How does one start a social movement?

"If one wishes to know love, one must live love, in action.”

-Leo Buscaglia

How does one start a social movement?  How does a group of people turn an idea into a vision, and then transform that vision into a new reality?  How does social change occur?  What creates a culture?

To facilitate large-scale systems change, we need to address these questions.  We need to understand that climate change is inherently linked to oppression, violence, and destruction.  We need to show that inequitable development is by definition unsustainable, for it will ultimately lead to social strife and bring about its undoing.  We need to realize that providing health care, jobs, education, and security are not separate goals, but are all essential in bringing about social welfare.  We need to understand that happiness is not driven by money or material wealth but by the relationships and communities in which we embed ourselves.

Ultimately, I view climate change as just one symptom of an even larger problem: an unsustainable culture.  Western culture dictates consumption at levels far greater than what brings about true social benefits.  American culture reveres violence and spews misogyny through its advertisements and language.  Our global culture claims to respect the dignity and goodness of all human life, but still spreads hatred between persons of different skin color, religion, language, class, age, or sexual orientation.  Our culture is immature, wasteful, destructive, and unfulfilling.  Perhaps that worst part of this culture is that it does not even bring happiness; Americans are more unhappy now than they were in 1950, even with our recently accumulated treasure trove of material possessions.

What does this mean for me, a youth coming of age in this second decade of the 21^st century?  What does it mean to be immersed in an unsustainable culture?  What does it mean to live in a world that does not actively include love?

As I ponder these questions, I reflect that human society has achieved remarkable progress since the dawn of civilization.  Roughly ten millennia have passed since humankind began to create permanent agricultural settlements; two millennia have passed since the birth of a boy deemed a savior; five centuries have passed since the advent of the printing press and the discovery of the “new” world; two centuries have passes since the invention of the steam engine; one century has passed since the birth of the modern automobile; fifty years have passed since our ascent into space; thirty years have passed since the creation of the personal computer; twenty years have passed since the beginnings of the internet; thirteen years have passed since the founding of Google; six years have passed since Facebook went public; and four years have passed since the origins of the iPhone.  Human society has literally accelerated the development of creativity and communication exponentially over the past ten thousand years.

But this acceleration of abilities is also our undoing.  Every physical system has limits, largely dictated by the laws of thermodynamics.  Our species’ incredible growth, both in sheer numbers and in capabilities, is straining the planet’s support systems in a way that has never been seen before.  And no one knows the breaking point.  If only one ecosystem in the biosphere fails, the consequences could ripple around the world.  If the climate system reaches a tipping point, after a tumultuous period Earth could resume  in a new stable global climate.  And with this dramatic shift in climate, our civilization would likely not survive.

There is another way.  One year has passed since the genesis of “Four Years. Go,” an alternative path forward.  “Four Years. Go” is a new vision, set on shifting the consciousness of the world towards a just, thriving, and sustainable future.  By utilizing the incredible power of connections humanity has developed through social network capabilities, “Four Years. Go” hopes to shift the goal of global society from profit and short term gain towards a peaceful, just, sustainable, and thriving world.

This task of shifting the path of human society is perhaps the most important challenge in our history.  We have faced threats before, but nothing of this magnitude.  If we fail to change our culture, I believe civilization is destined to collapse.  But if we overcome and elevate ourselves to higher ways of living, we will not only persevere but will thrive.  If we are open to the possibilities, perhaps “Four Years. Go” can help our species to evolve.

So how does one start a social movement?  Can a group come together to create revolutionary change?  Can a campus, a community, and a nation be completely transformed in four years?  History shows that the chances are slim, but rapid social and cultural transformation has occurred before.  Europe transitioned from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment in thirty years during the Renaissance.  Who is to say that a modern Renaissance is not underway?  Perhaps we are already moving towards a better way of life.

I believe that one starts a social movement by living life to its fullest potential.  And so, I now dedicate myself to living differently, challenging the destructive norms of society, and encouraging others to embrace their own potential.  I will learn from the wise and shun the wicked.  I will best the best I can be, for my own sake.  I will stay open to the possibilities of life.

I wish to know love, so I must live love, in action.

A Repost of the Declaration from the US Social Forum’s Ecojustice People’s Movement Assembly

I recently attended Sprog, an environmental organizing camp hosted by the Sierra Student Coalition.  During the week, I had the chance to have many incredible conversations with my fellow Sproggers.  We talked about everything from trivial matters like Lady Gaga and the best teams in the World Cup to organizing strategies and the meaning of life.  But something that stands out in mind is the conversations I had about different political philosophies.

