin a politician’s chances for re-elec­tion, so the sup­port of the peo­ple is cru­cial.  Elect­ed offi­cials must inform the pub­lic.  Put on a town hall meet­ing to raise aware­ness and support. 

SIX:  Make being part of the Resis­tance fun. Use ridicule.  These UN Agen­da 21 plans are often ridicu­lous.  Mil­lions of tax dol­lars are going for stud­ies. Our gov­ern­ment is spend­ing huge amounts of our mon­ey for things we don’t need or want but they can’t pay to pave our roads. The imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21 costs a for­tune.  We haven’t even scratched the sur­face and we’re already bank­rupt. High speed rail is an exam­ple.  We’re going to spend bil­lions to lay tracks from Fres­no to Bak­ers­field?  Com­e­dy.  How about a neigh­bor­hood asso­ci­a­tion run by city-hired con­sul­tants because it’s too messy to hear what you real­ly think?  They did this in Seat­tle. Com­e­dy. How about road diets that nar­row the road and put bikes and cars in the same lane?  They call this shar­ing the road.  Ridicu­lous­ly dan­ger­ous.  Build­ing high den­si­ty tran­sit ori­ent­ed devel­op­ment sub­si­dized with our tax dol­lars will indebt us for 40 years.  Two gen­er­a­tions of debt used to build apart­ments by the train tracks. Sus­tain­able or ridicu­lous?  Remem­ber in the late 60’s Jer­ry Rubin and Abbie Hoff­man throw­ing dol­lar bills into the NY Stock Exchange?  The traders went crazy run­ning for the mon­ey.  It was fab­u­lous polit­i­cal the­ater.  Be creative.

SEVEN:  Be hon­or­able.  Work with oth­er groups in coali­tion on your com­mon goals. Keep your pol­i­tics to your­self and focus on what you can agree on.  What do we have in com­mon?  We object to Smart Meters, to domes­tic spy­ing, to end­less war, to eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion, to crush­ing school debt, to region­al­iza­tion and glob­al­iza­tion.  We have com­pas­sion for those who think of them­selves as envi­ron­men­tal­ists and are wak­ing up to the manip­u­la­tion.  Make a com­mit­ment in front of your group, per­son by per­son, that you are depend­able and seri­ous in defend­ing our free­dom and that you will do the work.  Show up when you say you will.  Stay con­sis­tent in your mes­sage and in every­thing you do.  Speak the truth, and be trust­wor­thy.   When you say you’re going to sue, do it.  If you make a threat and don’t fol­low through no one will take you seri­ous­ly in the future. 

EIGHT:  Under­stand what your people’s lim­its are.  Remem­ber streak­ing?  Now imag­ine your group doing that.  Not going to hap­pen, right?    Peo­ple who don’t want to speak at a meet­ing should hold up signs in front of the cam­eras.  It is best to speak because silent peo­ple are assumed to agree.  Read­ing some­thing is bet­ter than not speak­ing at all.  Choose those events care­ful­ly.  We don’t want to burn peo­ple out.  If there is a pop­u­lar issue in your town that you agree with, get out there and get in front of it.  Get email address­es and grow your group. 

NINE:  Peo­ple become active when their inter­ests are threat­ened.  Telling them that they are los­ing their sov­er­eign­ty or their rights is not as effec­tive as telling them that the city coun­cil is propos­ing  to require a $750 ener­gy inspec­tion on every sin­gle build­ing in the entire city, and that they’ll have to pay before they can sell their house or get a build­ing per­mit.  We stopped this with a fly­er.  Sev­en thou­sand fly­ers. Choose fights that the pub­lic actu­al­ly cares about.  Mon­ey out of their own pock­et is the num­ber one con­cern. Always think of the issue in terms that will get peo­ple up, angry, and active.  Then direct them and grow your group. 

Tar­get those on coun­cil who sup­port Smart Growth, region­al plans, vision­ing projects, etc.  We were able to change the bal­ance of pow­er on the San­ta Rosa City Coun­cil by expos­ing the Agen­da 21 fac­tion that sup­port­ed spend­ing a mil­lion dol­lars to turn our neigh­bor­hood street into an obsta­cle course called a bike boule­vard.  Frame the issue in a way that will appeal to the pub­lic. When we want­ed to stop the bike boule­vard our slo­gan wasn’t “Stop the Bike Boule­vard” it was “Restore Hum­boldt Street.”  We won. 

TEN:  Real resis­tance is about pow­er.  This is a fight for the hearts and minds of the Amer­i­can peo­ple that will be won by engag­ing our fel­low cit­i­zens in their own self-inter­est. It’s up to us to help them see what that means.  We must refuse region­al plans lead­ing to glob­al gov­er­nance. Camp­ing on the city hall lawn isn’t pow­er.  This is a method used to mass obe­di­ent troops that can be used lat­er.  Pow­er is get­ting infor­ma­tion to your fel­low cit­i­zens so that they will not be Delphi’d.  Pow­er is reveal­ing the gears behind the machine so that cit­i­zens will stand up and say HEY, that looks like Agen­da 21 and we don’t want it.  Pow­er is encour­ag­ing peo­ple to use their rea­son­ing and then to speak out.  The word ‘encour­age’ means ‘to give courage to.’  To ‘empow­er’ means to ‘assist those in the fight to see the pow­er they have and then to encour­age them to use it.’  This is our job. 

Let’s do every­thing we can to relent­less­ly bring the aware­ness of UN Agen­da 21/Sustainable Devel­op­ment to crit­i­cal mass. Free­dom is non-par­ti­san. There is joy in tak­ing your pow­er.  Aware­ness is the first step in the Resistance. 

We can do it.

Rosa Koire
Exec­u­tive Director
Post Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Institute

– See more at: http://democratsagainstunagenda21.com/developing-a-winning-strategy.html#sthash.T1UkYECa.dpuf