As movements around the planet mobilize to counter the effects of climate destabilization on their communities, cultures, and ecosystems, a framing battle of global significance is underway.

In the climate fight, as with so many other struggles, the heart of the framing battle is naming the problem, since how we define the problem determines what solutions are possible. To varying degrees, governments and multinational corporations around the world have acknowledged the crisis and they claim they are working to address it. However, they present the climate crisis through a reductionist lens as merely a problem of too much carbon in the atmosphere while ignoring the underlying issues of justice, equity, and humanity’s relationship with the Earth. This framing allows exploitation of the crisis to justify escalating the very policies and practices that have pushed the planet to the brink. Essentially the world’s richest countries and companies are co-opting environmental rhetoric to put a PR friendly “green” face on the same old politics of unlimited economic growth, resource thefts and corporate exploitation.

Meanwhile the ‘official’ climate movement has been dominated by a loyal opposition of largely northern, policy, and access-oriented NGOs who, although (mostly) well intentioned, have failed to reframe the debate or address the root causes of the crisis. But increasingly as more global movements begin to unite under the banner of climate justice, there is a different story to tell. The terms of the debate are being reframed from seeing the climate crisis as an isolated issue, to understanding the disruption of the climate as merely the most visible symptom of a much larger problem: our global system of growth-addicted, fossil fuel-driven, corporate capitalism that is undermining all the life support systems of the planet.

When this deeper framing of the problem is accepted it becomes clear that we will never re-stabilize the climate without addressing the roots of the problem. This means acknowledging the Global North’s historic responsibility for the problem (“climate debt”) as the first step towards fundamental shifts to our economy, political systems, and cultural assumptions. This is why one of the over-arching and unifying messages coming out of global movements fighting for a just response to the climate crisis is “system change NOT climate change”.

However, as people’s movements around the world ramp up their organizing in the lead up to the next round of United Nations negotiations in Cancun there are a number of dangerous frames––control myths––that must be challenged.

Control Myth #1 Only The Market Can Save Us!

In this case a global carbon market that effectively privatizes the atmosphere, justifies massive land grabs and further commodification of forests, soils, and grasslands. Two hundred years of ideology have bestowed the “invisible hand” of the market with debate-shaping qualities of alleged efficiency, fairness and power. This is a familiar narrative to many of our movements fighting privatization and displacement but we still need better, shared strategies to reframe the myth of the market.

Control Myth #2 Technology Will Save Us!

Hand in hand with the story of the all-powerful market is the obsession with techno-fixes. Techno-fixes masquerade as solutions but just distract us from making the fundamental changes that are needed. The assumption that some benign “experts” will provide new, innovative technology to solve the problem justifies continuing unsustainable policies while removing people’s agency from the frame. More and more climate techno-fixes are being proposed: from overt lies like “clean coal” and “climate ready” genetically engineered crops to terrifyingly disruptive, untested new technologies like synthetic biology and geoengineering.[i] Beware!

Control Myth #3 Climate Is Too Big An Issue: Only Governments Can Save Us!

The debate has been overly focused on global and national policy while social movements and community-based responses are left out of the frame. Many mainstream environmentalists have even argued that any global emission reduction agreement (regardless of how weak or unfair) is better than no deal. Variations of this narrative have been used (particularly by the U.S.) to evade historic responsibility and blame China, India and other developing economies for blocking an international deal. Certainly a global agreement is important, but the reality of the scale of the climate crisis is that we need transformative action in all sectors of society.

Given the wide-ranging implications of the debate, climate is an essential arena for our movements to develop more holistic narratives and shared frames that mutually reinforce efforts across different sectors and struggles. At the heart of this framing battle is the emerging climate justice movement led by frontline impacted communities, indigenous movements and environmental justice organizers.

Climate justice framing is challenging the control myths above (and many more) by refocusing the issue on the core problems of fossil fuel addiction, the ongoing legacy of historic inequities and the need for systemic change. At the center of the evolving narrative is the role of community-based solutions in stewarding a just transition towards a society that is both sustainable and just. As different movements like migrants rights, reproductive justice and organized labor articulate the connections between their struggles and the climate crisis there are many opportunities to experiment with applying and broadening climate justice framing.

With the historic adoption of the Cochabamba People’s Agreement on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April there is now a powerful new narrative emerging that unites ecology, justice and social movement action. This platform offers a potent counterpoint to the corporate driven, false solutions of the United Nations process. Most importantly it offers an invitation to organizers everywhere to connect their issues with this multi-faceted struggle to transform our world. In the words of one of the key slogans uniting movements in the lead up to the COP-16 meeting and beyond: “grassroots organizing cools the planet!”

[i] For a good summary of “false solutions” to the climate crisis check out Rising Tide North America’s Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: False Solutions to Climate Change. Other resources for tracking the rebranding of failed GMO seeds as “climate ready” can be found by following the ongoing work of Food First!/Institute for Food and Development Policy and the Organic Consumers Association. To learn more about the latest developments in the emerging fields of synthetic biology and geoengineering check out two recent reports by global technology watchdog ETC Group Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering (Oct 2010) and The New Biomassters: Synthetic Biology and the Next Assault on Biodiversity and Livelihoods (Nov 2010) both of which are available at www.etcgroup.org. For updates on the ongoing resistance to geoengineering check out the international H.O.M.E. campaign.

Reflections on Cochabamba, Geoengineering, and Framing the Climate Crisis on the Road to Cancun…

The news this week from the climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany suggests that the world is on track for a catastrophic 4-degree increase in temperatures by 2100. (Four degrees Celsius in temperature rise renders our planet essentially unrecognizable and unlivable.) This is a frightening forecast for what’s in store on the road to COP 16, the next round of international climate negotiations slated for December 2010 in Cancun, Mexico.

