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Blog Post Summary: The Cost of Unaccountable Liberty
In a compelling presentation at Monerotopia hosted in Mexico City, Catherine Bleish Bonandin passionately addresses the disconnect between the rhetoric of freedom and the actions of some within the movement, particularly focusing on her personal experience with coercive control and the lack of accountability in decentralized communities. Speaking with raw honesty, Catherine challenges the audience to confront the hypocrisy of leaders who preach liberty while engaging in oppressive behaviors, using her own story as a poignant example.
Catherine begins by confronting her ex-husband, John, a prominent figure in the Liberty community, for using the state to force their children—raised with a commitment to sovereignty and homeschooling—into public school, under threat of jail if she does not comply. She questions how a community that champions freedom can tolerate such contradictions, arguing that liberty is not a commodity to be sold but a lifestyle to be embodied through consistent actions. Drawing from her extensive activism history, from the grassroots Ron Paul Revolution to cryptocurrency advocacy, she highlights the movement’s achievements but warns of its tendency to centralize and harbor unaccountable actors.
Using historical examples like the Ron Paul campaigns and personal anecdotes, Catherine illustrates how the Liberty movement’s decentralized nature, while a strength, makes it vulnerable to charismatic leaders, predators, and provocateurs who exploit trust and lack of oversight. She cites cases of financial misappropriation, violence, and coercive control within the community, including her own experience of losing educational freedom for her children due to her ex’s legal maneuvers. She references cults like the People’s Temple and Rajneeshpuram to underscore how movements founded on ideals of freedom can devolve into control without accountability.
Catherine proposes solutions for fostering accountability in decentralized communities: establishing clear mission statements, encouraging consensus-based decision-making, ensuring transparency through accessible records, leveraging blockchain for transparent voting, rotating leadership, and creating conflict resolution processes. She emphasizes the need for community-driven mechanisms to address issues like domestic violence, which currently force women like her to rely on the state for protection. Highlighting successful accountability examples, such as transformations at Anarchapulco, she calls for a cultural shift where the community actively supports victims and holds bad actors accountable.
The presentation ends with a heartfelt plea for the Liberty community to develop non-state conflict resolution systems and to stop financially supporting leaders who fail to walk the walk. Catherine’s story, shared publicly for the first time in this setting, is an act of bravery aimed at sparking dialogue and solutions. She invites the audience to contribute ideas for building a truly accountable, freedom-loving community, urging them to align actions with values to prevent further harm and dependency on the state. The full transcript will be available on Sovereignliving.com, alongside updates on her memoir, Memoirs of a Radical.
