*Random Remarks For Activists*

*No. 6. Circles of Commitment*

(Friday 18 November 2005)

I have read, and
believe, that the world is being driven mad by poor Powerpoint
presentation. Slides should not be used for text, certainly not
for long lists of bullet points, but for graphical presentations
of ideas or data. Admittedly, these remarks are aimed at the radical
social change activist community and the abuse of Powerpoint is
not a major problem in these circles. Nevertheless, I believe
this is a necessary preface to some remarks using a diagram –
a diagram which I think can help us with the Super Hero complex
which mainstream society uses to disempower us. (It disempowers
us if we believe, as society tells us, that we are the Nothing-people
on the fringes of the great. It also disempowers us if we delude
ourselves into thinking we are the Elect, the Chosen Few.)

This box represents society and attitudes
towards a particular cause – say Iraq. Area 1 are hostile
to the movement, and opposed to withdrawal (for now we ignore
subtleties). Inside the first/biggest circle, Area 2 are the neutral
or open-minded. Next in are the sympathetic. Next (red circle)
are those willing to take some action – signing a petition,
writing a letter, going on a demo, other more forceful actions.
Area 5 are those who have some connection to the movement. They
subscribe to a movement paper, are members of a movement organisation,
are on an email list, and so on. Next in are people who are active
members of a local (or national) group. In the centre are the
organizers; the people who book halls and speakers, who buy leaflets
and organise stalls, who run the stewarding, legal support and
media campaigning around demos and actions.

The first thing to say about this diagram
is that the most important thing is NOT how big the “sympathetic”
circle is. It’s important, but it doesn’t matter to
the people of Iraq how many westerners want the occupation to
end. What makes a difference is the red circle – the number
of people who actually take some action, which puts pressure on
the authorities to change policy. Attitudes are important but
it is action that makes a difference (and alters attitudes).

There are many other things one could say
about this diagram but here we will concentrate on one point:
the aim of campaigning is to move people through to the next circle.
Any particular event or conversation or street presence is only
able to move someone through the next barrier. You can’t
hope to move someone from ‘hostile’ to ‘ the
organizer core’ in one conversation or one meeting. You
can hope to shift them to ‘neutral’ or open-minded.

The objective for the campaigner is to give
the other person the experience that makes it possible and natural
to move to the next circle. Information is part of this, certainly,
and logic. Equally important are respect for the other person’s
point of view and a willingness to listen, and to seek out common
ground, not as a manipulative device but as a genuine attitude
of equality. You can have all the facts at your fingertips and
all the arguments needed to puncture official propaganda, but
if you are rude and arrogant (as I have been, on occasion) your
facts and arguments will only drive people outwards rather than
draw them inwards towards action and commitment. Even with leafleting
‘how you leaflet’ can be alienating or can be something
that makes the movement more welcoming, inviting, more of something
worth listening to, somewhere you might like to go. Closely related
to this ‘one-boundary’ modesty of intention is another
aspect of each encounter – how does that person feel about
the movement after your encounter? Even if they are entirely unconvinced
by your words, do they feel more positive towards the movement?
Are they more willing to listen to what the movement has to say?
Are they more resistant to official propaganda about the movement?

The campaign is made very largely out of
our face-to-face conversations and encounters, in meetings, on
the street, in pubs and offices, in our homes. Nothing is more
powerful than word of mouth from a trusted face.

‘One boundary modesty’ is a counter
to the myth of The One, the world-changer, the cataclysmic transformer.
No single person gets to change the world. The world gets changed
by lots of people moving. Each of us gets to move a few other
people a bit, and to exert a certain amount of pressure on those
who are committing crimes against the planet and its people. (We
are coming near the ‘hairdresser’/’architect’
issues.)

Now one aspect of the Star system is that
it infiltrates the movements. Also there are always leaders, particular
people who make a contribution at a particular time. Someone who
is a leader in one area may be a follower in another. Someone
who takes a high-profile role at one time will take a low-profile
role at another time. What the Star culture does is it creates
an inner core at the heart of all the circles, and presents that
core as the only circle that matters. The famous, the globally-
or nationally-recognised, the notorious. These figures are presented
as almost being the movement. This is disempowering for us all,
and no doubt is an unwanted burden on those prominent figures
themselves.

The basis of they Star system is that there
are certain people who are constituted differently, who can do
things the rest of us cannot do, who have talents or powers that
the rest of us do not.

What Greenham Common women said in the 1980s
was that ‘the only stars are in the sky’. The women’s
peace movement consciously embraced and enacted anonymity, group
strength, equality, democracy, solidarity. Much of radical social
change culture in the West is infused with the renewal of anarchism
by the women’s peace movement in the 1980s, an attack on
the Star system and on authoritarianism and patriarchy.

The perspective in radical social change
circles is more likely to be there are skills we can share; there
are methods that can empower and liberate all of us; all of us
have talents and powers that can make change happen.

