I’m going to use Jane McAlevey’s definition for organising as described in a previous post: “organizing places the agency for success with a continually expanding base of ordinary people, a mass of people never previously involved, who don’t consider themselves activists at all – that’s the point of organizing.”
In this post, I’ve included activism around ‘rights’ and ‘issues’, to make this list as comprehensive as possible. I’d also add that this is a rough sketch of what to organise (and mobilise) around and this list needs more research and probably reworking.
Workplace
The first area to organise around, with a long history is the workplace and employment. This was an important area of struggle to change society in the twentieth century, but the nature of work has changed and the trade unions have been crushed in the last 40 years. There have been, and are, several union forms; those from the past will be looked at in future posts. Currently, there are large unions, known as ‘service unions’, and ‘base unions’.
The second area to organise around is the community, including: community organising, community unions, the community rights movement, and community social welfare programmes.
Community organising was developed in the mid-twentieth century in the US. It involves campaigns to change institutional policies and practices to improve the living conditions for community members. Hackney Unites has put together a good HU-community-organising. National reformist community organising organisations doing good work include Citizens UK and Community Organisers. There will be many local groups and organisations using community organising methods all over the UK.
There has been a first step in the UK to set up a community rights movement in the formation of the Community Chartering Network. This comes from a successful community charter in Falkirk, Scotland, that resulted in the Scottish Government banning fracking in Scotland. Read the story here.
Community social welfare programs are generally run by local government or NGOs (Non-government organisations). A good example of this in the UK was the British Restaurants – communal kitchens set up in 1940 to provide cheap food so everyone could eat.
Communities have been under attack since the 1970s, with many basic services and social centers no longer in operation. Community social welfare organising now involves activists running basic services in their communities to fill the gaps where the state has been rolled back. The classic example would be the Black Panthers Free Breakfast for Children in the US in the 1960s/70s.
In 2014/2015 a pay as you feel cafe called Skipchen in Bristol served over 20,000 meals. Can Cook in Garston, Liverpool provides thousands of free hot lunches for children in poverty in the Merseyside area. Foodhall is a public dining room and kitchen in Sheffield that is managed by the community, for the community, tackling social isolation and encourage integration across a diverse range of groups. Foodhall are campaigning for a National Food Service, to develop public social eating spaces around the country. There is Cooperation Town movement based on Cooperation Kentish Town that provides a community space with healthy, cheap food, childcare and more.
Combining Workplace and Non-Workplace
The third area to organise is a combination of workplace/job and struggles outside the workplace, including: Jane McAlevey’s ‘whole worker organizing’, community unionism, and social movement unionism.
Whole worker organising merges workplace and non-workplace issues based on Jane McAlevey’s extensive experience of community and union organising. This article gives a good summary of McAlevey work in Connecticut that combined housing and workplace struggles.
Janice Fine is her 2005 article, “Community Unions and the Revival of the American Labor Movement” describes community unionism as community-based organisations of low-wage workers that focus on issues of work and wages in their communities. They are based on specific ethnic and geographic communities (as opposed to workplaces), especially immigrants and African Americans. Fine describes how they have appeared from several sources including: “community and faith-based organizing networks, Central America solidarity movements and other left-wing organizations, legal services as well as other social service agencies, immigrant nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), churches, and some labor unions.” These community unions are mainly focused on work-related issues but also include other aspects of life including housing, healthcare, and education.
Social movement unionism is currently popular in the US, involving the combination of workplace unionists and social movements to tackle issues, civil and human rights and alter structures of law and political power. This article gives a history and critique of social movement unionism. This interview with a member of the UK National Union of Teachers (now the National Education Union) describes the three legs of a stool working together to make a strong union: bread and butter issues, professional issues, social justice and community campaigning.
Megan Behrent writes about a radical form of social movement unionism called ‘social justice unionism‘ here.
Social Strike
The ‘social strike’ is described by Antonio Negre and Michael Hardt in Assembly as the ‘weapon of social unionism’. [1] Keir Milburn states here that the social strike “brings out three functions that will be required from any set of practices able to play a role equivalent to the twentieth-century strike. These are making the new conditions visible, disrupting the circulation of capital and directly socialising, collectivising and communising our social relations, reproduction and struggles.” Negre and Hardt describe the social strike as “the labor movement’s interruption of industrial production and the social movements’ disruption of the social order.” [1]
Recent examples are the UK Youth Climate Strikes and the planned global Earth Strike on September 20th. Around social reproduction, there is the Women Strike Assembly, which organised strikes in 2018 and 2019 on International Women’s Day, March 8th.
Politics
Political organising takes place via a political party or independent citizens’ platforms. Political parties come in several forms: classical traditional political parties, social movement parties, single-issue parties, and digital/internet-based political parties. Some parties combine a few of these forms.
There have been recent innovations in classical traditional political parties such as Obama’s organising/movement presidential campaigns and Bernie Sanders 2016 US presidential campaign using ‘Big Organising’.
Single issue parties would be the green parties in different countries (although many have broadened their policies over time) and the Brexit Party in the UK.
Organising around politics can also be done outside political parties, as the municipalism movement (see below) is showing. For examples of independent politics at the local level in the UK, there is The Indie-town project and Take Back the City in London.
Municipalism
Municipalism is the process of self-government by cities, towns, or municipalities. There are three broad municipalism traditions: municipal socialism, libertarian municipalism, and the right to the city movement.
Municipal socialism describes the local government-led social reform. There have been several phases in the UK. The most recent is the Preston Model, where the local authority changed the procurement for the council and local large institutions (university and hospital) to buy from local businesses and cooperatives. This strengthens the local economy. It is based on the Cleveland model and is known as community wealth building.
Libertarian municipalism (also known as Communalism) is from the theorist Murray Bookchin. Bookchin proposed a twin strategy of popular or people’s assemblies to look at local issues and start to form an alternative government, combined with running municipal candidates chosen by the people’s assemblies to stand in local electoral politics. Bookchin wanted to build institutional capacity and repurpose state power to increase libertarian collective power. The societal, larger-scale vision of libertarian municipalism or Communalism is Confederalism – where self governed cities and localities are connected in a larger network. Ideas of confederalism have been put into practice in Rojava in northeast Syria/West Kurdistan and are known as Democratic Confederalism. They have also been taken up by the international Fearless Cities Movement and Cooperative Jackson in the US.
The right to the city movement started in the 1960s with geographers such as Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey analysing the city from a Marxist perspective. They argue that the transformation of the city depends upon the exercise of collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization to meet the people’s needs.
Poor people’s Movements and Solidarity
The history of poor people’s movements have been explored in detail in the book Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward. This article gives a good summary of the more spontaneous and disruptive nature of these movements. They are based on mobilising rather than organising, which links to momentum driven organising discussed in this previous post.
DP Hunter has written a book Chav Solidarity and in this article he describes chav solidarity: “if just the left-leaning working class were to collectivise our resources (wages, savings, inheritance, homes, and whatever else), or we were to transform our economy into a communal one, we would be able to provide for one another. Those economically marginalised and living in poverty, as I was not that long ago, would not be in positions of such deprivation and exclusion, their short term concerns of where their next meal was coming from, where they would be sleeping in a week’s time, would abate.”
