Category: Activism

Categories
Academia Activism Social Movements

Maps, cars, metaphors and – most of all – the responsibility of intellectuals

I’m writing this because I may be wrong.

Of course, that doesn’t narrow down the things I could write about (I mean, everything, other than that I exist: merci, Rene!).

Specifically, then. A couple of days ago one of those ‘things could be much much better than they are’ reports got released. And the Guardian, bless its centrist socks, ran an op-ed by the authors.

I did a keyword search for ‘movements’ on the latter, which came up blank.  So then I wrote a two-part thread on BSky.

It ran thus-

Another day, another worthless (worse than useless?) ‘The cat should wear a bell’report about how everything can be wonderful.  

No mention of social movements.  

Apparently the state and corporates will do all this wonderful stuff un-bidden.  Because some academics wrote a report.

1/2

And part two

I can’t take this shit seriously, and I would encourage other people to do likewise.

I search “hey, we can save the world, here’s how” articles for the word ‘movements’. No mentions gets a hard pass from me.

Saves time/bandwidth.

To read or not to read – Ctrl F movements, Ctrl F global justice…

2/2

By my pitiful engagement standards it did well.

The first post got 5 reposts, on quote post, 16 likes and a save.

The second one got some comments, a repost and 4 likes.

It is to these comments that I now turn.

One person on Bluesky typed

How to make it happen is the next step not a replacement step.

There were several things I could have said. I chose to keep it relatively neutral –

In my experience these reports never have an “implementation” sequel. Happy to be proven wrong…

To which came

*We* need to be the implementation sequel.

A map isn’t worthless just because it comes without a car.

To which I replied

A map tells you the terrain. A castle in the air doesn’t. 

I suspect we agree on a lot, and could/can fruitfully disagree.

This platform isn’t the format, imo. So I will write A (sic) post and you can respond if you like.

Which brings you up to speed, if you’re still here.

Life is short and there are moorhens to say hello to (it’s been far too long), so I will frame this around a series of questions. (These may be leading questions, they may not be the right questions, and I am happy to be told they are not, and to be told what ARE the right questions.)

Did the report (which you can read here) have anything new about new strategies for a world where hope is dying, where our situational awareness is being destroyed not merely by accelerating corporate propaganda and government secrecy but also AI slop?

Nope. I am sorry, but having only one reference to social movements, and quite a glib one in the introduction, is just not on.

(“civil society” appears not at all. Apparently this is all going to be done by technocrats in bureaucracies. Yeah. Sure.)

Are vague invocations of “we” “being the implementation” helpful?

No. If anything, that sort of statement is more likely to have us staying within our smugospheres, doing things that make us feel good/give us status (or continue to deprive us of status perhaps?) and are easy because we’ve been doing them for ages, independently of their actual or likely success.

Why might someone push back against my performative world-weariness?

Nobody likes some smug performative world-weary asshole who pisses on everybody’s chips and apparently has no solutions of his own. (Actually, I have plenty, at a microlevel, which is what is required to make the meso and macro happen. But I totally understand how somebody might assume I don’t, either because they don’t know my stuff, aren’t interested in finding out or wouldn’t find it convenient to find out because then I would be less easily chided/dismissed). 

I keep meaning to put all this shit together in one place, but never do. Anyhoos, one the social movements, incentive structures and our inevitable doom, see here. 

Is this report much of a map of the existing terrain?

No.

You haven’t read the whole thing, how can you be sure?

I brown M&Med it.

Eh?

The Van Halen test. I asked some specific questions via my old friend Ctrl F.

Will you find any of these words? (Spoiler: no, so, not much of a map, imo)

  • Advertising
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Buen vivir
  • Permaculture
  • Positional goods
  • Predatory delay
  • Propaganda
  • Repression
  • Veganism
  • Vegetarianism

Only two mentions of capitalism, and one of those is a reference.

“More generally, the development of Western industrial capitalism since the 18th century is closely linked to a system based on the international division of labour, the mobilization of natural and human resources at the world level, and the European powers’ military and colonial domination over the rest of the planet.” (p.115)

and

Nogues-Marco, P. (2021). “Measuring colonial extraction: The East India Company’s rule and the drain of wealth (1757–1858)”. In: Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 2.1, pp. 154–195.

Does this report, coming in at 136 pages, have anything other than another international body that will be instantly captured/de-fanged to suggest?

No. I don’t think it does (but I have yet to read all 136 pages)

Do these authors give any indication at all of knowing what a car is?

Not to me they don’t.

Are our metaphors all outa whack?

Why yes, yes they are.

What, ultimately, is the responsibility of intellectuals?

“There’s a huge cultural, intellectual, political battle that is going on. And we all have a role to play,” said Thomas Piketty, a co-director of the WIL and a professor at the Paris School of Economics. 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/04/world-inequality-lab-equality-academics-planetary-survival

Well, sure. But for me, you can’t go past Noam Chomsky – it is the responsibility of intellectuals to expose lies and tell the truth.


And the truth I keep coming back to is that ”we” (note the quote marks) are losing, and have been losing quite badly since the 70s (not that before then was exactly great). 

And if intellectuals are going to spend the bulk off their time building these probably necessary “visions” but NOT offer a fair assessment of how “we” have been failing on these questions for well over fifty years, then I do not think they are either exposing lies (sweet little lies we have been telling ourselves) or telling the truth.

James Baldwin said it best – “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

The report doesn’t help us face our failures since (before) the 1972 Stockholm conference, at a state, corporate, civil society or social movements level. 

This is by technocrats, for technocrats, and will sink without trace. Meanwhile, the emissions will climb, the impacts will hit ever harder.


We are near the beginning of the Fafocene. Buckle up, mofos.  

That report, btw – 

Chancel, L., Mohren, C., Moshrif, R., Odersky, M., Piketty, T., Somanchi, A., et al. (2026), The Global Justice Report: A Plan for Equality & Prosperity Within Planetary Boundaries, World Inequality Lab (gjp.wid.world).

