---<fwd>--- From: "Laurence Cox" <•••@••.•••> To: •••@••.•••, •••@••.••• Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 Subject: Ireland from below activist / academic encounter Hi, I've been thinking and talking to people for about six months about a project that would bring together theoretically-minded activists and politically-minded academics from or interested in social movements, and I think it's about time to give it a go. So this is a sketch for an event that I'm planning for the first half of 1999, in the hope of attracting feedback, participants and co- organisers! .1. The Good Things There are a lot of things happening in Ireland at the moment in all kinds of different social movements. We have eco-warriors in treehouses and striking building workers, refugee solidarity and new religions, community women's groups and Rainbow Gatherings. A lot of people who have never been active before have started to become involved in one movement or another, and at the same time students and academics are starting to take an interest. Talking to people who are active in or thinking about different movements, it turns out that very often the experience of one movement has a lot of parallels with the experience of another movement; and that a lot of what people interested in one area would like to see happening connects up with what people interested in another area might be interested in. Meanwhile, Irish politicians are looking more and more like clones of each other; at this stage almost everyone in the Dail has been in government with almost everyone else, and in any case their policies are largely driven by EU decisions and Partnership agreements. In other words, if there's an alternative to "business as usual" for the next twenty years, it's an alternative from below. .2. The Bad Things One of the things that gets in the way is how social movements are organised. Although very many activists have very wide-ranging visions of what they would like to see happen, in day-to-day practice we tend to narrow our focus as much as possible. One of the reasons for this is that in practice our politics are driven by the agendas set by those same politicians, whether our main problem is trying to make an impact on the policy process or trying to get funding for our projects: we wind up organising in ways that mesh with the state's way of organising. At the same time, we find ourselves competing with each other, not just for funds, policy input or media attention, but also for acceptability: we need to convince politicians, journalists and the "mainstream" that whatever our own group is saying can be accepted on its own terms without accepting any of the wider issues that we might actually want to see happen. We also wind up being owned by our own organisations much more than we might be happy with, simply because we don't have any spaces where we can meet and cooperate with people from other movements. It doesn't help that Ireland's been changing very fast over the past ten years or so, for good and for bad. This means that a lot of the ways we've learned how to do things don't work so well any more. But we assume that "other people" - the people who make the news and sell the products - are in charge of what's happening, so much so that we don't even try to challenge their control, even though we know that most of them are neither very bright nor very good at what they do. .3. The Solution It could be time to talk to each other a bit more; to do whatever we can to get a better picture of the whole situation and a better sense of what the overall result of what we've done to date has been, and what our future options might be. So there might be something to be said for talking to each other - to activists who do a lot of thinking and researchers who want to help - with the thought in mind that we are the alternative, that activism is something we can get better at, and that one way of doing this is by talking to and learning from each other. .4. The Concept The idea is to hire a hostel for the weekend, so that we'll have time to communicate with each other; we won't have the distractions of holding an event in the city; and we'll have to manage very basic kinds of cooperation and communication with each other if we're cooking and eating together, sleeping in dorms and all the rest of it. The max cost per person will be #25 all in, hopefully less; if people who might want to come feel they're going to need some kind of creche setup let us know and we'll see what we can do! Food'll be vegetarian; if possible participants are vegan, have religious requirements or allergies let us know. We're inviting people from any and every social movement in or relevant to Ireland. So feminists and Marxists, republicans and ravers, youth workers and the alternative press - but also refugees and immigrants who are active in movements elsewhere, Irish people involved in solidarity work, and people from movements abroad that connect to Ireland, from TERN to MAI. We hope to have around 30 people, give or take. Everyone who comes is asked to participate in some way that involves communicating with people from other movements, with other backgrounds and other interests. That could be talks or workshops, rituals or roleplay, or even something as basic as organising the sessions to get the best effect or coming up with an overall food plan! The one thing that's out is people reading ... from ... written ... papers. If you've got something written and you want to talk about it, by all means do - we'll even copy and distribute it for you. But don't read it out word for word! The suggested themes are: - Movement activism - Movements and the state - Visions of the future Please remember when thinking about your participation to do something that's aimed at *communicating* with other people. There'd be nothing more painful and pointless than spending a weekend with 30 people all trying to convert each other.... .5. The Purpose The main purpose is simply exploration: to see what happens when we try this kind of communication seriously. In the nature of things, the people who come won't be speaking "for" their movements, so it isn't an organisation-building event. My guess is that trying to find common ground with each other, and learning to listen to each other, will give us quite enough to do for a weekend. There isn't any preset goal for the event: none of us have the whole picture. We don't even know, until we try, which of us can manage to communicate with each other. It'll be sufficient to call the event a success if we come away from it with a better picture of what's happening, one that we can relate our own work to, and some ideas that we can feed back into our own day-to- day activities. .6. The Follow-up One part of the follow-up is easy: if the event is even half a success, we do it again next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. In other words, we make a space where people who are interested in thinking about different movements and doing them can meet and reflect. The other part is a bit less easy: the obvious thing to do is publish the results. In some cases this will be easy: we can print people's workshop notes, roleplay guidelines, speech cards, written papers or whatever else. In other cases people might not have those. We could print the proposals people send us in; we could ask people to bring along something they've written for people in their movement that might interest people outside it; or we could as someone suggested interview the people who don't have anything written, and print the interviews. The main point is that it would be good to be able to circulate what we do a bit more widely than the 30 people who take part. We should be able to arrange for printing and distribution (academics please note: with ISBN number and all!) .7. What Else? Well - if this is going to happen there are still three things missing. One, the most important, is people who want to participate. If you're one of those people, please get in touch and send me some kind of description of what you'd like to do. Since we'll only have so much space in the hostel etc., we're going to want to have as broad a range of movements and perspectives as possible. Plus we don't want to bore other people! The second thing is other people who'd be interested in helping organise this in practical ways, from looking through proposals to doing the food shopping to putting the publication together. (At least the money shouldn't be a problem - we should be able to get funding for the Centre to do this without having to make compromises.) The third thing is feedback, from people who might be interested but would be put off by some part of it; people with really good ideas for how to set it up; people who've done things like this before; or even just people with definite ideas as to which weekend and which hostel.... That's really it for the moment. Once I start to get some definite participants and a couple of other people who're willing to help organise this we can do a formal announcement with dates and all the rest of it. So if you're interested, send me an email or a letter! And forward this to anyone you think might be interested... Take care, Laurence Cox - - - Centre for Research on Environment and Community College St. campus, Waterford Institute of Technology Waterford, Ireland Tel. (+353-51) 302257 http://cyberjournal.org/social-movements/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create a sane and livable world in vibrant democratic societies. Bring global corporate power under control. CITIZENS FOR A DEMOCRATIC RENAISSANCE mailto:•••@••.••• http://cyberjournal.org --- To join the discussion on bringing about a movement for a democratic renaissance, send any message to: •••@••.••• --- To subscribe to the the cj list, which is a larger list and a more general political discussion, send any message to: •••@••.••• --- To review renaissance-network archives, send any message to: •••@••.•••
