A billion users cant be wrong
This Facebook post caught my eye:
And i giggled inside. It is the same silly notion that many Czechs had after the Berlin Wall came down – that democracy and the will of the people would rule the land.
I also thought that it was funny that the poster thought 0.1% of Facebooks 1 billion users would represent much of a ground swell for this company. FB is moved by greater forces.
Facebook has an objective, it is not simple – it has dominating the social network ecosystem, increasing e-commerce potential for them, charging micro fees for services for users and several grades of premium users. It has timing for these services and restrictions planned out to not annoy too many addicts, i mean users, at once.
because i want your money, perhaps?
And we have a mission, which we are largely ignoring, which is to create an open source social networking service, which does what is most useful about FB, but without all the poisonous corporate extras. In a parallel life i am working with some hot group of coders in a crowded duplex in Palo Alto crafting just such a thing now.
These are some of the design features:
- Non profit/volunteer based platform
- no filtering
- all data belongs to users
- Opt in ads where you get (perhaps) half the ad revenue for watching them
- real services – barter facilitation, tripper like services, gifting circle and all manner of non-monetary exchanges.
There is much more to say about what comes after FB and how we promote it. But this is enough for today.
Disagreeing with Rumi
One of the worlds most enduring poets is Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, a Persian sufi mystic who died in the 13th Century. The world remembers him as Rumi.
Elegant, profound and wrong
Rumi is famous for powerful quotes like the one above. And when i saw this on Facebook, i recognized it and took issue with it. I have seen many activist and organizers drop out of political work to pursue spiritual paths or personal growth and the like. This leaves those of us foolish enough to “stay behind” with even more work.
Gandhi’s famous quote is a bridge between these two paths “Be the change you wish to see in the world” [Tho Gandhi probably never said this.] One can even argue that you must start by cleaning up your own stuff, before you can be effective in influence the world. But the world is in desperate need of concerted attention and it is in no way wise to focus on yourself instead.
This mysticism i am down with
Call Langley
Jakub and i went out together in Prague the other night. Jakub was one of the founders (with Honza Beranek) of Hnuti DUHA, the Czech dark green environmental group i worked with for nearly 7 years. i had a wonderful time, both meeting new activists and retelling stories of these glory days.
When reasonable people had gone to sleep, Jakub and i kept talking. We went to the home of his friend, a night owl and independent film maker, Vit Janecek. “So you are the spiritual father of Hnuti DUHA” Vit said to me and i was quite taken a back. I never considered myself to have such a significant role, but as Jakub described it i could see how someone might think this. I was touched and flattered.
Czech Film maker Vit Janecek
Jakub was 19 when we started working together, i was 36. The first time we did a march at nuclear power plant there were perhaps 50 protesters. At one point there was something of a stand off between the armed security guards of the plant and the protesters. I turned to Jakub and said “in the west this is when we would start chanting or singing”. Jakub grabbed the bullhorn and lead the chants. The security stepped back, and the protesters celebrated a small victory. It was 1991, there was virtually no protest movement history, other than the revolution itself in the Czech Republic. The little i knew was useful.
And i was a peculiar character in the DUHA office, not only older, but i could barely count in Czech, i slept in the office often, tangled my complex finances with those of the organization, had strange anarchist friends who visited and too many girlfriends for some of the members to be comfortable.
At one point a member of DUHA came to Jakub and said
“I think Paxus works for the CIA”
Jakub replied “Get Langley on the phone – i want 5 more just like him”
nothing to see here, move along please
Climate Change Strategies
i love Beatrice, especially when we disagree. She recently went to Larry Kramer’s Facebook Page and read the speech he gave that sparked the AIDS group ACT UP.
“Kramer said:** “If my speech tonight doesn’t scare the shit out of you, we’re in real trouble. If what you’re hearing doesn’t rouse you to anger, fury, rage, and action, gay men will have no future here on earth. How long does it take before you get angry and fight back?”**
And Beatrice asks “Where is our Larry Kramer? to fight to save our Biosphere, to take on big oil.”
