Hey Sam. Thanks for being interested, and continuing the conversation! :)

I too was excited by the Yellow Vests. I stopped following it once I felt like it had been co-opted and defused by the state. I realize some independent factions continued on, but personally I just tuned out once it lost momentum, as I had a lot already going on, and wasn't near any Yellow Vest action anyway. I'm reminded of the Occupy movement, which I also covered eagerly in the early days (as a YouTuber). I didn't get involved at the local level, despite there being a Vancouver contingent (I had not yet been nudged to make the jump from online activism). It too mostly got co-opted, and I also didn't agree with their slant toward socialism.

I didn't know you believed we are headed for something like Mad Max! Interesting. That's a very different kind of world, one I'm not very prepared for. I think in the case of a total societal collapse, disabled people like myself will be early targets. Even if I can find a way to hide or fight, my long term prospects in that world are grim. (I'm essentially an anarchist, but I believe in and desire technology, community, culture, and society.... okay that's a discussion for another time!)

The comment by @erh.germany above was excellent. One can tell he has become involved with grassroots activism just by reading that. He's right, there are so many reasons why this kind of protest is necessary. The biggest is because it activates and motivates people in a way that nothing else can. You (and others who have not become significantly involved before) believe those who are involved are doing it for you (the observer). You ask yourself "what message are they trying to reach me with?" and then either accept or reject it personally. But those people aren't just doing it to reach you, or people in government, they're doing it for themselves, and for each other. Groups of people can become greater than the sum of their parts through these kinds of actions. Something is created when likeminded people are together, something real, something the powers that be are deathly afraid of and do everything to prevent.

Become involved, and be changed forever. I watched from the sidelines for a decade before MediKatie and I jumped in, 6 years ago to the day, July 1st 2015 in downtown Vancouver in front of the Art Gallery. A well-respected local activist Neil Magnusson was arrested for selling joints as civil disobedience (as we have done there every year for 20+ years). On this day, police decided to tell us in advance they were planning to make arrests, so more activists than normal showed up to do their thing. I attended with my camera, hoping for footage for my YouTube channel. That day (like hundreds of others since) changed me, activated me, made it so that I couldn't NOT pick up the torch and run with it. I feel I've got no choice, having seen what I've seen and knowing what I know, if I want to maintain my integrity. It's what I think is right, and what needs to be done. Since we got pregnant and moved to a small town to have him, we've had to step back. There are few rallies up here, and we aren't permitted to operate a vehicle, and we don't fly because of naked body scanners post-911. We stay in touch with the scene and a few key figures we connected with, but without being there, it's not the same. We're basically on the sidelines again (except recently we're involved with the anti-lockdown stuff of course).

The 2015 Cannabis Day riot: @drutter/cannabis-day-riot-2015-vancouver

I was living at my grandmothers in the outskirts of Vancouver in 2015. You've heard parts of this story. She wanted to die in her home of 60 years, not a facility. Her kids (ie my mom etc) wanted her in a facility and wanted to sell the house (hot Vancouver market). But I stood in the way with my nursing degree and integrity. Sure, I'll do what you ask, Grama, you've never asked anything of me and always been there for me since the day I was born. Not even a question. Done! But my family was pissed (although they couldn't/can't admit why). I'm now the black sheep of the family, after being "firstborn grandson" and favoured until I was 40 and she died.

Living there meant I had some free time every few days to get out into Vancouver (on foot/bus) and MediKatie and I made the most of it. We knew those times wouldn't last forever (which is good because they were pretty hard on us). My brother, a drunk and coke addict part time waiter, had been living with Grama for years. At first, he was a help, but over time had become a liability. He couldn't even take care of himself. But he kept telling our family (who live up here, in the aforementioned small town) that HE was the one taking care of Grama, and the house, and the gardens, etc. She loved, pitied, and enabled him, and wouldn't out him, so he was able to go on abusing her. And me, and MediKatie. He started stealing from us, trying to get us kicked out, and so on. Because his addictions needed to be fed. And my mom and the rest of the family secretly knew he was a drunk, and that it was really me keeping things running, but because they WANTED the whole situation to crash and burn, they refused to help me or even acknowledge what was really happening.

