Professor Kevin Anderson has written an open letter to the President of the European Commission about the EU’s climate policy. In the letter, Professor Anderson expresses his “serious concerns that the process for determining the EU’s 2030 decarbonisation target is being conducted in a vacuum of scientific evidence.” He also puts the view that the proposed target “fails to quantify honestly the EU’s high-level statements and international obligations on climate change.”
The letter (click on the images!) hopes to influence the forthcoming European White Paper on climate policy, and states that the already-published Green Paper contains both an “abuse of probabilities” about the (fast disappearing) ‘two degrees’ target and an unfair division of labour between developing and developed countries on carbon dioxide emissions.
It is a typically robust, clear and scientifically-grounded letter, as anyone who has encountered Professor Anderson will expect. Sadly, it will probably have little effect. Scientists can only do so much. In the absence of a relentless and growing mass movement, politicians will only do very very little. Where is that movement? Answers on a post-card to the usual address…
A few weeks ago I was invited to participate in a debate in front of a bunch of second year Geography Students, on the theme of “Can Development End Poverty?”
I spoke second….
There’s a Q and A session too, which I am ashamed to post, since I did tend to do what I disparage in others, of giving long answers to short questions. Just because I am a big fat hypocrite doesn’t mean I am wrong…
Marc Hudson attends (1) a redemption ritual for corporate “environmentalists” and finds himself musing about ecological modernisation, prostitutes and the #deliciousambiguity of the ‘cons’ in #citycons…
There were 130 (2) or so of us, sat in rows, listening to the incredibly inspirational speakers. Probably 4:3 male to female ratio, and all but about 5 of us various shades of white.
The event was (mis?)-named “Greening the City, and was the latest in a long line organised by “City Co.” Who they? They’re one of those fuzzy public-private partnership style things that has done so much to make the city centres of the UK the vibrant, civic spaces that they now are. (3)
The event was novel and brave in that it gave time to five white, middle-class white men, a demographic so scandalously under-represented in public life. Someone once introduced me to the phrase “stale, male and pale.” If I could remember who it was, I’d thank him.
Steve Connor (4), chaired the event very imaginatively indeed, encouraging people to introduce themselves to the person behind them, making sure that the Q and A was not just the usual self-adverts and ensuring that the video being presented by one of the speakers played seamlessly, without any hiccups. (5) Sadly he was unable to prevent the speakers biogs and the schedule for the day being printed on two separate single-sided A4 sheets.
Digression #001
Ecological Modernisation is the fairy-story we tell ourselves about how we are going to invent, spread and maintain technologies that will more than make up for the huge rise in both population but also demand for ever-more consumption. Ecological modernisation wants you to believe that there are simple-ish technical solutions to social problems like poverty, despair and anomie. It’s a useful fairy-story, since it allows us to believe politicians when they say that we can have our (ever-expanding) cake and eat it, regardless of pesky things like Jevons’ Paradox. Simply, if ecological modernisation were going to work, it would have worked by now. Our technologies are helping us cause this problem quicker than we solve it, not the other way round.
After an exhilarating and inspiring anecdote about the value of “soft side” projects – they convinced “the wife” of a big investor to convince her husband to plonk his factory/facility in Manchester – it was on with the show.
First of the Four Speakers were John Darlington, the Notional Trust‘s director for the North West
He was at pains to expand people’s view of the National Trust (scones served in stately homes) and to talk about its work on “nature deficit disorder” (not that he used that term).
The “burning platform” (he did however use that term, at least twice) is kids’ disconnect from nature, with more able to recognise a Dalek than a magpie…
And to this end the National Trust has hired Sean Harkin as a “Gardener-in-Residence” to work in Manchester for 18 months.
Tom Webster, CEO and co-founder of “Grow Up”, a London-based company talked at length about aquaponics and food containers. In a telling metaphor, he talked described fish shitting in the water as them “doing their business.” I wonder if anyone from CityCo took him to one side afterwards and asked him to use a different euphemism next time?
