By locating social movements in history, prize-winning social scientist Charles Tilly provides rich and often surprising insights into the origins of contemporary social movement practices, relations of social movements to democratization, and likely futures for social movements.
"Looking at climate devastation while witnessing a lack of political urgency to address the crisis, it can be easy to spiral into a dark place . But a look at the larger picture gives reason to be hopeful, says writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit."
By Euronews Green with Reuters
Published on August 10, 2023
"#SimonLachner had plans to glue himself to a German city thoroughfare in June to call public attention to #ClimateChange. Instead, he ended up in police custody before he'd even left his home.
"Lachner, 28, is one of thousands of #activists caught up in a European crackdown on direct action protests which gathered pace last year. #Protesters are demanding urgent government action against climate change.
"#Roadblocks on major motorways in #Britain have caused traffic chaos, protests at #oil installations in #Germany have disrupted supplies, and in #France, thousands of activists and police clashed over #water usage, leaving dozens injured.
"Determined to prevent such protests from strengthening further, states in Germany and national authorities in France are invoking legal powers often used against organised crime and extremist groups to wiretap and track activists, Reuters found, based on conversations with four prosecutors, #police in both countries and more than a dozen protesters.
"In #Berlin alone, police have spent hundreds of thousands of hours working on more than 4,500 incidents registered against the 'The #LastGeneration' and '#ExtinctionRebellion' groups, according to previously unreported data from police.
"State authorities in Germany are widely using preventative #detention to stop people from protesting, including holding at least one person for as long as 30 days without charge.
"This is permissible under Bavarian law, the prosecutors consulted by Reuters said.
"Lawmakers passed new surveillance and detention laws in France in July and in Britain in May. Britain is making it illegal to lock, or glue, yourself to property.
"France has used an anti-terrorism unit to question some #ClimateActivists, the police confirmed to Reuters.
"The governments in Germany and Britain said the response to the protests was aimed at preventing damaging criminal actions. The French government declined to comment but has previously said the state must be able to combat what it calls 'radicalisation'.
"Activists say they turned to direct action after the failure of other protest strategies. #CivilDisobedience has a long history in #SocialMovements, including in the fight for the vote for women and the US #CivilRghts movement."
🗣 The call for papers for the #Commoning congress is ongoing.
The online congress will focus on the practice of commoning throughout history with the primary objective to present innovative research informed by critical interculturality.
Does anyone like the US #TwoPartySystem? The parties are opaque, private orgs, weak institutions, prone to capture and corruption, and #gerrymandering's "safe seats" means the real election takes place in the party's smoke-filled rooms, selecting the sure-thing candidate:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
But that's not cause for surrender - it's a call to action. In an interview with #SeymourHersh, #ThomasFrank (Listen, Liberal) sets out another locus of power, one with the potential to deliver control over the party to its base: #SocialMovements:
Visual Activism in the 21st Century: Art, protest and resistance in an uncertain world
"Our investigation is concerned with two domains – relating to the visual and to activism – and is premised on the question of whether there is good reason to believe that there is an increasingly strong association between these two domains"
The art of protest. Culture and Activism from the civil rights movement to the present
"My title, The Art of Protest, is meant to suggest two related things: (1) that the arts have played a significant role in social protest movements,
and (2) that movements need a certain degree of strategic artfulness to be successful in the current age". (T.V. Reed)
"On April 15, 2023 utilities in Germany shut down the country’s three last remaining nuclear power plants. These closures mark the successful planned phase-out of German nuclear energy from the nation’s grid.
"What does this mean for Germany? What lessons should the U.S. take away from the German energy transition?
"Germany’s #Energiewende (“energy transition”) is an overarching policy commitment to achieve a low-carbon, nuclear-free economy and transition to renewable energy. While the recently completed phase-out of nuclear power is a major milestone for Germany’s energy transition, it was by no means a perfect process nor is the current energy system in Germany a perfect example to follow.
"But, Germany’s transition shows that an energy policy grounded in #environmental values works – and the earlier climate policy is implemented, the sooner the #climate policy goals can be realized. Above all, the German energy transition shows the tremendous power of active citizenry, organized #SocialMovements, and activism to transform policy and successfully demand change."
"But social media also exposes movements to many vulnerabilities. The solidiarities it generates are often superficial: movement use of social media can easily devolve into repetitive messaging in echo chambers without collective gains in narrative power—a change in the stories and values that hold sway in society—or a translation to real-world militancy."