Dearest friends, family, and community,

As you read this, an army of energy lobbyists are preparing to descend on the global negotiations for a new climate change treaty. Their objective is not to build a more just or sustainable future, but to profiteer from the climate crisis and pass the buck to the next generation.

But across town and around the world, everyday people like you are taking a stand and telling another story of local food, renew

able energy, and social equality. Educators, farmers, young people, mothers, and community leaders are telling a new story of just transition away from fossil fuels—gathered in church basements, demonstrating in public squares, and speaking truth in the halls of power. This is the story that affirms life and respects the rights of people. This is the story of ecological justice. And this is the story you chose when you support smartMeme with your donation.

With your support, smartMeme has built a gifted team of thinkers, doers, and dreamers who are on the ground, doing the honest work of social change day in and day out, from coast to coast. We are a lean, diverse network with creative methods that reframe public debates and get results for economic justice and environmental protection. And we’re counting on your donation to shift the story for progressive causes in 2010.

SmartMeme delivers powerful impact on a shoestring budget, directly training over 500 frontline activists and collaborating with over 75 diverse groups in 2009 alone, including:

•    Developing a cross-cutting alliance of grassroots groups across California to defend the human right to water and protect watersheds that are threatened by global climate destabilization and water-greedy industrial agriculture companies

•    Designing and teaching an innovative curriculum for leading economic justice organizations blending framing and storytelling with online video and social media tools

•    Gathering the nation’s next generation of climate change leaders for a retreat on framing social justice strategies for the Copenhagen climate talks, and beyond.

SmartMeme makes all of this (and more) happen for cents on the dollar of the corporate PR machines we fight.

As a mission driven non-profit, smartMeme does not receive funding from corporations, or even large foundations. We are powered by YOU, the everyday people who believe in change put your dollars where your dreams are: with the courageous spirit of innovation and social progress, one footstep at a time.

Now is the time to walk with us. Our goal is to raise $30,000 this holiday season. $5000, $500, $100, $50…or a smaller amount each month as a smartMeme sustainer will directly support critical campaigns, training grassroots leaders, and wide-scale distribution of the 2010 edition of our strategy manual. Your donation is an essential step to build the movement for ecological justice and progressive social change in 2010.

Supporting smartMeme is an act of strategy. SmartMeme is dedicated to innovating social change methods to build a more effective movement and advancing a larger vision of systemic social change. Your gift to smartMeme is a force-multiplier with rippling impacts.

Ask your self, what would you give for ecological justice? Can you put a price on empowerment, ecology, and equality? What can you put aside each month for a better future?

The ecological footprints we leave behind are the choices we make everyday: the way we live, what we buy, and what we give.  Together, our footprints create the courageous march of progress that defines (and redefines) history.

Please join us on this journey today by making a generous gift to support smartMeme’s important mission, and change the story for a better future. Thank you for your support, and for all you do…step by courageous step.

With one foot in front of the other,

Doyle Canning & Patrick Reinsborough, smartMeme Co-Directors

PS: Have you seen our new online video, Changing the Story of Climate Crisis?! Meet some amazing ecological justice leaders and give secure online today: smartmeme.org/climate

PPS: A special welcome & shout out to incoming smartMeme board members Autumn Brown, Maryrose Dolezal, Myla Ablog, Nupur Modi, and Shana Mc-Davis Conway! Support their leadership! Become a smartMeme sustainer for 2010: smartmeme.org/give

THANK YOU, AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

As the seasons turn and the geese take flight, we are inspired to offer this invitation for participation!

FACT: As each goose flaps its wings, it creates uplift for the bird following. By flying in a “V” formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if the bird flew alone.

LESSON: Those who share a common direction and sense of unity can get where they are going quicker and easier, because they are traveling on the thrust of one another…

SmartMeme is seeking a few special individuals to join our Board of Directors, and we’re issuing this invitation to our community. The Board’s primary function is to support the organizational mission and participate in making that mission manifest. As part of our commitment to inclusive movement building, the Board is majority people of color and women. Attention is made to diversity in sexual orientation, area of work, geography, ability, etc. Young people are welcome and the current group is all under 40 years old.

2009 board members start with a seaside board retreat in Northern California November 5-8, 2009. We are currently redefining and building this leadership team, and it’s an exciting time in smartMeme! Interested?