Next up we had someone from Peel Holdings. Readers with longer memories will recall that Peel was so very very effective during the referendum campaign on the Transport Innovation Fund and Congestion Charge. Almost as effective as the “pro” campaign. Can’t remember who headed that up…
His entire spiel was mostly about the Atlantic Gateway project, which is all about “rebalancing the economy.” Rebalancing towards massive emissions reductions and living within ecological limits? Don’t. Be. Silly. Ecological. Limits. Don’t. Exist. Ecological Modernisation tells us so. No, this rebalancing is to do with the north-south divide in the UK – to stop all those grubby South-Easterners getting their grubby mitts grubbier.
If you’re ever needing a practical example of the “Spatial Fix and the Sustainability Fix“, this presentation is it. And I actually mean that in an admiring way.
Paul Lincoln from the Landscape Institute showed us a bunch of pictures from New York and a greened abandoned train line, before whizzing through slides of a competition in London that included entries like an 80 mile linear swimming pool and growing mushrooms in a Royal Mail tube-line.
The Q and A (6) was everything you’d expect – a mix of good questions (“how come there is so little about Manchester during this event?”) and rambling self-adverts (you know who you are, both of you).
Now, about those prostitutes.
There’s a simply amazing book “Occupied Minds: A Journey through the Israeli Psyche” by a guy called Arthur Neslen. He went and interviewed people from all walks of Israeli life, and then transcribed it (kinda Studs Terkel in the Middle East). He talked to a dominatrix. She told him that her most high-powered clients, the CEOs, generals and party leaders, wanted not straight sex, but in fact to become babies, literally infantilised. Which led me to think up this –
The social function of these events, with some cod-Transactional Analysis thrown in for larfs
“We” (members of the climateriat) are afraid because of the concatenating environmental crises. We are afraid because we see the hollowing-out of our democracies, and the clear inability of civil society organisations to challenge the eco-cidal global elite with more than occasional occupational spasms.
We are afraid. Very afraid.
When we are afraid, we want to “regress” to a state where someone else has to look after us.
The elite described in Neslen’s book need to regress all the way to diapers. The rest of us, with less responsibility in our day-to-day lives, are able to regress merely to being a school-child, sat in rows, listening to the Clever Parent at the front. No jobs, no direct-reports, no kids to look after, we can, for the length of the event, just be the docile/obedient Child.
Attempts to turn us into Adults in this setting will be resisted, both by those who wish to be Parents, and by those who want to be Children. Efforts at de-ego-fodderification are, thus, futile.
And, for those who know we are doomed, there is another motive. Ignoring the tiny minority who want more copy for their silly little web blog, others are attending because they want to believe that it is possible to placate and propitiate a vengeful Gaia with our good intentions. #magicalthinking
For more on anxiety-reduction and the power of numbers and powerpoints and so on to allow people to switch off their critical faculties, you must run (not walk, run) to the nearest library or bookshop and get yourself a copy of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “The Black Swan.”)
What was missing.
a) The irony police. The fact is, Manchester City Council have been promising a “Green and Blue Infrastructure” strategy for years. It keeps getting delayed (without public explanation). It was supposed to go to Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee… today.
Ditto their “Meanwhile land” strategy.
Perhaps this is why the new Executive member for the Environment, Kate Chappell, was not on the platform – the rhetoric-reality gap could have gotten a bit awkward.
b) Any sense of reality. The species is accelerating towards a global catastrophe. Any vaguely numerate person knows this (so, perhaps this excludes, PR flaks, bankers and politicians?). That’s kind of anxiety-provoking, isn’t it? Events like today are a soothing lullaby, an opportunity to swap business cards and feel good about ourselves. Me, I ain’t interested in lullabies, business cards or circle-jerks. Still, to each their own.
c) A two minute pop-up lecture by a sociologist explaining i) ecological modernisation and its discontents, ii) the spatial fix and sustainability fix and
Footnotes
(1) I ought to know better. I do, in fact, know better. So why go to yet another sages-on-the-stage-followed-by-quacking-and-airkissing event? For the anthropology of it all, is why.
