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Welcome to rabble.ca's extended series on the Canadian left -- Reinventing democracy, reclaiming the commons: A progressive dialogue on the future of Canada -- a look at where it stands after the 2011 federal election, and what the future can hold. The series will run in this, rabble.ca's 10th year, and is curated by journalist Murray Dobbin.
In the first half of this essay, I spoke about the centrality of dealing with our emotional issues collectively as part of strategies for social change. I argued that healing from the oppression and hurt of our individual lives is essential to being able to lead the kind of change we want to see but that we have mostly privatized that kind of healing. In this section, I talk about the connection between this kind of personal and behaviour change with the structural change that is also necessary. I conclude on the importance of multi-generational dialogue in coming up with the strategies we need.
The question that remains to be answered is what would a movement for structural change look like. We have examples of peoples' democracies that emerge in periods of great upheaval whether the neighbourhood social economies and factory occupations in Argentina in face of the economic collapse of the 1990s or the neighbourhood organization in Tunisia and Egypt last winter. But in each case, the state apparatus takes over and restores some form of the old order. The strategies of the old Left have always focused entirely on that state apparatus. Many of the strategies of today's new Left or new progressive forces are community based without developing new ideas about how the state will be transformed.
It is probably in Latin America where the most advanced experiments in structural change are occurring. There, I think Bolivia is most advance with a political party based in powerful social movements and accountable to them. Evo Morals has always said that taking state power was just the first step in transforming Bolivian society. What we see in Bolivia is a constant struggle where the government and the social movements are in a complex dance of conflict and support. Bolivia has some of the most powerful social movements in the world and a relatively weak state so it makes sense that such a process would begin there. While we can learn from it, there is no one model. Had we had stronger social movements in the U.S. that might have happened to pressure Obama to make necessary structural changes there.
There are some efforts like the new PartyX in B.C. that is developing apps for participatory democracy that might provide some tools for changing the democratic structure. When I wrote Imagine Democracy in the early 1990s, I saw the participatory budget in Brazil as a model of how we could transform democracy but even in Brazil the forces of the established order were able to co-opt the leadership of the PT (Workers Party) who did not transfer what they learned at a local level to a national level.
On the economic front, we have even fewer examples. What challenges we have to capitalist approaches to the economy are either highly bureaucratic public structures or highly decentralized local organizing. Probably the most significant economic alternative we have today is the open source programming. It provides an alternative economic model not based on property rights and competition but rather on innovation based on sharing knowledge. I think the battle to keep the Internet open and movements to break the stranglehold on intellectual property rights are among the most important efforts at structural change on the economic front.
The other area of significant structural change is the food movement. Here we are seeing an alternative distribution system that goes around the centralized system of monopoly distribution sometimes through conflict but mostly through creating community alternatives. Global movements like La Via Campasina and even the Slow Food Movement are globalizing local initiatives. In the U.S. activists often talk about scaling up initiatives. The food movement is an example of how to do that starting from very local initiatives linking up and then globalizing through sharing experiences, knowledge and material solidarity.
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Holistic
Working with Indigenous people over the last couple of decades, I have learned that many of them don't separate head and heart the way we do. The same is true for many Eastern philosophies. This more holistic approach to life is not only more sustaining for us, it is ultimately more sustaining for everything on the planet. And it's not just head and heart. It is social justice and environment; it is sexism and racism. Today all issues are connected to all other issues. Like a ball of wool, wherever we pull, the unravelling affects every part of it.
We also need to value much more those projects that bring us together to create something for our community. Again my generation of politicos often dismissed the alternative life styles created by back to the landers or hippies living off the grid in the city as the work of privileged people who could afford to create alternatives. Today such alternatives may very well be pointing the way to a future economy, more local and community based and a future democracy, more citizen and less professionally based. It is important that those of us who communicate about social change start to see such projects as just as important as the protests. People need to believe in each other again and our capacity to create solutions to the problems society faces. Not to mention that we don't have all the answers to the massive problems we are facing, working on alternatives whether in the sphere of democracy, food, energy, education or transportation will help to find them.
Living well
Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia, says there are enough resources in the world for all of us to live well but not enough for some people to live better. This is a reality that few of us in the global north who are living better are willing to face. Much of the social democratic left is still holding on to the dream of a growth economy and burying their heads in the same sand that covers the urgent necessity of dealing with the crisis of climate change in the interest of getting more votes. The radicals might be more aware but too often their approach is rooted in a moralism that is just another form of domination, not in a vision of how we could be happier and healthier in world where resources are shared more equally.