Apply today! [DOWNLOAD APPLICATION AS PDF]

Want to fly with our flock?

Read and return this application [DOWNLOAD AS PDF] and return via email by 5 pm PST on OCTOBER 14, 2009.

{More lessons from Geese}

Enjoy some scenes from the 2009 REVerb Summer Camp with the Progressive Technology Project, somewhere in Minnesota!

This 4 day training was 2 days on framing/story-based strategy w/ smartMeme, and 2 days of fun w/ the Flip Cams and Tweet-decks making mock campaign videos and online campaigns, with Jen Caltrider.

Groups at the camp included SCOPE from Los Angeles, Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) from Albuquerque, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Data Center, POWER from the San Francisco Bay Area, NY City AIDS Housing Network, and TN Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition from Nashville.

I took the opportunity to learn more about using final cut pro, an made this video blog about the summer camp!

I had a wonderful time working with all these beautiful, incredible, bold and brilliant organizers – and innovating the story-based strategy curriculum to mesh with viral video production and online campaigning. It was tons of fun, and I learned a ton too.

THANKS to PTP and all who made this amazing training possible!

See also — Pics from the week via Flickr…

www.flickr.com smartMeme’s RE:Verb Summer Camp with the Progressive Technology Project photoset

A quick reflection on our 2009 convening on climate change, creative actions, social justice and the “Copenhagen Moment”…

I am so thrilled about the “Pause,” a restorative and rigorous retreat we convened last week. I am deeply grateful for all who attended, supported, and donated to make this event possible. It was truly a special occasion, gathering some amazing climate activists who are approaching the crisis from a justice perspective, and working to build movements at the intersections of ecology and social justice.  We were also joined by our amazing video team (justinfrancese.com) and kitchen magicians (delicata catering). The beautiful Bluewater Farm in Andover, NH (traditional Pennacook Territory) was generously donated for this event. Check out pics…

www.flickr.com smartMeme’s Invoking the Pause: smartMeme conveing on climate and social justice photoset

The sessions involved narrative power analysis and discussions of the dominant frames on the climate crisis; climate justice principles; the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen later this year; and creative ideas for how to spread memes for climate justice.

We also had a celebration on Tuesday evening, and were blessed with local special guests from the Winter Center for Indigenous Traditions (dedicated to environmental justice, Abinaki indigenous rights and cultural practices), and local CSA organic farmer Katherine Darling, of Two Mountain Farm.

Fireside chats and formal sessions included discussions of the upcoming G20 meeting in Pittsburg, stories from past UNFCCC talks in Bali and Poznan, reflections on race and racism in the environmental field, and visioning for how to build an inclusive movement that addresses the root causes of the climate crisis.

As I write this blog, I am recalling this experience and simultanously struck by the stakes. Listening to this mornings news from the G8 Summit in Italy, I hear the voice of Phil Radford, executive director of Greenpeace USA:

“It’s almost diagnosing your child with cancer but not taking the kid to the doctor. It just doesn’t seem like good leadership, and I think people expect better of President Obama and other world leaders.”

Then, the sobering words of Ken Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution (?):

“I think it’s going to be very, very hard to avoid a catastrophe, so I think anyone who looks very seriously at this issue has to say that the future looks very, very sobering.”

Indeed.

The Road to Copenhagen is hot, long, and treacherous. But we make the road by walking…

Below is an excerpt of a report-back on the retreat by some of the participants…

Here is a report-back from a strategy retreat convened by smartMeme that I  attended last week (called “The Pause”) to discuss climate justice issues & messaging.  There were about 15 or so folks in attendance, all invited by smartMeme or other attendees.  The folks who came were connected with various orgs with a major focus on either climate justice or environmental justice: Environmental Justice Climate Change Initiative (EJCC), Indigenous Environmental Network, Action Mill, Avaaz.org Climate Action,  Katrina to Copenhagen, Global Justice Ecology Project, Rainforest Action Network, The Ruckus Society, Movement Generation, DS4SI and Northeast Action.

