From The Morgue

(G’day to any No Right Turn readers who’ve wandered over – this is a longer one than the last few, so take a deep breath. Or go get a cup of tea or something.)

Sunday, the day after the big MPH rally, showed the progressive movement’s diversity in full bloom – ‘one no, many yeses’ as the slogan has it. There were two separate counter-summits in Edinburgh, each packed with speakers and workshops relating dozens of subjects to the G8 meeting that will take place near here this week. There were dozens of other events held by independent groups, from special services at churches to a skaters for justice gathering (which looked much like the standard skater Sunday gathering in Bristo Square, only with more people watching). There was another march today as well, organised by the Stop The War Coalition. I couldn’t begin to keep track of it all.

I did make time, prompted by Siobhann, to get along to one of the many sessions George Monbiot was speaking at. Monbiot is a high-profile figure in the progressive movement in the UK, best-known for his Tuesday columns for The Guardian. He was partnered with socialist Alex Callinicos in a workshop entitled ‘Alternatives to Neo-Liberalism’.

Both men spoke eloquently of models that could be workable alternatives to the current neo-liberal model of global governance and economy. (Monbiot wasn’t just eloquent – he was funny, utterly in command of a wealth of information, and tremendously charismatic to boot.)

Callinicos championed socialism, but a form of it quite different to any model I’ve encountered before, based largely on Pat Devine’s ‘negotiated coordination’ with Michael Albert’s ‘Parecon’ also mentioned. (Here’s a Callinicos address from a couple years ago which covers some of the same ground; go check it out, theoryheads!)

Monbiot’s programme was essentially that outlined in his book ‘The Age of Consent’, which seems to be becoming a key text in the progressive library for the clarity of its vision. He spent a bit of time talking about ‘contraction and convergence’ – here’s a quote from Monbiot’s column on this from 2003, to give a flavour:

Contraction and convergence, which the African governments have now adopted as their official position on climate change, first establishes how much carbon dioxide humans can produce each year without cooking the planet. It then divides that sum between all the people of the world, and allocates to each nation, on the basis of its population, a quota for gas production. It proposes a steady contraction of the total production of climate-changing gases and a convergence, to equality, of national production per head of population. To produce more than its share a nation must first buy unused quota from another one.

The bulk of his discussion, though, was his concern about the G8 resistance project and what it meant and symbolized for the progressive movement in general. He expressed worry that the global justice movement was being depoliticised by such broadly appealing tactics as the Make Poverty History march and the Live 8 concerts. None of the widespread coverage of the event had mentioned the word ‘power’, let alone provided a critique of that power.

In a recent column he criticised the butter-them-up rhetoric of Geldof and Bono:

The answer to the problem of power is to build political movements that deny the legitimacy of the powerful and seek to prise control from their hands: to do, in other words, what people are doing in Bolivia right now. But Bono and Geldof are doing the opposite: they are lending legitimacy to power.

Today he characterised Live 8, Make Poverty History et al. as approaching the table of our lords and masters on bended knee, and celebrating when we receive more and better crumbs than we are used to.

He’s right, of course. The devil is always in the details with a system as complex as global governance and economics. The MPH campaign celebrates Gordon Brown’s recent debt cancellation, heedless of the conditions attached to the amnesty that open those nations to privatisation and predation by multinationals. MPH says ‘Make Trade Fair’ but the complexity of trading structures means relatively superficial restructuring can be presented as a great victory for justice. And so on.

Monbiot particularly attacked the way so many of the activities underway characterised the G8 as something akin to an NGO, an organisation meeting to resolve the problems of the world. They are not, in any way, such an organisation. They are representatives of the most powerful nations in the world, each motivated by national self-interest, and they directly preside over and rely upon the structures that cause massive global inequalities.

The Make Poverty History campaign wouldn’t bring justice even if it was entirely successful in ‘winning over’ the G8 leaders. Even so, I am convinced the concessions it seeks will make some positive difference, hopefully more than the negatives that it will legitimise. It’s not enough for real and lasting change, but I’m not comfortable with holding out for a massive restructuring of international capitalism while people are dying. The increase in aid, overall the least important of the MPH demands, is easily the most important in the short term.

There’s not just the short-term gains to think about, though. The MPH campaign has put into discourse the notion that poverty is structural. If the powerful put their seal on the message of the MPH campaign, then they may gain some legitimacy from it in the short term, but in the long term their failure to make real change will become more and more clear. They will have signed up to a demand for justice that cannot be spun away.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown both wore white Make Poverty History wristbands. Today George Monbiot wore one as well. There is a battle going on for the meaning and value of the MPH campaign and the message being sent about the G8 meeting; but in the long term it’s a battle only we can win.

Cat spotted it first. The broad stretch of the meadows was strewn with litter, spots of white like the starfield that we didn’t have above because the sky was getting light even at half three in the morning. One constellation had been carefully arranged, the CND logo assembled from discarded posters and placards and water bottles. Peace.

