Crash test dummies and movement building

Do you ever feel you’re strapped into a car that almost deliberately, wilfully, crashes into a wall? Sort of a Groundhog Day/Source Code mash-up, with Camus ruefully driving a Facel Vega and getting hit by a boulder that some clown had let roll down a hill?

I do.

It’s like we in the ‘social movement activism’ game are crash test dummies – and this song, which is all about arbitrary and inescapable pain –

has a hidden (source) code in its title,  that actually stands for  Mitigation mismanaged – mobilisation murders movement-building – Moments mostly muffed –   Misery mounts momentously.

Where did this come from?

Well, partly from hearing Professor Kevin Anderson do the same speech two weeks apart (I don’t mind, it’s a corker of a speech).  It’s about the pending ecological debacle  and it has this line about how “we” have tried everything else – offsetting, emissions trading, promises of carbon capture and storage- instead of, you know mitigation, and might it not be a good idea to actually try mitigation [FWIW, I think that ship has sailed].

Well, for me at least it’s the same with the various hype cycles of social movement/environmental activism over the past 10 years (actually, a lot longer, if you take in the roads protests morphing into GM crop morphing into Anti-Capitalism (man) from 1996 to 2001.) There were camps, marches, legal processes, tensions between the various perspectives (liberal reformist, state socialist, smash the state anarchism) and endlessly repeated (photocopied? Ctrl C + Ved?) proclamations of the urgent need to Movement Build.  And the answer was never to take a close look at why previous efforts had failed, why so few new faces at meetings/events/camps/marches came back for seconds – or if they did, came back for thirds.  Nope, it was always an emotathonic call for Another Big Event.

And wheels on the movement go round and round.  Until they fall off. Again.

Don’t get me wrong – a lot of people have put a lot of brain and muscle power into these things, sincerely believing it was a contribution to a better world.  (I’m talking about offsetting, emissions trading, CCS; the same goes for the Occupies, the camps, the rallies and marches.)

But these are all the appearance of movement-building, they are actually mostly mobilisation. The two can overlap, but they can also be in opposition to each other.

Might it not be a good idea to actually try movement-building [FWIW, I think that ship has sailed].

• What is there for the person who doesn’t want to/cannot come to the next meeting/march/whatever?
• Who can’t afford (in any sense) to get arrested?
• Who is bored by being ego-fodder?
• Who has some skills and wants others?
• et. cet. er. a.