You, me, the bankers, George Clooney. We’re all looters.

by Ed

Frightful, isn’t it? Scores of people, surging through the cities, swarming into shops, grabbing, taking, jostling, greedy for more. Frenzied, self-absorbed, no thought for the wider community…

I mean, don’t you just hate Christmas shopping? In fact, any busy Saturday in town?

I’m being flippant here – but I’m also aiming to make a serious point. Everyone’s of course shocked by the rioting and looting this last week. Judging by Facebook comments etc, quite a few folk seem depressed, ashamed of Britain, etc.

And of course, the good folk at the Daily Mail, the Express, etc have had a field day. Because, with everyone a bit down in the dumps (the austerity, falling house prices, rising petrol prices, the stock markets in tumult, etc), these events have certainly boosted the spirits and the self-righteousness of Middle England. (‘Gosh, isn’t this rioting awful? Who are these scum, these thugs? Where are their parents? I’m awfully glad that we’re not like them. Blah blah blah.’)

In fact though, I don’t think they are so different to the looters and rioters. And neither am I – and nor are any of us. Why? Because the looting is – I suggest – absolutely of one spirit with our whole consumer culture, of mindless acquisition, irresponsibility, materialism. Looting of course isn’t legal and is therefore socially unacceptable, and it’s more obviously violent (more on that below) – but in spirit, I think it’s barely indistinguishable. On that basis, I’m as equally depressed by the looting as I am by any given shopping centre on a Saturday.

But hold you, on say. The looting was (a) theft, and (b) violent – and therefore wholly different. I disagree.

First, on what basis are most shoppers shopping? Credit – the very foundation of our consumerism culture. That is, people buying stuff with money that isn’t really theirs. Where does credit come from then? Who does it belong to? Credit’s based on an assumption of future earnings. But as the credit crunch and recession have shown, our credit-based consumer economy is bankrupt – a totally delusional and unsustainable model.

(It’s far too easy to just blame the economic crash on the bankers, to assume it’s about poor banking. The bankers are just the tip of the iceberg. Our whole economy is built on thin air and wishful thinking, and we’re all implicated – because we all choose to believe and participate in it.)

So the government bailed us out, and – through that – we’re collectively loaded to the eyeballs with debt. Who’ll pay that debt? Future generations. So I’d suggest that today’s consumers – all of us – are fuelling our habits courtesy of tomorrow’s taxpayers. That is, we’re nicking from the future.

And we’re also nicking from marginalised people in the present – for instance, the good people of countries like Congo who are having the natural resources of their land pillaged for our consumer habits. By way of example, the mineral coltan – used in every one of our mobile phones – is mined on the cheap by international companies in places like Congo, then fuels those companies’ profits, providing a tidy income to their shareholders and the wealthy elite of Congo… and spells nothing but a few crap jobs and environmental disaster for the normal people living there.

And what of the violence and destruction? Surely that sets the looting apart from our everyday shopping habits. No, not really – it just makes it more visible. Let’s face facts: behind the scenes, consumerism is horribly violent. Through it, we’re raping the planet, abusing/enslaving large swathes of humanity (sweatshops, the coltan example above, etc), and all becoming increasingly individualised, depressed, disempowered (a violence against ourselves, our neighbours, our communities).

Furthermore, we’re told that direct violence is absolutely fine – when conducted by the ‘right’ people, against ‘bad’ people. Like when we invade a rogue nation, or seek to topple a dictator. (Saddam? Gaddafi? Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh in Liberia and Sierra Leone? Hitler and the Nazis?) I’m not condoning despotism anyway, but there’s an infinitely grey area regarding the legitimacy of violence.

(Similarly, violence is absolutely fine when conducted by the ‘good guys’ in films and on TV, against ‘bad’ people – and our imaginations are constantly shaped by that myth.)

Of course, I really feel sorry for the shop owners and others who’ve been on the receiving end of this week’s looting. And even more so those affected by yesterday’s tragic deaths – which indeed take the rioting to a new level. Indeed, in no way am I seeking to condone or excuse the looting or violence – quite the opposite.

