Friday, January 16, 2004

Mass uprisings slip through our fingers   On one of the last mornings before I was to leave Australia, I met up with a girl I had kind of grown up with. My family would always see the Crawfords at Christmas – the two girls of the house were around my age. I always wondered what it must have been to grow up surrounded by girls and a very strong female role model, and in turn perhaps they wondered what it was like to have three devilish younger brothers that could at any moment set fire to the garden. After getting lost a little on the windy day, I finally found Rebecca sitting waiting with a coffee in a Clovelly coffee shop. As I walked in she looked up and as she smiled I saw she was beautiful – like an Italian goddess literally radiating some sort of light. I felt a bit rueful at my rushed hung over state, but then I reasoned that the Crawfords had always been like that.   Seeing as we hadn’t seen each other for years we had a lot to catch up on (the mothers-grapevine had passed along the relevant details of our movements naturally, and I had to laugh when Rebecca said she was worried about what kind editing that didn’t involve.) We went through it all – boyfriends old new and potential, the family, whereabouts of errant friends, the baby boom, and what was on the horizon. We managed to get through this all even though I got worried I’d have to tackle the waitress to get any attention.   Having finished her Phd Rebecca told me she was ready to look forward to a new project. Off handedly she told me that she was thinking of writing a book. Before I could follow that up, she also mentioned that one another project involved doing a documentary following the lives of three Labour Party women as they ran for election in the next election. Rebecca has been involved in politics as long as I can remember.  We sat in the café and talked about where our experiences overlapped.   Specifically, what was on my mind was the early mass ‘No War’ demonstrations of 2003. I had not been in Australia for the huge demonstrations that took place, in which a reported 250 thousand people choked the heart of my birthplace. I had participated in the ones in the Netherlands. Almost as a follow on to these rallies I briefly joined a group calling themselves ‘American Voices Abroad’, which sprang up at a grass roots level carrying forward the momentum of the demonstrations. To me, and to many others, the global demonstrations were incredible – to date they are the largest demonstrations ever held in the world. In the US they were the largest demonstrations since the Vietnam war. This is significant in that people claim that Generation X – which is now hovering around the 25 to 35 year old range - is essentially an apathetic generation. Although one of the strongest things about the rallies was the multi generational participation, the dichotomy between the reality of the mass protests and the supposed lethargy of people my age is quite marked.   The protest of Feb 15 and March 22 in 2003 were significant events. In terms of ideas, the confluence of so many people allowed for the cross pollination of political agendas. Terms like ‘neo-liberal’, and ‘economic imperialism’ cross seminated with ideas as basic as war is wrong. Suddenly you had a multitude of grassroots agendas coming together to march under the ‘no war’ banners. A huge gathering presented people with a sense of solidarity, which was only reinforced when we went home, and watched the news coming in from around the world showing the huge demonstrations in major capital cities. The sense of empowerment was real.   Since that day, activist bodies like Greenpeace have asked themselves how to harness that energy, and that sense of mass peaceful action. When I talked to Rebecca about it, she said that the Labour Party had no idea how to connect to that body that took to the streets, and they weren’t asking themselves how to.   A major party like the Labour party in Australia doesn’t have to harness the power of a grass roots uprising to create social change. Rebecca explained to me that the labour party has a long history, with a detailed public policy, with which the party members are familiar.  As we talked  I learned that the inter party political positions (left center and right) of party members is actually based on their interpretation of that policy; what policies they’d give up and what policies they’d consider fundamental to labour operations.  Rebecca explained to me that no party could ever represent the true wishes of 20 million people, so government becomes a form of compromise.   What we have to do, said Rebecca, is justify to the people why we sacrificed one position in order to push another position through. That is the art of governing.   In contrast, I realized that Greenpeace is outside the structure of this form of governing, and acts as a pressure group upon the political framework Greenpeace doesn’t do solutions work; it acts as a catalyst for social change. The thing that is fundamental to what Greenpeace is all about, is non violent direct action. We use the media to leverage our actions to gather public attention – this is the pressure that we bring to bear on parties such as the Labour party.   Yet we share a common wish to harness the public to achieve social change.  It occurs to me that neither of us have any idea how to really get a grip on what happened in early 2003. 3:07:38 PM      comment []

