<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">peter waterman</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:peterwaterman1936@gmail.com">peterwaterman1936@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 9:35 PM<br>Subject: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: [WSF-Discuss] Challenging the radical critique of the People's Climate March: a different drummer does not alone a march make<br>To: <a href="mailto:networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org">networkedlabour@lists.contrast.org</a>, "<a href="mailto:johnholloway@prodigy.net.mx">johnholloway@prodigy.net.mx</a>" <<a href="mailto:johnholloway@prodigy.net.mx">johnholloway@prodigy.net.mx</a>>, Debate is a listserve that attempts to promote information and analyses of interest to the independent left in South and Southern Africa <<a href="mailto:debate-list@fahamu.org">debate-list@fahamu.org</a>><br><br><br><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-size:small">A lesson for us all?<br><br></div><div style="font-size:small">P<br><br><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Brian K. Murphy</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brian@radicalroad.com" target="_blank">brian@radicalroad.com</a>></span><br>Date: Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 4:13 PM<br>Subject: [WSF-Discuss] Challenging the radical critique of the People's Climate March: a different drummer does not alone a march make<br>To: <a href="mailto:worldsocialforum-discuss@openspaceforum.net" target="_blank">worldsocialforum-discuss@openspaceforum.net</a><br><br><br><u></u>
<div>
<div><a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/181799/whats-wrong-radical-critique" target="_blank">http://www.thenation.com/article/181799/whats-wrong-radical-critique</a><span></span>-peoples-climate-march#</div>
<div><font color="#0000FF" size="+1"><b>What's Wrong With the
Radical Critique of the People's Climate March</b></font></div>
<div><i><b>The movement to stop climate change needs both mass
mobilizations and direct action.</b></i><br>
</div>
<div>by Jonathan Smucker and Michael Premo, September 30, 2014</div>
<div><br>
Last Sunday, we joined 400,000 people in the People's Climate March
(PCM) to demand action on climate change. The next day, we joined with
3,000 others to participate in Flood Wall Street (FWS), disrupting
business as usual and naming capital as the chief culprit of climate
change.<br>
<br>
In the days leading up to these mobilizations, a few critics on the
left framed a stark dichotomy between these two kinds of actions. The
PCM was cast as a depoliticized, corporate-friendly sellout, in
contrast to more militant direct action, which Flood Wall Street soon
emerged to organize. Chris Hedges, for example, called the PCM "the
last gasp of climate change liberals," and argued that the real
resistance would come afterward "from those willing to breach police
barricades." Resistance, according to Hedges, can only be effective
"when we turn from a liberal agenda of reform to embrace a radical
agenda of revolt." Likewise, Arun Gupta accused PCM of spending too
much money on subway advertisements and wondered how much political
value a march can have when mainstream politicians and other elites
felt comfortable enough to march in it.<br>
<br>
Surely there are critiques to be made of last week's
mobilization-there is always room for improvement. But last Sunday's
march was an important step toward building a popular movement for
climate justice, which, in turn, is a necessary condition for more
radical actions-like the ones FWS organized. The dichotomy between
the PCM and FWS is a false one. What the world saw last week in New
York was a vibrant movement ecosystem in which a broad mobilization
and its radical edges engaged in a critical interplay.<br>
<br>
What Hedges overlooks is how easily direct acts of revolt can be
dismissed or repressed, if they are carried out by a small number of
people who are not visibly tied to a broader social base. This is why
Flood Wall Street's mobilization in relation to the PCM was so
vital. To grasp this relationship requires us to shed the dichotomous
thinking that pits this vs. that and us vs. them-too often extended
to even our closest allies-and that limits our options to the
absurdity of a multiple choice test.<br>
<br>
Even if we are partial to the escalated tactics of Flood Wall Street,
it is clear that the efforts and resources that poured into the PCM
literally set the stage for a radical edge to then move further.