Categories
Activism Australia Coal

June 5, 2006 – Rising Tide boat blockade

Nineteen years ago, on this day, June 5th, 2006, 70 brave people put their bodies on the line…

June 5, 2006, and Nov. 3, 2007: Rising Tide boat blockades of Newcastle port

On June 5, 2006, in a Rising Tide Australia action, 70 people used small boats to blockade the port of Newcastle, Australia, which exports 80 million tons of coal each year. The protest aimed to call attention to a planned expansion that would allow the port to export twice that amount.[1] The action was repeated by 100 people on Nov. 3, 2007: at this second action, participants attempted to block ships from entering the port for four hours, but police boats managed to escort three ships into the port. At one point, a police jetski rammed one woman’s kayak, resulting in her hospitalization.[2][3]

Citizen action and protests against coal in Australia – Global Energy Monitor

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that all the petitions, marches and begging of politicians had not worked. Emissions climbed, fossil intensive infrastructure projects kept getting approved (and still get approved).

The specific context was that the Howard government (like the Keating and Hawke governments before it) had mouthed occasional platitudes about “the environment” but were hell-bent on saying yes to whatever fossil extraction and export was proposed. 

What I think we can learn from this is that brave people have had the foresight and clarity – it hasn’t been enough. What was needed was broad-based movements. Oh well…

What happened next was that the exports and burning went on, the emissions and concentrations went up and up. The mainstream politicians have mostly given up pretending to give a shit.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

June 5, 1963  – JFK says yes to SST – All Our Yesterdays

June 5, 1967 –  Working Group on Atmospheric Pollution and Atmospheric Chemistry – All Our Yesterdays

June 5, 1993 and 2011- let’s have a march for #climate… It will make us feel good. – All Our Yesterdays

June 5, 1994 – that referendum idea is back again… – All Our Yesterdays

June 5, 2000 – Liberals pushback against Kyoto, a UN conspiracy… – All Our Yesterdays

June 5, 2001 – NSW Premier Bob Carr promises a climate advertising blitz – All Our Yesterdays

June 5, 2006 – IPA sets up astroturf outfit – All Our Yesterdays

Categories
Activism United States of America

May 29, 2025 – Daughter sues Exxon for mother’s heat death

One year ago, on this day, May 29th, 2025,

May 29 2025 case filed against Exxon etc by daughter of woman who died of hyperthermia in 2021 heat dome – https://climatecasechart.com/wp-content/uploads/case-documents/2025/20250529_docket-25-2-15986-8-SEA_complaint.pdf

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 427ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that from the late 70s, Exxon was well aware of the carbon dioxide threat, and had even helped oceanographers take samples of CO2 on their oil tankers, and had made many predictions and presentations for the C suite. But Exxon decided in the mid 1980s that it would change its stance on the reality of carbon dioxide build up, and it became one of the chief proponents and funders of outfits like the Global Climate Coalition, established in 1989 to resist both domestic US and international climate policy. And Exxon also funded various denialist groups, so much so that in 2006 the UK Royal Society had published an open letter asking them to knock it off. 

Exxon was also instrumental in the Dubya Bush White House 2001 to 2008 especially with their apparatchik in the CEQ writing climate policy and spreading denial.   

The specific context was that we’re now getting the long predicted weather anomalies, disasters sometimes happening much sooner than the scientists had thought, because, well, that’s nonlinear patterns for you. And what do you do when you’ve been hit by one of these well, you sue, if you can. You use court to try and do what the politics hasn’t been able to do. 

What I think we can learn from this is that most court cases fail, but that doesn’t mean you don’t use it as one of your venues for seeking justice, I guess. 

What happened next. 

On April 9 this year –

State Court in Washington Denied Fossil Fuel Defendants’ Request to Stay Case Pending Supreme Court’s Resolution of Boulder

Defendants’ motion to stay proceedings denied.

A trial court in Washington State denied fossil fuel industry defendants’ motion to stay proceedings pending the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. The Washington trial court found that the outcome of the Boulder proceedings was “far from certain,” including whether the Court would issue a substantive ruling and whether the Court would resolve the issues in this case. The court also found that a potentially 14-month stay could prejudice the plaintiff’s ability to conduct discovery, that the public interest weighed against the stay, and that potential prejudice to the defendants was mitigated by the fact that some documents had already been preserved and some discovery had already been conducted in other similar cases.

https://www.climatecasechart.com/collections/leon-v-exxon-mobil-corp_b93f

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

May 29, 1968 – UN body says “let’s have a conference, maybe?”- 

May 29, 1969 – “A Chemist Thinks about the Future” #Keeling #KeelingCurve

May 29, 1989- “We will all be flooded” –

May 29, 1992- ANAO says it will look at DPIE’s energy management programme 

May 29, 2007 “Climate Clever” ad campaign in attempt to save John Howard – All Our Yesterdays

Categories
Activism Event Report

Getting to the NEB of the issue: The National Emergency Briefing and what is to be done.

Last November eight experts made short presentations to hundreds of people gathered in Westminster Hall, London.

The topic? The climate and biodiversity emergencies that have been unfolding for decades now (the biodiversity crisis for centuries, tbf).

It was the National Emergency Briefing on climate & nature.

Well, now that has been turned into a documentary, with film showings in Europe and the rest of the world being encouraged. I went to a film showing last week in Adelaide.

In this short (ymmv) blog post I am going to talk about the film and what is missing from it, and what needs to be done now, (without holding out more than net zero hope that it will be).

What is good in the film

One is that it is short – 50 minutes is a nice round number.

All of the presentations are good (several are better than good). The presenters don’t waffle, they don’t batter people over the head with jargon.

