Whistler Society Mantra
To revolt is to refuse to obey the constraints imposed by another; to rebel is to attempt to replace those constraints by a set of ones own.
Many of us were raised on soil untouched by war. Believing ourselves beyond the grips of strife, our asylum was shattered by tragedies such as 9-11, Columbine and a global recession. Connected across oceans, cultures, and wars, we now live in a warming world that is more ignitable and less predictable than any before. Our whole lives we’ve been told we can be whatever we want to be by the same people trying to fit us into cubicles. With a trillion dollars passing around the globe everyday, planes crossing over our borders, and trade policies causing genocide, it is easy to see our individual choices and voices as less and less significant. We don’t have all the answers, but we recognize that these are historic times of transition. We can either be tossed by the tides and allow the opportunity to pass us by—or we can attempt to forge something entirely new.
The Whistler Society calls on you to rise to the occasion of our moment. We are coming of age in a new era of connectivity and creativity. Forsaking the exclusive tactics of our predecessors, we ask: Why can’t this world be freer than our fathers? A whistleblower pursues freedom in the face of opposition. Let this be a place where we figure out how. Let this be a place where we work to create a world with less pain and fewer borders—both real and counterfeit. Let this be a place where we create beauty and dig deeper than we ever have before. Let this be a place where we challenge every preconception and in the process discover things altogether new. Let this be a place where we turn noise into music.
To begin, we have only one rule: Every idea, no matter how tired or radical, must be allowed if spoken with respect.
“ The saving of our world will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority. � martin luther king jr.
Five years ago, Falling Whistles began with a single goal: to build a global coalition for peace in Congo. Today, that coalition stands 100,000 strong.
we’ve enacted powerful advocacy campaigns and funded direct rehabilitation and community building efforts in eastern CO N G O. TOGETHER,
But now it’s time to take the next step: to unite and mobilize the coalition in 50 cities across the globe.
THAT’S HERE YOU COME IN.
you are now a member of the pioneer league of Whistler Society Leaders: CONGRATU L AT I O N S ,
T he A ugust G eneration
YOUR MISSION STARTS NO .
The abolition movement began in an underground cellar. The American revolutionaries conspired in old farmhouses. The French circled in pubs to fiercely debate their liberty. Mandela used the yard of a prison. Fela, the music of The Shrine. Young activists in Egypt began in the alleys of Cairo. In every era, those unwilling to settle for what is have gathered toward what ought to be. THIS IS THE WHISTLER SOCIETY.
“ It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.” eleanor roosevelt
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The Whistler Society is a global network of local chapters dedicated to whistleblowing. Each chapter contains 8-20 people who meet every week to confront the world’s problems, understand their depth, and participate in solutions. Connected across oceans, cultures, borders, and wars, we ask: Why can’t this world be freer than our fathers’? The search for answers requires an open mind and a level of commitment above and beyond personal aspirations. Because this is not a club. This is not dragging yourself to a meeting. And this won’t look good on your resume. This is a choice. A departure. The foundation of a coalition to end a war.
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START WITH FIVE Find 5 people who are open to breaking from their normal patterns of behavior. Ask them to approach 5 more to do the same. Push the boundaries. Look outside your immediate social circle. Seek out creative and capable individuals: entrepreneurs, club promoters, photographers, storytellers, designers,
writers, salespeople, lawyers, chefs, teachers.
Don’t recruit using mass social media postings; all of the best conversations happen face to face.
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STAY CONNECTED You are the beginning. The first. The August Generation will build the future of the Whistler Society. If we accomplish our goals this year, next year we will launch another 75 societies around the world. What happens at your meetings will directly influence the next round of leaders. Stay in touch with us. Record your successes and failures. Take note of what works. This is our legacy. We’re creating the foundation for future generations to stand on.
Gather in a basement or a cave, a classroom or a speakeasy, by lantern, flashlight or fire. It’s your job to set the tone, elevate conversation, and encourage debate.
To begin, we have only one rule: Every idea, no matter how tired or radical, must be allowed if spoken with respect.
“ When we are shown scenes of starving children in Africa, with a call for us to do something to help them, the underlying ideological message is something like: Don’t think, don’t politicize, forget about the true causes of their poverty, just act, contribute money, so that you will not have to think!” slavoj žižek
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THINK FOR YOURSELF, LIVE FOR OTHERS The first six months you spend together as a Whistler Society could change your lives. The world is complicated and there are few easy answers. Change is carried on the backs of those willing to dig deep, learn the intricacies, and respond with imagination and ruthlessness. Together, we’ll create a pool of media, books, tools, and resources to liberate our minds and develop the skills necessary to push the world forward.
