What are social movements?

What are social movements?

by | Jul 13, 2021 | Education, Movement Building & Support, Strategy & Analysis

This article is from the blog buildingarevolutionarymovement.

 

Social movements are important because when collective action spreads across an entire society it leads to a cycle of protest. When such a cycle is organised around opposed or multiple classes or interest groups then this can lead to revolutions [1]. This is simplistic as there are many causes and factors that lead to revolutions, which I’ll attempt to unpack in future posts. This post will focus on describing the characteristics of social movements to frame a future post listing the history of social movements in Britain.

Defining social movements

Many have defined social movements and their characteristics. Here is a consolidated list of those characteristics:

  • social movements are extremely varied: “historically and cross-culturally, and include movements campaigning for various ‘rights’ (civil, labour, women’s, gay, disability, children and so on); movements campaigning on behalf of the environment, peace, or animals; movements seeking specific political reforms or diffuse cultural and personal change; and movements contesting globalization, corporations, and capitalist social relations.” [2]
  • social movements are collective/organised enterprises for social change, rather than individual efforts at social change. Some have created formal organizations, others have relied on informal networks, and others have engaged in more spontaneous actions such as riots.
  • Social movements exist over a ‘period of time’ rather than being ‘one-off’ events- movements follow a temporal trajectory so ‘move’ or change. They might be viewed as temporary from a longer-term perspective.
  • Social movements challenge ‘the status quo’ – elites, authorities, and opponents. They challenge or defend the existing authority by engaging in a ‘conflictual issue’ with a ‘powerful opponent’. Social movements are typically resisted by forces that favour the status quo, which imparts fundamental contentiousness to movement actions.
  • Social movements use varied tactics – choose between violent and nonviolent activities, illegal and legal ones, disruption and persuasion, extremism and moderation, reform and revolution.
  • Social movements use protest – Social movements actively pursue change by employing protest.
  • Social movements are a source of creativity and create identities, ideas, and ideals – members of a social movement are not just working together, but share a ‘collective identity’.
  • Social movements occupy public spaces and the public sphere/debate. Social movements are unique because they are guided purposively and strategically by the people who join them.
  • Social movements mostly operate outside established political and institutional channels.
  • Social movements, big and small, move history along, sometimes in significant ways. [3]

When did social movements first appear?

Charles Tilly describes in Social Movements 1768-2012 that popular risings in one form or another have been happening for thousands of years. He argues that in the eighteenth century something changed so that social movements in the form we understand them were first created, including leadership, members and resources. For Tilly social movements emerged from an innovative combination of three elements:

  • a campaign “a sustained, organized public effort making collective claims on target authorities”
  • social movement repertoire “employment of combinations from among the following forms of political action: creation of special-purpose associations and coalitions, public meetings, solemn processions, vigils, rallies, demonstrations, petition drives, statements to and in public media, and pamphleteering”
  • WUNC displays “‘participants’ concerted public representations of WUNC: worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment on the part of themselves and/or their constituencies” [4]

Defining British social movement since 1945

There have been two books written about post-war social movements in Britain. They both define social movements for the recent British context so I’ve included their definitions.

In British Social Movements since 1945, Adam Lent describes a more focused concept of British social movements “by post-war social movements I am referring to those grassroots mobilisations which were initiated outside of the established structures and values of the existing polity and which formed around the politics of six key issues and/or social groups: gender and women, sexuality and homosexuals, disability and the disabled, race and the ethnic communities, the pursuit of peace, and the defence of the environment. This is a definition rooted deeply in the historical specificity of post-war British movements.” [5]

The second book is Social Movements in Britain by Paul Byrne. He notes the main characteristics of social movements to be:

  • Values and identity – people join social movements because they are committed to certain values and are making a statement about themselves.
  • Structure – social movements are not formally organisations like political parties but are instead ‘networks of interaction’ with political goals.
  • Outsiders – social movements challenge the existing order and way of doing things.
  • Tactics – social movements engage in some action outside of the institutional or legal channels of political institutions.
  • Protest campaigns and social movements – protests do not represent a movement if it does not seek to gain support across the whole of society or even internationally. Social movements aim for societal change, not local change. [6]

Social movements, dynamics of contention and collective action

McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly argue in Dynamics of Contention that different forms of contention result from similar mechanisms and processes in society. The different forms of contention that they list include social movements, revolutions, industrial conflict/strike waves, nationalism, democratisation, war, and interest group politics. McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly define contentious politics to be “episodic, public, collective interaction among makers of claims and their objects when (a) at least one government is a claimant, an object of claims, or a party to the claim and (b) the claims would, if realized, affect the interest of at least one of the claimants.” [7]

Other important forms of contention are insurrections, rebellions, revolts, riots, and uprisings. Sometimes they are part of social movements and sometimes not. I will explore these in future posts.

Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani defines collective action as “individuals sharing resources in pursuit of collective goals – i.e., goals that cannot be privatized to any of the members of the collectivity on behalf of which collective action has taken place. Such goals may be produced within movements, but also in many contexts that normally are not associated with movements.” [8] Donatella Della Porta includes social movements, political parties, voluntary organisation, interest groups and religious sects, as collective action. [9] Herbert Blumer identified four forms of collective behaviour: crowds, the public, the mass, and social movements

The structure of social movements

In What is a Social Movement? Hank Johnston explains that there are two basic ways of thinking about how social movements are structured. First, social movements are made up of organisations and groups that integrate people in varying amounts of participation and mobilise them to act. These groups and organisations are large or small, disruptive or engage with political institutions, grassroots or centralised. Second, the complexity of social movements means they are interconnected network structures. The network binds the components (individuals, organisations, groups) together resulting in an overall cohesion. [10]

Charles Tilly makes a useful point that social movement analyists make a common mistake of  confusing a movements collective action – the campaigns in which it engages – with the organisations and networks that support the action. Or even simply considering that organisations and networks are the movement. [11] I think its both, the activities (actions, protests, marches/demonstrations, and campaigns) and the structures (organisations, groups, some political parties, and movements of movements).

 

Endnotes

  1. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Sidney Tarrow, 2011, page 16
  2. Social Movements and Protest, Gemma Edwards, 2014, page 2
  3. Social Movements and Protest page 2-5
    The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts, Jeff Goodwin, 2014, page 3/4
    Making Sense of Social Movements, Nick Crossley, 2002, page 2-7
    What is a Social Movement?, Hank Johnston, 2014,  page 1
  4. Social Movements 1768-2012, Charles Tilly, 2012 page 4/5
  5. British Social Movements Since 1945: Sex, Colour, Peace and Power, Adam Lent, 2002, page 3
  6. Social Movements in Britain, Paul Byrne, 1997, page 12-23
  7. Dynamics of Contention, Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly, 2001, page 4-7
  8. Social Movements: An Introduction, Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani, 2010, page 19
  9. Social Movements: An Introduction, page 19-20
  10. What is a Social Movement?, Hank Johnston, 2014,  page 7
  11. Social Movements 1768-2012, page 7
Learning From History

Learning From History

by | Jul 6, 2021 | Education, Movement Building & Support, Strategy & Analysis

This article is from the blog buildingarevolutionarymovement.

 

Writing about history is important for this project, but why is that? I took for granted how important learning from history is without really thinking about why. When I read How Change Happens by Duncan Green, he clarified things. This got me thinking about wanting to understand learning from history better to then write about it.

Successes and failure of the left
Duncan Green, who’s area of focus is international development, describes how looking at history lets us question the world we take for granted and understand the long-term trends that shape it. By understanding how our current world has been created, we can find more realistic methods to change it. He describes how the success of the abolitionist movement shows that massive, immovable objects have been changed before. Green describes how history can inspire a deep respect for the personal sacrifices and campaign skills of our predecessors. History can also provide intellectual material to challenge the current narrow window of what’s acceptable. By studying historical examples that are an alternative and different from the norm, it gives new insights and ideas. Green explains that history encourages curiosity and humility and reminds us that activists are usually less influential than political, economic or unexpected changes. [1]

Campaigning for change: lessons from history by the History & Policy Network and Friends of the Earth explain that the case studies in the book: “illustrate, documenting activism and organising for change in the past gives us greater understanding of strategic choices, communications strategies, timing and serendipity in campaigning, as well as some extraordinary examples of mobilisation on a scale that today’s campaigners can scarcely dream of.” [2] The book explores ten case studies from the last 200 years in Britain.