What is cringe

NB I am not the target demographic, but the ‘Gogglebox’ side of things (cutting away to reaction shots, ‘chummy’ conversations on sofas with performative swearing was …. cringe. A mix of celebs (Deborah Meaden, Jennifer Saunders) and Joe and Jane Punter (mercifully not all white home counties). I understand why they did it, and maybe it is landing with other people. What the hell do I know.

What is ‘bad’/problematic in the film

I don’t know the order of the presentations, I suspect it more or less followed what appears in the film. The first five are ‘here is the nature of the shit we are in’. The last two are much more ‘but things are being done/can be done’. I TOTALLY get that you need to have some kind of arc, some kind of call to action. But you also need to remind people of the scale of the challenge and the need for much much more action at all levels of society. My fear is that those last two presentations will allow people to tick the box marked ‘I at least informed myself and anyway, things could get better.’ I wish there had been some sort of acknowledgement of this dynamic (which has played out repeatedly already).  Which brings us to

What is missing

Fifty minutes is not long, and if you’re trying to give all the speakers a fair shake, then, understandably you are going to end up with a certain “present-ism.”


But we really need to step back and see three things.


First, that the biodiversity crisis has been going on for a very very long time (hundreds of years). I may be wrong, but I didn’t hear anyone say ‘Sixth Extinction’.

Second, we should remember that Thatcher was told about carbon dioxide build-up repeatedly, from 1979 (that’s not a typo) onwards until finally making her pivotal speech in September 1988, and that until very recently there was an all-party consensus on the need for ‘urgent’ climate action.  And that there really wasn’t, once you take out the accounting tricks, much real UK action (Prof Kevin Anderson – a friend – nailed this, as he always does). So, it’s not as if our Lords and Masters weren’t dimly aware (and some of them are very dim) of the issue. It may be that information is not the actual problem here. 

Third that there have been repeated spasms (or, if you’re being less pejorative and more shiny happy) “waves” of concern about environmental matters.  The first big one was in the late 1960s through to the early 1970s.  Then another one between 1988 to 1992, then another from 2006 to 2009, and then one from 2018 to about 2020, when Covid came along and fried everyone’s brain. Alongside this we have seen states learn how to insulate themselves from public pressures. 


I have written about this a lot.  The two pieces I wish folks would read were these

There’s a third article I think is okay – Dear New Climate Activist (written 2018). And if you really want to go down the rabbit hole there are these about XR’s moment of maximum danger and a debate about whether it has (well, had) the right tactics. 

The point is, that social movements really struggle to sustain themselves, but withOUT an energised and engaged civil society, then governments and corporations do business as usual. The same business as usual that is wiping us out. See this from BHP, the world’s biggest mining corporation.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/may/25/bhp-files-internal-memo-revealed

George Monbiot’s latest column (May 27) is about the current government insulating itself from all critiques, all civil society input. It’s a good column but it too (for the same reasons as the film, mostly) also neglects to join the historical dots. There 

So, two final things.

The film calls on people to do three things

1.Spread the word

2. Join a group near you

3. Keep the pressure on the government


Hmmm.  That number two is – for a whole host of reasons – really really difficult. Groups fall apart, fingers and hearts get burned, and not in a ‘phoenix will rise’ kinda way, but in a ‘where shall we spread the ashes while singing a dirge?’ kinda way. If we are not honest abou t


The idea of film showings is great, but I have real concerns about how well this is executed.

The film showings MUST be short (intro, 50 minutes and then at most 40 minutes of other people, including a well-facilitated Q&A that is not (I repeat, NOT) dominated by speeches-’disguised’-as-questions from the usual suspects.

There are some really simple facilitation/meeting design techniques that can help with this, but I don’t see them being used anywhere, and I have my own reasons for believing it won’t happen (call me a cynic).

From 2014 – Meetings are institutionally sexist

From 2017 – We’ve got to stop meeting like this.

In their absence, new people will not get a word in edgeways, and the whole thing will be dominated by the usual suspects with – likely – the usual results.

(See also the aftermath of “The Age of Stupid” in 2008, “This Changes Everything” in 2014, Don’t Look Up etc etc (there have been some so bad I have tried to expunge them from my memory, a la Men In Black and the memory wand thing). There is an article to be written – “Documentary films/satires as tools of social change? Well, they could be, but not on their own…”)

Further reading

Interview with Abi Perrin: “academia isn’t responding robustly to a world that’s literally and metaphorically on fire”

Does anyone want me to do a seven minute “presentation I would have given at the NEB if they had asked me” post? If so, I will. If not, I am not sure I can be bothered (yes, I know I should use better bait when fishing for affirmation).

Categories
Activism Australia

“Bravadic hope” – the emotacycle, the 585 dead trees, and what next.

The “Stop the Chop” rally last night on the steps of Parliament House, on North Terrace, was at least as large as the one nine days earlier, before 585 trees got chopped down.

I have no doubt that many (most) who attended went feeling happy, energized (though how long that persists, we will come back to). Me, I came away with a very different set of emotions, ranging roughly from despondency to despair (I have learned not to bother, in these instances, with anger (1)).

The song remained, as I thought it would, very much the same.  I wrote this (DO Mourn, then Organise) about the dangers in not facing up to facts about where things were at, and I don’t intend to recap at any length.  The blog quotes Baldwin and Chomsky and is – but I would say this – worth your time.

Instead, I am going to talk about the likely consequences of this missed opportunity to engage people in granular involvement, rather than ‘mass’ engagement.

And I am going to introduce, of course, yet another made up word – this time, an adjective.

[FWIW – I am grappling with ideas about how we think about (collective) emotions in “social movements” and I’d be very happy to hear from people who are thinking about this too, whether they agree or disagree.  I will not engage with trolls, or with smug gaslighters who try to tell me that things happened at the rally that didn’t, in fact, happen.]

What happened?