The retreat intended to focus on how to do more effective framing and messaging around climate justice, following the smartMeme model of challenging underlying cultural assumptions (you can download their new manual for free at smartmeme.org).  On the first day we heard some presentations about smartMeme’s messaging strategy and ‘narrative power analysis’ (see the manual for a more in-depth explanation of this), as well as some strategies that have been used by Action Mill and Design Studio for Social Intervention, a community organizing group in Boston.  There were some brainstorming sessions to “get the creative juices flowing,” and some short presentations about Environmental Justice/Climate Justice principles, the COP-15 process, the Mobilization for Climate Justice and other organizing underway.

The second day the group wanted to get deeper into concerns of numerous people present on the watering down of the term “climate justice” and its conflation with climate action, which is not necessarily based in justice (carbon offsetting, for example)…

All in all, while the retreat was not exactly what I expected, it was the unexpected conversations that I found most valuable and thought-provoking.  And the facilitators did an excellent job of being flexible and serving the many changing needs of the group.  Oh, and I forgot to mention the food was AMAZING.  Mainly, it was great just to connect with so many awesome folks, and be able to have some of the hard (but
so necessary) conversations around how to build a movement across boundaries of race, class, and culture.  Only by hearing each other and working through this stuff will we ever stand a chance of building the sort of broad-based movement that actually has the power to bring about systemic changes…

I was so pleased to attend the 2009 national gathering of the Progressive Communicators Network (PCN), held in Chicago at the end of May. The conversations were rich, the connections were deep, and the insights were exquisite. What an amazing network!

Along with the great discussions (and party!), one of the highlights for me was the workshop on the story-based strategy model. We hadn’t done anything quite like this before. Patrick and I,  with support from Anasa Troutman of the Movement Strategy Center,  designed this session for this special group of skilled practitioners. It was such a wonderful challenge, and I felt myself growing into the moment. I was so humbled and honored to be in the space and share some of our “edge thinking.” And now you we can share it with you too!

Thanks to Nell Greenberg from Rainforest Action Network (who I recruited on-the-fly to shoot this low-fi video on our Flip Cam), the world can watch the workshop on smartmeme.blip.tv! Its about 45 minutes, and we go into some detail about the strategy model presented in RE:Imagining Change with examples to show each stage in the process….enjoy!

*You can download the slideshow from this presentation (its higher res than this video) at slideshare.net/smartmeme

* You can download the Story-based Strategy Campagin Model “Chart” handout HERE.

Pics from the workshop….

Anasa Troutman from the Movement Strategy Center opens the session on story-based strategy.

smartMeme workshop at the PCN national gathering, Chicago 2009

Doyle giving workshop at PCN national gathering, 2009 in Chicago

What PCN is all about:

PCN exists to strengthen and amplify the power, voices, and vision of grassroots movements that are working for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. Network members use communication strategy, framing and messaging, and media tools to: 1) enhance the influence of social change movements on public policy and opinion; and 2) realize a world without poverty, racism, and other forms of oppression. The Network is a project of Spirit in Action, a movement-building support organization located in western Massachusetts.

A thousand THANK YOUs to the Progressive Communicators Network for bringing this amazing group together!

MAKE A DONATION TO PCN TODAY!

It has taken me far too long to post this, but I feel strongly that smartMeme community will enjoy this important conversation.

On Febuary 25th, the Boston Chapter of the Progressive Communicators Network convened a panel discussion called “Talking About Racial & Economic Justice in Obama’s America.” After some fairly crude sound editing, I managed to upload the recordings of the panelists for your listening enjoyment!

Amaad Rivera [LISTEN] is the director of the racial wealth divide program at United for a Fair Economy, and lead author on their 2009 State of the Dream Report: The Silent Depression. He discusses Racism without Racists, patterns of school segregation in Boston, and building racial justice frameworks.

Tarso Luís Ramos [LISTEN] is the director of research at the right-wing watchdog group Political Research Associates. He discusses the work of Ian F. Haney Lopez’s on  “colorblind white dominance,” Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s work on White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era, and the “Color Blind Ideology.”

Color-Blindness:

“views racism at the individual level (e.g. Lines of reasoning such as “I don’t own slaves” or “I have very close black friends” to defend oneself) without looking at the larger social mechanisms in which racism operates.”

Ramos presents a facsinating discussion of Bonilla-Silva’s frames of color blind ideology, and how these play out in affirmative action fights: Minimization (“Yes, there is some racism but its no big deal”); Cultural Failings (“Mexicans have too many babies; Blacks don’t value education,” etc.); Naturalization (“Its natural for people to flock together. Its not segregation.”); and Meritocracy (“Its unfair for government to advance one race over another; treaty rights/civil rights are special rights.”)