THE BIG PICTURE Over the next several months, you will learn that resource exploitation occurs systematically around the world. The deadly conflict in Congo is the ultimate example of its devastating effects. The more you learn about it, the more sides of it you will become aware of, and the more you will feel that you can’t possibly see the whole shape at once. The important thing to see is that this proliferation of anger and violence in Congo is the output of a global system that entangles us all. This campaign is not about charity. It is not about relief. It is not about treating symptoms. It is about solidarity. Reclaiming the very system that brought us here and redesigning it to produce sustainable solutions. That process begins with reclaiming our minds and putting them to action, together.
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“ It always seems impossible until it’s done.” nelson mandela
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Every whistle sold is a vote for peace in Congo. Product purchases fuel the growth of the coalition to end our world’s deadliest war. It is thanks to the coalition that we were able to stop the M23 Rebel Group in its tracks, see war criminal Bosco Ntaganda in jail, and get Special Envoy appointments from the US government and the UN. It’s because of the coalition that we’ve been able to invest in eight Congolese visionaries and set up technology for monitoring and reporting on Congo’s recent rigged elections. As the coalition grows larger, we will be able to do so much more.
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Build it with us.
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SOLUTIONS
THE WHISTLE IS YOUR TOOL
Falling Whistles is working with companies around the world to create the first conflict-free products from Congo.
You understood the whistle long before you were recruited into the August Generation.
These products will allow consumers to participate in solving social problems through conflict-free exports, ensuring their money is put in the hands of those who are building homes and schools, rather than those who are buying weapons and waging war. This challenge is enormous and requires a great deal of public will. On December 10th, we will unite across the globe for peace in Congo. With the world watching, we will ask all corporations and governments to join us in creating conflict-free product for the 21st century.
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It’s a symbol of protest. A tool to elevate conversation. A vote for peace in Congo. It also functions as the uniform that unites us. A visual identifier of the coalition. Wearing the whistle is an affirmation of your values and a commitment to the cause of peace in Congo. It identifies you as a whistleblower for peace. Allow it to be an organic tool to sell itself and engage your community.
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TACTIC S
Elevate Conversation
Gather Contacts
Create Vibe
Share Knowledge
Your community can’t grow unless they know. Each month, work together to host a unique event. It can be anything. A film screening, concert, spoken word, party, potluck, whatever. It should educate those around you and inspire them to buy a whistle. It should reflect who you are, and where you are. Be original, be bold, and always have a good time. At the event, sell the whistles directly.
To keep the conversation going, the most important thing you can get is an email address. If someone is intrigued by the whistle, collect their email address through your chapter’s dedicated sign-up page. They can then be invited to local events and be kept up to date with the progress toward peace in Congo.
You’re no stranger to flash-mobs or street art. Spectacles and installations. Work with your chapter to come up with innovative ways to get the attention of your community.
Post your thoughts, stories and successes to the WS Publishing platform, which will curate writing and reports from all 50 chapters around the world. Always feel free to share new books, videos, and information you’ve experienced via social media and with your friends.
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“ If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.” john lennon
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GLOBAL MOMENT OF UNITY You’ve organized a group of educated individuals and built the coalition. You now have a significant body of people within your community who are ready to participate in something big. Mass activations are extremely powerful disruptions of the status quo. We believe a demonstration of unity, showing a large number of global citizens ready for change, can pave the way for real solutions.
DECEMBER 10TH, 2013 On Human Rights Day, you and the other Whistler Society Leaders from around the world will coordinate a Global Moment of Unity to demand conflict-free product. It isn’t the first of its kind and it won’t be the last.
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What it looks like is up to all of us to decide together.
