Protests and Demonstrations are not the same thing

When Gandhi and his comrades marched to the sea and made salt in defiance of the British Imperial ban on salt-making that was making a demonstration, not a protest. This distinction is important: A protest merely involves some wailing over injustice followed by self-congratulatory back-patting, while a demonstration involves defiance of the system of repression. A demonstration like Gandhi’s both shows the outrage of the Indian people against British imperialism and demonstrates that India had the power and ability to manufacture its own salt and bypass the British ban. This was also the case in American protests against the Vietnam War; when the people sang songs and cried over the dead, that was a protest; when people burned their draft cards, that was a demonstration. The demonstration shows that one has the will and the power to throw off oppression and to act as a free being. A demonstration should be either a direct act of defiance, or the laying of concrete plans to carry forth a struggle.
The demonstration is not to be confused with a riot; a riot occurs when the revolutionary energy of a people has no constructive outlet, and it does not win people over to the side of the rioters. People are moved by the sight of a co-ordinated and organised strong group of people, they are moved to take more freedom in their own lives by demonstrations. Riots make people feel helpless because they do not end in social change, they are, as it were, a waste of violence. The demonstration should demonstrate the power of the organized masses for the purpose of winning fence-sitters over to their side. It should also function to build confidence and the feeling of power in the people who participate in it. These feelings will serve to construct an identity and a culture of equality among people all over the world.

Life without Dead Time
Edward in Tokyo
Adbusters #73, Sept/Oct 2007

See also-
The smugosphere
Take your bloody marches and shove them up your arse
Chomsky “On Resistance” and an exchange following on from that.

Transruptive Video

Hmm, these are displacement activities that I am engaged in.
One more, on “GLOW” and then I’d better get some real work done…

Who writes like this??

I’ve just read, to my sorrow, “Who we are and what we do“
by Rob Hopkins and Peter Lipman. Published in February 2009, it’s an intro to the Transition Network.

Here’s the first sentence;

“Peak oil and climate change have rapidly moved up in people’s awareness in recent years, but often, particularly in relation to peak oil, solutions tend to be thin on the ground.”

So, we have
a) a far too long sentence
b) in the passive voice,
c) with subordinate clause ,
d) and a tired image.

But wait, there’s more! Clock this;

“We have already been seeing a structure emerging organically over the last two years and what we propose in this document is based on a deepening and a supporting of this emergent model, on the principle that self-organisation, innovation and action are to be encouraged and supported where they arise, supported where they arise, supported by a distinct set of principles and clear guidelines.”

I swear to you, you couldn’t write this fugly if you tried. “We have already been seeing”???? Have these people not read Orwell’s Politics and the English Language? Have they not read this out loud to see how it plays? Have they not given their first draft to someone who knows something – anything – about copy-writing?

Apparently not.

Sigh.

Head v heart?

So, reading a PhD on activist education-

The literature review and initial observations and interviews undertaken during this inquiry suggested two broad schools of thought and practice in activist training and support. The technical school primarily promotes the development and refinement of a toolbox of activist skills. Activist educators whose approaches may be categorised in this way tend to prioritise intellect and knowledge, skills and efficiency. The affective school, on the other hand, assumes that effective social change is more directly influenced by and dependent upon values and feelings, understanding oneself and understanding society. Activist educators and activities reflecting this orientation promote the development of relationships and spirituality. Whereas the QCC action research study (Chapter Five) highlighted the skills orientation of the technical school, the Heart Politics approach that is the focus of this chapter prioritises the personal growth, relationships and spiritual orientation of the affective school.

Whelan, 337-8

Hegemony and its discontents

Review of Tim Doyle’s “Surviving the Gang Bang Theory of Nature: The Environment Movement during the Howard Years” in Social Movement Studies Vol 9, No. 2, 155-69, April 2010

I really wanted to like this. I’ve met the author (he’s a good friend of a good friend) and he’s engaging, intelligent and committed. But this article merely sets out the problems, rather than sketches out some possible solutions.

