My name is Jonathan Tijerina. I am on an indefinite moral fast from August 7th, 2026 onwards which I will end once 50 people agree to join me for a fully legal, nonviolent, silent procession with the organization 4 Billion Dead, and agree to stay involved and assist in growing the organization.
The link to sign up and more resources are below!
Please fill out this form to stay involved. Once 50 or more people have signed it and are trusted to stay involved in 4 Billion Dead, I will eat again:
I am a 31 year old White (British/Irish) and Hispanic (Indigenous Mexican/Spanish) man. I was born and raised in Northern California to a deeply involved Christian (Jehovah’s Witness) family. I like to joke that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are the Christian military, because of the depth and intensity with which I was expected to study the teachings from a young age. Reading and rereading the stories from the Bible, particularly the Gospels, and learning about my religious heritage moved me deeply from a young age and impressed upon me the existential duty to live in accord with one’s values. Jehovah’s Witnesses have gone to jail, prison, have faced torture and have been executed in countries around the world for their commitment to various expressions of political neutrality, such as refusing to salute the flag or take up arms and go to war to kill people. Many of the friends I had in my youth in the Jehovah’s Witness organization were undocumented immigrants from Central and South America. Spending time with them, preaching, studying, playing sports and eating with them -- getting to know them as my fellow human beings, my brothers and sisters -- went a long way for me in dissipating the white supremacist racism we inherit growing up in the culture of the West.
In 2019, I was told that an older man I considered a friend (a fellow Jehovah’s Witness) had abused a girl, beaten up her grandmother (also a Jehovah’s Witness), and then went home and shot himself in the head. This led me to question the moral stability of the organization I was part of. I did research and saw that there were problems with many policies and teachings of the organization which were causing harm to people. So I spoke up about it. I posted an image on my Instagram suggesting to my friends that they look into these harmful policies, and for this I was “disfellowshipped” -- excommunicated from the organization. My entire family, all of my friends ceased speaking to me. My family did not speak to me for almost 3 years after this event.
(This is the image I posted on Instagram on my birthday, July 3, 2020)
In 2021 I was laid off from my job for encouraging workers to form a union. Later that year I had another life-changing realization -- I became aware of the gravity of the looming ecological and societal collapse caused by our destruction of our planetary life-support systems. I got to know some people who were engaging in civil disobedience activities which I felt could change society if many people became involved with them, so I flew out to join them, at a pipeline through Indigenous territory in Minnesota, and then in Florida, where I was arrested for distributing flyers to young people at a middle school, and then for entering and then blocking a highway.
I and my friend drove to Washington D.C. that year, after blocking a highway in Florida and denying bail for a week to see what the experience would be like. My friend Roger Hallam, a global leader in nonviolent resistance and social organizing, was able to connect Donald and I to Adam Mckay, the director of films like Anchorman, Step Brothers, Don’t Look Up and the Big Short, who donated $50,000 so that we could create a nonviolent resistance organization in DC called Declare Emergency, in coordination with a global network of organizations carrying out coordinated uprisings of nonviolent civil resistance in 2021-2022. In March of 2022, I went on a 7 day “hunger strike” to motivate people to get involved with nonviolent civil disobedience. Later that year, groups of people joined us for actions which became national news.
The activities we carried out in the public arena with others became global news and have forever changed the public’s consciousness and history. Declare Emergency was covered by many outlets, including on primetime FOX News, NY Times, and by DemocracyNow!:
-
New York Times, Nov 3, 2025 (link)
In late 2022, I became overwhelmed with the pressure because I had not done sufficient character building, so I flew home and lived with my family for 6 months, moved out and remained in their town for several years. I stayed active, organizing events, carrying out acts of civil disobedience, encouraging my neighbors to become involved in solving the problems in our community. In 2024 I joined an ally named Sam Kirchner who was creating a group called StopAI in San Francisco California. At the time I was the only person in the world who wanted to be publicly affiliated and actively engaged with the group he was creating. We got arrested blocking a road in front of OpenAI’s secret offices. Since then, the group has grown and has been covered by national outlets like the Wall Street Journal.
This year, I decided that the time had come to leave the small town I was living in and become actively engaged again throughout the country. I drove here to Salt Lake City in late April/May, and have been arrested 4 times in this city for nonviolent civil disobedience.
After having thousands of conversations with people of many different races, religions, ideologies, ages and professions about the state of our political/social/ecological crises, I have come to the conclusion that we are struggling deeply with terminal moral/psychological/spiritual “HIV/cancer”. We are drinking the cultural poison/painkillers which are keeping us quiet, inactive and despairing, at the very moment in human history when we should be the most active. As the saying goes, “The only thing evil needs to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”
The UK insurance industry predicts that 4 billion or more people will likely suffer torturous death and execution because of the collapse of the food systems, extreme heat, mass migration and war by the year 2050. 4 Billion Dead is an international network of ordinary people, joining together to make the truth known to the public, and to act as if it is real. 4BD will not be carrying out civil disobedience. We are acting as a community funnel and international meeting place, to activate people of goodwill from across the planet. We are organizing meetings and silent processions in various countries.
Rather than encouraging people to go about our lives in an emotionally repressed state, pretending that the future is not right around the corner, polishing our guns and outlining our escape plans to commit suicide when the end comes, I have dedicated my life to motivating others to join together and take the necessary actions which can maintain a positive, coherent society as life becomes harsher for all of us over the months and years to come. Nonviolence, enacted in harmony with other people of goodwill from around the world and in our own cities and neighborhoods, is a must. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, our choices are now only “chaos or community.”
This is why I have decided to go on an indefinite religious/moral fast, to motivate my fellow human beings and children of God to take our moral duties seriously. Once 50 people have agreed to join a fully legal, silent sidewalk procession and stay involved in the organization, I will end the fast. You can fill out the form to sign up for the procession below. Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. went on moral/spiritual fasts to motivate their allies to take action or encourage them to change their destructive behavior.
If we do not take our responsibilities at this time seriously, our children, the planet, the cosmos will never forgive us. It is do or die.
Jonathan Andrew Tijerina
August 8, 2026
*****
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If I am detained, either arrested or institutionalized for my “health”, I may not be allowed to speak with friends or able to verify who has signed the form and agreed to come to a procession and be part of 4 Billion Dead. I also may lose access to the form results at some point. So, in addition to signing the form, please post a picture of yourself publicly on Facebook, Instagram or X with a sign reading 4 Billion Dead. Please share where you are from and that you agree to join the organization. Please include the words or hashtags in your post: “4 Billion Dead”/”#4billiondead” and “FastForLife2026”/ “Fast For Life 2026”.
*****
This folder contains further information on the plan for societal transformation, books, a film and other important resources:
