Outline of 20 years ups and downs of grassroots activism in the UK

Published Date 11/30/15 3:38 PM

In my expirence the flowering of the #indymedia networks followed by the first years of #climatecamp were the high points of activist culture. The end of climate camp was the low point of activist culture, after this the drift to #NGO and #fashionista was wide and dissipating.

#Occupy was a break in activist culture, it was the first mass “internet first” on the ground manifestation that happened disconnected to the past of activism because of the use of #dotcons tools as prime organising space. The old culture has been discredited by the failings of climatecamp, the new dotcon tools had been celebrated and used well by Ukuncut etal. Where Ukuncut was a reboot of the old climate camp crew, occupy was a project of the #failbook generation in all its wide reflective madness.

Where are we now? The old left is rebooting with a broken mix of the Blairite right and the Stalinist/toxic left, both pulling at the radical liberal centre. Alt media content is being rebooted but the network it needs to build, to stop its drift to NGO burn out, is missing. The right is ideologically bankrupt and visibly grasping, but stronger than ever.

In activism currently we are full of the biter taste of occupy and NGO worshipping of dotcoms and careerism. The working of the 21st century is potentially different to the workings of the 20th century the are groups, networks and individuals that embody this and a larger group/individuals who fight for the past century working practices.

The “certainties of the 20th century” are grasped in our frail and trembling hands, the first stage of a “network” reboot is to let go of these “certainties” one constructive path to this is to fill in the gaping activist memory hole by looking at what works and what does not. The lost and flailing progressive alt needs foundations bridging this gap to build on.

The IS NO SHORT TERMISM HERE, but the is speed and nimbleness, plenty of fun, creative motivated building to be done. Many of the foundation problems can be built in parallel as a “network” so it can happen faster than most can imagine.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

UPDATE:

Am currently working on two projects to take steps to mediate the issues I outline here:

Open Media Network (OMN)

Organiseing the 21st Century

Published Date 12/23/14 7:52 PM

Let’s look at how we acturly organise. Grassroots alternative streams (and #mainstreaming river with more complexity) can be split into a number of streams

* The horizontals

* The verticals

In the horizontals the organising is actually pretty opaque – lets look at the tributary’s

Organic consensus – This is rare and generally fleeting, a working example is the rainbow gathering, generally as the project settles into place organic consensus is replaced with one of the bellow organising strategies. The organic nature comes from shared myths and traditions.

Bureaucratic consensus – Common, but this tends to be only a surface layer obscuring the actual working practices which would be one of the others. It leads to ossification, see late climate camp process as an example of this. A current project is looking likely the “edge fund”.

Opaque affinity group – There is a group of people who are doing it, but you don’t know how or how to take on a role. A lot of alternatives are actually run like this, middle/late #climatecamp is an example.

Invisible affinity group – The thing just appears as if by magic, lovely as far as it takes you. Given time, this will burn out and morph into one of the other forms. Early #climatecamp is a good example of this, as is early #Indymedia

Open affinity group – The is hope in this hard to sustain one, an example would be the tech group at Balcomby anti fracking camp. These are hard/tiring to keep open “naturally” falling into a different strategy.

Then the verticals are more in the open

Democratic centralism (#SWP etc) top down and corrupt, good for the nasty crew at the centre that can last a long time by draining new blood from the alternative. Big noise and little effect.

Bureaucratic democracy (#NUJ) good as far as it goes but endless meetings and heavy use of cross subsidy to sustain the sluggish process, problematically reactionary dues to glacial adaptation to changes around it.

Career Hierarchy – most trade unions and the Labour Party, conservative and sluggish, can be captured by functioning opaque/invisible affinity groups and then used for their own ends – an example the #newlabour project.

Generally, the way things are on the river surface bears little relation to the undercurrents below the surface. Almost all organising that achieves social change is by opaque or invisible affinity groups. The more permanent, static alt infrastructure is Democratic centralism or Bureaucratic democracy. The parts that merge into the mainstream river are career Hierarchy.

We live in turbulent times, enjoy your ride on the choppy river.

Where are we? An example of what works

Published Date 11/21/14 4:44 PM

An example of what works.

At #Balcome the anti-fracking camp last summer, we built a “visible affinity group” to do the power and tech for the camp. This was successful in providing working off grid energy for the camp of more than 200 people for 2 months.

However, it wasn’t without problems and did fail to build on this success when the time came to reproduce this open working model at the next camps over the winter.

How we made it work, a timeline:

* Clear the space of the dysfunction by imposing open working practice’s.

* This opens the space for functional working which has been excluded by the dysfunctional pushy minority.

* Open working practices nurtures talent and energy, the space growers and blossoms, good shit happens.

* A tiny minority of seriously dysfunctional individuals will actively try and destroy this flowering, some emotional violence will inshuew in the process of excluding them.

* The wider camp will become used to a working tech space and normality will settle back into place, at its best this is rinsed and repeated for each part of the camp.

* People will start to forget the open processes as artificial, constant vigilances is needed here to keep openness relevant and in place.

* As the camp is packed down, a open meeting will bring this amnesia to the surface as everyone has an equal voice and the focus (affinity) that created the flowering will be trampled under the widening of the group’s members.

In the horizontal alt there are only two successful working practices, most organising happens by “invisible affinity groups” #climatecamp and #RTS are examples of this. Rarely “open affinity groups” are also successful, examples would be early #Indymedia and this tech at Balcome.