But we have to ask: what really lies underneath this violence, what can we learn, and what could we do differently? I don’t think the ‘scum’ rioters are simply to blame, nor their parents and sub-cultures. Nor is it simply down to government cuts or police head-handedness – although both surely played a part in triggering recent events.

All of the above contributed to the events, but in fact – shock, horror – I think we’re all to blame… Or at least, we’re all implicated – because blame and demonisation aren’t going to achieve anything.

Indeed, we need to look forward. What will the repercussions of these events be? Lots of people are clamouring for ramping up police powers, a crackdown on civil liberties, etc – so that the consumerism bandwagon can roll on just a little while longer, and we can sleep soundly at night – safe from the ‘thugs’.

Instead though, let’s seize this opportunity. The riots have – in dramatic fashion – made visible the violence hidden in the fabric of our consumerist culture. Let’s step back, reflect, debate. What kind of society do we want? And what are we each going to do about it? Together, we have the power to make change – if we choose.

Finally, you ask, what’s poor George Clooney got to do it? In a delicious irony, the film Ocean’s 13 was on TV over the weekend. So, just as the riots and looting were really getting going (and the participants getting demonised), millions of us were settling down to watch a film that glamorises… THEFT. But hey, George (and Brad Pitt, and co) – they dress so well, they use cool lingo, and they’re so suave. So that makes it ok, I guess…

(Note: this blog quite possibly doesn’t reflect the opinions of my colleagues nor trustees. But they’re all away on holiday, so what the hell.)

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

from Mike’s keynote speech at Leeds Holocaust Day 2011

There are foundational stories that underpin our lives, of which we are barely conscious. These are the culturally reinforced stories that make sense of the world, that interpret reality to us, and form our identities – both individually and collectively. Often we become conscious of them only when they are challenged by other stories contradictory to, or incompatible with, our own. Yet unless we expose and challenge them, some of them will continue to lead us down spirals of violence and abuse – without us even realising it…

For instance, the ‘myth of redemptive violence’ enshrines the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace, that might makes right. As an exercise, next time you watch a film, ask yourself: is this the underlying story, the fundamental assumption? (Vic Thiessen first put us onto the myth of redemptive violence in film, at his 2007 T4P festival worshop.)

After perhaps the most violent century in human experience, we have to stop believing and acting out this myth. But surely, you say, only violence works in extreme cases – such as the need to defeat the Nazis in the 1930s-40s. And yet, here’s a story I’d never heard…

Bulgaria’s Bishop Kiril told Nazi authorities that if they attempted to deport Bulgarian Jews to concentration camps, he himself would lead a campaign of civil disobedience, lying down on the railway tracks in front of the trains. Thousands of Bulgarian Jews and non-Jews resisted all collaboration with Nazi decrees. They marched in mass street demonstrations and sent a flood of letters and telegrams to authorities protesting all anti-Jewish measures. People hid Jews and churches accepted large numbers of ‘converts’, making it clear they would not consider the ‘vows’ binding. Every single one of Bulgaria’s Jewish citizens was saved from the Nazi death camps.

With this century’s potential for even more conflict than the last, we must learn new ways of tackling or managing it – and stop giving credence to the myth that, ultimately, violence works. (Be it direct violence, structural violence, or cultural violence – or cite Johan Galtung.) Can we do that – at home, politically, socially, everywhere?

And we’d also do well to live and think more critically about the stories in which we’re unconsciously embedded – and whether we want to continue replicating them. For instance, there’s the opaque story of capitalism – that we barely see, because we’re so embedded in it – that itself has inflicted different kinds of untold violence on the world’s poor and the planet itself. Can we not find alternatives to that?

The full transcript for Mike’s speech can be read at www.t4p.org.uk/hmd2011.

 

Ramblings on Community Engagement

by T4P friend, Mike Chitty

We used a recent Innovation Lab in Leeds to explore the topic of ‘community engagement’, with a view to generating fresh insights and collaborations.

Community engagement… A phrase invented by bureaucrats and policy makers to shift the blame for their own insignificance, or worse, to many of those who they would wish to ‘fix’ in some way?  To get back to work, to make healthier, or to force compliance with societal norms?  A starting point to refine services to ensure that the policy goals of our democracy are met with ruthless efficiency?