About 2000 people (and around the same number as last time) gathered on the steps of Parliament House.  There was a better sound system and they heard various speeches telling them things they already knew.

There was no serious acknowledgement of the emotional toll that losing the battle for 585 trees would have had.

There were no concrete specific actions for people to take beyond “sign a petition” (because apparently “they can’t ignore us” except they have) and to turn up either the following morning at some random thing (too short notice) or else on Saturday June 6th in Victoria Park to tie some yellow ribbons around threatened trees.

There was repeated chanting of ‘stop the chop’ (From a biased psychoanalytic perspective it was as if people were willing the past week not to have happened, pretending it hadn’t. Wanting to disappear into a fugue state.

There was repeated claims that the “movement” was growing. The only evidence adduced for this that I heard was that 47000 people had signed a petition (there was, apparently though, a problem with this petition, because a different one – it was not clear for what – was being set up – and people could sign it on the six clipboards circulating).

This put me very much in mind of that line from Casablanca “You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart.”

Watch the clip here.

For me, it all comes back, as it did a month ago, when the Australian Conservation Foundation and Conservation Foundation of South Australia co-hosted a shamefully bad event, to the question of what do you think a movement is? To quote myself:

It comes down to what your definition of “movement” is.  

If you believe, as Adam Bandt and his colleagues seem to, that a movement is a bunch of people from a Big Organisation, jetting in from their HQ and standing on a stage, offering “hope,” authenticity and validation to ranks of people who are sat mutely in rows, wanting their (begging) bowls filled up, then Friday was another success in a long line of successes.

If you believe, as I and a few (many?) other people do, that a movement is made up of individuals, small groups, large groups, pulling mostly in the same direction, as frenemies, helping each other out, learning from each other, sharing ideas and resources, then Friday night was another catastrophic shit-show/missed opportunity in a world that can’t afford any more missed opportunities.

What was the broader context

The defeat of the “left” and the progressive (NOT the same thing) ecological forces over the last 60 years.  The inability to democratize the state and to stop its total (rather than partial) capture by corporate and technocratic interests, especially in response to the public pressure upsurges of the 1960s and 1970s.

There are lots of factors here. One is the ‘professionalisation’ of campaigning groups and ‘Non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs), so that they become captured by middle-class/tertiary-educated people and  – crucially – the perspectives of those people.  It was fascinating that the “Conservation Council of South Australia” didn’t even bother to send out an email in advance of the rally. They are ducking and covering.


What was the specific context

In 2023 the Malinauskas government passed some absurdly repressive laws (mentioned – and booed – last night) raising the maximum fine for various forms of protest (e.g. trespass) from $750 to $50,000. Well, it worked. As nobody at the rally mentioned, the Australian Energy Producers had just held a conference on North Terrace and bar a few Extinction Rebellion people, nada.

There is a growing sense of loneliness, atomization, despair in the air, and people are quite understandably desperate to congregate with other people who think and feel like them, even if it is only briefly, only futile. It’s apparently ‘better than nothing’.

What do we learn?

Here’s the promised neologisim.  Are you ready?  Bravadic.

Bravado is the noun – meaning blustering swaggering conduct. 

Well, last night felt very much like a display of ‘bravadic hope’, of people gathered, like all the animals of Animal Farm (except the pigs and dogs) to sing ‘Beasts of England’ as a way of soothing themselves. (see here for the Animal Farm quote, and a bonus snark about a terrible student meeting).

Why is this so?  It’s partly because (thanks to fifty plus years of losing) we don’t have expectations or norms about how leaders need to nurture actual movement-building techniques in social movement organisations, during campaigns. It’s always possible to rabble (a)rouse, without helping people develop the tools, spaces, language to cope with inevitable setbacks. Instead, we allow a silence to cover (in the short term) those wounds. (I will write more on this soon, and link to it). We come to think of a campaign as a series of Big Events, rather than granular slogs.  I coined the term emotacycle for just these purposes. What we are seeing here, I reckon, is the peak of an emotacycle. 

What do I think will happen next (NB it’s the future, so wtaf do I know?).

  • The anger and energy on display over the last week will dissipate. Not among everyone, but among enough people to make a serious difference at the level of a ‘movement’. The Saturday June 6th event will be significantly smaller (harder to get to, people have other responsibilities that don’t impinge on a Weds/Friday evening for an hour, people don’t see the point).
  • A feeling of ‘well, I’ll get involved again if I have to closer to the time of the Next Big Threat’ will kick in.
  • The opportunity to do something different, something that actually counts as movement-building, will be (further) squandered.

What needed to happen

There were two thousand people present. I already have written two speeches about what needed to be done. You can read them here and here.

Basically, the expectation needed to be created that those present would not simply go home, but they would get together with people they knew, and think hard about all the things that they could do with existing skills and knowledge, and the other tasks that needed doing, but for which skills and knowledge might be in short supply.  People needed to be told that turning up at a rally now and then, supplemented by signing a petition and being chronically online battling trolls in a Facebook group, Is. Not. Enough.

Footnotes

(1) This not because I have become a more mature or calmer person, but because I have at least managed to massage my expectations down down down).

Categories
Activism Australia

*DO* Mourn, and then Organise

“Don’t mourn, organise”

Joe Hill (of the International Workers of the World)

[Update – speech I won’t give at the bottom of this post]

The American novelist, thinker and civil rights activist James Baldwin wrote, in January 1962, that  “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Ahead of another rally on the steps of Parliament House on Friday 22nd May (5.30 to 6.30), I think we need to face a few facts (as I see them – your mileage may vary).

  1. (It seems to me that ) Malinauskas is in a much stronger position than he was a week ago.

First and foremost, he has completed the chopping down of the trees – there is no physical thing to defend anymore. [update – there may be some remnants, but the major job of work has been done, I think.]