But there is another road to Cancun, made by social movements who attended the historic Cochabamba Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April. The Cochabamba conference was convened by Bolivian President Evo Morales in the wake of the failure of the Copenhagen talks and the regressive agenda laid out by the United States and their allies in the so-called ‘Copenhagen Accord.’ (For my take on Copenhagen see the April/May issue of Left Turn Magazine). Cochabamba was an attempt to stake out another pole in the international climate discourse, led by Southern governments and social movements, that pins the responsibility for climate change directly on the over-consumptive northern countries and transnational corporations, and asserts the rights of Mother Earth.

From Copenhagen to Cochabamba

At the invitation of the Bolivia UN Mission in New York, I had the great honor of attending historic Cochabamba meeting, and accompanied the delegation of Grassroots Global Justice and the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN).

SmartMeme’s main piece of work at Cochabamba was to support IEN’s organizing around forest-offset schemes known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). Carbon offset schemes like REDD are opposed by peasant movements and Indigenous Peoples around the world on the grounds that these programs are designed to create a multi-billion dollar market for transnational corporations, while displacing forest-dependent communities and making no meaningful impact on slowing climate change. (For a great introduction to forest offset impacts in Brazil, see the new 20-minute film from Frontline, “The Carbon Hunters.”)

The REDD struggle is a critical front of the global Indigenous Peoples human rights struggle – this is ultimately a multi-billion dollar scheme to move Indigenous Peoples out of their traditional homelands and lease those forests to polluting industry to enable them to continue to pollute. At the heart, this is the struggle against the commodification of nature, and a struggle to assert that trees, air, and people’s homes and life ways cannot be traded in a marketplace to offset pollution.

Unlike Copenhagen, the Cochabamba conference elevated these kinds of concerns about the human rights impacts of both climate change and climate policy, and proposed strong negotiating positions (50% emission reduction under the Kyoto Protocol in the upcoming Cancun COP-16 talks, and targeting 1 – 1.5 degrees C of warming).

The good news is that the Cochabamba conference rejected REDDs and “market mechanisms that violate the rights of Indigenous Peoples, States, and Nature.” The conference adopted a Peoples’ Accord on the Rights of Mother Earth with strident, strong positions on the necessary actions to safeguard the future and build a just transition off of fossil fuels.

The bad news is Bonn, and that the United States has essentially committed to do nothing to fundamentally address the climate crisis in terms of transitioning off of fossil fuels. As we enter this next round of climate negotiations at COP 16 with the sunset on this edition of the Kyoto Protocol looming in 2012, now is the time for the climate justice movement to be rethinking our framing. We are losing critical ground while extreme proposals like geoengineering (i.e. planetary engineering) are gaining support using the narrative of government inaction and a quick fix.

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The Cochabamba conference was titled, “The World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth,” and this framing – The Rights of Mother Earth – was the most enticing and provocative aspect of this historic meeting for smartMeme. Indigenous Peoples and social movements gathered together under this banner, combining a rights-based frame with the affirmation of our sacred relationship with the planet, and the pan-Indigenous creed of respect for Mother Earth (or “Pachamama” in much of the Andes).

As we all know, global warming is happening at an alarming rate, and changes are inevitable. Weather patterns are changing, and countless ecosystems and communities are impacted directly – from the Arctic to Africa to the Amazon. Dramatic, comprehensive, collective action must be taken…the fight now is about What kind of action? Who decides? Who profits? And who pays?

From a framing perspective, how define the problem is inseparable from how we imagine the solution. As my colleague and design studio-mate Kenneth Bailey says, in a design process “description embeds prescription.” The way we cognitively pattern the problem determines what solutions are possible – and in the climate justice fight, this is at the heart of the battle for the story.

The Carbon Fundamentalist Narrative

To borrow a meme from my colleague (and smartMeme board member) Gopal Dayenenni at Movement Generation, the pervasive mindset in climate politics is steeped in “carbon fundamentalist” narrative. This story insists that the problem we are facing is merely a surplus of atmospheric carbon, and the way to deal with it is to effectively manage the amount of carbon being omitted, ideally by reduction, but if that proves politically infeasible, then through offsets. This problem-solution-action frame has given rise to the international carbon market – and the carbon-offset-industrial-complex. It also leads to obsession with charts, bright lines, and light bulbs, and the murky logic of techno-fix proposals that will magically save us without ever having to lift a finger to phase out fossil fuels.

An underlying assumption of this narrative is that carbon emissions are disconnected from place. This story says “We are in a global crisis, so pollution from a coal plant in Kentucky is the same as anywhere else, and carbon-eating trees in Brazil can make up for it.”

While the message that we have a surplus of carbon is not untrue, it is hardly meaningful for people, which limits its effectiveness on a narrative level. The carbon fundamentalist narrative is also inherently problematic as it focuses on emissions in the abstract, disconnected from the eco-systems, neighborhoods and nations where fossil fuels are mined and burned (most often poor communities and communities of color), and where offset projects displace people and disrupt communities (most often in the rural global South).

It also is carbon-blind – seeing all carbon as the same, weather it comes from Exxon-Mobil or a Brazilian farmer’s diesel tractor – which leads to policy solutions that are ahistorical and unjust, and do not address the roots of the problem: the fossil fuel industry. If we focus exclusively on carbon, we lose the focus on real places and real people, and on the real culprits.

This narrative is very dangerous, and is getting more so. As the international climate negotiations falter, and with four-degrees in the sightlines of Bonn, false-solutions and geoengineering mega-projects are gaining more and more traction.