Saturday, August 30, 2003

This summer, Dave Hill got a refreshing break from the run-of-the-mill spam that routinely invades his e-mail inbox. Instead of hawking mortgages, penis-enlargement pills or weight-loss products, a message arrived that seemed straight out of a science-fiction novel. The anonymous e-mail offered $5,000 to any vendor capable of promptly delivering a collection of far-fetched gadgets for conducting time travel. Among the mysterious devices sought by the message's author were an "Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built-in temporal displacement" and an "AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 induction motor." More > 2:01:17 PM      comment []

Monday, August 18, 2003

Here's a fantastic article from Brian Eno about US propaganda, population control and the neo con regime. "What occurs to me in reading their book is that the new American approach to social control is so much more sophisticated and pervasive that it really deserves a new name. It isn't just propaganda any more, it's 'prop-agenda '. It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. "   3:47:20 PM      comment []

Thursday, August 14, 2003

Emerging website strategies favor immediate engagement During the dot.com boom, when bright young things were scrambling to grab the six figure pay packets, the dream of those who stayed working with the web to push a social agenda lay with the idea of the promise of a connected world. The potential of mass human networks, controlled by at the grassroots seemed to promise freedom from the existing media monopoly. As the knowledge based society flowers in the new millennium, progressive civil society activist groups have dismissed a sense of disillusionment with new media. We know that some things do work, and that the medium can deliver the message. Collectively, we're trying to use the web to connect to people - to engage people, to activate people, to change people in order to change the world. We're actively building communities and seeking to find out exactly how to harness their potential. This is radically changing how we use the web. Over 30 years, Greenpeace has a history of public involvement with its campaigns. What started as a grassroots organization developed into a well known spearhead of the environmental movement. Greenpeace's public involvement occurs within the framework of a diversity of campaign strategies that can see our targets include not only the public, but specific groups such as politicians, commercial giants, unions, schools and institutions. For the new generations that accept incredibly rapid development, it would almost seem natural that of course we'd want to involve the public - to motivate them, to interact with them. I mean this is the age of public relations where company CEO's take ‘customer relationship management' more seriously than they take ‘wife at home relationship management'. But it's not necessarily the easiest thing for a non profit to do. Why? Business is based on and measured by the bottom line: profit. Non profits are not fundraising agencies - they are activist entities. Customer relationship management is the lynchpin of a fundraising approach, and when it comes down to whether a non profit will spend money on achieving campaign goals or fulfilling fundraising strategies, most non profits would put that money into achieving concrete goals. It all boils down to that although we desperately need to (and WANT to) work with the public to achieve change, public interaction is not inherently an easy thing for a non profit to do. If you think about what an activist organization is, and how it works, you'd be amazed at what is accomplished by a small group of committed people. When you think about the millions strong anti war protests that took place all over the world recently, you can see that the public is not stupid, and nor is it as complacent as some might wish. We need to harness that energy to make lasting worldwide change. So it's been a hard step to take; to move away from writing 12 pages in beautiful copy, with gorgeous pictures, about our ‘save the oceans' campaign, and shift towards a strategy based on making the public do something straight away. We're doing it. All the non profits are. The new phase is about engagement and participation. What that means depends on which non profit you care to look at. http://www.weblobbying.com/ is a powerful example of how email can effectively act as a lobbying tool. You'll note the absence of pretty pictures and the concentration on clean information architecture. This is the first page of their site - they resisted the urge to brand more heavily, in favor of allowing more opportunity for activism. http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/index.cfm is a site that also displays a minimal amount of the typical ‘pretty pages' features. Fascinatingly they are extending the reach of the message through supporting a community based radio, whose talks are made available online. Their front pages are a mixture of news and calls to interact. http://www.moveon.org One of the most successful activist sites on the web, MoveOn profiles calls to action on its front page. News takes a secondary relation in the third column. They can send faxes, stream real media and are currently managing a list of 20 000 supporters. http://www.amnesty.org Amnesty, at 40 years old, is one of the oldest and most well known non profit organizations in the world. Their front page reflects their development strategy - you can see that haven't yet entirely discarded the legacy of previous phases. They still list reports, press releases and their campaigns on the front page. In line with the general direction for non profits, all of their top articles link to strategies designed to engage and motivate the public. Greenpeace International has taken a two headed approach. We maintain almost a whole website http://act.greenpeace.org/ devoted to what we call cyberactivism, wherein people can send ecards, talk about issues in the forums, join issue groups… actually you should check it out. You can even join a cyber flotilla. The main page at http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/ talks about more news and features related work, harkening back to the previous phases of development that concentrated on dynamic news. These are just a few of the activism sites out there that are at the frontiers of non profit web development. The non profits moving towards public engagement, relationship management and online activism. All the views expressed herein are strictly personal. I have worked for five years as a staff member of Greenpeace, although I am no long employed in a full time capacity. 5:39:41 PM      comment [] Allah akbar!. We have arrived in beautiful Baghdad, and are settling in. I apologize to you a... [Tyler J. Wagner] 2:21:37 PM      comment [] May I have a penis please?. I’m back in Manaus now after three weeks on a river boat in the forest. We spent about a week... [If you tolerate this... - the Greenpeace weblog] 2:20:53 PM      comment [] A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity". Doesn't that just warm the cockles of your heart? Read more>> 2:18:06 PM      comment []

