Your County

starting your local group #BuildClub

You want to prepare for the future, you want to build a free civilisation, you want to protect your home and family. This article is about some things you can do, and will be in a series of articles on the same topic.

For the purposes of political and cultural organisation, this post assumes that you are living in the United States. If you aren’t and wish to, there’s lots of ways in right now. If you are in another country then you may need to adapt these recommendations to fit your local, regional, or national landscape. I’m happy to help, so feel free to comment or contact me privately.

Counties

In the United States, politics is organised at the county level. It is your county registrar of voters who registers voters, keeps voter registration lists, and makes these lists available to you under certain conditions. The county clerk administers the election, records votes by some process which may or may not be corrupt, and certifies the results of elections. The county assessor will look at local properties, including your property if you own property in your own name, and assess its value for the purpose of allocating property taxes. The county collector will collect taxes due from various sources and forward some portion of those taxes to the state government. Most significantly, the county sheriff is the highest law enforcement authority in your county. County judges administer the law and may apply it justly or corruptly depending on their character.

So it makes sense to set up a county level organisation for yourself, your friends, your family, and people you encounter who are interested in freedom and live in your county. If you live in a county with a population greater than 100,000 you may also want to build a more local group for your city or area of the county. If you live in a county with a population greater than 1 million persons you may wish to consider re-location to a more defensible home in a mountainous rural county.

Announcing Your Group

An early step to take is to have an organisational meeting of people you know and trust. This group may form the core membership of the county group you build. You can come up with any name you like. It may not be a free country right now, but your goal and mine is to build a free country. So feel free to include freedom in the name. I think a name like Building Freedom Douglas County is adaptable to many places. If you expect the word “freedom” to be a dog whistle to Marxists in your area, by all means feel free to blow that dog whistle. Or choose a name like Build Club Douglas County. Remember the words of William Shakespeare: “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

You should pick a place to meet. If it is a place where the people who get together can eat a meal, such as in a local restaurant’s meeting room, be sure to include that information in your announcement. If it is your intention to have people eat food your group provides, make those arrangements with the restaurant or hotel where you meet. If people should pay their own way, be sure to include that in your announcement. Your announcement should include the date, time, place, and purpose of the meeting.

You’ll want to reach the people near you. There are lots of techniques for doing so. One that is extremely effective is to print up flyers and distribute them in person door to door. This gives your core members an opportunity to meet the neighbours. You will get all kinds of reactions. Dress nicely and stay calm. If they want you to come in they’ll invite you, if they want you to leave then go promptly, if they don’t answer the door, leave the flyer if that is appropriate.

You can announce your first meeting online using social media. You can create a web page and post the announcement there. You can create a blog using Substack or blogspot or medium or any other tool you like. You won’t find me logging into Facebook so if you create a Facebook group you need not bother to invite me. If you’d like me to help with your announcement, my main Twitter is twitter.com/planetaryjim and I’m happy to help. You may be able to get your local paper to print a news story about your event. Feel free to ask in the comments if you need help crafting a press release. Craigslist and other online resources can help you get the word out about your event. Also consider FreedomCells.org as a way to find other freedom oriented people in your community.

Keeping Your Group Together

It is useful to have regular in person meetings. Depending on how big a priority freedom is for you, you can meet as often as daily or weekly. See if you can get the folks at the initial meeting to agree on a date and time for the next meeting. Of course, the day of the week of your first meeting will inform you of what day of the week the people who show up can meet. You’ll get other feedback about other days of the week, and you can consider setting things up to meet on two different days of the week if you wish.

Where you meet is up to you, I don’t know your community. Consider meeting in a church or restaurant or hotel or home. There are good reasons for all sorts of different choices. Business owners sometimes have empty rooms or even empty buildings that might be available, especially if the business owner is involved in your group. If you have trouble thinking of a good place to meet, try posting on Craig’s List or look online for meeting spaces. Some cities and counties have free meeting space inside at the public library or outside under pavilions and in public parks.

