The more I am reading about activism, the more I become aware of how my thinking is constrained by the images that I have accepted as ways to simplify a complex world. For example, the pyramid view of society with some king/head of state/CEO at the top, supported by a small elite of sorts, supported by a large mass of ordinary people makes change only possible if, somehow, the elite and head are reached and convinced to change (or violently exchanged, but I prefer the non-violent way). But the pyramid is really only an image, one very simplified representation of reality of many, and seeing the world this way mostly serves to keep things the way they are since challenging them, in this image, seems impossible. Whereas if you think about the upside-down pyramid supported by pillars (as suggested already in the readings last time), suddenly many opportunities open up!

Similarly, we traditionally think about our work in terms of miliary language, the group I work in is called “genombrottet” (i.e. a breakthrough through enemy lines). If we are counting “victories” in battles, it makes it difficult to celebrate conflict-free collaborations. The language we use to describe the world shapes and constrains our thinking so much!

Since I am taking the course for two reasons, both to learn more about activism for myself and build community, and to think about how I could run similar courses here in Sweden, first a quick recap of the second meeting of the “Climate Activism 101” course before I launch into what I read. Last meeting, Robert started with an acknowledgement statement of how Norway, the university building everybody is meeting in, our jobs at university, are de facto built on oil exploitation. I have seen these types of statements, or land acknowledgements, before in North American and other contexts, but I thought it was great to show (and maybe even raise?) awareness of context in this course.

Starting the session, it became obvious that there had been a large fluctuation of people. Many new participants had joined, but also some people from the first meeting did not come back. I do not know their reasons, but high fluctuation is something to keep in mind for my own courses — building community, and also progressing in conversations, requires more or less the same people coming together repeatedly. How could that be facilitated, while still staying open to newcomers and inviting people to come in and check out the group but of course with the option of not coming back?

Another thing that became very clear is that not many people had read all the suggested readings. Which was explicitly encouraged, too: better to show up without reading than not showing up because of a bad conscience that the homework isn’t done. But of course that also influences how deep conversations can go if the goal of the session is to discuss readings. One problem that I noticed in my discussion group was that reading the “myths” in the Hunter (2019) handbook only during the discussion itself led to some misunderstandings of what exactly those myths were, for example the headline “Myth: Movements need media attention to win.” was somehow interpreted as movements really needing media attention to win, and every other understanding being a myth, hence falling into the myth. Also the upside-down triangle isn’t as self-explanatory as I thought, it seems to be difficult to imagine what “pillars” support our society and way of life. And the Roger Hallam interview that I found so inspiring was perceived as too difficult and theoretical and boring! Goes to show that context and target audience are everything, and that I would need to do some work figuring out what readings to recommend if I were to run a similar course in Lund. Seeing that I also found some of the reading quite difficult and that there were redundancies between different resources, maybe one idea might be to have a shorter, more strongly recommended reading list that really consists only of one or two highlights?

One assumption that seemed very common in the group is that “activism” is more or less synonymous with “demonstrations”. For this, I find the database of methods of non-violent protest and persuasion super helpful to browse — almost 200 different methods that have been historically successful, and that are super diverse. Great place to go and get inspired! (This is also a resource that is recommended reading for one of the upcoming meetings)

But now to what is on the reading list in preparation of the next meeting:

1. The 350.org tutorial “Having climate change conversations”. I already discussed in my last post, definitely a good resource!
2. Erica Chenoweth’s Ted Talk “The success of nonviolent civil resistance”: This is an awesome, inspiring testimonial of someone who liked looking at things blow up but who then did the research to compare success rates of violent vs non-violent protests and found that non-violent protests are twice as likely to succeed as violent ones, and if a movement gets 3.5% of the population actively engaged over a period of time, they have historically always been successful (sometimes even with fewer people). I would really recommend watching this TED talk since it is a nice research-based approach that speaks to me.
3. The movie “A force more powerful. A century of nonviolent conflict“. This is a documentary of movements in India, the US and South Africa and it is a bit embarrassing how little I knew about those events (and I just saw that there is a part 2 on Denmark, Poland, and Chile that I haven’t watched yet). It is quite a long movie with lots of original, black-and-white footage, which I found difficult to watch in the beginning because of a relatively slow pace (and I just wanted to quickly eat up all the relevant information…) but it is really good to slow down, take the time, and take it all in.
   
4. Select parts of Engler & Engler (2016): “This is an uprising”. They talk about a “monolithic” understanding of the society, basically the standard pyramid view, and they very nicely make the point that people are typically not aware of the power they hold since “even a dictator can’t collect taxes on his own”; i.e. any system needs people supporting it not just in leadership roles, but in all kinds of direct and indirect support functions, and as soon as they stop, the system begins to fall. Here, again, the image of the supporting pillars is used, and some examples of supporting pillars are independent media, entertainment and music, academia, the police (the constant peaceful arrests served to build relationships between police and activists! And I don’t know if it was in the book or in one of the movies, but I remember a quote from a police officer who did not shoot at protesters because he knew his child was somewhere in the group). They also introduce the classification of transactional — within the system — or transformative actions, aiming at creating a completely new system. And then, there is a lot of redundancy with the movies above.

Ready for, and looking forward to, the next meeting next week!

P.S.: I chose the featured image for this post looking through the camera roll on my phone for something “monolithic”, or at least boulder, and then got distracted by water. But since water is good for our mental health — why not?