2023, Jan 4: can green groups survive abeyance?

On this day, next year,… no wait, what? Yes 2023.  I thought it worth discussing what I used to call the “January 4 2023 problem”, since we’re almost there.

On  June 12 of 2019, near the beginning of the latest wave of concern about climate change, I wrote an article which you can read here. 

The TL:DR. Sustaining social movement organizations is really difficult, and especially so around climate change. Has Climate Emergency Manchester, the group I was until recently  involved in, solved the January 4 2023 problem? 

It’s too early to say, obviously, but the signs are encouraging. And here’s what Chloe Jeffries had to say 

From January 4 2022 through to January 4 2023 CEM has a clear vision of what it is trying to do but will be faced with its toughest challenges yet. You might think that setting up a group would be the most difficult stage. Or that our momentum stalled as the pandemic first hit. But CEM was founded at the start of an upswing in attention to the climate crisis. That cycle is over. We can debate when it next picks up, and from what baseline. But in 2022 we have to sustain a social movement organisation as much public and media interest drifts elsewhere.

This is why the ‘4th January problem’ is important over the next 12 months. It will keep us focused, or help us to reset when tasks slip or a mistake is made. Or, when a piece we put out sinks without trace. We have several things in our favour; a strong core group, bolstered by two new members who worked closely with us for over a year before joining the inner sanctum; a healthy cohort of new volunteers who became involved in the final stretch of the last attention cycle (COP26) and who have already cut their teeth on concrete tasks. We have good relationships with a wider group of supporters and organisations and must use this effectively in the coming year. It will be difficult for them too. CEM also ended 2021 on a high, with a strong piece of research (on Manchester’s airport hypocrisy). December outputs have the potential to tie us through the Christmas and New Year torpor.

Solving the 4th January 2023 problem will remain the goal, but that does not mean that our tactics will stay the same right through, that we march on regardless (if anything we will do even less marching, and we never did much). I’m conscious that some of CEM’s 2019 / 2020 repertoire no longer works as well as it once did, even if innovative when first trialled. To give an example, in our reporting of Manchester City Council’s scrutiny committees, the format of one volunteer assigned to one committee has peaked. Volunteers whose committees never discuss climate get disillusioned sharp; others go native on their patch. Meanwhile, we tie up resources covering 2.5hr meetings with little or no implications for the climate emergency and then cannot cover a damning report put out by the Manchester Climate Change Agency or (likely in 2022) a fuzzy statement by the new council leader. With the 4th January problem in sight, we should be able to spot issues around functioning and effectiveness sooner and adapt (in the example above, this will be through re-assigning volunteers and giving individuals a different brief, to follow an issue rather than a committee). Already a fresh programme of work we have begun on climate change and health inequalities is shaking up the kaleidoscope pieces, bringing some different names (both from the council and civil society) into play. 

What happens after 4th January 2023? Even once this date is passed, I can see the value in setting a new date to backcast from and for this to again fall early in the calendar year. Invariably those first few weeks prove tough for sustaining morale, for all the recurring reasons that the original 2019 article points out. Since then, the cost of living crisis has only worsened. The coming years will see rising inflation and energy bills that bite hard in winter and make it hard to start work with folk we don’t already know. 

On the surface, it may look like little is happening with policymakers or government at this time of year too, slumping back after the seasonal break. But is that entirely true? I hope the other entries in this series provide some evidence to the contrary. A gap in public meetings might remind us that plenty goes on behind closed doors. Local authorities have budgets to sign off. And you can usually bury bad news under a snowdrift. On my Christmas walks in 2021/2, I have been listening to Obama’s account of his first term in office (all politicians and political memoirs are flawed, but at 29hrs it gives great insight into the workings of government). The response to the financial crisis is a revealing episode (or three). Much was hammered out with the banks in early January 2009, before the inauguration. Not all the negotiations were reported in the press. Yet it struck me that many at the time might have seen what they wanted to see. If you remained wedded to the notion that January is all about easing back in, and looking far out on the horizon at the year ahead, you could have filled your boots on long reads about the new family at the White House, who might sing at the swearing in and What This All Meant for America. But if you maintained what we in CEM call ‘situational awareness’, you might have recognised that crucial decisions about the economy were being made day-by-day. In 2009, we got a competent tinkering of capitalism. In Manchester 2022, we also have a new leader who will make roughly the right public noises (including on climate) but not overhaul the system. Alongside the 4 January 2023 problem of sustenance / abeyance, we have the problem that comes with every new year (heightened in Manchester in 2022) of not letting power off the hook. Don’t start unsustainably, but don’t go gently into the new year.

See also emotacycle, smugosphere