She found Kramer’s anger and passion compelling and believes that climate change needs a similar enraged and dedicated hero.
ACT UP logo – and compelling political message
i am less convinced. i certainly dont want to stop such a person from stepping forward, and i will get arrested and a non-violent climate change action faster than most people will (and already have). But the issues are so different and the forces which need to shift are not at all the same.
In climate change we are fighting big oil, big coal and to a lesser extend nuclear. These are rich, powerful entrenched interests which are willing to do lots of legal and illegal things to stop us. With AIDS we were fighting a priorities battle. Would medical resources be spent on dealing with this epidemic? For the first many years the entrenched bureaucracy said “no”. And Kramer gang was extremely effective in changing this, they were relentless, they got arrested repeatedly, they dogged political candidates and bureaucracies until they finally caved.
Big oil wont cave. They have extremely effectively used a similar type of disinformation campaign that the 1% have used to convince working class people that poor people are the problem. Rush Limbaugh is pitching the idea that the heat index is a government conspiracy to convince us of the existence of climate change. Climate change was not mentioned once in the presidential debates, this is the first time it was left out since it first showed up on the political scene in 1984. But the very longevity of the issue works against the sense of immediacies that many of us activists feel about it.
This is part of the problem
In the long Facebook thread/debate on where is the Climate Change Kramer and do these tactics work there was the commonly heard call for the need for big actions. People love to call for big actions. There issue is important, lets get a million people who agree in Washington to protest for it and that will change things. Organizing big actions is extremely difficult and expensive. I am not at all saying it should not be done, i am just saying it is not easy and we need to look at what it takes to make it work. I wrote this about it:
Let’s talk about what it takes to create big actions, who has done it successfully in the last decade. We had big actions around the Bush II war in Iraq, which had an immediacy that i dont see a parallel to with climate change (which we have been talking about as a serious problem since before 1992 and the Rio Summit). We have had some big demonstrations for women’s reproductive rights – this again feels very immediate to many of the women and men involved. Perhaps the model is the pre-9/11 anti-globalization movement. Starting in Seattle in 1999 and the subsequent World Bank/IMF demonstrations and the Quebec City FTAA demo – we got tens to hundreds of thousands of people out for a very abstract issue, not very immediate at all. What made globalization protests work? Until they were destroyed by the “you are with the terrorists or you are with the US” rhetoric of the Bush administration post 9/11. For me this a more compelling organizing parallel than ACT UP which was incredibly immediate to a pretty small group of people.
Part of the argument in this thread was about does political change happen via “throwing the better party” or “harnessing peoples rage”. And while the ACT UP folks definitely harnessed rage, it is clear from some of the reading i have done that the cohesion of the group was that the meetings has a better party aspect to them.
This is one of the most vexing issues of our time. It is time to be brilliant about it. What ar eyour thoughts?
And in this case, i am inclined to believe them
An excellent link on how there is not science to support the denires.
Lazy Day – Networking is not working
i barely got out of the hotel today. i watch Aljazeera and the BBC and SkyNews and soaked in the work news of Greece teetering on the edge, Syria in Civil War, Egypt looking at a counter revolution and floods in the UK.
i spent a bunch of time on this kids laptop that i got from Angie a couple of years back. The argument back then was that a splash proof keyboard would be handy for an 8 year and that i could care less about the bright blue carrying case and the vomit green details on the machine. In fact, Willow has never spilled anything on this machine despite using it all the time and i have on at least a couple of occasions.
Willow and i watched both a Harry Potter flick and How to Train Your Dragon. Though i slept through part of Dragon. i was not even dressed for most of the day. Hawina and Corb came over and Hawina took Willow to the licorice shop. I spent some time on Facebook. It feels now like a lazy day.
Except it was not really.
I did logistics organizing around money transfers that ultimately required 4 people in the states to help me.