Second, with the help of the Advertiser (of which more in a separate blog post) and all mass media he has painted his opponents as ‘extremists’ and smeared the lot of them (1).  Sure, it won’t have worked as a smear on everyone, but it will have made some people reluctant to engage with future campaigns (the point of it is, after all, to raise the costs of ‘recruitment’ and ‘retention’). This is not new. See this below from 1970, with NSW Premier Robin Askin talking about ‘professional agitators’.

  1. A significant number of people will be (understandably!) demoralised, disenchanted.  This will especially be the case if the rally on Friday is smaller than the 2,000 is who turned up last Wednesday. 

I just read this on Facebook, and I think it is accurate (emphasis added) –

 I know yesterday was disappointing, honestly, the past week has been tough. A lot of us are feeling depleted, angry, depressed.. Just tonight I even ate half a tub of ice cream trying to cope 😬

The point is that those people who were previously engaged in “activism”, or have strong existing sympathetic networks will be better able to deal with those feelings, but those who are – for whatever reason – more isolated, will be having a really really tough time of it.  Grief can easily curdle into cynicism and disengagement.

  1. If Malinauskas is stronger (some will dispute this) and ‘we’ are weaker (some will dispute this) then this makes the campaigns to come (MotoGP, Fracking moratorium) more difficult. Momentum counts for a lot.

Crucially, then, the same mistakes must not be committed.

For me, the rally on Wednesday May 13 was a seriously missed opportunity to get those who attended (and those who didn’t) energised, connected and inspired.  There were very very few concrete and engaging actions being suggested. It was (and I was listening closely) mostly about what other people (politicians) were already doing, and a petition to sign).


I wrote a blog about this, and suggested that the number 585 could have been used. Here is the end of a ‘speech I would have given’

This is great. Thank you. But this is not enough.  We need more. So a final pledge is coming up..

We need artists, poets, songs. We need tiktok videos, we need memes, slogans. We need blogs. We need letters to the Advertiser.  Sorry- I was just playing with you.  We need to bypass the Murdoch media. We need lawyers, we need conversations, we need networks. We need people standing outside football matches with placards and information about what is being done by this government, and in whose benefits. We need – well, we need more ideas than I have, we need all the ideas, skills and energy that YOU have. 

Does each of you pledge to go home from here and – alone or with your friends – come up with a list of five things you all can do, with your knowledge, your skills, your networks, your time?  Then DO those things, get better at those actions. Share those actions? Do you?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)

  • Talk to five people
  • Write an eight sentence letter to the Premier and your MP 
  • Come up with a list of five things to do.

If you pledge it, then on three, 585!

(hopefully people chant 585)

What is to be done

The American linguist Noam Chomsky once wrote

“If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.” 

It is not clear to me that the organisations trying, valiantly, to defend the parklands are able to do this – time will tell, she usually does (1). 

We have to face facts (which doesn’t guarantee that we will ultimately change them).

The parklands are under siege. They have been before. This below is from 1984.

We have to develop skills, knowledge, relationships. We have to spot where we have absolute lacks or single-points of failures in our organisations and networks. That takes time, effort and does not come with any endorphins.

We have to give guidance, encouragement and support (emotional, intellectual etc) to people who are new, who have limited time, who are despairing

We have to acknowledge that there are risks in despair leading people into de-activation or into (more) conspiracy theories, or into smugness and dismissal of posts (like my last one and this one too presumably) that try to raise questions of efficacy.

Friday’s rally will – I presume – predominantly be attended by a subset of those who were there last Wednesday. The mood will be angry, sombre. There will probably be some recriminations, some hopelessness.  I don’t think the ‘stop the chop’ chant will work in the same way.

All this is an enormous challenge for the speakers, for the strategists.

Not an insurmountable one, but enormous. A bit like the polycrisis we face – of a collapsing biosphere, hollowed-out democracy, accelerating wealth inequality, and AI-enshittification.

Happy times. 

Footnotes

  1. I’d like to believe that nobody could be stupid enough to have tried to doxx Malinauskas, that it must have been a ‘false flag’. But I also know that – sadly – it is entirely possible that it was simply an own goal by people unable to think through the likely consequences of their actions.  
  2. Time doesn’t always tell– see Nigel Balchin’s novel The Small Back Room.

Four minute speech I won’t give at the rally on Friday May 23

I want to take you to a bad place. Then, we come back, and we start walking, together, to a better place.

Let’s remember the last week. The trees being chopped down, the possums and birds fleeing. The naked contempt that the Premier has for democratic norms, for heritage, for Mij Tanith and the others who put their bodies in the way of his ego.

Just for a few seconds stand in your anger, your despair, your sense of hopelessness.

It’s horrible, isn’t it? Not a place to stay, not a place to return to.

We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it.  We have to go through it.

We have to go through it, together, helping each other as we walk.

If we want to be in better shape a year from today, we have to walk together, we have to grow, learn, organise and perhaps win.

We have to grow, as individuals and groups. We have to grow our skills. So many, but a key one is to become good at having conversations with people who don’t know what is going on, or are too busy to be involved, or have swallowed the lies and the smears.

We have to grow the size of our groups, by making it easier for busy people, unconfident people, to be meaningfully involved without coming to endless meetings, or being online 24/7.

We have to learn – the history of our state – and it didn’t begin in 1836. The politics and economics of the moment. We have to learn how social movements work. We have to learn from our past successes and mistakes. We have to learn how protest movements grow and win or lose, how they get distracted, divided, repressed.

We have to organise – along our streets, our places of work and worship, among our friends and acquaintances. And today’s stranger is tomorrow’s acquaintance may well be next year’s firm friend. By organise I do not mean everyone joins a party and takes orders from on high. I mean we share skills and knowledge, we learn from others, we strengthen the ties of those all around us to form networks, overlapping, stronger here than there, so that w.

Not everyone has to become expert at everything, but all of us can – and must – get better at something. All of us can – and must – contribute to growing, learning, organising. 

