Why I'm not a "pioneer"

I went to an event recently and someone tweeted about it at me afterwards, calling me a pioneer:

World changing pioneers! It's a @women2 @W2citymeetup #FF @activismo, @alizardx, @anadiazhernandz, @arilikeairy, @ArtfulAllie, @Avilesm
— Nicole Lazzaro (@NicoleLazzaro) May 2, 2014

I have a few thoughts.

1) First and foremost, I do appreciate the sentiment and good intentions that motivated the above tweet.  Pioneer generally has a positive slant in our society, so if I can just skim the good connotation off the substance, I will.  I'll take the cream off the top.  We generally applaud pioneers for their successes, knowing or seeing something first, and usually taking some action because of it.  Parts of me certainly would like to be part of this trend-setting group.

However, there are some less-desirable characteristics of the word that I wouldn't like to embody, and for those reasons, I don't identify as a pioneer.

2) The word pioneer, says Google, means:

Though I am part of U.S. settler colonialism, I don't seek to actively reify it.

3) I'm also not the first, nor only one ...probably doing anything.  There are countless people who have come before me and set forth ideas that have lead to my own.  To discount all of that work, thoughts thoughts, the labor, and the individuals before me is narrow-minded and...quite frankly self-centered.

So, nope, I'm not a pioneer.  I acknowledge those who have come before me, those who have helped me get to where I am now, and I am actively against reifying settler colonialism!

Take Action against the Keystone Pipeline

As you may know, the Keystone Pipeline was recently made available for public comment.  I'd like to share a little information and hopefully encourage you to voice your opinion on this matter.

WHAT'S THE DEAL W/ #KXL

The proposed pipeline will carry crude oil and products of tar sands production from Canada through the U.S. for refining.  There's also been talk of shipping these refined products to Europe.

Aside from the mainstream environmental issues - its contribution to climate change and our government's continued resistance to move away from fossil fuels - Native Americans and First Nations of Canada have been extremely active and vocal about stopping Keystone.  All of the land the pipeline will traverse and will draw from were once native lands - and some still belong to native people.  Beyond that, burning these fossil fuels will affect us and generations to come, with unforeseen consequences of climate change.  This is a bleak picture that I'm sure you are familiar with.

However, there is good news!

The construction permit for this project has not issued yet - it's still a proposal.  That means, if we get our act together, we can prevent it.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

There are several things you can do to express your thoughts, feelings, and plans for the project.  Here are a few:

• Submit a comment online - http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=DOS-2014-0003 - before March 7
• Write and send in a letter to (more info http://www.keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/) - before March 7

U.S. Department of State

Bureau of Energy Resources, Room 4843

Attn: Keystone XL Public Comments

2201 C Street, NW

Washington, DC 20520

• Share this email with your friends and people who care about the health of the planet and its people.
• Attend or organize a protest - join others who feel similarly, feel solidarity in action - they're happening across the country.

The first two actions are often taken in isolation; you can't really *feel* that you're part of something bigger.  However, attending protests is often an inspiring way to show how I feel about something and also be joined by others who agree.  It's motivating and reminds me that tons of other people really care about these things and are willing to go out and do something about it.

CONCLUSION: DON'T SIT THIS ONE OUT

I recently saw Winona LaDuke (an Anishinaabe activist) speak - she made a point about how the extractive industry is becoming more extreme.  The Deepwater Horizon (drilling to depths of more than 30,000 ft) fracking, mountaintop removal, now tar sands extraction - the U.S. is becoming more and more desperate in our addiction to these toxic substances.  But more and more people are also standing up, realizing the truths about climate change, and taking action against the government's mindless trajectory toward climate destabilization.

I urge you to voice your own opinion about the Keystone Pipeline - we have the ability to slow, stop, and prevent it from happening.

I'd love to hear if this email has been motivating to you - and to hear if you decide to email or mail in a letter.

"giving up" privilege

Is it possible to "give up" privilege?  Or, would it be more useful to think of ensuring privilege for everyone?  

In thinking about these questions, an analogy popped into my head: if we all try and "give up" our privilege it might be like trying to play soccer without ever travelling with the ball.  Whenever we were given the ball (privilege) we'd have to kick it away.

This way of thinking (of "giving up" privilege) also seems to suggest action based on avoidance, possibly guilt, feeling bad about oneself, and maybe even ignore-ance.