To say that Sprog was filled with liberals would be an understatement; there was a decidedly anti-capitalist mindset at the camp.  I share much of this anti-capitalist sentiment, as our current version of capitalism works only through the economic exploitation of people and the extraction and degradation of natural resources.  Yet I wonder whether socialism or any other non-capitalist economic system could ever take root in America.  When even moderate financial reform has difficulty passing after the financial collapse of 2008, it is difficult to imagine our country ever moving significantly to the left.

However, that doesn't mean that people aren't trying.  At the recent US Social Forum, the left came together around the theme of "Another World is Possible.  Another US is Necessary."  One thing that emerged from the USSF was a new declaration for the the Ecojustice People's Movement Assembly.  The complete text of this declaration, courtesy of It's Getting Hot in Here, is posted below:

Declaration from the US Social Forum’s Ecojustice People’s Movement Assembly

As participants from diverse social movements throughout North America responding to the ecological, economic and social crisis created by corporate-controlled industrial production and exploitation of land, water, soil, air, work and life; we honor the struggles and are inspired by the resiliency of the people of Detroit. Detroit has epitomized the inevitable boom and bust cycles and class, race and gender oppression that Capitalism inflicts on communities; however this city has also come to represent a beacon of hope for communities across the US.

Detroit is a window into the future. Through this window we see an inspiring site of deeply grassroots and living visions of a just and democratic community. Community resistance to corporate polluters in Detroit, including oil refineries, coal power plants and the world’s largest waste incinerator, continue to hold the frontline against the destruction of the planet. Meanwhile resistance to such corporatization strategies such as predatory lending, water privatization, prisons and police brutality are matched with equally powerful models of resilience; such as community gardens, cooperative economics, freedom schools and transformative justice. Detroit can be a model of the Just Transition to sustainable communities that we require; one in which exploitive jobs that cause ecological devastation and compromised health are replaced with meaningful work in our own interests; restoring our labor and our resources to the web of life.

In standing with the people of Detroit today, we stand in solidarity with other frontline communities around North America and the World. As we gather here at this US Social Forum, in solidarity with protestors at the G20 summit in Toronto, estimates of the oil gushing from a gaping wound inflicted on the Earth’s sea floor by BP in the Gulf of Mexico continue to escalate—now possibly over 1 million gallons per day. Gulf Coast communities are forced to survive the fossil fuel economy’s devastating effects. From Indigenous communities on the frontlines of tar sands oil extraction in Canada to Laotian, Latino and African American communities fighting Chevron’s refineries in Richmond, California to poor White communities in Appalachia fighting mountaintop removal coal mining and others fighting hydro-fracking for natural gas extraction – we stand in solidarity with the people of the Gulf Coast in reclaiming control over our land, air, water, and livelihoods.

We call for an end to all climate pollution and false corporate solutions! And we call for the rights of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina to return, to reconstruction of communities, and to restoration of healthy wetlands. So many of us, migrants – old and new – were stolen or forcibly displaced by socio-economic forces, ecological impacts, or imperialist wars to leave our homelands and migrate to North America while the Indigenous Peoples of this land were systematically massacred. Immigrant communities are facing increasing criminalization as manifested by SB 1070 in Arizona, police-ICE collaboration around the U.S., and increased border militarization, as well as exploitation by unscrupulous employers. Immigrant communities are frontline communities, both in our home countries and in the US and Canada, who face devastating ecological adversities from historic and future effects of climate destabilization.

We reaffirm the outcomes of the 2010 People’s World Conference on Climate Change’s Climate Migrants Work Group, especially the demand to the right to free movement, the right to home, and the right to not be displaced by force. We condemn legislation that further criminalizes immigrants without addressing the root causes of climate change, as well as anti-immigrant forces who attempt to “green the hate” through racism and fear. We demand legislation and government action that redresses the injustices against displaced communities and addresses the ecological conditions faced by immigrants.

We support the process, conclusions and the call for North American based social movements to embrace the Cochabamba People’s Accord and the Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth reached by social movements, indigenous peoples and international civil society at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Cochabamba, Bolivia in April 2010. We join the global people’s movement for Mother Earth demanding that North American federal governments and the United Nations climate change negotiations be inclusive, transparent, and equitable, and incorporate the proposals presented by the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in order to find real solutions to the climate crisis and to save humanity and our Mother Earth, as we know it.

