Addiction Incorporated – How We Started Beating Big Tobacco

Another great film on the documentary circuit – Addiction Incorporated.

Link Loving 23.02.12

• Why engagism is more valuable than activism. Wael Ghonim.
• Balance yourself, not work and life. Annie McKee.
• Tax Justice: the next great American movement. Jeff Strabone.
• Tessy Britton is wonderful. Especially when she includes me in her top 50 list of radical change-makers!
• Want to know how Nike operates since screwing up their supply chain? The Guardian Sustainable Business Hub talks to Hannah Jones. Filmed by pals at Nice & Serious.
• Brilliant infographic on fracking.

Movement Strategy

I am shamelessly reposting the following from the Occupy St Louis site, which takes George Lakey’s advice from yesterday’s Link Loving and fleshes out the model. This is worth taking ten minutes to read and really think through.

Anybody want to spend a weekend mapping this out?

Create a strategy that:

• builds on a shared vision
• guides a largely decentralized network of groups
• guides which tactics make sense & which don’t
• combines non-violence with non-cooperation
• use humor in actions to connect with people
• validates alternatives
• supports the experience of freedom
• expands the skills of cooperation
• is a political and community strategy
• links short-run struggles to more far-ranging goals
• takes down the top/bottom power structure while simultaneously building a new one
• is a community strategy that links today’s creativity to the new society that lies beyond the power shift

Recognize:

• the power of strategy as a unifying force
• that strategy guides which tactics work, and which don’t
• strategy = power

Strategy is aimed at dismantling the top-down direction of the current power pyramid.

• identify the pillars that hold the pyramid in place
• weaken and finally break the compliance of those at the bottom of the pyramid

Five Stages–Strategy for a living revolution

These stages are simultaneously sequential and overlapping. Cyclical and linear.

1. Cultural preparation-consciousness raising
2. Organization building
3. Confrontation
4. Mass political and economic non-cooperation
5. Parallel Institutions

These stages occur organically with lots of overlap. Picture society as a cluster of sub-societies that respond to the following stages at different rates. Activists might go through the first several stages over and over again. We may end up more in cyclical motion than linear progression.

Where Is The Dark?

Who knew that a film on light pollution could raise so many big questions? The City Dark looks like a strong piece of documentary-making.

Link Loving 22.02.12

• Occupy the long view. George Lakey.
• Anticipating fear. Mary Elizabeth King.

Both these links are must-read. Both are also from the excellent Waging Nonviolence.

The Wayfinders

Anthropologist Wade Davis answers the question – ‘What happened to the Kingdom?’.

Link Loving 21.02.12

• Greeks are losing belief in the state. Paul Mason.
• It’s not that we want privacy, we don’t want to be surprised. Seth Godin.
• Is workfare slavery? Anne Archist.
• This is where the battle to stop a new generation of nuclear power stations will be won or lost.
• Looks like emerging democratic powers – India, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa – are parting ways with Russia and China on human rights issues. David Bosco.
• Thousands of Iranian democracy activists march silently through Tehran to urge regime to release political prisoners. Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Monavar Khalaj.

Great Campaign Video – Time To Change

I met up with some of the campaigns team at MIND last week who told me about the Time To Change campaign, which seeks to end mental health discrimination.

• stories, stories, stories
• skillful use of celebrities
• faces from across society’s spectrum – change is for everyone

Link Loving 20.02.12

• Want to speak at TED? Audition!
• Occupy the food system. Willie Nelson.
• Africa Unsound – fund and follow the new African sound.
• Britain’s 50 new radical ideas.
• Babies’ innate sense of justice. Science Daily.
• If you wanted to save capitalism, this is what you should do. Martin Wolf.

How Do You Get From Silos To The Promised Land Of Integration?

More great work from the Greenpeace Mobilisation Lab – read the full story here.