Additionally, thinking of privilege as something one can "give up" is problematic because it suggests it is a personal choice.  Often, privileges are given to us socially, and not something we could give up.  For example, a (white, upper class, straight) male privilege is being able to look at the U.S. House of Reps and see himself represented (see #7).  How could a man who isn't an elected official give this up?  He could, of course, vote a female in.  And perhaps less men could run for office, or better: encourage their female colleagues to run.  But I'm not sure where thinking of "giving up" privileges gets us in this situation.

Or, continuing, if a man sleeps with a bunch of women and isn't called a slut (#13), how could he give this up?

It seems to me that a more useful perspective that allows for and encourages more social justice is to think about ensuring the privileges we are aware of having for everyone.  We shouldn't have to feel bad about them - rather we should acknowledge them and work toward making it possible for everyone to have them.

For a great primer on privilege, check out White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, By Peggy McIntosh.  I've blogged about this before.

This is still something I'm still working on figuring out, so if you read this and are intrigued...or think I'm wrong...or can help with a next step, do let me know by leaving a comment!

Myths of Corporate Personhood

Here's the short version, for the longer (explained) version, click here.

Text of Belden Fields teach in "The Myth of Corporate Personhood"

THE DISEMPOWERING FOG CREATED BY 14 IDEOLOGICAL MYTHS

Prepared for Occupy the Quad at the University of Illinois, Urbana 1/19/12

by Belden Fields

1. The myth that the corporation is a person with the rights of individuals.

2. The myth that Supreme Court represents a higher interpretation of law that transcends partisan politics.

3. The myth that money is speech; therefore, money spent freely in elections is protected by the First Amendment right to speech.

4. The myth that the interests of large corporations is in the interest of workers because they create jobs and raise standards of living.

5. The myth that “right to work” laws really protect workers’ rights.

6. The myth that government is the only source of bureaucracy that disempowers people.

7. The myth that economics is above moral concerns and the market will always, by definition, result in the greatest good for society.

8. The myth that the United States is a democracy.

9. The myth that the only legitimate human economic human right is the right to private property.

10. The collateral myth that that social security, health care benefits, and pensions are unearned and unaffordable “entitlements."

11. The myth that privatization is always more “efficient” than public goods and services.

12. The myth that the “official” unemployment rate in the United States is accurate and comparable to the unemployment rates in other countries.

13. The myth that the U.S. offers the highest rates of upward mobility in the world.

14. The myth that there is no alternative to the capitalist system that manifests the above characteristics and treats the worker as a commodity.

academic subjectivity

I'm currently in graduate school. I hope that this post will be one to start a theme of my struggles to find a perspective from which to write and understand what I learn. I inherently prefer writing with the word "I" and using it to organize narratives, however this, in many disciplines, goes against very explicitly stated traditions. For today, I'd like to quote an article whose author writes on his use of "I".

Before all of this, a note on my purposeful use of the active subject in this essay is warranted. Autoethnographers have noted the highly tactical enterprise of using the first person in academic writing (Peterson & Langellier,1997). Such tactics sometimes serve as confessionals, in efforts to render texts transparent (van Maanen, 1988). However, the “I” that this essay evokes, unlike the fully-formed modern subject, is a textual, constructed and strategic “I,” designed to underscore the partiality, contingence and temporal quality not only of such insight as “I” have to offer, but of knowledge claims in general. My efforts at generating such texts are relatively recent (Ganesh, 2008; Ganesh, in press), but in many ways, as I do so, the voice with which I speak to myself draws from oral practices that stem back to my childhood: for instance, this voice evokes memories of stories that my grandmother told me; stories told in a voice that are at odds with the realist trope in which most of us write. So, in personalizing this text, I hope to both problematise realist tropes, and actualize what Ellis and Bochner (1996) have called the therapeutic function of research and writing.

And here's the APA citation for ya:
Ganesh, S. (2009). OrganiZational communication and organiSational communication: Binaries and the fragments of a field. Communication Journal of New Zealand, 10(2), 6-17. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Partnership for Community Development

PPG, Partnership for the Public Good, is a group in Buffalo, sort of a "think and do tank" which has also been described as a progressive alternative to a chamber of commerce. They create useful online resources, host fruitful workshops, and organize panel discussions on pertinent local, democratically-chosen topics. Check them out, they've got an interesting approach to community development.