The Urgency Frame & Geoengineering

The carbon-fundamentalist narrative has increasingly co-opted the “urgency frame.” As the crisis escalates and the window for meaningful action is closing, environmentalists and others are ringing the alarm bells ever louder. Campaigns like “TckTckTck” emphasize that time is running out, and frame around the lack of time and the severity of the crisis.

And there is no doubt, the situation is urgent. It is very urgent, especially in Alaska Native territories, in Sub-Saharan Africa, Tuvalu, or anywhere on the Gulf Coast. But what is of concern to me is that the urgency frame does nothing to explain the roots of the problem and is thus easily co-opted by any big, dramatic so-called “solution,” regardless if it is just, or even if it is a good idea.

The carbon fundamentalist narrative coupled with the urgency frame actually enables and promotes proposals like geoengineering, proposals that are gaining a lot of traction from philanthropists, venture-capitalists, and governments in the lead up to Cancun.

Now, what do we mean by “geoengineering”? Our friends at the ETC Group explain in their 2009 report “Retooling the Planet”:

Geoengineering is the intentional, large-scale intervention in the Earth’s oceans, soils and/or atmosphere, especially with the aim of combating climate change. Geoengineering can refer to a wide range of schemes, including: blasting sulfate particles into the stratosphere to reflect the sun’s rays; dumping iron particles in the oceans to nurture CO2 -absorbing plankton; firing silver iodide into clouds to produce rain; genetically-engineering crops so their foliage can better reflect sunlight.

University of Calgary physicist and geoengineering advocate, David Keith, describes geoengineering as “an expedient solution that uses additional technology to counteract unwanted effects without eliminating their root cause.” In other words, geoengineering uses new technologies to try to rectify the problems created by the use of old technologies, a classic techno-fix.

The Geoengineers in Bolivia and Beyond

In addition to 17,000 people from social movements across the world, a bold trio of geoengineering proponents from a company called CloudWorld.co.uk also attended the Cochabamba conference, hoping to gain support for their plan to release sulfates into the atmosphere above the Arctic. We had a heated conversation about how to best address the climate crisis.

Their logic was straightforward, and chillingly compelling:

The climate crisis is reaching a point-of-no return.

We must save the Arctic, or before warming sets off an irreversible feedback loop that will push the planet over the edge.

The only way to save the Arctic, and the world, is to shield the ice from the sun.

The way to do that is to mimic a volcano, clouding the atmosphere to shade the ice.

At this point, geoengineering has to be part of the program in order to avert humanitarian catastrophe.

Their story fits right into the urgency frame, is mired in the carbon fundamentalist narrative, and is nestled in the underlying assumptions of the dominant culture:

• Earth is a machine,
• The hubris that humans can fix the machine, and
• No one else will act and so a smart (white) man must go rogue and save the world (a la a Hollywood movie.)

But this is a disaster movie.

And the scary thing is – it’s not too far from reality. The ETC group reports that In March 2010, 175 geoengineers met at Asilomar California to establish “voluntary guidelines” for real world geoengineering experiments. The meeting was convened by a body associated with a private geoenginering company called Climos Inc who aims to carry out ocean fertilization trials. Other companies and groups in attendance made it clear that they also hoped to see real-world field trials in the near future.

And the field trials are happening. On May 8^th, the Times of London revealed that a company called Silver Lining – backed by the world’s richest man Bill Gates – would be conducting field trials for their “cloud bleaching” project in the Pacific Ocean.

The Times story begins:

“The first trials of controversial sunshielding technology are being planned after the United Nations failed to secure agreement on cutting greenhouse gases.”

That framing is revealing of the narrative equation that is starting to define the climate landscape: government inaction + urgency = geoengineering.

Hands Off Mother Earth!

Fortunately there weren’t too many takers for geoegineering in Cochabamba. I attended a fantastic side event by the ETC Group, which launched their new campaign called Hands Off Mother Earth (HOME). This new campaign calls on the UN for a worldwide ban on geoengineering, and reframes away from carbon, and towards the larger living system of Mother Earth, on which we all depend.

The Hands Off Mother Earth campaign features an interactive website where individuals can ‘lend a hand’ to the campaign, leaving messages and uploading images of themselves. The site features a public portrait gallery of individuals with open palms calling a halt to geoengineering.

“With rich governments and industrial interests jockeying for open-air geoengineering tests it is time to draw a line that should not be crossed.” affirmed Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group, Mexico. “Mother Earth is our common home whose integrity should never be violated by geoengineering experimentation - it should never be a laboratory for these risky and unjust schemes.”

HOME is already achieving success! Due to the great work by ETC and their allies, a proposal for a geoengineering moratorium will go to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity at its next meeting in Nagoya, Japan this October.

I hope you will join me and smartMeme in this campaign by adding your hand to the photo-gallery, and lending your support to grassroots movements for climate justice that are addressing the root causes of climate change and building solutions from the ground up.

From Broken Machine to Mother Earth

If we are to succeed in debunking and halting dangerous false-solutions like REDDs and stop geoengineering, we must also fundamentally shift the framing of the climate crisis – away from the idea that the planet is an overheating machine, and towards the assertion that we are all interdependent on the living systems of Mother Earth.

The Cochabamba conference has helped the world to hear this message, but while the relationship with “Mother Earth” has always been central for Indigenous Peoples, can the “Mother Earth” meme reach the hearts and minds of the rest of the U.S. public? Perhaps with 50+ days of the tragic BP oil spill, consciousness is shifting – but we’ve got a long road beyond Cancun to make the necessary fundamental changes in the fossil fuel economy and the US culture of cheap oil dependence.