Anyone who has been involved in, for example,
civil disobedience circles has seen people change dramatically
in their sense of self and their personal power, as they take
steps out from “normal life” into an “engaged
life”. That is another set of concentric circles.

One of the funny things about Famous Activists/Stars
is that many of them (some of them?) are comfortable addressing
large crowds, but much more daunted by small group discussions
or trying to persuade a neighbour or a family member. It hardly
needs saying that more change in attitudes comes from small group
discussion than a big speech, and addressing a rally is confirming
the beliefs of those you speak to, while with neighbours and family
it often means challenging the beliefs of those you speak to.
Those challenges are what makes shifts in public opinion, and
re-make political realities. We may not notice the changes we
make but they are real effects nonetheless. And it can be proved
with Powerpoint.

*No. 7. Snapshot*

(Friday 18 November 2005?)

What’s it like? Well, several prisoners
have compared Lewes favourably to other prisons in the region.
One said ‘They listen to you here, and they try to do something
for you!’.

There is a special reason for that, but we’ll
come to it. I’ve seen no behaviour by prison staff that
you could complain about, and plenty that was above average.

In our group of prisoners (not a proper “wing”)
there is no friction or hostility (so far) and no one who is a
danger to others. I heard that there was an incident just before
we got here where a young prisoner withdrawing from heroin got
into a fight with his (much older) cell mate.

My cell mate Marcus is a great guy. He once
had a junkie cell mate who was up all night, crashing around,
turning the television on and off, unable to settle.

Our cell is an old-fashioned one –
the new cells in most wings have toilets in a separate room. We
also have a pretty old-fashioned regime where exercise is very
irregular (3 times in 3 weeks), and ‘association’
(where you get to sit around on the landing with other prisoners?
is pretty infrequent also. We have no work and no gym. Some days
we are banged up for 23 hours.

I’m here because of my beliefs, with
a lot of support from friends, family and the movement. I’m
in here for only thirteen days. (When I was in Pentonville for
ten days, someone said ‘I could do that standing on my head!’)
It is not a great strain for me, but it is a pressure on the others
in our group.

We are on this regime because we are a segregated
group of prisoners on ‘F Wing’. ‘F’ wing
is hated and reviled in every prison as the home of paedophiles
and sex-killers. The guards say most people on ‘F’
wing are actually self=declared ‘vunerable prisoners’
(VPs) who are at risk of self-harm, suicide or harm from others.
No one believes this.

What was supposed to happen was that as we
arrived, we went to ‘K’ wing, the induction wing,
for one or two nights, and then we’d get moved to the regular
wing (A, C etc.). Instead there are over a dozen of us who were
immediately put into ‘F’ wing as a segregated group
within the wing.

Regular prisoners hate people on ‘F’
wing violently, and are liable to assault ‘F’ wingers
without warning or provocation. Therefore our group has to be
segregated at all times from ‘F’ wing. And that’s
why we can be banged up for 23 hours a day some days. We have
meals served separately, we have association separately, we can’t
do work or exercise at the same time. And we have no access to
the gym (so far).

All of this puts a lot of pressure on the
group and that may be a reason why the staff are extra motivated
to be responsive and humane.

We also believe that those of us who are
in this regime are likely to serve our whole time in this way.
Because if we now get moved to ‘A’ wing we will run
the risk of being attacked as ‘F’ wing perverts.

As I say, this is of little significance
for me, because I am here briefly and in totally different emotional
conditions to everyone else.

There are things about prison I can hardly
believe. The television. The kettle. The Littlewoods catalogue
– you can order pretty much anything you like, if you have
the money to pay for it. Inside Times, the prison newspaper, is
excellent. I’m surprised they print such frank letters and
that they get relevant officials to respond.

As I wrote this, ‘F’ wing is
being let out for Sunday morning exercise in a huge football pitch
type yard, with a grass bank on one side. Our group exercises
in a tiny enclosed yard about 20 yards long and 5 yards wide.

I guess it is quite likely that other prisoners
from protest movements get caught up in similar circumstances
because of the crisis of prison overcrowding.

What is it like in prison? The food is poor
– and ‘F’ wing food is likely to have been spat
in, or worse, by the cooks. We have a former prison cook in our
group, and he is not keen on eating the food. The days are long.

As a former peace prisoner just wrote to
me, it can be wrenching to hear other peoples’ stories.
The challenge of prison seems often to be unexpected burdens,
unexpected dilemmas, unexpected pains.

Right now, for example, I have done nothing
to challenge the demonisation of ‘F’ wing prisoners.
I would hesitate to protect an ‘F’ wing prisoner from
attack. I hope I would do it, but I’m not absolutely certain
I would do it. I am afraid of being identified with them –
the outcasts. If I did try to protect an ‘F’ wing
prisoner, I would frame it in terms of it not being worth it,
of the likely cost to the attacker in terms of punishment, rather
than the likely innocence of the prisoner, or his right not to
be attacked, whatever his crime. Why? Because that is something
that might get through to the attacker, and because it would not
risk my acceptance by the group. I’m not proud of these
reflections, but they are accurate, I think. Why is ‘F’
wing hated so? I think it is partly an acceptable outlet for the
anger, fear and hatred prisoners feel towards authority, which
it is too dangerous to express. It is also a violent expression
of heterosexual maleness, and of “protective” patriarchal
attitudes.

