#27 Jail- News letter- the power of consent

A lady who visits the jail was putting together a newsletter and asked Taylor to write something. I thought I would share that here. Enjoy :)

From Taylor:

I get asked, “Why are you in here?”. My answer is simple, “because the people out there”, I point to a barred window, “consent to me being here”. I often get a curious tilt of the head. “Allow me to explain. It is taught in Civics classes that, 'government derives its authority from the consent of the governed'. The number of people ‘in charge’ of any body politics is dwarfed by the number of people governed.There is a maxim of law that reads, ‘government is by agreement, not title’.Our founding fathers, in the Declaration of Independence, recognized that a people will tolerate much abuse before removing their consent to be governed by a given authority. Another maxim reads, ‘an injury long consented to, is not an injury’.The people of the United States have consented to the current injuries, which cease to be injuries with consent for far too long. As a J6 inmate, I shudder to think I ever consented to warrantless searches, questionable elections, corporate personhood, benefits of the state (welfare and a centralized financial system to profit off) or a for-profit prison industrial complex. Here is the dirty little secret government doesn’t want you to know, consent is tangible when you ask, ‘when and where did I consent’? Remember, the government operates by agreement, they draft ‘bills’ that the people must ‘perform’ or ‘pay’. When you don't want to, because a bill is injurious, in our current world it can feel hopeless. The government knows and operates under the maxim ‘the contract is the law’. Contracts come in lots of forms, but for a true contract to be valid, there must at some point be ‘consent’. When we accept benefits, we consent. Government knows the power of a monopoly and limiting your options. We must beat them at their own game and remove your consent from contracts you don’t like. Vote with your eyes, vote with your dollars and vote with your clicks. Have the strength to turn away from the ‘bread a circus’ and redirect your money to causes that share your values. Don’t click on news sources that run fake news, and slander good hard working Americans. Don’t watch programs, designed to ‘program you’. Gandhi once said, ‘be the change that you want to see in the world’. He redirected the Indian continent to starve out the British Imperialists by encouraging people to buy homespun clothing, shop local, buy local products, the refusal of the ‘benefits’ of Britain, and freed themselves from the commercial ‘slavery’ that they suffered under. We can do the same! Examine how you can redirect your attention to what you DO want, not to what you hate. Stop voluntarily consenting to the things that we hate, this will require sacrifice, but the reward will be well worth it. 

http://dollarsvotelouder.com/

Thanks for reading, Taylor