This week I went to a climate action meeting. Over fifty people gathered and there was an organised conversation for two hours about the climate crisis and environmental issues. The discussion covered so many different things: food waste, recycling, vegetarianism, nuclear weapons, education.
But what does it add up to? A list of things that "we" could do, or that "someone" could do. The trouble is I come out of such meetings thinking "we" haven't really committed to take any definite action, because no one said "I will do this (with some help)." I didn't say that either. So there's just a list of things "we" could do, and no one to do them. The meeting ended and we all went home. So what was the point? My cynicism is partly due to the fact that I went to a very similar meeting about two months ago, organised by a different organisation, that did almost exactly the same thing. Again, without any actual outcome.
And it's not so much that it's ineffective that's my problem. It's that I'm not sure it's good for us. I wonder if such things just add to a sense of guilt and paralysing despair, as they just create a list of things that need doing, without them getting done.
I feel like we should be both more ambitious and less ambitious in what such a meeting could achieve. More ambitious in the sense that dealing with the climate crisis will need something close to a revolution, and less ambitious in a sense that the first step of that might be just breaking bread together and saying, "How are you doing?"
I'm starting to believe that what prevents effective activism is an absence of community. Without community I think that activism can lack both coherent structures and a deeper sense of trust in working together to achieve things. We can gather and be opinionated about the kinds of things that could happen. But we lack both the emotional and the organisational capacity to do them.
On reflection I wish what could have happened in the meeting was just a meal and a chance for a conversation about what we're doing and how we're feeling. I feel like I would have preferred to have seen at the end of the night, not a list of things on a flipchart that "we could do" (but we won't). But just the beginning of a process of loving and trusting each other. A chance to grieve, and be angry, and share and be supported. Although this might seem wishy-washy I actually think it will eventually lead to more effective action that is rooted in trust, in friendship, in community, in a deeper sense of responsibility to each other. I think it's that that effective movements are actually made of.
But what does it add up to? A list of things that "we" could do, or that "someone" could do. The trouble is I come out of such meetings thinking "we" haven't really committed to take any definite action, because no one said "I will do this (with some help)." I didn't say that either. So there's just a list of things "we" could do, and no one to do them. The meeting ended and we all went home. So what was the point? My cynicism is partly due to the fact that I went to a very similar meeting about two months ago, organised by a different organisation, that did almost exactly the same thing. Again, without any actual outcome.
And it's not so much that it's ineffective that's my problem. It's that I'm not sure it's good for us. I wonder if such things just add to a sense of guilt and paralysing despair, as they just create a list of things that need doing, without them getting done.
I feel like we should be both more ambitious and less ambitious in what such a meeting could achieve. More ambitious in the sense that dealing with the climate crisis will need something close to a revolution, and less ambitious in a sense that the first step of that might be just breaking bread together and saying, "How are you doing?"
I'm starting to believe that what prevents effective activism is an absence of community. Without community I think that activism can lack both coherent structures and a deeper sense of trust in working together to achieve things. We can gather and be opinionated about the kinds of things that could happen. But we lack both the emotional and the organisational capacity to do them.
On reflection I wish what could have happened in the meeting was just a meal and a chance for a conversation about what we're doing and how we're feeling. I feel like I would have preferred to have seen at the end of the night, not a list of things on a flipchart that "we could do" (but we won't). But just the beginning of a process of loving and trusting each other. A chance to grieve, and be angry, and share and be supported. Although this might seem wishy-washy I actually think it will eventually lead to more effective action that is rooted in trust, in friendship, in community, in a deeper sense of responsibility to each other. I think it's that that effective movements are actually made of.
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