I want to give a warning shot to anti-oppression trainers and activists. My bottom line is this: we need to stop applying theory onto people’s experiences, wielding it like a weapon to describe what we believe whether we actually see it in a room or not. It’s not smart organising, creates intense backlash, and shrinks – not grows – our movements.
An organiser recently shared with me an example of what I’m talking about.
He was working in a union that represents workers at a…
I don't like it when things get ascetic. Enjoying ourselves has potential for liberating us. My general philosophy is: pleasure is a good thing. In our affinity group we have made a commitment to enjoying ourselves. We realised that a lot of our motivational energy comes from guilt. That got us thinking what other motivations we could discover. Enjoying ourselves is a vehicle that will be more exciting and appeal to other people.
There is a lot about pleasure that is to with class and…
In the last few decades, one of the major phenomena occurring on the global scale has been the rise of China. In 1978, the country opened to the outside world after nearly 30 years of almost non-existent contact with what lay outside its borders. Since then, China has grown incredibly, in economic terms, and in terms of the global political balance of power. In little more than 30 years, China has become the second largest economy of the world, and a major economic partner for most countries…
In 2003 the UK and US invaded Iraq without a UN resolution. This is common knowledge to anyone who was old enough to pay attention to the news at the time and the following years. Many in my generation also attended the anti-war marches that were organised not only in Britain but across the world, although the London march, attracting between one and two million people according to different estimates, was clearly the largest and attracted the most attention.
What may not be as common…
For my parents, people who go to court are people who have done something wrong. Even when they know you, they are not going to change their mind. They may think “my daughter is not a bad person”, but they have stereotypes. And they will worry because I am in another country. Maybe they think I don’t know what I am doing, because my brother is police and they listen to him everyday.
But because I travel, then it changes my perspective. I realise that the law…
The workshop focussed on naming and exploring many of the dynamics that so often go unspoken and unprocessed in groups.
I was part of the mainstream of the group – I come from a grassroots ‘activist’ culture, I’ve been to university, I’m from the UK, I’m white. Being part of the group’s mainstream meant I was one of the people who had the power to make the subtle decision of what behaviours and attitudes were acceptable in the space; essentially, I helped define…
Peace News Summer Camp:
Jameela singing in the evening
This year’s Peace News Summer Camp (25-29 July) is something unusual in British peace movement terms; it’s a major event that has been put into the hands of activists of colour – people whose heritage is from the Global South (Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East). Beyond the peace movement, it’s hard to think of any major, regular activist event in the UK that has been mainly…
For the last two years, there has been a small group of us rebuilding Faslane Peace Camp as a community of anti-nuclear action.
We came together with a shared vision that if we maintain the camp as a safe, alcohol- and drug-free space with regular actions and campaigning, we could create a strong, autonomous community active in the fight against Trident and the militarisation of the west coast of Scotland.
Part of our vision has been achieved in making the…
Instead of holding a ‘death party’ (there were many around the country, including one in Trafalgar Square initiated by Class War, and several in former coal-mining villages), Alex Higgins and Tasha Harrison focused attention on those who lost out during the Thatcher era and invited people to donate to important causes. These included: Stonewall (the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity), Shelter (the housing and homelessness charity), the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation and the Child…
Ever since Peace News Summer camp 2012 I had been hankering after getting up to visit Faslane Peace camp, in fact to be totally honest I had wanted to visit and support the peace camp since I heard about it many years previously, and had driven past it during the Faslane365 year of actions when we did an action.
Anyway, with the backing of…
I do find that quite a lot of people think that to ‘get back to nature’ we should spend our time wallowing in mud. The practical problems of that [anti-roads] camp in Combe Haven [East Sussex]…. I’m quite glad I only turned up the day before the evictions happened, otherwise I would have had to spend days living in all that mud.
The thing I enjoyed most about being in a tree for three days [during the evictions] was being out of the mud for three days.…
Street choirs Photo: Ieuan Ellis
The Institute
On 23 March in the Morlan Centre, Aberystwyth, there will be a conference of the ongoing campaign for setting up a Wales Peace Institute, ‘Academi Heddwch Cymru’. Speakers will include Jill Evans MEP, Dr Robin Gwyndaf (vice-president of the Fellowship of Reconciliation) and professor Jenny Pearce of the department of peace studies in Bradford University.
In October 2009, a…
After a huge backlash, including 64,000 people signing a critical petition, EDF Energy, the transnational power company, announced on 13 March that it would stop pursuing 21 climate activists for £5m. EDF had claimed that it lost this amount as a result of No Dash for Gas’s week-long occupation of two chimneys at the West Burton gas-fired power station last October (see PN 2552-53 and 2555).
No Dash for Gas activist Danielle Paffard said: ‘A domineering company…
Saturday was the 25th anniversary of the March 16, 1988 gassing of the town of Halabja, which is north-east of Baghdad and whose backdrop is the mountains that make up part of the Iran-Iraq border. This attack killed upwards of 5000 civilians, mostly women and children, injuring thousands more as Iraqi planes dropped chemical bombs on the town.
Having previously visited the town in April 2009 I returned to Halabja on…
Patrolling the pavement of one of Mexico City’s “red-light” districts, a group of heavily made-up women wearing short skirts and high heels hold placards up to potential clients. These placards read – in words daubed on in menstrual blood – “I am your mirror”. Intermingling with clients and other passers-by, they reflect back their responses, whether puzzled facial expressions or cries of surprise.
This performance piece — put on in…