Sunday, August 10, 2003

On Saturday night we went on bike ride out into the night. There was an unearthly mist, and no one was about. We were off in search of a festival, at Ruigoord, an artists commune an hour out of Amsterdam. This is a scene from that festival For more pictures see 'Party Pictures' 5:11:22 PM      comment []

Saturday, August 09, 2003

Well, folks it’s the lead up to the WTO in September, the horses are at the gate and the starter has his whistle. Ladies and Gentlemen, you are looking the preliminary races that take place before the major ‘dash for cash’, the WTO meeting in September. The preliminaries are where the horses really showcase their form as they negotiate tricky obstacles like agricultural subsidies, medicines for poor countries and vital environmental initiatives like the Biosafety protocol. If the horses don’t manage to get through these areas with some sort of agreement, we may face a ‘gridlocked’ major race. Agriculture is at the heart of the current round of world trade talks and unless countries can agree on a plan for reducing domestic farm payments, export subsidies and agricultural tariffs, there is little hope for other areas of the talks. So it will be an interesting preliminary race  ladies and gentlemen. What an interesting line up we have here – horses from every country in the world. Naturally the eye is drawn to the two biggest horses I’ve ever seen, from the US and the EU. They tower above every other horse in the line up – look at the size! The speed at which they can pass trade resolutions must be breathtaking, the ‘profit uber alles’ blinkers are definitely on; their sheer bulk means that they must produce an enormous amount of horse shit. All the money here today is on these two stallions, which have been bought and paid for by corporate interests at home in their relative countries. Why compared to the sheer muscle of these super giants, the other horses, especially those from the South, are looking a wee bit like Shetland ponies. And what’s that, ah bless them, the WTO officials have decided to handicap all horses from developing nations with big rocks in their saddle bags. That’s exactly what we need; a level and democratic playing field. Ok, they are going into their stalls. No one wants to stand near that big US horse, I wonder why. The moment is tense. The WTO official raises his whistle. AND THEY ARE AWAY!!!   Well it’s an exciting start…. The first challenge is agricultural subsidies! The US has been providing subsidies to its own farmers, while insisting the rest of the world isn’t allowed to do that. This policy creates an excess of US agricultural produce, which is ‘dumped’ on foreign markets. Look at that massive horse – its dumping excess right now and by golly that’s a sight. The tiny horses from the South seem to be covered in the stuff. My, they do seem to be drowning, just as their own farmers are drowning under the weight of US maize, sold so cheaply in their own country that they can’t compete. And, good grief, the US horse is part cyborg!!! The dumping contains genetically engineered organisms! I can see a small horse struggling now. He doesn’t seem to like this genetically modified stuff, and who could blame him? He’s pulling away from the US lead and is pointing to the Biosafety protocol. Some superb riding from this plucky Southern horse. Two thirds of the countries that have ratified the Biosafety Protocol are developing countries, and they are incresingly seeing through the empty promises from the US and the GE industry that GMOs will save the world from hunger.   The rider seems to be pointing out that for many countries of the South, agriculture is a crucial export. He is pointing to previous promises from the US and the EU to address world poverty at the WTO to and move towards sustainable trade practices. I can make out that the gutsy jockey is mentioning that this is supposed to be a ‘development round’ of talks.   Well, the US is coming in from the outside. What a sight! They are followed by Argentina, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, New Zealand, and Peru. The US is NOT happy. There are no signs of budging on dropping the US domestic subsidies for farmers and textile producers, and it is pushing to get developing nations to accept GMO’s. The European Union certainly holds the moral high ground defending the rights of a large majority of its citizens as opposed to the US administration, which is using the WTO to defend narrow industry interests at the expense of the environment and the people's right to choose what they eat.   