Tuesday 28 February 2012

CEESA new module titles for next year

Not to worry - we haven't changed the course contents (though we have decided that the module on feminism should be a core one for everyone!) But we did take the time to go through the titles of the different elements and see if we could give them names which make it clearer what they actually represent. So...

The two core modules running across both semesters are now
"Community of praxis" (was: Praxis and community participation) and
"Researching and completing your thesis" (no change).

The four one-semester core modules are now
"Radical education and critical pedagogy" (was: Critical pedagogy in critical adult and community education)
"Equality and social justice" (was: Understanding equality and inequality)
"Power and politics" (no change)
"Feminist theory and practice" (was: Politics of feminism and masculinities)

We hope you agree that these are a bit less obscure!

This year's elective options (all titles remaining the same) will be
"Critical media and cultural pedagogy in communities"
"Participatory action research in social movement practice"
"The politics of environmental justice"
"The market, the state and social movements"
"Sustaining communities"
"Nature and society"

You can get a sense of what most of these modules are like from this year's preliminary readings.

Friday 24 February 2012

Journalists arrested in Egypt

Australian freelance journalist Austin Mackell, Egyptian translator Aliya Alwi and US masters student Derek Ludovici were arrested on February 11th in the town of Mahalla al-Kubra where they had gone to interview trade union activist Kamal el-Fayoumi.

On arriving, they were attacked by a small mob, then taken to a police station and interrogated. Following this they have been charged with the bizarre assertion that they promised children money for throwing rocks at a police station: if convicted they face from 5 - 7 years in jail. On release the police publicised their names and addresses, putting them at physical risk. They have been prevented from leaving Egypt.

Mackell has written a number of articles in support of the Egyptian uprising and critical of the military junta. El-Fayoumi is a long-time labour activist from a town whose 2008 general strike inspired much of the rest of the country. It seems likely that the real purpose of these implausible charges is to intimidate foreign journalists reporting on the democratic protest movement, and in particular on the labour struggles which have been the backbone of opposition first to Mubarak and now to the military.

There is a petition urging the Australian authorities to take action here, and an account of the events by Mackell here.

Thursday 23 February 2012

Women Occupy call for International Women's Day

Women Occupy have a great call out for International Women's Day - US-specific but it wouldn't take too much work to rethink it for other countries...

Repaying unjust debt

Letter to today's Irish Times:

Sir, – Ireland’s debt repayments for the now dead Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) will reach over €47.9 billion if the repayments are not suspended. The bill could even rise to €85 billion when borrowing and interest charges are added in.  The debts run up by these two institutions are not primarily the responsibility of ordinary people living in Ireland – they are principally the responsibility of those who supported Anglo’s and INBS’ reckless lending.

Yet we have been saddled with repaying the debts through a system of “promissory notes”. The next payment, amounting to €3.1 billion, falls due on March 31st. Such payments are scheduled to continue until 2031.

This money could and should be used to maintain and expand public services and provide a desperately needed stimulus to the depressed economy. For example, €3.1 billion would cover the cost of running Ireland’s entire primary school system for a year.

It is clear that the Irish Government is viewed as a compliant debtor by the international lenders, especially by the European Central Bank (ECB). The Government must take action to fundamentally re-orient this unbalanced relationship.

We, 57 teachers and researchers from a wide range of Ireland’s third-level institutions, therefore call on the Government to immediately suspend these repayments so that Ireland is viewed as a challenging negotiator by the relevant parties, including the ECB, and to ensure that this unjust debt is written down. – Yours, etc,

