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

[Bert]

Hey,

To point out to those who have a fear of 'disbanding CJA' -- it means 
little more than not having a meeting every 3 months! There has been 
very very little work done specifically by CJA over the past six months 
or so, even by those who have attended the meetings (and I include 
myself as a slacker). It's hardly like we will be winding down huge 
projects after months of work.

The simple question is - can people can think of a European-wide project 
that requires a network form to implement it? And just saying 'stopping 
climate change!' doesn't cut the mustard I'm afraid. Unless there is an 
answer to that question, in the form of a concrete project or a broad 
political trajectory (ie. inciting communism), then there is no purpose 
in our traveling across Europe to sit in wet fields or cold squats.

Bert


On 25/08/2010 09:38, n i c o l a s wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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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