“ Maybe the media and people will learn something from this silent standing, this resistance. Maybe they will feel some empathy. I am just an ordinary citizen of this country. We want our voices to be heard.” erdem gunduz
The government plans to sell an Istanbul neighborhood’s last green space, Gezi Park, to developers to be turned into a shopping center. In protest, fifty citizens stage a peaceful sit-in and are violently removed by the authorities. The incident ignites the whole country—all over Turkey, riots, strikes, and protests ensue. The dissenters are young and old, conservative and progressive. They rally together to demand freedom of expression and assembly, freedom of the press, and that the government stop selling public space to private interests. The police meet protesters with increasing aggression, breaking out water cannons and tear gas. Thousands are injured and arrested. Two weeks into the unrest, performance artist Erdem Gunduz develops a new tactic. He stages a silent, eight-hour standing vigil in Taksim Square, inspiring hundreds to follow. With the Turkish media under the government’s thumb, dissent moves to social media. The hashtags #duranadam and #standingman go viral on twitter.
The Standing Man 2013. Istanbul, Turkey
“Social media has permitted the viral replication of protest themes, slogans and tactics. Unlike in previous so-called ‘Twitter revolutions’, there is mass popular access to social media in turkey. New York university documented 2M tweets reporting on the protests between 4pm and midnight on one day, friday 28 May, when the protests went global...Gunduz’s moving, motionless protest, is a symbol of great peril for the turkish regime.” richard seymour, the guardian
“ Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.” sophie scholl
In 1941, a University of Munich student named Hans Scholl reads a sermon that condemns the Nazi regime. Horrified by its contents, Hans’s sister Sophie gets permission to print and distribute the speech. It becomes the White Rose Movement’s first leaflet. A group of students organizes to produce more writings that call out Nazi atrocities. The leaflets encourage readers to support the resistance movement in the struggle for “Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the protection of the individual citizen from the arbitrary action of criminal dictator states.” The leaflets are left in books and phone booths, mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution. White Rose members also produce a graffiti campaign, painting slogans “Freedom” and “Down with Hitler” on University Walls. Shortly after the capture of the members of White Rose, Leaflet No. 6 is smuggled out of Germany and copied by the allied forces, who airdrop millions of copies over Germany in mid-1943.
White Rose Movement 1942-43. Munich, Germany
“ Hans and Sophie Scholl came to represent not just the small band of youthful dissenters but all the pacifist sympathizers who were tracked by the Gestapo and the innumerable anonymous victims who were forced to pay the price for believing that human rights were more important than obedience to arbitrary laws. ” albert von schirndung, munich daily
“ We focused on breaking Milosevic’s authority, on ways to communicate to dissatisfied people that they are the majority and that the regime could only dig itself into a deeper hole through repression. We learned that fear is a powerful but vulnerable weapon because it disappears far faster than you can recreate it.” srdja popovic, ideological commissar for optor
It’s 11 years into Slobodan Milosevic’s authoritarian rule. Milosevic’s is a regime that secures votes using scare tactics and controls the media to censor dissent and push the slogan “Milosevic or Mayhem.” Disillusionment is the norm among young people, who see no chance for themselves to travel outside the country, earn a decent wage, or have any say in the governance of their country. In Belgrade, a group of university students and democratic party youth wing members unite around a symbol—a clenched fist—and a word—“otpor,” meaning simply “resistance.” They declare their objective and their methods: to oust Milosevic and establish a true democracy through nonviolent resistance. By design, Otpor has no official leaders, and quickly local chapters begin to spring up in small towns all over Serbia. Over 70,000 youth join such clubs. With stickers, t-shirts, posters and pamphlets, Otpor executes mass propaganda campaigns and organizes strategic boycotts, blockades and occupations.
OTPOR!
1998 Serbia
As the police meet the resistance with extreme brutality, more and more Serbians are compelled to join the opposition. The movement is effective in stripping away the culture of fear. In October of 2000, Milosevic is finally overthrown.
“ Throughout Serbia, activists were trained in how to play hide-and-seek with the police, how to respond to interrogation, how to develop a message in posters and pamphleteering, how to transfer fear from the population into the regime itself and how toidentify and begin to infiltrate Helvey’s ‘pillars of support’ in the police and elsewhere.... Otpor grew into the mass underground movement that stood at the disciplined core of the hidden revolution that really changed Serbia. No other opposition force was as unsettling to the regime or as critical to its overthrow. ” roger cohen, new york times magazine
“ When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.” mahatma gandhi
At first, the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, is unconcerned about the choice of salt as a point of protest. Newspapers ridicule it. Even the working national congress, who had asked Gandhi to organize their first act of civil disobedience, feels ambivalent. But salt is a deeply symbolic and unifying choice. Everyone in India, rich or poor, uses it every day. The hot tropical climate drains it from their bodies. And the 1882 Salt Act has given the British a monopoly on its collection and manufacture. Even though salt is freely available to those living on the coast through the evaporation of seawater, everyone is forced to buy it from the colonial government. For 24 days, Gandhi leads a 240 mile march from his base in Ahmedabad to the coastal village of Dandi, where he plans to defiantly and publicly make salt without paying the tax. Growing numbers join him along the way. When he finally arrives and breaks the salt laws, millions begin to participate in civil disobedience. Salt is sold illegally all over India, and by the end of the month the British have arrested over 60,000 people.
