Snap Rattle & Roll

Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers Again – Adventures in New Politics

I’ve been a leftist and activist since I was about 16 – or maybe since Junior High School.  I just spent some time working with an organization I will not name, with younger people I will not identify.  But they know who they are.  It was a funny and odd experience.

.4% Celsius Increase of Global Warming from Tar Sands Oil

I’m borrowing this quote from Tom Wolfe because the point of the experience was a People’s Lobby to convince a Democratic Party governor to stop a tar sands pipeline running through this U.S. state.  Stopping tar sands pipelines is an essential struggle to keep global climate change down.  If the Alberta tar sands are fully exploited, they alone will add .4 degrees Celsius to global climate change.

The Action

What we ended up with was two hapless bureaucrats for the governor – his environmental appointee and his ‘associate’ chief of staff – being grilled by a crowd of 45 people on the climate emergency.  The flaks kept their cool, which, like Sarah Sanders, is what they are paid to do.  I knew they would ignore us in a semi-polite way.  The majority of leaders of the group expected more and were actually disappointed.  This group works to put pressure on the Democratic Party as their main strategy, so their disappointment figures.  I’ve never asked a Democratic Party politician for a thing – knowing they rarely act (and which academic studies bear out for all elected ‘representatives’) so the experience was new to me, but the stonewalling was not.

Of note:  Instead of clapping, saying loud ‘yeahs’ or other verbal remonstrations over some good comment, these activists politely snapped their fingers like repressed hipsters.  After the negotiations / confrontation with the flaks, they all jumped on Twitter® and Facebook® and the Governor’s office became as quiet as a study hall.  Which sucked the energy out of the room like a giant digital hose.  In exchange, I imagine the digital world lit up just a little bit. 

Before the action at a library meeting room, we all had to stand, and in some kind of weird ‘prayer’ session, told to close our eyes while a white woman intoned that we should dig our roots into the ‘soil’ beneath our feet, along with other new-agey comments.  This was to be ‘grounded.’  I’m an atheist and I’m grounded without some fake ceremony.  I looked around to see if anyone else had their eyes open and a few did!  Unbelievers!  I think they were in the IWW.

Minnesota regiments turn Confederate left at Nashville

The New Abolitionism

The People’s Lobby took place in a room lined with massive paintings of Minnesota's Union regiments cresting Missionary Ridge; fighting at Plum Creek at Gettysburg to stop a key Confederate advance on the Union center on the 2^nd day; turning the Confederate left at Nashville and winning the battle; marching into Vicksburg and Little Rock; fighting at Corinth, Mississippi.  It was appropriate.  The same kind of battle for ‘abolition’ is going on now.  ‘Abolition’ of slavery led to massive financial losses for the southern plantation owners while ‘abolition’ of gas, oil and coal will lead to massive financial losses for the carbon capitalists.  I agree with Lincoln that no compensation will be offered.  The only exception is that union jobs should be guaranteed to all workers who lose their jobs. 

The Meetings

At the meetings to prepare for this action, we all had to say our names, any organizational affiliations and … our preferred pronoun.  So the first time this happened at a broader meeting, I told them they could call me anything they wanted...  The next times I ignored it.  You are supposed to say ‘he/him’ or ‘she/her’ or some other thing.  Yet not once in all the meetings did anyone use one of these pronouns in addressing someone.  This is what names or name tags are for.  Or pointed fingers.  Or ‘hey you.’  Or ‘next.’

At meetings the group did not use a chair but a ‘facilitator,’ so it was kind of a controlled free-for-all, but got confused or off-course occasionally.  When they had to decide something significant – the demand for the event – they used ‘consensus.’  Now if you are familiar enough with organizational functioning, democratic organizations like unions, union support groups, most hard left groups and most coalitions use real voting on a clear question for important issues.  But the methods of small, ‘warm’ fuzzy non-profits or NGOs or ad hoc groups always use consensus and in this case, confusion too. Consensus is a way of saying – EVERYONE must agree – otherwise we beat you over the head until you agree.  A form of liberal totalitarianism, if you think about it. 

Non-Profit Methods

Many NGO’s and non-profits, including ‘Green” ones, are for the most part legalistic, funded by capital, big foundations or rich people and will never become anti-capitalist.  They are the band-aid brigade to the normal functioning of capital and mostly reflect market approaches to the environment.  They can be temporary allies of course.  Their wonky politics and methods reflect their outlook and these methods apparently filter into other groups that might be to their left. That is not to say the people in these groups are not hardworking or progressive or won’t evolve.  But the domination of corporate-oriented non-profits in the long run in ANY movement is a bad sign.

The organization prepared for the People’s Lobby by writing a broad leftish letter to give to the Governor about the climate emergency.  Very big socialist stuff in that letter. But the ‘action’ demand that was consensually adopted to present to the Governor was … small stuff.  The Mountain produced a Mouse. 

WHITE GUILT

During meetings or the event, binges of white guilt had to be dealt with.  Confessions of middle class white privilege had to be endured.  If you’ve spent long enough on the left or the liberal-left or with straight-out liberals, you know guilt is a very big thing.  Yet most people of color know that white guilt is somewhat useless.  Politics for guilty people is a ‘do-gooder’ rite or a purely personal struggle for ‘peace’ or ‘justice’ or ‘virtue.’  These people are not actually fighting for themselves and that makes them weak allies and when the going gets tough, missing in action. 

As meetings drew to a close, the group sometimes did a round of ‘how do you feel’ for each person at the big tables, like some kind of therapy session.  Of course you couldn’t always tell the truth.  It was an uphill struggle to learn the jargon naming these methods, though jargon is common to any group.  I’ve forgotten these.  Anyway, if this stuff is happening in your organization, it will slowly push away proletarian people.  Just an FYI…

GOOD NEWS

The good news is that the Minnesota Commerce Department sued the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Friday, December 21 over the PUC’s decision to give Enbridge’s pipeline the go-ahead.  One wing of the government fights another!  This split in the politics of the ruling elites on climate issues bodes well for left action.  The Democratic Party Governor strongly supported the decision by the Commerce Department.  Perhaps our little intervention did some good, though many, many had come before it.  The next Democratic Party governor is a fence-sitter – a typical approach.  The outgoing Governor may be protecting him, as mass direct actions that ‘do not reflect well on the Democratic Party’ will start to occur in the winter and spring if Enbridge is not stopped.

P.S. – The Mau-Mau / Kenyan Land & Freedom Party were Kenyan nationalists fighting British colonialism in the 1950s-1960s.  They were relentlessly persecuted by the British, with mass detention camps, executions, torture and lies.  “Mau Mau” probably comes from an Akamba phrase for “our grandfathers,’ meaning to go back to the time of the grandfathers, before the British seizure of Kenya.  Later British government files on Kenya were conveniently hidden, destroyed or misrepresented.  Only a few were later dug out to partly reveal the extent of British atrocities, long after the events had happened and long after any political reckoning could take place.  Which is standard procedure, as we know.

Reviews on leftist organizations below:  “Revolution in the Air,” “Threat of the First Magnitude,” “Heavy Radicals.”   A new book of reflections by former members of the Progressive Labor Party will be issued soon and reviewed on these pages.

Reviews on the tar sands below:  “Tar Sands,” “Stop Tar Sands Oil,” “The Race For What’s Left,” “Oh Canada,” “Climate Change is Coming for You,” “This Changes Everything,” “Climate Emergency,” “The Party’s Over,”  “Blue Covenant.” Use blog search box, upper left.

Red Frog

December 27, 2018