tide turners

2009-01-08T15:28:00.001Z

hello, blog, just checking if my account is still active. Is it?

Radical Witness

2008-02-16T14:12:00.003Z

I think the use of art in facilitation is really interesting.
A pointer here to Radical witness - http://www.radicalwitness.com/ - a gallery of drawings by Jill Gibbon (who incidentally has contributed a lot to Faslane 365, Peace News, etc.)

I find the juxtapositions of arms dealers, activists, politicians, police, etc. quite moving . I wonder whether this sort of thing can be a good way into exploring motivations and energies for activism with groups?

different kinds of facilitation?

2007-11-18T13:24:00.000Z

I've just facilitated a four-way (Washington, London, Berlin, Melbourne) PBI conference call by telephone, using concensus. It was pretty productive, we were all calm despite the fact that three of us disagreed pretty strongly with the fourth. We didn't come to a final position (we weren't meant to; awaiting more information tomorrow) but have another call scheduled for Wednesday. Yes, consensus can be time-heavy. And expensive!

But it did strike me that maybe one of things we didn't address yesterday (perhaps because we are going to do it next month?!) is that between us we were trying to practice (and be practiced on by) two different kinds of facilitation.

One is that of (training) exercises, where for the most part we are directive in the structure of the exercise, but neutral on the content - that what people say doesn't really matter to the facilitator, it's just their job to facilitate the space to enable people to say it. This kind of facilitation has its own guidelines.

The second is that of facilitating a concensus meeting, in which often (always in my experience but I recognise a 'neutral' facilitor could be drafted in) the facilitator has an opinion on the issue under consideration. This is good, fine, and in the cases the group often choses the facilitator to a greater extent than they do in exercise-facilitation (again, in my experience). And while there are rules of this kind of facilitation, as well as guidelines, techniques, etc, and the process is structured, the outcome is not. The facilitator does not know (and must not know) where s/he is taking the group - because it is not the facilitator taking the group anyway. It is the group going somewhere, and the facilitator is just one member of that group, albeit at this point in time having an additional role.

Does that distinction resonate with anyone?

And if so, which kind is TTT focussed on? My suspicion would be that as RPs we are primarily supposed to be able to do the first (exercise-facilitation) very well, and that if we can do the second (meeting-facilitation) that's an added bonus. Clearly there is a skill-overlap, but...

.. and even in writing that, I'm not sure I have got it right. Is there a better way of defining our field?

Maybe ....

2007-11-16T21:15:00.000Z

Maybe. When Rachel suggested using the leaves at AWE to write out 'Maybe' as our act of protest/expression of hope/creative query, I could understand her thinking (I think).

And for me, the word was good enough, though it didn't particularly resonate with me, I had no nagging doubt or debate. But over the week I've thought a lot more about 'maybe' and bells are beginning to chime.

'Maybe' is not 'no' or 'yes' it's maybe ... when nothing is certain, everything is possible. It's the thrill of discovery, the satisfaction of knowing you were right, and the opportunity to sit back, undo your assumptions, look and learn. What a rich word.

And what a rich and inspiring RP gathering at Douai Abbey. Report to follow soon along with more fotos.

Circles of Empowerment

2007-11-16T16:07:00.001Z

Sorry that my first posting here is a bit of a whopper - I did it a little while ago, but it seems relevant to conversations we've been having lately.....

Circles of Empowerment

Power matters. Power is what drives social change, good and bad. More subtly, though, empowerment in itself leads directly to personal and community well-being. The sense of being in control of our lives, in a healthy relationship with our community, able to direct the energy which flows through us to achievable goals, is one of the main thing that enables us to be happy.

Where this is flowing well, it can lead to a virtuous circle, as suggested in the picture, where personal and community empowerment drives positive social change, and this positive change itself enables more empowerment. Unfortunately, in many ways, most of us feel profoundly dis-empowered, and many factors in our society combine to keep us that way. However, there are plenty of good models of empowerment and plenty of government rhetoric about personal and community empowerment - opportunities to be seized at least.

In this discussion, I want to ask the question:
How can we cultivate a situation where personal, community and global levels of empowerment reinforce each other, following a positive model of power - cooperative and compassionate, rather than oppressive?
I don’t have the answer, but I’ll point out a few positive models, which have the potential to fit together, and I hope this will stimulate thought.

1. Personal empowerment: our psychological conditioning
Most of us, having “un-learned” power to varying degrees in our childhood, need to learn to develop our power. We need to develop the tools and techniques of exercising power in a positive way, but also the belief, and experience, that our actions can have an effect on society around us.

Paulo Freire - who regards empowerment as being necessary for successful learning - talks about 3 levels of consciousness [i]. As described by Heaney [ii], these are :
- Semi-intransitive consciousness is the state of those whose sphere of perception is limited, to the demands of day-to-day life, and who are impermeable to challenges situated outside these demands. (It seems to me that most of the population are like this, most of the time, in our current society.)
- "naive transitivity." Freire characterizes this stage of consciousness by an over-simplification of problems, nostalgia for the past, an underestimation of ordinary people, a strong tendency to gregariousness, a disinterest in investigation, a fascination with fanciful explanations of reality, and by the practice of polemics rather than dialogue. (Sounds like Freire was familiar with party political meetings!)
- "Critical transitivity." This stage is characterized by depth in the interpretation of problems, by testing one's own findings and openness to revision and reconstruction, by the attempt to avoid distortion when perceiving problems and to avoid preconceived notions when analyzing them, by rejecting passivity, by the practice of dialogue rather than polemics, by receptivity to the new without rejecting the old, and by permeable, interrogative, restless, and dialogical forms of life.

The concept of “dialogue” is important to Freire: a multi-faceted dialogue, where we have the skills to engage with many others: on “our side” and “the opposition”: listening and intervening effectively. This is relevant to the idea of webs of power, which we will come on to.

There are techniques to support “dialogue” and empowerment. One example is “deep democracy” To quote Wilson [iii]:
“Imagine how the following three habits, if embedded in the culture, could build the basis for deep democracy:
- the habit of listening to understand the “other” before advocating a position
- the habit of reflecting on, and revealing, one’s own assumptions and values
- the habit of sensing together the emergent future of the whole organism or field.”

2. Community Development
Individual empowerment is intimately linked with empowerment of one’s community or social group. Illich [iv] (amongst others) has criticised the way that social initiatives which purport to help communities can end up becoming - at least partially - “part of the problem”. They often come to serve the needs of the professionals and the power-holders, and (perhaps unconsciously) act to “keep people in their place”.

The approach known (rather inelegantly) as asset-based community development (ABCD) [v] has developed an alternative methodology, and a detailed set of tools for an empowering approach.

Many community development initiatives start by identifying a set of problems or deficits in a community, which need to be “put right” through interventions from outside. (x% illiteracy, y% teenage pregnancies, z% drug use, etc..) This starting point can be profoundly disempowering. In contrast, ABCD starts with the assets within a community It is based on:
- Appreciating and mobilising individual and community talents, skills and assets (rather than focusing on problems and needs) The greatest assets are the qualities and skills of community members.
- Community-driven development rather than development driven by external agencies
It uses participatory approaches to development, which are based on principles of empowerment and ownership of the development process. The ABCD toolkit includes developing a community vision (including a picture of how it will look when the vision is realised), asset mapping, analyzing community data, selecting priority issues, establishing targeted outcomes, and developing detailed plans - leading to action.

ABCD is by no means unique: to name just one other approach: “appreciative inquiry” [vi] also takes community strengths and skills as a starting point, [employing a cycle of:
- collaboratively “discovering” the strengths and high points of the community,
- developing a vision for a better future, perhaps challenging the status quo, but grounded in the community’s strengths,
- designing a strategy to realise the vision,
- sustaining the progress by nurturing a collective sense of destiny. ]

3. Dealing with global issues and their overwhelming nature: “power with”, and webs of power
The sorts of empowerment described above engenders what Joanna Macy [vii] calls “power with”: power operating through sustainable networks of connections with other people. Macy contrasts “power with” with the common conception of power: “power over” - the power to prevail over another. [As she points out, this originates in the “traditional western” world-view, “which sees reality as composed of discrete and separate entities, be they rocks, atoms, people, ...” This is the underlying view when we talk of people “possessing power”, “building up power”, “wielding their power”. This kind of power tends to be associated with armour and rigidity, and with defending ourselves from “the other”. It sees power as a zero-sum game: “if you win, I lose”. ]

“Power with”, on the other hand, comes from being part of a living network. It is a process: something that happens through us when we engage in interactions that produce value. Power is exercised by influencing others. This influence is rarely on just one other: it propagates through a web of connections, flowing together with the power of others to produce results. Fluidity and flexibility are strengths.

This view of power has a number of consequences, which relate to the preceding parts of this article.
- We needn’t be so discouraged by the enormity of the task facing us, and the globalised networks which we need to influence. We are unlikely to be able to say “this demonstration which I went on stopped the war with Iraq”, or “this action has brought the cancellation of third world debt 1% nearer”. However, to expect this is to mis-understand the nature of our power. In reality, our power flows into and reinforces the power of others, and works through an incalculable web of influences. This produces a virtuous circle where our own empowerment and the empowerment of others go along with influence in our chosen issue, and knock-on effects on the web of issues relating to it.

- Process and product, our own empowerment and the results we are striving for, are inextricably entwined. Empowerment of individuals around local developments in their own immediate community will enhance those people’s learning (as Freire suggests) as well as leading to better outcomes in the community development. It will also improve the climate for global peace and justice. Reciprocally, engagement of people in positive peace and justice actions will also help with personal empowerment, which will enhance the ability to influence local developments.

- “Webs of power” - Starhawk [viii] amongst others, has used this image, and it has great resonance. Both our model of a peaceful, just society, and our organising principles for achieving this, have the characteristics of a web.

- The place of spirituality. A spiritual perspective very much chimes with the notion of “power with”, and personal empowerment being inextricable with the achievement of political goals.

Bringing it all together

I like the metaphor of “scaffolding”, where the various aspects of empowerment are built up gradually, but lastingly, in a mutually reinforcing way - as suggested in figure 1. For example, tools for empowering people and communities - like deep democracy, ABCD, and appreciative inquiry - could support Freire’s notions of individual empowerment and learning. The practice of “power with” could naturally flow from the use of these tools, and perhaps be explicitly drawn out, to help people feel empowered around global issues.

It is easy to say this, but making the links is unlikely to happen automatically. It would be really interesting to explore ways of making the links in practice, weaving strong, resilient webs of power.

Notes:
[i] Paulo Freire “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” Continuum Publishing, 1970.
[ii] Tom Heaney “Issues in Freirian Pedagogy” - http://www.writing.com/main/redirect.php?redirect_url=http://nlu.nl.edu/lace/Resources/Documents/FreireIssues.html%3e.
[iii] www.shambhalainstitute.org/ Fieldnotes/Issue3/Deep_Democracy.pdf,
http://www.co-intelligence.org/
[iv] Ivan Illich: “Deschooling Society” Harper & Row, 1971 - see also http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html
[v] See - for example “Agents rather than patients” - available from the Building and Social Housing Foundation - http://www.bshf.org/en/to.php/publications/info.php?id=00001
See also the Asset Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University - www.northwestern.edu/ipr/abcd.html
[vi] See - e.g. - www.iisd.org/ai/default.htm
[vii] Joanna Macy, “Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age”, New Society Publishers, 1983.
[viii] StarHawk “Webs of Power”, New Society Publishers, 2002. See also http://www.starhawk.org/

Buy nothing day

2007-11-13T14:59:00.000Z

Coming up soon. Space Hijackers will be doing it, Slackers might be doing it, and many others are. See the Buy Nothing Day website.

MONDAY NOV 12: BLOCKADE AT BURGHFIELD

2007-11-12T23:07:00.000Z

From Helen Dymond

It is now 7pm, six hours since I got home from the Action this morning and I want to get my thoughts down on paper while its still in my short-term memory, so this is a personal story and not necessarily factually correct in every detail. Especially as I got home feeling extremely cold and tired, I immediately crashed out and am still fuzzy-headed. I just hope the wonderfully brave, inspiring people who formed the blockade and were arrested, have all got home, had hot drinks and food, and maybe caught up on some sleep too.

