What does the empire require of us?

A successful demonstration in the provinces this weekend... Ok, call it a speak-out, followed by a vigil (one organized by anarchists and the other by "the faith community," so they had to be separated), whatever, it was at least a little version of what they call in Spanish a manifestacion. We had a couple of hundred folks out on the courthouse steps for a good couple hours. We heard from a WWII vet, a Muslim poet, those ubiquitous drumming kids who sew patches on the seams of their pants, bunches of others. I went home feeling cold but good, did my part, participated in the historical marking of 2 yrs since Gulf War II began (one day to be remembered as the second act, after Afghanistan, of the permanent war).

I think those of us manifesting out there felt good, even though some creep came and stole a bunch of brownies in order, as I heard him suggest to a friend later on, to teach the socialists a lesson. Were we heard? Maybe by folks driving by in the traffic circle around the square. Maybe not. Maybe as blips on a global picture of what our prez calls "focus groups" that met to protest and resist the war on that day. It's hard to be hopeful about the effects of a demonstration, though. Let alone a speak-out/vigil.

This has been a mulling point for a long time with me. I came to the conclusion once, after watching a documentary on nonviolent resistance to apartheid, that demos have value in sustaining those of us who would constitute a resistance. In the SA film, the point was that boycotts and other such actions that come off "successfully," but don't tangibly advance the larger cause nonetheless are important for creating a mobilized body politic. So maybe demos are mainly for the demonstrators, so we can feel like we're not alone, that there's some response to the war machine that has run amok.

But for what are we being sustained? To cope with disagreeing with out government? To be able to sleep while the world burns, because we've sterilized ourselves from Bushism by registering our protest? Where does the resistance go when the manifestation is over? That to me is the unanswered, persistent question facing us.

The traditional answers are all there: organize. Write. Call. March. But is anyone listening? Moreover, if they do (let's say, we get a letter read by a member of congress), are they in a position to do anything?

One thing that's so unsettling about these questions is the disconnect between conventional means of political action and the view of the world which I've acquired from social and cultural theory. Whether you read it in Marx, Gramsci, Foucault, or some other foreigner, the persistent theme is that society works on a much less individualist/voluntarist basis than we think. That we collectively "make our own history" (not under "conditions of our own choosing"), rather than being lead into it by the members of the state.

So my question, as I walk home and warm up from the sustaining demo, is what is it that we do on a daily basis that creates the possibility of empire? What micro-level actions, speech acts, gestures, and habits are required of us for empire to continue? The only hope I can find in a moment like now, in which the state seems immune from the will of the governed, is that the regime depends on some level of complicity from its subjects, and that the form this complicity takes has not been fully uncloaked.

What does the empire require of us? What do we do that constitutes us as imperial subjects? What subversive discrepancies are possible, beyond turning out to stand in public and voice opposition?