(3) From their about page – “CityCo is a membership organisation that connects businesses with each other, and public agencies, to drive forward initiatives that support an improved, thriving and aspirational city experience. We seek to support economic growth and ensure the city is competing on national and international scale. We represent companies across sectors, sizes and locations; giving businesses a voice, ensuring they can run effectively and expand activities. We operate at both a strategic level with city decision-makers and on a tactical level, providing solutions and delivering on the ground. We report to a Board of the city’s influential business leaders.”
(4) According to a single-side of A4 with biographical info about the speakers, that was clearly put together very recently “He is the Chair of Manchester’s Climate Change Steering Group.” Really? Then who is this imposter Gavin Elliott with whom I’ve been having meetings then? I want my money back!! And my time. And my “expertise” (cough cough).
(5) Actual facts may vary. Always read the label.
(6) The bits I caught – I nipped out strategically and left early after my genuine attempt to point to someone who hadn’t raised their hand very far and was, I thought, invisible to the front of the room, was [understandably] misconstrued. And life is short. This event, in its full dismalness (dismality?) helped me understand what is – psycho-social-analytically – going on, why these events persist beyond the standard “it’s just greenwash and schmoozing” – argument. So for this I should be thankful…
According to the Grauniad, those smart-alecs at ALEC – the “American Legislative Exchange Council” are going to try to get laws passed that would penalise people who have invested in solar panels. Shades of Monty Burns?
A Green and Blue Infrastructure plan (that’s parks and canals and lakes, to you and me), has been promised and delayed, promised and delayed, so many times that we’ve lost count.
Some officers struggled with the ‘convincingly blending in’ aspect of going undercover.
A Dunstable based environmental protest group disbanded in chaos when it emerged that every single member was an undercover police officer. The group had been camping together in the kind of manky field you’d only put a donkey in if you wanted to make it terribly unhappy to protest about its forthcoming redevelopment as a McDonald’s but they quickly became suspicious of one another’s motivations.
“I first wondered if there were other officers present when someone complained about their blonde dreadlocks,” said a source. “She said they were itchy and horrible and that she’d feel better with her hair tied back in a severe bun and also that the Old Etonian tie she used to ironically hold-up her filthy combat trousers wasn’t half as comfortable as a utility belt stuffed with kit.”
Another source said, “We done a leaflet about how McDonald’s is kak and that and I thought something was suss when everyone had trouble with the spelling and things.”
Events finally came to a head around the campfire when after a particularly heavy session of consciousness raising the officers put down the bong and got confessional.
“We were talking about stuff we really liked doing,” said our first source. “And at first it was all normal, you know, like wearing tit-shaped helmets and parking wherever you like. Then it turned out that we all loved stopping and searching young black men in the street for no good reason. The penny dropped and, yeah, turns out we were all coppers.”
“People have already been having a go saying why is the police wasting so much money and manpower infiltrating groups that pose little or no threat to the Queen’s Peace when they should be investigating real crimes. Problem with that is none of us are odious enough to go convincingly undercover amongst bankers and corporate tax evaders. It’s been tried before, most recently with Agent Osborne, however there’s now serious concerns that he’s gone rogue and is no longer faking it for a greater good but really is that incompetent and dim.”
While I brew a post about the nature of successful feedback, clock this piece of cynicism.
There should also perhaps be a paragraph that says “Can see that change needs to happen, have the motivation, try and then get demotivated by feedback you choose to label aggressive, condescending and knee-jerk.” Or not.
Fwiw, the Ibn Khaldun (from wikipedia) reference; “Perhaps the most frequently cited observation drawn from Ibn Khaldūn’s work is the notion that when a society becomes a great civilization (and, presumably, the dominant culture in its region), its high point is followed by a period of decay. This means that the next cohesive group that conquers the diminished civilization is, by comparison, a group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process. Some contemporary readers of Khaldun have read this as an early business cycle theory, though set in the historical circumstances of the mature Islamic empire.”