I guess it started on Sunday when we waved the other RP’s off at Thatcham station after a brilliant weekend together that was both understanding how we work as a group, , and preparing us for NVA whether today’s or in the future. After a short rest, four of us, Chris, Alison. Denise and myself met in the now very peaceful sitting room, and after some silent worship, Chris took us through some questions we needed to think about: what kind/size of group did we want to participate in? What were our goals and objectives within that group? What kinds of action did we feel able/unable to do? Which AWE site did we want to protest at, Aldermaston or Burghfield? The outcome was that we decided we wanted to stay together as a TTT Affinity group but in a direct supporting role to the Muriel Lesters (sic?) Chris’s own Affinity group, some of whom would be likely to be forming the Blockade at Burghfield, whereas we for various reasons did not want to risk arrest on this occasion. We brainstormed some kinds of support we could offer, including doing mad dancing and creating an artefact, but we decided to offer singing as our form of encouragement, and in addition I wanted to offer readings on the Testimony to Peace from ‘Quaker Faith and Practice’. After tea we went to the Quaker Meeting House at Newbury where 40-50 people gathered from Block the Builders and many other groups. We looked in their library for protest songs and as we didn’t find anything exactly suitable for the occasion, started to re-write some well known tunes with our own Protest words; we wrote out several copies and practiced them with some of the Muriel Lester’s group. The organizers of the Action told us about what the Government was doing at the two sites, the symbolic and to some degree strategic purposes of the Blockade, and the risks/conditions for arrest, the procedures/phone numbers if arrested. After supper there was a great deal of self-organizing of people into groups and vehicles, and a great perusal of maps looking at the best spots for blockading and routes for getting there. Chris had by now agreed to be part of the blockade with three of the Muriel Lester’s group, and after discussion the best spot was agreed; we also agreed to get there by 7 a.m. to prevent workers from getting onto the AWE site., which meant getting up at 5.a.m and meeting the M.L. Minibus down in Woolhampton village en route to Burghfield

In fact I woke up at 4 .m. and spent some time choosing texts from QFP chapter 4 on the Peace Testimony to read out to encourage the Blockaders and hopefully reach out to the hearts of the Police with the truth of the testimonies. It was weird, indeed, that the police had followed the Minibus from Newbury, they must have an informer or some way of knowing which vehicles to follow – anyway, this police van proceeded to follow our convoy of three vehicles for about half an hour round and round the country lanes, and even though we stopped at Aldermaston to let some people off there, the police van continued to follow our group to Burghfield where, we understood, the Trident warheads are being made, and we wondered if a convoy was going to arrive there today. When the Minibus got to the lane that had been chosen, it was totally BRILLIANT the way the four (you could call them elderly, if they weren’t so youthful in spirit) blockaders LEAPT down from the van and laid themselves across the road locking on, it all seemed to happen in about three seconds and took the police completely by surprise. They managed to pull at Chris’s arm, I think, as he was last out of the van, to try and stop him locking on but he fooled them by lying down on the grass verge with his hand invisible in the sleeve of another blockader, so it looked as though he was locked on even though he was in fact holding on. It was a bright and beautiful morning but extremely cold – it must have been the coldest day of the year so far- and the four of them lay on the freezing ground for two hours as the unlocking team dealt with the three blockades at Aldermaston first and did not reach Burghfield till 9.a.m. All those gathered in support supplied them with as much warmth as we could, sleeping bags to cover their legs, biscuits etc. and though we could all have done with hot drinks, they did not want to drink as they could not go to the loo. Dan was the legal observer and many photographs were taken of all of us both by supporters and the police. I heard someone say that Radio Berkshire had sent reporters to the Aldermaston blockade.

Strategically it was a great success, the police blocked off the lane and there was a long queue of traffic on the perimeter road so that workers were delayed in getting to work in the site. Meanwhile we sang our protest songs, another guy called Chris played the violin which was great, and I read out excerpts from the Quaker Peace Testimonies and the police had no choice but to hear them and some of them appeared to be thinking about them. We engaged the police, who were friendly and good-humoured, in discussions about the purpose of the Blockade; a fairly senior officer I was talking to said he had assumed it was a political protest and I emphasised the spiritual and moral purpose of the Action ,which I saw as not affiliated to a political party but to an ideology of the spirit and a way of seeing the world. I heard one elderly gentleman Blockader called Ray explaining calmly and with great authority to the policeman who had come to cut him free, that he felt he had to do this action for the sake of his children and grandchildren. The four were then arrested and taken to a police van, we believed they were going to Newbury police station, and the supporters dispersed and went to a transport café for greatly needed hot drinks and food.

It truly was inspiring to witness this courage and commitment, the macro- and micro-teamwork that went on, and the opportunities it offered for constructive engagement with representatives of the law. I feel that I have learned some valuable lessons from my first experience at an NVA Blockade. On another occasion I would still want to sing and would prepare a lot more songs in advance and I might also play my recorder. I hope that on a future occasion I would feel able to get arrested but could see that we were all playing our parts interdependently and drawing strength from each other.

Helen Dymond

Making Eurostar Cycle-friendly

2007-11-05T19:24:00.000Z

Eurostar services will start running from St Pancras International on
14th November 2007. But, in spite of all the publicity about the brand
new station, which is indeed impressive, provision for cyclists is
abysmal.

Cyclists deserve better cycle carriage, cycle parking and cycle access:

* It is awkward to take a bike on Eurostar (it has to be bagged) or
you can pay £40 return to send it a day ahead.
* Cycle parking consists of a pathetic 30 wheel-bending loops.
* Access is hindered by the new gyratory round the station and lack of
signage.

CAMDEN AND CITY CYCLISTS ARE ORGANISING A DEMO AT ST PANCRAS
INTERNATIONAL ON 14TH NOVEMBER. THEY MEET OUTSIDE THE GERMAN GYM,
PANCRAS ROAD (OUTSIDE THE STATION) AT 8 FOR AN 8.30 START ON RIDING
ROUND, INSPECTING PARKING AND GREETING PASSENGERS COMING FOR THE FIRST
TRAINS AT 10 AM.

Please publicise this demo and do your best to join in. Even if you
can come only for a short while on the way to work, it will be worth
it.

Reverse Trick or Treating

2007-11-02T13:06:00.000Z

I was surprised on Tuesday night to see so many witches ghouls and goblins about as I rode home from Friends House to Hackney. Follow up conversations with a random sample of 5 locals revealed that trick or treating is a long established English tradition. Huh. I didn't know. Reverse trick or treating was also news to me, and a good campaigning idea.

Happy Samhain!

events

2007-10-09T13:35:00.000Z

This week - buskers including 'The Ballad of Accounting' into their sets across the commuter zone - catch them at places various. Join in if you want to.

Sunday 14th October - afternoon SOMA workshop (see previous posts) at the Toilet Gallery. Very close to Richmond station. Part of a series looking at activism...films, performance, workshops. See Guerilla Zoo website.

Monday 15th October - action day against Royal Bank of Scotland - the oil bank. See Rising Tide website.

Friday 19th October to Sunday 21st October - Bloomsbury Festival. Events, talks and shows around Bloomsbury. See the Bloomsbury Festival website.

Friday 26th October - last Friday of the month means its time to cycle round central London with the Critical Massers. Meet 6.30pm at national film theatre under Waterloo Bridge.

2007-10-02T13:54:00.001Z

It just made me smile.

Happy international day of nonviolence. I hope you are having an a good actively nonviolent day (or nonviolently active day?).

two wheel fun

2007-09-23T19:01:00.000Z

Dates for cyclists -

Critical Mass - last Friday of each month. Outside National Film Theatre at 6.30pm. Cycle round London with loads of other cyclists, and a Police escort to keep you free from the maddening motorists. Slogan - we're not blocking the traffic, we are the traffic.

And for the cineastes - see http://www.bicyclefilmfestival.com/ It runs from 17-21 October at Rich Mix cinema on Bethnal Green Rd (L'pool St Stn end).

Brecht takes on Lennon

2007-09-19T11:56:00.000Z

In the interests of finding an alternative lyrics we can bash drums to... I found this at the end of an Indian human rights organisation's report on state violence in Chattisgarh.

1
From the People proceeds the power of the State.
But where does it proceed to?
Yes, where is it proceeding to?
Theres some place its proceeding to.
The policeman proceeds through the station gate.
But where does he proceed to?
etc.

2
Look, theres the whole lot on the march.
But where are they marching to?
Yes, where are they marching to?
Theres some place they are marching to.
They wheel through the gate and under the arch.
But where are they heeling to?
etc.

3
The power of the State turns right about.
Something is in the air.
What can be in the air?
Theres something in the air.
The power of the state gives a piercing shout
And yells: Get moving there!
But moving why and where?
It yells: Get moving there!

4
Theres something standing in a crowd
Something which queries that.
Why should it query that?
What cheek to query that!
The State just shoots-for thats allowed-
And something falls down flat.
What was it fell down flat?
What made it fall like that?

5
The power of the State sees something spill.
Something lies in the shit.
Whats lying in the shit?
Somethings lying in the shit.
Theres something lying deadly still
The People, why, thats it!
Can that really be it?
Yes, that is really it.

-Bertolt Brecht

Letter to Met

2007-09-14T09:07:00.000Z

Here's the text of my mail to Acting Superintendent Colin Morgan -

Dear Colin

You issued a s12 Public Order Act 1986 notice on the critical mass protestors last night at about 7.45pm at the junction of Upper Grosvenor St and Park Lane. I asked you for your reasoning that the protest might result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or to the serious disruption to the life of the community. You told me that you did not have to tell me this.

This morning I've spent some time trying to understand what these terms mean, but without much luck. So I'm asking you as a public servant to let me know what definition of these terms you use to characterise them before you decide to issue a notice. This will enable me and other protestors to understand how we might avoid a similar situation; because as non-violent protestors we do not believe that violence to people or property is useful in the advancement of our right to protest.

And I would also appreciate if you could let me know what led you to conclude that you 'reasonably believed' that we might create the situations generalised in the notice. And whether I have any rights under the Freedom of Information Act to find this out anyway.

Thanks in advance.

Carl Reynolds

Right to protest penned in

2007-09-14T08:39:00.000Z

I cycled on the small Critical Mass ride to the Dorchester Hotel last night to protest outside whilst the arms dealers were tucking into a five star dinner inside. After cycling merrily along for half an hour or so, the Police blocked us in at the end of Upper Grosvenor St and told us they were holding us under s12 of the Public Disorder Act 1986. This means that the senior officer believes that our 'procession' was likely to result in 'serious public disorder' or 'serious damage to property' or to the 'serious disruption to the life of the community'.

The last point has some merit, in that we wanted to disrupt the diners feasting on the profits of their deadly dealings, but to say they were the community or that 20 odd cyclists could seriously disrupt them, was pushing the point.

The senior officer who announced the s12 notice told me, on questioning, that he wasn't required to give me his reasoning for believing that there would be serious public disorder etc. I asked him how I might find out his reasoning, and was told I'd have to take a judical review. These are not cheap and are hard to come by at 8 o'clock on a Thursday night in the middle of the street.

So this morning I've done a big search of various acts and can't find a definition of what 'serious public disorder' etc means. Anyone help out?

What strikes me is that the state can define where a protest can be held (s14 of same act); which is a weird irony given that protests are often against the state. The other ironies are slapping such a notice on a non-violent protest. But more than anything, the Act (and various others that I discovered) allow the Police to impose virtually any condition they like, without having to explain their reasoning; safe in the knowledge that the citizen does not have practical recourse to challenge this. For example, even if I could afford to mount a judical review, I can only do this subsequently and it would take several months. And even when I find out the officer's rationale and/or the judge tells them they were mistaken; it'll only apply to the situation I was in, the Police will only get a slapped wrist and meantime will be using whatever Act they choose to use (anti-harassment, SOCA, public order acts) to prevent peaceful protest.

Something is out of control. In the meantime, I've emailed the senior officer to ask if he can help me find a definition of a serious public disorder and/or give me an account of his 'reasonable belief' that we were about to do serious disorder or serious damage or serious disruption.

Watch this space.

Skills Share -- Street Acts

2007-09-11T10:58:00.000Z

Seeds for Change and TTT will hold a day-long workshop Tuesday, 30 October for the TTT community. A trainer has been invited from Street Acts who will lead participants in exploring what we can learn from drama techniques to enliven role-plays and other activities in NV workshops, as well apply the techniques in the street.

The training will take place at Friends Meeting House 30 Oct from 10 to 5pm, please mark your calendar and let 'Sophie R' know if you plan on coming.

letter to Helen

2007-09-10T10:49:00.000Z

Helen, your news hit us like a thunderbolt on Saturday morning.

You remained with us, in our thoughts and your presence and your devastating circumstances lending an atmosphere - for me - of intensity, of the reality of life, as we discussed empowerment with ourselves and with the people on the streets around Euston.

Grief is such a personal thing, our own and how others around us respond to it. But it is, or should be, a time when the community around us comes together. You have been such a giving, member of our Turning the Tide community: contributing, constructively challenging others but most of all challenging yourself over the past year. You have been a pleasure to work with.

We tried, I think, to hold you with us on Saturday, making no claim to understand how you must feel, but to keep you present in our thoughts and our struggles with all that is sore in the world.

If there is anything we can do to support you, provide a source for strength, let us know. I am aware of the danger of speaking for others, but for myself at least, I will keep holding you in my thoughts. Take good care of you, and I hope others are taking good care of you too.

SOMA - more training opps for activists

2007-09-10T10:45:00.000Z

‘SOMA – an anarchist experiment’ group. It will run for 12 weeks every Monday evening, from 24th September to 10th December. The two introductory workshops are open for people interested to know more about SOMA, and also they will be a first ‘get together’ for participants of the group.