ABSTRACT This article investigates the Australian environment movement during the Howard years, 1996– 2007. First, the author maps out key issues which emerged during this period of governance, and then focuses on outlining the strategic and tactical repertoire of the movement at this time. The author argues the case that the movement embraced a neoliberal ideology often expressed within the dominant discourses shared by the state and big business, as the movement sought to operate more and more on business principles. In addition, environmentalists pursued a neoconservative moral agenda, so typical of the Howard years, right across the policy-making realm. Finally, the article concludes with the argument that the Australian green movement, mistaking a neoliberal geo-economic agenda as postmodernity, reorganized itself in such a way as to deliver political wins to its traditional adversaries, fundamentally weakening its position within Australian society as an advocate of radical social change.

Doyle lays out the terrain well;

The Howard government, then, continually advocated free-market, radical libertarian solutions to environmental problems, removing the role of active public and community sectors from environmental monitoring, regulation and problem solving. In turn, the input of large corporate interests into the shaping of government policy was ever increasing. This free-market ideology, ushered in by the Labor Party, but in a far purer ideological form under the Coalition, threatened environment movements directly.

And he nails the underlying ideology-

As the market place was deemed natural under sustainable use, wise use built on this premise, and then reversed it, arguing that, in fact, nature itself was a free marketplace (as was the global polity). Elsewhere, I have referred to this as the Gang Bang Theory of Nature (Doyle, 2001). In this neoliberal depiction of the biophysical processes of the planet itself, no longer was the Earth deemed finite. Everyone could have what they wanted, and nature could be put back afterwards.

And he is good on how being drawn into the state is a mixed blessing…

During the 1980s, in Australia under Hawke, large parts of the movement became the state (at least on occasions) (Hutton & Connors, 1999). Large chunks of environmentalism became mainstream; part of the furniture: institutions and business incorporated these concerns into their agendas. This led to different opportunities and weaknesses for the movement.

and what happens when there’s a regime change

Third, their enthusiastic embrace of corporatist politics under Hawke had weakened its more radical networks. Next, many networks were now understandably being punished by the conservatives for their overly close association with Labor; and those which retained/gained access to government were involved only in green window dressing, receiving vast amounts of money and kudos from Robert Hill and others, via the mining and pastoral sectors to plant trees and to ‘save’ species.

But there are missing concepts;
(Eagleton on ideology, Gramsci on hegemony).

There’s missing citations;

Moreover, these processes of capital accumulation quickened with the inevitable outcome being further discrepancies between the rich and the poor. (page 158)

While this is almost certainly true, a reference to the Gini co-efficients for Australia in 1996 and 2007 would be useful!

There’s an entertainingly vitriolic description of NGO-land spoiled by a rather odd use of the word palimpsest.

To describe the environment movement during these troubled years as a non-goal-specific, smeared-out palimpsest may accurately describe Australian non-institutional, green politics in a society (or non-society) now so overrun by a single meta-narrative that all opposition had been dispersed, and cast as disparate ‘minority voices’. (page 158)

Doyle then has a series of very interesting descriptions of elite and grass-roots techniques (the Rockefeller inspired ‘Earth Charter’ and the 1997 “Public Inquiry into Uranium.” These are fascinating and worth close attention.

Doyle is often right on the money-

The movement, profoundly anti-intellectual (again reflecting its society), often incorrectly interpreted this postmodern political space as a justification for strategies that were simply neoliberal and that ultimately deliver market-based outcomes. This neoliberalism, despite Howard’s eventual demise, currently pervades the operational and strategic reality of the environment movement in Australia, particularly in elite networks: ‘Find your own comfort level in social and political systems and pursue your own environmental ends and ecotopia will be revealed.’ (167)

and

The extreme neoliberalism of some environmentalists has not dealt with the basic problems of access to power and wealth. Any effective postmodern/poststructural tactical armoury must also include adversarial, structuralist, front-on, us– them, win –loss conflicts, as well as other forms of appeals to elites, win –win, and mass mobilization politics. In their acceptance of ‘universal embrace’ strategies, many Australian environmental strategists continue to overindulge in the characteristic of postmodern politics which White has already alluded to: in their ‘irreducible pluralism and . . . suspicion of totalistic revolutionary programs’ (White, 1991, p. 11), they rarely offer combined and confrontationary stances which are sometimes most appropriate in creative forms of postmodern politics. Instead, what is eulogized as postmodern cleverness usually manifests itself as neo-pluralism and neoliberalism.