It’s a spectacle to see the US horse try to force open new markets using the rules of the WTO. Watch the small horse get squeezed to the railing. The US is using its might to retaliate against the little horse, and it reasons that if the Shetland won’t give in on this, they will suspend vital talks in other areas such as access to medicines. I can see them threatening trade sanctions. You can see the sweat from here ladies and gentlemen, as this form of retaliation is allowed within the rules of the WTO. The pressure to fall behind the US is being felt strongly here, and you can hear the crowd going mad. And watch the WTO officials run onto the track to hold back the crowd with police.   It’s a media maelstrom at the edges of the track, as the camera’s capture scene after scene of crowds screaming with emotion. This would be the civil society. We’re seeing some fantastic form from the horses in response. Audiences back home are being told that the trackside spectators are rock throwing radicals – it’s a fantastic diversion of attention away from the real issues by demonizing the protestors on the ground. As the horses round the first bend no body knows who the bad guys are anymore. The jockeys seem lost in a cloud of dust, which is in fact a frenzy of negotiations and trade offs.   But what do we see charging in from the other direction? It’s the other massive horse, the EU. The EU isn’t keen on GE and has elected not to allow genetically modified foods to enter its boundaries. The US horse has rallied to this challenger; the US has lodged a bill at the WTO headquarters on the basis that the EU position is illegal because it stops US access to the European market.   Just like the WTO, this preliminary race favors the rich nations, so it’s a neck and neck situation as the two biggest horses are in contention. But wait – the EU has offered a compromise. The European Union last month agreed to two new directives on biotechnology foods, which it said would open the way to lifting a de facto moratorium on biotechnology food imports by member countries.   One directive required that foods and animal feed be labelled if they contain at least 0.9 percent of GM ingredients; and the other required that GM foods' origin can be traced. The US horse has come up to the EU – its neck and neck – and by golly, did you see that? The US horse has kicked the EU. The United States said the new labelling and tracking rules made no difference – it’s a turn down ladies and gentlemen. You can see a hoof mark on the EU’s ass. And the civil society is going nuts – they  are creating a wave in the stadium, they aren’t pleased with any form of compromise on such a crucial issue.   Back to the action. As we’ve rounded the last corner, the experts are saying that if the countries can’t meet the challenge of the agricultural subsidies issue the big dash for cash, the WTO, will be gridlocked. This would be a major disappointment for the corporate industry interests back at home in the US. You can see the whites of the eyes of the horses and they are frothing at the mouth. Buts hold on ladies and gentlemen, people are rising out of their seats, the US has sent a proposal to the EU that they try to develop a common position on agricultural issues by mid-August that would be acceptable to the rest of the WTO membership. As they head down the home straight, we are told that talks will be ongoing. The stadium is going crazy – how will this preliminary stage end?   It’s been a fantastic race so far folks – we’ll be reporting live as the flurry of action builds in the final stretch, selling the future of the planet. The tiny horses from the South are lost somewhere down the track. Will the rumors from trackside that say the WTO is thinking of expanding their mandate into dog racing and all sorts of areas without bothering with democratic elections and transparent processes turn out to be true? Will new issues be brought to the track to be pulverized under the hooves of commercial interests of the developed Northern nations to the detriment of sustainable trade and environmental protection? Will the unfair practices of the WTO render UN resolutions such as the Biosafety protocol obsolete and  pursue a mandate of trade above all else?   I don’t know but I’ll be right here with all the action as the final charge of this alarming race heads towards the deadline of the WTO meeting in Cancun, September 10 – 14.   6:35:06 PM      comment []

