From Decline To Rebirth – America The Possible

This is a shameless repost of Gus Speth’s piece for Orion Magazine. It’s a manifesto for systemic change, and the most comprehensible and readable one I’ve seen for a while. This is part 1, part 2 is coming out in May/June.

LIKE YOU AND OTHER AMERICANS, I love my country, its wonderful people, its boundless energy, its creativity in so many fields, its natural beauty, its many gifts to the world, and the freedom it has given us to express ourselves. So we should all be angry, profoundly angry, when we consider what has happened to our country and what that neglect could mean for our children and grandchildren.

How can we gauge what has happened to America in the past few decades and where we stand today? One way is to look at how America now compares with other countries in key areas. The group of twenty advanced democracies—the major countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, the Nordic countries, Canada, and others—can be thought of as our peer nations. Here’s what we see when we look at these countries. To our great shame, America now has:

• the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
• the greatest inequality of incomes;
• the lowest social mobility;
• the lowest score on the UN’s index of “material well-being of children”;
• the worst score on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index;
• the highest expenditure on health care as a percentage of GDP, yet all this money accompanied by the highest infant mortality rate, the highest prevalence of mental health problems, the highest obesity rate, the highest percentage of people going without health care due to cost, the highest consumption of antidepressants per capita, and the shortest life expectancy at birth;
• the next-to-lowest score for student performance in math and middling performance in science and reading;
• the highest homicide rate;
• the largest prison population in absolute terms and per capita;
• the highest carbon dioxide emissions and the highest water consumption per capita;
• the lowest score on Yale’s Environmental Performance Index (except for Belgium) and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Denmark);
• the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of national income (except for Japan and Italy);
• the highest military spending both in total and as a percentage of GDP; and
• the largest international arms sales.

Our politicians are constantly invoking America’s superiority and exceptionalism. True, the data is piling up to confirm that we’re Number One, but in exactly the way we don’t want to be—at the bottom.

Link Loving 04.03.12

• Can we have more of this please? King Hokum (contemporary Australian musician), who sings the old-school blues about unemployment.
• How to overcome perfectionism? Mindtools. h/t Rhizome.
• Seth Godin is writing here about LOLcats and slacklining – but he may as well be describing movement-growth strategy.
• How austerity is destroying Greek society: a report from Athens. Abi Ramanan.
• If you need a boost of hope – have a look what the Transition movement has been up to in February. Rob Hopkins.
• Sudanese activists are finding inspiration in their revolution of 1964. Isma’il Kushkush.
• I wish more people were aware of this – how to ask a good question at a public event.

Progressive Media Commentators – Time To Get Our Shit Together

I am sick of it – sick of progressives being punched and suckered on national broadcast debates.

I know that winning a media-battle is not how we’re going build a sustainable and just society – but to lose the debate so often on air surely undermines all the work we’re doing outside of the radio/TV studio.

Illustrative Story

I’m on the train to Oxford listening to ‘All Things Considered’, a BBC Wales talk-show about religion. This week, it’s a discussion about food banks and poverty – a perfect piece of proof for how serious the cuts and unemployment levels are. The first ten minutes features a sympathetic case study visit to a food bank in Bridgend followed by an interview with someone from the Trussell Trust (funders of community projects tacking poverty). Up next, a conversation between Neil Cooper from Church Action On Poverty and Colin Bloom from the Conservative Christian Fellowship, who gives a masterclass in how to win the debate. Some choice quotes with analysis below –

“We all have to work together (not those with most should help most) to make sure that the most vulnerable….(there are deserving and undeserving poor people – and if you don’t fit my criteria, you don’t get help) are helped (palliative, rather than dealing with root cause).”

“I work in Westminster (personal, open, friendly), I walk up Victoria Street every day (clear image that you can recognise), and for as long as I can remember (this problem has always existed and therefore we can’t do anything about it) we have had rough sleepers sleeping in the city centers. Whether it’s massively increasing or not I don’t know (sew doubt), I certainly know that there are problems there and working very hard to address those (I am perfectly reasonable and want the right thing to happen).

“And actually we’ve now got the opportunity, because of the Localism Bill, because of the work that’s being done in the Coalition (political message of support), that we are now seeing the opportunities are opening up for churches and faith groups to really get involved to do the things that they always were doing – but perhaps did less of in the last few years because government promised more than it could deliver (government fails, churches succeed).”

My favourite moment from the show has to be when he manages to say the following – and nobody challenges him.

“We have allowed compassion to become nationalised.”

SERIOUSLY?! We’re going to let that fly?