I gchated with Gihan about what was happening in Tahrir Square and scheduled an interview with her for after the big demonstration tomorrow. [For those not following Egypt, there is an encampment again in Tahrir Square of people dissatisfied with the President Morsi's self expanded powers. Some people think this might be the start of a second revolution there. Aljazeera on Morsi presidential powers]
Tents in Tahrir Square. But only thousands of protesters not millions, like last year.
i wrote 9 postcards and a letter to my mother. i have written 145 pieces if mail since the start of this trip on October 1. It does not take long to write them and people love to get them, especially people who i dont have strong relationships with or friends who i dont tend to email.
At absurd o’clock this morning i was flirting with Sarah Taub from Network for a New Culture in Death City. We agreed to do a long weekend event that we would organize at Sofia House in Louisa. It will likely be on practical polyamory, using a mixed format (like the communities conference) where there it is about half featured speakers and about half open space where anyone can present and participants select from the offered workshops. Sarah and i discussed briefly outreach, content, logistics and food. After i got off with Sarah Taub i wrote Sara Tansey and Sky asking if they would work on it with me for an April/May time frame. By morning Eastern Standard time Sara confirmed her interest and it moved out of the “good idea” stage into the “likely to happen” stage.
NFNC propaganda picture
Elephant Journal wrote back and said that they loved the Cat Calling piece i wrote recently and wanted to run it with more background on Gihan. Which is like a request to write a public lover letter to a very inspiring personality. Gihan was tickled and agreed to edit.correct what i crafted before i sent it to Elephant Journal (which ran a rewrite of the Wanderlust Film review i blogged about).
Willow and i walked around Oosterpark around 11 PM for exercise and air. When he is with me he stays up late, generally much later than this. He often sleeps in the next morning as well. I dont see much harm in it. And i may be on the next cover of Negligent Parenting Magazine.
I answer some marketing and customer questions for the community hammocks business. I helped push forward a Belgium TV show which wants to do reportage about community through the lens of food. I had a Skype conversation with Abigail about which career options at U of O to pursue. I have 4 separate IM sessions on community room assigning and waiting list issues. Aubby and i chatted about her party celebrating Tofu workers, and communards who are self destructing their memberships. i wrote about 20 emails pulling these and several other things together. I wrote on several online newspaper articles why Small Modular Reactors are a terrible solution and started a blog post on it. I posted a handful of links on Reddit.
Part of the reason i love Aljazeera is it is the only place you are actually going to see the spokes person for Egyptian president Morsi make the official statement on the meeting with the judges and why he is not stepping down from his extra ordinary powers. Later in the day i FB chatted with my new friend Mahmoud who is, i believe, not part of the Muslim Brotherhood (president Morsi’s party) but certainly is sympathetic to their struggle and cause. Mahmoud and i will Skype tomorrow to help me create my own “balanced” piece (anyone who has read a lot of this blog knows that “balance” is not something i am often interested in). I also succeeded in dragging my old mentor Crystal into the Egypt discussion and pending blog post, which makes me very happy.
This morning at absurd o’clock Angie and i started organizing another event for later in the year on repairing gender relations, with a full queer inclusive component to it. Angie is starting some google docs, which will also push it into the “likely to happen” stage.
it is not just who you know, it is what they are willing to do with you
Perhaps 20 years ago some rich guy advanced the idea that most of networking was in fact not working. And i think internalized this somehow and don’t think much of my own networking and can walk away from a day like today, feeling like i have not done much.
Settling old disagreements
Seventeen years ago Veronika and i had an argument. Which was more than i was capable of with anyone else around us at the time. Some background will clarify.
Between 1991 and 1997 I worked for the Czech chapter of the environmental organization Friends of the Earth, which was called Hnuti DUHA (“the rainbow movement” in English). I was working to stop the construction of nuclear power plants in eastern Europe and especially the new ones proposed be completed in southern Bohemia called Temelin. And for several summers we organized incredible actions at Temelin, actions where hundreds of activists came from across Europe and we closed down construction of the plant for some days.
