La Vie

A New Strategy for Green Activism: An Open Letter from Charles Secrett

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:12:47 -0400

“Dear green activists,

What more can NGOs do to help humanity out of the mess we are in? Tried and tested campaign tactics, based on protest and outrage at the incompetence of governments and industry, are not working. It’s time to break free from a perpetually defensive mode, and go on the offensive. Spark the reasonable revolution.

We need something much more powerful than just direct action or lobbying to encourage politicians, companies and communities to change course and tread a development path where the needs of people and nature are jointly met. The necessary wealth, resources, technologies and ideas are out there. What is missing is the political will to implement.

As you constantly warn, we have about 10 years or so to turn around the juggernaut of industrialism, and our gobbling up of earth’s resources, before ecosystems start collapsing, species extinctions reach crisis point, and the fundamental stability and productivity of the biosphere (soils, oceans and atmosphere) enters a state of runaway change. That will be the point of no return for billions of people. Imagine the chaos.

First, appreciate how powerful you could be from pooling your efforts. In the UK, you employ thousands of staff, spend over £100m annually, and have millions of members. You speak for people from all walks of life, and all political persuasions. Globally, you can multiply those numbers by a factor of 10, and probably much more.

Second, stop working in parallel, and unite with other causes – development, human rights, poverty, public health, democracy, community well-being – under one banner: “For people, for the planet”.

The fundamental problems in these fields – authoritarian government, the dominance of selfish elites, rampant neo-liberal economics, and disdain for the workings of nature – are connected. So are the solutions, and therefore your agendas. By co-operating, you reach a critical mass to achieve your aims.

Third, every successful revolution has a compelling text at its heart – ideals, goals, words, images and examples that inspire the majority. Where is your equivalent of the Rights of Man, Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital, or Little Red Book?

You need to agree a joint manifesto for life. Mine the library of sustainable development strategies to spell out a route map that can take humanity from where we are to where most want to be.

Collate the best solutions from public, private and community sectors into a compelling narrative. Pepper it with case studies of what works from around the world. Use simple language and pictures, not the professional jargon of sustainability-speak, to convince the silent majority that the alternatives exist.

Then, crowd-source the draft. Iceland is drawing up a new constitution like this. NGOs have the reach to try the approach globally. Bridge the traditional divides between north and south, east and west, where national governments and multinationals have failed. Help the public create a new world order, and confirm the principles, objectives and means to deliver political economies that work for people and nature.

That can build ownership of the outcome, and commitment to change, across cultures. Where the intelligence of elites has failed to motivate the mainstream, the wisdom of crowds can succeed.

Fourth, build a cross-party political consensus in every nation. You have extensive international networks, and are embedded and respected in most countries.

Societal change is about power, and who wields it and why. Your regular interaction with government and companies is not the same as real influence. You must systematically generate significant pressure to change the failing business-as-usual provision of energy, food, housing, jobs, welfare and the other things that people require for a good life.

Power resides with voters, tax-payers and constituents. No government can rule without citizen consent.

Use the manifesto, and specific proposals for policies, regulations, tax-codes and spending priorities that make environmental, economic and social sense, to show how people’s lives will improve from their adoption. Natural allies include scientists, gardeners, fishers, farmers, foresters, sports-people, outdoor recreationalists – tens of millions of people who depend on a clean, healthy environment.

Organise locally in every constituency to build formidable alliances between your supporters, other community groups, unions and local businesses.

The imperative is to hold government and industry to account at elections and between elections, at AGMs and throughout the year. If they don’t respond, motivated electorates and shareholders can throw the bums out.

Fifth, do the same in markets. Business too needs a license to operate. Consumers, shareholders and investors are the kings and queens of commerce and industry. No company will invest in, make or sell services and products that people won’t buy, or shareholders reject. It’s another opportunity to organise and mobilise.

Business allies are in sectors like insurance and pension funds that depend on stability and continuity in economy and ecology. And, the entrepreneurs and innovative companies who deal in clean, green and smart technologies, vehicles, products and infrastructure that reconcile a steady-state economy with a steady-state biosphere.

