Comments on: Naomi Klein: ‘Only mass social movements can save us’

By: dlw12014

dlw12014 — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 15:04:28 +0000

profound? I can’t make out if you are being sarcastic … whatever … I already said that Hedges’ ideas were not a prescription, there was no real need to prove it again (was there?) my point was his inclusion of a social dimension which resonates (I think) with Naomi’s 2012 plea

I grew up in Toronto and know very well how uptight it is, and I have seen it again and again since I returned in 2009, the recent failure of Toxic Zombies on Bay Street is a case in point and until the movement looks straight at this and deals with it somehow I think it is ‘modestly’ hobbled

the reason I made the effort to sing Anita’s song at your picnic and the reason I spent several hours corresponding with you is not profound at all – it is because you listened to my crazy idea about approaching Rob Ford, simple as that

be well, David.

By: John Riddell

John Riddell — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 18:59:05 +0000

David, you ask many profound questions. I’ll limit myself to a couple of points.
You say, “The movement ain’t moving.” The cause of paralysis has been the assumption, which seemed reasonable at the start, that governments would act on climate change if they got enough encouragement. Over time, it became clear that governments were determined not to act, and that an effective movement would have to go up against the government and its corporate sponsors. That was the message of the failed negotiations in Copenhagen five years ago.
This disoriented and — for a time — demobilized the climate action movement. The response was to challenge governments and corporations through the actions that Naomi Klein calls “blockadia,” expressed across the continent through initiatives like our East End Against Line 9 group. I’m sure you agree that this has had quite an impact and has aided the emergence of a new, militant movement around climate issues.
Then on September 21, we took part in the People’s Climate March, which proved that the climate movement can be built on a mass basis, with participation by millions. Again, this was new and a big step forward.
Take these two developments and add in Naomi Klein’s proposal for a movement on both climate and social issues, and you have the basis for a climate justice movement that can win.
You summarize the contrasting proposals of Chris Hedges:
1) “Severing ourselves from the dominant culture;”
2) “Build[ing] small, self-sustaining communities;” and,
3) “Disrupting the corporate machinery.”
The first two suggestions may be personally fulfilling, and all of us in the movement do this to some extent. But they do not in themselves challenge the petrostate or the polluters.
As for “disrupting”, the word is ambiguous. Often ideas are praised because they are “disruptive.” But I think Hedges is referring here to the “Flood Wall Street” action, a “mass sit-in” September 22 called to “shut down the institutions that are profiting from the climate crisis,” in which he played a prominent role.
In my opinion, the modest gains of this action were made possible by the much greater success of the mass march — more than a hundred times larger — the previous day.
I agree with you, and Naomi Klein, on the need for what she called a plan for a “wholistic healing process.” She challenges us to think what this process might be like. Surely the process will be an outcome of building a broad movement for climate and social justice of the type described in her book. When people join in collective action, they gain a new conception of themselves, of what they can and must do.
Thanks again for commenting, John Riddell

By: dlw12014

dlw12014 — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 13:44:34 +0000

“The bottom line is this: not until we have a plan to heal the planet that also heals our broken selves and our broken communities do we have a hope of preventing this most dire of all crises, and our job is to begin to imagine – quickly – what that wholistic healing process might look like.”

This is Naomi Klein at Powershift 2012 in Ottawa. The whole speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=viyv2b7zpJ8 merits a careful look and listen. The remark I’ve quoted is prefaced (f’rinstance) with the observation that some of you have heard me make viz. “The movement ain’t movin’!” (There’s a blockage! Where’s the Exlax? Where’s the Fleet Enema?) and which others of impeccable credentials such as Tim DeChristoper have also made.

I have been waiting since then (with bated breath!) for this latest book of hers in the way that someone in a rooming house waits to hear the other shoe drop.

Unfortunately, in an overlong recapitulation of descriptions & arguments (which many of us have heard before, repeatedly) she doesn’t quite get around to doing the bottom line imaginative work of her own 2012 prescription.

Why not I wonder? As John points out, she gets to “Only mass social movements can save us now.” Then she throws in ‘militant but not vanguard’ (whatever that means) and stops. Why?

It may be as simple as being unable to conceive of what such a “process might look like.” For those of us who watched the five years since Copenhagen go by from cheap seats deep in Toronto sensibility this would not be a surprise. We have seen the same hundred or so people come out year after year to meetings at which nothing much is decided and out of which emerges nothing resembling a ‘healing process’. (And we have seen the energy of the single mass expression, Occupy St. James’ Park, frittered away to nothing and quickly hidden under fresh sod.)

It may also be fear of inevitable conclusions. OMG! We may have to give up luxuries!

Chris Hedges gets to about the same spot, but being less polite he carries on a bit further. Extracting and sorting from the last paragraph of ‘The Last Gasp of Climate Change Liberals’ I get:
1) “Severing ourselves from the dominant culture;”
2) “build[ing] small, self-sustaining communities;” and,
3) “disrupting the corporate machinery.”

This may not be a script one can carry to Shoppers’ to have the pharmacist fill – but it’s something concrete to talk about (at least). Hedges himself hedges (seriously [smiley]) on carrying it out as can be seen in this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61ZjXsDKDHQ telling interview.

I wish I had met you people when I first fled back to Toronto from the tar sands in the spring of 2009. Everything might have been different. We didn’t meet. So it goes. And by the 20th when you get together to discuss Naomi’s book I will be gone.

If I were you (and I very sincerely do NOT mean to be condescending here) I would look to the obvious strengths I have seen among you (and nowhere else in this city) viz. compassion & competence (among others); and find if you can where these qualities might lead … in the way of ‘healing our broken selves and our broken communities’.

A start could be an in-depth analysis (from the perspectives of compassion & competence) of where the Toxic Zombies on Bay Street action recently got mired and sank without a trace (in a room where no one can hear what anyone else is saying).

Be well, David Wilson.

PS, two additional thoughts:
1) I began thinking about the Flood Bay Street failure here: http://comics-tirinhas.blogspot.ca/2014/10/hope.html#Hope-Flood-Bay-Street-Not
2) ee cummings came to mind:

i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars

as an antidote to too much Socialist perfectionism, and as an intro into THE central story of Lawrence Andrewes’ masterwork
[First posted to EastEndNoTar.Org.]