Or a methodology through which the balance of political, economic and cultural power can be shifted towards ‘communities’.

It seems to me that the term has been grabbed by different groups to mean different things and to justify very different streams of work.

The truth is that we haven’t a working and shared definition of ‘community’.  Often, it’s a label we slap on a demographic, or a catchment area that we wish to change in some way.  Occasionally we may remember that ‘community’ is also a state of being in relationship with others.

And we are not that much clearer on what we mean by engagement.

But when we seek to develop community engagement, surely we should be clear on whether we aim to engage them – ‘the community’ – with our agendas, or whether we seek to engage ourselves in ‘their’ agendas.  At its best, engagement is a two-way process.  But often we set it up as one-way street.

And here’s a radical thought.  If you want to engage, be engaging.  Be interested, be interesting, be relevant, and be convivial.  Get a reputation as helpful, influential, compassionate and caring.  Or at least entertaining.

We need to talk

by T4P friend & Schumacher North team member, Ellen R

On 23rd October, Schumacher North are hosting a conference on the theme ‘Beyond Consumerism’. The term ‘consumerism’ is interesting: it refers both to something abstract (a structural feature of the capitalist system), and to something immensely  tangible – a set of things which people do through which they seek to meet vital human needs such as personal worth and dignity, acceptance and social inclusion.

Also, this month and next, TIDAL are hosting their ‘Big Conversation‘ – a series of discussions around how to build capacity and increase the power of movements for social and environmental justice and sustainability. We might see this as a conversation about how we can wrest human needs and desires from the grip of consumerism, and channel them instead to build a movement for change.

Consumerism is a topic sometimes avoided by activists, for fear of seeming to moralise against pleasurable activity – or to suggest that we can simply change our individual behaviour, without confronting a global economic system whose inherent logic is to exploit and to ransack. But that economic system cannot survive without hijacking our needs in order to stimulate a continuous escalation of wants – not only to make us buy stuff,  but also to persuade us that our activities are freely chosen. It does so by holding over us the threat of personal  failure and exclusion if we refuse to conform.

Identifying this brings about a real possibility of resistance. Of course, mere resistance is no substitute for the immense and daunting task of building truly participatory political processes and ways of providing for our collective needs. We’ve a lot of creative ideas for approaching this task – many of which will be explored at the Schumacher conference. But the ‘visions’ we create of a more just and sustainable way of life can often seem remote from people’s immediate concerns, failing to capture the emotional commitment needed to bring more people in.

For a social movement to take off, people must come together to identify common underlying causes of their ‘individual’ anxieties. The pressure to consume is often where we feel the immediately oppressive impact of an unjust and unsustainable system, and identifying this may connect more people with a real desire for change. But because this pressure plays so mercilessly into our human social anxieties,  having supportive personal connections is also essential. Making such connections easier must, I think, be a priority.

It is also in the context of relationships that the sustained conversations occur which give us inspiration, identity and purpose. Few people want to exchange the things which give them pleasure and a sense of belonging for a ‘network’ and a ‘to do’ list. If the Big Conversation is to ‘grow the movement’, we must integrate it with our personal lives. Maybe a good start would be to spend less time in the meeting room and more time meeting together as friends…

An inquiry into the best of cities

by Mike

Over the past couple of months, we (T4P and friends) have put on a series of small events playing around the edges of the official ‘Vision for Leeds 2030′ process – stimulated by it, contributing to it… and hopefully challenging it. The inspiration came from several people saying they’d never considered what Leeds might be like in 2030 – and, more importantly, that they might have a role in shaping it.

We wanted to do something independent of the official process – contributing to it, and also able to challenge it. Mike Chitty talks about the ‘violence of vision’, that I take to mean the impossibility of formulating a unitary vision that – of necessity – marginalises or excludes competing visions.

And therefore, alongside What if Leeds, it’s great that many different people are trying to provoke people to think about vision for the city; I’ve taken part in Mike Chitty’s and Imran Ali’s Innovation Lab and Culture Vultures Cultural Conversations, to name but two. Now, without doing violence to the good anarchy of all this, is it possible that all of this forms part of an urban social movement for change? And what might that look like?