As COP 16 approaches, we must continue to resist carbon-fundamentalism and offer a new narrative of Climate Justice that can inspire transformative social change and protect the rights of Mother Earth, while blowing open the assumption – especially here in the US — that there will be a quick techno-fix that can save our planet.

The challenge for Climate Justice leaders now is to tell a better story of ecological justice and the real solutions that can transition us off fossil fuels for good. From Cochabamba to Cancun and beyond, we must change the story from techno-fix to fundamental change, and build the peoples’ movement for Mother Earth.

Two new Podcasts For your Listening Enjoyment…

Click to LISTEN: Part One :

Moderator: Laine Romero-Alston, Solidago Foundation; with Makani Themba-Nixon, Praxis Project; Doyle Canning, smartMeme; and Kathleen Pequeño, McKenzie River Gathering Foundation.

Click to LISTEN: Part Two :

Moderator: Helen Brunner, Quixote Foundation and Media Democracy Fund
 
Panel; with Karlos Guana Schmeider, Center for Media Justice; Patrick Reinsborough, smartMeme; Damekia Morgan, Community Media Organizing Project and Friends and Families of Louisana’s Incarcerated Children.

(Special thanks to Karlos @ the Center for Media Justice for posting this audio!)

This tele-strategy session series was organized by the Progressive Communicators Network, and brings together grassroots communications practitioners with a commitment to justice issues and funders who support justice and social movement efforts for a rare opportunity to think together about opportunities and imperatives to strengthen communications as a tool for change that will substantively impact U.S. culture, consciousness, and political policies.

This is a time of unprecedented change for grassroots communications practitioners. Factors such as the current economic crisis, rampant media consolidation, emerging new media technology and shift in administration bring unique and urgent challenges and opportunities. Faced with this changing communications landscape, grassroots justice organizations must make smart decisions about how to effectively communicate to advance their program and political work, often with fewer resources and confronted with changes in how media is made and news is communicated.
 
These times demand whole new approaches to change making and communication. It’s no longer enough to win individual victories, we must fundamentally shift our social, cultural and political ecology.

The Center for Media Justice, for example, has put out a call for a comprehensive and transformative approach to justice communications: Truly effective and sustainable movements for racial and economic justice must have the capacity, strategy, and leadership to advance a shared worldview and agenda, watchdog power, elevate strategic stories to a wider audience, increase engaged popular governance, and influence policy to change social conditions.They outline a powerful strategy that tackles race head on, brings the voices of the disenfranchised to the center, transforms public narratives, increases media access, and ultimately changes public consciousness and policy.

Join us to hear about these cutting edge strategies and more communications realities from across the country. We invite you to be part of creating the strategy and infrastructure that will boldly work to transform communications, change work, and the political realities of the 21st century.

I was so pleased to attend the 2009 national gathering of the Progressive Communicators Network (PCN), held in Chicago at the end of May. The conversations were rich, the connections were deep, and the insights were exquisite. What an amazing network!

Along with the great discussions (and party!), one of the highlights for me was the workshop on the story-based strategy model. We hadn’t done anything quite like this before. Patrick and I, with support from Anasa Troutman of the Movement Strategy Center, designed this session for this special group of skilled practitioners. It was such a wonderful challenge, and I felt myself growing into the moment. I was so humbled and honored to be in the space and share some of our “edge thinking.” And now you we can share it with you too!

Thanks to Nell Greenberg from Rainforest Action Network (who I recruited on-the-fly to shoot this low-fi video on our Flip Cam), the world can watch the workshop on smartmeme.blip.tv! Its about 45 minutes, and we go into some detail about the strategy model presented in RE:Imagining Change with examples to show each stage in the process….enjoy!

*You can download the slideshow from this presentation (its higher res than this video) at slideshare.net/smartmeme

* You can download the Story-based Strategy Campagin Model “Chart” handout HERE.

Pics from the workshop….

What PCN is all about:

PCN exists to strengthen and amplify the power, voices, and vision of grassroots movements that are working for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. Network members use communication strategy, framing and messaging, and media tools to: 1) enhance the influence of social change movements on public policy and opinion; and 2) realize a world without poverty, racism, and other forms of oppression. The Network is a project of Spirit in Action, a movement-building support organization located in western Massachusetts.

A thousand THANK YOUs to the Progressive Communicators Network for bringing this amazing group together!

MAKE A DONATION TO PCN TODAY!

I always thought that science museums were supposed to be educational, but where is the line between educating, and promoting a risky new technology?

Welcome to NanoDays!

According to its organizers the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network, NanoDays is “a nationwide celebration of nanoscale science and technology” that just last week happened at over 200 museums and other educational institutions around the United States. SmartMeme has tracked the issue of nanoscale technologies for several years and worked with a number of environmental and social justice groups to ignite popular debate about this rapidly growing industry. So I thought I’d do a little cultural reconnaissance and check out the now annual NanoDays at my local children’s science museum San Francisco’s famous Exploratorium.

Our kids are learning about nanotechnology but how much do the rest of us know? Most media coverage of emerging technology is either business press about investment possibilities or an uncritical, “gee-whiz isn’t this neat?” story. The political, social, ecological and ethical implications of powerful new technologies like nanotech are largely unaddressed in the mainstream media.

Nano: a Quick Primer

Nanoscale refers to the mysterious world of atoms and molecules that are smaller than 100 nanometers. A nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter (for reference sake a human hair is about 80,000 nanometer wide and the head of a pin is comparatively gigantic at 1 million nanometers across) so we’re talking about things that are almost unimaginably small.

However, nanoscale technology is not just about making things really small. Its more about creating a different paradigm where our reality of Newtonian mechanics is replaced with the unexpected dynamics of quantum mechanics. Thus, nanoscale materials are fundamentally different than the same materials in larger scales and have different properties such as different colors, conductivity, strength or magnetism.