Over a hundred years ago, a real labour leader – as opposed to Malinauskus – Joe Hill, was executed.  Famously, he said  ‘don’t mourn, organise.’

Nine days ago we stood here, chanting “stop the chop.” Today we are chanting “stop the chop – never again”. 

Today  I say to you,  do mourn, but then organise. Grow, learn, organise, and, a year from now, we can be winning. 

Categories
Activism Australia Event Report

Superior belling of the cat – but still leaves the “who is gonna DO it?” question.

Last night the Nelson Mandela lecture “Strengthening our Democracy – Valuing Our Diversity – Building Our Future” was delivered by Thomas Mayo, who is “an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander man, assistant National Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and author of seven books about First Nations history and justice.”

It was held at the Hawke Centre (more of that later) on North Terrace. Last time I was here was for a pre-Voice referendum event which left me disconsolate for its lack of strategic focus, and fearful for what was to come(1).  Last night I left with more ‘hope’, but still uneasy.

This was a night of three parts (four if you count the book signing afterwards, I guess).

First up there was an excellent “welcome to country.” These can vary in quality of course, but this one was done with empathy, honesty, clarity and good humour (especially the line about normally asking people to stand up, but given the tiered theatre and the audience demographics switching to plan B).  The woman welcoming us was of the Kaurna peoples, and also a member of the Pirltawardli Collective, trying to defend trees and animals from the State Government’s chainsaws. I didn’t catch her name, but will add it as soon as I can.

Second up there was a very good lecture by Thomas Mayo.  

The man knows how to grab an audience.  The anecdote about his Bob Marley fixation being joined by a love for Lucky Dube was great.

Mayo has a lovely voice, a lovely manner and – crucially – an actual working-class perspective to put.  It is all too rare to hear a full-throated defence of unions in public life.

In a paragraph – there are a series of pillars of Australian democracy (among these trades unions, recognition of First Nations, access to information, the right to protest), all of which have been under very deliberate sustained attack for decades. Mayo explained why each was important, what was being done to it and what needed to be done to defend the pillar/undo the damage.

Mayo also had useful things to say about Artificial Intelligence – and the need for a Universal Basic Income, and much else.

It was entirely competent, occasionally lyrical, but – back to that sense of unease – very much left me with ‘who will bell the cat?’ vibes. (This is from one of Aesop’s fables). The point is – there are all these good policies we are expecting ‘government’ to enact, but who is going to force the government to do the right things, when it is so obviously a plaything of the economic elites? “Braver mice” was the answer of someone earwigging my explanation to a friend. Braver mice sure, but who is brave, under what circumstances, for how long, to what purpose?

Anyway, that asides, Mayo’s speech was excellent and watching the video recording would be a good use of your time, whether you’re interested in defending (Australian) democracy, or learning how to structure a speech or to deliver it. Or something else.

As soon as the Hawke Centre people put up the recording, I’ll post it here and also blog it again.


The final portion was however, frankly painful, through no fault of Mayo. There were no questions from the audience, but rather Mayo was ‘in conversation’ with Peter Geste. This can work, but if the questioner is bold, engaging and bringing their A-game.  Not tonight; it was a polite/liberal avatar of Andrew Bolt in the room. Geste, presumably needing to defend his journalistic persona as ‘neutral,’ (2) was flipping through all the right-wing/nut-job (the Venn Diagram merges year after year) talking points. Doubtless among the thousand people joining the meeting via Zoom were some Murdoch hacks looking for a cheap headline about “ABC journo in soft-balling [insert dogwhistle adjective] activist.” Rather than asking any interesting questions, getting Mayo to expand on his arguments, Geste forced Mayo onto the back foot. It was frustrating and literally unedifying.  Geste is a man of undoubted courage and intelligence and this was all quite bewildering.

This could have been prevented if the Hawke Centre either

  1. Had a different interlocutor (Marcia Langton was in the room, for instance)
  2. Had had the guts to go to the floor for questions instead (though this comes with its own risks, of course).

Random reflections

  1. It is easy to give a list (litany) of what has been going wrong, and Mayo did it very well.


It is less easy to explore the underlying motivations/causes of what has been going wrong, and Mayo, in the margins, tackled this.


It is not easy at all to explore (in private and especially in public) the reasons why those wanting to make things worse for ordinary people and better for the big end of town have been winning, almost without pause, for a good 40 years.  That’s because speaking truth about power marks you out as a radical, and speaking truth about the failures of the forces trying to slow down/reverse the horrors will mark you out as a malcontent, who is ‘not constructive’ etc. Mayo did not attempt this at all, and while I totally understand (I think!) why he didn’t, it’s a pity, because if we don’t talk about the failures of the ‘progressive’ forces, the reasons for those failures, and what might be done to avoid history repeating itself again and again and AGAIN, well, history will probably repeat itself, with force.

As James Baldwin said – “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

  1. One thing that makes it harder to defend democracy is the isolation and atomisation we all face. Part of this is to do with “technology,” part the sense of ‘speed up’ in our lives (real or imagined) and partly by the destruction of ‘third spaces’ where people can meet and be convivial and, well, civil.

The Hawke Centre COULD, if it wanted, take some really quick simple and no-financial cost actions around this. They COULD create a norm where every public lecture has a two or three minute ‘turn to someone you don’t know – probably someone sat behind or in front of you – and introduce yourselves’ at the beginning of their events, and similar before a Q&A.


I’ve written about the why and how of this, in case you’re interested

We’ve got to stop meeting like this

https://theconversation.com/weve-got-to-stop-meeting-like-this-81615

“Meetings are institutionally sexist”; discuss. (White-knighting by #Manchester #climate bloke)
“Meetings are institutionally sexist”; discuss. (White-knighting by #Manchester #climate bloke)

I don’t expect it will happen, but then, speakers like Mayo could insist on it until it became a new ‘norm’ of meetings.  And then, in a town like Adelaide, the informal ‘weak ties’ would become more numerous, loose networks would spread, information, ideas and resources would flow more easily.  