Good icebreaker

Just ran across this browsing random design blogs...an icebreaker where everyone answers "I can teach you..."

Here's the flickr set.

Latin America + Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein has been at UIUC for the past few days. Today I had the privilege to attend a panel discussion with her and two academics (Prof. Fernando Coronil, Univ. of Michigan; Prof. Andrew Orta, UIUC) on "The rise of current social movements and protests in Latin America."

It was interesting, to say the least, and refreshingly reminded me that I am situated very close to a college campus. I'd been away from the academic air for a while.

Klein built upon arguments presented at her main lecture last night (I was unable to attend) and in her book, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her project is to promote a counter-narrative to the unquestioned neoliberal responses to disasters. Lately, see: 9/11, Katrina, and the bailout "plan." The government has responded to these catastrophes by capitalizing on public shock and fear to push an agenda (war in Iraq/Patriot Act, racism/commercialization of NOLA/overlooking of basic infrastructure problems, free reins with $700B). Additionally, we haven't done a good job at remembering history as it happened either. Thus, we're shocked at the shock...and during this our freedoms are stolen right out from under us, without question.

Klein says we Americans are "addicted to shock."

In the context of Latin America, she said that it is the most advanced site of resistance against this "shock doctrine" and neoliberalism. She cited a few reasons (and noted that it's an incomplete list):

1. It got neoliberalism first.
2. It was an extremely obvious un-democratic (violent and/or racist) overthrow of the status quo.
3. The left there wasn't discredited. Compared to the Soviet bloc, the left (socialist) side didn't fall; in Latin America, it was put down. People can't point to the left and say they screwed it up before.

She said we have a lot to learn from Latin American organizing during our own "reconstruction period."

I think she's got some good points, and I'll put her book on my "to read" list. ...Also, she was recently on Colbert Report if you'd like to see her in action.

This is also an interesting story.

Green Fire

Written September 22, 2006 near a small forest in Pennsylvania:

Sometimes when I go out, standing at the edge of the forest, I feel it. There's a warmth that wells in my chest, just below my sternum.. It's a warmth, the warmth, I think we spend our lives searching for but come upon only rarely. I think it's the warming of completeness, the warmth of entirety.

I feel it when I am truly happy. And when I am sad, my chest feels like an empty cupboard and I seek to fill it with food.

Sitting at the edge of the forest, surrounded by the all-encompassing hug of crickets, cardinals singly chirping, at the same time it is both within me as I am in it. It silently accepts me, and if I get quiet enough, sometimes I can hear it marvelling back at me. Our souls lying together in perfect unity on the forest floor.

Many times, though, this energy is dead set on spreading itself from me; it radiates and reverberates in others. It is an offering, complete in all its intricate, innocent beauty.

It is so disconcerting the many times I've set out searching for it, only to feel as if I am running after my own shadow. Sometimes I run so fast I fall and as I'm picking myself up I remember to be patient, stand still, and let it come out of its hiding place.

And it does. It winks at me if I pay enough attention.
"I'm still here," it beckons.

Sometimes it hides in the eyes of others, looking out at me. These days I am happy, we are complete.

I try to live my life with an absolute intention to one day come to see the peace beneath the war we so often delude and lose ourselves in, the busyness we put ourselves through, trying to ignore what we cannot avoid.

I long for the day when we can be open enough as a people to see it in ourselves, to accept it and embrace it. Sometimes when I go out, I can feel the promise.

anti-environmentalism

just reading up on what capitalist magazine has to say about environmentalism... ("if environmentalism succeeds, it will make human life impossible")

i just wanted to share this cartoon with you. it's from an article on the falsities in al gore's movie (http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4806).

but the cartoon. seriously, is it bad to love the earth? i mean, yeah, we've (people) created religions in the past to worship it, but historically Capitalists and Christians have abolished them (i.e. "civilized the heathens"). see paganism or, well, most indigenous religions. i guess we (civilized americans) wouldn't know what worshipping the earth looks like, because that's only for heathens, and you can't be a heathen with a hummer...can you?

i just think it's sad that it's come down to this...making fun of people for praising the beauty of nature.



more:
"The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by "environment" one means the surroundings of man--the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists' paean to "Nature," human nature is omitted. For environmentalism, the "natural" world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do." (from: http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4643)

i'd beg to differ and say that environmentalism is fundamentally ecological. we, men, need to realize that we are part of a system, and if we disrupt that system, we'll end up disrupting our human nature in some way or another (acid rain, drought, the dust bowl of the 30s, soil nutrient depletion, etc, etc. we know the drill). i think that's pretty fundamental.

eco-terrorist or "moderate environmentalist"?