Introductory Workshops
Wednesday 12th September – 7 to 10 pm
Monday 17th September - 7 to 10 pm
(Suggested donation £10 full /£7 concession)

12 week group on Mondays, 7 to 10pm
From 24 September to 10 December
£120 / £80 Please contact us to indicate interest

The Boxing Club
Limehouse Town Hall
646 Commercial Road
LONDON
E14 7HA

SOMA is a series of sessions/experiences using body games to create a group dynamic, inspired by principles of self-organisation and solidarity. When Roberto Freire created ‘SOMA – an anarchist therapy’ in Brazil, more than thirty years ago, he was looking for therapeutic methodologies that could help people emotionally who were fighting against the military dictatorship. Changing therapy into experiment, we have turned the SOMA (which means ‘totality of being’ in Greek) approach away from an emphasis on neurosis (we have something wrong) towards the gaining of skills (we can learn something new).
This approach breaks the traditional rational way to develop skills, where the mind is split from the body, the individual removed from its surroundings. SOMA games are proposals to play in a group - sharing experiences of collaboration, trust and responsibility. It’s this group dynamic created by SOMA games that stimulate the whole being to engage with the world. After the games, the participants will feedback, talking about their perceptions and behaviour playing together.
The body is the material to work with: movement, perception and contact with each other to dare to be creative in everyday life. Play is a way to rediscover the body, just as collaboration helps to rediscover relationships.

FACILITATOR:
Jorge Goia has been a Soma practitioner since completing his training in 1993 with Roberto Freire, the Brazilian psychologist who created ‘Soma – an anarchist therapy’ in 1970s. He has coordinated Soma groups in many cities in Brazil during more than 10 years. Since March 2004, he’s been doing Soma in Europe (England, Scotland, Germany and Spain). Goia has a PhD in Social Psychology and he researched the changes that Soma and Capoeira (a Brazilian martial art used in some Soma exercises) can make to individuals and groups. With Capoeira, he has been working with special schools and young people with behavioural issues. He is also a Research Associate in the Brazilian and Portuguese Studies department at King’s College, University of London.

Info: 07758224334 (Goia) jorge.goia at bol.com.br
and 07947596589 (Arthur) arthur.swindells at gmail.com

For directions see http://twenteenthcentury.com/lth/#directions

map: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=536720&y=181065&z=1&sv=536750,181250&st=4&ar=Y&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf

Working on it ourselves (Oct & Dec TTT sessions)

2007-09-01T08:03:00.000Z

Working on it ourselves (Oct & Dec TTT sessions)
Eleanor Roosevelt said 'It's not enough to want peace. You have to believe it in. And it's not enough to believe in peace. You have to work for it.'

Well the time has come for us Turning-the-Tiders to start doing our little bit of work IN THE WORKSHOPS for peace, (active) nonviolence, NVDA, campaigning, empowerment, the constructing the alternative, facilitation, and group-process.

As you know, the first part of the course has focused on content, and now we're switching gears and going to start working on the how to help other groups work on these topics: the facilitation and group-working skills bit of conducting trainings.

In August a group of us met to talk about any suggestions or recommendations we might have for how to organise these remaining sessions. The notes from this meeting have been circulated via email, and today I'm posting them here with the idea that the blog might provide a quicker and more easily accessible forum for us to discuss these ideas.

At the end of the Empowerment workshop 8 September, time has been made for us as a group to talk about how we'd like to collectively organise and facilitate the Oct (group-process) and Dec (facilitation and basic group skills) sessions. Since not everyone was able to come in August, this conversation will hopefully be more inclusive and an action-planning time.

This week Carl and I are going to work on a framework to suggest to the group about how we might facilitate Oct & Dec. We'll post these ideas ideas, and look forward to your comments and ideas, as well as your offers for more active involvement when we discuss this next Saturday. And so, welcome to September and see you next week. Notes are posted below.

Notes from 4 August

August small TTT group (AsTTTG) meeting

Who was there?

Carl, Denise, Kathryn (host, thank you), Luke and Zaria

What did we do?

It was decided to modify the proposed agenda and focus mostly on our learning, the design and delivery of the course to date. NOTE: this discarded agenda can be viewed in an earlier blog posting, scroll down to the end of July/beginning of August.

There were two 'sessions' (conversations really). Carl facilitated the first on evaluating the course so far – what have we learned about facilitation, NV practice and theory. Then we had a lovely lunch with very (!) fresh vegs and fruits in Kathryn's allotment across the street. In the afternoon session we discussed what we have liked or what has worked well over the past seven sessions.

The following are paraphrased chunks of comments recorded from participants from these conversations.

Conversation 1: Evaluation of the course thus far

Comment 1-1

I've learned a lot about NV, but I've been missing a lot of information about facilitation, or I've misunderstood what I'm suppose to be 'picking up' about facilitation just by watching. I don't feel at all ready to design or plan a workshop, let alone facilitate one.

Comment 1-2

I guess for me I went in curious, thinking I didn't know all that much about the subject matter (NV), but I've been surprised to learn that I know much more than I expected. What has been missing for me is well-modelled facilitation and discussion about facilitation choices – why did we did it that way? Or what else could we have done? I would say that I've been received training in the topic NV but not facilitation.

Comment 1-3

I don't feel that the facilitation has been that inspiring and that the facilitators have been constrained by their agendas. I think an agenda works best when you use it as a proposed route or a general plan minus the details, and you allow yourself to play with the group's outcomes and follow the way the group wants to go. Use the group to develop the agenda. We're a very interesting group with a wide range of experiences and skills, and that hasn't been tapped.

Looking over the facilitators' shoulders I've seen the agendas and they are planned down to the minute. And I don't know what that means. Does that level of planning come from a culture that says it's necessary, or is it uncertainty on the facilitators' part? What I would like are facilitators that respond to us – Fair enough, you say you want to do this, we can, but it means we won't do that. Is that what you want?

And I recognise there are conceptual differences. For me, feeding back on the homework is not facilitation, but I've talked to TTT about that, and in their way of thinking it is.

And one last thing, circumstances have been extraordinary, yes, but the course has suffered greatly because of the lack of continuity in facilitators. Continuity is important in a developmental course.

Comment 1-4

One thing I thought about the course was that I would be learning about different ways to protest, how to deal with the cops, relevant legal issues, that stuff.

Comment 1-5

I expected or hoped to find a community of like-minded people, and that has been fulfilled. The training for trainers aspect not so much. I expected engaging, inspiring, fresh, old material about NV and safe spaces to try out new ways of working with that material. The space has been safe (for me), yes, but overall I would say I've felt about 40% engaged with the material, I get more (grow) from other things I do (I think, maybe it's all just too close right now to tell), then from the Saturday trainings. Although watching the group has been very interesting and full of lessons, so I've no regrets. One thing that I also wondered about before the course was whether we would be applying what we were learning to organise an action or event or whatever the group came up with. No, we haven't, which seems like a sorely missed learning opportunity. We still of course can, but it might be an element to consider for future year-long courses.

Summary comments 1 (1-5)

I think what we're saying is that there is not great clarity about the programme on the part of the participants. We all have different expectations. One thing is – why is that? how come we are all found different messages about what the course would be?

Another thing is – what do we do about it? Or what could have been done from the beginning?

We could have talked about, what are your expectations? What are TTT's? Let's map them. Where do we overlap, where are the gaps, can we fill them, or what should be done?

Comment 1-6

The homework has been another greatly under-utilised resource of the course. Some of the readings have been interesting, one or two have grabbed me, but overall, not really. And I know there is good, inspiring stuff out there about NV, I read it. So the content is one thing, and then the attention or the way the homework has been treated as an after thought or a side dish seems unfair – here, do this reading to give context to the workshop, 5 minutes here, 5 there and let's move on to the agenda.

It elevates the agenda above the homework, where it all could be integrated, all of our contributions valued. It is especially a pity that the homework has not been used as a training tool to give people a chance to facilitate mini-exercises using the homework as a springboard. I agree with the previous comment that reflecting on homework is not facilitation, it's presentation.

Comment 1-7

Part of the discomfort that occurs is because the facilitators resist working with the conflict or the discomfort that arises. What can be done is to say – OK, what's going on right now is interesting, but I'm feeling uncertain about what to do. But what I think I'm hearing is ... So what do you want to do about it? ..... .... .... .... Done. OK, now, how do we all feel? Let's reflect on what we just did. What happened there?

The way conflict and discomfort has been generally dealt with is like going to do an action and when you get there, the police are already there, and you say to them 'Go away, you're not suppose to be here yet'.

Comment 1-8

In general I feel there is a hierarchy between the facilitators and us. And should it be that way if it's a training for trainers?

Comment 1-9

Facilitation is a bit like improvised music. You can only improvise if you know your scales. Facilitation requires adaptation and response to the environment. The facilitator is only there because the group has gathered and wants to accomplish something. The facilitator may have his/her own plan, but if that's not what the group wants to do, then the facilitator needs to adapt to the group.

The way it's been working is interesting – inside that room, we are a mini-representation of the outside world. The group is an issue and the facilitators have been playing the part of 'the system' (wanting to lead) and the group is saying, we don't want to be lead, let's work together.

Summary comments 1 (6-9)

So far what have we been saying? We've been talking about the art of facilitation and the theories and concepts behind NV. And what we're missing is

-- theory and concepts behind facilitation

-- opportunities to practice facilitation in small groups

-- reflection on the process of facilitation (which activities were chosen and why, how they went, what could have been done differently)

-- design, how to design workshops

-- common understanding of what training for trainers is

And then the group dynamics are interesting. People sometimes feel agitated and uncomfortable and there is a push-pull – I want to talk about this, and you don't.

And this system we're in. We're the core of a year-long group that gets together each month. We've changed, the system is changing, but perhaps more slowly, and certainly not willing or with ease.

And the language and the words we use to work through these issues. How do you do that so people don't feel alientated?

Comment 1-10

There needs to be a good deal of thought put into the next course, how it might be re-designed or completely re-done. Everyone's feedback should be included about the design and delivery of the course. How do I feel, you feel, TTT? What will service the needs of the organisation while still meeting the needs/expectations of participants, and how to maintain check-ins on that on-going process.

Comment 1-11

Yes, it seems like constant evaluation of a new (and if possible this one too) course like this should have been integrated into the design. Pen and paper evaluations at the end of each session, and time made for participants to fill them out. Or some kind of evaluation that is more thorough than just smiles and frowns. What we tend to do (not always, but generally) for evaluation is really more of a closing tool than a real evaluation tool.

Summary comments 1 (10-11)

One of the expectations of today was that we'd talk about how we'd like to facilitate the remaining sessions. But we have some gaps or doubts:

Is it realistic to think we have time to get it together to run September?

We need more information about the expected outputs of the remaining sessions.

Carl is not particularly interested in doing much facilitation as it's what he does professionally, and believes the practice opportunity could be better utilised by someone else. He's happy to playing a supporting role and be involved, but does not want to be a main facilitator.

Others present (with the exception of Luke) were indifferent in their responses – could do, but don't have to

Luke would be happy to try things out but would want support

Conversation 2: What we have liked, or what has worked well in the last 7 sessions

Comment 2-1

The films have been good, you have a fuzzy idea about history and events (like Leach was 'the man') but you're not really clear about how it all worked. And discussing the films is good because other people notice or know things that I don't.

Comment 2-2

I appreciate a lot of the sessions, but I want more on how to do NVDA and less on the context. That's just passive reception; I can find that out on my own. I want more on how, and less about why. More workshops like Matt and Alison's.

Comment 2-3

One of the points that interested me the most was when we talked about the wider ways social change happens – not just through NVDA – but how it all comes together and what sort of action is appropriate when. And why certain actions just will fail because the conditions are not yet ripe. That was very enlightening.

Comment 2-4

New words. I've learned words, like affinity group, non-cooperation, gathering 'I'd like to invite you to ..’

Comment 2-5

I've mostly valued the people. I missed one month and even though the next topic was not for me, I was very happy to go just to see people. And what is also interesting is hearing what other people say, I realise that I can take community for granted as I've got lots of little communities here and there.

Comment 2-6

Reflecting on the past conversation we just had and thinking about the bits and pieces that have been interesting, we've learned a bit about history of NV, power structures, campaign planning and all very good, fair enough, but I'm still unclear about what the outcomes of the programme will be. What will I be able to do once it's done?

Comment 2-7

I was the G8 in Scotland and I watched the protests, the police and I was bemused, annoyed, scared, energised. It was all very dramatic, but I didn't understand it. So in joining the course I thought I might better be able to and sometimes I think 'yes! I do' and then I think 'hold on, no I don't' ... 'or do I?' So working through all that has been interesting.

Comment 2-8

I've had this interest in NV for a while, but I've felt very alone with it. I've found the community and culture we're creating in the course very comforting. And have only felt that two times before, both in rather unique environments, one a monastery and the other in Israel.

I also have liked the videos; the videos have helped me to see the many varied creative ways of NV. NV is a very broad topic and the specific cases have helped me to know better that I need to focus myself. The images or stories told in the videos are so rare, people just don't know about that. They are very good; they take an abstract concept like NV and make it very real.

I can see now that I need to link NV to something that I already care about. I guess I need to volunteer or find opportunities to see or do myself the application of these tools.