But the key question “What is to be Done?” is not answered. We know we are under-performing, that we are in the smugosphere. Maybe Doyle thinks it’s not his place to be prescriptive, but criticism without ideas for praxis is akin to power without responsibility. How DO we go about surviving the Gang Bang theory of nature?

Mexican stand-off

This from the latest Peace News (though I found it online at the Centre for Alternative Technology website)
Hoping against hope
CJA is looking for feedback. Perhaps, although our resistance is always creative and emotionally powerful, for COP16 in Mexico we should consider more radically changing reality? As crises deepen, which they will, following the circus of capitalism and its road-show of pseudo democracy around the world becomes increasingly unproductive. Drawing on all our knowledge and experience, maybe we should go to anywhere but Mexico. If we mobilised 100,000 people to act more locally in trans-local solidarity, to provide much needed help to eco-villages, social centres, low-impact developments, refugee camps, and other projects that could stand out as good examples of just environmental and social practice, well, what a wonderful world it could be.

Well, quite, but I think the Climate Camp lacks the contacts, the energy and most of all the desire to do what is suggested. It’s far more fun to be wevolutionary.

Here’s some stuff I wrote in the tail end of 2008, when it became obvious that Copenhagen was going to be a big blackhole for climate activist energy…

Tail wags dog?

Is going to the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009 going to help to build a mass movement that takes non-violent direct action on climate change in the United Kingdom?
Leaving aside the tricky question of “is disrupting the negotiations a good idea”? (In order to achieve what?) there are other tricky questions that need to be asked:
What are the dangers of spending so much time and energy organising for a summit?
What would short-term success at the summit look like?
And what would it cost?
What projects won’t go forward?
Or go forward with less vigour than they otherwise would have?
What happens if the most dedicated and high-profile activists are focussed on preparing for- and then heading off- to Copenhagen for two or three weeks?

Alternatives?
While the world’s leaders talk (again) at Copenhagen about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, ordinary people could be non-violently DOING it- through individual and collective actions- in villages, towns and cities all over the world.
Every day while the negotiations happen, there could be a whole range of actions, from the very very non-arrestable through to the harder end of things. Different days could focus on different industries (aviation, power generation, oil industry, agriculture, transport, cement, forestry etc) and/or different countries could “adopt” different days, in a rolling programme of actions.
The 15 months from September 08 to December 09 could be spent on small-scale direct actions scattered across the countries of the UK, from open and fluffy through to closed actions, with a constant focus on “December 09 and beyond”.
Resources could be made available on the web on paper and via social centres and friendship groups on how each was done, what worked and didn’t, with a spectrum menu so people could quickly get information relevant to the type of thing that they wanted to do.
The camp movement, working in conjunction with other green groups that don’t (yet) share a commitment to NVDA, could create enormous political (and economic) pressure on the governments and corporations meeting in Copenhagen.
Thousands of people could get involved in NVDA without having to risk arrest, or take a week’s annual leave or travel to Copenhagen. That could create a very strong base for 2010 and beyond.

Are the key questions-
Where do “we” want to be in 2010, 2012?
What kinds of things do we want to see happening and by whom?
What kinds of things should be accepted as legitimate and essential by the mainstream?
How can a broad-based campaign of non-violent direct action make that happen, and how can a broad-based campaign of non-violent direct action best be accelerated?
Or are there other more important questions?

Fairford
In 2003, at the height of the anti-war protests, the Non-Violent Direct Action crowd accused the SWP-dominated “Stop the War coalition” of betrayal and strategic incompetence because they were telling people to that on the Saturday after the war had actually started they should go to Central London rather than places like Fairford in an effort to directly stop the US bombers from taking off.

They argued that marches and set pieces away from where the damage was being done had a time and a place (e.g. February 15th), but that local targetted direct action would make the bad guys pay more attention.

What a difference 6 years makes, eh? Rather than identify and act on a host of local Fairfords, the NVDAP is (unwittingly) colluding on a joint call to go to Copenhagen. Along with the SWP. Along with Ed Miliband. If your bedfellows are that strange, maybe you should think who you’re getting fucked by?

Or is the analogy wrong? If so, how is it wrong?

