Meeting notes

–Notes are in chronological order from earliest to latest–

May 12th, 2020

 Reactions to the readings on ‘First Nations Resistance and Climate change’ and other thoughts ....

• Sovereignty versus practical realities of living
• Decolonization
• Indigenous prophecy meets scientific prediction
• Resolving generational trauma
• Reconnecting - The crux of Westernization - Creating spaces to reconnect to our bodies and to the Earth
• Trust what is emerging
• Sharing experiences (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) from different parts of the world: Latin America/Europe/Africa/North America/Australia
• The role and positive presence of the outsider
• Need for a local, tribal, national, global shared vision allowing for diversity
• Challenging complexity - e.g. Indigenous rights versus green movement
• The need for time .... to pause, reflect and work out directions, draw together differences
• Workers rights and the need to take care of existing workers in a just transition to alternatives. Degrowth will mean less traditional ‘work’ and so the need for something else.
• The role of science in a just transition (multiple sciences not just Western)
• New normal – shared perspectives under lock down - how to capture this
• Bruno Latour’s notion of living on two (or more) different planets (in his book ‘Down to Earth’)
• Certain groups of people being considered expendable
• Exploring communication ...
• We are in a liminal space - of confusion, of messiness, of not knowing where we are or where we are going, lets accept this and allow it to be, so we don't rush to ‘solutions’ that are not meaningful or effective.
• How can we build a nation? What is it and how will we all contribute?
• Being in a container – sharing our own transitions, in touch with principles that are important to us
• How can we ‘re-enter’ in a just way - acknowledging the role that African Americans and others have played in serving others at their own cost - what is their sense of place?
• Building relationships - who each person is, what do you like, love and do
• Flesh out the ways that change can happen and the threats to those changes
• Important that we recognize power and how it is applied
• Patient trust versus the need for action

May 27th, 2020

 Reactions to ‘Disaster Capitalism and a People’s response’ and other thoughts

The views and perspectives are still very much from the US or Australia and do not reflect well the experiences from Latin America – how to bring these in? Questioning that the answer to problems with capitalism is socialism – must consider the problems of socialism too especially in Latin America. Need also to question the model of development of the West.

Just transition is still the key thing arising from these materials – taking care of workers in existing systems whilst transforming to new systems

Considering ways in which we can connect with others - global practices and networks - this is a touchable moment

We need to question and consider the role of work – the idea of work, vulnerable workers, essential work, whose work? Who for? The connection between work, knowledge and social cohesion.

The following themes arose in our discussion:

• Just transition
• Work
• Re-balancing power
• Values of success – truth meaning and value
• Capitalism/socialism – nationalism, growth, greed
• Westernization
• Wholeness versus patriarchy and racism
• Political theology of the earth (Katherine Keller)
• Corporations, power and culture

We considered the following action items we would like to include in future meetings:

• Critical friend - someone to help you question your own assumptions and ideas
• Sharing one idea or reading from the two weeks before - if it's a paper please share beforehand otherwise just bring it up at the meeting
• Taking one of the themes above and leading a discussion around this with associated papers, etc. - please let us know if you are interested
• Graphic recording – Holly
• Bring in the work of other networks and meetings and share these with the group - please bring this up each session as appropriate
• Digital place to store readings and links - Jerry/Eric to consider mechanisms

– Critical Friends –

My suggestions are as follows – I've tried to think about overlaps of interests / enough difference to support criticality/ people that don't know each other so well to stretch us. I will think of an activity for our next meeting to use critical friends to get us going.

Caroline/Holly – Jerry/Glevy – John/Eric – Debbie/Melissa

June 9th, 2020

 Reaction to "Democracy" (but more specifically to the anti-racism movement)

Reaction to Democracy (with additional emphasis on the anti-racism movement given the timing of the meeting with current events)

The conversation touched on different aspects of democracy, from municipalism to town meetings to indigenous democracy, there was also a significant discussion around anti-racism given the turmoil erupting out of the killing of George Floyd in the USA and the protests that have broken out across the USA and around the world in support of anti-racists reforms, especially with regards to the brutality of policing.

