Extinction Rebellion today announced that it was teaming up with Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace to try to make what has looked like it would be the Humiliatingly Small One into the Tolerably Medium-Sized One. This is the same Extinction Rebellion which denounced FoE and Greenpeace (aka "the FoGgers") as complicit, sclerotic and useless.... Continue Reading →
https://twitter.com/marcsrhudson/status/1637791469476954112 If you don't understand protest waves and movement cycles and ABEYANCE, you are a risk not just to yourself, but to those around you.
I made a video about what I call "Activist Credibility Tokens" - how people try to get them, how there's an "easy" way and how that sets up perverse incentives, unhelpful patterns. Tell me what you think... https://twitter.com/marcsrhudson/status/1637048946613706754
https://twitter.com/marcsrhudson/status/1636318881311588353 From here - McAdam, D. (1986) “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 92, No. 1, pp. 64-90
Thanks to Twitter, I saw two videos yesterday - one which is very recent, about the so-called "activist industrial complex" and the other from three years ago by the Financial Times, presented by the actress Nicola Walker. Both, in their ways, are good to think with, but perhaps not for the reasons their creators think.... Continue Reading →
So, there was a trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s for activists to do spoof newspapers - Metro, Evening Standard, Manchester Evening News, Financial Times. These varied in wit and skill, and usually met with, well, injunctions and so forth. But they were entertaining for a moment or two. In the aftermath of... Continue Reading →
I have a template now, and a rhythm that works for me. Here's the latest. Tell me what you think, how they could be improved (highlighting words in the quotes when I am reading aloud would be one thing. Leaving out some of the 'comic' asides would be another. What else? https://twitter.com/marcsrhudson/status/1626294996511997952
So, Manchester City Council has 96 Councillors. 91 belong to Labour, and a more craven bunch of neoliberal stooges you are unlikely to find this side of the Conservative party. The City Council has an executive system, meaning 10 of the (Labour) councillors run the show, with a "cabinet" and a "leader." There are six... Continue Reading →
There's another new report out, this time based on a survey of 2000 adults (1) that tacitly pins the blame for climate inertia on various forms of 'denial' and delayism. You can read about it on the excellent edie.net website here. I could be wrong, but these sorts surveys and reports seem to get done... Continue Reading →
In April the next (and final?) XR event will take place, in London. In January the organisation click-baited a "We Quit" statement (see here for more.) They are claiming they will get 100 thousand people to turn up and... (mill around? sell newspapers to each other? something else?) So, two things. First the numbers. There's... Continue Reading →
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