Activists and executives can speak with one voice to help decision-makers break free of ideological chains for what works. Neither left nor right, but forward, as the German greens used to proclaim.

By taking these steps, you can create the opportunity for governments at global summits to find common cause and tackle climate change, deforestation, ocean depletion, destructive trade patterns, human rights abuses et al – and escape the groundhog day experience of always being bitterly disappointed at every meeting.

Finally, accept certain campaigns are not winnable, and simply drain resources. Absolutist positions do not hold up for the majority. Because of climate change, this probably includes total opposition to nuclear power and GM products globally. Focus instead on the conditions where these technologies become acceptable: safe, economic, free of patent control by a few companies, and effectively regulated.

This is how NGOs can help mobilise a majority to back changes that give the poor and downtrodden, let alone my son and your children, a fighting chance of enjoying as decent lives as you and I do.

Yours sincerely,

Charles”

"People who enjoy waving flags don’t deserve to have one."

Wed, 25 May 2011 10:38:22 -0400

“People who enjoy waving flags don’t deserve to have one.”

- Banksy

It’s kind of a daft, self-congratulatory image produced to...

Sun, 22 May 2011 13:45:00 -0400

It’s kind of a daft, self-congratulatory image produced to show the world how conscious the producer is … However, it has a very good point.

This is not the kind of thing I’d usually blog. Having...

Sun, 22 May 2011 06:49:00 -0400

This is not the kind of thing I’d usually blog. Having said this however it did overcome my gnarled cynical circuits and brought a chuckle to my morning.

I want the world of blogging to be better than it is.

Mon, 16 May 2011 05:14:53 -0400

"And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware..."

Sat, 14 May 2011 06:00:47 -0400

“

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning —

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. (via gottaseethedopeness)

"We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s..."

Mon, 09 May 2011 13:12:00 -0400

“We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.”

- Noam Chomsky

I would say that the overview of American intervention in the Middle-East here is reductionist of course, but not inaccurate. The beauty of this quote lies not in the details but rather its coercion of the reader to see things from a different perspective.

I was saddened by America’s reaction to the assassination of Bin Laden. Sometimes violence is necessary, but to celebrate it is to reduce to barbarism.

The celebrations for me were indicative of what is being said here. Terrorism is bad and it is born from anger. The West has committed itself, and rightly so, to the prevention of terrorism yet what many fail to do is ask ‘why are they angry?’ Until the roots of discontent are discovered and dealt with, terrorism will occur. Furthermore, terrorism is not something which can be stamped out with force. Force can be used against armies because armies run on tanks and fuel and bullets; resources. Destroy enough resources and the army will diminish and cease. Terrorism runs on fanaticism. Fanaticism is the product of warped ideology applied to anger and discontent. The more force you use, the more you oppress, the more you galvanise and appear to justify the warped ideology.

I saw an interview on the BBC with an insurgent in Iraq. The reporter asked him why he had chosen to take up arms against those who were coming to liberate him. He responded by telling of how he used to be a merchant with a family. He didn’t like the regime under Hussein, but he had other things to worry about, like where his next meal was coming from. When the US invaded, they opened their campaign with operation ‘shock and awe’ which was a very flamboyant bombing campaign. It claimed to only target places of military significance yet we all watched on the television images of explosions throughout the center of Baghdad. This campaign hit everything from military command centres to schools and hospitals. The insurgent in question had lost all his children and his wife to an American bomb.

My point is that the ‘war on terror’ will not be won with guns but with aid. Improve the quality of life of those in poverty-stricken regions and they will not be so susceptible to fanatics. Help build infrastructure, agriculture, education and healthcare and we will quickly find that people are less inclined to listen to those trying convince them to blow themselves up.

Chomsky has highlighted how alien it is to view things from a different perspective but until people do, we will all continue to suffer.

"When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a..."

Sun, 08 May 2011 14:17:15 -0400

“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”

- Maya Angelou (via libraryland)

The 'Slut Walk' Protests: Progressive Movement or the Product of Misinterpretation?

