I’m hyper-attuned to building a social movement. In fact, I’m seeing it all over the place, from tight clusters of birds whipping around in their collective unconscious to Christmas movies.
Watching Polar Express tonight reminded me of my favourite part of the film near the end. Everyone’s waiting for Santa to come out and play. All the elves are standing around mumbling. Then there’s this converging anarchy of voices leading to an “ooooooOOOOOOhhhhhHHHHH yyyyyyYYYYYooooooOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…” that coalesces into “Oh, you better watch out,” etc. of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Many disparate voices joining together.
So I’m thinking about the abject failure of the Copenhagen summit for climate change a few weeks ago. Not surprising, really, when I think about it because the other day I was cutting some french toast in half [well 2/3 and 1/3] to see if my daughter would pick the bigger half. Game theory: the person who cuts is not the one who picks which half. I figured that was related to the realpolitik BS that killed Copenhagen.
So then I started reading up on the The One Degree War and how Evo Morales is convening a climate summit for social movements on Earth Day next year. The first begins a dialogue on solving a global crisis in an open-source, non-proprietary way; it feels quite cooperative. The second recognizes that a way past the 17th century political culture that killed Copenhagen is to convene a movement of movements.
I was thinking of that when I started Canada22.org on Earth Day in 2006, but I didn’t have the mobilization juice to scale it up to a provincial or federal level. But it’s nice to see now that organizations like TckTckTck.org have been able to hack together 15 million people to mobilize in advance of Copenhagen and we now have 11 months to mobilize before COP16 in Mexico next winter.
If we are ever going to get from zero-sum politics to positive-sum gains, we have to change the rules and deligitimize the old politics. And the people have to take control. And we have to see through the corporate greenwashing of Hopenhagen and realize their vibe contributed to the pablum document in Copenhagen and destroyed real movements for climate justice.
Social movements are a dire threat to political parties that still operate in the 17th century and maybe even the 20th century paradigm. Paradigm mechanics like TckTckTck.org and Evo Morales and George Monbiot are most able to pivot us into a new era. We have to get on board or our leaders will sell us down the tar sands river, starting with the Canadian prime minister.
Now I just have to figure out if Bert and Ernie [the cop and cab driver..which is which? and does it matter?] in It’s A Wonderful Life are really the inspiration for the Sesame Street characters and if there’s a nascent social movement brewing there. Then I’ll really have something.