Freedom Summer

I have two books out at the moment with the same title: “Freedom Summer.” The one I’ve read is by Doug McAdam, a sociologist. He looks at what happened that year in Mississippi, what it meant in the short-term for the volunteers who went, and the host organisation(s), largely the SNCC. And then he takes the story on through the rest of the Sixties, into the Seventies and Eighties (he did the interviews in’84 and ’85, the book was published in 1988).

I learnt a lot, and will continue to do so. Lots of post-it notes, and I’ll have to type the blighters up and turn some into launch-pads for blog posts. Suffice to say McAdam is good on both the benefits and costs of activism, and seems good on race, gender and class and what they all ‘mean’ to ‘activism.’

The other is by a FS volunteer, Sally Belfrage, of which more later (i.e. once I’ve read it- it looks dead good!)

At the end of the day…

Ok, bad form to quote oneself, but here goes nothing…

Back to the Climate and Capitalism meeting, I arrived after the final plenary speakers had given what I’m told were inspiring speeches. Unfortunately, the Q and A was anything but inspiring. I have lost count of the number of times good days have been spoilt by overlong and unfocussed Q&As where people (well, mostly men) with limitless needs for attention, approbation, controversy and more attention hold forth at horrible length with unstructured comments, deliberately(?) arcane questions (a form of dick-swinging; you rarely see it from women) and self-serving announcements. Not all of the contributions were like that, not even a majority, but enough of them were to needlessly deflate what seemed to have been a high-energy day. I do not understand why any organiser would plump for such a masochistic and self-defeating structure, except out of unconsidered habit. But there you are.

Both meetings could have benefitted enormously from a couple of simple techniques- give everyone (who is willing) a name badge and another sticker for them to say what they’re particularly interested in or are campaigning on, or where they live.

Also, even in a tiered lecture theatre (as the Climate and Capitalism event’s opening session was) it is possible to ask people to turn to the person behind them (they probably know the person they are sat next to) and have a chat for a couple of minutes about what they’re doing/what they’re expecting from the day.

These simple techniques help break down the invisible barriers to mingling (British reservedness) and can help nurture a wider set of loose ties between interested people from different social circles. If these things aren’t done, there tends to be a significant clustering into groups (cliques!) of people who know each other well.

60s battle re-enactment

OK, so one of my good mates put me onto Frank Turner. The title song of the album “Love, Ire and Song” has the following brilliant verse.

Well it was bad enough the feeling, and the first time it hit
When you realised your parents had let the world all go to shit
And that the values and ideals for which many had fought and died
Had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside
But it was worse when we turned to the kids on the left
And got let down again by some poor excuse for protest
Yeah by idiot fucking hippies in 50 different factions
Who are locked inside some kind of 60′s battle re-enactment
And I hung-up my banner in disgust and I head for the door

Savour those last three lines. Now that’s concision!!!

Good and bad and “keepers”

At a Manchester Climate Forum meeting on Weds 20 January, people were invited to say what made for a good group, a bad group and what techniques for “retention” could be used…
Here, with no editorialising, are the results…

Good Group
Aims set by consensus
Sense of purpose as a group and as an individual within a group
Shared values
Good chair
Everybody able to contribute
Achievements/ACTIONS
Have fun/a laugh
Balance between action and how you get it done.
“Managing expectations” – most important thing
Consensus decision making- but only with a group focussed and similar in approach
Good management of personality conflict
Opportunity for new ideas/development
A plan!

Bad Group
Boring meetings
Meetings for their own sake
Unfocused
Bad outreach- no effort for recruitment strategies
Wrong people in the group/bad group dynamic
Obsession with correct procedure
badly chaired
Gender imbalanced
Centralisation of work/allocation
No support given to new members
Too much housekeeping (i.e. admin tasks) at meetings

Ways to Retain people
Give small discrete tasks with “buddy”
Small regular victories
Fun
Humour
Common Aim
Friendship
Socialising
Ownership- needs to be nurtured
Direct communication… phoning!
Clear purpose for each meeting/overall aim
Retaining people does not necessarily make a good group!
Appointing someone to help introduce/engage new members
Balanced/regular rotation of new members
Mixed activities
explain basics of group on A4/A5 for newcomers
Good internal communications