*No. 8. The Chosen*

(Friday 18 November)

One way of coping with feelings of frustration
and powerlessness is to retreat into dogmatism and/or elitism,
two related phenomena.

It’s always hard to know if you are
being ‘self-confident’ or you’ve tipped over
into being ‘arrogant’. (There’s a sentence that
will come to haunt me.) Similarly, it’s hard to know if
you are confident in your beliefs and your knowledge or if you’ve
tipped over into being dogmatic and a know-it-all. (oh dear, more
hostages to fortune.)

These problems occur against a backdrop of
activists being told relentlessly and from every direction that
what they think about the world, and the values they hold, are
absurd, obsolete and/or irrational. Popular culture, “high”
culture, intellectual journals, the mass media, and mainstream
politics all treat grassroots activism for peace and justice as
irrational and aberrant. Corporate domination is natural. Obedience
to the state is natural. Our rulers are treated as well-intentioned
(in general) or as bad apples. The idea that there might be something
inherently wrong with our dominant institutions is generally excluded.

Some activists naturally take a somewhat
defensive stance in response. This can end up as a dogmatic belief
that whatever knowledge and understanding we’ve developed
is not something provisional and imperfect, to be improved by
inquiry and dialogue, but something fixed and in some sense absolutely
Good. The insights and discoveries we have made so far can become,
instead of a contribution to share with others as they evolve
their own views, a standard or a test by which to measure others,
and to distinguish The Elect from the inadequate.

This is particularly common in certain authoritarian
political and religious formations. The Party and The Church tend
to produce such dogmatism, unless there are strong countervailing
forces.

Dogmatism in this sense leads immediately
to elitism: the sense that there are Special People who are better
that the common herd. Not simply ‘better’. Political
elitism can harden into the conviction that those who do not conform
to our own ideas/beliefs/culture are not merely ‘lesser’
but actually intellectually and morally deficient. In the 1980s
this was definitely the attitude inside the punk subculture I
belonged to, for example.

But these attitudes are found widely (and
of course are found throughout non-activist circles).

One form of elitism found quite widely in
activist circles is a quite understandable reaction to the frustration
we feel that so few are (visibly) actively engaged in the struggle
for change. This frustration can lead to the attitude that ‘most
people’ are “Sun-readers” (the Sun being an
appalling right-wing tabloid newspaper). This is taken to mean
they are stupid, irrational, and driven by base emotions; immune
to moral appeals. They can only be reached by appeals to narrow
self-interest.

But a decision not to actively engage with
the popular movements is not necessarily a sign of not caring,
or being immoral. As Chomsky observes, it can be a rational decision
not to engage. Your extra effort will make very little difference
to the overall movement, but it is likely to cause all sorts of
problems for you possibly including ostracism and/or job problems.

The anger against ‘most people’,
which starts off as frustration and can grow into contempt, is
often fed by the contempt of those who regard themselves as ‘educated’
towards those they see as ‘uneducated’. The disdain
of intellectuals towards the lower orders is part of the ‘disease
of the intellectuals’, the belief that the educated should
rule on the basis of their intelligence.

Social change activists tend to be among
the intellectual classes and are prey to the prejudices of this
class. It’s something we have to fight: the immense appeal
of elitism, which would corrupt us as it undermined our movements.

*No. 9. Four Quadrants*

(Friday 18 November 2005)

As individual campaigners and as groups we
choose particular issues and modes of action. We also choose particular
target areas in society. One way of looking at this is to divide
society into four quadrants. One area is the media; another is
government and party politics; then we have trade unions, churches,
NGOs and other sections of “civil society”; and finally
we have the movement itself. As groups and as individual activists,
we probably choose to work primarily in one or two quadrants.
As a movement, we have to be strong in all four areas, but a single
organisation cannot hope to do equally effective work in all four
areas.

One interesting exercise is to assess a particular
movement by slotting in organizations and groups into each quadrant,
to see where the movement is strong and where it is lacking. Whether
anyone is going to create new formations to meet revealed needs
is another matter.

Working in a particular quadrant probably
involves particular methods, and might be more effective if there
can be co-operation with others working in the same quadrant on
the same issue.

It’s possible that a particular local
group might be able to keep a long-term campaign on a particular
issue fresh and sustainable by shifting their primary focus from
one quadrant to another, from one quarter of the year to the next.

The questions we can ask ourselves as a group
include why we choose to work in one area; why we have never done
much work in another area; whether there is another group we can
learn from or work with in a particular quadrant.

Maybe the four quadrants can help us to think
about our campaigning.