In our inquiry process, we decided to work with Appreciative Inquiry – a visioning tool that seeks out the best of “what is” to help ignite the collective imagination of “what might be”. By asking people to remember their experiences of where and when they were happiest, we hoped to find out what makes for a good place to live. The questions we asked were:

1. Tell us a story or share an experience about when you were happiest, most alive or felt most connected to Leeds or to any other city you have lived in. What was going on? Why were you so happy, so alive? What happened? Who else was involved?
2. How did the city contribute to this experience? Were there any special conditions or elements about the city that stand out for you in that experience?
3. What do you dream of or hope for Leeds in the future, and what part would you like to play in making that come to reality?

We’ve met some great people and heard happy and inspiring stories. We’re now sitting down to look at what we’ve got and what to do next.

There’s no copyright on the questions above, and we’d love it if other people (eg you) used them and found some way of gathering up what they (you again!) hear. We’ve had people interviewing each other and then talking together in a group, and we’ve interviewed people over tea and cake.

We’re thinking on how we feed what we’ve heard into the bloodstream of the city and would love to hear any ideas you may have…

Thoughts on the EDL and how to respond

By T4P friend, Huw I

I’ve been curious about the English Defence League (EDL) ever since first hearing of it. I initially assumed it was just a re-branded group of NF/BNP supporters. However, having viewed the various documentaries, heard about their origins, and seen some of the propaganda on You Tube, it seems simultaneously a much more absurd yet frightening movement.  Ultimately, the EDL does seem to demonstrate a shift in thinking, a redefinition of the dividing lines – in order to maximize the potential for conflict.

There’s some emotion behind this, stemming as it does from the Wooten Basset demo by Islam4life – when the EDL began. And there’s been a whole load of stuff rolling around in my head about what this all means and why this shift has occurred… Devolution, the domestic repercussions of the war on terror and global definitions of “enemy”, the shift in the political spectrum at all levels both at the centre and the extremes. Whatever the reasons, there’s a whole process of myth-making going on – apparently attempting  to create new dividing lines;  And this is worrying.

This is where the opposition to the EDL needs to acknowledge that there’s some genuine change away from the old far right – and a change based on a sea of contradictions, that actually means the EDL has very little to hold itself together. So the aggression and conflict-driven stance of anti-fascist groups such as Unite Against Fascism doesn’t seem relevant or helpful. Instead, it’d seem worthwhile for both anti-fascists and the Muslim community to take a good look at the EDL…

It’s not so much what the EDL are protesting about – which we may all have differing views on – but the way in which they are using protest to generate division and conflict.  If the EDL are protesting against Al Qaida, the imposition of Sharia law in Britain, attacks on Israel, attacks on the rights of homosexuals – then who is opposing what? For me, those wishing to oppose the EDL need to oppose the EDL’s attempt to draw all these issues into a mythological war between two sides – their attempt to create conflict and violence, to stigmatize and agitate. If responses to the EDL generate conflict, it feeds the EDL’s reason for being; without it, they can only look inwards.

And that is where the greatest threat to the EDL may lie. Anyone with half an ounce of sense knows that the issues raised by the EDL simply cannot be divided along “us and them” lines. Obviously, plenty of Muslims are opposed to the idea of Sharia law being implemented in Britain (“it would ruin my weekends”, remarked a Muslim colleague recently). And there are plenty are elements within the EDL (and beyond) that undoubtedly cause concern amongst other EDL supporters – who claim to be genuinely concerned about such issues as defending Israel or gay rights.

If responses to the EDL avoid stoking conflict, these contradictions within the EDL will rise to the surface – but what worries me is that, if we see large-scale unrest, the EDL myths may just start to take hold. Banners declaring “Allah is the greatest” (as seen in Bolton), and chants of “Nazi scum off our streets” feel blunt or even confirmatory to the EDL mindset.