Sun, 08 May 2011 06:49:20 -0400

From what little I have read regarding the US born ‘slut walk’ protests against miscalculated comments by a Toronto policeman (and it is very little; I am open to further enlightenment if I myself am guilty of misunderstanding) I can’t help but get the impression the whole thing is a big misunderstanding.

The policeman in question voiced his advice in a manner deeply insensitive to any women who may have suffered sexual assault and for that, he certainly needs a good telling off. But I somehow, I think it’s highly unlikely that his advice was a calculated move to place blame on the victims of such crime.

Was his bumbling gaff conceived to absolve rapists, or was it a very poorly judged attempt to persuade some women to consider the unacceptable yet lamentably inherent fact that the world is a dangerous place?

I think that as an officer of the law who has probably seen many victims of unspeakable crimes and may even have a family of his own, it was probably not the former.

I do not approve of his comments, though I think anger should be directed at his choice of words, rather than what he was trying to express.

Photo

Sun, 08 May 2011 06:21:35 -0400

"Is this the start of a long Conservative hegemony? The AV referendum result comes as a thundering..."

Sat, 07 May 2011 10:04:50 -0400

“

Is this the start of a long Conservative hegemony?

The AV referendum result comes as a thundering blow. In an era when voters are in rebellion against the old two-party duopoly, a third refusing to vote for either of the old tribes, the chance to shape an electoral system that might reflect that mood by recording people’s true first choices has been cast away.

As for a properly representative system, that hope is dashed for years to come. Forget new parties breaking through, the portal to politics remains desperately narrow. Westminster can only be approached through the heavily guarded gateways of the old parties, barring the way to others. Parliament is a closed club that risks falling into deeper disrepute, further removed from its voters, less responsive to the increasingly complex feelings voters want to express. What’s the point of voting, the poll refuseniks ask on the doorstep, if no one outside the two big parties ever has a chance.

How perverse to vote for less choice, but the reasons why are simple. The issue was steamrollered flat by the political passions of the day. For too many of those on the centre-left, instant vengeance against Lib Dems drove out all thoughts of the political future. It was a vile campaign, the No side mendacious beyond anything I can recall, the Yes side insultingly stupid with its call to make MPs “work harder”.

Nick Clegg badly misjudged this by insisting the referendum be held on local election day, when winning councils was the activists’ priority. A stand-alone referendum, after the Lib Dems had been trounced, might have aired the question better.

Shedloads of cash from Tory donors did its work. David Cameron’s killer threat, untrue but mighty effective – that AV would leave the rump Lib Dems in power forever – probably won the day. But Labour’s split between its retro-revengers and its forward-looking pluralists was a disaster. If Tony Blair at the height of his power dared not face down his party and push for PR with Roy Jenkins and Paddy Ashdown, Ed Miliband was in a considerably weaker position to whip the party in to embrace a more fluid multi-party future. Of course AV in itself, that “miserable little compromise”, wouldn’t have produced that outcome – but voting it down makes all electoral reform moribund. So will the Lib Dems get House of Lords reform instead? No, the Tories will kill that too, just watch and see, whatever Cameron may pretend. For many the loss of any hope of electoral reform will mark a dark turning point in their enthusiasm for politics.

The great double losers of the day were the Lib Dems, poll-axed by the end of their reform dream. Thrashing about in near-death agonies, expect all manner of contortions that may be as self-destructive as everything else they have done in the last year. Their overall result was not quite as bad as some polls predicted, holding on in some places, but their catastrophic coalition miscalculation may yet split and wipe them out for a generation.

They may bring down the coalition. They may eject Clegg, but what’s the point of replacing him with Chris Huhne? Even before the last election, he was pressing the not-so-cunning plan of going into a death-hug with the Tories. All the Lib Dem leaders convinced themselves insanely that they must prove they were a grown-up party of government, eager to take harsh decisions as nasty as the Tories.

How badly they misunderstood the nature of their swelling support: they were a safe haven for voters not wanting tough choices, nice people with apolitical instincts, trusting Clegg’s promised “new politics” would keep their votes clean from contamination. Had the Lib Dems stood apart and stood their ground, loudly opposing Tory plans, objecting to the savagery of the budget without quite bringing down the government, they might have kept their virginity. Instead, their relentless trashing of “Labour who left us in this mess” slammed the door on an alternative coalition future – and ensured angry Labour voters killed off their AV hopes.

