It’s Getting Hot In Here

“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories. … Our experience has shown us that in the general framework of daily struggle, this battle against ourselves, this struggle against our own weaknesses … is the most difficult of all.” – Amilcar Cabral, African freedom fighter (1924-1973)

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One of the things that has drawn me to the climate movement is the people. Global warming is the issue of our time and we must rise to the challenge. But how we go about making that happen depends on how we organize ourselves, how we identify ourselves, and how strong our community bonds become.

I have been impressed with the passion and sincerity of youth in the movement. This summer, on the march to re-energize NH, we were addressed by Bishop Gene Robinson and he told us we were crazy. Crazy because we are sincere and no one is sincere in this world of sarcasm and cynicism.

When we talk of building power to make change, we should be aware of and emphasize our strengths. As youth, we are mobile. Lets use that. We have close connections to large and powerful institutions — our schools — so lets use our influence there as a source of change. We are technologically savvy, or at least enough of us are, to do amazing things with online organizing tools; the Campus Climate Challenge, Step it UP 1 & 2 and Power Shift demonstrate that. We are also sincere, passionate and dedicated people. How do we build on our strengths?

I began to get involved with the movement a year ago. Over the summer I had the opportunity to meet an amazing variety of youth at the Sierra Student Coalition’s SPROG training, the march in NH and Shindig, the SSC’s national leadership gathering. Echoing the words of a friend, “I really like this tribe.” The people I have gotten to know over the last 12 months are some of my favorite people in the world, we have an understanding and a common energy that far surpasses the sum of our individual passions.

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We need to create the new technology that will revolutionize our relationship to energy and we need to put a real price on carbon. And, we need to include all types of people in this movement by creating opportunities for everyone to gain by participating. As we work towards our common vision, our developing dream, I want to hint at a possibility for how we could organize ourselves.

When Adam Smith started to figure out economics, he didn’t have a clear picture of what a multi-national corporation would be. That was OK, he just laid out a few principles and people ran with it. (This might be simplified a little, but bear with me).

Smith was describing a new way of thinking, and really creating a new subject entirely: how do people relate to the market? This revelation sparked a wave of innovations in banking, trade, production, marketing and communications. These are all advances in organizational structure. Other than the military, few very large organizations of people had to think critically about how to structure themselves. But as companies started to grow very large and compete with other very large firms, revolutions in the management of human capital forced innovations in how people relate to one another in the market. We have developed organizations of people that are very effective, albeit at meeting the goal of economic growth.

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What we need is an equally sweeping revolution in how individuals and groups relate to society.

When people interact with their government, the default form is as an individual – voting, writing letters, making phone calls, etc. We must instead remember that we’re part of groups of various sizes, and that those groups or units can have a much greater voice. In our country which is so rooted in individual values and identity, we need to re-learn how to operate as groups. When we say organize ourselves, we mean building consensus within our circles of friends and neighbors, building consensus between our friends and another group, building consensus among larger communities, between regions of states, etc.

Building consensus does two things: it develops ideas to creates a more powerful voice and it develops our own thinking. To get a group to agree with our ideas, they must be good ideas which are justified and clear. And, as we delve deeper into what a sustainable economy and a just society will actually look like, we challenge our own preconceptions and reasoning.

For the climate movement to win, we need to be based on groups that offer members a strong bond of friendship, learning and identity. Groups that have the freedom to take initiative, but also have a coordination for addressing this most global of problems. More organization does not mean a more integrated, top-down structure, but it is also not anarchism. There is no perfect balance, no silver bullet of organizational structure or philosophy. But there is an evolution, a sporadic progression towards vastly increased effectiveness.

We have our visionary thinkers: Saul Alinsky and Ella Baker. Ceaser Chavez and Miles Horton. We have principles to be honed and expanded on. We have thousands of groups, thousands of mission statements, thousands of partnerships and alliances. We have thousands of smart activists with thousands of cleverly named organizations and non-profits. And now we have a challenge so great it will force us to adapt and evolve.

We need to increase the scope of what is possible. Our groups can run a lot better. Our coalitions can be much broader. I think many of us are still stuck in a limited view of how much we can achieve, of how broad the changes we can make are! We can build a just and sustainable future by examining every nut and bolt of how we operate.

Organizing is power for people. Our times call on us as people to stand together on an issue like never before. If the 20th century was the era of corporations, lets make this century the era of citizens.

This is part 5 of 6 for my semester long independent study of campus organizing in the youth climate movement.  Books read for this post: Paths in Utopia by Martin Buber and Gaviotas by Alan Weisman.