Instead, counter protests could break-down the lines drawn in the sand by the EDL, and reclaim the EDL’s issues as ones that are not ingrained in a new definition of Englishness – showing that there is no “enemy” that cements their new definitions. Shouting “Nazi scum” may get to the actual Nazis in the crowd, but won’t help convert any of the new EDL recruits who actually think that they are opposing fascism.

Non-violent celebratory protest and avoiding unrest at all costs should be high priority, not least in places like Bradford – which have most to lose and in which the EDL have most to gain from high-level disturbances. In 2010, it could be argued that – despite the best attempts of the BNP – race has failed to cement a definition of Englishness, as ultimately it made no sense. We have to show that the EDL’s latest definitions make no sense either; so the nature of the counter-protest could either help draw support to or away from this dangerous organisation.

Beeston, the London bombings, and ‘the gift of pessimism’

by Ed

This month is the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings – and the media spotlight fleetingly swung back onto Beeston, down in south Leeds, where two of the perpetrators were from – and where I live too. The community’s moved on – partly through the simple passing of time, partly deliberately. People were fed up with being associated with those tragic events, especially by the (often parasitic) media.

However, I and a few others were keen to talk with the media – because there’s a good story to tell. (Click here to read the Yorkshire Post feature article, or here to listen to the BBC Radio Leeds interview.) Beeston’s got its problems, for sure – and 7/7 was a massive shock to the system. But actually, the community held together in 2005 – despite huge (international) scrutiny and pressure.

And I’d argue that it’s since grown even stronger. There’s a real sense of community, there’s some great local initiatives and events. And overall, I sense that a load of people (including myself) woke up to the responsibility we all have to make stronger communities – from the grassroots up – through the simple, daily task of talking, connecting and sharing life with the diverse people around you.

But isn’t this just ignoring or glossing over the bad stuff, the tough realities? There’s certainly a danger of that. International ‘peace-building’ activist and writer – John-Paul Lederach (a major influence on T4P’s action and thinking over many years) – argues that optimism easily leads people into ungrounded, hippy-ish work that achieves no substantial or sustained social change.

Indeed, he talks about ‘the gift of pessimism’ – to keep you grounded, realistic, critical. But then of course, he points out that pessimism alone drags you down. He therefore insists that we need a foot in both camps – to hold optimism and pessimism in tension. Optimism is essential to keep us energised, inspired, hopeful for a better world; and pessimism is its friend, keeping us rooted in reality, suspicious of easy answers, alive to the scale of the obstacles we face.

So, as I said in the media interviews, Beeston’s got its troubles (doesn’t any community?)… But so too, I love living there, I get a huge amount of energy from the place – and I like to think that we’re learning stuff, and slowly developing a good shared community life together. I’ll keep you posted…

Power and love

by Mike

Adam Kahane worked for many years bringing diverse people and groups together in difficult, complex and conflictual situations – South Africa, Guatemala, and Israel, to name but three. At a recent seminar in Leeds, he admitted that – in those situations – he’d made the error of focusing on love to the detriment of power.

Since hearing him and reading his book ‘Power and Love’, I’ve been reflecting that by caricaturing power as ‘bad’, I have defaulted to the same error. One network with which I’ve been involved has developed the idea of the ‘power footprint’ – and the need to keep your ‘footprint’ as light as possible, to ensure that it doesn’t use its power (funding and knowledge) coercively.

Kahane borrows his definitions from theologian/philosopher Paul Tillich (the subject of Martin Luther King’s Doctorate). Power is the drive of everything living to realise itself with increasing intensity and extensity; love is the drive towards the unity of the separated. Power, in this sense, is the drive to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow.

Love is the drive to reconnect and make whole that which has become or appears fragmented. Generative (positive) power is ‘power to…’; degenerative (negative) power is ‘power over…’. Love is generative when it empowers us and others; it is degenerative – sentimental and anaemic or worse – when it overlooks, or suffocates, or denies power.

The challenge is how we can exercise power and love together. Kahane says: ‘Learning to employ both power and love is like learning to walk on two legs. We can’t walk on only one leg, just as we can’t address our toughest social challenges only with power, or only with love… Walking means moving first one leg and then the other and always being out of balance – or more precisely, always being in dynamic balance’.