FWIW#2 Fundamental Attribution Error.
MCFly editor Marc Hudson goes to a left-wing thinktank’s ‘different’ conference and comes away ready to sign up… to the Tories.
This Very Long and Cathartic Blogpost is going to be a chronological account of the whole appalling day which was salvaged by meeting some brilliant attendees – in spite of, not because of the organisers. The tl:dr? This was about as “un” an “un-conference” as you can understand. Uninspiring, unnecessary and in fact unhelpful in the extreme. If you want the short version, you could watch the footage I clipped together and did a commentary over. No, really. (#getalife)
Registration
Quick and painless. And I think, pointless. See “We need a badger cul…. ture” rant later on.
The “read the papers” bit.
Well, they began as they meant to continue. That is;
a) twenty minutes late without any stated reason
b) achingly and unashamedly “top-down”
In effect; “We on the stage are the ones you have come to hear. We don’t much care whether you meet anyone else, have ideas of your own.” [For the benefit of any libel lawyers who may have wandered in, I am not claiming any of the speakers thought this, let alone said it.]
As if we don’t have enough of this every day of the week on the radio and television. Why do this format unless you’re going to tweak it, eh? Papers that don’t normally get a look in, for example. No-one mentioned anything from, say, the Morning Star. Or any of the regional papers. #londoncentric much? Or popular blogs. Or, or…
And oh the irony, none of panellists picked up on the rather good article about new left-wing groups and politics published in … the Financial Times‘ Life and Arts section, by John McDermott. That would actually have been helpful, y’see.
The opening section So, we all trooped off into the main hall. We sat there in a room set up around the eye of Sauron. At no point was there an announcement or explanation or apology as to why we were half an hour late starting. If it were a privatised train company acting like that, we’d all be scandalised.
If we can’t start our own meetings on time, why do we expect people to think we are credible agents of the transformation of Rapacious Global Capitalism, eh?
Opening speech
Can’t remember a word. Why was this needed? (See foot of this post for an alternative…)
Keynote “provocations” were by John Harris, Zoe Williams and Ewa Jasiewicz literally standing on pedestals having a conversation over our heads. Don’t believe me? Here.
And their “provocations” were not provoking. At least not in the sense intended. They were mostly recycled banalities, unchallenges self-descriptions and strawman binaries (“join the party or sit around the campfire”) . Nowt on the tension between movement-building and mobilising, nowt on where innovation comes from.
And why is there never an irony policeman when you need one? One of the speakers, standing on a pedestal, proclaimed “We’re talking about a culture of organisation that prioritises participation.” Here.
That is, you’re happy to try to monkey-wrench capitalism, but are either blind to the obvious irony of standing on a platform with a microphone telling people that the culture you come from is participatory, or else – worse – you are happy to be complicit in a dreadful format, in exchange for a platform for your “message.”
But how much more powerful it would have been to show rather than tell your message, to have said “actually, nobody today has so far been actively encouraged to talk with a stranger, a stranger who may in a week or a month be a staunch comrade. So I want to use some of the time the organisers have allotted to me to encourage that instead. What you hear from each other is at least as important as anything I have to say… Go to it, please!”
John Harris identified as a real problem – the inability of non-hierarchical groups to have an institutional memory and to sustain their resistance over the long haul. The response to this was some generalities about a “culture of resistance” as some panacea for that real problem. Really? After the dismal fizzle of Climate Camp and Occupy? Really? Smugosphere, much?
The keynot speech
Richard Wilson on “the anti-hero” project. Hmmm, I’d love to tell you what I thought about this but
a) our lives are short and
b) #peskylibellaws
Suffice to say, he succeeded- he is not my hero.