These are the gates we needed to control at the Temelin reactor
To close this site, we needed to block multiple gates and we needed dozens of people at each gate we wanted to block and there were about ten different gates around the plant. As one of the more experienced activists (and one of the very few people over 30) I was chosen to be a gate leader. Except I could not speak Czech or Russian or any of the languages most likely to be in sue at my gate. So Veronika, a promising Czech activists lead the gate with me and facilitated what ever translation was needed. We were there for several days and since she was the only person I could talk with directly, we spoke a lot.
Veronika is smart. Besides being conversational in English, she was thoughtful about the world around her. She was touched by her countries revolution in 1989 and felt a responsibility to be politically active and oppose this terrible project. She was vegetarian at the time and lived a very low impact life style, as all the folks from DUHA did. It was a dark green ecological movement.
Veronika and Sunflowers – circa 2011
One of the things we talked about was feminism. Veronika was anti-feminism. It was destructive to the family in specific and the social order in general, she believed. We talked about it a lot. She found it strange that I identified as a feminist. I found it hard that this clever, independent, empowered young woman was rejecting it for reasons which did not completely make sense to me. We talked a lot on those three rainy nights at Temelin gate 7 and on this we never agreed.
Fast forward a dozen years. I am living comfortably at Twin Oaks and I get an email from Veronika who I have not heard from since the gates of Temelin. She talked some about how her life had changed, but what inspired her to write was that she had read some old journals of hers about our arguments so many years before and she wanted to let me know she had changed her mind and she thought I was right about feminism now. Which I had to admit was quite gratifying.
I had a salad with Veronika on my recent stop in Brno. She wants to start a community. She feels like peoples experience of life is to individualistic and too focused on making money to support life styles they are ultimately unhappy with. She has two kids and she wants a better life for them and thinks community is part of that. I hear Veronika’s story often as I travel. I am going to try to help her a bit with her dreams. Only this time we are in complete agreement.
time to build a better future
Runnymede EcoVillage outside London
“We are not supposed to encourage people to go there.” The young security person told me when I asked for directions to the Runnymede EcoVillage. This made me feel like I was going to the right place.
It was well after dark that we were ultimately escorted by our host to the EcoVillage. Parts of it were immediately familiar. Like a cross between Occupy and the Rainbow Gathering, this DIY group of campers was roughing it in the brisk autumn night.
Blazing fire in large stove (version 2.0) in common dome at Runnymede
The camp had been there for almost 4 months, and it had been evicted twice already, but none of the participants had any concerns about evictions. “They cant put a fence around it, the public lands are too large here, they are unwilling to come into the encampment and take our stuff out, so the evictions are nearly meaningless, we just return here after being thrown out and everything is the same.” said James who met several of the Runnymede EcoVillagers are a local Occupy encampment. And while Runnymede is not an Occupy camp per se, it can be added to the tremendous list of occupy influenced projects
Strawbale and other Runnymede structures
There are a couple dozen people at the camp, with many tents, teepees, yurts, domes and even a strawbale building on the site. Runnymede is different from a typical Occupy encampment, in that it is clear that these people are here to stay. The strawbale construction is quite large, the public dome has an impressive stove in it, which is apparently version 2.0, with the plans to tear this stove down and build a new one. Good sized solar panels charge batteries which are scattered around the camp mostly for light.
“What is an ‘intentional community’?” One of my hosts asks when I start talking about Twin Oaks. And when I describe the idea that the people in the community select each other someone quips “Then we are an unintentional community.” I did not bring up the question of how they throw people out how are bad fits for the camp. I imagine that the work is so hard to survive, departing is often part of residents thinking “how cold will it get?”, “will there be any food?”, “will they come and evict us again?”
But none of these discouraging questions seems to be on the mind of our hosts, who are friendly, talkative and generous. Eddy is making a break pudding for everyone for the evening. James is working on repairing version 2.0 of the mud oven, because they are not quite ready to build version 3.0. Vincent is working on the collective plumbing, having brought water from a natural spring. And while there is plenty of chatting, there is also lots of industrious behavior.
Fire bucket with holes in the bottom and tea kettle inside
i loved this device which i had not seen before. It is a bucket, with holes int he bottom for air, you put the fire materials in the bucket. Then you spin the bucket over your head to get the fire going.