This has made nanoscale materials very exciting to industrialists but it also means that nanomaterials present unique risks to human health and the environment. Since they are so small, the human (or animal) organism’s natural defenses are largely useless in preventing potential toxic nanoparticles from entering our bodies. The fact is that there is no significant testing, regulation or even labeling currently required of nanomaterials, even though they are in hundreds of everyday consumer products such as sunscreen, make up, clothing and computers. The Woodrow Wilson Center’s Nanotechnology Project has compiled a Consumer Product’s Inventory with over 800 consumer products containing nanoscale materials.
But beyond health and safety concerns, nanoscale technologies represent incredible new power to take apart and reconstruct nature at the molecular level. The critical questions are, “How will this power be used? By who? And to do what?”

The “Techno-Fix” Myth

Some of the world’s largest corporations (DuPont, Microsoft, major defense contractors, etc.), governments and militaries are already heavily investing in nanoscale technologies that have the potential to unleash massive changes in medicine, manufacturing, and energy production-as well as warfare, surveillance and social control. All of this is happening without any broader public discussion or democratic decision making.

Based on what I experienced at NanoDays, I don’t expect much critical discussion to emerge from the nation’s science museums. I picked up “Small Talk” a kids activity pamphlet created by PBS’s Dragonfly TV that promises “BIG nanofun.” It encourages you to make you’re own buckeyball (a well known nanoparticle) but fails to mention that studies have found them to cause brain damage to fish, kill water fleas and to be toxic to human liver cells.

I saw enthusiastic exhibits on how nanotechnology give us stain free pants and LED screens, but no mention of the extensive research into military applications. The most dramatic evangelism came at the special feature presentation on how nanotechnology and energy. According to NanoDays, it turns out that nanotechnology will provide the solution to all of our energy and global warming problems!

Does the hype sound familiar? Kind of like nuclear power or genetically engineered crops? To many people this is a familiar story. The common denominator is the larger TECHNO-FIX narrative that assumes that technological developments are inherently “neutral,” always beneficial and can magically solve our most pressing social and environmental problems. One of the most dangerous aspects of this pervasive cultural narrative is that is masks the reality that technological developments are shaped by social forces and are inevitably political. The direction of technological developments are not pre-ordained. Rather, they are shaped by the specific perspectives and agendas of those people and institutions driving them. We should always ask who is funding any new technology; Who will own and control it? Who will benefit from its use and who will lose? What unexpected (or under-publicized) consequences might it have?

Since profit-driven multinational corporations and the military are the main institutions driving technological development, from a social justice perspective, I believe its essential to look critically at new technologies.

The techno-fix narrative draws many of its operating assumptions from the ideology that humanity is separate from the natural world, and that we can and should dominate and manipulate nature to fufill human desires. This ideology is at odds with the wisdom of countless cultures, religious teachings (and increasingly, modern science) that point to the fundamental interconnectedness of all life. Likewise, its good to remember our humility when we’re assessing the degree to which modern science understands the incredible complexities of the life sustaining systems of our planet. After all, isn’t it blind faith in so-called “technological progress” and arrogant assumptions about humanity’s ability to remake the natural world that helped created the ecological crisis in the first place?

As Albert Einstein famously said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This is not to say that technology may not offer some important solutions. Nanotechnology, for instance, could have useful applications in creating a new generation of solar panels, more efficient electrical transmission, and who knows what else. But we can’t let hype or hysteria rush us into ignoring either the short term risks or long term implications of nanoscale technologies. That is why many environmental and social justice organizations, as well as governments-and even some multinational corporations-are promoting the Preacautionary Principle as a framework for addressing the questions raised by new technologies. Put simply, precautionary approaches remind us that it’s much better to have the foresight to prevent a disaster than to try to clean it up after its too late.

Techno-Fix Memes = Double Danger in the Climate Crisis

Perhaps the biggest battleground for challenging the techno-fix narrative is the debate around how to solve global warming. The sweeping actions that are needed to transition our society off fossil fuels and re-stabilize the atmosphere pose a challenge to powerful, profitable interests like oil and coal. They are increasingly dangling the carrot of easy techno-fixes to distract and derail proposals that would actually challenge the status quo.

From the propaganda on how carbon capture and sequestration technology will make coal “clean,” to Agribiz corporations promoting so-called “biofuels” as a way to keep us in our cars. Obama’s science advisor John Holdren (pictured at the left) is talking about geoengineering the planet by shooting sulphate nanoparticles into the atmosphere in order to reflect some of the sun’s light. (Um, scary…!) See Corporate Watch’s new Techno-fixes report for a more thorough analysis of various proposed techo-fixes for the climate crisis.)

The stakes are high and our movements to stop global warming have to also innoculate the public against the techno-fix narrative. Sophisticated PR and big marketing budgets are already selling the stories of techno-fix that require little sacrifice or transition. These memes could co-opt the growing cultural momentum to address the climate crisis into dead ends and false solutions. Not only could we lose valuable time to address the crisis, but these technologies could backfire. In the sheeps clothing of stopping climate change, untested, powerful new technologies deployed on a wide scale could potentially create major new threats to our environment, human health and the democratic process.

We need better story-based strategies that can frame the debate and direct collective action towards addressing the root causes of our climate crisis: rampant consumerism, alienation from nature, fossil fuel addiction, a profit-driven globalized economy and the outdated story of unlimited economic growth.

Sure some technological advances may play a role in helping solve our problems. But only if they don’t distract us from the real work: shifting our culture, economy and political system from trying to dominate and re-engineer nature, to operating in balance with the planet’s natural systems.

Let’s try teaching that to our kids at the science museums.