IAIN ATACK (TCD); JOHN BAKER (UCD); TOM BOLAND (WIT); HARRY BROWNE (DIT); AUDREY BRYAN (St Patrick’s College); TOM CAMPBELL (DSC Kimmage); NICOLA CARR (QUB); MAURICE COAKLEY (Griffith College); BRÍD CONNOLLY (NUIM); COLIN COULTER (NUIM); LAURENCE COX (NUIM); TONY CUNNINGHAM (NUIM); LAURENCE DAVIS (UCC); DAVID DELANEY (WIT); DYMPNA DEVINE (UCD); Eilish Dillon (DSC Kimmage); VINCENT DURAC (UCD); ROLAND ERNE (UCD); MICHAEL FOLEY (DIT); MARK GARAVAN (GMIT); PAUL MICHAEL GARRET (NUIG); MARY GILMARTIN (NUIM); PAT HANNON (DIT); ANTHONY HAUGHEY (DIT); KIERAN KEOHANE (UCC); IAN KILROY (DIT); CARMEN KUHLING (UL); DAVID LANDY (TCD); CATHY LEENEY (UCD); SEÁN L’ESTRANGE (UCD); GERARD MCCANN (QUB) RORY MC DAID (Marino Institute); HUGH MCBRIDE (GMIT); TERENCE MCDONOUGH (NUIG); CHANDANA MATHUR (NUIM); ROSEMARY MEADE (UCC); GERARDINE MEANEY (UCD); FIONA MEEHAN (DSC Kimmage); MARIE MORAN (UCD); EITHNE MURPHY (NUIG); ENDA MURPHY (UCD); MARY P MURPHY (NUIM); TRÍONA Ní SHÍOCHÁIN (UL); CIAN O’CALLAGHAN (NUIM); TOM O’CONNOR (CIT); TOM O’CONNOR (DIT); KATHERINE O’DONNELL (UCD); AILEEN O’GORMAN (UCD); THERESA O’KEEFE (NUIM); HELENA SHEEHAN (DCU); PAUL STOKES (UCD); ANDY STOREY (UCD); FIONNGHUALA SWEENEY (UCD); GAVIN TITLEY (NUIM); BRIAN TRENCH (DCU); THERESA URBAINCZYK (UCD) JUDY WALSH (UCD)

"Saving" Greece...

A good open letter by some of France's best-known intellectuals (Balibar, Badiou etc.) on the Greek "solution". And a snappy video here explaining the economics, such as they are...

Tuesday 21 February 2012

Campaign skills workshops this weekend, Galway

There's a series of free workshops on campaigning in Galway this weekend put together by One World Centre, Debt and Development Coalition, Occupy Galway, contact.ie and Mick McCaughan - looks good. More here along with details of how to book.

Friday 17 February 2012

Anti-authoritarian assembly, Dublin, Feb 18th

This may be of interest...

"Hi everyone,


There's plenty going on in Dublin right now and never so many reasons to need to organise. RAG are calling an Anti-Authoritarian Assembly in Dublin 2.30pm, Saturday 18th February in Seomra Spraoi. 
We want to invite any Dublin-based anti-authoritarian groups or individuals together for a couple of hours - a chance to chat, to network, to help others, to get advice and to find points of common struggle etc. The proposed format is to give each group five minutes to tell everyone what they are up to and follow that by some facilitated discussion. We aim for a respectful atmosphere and a productive afternoon.

Hope lots of ye can make it along. Confirming your attendance in advance would be great to allow us to get a gauge of interest. Please feel free to forward to others who may be interested.



Similar assemblies were held in Dublin before round 2005 - 2007. At these, the group facilitating the event rotated between each one. We are just calling one assembly for now, to see how it goes.



*Facebook event*: http://www.facebook.com/events/117625871693251/

*Seomra Spraoi location:* http://seomraspraoi.org/copy_of_contact-us
*

RAG:* http://www.ragdublin.blogspot.com/ or http://ragdublin.tumblr.com/

Contact RAG at ragdublin@riseup.net"

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Ireland's future: a people's forum

Good to see so much debate and reflection on political alternatives. This event, in early March, is a bit outside the usual but may be interesting.

Friday 10 February 2012

Alternatives to university...

A fascinating Times Higher Education Supplement article here about contemporary alternatives to university...

Monday 6 February 2012

What is activist practice?

These are notes for a class discussion which may be of interest to a wider range of people, trying to explain what we mean on this course by the idea of activist practice.


