Invitation:building support for action against climate change: 14th December, Manchester

What can we do to sup­port and encour­age rad­i­cal action against cli­mate chaos?

One of the fol­low-up meet­ings after the cli­mate camp focused on what we can best do to sup­port action tak­ing place on cli­mate change. There will be anoth­er in Man­ches­ter on Dec 14th.

We met at the North­ern Eco-Action gath­er­ing in Brad­ford on Novem­ber 11. At a pro­duc­tive and ener­gis­ing meet­ing, we came up with a list of con­crete sug­ges­tions, and a whole load more ques­tions to be answered. A report of
the meet­ing is attached.

We’ll be tak­ing these ques­tions for­ward at a fur­ther meet­ing, which will look at what we can best do to sup­port local actions and groups tak­ing rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change, con­sid­er how best to stay in touch and share skills and resources. Pro­pos­als from this meet­ing will be brought to the next gath­er­ing in Leeds in Jan­u­ary.

We’ll be meet­ing in Man­ches­ter on Thurs­day, Decem­ber 14, 11am-5pm. Bring food to share for lunch.
The venue is at Bridge‑5 Mill (oth­er­wise known as MER­Ci) — ful­ly acces­si­ble & close to Man­ches­ter Pic­cadil­ly train sta­tion, details at http://www.merci.org.uk/visiting-b5m.php

We will be putting peo­ple’s thoughts and respons­es online in the lead-up to the meet­ing. Two of these are below: one a report from a work­shop at the Earth­First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, one the reflec­tions of one of the par­tic­i­pants at the meet­ing in Brad­ford. If you have some­thing to con­tribute to the debate that you would like peo­ple to read before we
meet, please email it to actionsupport@climatecamp.org.uk and we’ll cir­cu­late it to those who are com­ing.

If you want to read any oth­er thoughts sent out before the meet­ing, or if you’re like­ly to arrive late or need some­where to stay, please email actionsupport@climatecamp.org.uk to let us know you’re com­ing.

“Sup­port­ing rad­i­cal action against cli­mate change across the coun­try

Report from meet­ing Sat­ur­day 11 Novem­ber, Brad­ford Resource Cen­tre
(Meet­ing to devel­op ways of sup­port­ing local cli­mate action groups and actions, how to stay in touch and how to share skills and resources. Plus co-ordi­nat­ed days of actions.)

We start­ed by look­ing at what we need in order for lots of actions to be tak­ing place.

Broad­ly speak­ing, they fell into two cat­e­gories. The more abstract:

- inspi­ra­tion
— buzz
— ener­gy
— (feel­ing of) a crit­i­cal mass tak­ing part in actions
— sense of urgency
— hope

and the more con­crete:

- peo­ple find­ing out about actions so they can get involved
— feel­ing of suc­cess (and pub­li­cis­ing our suc­cess­es)
— skills
— mon­ey
— infor­ma­tion resources
— feel­ing of dif­fer­ence from approach­es and tac­tics that haven’t worked in the past
— lessening/avoiding/ability to resist state oppres­sion
— strate­gic reflec­tion

We felt that the more con­crete needs would fol­low rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly if the first were met: peo­ple’s ener­gy and inspi­ra­tion would mean that mon­ey is raised, infor­ma­tion resources get researched and dis­trib­uted, etc..

We iden­ti­fied as the main cat­a­lyst to inspi­ra­tion and ener­gy was pos­i­tive reports of suc­cess from lots of actions tak­ing place. So, the ques­tion became: where is the best place to con­cen­trate our ener­gy and resources to influ­ence and estab­lish the pos­i­tive feed­back loop that would lead to an esca­la­tion of direct action tak­ing place?

As a pre­cur­sor to eval­u­at­ing this, we tried to list some of the more and less con­crete things that would be like­ly to have this input, some steps that could be tak­en. This list is not com­pre­hen­sive, but reflects the direc­tions our think­ing and dis­cus­sion took on the day.

Resource packs
— brief­in­gs
— tem­plate actions
— press releas­es
— poten­tial tar­gets
— legal brief­in­gs
— reports of suc­cess sto­ries
— leaflets
— stick­ers
— oth­er mer­chan­dise: beer mats, brand­ed con­doms, lol­lipops etc.
— dif­fer­ent modes of how local groups might organ­ise
— poten­tial­ly use­ful action tat (e.g. dinghies)

Skill­shar­ing

Secure means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing and net­work­ing

Con­ver­gence
— face-to-face meet­ings
— par­ties
— big actions
— treeplant­i­ng

Pub­li­cis­ing actions
— print media: ours
— EF! update
— schnews
— local newssheets
— print media: oth­ers’ (we pro­vide the sto­ries, they pub­lish)
— lib­er­al press (often keen for sto­ries, some­times sym­pa­thet­ic)
— more main­stream press
— cas­cad­ing, decen­tralised meth­ods, e.g.:
— word-of-mouth
— stick­ers
— graf­fi­ti
— email
— film show­ings
— web-based
— EF! action reports
— indy­media
— indy­media cli­mate
— ris­ing tide
— cli­mate camp
(also use of email and web for dis­tri­b­u­tion of paper-based media)

Ways in
— dis­tri­b­u­tion of newssheets
— dis­tri­b­u­tion lists
— peo­ple to help!
— friend­ship net­works
— local groups con­tacts — pub­li­cised (not nec­es­sar­i­ly a group: can be person(s) up for stiff if more want to get involved)
— pub­lic meet­ings and gath­er­ings
— pres­ence on demos, at con­fer­ences, fes­ti­vals
— big, adver­tised pub­lic actions
— stalls
— gate­way actions/groups
— road­show