Comment 2-9

We've had good lunches and proven chaos theory correct – even without a plan, not everyone will bring hummus!

Comment 2-10

The blog has been good thing, but it's been kept alive by a core group of us. We should think about ways to broaden the circle of users in the future.

Comment 2-11

I like the group represents such a diverse range of interests but we're all connected by valuing NV.

Comment 2-12

I like the re-confirmation that I've got about the notion of everything you do accumulates towards the ends. You may not see the immediate outcome of X action, but it does all build up and contribute towards something larger.

Action suggstion from a follow-up email, Carl suggests this:

Denise

Thanks for the notes. I've read them and thought it might be good to agree a summary.

My understanding is that we have appreciated the range of topics, butbelieve that the programme should more explicitly cover the 'how to' of facilitation, using the various perspectives we came up with.
As to actions - I'm happy to provide support to whoever delivers the programme later in the year, but if no one is willing than I'm also happy to deliver the group process and facilitation sessions (Oct and Dec), as long as I understand what Steve and Mathew will cover in Nov.

Carl
Question from DD:

How does the wider group – all of you, not just the handful of us who were there, feel about Carl’s suggested summary and action points?

Chalk 4 Peace

2007-08-21T13:51:00.000Z

Hey hey hey hey,

Chalk chalk chalk chalk

peace peace peace peace

Are we going to let August go by without a post? Chalk 4 Peace is something that has caught my eye. What do you think?

updated plan for 4 Aug

2007-07-30T16:54:00.000Z

As there will be 6 of us, possibly 8, and many of us live in south London, I suggest we meet on 4 August in my house in Walworth, near Elephant and Castle, and use Burgess Park if it stops $£$£^% raining. I'll send directions to those of you I know are coming.

If you are coming, please post in a comment below what food you will bring, so we can coordinate and not bring too much rice/couscous/humus ;)

I have suggested facilitators (in brackets) for each item - please feedback if you want to do this, or something else?

see some of you on Saturday,
xKathryn

Using our skills and experience: building good workshops
aim to explore and develop our skills as facilitators of active non-violence workshops through peer teaching (sharing, mentoring and being mentored).
agenda
- gathering (any)
- homework groups/discussion (any)
- our facilitation styles (indiv, in pairs) (De)
- facilitation tools - go rounds, small groups, jig saw, puzzles, different coloured thinking hats, world cafe etc (sharing/discussion) (De)
- crumple buttons (what to do when things go wrong) (H)
- building good workshops, including what makes a good agenda? (building a model from group brainstorm) (K)
- reviewing the TTT course to date including feedback from TTT mid term evaluation (C)
- how will we facilitate later sessions? (C)
- evaluation (any)
- closing (any)

Attending: Carl, Zaria, Denise, Diana, Kathryn, Rachel
Maybe: Helen G, Frances
Not attending: Mary Lou, Helen D, Hannah, Jenny

C olombian Peace Community leader murdered - please act

2007-07-26T10:13:00.000Z

On 13 July, Dairo Torres, a leader of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community in Colombia was taken from a bus by two armed members of an army-backed paramilitary group. The next bus along that rounte discoved his body by the road; he had been shot.

Dario Torres's murder is but the most recent of 160 murders of members of this Peace Community since its establishment ten years ago: people who have chosen not to align with any army actors in Colombia's messy wars. You may remember the film about this community, Until the Last Stone, that showed the fear and the basic poverty in which these people live. Agreeing to be a leader looks like a suicide bid.

The San José de Apartadó Peace Community is accompanied by PBI in Colombia. As a result of this murder PBI has issued an urgent activation of its support network; a step PBI only takes when things are really serious.

More information about Dario Torres, his community and the background to this case can be found on Amnesty's website.

Please write to your MP and request that the British Government asks the Colombian Government to
- give guarantees that these acts of persecution against the Peace Community will cease
- quickly investigate the facts of this case, including the role of the police in the assassination of Dairo Torres
- take immediate measures to ensure and effectively stop impunity for the crimes committed against the Peace Community, impunity that opens the way for repetition of such crimes.

Sat 4 August - the group's workshop

2007-07-23T09:02:00.000Z

Since we do not have a workshop scheduled for Sat 4 August, at the July session we agreed that the year group could use this as an opportunity to reflect on the series so far, our own skills and experience as facilitators, and the input we might like to have in future sessions. Kathryn, Carl and Rachel offered to coordinate the workshop, so here is a tentative plan.

aim: to explore and develop our skills as facilitators of active non-violence workshops through peer teaching (sharing, mentoring and being mentored).

tentative agenda
gathering

homework groups/discussion

our facilitation styles (indiv, in pairs)

facilitation tools - go rounds, small groups, jig saw, puzzles, different coloured thinking hats, world cafe etc (sharing/discussion)

crumple buttons (what to do when things go wrong)

building good workshops, including what makes a good agenda? (building a model from group brainstorm)

reviewing the TTT course to date including feedback from TTT mid term evaluation

what to do in the future with TTT?

evaluation

closing

Attending: Carl, Zaria, Denise (?), Helen G, Kathryn, Rachel
Not attending: Mary Lou, Helen D
Venue: still to be decided (depends in part on numbers)

We really need feedback, particularly on whether you can a) attend b) facilitate any of it and c) what you would bring for lunch (so we don't have lots of pots of humous). If you are member of the TTT year group, could you comment on this post, or email Kathryn, with your responses to a) (even if you are not coming), b) and c), as well as any other comments have. Thanks!

crime pays.. does violence?

2007-07-20T08:39:00.001Z

There was an article in last Sunday's Observer about a painting forger who had spent 4 months in prison, and now continues to forge paintings but is quite open about it. He gets up to £75,000 for his fakes and has had an order from the leader of the jury that sent it down. Clearly he is doing very well out of the publicityof his trial. (Notably his accomplice still denies involvement and is still in prison 6 years on).

It reminded me of the debate about violence, and whether it is needed as the last resort. Would South Africa have escaped apartheid if it had been an entirely non-violent campaign?

Clearly it's simplistic to say 'crime pays'; I guess usually it doesn't (though this kind of crime, which is not hurting anyone physically, and is stealing property rights but not property itself, raises interesting questions). And the same with violence. But the nagging question remains - can we change everything with non-violence?

Reflection for activists

2007-07-11T14:09:00.000Z

A reflective practice, offered to the group as homework during the July session, is based on the Examen or Examination of Consciousness. It is a technique that encourages us to reflect on where we find energy for what we do as well as where the challenges come from...to step back and observe these in a non-judgemental way....to sit with our experience and see what emerges. It is not about thinking through or analysing our experience but about feeling and letting that experience speak to us.

Often people use it in the evening to reflect back over the day. I suggest we use it to reflect back over our time as activists, focusing on these 2 questions:

1. What has been energising and given you life during your activism?
2. What has been draining and taken life away during your activism?

I encourage you to try it out at least once. It is a practice and I've found that I get more from it the more regularly I do it so you may want to give it a few goes!

How to do it (a suggestion!)
Set 10 - 15 minutes aside for this....
Find a relaxing space and get comfortable.
Close your eyes or find something to focus on.
Be still. Become aware of your breathing.
Cast your mind back over your time as an activist.

And, when you're ready, bring the first question to mind, spend some time with it....
....and then move on to the 2nd question.

You may want to mark the end of the reflection in some way...reading or saying an inspiring quotation, with a prayer, a number of deep breaths....

Spend 5 minutes (of the 10-15 minutes) writing down anything that came to you.

Support
If anyone has any questions about this, is finding it difficult or that it doesn't work for them I'm happy to answer questions or offer other suggestions.

Chocolala -- new fair trade (and Quaker) chocolate

2007-07-09T20:11:00.000Z

When Helen did her presentation on fair trade it reminded me of some chocolates I had at a meeting a couple of weeks ago. Chocolala is a new fair trade chocolate company. They are a bit pricey, but they are good. A nifty present for someone special (... or yourself :-)

spirituality and our activism

2007-07-08T11:36:00.000Z

I was talking to friends last night (over a damn fine veggie lasagne in Kennington's The Dog House; recommended) about our workshop, and the things we could have covered. That then occupied me in insonmnia at 3am. So I'll share them.

My friends agreed that it would be fascinating to think about why we do what we do - at the very least, why do we give up one Saturday a month to attend these workshops? Why do we want to bring about change (without being paid for it)? So many people don't; why do we?

Related, but maybe not the same - what are our values? Can we map or somehow visualise them? Do we do this ourselves? (I know I don't) Why/why not? Does that matter? (Then, and for me only then, we could look at what supports us in living out those values).

Grasp the scary language: what does spirituality mean to us - both in terms of a definition of the language, and how do we relate to it? Why are some of us turned off by the language, and why or how does it support others? How can we communicate better using or not using that language?

Do we each believe there is something bigger than us? (How) does that affect our activism? Does that affect who we are activ(ist) with?

What do you think?

is your mobile fuelling war in the Congo?

2007-07-06T08:36:00.001Z

My colleague Jonathan recently surprised me by explaining that he doesn't have a mobile phone as a matter of principle, because the trade in coltan - an essential mineral for manufacturing mobile phones - is propping up the rebels in the DRC.

While most of the world's coltan comes from legitimate mining in Australia, Brazil and Canada, a worrying amount passes through warring hands,and there is little way of knowing which is which. This report from 2001 explains how money and wars are made through our calls:

Given the substantial increase in the price of coltan between late 1999 and late 2000, a period during which the world supply was decreasing while the demand was increasing, a kilo of coltan of average grade was estimated at $200. According to the estimates of professionals, the Rwandan army through Rwanda Metals was exporting at least 100 tons per month. The Panel estimates that the Rwandan army could have made $20 million per month, simply by selling the coltan that, on average, intermediaries buy from the small dealers at about $10 per kg. According to experts and dealers, at the highest estimates of all related costs (purchase and transport of the minerals), RPA must have made at least $250 million over a period of 18 months. This is substantial enough to finance the war. Here lies the vicious circle of the war. Coltan has permitted the Rwandan army to sustain its presence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The army has provided protection and security to the individuals and companies extracting the mineral. These have made money which is shared with the army, which in turn continues to provide the enabling environment to continue the exploitation.

And more information on guns, money and cells phones is avaliable if this has got you worried.

guerrilla lighting

2007-06-22T16:10:00.001Z

I came across this today, a bit bizarre but made me think of us nonetheless! Did anyone see it?

Guerrilla Lighting Comes to London
Demonstrating the power of good lighting

One dictionary definition of guerrilla is an unofficial independent army of partisan soldiers, and, following the success of Guerrilla Lighting Manchester it will be a 100+ strong army that descend on London on the 15th February. The concept of Guerrilla Lighting was created by Martin Lupton, director of BDP Lighting, for the purpose of raising awareness of the power of lighting. Under the guidance of a team leader, each member will take part in creating transient lighting designs by using high powered torches, battery powered LED projectors, luminous dot lights and an array of gels and filters. Instructed to be in a specific position and at a given distance from their target, the teams will simultaneously light up various aspects of the Pool of London's architecture on cue at the sound of an air horn, creating a dramatic spectacle. The installation will be photographed, the lighting turned off and then the team move on to the next site. The teams will be made up of local lighting designers, architects, interior designers and manufacturers, all of whom are keen to draw attention to the possibilities, and importance of, lighting in the urban environment. The event will take place as part of 'Switched ON London', London's first festival of light. www.guerrillalighting.net

www.switchedonlondon.com

Inspiring Book

2007-06-20T16:46:00.000Z

Something that inspired me this month, and an action I have taken which I hope will inspire others.
*Having offered to prepare something for the July session, I have decided to play my Joker on this item. Since this piece is too long to be read in the session, I'd like if I may to publish the whole text here, as a context for a short and hopefully useful activity in the session.

Helen Dymond

There was a book in the good old 1960's or was it the 70's, a hip guide to American students swanning around in their gap year, called 'Europe on Five Dollars a Day'. Five dollars a day? WOW! How could such thrift be attained? It was clever, inflation-busting, quaintly alternative. A new book, '50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade' by Miles Litvinoff and John Madeley (Pluto Press, www.plutobooks.com) tells me that half a century later in 2007, "throughout the developing world people are working in poor countries for less than a dollar a day to make goods such as clothes and toys for the Western world."

They are forced into it by the rock bottom prices agreed by the world agriculture markets for the kind of crops their climates and soils will allow them to grow. With the international coffee agreement's collapse in 1989, for many farmers prices fellow below the cost of production. The impact on societies has been and continues to be disastrous: "social unrest, robberies, suicides, debt, children withdrawn from school by their parents; in Colombia and Haiti growers turning in desperation to illegal drugs cultivation. In Nicaragua, thousands of coffee workers held a 'March of the Hungry' to the capital in mid-2003, during which fourteen of the marchers are said to have died, during the march, of starvation. " Equally devestating in its effects, the world banana market worth £5 billion is dominated by a cartel consisting of a mere five companies.

