[Cja] [climate09-int] CJA: the great fix-it-or-nix-it-debate

[n i c o l a s]

Hi all,

as someone involved in the attempt to set up a specific local climate
justice campaign in London (through climate camp east London, when it still
existed), Tadzio's suggestion makes perfect sense to me. We need to ground
climate justice as a concept and to find out what it means in practice where
we live. In Europe, this is not necessarily that clear - in our group, we
decided to try to focus on the issue of fuel poverty and were trying to
think of ways to build a grassroots 'campaign' around fuel poverty as a
climate justice issue.

But until we have a series of projects and campaigns such as this, climate
justice will remain ephemeral - a theory that we put on banners and make
into slogans, but without substance. I think that while the email list
should remain, dissolving CJA for now so as to focus on finding out what
climate justice looks like from 'below' is possibly the most useful thing we
can do. It may be that through the CJA list we can have an ongoing
discussion on what climate justice looks like, and how we go about achieving
it. And at some point perhaps we can use the old network to establish
connections between these local projects. But as Tadzio says, unless there
are those specific moments of resistance, we risk turning into little more
than a band of activists who come together at other peoples meetings to
cause a little trouble and not much else besides.

ciao
nic
On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 7:43 AM, Tadzio Mueller <tadziom at yahoo.com> wrote:

> dear friends (and dare i say comrades ;-)),
>
> it's great, and somewhat ironic, to see that there's finally some
> discussion regarding anything CJA-related at all. maybe it's like when my
> mum wanted to throw away that dusty teddybear in the corner that i never,
> ever played with anymore. realising that it was going to go the way of all
> things, i put up a big fight, and won. it stayed. unfortunately, it also
> stayed in its corner, gathering dust, until at some point, she threw it out
> in a nightly commando-raid... wow. very religious: speaking in parables -
> apologies for that, it's early, and coffee isn't ready yet...
>
> my point, though, should be obvious: it's inspiring that people obviously
> feel so strongly about CJA. it is even more inspiring that there are
> regional/national networks that somewhat draw on a CJA(-like) identity in
> their work, and that are growing and getting stronger. but: the work done at
> regional/national levels has in principle almost nothing to do with what
> happens with CJA at the largely European level (ref. back to long debates
> whether CJA is global or european - de facto, it is european). at that
> level, the network has been largely disfunctional since before (!)
> copenhagen. in copenhagen itself, the only functioning CJA structures were
> the media group, and the reclaim power action group (though in both cases,
> they were also strongly constituted by our amazing danish friends, organised
> in the climate collective). neither of these structures exist anymore.
> meetings have been getting smaller and smaller, and more and more like
> gatherings of friends. for those who haven't been to these meetings: there's
> a very strong sense of drift, of a lack of purpose. we're not playing with
> the teddybear, as it were. it's gathering dust. it doesn't have a purpose
> right now.
>
> to be sure: this lack of purpose is not because the problem has gone away -
> but because, i suggest, right now is not really the time for global network
> building around climate justice. really, we need to engage in
> sub-global/continental capacity/power-building. global networks are only as
> good as their social base. in fact, strengthening global networks * the
> expense of* local bases leads to the latter becoming subject to the whims
> of the former.
>
> anyway: if people want to make the de facto european CJA network come alive
> again, by all means, get involved. make the structures work. create
> structures. do stuff. put in management-speak: CJA can only function if
> there's a significant 'buy-in' from people all around the continent. if not,
> all the inspiring words written on email lists won't change the fact that
> CJA is pretty much non-existent. and if that is the case, then the few of us
> who actually have been investing time and resources and affect into trying
> to make things work, traveling to distant meetings, can maybe spend that
> energy elsewhere.
>
> solidarische gruesse
>
> tadzio
>
>
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