Another car-crash example is this debate on Woman’s Hour between a Daily Mail columnist and a spokesperson from Netmums on whether parents are going hungry to feed their children. Same story. Depressing listening.

How We Can Do It Better

Let’s start with some principles that we know and love.

1. People do not connect with issues – people connect with people.
2. People connect with other people by recognising their shared values.
3. People share their values by telling stories that illustrate them (NB – NOT by saying ‘I have value X’, Mr Miliband.)

It is absolutely possible to be a powerful preogressive voice in the media. Some fantastic examples include Frances O’Grady from the TUC, Camila Batmanghelidjh from Kids Company and Shami Chakrabarti from Liberty. So what do they get right?

• Illustrative stories – what is happening?
• Clear analysis – why is this happening?
• Confident communication style – good humour, passion, gravitas, not allowing themselves to be interrupted/thrown off course by others
• Memorable memes and messages – nice turns of phrase, frames that resonate

Most NGO staff receive some sort of media training – but we need to up our game. How many simulated debates do we practice? How often do we use a real studio for this? How do we defend the strong media advocates when they get attached?

Request For Help

I’ve organised and hosted a couple of small attempts to build these skills in the past (media training + economics for activists workshop), but there is a lot more that we can do.

• Do you have access to radio/TV studios which could be used for training?

• Do you have contacts with emerging progressive leaders and spokespeople who will be stronger advocates because of some training?

• Are you, or do you know, someone who can give high-quality media training and simulate real-life situations?

• Do you have time and skills to manage and run something like this?

• Do you have some cash that could help make this all happen?

If the answer to any of those is yes – comment below or email me, caspertk[at]gmail.com.

It’s time to get our shit together.

Link Loving 03.03.12

• Activism for the end times: Mass actions or focused campaigns? George Lakey.
• Judith Wallerstein’s 25-year study of children of divorce – it’s not pretty.
• Rich people are more likely to steal lollies from children, study finds. ABC News.
• Air pollution is second biggest public health risk in Britain after smoking, and is linked to nearly 1 in 5 deaths a year in London. John Vidal.
• How to write winning research funding applications. Duncan Green.
• How leaders lose their luck. Great piece. Anthony K. Tjan.

Three Little Pigs And The News Industry

This is how you save the print industry. Fantastic.

I’ll never look at the story of the Three Little Pigs in the same way again.

Link Loving 02.03.12

• What a poor man’s innovation can teach a rich country. An Phung.
• The psychology of working with children on climate change. Ro Randall.
• Advice to younger self. Henry Rollins.
• The future of Occupy. Tim Gee.
• Intense lobbying by energy companies and government misinformation is creating genuine uncertainty about who has overall control over our energy policy. Catherine Mitchell.
• How to delete your browsing history before Google sells it on.

Still Searching For That

“Our century is probably more religious than any other. How could it fail to be, with such problems to be solved?

The only trouble is that it has not yet found a God it can adore.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Philosopher

h/t Alex Evans

Link Loving 01.03.12

• Stop Stealing Dreams. Seriously cool initiative on education.
• John Romano on Niall Ferguson‘s new book ‘Civilisation’.
• How the domestic workers movement in the US is capitalising on ‘The Help’. ‘Ilyse Hogue.
• Intelligent campaign measuring. Tom Baker is on it.
• How to achieve dignity in debt. What Works.
• Syrians are collaboratively deciding what street names will be re-named post-Assad. Mary Elizabeth King.

Well, This Is Awkward

Remember that post about not using the image of megaphones in campaigns?

This newsletter from Practical Action just landed in my inbox.

The subject line read: 'We need loud people!'

#Awkard

Move Your Money

Today is the first day of the Move Your Money campaign. I’m going to move my money on the 23rd of March because I’m tired of upholding a system that exploits the poorest and invests in weapons and fossil fuels instead of communities and renewables.

The campaign is calling for all of us to move our money from the five big banking groups into local, mutual and ethical alternatives. There is a large network of Credit Unions, Building Societies, Ethical Banks and Community Development Finance Institutions in this country that keep our money safe, so plenty of options to choose from.

“Change and progress are preceded by action, individual and collective, and local banking systems thrive when we support them. Since the financial crisis the alternative sector has grown considerably. Several ethical banks have seen their balance sheets double, and savings in credit unions increased by 300% over the last decade. In the US, 10 million people have moved to local financial institutions since 2010.

Move Your Money isn’t about ‘bringing down’ the big banks (they can do that just fine by themselves, thank you). This is about strengthening the alternatives and creating a more diverse system that works in the interest of wider society”

Danni Paffard, Move Your Money organiser