"We must live what we know."

we just got back from driving my sister to woodfield for her bus back to champaign. woodfield is a giant mall in northeast illinois. pretty much the whole time we were driving i was almost throwing up. i really hate the suburbs. i think that's maybe why i've been kinda manic depressive lately (sometimes really really hyper for no reason, other times depressed, quiet, withdrawn)...the city fucks me up. suburbs are worse. i was being really obnoxious in the car. i really don't know how to express that feeling in any other way than that. i was like that in florida a lot too, just acting like a 4 year old, and not in a good way. i think that's what happens when i feel oppressed, trapped - it comes out that way when people won't let me say my words.

the day before my birthday we (the family and i) went out for dinner in a neighboring town (crystal lake) (really surburban, lots of strip malls...like miles of them.) at a pretty good restaurant, well, it's been good in the past. and as we were leaving to go pick out my bday present (i wanted to go to a sporting good store and buy some good stuff, like a stuff sack for my sleeping bag or some other applicable stuff (like warm socks)) i was saying something about how i wanted to just deface hummers or fuck them up or something. i think my dad said something about being an eco-terrorist. i said "i'd rather be an eco-terrorist than a moderate environmentalist." that's what i'm coming to realize. if we want to have a real effect on this shit called global warming, we need to stop driving. stop living in this global warming trap that's been set up for us (and if that means being an eco-terrorist, then i'm gonna start doing that...well, maybe not destruction of property, but ...well, something.). anyway, we get to the sporting store and all four of us walk in and i'm standing at the entrance thinking, fuck i don't want to be part of this. the store is gigantic, packed with overpriced things you need to go outside, heaven forbid you don't have a supersilk thermalite(TM) north face piece of shit to make sure you don't freeze to death outside. i didn't let them buy me anything, even though my dad was pretty adamant about doing so. i told him i was sorry.

driving around the suburbs in 60degree weather of november i had my window down and i felt like an alien. being rejected from this society, and rejecting it. i was physically affected, antsy, rollercoaster emotions. i'm not really sure how i should feel. i do know that it's sad that kids born into this don't know anything else. i want to get a machine and dig up a part of the parking lots and scream THERE'S SOIL UNDER THESE THINGS. let's not keep ourselves from the earth! people walk from their houses on their driveways to their cars, drive to work, walk through the parking lot to their skyrise and never step on grass. grass is ornamental; it's not real. we drove past a park on the way to woodfield, nature is fenced in there. there's a really strong dichotomy between city/humanity and wild/nature. it's sick.

many times i think this is one of the most radicalizing experiences i've had. i do not want to be an on the fence environmenalist. i don't want to be environmentalist because it's smart, or because being opposite is dumb. i want to do it because it's right, and i want this to encompass my life. it's not just that i run a campaign on stopping global warming, it's that i live my life to stop global warming. it's not a mask i can put on and take off. it scares me that (i interpret) most of the people i'm working with can do that. for me environmentalism is a lifestyle, not a tactic.

Global Warning

First, if you are unsure about the science of global warming, please do yourself a favor and learn about it. Don't just learn about some abstract 'issue,' learn how you are part of it, learn how you fit into the bigger picture - learn how we are interconnected. Please, if you have any questions and would rather ask a human than attempt to surf this vast ocean of information, do not hesitate to ask me (arisahagun at gmail dot com)! If I can't answer your questions, I might be able to provide you with the resources to help you. Then, read on.

An article by BCC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6126242.stm suggests that global warming is more than a future threat to some African countries. Furthermore, since most of the efforts of industrialized nations have focused on lessening greenhouse gas emissions, there has been little worked on internationally as far as researching "adaptations," let alone how to apply those.