Dumpster diving provides much of the free food that the EcoVillage consumes. And most of the participants are involved with it somehow. A loose consensus is the decision making model, mostly the old anarchist credo that those doing the work make the decisions.
Part of the dumpster provided dinner
Lisa shows up with her two kids. They have a tent in the village, but live in a boat nearby. By not being registered to vote, they avoid the Council Tax. The kids love the woods and run around while Lisa talks about the economic situation which has both her and her partner out of work for a while now. They come to the EcoVillage often, they are part of the social life and the informal meal plan.
Eddy has a compelling recruiting style. “Will you help me build that?” Eddy asks Diana who is traveling with me. She wants to build the teepee green house they have been discussing. “Sure.” Diana agrees, who could turn down an offer to help with such a project. And as Eddy talks about the myriad other projects at the EcoVillage, it is clear many have been asked to volunteer and a fair few have decided they had energy to give.
The lovely and talented Diana, who accompanied me and will help Eddy grow food
Runnymede is quite near where the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. The contract which King John was forced to sign, giving rights to individuals some of which are greater than the kings whim. The Runnymede folks are influenced by the Diggers movement of 1649, where another collection of embolded squatters took back unused land and started to grow food and DIY culture on it.
There is a skill share weekend workshop coming up. If you are in the greater London area you should think about going and supporting this worthy project. But dont ask the security people how to get there. They are not supposed to tell you
Revolutionary Experience > Cat Call Culture
I spoke with many revolutionaries in Egypt, and heard several fascinating tales. But the ones which haunt me I heard for Gihan. They were the tales of her experience in Tahrir square and afterward. Of the extraordinary temporary community which was created and how the act of revolution changed peoples lives. And very specifically hers.
Gihan in Tahrir Square – Dec 2012 (post revolution)
She recalls when she was first in Tahrir Square she held up a sign so it was in front of her face, so she would not have to be seen. And with time she dropped the sign lower, chatted with the people passing by and the media, inviting them in – to be part of what was become more inevitably their revolution as well.
Gihan circa 2010
Gihan tells of her experience of cat calling [this is the verbal harassment many people – mostly women – get from men they dont know on the street. Frequently, but not exclusively about their appearance]. Before Tahrir Square she would just walk away from this type of harassment, feeling it was ubiquitous and hopeless to change.
After the revolution she found herself doing something else. When someone cat called her, she would turn and face them and ask “Were we together in Tahrir Square?” Millions of people from Cairo and other places participated in this popular revolution at least for part of it. Everyone she asks says “yes”
Tahrir square in it’s hayday
“What you just did hurt me and I know you would have never done that in Tahrir Square.” And then she turns to walk away – but every cat caller, asks her to stop and apologizes. And I think more importantly, they likely retire from this type of harassment.
The courage it takes to tear down a dictatorship not only changes the political landscape of the country, it empowers and emboldens the people who make it happen to take on other cultural injustices which surround them.
Legacy Bureaucrats
One of the most common problems with revolutions which overthrow dictatorships is that many corrupt officials from the previous regime are able to slip into new positions or maintain their previous posts. When the Czechoslovakia broke the yoke of communism, one of the first demands was to disband the despised and abusive secret police force. These agents were then immediately hired by the state run electricity monopoly for its own security. The activists who risked uncontrolled torture to overthrow the old totalitarian regime would face these same (now minimally controlled) state security agents when they protested the completion of nuclear power plants after the revolution.
Recently, Egypt my host and I faced a similar situation. Before the revolution, the head of the local police prevented westerners and other critics of the Mubarek regime from speaking at the university in Qena (Southern Valley University). After the revolution this corrupt bureaucrat was removed from his job, only to be hired by the president of the university (a strong Mubarek supporter) to run security for the school. So when I showed up at the gates, with my presentation having been approved in advance, we were informed I was not being permitted to speak. I have to admit I was flattered to be considered as a threat to these still corrupt elements of the state.