The issue of militancy, which was defined for our group as non-violent radical challenge to the status quo, was brought up but not fully explored as an imperative if anti-racist change is going to get any significant traction, with a sense that without militance, this may all settle back into the same racist realities that much of world is subjected to and is structurally protected from being undone.

Town meetings, a localized form of democracy that brings people together to engage in dialogue as a key component of the decision-making process, where town residents are encouraged to come and share perspective before they each vote on key issues involving the town, was shared noting this continues to exist in rural communities but is hard to find in urban settings.

Indigenous democracy is an inclusive process that focuses on listening to all voices, respecting the different needs and perspectives but also embracing the importance of looking beyond individual needs to the community needs and, more importantly, to environmental needs... allowing people to consider the important decision-making role not just on what is best for the people but what is best for the planet (local environment and beyond). The listening to each other and the planet, and responding to what is learned from listening rather than what is desired for oneself, especially by those at the top of the hierarchy, is essential to this form of democracy.

Frustrations were shared around the perpetuation of power and privilege, whether it be by privileged students questioning the political motives of professors who expose inequities of privilege or by liberals advancing their own interests and causes upon other contexts they have the resources and interest to influence, even if their understanding does not correlate to their judgements.

Municipalism, from the readings, was raised as a growing counter to centralized democracy, noting its ability to address the most urgent and relevant needs of the city. There was general agreement that neither local nor central governance holds the key and neither should be “fetishized”. That led to sharing of the string vest theory, which highlights the balance needed between central governance (string) and local governance (spaces between the string). It was a nice metaphor for understanding the need for a balance that at a certain point, you can have too much space or too much string, thus compromising the intent behind the string vest.

We had a chance to connect in breakout rooms with our critical friends, this being the first chance to connect for many and thus more a chance to get familiar with each other than to go deeply into the topic.

Action Items

• We agreed to stay with the reading assignments but as we did this week, to feel free to pull pertinent topics into the discussion.
• Eric is currently setting up a wiki page that will allow us to post articles and videos relevant to our group that will be easily accessible.
• We are all encouraged to share content we think will be helpful to the group.

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June 23rd, 2020

 Reaction to "A New Economy"

• New Internationalist community journalism project in Newcastle
• Plaine Commune in Northern Paris Suburb
• Hilary Wainwright (paper linked to in readings section)
• need to balance centralization/decentralization in communal/autonomous social formations - UK response to Covid-19 is too insulated from local conditions and centralized while US response is fragmented and decentralized
• Pioneer Valley Cooperative Farm in Northampton, MA is a worker-owned farm with 7 members on 4 acres (https://pvworkerscenter.org/coop-farm/)
• Highlander Center in Tenn. is a social justice leadership and training school (http://thehighlandcenter.org/)
• Argentina's Recovered worker-owned Factories embedded in communities and offering community services e.g. health services, popular education courses, libraries, performance spaces, etc.
• Mondragon Corporation is a federation of worker-owned cooperatives in the Spanish Basque region
• transitional horizons to soft power
• how has our internalization of capitalism impeded our ability to create alternative political/social/economic structures?
• The economy is a term for how people relate to each other and the world around them in order to support a full and meaningful life
• localization of economy
• motivation of growth can be different than profit
• hierarchical and patriarchal construction of communes in Venezuela. Movement came from top down. Women's groups already practicing communal principles
• organic approach as opposed to orchestrated approach to change
• research that doesn't reflect experiences at local level cannot create change
• theory — value — action
• Gramsci's organic intellectual
• clarify differences between rural and urban environments/farm culture
• Lomax investigated music as embodiments of different economies - participatory or expert based
• Heart of England Forest (https://bit.ly/3fbEZ0x)

July 7th, 2020

 Reaction to "Building Relationships & Power for Transformation"

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Kindred – Octavia Butler

• Kumeyaay held a demonstration in San Diego where they blasted and human remains came up. Burial grounds ignored. Hope in the diversity of the event.

• Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Shoshana Zuboff

A Question of Culture – Building Relationship and then approaching frameworks for looking at White Supremacy.

• Individual Transformation and is it the most productive thing we can be doing right now?

Saul Alinsky and his Community Organizing techniques

• Hierarchy vs. Participatory Democracy

Revolutionary Goals and Revolutionary Processes must be aligned.

Responding to the Podcast

• How do we get buy in? How do we actually align values between groups in some way? How do we analyze economic systems? How to bring in systemic change that is fair and democratic and stays the cause?
• The leave UK interpretation is contested. Each group claiming “they got the vote through”
• Manipulation of the media. Cambridge Analytic

Joining groups with people with different relationships can create complex communication webs. Trust – How we come to trust a group we enter or assume we can because we know someone or some of the people, but how do you move from the individual trust to trusting others in a group?

Limitations of communication via email and zoom vs. face to face building.

Trust built through common struggle and activities – participate together.

Community Labor Coalition:

• Organizing in cities in New York around responsible development with affordable housing, more green space, and local hire agreements with teeth that lead to careers with health care and family sustaining benefits.

—Need help with the full-time task of organizing coalition communication

—Need to take time, and break bread

—Need to have strategy but also always reflecting

—Need to be willing to listen

Indigenous Group Organizing —

• Being able to share an activity – crucial to building the trust
• Individuals representing is all just theory until we actually were able to have an exchange
• Build relationships when it’s uncomfortable not an easy thing. We achieved that because we listening to each other.
• Bring Food to the table (literally and figuratively).
• Who you are, not what you are or what you can do (Words match my walk.)

Come to the table of a dialogue Listening/Understanding the values of the communities we are entering into coalition. Time, again

• Very important when you try to build or help facilitate this type of network, to listen to what people are saying.

Venezuela

• Key goal was to build a network of indigenous background environmental leader
• Recently their issue interest is shifted from environmental. Now they want to talk about food stability. Without food we can’t do environmental work.
• If you want to gain the trust you have to be in the same line of space with them. Show Solidarity
• Assumption that people on the ground in Latin American want to build the revolution. Need to focus on the issues they have.

In Argentina – Doing this work because need to eat Not interested in discussing theoretical Casa Pueblo – Countering the mining needed to not start there. Dakota Pipeline – Environmental lens on a soverignity fight

Food Security in a Western experience vs. any food whatsoever Linking the issue of mining and high levels of coronavirus Health.

Always watching for having one’s own agenda and not listening to what the needs are.

Nicaragua

• Systems of information flow (youth and community leaders who went door to door and knew everyone and their status – connected to a District Nurse and then a broader group.
• Nesting Dolls – Strategic Politics of health networks

By keeping close relationships with these communities able to maintain power. Government can utilize these networks for maintain power but also can be used and developed to get information in a positive health

Coronavirus contact tracing implementation will then exist and be able to be used to exert control later. Allowing them to consolidate control.

ESJP Community Solidarity and Universities – How to work together. Value informed Practice – PRAXIS Waste for Life and how they work vs. others with the same technology. For Profit model: Employing and then generating profits back vs. Waste for Life – generated by the community

What is our role?

• Charity? Necessary but not sufficient.
• How we bring ideas and theories to help groups?
• How can we??

Power – For abiding change (whatever you call it) to occur, you have to be able to exert some sort of power. Whether on your environment or autonomously.

How do those without power gain back any power? Seeing you have the ability to change the circumstances.

Exploring Power

• What are the barriers, what’s emerging in the margins that are effective, how can we connect these movements? Way of capturing this – maybe visually. Cross-pollinating emerging systems.

Issue based coalitions and working with community.

• Comes a point where you have to start all over again.
• What was importance was not the individual victories, but to keep these relationships going in such a manner that they were able to act as a powerful coalition.