Greenpeace V: part 2 - the International Day of Action

yesterday i had a moment to feel that all the shit of the past two weeks has been worth it. so i guess i haven't mentioned it up to this point but a lot of what we've been working toward culminated yesterday, the international day of action on climate change. 20,000 people marched in london, a greenpeacer got arrested for climing a power plant tower, we had 400 people on the beach create an "aerial art image." with the help of an artist, a helicoper, hundereds of volunteer hours, about 40 organizers, and many many community members, we spread across the beach to create an outline of Flordia and text that said "save our state." next, we morphed into a drowning person holding an umbrella with the text "stop global warming" it's an awesome picture. sitting next to connie and michelle (two fellow got'ers), a girl playing an african drum, and two volunteers from broward community college, i realized that it's all been worth it. i'm sitting in a giant 'E'. the helicopter's coming across the horizon, the tide was rising. i'd volunteered to get wet. they told us (we were telling volunteers) ankle-deep water -- then we realized that we'd be laying in it. but it didn't matter, i'm part of the E. daryl, the BCC volunteer turns to me after a wave and asks how he can keep things up after we leave florida. that's awesome. we've inspired another to join our cause. awe-inspring. the pictures are worth well over 1,000 words.

the day itself was really crazy too. i got to the beach around 8:30am and it was cloudy with winds around 30mph and tall waves. "no way will we get more than 250 people out here." we're thinking. just standing on the beach we were getting sandblasted. most of us got windburn. the sun came out twice before we were done with the day - once during the first picture and again for the second shot. sometimes you just know things are right.

Greenpeace V: part 1

so i feel like i owe something in reflection of these past two weeks. and what better time for it than a 16 hr. van ride back to DC. cleaning out the hotel room this morning, being on the beach these past two full days, and just generally - people are so wasteful. it's on such a gigantic magnitude - and it's nearly inescapable as an American. at a hotel, everything is single-serivng; everything is temporary, transitory, with little regard for the future. i called the hotel's corporate office and left a message with my phone number asking about their recycling program (they don't have one). no one's called me back yet. it seems that we try so hard not to waste specific resources (i..e.time and money) but we end up wasting profusely in other areas. even we "environmentalists" are often too focused on other goals and we end up running the conversion van for 5 minutes not moving, run the air conditioning all day in an empty hotel room, taking 30 minute showers, spending $200 on clothes. we literally just passed what i suspect was a garbage dump. a swarm of seagulls larger than i've ever seen with hundreds of turkey vultures circled overhead.

i'm starting to realize that it's hard for people to respect the criticisms of someone also stuck in the same system ( i.e. not living any solutions). i'm beginning to feel disconnects within myself - hypocracies that i notice and need to fix within myself. i'm tired of being lax and letting the situation dictate the things which are important to me. it's like saying i might as well shave my legs because it's easier. i want to create situations (or find them) where it's easy to be me, where i'm not constantly swimming against the flow. we just drove by a giant plot of land with bare, exposed soil - a future subdivision.

i hate seeing animals and birds by the road. i hate to think they have to live next to us. i hate to think that i am to blame. i use these roads, i use the subdivisions, i use the garbage dumps. this is what i'm beginning to realize - that it's hard to respect a dissenter if he/she is part of and this encouraging the continuation of that system. this is the concretion of the thought that i've been having here a lot at greenpeace.

it's kind of summed up in one of the lunches i shared with one of the guys from the research team. he helped make a website which is basically a map of different oil companies, think tanks, individuals and their relations to the us gov't. we started admiring their efficiency and effectiveness (i.e. telling people that global warming / climate change isn't real) and at once strategizing. we wondered if theses institutions had training programs like ours. he said they probably did. we joked about one of us signing up for that program.

this is my point. for every one there is an equal and opposite. (newton) yin and yang. greenpeace exists as a response. it works in a system to negate its opposite. like chasing a shadow. but don't get me wrong - greenpeace serves and noble purpose and a lot of times does it in ways we haven't seen. with yin comes yang. i think greenpeace started off well, radically, showing people what they haven't seen - making waves. i think, now, in a lot of ways gp needs to step it up. i think the framework and intent are definitely there. still part of the system where [we] should be creating new systems. i think we need to continuously be improving, training people ot think outside the box. i probably think this way because iv'e heard the message so many times that i'm ready for the next step. repetition works insofar as it creates a space of monotony to be filled with creative solutions. i'm beginning to think this is one way to look at change - create the space and then give people the tools to fill it. (which is what someone at gp said about what gp does.)

hopefully this all isn't too abstract, detached, and philosophical to understand. creating these spaces seems really cool - providing opportunities. it's the fundamental underlyng principle in culture jamming and somewhere in the resolution of cognitive dissonance. this program's made a lot of spaces for me. a lot of spaces to get pissed off, to question, to propose creative, new solutions.