(1) Imagine, for the sake of argument, that your initial mobilisation comes from awareness of a problem (in your life / community / context / wider world) and a response that it is so outrageous / unjust / dangerous / destructive / whatever that something needs to be done.

(2) In the nature of things you then almost have to choose (often without realising that you are doing so) a particular organisation, approach, strategy, theme, focus and so on around this issue. Often this is because there is an existing organisation whose approach you can then learn; other times you draw on whatever past experience you might have, or a model that inspires you etc. (or even read a how-to book about campaigning!)

(3) This leaves you having to learn a lot of stuff: understanding the issue, getting a sense of the bigger picture (social analysis or whatever) that underlies it, learning how to organise in a particular way (press releases, holding meetings, demos etc.), maybe learning other skills (alternative technology, counselling skills, whatever it might be). At this point you are a basically competent campaigner - in a particular way, around a particular approach to a particular issue.

(4) As time goes on most people change and develop around this. Sometimes this happens consciously (as they win or lose on an issue and move onto another one, or as what they are doing doesn't work, or doesn't work well enough), sometimes perhaps less consciously (as they listen to what others tell them, from fellow-activists to people on the street, or as they work out their own ways of doing things and notice that this works better than that etc.)

(5) This is at one level “having an activist practice”. It can be more or less articulate - at one end of the spectrum you might not be able to explain to others what is characteristic about your approach, while at the other you might be in the business of training others around doing it a particular way.

(6) Quite often too an organisation, or a particular organising tradition (eg Freirean, NVDA, Marxist, advocacy-NGO etc.) has a quite definite and conscious style of practice which may be immediately recognisable to other experienced activists. This is manifested in books, training programmes, particular concepts that activists use, techniques they like, principles they try to implement in what they do - even down to visual styles.

(7) At all these different levels - the most basic "knowing how to do something about something", the more or less conscious and articulate personal practice, the organising tradition - there is activist practice going on, and often (not always) some kind of learning and development. One of the things we work on in this course as a whole is becoming more conscious and articulate about our personal practice, including its sources in particular traditions (not always movement ones - they may well come from everyday life or indeed from powerful institutions like business, academia, the state etc.) This puts us in a position to name for ourselves the strengths and limitations of what we already know, to learn more from observing and listening to other activists and from reading, and to become reflective learners around our practice.


This isn't a very formal statement of things but it might be useful or interesting as one of the things that this course is about.

Sunday 5 February 2012

Global movements and social change


This is a revised version of a talk I did for Occupy University at Occupy Dublin (9 Nov 2011), very much in a personal capacity. 

In this talk I want to look at three things: the idea that we are living in the middle of a wave of social movements; what the impact of such waves has been historically; and what the practical implications of that are for social movements.

Global movement waves

Waves of social movements are a normal feature of life in capitalism. They include the “Atlantic Revolutions” of the late 18th century (America, France, 1798 in Ireland and the Haitian revolution which ended slavery); the revolutions of 1848 across Europe; the wave of 1916-23 which left new states of very different kinds in Ireland and Russia but saw revolutionary situations in many if not most European countries; the anti-fascist resistance from (say) the Spanish Civil War to 1945; Asian and African anti-colonial movements which led to independence from empire for most of the world’s population; the global wave of 1968, from Mexico to Japan; the revolutions of 1989-90 which brought down state socialism in most places (but were defeated in China); and the Latin American “pink tide” which has seen a string of revolutionary situations and movement-linked states in South America in particular.

In the present day, the anti-capitalist and anti-war movements of the early 2000s have faded into European anti-austerity movements (from the 2008 Icelandic “pots and pans revolution” and Greek unrest), the Arab Spring, and the indignados / Occupy movement. (NB that I am not trying to list every movement here, just those where there was visibly a wave of large-scale participation in radical movements across many countries.)

The causes of such waves are widely debated. One reading links them to the long Kondratieff waves of capitalist development and tries to see a structural link to the ebbs and flows of political economy. Another highlights weakened states (for example, at the end of wars). George Katsiaficas has talked about an “eros effect” of contagion from one revolution to the next. Others have celebrated “networking” processes.