But '50 Reasons' does't set out to scold; it invites us to celebrate the burgeoning of the Fair Trade movement, to join a damn good party that is going on and is here to stay It's this positive energy that makes the book inspiring; and incidentally it cleared up my puzzlement as to why I had not enjoyed Starhawk's 'Webs of Power' as much I had expected to: Starhawk seemed so much preoccupied with Our Action, Our Vision, Our struggle - whereas this book is all about Them. It is meticulously researched and packed full of useful information about what Fair Trade is, how it helps producers to a fair and stable income, where to find FT products; but perhaps its greatest achievement is that it gives a small cast of farmers a published voice, lets them speak for themselves.

It provides just the global context we need to make sense of what is happening in our own locality, and has prompted me to conduct a small, totally unscientific survey of my two local superstores; Sainsbury's at Ladbroke Grove and at Willesden, to explore Sainbsury's claim that it supports Fair Trade. I also wanted to answer some more uncomfortable questions closer to home: why don't I, the barely-reconstructed housewife, buy more than a few FT products? Is it because of my ignorance of the range on offer? A suspicion that they will be more expensive than non-FT? Or it is due to lack of visibility, a failed opportunity to highlight the products like the sweets which are always in your face at the checkout counter? (I am told Sainsbury's recently had a 'Fair Trade Fortnight' , but none of my neighbours seem to have noticed it).

Not that I am advocating supermarket shopping, given the environmental impact of import air-miles, excess packaging and general swamping of small producers. But the plain fact is that the vast majority of shoppers patronise supermarkets, so there should be some attempt to understand what is going on there. Paradoxically a much wider range of FT can be found there than in the average small retailer, and those who already patronise FT- specialist shops/farmers'markets need no conversion. Having obtained printouts of what FT goods are offered in these two stores, I made some comparisons between them, checked prices against the Online Shopping list and came up with some suirprising findings, of which I give just a sample here.

'50 Reasons' tells me that there are now over 2,000 FT certified products on the market, but Sainsbury's Online Shopping lists only 68 - so the first question is, why so few? And apart from cleaning cloths at Willesden, none of the non-food items are listed. There seems no consistent Buying policy either: Willesden carries only 27 items, of which 13 are not listed at Ladbroke Grove, while Ladborke Grove carries 30, of which 18 are not available at Willesden. This seems fairly chaotic, but the most glaring omission is that, having been assured by the Customer Care Service that "all Sainsbury's bananas are Fair Trade", FT bananas are not listed at all at Ladbroke Grove! I have informed Head Office of this fact and the person I spoke to sounded genuinely shocked.

The majority of products are beverages, coffees, teas and wines. At Ladbroke Grove fresh fruit FT products are grapes, pineapples and mangoes, whereas Willesden, a store with a significantly smaller clientele, manages to sell all those plus oranges and bananas. Ladbroke Grove Sainsbury's, a significant shopping mecca in this part of London boasting a bus terminus, and the Congestion Charge Extension Zone was shifted, after huge local protests, a few metres south of the Harrow Road so as to exclude the store, has a Coffee Shop which sells FT chocolate muffins and chocolate brownies - so why aren't these available on the shelves?

Thebiggest surprise are the prices. There is a perception that FT goods are likely to be more expensive, as organic products are, although the big stores can afford to and sometimes do subsidise them. Many FT items turn out to be the same, or cheaper than, non-FT. Fairtrade Teabags 250g cost £1.19, whereas Sainbsury's Green Blend Teabags 250g cost £1.95; Billington's Golden Granulated Sugar 500g sell for 89p, Tate & Lyle Granulated for a whopping £3.85; a pack of 5 Sainbsury's FT oranges are £1.59, while a pack of 5 non-FT oranges are £1.75.

What to do with these admittedly random statistics? I plan to send a report to Sainsbury's outlining my findings and suggesting that the Buying Policy is reviewed and hopefully improved. The range of goods offered could be greatly extended, and promoted as not only socially responsible but better value. And I have a plan to do a small promotion of my own: namely, I am thinking of a pre-Christmas social gathering of our Neighbourhood Watch Group to which everyone will be invited to bring only FT consumables - a sort of Pudding Party with bevvies, chocolate mousse and exotic fruit salad, nuts for those that can eat them, freshly baked biscuits etc. and some small inexpensive Ft gifts for Santa's Sack and prizes for games. It's a small step, as social movements go, but a first, I am resonably sure, in this neck of the woods.

tan... slowly

2007-06-18T07:55:00.000Z

In the Guardian on Saturday 9 June there was a centre spread that listed 'eight years and 32 actions to save the planet'; things that need doing at international, national, local and individual levels. It looked impressive, optimistic. The last point was

2015 Downshifting and having a slow pace of life now the major aspiration for many peole. Youngsters travel abroad by ship and train, savouring the experience. Low-cost flights have reduced by 80%

Then, over the page, is a nearly full-page advert: United we TAN. 5* Marrakech 5 nts from £279. Get your 5 breaks a year. lastminute.com.

If newspapers like the Guardian don't walk the talk, and change how they accept advertising, how are young people or anyone else going to buy into 'having a slow pace of life'?

How nonviolence protects the state

2007-06-15T18:38:00.000Z

Arms and the movement -- how nonviolence protects the State. I found the article quite engaging, whadda you think?

Euston Tea Party

2007-06-13T10:32:00.001Z

The sarf Londoners will recognise this as London Bridge, but hey, it's a mainline station.

We've talked about doing an action as a group. One idea that combines our love of food and our concern for the planet and people is to raise awareness of food and health.

So...the Euston Tea Party. An extravaganza of cakes, coffee and teas; combined with conversations about fair trade, organics, food miles, body and mental health. In front of their antithesis of Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, Cornish Pasty et al.

I suggest we occupy a couple of tables in the public space outside the station and in front of said outlets and give away cakes and teas to passers by and engage them in dialogues about food and things. We accompany this with flyers; and seeing as we have the skills, a couple of songs too.

What do you think? Ideas in the comments section. Plan at July get together.

If you want to practice, there's a Bellenden Bunfight this Saturday 16th June at the Review Bookshop on Bellenden Rd. Entry is £1 - bring a cake to be eaten and judged.

More info at http://landcrofthouse.blogspot.com/2007/05/bellenden-bun-fight.html

building the local alternative

2007-06-13T10:19:00.001Z

Last weekend we looked at building the alternative; based on the notion that the way in which we are active should also form the way we want our civil society to be.

I facilitated an exercise on looking at this from the localised perspectives of - home, friends and neighbours.

These themes and ideas emerged. What do you want to add, be clear about or comment on?

Friends
Learning from them
Be the friend you'd like to have
Care-frontation not confrontation in challenging views you don't agree with
Put energy into reconnecting with old friends
Express your gratitude for support
Stop 'taking the piss' and encourage instead

Home
Reduce, re-use, recycle - eg books, washing machines, cars, computers
Share resources
Produce as much food on site as possible
Use organic and biodynamic stuff/food
Fair trade, eco-products
Turn off stand-by items
Think through ethical consumption
Commit to good communcation with those you live with
Offer hospitality
Cook together and not too much

Neighbours
Solidarity actions eg campaigns to save adventure playgrounds, the Maudsley
Community gardens in the space between flats - herbs, flowers, veg and compost
Smiling, walking, conversing with neighbours
Use local shops, not chains or supermarkets
Have dialogues about choices in shops and markets
Campaign for post offices and local services
Join a local group eg a choir or bell ringers
Go to local events like school fairs, jumble sales and festivals

Peace Tax continued again

2007-05-18T21:54:00.000Z

Helen's letter:
This message was also sent to: Claude Moraes MEP, Gerard Batten MEP, Robert Evans MEP, Mary Honeyball MEP, Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, Jean Lambert MEP, John Bowis OBE MEP, Syed Kamall MEP

Thursday 10 May 2007

Dear John Bowis OBE, Gerard Batten, Claude Moraes, Jean Lambert, Syed Kamall, Robert Evans, Charles Tannock, Mary Honeyball and Baroness Sarah Ludford,

I am one of your constituents, living in north-west London, and you are my representatives at the European Parliament. Apart from Jean Lambert, whom I have heard speak and who is well known for her green credentials, forgive me that I do not know what campaigns and causes
the rest of you are involved in, but I am hoping that the issue I raise here will strike a chord with at least one of you and that I shall have at least one reply.

I am a retired teacher and college lecturer, and so my income tax is deducted at source via PAYE. I am one of the millions of people who have demonstrated consistently against war, and are horrified that our hard-earned money is being creamed off at source to pay for military
weapons,the illegal invasion of Iraq and the deaths of innocent civilians. I no longer feel able to accept this system without challenging it. I have joined the campaign group 'Conscience' which is
advocating the right of European citizens to have that part of one's taxes currently devoted to killing, to be ring-fenced for a 'Peace Tax' devoted to positive mediation to prevent war, and compensation for victims of war. Some members of 'Conscience' have already taken this
matter in the European Court of Human Rights on the basis of Article 9 of the European Convention which protects 'our right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and to manifest that religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.' I need to hear
from you, please,whether or not you are in support of this movement.

I shall be writing also to my British MP, but unfortunately she has voted consistently against investigating the Iraq War, so she is unlikely to ally herself to this critical cause.I do hope that MEPs are more enlightened.

Yours sincerely,
(Mrs.) Helen Dymond

A response from Charles Tannock

Dear Ms Dymond

I do not support this "Conscience" movement or its fiscal philosophy nor does the UK Conservative Party to my knowledge in the UK House of Commons, which would anyway be in charge of direct UK taxation not the European Parliament of which I am a member. I do not believe in ring fencing direct taxes according to one's personal beliefs no matter how strongly or sincerely held (eg animal rights activists opposed to intensive farming, antinuclear protesteres opposed to nuclear power etc) as this would create an impossible precedent in which people would opt out of all sorts of things they did not like and demand their taxes back making government budgeting impossible! To my knowledge no country in the world upholds such an approach as you suggest. In a democrcay you vote for a party and only if it has majority control can it decide to change spending patterns, although I accept we politicians within reason
must be as sensitive to differing views as possible, but this would not in my view mean reducing funding of the armed forces which defend the security of the whole country. I regret I cannot be more helpful but doubt any responsible mainstream party could support such a policy.

Dr. Charles Tannock MEP

London Region
Deputy Coordinator Foreign Affairs Committee for EPP-ED Group
UK Conservative Foreign Affairs Spokesman

Office of Dr. Charles Tannock MEP
Conservative/London Region

European Parliament
ASP 14 E 101
Rue Wiertz
B-1047 Brussels
Belgium
Tel: +32 2 28 45870 Fax: +32 2 28 49870 www.charlestannock.com

and another one from Peter Hulme

Dear Ms Dymond,

Thank you for your email.

My position on the British involvement in Iraq is as follows, copied from a posting on the internet in November 2004..

"I would have supported an allied invasion of Iraq, including the deployment of British Armed Forces, if this had been sanctioned by a United Nations Resolution. I am not a lawyer, but I do not believe there was a UN Resolution to this effect. I do not therefore support the Government's justification for sending our troops to Iraq.

My support for such a UN Resolution would be conditional upon the invasion being in the UK national interest, and a clear and unambiguous statement of the aims of an invasion from the outset.

I would consider UK national interest to include security of our borders; safety of British subjects overseas; protection of British economic interests including free and fair international trade; and the upholding of international law to promote peace and stability. I would
not be in favour of interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign state unless these principles are at stake."

There have always been people who oppose war and refuse to fight in one for various reasons. In WWII such persons often became medical personnel, stretcher bearers, etc. In more modern times, the proposal has been to withhold a proportion of one's taxes. I think this will be
difficult when one's taxes are taken under the PAYE system, but I can only applaud you for trying.

Best Regards,

Peter Hulme Cross
One London Group
London Assembly

Tel:- 020 7983 4919
www.onelondon.org.uk

and one just in from the Lib Dems

16th May 2007

Dear Ms Dymond,

Thank you for your email dated 10th May 2007 regarding taxes. I am replying on behalf of my colleagues at the London Assembly, Sally Hamwee, Dee Doocey, Graham Tope and Mike Tuffrey.

Thank you for your interesting thoughts on taxes but unfortunately taxation is a matter for Westminster not the London Assembly, so we have no powers over this subject.

We do however sympathise with your concerns. We can confirm that the Liberal Democrats in parliament voted against the horrific Iraq war, and that Ming Campbell has in the past called for early withdrawal of UK troops backed up by re-energised talks and negotiations with Middle Eastern powers.

Thank you for writing to us.

Yours sincerely,
Geoff Pope AM
Liberal Democrat Assembly Member

Peace Direct job

2007-05-18T21:51:00.000Z

Peace Direct are currently advertising for the position of Project Manager
on the Truce 2012 project.

Salary £25,000 plus 6% pension contribution, 25 days holiday. More information about the position can be found here.

Truce 2012 is a project to develop leadership and conflict resolution skills
in young people in East London in the run up to the Olympics.