Consider having smaller meetings of the core team members of your group. Schedule these separately and invite the people you think are most effective. If you can arrange to meet after a meal together, that can be very helpful in building camaraderie and keeping your group together. Pot luck or “carry in” meal gatherings are especially effective at building a team spirit.

Josiah Warren was involved in several utopian communities in the late 19th Century and wrote about them. Wendy McElroy read his writings and posted some good essays on his work. I read some of her early essays on this topic in the 1990s on L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise web site at ncc-1776.org so that would be the site to search for them.

One of the ways in which groups can form lasting ties is to have a local money. Ithaca New York has Ithaca Hours. Other communities have formed other community currencies. Liberty Dollar enthusiast Wayne Hicks organised the city of Berryville, Arkansas about 2004 around the Liberty Dollar which was available at the time in one ounce silver pieces and paper warehouse receipts redeemable for silver. If you need help designing a local currency, feel free to comment below or contact me for further discussion. A future entry on this substack will cover features and benefits and drawbacks and considerations for local currencies. Even something as simple as a coupon for use at local businesses can be an effective tool for economic involvement in your group. People who have “skin in the game” will work harder and be more invested in the success of the group.

Communications

You’ll want your group to have its own secure communications. Two ways to arrange for this function that come to mind are to create a group using Signal which is an open source free encrypted messaging and voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) app. It allows for groups up to any size. Consider having separate Signal groups for the core leadership team, for any committee to accomplish a particular task, and as needed.

Another way to arrange this function is to have an email list service. You can have secure email for yourself and others, for free, using Proton.me as an encrypted email option. You can also use Open PGP to use email with an email client like Thunderbird. You can see the option to have “secure” email in Gmail lately, but given the way Google operates, you should probably not trust it - transmitting messages may be moved in encrypted form, but draft messages may be saved to Google’s servers unencrypted, so your information may be compromised.

You should be aware that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, Twitter, and other big tech companies cooperate with the deep state. Use their systems carefully and avoid being dependent on them. Be aware that PayPal and many other payment services work directly with the government to collect and report taxes, report transactions above a certain size, may shut down your account and seize your funds with little or no warning, and in the case of PayPal and some others, may seize some of your funds for “infractions” according to terms they wrote to suit their preferences.

There are many good resources for information on privacy technology. I strongly recommend Naomi Brockwell and Crypto Beats, her newsletter. NBTV is available on Youtube and other video distribution platforms.

There are some good resources for alternative payment systems. GIveSendGo is demonstrably better than GoFundMe as the Canadian truckers convoys learned. There is a Second Amendment payments service which is one payment processing option I’ll write about in an upcoming article in this series. If you need links to anything mentioned in this substack, try Search.Brave.com to keep your search information private. Also feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to promptly reply with links and thoughts.

Research

You want to build a free and prosperous civilisation. You want to build a free community around you. You want to protect your home and family. To do these things, you need to know your neighbours, know your neighbourhood, know your options, and know your local government. There’s a great deal of research to be done. Some of it can be done online, some at local libraries, and some of it is going to require you and your team to get together, discuss ways of finding things out, and then going out and getting that information.

Research on Your Neighbours

What should you know about your neighbours? Well, are they for freedom or slavery? If they are for freedom, do they care much or little? If they are for slavery, what is their philosophy behind that preference? Are they Marxists or some other flavour of socialist? Are they adherents to some philosophy of obedience to the state despite the state demanding atrocities and abominations? Many people simply want to be left alone, and given the intensity of recent events, these are likely to be your best allies and most ardent supporters.

On a more basic level, how do you get in touch with them? Do you want to send them postcards in the mail to notify them of your meetings? Do you want to call them or text them so they hear from you on their mobile device?

One set of information that is available on some basis is the voter registration rolls. the fact that a person is registered to vote, their address, and their party affiliation is often available. It may be more readily available to a political party, but that’s okay. You can work with your local GOP or DNC party, or in a much smaller number of counties, your local Libertarian or Green party to get access to this information. If you want, it is almost trivial to get the state Libertarian party to agree to let you form a county group - the odds are about 125/3080 (4%) that there is such a group in your county already so chances are you’d be the first from your county to make such an offer.