Open Space. No no no. Let me say that again. No no no. The whole thing was already massively behind schedule, but rather than respond to that inconvenient reality, they just ploughed on with a needlessly long-winded introductory spiel, at least 50% too long, too long-winded. If instead the guy had said “right, because we are behind, I am asking you just to trust me. I will ask you to do each step, without explaining why. Trust me – this works, all will become clear. Now, if you want to run a workshop, stand up and come up here. You are going to write a “how” question on two sheets of paper. You’ll say your name, then read it out and pin it up on those pegs over there.” then lost momentum might have been regained.
Instead, despite being so far behind, we got a LOT more than that. Which added to people’s confusion rather than reduced it.
This was just clearly going to fail from the start. Why not use the other room too? And the stage. And the stalls room. Anything to relieve the crush in that main room. Just Bizarre.
By doing the “Open Space” this way, the organisers got the worst of both worlds – people couldn’t make an informed choice about what they wanted to go to because the room was so crowded, similar workshop suggestions didn’t get combined systematically, appropriate-sized spaces for people’s choices didn’t get allotted. (Isn’t it best practice to have time proposals and people indicating what they want to go to and the actual allocation of spaces by the event organisers?!)
Doing it “spontaneously” meant those wanting to hold sessions, for the most part, hadn’t prepared things (e.g. handouts, specific exercises etc) So, you ended up with just people sat in circles, straining to hear each other over background noise. And given the hare-brained thought that you could have 40 workshops in one space, the high level of background noise discriminated against the hard of hearing (and the favourite hair colour of the audience was grey).
Look, spontaneity on this scale requires planning. Why not organise it as follows –
When people sign up to the day, include a paragraph that says “We have time in the schedule for workshops. If you want to run one, you need to give us your name, the title of the workshop and ONE paragraph about it. We reserve the right to a) refuse without explanation (we won’t do that – it would be rude!) and b) to ask you to combine with a different workshop.” Then, three days before the event, put it all up on the web.
On the day, as people register, have a big wall with all the workshops up. Give people coloured stickers and ask them to indicate which one they want to go to. Then you get a sense of which spaces are going to be needed for which.
On the whole of the Open Space element I can only say – “What a way to discredit a potentially liberatory and revolutionary tool.” Just made me so angry.
At this point I phoned the wife, who gave me great advice (along the lines of “get the hell out. Right. Now.”). I was taking that advice – honest – but a veggie breakfast got in the way. Dramatically unsatisfied by the overpriced bowl of soup at the official vendors for the event, I went to a (non)greasy spoon near the venue. And met a wonderful fellow attendee. Great brekkie, great conversation with her. And I decided to stay on through the afternoon, because in the final session there was someone Interesting.
Back at the event then, and had a great chat with a fellow banality refugee. Can’t tell you about Joss Garman being interviewed Natalie Bennett. Can’t tell you about MikeRustin being interviewed by Jon Cruddas, though someone I know who has good judgement said it was good.
I’m STILL holding out for a hero. Another dismal session. Why do we need to have 4 people, three at least of whom have absolutely no problem getting a platform for their views, telling us who their heroes are?!
Oh, and Zoe Williams – if you want to chair, chair. If you don’t, don’t. Simples, eh? Whatever you do though, don’t sit there like a chocolate teapot. If you say “five minutes each”, then Stick. To. It. In a rational world we would have all laughed out loud when you said apologetically at the beginning of the Q and A “we’re up against the clock.” We’d have been ten minutes less against the clock if you had done what you said you would and kept the last two speakers to 5 minutes apiece, instead of allowing them either-side-of-ten. And yes, perhaps both of them, adults, could reflect on why they felt incapable of keeping to five minutes. #ffs.
World Cafe? The clue is in the name. Cafes have tables and chairs.
This session was about “failure.” Oh the irony. It was a massive failure, and, as with the “open space”, an abuse of a potentially useful technique.
It would help if the person “running” the cafe had an even cursory understanding of what World Cafe means. Just sayin’.
There are far more interesting ways to learn from failure. Trust me, I’ve done a very large amount of failing. (Less learning, t’is true.)
Those “in conversations with” sessions.