Peace Tax, continued

2007-05-18T10:08:00.000Z

A big Thank you to Zaria, Carl and Kathryn for acknowledging my efforts and between them all, making my Blog happen!
Now I don't know how to attach files to this Blog. I would like to post up two responses I have received very recently from our elected representatives on the subject of Peace Tax. I wrote to all MEP's and London Assembly Members outlining the Peace Tax Campaign position and requesting that each of them state their position. The Tory MEP Charles Tannock is by definition a joke anyway, but they do point up for me, again, the problem of INERTIA/NOT MY PROBLEM as the most insidious form of opposition to change. However the issue has been raised, it has been in their face for a few minutes and this is just a beginning.

AS I dont know how to attach a file to this and it may not be possible anyway, I will if I may send them to Kathryn and see if she can (if time and inclination) do anything with them.

Thanks, for support 'n all

Helen D.

building the alternative homework

2007-05-16T09:23:00.000Z

For the next workshop (9 June) we have been given links to examples of building the alternative through direct action:

- achievements of landless peasants in Brazil

- the story of a squatters estate agency, 1970s London

- article in Peace News about the Diggers, and their relevance for contemporary activists

- Starhawk’s journals about the G8 protests at Gleneagles in 2005, particularly the Ecovillage at Stirling, and the Cre8 building of a community garden.

NVDA TOT in Glasgow, and London?

2007-05-15T12:11:00.000Z

Fabulous! Kathryn just wrote to encourage people to continue discussions sparked by last Saturday's training on the blog. I'm anxious to hear about the content, the vibe and thoughts, experiences, about Saturday's TTT training.

About two weeks ago, I went to Glasgow for a training of trainers NVDA workshop. I went because I knew I had to miss Saturday's workshop, and because I'd never been to Glasgow so my partner and I made a long weekend of it.

The workshop was .... good. The trainers were completely competent and knowledgeable about training people for doing actions. The participants ranged from 'grassroots weapons inspectors' (full-time Faslane activits) to students with little NVDA experience, but keen to learn more, to ... a couple of, well one other come to think of it, person like me -- had done loads of NVDA years ago, but wasn't too sure about the climate and police response these days. We were seeking a 're-fresher' course if you like.

What was disappointing to me was the lack of community building exercises, I spent from Friday night to Sunday afternoon with 13 other activists, and the atmosphere was friendly but there was never that 'click' for us a whole group, you know? I clicked with individuals, but there was nothing particularly pulling us together as a group.

And then, another short-coming for me was this notion that we all held the same assumptions about the role and importance of NVDA. OK, it was a TOT on how to get groups ready in 90 minutes (or if you're lucky one day) for an action, but I would have liked some discussion on the effectiveness and timeliness and a vast array of other things about NVDA.

How was the London training? What were the main issues?

non-violent direct dining

2007-04-30T15:58:00.000Z

Check out tube dining.

Strikes me if they can get away with that, then a more political intervention would both draw attention (the dining incident was on BBC news) and engage other travellers in the issue. Non-threatening and quaintly bizarre.

active (non) violent museums?

2007-04-30T07:43:00.000Z

I was in Tate Britain on Friday briefly, and had a quick look at Mark Wallinger's Tate Britain. I've never been quite sure what I think of it... part of me wonders what the point was of replicating all the pieces that were on the grass outside the Houses of Parliament; if he waited a while he could cadge a whole load of originals. (I'm also a bit of a sceptic about Brian Haw, having read an article where he says 'I wish I could just go home to my child and my wife'. Its a valiant protest, no doubt, but then you've heard me banging on about strategic change and the need to be focussed, and I can't see his focus. He's a reminder, sure. Is that enough?) Is it art? (okay, don't answer that. Dull, oft-repeated question).

But seeing the show reminded me of Goodbye Lenin and a spate of books that came out around a decade after the Berlin wall came down about return, and dissadents' experince of dislocation. It was as if, ten years on, history could become culture, we can deal with it on another level - enjoy it as art, somehow unreal. (Though Susanne deconstructed this argument a little on Saturday, reporting that the director of The Lives of Others had struggled to get funding, since people kept encouraging him to tell the story as a comedy. The message of that: Don't take the Stasi too seriously?) So what then does it mean that Brian Haw's presence is in a gallery? Does that ossify it? Mean it is history? What does it mean for us?

I also finally visited my local museum a couple of weeks ago. I have been putting it off for years, partly because it is just too close, partly because I don't want to celebrate these things in boxes. But I figured I need to engage with whatever it is the Imperial War Museum is trying to do. Confusing thing is, I still have no idea what it is trying to do.

You walk in and face a barrage of tanks and an enourmous V2 missile (I now understand why I have an allotment; that great hunk of vile metal hit houses opposite me on Aylesbury Road). They seem to be pointing at you, or rather (since you move) at a tiny dog hanging from a parachute. The little signs are all 'objective', descriptive enough. Each individual piece is not, as far as I can tell, glorifying war, but it's hardly critiquing it either.

Having faced the tanks (and survived), I watched a film on crimes against humanity, and wandered through some of the Holocaust exhibition. It's huge, and made me feel sick (which surprised me, given that I read masses on the Holocaust for my PhD and before, so thought I might be somewhat innoculated). I didn't make it to the small corner that looks at the Gulf War or the Falklands; will go back.

Outside, you meet a piece of the Berlin Wall, and the Peace Garden (ahem, peace is only outside). It's a gorgeous sunny day and you are face to face with two enourmous guns. I stand in front of them and am just bemused; I just don't understand how anyone can see these and not think of the pain/death they cause. I'm losing/lost my ability to empathise with people who 'get' war.

satyagraha

2007-04-20T08:58:00.000Z

I went to the ENO's Gandhi opera, as I saw it, after the workshop on Saturday. Realisitically it is a Philip Glass opera before a Gandhi one... it is beautiful, simple, sometimes amusing, and very very looong. Three hours, post-strategy and campaigning... Hmm. As the Observer reviewer put it, 'Oh, do get on with it'.

In the words of Anthony Holden, 'As a work of art, this piece undeniably pays due homage to a great man. As theatre, it is intermittently stylish; as a sermon, its precepts are unimpeachable. As music, extremely well performed, it is interesting for 10 minutes, pleasant for another 10, then insufferably monotonous for the ensuing three hours-plus. Some will emerge believing they have seen an inspirational affirmation of the human spirit, others a non-violent attempt to bore the oppressor into submission.'

Is opera in that list of 198 NVDAs?

2007-04-16T22:03:00.000Z

well, i finally made it into the blog!
i am no expert at this, so realise my identity is fully hidden - wishingchair is sue, one of the facilitators on saturday
greetings to all, will look forward to reading and contributing!

why are you reading this?

2007-04-16T17:49:00.000Z

Sophie made a beautiful slip of the tongue on Saturday that set me thinking; she said, 'We're going to build up a campaign on the issues that care for us'.

Where would we be, as individuals, without the issues we care deeply about?

Why do we spend our sunny Saturdays in a large room in Euston?

How does this relate to empowerment, and the group/individuals issues that Zaria's playing with below?

(The pictures are of the issues that we hung on our washing line on Saturday, the 'issues that care for us').

One More Step towards Conscience Objection to War

2007-04-16T17:45:00.000Z

A number of people were talking about peace tax and like-minded things at the weekend, so I thought I'd share this, from my friend Nadine Hoover in the States. It's nearly two months old, but hey.

Early on February 22, 2007, thirty-three Quakers from all over New York, New England and even the U.K. gathered at the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan for a special meeting for worship in preparation for the argument of an appeal by Daniel Jenkins in his case of conscience against the Internal Revenue Service. Dan Jenkins is bearing witness to the leading of his conscience that paying taxes for war is wrong. Following this leading he paid his federal income tax into a special escrow account, refusing voluntary payment until the government agrees to use the money only for non-military purposes. For this, he is being charged not only for the taxes and ordinary penalties and interest, but an additional $ 5,000 fine for daring to challenge the government in Tax Court rather than accepting the penalty assessments.

Fred Dettmer was the lawyer who argued the appeal on behalf of Dan Jenkins. Relying primarily on the US “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” (RFRA), he told the Court that the government can and must find a way to accommodate Dan by honoring his conscientious insistence that his tax dollars not be drafted to pay for war. In this way Dan can meet his obligations to the state, as he wishes to do, without violating the dictates of his conscience. He explained that the RFRA puts the burden of accommodation on the government and the IRS has demonstrated through the campaign contributions that it is able to accommodate. He also presented Dan Jenkins' case that the New York State Constitution Article 9 assures the citizen's rights to liberty of conscience as a critical element of democracy. This constitutional law predates and outweighs the federal powers to tax for war. This is the first time the court will be ruling on this legal argument and there is nothing frivolous about it. A separate brief was submitted by New York Yearly Meeting of Quakers as a “Friend of the Court.”

Following the argument, Friends discussed the appeal and opportunities now being created for others to make formal statements of their own conscientious objection to war taxes. A conference on the subject was also held over the weekend at Purchase Friends Meeting. The conference discussed the possibility of other legal actions advancing similar claims.

One area opening for anyone opposed to paying war taxes is to create a personal statement of conscience. This could also serve as evidence to support a claim that limitation of one’s tax dollars to non-military uses is genuinely based on conscience, something that might serve as the basis to require accommodation by IRS in the event that Dan Jenkins wins his appeal, or Congress passes the Peace Tax Fund bill. These statements are being gathered and maintained by the NYYM subcommittee on Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation comprised of Friends who share a strong leading for “tax resistance” to war and other military expenditures. More information is available from Conscience & Peace Tax International and from the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.

groups, individuals and groups of individuals..the story continues

2007-04-13T13:35:00.000Z

Dear Tide Turners,

So this is what we missed: 50 - 80 protesters, roads blocked for an hour and a half, eleven arrested after locking on (aldermaston women's peace camp blog: http://www.aldermaston.net/camp/blog.php).

They also, rather charmingly, did this:

A useful discussion has grown up over the last week, and a series of themes has developed:

DD wants to state 'the obvious', but I don't think your comments are obvious at all, DD, and what is obvious to some is not obvious to all. It was an interesting response to our disappointment/unmet expectations to link to 'Appreciative inquiry', which perhaps we should talk more about as a way to approach protest situations.

Anyone know more about appreciative inquiry?

A thread running through the discussion, however, is the tension between the personal and the group-oriented, as Carl said. Rachel mentioned how protest seems like 'part of the system', which I think is really interesting, and Carl brought up how this 'protest system' is oriented more towards the individual rather than the collective. This perhaps reflects what DD said about self-empowerment through forms of protest. Self-empowerment is admirable but if taken as a basis for a philosophy of protest could it create the kind of chaos which we felt we had encountered last week?

Ok, to push it further: could it be said that some forms and expressions of political protest are mainly aimed at serving the cultural and psychological needs of the protesters as individuals, rather than at truly resolving problems. If, as Kathryn suggested, we/the people in the pictures really did have a dialogue with the nuclear industry, would we achieve more?

Hope thoughts can flow further, obvious and less obvious all welcome...it's only cyberspace...see you on Saturday.

Zaria

Dazed and Confused!

2007-04-09T20:02:00.000Z

Dear Tide turners,

Easter Monday and Carl and I abandoned the delights of the Cotswolds to go to Reading to prepare to blockade Aldermaston. We had debated this, at some length: was it going to be worth it? What would we actually achieve? Was it better to pick a campaign and stick with it? were we going to Aldermaston simply because it was there as a campaign and did we believe in it any more than say, climate change, or anti-consumerism or anti-capitalism? The ideological supermarket is open 24 hours, after all.

We had assumed that we’d find a tight group of seasoned protesters with precision organisation. What instead fetched up in Reading was a very small group of people indeed. We went through some training, which was similar in some ways to the Tide Turners sessions, but more chaotic. We were told of the importance of forming and affinity group: something that we were aware we didn’t have, but given no chance to form one. At no point was the impression of precision organisation given. More random chaos with all protesters deciding what they wanted to do and how. Many protesters seemed to have a few issues with working in groups and deciding on common policies and, apart from anything, there didn’t seem to be any common policies and no-one seemed to have a clear idea of what was going to happen. Or at least they didn’t tell us. On the plus side we were given some very interesting information about the progress of the nuclear project in Britain and some details about how convoys of nuclear material move around, etc.

We had powerful conflicting feelings about all this: to be brutally honest I think we wanted to be impressed and made to feel secure. On the other hand, why should we need others’ guarantees? We wanted to join an organised group who were focussed on achieving things, but there was a strong emphasis on individual decisions and the individual within groups. What also became apparent was that there were admirable and switched-on people doing dedicated research and observation of Aldermaston and their strong work was not reflected in the publicity and wider awareness of the issues. For example, they made that the official secrets act in the UK made it harder to find out information about nuclear material and dangers to public health than in the US, where government strictures on sensitive information are less tight.

The whole experience made us reflect on the further learning we had to do around this issue, and the issue of protesting in general: does process have to reflect content? What is the problem with organisation? Can we find an ‘affinity group’ which is prepared to act, or not act, to some effect? How can people be mobilised in large numbers? Is it necessary to cultivate media relations? Is it ok to doubt the wisdom of actions which appear to merely amuse/annoy passing motorists and not have perhaps much effect on the fearsome development of nuclear weaponry in this country?

Comments very welcome: anyone else had doubts? anyone else been Dazed and Confused?

