Yesterday I wrote an article called “After the heatwave – what is to be done”
Its advice mostly focussed on ‘holding good public meetings’. There is SO MUCH more to ‘growing a movement’ than this, but bad public meetings (and most of them are, in my extensive experience) is one way activists try to hit the accelerator with their whole body-weight unwittingly mashing down on the break. It’s heart-braking.
So, this below is a mix of questions, provocations and the customary unsolicited advice for anyone thinking about holding a meeting once this wretched heatwave ends and before the next one starts (and remember, this is one of the coolest summers of the rest of your life)
First question
Why are you holding this meeting?
Usually the answer is “to give people the facts” (and to be the person giving the people the facts)
That is not good enough – people can get the facts from the internet, newspapers etc. If you want people to have the facts, a decent video would do better. Are you sure you aren’t holding this meeting to pump some prestige/’momentum’ back into a grassroots group/NGO offshoot that had a sheen a year ago but is now looking a bit tired? Are you sure you’re not suffering from a little bit of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome? You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t, and suffering RDS doesn’t make you a bad/worthless person, but it DOES make you susceptible to perpetrating one of the many fatal errors in social movement organising/agitating.
Second question What would success look like for this meeting?
The usual answer is ‘lots of people come’ and ‘lots of people feel like/tell me they learned a lot.’
Okay, but then, so what? People are more informed (coulda been done more efficiently online, btw). How does a few more people knowing a few more facts (most of which they will forget quite quickly) translate into pressure for change at a local/national/international level? How?
Did those people form any new links with other people, or was all the time and all the attention devoted to the Big People at the Front Of the Room? Was the Q and A dominated by the usual suspects? Did people slump out, shoulders slinked before the close of the meeting, which seemed to have no clear end in sight? Did they? I bet they did, but you chose not to see it, or to explain it away, to blame the victim of your own malpractice for failing to design and execute a meeting well.
Who did you invite to speak at your meeting?
I bet it’s a natural scientist and some politician/celebrity.
Of course, you need a “name” to get people in the door. I understand that. People are more likely to come if they know that the Executive Member for the Environment, some scientist from the nearest university, some person off the telly is going to be there.
But look, all these people come with baggage, with problems
The Executive Member for the Environment will probably be some brittle egomaniac who throws out half an hour of verbiage to try to disguise the fact that her local authority is far more interested in building skyscrapers and raking in cash from the airport than in doing anything meaningful about climate change. They will bludgeon the audience with factoids and boasts about their Strategies and Implementation Protocols, until everyone has lost the will to live. If anyone points out their long record of failure they will, as per media training come out with “well, I’m focussed on the future and what we do next, not on the past.” Rinse and repeat.
Your scientist
- May not be a very good public speaker at all. This will be bad.
- Or they may be a very good public speaker but without a strict (agreed beforehand and then gently enforced) time limit, will go on and on and on.
- They may get involved in long detailed discussions about obscure/confusing (to Joe and Jane Public)
- The scientist won’t necessarily know much about what is(n’t) being done locally, and in any case will fear tarnishing their reputation for high-minded neutrality by having an opinion about a local issue (it’s fine to bash the usual suspects). [The whole question of why we continue to fetishise natural scientists about what is a social problem is for another day].
Your celebrity will be in Rod Stewart mode – “once I was a young man, and I thought all I had to do was smile.” And likely ditto the scientist on the locally issues
All three, unless kept to time, will talk too long, too vaguely.
This will eat into time for the Q and A.
The Q and A will almost certainly be dominated by a few people (usually over-educated middle class white men, young, middle-aged, and old). They will engage in point-scoring or ‘look at me for asking an obscure question’ or give speeches thinly disguised as questions (some may be butt-hurt that they were not invited to be a panellist).
The energy will be leaking from the room by now, and the chair will either be sad about it or ignore it and plough on. The meeting will dribble to an inconclusive conclusion, with those people not reliant on public transport and who don’t have to get home to the baby-sitter or get up early in the morning sticking around and regurgitating their talking points.
Other people, who came and were talked at, who hoped to meet people and start thinking about DOING things, will go away, thinking the problem is them, and that they simply aren’t dedicated enough to be involved.
A few months later, another meeting, same format, same usual suspects, new ego-fodder. Rinse and repeat repeat repeat.
So, when you hold your meeting, I BEG you, have answers to the following questions.
- Have you looked at this meeting through the eyes of someone who is coming who doesn’t know anyone else? How will you make them feel welcome, how will you make it easier for them to make loose connections, chatting to people who are strangers?
- What is the meeting FOR? Are you hoping to start/revive a group that will take action? Have you thought about what skills are needed? Have you got a well-written information sheet (2 sides of A4 at absolute most) to give out to everyone
- Have you agreed with the speakers how long they will speak for and about what, making clear that you WILL keep them to time?
- Have you got a plan for how make sure that the Q&A is not the usual sausage-fest?
- Have you got a way to finish the meeting ON TIME, with an up-beat feel
- Most of all. MOST OF ALL. Have you got a way for QUICKLY communicating the content and the outcome of the meeting to all those people who would be interested in what you are doing but couldn’t come because of finances, work commitments, child-care, illness, agoraphobia etc etc? If there isn’t a blog up on your website (you do have a website, don’t you? I mean, you’re not a captive of Meta, are you?) within a couple of days of the meeting, then, guess what champion, you’ve failed.
I could go on and on and on, but, well, I won’t.
Two other bits of reading
About the pathologies of meetings
https://theconversation.com/weve-got-to-stop-meeting-like-this-81615
About the pathologies of movements