If you’re interested in reading the book and coming to a group discussion, get in touch. (Power and Love, by Adam Kahane, 2010.)

Power: sometimes bold, sometimes ticklish..

by T4P friend and trustee, Max Farrar (www.maxfarrar.org.uk)

Power can be bold, hard, in your face and on your body.  Power also comes in italic, more feathery: you know it’s there, but it doesn’t seem to hurt so much, and sometimes it even tickles.

Hobbes advocated state power of the bold sort: human society is so ineluctably competitive and violent that a monarch must forcibly impose a social contract to ensure order.

Marx argued that power under capitalism was exercised by a state (usually led by a monarch and a parliament) which served the interests of the ruling class. Its function was to legitimise the immiseration and oppression of working people. He believed the state would ‘wither away’ when the working class took control of society. But communist societies like the former USSR demonstrated a model of power in bold.

Anarchists like Kropotkin argued that the state itself was the obstacle to human progress; a good society would be composed of co-operatives working in mutual aid with each other. Their suggestion was that power was to be shared equally among all; it would hardly be felt at all.

I suggest that Michel Foucault has the best understanding of power. For him, it is not possessed simply by states, classes or individuals. It’s all pervasive, in the language we learn, in ideas we circulate, in the words we write, in the media we consume. Knowledge is inextricably linked with power. Fortunately, according to Foucault, both power and power always incite resistance. Even ‘discursive’ power has to be deconstructed if we are to fully undermine the power exercised by gods, monarchs, patriarchs, prime ministers, the general secretaries of trade unions, and Hollywood celebrities.

Easier said than done, as you recognise when you find that your spiritual leader, your feminist icon, your Trotskyist militant or your charismatic anarchist is actually a bit of a bully. Foucault’s power might thump, shout, bite, arouse or tickle, sometimes all at once, but it never goes away. Power is both bold and italic. Like most things in life, the trick is learning to live with it and making it work for you, and for everyone else.

Subverting our culture of red-tape and bureaucracy

by Ed

Everyone’s fed up with red-tape, bureaucracy, regulation, etc. Just yesterday, I was in the governors meeting at my local school, handed wad after wad of paper – and felt physically depressed (literally: pushed down).

Similarly, I was recently talking with a (great) community worker, who said: ‘There’s all this paperwork and monitoring, but it doesn’t actually make for better work – it just ties us up. We need more time just to sit with people, build trust, be there for folk. And safeguarding is just covering the backs of professionals, like a shell around the workforce – it’s not actually helping real people.’

Why have we got this red tape and paperwork culture? It’s for accountability, to manage risk, to keep people safe – all important and difficult tasks in our complex society. But are our systems actually achieving their aims? Surely there’s a better way than the onerous, depressing, and counter-productive methods we’ve developed.

We can subvert it. Years ago, when I was wading through paperwork for an EU-funded community job, I found I could better navigate through it by nurturing strong relationships with the project participants, help them see and understand the ridiculous burden of paperwork I had, and have a laugh as we filled in form after form after form together.

Similarly, last July I was voluntarily helping to coordinate a Big Lunch (www.thebiglunch.com) street party in my neighbourhood. When the Council (bless ’em) found out about our plans, they swiftly gave us a HUGE list of requirements, including: formal road closures (a snip at just £700), a public entertainment license, proof of full assent from all neighbours, massive risk assessment forms, etc.

We were ready to sack the whole thing off – but as a last resort, I got on the phone to some other Council employees I knew, and asked them if they could help. Sure enough, they talked with the relevant department, and we had no more bureaucracy requests. Relationships, passion and trust had subverted ‘the system’… and we had a GREAT event.

There are dangers here – nepotism, the old boys (or girls) network, etc. But surely that’s preferable to the deathly cul-de-sac we find ourselves in. These alternative, relationship-centred modes of working actually have potential to be FAR MORE efficient, productive and accountable. (Who ever wants to let a mate down?) So I’m sure we can start to recover a more fluid, spontaneous and life-giving way to live together – if only we’re willing to live with passion and trust one another. Who’s with me?