  1. It was the Hawke government that ratted out the Aboriginal communities on a Treaty, after basking in the applause of saying they’d sort one, back in 1988. (Aye, Barunga).

But then it’s not polite to mention these things…

Footnotes

  1. And so it came to pass – the Murdoch media’s assault, and the decision of Peter Dutton’s Liberal Party to be the absolute worst version of themselves, meant that a tsunami of lies swept away the possibility of basic respect.  Had it not been for the events of October 7th, Australia’s international reputation would have taken a massive hit.
  1. Many books have been written about what ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ mean in journalism. I ain’t gonna recapitulate except with a quote and a reference.

The quote – “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” Desmond Tutu

The citation – 

Maxwell T Boykoff, Jules M Boykoff,

Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press,

Global Environmental Change,

Volume 14, Issue 2,

2004,

Pages 125-136,

ISSN 0959-3780,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2003.10.001.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378003000669)

Abstract: This paper demonstrates that US prestige-press coverage of global warming from 1988 to 2002 has contributed to a significant divergence of popular discourse from scientific discourse. This failed discursive translation results from an accumulation of tactical media responses and practices guided by widely accepted journalistic norms. Through content analysis of US prestige press—meaning the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal—this paper focuses on the norm of balanced reporting, and shows that the prestige press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action.

Categories
Activism Australia biodiversity Event Report Fafocene

Event report: the Possum Park defence rally

Vibes aren’t going to cut it: What we (well, I) learn from the Possum rally

Last night I was at the rally on the steps of South Australian parliament protesting the cutting down of 585 mature trees in the North Parklands.


I should write something longer, coherent, but I don’t have time, energy (and perhaps talent). So instead, just a list of random observations. After that, the speech I would have liked to have given.

  1. From an emotional perspective, the whole thing was a success.  Those attending got their emotional needs met. Three obvious candidates here –
  • The cop who tried to push me onto the pavement instead of simply asking (did he get the uniform so he could literally push people around, or did he get the desire once he had the uniform? Chicken, meet Egg)
  • Some (#NotAllSpeakers) of the speakers, who were loving the attention (they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t). Special shout out to the person who read out a speech that had been written for a council meeting last night and almost lost the crowd (‘read the (lack of a) room’). You could have quickly pointed us to the video of that speech and said something else?
  • Those attending, who got to feel less lonely (that’s good) and more sane (it’s a crazy-making world). The repeated chants of ‘stop the chop’ are the progressive ‘left’s versions of the muscular bonding and chanting at sports events that hoi polloi get every weekend.
  1. Those attending (2000, according to the ABC, but we will come back to that) got some information they already knew, or could easily have found out. In terms of what to DO they got requests that amounted to (and did not go beyond) 
  • write to your MP
  • sign the petition 
  • get some stickers 
  • come to another rally on Sunday.

They were assured that the Federal Minister for the Environment had been written to. Well, that’ll show everyone. There were no calls on individuals who had turned up and were keen to know how they could contribute to 

  • Use and expand their skills
  • Use and expand their knowledge
  • Use and expand their relationships

Just people as an undifferentiated mass, a pulse of emotional energy, that will be gone like a fist when you open your palm.

We were told to ‘maintain our rage’, a cute line from someone who was not around when Whitlam said it.

  1.  Besides who WAS there (Kaurna spokespeople, Adelaide Parklands Association people, Adelaide City Council folks) there was one very very telling absence.

The Conservation Council of South Australia, the peak body for various green groups (the clue is in the name). Did they have any representation at the rally? Not that I saw. Certainly none of the speakers and their blog is entirely silent.

This is not surprising. The CCSA is dependent, financially, on the State Government, and knows it would not be forgiven for biting the hand that feeds it.  At this point it is simply a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Labor government.  This is a tragedy, but there you have it. 

UPDATE 15/7/2026. Last night (14/5/2026) CCSA sent around an email encouraging people to attend the next demo, on Sunday. Their website is still silent on the question. Make of this what you will.

4. The media coverage was hilarious and instructive. 

The 7pm ABC TV news of South Australia framed it as ‘no violence happened though police were present’ (yes, and if it meets the needs of the state for there to be violence, doubtless the police – in uniform or plain clothes – will be happy to provide it). There were two vox pops that focussed on the animal livelihoods aspect, not on the far more sinister State government powergrab aspect.   Meanwhile, the ‘Advertiser’ (Murdoch toilet paper, the only print paper in town) … pretended it had not happened. Not a single word, because their pet Malinauskus is doing what they like, generally. They had an ‘exclusive’ from him (presumably planned as a spoiler?) about overturning a fracking ban.  At this point the Advertiser should just rename as the Santos Sturmer.

Don’t get me wrong. Rallies matter.  Good signs are good signs.

But it is not enough. We have been here so many times. So so so many times. If we don’t use rallies for MORE than feeling good in the moment, for supplying ego-fodder and being ego-fodder, then more losses will pile up, while the pile of debris that gets called progress grows skyward. 

Maybe this campaign will win – it’s the future, so I don’t know.  But IF it wins, it hasn’t laid any ground work for future bigger campaigning sinews, relationships, skills, knowledge, expectations. And if it loses, then people will just have more grounds for despair.

Below is the three minute (ish) speech that could have been given. 

Hypothetical speech to Rally.

Thank you for coming. That you are here matters. But it doesn’t matter ENOUGH.

I want us to reflect on who we are, what are we even doing here, and what we must do in the coming days, weeks and months.

Who are we? 

Some of us here have ancestors who were here, on this land, thousands and thousands of years ago. (hopefully applause).
Some of us maybe trace our history with this land to 1836 or thereabouts, when South Australia was ‘settled’.  (pause) . South Australia was not settled. South Australia was invaded. And sovereignty was never ceded.