Institutions
Organising around institutions can take three forms: influencing institutions, reclaiming existing institutions for the left and supporting or creating alternative institutions.
Influencing institutions includes attempting to change state behaviour through laws in parliament or rulings in courts. It could also include influencing political parties, the media or corporations. A good resource on this is How Change Happens by Duncan Green.
Examples of reclaiming existing institutions for the left would be all three municipalism traditions described above. The Labour Party has recently been reclaimed for the left by Jeremy Corbyn. The UCU trade union membership recently elected a grassroots left candidate as General Secretary – Jo Grady. We Own It, campaign against privatisation and make the case for public ownership of public services.
For alternative institutions, the community social welfare programs described above in the community section is an example of this. Others are workers coops in the UK and Mondragon in Spain. Concerning alternative media, see here. Concerning credit unions, see here. Libertarian municipalist people’s assemblies (see above in municipalism section) are an example of an alternative government. There is the recent idea of public-commons partnerships where citizens become co-owners, co-earners and co-decision-makers of municipal cooperatives.
Rights and Issues
There is a lot of crossover between rights and issues, so for now I’ve combined them.
Rights include human rights, democratic and political rights (right to vote, citizenship, civil liberties), economic rights (right to a decent job and pay, and a social safety net such as benefits), rights to public goods/services (public healthcare, education, housing, media etc), community rights movement (see above), and rights of nature.
Issues include the rights of women, gay people, people of colour, disabled people, and others, anti-war and the peace movement, LGBTQ+ movement, inequality, environmental issues with climate change being the biggest concern, and the alter-globalisation or anti-globalisation movement.
Endnotes
1. Assembly, Antonio Negre and Michael Hardt, 2017, page 150
We often hear from people who say that “lithium is better than oil & gas” and that “we’ll be able to recycle all the lithium we’ll need”. These are common misconceptions about both the realities of lithium mining and what it does to the Earth, and about recycling. As Max describes in these two videos, it is dangerous to put our faith in these ideas.
The first video describes the devastating destruction the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine will do to Thacker Pass, all who live there, and the surrounding communities, should it get built. The second video dispels the myth of recycling.
Editor’s note: The Brexit gives the UK the chance to become independent from the very destructive EU agricultural policy. This is the time for UK activists to step up for rewilding.
Featured image: Forest in Somerset, UK. Photo by Deb Barnes
By Lisa Malm, Postdoctoral Fellow, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Umeå University, and Darren Evans, Professor of Ecology and Conservation, Newcastle University
After a particularly long week of computer based work on my PhD, all I wanted was to hike somewhere exciting with a rich wildlife. A friend commiserated with me – I was based at Newcastle University at the time, and this particular friend wasn’t keen on the UK’s wilderness, its moorlands and bare uplands, compared to the large tracts of woodland and tropical forests that can be found more readily abroad.
Luckily, I count myself among many who are charmed by the rolling heather moorlands and sheep grazed uplands, whose colours change beautifully with the seasons. But my friend had a point – there is something very different about many of the UK’s national parks compared to those found in much of the rest of the world: the British uplands are hardly the natural wilderness that many perceive.
These upland habitats are in fact far from what they would have been had they remained unaffected by human activity. In particular, grazing by livestock has been carried out for centuries. In the long run, this stops new trees from establishing, and in turn reduces the depth of soil layers, making the conditions for new vegetation to establish even more difficult. Instead of the woodlands that would once have covered large areas of the uplands, Britain is largely characterised by rolling hills of open grass and moorlands.
Government policy has long been to keep these rolling hills looking largely as they do now. But the future of the British uplands is uncertain. Regulations and government policy strongly influences land management, and the biodiversity associated with it. In fact, the management required to maintain British upland landscapes as they are now – management that largely involves grazing by sheep – is only possible through large subsidies. And due to Brexit, this may change. A new agricultural policy will soon replace the often-criticised Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
What this will look like remains unclear. There are a range of competing interests in the uplands. Some wish to rewild vast swathes of the land, while others want to intensify farming, forestry and other commercial interests. The rewilders tap into the increased interest in restoring natural woodland due to its potential in carbon uptake, increased biodiversity and reintroduction of extinct species such as wolves and lynxes, while some farmers argue that this will be bad for the economy. The UK stands at a crossroads, and interests are rapidly diverging.
Whatever path is taken will obviously have an impact on the unique assemblages of upland plants and animals, many of which are internationally important. But upland birds and biodiversity have for a long time been on the decline. Whether rewilding is the answer to this or not has long been debated: some claim that we need to stop grazing animals to allow the natural habitat to reassert itself, while others claim that some species, such as curlews, rely on such grazing practises for their survival.
But our new research, published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology, provides the first experimental evidence to our knowledge, that stopping livestock grazing can increase the number of breeding upland bird species in the long term, including birds of high conservation importance, such as black grouse and cuckoo. This is interesting, as it is often argued that land abandonment can result in lower biodiversity and that livestock grazing is essential for maintaining it.
Our research shows that, depending on how the uplands are managed, there will be bird “winners” and “losers”, but overall when sheep have gone the number of bird species returning increases.
A subsidised landscape
Before going into the research itself, it’s important to consider the history of British upland land management. Truly “natural” habitats in the UK are few and relatively small. Deciduous woodland, and to a lesser extent coniferous forests, used to cover most of the British uplands below the treeline. For example, only about 1% of the native pine forests that once covered 1.5 million hectares (15,000km²) of the Scottish Highlands remain today.
These woodlands provided homes for charismatic species such as pine marten, red squirrel and osprey, together with now extinct species such as lynx and bears. But centuries of farming has shaped most of the upland landscape to what it is today: a predominantly bare landscape dominated by moorlands, rough grasslands, peatlands and other low vegetation.
These marginal areas tend to have low financial profitability for those who farm the land. And so a range of other activities, such as grouse shooting and commercial forestry, exist to boost rural community incomes.
Despite their low profitability, however, many grazed areas are considered to represent “high nature value” farming. This seems paradoxical, but basically means they are considered important as habitats to protected species benefiting from open upland landscapes. One such species is the iconic curlew.
Because farming is tough in the uplands and it’s a struggle to make a profit, landowners receive, and often rely on, subsidies to maintain their farms. The form of these subsidies has changed over time, in line with the current perception of appropriate land management for food production. At the moment, the scale of these subsidies are based on the size of the farm, but they also require that the farmer maintains the land in a good agricultural state. This leaves little room for shrubs or trees, except along field edges, especially in England where there is no financial support for agroforestry (where trees are integrated in agricultural land).
But these subsidies will soon no longer be allocated through the EU – and so it’s time to reconsider what kind of land management should be supported. It seems sensible to consider introducing financial support for other land management types, such as reforestation, natural regeneration or wildflower meadows. Such habitats have other public and nature conservation benefits.