Clive Stafford Smith is awesome, a hero of mine. But why not have him speak for 10 minutes on successes, failures and challenges ahead, and then get everyone into small groups of 2-4 people to brainstorm ideas about how the Reprieve campaign can resonate, ramify etc. In fact, why not structure each of the “conversations” around that?
The highlight of the day (and it would have still been the highlight of a much better day as well) was Margaret Aspinall of the Hillsborough Family Support Group. Just awesome. Just brilliant. I really wish I had seen more of her rather than the dreadful session I actually went to. She would have been an EXCELLENT keynote speaker, if you decided for whatever crazed reason that the day actually needed to have one.
When I asked her about what advice she would give herself if she could go back to a week or month after the Hillsborough disaster, she gave an answer full of empathy, wisdom, insight.
Final session, was, without irony, called “OK, Here’s the Plan” where a bunch of “21st century visionaries” [I am not making this up] held yet another conversation literally if not metaphorically over the heads of those people remaining in the hall. It was an embarrassment, but utterly in keeping with the general competence of the day.
In any case, plans – unless they are the Manchester Climate Change Action Plan- have some goals, some “next actions”, some reporting metrics. This was just more motherhood and apple-pie, a bland shopping list of aspirations etc. In the last moments it was thrown it open to the floor for ideas. And got the standard mix of obvious and thoughtful suggestions. No indication if any of these were captured and will be enacted. Regardless – too little, too late, too tokenistic. Cringe-worthy.
Feedback forms? Nope. And it is totally pointless to send it out later. The response rate will be lousy, people will only tell you nice things, and the finer detail will have been lost.
Would it have killed you, really, to print up some A4 pages that said “best thing about today” “worst thing(s) about today” “what we should do differently next time?”
Badge(r) Cul…ture
Would it have killed you to give everyone badges? One for their name, one for where they were from (Manchester, Hampstead, Bristol, whatever), one for a passionate concern from a list of say 15 topics (climate, labour party, international solidarity, education, civic engagement, aviation, poverty, financial reform) and a blank badge for people to write what the hell they wanted. This would have made it easy to see who had overlapping interests to you and was ‘worth’ talking to. A bit of a Tinder but with your clothes on, eh?
No, it wouldn’t have killed you, but you didn’t think of it, because your interest seems not to be in fostering new links between those who attended, but rather in turning them into ego-fodder for your guest speakers. #ffs.
Sitting in Judgement
How do you judge people? On the basis of what they say about themselves, or on what you see them do? Most people would say the latter.
Compass claims it wants to behave differently. Whether they want to believe it of themselves or not, their conference would lead a Martian anthropologist to conclude that their model of social change is to get some of the Great and the Good up on a stage and have rows of people sit at their feet and listen. Again and again and again. Then do some hand-wringing about low levels of participation from Other Groups. Then everyone pat themselves on the back and piss off to the pub.
And they wonder why nobody bothers, nobody votes. Unconference? Un-believable.
Or, more charitably, Compass want to do differently but don’t know how. Well, heck, maybe they’ll get some ideas from this blog post. I am part of the 99% … certain that I won’t be risking a day of my life next year to find out.
The Venue Was Wrong
No space to hang out and chill without being, um, chilled. You could not lounge about in the lounge.
It might have gritty cred, but not as Friendly as a Friends Meeting House
Food expensive and unimpressive. Where was the bloody creche, eh?
Why so angry? Why write this?
So, am I just having fun at some no-longer-probable-allies’ expense? Doing what I so often do, with my clear need for regular conflict?
I don’t think so (but of course, most of us are strangers to our actual motivations most of the time). I am not that angry for my “wasted time” – I managed to carve out some usefulness, and met a couple of astoundingly awesome people. It is of course “the principle of the thing” (refugee of ranters everywhere). Someone has to say “you really shouldn’t use those labels without following through, eh?”
I believe – self-servingly- that I am trying to defend some important words. Throwing around terms like un-conference and “open space” and then perpetrating what Compass did seriously devalues the currency of innovation. If people who attended think “that’s what World Cafe is” or “that’s what open space is like” then they become cynical and dismissive about them. But these tools are are not – in the right hands – marketing ploys. This event was Bill Gates’ idea of Web 2.0. This was Encarta when it could have been – and promoted itself as – Wikipedia.
