[Cja] The Future of CJA ; dissolve or find a new course

[Bert]

I have felt this debate coming!

So I've been churning over whether to come to Holland or not this 
weekend, precisely because of these kind of questions. Given my limited 
time and money, is traveling to this meeting the best way to see them spent?

I'll put this in as proviso - these are ideas flowing somewhat 
haphazardly off the top of my head. They are certainly not conclusive 
thoughts!

The *first* question - what is the state of climate politics?

In my eyes, if we were to survey the 'movement' as it currently stands, 
it is dominated by a field of NGOs engaged at the policy level. To this 
extent, I'm hesitant to even use the (ambiguous) term of 'movement' - 
rather it now appears to be a number of policy-hacks claiming legitimacy 
on the back of a non-existent 'movement' demographic. This is sadly 
reflected in the trajectory of the Cochabamba Declaration, which is now 
treated solely as a series of policy points that 'experts' are concerned 
with writing into the UNFCCC negotiating texts, whilst Bolivian 
representatives proudly pronounce that the UN is being forced to listen 
to the people. A disgraceful bastardisation of any possible 'new 
politics' that could have been born from that Bolivian conference.

My understanding is that whilst climate politics continues at the policy 
level, any 'movement' will ultimately be reduced to fulfilling the role 
of foot-soldiers, a crowd upon which policy-hacks feed so as to claim 
some form of representative capacity within negotiations -- 'look here! 
we have the people behind us!'. I'm not interested in mobilising cannon 
fodder for ineffective UN negotiations, and I'm not interested in 
bolstering this or that bargaining position. The only possibility of 
this having any value is as part of a different politics and a broader 
strategy that exists outside of policy negotiations. At the moment, 
there isn't one - blind hope is still within the UNFCCC despite 
inevitable failure.

The *second* question - what would an other climate politics look like?

For all the criticism, what other trajectory could or should have been 
taken? How do we create something effective, that takes as its basis 
popular activity outside of policy spaces? I think we began to explore 
this in our discussion of creating a different strategic space, one that 
would put the emphasis on placing 'climate politics' in peoples daily 
lives as opposed to in the policy realm. In other words, we need to 
provide a revolutionary dream, the 'other worlds' that listen and speak 
to the daily concerns of peoples lives - not some abstract ethical drive 
based on PPM and Bangladeshi floods (however terrible they may be). We 
will not build a movement out of voluntarist ethical commitments to 
'reduce carbon', manifesting itself within protests, days of action, 
asceticism or policy-led politics.

In other words, we are concerned with generating an anti-capitalist 
response to climate change. We should know well enough that, to do this, 
we must locate the 'place' of capital not in institutions, nor 
corporations, nor banks, but at the level of control over our daily 
decision making. This means that we must begin with the issues that are 
the core of our lives - housing, food, healthcare, transport, childcare, 
'education' - and begin a process of strategising how people can assume 
common control of these fundamental life processes. As it stands, we 
predominately rely on capital for our own survival, we are all forced to 
sell our labour (or to exploit the labour of others) so as to survive. 
This reliance means that, however much we despise this system or however 
much we personally fail to benefit from it, the bottom line in decision 
making is /always/ the accumulation of capital. If we want control over 
'ecological' decisions, then we must free ourselves from our compulsion 
to act in accordance with capital.

The purpose of this imagined conference leans towards this - how do we 
base a climate politics in peoples self-interest? How do we begin a 
process of empowering people to create circuits of reproduction /other 
than and to the detriment of/ capital? How do we ignite the sentiment of 
another world, and how does do we ensure this sentiment spread like 
wildfire? There is only one way - and that is embedding politics as a 
struggle over the conditions of everyday life.

The *third* question - can CJA initiate this other politics?

Well... firstly, we would have to make sense of all this. We would have 
to work out a first step for an anti-capitalist climate politics, and 
how it is based in present reality. We would have to work out if there 
is any difference between the aforementioned and anti-capitalist 
politics /in general/. We would have to resolve contradictions such as 
that between the 'green jobs'/'anti-growth' camps. We would need to find 
a discursive AND practical way of delinking human well-being from the 
reproduction of capital. We could perhaps forge 'directional demands', 
demands which seem fully plausible from the position of human wellbeing, 
yet completely untenable from the position of capital accumulation, such 
as that of a 'living wage for all'. I think the strategy conference we 
discussed just might have some play in this particular discussion, but 
it would have to go far beyond any confines of the 'climate'.

