anne's dispatches from sydney

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Hi

I will transcribe a few things

1.something I wrote about a month and a half ago about the climate movement in the US and Canada:

and

2. a memorial for an old Montreal grocerer

1. I believe that there are dangers in the climate movement just like those in the "Anti-Corporate/ Capitalist" movement in that these campaigns are becoming too abstract, and not rooted in specific local/ international campaigns with concrete goals, that empower local groups.

Each small campaign should be a building block to create a big picture. However, at the Kyoto Summit, are we mobilizing people on the basis of a generalized anxiety, for which there are individualized solutions, OR on the basis of many local power-building projects, that build institutional respsonsibility as well as institutional change?

From the impression I get from the imagery (the sand timer), the story is that the apocalypse is breathing down our necks. Is this empowering? It does nothing to educate the broader public about the politics behind global warming- rather it makes the situation seem more hopeless. Would you come to a rally that is permeated with the imagery of our certain death?

What are the current / potential campaigns that are happening, and how can we use our mobilizing capacity as students to support these?

If we mobilize people on the urgency of the climate crisis alone, with no demands, or goal stepping stones, this leads our movement to the real possibiility of being coopted.

This is the case with any abstract campaign, because the targeted powerholder can respond to public pressure in any way they please- getting lots of PR for being the initiator (eg a corporation for implementing a self-regulated code of conduct).

We saw this clearly at the G8 "Make Poverty History" marches in Gleneagles in June, when there was this inspiring, yet abstract catch cry "Make Poverty History" which was taken up cynically by the G8 and Bono to justify a continued agenda of neocolonialism- privatisation and strict conditionalities - which are the WORST part of debt (also it is rather presumptuous of Oxfam to believe that their prescription of reducing agriculture barriers is key to ending poverty in the first place- sounds like they are legitimising the simplistic view of the magical free trade elixir). George Monbiot has done some great analysis of this here- June and here-September.

In an ideal world, it would be nice if such institutions could be asked nicely to change their ways and they would do so in a satisfactory environmental way.

However, in our society, many institutions have immense inertia- that is- they continue doing what they're always doing because it is in their economic and political interest to do so. Hence they need to be forced to change, more often than not.

What social movements can do is raise the political cost for an institution to continue on its present path. The public is alerted to the mismatch between what the organisation is doing and what they should, ethically, be doing- and hence the ALTERNATIVE PATH/policy is highlighted, becoming a strong element of the public imagination.

We need to have our alternative policies endorsed and drafted by people with solid understanding and expertise. And to a large extent, we need to BECOME those people with solid understanding- learning from experts, each other etc, by meeting and distributing information, and directly teaching each other- constantly doing formal and informal workshops, so new people can participate in the ongoing debate about defining and sharpening our approach. In other words, we need to lead in order to become redundant.

We need to get to the point where new nuclei campaign groups keep sprouting up in each different context- due to our efforts in handing on our skills. We need to give other groups enougn support for them to become self-sustaining and to effectively utilise their talents and their potential leverage/ effectiveness. Then we need to keep in contact with these new groups.

What is a campaign?

A campaign is NOT a one-off event, such as car-free day, or holding a stall. A campaign emerges into the public consciousness after months of organizing and planning. This is usually coordinated by people who have certain beliefs about history- that it does not simply HAPPEN- that history is created by people who are co-ordinated and conscious about their actions and objectives.

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2. And here is something I wrote at 1am on the 11th December:
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Tonight I walk through the snow back to my apartment.
I have been at the university library until very late.

I walk past the old French-style grocery store on Rue Napoleon and Saint Laurent.
The windows are newspapered up. I cannot see the old cash register.
It says ¨Closed for Renovations´´.

And then I notice a hand-written sign saying,

´´Simcha passed away 10.12.05. Rest in Peace´´

I realise that even in the short time I am in Montreal, I am seeing it change. I am seeing people die-
that enchanting elderly man died earlier today (or yesterday)

For a while, I had wanted to come in and take a photograph of him,
using his enormously cumbersome cash register

but i felt i would be disrespectful, because at that time
even the smell of rotten tomatoes gave the smell of death away
here was a man who was resigning himself to death
with windows clouded up with grime-
just like old Mr Keary´s shop in Strathfield years ago when I was a kid.
and so I never took the picture, but someone else did,
and pasted the pictures up on the window and beside the door

as a little sign of respect for a local icon.

(I will put the pictures up on this site when i get access to wireless)

posted by: anneinchaosland at 17:38 | link | comments |