Friday, August 08, 2003

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Mrs. Rosa Parks felt her feet were too tired for her to stand up for a white man who had boarded after her. The bus driver ordered her to stand up and give her seat to the white man, but she refused. She was arrested and taken to the courthouse. By Monday afternoon, 5000 non violent protestors had surrounded the courthouse, sparking the beginning of the civil rights movement in the USA, the progress of which was televised to watchful nation. Now almost 50 years later, the idea of non violent protest has sunk into the national consciousness, and along with the disempowerment of mass consumerism, we’ve gotten to the point where the viewing public has been growing indifferent.    Unlike the generation that watched the riots of Berkeley, and participated in demonstrating against Vietnam, my generation has watched George Bush launch preemptive strikes against a nation some of the poorest people in the world, with no justification, and no proof. Whereas something like Watergate could bring down a presidency 20 years ago, false evidence used to start an illegal war, the president’s connection to the Saudi government, and evidence of Saudi financial backing for terrorism isn’t enough to challenge the right wing authority of the current president.   You can see why we’re apathetic: we reason that if justice doesn’t apply to everyone, and the world’s richest people are exempt from its reach, there is no use fighting for a just system. And we’re told that the way to happiness is not a collective movement – individuals can be happy by buying it, and getting to the top. One of the weirdest signs of our times is that we’re selling this version to ourselves. Thirty something’s are gaining respectable jobs in marketing and if anything the stuff they are creating further wraps us in the lies that you can buy empowerment if you play nice with the system.   I passed a bus shelter yesterday here in Amsterdam and the picture on it was impressive. A big handsome black guy, called ‘50 Cent’, looking ripped and mean, stood in front of a glass shattered by a bullet. The copy line, the line of his upcoming tour here, is ‘Get rich or die trying’. He’s just one year younger than I am. What this guy wants to do is get rich because that will make him powerful enough to buy whatever happiness he wants. When I looked him up on the net, his blurb says “He’s a man of the streets, intimately familiar with its codes and its violence, but still, 50, an incredibly intelligent and deliberate man, holds himself with a regal air as if above the pettiness which surrounds him.” His trajectory doesn’t seem to be tied to any thoughts of bringing people with him either, maybe he’s ‘above that’ – above changing the system so his people from Queens could have a better life?   I don’t have anything against this guy – he’s just an example for me that my generation measure personal power in what you can buy. And there’s some truth to that, but isn’t a sustainable or fair system.   I wondered what could wake us up from the apathy. I really did. After 9/11 the world reeled in shock. Afterwards came the grief and the anger. We all felt that. A collective feeling swept the world. The immediate feeling was horror. And that was the beginning of it. We watched as the US reacted. Even those of us that thought that retaliation *might* have been justifiable in that it routed the Taliban, even those people began to question when the second phase of the war machine rolled out into Iraq. Dismissing the posturing of Dubya, people began to say it was all about the oil. Having grown up with the media, we have become adept at reading between the propaganda, and we didn’t like what we were seeing.   So we went to the streets. By some counts 30 million people took to the streets the world over. For many people my age, this was the first protest they’d ever been on. For some of us it was old hat. I was there on Feb15 and March 22, my fingers freezing as I shot image after image of the variety of people, classes, and nationalities.   Since then I have seen and heard murmurs of a global civil awareness that just wasn’t there before. People really are worried about what the government of the one superpower is up to, and those feelings are rippling down through the dominant world culture. I’m not claiming that this is overt, and likely to shake a generation away from its apathy and addiction to consumerism. But I do feel that something new is happening, something is stirring, something global and critically aware that things are not progressing as they should. There is a risk that this energy, created by the global unified No War demonstrations, will dissipate, it's true, but the challenge is not to let it go. As long as people are aware that things aren’t right, and that possibly millions of other people think the same way, I think we have a chance.       4:19:18 PM      comment []

© Copyright 2004 Danielle Hickie . Last update: 1/16/2004; 3:07:43 PM .