Ramos says that these four frames reinforce each other and hold racism in place, and he points to the work of the Center for Social Inclusion to suggest that audiences need an alternative frame of “Structural Racism” to buck the colorblind mythology.

Doyle Canning [LISTEN] (that’s me), discusses some of the stories in the popular culture on racism and “post racism,” and how story-based strategies can work to challenge some of the underlying assumptions of white supremacy in the dominant culture.

The most potent meme of the moment was the “Nation of Cowards” from Eric Holder’s speech on systemic racism.

I strongly recommend watching this amazing roundtable on the topic on Laura Flander’s GRITtv:

Manning Marable’s comments (10 minutes into the video) are particularly powerful in terms of thinking about the power of narrative and history. He speaks about the stories we carry in our head as we’re walking through the world depending on our history: Marable sees lower Manhattan as a slave trading port, while others (whites) see Wall Street’s glittering façade.

This gets to the heart of the internalization of racism. The Peoples’ Institute for Survival and Beyond discusses the interconnected principles of learning from history and addressing the inter-generational processes of internalized racial superiority and inferiority.

I believe that story-based strategies can help us build movements for racial justice, but it really is about movement building. If only it were as easy as coming up with a pat sound-byte to address these deep seeded cultural currents! It still takes struggle, as it always has.

One piece of work I want to point to specifically is work on unmasking and undoing White Privilege, such as the first annual White Privilege Awareness Week!

Also, in terms of racial justice communications specifically, check out the guide “Talking The Walk,” edited by Hunter Cutting and Makani Themba-Nixon (download the toolkit!); and the Center for Media Justice toolkit, Communicate Justice 101. See also: A Three-Ring Circus On Race This Week by Paul Rosenburg.

And one more thing…

Maureen Dowd wrote in her NY Times OP-Ed on Holder’s speech,

“In the middle of all the Heimlich maneuvers required now — for the economy, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, health care, the environment and education — we don’t need a Jackson/Sharpton-style lecture on race. Barack Obama’s election was supposed to get us past that.”

My observation is that this is the line of reasoning often used in white-led liberal organizations (“We’ve got a crisis and so much work to do…we can’t deal with this now…and besides, we have some people of color involved.”) about why we can’t talk honestly about racism and work to address racism within our movements…Just a thought.

I always thought that science museums were supposed to be educational, but where is the line between educating, and promoting a risky new technology?

Welcome to NanoDays!

According to its organizers the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network, NanoDays is “a nationwide celebration of nanoscale science and technology” that just last week happened at over 200 museums and other educational institutions around the United States. SmartMeme has tracked the issue of nanoscale technologies for several years and worked with a number of environmental and social justice groups to ignite popular debate about this rapidly growing industry. So I thought I’d do a little cultural reconnaissance and check out the now annual NanoDays at my local children’s science museum San Francisco’s famous Exploratorium.

Our kids are learning about nanotechnology but how much do the rest of us know? Most media coverage of emerging technology is either business press about investment possibilities or an uncritical, “gee-whiz isn’t this neat?” story. The political, social, ecological and ethical implications of powerful new technologies like nanotech are largely unaddressed in the mainstream media.

Nano: a Quick Primer

Nanoscale refers to the mysterious world of atoms and molecules that are smaller than 100 nanometers. A nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter (for reference sake a human hair is about 80,000 nanometer wide and the head of a pin is comparatively gigantic at 1 million nanometers across) so we’re talking about things that are almost unimaginably small.

However, nanoscale technology is not just about making things really small. Its more about creating a different paradigm where our reality of Newtonian mechanics is replaced with the unexpected dynamics of quantum mechanics. Thus, nanoscale materials are fundamentally different than the same materials in larger scales and have different properties such as different colors, conductivity, strength or magnetism.

This has made nanoscale materials very exciting to industrialists but it also means that nanomaterials present unique risks to human health and the environment. Since they are so small, the human (or animal) organism’s natural defenses are largely useless in preventing potential toxic nanoparticles from entering our bodies. The fact is that there is no significant testing, regulation or even labeling currently required of nanomaterials, even though they are in hundreds of everyday consumer products such as sunscreen, make up, clothing and computers. The Woodrow Wilson Center’s Nanotechnology Project has compiled a Consumer Product’s Inventory with over 800 consumer products containing nanoscale materials.
But beyond health and safety concerns, nanoscale technologies represent incredible new power to take apart and reconstruct nature at the molecular level. The critical questions are, “How will this power be used? By who? And to do what?”