Some of us maybe trace our history to the last 50 or 20 years.  

But this is home. All of us here tonight, we know this land, this air, this water, these other creatures we share with, is precious. We know it is fragile, and that it must be protected from those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. We know it must be protected from people who have no respect for nature, or for democracy, for anything than their wretched careers and bank accounts.

Do we know this?

(Hopefully everyone yells “yes”)

Do you – you, me, everyone –  want to protect this land, this air, the possums, the birds, the humans, the future generations?

(Hopefully everyone yells yes).

Okay. That was the easy part.

What are we even doing here?

I have bad news. Besides the trees being cut down, besides the naked powergrab by the State Government. The bad news is that while you being here now, today, is great – and thank you for coming – it is not enough.

Is it enough?

(Hopefully people shout ‘no’).

Can we do more?


Can we do more?

(Hopefully people yell ‘Yes’)

Will we do more?  Do you, as an individual, commit to doing more?

(Hopefully people yell ‘Yes’)

Okay, so this is where it gets interesting. I do NOT have a short list you can tick off. – “sign here, donate there. Tick that, next campaign.”  Sorry.

But I do have some pledges for you, me, all of us to make.  They want to destroy 585 trees, homes to birds, animals. 585.  So I am going to close out with three pledges.

Does each of you pledge to talk, in the coming days, with five people who don’t know about what is happening? To listen to them, to inform them, to help them take a stand. Five people. Do you pledge this?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)


We need Peter Malinauskus and the Labor Party more generally to know that they have made a mistake, but that it is not yet too late for them to do the right thing.

Eight sentences.  Do you pledge to write an eight sentence letter to Malinauskus, and send a copy to your MP -about this.  Not War and Peace; Just eight sentences, which maybe you show to those five people, to your local councillors and that you post online?

Do you pledge this?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)

This is great. Thank you. But this is not enough.  We need more. So a final pledge is coming up..

We need artists, poets, songs. We need tiktok videos, we need memes, slogans. We need blogs. We need letters to the Advertiser.  Sorry- I was just playing with you.  We need to bypass the Murdoch media. We need lawyers, we need conversations, we need networks. We need people standing outside football matches with placards and information about what is being done by this government, and in whose benefits. We need – well, we need more ideas than I have, we need all the ideas, skills and energy that YOU have. 

Does each of you pledge to go home from here and – alone or with your friends – come up with a list of five things you all can do, with your knowledge, your skills, your networks, your time?  Then DO those things, get better at those actions. Share those actions? Do you?

(Hopefully ‘yes’)

  • Talk to five people
  • Write an eight sentence letter to the Premier and your MP 
  • Come up with a list of five things to do.

If you pledge it, then on three, 585!

(hopefully people chant 585)

Categories
Activism Australia Upcoming events

Upcoming event: May 20, “Climate Emergency” screening in Glenelg, Adelaide

This below is a cut and paste from here.

Laudato si’ Week Event: “The Climate Emergency: A Film Screening, Update and The Way Forward”

Wednesday, May 20, 2026 – 7pm – 9:30pm

St. Mary’s Hall, Glenelg Catholic Parish, Glenelg SA, Australia

Description

This event, based on science and inspired by faith, will be held in

Laudato si’ Week in the lead up to Pentecost, and will include:

  • a screening of the recently released UK film “National Emergency Briefing”
  • recent climate updates published by Australian scientists
  • a way forward out of our Climate and Nature Emergency through a rapid energy descent, simpler lifestyles and restored relationships with our planet and each other
  • opportunity for a group discussion

When: Wednesday 20 May, 2026

Where: St. Mary’s Hall, Glenelg Catholic Parish, High St, Glenelg

Time: 7pm-9:30pm

Interval: 20 mins with tea/coffee

Film information and trailer:

https://www.nebriefing.org

https://youtu.be/9tLUnWHkGG4

Categories
Activism United Kingdom

May 8, 1971 – FOE does/doesn’t bottle it.

Fifty five years ago, on this day, May 8th, 

But it was rather by luck than design that FoE’s first action, the return of bottles to Cadbury-Schweppes’ offices on Saturday 8 May 1971, achieved phenomenal publicity and launched FoE onto the public’s attention. As Weston remarked “The bottle dump event was really a media coup for FOE. That style of political activity had not been seen in Britain before and was, until then more associated with the American system of pressure group politics” (Weston 1989: 35).

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that concern about pollution, resources running out, overpopulation, etc, were all growing steadily in the late 1960s helped by the Torrey Canyon oil tanker disaster, and then the Santa Barbara oil spill, the Earthrise photo, etc, various pollution incidents.

The specific context was that in the UK, the main environment group at that time was the Conservation Society, but it was small-c conservative, and didn’t want to do eye-catching stunts. Therefore there was an ecological niche for other actors. And here we see Friends of the Earth doing a brilliant publicity stunt, leaving lots of empty bottles that would otherwise go to landfill en masse outside Downing Street. Very visual, very obvious. 

What I think we can learn from this is there is a time when these sorts of stunts will work. You have to look at what’s happening within the broader social system.

What happened next. These stunts have diminishing returns. “Hippies protest,” @man bites dog”, but as late as 2006 loads of coal were being dumped outside Downing Street by Greenpeace.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

May 8, 1972 – “Teach-in for Survival” in London

May 8, 1980 – Nature article “CO2 could increase global tensions.” Exxon discussed underneath. Delicious ironies abound. – All Our Yesterdays

May 8, 1992 – UNFCCC text agreed. World basically doomed.

May 8, 2008 – Carbon Rationing Scrapped

May 8, 2013 – we pass 400 parts per million. Trouble ahead.

May 8, 2015 – denialist denies in delusional denialist newspaper