Fifteen hours before the ground beneath our feet had been bearing the weight of 225 thousand bodies. White-shirted families, young teenagers in groups, socialist party members in bright red and singing French activists and dancing alternofolk and resolute senior citizens and us, by the thousand, a teeming throng of smiling, forgiving, hopeful people. The tree-lined walkways of the meadows were packed with patient souls waiting their turn to march, some waiting three or more hours before beginning the one-hour route. Music played from the stage, the giant screens played short documentaries, everything stayed on message except the marchers who showed up with Palestine flags and George Bush Terrorist signs. The sun took part as well. It was a glorious day.

I snapped dozens of photos as we went around the route, through the bottleneck exit from the meadows, down the mound, along Princes St where innocuous High Street retailers had covered their picture windows with boards and chipper signs, ‘open for business’. She-Boom, an all-women drummer group from Glasgow, ended up accompanying us the entire circuit, and we danced as we went. People waved from windows.

Make trade fair. Drop the debt. More and better aid. Whatever else its failures and limitations, the Make Poverty History campaign has mainstreamed ideas that were radical only five years ago. Essentially they amount to public acknowledgement that we in the developed world exploit those without, and we bear responsibility for their misfortunes. The message was repeated time and again – this is not about charity, this is about justice.

After the circuit we went to local pub the Pear Tree House for a bite to eat, making our way down Buccleugh St and ending up at ground zero of the police confrontation with the Black Bloc. Clown-faced people taunted and played with the rows of silent police, beyond which a hundred or so Black Bloc people stood together and weighed their options. One guy, about twenty or so, stood inches from a policeman and stared insolently into his eyes while brushing his teeth. I’ve never seen teeth brushed with such menace. We didn’t stay to watch things unfold, but no violence seemed to take place. Whatever might have happened was off the agenda with that many uniforms on the scene.

Music in the park, more speeches, and Billy Bragg slipping the Internationale in to finish off the Edinburgh event. Everyone cheered.

Crossing back through the meadows in the early hours of the morning and seeing empty stages and hollow tents, I experienced again a sensation I used to have wandering night landscapes as a teenager, a truth just beyond words. The silent world asking a question and in me a responsibility to answer. Thoughts spinning out from the meadows to the beat of protest drums and dancing, and we walked on from the CND circle, over shining refuse stars, and around us the night moved on into day.

There is no zero-sum equation between contributing to a concrete cause and spending time and cash on a protest. People can do both. A major component of everything happening during the G8 is designed to get more people more involved in these issues day to day. There is far more to this particular event than marches and concerts, but even if there wasn

There is no zero-sum equation between contributing to a concrete cause and spending time and cash on a protest. People can do both. A major component of everything happening during the G8 is designed to get more people more involved in these issues day to day. There is far more to this particular event than marches and concerts, but even if there wasn’t, just those still serve to bring people more fully into the fold.

Still, it would be disingenous to say they’re independent. Yet if everyone who came to Edinburgh instead stayed home and gave their budget to charity and spent so many hours on good works? Surely, it would be a bonanza of positive outcomes – but even this impossible dream would be a drop in the bucket compared to the potential impact of downstream influence on public opinion and the G8 decisionmakers. Not even that.

Sandbrook said that the 1960s protests achieved little, but the world did change. There is now little support for nuclear power in Britain, the Vietnam war is well-understood to have been a moral and strategic disaster, and the Troubles have finally begun to end after a long series of iconic protests. The world did change. Sandbrook doesn’t understand what protests do.

I’m leaving the house in a few minutes. Off to be part of the speech as a population talks to itself.

[next: What the day was like!]

So what is protest actually able to achieve? There’s a whole suite of effects that follow on from the kind of protests being undertaken during the G8. Here are some important ones.

Raises awareness
Protests are public events that generate interest and attention. Simply raising awareness of a concern and a projected response to it are worthwhile goals. Likewise, those involved in a protest will usually become more educated about the concern of the protest, and additionally will often be educated about side issues that are addressed within the context of the protest.

Promotes an alternative narrative
A basic function of the powerful is to control the narrative that explains what is happening in the world – the necessity for war in Iraq due to Weapons of Mass Destruction, the intractability of poverty in Africa while corruption continues, etc. A protest introduces an alternative narrative, signalling that there are other ways of looking at a concern and makes unconsidered acceptance of the provided narrative less likely.

Shifts public mood
Protests are a population talking to itself, and one downstream effect of this is to feed into the process of opinion-forming within a population. This is hugely important. Public discourse is in a continuous feedback process that amplifies and diminishes different messages; a protest can help amplify a message, and as a message is amplified further it may become uncontentious and mainstream over time. This is a key aim of protest – not to bring about immediate change, but to create the conditions for change in the future. (Of course, immediate change is still sought as well.)

Increases commitment and activity
Participants in protest, by that very participation, become more likely to increase their involvement in activism. Protest is also a feedback loop, and those within it are given encouragement to amplify their commitment to the cause (and related causes). This has massive followthrough effects. At the Make Poverty History march, dozens of poverty-related organisations and charities will be seeking volunteers and contributions, and generally raising their profile. They rarely have such a good opportunity to recruit people to their causes. This could, and should, result in a significant increase in person-hours devoted to these causes as new recruits come onboard with their time and energy.