The “Techno-Fix” Myth

Some of the world’s largest corporations (DuPont, Microsoft, major defense contractors, etc.), governments and militaries are already heavily investing in nanoscale technologies that have the potential to unleash massive changes in medicine, manufacturing, and energy production–as well as warfare, surveillance and social control. All of this is happening without any broader public discussion or democratic decision making.

Based on what I experienced at NanoDays, I don’t expect much critical discussion to emerge from the nation’s science museums. I picked up “Small Talk” a kids activity pamphlet created by PBS’s Dragonfly TV that promises “BIG nanofun.” It encourages you to make you’re own buckeyball (a well known nanoparticle) but fails to mention that studies have found them to cause brain damage to fish, kill water fleas and to be toxic to human liver cells.

I saw enthusiastic exhibits on how nanotechnology give us stain free pants and LED screens, but no mention of the extensive research into military applications. The most dramatic evangelism came at the special feature presentation on how nanotechnology and energy. According to NanoDays, it turns out that nanotechnology will provide the solution to all of our energy and global warming problems!

Does the hype sound familiar? Kind of like nuclear power or genetically engineered crops? To many people this is a familiar story. The common denominator is the larger TECHNO-FIX narrative that assumes that technological developments are inherently “neutral,” always beneficial and can magically solve our most pressing social and environmental problems. One of the most dangerous aspects of this pervasive cultural narrative is that is masks the reality that technological developments are shaped by social forces and are inevitably political. The direction of technological developments are not pre-ordained. Rather, they are shaped by the specific perspectives and agendas of those people and institutions driving them. We should always ask who is funding any new technology; Who will own and control it? Who will benefit from its use and who will lose? What unexpected (or under-publicized) consequences might it have?

Since profit-driven multinational corporations and the military are the main institutions driving technological development, from a social justice perspective, I believe its essential to look critically at new technologies.

The techno-fix narrative draws many of its operating assumptions from the ideology that humanity is separate from the natural world, and that we can and should dominate and manipulate nature to fufill human desires. This ideology is at odds with the wisdom of countless cultures, religious teachings (and increasingly, modern science) that point to the fundamental interconnectedness of all life. Likewise, its good to remember our humility when we’re assessing the degree to which modern science understands the incredible complexities of the life sustaining systems of our planet. After all, isn’t it blind faith in so-called “technological progress” and arrogant assumptions about humanity’s ability to remake the natural world that helped created the ecological crisis in the first place?

As Albert Einstein famously said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This is not to say that technology may not offer some important solutions. Nanotechnology, for instance, could have useful applications in creating a new generation of solar panels, more efficient electrical transmission, and who knows what else. But we can’t let hype or hysteria rush us into ignoring either the short term risks or long term implications of nanoscale technologies. That is why many environmental and social justice organizations, as well as governments–and even some multinational corporations–are promoting the Preacautionary Principle as a framework for addressing the questions raised by new technologies. Put simply, precautionary approaches remind us that it’s much better to have the foresight to prevent a disaster than to try to clean it up after its too late.

Techno-Fix Memes = Double Danger in the Climate Crisis

Perhaps the biggest battleground for challenging the techno-fix narrative is the debate around how to solve global warming. The sweeping actions that are needed to transition our society off fossil fuels and re-stabilize the atmosphere pose a challenge to powerful, profitable interests like oil and coal. They are increasingly dangling the carrot of easy techno-fixes to distract and derail proposals that would actually challenge the status quo.

From the propaganda on how carbon capture and sequestration technology will make coal “clean,” to Agribiz corporations promoting so-called “biofuels” as a way to keep us in our cars.  Obama’s science advisor John Holdren (pictured at the left) is talking about geoengineering the planet by shooting sulphate nanoparticles into the atmosphere in order to reflect some of the sun’s light. (Um, scary…!) See Corporate Watch’s new Techno-fixes report for a more thorough analysis of various proposed techo-fixes for the climate crisis.)