It’s not just farming and aesthetics that are at stake here. Challenges such as climate change and air pollution should also inform how financial support for appropriate land management is managed. For example, floods are predicted to become more common as the climate gets warmer. Reforestation can help to diminish floods, the roots channelling water down through the soil instead of letting it run off the land. Re-establishment of woodlands can also improve air quality: the leaves absorb harmful gases such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.
But rewilding, or any form of restructuring land management, can be costly. It therefore needs to be based on the best scientific evidence, preferably from well-designed experimental research studies. In controlled experimental studies, the cause for any effects found can more easily be determined, as opposed to observational studies, which risk being biased by other, confounding, factors. But due to the cost and complexity of maintaining them, long-term, experimentally manipulated land use studies are rare, and with it the necessary evidence base for long-term management decisions.
Experimental grazing
I’ve been lucky to be involved in one such long-term experiment. The Glen Finglas experiment, managed by the James Hutton Institute, was set up in 2002 in Scotland’s Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. The experiment examines the long-term ecological impacts of different livestock grazing intensity levels on plants, arthropods (insects and spiders), birds and mammals. These grazing levels reflect the conventional stocking rate in the region at the start of the experiment (about three ewes per ha), low intensity grazing at a third of the conventional stocking rate (with sheep only or both sheep and cattle), or no grazing at all.
The experiment has six replicates of four grazing treatments and covers around 0.75km² of land, with 12km of fencing. This may not seem large, but in experimental terms, it is. According to Robin Pakeman, a researcher at the James Hutton Institute who manages the project, the experiment constitutes “an unrivalled resource to understand how grazing impacts on a whole range of organisms”.
Since the start, the Glen Finglas experiment has shown that grazing intensity affects plants and the amount of insects and spiders. The highest amount of plants, insects and spiders were found in the ungrazed areas. This was not too surprising as grazing livestock removes vegetation, which results in reduced habitat conditions for insects and spiders overall (although some species benefit from grazing).
There have also been studies on carbon storage, vole abundances and fox activity within the experiment. These have shown higher carbon storage and higher fox activity in the ungrazed areas.
Meanwhile, the research on birds within this experiment has, from the start, focused on meadow pipits. These small, brown birds are the “house sparrows of the uplands”, yet often go unnoticed. But they are the most common upland bird and an important part of upland food webs, forming key prey for birds of prey such as hen harriers and a common host for cuckoos. The experiment has provided unique insights into the ecology of this fascinating little bird, and a much clearer understanding of how it is affected by grazing.
In just the first two to three years, it became clear that meadow pipits could be affected by grazing intensity. My PhD supervisor, Darren Evans, found that the breeding density and egg size were both positively affected by low intensity mixed cattle and sheep grazing. But there were no differences in how many meadow pipit chicks were produced and fledged between the grazing treatments, at least not in the very early phase of the experiment.
I wanted to test whether these results changed in the longer term. Together with colleagues from Newcastle University, the British Trust for Ornithology, The James Hutton Institute and The University of Aberdeen, we looked at whether 12 years of continuous experimental grazing management had affected the breeding success of meadow pipits.
We assumed that low intensity grazing, compared to high intensity or no grazing, was most beneficial for pipit breeding productivity. We found the low intensity grazed areas did indeed seem to be better for meadow pipits, but the effects were not clear enough to be statistically significant. And there seemed to be potentially more important factors, such as predation, affecting their breeding outcome.
But although we did not initially set out to test it, we found other, more significant, effects on the wider bird community.
When the experiment started, there were almost no bird species other than meadow pipits in and around the treatment areas, hence the focus on them. But in 2015, while looking for meadow pipit nests, we came across a few other beautiful nests in the low intensity grazed areas. These nests had colourful blue eggs or eggs that appeared to have been painted with dark brown watercolour paint. These turned out to be stonechat and reed bunting eggs, two bird species that had not previously been seen in the experiment.
Later on, we saw that they had fledged successfully: the parents would call them to warn about human intruders. If we didn’t get too close, the newly fledged young would curiously nudge their heads up through the vegetation. By this stage of the experiment – 12 years in – the vegetation had actually become quite dense and high in the ungrazed and some of the low intensity grazed areas.
We also detected several black grouse nests, mainly in the ungrazed areas. Most of them were already hatched, but one had a female who bravely stayed put on her eggs every time we visited this area until they hatched.
Another great discovery was when we found a meadow pipit nest with one egg that seemed oddly big in comparison to the rest of the clutch. We were really excited to realise that it had been visited by a cuckoo that had laid an egg there, which hadn’t happened during the early years of nest monitoring in the experiment. This egg had a brown spotted pattern which was fascinatingly similar to the meadow pipit eggs. (As exciting as this all may seem, nest searching should only be carried out under permit. I also had a bird ringing permit covering my research activities).
Thanks to all these encounters, we decided to test how the different grazing treatments affected the species richness of breeding birds. Over the first two years, we found that there was basically no difference. But another decade on and there were clearly more bird species found in the ungrazed areas compared to the other experimental plots.
A fractious debate
It was not only bird species richness that needed time to respond to the change in grazing management. Although plant structure responded early, it was not until 2017 – 14 years since the experiment began – that an effect on plant species richness could be detected. In this case, the variety of species was greater in the intensively grazed areas, probably because the livestock holds back fast-growing plants from dominating. Whether this would remain the same in another decade is far from clear.
The ungrazed areas in our study, meanwhile, showed more shrub and tall-growing plants after a bit more than a decade. There were also patches of deciduous tree species, which were not there when the experiment commenced.
Rewilding is such a fractious debate because of the difficulty in obtaining solid scientific evidence on which to base decisions. It takes a very long time – far longer than our political cycles, most research studies, perhaps even a lifetime – to determine what the ultimate effects of large scale land management on the environment are. In our experiment, changes have been very slow. Pakeman explained to me that this is partly expected in cold and infertile habitats but another reason for slow responses is that plant communities exist in a sort of “mosaic”, with each community having a different preference for the grazers. He continued:
The long history of grazing has meant that the most highly preferred communities show little response to grazing removal as they have lost species capable of responding to this change.
There is no one management practice which creates the perfect environment. Some bird species (skylark and snipe) were only found in grazed areas. Other species were more abundant in the ungrazed areas. There is no one size fits all.
But much more consideration and effort needs to be given to unattended land and its potential for boosting biodiversity. There is no single answer to what is the best alternative, but our experiment indicates that a mosaic of different grazing types and shrub or woodland would be more suitable if the aim is to increase biodiversity, carbon uptake and habitats for endangered species.
The experiment also showed that changing the management had no effects on plant diversity and bird species richness in the first years. But this may only be the beginning of the transformation. Another decade of no grazing may result in even higher, or lower, species richness. This shows how important it is to be patient in receiving the effects of land management on plants and wildlife.
Using existing evidence
Our results bring some experimental evidence to the debate around sheep farming versus rewilding. Hopefully, decisions around new policies and subsidy systems will be based on such evidence. As new policies are formed, there will inevitably always be winners and losers, among both humans and wildlife, according to which habitat types receive more support.