You can also access voter registration information as an independent or unaffiliated person.. There may be fees. There are always rules. You can find these rules online or in person by visiting the county clerk’s office. Tuesday mornings are often the ideal time to visit government offices since they are less busy in the morning and most busy on Monday. The exception being the first of the month, whatever day of the week that falls on, often a busy time.

You’ll need information about the members of your group. You will want to think about what information to collect and how to keep it secure. If you are sloppy with the information you gather, people will be reluctant to share it with you and may be harmed by your neglect. Some information members will be happy to share with everyone, such as their names, phone numbers, and email addresses. Respect the choices of each member. If they are hard to reach, that’s okay. You don’t need to push people about what they share. Often the most private people are the most resourceful when it comes to handling a crisis.

Now, we should face the fact that much of the election process is corrupt. We should not expect to vote our way to freedom. We don’t necessarily need to elect people in order to be free. Nor should we be surprised if candidates for public office are not all treated equally. But, you may wish to have insight into the election process in your county, or work for particular candidates for public office, or work for one side or the other in local issues such as whether to raise taxes, legalise certain activities, or add to the indebtedness of the county or city government. Your participation is up to you.

If you do want to participate, being aware of and possibly being involved in the county political organisation of your preferred party would be important. You won’t have as much impact in local politics if you don’t know those people who are already prominent in these county groups. And, since the GOP and DNC leadership in your county have significant “pull” in how things work in your county, you may as well know who they are. Remember, your goal is to build a free community within a free civilisation. You aren’t going to get that job done overnight, and you won’t get it done alone. If for no other reason, get to know these politically prominent people so you know your enemy. And remember that Jesus taught us that hate won’t win in the long run, so we should love our enemies. Love is the only thing that demons cannot understand nor conquer.

Resarch about Your Neighbourhood

You will want to have a good sense of the resources of your community. Where do you go to get help? Where do you send people who need help? If everyone in your county except you and a few friends were to disappear, be taken away by enemy action, or were to die in some calamity, where are the things you survivors will need to keep going? Things like food stores, gun stores, national guard armories, factories, warehouses. You should have a sense of the “lay of the land” because you will need this knowledge under adverse conditions. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, talk about the world situation, and seek allies when you do this research.

It is not yet illegal and does no harm to think strategically and tactically about your region. How would you defend your town if called upon to do so? Which direction is the big city where marauding Marxist cadres may be coming from in future? Which roads through mountains can be easily blocked, and where, and by what means? Which bridges cross sufficiently large geographical obstacles (rivers, ravines, gorges) to be tactically important? How many people would you need up in the hills overlooking town to keep them secure?

There are a huge number of thoughts that go into area defence. Most of the time, in 4th Generation warfare, trying to hold territory is very difficult. So, think about how to retreat from where you are, and think about where to go. Remember that holding territory is just as difficult for your enemy as it is for you. So unless your community is of great strategic importance, it may be taken but it won’t likely be held for long. You’ll be able to get back home, perhaps soon after the town falls to invaders. Plan accordingly.

Remember that the people you seek to protect are not replaceable, but the things you need are. You’ll find places to live, comforts to enjoy, food, water, and other resources including what you take with you. Don’t be afraid to engage the enemy on a scorched earth basis, destroying what you cannot carry off. Remember that God is with us and that God can provide a bounty from very little - consider the miracles of the loaves and fishes.

Publications

There are some books and documents it would be good to know. One of these is the Declaration of Independence. Consider memorising the preamble down to the list of grievances. Consider having your group make up a similar list of grievances, so you can share what it is you are organising to stop and what you want instead.

You should have a copy of your state’s constitution and of your country’s national constitution. Understanding the constitutional authority will give you the opportunity to challenge unconstitutional acts by people in power. You may be surprised by the number of people who have sworn an oath to uphold and defend the constitution but do not know its contents. Be kind and help educate others in your community.

You can get, from the Cato Institute and from many other places copies of these foundational documents in printed form. Consider having a few with you so you can share them with others. Let them have a sense of what they have lost.