Influences the target
Protests can have a direct effect on the target. Even though the targets of protest are massively pressured by context not to concede to the aims of protest, effective protest still promotes an alternative course in the mind of the target. If nothing else, it presents a significant body of people who think a certain way, which is a potential source of electoral support to a politician, and a market segment to a business operative, and so on. On a less cynical level, the targets of protest are people too, and a perspective championed by a protest may start to grow in legitimacy in the mind of the target for all the reasons that it might have an impact on anyone else.

Additionally, and more probably, protests can indirectly influence their targets. As public discourse feedback loops operate and a perspective becomes more mainstream, those in power are forced to adjust to a new public opinion. The Make Poverty History campaign is a massive mainstreaming of some rather radical notions – debt cancellation, trade reformation, and aid increase and reform (the limitations of the MPH prescription on each point notwithstanding).

[next: that’s all very nice, but wouldn’t our energy be better spent elsewhere?]

Occasional commenter here (and longtime morguefriend) Kiwi in Zurich has just made a guest post over at BerlinBear’s blog The Capital Letter, on the subject of the legalisation of gay marriage in Canada and Spain. If you’re interested, hop over and check it out. (Make sure you read the comments – loads of good stuff in there.)

A population is always engaged in an ongoing discourse about what it is, what it values and what it should be. This can be seen in its rawest form on the editorial pages of tabloid newspapers, but it is implicit in the media, in the activities and rhetoric of politicians, artists and public commentators, in the aggregate spending habits of the population, in the places they go on holiday and the subjects they study at university.
The most important channel for this discourse is the news and opinion media, which choose and frame the issues of the day and develop and promote a population

Historian Dominic Sandbrook wrote a short article in the June 2005 issue of ‘History’ magazine about popular political protest in the 1960s, with a particular focus on marches. (The article was really an accompaniment to a big and impressive photo of the 1960 London march of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.) He concludes:

Yet despite the historical attention given to protests of this kind, the truth is that most of them had little direct effect. Britain kept the bomb, the Vietnam War went on, and Northern Ireland sank into sectarian bloodshed. The protesters of the 1960s set out to change the world, but looking back, what is really striking is the extent of their failure.

Is Sandbrook right? Is history repeating itself? Are these protests in vain?

Protest and Direct Outcomes

We know that protesters are seeking change. They make demands for those in power to change their minds, to make a change in course as a result of the protesting voices.

Those targetted by a protest have enormous pressure on them not to concede anything to those protesting. This pressure comes from their peers, their pride, the demands of stockholders, and so on. It also comes from basic tenets of human self-perception and behaviour, psychological principles like cognitive dissonance.

Even if a change is effected in accord with the protests, the targets of the protest will always distance the change from the protest and deny that the protest had any influence.

Almost always, it will seem like protests are falling on deaf ears. It has to be like this. To expect anything else is foolish. (And only the most naive protesters would expect anything else; talk of such an expectation is a straw man argument advanced by sceptics or opponents.)

Thinking about protest in terms of direct outcomes is the wrong model. To understand and appreciate the role of protest you have to think about it differently.

To be more precise, think of it like this:
Popular protest is a population talking to itself.

[next: populations talking to themselves]

Poverty is structural.
This is the foundation premise of the entire progressive/liberal movement. This is the centre around which everything else gathers, and the base on which much else builds.
Poverty is structural. The massive suffering and deprivation in Africa (the focus of the G8) and in many other places is not handed down by God or mandated by nature. It is an artifact of the systems we have in place to govern the ownership and usage of resources.
We in the rich world benefit from a system rigged in our favour. We who benefit from it are also the only ones in a position to change it.
That is why we gather in Edinburgh next week. The mass action is designed to achieve one goal above all others: to give our elected representatives permission and instruction to spend our money on fixing this, instead of perpetuating it.
Because if poverty is structural, then the structure can be changed.
Another world is possible.

Saturday night I went along to Jess’ Kiwi music party (my suggestion, her action). It was choice, bro. We had a full flat of mostly non-Kiwis listening with good cheer to a whole range of New Zealand music, from Dave Dobbyn to the Verlaines, from the Verlaines to Shihad, from Dam Native to Mikki Dee.
It was good to be accompanied in Hawaiian shirt sartorial elegance by MC Don’t Know, AKA Dancing Gregor. (I of course was MC Don’t Care.) Malc manned the sound system, and he had a DJ name too but I’ve forgotten it. Gregor will probably remember though, he’s good at that sort of thing.
Also in attendance were loads and loads of good folk, but worthy of mention was the stupendous Siobhann of Cankerous Beet and of course the incorrigible Steve Bassett. And a great time was had by all.
It was great to experience the wonderfulness of NZ’s musical output, wallow in nostalgia, jump around to classics, and hear loads of stuff I’d never even heard before. There were so many good tunes! Yay!
‘Saddest Song in the World’ on the new Shihad album makes me feel 16 years old. Which is what it’s designed to do, I think. It’s an awesome track.
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And the NZ musicality continues tomorrow night with an outing to Scribe and P-Money who are playing Edinburgh. Gonna be sweet as, bro. Chur.