Biodiversity is incredibly important. It creates a more resilient ecosystem that can withstand external stresses caused by both humans and nature. It also keeps populations of pollinators strong. At the moment, perhaps the most current and urgent reason is that it could be instrumental in protecting us from future pandemics. A wider range of species prevents unnatural expansions of single species, which can spill over their diseases to humans.
But preserving biodiversity is just one element of long-term environmental aims. Other processes, such as increased flood protection and carbon storage, which both can be achieved through more vegetation, may soon become more prevalent.
There are therefore several biological processes pointing towards public gain from increasing the area of unmanaged land. Across Europe, land is being abandoned due to low profitability in farming it. There are predictions that the amount of abandoned land in Europe will increase by 11% (equivalent to 200,000km² or 20 million ha) by 2030. This is often reported negatively, but it does not have to be. The problem most people see with land abandonment or rewilding is the decrease in food productivity, which will have to increase in order to feed a growing human population.
But as Richard Bunting at the charity Rewilding Britain explained to me, a decline in food production could be avoided, while increasing the areas subject to rewilding to 10,000km² (a million hectares) by the end of the century:
We’re working for the rewilding of a relatively small proportion of Britain’s more marginal land. One million hectares may sound like a lot, but there are 1.8 million hectares [18,000km²] of deer stalking estates and 1.3 million hectares [13,000km²] of grouse moors in Britain. In England alone, there are 270,000 hectares [2,700km²] of golf courses.
As farmers and other upland land owners may be opposed to the idea of rewilding, I also asked him how this would work in practice. He told me that he believes farming and rewilding could work well together, but he had some caveats:
We do need conversations around fresh approaches to the way farming is carried out and how land is used. A key point here is that for farmers, engaging with rewilding should always be about choice, as we seek a balance between people and the rest of nature where each can thrive.
There are many ways to rewild. The Woodland Trust have been successful in restoring ancient woodlands and planting new trees by protecting them from large herbivores such as deer and livestock. Another method is to let “nature have its way” without intervening at all. This has been successful in restoring natural habitats, including woodland, such as the Knepp estate in West Sussex, which Isabella Tree has made famous in her book Wilding.
After 19 years of no conventional management, The Knepp estate now hosts a vast range of wildlife, including all five native owl species, the rare purple emperor butterfly and turtle doves. Large herbivores, including both livestock and deer, graze the area on a free-roaming level. These animals are replacing the large natural herbivores such as aurochs, wisent and wild boar which would have grazed the area thousands of years ago.
So there is room for discussion on what environmental and financial benefits there may be of different rewilding, or woodland restoration projects, and where they are most suitable.
The first thing to do, I think, is to diversify the types of land management championed by the government through subsidy. Natural habitats could be increased through more financial benefits to landowners for leaving land unattended, while improving public interest in visiting woodlands and thereby the support for preserving wild habitats.
Meanwhile, long-term research of land-use change would give us a better evidence base for future decisions. But this must go hand in hand with much needed serious evaluations of rural communities’ long-term income opportunities under alternative management scenarios, which will always be a cornerstone in land use politics.
This post will describe the differences between mobilising and organising following on from a previous post that describes Jane McAlevey’s three options for change: advocacy, mobilising and organising. McAlevey describes pure forms of these options for change, which is useful for understanding and analysis but clearly on the ground nothing will be this clear cut.
Jane McAlevey is a community and union organiser in the US. She has had a huge amount of success in using deep organising in hostile workplaces to build militant unions and repeatedly win. She describes this in her book Raising Expectations and Raising Hell: My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement. This article describes McAlevey’s six-step structured organizing conversation.
In a recent article, McAlevey responds very clearly to a question about mobilising and organising:
“I should say, I’m not critical of mobilization, I’m very clear that we need plenty of mobilization. It’s just, I’m critical when that’s all we do. That’s where my critique comes in. The difference between the two—and this is sort of the essential reason why we have to do both, not just one—mobilizing is essentially when we just spend all of our time talking to people who already agree with us. It’s getting more effective at the technology of turnout. It’s calling up a protest, and 300 people show up the first time, and you say “Wow, that wasn’t what we thought,” and you double down, and you do way better social media, and you use every single piece of technology you can, and you get 4,000 out the next time. And that’s a huge jump, and you feel great. The problem is that your organization is more like 100,000, and so you’re still only turning out a teeny fraction, and even worse, you’re not actually engaging anyone or expanding your base.
So, what organizing is, by contrast, if I just use that example: If your base is 100,000, organizing is an explicit strategy to go from 100,000 to 1,000,000 and to make it simple, realistic, with a plan. In organizing, we’re consciously, every single day, doing what we call “base expansion.” We’re expanding the universe of people from whom we can later come back to mobilize, whether it’s to go to the polls—I think most people on the left and in this country have learned that elections actually matter—or whether it’s getting people on a picket line and striking, or blocking a bridge, the truth is, there are way too few people, right now, who self-identify as “participating progressives.” We need way, way, way, way more to actually win. So that’s my obsession.
People get confused, they say, “Hey, we called a meeting. Hey, it’s an open meeting.” Like, it’s an open meeting, we called a meeting and we invited anyone to come, and people came, and we’re going to do an action. All of those things involve people. So because they involve people, people think they are organizing. And people go, “Hey, I’m actually organizing.” And I’ll be like, “Really?” And then we get into a deep discussion about it. Because unless you’re waking up in the morning with an explicit plan to build the universe of people who are not yet part of your organizing, who are not in your social media feed, who you don’t talk to, who might even think that they don’t like you, who might even think that they’re opposed to you— that’s the work of organizers and organizing, going out to build unity, and solidarity, and expand the universe of people in our movement.”
McAlevey differentiates between structure-based organising and self-selecting groups. She sees the labor and civil rights movements practicing structure-based organising. Their organising is located in structures, a “cohesive community bound by a sense of place: the working community on the shop floor, in the labor movement, and the faith community in the church, in the fight for civil rights”[1]. For McAlevey, self-selecting groups include environmental and single-issue fights, women’s and other identity-based movements and rely on the mobilising approach. People come to meetings because the are already interested or have a commitment to the cause. These groups spend most of their time talking to people already on their side. Compared to structure-based work, which has the aim of growing the base of people in the movement so need to engage with new people, who initially may have little or no initial interest in being involved.
McAlevey describes how the core of organising is raising people’s expectations:
“about what people should expect from their jobs; the quality of life they should aspire to; how they ought to be treated when they are old; and what they should be able to offer their children. About what they have a right to expect from their employer, their government, their community, and their union. Expectations about what they themselves are capable of, about the power they could exercise if they worked together, and what they might use that collective power to accomplish. Ultimately, expectations about where they will find meaning in their lives, and the kinds of relationships they can build with those around them.” [2]
In this video from 2015, McAlevey gives a presentation titled “Building Power to Win: Organizing Versus Mobilizing”. From 15 minutes in, she gives a good description of mobilising and organising. McAlevey explains that to build power our movements need to get clear on the differences between organising and mobilising.