The stakes are high and our movements to stop global warming have to also innoculate the public against the techno-fix narrative. Sophisticated PR and big marketing budgets are already selling the stories of techno-fix that require little sacrifice or transition. These memes could co-opt the growing cultural momentum to address the climate crisis into dead ends and false solutions. Not only could we lose valuable time to address the crisis, but these technologies could backfire. In the sheeps clothing of stopping climate change, untested, powerful new technologies deployed on a wide scale could potentially create major new threats to our environment, human health and the democratic process.

We need better story-based strategies that can frame the debate and direct collective action towards addressing the root causes of our climate crisis: rampant consumerism, alienation from nature, fossil fuel addiction, a profit-driven globalized economy and the outdated story of unlimited economic growth.

Sure some technological advances may play a role in helping solve our problems. But only if they don’t distract us from the real work: shifting our culture, economy and political system from trying to dominate and re-engineer nature, to operating in balance with the planet’s natural systems.

Let’s try teaching that to our kids at the science museums.

Further Resources on Social, Ecological and Ethical Implications of Nanotechnology from some of the groups that smartMeme has worked with on the issue:

International Center for Technology Assessment’s NanoAction Project
International civil society technology watchdog The ETC Group
Friends of the Earth USA and Friends of the Earth Australia

Also check out a great overview article of different technology contraversies and battle grounds that ETC Group’s Jim Thomas wrote for the Ecologist magazine

Organizers and movement builders have always helped ordinary people realize their own power-–both individually and collectively––and supported them in taking action to make their communities better. Although the lead-from-behind nature of organizing is at odds with the way our celebrity-obsessed culture has constructed heroism, social justice work is full of unsung, everyday heroes. Telling the stories of this type of heroism can not only inspire others to action but can also help redefine what it means to be a hero.

It was in this spirit that I had the pleasure of attending a fascinating and unique conference this past weekend at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavorial Sciences in Palo Alto, California. The conference was convening by the newly formed Heroic Imagination Project and was bringing together experts in different fields to examine the issue of heroism and promoting moral courage.

It was a small but very eclectic gathering of social scientists (including one who had travelled all the way from Italy to attend), entrepreneurs, educators, media industry professionals (representing a gamut from start-ups to an editor from TIME magazine) and of course yours truly from the social justice sector. The common denominator among the participants was a willingness to see heroism as a meme in the culture which could be demystified and democratized to promote the concept of everyday heroes and broader action to  promote the greater  good. (“Sociocentric behavior” as I learned the psychologists like to call it).

The project is the brain child of Dr. Philip Zimbardo a Professor Emeritus of  Psychology at Stanford University. Dr. Zimbardo is a world famous lecturer, best selling author of countless books and among the world’s most famous living social psychologists. His ground breaking work––including the   controversial 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment––helped laid the foundations of the field.  He was also an expert witness in the Abu Ghraib trials who challenged the U.S. government myth of “a few bad apples” and put the whole system on trial in his best selling book about the psychology of evil called The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil.

At the core of Dr. Zimbardo’s work is an examination of how, when and why people stand up to illegitimate authority.  The Heroic Imagination Project is taking the research on the psychology of evil and flipping it around to ask how can we teach our children and shift our culture to be more heroic about resisting immoral behavior. You can see his talk on the subject at the TED conference.

Dr. Zimbardo reached out to SmartMeme and asked us to come share our work around building broader social movements and discuss how taking action for social change is heroic. Although its a different starting point for discussing social justice work than we normally use it was an intriguing lens. One key concept that emerged from my presentation was that we need to shift the definition of heroism from the current focus on individual action to one of collective action. How can our communities be heroic? How can we shift our culture to embrace a heroism that has moved beyond its often militaristic origins to incorporate broader types of collective action? (I learned that in Germany the traditional word for “hero” was so connected to the Nazis that post-WW II the term is no longer used.) What would it take to make the idea of a “peace hero” as well known and applauded as a “war hero”?

These are big questions and ones that organizers and social justice advocates are addressing all the time. It’s exciting to know that smart people in other fields are tackling the issue as well because in a era of runaway crisis––from climate destabilization to the pathologies of the financial system–––we’re going to need all the heroes we can get. Stay tuned to see if the Heroic Imagination Project and collaborators can expand the definition of heroism and push the new meme into popular culture.

Professor Zimbardo speaking at an anti-war rally in 2003.

