local sovereignty developing into a campaign idea

after exchanging a few emails, the local sovereignty idea is starting to take shape into an actual, practical campaign idea.

name ideas -
campaign for local consensus government
campaign for real democracy
consensus works

twin track approach

1) giving people involved in local campaigns (who are almost certainly being frustrated by what passes for 'democracy') both a tool to help with their campaign and a broader goal that could stop the kind of things they're campaigning against happening again.
2) giving people who have seen true democracy working (such as climate camp) a mechanism for spreading it

and bringing these 2 groups together

firstly with a questionnaire / mapping project of campaigns in london
communicating with people with a general desire to achieve real democracy (anarchists and others that might have experienced consesnsus decision making at places like climate camp)

then a meeting / conference entitled something like 'from single issue campaigns to real democracy'

what we need is much much more bureaucracy

as usual the talk around the budget includes promises of 'cutting back on government waste' and 'slashing bureaucracy' from all sides and to a point i agree - most of the current bureaucracy is a waste, but that's because there isn't enough of it.

The problem is the level it rests at - a nation of 60 million or borough of 100,000 with very little power means that any administration is either totally separated from the needs of real people or totally without influence. what people need is a bureaucracy they can see working and really be involved in that takes real decisions. Then people won't mind how big it is, because it'll be working for them and nobody minds working to make their own life / community better. If 'government' was done at this level (no more than a few thousand people and with real power equivalent to those currently held at the level of the state) then everyone would constantly be arguing and discussing 'politics' and 'governance' and 'budgets' only we probably wouldn't call them that - we'd probably just call it 'life' and 'community', and all the things that are part of that.
Q - how do you know when you've been in too many climate camp meeting? A - when, while in the dock on trial you absent mindedly do 'wavy hands' when your barrister says something you really agree with.

are police the law or do they uphold it?

today i was convicted of obstructing a police officer that i was trying to walk around, as he followed me to push me back with his shield. i think most people would accept that i was being obstructed by him. the difference comes when you realise that i was walking towards a power station which apparently makes it alright. he said the police had established a 'sterile cordon' which people weren't allowed into but couldn't say which law had been used to establish this - the reason - there was none. police think they are in a war film 'take your men and set up a perimeter over there' they are ordered 'and don't let anybody through' and off they go and do it. the law doesn't matter, they are the law so whatever they want to do is ok. when i arrive i'm told to stop, in court he said 'most people stop when i ask them, they don't need to ask what my legal basis is for doing this' maybe they should? he admitted he had no idea what law he was using or even who's decision it was that people weren't allowed in to that area. but he was happy to repeatedly push me with his shield and eventually wrestle me to the ground and pin me down with his hand around my throat. this is the tactic that forms the basis of kettling - restricting people arbitrarily just because they are police and we are not, deciding what people can do without telling them or referring to the law.

response to Will hutton ' The environment is too important to be left to the green movement'

Read Hutton's piece here

Hutton rightly identifies problems with the prince of wales and 'small conservation' greens, but he makes the mistake of including everyone else working to tackle climate change as just another wing of the 'the green movement'. it's clear by his use of this phrase that he doesn't know who or what he's talking about. He is hopelessly out of date. in the last 5 years a huge coalition movement has come together to demand global justice, only focussing on climate change for the pragmatic reason that it is the largest and most immediate threat to humans. The term 'environmentalists' hardly even scratches the surface.

He's also right about the film 'the age of stupid' that is a film that should have been released years ago and is now as out of date as Hutton. That kind of scare motivating of waving sea level graphs and expecting people to take action is in the past. Those that haven't been scared into action by now are never going to listen to this. This is mostly because at the same time people were told 'but all we have to do is change a few lightbulbs, do our recycling and build a few wind turbines' and it just didn't add up. Instinctively they knew that either it wasn't that bad or, if it was, this wasn't a solution - either way they were being lied to and, quite reasonably, preferred to continue with what they were doing.

The lack of action on climate change is because we haven't actually asked for it. I'm convinced that if we're straight with people about the threat, the big changes needed and the massive opportunities to make a better world at the same time we'll see a huge change, and even if we don't it'll be forced on us soon enough by the end of cheap energy.

The real activity is now to offer everyone a reasonably smooth transtion to completely new society that has to come anyway, while a few people do what they can to prepare for it to happen as painlessly as possible when we are ineviatably forced to.


on a similar note monbiot on plastic bags

police commit hate crimes against protesters

if you were assaulted by police on April1st - why not report it as a hate crime?

" I was verbally abused and physically attacked by members of a large, angry group of armed, masked (mostly) men simply because I was part of a different group. "

http://www.met.police.uk/communities_together/docs/reporting_crime.pdf

report it online here

http://www.met.police.uk/reporting_crime/index.htm

policing protests - routine disdain, impatience and a welcome opportunity for violence without consequence

The release of video showing that Ian Tomlinson was assaulted shortly before he died on April 1st is not at all surprising. The routine aggression, nastiness and assault by almost all officers when policing protests makes it almost certain that anyone on the streets that day would receive such treatment.

Very few of these officers are 'riot cops' these are almost all 'ordinary coppers' who seem to be given some kind of switch that they gladly throw when facing 'protesters' rather than 'real people' that allows this constant disdain and regular assault, even when not actually trying to move people on. It's political policing at the most petty and routine level.

Add to this that those giving the orders clearly have no patience for peaceful protest - at around 7pm on that day they gave the order to violently move the climate camp that had been not just peaceful, but positively carnivalesque. I'm sure these commanders spend loads of time playing 'war games' of violent public order situations facing other coppers dressed up in black hoodies & masks (I bet that's one job where they don't struggle for volunteers) but very little time facing peaceful protesters - after all, where's the fun in that? They must have been so excited in the run-up to April 1st of a chance to try out tactics and scenarios learned at Hendon with impunity and so disappointed with what actually faced them on he day.

In the police it seems that protests are taken as a safe opportunity for junior officers to indulge a, mostly repressed, desire for violence and conflict and senior officers to practice para-military tactics - a dangerous cocktail
I think i've come to terms with using anger at police over-reaction as a motivating factor to build the movement. It's not ideal, i'd prefer it if people were motivated by the urgency of the issues to take direct action. However I think this is actually quite a large jump from 'normal' conciousness. I think a general feeling of disobedience from dissatisfaction with the actions of the state and corporations is a good intermediate stage, and to discover that the police aren't dixon of dock green must surely be something that can help with that move.

It's our responsibility to have the real issues available in digestable form for these people so they can decide where they might best put their efforts after the initial rage has died down.
I haven't written a blog post for at least 2 months, this is good news because it means i've been ACTUALLY DOING STUFF. Mostly helping to organise climate camp in the city of london which was absolutely brilliant. But I have missed thinking / writing etc a bit, so i'm going to get back into updating regularly AND making little video blog entries as i've decided that video is a much better way to do this kind of thing.