They reference the famous quote ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’, and describe how politicians and pundits regularly use history to try to understand the present but without thinking how to do that appropriately. [3]

The History & Policy Network and Friends of the Earth describe the three questions that academic historians focus on the most:

  • how you choose your questions/choosing your histories,
  • the truthfulness of historical explanations/choosing your historians,
  • the unique character of historical events/translating past into present/challenge of drawing parallels. [4]

The conclusion of Campaigning for change: lessons from history identifies four areas of learning:

  1. Big game-plan and proxy campaigns – many modern-day campaigns do not have a bigger game plan compared to campaigns of the past.
  2. Approaches – using economics arguments instead of moral arguments is now common; movements do reach out to elites to build coalitions as they did in the past; we now have loose networks heading in the same direction compared to broad-based cohesive movements and coalitions of the past.
  3. Tactics – strong individual and group identities are important; people have relationships with the place they live in and the people who live there; direct action has contributed to successful campaigns in the past when used strategically; over time women have extended their sphere of influence in movements resulting in novel and successful tactics.
  4. The backlash – prepare for and understand what possible backlashes may appear and from where, and prepare how to use them to benefit the campaign; and understanding that those in power cannot always control the narrative so aim to control or change the narrative. [5]

In Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy Rinku Sen describes how looking at the history of community organising shows several different models, that are based on a “specific theory of constituency building and social change”. These specific models of organising can be beneficial and limiting. Understanding the model that our tactics are based on means we can “follow that model to a logical conclusion, get help from others who have used it, avoid its pitfalls, and describe ourselves effectively in our attempts to raise money and train new leaders.” Models can also limit campaigns ability to innovate, which is key to success. Sen explains that pure models do not exist and effective organisers mix and match. Community organising and social movement history are full of examples of tactics from past campaign being applied to ongoing struggles. She argues the importance of being able to articulate the theory of social change being applied to then stick with it or adjust it as necessary. [6]

Professor Jodi Dean describes how historical accounts are meant as lessons and guideposts, ways of thinking that let us learn and do better next time. She argues that sometimes leftists forget this and get bogged down in lessons of the past as if they tell us exactly what will happen. As if history is completely determinist [7] and there is no alternative. She argues that the determinist perceptive is an academic approach and instead need to think in more political and revolutionary terms. Dean describes that we need to look at the past for guidance and the future should determine how we apply this guidance in terms of ‘strategy, tactics, practices, and slogans.’ [8]

Jodi Dean also argues that we need to learn the positive lessons from terrible historical periods. Jodi Dean wrote The Communist Horizon intending to reclaim ‘communism’, argues that when people reduce communism to the Soviet Union, they don’t want to learn from history. Instead, they want to universally criticise and condemn the Soviet Union. I’m no fan of the Soviet Union for obvious reasons (it was responsible for the mass murder of millions of people and highly repressive) but like Jodi Dean, there were experiments in self-management and collectivisation that we can learn from. It’s important to not write the whole period off. The people that undertook these experiments – scientists, doctors, farmers – do have something to teach us. [9]

Ben Reynolds who wrote The Coming Revolution: Capitalism in the 21st Century describes how we need to learn where the left has made missteps or gone wrong. Not so much about blame as being able to conduct an honest appraisal of our historical and current failures that will help us to build a strong and solid movement going forwards. He links this to how fractured the left is, with people being very ideological and not many reading or listening to opposing voices on the left. Reynolds describes how those on the left caricature those in other tendencies, so they are seen as evil and the enemy. The result is that no one learns from the historical experience and instead everyone is just regurgitating their talking points. He describes some of the lessons from the victory of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and the mistakes the left made there. [10]

Naomi Klein describes the emotional benefits of learning from this past in a talk she gave in 2011 about her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She explains that the large amounts of terrifying information that we are bombarded with result is us being in a state of shock so we don’t make important connections or construct analysis. This keeps us in the immobile state we’re stuck in. She describes that when we gather and tell ourselves stories then the clicks of connection happen. We can’t be effective activists if we’re hysterical. We can be calm and angry at the same time. Our role models in the effective political struggles of the past weren’t hysterical. They were focused and calm. Klein describes that when we make the connections between issues – war, torture, economics – between the present and our past, then our bodies start to relax. We calm down, get more focused and we can feel some of that rage as opposed to just fear. So we can be much more effective activists and fighters. [11]