Two weeks ago I was in the streets with thousands of friends, old and new, for the historic Capitol Climate Action (Check out my pics on FLICKR!) SmartMeme endorsed this action, and I was excited to support the effort by helping to create messages for the action’s banners, training participants in nonviolent direct action , and being a  “contingent coordinator” with the awesome Blue Team.

Honestly, I had a ball! The action was well organized, colorful, and upbeat despite the cold temperatures. My nonviolence training session was packed – with a dozen participants showing up 30 minutes early to ensure they got a spot, and a line going out the door when the room was full. 95% of that group were first timers to nonviolent protest, and they were fired up and ready to stop coal and solve global warming.

The action was endorsed by a large and diverse community of organizations, and attention was made to amplifying the voices of directly-impacted people. Leading the march were residents of Appalachian communities being blown-up by the Coal Industry; Indigenous delegations from Black Mesa and Michigan (where five new coal fired power plants are proposed), and leaders from Chicago’s Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, who are fighting for clean air against coal fired power plants. They were joined by celebrities and prominent environmental leaders like Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry, and the executive directors of the convening groups. The majority of participants were students (mostly white), many of them taking action in the streets for the first time.

Action Logic

The Capitol Coal Plant was a smart venue for this event. It comes with built in symbolism and implicit story-based strategy. The plant is powered by coal to warm and cool our nation’s  Capitol building. The concept of the action was to draw attention to the fact that coal-fired power is fueling climate destabilization, and highlight the utterly destructive life cycle of coal, from mining to slurry to smog. It was also a way to point to the heavyweight influence that the coal industry has over all of Capitol Hill. Symbolically this was a perfect stage for our play.

But two unexpected things happened that took the story off the script.

1. Days before the protest, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid released a letter asking the Capitol Architect to switch the Capitol Power Plant from coal to 100 percent natural gas by the end of 2009.

Organizers responded saying that this was a victory, showing the power of grassroots mobilization to get the attention of power holders. This hardly took the wind out of our sails, but did complicate the frame. The discussion emerged in my nonviolence training about whether this shift even was a victory: “Natural gas is also a fossil fuel.” “The problem is the whole coal/oil/fossil fuel paradigm.” “One symbolic concession is a dangerous victory to claim, given the stakes.”

So the question is, what would a real victory look like? What if we’d pressed Pelosi further, and said “If you want to make a statement, put solar panels on the Mall and windmills along the Potomac, and kick Coal Inc. out of Congress.” As the climate fight intensifies, we cannot settle for half-hearted victories or afford to celebrate false solutions.  We’ve got to shift our thinking and get ahead of the curve with visionary, foreshadowing stories and strategies. Bolder demands can be made of the new political  establishment, and now is the time to make them.

2. The police declined to arrest anyone.

Which, at the end of a long cold day was kind of a nice thing. But the Action Logic suffered from a framing around arrest as the “meta-verb” and the expectation. (A discussion of action logic (How the action tells a story and makes sense to an outside observer) and meta-verbs (the way the logic translates into the actions we’ll take: “rally, protest, shut-down, surround”) can be found in the article Story-based Strategies for Direct Action Design )

The calls to action were framed around a civil disobedience at the plant, which was bold, and wonderful. But it meant that the conversation of the day was about “getting arrested” and there was a sort of anti-climactic feel to the lack of arrest. The protests surrounded the plant and we held the space at every gate, so there was no traffic in or out. But there was no actual trespass on to the property, and therefore no good reason to arrest 2,000 peaceful people. Not arresting people actually served to diffuse the media-spectacle, and potentially, the impact of the action.

The lesson here is that it is essential to tactically prepare for mass-arrest (with trainings, legal teams, etc.) while strategically and rhetorically preparing for all outcomes, including no arrest.

Despite these twists in the plot, the organizers declared the action a success, saying:

“We look to our goals: 1) change the national conversation on climate, 2) push the new administration and congress for bolder policy, and 3) build the movement — all as successes – the impacts of which we will see unfold more and more.”

I would have to whole-heartedly agree with this assessment. The hopeful tenacity that I felt in the streets was truly moving. Memories of my flight over West Virginia last summer flashed through my mind as I marched side by side with urban students and residents from rural Appalachia. The images came back to me in their full horror: the bombed out landscape and unbelievable scale of destruction by so-called “mountaintop removal mining.” Tears came to my eyes as we chanted together in the shadow of the smokestack and the Capitol dome:  “These dirty lies have got to stop / We’re here to save our mountain tops.”

