Month: June 2005

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.

A few days back I talked about the growing buzz around uncommissioned TV show ‘Global Frequency’, the pilot of which is circulating on the net:
“And I think it’s not a coincidence that Global Frequency is the instance that opens new doors. Everyone who cares about the world can look in it and see hope.”
Creator Warren Ellis, yesterday on his mailing list:
“If you like the concept behind the show, then, you
know, take part in some kind of political or cultural
activism. Because there are more important things
for a group of smart, passionate people to worry about
than a TV show.”

The G8 are meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland in a week and a half. Big protest activity is being planned. The two big days are July 2 and July 6.
On Saturday July 2nd, the Make Poverty History campaign is organising a big march in Edinburgh central.
On Saturday July 6th, the opening of the G8 meeting, another rally will be held in Edinburgh, and a big concert in the evening. I’m heading up to Gleneagles to join the protest happening up there.
It’s a really big deal. I’m going to try and write a bunch of stuff in this blog about what goes down, what it’s like being here, and why I think it matters. Because I think it does matter.
(Hopefully I’ll be able to wrest the time to do this. It’s been a busy week. But this is important. Stay tuned.)

I played golf this evening. Midsummer madness. I was terrible, which was pleasing, because on all indications prior I was so far beyond terrible the English language runs out of descriptive power. My team came 7th out of 8 teams. I was given a can of Belhaven Best and a bag of Smarties as a prize. Fantastic.
And Most Haunted Live is on. Yvette got scared by a weird raspy voice. Cool. Richard Felix, the dude I met in Derby at the Gaol sleepover, is doing some table tipping. Wahey! I still don’t believe in ghosts, but I am more and more convinced they should exist just for the coolness of it.
And I’m frikkin’ exhausted and don’t really know what’s going on. The long sunlight hours are screwing up already hazy sleeping patterns.
Yesterday, at scenic North Berwick, Malcolm and I got in trouble for balancing. I ate some kanafe or however it’s spelt, an insanely sweet middle eastern thing, and it gave me a deeply unpleasant sugar rush that is still playing out. Yah.
And Leon (of ‘Leon is a god’ fame) is in town with his lovely gf Laura. Tomorrow night I will seee them, yah!
All of this to say: I have several blog posts about the rapidly-approaching G8 event and protests here in Edinburgh. But I am in no state whatsoever to write them now.
Most Haunted Live is back on! Be careful Yvette! THE TABLE IS MOVING!

Wow. That was cool.
It isn’t going to be remembered as one of the great TV show seasons of all time – it was too choppy for that, and the crisis resolutions were usually of a type that you can get away with sometimes but not all the time. If this seems like praising with faint damnation, it is.
This will be remembered as one of the great family TV show seasons of all time. Maybe the greatest. If you’re not in the UK it’s hard to convey just how big and mainstream it has been over here – everyone is watching it, I’ve got into random conversations with strangers about it, in the buildup to today’s final episode I witnessed about six different conversations about it among people from work. Kids love it. Parents watch it with their kids, and that’s magic. It’s such a huge success.
And it is still my show, the one I loved as a boy because it was the right mix of wild and scary and creative and moral and true. Everything is in the right place, everything works. The hearts beating in this show are the same ones from November 1963. It feels exactly as it should.
And it is still my show, of a piece with what has come before. It has even done the seeming impossible and made the misguided ’96 American co-production, featuring a wonderful Paul McGann and an incoherent and dismal plot, into a coherent part of the experience. It works its continuity magic not by explanation or reference – although fanboys like me could pick up loads of cheeky little nods – but by picking up the best spirit of what has come before and celebrating it in the new.
And it is still my show, over-brimming with hope for human beings with all our failures and our foibles and our pride, trusting us, loving us.
It’s the best revival of a TV show there will ever be.
Doctor Who will never be in my pantheon of truly great television. It isn’t Homicide or Freaks and Geeks or Buffy or Twin Peaks. But it is very very special. It is part of what pop culture should be. And it makes me happy to see it shine.
Hurrah!

Finally got around to reading Catherine Chidgey’s ‘The Transformation’, a gift from a wee while back. Finished it today. It was a good read, more due to the confidence and pleasure of the prose itself rather than the way its tale unfolded. I found it quite curiously structured – I was halfway through before I felt the story was really underway, and the finale threatens some glorious grand guignol but then finishes on a soft note, a decision which to be honest disappointed me. Nor do any of the other characters stand up to the mighty wigmaker whose story this is; he dominates every moment of the book, and the triangle of characters is thrown askew as a result. In any case, the last third of the book I read without pause, which is a rare thing in my easily-distracted world and a pretty clear sign that I was engrossed. So, rock on.
Catherine is an acquaintance; I haven’t seen her for years but last time I did we said hello to each other. She grew up near to where I did, and knowing this I had a nice rush of pleasure to read one late passage in the book:
“The action reminded her of something she had done as a child, at a picnic. There had been a cave. She had wanted to touch the very back of it, but could not see where it ended, and had moved orward one step at a time, completely blind, her index finger a snail’s horn trembling at the brush of every web, expecting at any moment to feel cool stone against her palm…”
I’m sure every kid who grew up in the Hutt Valley knows the cave that must have inspired this sequence – the infamous Weta Cave in Percy’s Reserve. Man, that cave was creepy.
…you know, I did have a point about how my response to this overshadowed in some way the emotional response to the climax of the novel, and what this meant about, I dunno, reading books or knowing authors or something. I forget. Oh well.
(Catherine, if you ever google this up or something: g’day!)
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Yep, all this week’s blog entries have been nice softball topics. I’m easing myself back into it.

“And here I have, well, unless I’m mistaken, a fan base which exists and is trying to organize for a show which has never appeared on television. Not a cancelled show — a show which has literally never aired on broadcast television.”
from Kung Fu Monkey
The pilot/trial episode of Global Frequency, based on (not worksafe!)Warren Ellis’ comic series, has been leaked on the net after being passed over by the US networks. It is worth tracking down. Warren is a big old crankybum but he is also profoundly and positively humanist and this is an astonishing piece of fiction.
The chance of it making it to series now is vanishingly small, but the idea is out now. It has escaped into the culture in a way the comic never did, and I hope it finds its way wider and wider. I’m going to watch what happens to the idea with interest. This is culture and media changing beneath our feet.
(And I think it’s not a coincidence that Global Frequency is the instance that opens new doors. Everyone who cares about the world can look in it and see hope.)
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Billy: I’m getting there. Sorry it’s taking so long.