Category: Social movements

Very interesting blog post from Aaron Peters of Novara Media: This short piece intends to outline what kinds of organisation are optimal in this context and how they would emphasize the strengthening and broadening of a currently weak social movement ‘base’. Examples of currently existing organisations that perform similar roles will be given. This is…

I was pleased to read these blogs about organising in Turkey. A few quotes sum up what I liked: #Solidarity – a letter: What pleasantly surprises me is that the Turks are not repeating the errors of the Spanish indignados or the Occupy movement. In almost all of the Spanish occupations, decisions were taken by…

This post was written following the loss of an interview recording and the notes on that interview, so contains no direct quotes and I no longer know all the names. It still seemed an interesting subject so I have written a quick summary. I met a couple of campesinos from Isnos, Huila, in the nearby…

Something that is noticeable about Colombian social and political organisations on the left is that they involve themselves in ‘processes’. This includes processes with each other, meaning that they establish ways to work together for common ends. I have just been to the Regional Congress for Peace, a forum to feed into the national Congress…

I asked someone else I met in a temporary political organising space about the unsustainability of political organising that I had noticed.  I won’t comment on much but while reading it I was struck by the fact that there seems to be no pool of knowledge for long term organising that we can trust. Political…

This is the second part of a discussion I had with Marc Hudson, co-editor of Manchester Climate Monthly and person who has been involved in political activism – mostly of the environmental persuasion – for a few years. Here we talk about whether political organisations are really looking for a broad membership, and the lack…

This is the first part of a discussion I had with one Marc Hudson, co-editor of Manchester Climate Monthly and person who has been involved in political activism – mostly of the environmental persuasion – for a few years. I asked him about the ups and downs of political activity and why he thought they…

As part of my series of posts about the sustainability of political movements in the UK I recently interviewed an activist who took part in the 90s/00s anti-globalisation protests and who is still involved in politics. This person is still politically active so I wanted to discuss the upswings and downswings of political momentum in…

Someone put me in touch with the person behind this excellent Ending Activism blog. I am working my way through it at the moment – it has some interviews with people about why they got involved in activism and why they left. I think what is rarely stated in the interview answers, but that is…