Today a frightening question confronts Labour: is this the start of a long Conservative hegemony? The economy is flatlining – but so is Labour. It gained too few seats, compared with its 2007 low vote. Why didn’t it do better? Unemployment is rising, the NHS faces deep cuts, libraries, leisure centres and Sure Starts are slamming their doors, while university fees terrify families, middle incomes shrink and growing ranks of economists warn that George Osborne’s plans are sending the UK into a downward spiral – yet Cameron’s shield is undented. Some progress is made with “too far, too fast” – but nowhere near enough yet. If there were a general election tomorrow, Cameron would win.Labour remains unforgiven, blamed for everything, its faces still too redolent of a rejected Brown era. Twenty-three policy reviews under the aegis of “No money left” Liam Byrne are not so far an inspiring prospect.

Meanwhile, Lib Dem votes collapsing to Labour may paradoxically yield more Westminster seats to Tories. Labour regained its northern strongholds but until it besieges Tories in the south, it’s not a contender. Losing Scotland was a blow. Boundary changes favour the Tories and if Scotland breaks away, then Westminster looks blue stretching into the far horizons of the future.

Is this the death of the idea that Britain has a “progressive majority”? Is this really a Conservative country after all, as the Blair/Brown/ Mandelson project always assumed? No, though without AV, first preferences can’t be proven: a fifth of voters are forced to vote tactically. A solid third of voters are Tory but the anti-Tory vote is now more dispersed and without voting reform, harder to assemble into a winning force.

What is the Miliband, pluralist wing of Labour to do about that? Open up the party to new entrants, hold open primaries to become the gateway into politics for unconventional candidates assembled around the spine of Labour values. Cameron has cooled on this, since the Totnes Tory primary delivered a GP critical of his health reforms.

Labour can only be attractive if it is welcoming, open-minded, free-spirited, the party that unlocks doors to Westminster for new ideas and new people. In the last weeks, the worst of Labour often paraded the opposite. Where once left and right were Labour’s deepest rift, now the deeper divide is the open-minded versus narrow sectarians. Haunted by its painful recent past, Labour has yet to tell us what it’s for.

”

- A column from Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. This article gets to he bottom of the fundamental problems that Britain is now facing and more alarmingly, how difficult it will be to change or challenge them.

This is a stunning piece of analysis.

Rather out of the blue I’ve been drawn back into an...

Sun, 01 May 2011 07:44:37 -0400

Rather out of the blue I’ve been drawn back into an obsession with skateboarding. It’s a sport that I thought I’d left behind with early-teen angst and moody rock music yet the allure has drawn me back.

This video is of Kilian Martin, a professional street-freestyle skater from Spain. I’m optimistic that with a couple more hours of being reintroduced to my board, I’ll be able to nail most of this.

"To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing."

Sun, 01 May 2011 07:39:06 -0400

“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”

- Aristotle (via junkbondtrader)

"I saw that the novel, which at my maturity was the strongest and supplest medium for conveying..."

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:25:00 -0400

““I saw that the novel, which at my maturity was the strongest and supplest medium for conveying thought and emotion from one human being to another, was becoming subordinated to a mechanical and communal art that, whether in the hands of Hollywood merchants or Russian idealists, was capable of reflecting only the tritest thought, the most obvious emotion. It was an art in which words were subordinate to images, where personality was worn down to the inevitable low gear of collaboration.””

- F. Scott Fitzgerald in ‘The Crack-Up’.

Working in an independent cinema, I can’t be too disapproving of the medium of film. Having said this however, I’ve never been able to subscribe to it as anything more than mere entertainment. Despite reflecting on moving images as a new idea and seperated from cinema in a modern context, I really agree with Fitzgerald. Whether film has the potential to be a true art form and to rival words in their ability to convey truth, I am not experienced or intelligent enough to say. What I may say however, is that modern film falls so short of the power of past literature that they are incomparable. I would also venture to say that the predominance of film, television and internet have been complicit in the suppression of standards and that due to this we may rarely, if ever, see greatness flourish as we once did.

libraryland: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay, “The Crack-Up” from...

