https://soundcloud.com/user-335030245/the-climate-movement-and-the-1
I cannot stop thinking about this question. That’s for sure. Are we doomed to repeat history, is a meaningful question that I feel like I will never, no matter how much work I put in, be able to answer which intrigues me even more. I feel like no one could ever have a fully formed answer to this question because there is so much unknown lurking within it. As Daniel (a fellow PLP 11 student) said “aren’t we still in history?” How are you supposed to answer a question when you haven’t even understood its foundation. Its all these little tripwires that make it so very interesting.
Last week I argued that what Naomi Klein said in “On Fire: the burning case for a green new deal” was equal to what Rev Martin Luther King said after his house was bombed around the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and how that proved the 2 movements were alike. Now abruptly after (or even during) that post (link here if you want to read into the similarities that I focused on) I was stricken with the idea that maybe what they said was just explaining the basis of movement.
That maybe they weren’t as similar as I previously thought. Which confused and intrigued me. Was I wrong to jump so quickly to a connection? To figure this out I delved into a 3 hour “power hour” just inhaling information about movements (The 3 hours, I think, is in part due to the fact I finished the tv show I was watching yesterday!) and boy did I ever find enough information to answer my question.
Ok so no. That’s the answer. I was wrong to make such an abrupt connection to the climate movement. I still agree that what I found was identical, but thats is like saying the Merriam-Webster definition of movement is the same as the Oxford dictionary definition.
If you see what I mean. Obviously they are going to be the same, because they are describing the exact same thing. Now I was not completely wrong in my conviction from last week, I say this because the power of a movement relies in the numbers, that is true, and the statements I used exemplify that, its just not a usable example of a connection. For example I could draw a connection between the Climate movement with the Civil Rights movement because they are both movements, but nobody wants to hear that crap. It’s not a strong connection. This is where my 3 hours of movement investigation comes in. Be prepared, I am hoped up on candy and I am going to butcher my connections I made last week. (Read last weeks connections here).
Firstly the Civil Rights movement was a force to be reckoned with. It had a firm belief to abolish the Jim Crowe laws and to supply African Americans with equal rights, and on paper it succeeded. (It was successful per-say, the movement did not account for bigoted people of power who could refuse to listen to the federal authority due to personal bias, but the movement mostly surpassed those people.) Now the focus for the Civil Rights success should be on the movement’s concrete and pinpointed objective, which I mentioned above. Every person who partook in the Civil Rights movement knew what they were fighting for. This fact makes it seem cruel to compare the Civil Rights movement, and the Climate movement, for what is the concrete and pin-pointed objective of the climate movement? Every organization has a different answer, sure they may all be variations of keeping the planets warming below 2 degrees, and making up for the poor treatment of low and middle income countries, but thats not direct. Its what has to happen yes, but in little steps. The only goal should never be the end goal. It needs to be thought out in bite sized pieces. In terms of movement: bite off more then you can chew, and its forgotten forever.
Example: Occupy Wall Street, (I feel like I don’t need to say any more, though I will) failed because they didn’t have a consensus about what they were fighting for. They had a catchy slogan, I’ll give you that, but they lacked the direction needed to turn their protest into a movement that would catch the attention of others. Now this is an excellent segway into my second point which is described perfectly by Greg Satell in this quote. “Until your movement is able to attract the support of those who don’t immediately agree with you, its noting more then a protest.” Let that settle for a second.
The Civil Rights movement is riddled with examples of attracting support from white people who, as Satell stated, “didn’t immediately agree with (them).” Take the Freedom Rides for example, the support was bi-racial.
The Riders did not only consist of African American students, it also consisted of white students who saw the inequality because the Civil Rights movement was able to catch their attention. I know we haven’t fully diverged, in class, into the peaceful protests of Selma, but this is another excellent example. By supporting the belief of non-violence, Selma attracted many people who were seen as villains. This switch from minority to majority takes the movement from only those affected by it, to a wider scale. Every movement must undergo this phase, but yet again I feel like I was cruel to place the Climate movement beside the Civil Rights movement. I feel this way because the climate movement has yet to exit the chasm. (Image below to reference). Take Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign for example, (please feel free to @ me in the comments, I know this is a risky statement to make)
Sanders actions made him look like he felt that if you didn’t share his exact same opinion, then he would target you as corrupt, or against the Climate movement, even though in many cases the person he was targeting was, in theory, on his side. (The side would be socialist, and well as climate activist in this case democratic). This caused people to resent what he stood for, because he was forcing people who fought for him, to fight against him if they stood for something even miniscully different. Though Bernie Sanders may have gained a strong, loyal following, he lost the ticket to change when he lost the majority. He took the Climate movement and made it a hierarchal thing, instead of what it is, a “current” – who said this. The power comes from everybody believing in the same thing, not one person edging his way to fame and fortune in the name of climate, by pushing others down.
And so I hope these 2 points help you to see the incorrectness of my connections from last week.