The Marxist economics Professor Richard Wolff, explains in many of his youtube videos how important learning from history is in relation to why the 2008 economic crash happened and also what happened in the US in the 1930s in response to Great Depression – labour movements forced President Roosevelt to implement the New Deal by taxing the rich. [12] He also explains that most people know a lot of what he explains in his talks but he shares his understanding of history with a narrative in the hopes that it will cause people to join with other people to make a change. [13]

Richard Wolff explains clearly in this video how since 1980 the capitalists in the US rolled back the New Deal gains for ordinary people of benefits, pensions, and full employment. He explains near the end of the video that although the rich were heavy taxed during the New Deal period and post-war boom, they were left with the resources to be able to support the neoliberal project of think tanks and academics from the middle of the twentieth century. It then became the dominant political and economic ideology from the late 1970s. I will describe the history and nature of neoliberalism in a future post.

Richard Wolff argues in the video that what we learning from the last fifty years is that: if taxes are drastically increased and regulations are put in place to stop another financial crash, the rich have the resources to undo them again and they will do this. He concludes that “you can not leave some people in control of a disproportionate amount of the wealth of society and then be surprised if they use that wealth to keep themselves at the top. If we don’t want that, then let’s not fight over redistributing the wealth. Let’s not distribute unequally in the first place. We shouldn’t have some people earning millions of dollars and other people fighting to get $15 an hour as a minimum wage. That creates inequality and the corruption of politics to keep that inequality in place.’ [14]

History from below
In All Knees and Elbows of Susceptibility and Refusal: Reading History from Below Anthony Iles and Tom Roberts describe two perspectives of ‘history from below’: “‘radical history’ – the history of more or less organised political movements which challenge and sometimes shape the order of things – and history from below as the history of unheard voices and experiences per se.” [15]

All Knees and Elbows of Susceptibility and Refusal: Reading History from Below has eight chapters. The introduction describes core figures and institutions that are used as a starting point to explore the field. Chapter two looks at class, ‘the people’ and ‘the below’, and how history from below has expanded these categories. Chapter three explores questions related to the discovery and use of historical sources. Chapter four looks at how the working class developed intellectual practices and developed distribution networks for the dissemination of dissent. Chapter five focuses on the relationship between history, literary forms and myth-making, and how people construct their own identities and experiences about the dominant culture. Chapter six looks at education – university institutions, their critique and protest against them. Chapter seven looks at history and state politics, focusing on the Coalition Government concept of the ‘Big Society’. The final chapter describes some of the disputes and controversies that ‘historians from below’ have initiated.

Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements edited by Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally brings together “radical adult education and historical theoretical frameworks to explicitly examine the knowledge production, learning and politics involved in processes of retrieving and critically engaging with movement histories and developing activist archives, and further, in ways which put them into dialogue with contemporary activism.” [16] Its asks important questions “How do educators and activists in today’s struggles for change use historical materials from earlier periods of organizing for political education? How do they create and engage with independent and often informal archives and debates? How do they ultimately connect this historical knowledge with contemporary struggles?” [17]

The book is divided into four sections:

  • engagement with activist/movement archives,
  • learning and teaching militant histories,
  • lessons from liberatory and anti-imperialist struggles,
  • learning from student, youth and education struggles.

Six of the chapters focus on social movements in South Africa. Struggles are explored from other countries including Argentina, Iran, Britain, Palestine and the US [17]

The introduction (download here) gives an overview of the book and aspects of learning from history. It describes the importance of developing “context-specific, locally relevant ways to connect historical movement knowledge with contemporary organising.” [18] It also states that “histories from below can be fraught with contradictions, silences, omissions, distortions, and absences in similar ways to official histories, just as learning and knowledge produced in activist milieus can sometimes replicate rather than disrupt dominant power relations.” [19] Using ideas and concepts from previous struggles requires us to be aware of potential problems of “constructing imagined histories and continuities with the past”, so we need to avoid romanticising earlier struggles. We need to avoid copying past victories and applying now in different conditions and contexts. We also need to seriously consider to value of ‘old tactics’ that did not work in the past. [20]