Organising is about relationships and building meaningful solidarities among majorities of people. It is about disrupting and diminish existing elite power. She explains that the lesson from US history is that during the 1920s-40s in the labor movement and 1940s-60s in the civil rights movement organising not mobilising was used, which led to huge change. She describes how since the 1960’s several factors have resulted in the organising skill set to be mostly lost.
McAlevey describes mobilising as a campaign approach. It has been exported confusingly as an ‘organising model’ when it is mobilising. Whatever it’s called, she is clear that it’s not working.
In the same video, McAlevey gives comparison table between mobilising and organising.
Mobilizing V organizing table
Mobilizing: herding people
Organizing: base expansion
Get those on our side off the couch: technology of turn out
Bring unconvinced and “undecideds” into our movement: expands base
Post-1970’s “advocacy” or “mobilizing” models take hold, staff do the work to “mobilize” “bodies” to “action”
Grassroots leaders do the work with the help of staff, organizers teach/coach skills of struggle (here’s what boss will do next..)
Issues attract self-selected people who are already in agreement (and spend a lot of time talking to ourselves)
Doesn’t grow our base, neglects political education & world view, demobilizes and deskills base
Expands the base of who is with “us” by focusing on capacity of organic leaders creates a fighting army
The table below from McAlevey’s book, No Shortcuts: Organising for Power in the New Gilded Age describes mobilising vs organising using a 3 part framework: theory of power; strategy; people focus.
Mobilizing
Organizing
Theory of Power
Primarily elite – they will always rule and the best we can do is replace a ‘naughty’ elite with a ‘better’ elite, who they ‘can work with’.Staff or activists set relatively easy goals and declare a win even when there is no way to enforce it. Backroom deal making by paid professionals is common.
Mass, inclusive and collective. Organizing groups transform the power structure to favour constituents and diminish the power of their opposition. Specific campaigns fit into a larger power-building strategy. They prioritize power analysis, involve ordinary people in it, and decipher the often hidden relationship between economic, social, and political power. Settlement typically comes from mass negotiations with large numbers involved.
Strategy
Campaigns primarily run by professional staff or volunteer activists with no base of actual, measurable supporters, that prioritize frames and messaging over base power. Staff selected “Authentic messengers” represent the constituency to the media and policy makers, but they have little or no real say in strategy or running the campaign.
Recruitment and involvement of specific, large numbers of people whose power is derived from their ability to withdraw labor or other cooperation from those that rely on them. Majority strikes, sustained and strategic nonviolent direct action, electoral majorities. Frames matter, but the numbers involved are sufficiently compelling to create significant media interest. Mobilizing is seen as a tactic, not a strategy.
People focus
Grassroots activists. People already committed to the cause, who show up over and over. When they burn out, new, also previously committed activists are recruited. And so on. Social media are over relied on.
Organic leaders. The base is expanded through developing the skills of the organic leaders who are key influencers in the constituency and who can then, independent of staff, recruit new people never before involved. Individual face to face interactions are key.
As describes in the previous post, Hari Han in How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations And Leadership In The 21st Century, identifies three theories of change from her research: lone wolves, mobilising, organising. See the table from the book that compares them.
Han found from her research that the local groups with the highest rates of activism did both mobilising and organising. These groups mobilised large groups of people to take quick action and they cultivate a group of people to become future leaders. Han identifies the core difference between them is that organising is transformational and mobilising is transactional. By transformational, Han means that the process of people becoming leaders involves developing a sense of personal agency that they previously lacked, that they could make a difference. Groups that cultivate a sense of agency, push them in directions they might not of gone on their own.
Mobilisers do not aim to transform people’s interests as they bring them into action. Instead, they focus on growing the membership base – the more on the list to contact, the more that will likely engage with the action. Who gets involved depends on who is are ready for action or not. Mobilisers let people self-select the level of activism they want to do.
Han describes how the two are structurally different. Groups that mobilise are usually centralised with decisions being made by a few leaders. Groups that organise, distribute the work through a larger network of leaders. Mobilisers aim to involve large numbers of participants so the leaders look to identify potential opportunities for participation and share that with a growing group of activists.
Organisers seek to cultivate and transform people’s interests so they make different choices compared to mobilisers about how to recruit people into action. First, organisers engage people for action that bring them into contact with each other and give them room to exercise their strategic autonomy. Because working with others to strategise is challenging, mobilisers focus on easy requests that allow people to act alone. Mobilisers are not aiming to cultivate people’s future activism so don’t see the need to bring people into contact with each others or give them any strategic autonomy.
Second, organisers focus on building relationships and community through interdependent collective action. People’s motivation for action and the potential for learning is centered on the connections they have with other people in the group. Han describes three different types of motivations for engaging with politicals organisations: purposive, solidarity, and material. Purposive motivations related to achieving policy goals. Solidary motivations are social and relational. Material motivations are about personal gain. Han argues that mobilisers appeal mainly to purposive motivations, with organisers appealing to all three, especially solidarity ones.
Third and finally, organisers want to develop people’s ability to take future action so they focus on training, coaching, and reflection, mobilisers do not. Mobilisers and organisers depend on grassroots engagement but they engage the grassroots in very different ways. Organisers select which people to train to be leaders, structure and develop relationships with activists, cultivate the motivation and interests of potential activists and leaders, equip them with the skills they need to become leaders, bring people together to engage in collective action [3].
Han describes that combining mobilising and organising helps organisations build quality and quantity of activity. She gives several names for this: “engagement organizing,” distributed organizing,” or “integrated voter engagement.”
Endnotes
No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, Jane McAlevey, 2016, page 12
Raising Expectations and Raising Hell: My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement, Jane McAlevey, 2012, page 12
Hari Han, How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations And Leadership In The 21st Century, 2014, page 14-17
Part one looked at Marxist and non-Marxist concepts of ideology, the challenges of defining ideology, ideology and the political spectrum, and the classical and new ideologies. Based on Political Ideologies: An Introduction by Andrew Heywood (4th edition from 2007) this post describes the classical ideologies of liberalism, conservatism, socialism, nationalism, anarchism, fascism, plus the new ideology feminism.
Liberalism
Heywood describes the central theme of liberal ideology to be a commitment to the individual and the desire to build a society where people can satisfy their interests and achieve fulfilment. Human beings are seen as individuals, invested with reason. Therefore, each individual should enjoy the maximum possible freedom, ensuring a similar freedom for all. Individuals are given equal political and legal rights but they are only rewarded in line with their talents and willingness to work. Liberalism is based on a number of values and beliefs: the individual, freedom, reason, justice, toleration.