Another very useful book to read is Take Back Your Government by Robert Heinlein. Originally conceived and written in 1946 and published posthumously by his literary estate in 1992, this book has a wealth of information about organising meetings, choosing a candidate, running a political campaign, fundraising, and strategy. It will be useful to read simply to know why reform movements in America always fail.

Remember that all political power is inherent in the people. The people retain at all times the right to alter, reform, or abolish their form of government. That’s from the Texas constitution. Your state constitution may have similar language, or may have in the past. You live in a country that came out of the American Revolution and which continues to recall those roots, even though it is presently infested with tyrants and their cronies.

I do not say that the constitution created an ideal form of government. If you would seek monuments to its ineffectiveness, look around you. Perhaps if the bill of rights had teeth, had some enabling statement that gave you standing as an individual to uphold your rights in court, things might have worked out differently. In the meantime, it remains an 18th Century look at how to form a national plantation economy, probably not the long term goal for a civilisation of free and prosperous individuals.

Personal Preparedness

Are you going to survive? We cannot build a future for mankind if we don’t live to build it. So prepare your home, your family, and yourself.

Physical preparedness can take many forms. You need to be healthy and well. The Ozark Herbal Academy herbalknowledge.org has information that can be of service to you in getting and staying healthy. They have information on detoxing from the spike protein that forms one of the critically dangerous aspects of the war virus and the vaxxajabs. Their database can also help you with all kinds of other remedies outside the hospitals and doctor offices. Even before the plandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans were injured or killed every year in hospitals and by doctors. They call such injuries and deaths “iatrogenic” so it is hard to pronounce and understand, but it basically means the healer has hurt you. So, you will need to learn about your health, about your family health history, and about how to take care of yourself with diet, exercise, nutrtion supplements, and other training.

Yes, you’ve been told many times that you need experts. You cannot fix your own plumbing, roof your own home, repair wiring, do your day job, keep up with your hobbies, watch 8 hours or more of television to get programming from the deep state, laze around the house on weekends, and study to become a doctor, so you’ve relied on “experts” to take care of many things in your world. And see how they have betrayed you. I can suggest one or more places to cut back that might leave you time to get more knowledgeable.

The Internet was built to make it impossible to completely knock out communications in a nuclear war. It turns out that the principles of decentralised communication have been applied to knowledge, to software development, and to hardware development. We’ve had enormous success with decentralisation, including of money using bitcoin and other tools. So you have, presently, access to nearly all the knowledge of the world, and through the good offices of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and thousands of others, access to information by and about the deep state.

Prepare your home and your family. You’ll need food and water for several months stored in containers that aren’t deteriorated by the food and water. You’ll want the things you need to keep warm. You’ll probably want several forms of power generation in case the power grid fails, including battery storage, solar cells, a diesel or gasoline generator, wood stoves, steam engines, or other alternatives. If you get access to a deployable nuclear generator you will be in very good shape.

Prepare yourself spiritually. You are building a civilisation. Time and again we know that God has changed the world to eliminate cultures and civilisations that were corrupt and decadent. Seek God. Pray. Go to worship services. Believe. Have faith because with faith as tiny as a mustard seed you can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens you.

Yes, I am aware that not everyone shares my beliefs. My beliefs do not require them to.

Prepare yourself emotionally. I am told that at their first meeting, the Bilderboogers declared war on the American people. Yes, I am making fun of them and their hubris. You are clearly in a war, which some call 5th generational. It includes endless psychological operations, it includes propaganda, and it is including biological terror weapons. So prepare yourself emotionally. Keep some chocolate on hand as an anti-depressant. Consider giving up drinking or other addictions. Join an alcoholics anonymous group or start one - these are completely decentralised and you don’t need anyone’s permission to show up to a meeting nor to start your own series of meetings. Alcohol is useful to have on hand as a trade good and for disinfecting wounds, but it is a depressant and it can rapidly impair your judgement.

Another thing many people are addicted to is anger. You’ll need to understand it and be prepared to manage it. You do not need anger clouding your judgement or taking you into rash actions you’ll regret. You may need anger to motivate other people in your group, and you may need your own anger when it comes time to be in battle. Simply be aware that it is more useful than despair. And that it can be very damaging if it is not kept under your own control.