The Salt March 1930 Jalalpur, India
The Salt March grows into a national boycott of many British goods and open defiance of colonial tax laws. The story appears in 1350 newspapers around the world. Independence happens just as Gandhi described it: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.”
“ Of course these movements exercised tremendous pressure on the British Government and shook the government machinery. But the real importance, to my mind, lay in the effect they had on our own people, and especially the village masses....Non-cooperation dragged them out of the mire and gave them selfrespect and self-reliance.... They acted courageously and did not submit so easily to unjust oppression; their outlook widened and they began to think a little in terms of India as a whole.... It was a remarkable transformation and the Congress, under Gandhi’s leadership, must have the credit for it. ” indian national congress leader jawaharal nehru
“ What kind of repression do you imagine it takes for a young man to do this? A man who has to feed his family by buying goods on credit when they fine him... and take his goods. In Sidi Bouzid, those with no connections and no money for bribes are humiliated and insulted and not allowed to live.” mohammed bouazizi’s sister
Sidi Bouzid is an impoverished agrarian city in central Tunis. Here, 26 year-old Mohammed Bouazizi works as a fruit vendor, earning approximately $140 a month to support his mother, uncle, and five siblings. He’s been working full time to provide for his family since his late teens, when his uncle fell ill. Allegedly, authorities have been targeting Bouazizi for years, frequently confiscating his small wheelbarrow of produce, as he never has enough money to bribe them or the connections to win their favor. On December 17th, 2010, Bouazizi is $200 in debt from procuring the day’s produce. A few hours into his work day, the police confront him, and proceed to slap him in the face, spit at him, confiscate his weighing scales and toss aside his produce cart before beating him. Angered and fed-up, Bouazizi goes to the governor’s office to ask for his scales back. He announces: “If you don’t see me, I’ll burn myself,” but the governor refuses. Standing in the middle of traffic outside the office, drenched in gasoline, Bouazizi yells “How do you expect me to make a living?” before lighting the match.
Mohammed Bouazizi 2011 Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia
Within hours, protests break out in Sidi Bouzid and slowly spread around the country and to the capital. Less than a month later, the growing unrest causes president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down after twenty-three years in power. Bouazizi has lit the match that will ignite the Arab Spring.
“ The revolution has rippled beyond Tunisia, shaking other authoritarian Arab states, whose frustrated young people are often written off as complacent when faced with stifling bureaucracy and an impenetrable and intimidating security apparatus. That assumption was badly shaken with Mr. Bouazizi’s reaction to his slap, and now a picture of him, in a black jacket with a wry smile, has become the revolution’s icon.” kareem fahim, new york times
“ Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” thomas paine
Thomas Paine first publishes Common Sense anonymously. Not just because the pamphlet’s contents are treasonous, but because he believes the doctrine to be more important than the man. At a time when America’s desire for independence is lukewarm at best, Paine, an Englishman, blows the whistle on monarchy and proposes the creation of a distinct new identity. Every revolution needs a unifying ideology, and for America Common Sense is it. Foregoing the highbrow language of his contemporaries, Paine packages his message in the vernacular and structures it as a sermon. His arguments are steeped in Biblical references and a Protestant ethos. His goal is to persuade the common man that the British hereditary aristocracy is a tyrannous system in which rulers contribute nothing to the people. He proposes instead a system of elected representatives. Paine successfully makes the case that Britain rules the colonies for her own benefit rather than for the benefit of the colonists. Once the idea is unleashed there is no stopping it. The pamphlet goes through 25 editions in the first year alone and has the largest sale and distribution of any book published in American history.
Common Sense 1776 Philadelphia
“ It would be difficult to name any human composition which has had an effect at once so instant, so extended and so lasting. It was pirated, parodied and imitated, and translated into the language of every country where the new republic had well-wishers. It worked nothing short of miracles.” george trevelyan, history of the american revolution
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