Liberals believe in the need for a state, government and laws to protect individuals from others that might be a threat to them. Liberal societies are organized politically around principles of constitutionalism and consent, intended to protect citizens from the dangers of government tyranny. The core features of Liberal democracy are:
constitutional government based on formal legal rules
guaranteed civil liberties and individual rights
institutional fragmentation and a system of checks and balances
regular elections respecting the principles of universal suffrage and ‘one person, one vote’
political pluralism, in the form of electoral choice and party completion
a healthy civil society in which organized groups and interests enjoy independence from government
a capitalist or private-enterprise economy organised along market lines
Heywood explains that there are significant differences between classical liberalism and modern liberalism. Classical liberalism from the nineteenth century has a number of common characteristics. First, it views human beings as rationally self-interested creatures, who have a strong capacity for self reliance. Second, an individual is free by being left alone, not interfered with or coerced by others. Third, it is in favour of a minimal state that maintains domestic order and personal security. Finally, it has a positive view of civil society, that reflects the principle of balance or equilibrium. A good example of this is the classical liberal faith in a self-regulating market economy. Classical liberalism is based on a number of doctrines and theories: natural rights, utilitarianism, economic liberalism, social Darwinism, neoliberalism.
Modern Liberalism, also known as ‘twentieth-century liberalism’, developed in response to the industrialisation and the realisation by some liberals that the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest did not produce a socially just society. Modern liberals believe that the state should help people help themselves. It includes the following ideas: individuality, positive freedom, social liberalism, economic management [1].
Conservatism
According to Heywood, as a political ideology, conservatism is defined by the desire to conserve, with a resistance or suspicion of change. It is characterised by supporting tradition, a belief in human imperfection and an attempt to maintain the structure of society. Conservatives seem to have a clearer understanding of what they are against than what they are for. Conservatives describe their beliefs as a ‘state of mind’ or ‘common sense’ as opposed to an ideology. Its supporters argue that it is based on history or experience, not rational thought. Its central beliefs include: tradition, human imperfection, organic society, hierarchy and authority, property.
The main distinction within conservatism is between traditional conservatism and the ‘new right’. Traditional conservatism defends established institutions and values as they are seen to safeguard the fragile ‘fabric of society’, giving security-seeking human beings a sense of stability and rootedness.
Heywood identifies three forms of traditional conservatism. Authoritarian conservatism is a tradition that favours authoritarianism – a belief in or practice of government ‘from above’, in which authority is exercised over a population with or without its consent.
Paternalistic conservatism is based on the idea that the values that are important to conservatives – tradition, order, authority, property, etc – will only be maintained if policy is developed based on practical circumstances and experience, rather than based on theory. This accepts a prudent willingness to ‘change in order to conserve’. There are two main traditions of paternalistic conservatism: one-nation conservatism, and Christian democracy.
Libertarian conservatism advocates the greatest possible economic liberty and least possible government regulation of social life. Heywood suggests that libertarian conservatives are attached to free-market theories because they ensure social order.
Heywood describes the new right as a combination of two ideological traditions. The first is called the ‘liberal new right,’ or ‘neoliberalism’. This is based on classical liberal economics, specifically free market economics with a critique of ‘big’ government, economic and social intervention.
The second is called the ‘conservative new right’ or ‘neoconservatism’. This is based on traditional conservatism that defends order, authority and discipline. The new right is therefore a fusion of economic libertarianism and social authoritarianism.
Heywood describes the new right as a blend of radical, reactionary and traditional features. It is radical in that it aims to ‘roll back’ interventionist government. The reactionary element relates to the liberal and conservative new right looking back to a past ‘golden age’ of supposed economic propriety and moral fortitude. The new right also prizes the traditional values listed above [2].
Socialism
Heywood describes socialism as in opposition to capitalism and the attempt to create a more humane and socially worthwhile alternative. The foundation of socialism is a view that human beings are social creatures united by their common humanity. Individual identity is formed by social interaction and the involvement of social groups and collective bodies. Socialists value cooperation over competition. Equality, especially social equality is seens as the central value. Social equality is seen to ensure social stability and cohesion, providing freedom because it meets material needs and provides a basis for personal development.
Heywood explains that the difficulties of analysing socialism are due to the term being understood in at least three different ways. First, it is seen as an economic model related to collectivisation and planning and as an alternative to capitalism. The second approach views socialism as an instrument of the labour movement, known as labourism. It represents the interests of the working class and provides a programme for workers to gain political and economic power. In the third approach, socialism is seen as a broader political creed or ideology with a cluster of ideas, values and theories. These include: community, cooperation, equality, class politics, common ownership.
Socialism has a number of divisions and rival traditions, according to Heywood. The divisions have been about the ‘means’ (how socialism should be achieved) and ‘ends’ (the nature of the future socialist society).
The roads to socialism or ‘means’ of achieving it can be divided into revolutionary socialism and evolutionary socialism. Heywood defines revolution as “a fundamental and irreversible change, often a brief but dramatic period of upheaval; systemic change.” Revolution is more than a tactical consideration for socialists, it also relates to their negative analysis of the state and state power. Evolutionary socialists, also known as democratic socialists or social democrats support gradualism, aiming to reform or ‘humanize’ the capitalist system by reducing material inequalities and ending poverty.
For the goals or ‘ends’ of socialism, Heywood describes the different and competing conceptions of what a socialist society should look like. He divides them into Marxist and social democrat.
Marxist
Communists and Marxists support revolution and the abolition of capitalism through the creation of a classless society based on the common ownership of wealth. Marxism is based on the work of Karl Marx and later generations of Marxist thinkers. Their aim has been to develop a systematic and comprehensive worldview that suits the needs of the socialist movement.
Heywood describes three forms of Marxism. The first is classical Marxism: “a philosophy of history that outlines why capitalism is doomed and why socialism is destined to replace it, based on supposedly scientific analysis.” The second is orthodox communism, which refers to communist regimes from the twentieth-century based on the theories of classical Marxism, that had to be adapted to the tasks of winning and retaining political power. The main example is the Russian Revolution, that dominated how communism was viewed in the twentieth-century. The third is modern Marxism, also known as neo-Marxism: “an updated and revised form of Marxism that rejects determinism, the primacy of economics and the privileged status of the proletariat.” Modern Marxism was shaped by two factors: a re-examination of conventional class analysis due to the collapse of capitalism not happening as Marx predicted, and a rejection of the Russian Bolshevik model of orthodox communism.
Social democrat
Social democracy stands for a balance between the market economy and state intervention. Its features include: liberal-democratic principles with peaceful and constitutional political change; capitalism being accepted as the only reliable means of generating wealth; capitalism being viewed as defective at distributing wealth; defects of capitalism can be reduced by state intervention; the nation-state is the meaningful unit of political rule.
Heywood describes how the theoretical basis for social democracy is based on moral or religious beliefs, rather than scientific analysis. Social democracy is primarily concerned with the idea of a just and fair distribution of wealth in society – social justice.
Another form of social democracy is ‘revisionist socialism’, which is based on those that came to see Marx’s analysis of capitalism as defective and thus rejected it. Capitalism was no longer seen as a system of naked class oppression. Instead it could be reformed by the nationalisation of major industries, economic regulation and a welfare state. This is also known as ‘managerialism’.
Since the 1980s reformist socialist parties have gone through another round of revisionism, know as the ‘third way’. It is an unclear term but is broadly a continuation of neoliberalism by parties that were on the left [3].