Zaria.

Challange GUANTANAMO athrough AVAAZ

2007-04-09T08:08:00.000Z

A new group AVAAZ, which means 'voice' in a variety of Asian, Middle Eastern and European languages, is putting together a global petition to close Guantanamo. There are already 1 million people from 182 countries that form the Avaaz.org community. When they have received signatures from every country in the world, they plan to run the petition in key US newspapers. You can sign the petition via

www.avaaz.org/en/close_guantanamo

Helen Dymond

25 years of Defending the Right to Defend Human Rights: music and photos

2007-04-04T11:07:00.000Z

For 25 years Peace Brigades International has been sending teams of volunteers to provide unarmed protective accompaniment to human rights defenders all over the world, currently we have projects in Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia, Guatemala and Nepal.

This exhibition has been put together to illustrate the work of human rights defenders and the issues they face. The pictures are a tribute the bravery and hard work of human rights defenders across the world.

The exhibition runs from Weds April 4th to Sunday April 30th at Pogo Café, 76 Clarence Rd, Hackney E5. Contact Lani for more info on PBI's work.

To compliment The Pogo Cafe hosting this exhibition come and see a unique musician play Latin music with a twist, Flakito. Flakito has spent two years working for Peace Brigades International in Colombia. He will be sharing music and stories. Thursday 5th April at 7.30pm with his one man band. Come and find out about the work and listen to some great music at the same time!

I keep thinking of you

2007-04-04T10:52:00.000Z

Given the various conversations we have had about making or building communities, I noticed that I keep thinking about TTT people as I work on my own understanding of changing the world. Like in a plane from Aceh, reading Lederach's Preparing for Peace, I got to thinking about Rachel's new job, and what potential there is for elicitive conflict transformation workshops (drawing on their existing conflict resolution practices) with local communities in Lambeth and Southwark.

And on the plane back from Indonesia yesterday, watching Freedom Writers, Hollywood enough but also inspiring (based, as it says, on a true story of devastatingly divided ethnic communities and multiple gang deaths). It reminded me of a conversation with Nana, her frustration with her own community. And also of my experience on the way to the RP gathering in Birmingham, where a black and an Asian woman helpoed to break up a fight on the street, and I felt useless because I am white.

And all my god-damn flights in the last three weeks, over an archipelago that stretches the same distance as from London to Baghdad, making me wince knowing Carl's commitment to not taking planes. If there is an eco-footprint hell I've been headed there for years. I can't really make myself repent because an ongoing connection with PBI and peace attempts in Indonesia gives me too much.

So there, you're in my head. Looking forward to seeing you soon.

A play which may be of interest...

2007-04-02T12:57:00.000Z

I friend of mine has put this play on , which looks interesting it's on until 14 April if your interested. I'm going to go along on Thursday 5th if anyone wnats to join me then :)
xx

The Ladies Cage
The World Premiere of a new play by Maureen McManus. Directed by John Terry. Designed by

In a full-bodied attack on conventional wisdom, Scary Little Girls Productions and acclaimed director John Terry strip away the myths surrounding the ‘Uncrowned King of Ireland’, the Victorian Irish Nationalist leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, in the world premiere of a new play, The Ladies Cage, opening at the Finborough Theatre on 21 March for a four-week run. Uncovering a forgotten piece of women’s history, the play is inspired by the life of his sister, Anna Parnell, and reveals the pivotal role played by women in freeing the Irish from British rule – and themselves from the “ladies cage” that imprisons them…

Acclaimed young director John Terry, Associate Director of the Finborough Theatre, has directed the sell-out Time Out Critics’ Choice Finborough-commissioned productions of Rolf Hochhuth’s Soldiers and Keith Dewhurst’s Lark Rise to Candleford, winner of the Peter Brook Empty Space Mark Marvin Award. Playwright Maureen McManus is also a published poet and journalist. The Ladies Cage has been written with the input of eminent historian and politician
Dr Margaret Ward, author of Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism, a ground-breaking reassessment of the role of women in the struggle to free Ireland.

Scary Little Girls Productions is an innovative young production company based in London and Cornwall. Its first show was produced in collaboration with the Bristol Old Vic and recent partnerships include art, drama and film projects with the South London Gallery, Glastonbury Festival and the Curzon Cinema Group, as well as two sell-out London shows – The Kisses in 2003 and Maria Stuart in 2005.

Finborough Theatre, The Finborough, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED
Box Office 0870 4000 838 www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Wednesday, 21 March – Saturday, 14 April 2007
Tuesday to Saturday Evenings at 7.30pm. Sunday Matinees at 3.30pm.
Tickets £12, £9 concessions. Tuesday Evenings £8 all seats. Saturday evenings £12 all seats.
Previews (21 and 22 March) £8 all seats.
Performance Length: Approximately 2 hours.
The Finborough run is followed by a run at the Manchester Royal Exchange Studio – 27-28 April 2007

choose life

2007-03-28T18:06:00.000Z

I was just talking to a friend who is researching relationships between donors and government in Aceh, Indonesia, about jobs, and how to get them.

She came across this piece of advice from George Monbiot to choose life instead of other things.

how to...link to doc

2007-03-28T11:19:00.000Z

See How to use the blog

Protest disrupts slavery service

2007-03-28T09:37:00.000Z

Saw this on the BBC news website. Just thought I'd share it with you as an example of non-violent direct action.

Toyin Agbetu interrupted a commemorative service at Westminster Abbey marking the 200th anniversary of the act to abolish the slave trade.

The event, attended by the Queen and Tony Blair, was almost over when human rights campaigner Toyin Agbetu began shouting: "This is an insult to us."

He condemned African Christians for taking part and told them to walk out.

The service resumed minutes later after security guards led him outside. He was arrested and is being held in custody.

Toyin Agbetu is a campaigner for Ligali, an African-British human rights organisation.

He managed to get a lot of publicity by taking this action and has raised questions about slavery and its impact on us today. What we don't know is the preparation he took part in, his support network (if any) and whether he considered the likely impacts he might have.

More nukes like fish need more ...

2007-03-27T19:58:00.000Z

Been busy, but wanted to add this to Carl's entry post-Trident protest (14 March).

eostre events on

2007-03-27T13:22:00.000Z

For full listings of activities in April from the day of the fool see the Network for Peace site.

Me and Z are off to Aldermaston, with some, but not all of the Slackers* on Easter Monday/Tuesday 10th. See Block the Builders and Trident Ploughshares for more info.

* Slackers are a non-violent choir. We might sing or we might not.

every journey begins...

2007-03-21T17:33:00.000Z

Dear reader, I am currently trying to write a step-by-step process for posting comments on this blog, that will, hopefully, be difficult to misunderstand. I writing this post to test whether the steps I'm drafting are easy to follow. I'll then ask you to try them out. If they are not clear to you, then I'll re-write them.

Helen Dymond

2007-03-20T19:22:00.000Z

I hope I am connnected after various attempts... ...More and more does power reside with the computer-savvy. I wanted to say, I went to a presentation recently by one of the Peace Tax Seven (affiliated to 'Conscience') who are challenging the automatic allocation of part of our taxes to the arms industry, and want these monies ring-fenced for a Peace Fund to pay for "life-affirming activities such as health care, education and non-violent conflict resolution." They are taking their case back to the European Court of Human Rights under Article 9 of the European Convention. I have a DVD of their recent doings but they can be accessed on www.peacetaxseven.com
all good wishesHelen Dymond

Trident and untested

2007-03-15T09:41:00.000Z

Up on Parliament Square yesterday to join the protest against the renewal of Trident.

Lots of good speeches; but I was particularly interested in the one from a woman from Block the Builders (anti-Aldermaston developments), who was involved in direct action at the camp. She said nine of them had earlier blocked the road and were now being held under SOCA - serious and organised crime legislation.

Then the fish on bikes turned up and there was a bit of argy-bargy with the Police. Made me think - why are a whole load more of us not organised to take part in mass blockades?

For further thought perhaps - getting people to break the law is fraught with all sorts of complications. In the meantime, it was good to see a healthy mid-week turn out - the struggle continues...

What is the Peace Process in Nepal Leading To?

2007-03-13T09:15:00.000Z

A Discussion on the Challenges of Mainstreaming Maoists, Federalism and Madhesh Movement, presented by London Chhalphal & SOAS Nepali Society with Mr. Kunda Dixit Chief Editor and Publisher, Nepali Times.

17th March 2007, Saturday, 2:30 - 4pm

Venue: Room B104, Brunei Building, Russell Square Campus
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
London, WC1H 0XG Nearest Tube Stations: Russell Square, Euston Square, Euston

Mr. Kunda Dixit is currently the chief editor and publisher of Nepali Times and the co-publisher of Himal Southasian magazine. He is a graduate of Columbia University, USA. He worked as news reporter for the BBC at UN Headquarters in New York from 1985-86, and then as Asia-Pacific director of Inter Press Service from 1987 to 1995. He returned to Nepal in 1996 to head Panos Institute South Asia. He is also author of the book, Dateline Earth: Journalism As If The Planet Mattered.

London Chhalphal is a Nepal-facing discussion and networking forum. The forum provides an opportunity for anyone interested in Nepal to share, learn and debate wide ranging issues from politics, development, people and society. London Chhalphal is an independent platform that neither endorses nor is affiliated with any political ideology or organisation. The views of the speakers are their own.

Additional Non-violence Readings

2007-03-10T08:11:00.000Z

Center for Teaching Peace -- course readings, and an invitation for further study

I was flipping through notebooks, bookmarks and my mind this morning thinking about today's homework and I re-encountered this page. I have found it to be a great resource for my own 'peace journey' as well as having drawn from the articles for workshops I've facilitated.

It is such a good resource, I sort of felt like I ran into an old friend.

I've never sysmatically worked down through the readings though, and I wonder would anyone out there be interested in complementing our TTT training by reading a lesson each each month, and sticking around for an hour afterward to discuss them? Or perhaps a different set-up, another night, another channel?

Fish on Bicycles mass cycle against Trident

2007-03-09T20:52:00.000Z

Open your eyes, and move those legs! Alternatively start your engines for a mass one-set-of-eyes car-car! ;-)

14 March 2007, LONDON. "Fish on Bicycles mass cycle ride"
Meet at 6.30pm under Waterloo Bridge for a mass cycle ride around central London. Inspired by Steve Bell's cartoon depicting Tony Blair calling for a replacement to Trident, next to a fish demanding a new bicycle, the cycle ride will demonstrate just how pointless and ridiculous the government's plans to build a new generation of nuclear weapons really are. Bring anti-Trident messages, and dress as a fish or other non-cycling amphibian to highlight the pure stupidity of replacing Trident. (Dressing as a fish is optional!) Download a specially-made "fish on bicycles" race cards displaying Steve Bell's cartoon (to be attached to the front of bicycles) from <http://www.tridentvoteday.org.uk/>
Please note that arrests, although unlikely, are a possibility. For more information the events and actions taking place on Trident Vote Day, please visit:
<http://www.tridentvoteday.org.uk/

Iran film

2007-03-08T11:12:00.000Z

Check this out www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html

NVDA meme spreads

2007-03-08T10:05:00.000Z

In today's Guardian G2, there's an article on the spread of NVDA. A piece on how organisations like Seeds of Change are offering workshops to activists on direct action - bit like TTT I think.

Made me think about how we spread the method beyond the usual suspects. The more we spread these ideas to different interest groups and communities the more powerful the tool becomes. While TTT is clearly linked into many campaigning organisations, we need to think through how we get to those that are either unaligned or those that are in organisations but have no idea about NVDA. Given that two of the highest profile NVDA campaigns in the 20th century were for national liberation (India) and civil rights (USA), and were not for or about white people, we should perhaps also think through why these methods have little current resonance with people from black or minority ethnic communities?

can theatre change the course of history?

2007-03-06T20:50:00.000Z

We missed this at the Almeida Gallery:

We asked the Almeida's artist collaborators and the students whether theatre can change the course of history. Their response came about as part of a theatre laboratory - a practical and artistic investigation of the strength and importance of ideas and the power of the collective to effect change.

But they have kindly given us instructions on how to devise revolutionary theatre

the many doors to our activism

2007-03-06T12:14:00.001Z

Turning the Tide held its Resource Person gathering at Bilberry Hill Centre near Birmingham over the weekend. The programme, ably put together by Bob, Denise and Sophie, focussed (I think) on 'the roots of our activism'. The weekend was, for me, strangely unexpectedly intense, cohering and exhausting. The venue provided more doors than seems possible for a youth centre, and a splendid place to view the moon as it went orange and threatened to drop out of the sky.

through the hatch

We were a mix of older RPs (both in terms of length of involvement in TTT and in years age, it seemed) and several of us newbies (though interestingly we newbies facilitated several of the sessions). And we delved inside ourselves... at least that's how it seemed to me. Carl's session using an exercise from neuro-lingustic programming (NLP) took us up and down a 'ladder' of our activism: our environments, behaviours, capabilities, beliefs/values, identities and spirituality/vision, both in the present and how we would like to see them in the future. It shook and scared me, strangely: connecting parts of me, internal and external, trying to figure out how I and my activism fit together, and how I would like them to. I think it was also incredibly productive.. but I'm still digesting.

many doors lead to many chairs

We had two sessions that made little waves, like nails catching on nylon: 'spirituality and our activism', run by Helen D, and 'class and activism', by Amanda. Both stirred (some of us) up, me included, and I'm still not sure why: partly making me (or us? I don't think I can speak for anyone else though) confront things I feel uncomfortable about, define my acts and thoughts in terms that I don't feel right using. And of course these led to good discussions, and overhanging thoughts that seeped into lunch and dinner.