My own take is to see them as linked to the rise and fall of regimes of accumulation – that they represent both a crisis in such regimes and a moment in which popular forces have an opportunity to push events in a different direction: enforcing democracy against monarchy or dictatorship, independence against empire, welfare against capitalism, and so on. For the purposes of today’s talk, in any case, it is less important to analyse why they happen than to note that they happen, and to think about their effects and what that says to us.

The impact of movement waves

Global waves of social movements have been among the major social forces in the history of recent centuries. Decolonisation – whether the US in the 18th century, Latin America in the 19th, Ireland in the 1920s or Asia after WWII – is one major outcome. Democracy – in the French Revolution, the European resistance to fascism or the events of 1989-90 – is another. Social justice has been a common theme, from the Haitian revolution via the European uprisings at the end of WWI to the Latin American pink tide. A democratisation of everyday life – in particular after 1968 – is another.

The current wave is happening in a very particular global context. The wave of 1989-90 saw the Soviet Union lose its satellites and then disintegrate, and Putin has not been able to restore its reach. The pink tide demonstrated the US’ inability, for the first time in a century or more, to impose its will (in military, foreign policy or economic terms) on its Latin American “backyard”, while events in Egypt in particular have underlined its limited purchase on the strategically crucial Arab world (a process begun by the failure of the “war on terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq).

More generally there is a rumbling challenge to neoliberalism: started by the “IMF riots” of the 1980s and early 1990s, articulated by the Zapatistas, the World Social Forum, summit protests and the 2001 Argentinazo, institutionalised by radical governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, most recently on the streets and shaking governments in Iceland, Greece and the UK and now in the form of Spanish indignados, “Occupy” in the belly of the US beast and even a revival of protest in Italy.

This challenge is particularly significant as the tentative criticisms of neoliberalism made at the start of the current crisis by figures like Gordon Brown have had no real implication beyond the narrowly technical (“quantitative easing” etc.) It is clear to anyone who reads the newspapers that there is no significant dissent within elites – political and financial, or their hired mouths in academia and journalism – about the proposal that the only way forward is more austerity, more neoliberalism, more privatisations. If you want to imagine the future, imagine a debt burden pressing into human faces forever. Unless, of course, we stop it – and the fact that elites are so resistant to alternatives is one of the major factors forcing ordinary people into radical resistance.

Implications for social movements

Firstly, of course, we need to understand the current movement wave as international; we need to see its time scale (in relation to anti-capitalism and in relation to the anti-austerity protests from 2008 on as well as in relation to the Arab Spring and Occupy); we need to understand that it has many different organisational forms; and that this situation will not last for ever.

The weakness of neoliberal structures is precisely in the closed consensus of elites – and their belief that they do not need to convince or gain the consent of their populations, simply tell them that austerity is necessary and the reporters and economists will do the rest. Of course every regime that has ever fallen, controlled or censored the media and had its own paid hacks in the newsrooms and universities: it did not keep them in power.

There is a substantial crisis of legitimacy for neoliberalism which anti-capitalism laid the groundwork for and the new movements are articulating dramatically. It is above all an inability to lead: to articulate the political and social aspirations of large groups of people in the way that (for example) Thatcherite and Reaganite populism could.

Its global grip – from the Middle East to Latin America, in the belly of the US beast and across key European states, where unemployment figures have reached unheard-of levels – has never been weaker. We miss this if we take their definition of reality (political parties in a situation where there were more spoiled votes in Spain than votes for the PP, an official media which repeats an elite consensus, the co-option of historic movement organisations etc.) too seriously. Real social change comes about precisely when ordinary people look at the reality of their own lives and contrast it to these official versions of the truth, and organise differently. It can happen very quickly: Colin Barker’s Revolutionary rehearsals is one book which shows what this means in practice.