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:14:46 -0400

libraryland:

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s essay, “The Crack-Up” from Esquire magazine, 1936.

(The piece was later featured in a book of Fitzgerald’s essays, also titled The Crack-Up)

This is a point that I often try to make.

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:35:23 -0400

This is a point that I often try to make.

This is an inevitable part of life. It’s also rather sad...

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:17:44 -0400

This is an inevitable part of life. It’s also rather sad as it draws to our attention how technology has such a constricting grip upon us. It shows how we’ve forgotten the true value of shampoo ingredients.

Internships with political parties certainly aren’t...

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:13:00 -0400

Internships with political parties certainly aren’t rewarding.

A Note on the Alternative Vote

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:24:00 -0400

So our country is finally having a referendum on our voting system, though I could simply say ‘so our country is finally having a referendum’. This is because there has only been one occasion when the government has honoured us with this privilege in the past and that was in 1975.

Britain is regarded globally by governments, international bodies and academics as one of the most ‘stable’ democracies to have ever existed yet here at ground level the concept is rather sparse. The above example of a single referendum is a case in point but the truth is that the level of representation in Britain is shamefully low. That no government in the last century has held its position with more than 40% of the national vote is another jolly fact highlighting the issue. To push the point home, 10% of the population could select a party that represents their interests in a general election, yet that party could fail to occupy any of the seats in Parliament. That’s a whole 6,000,000 people who would not have a single voice to speak for them in Government.

We have a two party system, Labour who occupies the centre-left and the Conservatives who occupy the centre-right (all be it rather more distant from the mid-point than Labour). Two parties with a strangle-hold on power at a time when party identification in Britain is at its lowest in living memory. Essentially, the people of the UK are provided with a choice of two, neither of which truly represents any great number of the electorate yet there is no way to introduce new parties. Surely the point of Democracy is to allow the people to choose their representative in Government? Yet currently the vast majority of the population do not have their views accurately represented and are not allowed to choose a person or party who are capable of it.

The two major parties now win votes by telling the electorate that if they vote for someone other than the two big players, the major party that represents their views least will win. Does this not say it all?

I could go on but instead I will try to remain brief. It is for the above reasons that the forthcoming referendum on altering the voting system is significant. AV is not the king of the voting systems, it has many problems and will still result in many or even most not being fairly represented but it is symbolic.

Firstly, we cannot forget that despite its warts and short comings, it is superior to the power preserving fraud, masquerading as a democratic system better known as ‘first-past-the-post’ majoritarianism. It’s no coincidence that almost all of the negative press for AV is coming from the government because a move away will mean that they no longer only have to compete against one other for the right to rule the whole country. British majoritarianism is regarded with such contempt by academics and political scientists for its lack of fairness and basic democracy that whenever a massively closed, almost undemocratic majoritarian system appears in the world, it is referred to as adhereing to the ‘Westminster model’.

AV is not perfect but it is the first step. Changing the voting system in the UK will break the unquestioning acceptance of antiquated institution. It will illustrate that change is possible and that the system need not be the way it is. It will give the people a chance to realise that politics can be fluid and encourage them to demand a voice rather than to simply grumble every general election when it’s a case of ‘this bunch’ or ‘that bunch’. Not only may we have a better shot at choosing more worthy candidates and putting more pressure on the current giants but it will be easier for us to demand another change to something better still than AV. If we pass up the opportunity we give to the hegemony a mandate allowing them to say to us “you had your chance” whenever we demand better.

The campaign against AV has gained a great deal of momentum. If it is successful then you, the people of Great Britain have nobody but yourself to blame when British politics continues to be the undemocratic, shady and exclusive business it has been for over a century.

Are you someone that says ‘I want to take part in the...

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:20:05 -0400

Are you someone that says ‘I want to take part in the referendum but I don’t understand what AV is all about’? If so, you need to see this.