A good friend recently pointed me at a very good (imo, ymmv obvs) article “education for democratic resilience.” It’s full of quotable bits but for now Imma riff on this –
“I believe one reason is that too few Americans understand the nuts-and-bolts of associations. An initial meeting often draws many concerned people, who may use the time to express strong feelings and to share ideas, some of which are excellent. But nothing concrete is decided. The second meeting draws some of the same people along with many newbies and recapitulates the first discussion. By the third meeting, most people are too frustrated to continue. The group needed an agenda, a committee of accountable, volunteer leaders, a decision-making process, and a budget.”
This is – from three decades of observing/participating in social movement organisations in the UK (and reading/communicating about others in other countries) – true. I’ve developed concepts like the smugosphere and the emotacycle (among others) to get at the underlying reasons why. (See the end of the post for a very small selection of posts about these dilemmas).
But the problem – as I see it – is that we can’t solve this problem until we’ve solved this problem. (And we can’t solve this problem).
Because for people to be attracted to a campaigning group that has a specific goal and a “committee of accountable volunteer leaders”, a “decision-making process” that isn’t about the pub afterwards/Whatsapps between the real power-brokers, they have to have previous experience of groups that haven’t experience one of the following fates.
a) gone on a death march of repeated protests in London/petitions/soul-crushing “engagement” with bureaucrats who not only have the job of obfuscating and condescending citizens to death but come to actively enjoy obfuscating and condescending citizens to death (1)
b) devolved into a People’s Front of Judea “personality” (if you can call it that) cult.
c) been squashed like a bug by the Repressive State Apparatus.
or, most likely,
d) some mix of the above.
The history of the last forty years (not that things were hunky-dory before the coming of Thatcher, Reagan, Hawke etc) is that civil society groups (and especially social movement organisations) have been
a) co-opted (brought into “the tent” and then stripped of all change-making power) or
b) repressed (spied on, detoured, beaten up, dragged through the court system) or
c) exhausted (by fending off co-optation and repression, and also suffering from inevitable internal pressures around competition for resources (money, prestige) or battles over control (malignant narcissists aren’t just a “right-wing” thing, y’all).
If you’ve never SEEN (or even heard of from a reliable friend) of a group that has managed to engage constructively and win significant victories (blah blah “non-reformist reforms”) then it makes perfect sense to
a) get the short-lived adrenaline/dopamine hit of going to a big protest or the first two meetings of a group that is going to fail anyway and/or
b) stay home and may be a keyboard komplainer.
At this point, I am going to quote old Nick Machiavelli
“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.”
So, YES, we need these groups that have accountability, plans, budgets. Obvs we do. But we can’t have these groups until we’ve had a lot of these groups – so many of them in fact that their continued and undeniable existence has changed the expectations of potential participants, and the habits (and incentive structures – see below) of those IN the smugosphere who ride the emotacycles.
Please do NOT comment if you’re just going to gaslight me/call me a defeatist.
Please only comment if you are going to engage with what I’ve said and suggest ways to fix the hole in our buckets before the biosphere kicks the bucket (any year now, btw).
Here’s that promised list.
https://theconversation.com/weve-got-to-stop-meeting-like-this-81615
https://peacenews.info/node/8767/2019-how-we-blew-it-again
Footnotes
(1) Presumably they see this as a perk/compensation for doing a job where they are micromanaged by corrupt and incompetent bosses.
marchudson.net 
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