I love affinity group organising

Published Date 12/19/13 2:50 PM

A ruff DRAFT

I love affinity group organising, its a very effective way of getting good stuff done. Lets look at the highs and lows of a few such inspiring groups.

First 2 years #climatecamp were affinity group organised (manifested), it worked very well, the was no “democracy”. Process grew and smoothed this in-till the project “ossified” into the naive mess that you see in the film “just do it”, it went down hill when #bureaucratic #consensuses process brought a highrahcky into existences run by people who had no idea how to do real/horizontal things.

The first few years of London #hackspace were afferently group organised (hacked), it was an exceptional friendly and open space, with few fundamental problems. Only later has it started to fall into the arms of “bureaucracy” which some naive people might call democracy. The common space, decision-making and creativity are now “ossified” and the trolls are breeding and dispoling the decision-making e-mail list.

In both cases the transition came about because of the limitations of affinity group organising – that small close nit groups, while nimble/very effective, move on. The resulting spaces are then filled with less imaginative/creative/lovely people, who leave the space open to trolls and blind ego wankers.

Affinity group organising is the best we have for anarchist/libertarian/horizontal ideas about life, but the is no working horizontal process for passing on responsibility to new affinity groups – thus they are annual flowers, they fade and die too soon to be a real alternative to traditional society. What can we do about this?

The same happened to UK #indymedia, though that was also different in some ways.

A brief history of activism

Published Date 3/28/13 1:18 PM

This is a DRAFT

#Occupy has become bureaucratised and continues as e-mail lists and side projects, not very active.

#ukuncut has become institutionalised. Still active – presser protests in conjunction with NGO’s

#climatecamp The anarcho’ s left and most of the rest got jobs in NGO’s a few continue in other campaigns. It has run its course, the influx of liberals had watered it down till its DNA failed. The healthy ones went onto Ukuncut. Fuckup, not conspiracy sadly. A spattering of global projects remain.

(google trends not accurate)

#submedia still banging the radical drum

#Indymedia failed from the opposite resion the activists excluded other groups in till the weren’t a healthy mix left. Then the group dwindled by exclusion and inbreeding till its DNA was two narrow to evolve when it needed to change with the growth of personal publishing. It was replaced by blogs then corporate social networks. Still exists.

The are still some active IMC’s would be intresting to look at why some are still working?

#undercurrents burned out of funding then failed to re-new with the fund-raising charity side not feeding into the active political production side. The charity/NGO side then shrank and dispersed. Still exists

(google trends not accurate)

#schnews had some lean times but seem to have survived in the radical project Though clearly fading on this graph of web searches

The European News real project and being relevant

Published Date 1/2/12 4:55 PM

This is a DRAFT of a text i wrote 09/08/2002

The #ENR was a global alt-media production/networking project in the USA, it went out on TV. I was responsible for bringing this project to Europe after it had been running in the USA.

This is my (failed) attempt to stop the project becoming irrelevant.

Every time this project takes a step I cringe, a shudder of shock go’s threw me. If we don’t ask the people who have done this before – and the are a number – then we are DOOMED to make the same mistakes, and I, for one, don’t have much hart or spirit to go through this sad alt-movement ritual.

So here is another go at writing up what I think the project is:

* It’s an #indymedia style project-that it is fundamentally decentralised and non-hirarckal, based on open publishing and non-re-editing of other people’s work.

* it’s a grassroots project, that it is about encouraging, facilitating and training people who wouldn’t normally use video as a tool for social change. In this, giving them their own voice.

* it’s a project that is designed to link and strengthen existing video production groups and help to create new groups both within the indymedia network and outside it.

* it’s a project that at its bases is about creating a public focus for activist groups to facilitate and strengthen local campaigns and link these local campaigns together.

*** it’s a TWIN TRACK PROJECT, the euronewsreal itself is a tool for internal communication with in the movement. In this the existing video activist groups are mentors of the newsreel rather than creators – of course we will all produces segments, but that isn’t our first priority.

*** the second track is OUTREACH – this is where the editing comes in, and our current higher production values are used to best effect. The Newsreel is the opening segment of the screenings, ie. The first half. The main-feature is where the power of video as a tool for social change comes in, and it is this main-feature that we as existing video groups should concentrate on producing. Our job is to produce the main-feature such as globalisation and the media from Undercurrents, CannalB’s Genoa film, TroshenTV’s Europe film etc. This is the outreach social change part of the project.

* That is the newsreel itself is a tool for networking and training for the movement, it’s about strengthening connections and bring new people in, and hopefully (funding permitting) training them how to hold a camera steady (:

So fundamentally for us existing groups it’s more of a mentoring job. A good opportunity for those who need funding to apply for some to run training and networking meetings.

We will produce segments, but that isn’t the end all, of our job. The half hour newsreel is actually about creating a distribution network.

We will kill the grassroots nature of the project if we add a higheracky of editorial, not only will editing store up trubbal it will also take a much higher level of commitment – which I, for one, don’t have.

So at its base it’s a very simple “open publishing” system with no perment central higheracy. It’s about expanding the alt-video moment at the grassroots and consolidating it at the level of existing production groups. It’s a low-level project to get us all co-operating. An internal networking project not an external social change outreach project.

Its power for changing the world is focused on the co-operation it creates, rather than the half hour of monthly video. In this, the video will have a much power fuller effect than any highly produced project that founders on disagreements and the enevertabil burn out lack of support brings.

WE NEED TO LEARN FROM THE PAST!!!!