NORTHERN LIGHTS - Learn How to Change the System

Written by John Anderson

Free Directions with Your Next Car Repair 

I was at my local mechanic getting an oil change when I noticed a small stack of newspapers on the counter with the word FREE on the cover.

The paper had the unfamiliar name, Druthers.

If the slogan “TRUTH - LOVE - FREEDOM” didn’t tip me off as to what I was looking at, the headline of the lead story—World War III May Have Already Begun—made sure of it.

Weather modification, the subversion of Christianity, and the “great poisoning” of the COVID vaccine. Druthers had all the hits.

I did what any self-respecting guy would do: I stuffed the full stack of them in my bag when my mechanic wasn’t looking. After a short wait, I had a friendly talk with him about front-wheel stabilizer links, how mice get into car vents, paid up, and left.*

My mechanic is a decent guy. Affable and a bit goofy. I figure someone else is dropping off the papers at his place, but who knows—perhaps my man Saeed is a fascist. It has been normalized in 2024 after all.  

Druthers boasts a circulation of 200,000 Canada-wide. Its founder posted on his Facebook page that they’ve raised well over a million dollars to publish and distribute the paper.  The writing style is a stream of consciousness. It’s filled with run-on sentences and grammatical errors. It is also very positive for the reader, using popular language to fire readers up. There are lots of familiar slogans: “For the people, by the people!” “Fighting to change the system!” In many ways—minus the topics—it reads much like an ACORN paper would, if we had one.

This reminded me of a recent A1 story in the Toronto Star about the small suburban city of Halton Hills, Ontario. Its city council transportation planning proceedings were overtaken by local residents with conspiracy theories about the 15-minute city. The unfounded theories largely revolved around 5G being used to brainwash, and stretched all the way to the potential enslavement of small-town Canadians. Cray-cray, as they say. And it all is, until they get power.

The piece, written by David Ryder, shared links to Stand4Thee.com, which has detailed how-to pages and instructive videos on lobbying your local city council against the 15-minute city, hosts weekly Zoom meetings, and has been responsible for disrupting council meetings across small-town Ontario.

The name Stand4Thee is an homage to a line in the Canadian national anthem, and the site describes itself as “an action-based alliance of patriots focused on creating a better world following 4 pillars: Action, Unity, Integrity, and Empowerment.”

Stand4Thee, like Druthers, is unpolished and rambling—angry enough but much nicer than the far-right American things I see and hear from the Trumpers. It’s less violent about its hate against trans people and immigrants—less “I’ll shoot you for coming on my property” and more “Let’s go to Tim Hortons and be free!” This Canadianization is surely a natural evolution, because the guy from Druthers isn’t focus grouping this in order to micro-target or using data to segment his emails.

We often lament that we are up against the rich—the people who buy power. The problem is, while they may have spent money over the last twenty years getting this all going, what we are looking at now is a people-powered, grassroots movement.

A few takeaways:

First is the messy nature of it all—from the out-of-this-world takes down to the formatting of their website and paper. There is a charm to DIY efforts. They are authentic. Messy is often bullshit-proof. People don’t see through it because they see themselves in it. ACORN knows this well.

Second, they have taken the language of our struggle. They’ve got the familiar protest slogans: “Power to the people!” “Speak up, be heard!” Heck, they’ve even co-opted hippies, which no one I know had ever contemplated doing. Hearts with the words “peace, love, and freedom” are all over Druthers. Many people picking up the paper would not differentiate between the fight against 5G in Halton Hills and Ontario ACORN’s fight for real rent control. It’s all just fighting the system, man. 

Next, their movement is decentralized. This is likely made easier by the fact that what they’re fighting for is often not real. If the purpose of the mobilization is to disrupt or cause chaos, having a room full of random people taking over a council meeting armed with tip sheets makes perfect sense. It doesn’t matter what they say when the goal is to destroy something. It’s harder when you are pushing for real gains for working people. But let’s be real, getting reams of people reading from your tip sheet at city halls across small-town Ontario is a very impressive achievement.

Lastly, on the surface, this is not an ideologically based movement. It’s not about left or right—it’s about right or wrong. Again, ACORN is incredibly familiar with this. The majority of people want solutions to their problems and to be heard. In so many ways, it’s just a simple race to see who talks to people first: us or them.

This isn’t Astroturf. The issues I tossed in my blue bin were #49 of Druthers, not issue #1. There is a popular right-wing grassroots movement resonating with working-class people in Canada.

With this all top of mind, I’m taking the idea of generic tip sheets for lobby visits to post on acorncanada.org to our year-end, year-beginning meeting next week—and I’m bringing a stack of Toronto ACORN flyers with me when I go in for my next repair.*

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