Even so, we got crazy amounts of activism done. We changed the world in that year, and 2016-2018. Katie and I had a hand in shaping cannabis legalization, which is spreading from Canada to the rest of the world. Mind you, it's exactly what we fought against, because I knew for years that it was going to be a scam:

That's January 2014, long before legalization (2018). Nobody (almost literally) believed me, but I was right. If you haven't seen my documentary: @drutter/legalization-is-a-lie

Katie and I started and ran many projects during that time. It was incredible how we bloomed by being involved in the grassroots. The true "people" in the phrase power to the people. The ones with passion, who like me couldn't NOT do what they were doing. That's where the world is changed. There, and in secret corporate board rooms! My place is with the people.

And I don't even really like people for the most part! I love all people and will fight for "the people", but yeah, I'm an introvert. On top of that, most people kind of bother me (and I tend to bother most people). I need them, I love them, I fight for them, but I don't want to be around most of them most of the time.

But when the people come together in power, in small or large groups, there's magic. Real magic, Sam! I can't describe it any other way. Have you ever done shrooms? If so, when it was your first time, did you go "aha! I get it! so this is what it's about!" I sure did, and so did a lot of people I've talked to. The sense that you didn't understand before, you couldn't understand before, but now you do? I don't mean to sound elitist or egotistical here, just being real. For me, it was like that. I couldn't have understood it until it happened to me, no matter how well somebody tried to describe it. It's magic that is accessible to us.

I'm just going to implant the concept of manifestation here. Some people refer to "protests" and such events as manifestations. They are the physical form of the will of the people. Sure, you could say "they are useless and they never accomplish anything". Or ask "give me examples of recent activism which created lasting change?" I would say they ALL did. It's just that you assume they are trying to accomplish something tangible and instant with their actions. The lasting change is made inside the participants.

Some of the people we met in those years say things to us like "that was the most important thing I ever did with my life" and "I miss those days when I felt so connected and so empowered". One of the projects was a weekly (every Saturday) cannabis farmers market, right downtown, on the very spot that Neil had been attacked and arrested in 2015. We kept it up 2.5 years, growing all the while. People were coming from WA state, Alberta, and even further. "PLEASE don't stop doing this, you're the only source for quality clean medicine for my baby with epilepsy", we heard so many times. Dispensaries were operating illegally in the leadup to legalization, but couldn't carry edibles (they would be raided instantly). So parents were desperate to get RSO (pure cannabis oil) and edibles baked with it. They were even coming illegally from Washington, where it had been "legalized" years before! Why? Because it was ten times cheaper, and ten times higher quality. The fucking street market!! That confirmed to me that legalization was going to be a scam, if I didn't already know. And I was right.

Ask me sometime how I drove off in a BUS (yes, a full sized bus) full of pot, edibles, extracts, glassware, seeds, and living plants.... after being pulled over by several VPD members on the way back from a big market/protest! Oh, and the activists on the bus happened to be smoking weed, with it billowing out the windows... I have footage :D (Just haven't edited and uploaded it yet. I'm hoping to have a new PC soonish, so I can do the footage justice.) Yes, we really went back onto the bus and drove it away, without being searched or arrested!

In another adventure, MediKatie was waiting in the same bus for me and the owner to return. Suddenly she was surrounded by 10+ cops shouting orders! She called me in a panic and we said we would return ASAP. When we got there, they had just breached the bus, and hauled her out kicking and screaming. That little girl is a firecracker when it comes to thugs, she won't accept it! She's crippled from spinal cancer (well, from the surgery and radiation they gave her, because they didn't know/accept cannabinoids cured that type of tumor). They could have paralyzed her by manhandling her like that, it was scary to see. And then cuffed in the back of a cop car while they tossed the contents of the bus onto the road. They found nothing! She had only been denying them entry because they had no warrant, and she didn't want to be violated. They had no legit business getting into that vehicle. They assumed she was denying them entry because she was hiding something. We barely even had any weed in the bus at the time, let alone anything actually incriminating. And she's a legit medical user with a prescription, anyway. So they just charged her with obstruction. I have footage from inside the bus (which Katie took) and my own vantage point when I got there during the search. I plan to put that together into a proper film at some point too.