Nationalism
Classical nationalism is based on the belief that the nation is the natural and proper unit of government. Nationalism is a complex and highly diverse ideology, with distinct political, cultural and ethnic forms. Heywood describes the core feature of nationalism to be its broader connection to movements and ideas that accept the central importance of political life of the nation, not simply its narrow association with self-government and the nation-state.
The political implications have been varied and sometimes contradictory:
“at different times, nationalism has been progressive and reactionary, democratic and authoritarian, rational and irrational, and left-wing and right-wing. It has been associated with almost all the major ideological traditions. In their different ways, liberals, conservatives, socialists, fascists and even communists have been attracted to nationalism; perhaps only anarchism, by virtue of its outright rejection of the state, is fundamentally at odds with nationalism. Nevertheless, although nationalist doctrines have been used by a bewildering variety of political movements and associated with sometimes diametrically opposed political causes…”
Heywood defines cultural nationalism as: “a form of nationalism that places primary emphasis on the regeneration of the nation as a distinctive civilization rather than on self-government.” He defines ethnic nationalism as: “a form of nationalism that is fuelled primarily by a keen sense of ethnic distinctiveness and the desire to preserve it.”
Nationalism has emerged in very different historical contexts, influenced by different cultural traditions, and has been used to advance a wide range of political causes. Heywood describes how nationalism has a capacity to combine with other political doctrines and ideas, which has created a number of rival nationalist traditions. These include: liberal nationalism, conservative nationalism, expansionist nationalism, anti-colonial and postcolonial nationalism.
Liberal nationalism is the oldest form of nationalism, dating back to the French Revolution. Liberal nationalism is a liberating force in that it opposes all forms of foreign domination and oppression, and that it stands for the ideal of self-government. Liberal nationalists also believe that nations, like individuals, are equal, in the sense that they are entitled to the right of self-determination.
Conservative nationalism took shape in the late nineteenth-century and was used by conservative and reactionary politicians to promote social cohesion, order and stability, in response to the increasing international challenge of socialism. Conservative nationalism is maintained by its relationship to tradition and history; it defends traditional institutions and a traditional way of life. It is nostalgic of a past age of national glory and triumph.
Expansionist nationalism is aggressive and militaristic, most clearly displayed by the imperialism of the late nineteenth century by European powers to colonise territories. This form of popular nationalism had a lot of public support, where national prestige was linked the expansion of empire.
Anti-colonial and postcolonial nationalism came about from a desire of ‘national liberation’ by people living in Africa and Asia under foreign imperial rule. Most anti-colonisation movements were based on some form of socialism. In recent decades, postcolonial nationalism has rejected western ideas and culture in favour of religious fundamentalism related to political Islam.
Looking beyond nationalism, there is internationalism. Heywood describes this as a theory or practice of politics based on transnational or global cooperation. There is liberal internationalism based on human rights within nations, national interdependence-based free trade, and where national ambition is limited by supranational bodies. Socialist internationalism treats internationalism as an article of faith or core value, with working class or proletarian class solidarity transcending national borders, especially as capitalism is an international system, and thus can only be challenged by a genuinely international movement [4].
Anarchism
Heywood describes the Anarchist central belief as being that political authority in all forms, especially in the form of the state, is evil and unnecessary. Anarchists therefore want to create a stateless society through the abolition of law and government. The state is viewed as evil because it manages sovereign, compulsory and coercive authority, which are an offence against the principles of freedom and equality. The core value of anarchism is unrestrained personal autonomy. The state is seen as unnecessary, because order and social harmony can exist naturally and do not need to be enforced ‘from above’ by government. Heywood describes the utopian character of anarchist thought, which is reflected in the highly optimistic assumptions about human nature. The broad principles and positions of anarchism are: anti-statism, natural order, anti-clericalism, economic freedom.
In addition, anarchism draws from two different ideological traditions: liberalism and socialism. This has resulted in rival forms of anarchism: individualist and collectivist. Both accept the goal of no state, but promote different ideas of the future anarchist society.
He describes collectivist anarchism developing by pushing socialist collectivism to its limits – the belief that human beings are social animals, well suited to working together for the common good, rather than individual self-interest. This is also called social anarchism, based on the human capacity for social solidarity or ‘mutual aid’. Anarchists have also worked in the broad revolutionary socialist movement.
Heywood identifies a number of theoretical overlaps between anarchism and Marxism: rejection of capitalism, social change through revolution, preference for the collective ownership of wealth and communal organisation of social life, a belief that a communist society would be anarchic, and that human beings have the capacity to run society without political authority.
Heywood also describes how anarchism and socialism differ on two main points. First, anarchists dismiss parliamentary socialism as a contradiction in terms – it is not possible to reform capitalism, and the expansion of the role and responsibilities of the state will only entrench oppression, even if in the name of equality and social justice. Second, collective anarchists and some Marxists have very different conceptions of the transition from capitalism to communism. Marxists believe a revolution will bring a proletariat state, which will then ‘wither away’ as capitalist class conflict dimmishes. Anarchists view any form of state power as evil and oppressive in its own right, with its existence being corrupt and corrupting. Genuine anarchist revolution requires the end of capitalism and state power.
Collectivist anarchism is made up of a number ideas. One is mutualism; “a system of fair and equitable exchange, in which individuals or groups bargain with one another, trading goods and services without profiteering or exploitation.” A second is anarcho-syndicalism, which is a form of revolutionary trade unionism, emerging in France in 1914 and spreading to other industrialised countries. Anarcho-syndicalists reject conventional politics as corrupting, instead believe that working-class power should be utilised through direct action, boycotts, sabotage, strikes, and general strikes. They also organise their unions as a model for a decentralised, non-hierarchical society. This results in a high degree of grassroots democracy, with syndicates forming federations. A third, is anarcho-communism, the most radical form, that requires the abolition of the state. This form envisages that an anarchic society would be made up of a collection of self-sufficient communities, each owning wealth in common. Social and economic life is based on sharing, direct democracy and small scale or ‘human-scale’ communities.
Individualist anarchism is based on the liberal idea of the sovereign individual. When individualism is taken to its extreme, the result is individual sovereignty, which is the idea that absolute and unlimited authority resides with each human being. Any constraint on the individual is evil. It is based on: egoism, libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism.
Heywood states that anarchists reject state power, political power and political parties so have pursued alternative routes to achieving anarchy. One route was revolutionary violence; bombing and assassinations were conducted in the nineteenth century and 1970s. Another route is direct action, which is political action taken outside the constitutional and legal framework, including passive resistance, boycotts, strikes, popular protest. A third route is non-violence or pacifism – the principled rejection of war and all forms of violence as fundamentally evil [5].
Fascism
Heywood identifies the core theme of fascism as being the idea of an organically unified national community, strengthened by the belief in ‘strength through unity’. Individual identity must be absorbed into the community. The ‘new man’ is motivated by duty, honour and self-sacrifice, and is prepared to dedicate his life to the glory of his nation or race, and give complete obedience to a supreme leader.