Kick­start actions
— local
— big­ger

Iden­ti­ty
— net­work iden­ti­ty rather than move­ment iden­ti­ty
— het­ero­ge­neous mem­ber­ship
— exist­ing net­works
— indi­vid­u­als
— groups
— friend­ship groups

Note on local organ­is­ing (par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant for con­tacts and for resource packs)
All local groups are dif­fer­ent, and what works some­where might not be the best way of organ­is­ing in a dif­fer­ent area. There are lots of suc­cess­ful ways of organ­is­ing, includ­ing
— one ‘action group’ with a broad­ly con­sis­tent mem­ber­ship but chang­ing focus, per­haps doing actions under dif­fer­ent ban­ners
— dif­fer­ent groups with peo­ple who attend more than one as infor­mal links
— dif­fer­ent groups with a forum in which they come togeth­er
— there is no local group, but peo­ple occa­sion­al­ly come togeth­er to do stuff
We should­n’t be pre­scrip­tive: there are as many sorts of local organ­is­ing as there are local groups.

The way for­ward from here:
The main task ahead is to work out how we can best use our resources for the great­est effect. This goes both for which areas we pri­ori­tise, and how we can best tack­le each area. In look­ing at, say, web-based pub­lic­i­ty, we need to look at what it is we need to ful­fill our aims, eval­u­ate whether any of the exist­ing fora meet these aims, and if not, if it would be pos­si­ble to trans­form them into some­thing more use­ful for our pur­pos­es, and the like­ly effort involved in this (worth com­par­ing with, say, resources to set some­thing up from scratch.)”

“NOTES FROM EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing Work­shop:
Build­ing a move­ment for cli­mate jus­tice beyond the Camp for Cli­mate Action

Most inter­est­ing is sec­tion 3 — HOW WOULD THE NETWORK BE ORGANISED?

1 WHAT SHOULD IT ACHIEVE?
* Dis­man­tle the fos­sil fuel indus­try (and there­fore Cap­i­tal­ism)
* Place CC at the cen­ter of social thinking/culture in wider soci­ety, not just us
* Pro­vide sup­port for each oth­er – know­ing that oth­ers are work­ing on the same issues
* Devel­op renew­able ener­gy, decen­tralised around the coun­try, local­ly run
* Devel­op and set up work­able alter­na­tives
* Aware­ness rais­ing and edu­ca­tion
* Work to reduce consumption/demand – also means reshap­ing how we think about eco­nom­ic growth/progress
* Focus on aviation/aviation as a new anti-roads move­ment?
* Focus on Nuclear be ready for nuclear new build with strong argu­ments and analy­sis

2 WHAT WOULD THE NETWORK DO/ HOW WOULD IT BE DIFFERENT?
* Direct action!
* Build­ing hous­ing co-op move­ment, urban/rural links to re-local­i­sa­tion
* Rad­i­cal analy­sis not piss­ing about
* Think long term re-local­i­sa­tiom (with­in the mov­ment also)
* Work­ing in com­mu­ni­ties allot­ments, res­i­dents groups.
* Works with NIMBY groups re aviation/nuclear.
* Links with major­i­ty world.
* Find weak points in sys­tem now increas­ing­ly info/communications rather than phys­i­cal spaces.

3 HOW WOULD THE NETWORK BE ORGANISED?
* Need a group/named net­work to feel part of, to feel belong­ing and sense of sup­port
* Set­ting up new net­work seems inef­fi­cient why not use whats already there Ris­ing Tide Net­work? has basic struc­ture in place, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and deci­sion mak­ing struc­tures, news-sheet, web-host­ing, etc., inter­na­tion­al ele­ment RT North Amer­i­ca, Aus­tralia, etc
* No time for lob­by­ing gov­ern­ment
* Use social cen­tres
* Gath­er­ings for deci­sions mak­ing
* Region­al­ly based sup­port for local indi­vid­u­als

4 WHAT NEXT?
* Recog­nise that peo­ple are moti­vat­ed to come togeth­er to work on a spe­cif­ic action or project, rather than form a group for the sake of a group
* So har­ness the ener­gy com­ing out of the camp by call­ing for every­one to take part in spe­cif­ic upcom­ing actions it is this that will kick-start local groups
* Oct 3–4 Day of Action coin­cid­ing with G8 Ener­gy and Envi­ro min­is­ters meet­ing in Mex­i­co (called by Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca) soon but maybe good because there will still be a buzz on after the camp
* Oct 21st Shell spon­sored Wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the year award RT is doing a tour of the coun­try with peo­ple from Shell affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties (eg. Ross­port, Nige­ria), along with an alter­na­tive exhi­bi­tion, in the run up to the award win­ner being announced on Oct 21st. RT will only be able to get to a few cities peo­ple who come to the the camp could be part of/expand this?
* Feb­ru­ary 2007 pos­si­ble Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action against Shell (called by Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty)

* Anoth­er camp? Maybe local camps are more sus­tain­able, so no big camp next year but lots of small region­al camps.

* Also recog­nised that some new local groups will need sup­port Ris­ing Tide might be able to help, or at least help link up peo­ple who need skills/training with peo­ple who could pro­vide this”