Further Resources on Social, Ecological and Ethical Implications of Nanotechnology from some of the groups that smartMeme has worked with on the issue:

International Center for Technology Assessment’s NanoAction Project
International civil society technology watchdog The ETC Group
Friends of the Earth USA and Friends of the Earth Australia

Also check out a great overview article of different technology contraversies and battle grounds that ETC Group’s Jim Thomas wrote for the Ecologist magazine

Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy Stephen Duncombe, New Press, 2006

Reviewed by Jen Angel

Stephen Duncombe’s compelling book, Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, analyzes the ways in which political groups engage the public and communicate their messages.

Duncombe is both an activist and a scholar, currently teaching the history and politics of media and culture at New York University. He has authored several books, including Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (1997), and edited the Cultural Resistance Reader (2002). A veteran global justice organizer, Duncombe co-founded the Lower East Side Collective and was one of the main organizers for the New York City chapter of the international direct action group Reclaim the Streets. Throughout Dream, Duncombe uses “we” to talk in an inclusive way about activism on the Left, coming across with sincerity as someone who is directly engaged in this work.

Duncombe’s central thesis is that we live in an age of “manufactured consent” (a term first coined by Walter Lippmann), where spectacles that appeal to our needs and desires win our hearts and minds. As progressives, we’ve failed to learn how to “manufacture dissent” because we think that it can only be done in a way that is manipulative and exploitative, in the style of Madison Avenue advertising firms. Duncombe, arguing that an ethical spectacle is not only possible but necessary, sets out parameters for spectacles that are neither manipulative nor exploitative

Duncombe writes, “What is spectacle? By default most people think of throwing Christians to the lions, parading missiles through Red Square, or maybe the Ice Capades. But spectacle is something more. It is a way of making an argument. Not through appeals to reason, rationality, and self-evident truth, but instead through story and myth, fears and desire, imagination and fantasy. It realizes what reality cannot represent. It is the animation of an abstraction, a transformation from ideal to expression. “Spectacle is a dream on display” (30). As an example, Duncombe cites George W. Bush’s arrival on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in a fighter jet to deliver his “Mission Accomplished” speech (28).

Duncombe sets the stage with astute observations about the failure of the Left to dominate political discourse in the US. He argues that American politics on the Left is based in empiricism – truth. As progressives, we feel that if we just tell the truth or expose the facts, people will be convinced and join our cause. This, however, is not enough, and anyone who sticks with this will, Duncombe warns, “be doomed to insignificance” (6). Instead of just teaching people how to critique messages, we need to create our own powerful messages.

What’s missing, he asserts, is a politics that embraces dreams and desires, the vernacular of our time (9). If we want our ideas to lead, we need to speak a language that recognizes these dreams and desires, and that means using spectacle, or simply making our arguments through stories, associations, and images. We need to admit that people are emotional and passionate, not simply rational.

Duncombe goes on to examine things that are wildly popular in American culture, like Las Vegas, celebrity culture, and video games. From these examples, he deduces several basic needs or desires that are not being met elsewhere in our lives. Take the video game Grand Theft Auto, for example. On the surface, the game is violent and has no redeeming social value. It’s a game where the player is encouraged to steal and kill, where the main character is a poor, black gangbanger. In all of its iterations, Grand Theft Auto has sold more than 21 million copies since 2001, earning $924 million in revenue (53). Duncombe spends a chapter dissecting the game, first by making analogies to outlaws who are popular and revered in Western culture such as Robin Hood, Butch Cassidy, and even Tony Soprano (50), and then by analyzing the base desires the game addresses, asserting that these are what really make the game wildly popular: the desire to rebel (though that rebellion is through crime); the desire to identify with what we are not – embracing difference – where identification with “the other” in a game like Grand Theft Auto is a pleasure, not a chore; the desire for autonomy and freedom of choice – Grand Theft Auto is played out in a “noninstantial, open-ended, well-realized world”; the play matters – how you play the game matters as much as getting to the finish line.

GTA is popular because the needs and desires it meets are not being fulfilled elsewhere in people’s lives. This leads us to the basic question that Duncome poses: what dreams or desires do things in popular culture fulfill, and how can those needs be otherwise met? (105).

If you look at how we ask individuals to participate in politics on a mass scale, it usually involves signing a petition, giving money, or sitting through a boring meeting. No wonder masses of people aren’t flocking to our causes. We have failed to set up structures that facilitate true engagement and participation. Though there are great examples of true engagement, such as Reclaim the Streets, Critical Mass, and large-scale direct actions, by and large the public as a whole is not engaged or asked to participate by activists. Groups that embrace participatory democracy while increasing in size and number are still the minority outside of dedicated activist spheres. Politics, in a mainstream sense, has been moved into the realm of professional politics, with individuals asked to participate just by voting. Of course people feel alienated and disengaged. What more do we offer them? Rallies? Duncombe insists that we need to model the world we want in our activities, and long boring rallies are not part of the world we want (67). He puts that claim into perspective by citing contemporary groups that truly engage the public, such as the Reclaim the Streets movement or Act UP, and by contrasting them with groups that do not engage the public, like the Sierra Club or the Democratic Party.

What is important is how we “do” politics. Duncombe cautions that there is danger in focusing on the means as much as the ends, considering that this could lead to valuing means more than ends: “In her study of the antinuke movement of the 1980s, social movement scholar Barbara Epstein tells the story of one small protest group that blockaded an isolated, unused access road to a nuclear power plant even though the action had no impact on the facility’s operation nor any chance of media coverage. What mattered to the activists was not efficacy but the principle of putting their bodies on the line – even if that line led nowhere” (70). Not all goals can be prefigured, Duncombe reminds us, and not all necessary political work is a street party.

