Organising: organisers invest in two-way relationships with, and give power to, people they recruit, who then go on to recruit other people in the same empowering way.
Are you a lone wolf, a mobiliser or an organiser? And does it make any difference to how much social change you make? I’ve been chewing over questions like this after attending two very different movement events in the last few weeks.
The first was ‘Can we unite for peace?’, a conference in London put on by ‘…
In late February, hundreds of French police in riot gear, equipped with bulldozers, helicopters and drones, evicted dozens of occupiers from a proposed burial site for France’s civil and military nuclear waste. The protest camp in the Bois Lejuc, north-eastern France, had been set up 18 months ago on the spot planned for ventilation shafts.
Police also surrounded and forced their way into ‘the House of Resistance’ in nearby Bure, where local opposition to the planned waste dump…
Awel Irene writes: As the sun set on Caernarfon castle, a symbol of centuries of militarism and oppression, eight of us unpacked a van that arrived from faraway London to launch the CND Symbol tour. We put together the jigsawed symbol to celebrate 60 years of protest against nuclear weapons. We remembered the hundreds of people who have gathered in that square rallying and wearing CND badges, including Dilys O’Brien Owen who died in February shortly before her 103rd birthday after a life of…
On 19 March, the Undercover Policing Inquiry (led until July 2017 by Christopher Pitchford) posted the previously-secret Special Demonstration Squad Tradecraft Manual on its website (see accompanying article for extracts). The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was a section of Special Branch, the British political police, devoted to undercover operations, which existed between 1968 and 2008.…
This is the second in our series of interviews with working-class activists. These are Holly’s words:
“Growing up working-class erodes your confidence, almost by design. I just didn’t feel confident in any life stage, that I’d be able to excel or do well, or that anyone would actually want me as part of what they’re doing. People talk about ‘impostor syndrome’* all the time now. I do believe everyone has it, but if you’re from a disadvantaged background, it’s... it’s…
A baking summer day in the early 1960s. I’m in my pushchair, trundling along the road to Aldermaston with my CNDing parents, and somewhere on the fringe of my toddler’s consciousness, there’s a Cheshire cat smile, floating in the heat haze.…
Has the election of Donald Trump as president of the US got you down? Are there days you just don’t believe any more that we can win, that we can change big important things?
Jane McAlevey’s Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) is the perfect antidote to Trump-era pessimism and despondency. I’m going to buy a bunch of copies for people I know, and I think you should too.
There are books out there filled with inspiring…
In May 2007, just after I started editing PN, we ran a front-page opinion piece by Dan Clawson, a US union activist and academic, on what trade unions and grassroots movements could learn from each other. He’d written a wonderful book about this, called The Next Upsurge.
Clawson gave an example of the new unionism he favoured: the…
After I shared a cartoon on Facebook recently, I had an angry response (several hundred words long) from ‘John’, someone I haven’t heard from in years. The cartoon, by New Zealand-based illustrator Toby Morris, shows two people, equally intelligent and hard-working, growing up in different circumstances, and ending up in very different situations in adult life. The…
One of Britain’s oldest activist training organisations has divided into two. Seeds for Change used to have two groups, one in Oxford, one in Lancaster. As reported last issue, Seeds for Change (Oxford) has become ‘Navigate’; and Seeds for Change (Lancaster) has become just ‘Seeds for Change’.
Seeds for Change say: ‘Towards the middle of last year, Seeds for Change Oxford and Lancaster realised we’d be able to offer more on-the-ground support through a looser relationship with…
Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases
1) Please explain your aims or purpose in about 25 words
Challenge the legitimacy of the presence and role of the US visiting forces and their agencies with the ultimate aim of the total removal of the US bases from the UK.
2) What’s your organisation’s budget for campaigns in 2017?
[No reply]
3) Do you have paid staff? If so, how many full-time and part-time? Otherwise, how many…
Based on my own experience, the content of the letters pages of newspapers and journals is manipulated to ensure that certain views and even facts are not published.
For some months, for example, in connection with the 2001 conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, I tried to point out the significance of the fact that Scots law had three possible verdicts (‘guilty’, ‘not guilty’, and ‘not proven’) and that the Scots court in Holland had not…
Ali Cat. Leeds. is a printmaker based in Portland, Oregon, USA. She draws inspiration from social movements and ‘weeds’ growing up through cracks in the concrete. Ali works towards supporting activist, grassroots organisations through sales of her work along with the spreading of the ideas she portrays.
www.entangledroots.com
Young delegates stop nuclear missile launch at the IPB Congress!
From the 30 September – 3 October, MAW Youth (Jen Harrison, Becky Garnault, Maddy Ridgley) plus 2 competition winners (Ella Johnson and Khem Rogaly) attended the International Peace Bureau world congress in Berlin.
For 4 days we were immersed in fascinating panel discussions and workshops delivered by an impressive collection of academics, activists, writers, politicians and economists. In our…