The introduction stresses the importance of being aware of the problems of historical and social amnesia. This amnesia “risks losing the thread and texture of what it takes to bring about social change, with all of its tensions and contradictions and threatens to leave us with a version of history that glosses over or ignores the significance of behind-the-scenes organising. Such amnesia can paper over the conflicts, tensions and power dynamics that have been part of these organising efforts and from which we can also learn.” [21]

It also underlines how important it is for many movements to identify the “historical context for the conditions in which people live and struggle”, related to capitalism and colonialism. It describes the essential need to fashion “tools from forms and histories of resistance that are sometimes forgotten and buried.” It is important to appreciate struggles “at the margins or dissenting currents within larger movements, the ideas that they produce and their contributions to organising.” Finally, the introduction describes the need to be aware of revisionism “we need to also bring to light ways in which the latter struggles sometimes get overwritten by dominant accounts which focus on individual leaders and more visible or more powerful organisations.” [22]

Endnotes

  1. How Change Happens, Duncan Green, 2016, page 76/77
  2. Campaigning for change: lessons from history, History & Policy Network and Friends of the Earth, 2015, page 9
  3. Campaigning for change, page 11
  4. Campaigning for change, page 12
  5. Campaigning for change, page 160-174
  6. Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy, Rinku Sen, 2003, page lxiv
  7. Determinism is the philosophical theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. Determinism is usually understood to preclude free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do.
  8. Jodi Dean, Launching the 2018 Register: Rethinking Democracy, 11m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IioL6TyKDE
  9. Jodi Dean – The Communist Horizon, 13m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhUvNkJve-w
  10. Bey Reynolds, The Coming Revolution, 29m, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SdHitD2ag8&t=98s
  11. Naomi Klien, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, 129m, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg
  12. Richard Wolff, Crisis and Openings: Introduction to Marxism, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Whccunka4&t=352s
  13. Richard Wolff, the Game is Rigged, 121m, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlhFMa4t28A
  14. Richard Wolff, How Reaganomics Killed America’s Middle Class, 47m, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdCNGkZoIZw
  15. All Knees and Elbows of Susceptibility and Refusal: Reading History from Below, Anthony Iles and Tom Roberts, 2012, page 6
  16. Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements, Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally, 2017, page 8
  17. Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements, page vii
  18. Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements, page 4
  19. Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements, page 6
  20. Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements, page 8
  21. Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements, page 9
  22. Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements, page 14
  23. https://www.britannica.com/topic/historiography
What to organise around?

What to organise around?

by | Jun 30, 2021 | Building Alternatives, Education, Movement Building & Support, Strategy & Analysis

This article is from the blog Building a Revolutionary Movement.

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 ‘service unions’ (also known as business unionism) do important work to defend workers’ rights but it is limited to that, and these unions do not attempt to change society, even if individual members do want that. They maintain capitalist social relations. The more radical unions include National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Fire Brigades Union (FBU), University and College Union (UCU), Communication Workers Union (CWU).

‘Base unions’, is a term that originated in Italy. These unions were formed in workplaces where workers had a material need, made up the union’s membership and were in control of how the union operated. This article gives a history. This is based on the anarchist form of radical unionism, anarcho-syndicalism. The radical ‘base unions’ in the UK are Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Independent Works Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and United Voices of the World (UVW). See this article for more info. There is also the Work Force Movement.

Community

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.

Several community and tenant/renter unions have formed in the last decade. Three focus on supporting their members with housing and community issues using radical direct action tactics; they are ACORN, London Renters Union and Living Rent in Scotland. There is also Unite Community, which offers the ‘service union’ benefits to those not in full-time work, so part-time or unemployed and campaigns on workplace and community issues. There is also Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth  and Sisters Uncut. See this article on critical support for renters unions.

The community rights movement originated in the US, primarily driven by the Community and Environmental Defence Fund. They describe community rights work as including environmental rights, workers’ rights, rights of nature and democratic rights. Read a history of the community rights movement here.

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.

Solidarity networks and base building combine workplace and community/social issues in a locality. Active groups and networks in Britain include Solidarity Federation, Angry Workers, Teesside Solidary Movement and Valleys Underground, Marxist Centre.

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’.

Social movement parties have different relationships between the movement and party: vanguard, electoral and organic and include Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, and the Five Star Movement in Italy.

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.

Digital parties and internet parties include the Pirate Party and others.

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

Mobilising and Organising

Mobilising and Organising

by | Jun 23, 2021 | Education, Lobbying, Strategy & Analysis

This article is from the blog buildingarevolutionarymovement.

