Class Dispatch to David
From: Liam & Nick
February 7, 2024
Notes on Tracy’s presentation on Ecoactivism:
Baz Kershaw
- Welfare State International (1970s-80s)
- Locally focused
- Used puppetry, and large objects (ships, skyscrapers).
- The landscape became a backdrop
- Performances that resembled events/festivals more than plays.
Activism’s recombinant formats:
- Word-based:
- Poster, placarding
- Letter-writing
- Slogans, songs
- Collective action:
- Meetings
- Public rallies
- Riots
- Blockades, boycotts
- Occupations
- Lobbying, electioneering, pledges campaigns.
- Creativity
- Creativity taps into morality
- Post-humanism
- Focus on the perspective of the non-human in the Anthropocene
- Creation of interpretive frame to filter experience.
- Filters the experience to those who have forgotten.
- Resource Mobilization
- Resources could be people/songs, not just materials
- Condensing symbols & moral shocks
- If there is not a shock, then the message stagnates.
Recent developments
- technology/social media
- Generally considered no more effective than other techniques.
Examples
- Salt March in India 1930
- Protesting the prohibitive tax on Salt by the British government
- Trail of Dreams 2010
- The Battle in Seattle 1999
- Protest activism in conflict with anarchists
- Virtual Streetcorners 2010
- Ultra-local; connecting disparate parts of the same city.
The key feature of activism is the taking of space.
- Enacting a right that is being denied.
- Using Techniques of Art
- Greensboro Sit-ins 1960
- Why Loiter? Campaign, Mumbai 2016
- Umbrella Revolution, Hong Kong 2014
- Estonia’s Singing Revolution 1991
- Built community & a sense of national pride
- French Farmers 2024
- Bringing the conflict to the people who may have forgotten about them.
Marine conservationist activism
- Motif: A hugging a seal
- Protest: sealing quotas in commercial sealing
- Using a human body as a stand-in for the post-humanist subject
- Ex. Bloody seal, bloody whale
Vignettes of Protest
Discussion on the Vignette Activity
- Carpool, difficult to measure its effectiveness
- Conceivability; the ability to purchase everything
- Timeline: how long does one have
- Theory of change
- “Make like a tree and leaf”: very visible
- Common pitfall: making a statement, but no outcome
- Humor invites engagement, guilt shuts people out.
- Power Mapping
- Protest’s proximity to power.
- Points of Intervention
- Subversion of social norms: transgressive
- Limitations of playing the public vs direct petition.
- Put on a lot of different places.
- Action Star
- Framing the protest in time, place, and conflict helps draw spectators in.
- A clear target is necessary.
- Battle of the Story
- Foreshadowing what is to come
- What assumptions are made about the conflict and the desires of the public?
Debate Activity:
Group A: Clicktivism will save the world
- Reduce the cost of protest
- Decentralizes ecoactivism
- The local is now international
- Gives access to news when people only have access to social media
- Makes the common person the reporters
streamlines the protest process & removes barriers to entry. - Ex. BLM, Arab Spring
- Critiques:
- Social media is not taking away resources
- “Mouse in hand, power at your fingertips”
- When people are not allowed to be in person, the internet allows for protest.
Group B: The Revolution will not be on the internet
- Access to internet
- Things can only happen on a global scale
- Grassroots protests are not effective
- “Joe Biden does not see your tweets”
- Face to face is more impactful than the anonymity of the internet.
- Internet activism exists for its own sake
- Virtue signaling.
- The internet does not lead to actual change
- Social media is a tool for in-person activism
- Social media inconveniences no one.