In Velcrow's upcoming film, Evolve Love, Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network says people are still sleepwalking but soon they will awake. When they awake, will there be beautiful alternatives to the individualistic, competitive, winner take all world in which we live?
We live in dangerous times, there is no doubt. I think the political Right will wind up in the dustbin of history in the not too distant future. Rupert Murdoch's rapid decline and hopeful fall is a sign of how quickly the immoral action of arrogant dominators can be exposed when the timing is right. But whether there will be a move to a fundamentalist Right, like the Tea Party or the Taliban based on fear and hatred or to a more egalitarian progressive society based on equality and love depends on the collective us. I think one of the reasons the radical Right is gaining ground is that on some level people recognize the depth of the crises and that new solutions are necessary. The Left, at least the part that is visible to a mass public, is mostly proposing little adjustments and hasn't had to courage or the vision to propose sweeping new solutions.
The Left is not a homogenous force either in Canada or around the world but we are networked and learning how to magnify and support the work of our comrades around the world, learning from them in the process. When I wrote Transforming Power a few years ago, I couldn't find any Canadian groups that were using the new political tactics and strategies that I saw in Latin America, Europe and even the U.S. Today there are several.
The task is not only to stop the worst excesses of the Right but to do so in a way that contributes to building a better world here and now. My generation understands a lot about confronting power and winning. I think the younger generation understands much more about how to construct movements for change in today's world. One of the important tasks ahead is to recognize what from the past is helping us and what is holding us back. At Hollyhock's Social Change Institute last month I met with a group of people who are proposing a series of cross-generational dialogues on strategy to learn from each other about what those new strategies might be. There will be one in Vancouver organized by the Gen Why Media Project in the fall. I think the kind of strategic discussions we will have there is an important part of what we need to do to build a future for the Left.
Judy Rebick's blog can be found here.
Read our other stories from Reinventing democracy, reclaiming the commons: A progressive dialogue on the future of Canada.
Cultural and economic transformation will require a myriad of institutions working in disciplined ways and in coordination with each other. New kinds of institutions are required, along with new ways of mobilizing ideas and harnessing the power of human potentials. Individuals will work together, in a variety of forms and differing and overlapping purposes, to create these institutions.
One size cannot fit all, but breaking off into separate directions can only weaken whatever efforts we have. Broad social movements require unifying visions; we need to know what unites us even as work across forms. Co-op creators, artists, librarians, political organizers, partisans, community builders, union organizers, neighbourhood connectors - we all need to know what direction we're headed in and to see ourselves as connected and working together. One way to do this is through common educational experiences, in our leadership development and cultural programs. Another way is through coalition and intentional movement building.
Substance and glue are both required. In substance we need to pool our financial capital and then use it for true social enterprise - including to build effective mass media enterprise and to fund even more transformative enterprises. We will also need to pool our political capital, using it for true social governance. Whatever new forms we employ, the forms will require that we can speak effectively, build across several (sometimes divergent) bases, work together, learn together and trust one another enough to work across time, place and culture.
These institutions will require at some level of recognizable form, they cannot be merely "felt" but must also be able to act with attribution. And will we require many kinds of institutions and many of each kind, we'll also need to have some with predominate levels of effectiveness, able to co-ordinate and coalesce and also include broadly across an entire movement.
Finance, communication, production, organization - these should be at the centre of our movement building. And each and all of these institutions should be at their centre creative, meaning that they should be creating things, not simply criticizing or taking down our opponents.
Tom Kertes
Beyond Ridiculous: The Old Left Still Doesn't Get it
Judy, how many air miles do you clock every year? One has to wonder. Again you end your dissertation with reference to far away conferences, this time Hollyhock on Cortes Island (TUITION: $495 CDN (meals & accommodation extra) / 4 nights)...I have a saying that goes like this: "The experts on climate change are forever on airplanes."
You start out this piece by correctly acknowledging how "we have mostly privatized" our approach to healing and yet you continuously pander and promote and flaunt your absurdly global-elite lifestyle that reflects all of what is so horrid about the commercialization and private sectoring of our lives.
I would rather not comment, but I am truly offended by the sensibilities which you are transcribing in these columns. Please take a moment to reflect inward and reconsider whether your positions are truly relevant, or absurdly preposterous.
many of the efforts noted in your article are useful, however if 'old and new Left' people in all places said "'we do not accept historic human rights abuses done in the name of 'socialism'" repeatedly and clearly, room would be free for open dialogue.
Thank you. I believe that you have well and truly started the discussion.
When you said, "My generation understands a lot about confronting power and winning." I found myself remembering the times of confronting power and losing. But after experiencing a couple of those, I would burn-out and then heal for 10 years, and then I would find my optimism again.