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) Everyone (boss hires workers, parishioners attracts members, landlord contracts to tenants, etc)
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

  1. No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, Jane McAlevey, 2016, page 12
  2. Raising Expectations and Raising Hell: My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement, Jane McAlevey, 2012, page 12
  3. Hari Han, How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations And Leadership In The 21st Century, 2014, page 14-17
The Spectrum of Environmentalism

The Spectrum of Environmentalism

by | Jun 18, 2021 | Strategy & Analysis

This is an excerpt from the book Bright Green Lies.

DEEP GREENS

The living planet and nonhumans both have the right to exist. Human flourishing depends on healthy ecology. To save the planet, humans must live within the limits of the natural world; therefore, drastic lifestyle transformations need to occur at social, cultural, economic, political, and personal levels.

 

LIFESTYLISTS

Humans depend on nature, and technology probably won’t solve environmental issues, but political engagement is either impossible or unnecessary. The best we can do is practice self-reliance, small-scale living, and other personal solutions. Withdrawal will change the world.

 

BRIGHT GREENS

Environmental problems exist and are serious, but green technology and design, along with ethical consumerism, will allow a modern, high-energy lifestyle to continue indefinitely. The bright greens’ attitude amounts to: “It’s less about nature, and more about us.”

 

WISE USE / ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGERS

Ecological issues exist, but most problems are minor and can be solved through proper management. Natural resources should be protected primarily to enable their continued extraction and human well-being.

 

CORNUCOPIANS

The earth is made up of resources that are essentially infinite. Ecological problems are secondary. Technology and the economic system—whether free-market capitalism or socialism—will solve all ecological problems.

 

TECHNOCRATS / TRANSHUMANISTS

Humans should transcend biology by investing heavily in technology and developing synthetic meats and other foods. We can also avoid the possibility of human extinction by leaving planet Earth behind, and we should ultimately move towards cybernetic enhancement and uploading human consciousness into machines in order to defeat death.

We Should All Be Worried About The United Nations Food Systems Summit.

We Should All Be Worried About The United Nations Food Systems Summit.

by | May 30, 2021 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Building Alternatives, Climate Change, Education, Lobbying, Strategy & Analysis, Toxification

Editor’s note: Large scale agriculture, especially the industrial form with its dependence on heavy machinery, highly toxic chemicals and genetically modified crops is incredibly destructive. It’s also remarkably undemocratic since it is pushed by large multinational cooperations and their exclusive institutions like the World Economic Forum and the UN. If we as humans want to have a future on this planet (it looks like we don’t), we need to shift radically to more community based, small scale, democratic food systems and locally applicable techniques for ecological restoration, since large scale agriculture will inevitably fail and leave toxic, deserted landscapes behind.

By Thea Walmsley of A Growing Culture

A battle for the future of food is already underway. There’s still time to change the outcome.

Later this year, the United Nations is set to hold a historic Food Systems Summit, recognizing the need for urgent action to disrupt business-as-usual practices in the food system. But far from serving as a meaningful avenue for much-needed change, the summit is shaping up to facilitate increased corporate capture of the food system. So much so, that peasant and indigenous-led organizations and civil society groups are organizing an independent counter-summit in order to have their voices heard.

At the heart of the opposition is the fact that the conference has been co-opted by corporate interests who are pushing towards a highly industrialized style of agriculture promoted by supporters of the Green Revolution, an approach that is meant to eradicate hunger by increasing production through hybrid seeds and other agrochemical inputs. It has been widely discredited for failing to achieve its goals and damaging the environment. The Summit’s concept paper perpetuates the same Green Revolution narrative — it is dominated by topics like AI-controlled farming systems, gene editing, and other high-tech solutions geared towards large-scale agriculture, as well as finance and market mechanisms to address food insecurity, with methods like agroecology notably absent or minimally discussed.

A Crisis of Participation

But the problem is not only the subject matter that the conference has put on the agenda. It’s also the remarkably undemocratic way of choosing who gets to participate, and in what ways. The agenda was set behind closed doors at Davos, the World Economic Forum’s exclusive conference. As Sofia Monsalve, Secretary General of FIAN International puts it, “They have cherry picked representatives of civil society. We don’t know why, or which procedure they used.”