Duncombe concludes the book by deconstructing what an ethical spectacle would look like, and how it could be created in a way that is not manipulative. He starts this discussion by saying that ethical spectacle needs to be grounded in progressive beliefs: “A progressive ethical spectacle will be one that is directly democratic, breaks down hierarchies, fosters community, allows for diversity, and engages with reality while asking what new realities might be possible” (126). He goes on to establish criteria based on these beliefs, concluding that ethical spectacles should be:

1. Participatory beyond just observing – in terms of leadership, organizing, and other dimensions. As well, ethical spectacles should inspire action that is “transformative” to the individual and to society. Traditionally, spectacle is anti-democratic and created by the few for the many.

2. Open and responsive to input. Though there are leaders/organizers (because someone needs to set the stage for participation), ethical spectacles should have many interpretations or possibilities, just as modern art is open to interpretation. Good examples of this are Critical Mass and social forums. This responds to desires for autonomy, exploration, and modification.

3. Transparent. It should be obvious that it’s a spectacle and not trying to pass off illusion as real. Bertoldt Brecht chose to alienate the audience instead of drawing them in so they wouldn’t forget they were watching a play. This doesn’t mean the spectacle can’t be enjoyed. Billionaires for Bush is an excellent example.

4. Based in reality. Cindy Sheehan is a spectacle. She is immensely popular and well known because her story is true and compelling. It is what it claims to be. The goal of ethical spectacle is not to replace the real with spectacle, but to reveal and amplify the real through spectacle. Dramatize the unseen and expose the elusive.

5. Dream. Imagine a future world that we want to get to. Is there a problem with the Zapatistas’ imagined future because it is impossible? No, Subcomandante Marcos provides us with visions and realms that we know are impossible – there is no illusion. They are part of the spectacle.

After reading the book and several interviews with Duncombe, I had a few lingering questions, which I posed to him over email. First, I asked for his thoughts about the assessment that certain elements of commodity culture are only wildly popular because the public is given limited options for entertainment by mainstream media.

Duncombe responded, “I would probably agree, in part… If commercial culture is the only game in town then of course people will flock to it and that’s why we have to play the game. But I also have a problem with this argument because I think one, it overlooks the fact that most commercial culture fails and thus two, that people are not idiots: they “buy into” certain commercial culture because it touches them at some deep and profound (or perhaps necessary light and frivolous) level. Again, this is why my argument is not about embracing commercial culture, but about understanding why it is so popular and then providing a progressive equivalent.”

I was also interested in his use of the word “leader,” and the way in which he relates leadership to activists and organizing. While many radicals talk about the concept of leadership and vision, the term “leader” is often eschewed by leftists who think this connotes hierarchy. I wanted to know if Duncombe felt that hierarchy is implicit in leadership. Duncombe echoed what many activists with whom I have spoken say – that denying that leadership happens leaves you vulnerable to informal leadership. The way to counteract this, he suggests, is by “consciously undermining hierarchies through constantly revolving leaders, training new people to lead, being open to contingency and context, ‘leading’ the situation but letting go of what happens within that situation, and so on. In brief: if you don’t recognize leadership then you can’t combat hierarchy; once you do you are free to deconstruct and rebuild the whole concept.

Similarly, power is often a scary term for leftists. Duncombe notes, “Progressives worry about abuse of power before we have it – this is a sign of our reluctance to pursue it” (125). When asked to expand on this point, he replied, “Power is scary. With it comes responsibility. As with leadership, if you don’t acknowledge that power is necessary then you won’t do anything about re-imagining it. I think leftists have gotten very comfortable being critics of power. Criticism on the road to power may be useful, but criticism by itself, in our day and age, is actually an attendant to dominant power. ‘Look,’ the powers that be argue, ‘we have critics, that means you have freedom and democracy, right?’ Criticism, by itself, is just self-serving politics: it makes the critic feel better about their non-compliance but changes nothing. Therefore I’m interested in moving past criticism and really thinking about what is necessary to win power. For without power you can’t change things. And I’m in this game to change the world, not just comment about how bad it all is.”

I left the book thankful for Duncombe’s thoughtful and sincere work, and happy to add another title to the list of books that challenge activists to imagine a future world and to reexamine our current strategies and tactics. Duncombe says it best: “Again, this is what I’ve learned from successful commercial culture (and from being a community activist): you got to give people a vision of what they can become, and then open the door and let them in.”

Nearly 10 years ago in late November 1999, I was one of the over 50,000 activists from different movements around the world who converged on Seattle to confront the World Trade Organization. We had come together to challenge the slickly packaged agenda of “free trade,” and the WTO’s effort to enshrine the power and profits of multinational corporations as the organizing principle of a new global order. The mass non-violent actions which shut down the opening day of the meeting (and the subsequent collapse of the Ministerial talks) marked a major milestone in the ongoing struggles for global justice, democracy, peace and ecological sanity.

Last week I had the surreal experience of re-living the actions as I attended an advance screening of the new feature length independent docu-drama called Battle in Seattle:

Naturally, the movie is far from perfect. It contains some typical cheesy cliches (particularly around gender) and its focus on a few central characters distorts the reality that actions like Seattle grew out of mass participation, decentralized decision-making and the underlying energy of broad social movements.

Nonetheless, the movie was so much better than I had expected it to be. The film contains over 9 minutes of archival footage that seamlessly blends into the movie and effectively recreates the look and feel of the actions. The film is a powerful depiction of the actions and is clearly anti-WTO, pro-mass action and culminates with a montage of global resistance that serves as a inspiring call to action.