Sophie and Rachel have a Sunday

Chris and Amanda get classy

And what lunch and dinner they were! Jenny and Rachel seemed to create big pots of goodness out of nowhere and in no time. We ate around a big table, something between a school canteen and Busaba Eathai communal tables, with food passed through the hatch from the cavernous kitchen.

deep debate by the fridges - Chris, Allison, Helen and Carl

Ally and Denise through the hatch

And there was energiser fun... never has a gym been as fun as went 10 of us ran around doing car-car, one eye-closed, the other driving them, making suitable noises on top of giggles. It led on to more discussion about why this stuff works, carnivals and fools, SOMA from Brazil (see Carl's comment below, and Rachel, please tell us more!). And of course the songs, led by Rachel, drawn from SLACKERS: South London Activist Singers. Encore.

Sophie gave us an overview of who's who in the TTT world, and talked through what TTT is doing at the moment, and where she and Steve would appreciate some help. If any of the words below make sense and call to you, call to her.

What TTT does

And in the middle of all this, the clouds cleared, the sun went behind the earth and the moon went orange.

Post-conflict Truth and Reconciliation in Peru

2007-03-05T15:03:00.000Z

An evening of reflection and music on the 1980-2000 conflict in Peru, and discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report.

Organised by Movement for the Abolition of War and the Peru Support Group in association with St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace.

We will remember those who lost their lives as a result of the conflict between Peruvian state forces and the Maoist group Sendero Luminoso ('Shining Path'). The final report of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which took evidence from relatives who lost loved ones, or who were themselves subjected to violence during the 20-year conflict, will be reviewed.

A 3x2-metre, collective quilt produced by women from the Ayacucho region of Peru - and first exhibited in May 2002 to the TRC - will be displayed and its production and meaning discussed. Music from the Peruvian tradition complemented by British songs of peace and reconciliation will provide a background to the evening.

Speakers and performers include:
- Roberta Bacic (Chilean human rights lecturer, researcher and activist)
- John Crabtree (Latin America Centre, St Anthony's College, Oxford)
- The Andean music group, Sangre Andina
- Sue Gilmurray (singer-songwriter)
- Fernando Cari (Peruvian painter)

At 6 pm on 12th March 2007 at St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and
Peace, Bishopsgate, London EC2N 4AG
Nearest tube: Liverpool Street
Location: Just south of the junction between Bishopsgate and Camomile St.
For futher information contact MAW on 01908 510642 or Peru Support Group (020 7354 9825)

occupation of carbon neutral company

2007-03-03T16:56:00.000Z

Dear tide-turners,

I thought the description of occupying the carbon neutral company's offices was highly interesting...playing the blues on the harmonica? messing around with stressballs? what on earth did they think they were doing? The fact that the employees didn't seem to get the point that a protest was going on, and then the police turned up and left without even bothering to evict them indicates to me that they were not protesting effectively: they might have done better to go and make some cogent and cutting-edge points about the uselessness of carbon offsetting at the house of commons after all.

On Feb 10th I had interesting discussions about what non-violent protest actually achieves: some are cynical. I am not cynical and I continue to go on demos and support various protests because I think at the very least there is a healthy, spirited, communal support-building and consensus-building function to public demonstrations. They build common strength of feeling and conviction among those of us who participate, and this is useful in the strengthening effects it has on the rest of our lives and the conversations we have with others and the way we can change our lives. If they pass vital messages about public opinion to policy-makers, then that's great, but it's probably marginal and secondary.

So, to what extent might the three harmonica-players who occupied the carbon neutral company have strengthened consensus and support among others? the other two of them, perhaps. Did they influence policy-makers? not a sausage, I suspect. Did they make a valid point? Yes, perhaps, via indymedia and email lists. To those who already agree, such as myself.

Tideturners, your thoughts? Are they brilliant political satirists? Useless funsters? Is their protest still a protest because they reckon it was, while others clearly didn't give a toss? Is the internet replacing the need for 'real' direct action on the grounds that news travels better on the internet and makes more people think?

I can think of a better protest: send a polite jiffy bag full of coal to the next person who tells you proudly that they offset their weekend break in wherever...

Zaria

Activists occupy Carbon Neutral Company

2007-03-02T10:57:00.000Z

‘Six Go Searching for the Heart of the Carbon Neutral Con’ – what happened when a small group of intrepid aficionados of climate justice occupied the Carbon Neutral Company offices, London, 21.2.07

A good day was had by those three of us who walked into the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) at 9.30am, deciding to dispense with duplicity and say we were from London Rising Tide. Having signed in, we decided one of the two boardrooms in the spanky new ‘King’s Cross is very up-and-coming-don’t you-know’ offices would do the trick, and quickly barricaded ourselves inside with the boardroom table and chairs. Actually it took a while for them to work out what we were actually doing – they might have wondered why we had moved the table and were drawing big words in felt pen on the flip chart paper, but that didn’t automatically spell out the words ‘office occupation’ to them. ‘Weird kindergarten types’ maybe, but ‘protest’, no.

The words eventually spelt out the slogan ‘Carbon “offset” = climate upset’, which we stuck to the windows facing down on the insanely busy street below, where our three friends below had a banner fiendishly bearing the exact same slogan, and were busy symbolically sweeping coal under carpet for a Swedish TV crew and anyone else who was intrigued.

Back upstairs, we spent the day drawing more big slogans (‘Carbon Neutral Con’ being one), ringing the press, playing the blues on the harmonica, throwing executive stressballs at eacho ther, talking over the issues, sleeping, and chatting to the CNC CEO who subsequently told employees that we had refused to talk to him, when in fact he had declined our invitation
of a reasoned discourse, albeit through the glass of our barricaded door.

Why is it that people like that always seem to think that the offer of a meeting in the boardroom where we get to sit with the grown-ups and maybe even eat some of their biscuits while outlining our concerns is going to result in anything other than yet more prevarication and empty greasy promises of a fruitful working relationship to come in the future? And why
would the world outside have any interest whatsoever in the news that yet another campaigning group has been coaxed in from the icy streets to join together in mutually beneficial partnership with another bunch of bemusing-statistic-spouting besuited lunatics who claim that markets are going to dig us out of the climate crisis. Phew. Short version: watch out if you get invited into the cosy offices of the dark forces, boys and girls, unless you want to end up on the boss’s knee.

When the police arrived, one asked with dark jocularity if the one of us who was locked on by the neck to the door-blockading-table had any life insurance. But then they went away having said it was unlawful but not illegal and that it was a civil matter, leaving us to enjoy the tranquil drowse-making summer sunshine until we decided to make a move at 4.15pm,
while the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Climate Change, run by the CNC, to which we had declined the opportunity to make a presentation, was still in session, with the Women’s Institute taking our place alongside Friends of the Earth and Stop Climate Chaos. (*)

We had been harbouring a stray piece of coal all day, and so, once we had tidied up after ourselves and pulled the table from the door, we presented it to the (extremely helpful) receptionist along with a note reading ‘Offset this (please)’. Actually, on reflection I think it should have read ‘Offset this (cannot be done)’ or somesuch similar. But never mind, we were free, or free at least after I had scampered to the open plan office and said to the underwhelmed assembled ‘Goodbye…and by the way, please find a better way to save the planet, because this method ain’t working’. At least I hope that’s what I said.

We'd been discussing through the day about what effect our action might have been having on the employees working in their open-pan office behind one of our boardroom walls. The indications that we could glean were that we had upset them mightily, and who wouldn't be upset by a group of outsiders wandering in with a message that what the company is doing is doing the opposite of helping the climate heal. We tried to make it clear that our critique was
of the company - not to mention capitalism itself - but still it can't be a hundred laughs to have us lot saying that the morality of offsetting is deeply flawed.

And then, with an apology to the man at the desk who we signed in with, (he seemed relaxed about it, fortunately,) we really were free. Free to enjoy the bourgeois delights of this teeming metropolis, free to accept a free lobotomy (sorry, I mean ‘London Lite’) from an overworked giver-outer chasing a quota, free to enjoy a rush-inspiring throwaway-cupped smoothie
in a caff down the street, free to trundle home to a warm house and immediate access to the wonders of the www. Yes, free to acknowledge how bedded-in we are to this system built on exploitation and injustice, topped off with a wholesome-looking but totally toxic layer of bullshit and greenwash. Hypocrites? Probably. In that case, how about ‘hypocrites who helped strip away that toxic layer just for a millisecond and let some real daylight flood into the debate’? Definitely. And I feel really good about that.

(* This was our response: ‘We're declining the invitation to address the
meeting, since we believe in the creation of mass movements striving for
systemic social and ecological change. Engaging with the committee would
be a distraction from that, as it's not in the interests of either
Parliament or private companies to call for - or work for - such change.
Also, we are deeply sceptical about the apparent privatisation of the
committee process, especially when the company concerned is profiting
handsomely from the sale to the public of the phony solution that is the
carbon offset.’)

The Coalman

--
London Rising Tide,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES; Tel: 07708 794665
www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk
Shell is the new sponsor of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award.
Send your photos and artworks in to our 'Shell's Wild Lie'
counter-exhibition: www.artnotoil.org.uk/gallery/v/Shell &
www.shelloiledwildlife.org.uk

See also the Camp for Climate Action site: www.climatecamp.org.uk
as well as Climate Indymedia: www.climateimc.org

books of games for facilitators and trainers

2007-03-01T17:13:00.000Z

House of Games - Chris Johnston, Nick Hern Books. ISBN 1854599054. From the perspective of theatre and impro.

The Gamesters handbook 1,2&3 - Donna Brandes and John Norris, Stanley Thomas Publisher. ISBN 074873506. Lots of games - cooperative, about learning, about community etc

Games for actors and non-actors - Augusto Boal, Routledge. ISBN 0415267080. Brazilian founder of Forum Theatre. Many many activities and a practice philosophy in one book.

Theatre games for the classroom - Viola Spolin, Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0810140047. What it says on the label. And how to connect/sequence them.

Participatory Workshops - Robert Chambers, Earthscan. ISBN 1853838632. Activities across the spectrum of a participative process and some games.

Reflections on Non-Violent Power

2007-02-16T18:43:00.000Z

Been on a workshop today about rank and privilege which I think connects to what we were exploring last Saturday.

Basic idea can be summarised as - we have rank and privilege because of social rank (gender, race, class etc), our positional rank (job, profession etc) and our psychological rank (how well we feel supported internally).

Rank is also dependent on context - eg as a newcomer to a group you'll have less rank (from one perspective) than others who have been in the group for a while.

The connection to conflict and NV, is that if rank is not brought to awareness (both of power over, power under) then it makes it harder to resolve conflicts.

It all is more complex than this, but suggest you look at Arlene and John-Claude Audergon's website for direction to more on this, as their the people who led the workshop. And much of this thinking (and ways to explore) are contained in the book, Sitting in the Fire by Arnold Mindell.

Human rights in Papua: SOAS Thursday 22 Feb

2007-02-16T09:11:00.000Z

Hello tide turners - i would like to invite you to a talk i am organising with Peace Brigades international on Thurs 22nd 7pm at SOAS university, just around the corner from friends house, Details below.......
hope to see some of you there, Luke
(and same from Kathryn, as she will be translating)

A unique chance to hear directly from a Papuan human rights defender
SOAS Russel Square, Room G52
Thursday 22nd February 7-9pm

Key Speakers include
Peneas Lokbere is a member of the Indonesian Legal and Human Rights Association and head of the community of survivors of the Abepura case of the 7th December 2000. On this day The police responded to an attack on a police station by rounding up and brutally beating 23. Within 24 hours 3 students had been killed and 100 people had been both beaten and tortured detained. The Abepura case of 2000 is the only human rights case to be brought to the Indonesian permanent court of Human Rights. However, the case was dismissed and nobody involved has been convicted. The survivors still struggle against this impunity and for justice.

Peneas Lokbere stated, "I hope truth will be revealed, and may justice [be] outpoured to people who are right."

Peace Brigades International (PBI) provides accompaniment to Peneas Lokbere. PBI is an international organisation that provides non violent protective accompaniment to human rights defenders. PBI’s international presence is backed up by a network of support from MPs, organisations and individuals.

Don’t miss our on this rare opportunity! For more details and confirmation of a place contact
Lani Parker on 020 7 2815370 or Luke Tanner 07866861631

learning to turn the tide

2007-02-12T22:33:00.000Z

This blog is born of a series of workshops in non-violence change, run by Turning the Tide once a month throughout 2007. The authors are all participants of these workshops.