I believe optimism is crucial to creating a popular movement. We don't need people who are willing to die for the cause, as much as we need people willing to live for the cause. Only a complete person will value all of the things that we will need in order to be successful.
It is the legacy of narrow perspective and personal criticism, which will prevent us from the honest discussion that needs to happen as we create a future that we haven't imagined yet.
(tech note: the link to PartyX is for a US group out of Oregon - still doing interesting stuff.)
One of the areas that could use some frank and constructive debate is the labour movement. They need to compare their current practices against the ideals that they started with.
I look forward to more new ideas.
saying this over and over and over and over
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Air travel and climate change
Although aviation is a relatively small industry, it has a disproportionately large impact on the climate system. It accounts for four to nine per cent of the total climate change impact of human activity.
Compared to other modes of transport, such as driving or taking the train, travelling by air has a greater climate impact per passenger kilometre, even over longer distances. It's also the mode of freight transport that produces the most emissions.
(Reprinted from David Suzuki's website: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/science/climate-change-...)
Too many people still suffer under the illusion that there is "equality of opportunity" that they will make the big breakthrough and become the next multimillionaire...
The process to realisation that egalitarianism is the better way...where all can live with dignity ...
I can certainly understand Gabriela Sinduda's strongly felt opinions about Judy's travel expenses because my eyebrows also go up every time I read about the globe-hopping Maude Barlow and her entourage.
In stunning contrast, I marvel at the astonishing accomplishments of a relatively tiny Pennsylvania-based NGO, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (www.celdf.org) that is single-handedly spearheading "massive disobedience" to US environmental law, one community at a time. And in the process, they're running a "Democracy School" for the citizens of the communities they're helping to write local environmental ordinances that take precedence over state and federal legislation which give predatory corporations an unfair and unjust advantage in the courts.
CELDF is in effect doing what others just talk about doing -- building a bounded but effective grassroots environmental social movement organization.
If CELDF can do this in the US, what's to stop Canadian communities from doing the same? Why aren't Canada's environmental organizations -- Ecojustice Canada for example -- providing some leadership in this arena. CELDF discovered that taking on big corporations one court case at a time is too slow, much too costly and, in the long run, inneffective.
Oh yes, when CELDF switched tactics to help communities write their own ordinances guess where their biggest opposition came from? -- Established environmental organizations.
Less talk, more "effective" action please.
I have several posts about CELDF's work on my blog -- www.citizenactionmonitor.wordpress.com
I believe that relearning how to talk to our neighbours about social justice; including climate change and global warming, requires all of us on the left to stop hiding behind intellectual language. Over the last 2 decades we have forgotten how to talk about everyday realities in the language of justice, fairness, safety and hopefulness.
Most of the time many of us on the left spend our time opposing things. Thus we rightly oppose prisons and police racial profiling but we abandoned any discussion of a right to safety. As a result the right wing has an open field to define “law and order”.
Popular culture with the sexualization of everything is repulsive but because we don't know how to talk about sexual images we leave the dialogue to be inherited by right-wing moralists. We talk about social justice but we don't talk about money.
I would like to hear a discussion of environment that acknowledges that environmental degradation also includes Regent Park and Scarbrough, overcrowded unpleasant TTC transportation and how to keep our kids cool in summer and warm in winter.
I fear that until we learn to translate our intellectual understanding into practical language we will not interest our neighbours in our conversations.
I appreciate the contradiction between using air travel and environmental sensibilities. I am far from the only offender on this but I don't think staying in one place and not travelling necessarily in and of itself accomplishes very much either. I am not "flaunting" my life style. In fact at the moment I am living mostly on a small pension and some contract work. Most of my travel is paid for by the people who invite me to speak at events which I try and combine with other activities. This of course puts me in a different category of privilege that has to do with recognition rather than wealth.
What I am doing in these articles is sharing some of understanding I have gotten from activists on the West coast who seem to be more advanced on some of these questions of combining head and heart. My attitude about privilege has always been to try and share the power and privilege I have rather than feeling guilty about it which I think accomplishes nothing.
I think the Tom and Shartel's contributions are very interesting. While I agree with Tom that eventually we have to come together in the ways he suggest, I think we are at not quite there yet. It will require numerous experiments and learnings to get there.
I do agree that working on sustainability means doing it on a local level. In the US there have been a lot of green projects in poor areas like the greening of the south bronx and the work of Van Jones and others in Oakland. There are also some communities in BC that are working on sustaininable communities. I haven't seen them myself but I have heard about them.