Greenpeace IV: part 3 - the Law of Halves

when we're petitioning we try to estimate the number of petitions in order to get a certain number of people ...say... to come to a meeting. you get 192 petitions signed - about half of those (96) will have phone numbers - about half of these numbers you'll be able to make contact with aperson (48) - of these, 24 will actionally talk to you. 12 people will say they'll come (to the meeitng). 6 will actually show up.

(ok, pause it. remember the scene in fight club where "jack" (ed norton) is on the plane telling an older woman the calculation that his insurance company uses to determine the safety rating of a car? (as we view a car that's been burnt to a crisp and listen to the workers joke about how the fat burned to the seat would be a good modern art exhibit...) "if a x b x c = x, and x is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." (are there a lot of these kinds of accidents? // you wouldn't believe) and she's like 'what car company do you work for?' and he says "a major one." i feel kinda like that about this law of halves calculation. just to set the scene.)

that makes sense, right? i can get (at low estimates) about 15 petitions signed in an hour - so it would take 10 of us just over an hour to get 192. this system of numbers is one of the main things we base our days around. the law of halves is something we almost live by as organizers. //this// is why i don't want to be an organizer. 10 people just spent about an hour and a half talking to more than 200 people and we end up forging 6 relationships where people are interested in coming to a fun event with free food. we 'accost' people in the street, see if we can grab their interest with one line ( i.e. "got a second for the environment?" (which i've never used, because i don't think "the environment" exists like that. that's perhaps a longer story) or "have you / are you interested / heard of global warming?" "would you like to sign a petition?" (said as you offer them a clipboard), etc.), get them to sign a piece of paper while encouraging them to write their phone number and check the box that says "i'm interested in volunteering" while saying "don't worry, we won't contact you in any way unless you check that box" and bating them with credit from the volutneer office at their school (yeah, we actually hooked that up). there. that's what i do most of the day. then...after we get back to the hotel, we count up all the checked boxes (notice: checked boxes...these are our volunteer's phone numbers.), divide them up and everyone starts calling people to see if they'll volunteer (we call this phonebanking).

i realize i'm being cynical and overly negative about this stuff. perhaps a bit overdramatic about it with the fight club scene. i guess i should admit that i don't //completely// loathe it. we do reach a lot of people and at least share the idea of global warming with some people who have never heard about it. we are making progress with the candidates, too. ron klein (the democrat) finally said he'd agree to the waxman safe climate act, the "global warming legislation" currently up for disscusison. jon (our leader/teacher/etc) and jack also got interviewed by the media. (oh, and i'd also like to semi-reationalize my cynicism by saying that maybe it's just a misguided questioning of the status quo/system/the man)

Greenpeace IV: part 2

since when do we need anything plastic? since the marketing campaign? who runs these campaigns? what do they want from us? why do we listen to them? there was a guest speaker - we invited a professor - at our meeting last night - and she was really radical about endiong global warming. she said we never should buy another car, stop using plastic, become vegetarian, and only have 1 baby per person. i don't disagree with any of these - plus, she's bulidng an eco-community in belize - but she made me think about our completely unnecessary dependence on plastic, electricity, fossil fuels. yeah, we have those technologies, but they don't /need/ to be part of our everyday lives! also, during that meeting i talked to a guy who seemed to be buddhist or daoist, teaches qi gong and is raki certified. and he reminded me of some things i know but have been organizationally trained to forget or look past.

Greenpeace IV: part 1

i feel like a lot of times the things we're doing aren't by choice. we aren't self-led. i think this is what's getting to me? having to fill this out or get people to do somthing or try and figure out how what i want works for people rather than starting from them and what they want. this gets to me. i don't feel like i've made any personal relationships outside of this group. it's hard working with people on that level. if people aren't the force i'm scared. petitioning is effective i guess; it gets people superficially aware and asks them to take an action.

i'm tired of people just trying to get what they want from me. i don't want to have that kind of relationship with others.

we should never sacrifice humanity, emotion, personality, character, for effectiveness. this is not for me. screw the details about how many petitions to get, i love people, people are the power, the movement. screw any movement that doesn't utilize this. this is why i prefer consensus over majority. i will and need to be more creative about entertaining minority views. majority is clearly more effective, but if that was the case with movements, why would the minority ever stand up? it seems like, in a lot of cases, the numerical minority is the ethical/moral majority. ...or that, perhaps most interestingly, the minority actually is the majority but we just can't see it because of how a particular issue is framed. (this, i hope to explore after we finish the book we're currently reading: don't think of an elephant by george lakoff)

if no one likes phonebanking, why aren't we more creative about them?