She was traumatized, and that was just one of many nasty events during those years... because we were homeless on and off after Grama died in early 2016. Not having a stable situation made activism harder in some ways, but it pushed us into it harder, too. We felt that by changing our world for the better, our personal lives would be improved. Veterans tried to gently warn us that a lot of people get burned out with that tactic. Yeah, we learned quickly to separate things out in our heads. Yes, we're trying to fix the world.... but no, it's not going to all happen right away! We have to be the change, not force the change. Change ourselves, lead by example, and ripple outward from there.

So our tactics have changed over the years but our passion hasn't.

I think another reason this kind of activism seems like it doesn't accomplish anything is that it's a process, not a destination. Outsiders look at it and say "they've been doing this for generations, and look where it has gotten us? Clearly it isn't working". But maybe that's like saying "they've been changing their oil for years, and their car eventually still broke down!" Obviously changing the oil isn't the cause of the car breaking down, and in fact might have prevented the break down from happening sooner, but it's possible an observer might assume oil changes don't work. They don't work if you assume the only goal is to prevent a breakdown from ever happening. Activism keeps tyranny from destroying society, in my opinion. You could say it doesn't work, or you could say it's one of the only things keeping us in the game, depends how you think about it I guess.

In a way, front line protesting can be some of the only combat experience a person can get nowadays without becoming part of the state's killing machine. I'm not personally the fighting type, and in generally I'm in favour of non-aggression. We do need people who can handle themselves, though. One way they can get some experience (upgrade from BLM sign-waver to seasoned canna-warrior!?) is being around (or even involved in) skirmishes with enforcement. I think having even a little combat experience could be valuable as things continue to get wilder.

There was also a movement called Hug Power which trained activists in using non-violent methods to resist unlawful arrests. Theory only goes so far - you can talk about the tactics and show them on paper, but actually DOING IT is the only way to get true experience. The more hug power you have seen or participated in, the more likely it will work when you use it. I've seen it work. Anyway, just saying, it's hard to get experience in certain things without doing them, that's all.

In saying all that, essentially in favour of grassroots hands-on (often street-level) activism....

I've always believed that it takes many kinds of activists (and just people in general) to make a movement, or any societal change. We don't ALL have to be doing ALL the jobs. Some of us specialize in certain things, for example. One thing critics often say to online activists is "yeah but when was the last time you held a sign on the street corner?" and I'm quick to defend the online activists. I can see where the person is coming from... like... "do you put your beliefs into action, or just blab about them online?" But my stance is we can't all be doing all the jobs. Just like not everybody you see at protests has an online activism presence, not every online activist has a box of signs and flags in the garage. And that's perfectly okay. We don't berate generals for not having good sniper skills, or fire the machine gunner because he can't operate a field radio, etc. Not everybody needs to be doing EVERY job!

My point is, just because I'm advocating for physical grassroots activism actions, doesn't mean I'm saying YOU should be (or could be) involved in such. For one thing, you're where you are! Not a lot of this happening within a short trek, I'd imagine. And like you've mentioned above, you have personal life experiences causing you to feel a certain way, and that's totally valid. I can't know what that was like for you. I'm sorry you feel your father wasted his efforts. I can barely imagine how that would feel.

You're doing what you can do, and doing it well. You contribute to the cause in the ways you decide. I'm certainly not trying to make you feel like you are any less important if you can't/won't/don't get physically active with local gatherings. I'm coming at this from more of an ideological slant, and trying to share my real life experiences that seem to relate. Not trying to prod you into doing something, or feeling any particular way.

You're a very intelligent and principled person. I respect you a lot, and I'm honoured to have met you! I'm sorry if it feels like I'm being pushy or rude. Or challenging you unfairly. There's a lot I can learn from you, and I'm grateful for those opportunities.