Popular culture representations of social change struggles present both the opportunity to reach a wider, uninitiated audience - and the dangers of cooptation and distortion. When it comes to Seattle, the sad truth is that our movements have lost the Battle of the Story over the WTO protests. Unfortunately, the essential history and significance of Seattle and the subsequent global justice actions has largely failed to enter U.S. mass consciousness. Shoddy corporate journalism mis-labeled the WTO actions a “riot,” and despite a brief period of sensationalistic media coverage, the reporting largely ignored the underlying clash of values and ideas between global solidarity and corporate globalization. After 9-11, the U.S. corporate media delivered numerous public obituaries for the U.S. wing of a global movement of movements they had never really reported on, and the legacy of Seattle faded into the never ending onslaught of tabloidized 24 hour news cycles and reality TV shows.

So in 2008, what does this mean for us? The movie is fast paced, exciting and has a sprinkling of stars (Woody Harrelson as a violent cop, Charlize Theron as his wife, Ray Liotta as Seattle’s mayor, and Andre 3000 as one of the core activists). The anti-WTO message is clear, but the movie prioritizes being “entertaining.” All of this means the movie could succeed in reaching mass audiences inside the United States. If this movie is widely seen, it could spark broader conversation about corporate power, mass protest and the dynamics of how change is made. Although the exact social impact of a movie is difficult to gauge, it can certainly help us reclaim the legacy of Seattle and channel that energy into ongoing work for change. But only if we mobilize behind it…

Upcoming Events by Eventful

As the director (Irish actor Stuart Townsend) made clear to those of us at the screening, this movie can’t succeed on it own. The film is a small budget independent film, and after a year of disappointing experiences with distributors they are self-releasing. It does NOT have big Hollywood money behind it and it’s set to open in only 4 cities for a one week run on September 19th and then open in 10 more cities the following week. If — and ONLY if — it is commercially successful in those cities will it be released for mass distribution across the country. Essentially, in order for this movie to get widely seen it needs the support of progressive activists like you, and it needs it on those critical opening two weeks.

The film’s very small promotions crew is actually led by a Seattle WTO veteran, Harold Linde, who is one of the activists who helped hang the Rainforest Action Network’s famous WTO vs. Democracy banner (which is the opening sequence of the film.) As Harold explained, one of the best things people can do to help this movie succeed is to demand that local theaters play it.

Request a showing in your local community!

Share Your Seattle Stories!

The upcoming release of the film has also sparked another very important initiative to create a broader, multi-facted people’s history of the Battle in Seattle. This web based project has put an invitation out to all Seattle WTO veterans to post your stories and analysis of what happened at www.realbattleinseattle.org. The site has lots of great resources and links so check it out and post your story!

We may have lost the Battle of the Story around Seattle’s legacy, but it’s never too late to reclaim our stories! Between helping get the movie widely seen, and participating in projects like the people’s history website, we can hopefully reclaim some of that story and introduce new generations of activists to the joys of taking mass direct action for a better world.

More links for those unfamiliar or curious about the history and significance of the Seattle WTO protests:

• The Big Noise Films documentary This is What Democracy Looks Like
• The anthology The Battle of Seattle: the New Challenges to Capitalist Globalization edited by Eddie Yuen, George Katsiaficas and Daniel Burton Rose
• SmartMeme’s Doyle Canning’s reflections on the Seattle actions can be found in the book Letters from Young Activists

Two great books that capture the legacy of Seattle and dispatches from the global movements against corporate power and exploitation are:

• We are Everywhere: the Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism edited by the Notes from Nowhere Collective
• Globalize Liberation: How to Uproots the System and Build a Better World edited by David Solnit (and including several contributions from smartMeme’s Patrick Reinsborough)

New from smartMeme : Story-based Strategies for Direct Action Design
SmartMeme is pleased to join Team Colors Collective and The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press in announcing the launch of the one-off online publication “In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement and Movements”:

www.inthemiddleofawhirlwind.info

Whirlwinds provides detailed analysis, thoughtful criticism, and substantive writing on current organizing through an inquiry into movement in the United States. Through that process, Whirlwinds assembles a strategic analysis of current political composition as a tool for building political power.

SmartMeme was asked to offer some analysis on how to integrate narrative strategy into the realm of street protest, with an eye towards demonstrations at this summer’s political conventions. We responded with a brief but detailed explanation of story-based strategy elements, and ideas for “direct action at the point of assumption.”

In addition to our own submission, some of our favorite snippets of this anthology include:

Harmony Goldberg on The Right to The City Alliance:

This expansive approach to anti-gentrification organizing reflects the Right the City Alliance’s movement-building orientation. The alliance is not interested in a narrow definition of the issue; instead they want to foster a resistance that is as complex and wide-ranging as the process of gentrification itself.

Marina Karides on the US Social Forum:

The establishment of the USSF process relied on repeated transaction or tasks accomplished by various members of the National Planning Committee that started the process of establishing trust. And this trust developed beyond traditional activist sectors, extending networks outside of their “quarters” or issues. The future of building a program of collaborative social justice in the US will rely on groups and organizations extending beyond their usual body politics and into building alliances with other sectors and political leanings.

and our very own Jen Angel on Media & Activism:

All types of media contribute to discussions around social movements in their own unique and valuable ways.

What I’ve come to believe can be summarized in several points:

• Media is central to how power operates

• Media is integral to advancing the work of social justice movements

• Media is a tool to be used strategically by activists

• Activists need to prioritize and fund media

• Activists need to directly connect our activism and media to struggles and communities

• We need to meet the needs and appeal to the desires of individuals and communities

This collection begins and end with the question:

Will you join us in the middle of a whirlwind??

Visit the Whirlwinds Site

Download the PDF - Story-Based Strategies for Direct Action Design