Brand Activism: Taxpayers or citizens
Over at the Mutualist Manifesto Johnny points to this delightful quote from an article on Citizenship in the Pacific Northwest Inlander:
Taxpayers are just full of anxiety. Citizens seek to participate in a constructive manner. Taxpayers seek always to reduce public life to a balance sheet. Citizens seek ways of broadening and deepening public life. Taxpayers, by definition, live in a private world, and they don't much like government penetrating that world. The word "taxes" symbolizes that penetration. Citizens seek life in the polis. Citizens live in a world of values, which, when agreed upon, determine how we will live.... The citizen is up to something very different. The citizen is concerned with what urbanist James Kunstler terms "the public realm." Kunstler defines the public realm as "the connective tissue of our everyday world.
And Johnny's comment:
This is the kind of awareness that mutualism promotes, a deeper sense of what is to be a citizen, part of the community.
Here, here my friend, here, here.
Take some steps today to connect with your community, whether at work, in your neighbourhood. Understand what's going on and engage. For my part its the work realm where I could do with engaging more. Don't let 'alienation', that sense of being outside effect you - make a difference and have that conversation, listen and above all act.