Fascism is a revolt against the ideas and values that have dominated western political thought from the French Revolution onwards. Values such as rationalism, progress, freedom and equality were replaced by struggle, leadership, power, heroism and war. Fascism has a strong ‘anti-character’, it is” anti-rational, anti-liberal, anti-conservative, anti-capitalism, anti-communist, etc. Fascism embraces an extreme version of expansionist nationalism or ultranationalism, that views nations as rivals in a struggle for dominance.
Fascism is made up for two distinct traditions. Italian fascism was an extreme form of statism that was based on absolute loyalty towards a ‘totalitarian’ state. German fascism or Nazism, was founded on racial theories, presenting the Aryan people as a ‘master race’ and promoting extreme anti-Semitism [6].
Feminism
For Heywood, feminist ideology is defined by two core beliefs: that women are disadvantaged because of their sex, and that this disadvantage can and should be abolished. The feminist view of the political relationship between the sexes is the dominance of men and subjugation of women in societies. By viewing gender divisions as ‘political,’ feminists challenge generations of male thinkers that have been unwilling to examine the privileges and power held by men that have kept the role of women off the political agenda.
The feminist movement has had a diversity of views and political positions. These range from achieving female suffrage, increase in the number of women in elite positions in public life, legalisation of abortion, and the ending of female circumcision.
Heywood describes how feminists have used reformist and revolutionary political strategies. Liberal feminism is essentially reformist; it aims to open up public life to equal competition between men and women, instead of challenge what most feminists view as the patriarchal structure of society.
Socialist feminists argue that the political and legal disadvantages that women face cannot be resolved by equal legal rights or equal opportunities as liberal feminists believe. In their view, the relationship between the sexes is a core part of the social and economic structure, therefore significant social change or social revolution is needed for genuine emancipation.
Radical feminists belief that sexual oppression is the most fundamental feature of society and that other forms of injustice, such as class exploitation or racism, are less important. Gender is seen as the most important social issue. Radical feminists see society as ‘patriarchal’, which is the systematic, institutionalized and all-encompassing process of gender oppression.
Heywood describes some forms of feminism that have emerged since the 1960s: psychoanalytical feminism, postmodern feminism, black feminism, transfeminism [7].
Endnotes
[1] Political Ideologies : An Introduction by Andrew Heywood, 4th edition, 2007, page 23-62
By David Tindall, Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia
The RCMP has recently been arresting protesters who had set up blockades to prevent the logging of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. Environmentalists say the Fairy Creek watershed, near Port Renfrew, is the last old-growth area left on southern Vancouver Island, outside of protected areas.
The contested forested areas lie close to the internationally known West Coast Trail, and within the unceded traditional territory of several First Nations, including Pacheedaht and Ditidaht.
Some of the trees are more than 1,000 years old and are part of rare ecosystems that some independent estimates suggest make up less than one per cent of the remaining forest in B.C. Close to 25 per cent of the world’s remaining temperate rainforest is in B.C., mainly along the coasts.
The demonstrators established the first blockade in August 2020 along the logging roads into the Fairy Creek watershed, where Teal-Jones has a “tree farm licence” to harvest timber and manage forest resources. Now dozens of people, including some First Nations youth, have been arrested for violating a B.C. Supreme Court order that restricts protesters from blockading the logging roads.
This dispute resembles the protests over Clayoquot Sound (also on the west coast of Vancouver Island). Dubbed the “War in the Woods,” more than 850 people were arrested in 1993 for blockading logging roads. That protest, sparked by a decision to allow logging in the area, was the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history and a seminal event in the history of the environmental movement.
As a researcher of social movement and environmental issues, I have been surveying the general public and environmental activists about their attitudes and behaviours for about three decades. I am particularly interested in environmental conflicts and the factors (such as social networks) that explain why people get involved incollective actions to protect the environment or to protest against such actions (pro-industry protesters).
This research can shed light on current and future conflicts. People who support the goals and values of a movement can be drawn into it, what social movement scholars call “the mobilization potential.” However, involvement is often contingent upon other factors, such as social ties to other participants.
‘War in the Woods’ redux?
The connection between Fairy Creek and Clayoquot Sound was highlighted when Tzeporah Berman — a high-profile environmentalist and a leader of the Clayoquot protests — was arrested at a road leading into the Fairy Creek watershed in May.
Berman, who is also the director of the environmental organization Stand.earth, co-ordinated the blockade in Clayoquot Sound 27 years ago. She was arrested then too, although the long list of charges was eventually dismissed on constitutional grounds. No large-scale industrial logging occurred in Clayoquot in the aftermath of the protests.
More recently, anti-logging protests focused on the old-growth forest in the Great Bear Rainforest. Environmentalists, the forestry sector, First Nations and the B.C. government eventually worked together to establish a 2016 agreement to protect the Great Bear Rainforest.
An old-growth forest is one that has not been disturbed by large-scale human activities, such as industrial logging. In B.C., these forests have been growing since the last ice age, about 10,000 years.
They include gigantic trees such as red and yellow cedars, Sikta spruce, hemlock and Douglas firs, which are sometimes as tall as a football field or soccer pitch is long. One thousand-year-old trees may be the most iconic features of coastal old-growth forests, but the forests also promote biodiversity by providing habitat to numerous wildlife species, many of which do not thrive outside of old-growth forests.
Logging has contributed to the dramatic decline of B.C.‘s old-growth forests. One independent study suggested that the majority of B.C.’s productive old-growth forests have been logged, and there are plans to log the majority of what remains.
In a 2007 survey, my group found that 75 per cent of the general public completely or mostly agreed that “clearcut logging should not be allowed in old-growth forests.” So did 93 per cent of environmentalists.
We also asked about the statement: “Some forested areas should be set aside in order to protect endangered and threatened species (e.g., the spotted owl, the spirit bear).” Here, 94.2 per cent of the general public and 98 per cent of environmentalists completely or mostly agreed.
It is difficult to assess the outcomes of social movements, but civil disobedience has been successful in the past. Media attention, changing public opinion and disruption can put pressure on governments to change course.
Growing protests
Protesters have been blocking access to logging roads and positioning themselves high in trees to disrupt harvesting operations in the Fairy Creek area, drawing the attention of the media and the public and putting pressure on government. The RCMP responded slowly at first, but recently began to enforce the court injunction and have restricted access to the protest sites.
While the protest has been going on since late last summer, its activities have recently heated up. Environmentalists want the government to adopt the recommendations from a new advisory report on old-growth forests. It seems likely that the protest will grow.
A large number of people see civil disobedience as being effective and are willing to do it. Once the B.C. government eases COVID-related restrictions, more people will likely become involved in protests. Pleasant weather and flexible summer schedules may encourage others to join. Satellite protests regarding the threat to old-growth forests will also continue in urban centres.
The RCMP says it has arrested more than 100 people already, and 75 seniors from the Victoria area have joined the protest at Fairy Creek. This may just be the beginning of another “War in the Woods.”