Secondly - and perhaps most importantly - we would need the bodies to 
make it happen. As Tadzio and Peter have mentioned, I just can't see 
where they are going to come from. Is CJA the vehicle to make any of 
this happen? I really don't know. Is 'climate justice' a discourse which 
can speak to this concept of generalised struggle over our own 
reproduction, which is fundamentally what this is about? Or must it be 
abandoned as liberal bullshit within the realm of policy-hacks?

A million questions, and I feel somewhat lost.
I hope someone can persuade me within the next 24 hours that I should go 
to the Netherlands.

Solidarity,

Bert



On 24/08/2010 11:21, Tadzio Mueller wrote:
> hey all,
>
> first of all, thanks to peter for basically clarifying something that 
> had sort of been lurking at the back of my mind, and, i suspect, other 
> people's too. my email yesterday kind of hinted at something like 
> that, too.
>
> i think the point about the 'standard recipe' of the 'day of action' 
> is especially well-taken: as someone who was involved in pushing that 
> idea at the february meeting in amsterdam i'll be honest, it was very 
> much an idea that emerged simply in order to keep the network alive. 
> and that's not enough to energise people, as we've seen from the 
> absolutely crap work we as a network have done around the day of 
> action: we've done practically no outreach to groups and people who 
> don't come to CJA-meetings, something we were great at in the 
> copenhagen mobilisation; the storytelling/media-work aspect has been 
> pretty dead, and that was one of the things where we shone in and 
> before copenhagen.
>
> as i think i mentioned in my last email, our local group in berlin has 
> now started to do active outreach to groups in eastern germany, so far 
> very, very 'empty' ground from the perspective of networked climate 
> (justice) struggles. in a way, that's a very boring task - nowhere 
> near as fun as hanging out with y'all lovely lot :-) but it's probably 
> what needs to get done. the global events, we know after 10 years of 
> experience in organising them, have their role to play. but that role 
> is limited.
>
> anyway, i'm starting to repeat myself, so i'll stop here. like peter, 
> it would be great to hear loud and practical and concrete disagreement 
> with these thoughts. but whatever we do, let's be honest to ourselves.
>
> solidarische gruesse
>
> tadzio
>
>
> --- On *Tue, 8/24/10, Peter / GroenFront! /<peter at groenfront.nl>/* wrote:
>
>
>     From: Peter / GroenFront! <peter at groenfront.nl>
>     Subject: [Cja] The Future of CJA ; dissolve or find a new course
>     To: "climate09-int" <climate09-int at lists.riseup.net>,
>     cja at lists.aktivix.org
>     Date: Tuesday, August 24, 2010, 5:49 AM
>
>     Dear friends,
>
>     The next meeting op Climate Justice Action should, in my view ,
>     have just one agenda point. Dissolve the network of not.
>
>     Climate Justice Action was formed to mobilise for Copenhagen. In
>     2009 it was a lively, planet wide network that was powerfull
>     enough to make a stand in the streets of Copenhagen. In all the
>     stress and rush to prepare for that event, we forgot to think
>     about the future of the network itself. As a result many people
>     dropped out after the Copenhagen summit. Discussions at the last
>     two meetings have focused on finding a cause to keep the network
>     alive. The standard recipe of global day of actions was brought
>     up.  But that's not enough to keep people motivated and keep the
>     network alive.
>     The meeting in bonn only had 30 people, the next meeting in
>     Holland looks to be even smaller. Tasks taken up  in Bonn haven't
>     been done.
>
>     Apperently the time and energy to keep the network alive isn't
>     there any more. Most likely because the network is missing a
>     concrete common goal. A battle to prepare for.
>     I think it is time to face facts, and dissolve CJA as it is at
>     this moment.
>
>     I would be good to keep the mailing list up, to make contacts
>     easier, or maybey organize a conference on Climate justice in
>     Europe. But to keep dragging the burden of an international
>     network would be a mistake. It will drain the time and energy
>     needed elsewhere, and give people the false hope that we are able
>     to mobilise large amounts of activist for future actions.
>
>     I ofcourse hope to be mistaken, and see lot's of angry people at
>     the next meeting to oppose my proposal. If not come over to have a
>     drink at the campfire. I hope anyway to see you all on the
>     barricades , somewhere, sometime.
>
>     Peter Polder
>
>
>     -- 
>     skype:peterpolder
>     www.groenfront.nl <http://www.groenfront.nl>
>
>
>
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