Leading the radical edge was the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), a
collaborative of more than thirty-five community-based and movement
support organizations uniting front-line communities. CJA put out a
call to action that accomplished several important things.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><i>First,</i> it inserted a deeper structural analysis into the
mobilization, both naming corporate profit and power as culprit and
articulating how different communities-indigenous peoples, people of
color and working-class whites, for example-are disproportionately
impacted.<i> Second,</i> CJA called for nonviolent tactical
escalation. Indeed, Flood Wall Street was initiated in response to
this call.<i> Third,</i> the call helped build Sunday's massive
march by encouraging CJA's social bases and allies to attend the
march and organize delegations. By insisting that the people who are
affected by the climate crisis should be involved in the solutions,
CJA positively altered the composition, framing, and narrative of the
march.</div>
<div><br>
Rather than position itself as an outsider in relation to the broader
mobilization-which was being organized primarily by <a href="http://350.org" target="_blank">350.org</a>, Avaaz
and the New York City Host Committee, which included a network of
labor, economic and environmental justice organizations-CJA
positioned itself as a left pole that pulled the larger mobilization
in its direction. Later, FWS positioned itself similarly-not as
"the most radical kid on the block," but as a complementary
operation that had something important to contribute to the larger
effort.</div>
<div><br>
Radicals who are serious about political change-and not just
engaging in self-righteous sideline critique-would be wise to learn
from CJA and FWS's strategy here. CJA added capacity to the broader
efforts and both groups constituted a left pole that pulled a broader
base toward a more visionary direction. The Climate Justice Alliance
brought perspectives, participation and leadership from frontline
communities that had been lacking in the more mainstream climate
movement. And Flood Wall Street brought tactical innovation, cultural
creativity, smart political targeting, and a willingness to take
risks.<br>
<br>
Having the most radical-sounding solutions in the world is all for
naught if those solutions are only believed by a relatively small
number of self-identifying radicals. We have to engage broader social
bases by meeting new participants at the on-ramps by which they
initially enter into collective action. The PCM provided such an
on-ramp to many thousands of newcomers.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Those of us who identify with the left end of the progressive
spectrum need to be honest with ourselves about our current lack of
capacity for building such on-ramps on our own. If we want to move
more people in a radical direction-to fundamentally reengineer the
roots of a broken system-it behooves us to build and maintain good
relationships with organizations that have more resources and a
greater reach, even if they do not share all of our politics. The left
of the left spectrum has to muster the courage and savvy to enter into
alignments that are too big for us to be able to control.</div>
<div><br>
The dead-end alternative is for radicals to work only with other
radicals-and to remain stuck in a story of the righteous few, whose
protagonists bravely fight the good fight but always lose. Part of our
trouble is that we are at the end of a decades-long period of
fragmentation and decline in the broad social justice left. Some on
the left have become so accustomed to powerlessness that they have
become attached to it. Success itself becomes suspect, and politics
becomes framed only in terms of expressing values and making righteous
stands-instead of as intervention in the terrain of power.
Accustomed to the margins, we can have a hard time recognizing how
many of our ideas have actually become popular.<br>
<br>
This is not to say that radicals should not push. But if radicals find
the plans for big marches limited and constrained, the most
constructive push we can make is to plan a complement to the action
that adds the things we see as lacking. This has to be done with
strategy, principle and loving care; with the knowledge that
autonomous actions will impact the whole mobilization, one way or
another-with potentially negative outcomes. This is why Flood Wall
Street insisted upon clear action agreements to guide its nonviolent
civil disobedience on Monday. And this is why both CJA and FWS engaged
in principled open communication with all organizational partners
throughout the mobilization.<br>
<br>
The emergent climate justice movement is stronger now because of the
People's Climate March, the Climate Justice Alliance and Flood Wall
Street-and because of the overall positive interplay between these
complementary efforts. Around the world a growing network of
communities is embracing a multi-pronged strategy to challenge the
powers that are pushing our planet to the brink. Such a strategy has
to tap into a broad-and-growing base of support, and it also has to be
willing to turn up the heat and disrupt business as usual. Such an
alignment will, of course, be full of challenges. But these are good
challenges to have. Let us lean into them together.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
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