We condemn and reject the US and Canadian governments’ moves to undermine and threaten the international climate negotiation process including the Copenhagen Accord that would allow a global temperature rise of 2 degrees or more and endanger all living species. We support the conclusion that only by “living well,” in harmony with each other and with Mother Earth, rather than “living better,” based on an economic system of unlimited growth, dominance and exploitation, will the people of this planet not only survive but thrive.

Therefore, in alignment with the international Climate Justice movement, and all peoples’ struggles for freedom, self-determination, and dignity, we demand and will fight for:

1) Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground. We call for a moratorium on all new oil, gas, coal and tar sands exploration as a first step in the phase out of fossil fuels. No drilling, digging, damming, chopping, burning, on bombing. We must phase out fossil fuels, mining, mega-dams, agro-fuels, waste incineration, and nuclear energy. All these resource-intensive energy systems compromise the life-support systems of communities and Mother Earth herself. Furthermore, we – both frontline communities and workers – will guide the just transition towards dismantling climate polluting industries and ending the corporate control of our economies.

2) An End to False Solutions. No more business as usual— no commodification of atmospheric space or people’s rights through carbon markets, carbon offsets, or offsets associated with the protection of Indigenous People’s lands, agriculture and forests such as REDD program. We reject “clean” coal, natural gas, nuclear power, biomass and waste incineration, landfill gas to energy, geo-engineering, industrial agro-fuels, and all other corporate techno-fixes which fail to address the root causes and deepen existing inequalities and environmental problems.

3) Real and Effective Solutions. Our communities will win back control of our land, food, water, labor, energy, and decision-making. We will fight for sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples. We demand investment in infrastructure for participatory budgeting, public transportation, local food systems, local watershed and wetlands management, worker cooperative business development, and local economies that take care of the places we live in.

4. Rapid Reductions and Reparations for Ecological Debt. We shall hold responsible the governments of all industrialized “developed” nations and the corporations that control them. We demand that North American federal governments move towards a zero emission economy by 2050 and honor its responsibility for both local and global climate and ecological debt.

5) Respect the Cochabamba Protocol and the Rights of Mother Earth. We call on the North American federal governments and all governments engaged in the UN to incorporate proposals from the Cochabamba Protocol and to adopt and implement the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.

6) Transformation, not Criminalization and Militarization. We reject government responses that criminalize Black, Arab, immigrant, and other communities in North American and around the world as manifested through SB 1070 in Arizona, police-ICE collaboration and raids, increased border militarization, Fortress Europe, the E.U. Directive and many other such inhumane and unjust policies. We demand full employment in the roles we need to transform our communities—healers, counselors, mediators, facilitators, organizers, bus drivers, bike mechanics, deconstruction and reconstruction workers, (zero) waste workers, and more.

Today, we call on our North American social movements unite with clarity that the root causes of joblessness and the housing crisis in our cities; the toxic contamination of our air, water, soil and climate, and ecosystems; and the displacement and criminalization of our communities are the same. These root causes—capitalism, imperialism, and the systems of oppression that uphold them– are the same root causes that put the earth’s ability to sustain human life in peril. We are forging a new movement of movements in which grassroots groups in frontline communities provide key leadership for a just resolve to our global crisis, working in concert with environmentalists, policy advocates, artists, healers, and more.

We call our movements to action on the following:

- Stand with the people of Detroit for the Saturday action at the Covanta Waste Incinerator and ongoing actions against local polluting corporations such as Marathon and DTE.

– Stand with the people of Arizona against SB1070, the militarization of the borders, and other repressive enforcement measures, on July 29th as we mobilize for Cancun.

- Coordinated actions in solidarity with Gulf Coast residents on August 29th in commemoration of the 5th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

• Demand federal recognition of sovereignty of United Houma Nation.
• Creative actions around the country in protest of BP, Chevron and other dirty fuels industries.
• Demand the protection and restoration of wetlands, rights of return and reconstruction for Gulf Coast residents.

- Support Appalachia Rising, a mass mobilization to abolish mountaintop removal and all strip mining on September 27 in Washington, DC

- Strategize and mobilize locally across North America to bring our power to bear on the UNFCCC’s COP 16 in Cancun November 29 – December 10.