And just as the activists in Tahrir Square found dozens of ways to slip from the grasp of the corrupt security apparatus, my hosts nibble friends moved the talk out of the university and into a nearby off campus dorm. These dormitories were built by the Muslim Brotherhood for students who could not afford on campus housing. Unfortunately, because the dorms are single sexed, this move meant we lost all the female participants to my talk, which I did not discover until near the end of the talk.
The hope for Egypt (and me)
We spoke for three hours, both alternating translation and alternating questions. They wanted to know as much about me as I was curious about them. Before the talk my host encouraged me to ask the hardest questions I could image – “Ask them about jihad and killing infidels” he suggested, “ask them about Islamic law and the rights of women”, “Ask them everything you want”. The conversation was animated and revealing. I found myself repeatedly explaining and apologizing for US foreign policy. They kept surprising me with their commitment to social justice and equity, non-interventionist foreign policy, religious tolerance and the evolution of tribal customs towards fairness (and away from arranged marriages and revenge killings) because of increased education. [More on all of these topics in a pending blog post]. In the end, I had to leave to catch my train, our conversation was far from complete and they encouraged me to return. I have several new Facebook friends whose names I cant read.
In the last hour I brought up Twin Oaks and promptly lost my ability to ask them questions because of the flood of excitement and inquires that came from these young members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups. “This is just what we need to be doing!” One student exclaimed as I described our sharing systems. He had studied English for 4 years at SVU and ours was the first conversation he had ever had with a native speaker, in part because of the efforts of this corrupt bureaucrat. But things are changing in Egypt and I am quite sure this will not be his last.
Occupy Sandy > Red Cross in NYC
So what is the career path for a group of people who are experienced with camping out in urban areas with minimal energy systems and many mouths to feed? Of course i am talking about the Occupy Walls Street group which exploded onto the political scene last year and has been in a homeless limbo for the much of 2012. Well those urban survivors can Occupy the relief effort for Hurricane Sandy right in their back yard.
Beside feeding the thousands of people without power or services, they are also providing bike powered cell phone rechargers, so people can call their families to tell them they are okay.
For example where is FEMA and the Red Cross?
This leaderless popular movement has been seeking its direction since it was evicted last fall. There have been many excellent initiatives but this represents a place Occupy can take DIY birth right and apply it both widely and popularly.
Steal the money: More importantly than replacing the relief efforts of the oft legitimately maligned FEMA, what this does is push the case for independent citizen initiatives like Occupy to replace the administration heavy Red Cross. And Red Cross is big business at $4.1 billion dollars year. And Occupy can have a larger donations front door than the Red Cross, in that it is already experienced in distributing things. It also can distribute relief very directly as in this story. Here is the story about how Occupy Sandy is coordinating online donations like a gift registry.
There is a funologist angle here as well. When we look at these big DIY festivals, like the Rainbow Gathering (or to a much lessor extent Burning Man) we see the same leaderless “get things done” style which pervades Occupy. Problems pour in “these people need food”, “these people need cell phone charging”, “these people need dry clothes” and small groups take them on. They dont always succeed, but they are more nibble, more accessible and most importantly more joinable than the FEMA or Red Cross efforts.
Mutual Aid not charity – that is the key
What i mean by joinable, is there is nothing which prevents you from eating a meal at an Occupy Sandy kitchen and then staying to clean up and cook the next meal. There is no distinction between the people who are serving and the people who are being served. This is not true for the classical relief agencies. There are badges and permissions and uniforms and bosses and protocols. You can not migrate from being someone who is relieved to someone who is a relief worker. Yet, there is a fantastic desirability to this capacity to join the relief efforts. It makes you feel like you are part of the solution and you arrive with tremendous empathy for the people you are serving. It also serves to break down class barriers, which the conventional relief agencies simply enforce.
The work of Occupy Wall Street is by no means complete and we need to be pressing more on the case for economic fairness and jailing corrupt banksters. And what will help Occupy grow as a movement is to see the many niches where it can replace government and bloated hierarchical non-profits and provide direct services.
Well after this post was written, criticisms of the response by the Red Cross, which raised $150 million for Sandy, were coming in strong.