For social movement participants and organisers, this potential means, firstly, that we should do what is possible now, while the situation is still open (it will not remain so indefinitely: we will see a new fascism, a new fundamentalism, or some other new elite-led way out of the impasse if we wait too long). Secondly, we should try to understand ourselves on a global stage. In Ireland this means – while seeing the increasing political bankruptcy of the new government, the leftward drift of voters, resistance to all aspects of the financial crisis and new movements springing up – making the case that we are part of a wider European wave of opposition to neo-liberalism. “Europe” is not all-powerful because it is not simply the leaders of the EU. It is also our fellow Europeans, rising up in revolt against “Europe” as debt collector, bailiff, liquidator and technocrat.

We need, of course, to keep highlighting that the challenge is neo-liberalism, not just this or that policy. So it is important at every opportunity to make the links between the giveaway of oil and gas in Mayo, Leitrim or Dalkey; bailing out the Anglo bondholders (and others); European-imposed austerity regimes; the household tax and other iniquitous ways of making the poor pay for the crisis; loyalty to the euro at any price rather than the Argentinian and Icelandic default option; the privatisation of public services; low corporation tax and union-free multinationals; and all the rest of the sorry shebang. We need to think what is possible in Latin American terms, not the ones set by the Irish Times, RTE, the ESRI or Joan Burton – and to develop an alternative understanding of social movements in Ireland (see this paper).

Lastly, we need to think how we can construct alternative institutions, at any level. “Occupy NAMA” and other strategies of taking occupation outwards are important ones. Resisting the household tax, and reviving community organising, is another. Supporting strikes and workplace occupations is fundamental, and trying to involve radicals within the unions. Challenging the economics of bailout and bondholders, tied to specific issues like repayment of Anglo debt, is important. Resisting Shell at Rossport, fracking in the west Midlands and drilling of Dalkey builds important alliances. Bringing together activists across different organisations and movements to develop solidarity is strategically key. And so on.

If there is one guiding line, it should be bottom-up democracy: the construction of new institutions responding to human needs and outside the current orthodoxy. That means holding the more authoritarian left groups to account and making them serve the movement rather than try to own it. It equally means being wary of fake movements like “Claiming our future”, ICTU-led token protests and other strategies which are led by individuals and organisations who are structurally tied to neoliberal politics and the current government.

Whether that means “ignore”, “challenge from the outside” or “participate and raise hell internally” is something everyone has to work out for themselves: my own guess is that we cannot ignore the fact that to date the unions are the only body capable of bringing out real numbers of people against government policy, and we should argue within these protests and try to take them further. Conversely, it is simply wasting time to talk to Labour Party hacks pretending to be radical activists. But these are not the most fundamental questions.

Lastly, and most importantly, our question has to be “How can we take the movement further?” How can we find ways of engaging people who are being hit badly and show them where the problems are coming from? How can we talk to people who believe that their local councillor or union rep has only their best interests at heart and don’t know about the political bottom line of their party whip or union policy? How do we link up the different struggles that are happening rather than let them be played off against each other and treated as separate issues on the “we’ll give you a concession if you come back within the tent” logic? And how do we find new ways of talking to and working with each other which are adequate to the kinds of movements that we have seen across the world these last twelve years?

I think we may be about to find out.

Changing yourself *and* changing the world...

Sustaining resistance, empowering renewal
24 April - 1 May 2012
7-day workshop in rural Devon, UK


This workshop offers personal and collective tools to make our activism more effective. It offers space to reflect and analyse, helping us to stay in it for the long haul, create personal sustainability and add continuity to our movement building. We will explore how to ensure the collective dimensions of our activism exemplify the values we struggle for. It aims to help us stay inspired, nourished, empowered - strategically creative.

The workshop applies ecological/systems thinking, radical analysis, and holistic-participatory learning to help us explore our activism and the building of social movements. It offers practical methods for engaging in the inner work that underpins effective social engagement.

The course is offered by the ecodharma collective (www.ecodharma.com) and Seeds for Change (www.seedsforchange.org.uk). Bursaries are available, but places are limited.

Application deadline: February 29th 2012.

For more information or an application form email: susres@ecodharma.com