Receptionand consequences
First and foremost, few people will read this blog post. #nottheendoftheworld
Then, in no particular order
a) This post will be dismissed as the sour grapeshot ravings of a man whose essay didn’t get linked to and whose proposed Open Space slot got no attendees whatsoever. (Though one person came and found me afterwards to say she would have come but I’d already nixxed it.)
b) I will get tone-policed“Why are you so angry? It gets in the way of your message.” My response: “You applaud passion when it is thousands of miles away, in the mouths of Third Worlders attacking Rapacious Global Capitalism. You denigrate it when it is – in every sense – closer to home.”
c) I will get target-policed “Why are you attacking your friends and allies? The Real Enemy is Rapacious Global Capitalism/the Conservatives/Nick Clegg” My response: “When it is raining, you need a decent umbrella, not an analysis of the rain. Haters gonna hate, Tories gonna be Tories. Evil Capitalist Blofields gonna be ECBs. Denouncing them is likely to get me published in Socialist Wanker or Red Papper, but so fricking what? It’s just more noise. This was an event about learning from failure, doing things differently. Suck it up.”
d) I will be accused of being a hypocrite because I have not always walked my talk. Yep, guilty as charged. Getting better (I think), but that’s irrelevant – just because I am a hypocrite doesn’t mean my analysis is wrong. Play the ball, not the man, yes?
e) I will be dismissed as a Green Party member. Clearly I am. How else could I have written such an up-beat hagiographic piece as this about Natalie Bennett.
f) This will be met with “why don’t you do it better then?” Fair enough. See hypocrite argument above.
g) This will be accused of mansplaining. Cos I am a man, natch.
h) I will get scolded for washing dirty linen in public.
i) I will get accused of a lack of compassion – the event was organised on a shoe-string, and one of the two organisers was indeed unavailable because of jury service. But that doesn’t hide the fact that nobody seems to have walked this event through from the eyes of a “newbie”, or thought seriously about the constraints of the venue. Or about whether using the term “un-conference” was fair and proper.
Consequences
a) I will be removed from some Christmas card lists.
b) My ideas will be ignored, (but they would have been anyway, so what is lost other than my time and possibly the willingness of the neutral by-standers to engage with those ideas at some hypothetical future point in time. Meh.)
c) I won’t get invited to be a guest presenter/speaker/blah-de-blah at future events (#cryingeyesout)
d) A couple of projects that I am working on with a dear friend, around how activist cultures can be improved, will probably not get the access to mainstream ‘progressive’ media outlets that they otherwise would have. That’s a pity, what’s the alternative – qui tacet consentit and all that.
In the long run, concepts like un-conference, open space and World Cafe will continue to be whittled down and debased by cool-hunting organisations, just like “sustainability” “participatory” “resilience” were before them.
Cynicism will increase. And despair, and hopelessness. And the people who claim to be anti-atomisation will continue to organise events that do nothing to “de-atomise” people, to help them build skills, knowledge, contacts, morale.
Ya basta.
Alternative titles for this event
“Come be ego-fodder”
Rally the Troops
Come meet cool people – in spite of, not because of, the organisers.
The International Women’s Day award nomination deadline has been extended until Tuesday 10 December. As yet, they have still not received any nominations for the following category:
“Women Protecting Our Environment This award is for a woman or a group of women that actively exhibit a commitment to improve their local environment, contribute to tackling climate change, or promote a sustainable green future at a local level.
Our "leaders" are going to keep making empty promises. It makes them feel good. It gets the activists to act like zombie kittens. If you want to have some self-respect and perhaps make a difference (actual facts may vary), then find a functioning group that cares about your skills and knowledge - what you have, what you want.
One useful group might be www.climateemergencymanchester.net - you can email them on contact@climateemergencymanchester.net
manchester climate monthly 