The multi-stakeholder model of governance is problematic because it sounds very inclusive,” Monsalve continues. “But in fact we are worried about the concealing of power asymmetries, without having a clear rule in terms of accountability. What is the rule here — who decides? And if you don’t decide according to a rule, where can we go to claim you are doing wrong?”

The conference organizers have claimed that they have given peasant-led and civil society groups ample opportunity to participate in the conference, but this is a facade. The UN’s definition of ‘participation’ differs significantly from that of the hundreds of civil society groups that have spoken out against the Summit. The Summit claims that allowing groups to attend virtual sessions and give suggestions amounts to participation. But true participation means being consulted about crucial agenda items that have a massive impact on the communities they represent. This was not done.

“We didn’t have the opportunity to shape the agenda, Monsalve explains. “The agenda was set. Full stop. And therefore we are asking ‘why is it that we are not discussing how to dismantle corporate power? This is a very urgent issue on the ground for the people. How is it that we are not discussing about COVID and the food crisis related to COVID?’”

Organizations like the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS), which represents 148 grassroots groups from 28 countries, feel similarly. “It’s just like having a table set,” explains Sylvia Mallari, Global Co-Chairperson of PCFS. “So you have a dinner table set, then the questions would be who set the table, who is invited to the table, who sits beside whom during dinner? And what is the menu? For whom and for what is the food summit? And right now, the way it has been, the agenda they’ve set leaves out crucial peoples and even their own UN nation agencies being left behind.”

Elizabeth Mpofu of La Vía Campesina, the largest peasant-led organization representing over 2 million people worldwide, explains how “The United Nation food systems summit, from the beginning, was really not inclusive of the peasants’ voices. And if they’re going to talk about the food systems, on behalf of whom? Because the people who are on the ground, who are really working on producing the food should be involved in the planning. Before they even organized this summit, they should have made some consultations and this was not done.”

The concerns are not only coming from outside the UN. Two former UN Special Rapporteurs to the Right to Food — Olivier De Schutter and Hilal Elver — as well as Michael Fakhri, who currently holds the position, wrote a statement to the summit organizers early on in the process. “Having all served as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food,” they write, “we have witnessed first-hand the importance of improving accountability and democracy in food systems, and the value of people’s local and traditional knowledge.

It is deeply concerning that we had to spend a year persuading the convenors that human rights matter for this UN Secretary General’s Food Systems Summit. It is also highly problematic that issues of power, participation, and accountability (i.e. how and by whom will the outcomes be delivered) remain unresolved.”

Michael Fakhri has also expressed concern about the sidelining of the Committee on Food Security (CFS), a unique civil society organization that allows “people to directly dialogue and debate with governments, holding them to account.” As Fakhri explains, if the CFS is sidelined in this summit (as they have been thus far), there is a real danger that “there will no longer be a place for human rights in food policy, diminishing anyone’s ability to hold powerful actors accountable.”

Gertrude Kenyangi, executive director of Support for Women in Agriculture and Environment (SWAGEN) and PCFS member, stated during a Hunger for Justice Broadcast on April 30th that the problem comes down to one of fundamentally conflicting values: “Multinational corporations and small-holder farmers have different values,” said Kenyangi. “While the former value profit, the latter value the integrity of ecosystems. Meaningful input of small-holder farmers, respect for Indigenous knowledge, consideration for biodiversity… will not be taken into account [at the Summit]. They will not tell the truth: that hunger is political; that food insecurity in Africa is not only as a result of law and agriculture production, but it’s a question of justice, democracy and political will. That’s our concern.”

The Presence of AGRA

The problems with the Summit were compounded further by UN Secretary General António Guterres choosing to appoint Agnes Kalibata, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA), as Special Envoy to the conference. AGRA is an organization, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations (as well as our governments), that promotes a high-tech, high-cost approach to agriculture, heavily reliant on agrochemical inputs and fertilizers. They have been at the forefront of predatory seed laws and policies that marginalize and disenfranchise peasant farmers on a massive scale.