Serve Your Community

One of the best ways to find out who is really serious is to ask for volunteers to help at the local community shelter. Washing dishes is a good task to help out. So is preparing and serving food, doing laundry, passing out resources to the homeless on the streets. You can serve your community in other ways, through legal aid, through your church, by baptising people, by supporting free clinics, by taking up collections. How you serve your community is up to you, but you should.

Jesus said that if you visit the sick, visit those in prison, feed the hungry, shelter the poor, you do so unto Him. And if you neglect to do so, you neglect Him. Think about what is meant by the related scriptures. Consider a bible study group to understand your own civilisation. And consider a book club to read the classics by Shakespeare, Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius, Jefferson, de Tocqueville, and others so you know what your civilisation is, where it came from, why it is now failing, and what you can do to build a better future for your children and grandchildren unto seven generations or more.

By involving yourself in the community you improve your reputation. You learn who can be trusted. You learn more about local history. You meet more people. You’ll find many good people involved in community services, and some bad people.

Train Together

Ultimately, you are in a war. You didn’t start the war. You may not even want to be at war. I wish any of that mattered. I didn’t start the war either, it was already blazing when I was born. The president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was murdered and his administration overthrown in a coup d’etat that put the extraordinarily corrupt functionary Lyndon Johnson in office. Many other terrible murders were carried out to cover up the facts of the coup in Dallas. Much other destruction of American institutions was orchestrated.

So you need to get together from time to time and walk together as a group. If your community perceives that you are there “on patrol” they will look to you for help in bad times. And bad times seem very near on the horizon.

Train in other ways. Go to the local gun range and shoot together as a group. Train on safety and skill. Go hunting together. Go fishing together. Go gathering herbs, mushrooms, and berries together. Go driving in groups out to local recreation spots. Teach each other, learn from each other, help each other.

Entrepreneurship

Finally, consider how you want your group to be organised. I suggest you think a long time before you create a committee with a chairman or president and functionaries and subcommittees. If you want to look at the difficulties that arise from such a system, you can look at any union or at any level of government. Committees are a mess.

Consider instead an entrepreneurship. Consider having the group discuss which person is best suited to be the entrepreneur. Give that person power to appoint others to certain tasks. If that person gets out of hand, ask them to step down. Set up groups for advising the entrepreneur, do what you can to be self-responsible, and be as decentralised as possible.

In an emergency, people look for leaders. If there is no leader in evidence, it may be your turn. Pray that God guides you in your time of leadership. Find your team, lead them where they need to go, and fight against spiritual darkness wherever you encounter it.

One final thought: just because there is one group does not mean there has to be only one group. You might find yourself not getting along with the leadership of the committee or the entrepreneur in charge. Others in the group may be similarly disaffected. Feel free to form a new group. Remember, you are at all times free to alter, reform, or abolish your form of government, at all levels. God made you free and sovereign so you should act on that ability.

Groups can cooperate and groups can compete. That’s one reason the entrepreneurship model is so powerful. Just because there is one brewery in a city does not mean there can be only one. In fact, people set up lots of competing companies all the time, and then form industry groups to coordinate on things they need and to prevent things they want to avoid.

So if you don’t like the group you’re in, don’t be shy. Speak up. The only ways to get what you want are by telling others what you want, by taking action to achieve your goals, and through prayer to get God’s help.

Since what we want has not, in my opinion, based on decades of keen historical research and voracious reading on the topic, ever actually been created by people on Earth, it should be no surprise that we don’t have it now and it will be complicated and difficult to build. But #BuildClub is about building a future that is a celebration of everything mankind is capable of doing. We want, I believe, a lasting, stable, growing, and wonderful civilisation where free people are respected, where the individual is seen as being above the governments and organisations that serve him or her, and where children can learn and live and play safely and without being prey for perverts. Since God put us on a planet in a star system in a galaxy, I believe we have no limits to growth.

Please consider starting your own group to get started building. Thank you.