Our friend Josh Kahn Russell did a great post on “getting real about what this action is, and what its’ not” discussing the context of movement building and community-based organizing, and it seems that this has sparked some thoughtful discussion about where to take this protest energy as the movement for climate justice moves forward.

Messaging

Working with friends at the Rainforest Action Network (and other communications team peeps) we helped to develop banner slogans:

and I had a blast riffing’ with RAN’s Levana Saxon and the “chants posse,” coming up with some fun songs like:

Whose gonna do it? We’re the ones! / Gonna get our energy from the sun

Coal Fired Power – Shut it Down! We want Climate Justice and We Want it Now

More great chants are posted HERE! Thanks Levana!

What’s Next?

The tone of the action was optimistic and joyful, but make no mistake – the stakes are high. In every conversation people said to me some version of “2009 is the critical year for the Climate, and the fight is about coal. If we don’t move now, there’s no turning back.”

They were referring of course to the threshold of carbon in the atmosphere that we must not cross, and of Obama’s plans to pass some sort of legislation on carbon emissions before the COP-10 Summit of the United Nations in Copenhagen. Having just spent a good deal of time researching and writing the Afterward to smartMeme’s new RE:imagining Change strategy manual regarding innovation in the face of the ecological crisis, I am particularly attuned to the urgency of wide-scale action. The Capital Climate Action renewed my faith, and strengthened my resolve to change the story for a just climate future.

For a rundown on upcoming events and opportunities, check out “Beyond the Capitol Climate Action” by Scott Parkin of RAN and Rising Tide North America,

and Act for Climate Justice, a site for US mobilizations around the COP-10 climate talks.

The Capitol Climate Action was called the “first national mobilization for climate justice.” This is an exciting frame for the kind of comprehensive, holistic politics that are needed to create a space for the many stories, histories, and perspectives on the root causes of climate change, and ways to solve it. Let’s hope this is the first of many, and that we can keep social justice at the center as we struggle to save our warming planet.

But Climate Justice is Coming to the Capitol!

On February 16th the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their latest reports. They basically said, ‘Well, its even worse than we thought…’

“The world is warming far more quickly than scientists forecast just two years ago..[because of] the unexpectedly rapid increase in the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, since 2000.  “We are looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations,’”
- The Financial Times, February 17th 2009

We know the climate is in crisis, and we know we must act.  We know that the next 50 generations are counting on us. And we know that clean coal is an industry-crafted control meme – a myth we must dispel if we are to make any progress towards climate justice.

That’s why we invite you to join us on March 2, 2009 for the historic Mass Nonviolent Civil Disobedience at the coal-fired capitol power plant in Washington, DC.

On March 2, join smartMeme and thousands more in a multi-generational act of civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant – a plant that powers Congress with dirty energy and symbolizes a past that cannot be our future. Let’s use this action as a rallying cry for a clean energy economy that will protect the health of our families, our climate, and our future.

This will be the largest nonviolent direct action to stop global warming ever. It will be a peaceful demonstration, carried out in a spirit of hope, in keeping with the spirit of this political moment. We will be there lookin’ fly in our dress clothes, and ask the same of you.

In our guts, we know the fight for climate justice is one of the greatest challenges of our time, and that is going to take tremendous courage and political risk. It’s time to take a stand on global warming. We can’t wait any longer for the changes we know we can, and must, make today.

With a new administration and a new Congress, we have a window of opportunity. But we have to open it – together.

• RSVP for the Action
• Attend a nonviolence training in your area
• Join us on Facebook

See you in the streets!

P.S:  Why are we inspired to be part of this action? Read our discussion of the ecological crisis in the “Afterword  – A Call to Innovation,” which invites activists to reimagine our strategies in the face of a rapidly changing, warming world.

“There are moments in a nation’s-and a planet’s-history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived…The industry claim that there is something called “clean coal” is, put simply, a lie. But it’s a lie told with tens of millions of dollars, which we do not have. We have our bodies, and we are willing to use them to make our point.”

~ Bill McKibben & Wendell Berry’s invitation to the Capitol Climate Action