Greenpeace III

Hey.

I know - it's been a while since I last sent out a mass email about the state of my being here in DC. I guess it's been busy - I mean, like we all are, of course, a.k.a. I just haven't made time to sit down, think about what's going on in the context of my other lives, and then tell everyone about it. It's a little weird, feeling like I'm addressing some large audience, at the podium.

But nonetheless:
We've been doing a lot of "phonebanking" lately - calling numbers in Florida to ask people to put a (free) sign in their yard that says "Stop Global Warming" and asking them to call their Congressional candidates. It's kind of hard to have someone hang up the phone or say "no" when I ask if global warming is something they're concerned about. ...repeatedly. Phonebanking kind of helps me connect in my head how an individual can make a difference. It feels really good to get one person to call and tell their congressman that they care about global warming. It's something so small but when done on a mass scale it does make a difference. I called one of the candidate's offices and the secretary said that a lot of people had been calling for the same reason and if I thought there was some kind of campaign...it was pretty sweet that we were having an effect at that office.

A lot of us, though, are like, "What the crap? Global warming is a giant problem, what good is it to make a few calls?" It's easy to get defeated because of the scope of the problem and most people's inability to care about the it. That's what I think it is -- an inability -- because people simply can't relate to the phrase 'global warming.' We just finished a memoir from the civil rights by John Lewis and a few hours ago had a book discussion. It's really interesting to compare the two movements. In the civil rights movement, the "enemy" (or the target) was obvious - all the time people were exposed to overt racism, violence, sheer brutality, in the face of nonviolence. Seeing a white cop beat the crap out of a black citizen is powerful, you can feel that. You are actually /affected/ by the problem.

But something like 'global warming.' Does that, honestly, conjure up any tingly feeling at the back of your neck, goosebumps, or stir your stomach? Maybe, if you're really in touch with a global view of the problem - maybe if you've seen a polar bear drown, coral reefs bleached, indigenous peoples starving, similar powerful images, maybe then you can feel it. But probably not. Probably you're not viscerally affected by the idea of renewable energy, photovoltaic cells. You're probably not smiling, excited - finally, our people will be liberated from the oppressive regime of...coal power. Nah.

After our first phonebank, I was not in a good mood. "How could people /not/ care about global warming?!?" As I calmed down and was waiting in the subway station I began to see a different question -- "How do you even talk to people about global warming?" I started talking to the woman next to me about it -- "Do you believe in global warming?" is what I started with I think. She told me a lot - she says that she thinks why people don't act is because they don't know how, or don't have the capability. Well I've been thinking about how to approach people about global warming for about a week now...and I have no answers, because I think the question's unclear and doesn't promote a solution. This morning I realized that the question is more like "How /can/ people care about global warming?" My job as an [organizer] is to show people how they care, because I believe they do. And I must. I feel that for every second I don't believe people care, that the American public (or humans across the world) are lazy, apathetic, and simply do not care -- for every second of this thinking -- that second is wasted. That second is frittered away fighting something that's not real. But when I think that people do have some capacity to care, to act, they have potential, a speck of truth - somewhere - and this is what I need to start speaking to. This is what inspires people.

And inspire people is what I'll do.
But I knew this already.

one of the lectures today was from a guy called kieren mulvaney who primarily works with the antarctica campaign. he said that greenpeace is unique because it is "prepared to make people uncomfortable, and to say what people don't want to hear"
...so i asked him...if the IPCC (intergovernmental panel on climate change, a division of the UN) basically said that Americans need to make lifestyle changes to stop global warming, why is greenpeace not stepping up and saying this, rather than taking a fairly roundabout way of pressuring candidates to pass renewable legislation...?

his answer:
global warming "seems like science fiction"...in light of this, if greenpeace says, climate change is occuring, ice is melting in the arctic, so, pump up your tires and change your lightbulbs, there's a bit of a disconnect. lifestyle change and global warming are on different scales...so greenpeace is also good at beating up on the big guys; we're out to level the playing field to pave the way for the changes that need to be happening on the large scale.