AGRA has devastated small-scale farmers under the mission of “doubling productivity and incomes by 2020 for 30 million small-scale farming households while reducing food insecurity by half in 20 countries.” Their approach has been proven to be markedly unsuccessful. Timothy Wise, a senior adviser at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, began to research AGRA’s efficacy in the last fourteen years of work. Unlike many nonprofits who are held to strict transparency standards, AGRA refuses to share any information about their performance metrics with researchers. It took a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request to find out what AGRA has to show for their US$1 billion budget. Researchers found that AGRA ‘apparently’ had not been collecting this data until 2017 (eleven years after their founding in 2006).

Food security has not decreased in their target countries. In fact, for the countries in which AGRA operates as a whole, food insecurity has increased by 30% during their years of operation; crop production has fared no better. Yet this narrative continues to be pervasive around the world. It is the backbone of the UN Food Systems Summit and most development agendas. And AGRA’s president is leading the conference.

Attempts to build bridges with civil society organizations have failed. In sessions with civil society groups, Ms. Kalibata has demonstrated a lack of awareness of the growing peasant-led movements that reclaim traditional agricultural methods as promising avenues to a more sustainable food system. Wise explains, “During the session she held with peasant groups, she basically indicated that she didn’t know about the peasant rights declaration that the UN had passed just two years ago. And she told them, why do you keep calling yourselves peasants? She said that she calls them business people because she thinks they’re needing to learn how to farm as a business.”

“It’s also a pretty significant conflict of interest, which people don’t quite realise,” Wise continues. “AGRA is a nonprofit organisation that’s funded by the Gates foundation and a couple other foundations — and our governments. They are about to enter a period where they desperately need to replenish their financing. And so they are going to be undertaking a major fund drive exactly when this conference is happening. And the summit is being positioned to help with that fund drive.”

Since Ms. Kalibata was named special envoy, there has been a public outcry over this clear conflict of interest. 176 civil society organizations from 83 countries sent a letter to the UN Secretary General António Guterres voicing their concerns over Ms. Kalibata’s corporate ties. They never received a response. 500 civil society organizations, academics, and other actors sent the UN an additional statement laying out the growing list of concerns about the Summit. Again, they received no reply.

While 676 total civil society organizations and individuals expressed clear concern over Ms. Kalibata’s appointment, only twelve people signed a letter supporting the nomination. The Community Alliance for Global Justice’s AGRA Watch team found that all but one of these individuals have received funds from the Gates Foundation.

Competing Pathways for Food Systems Change

This summit isn’t just a case of poor planning and a lack of genuine participation for peasant-led organizations. It represents a deeper and more insidious trend in food systems governance: the erosion of democratic decision-making and the rise of powerful, unaccountable, private-sector actors who continue to consolidate power over the food system.

The absence of practices like agroecology from the agenda shows how deeply the private sector has consolidated power — these methods are highly promising, low-input and low-cost solutions for farmers to increase their yields while farming more sustainably. But they are mentioned only in passing. “If you ever look at a situation and see something that looks like the most obvious, sensible solution and it’s not happening, ask who’s making money from it not happening,” explains Timothy Wise. The answer here is clear: high-input agriculture makes many people extraordinarily wealthy. This power allows them to set the agenda for food systems change, at the expense of farmers, and at the expense of the environment.

That’s why this conference is so important: it will set the stage for the approach to food systems change in the coming decades. We the people need to decide who should set the agenda for a food future that affects us all — one that preserves biodiversity and prioritizes human rights and well-being. Are we willing to let the corporations who pursue profits at all cost continue to claim that they know what’s in our best interest? Do we want a future governed by the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in partnership with the largest agrochemical and seed companies in the world? Or are we ready to demand that those who actually grow our food — peasants, farmers, and Indigenous peoples around the world — be the ones to determine our direction?

This is what’s at stake. Right now, the most powerful players in the food system are poised to set an agenda that will allow them to continue amassing profits at staggering rates, at the expense of farmers, consumers, and the environment.

But there is still time to fight back. Where the conference holds most of its power is in its legitimacy. As groups mobilize, organize, and demand genuine participation, this false legitimacy driven by actors like the Gates Foundation begins to crumble. We must stand in solidarity with the grassroots communities who are telling the truth about this conference and what it represents. We must get to work.

A Growing Culture would like to ask all readers to help raise the dialogue about this upcoming summit. Re-share this article, re-post, tweet and amplify this issue. You can learn more about A Growing Culture here: https://www.agrowingculture.org, on Twitter: @agcconnect or Instagram: @agrowingculture.