{"id":8510,"date":"2015-12-04T15:37:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T20:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=8510"},"modified":"2021-06-10T08:56:33","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T13:56:33","slug":"to-bother-with-protest-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/12\/04\/to-bother-with-protest-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"To bother (with protest), or not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"_86941541_rob_m_oil_age_z6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Writing in The Independent<\/a>, “Left accelerationists<\/a>” Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek make the case that we need not bother protesting the Paris climate summit. There are better things to do than that.<\/p>\n

They argue, first, that the negotiators won’t change anything under pressure, and probably won’t even notice that pressure coming from the streets. (Especially when street demonstrations are banned.) And second, they argue that the tactics, whether it is marches or gamified street actions<\/a>, are ineffective — they may be\u00a0fun photo-ops that make sense during earlier phases of a movement, but they are too little, too late, for climate change.<\/p>\n

The first point could be disputed with a few counter-examples; the 1999 Seattle WTO protests come to mind.<\/p>\n

The second is also easily debated. The media filter for how the climate summit is interpreted around the world — and, indeed, whether it even makes much news or not — will be highly colored by the images that news comes clothed in. The\u00a0shoes<\/a>\u00a0and brandalism<\/a>\u00a0were\u00a0not just intended to generate\u00a0nice photos, or even to directly impact the negotiators (though one might hope for that as well). Actions like that are\u00a0intended to affect the moral and aesthetic tenor of the whole\u00a0debate, so as to speak to and engage a much larger audience. The point is\u00a0that climate change is\u00a0a moral issue that affects all humanity (and not just humanity).<\/p>\n

\"Brandalism-COP21-23\"<\/p>\n

But the alternatives Williams and Srnicek propose are, mostly, sensible. The include “resisting the construction of new oil wells, new pipelines, and new fracking projects” — or, as they call it, “targeted resistance” — which would require\u00a0training not only in\u00a0artistic guerrilla tactics, but in making and maintaining blockades.\u00a0Arguably, what mobilizations\u00a0like the Climate Games<\/a> and ZAC<\/a> are trying to do is to build participants’ capacity to act in all these ways: in the service of disrupting the status quo when and where that\u00a0is most effective, but also in the service of spreading messages, building and broadening coalitions, and the rest.<\/p>\n

Their second alternative\u00a0— that we should transform infrastructure “towards more environmentally-friendly ends” — is not a new idea either, and is what many of the larger environmental organizations have been pushing for on a number of fronts, energy being the most obvious.<\/p>\n

Their third alternative, however — that we “must contest the dominance of the work ethic and the economic imperative for rapid accumulation” — is altogether too abstract. (But it happens to be the theme of their latest book,\u00a0Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work<\/a>, which makes it less abstract if you’re willing to read it. I intend to.)<\/p>\n

Part of the problem lies in calling what the activists are up to in Paris\u00a0“protest.” This leaves in place a simple but effective dichotomy: there are the “negotiators,” whose work is legitimate and sanctioned by governments (and corporations) around the world, and then there are the “protestors,” whose work is not work at all, but a kind of thoughtless\u00a0action for the sake of being seen and heard to protest. Resistance for the sake of resistance.<\/p>\n

The point should not be just to “protest” or “resist” — though there is much to protest and resist against, no doubt (and those words carry potency that is still needed in\u00a0the right circumstances). The point must be to work creatively to generate new patterns of thought and imagination, and new capacities for action.<\/p>\n

We all know the negotiations are important, but also that they will not<\/em> result in what’s believed to be necessary to keep the world’s climate within the 2 degree Celsius target. (And it’s past the time to quibble over\u00a0uncertainties.)<\/p>\n

We aren’t sure what we do need. But it isn’t simple protest. It’s something entirely new — a new system of relations that can hardly be brought into being without either<\/em> a thousand lines of flight — mutations of how we live, on every level — and<\/em> a new sense of what humanity can accomplish together, globally and in the many places in which we live. What we need, really, is a vision for a future that is very\u00a0difficult to imagine. We can’t even name it.<\/p>\n

But there may be images that scramble<\/em> our sense of this world enough to render us open to that future.<\/p>\n

\"images-article-2015-11-30-GettyImages-499187440\"<\/p>\n

For updates on Paris and the mobilizations (a term I prefer over “protests”), see this page<\/a>, which I’ll be updating as things unfold.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing in The Independent, “Left accelerationists” Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek make the case that we need not bother protesting the Paris climate summit. There are better things to do than that. They argue, first, that the negotiators won’t change anything under pressure, and probably won’t even notice that pressure coming from the streets. (Especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[520594,196,691215],"tags":[350206,350207,123670,4459,350208],"class_list":["post-8510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-politics","category-ecoculture","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-cop21","tag-global-climate-change","tag-paris-climate-summit","tag-protest","tag-srnicek-and-williams"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2dg","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8443,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/11\/09\/whats-happening\/","url_meta":{"origin":8510,"position":0},"title":"What’s happening?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The beginning of COP 21, the UN Conference on Climate Change,\u00a0is three weeks away. So what else is happening, you ask? 1) The Campaign Against Climate Change's\u00a0Time to Act!\u00a0campaign, 350.org, Reclaim Power, and various other formations are preparing actions around the world on the eve of the summit (November 28-29)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"ClimateGames-meme-e1444227629407","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/11\/ClimateGames-meme-e1444227629407-275x143.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8472,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/11\/19\/the-climate-connection\/","url_meta":{"origin":8510,"position":1},"title":"The climate connection","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"How connected are the recent Paris attacks\u00a0with the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 21 (Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)? At first glance, the targeting\u00a0of Paris for ISIS's act of war on civilian populations would seem to be motivated by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8573,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/12\/13\/post-paris-thoughts-the-beginning-of-the-end\/","url_meta":{"origin":8510,"position":2},"title":"Post-Paris thoughts: The beginning of the end?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The Paris climate talks were successful in that they resulted in an agreement that is both\u00a0better than nothing and better than most of us expected. They were a failure in that even if they are followed to the letter -- and there's no provision for enforcing whether anyone follows them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8540,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/12\/15\/following-the-inaction-in-paris-updated\/","url_meta":{"origin":8510,"position":3},"title":"Following the (in)action in Paris, updated","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"This article\u00a0has been revised since it was first posted. It consists of a list of useful\u00a0sources providing ongoing coverage of, and initial post-conference reactions to, the COP21 conference and mobilizations in response to it. Please suggest any other helpful\u00a0sources and links in the \"Comments.\" (Previously suggested links\u00a0have\u00a0been added and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7858,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/09\/22\/climate-movement\/","url_meta":{"origin":8510,"position":4},"title":"Climate movement","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As I write, Bill McKibben is being interviewed left and\u00a0right, Tom Ashbrook is interviewing Naomi Klein\u00a0and pushing her to outline a vision that isn't capitalism-as-we-know-it, Time magazine is saying this could be the largest march of its kind -- which raises the question of what kind it is -- and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"PCM-640x360","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/09\/PCM-640x360-275x154.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9294,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/06\/02\/trump-vs-the-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":8510,"position":5},"title":"Trump vs. the world","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Trump's speech on his decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord included so many questionable statements, it's hard to know where to start. 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