Action

There are 59 posts filed in Action (this is page 4 of 6).

Greg Wilson: Eleven Tips for Organizational Change “This was a proposal for the US Research Software Engineer Association 2023 conference, but was rejected…. I recognize that they are incomplete—in particular, that they are strongly biased toward what works in affluent, democratic societies—but if you’re tired of rolling heavy rocks up steep hills over and over again, maybe they will help.”

The subject of organizing in activism

Ken Smith recently wrote about how Rosa Parks was successful because “Rosa Parks had this skill set, these allies, this long-term strategy with her people . . .”. To me, this implies organization, or an organization with goals and plans to achieve those goals. In Jacobin Magazine, Clement Petitjohn writes that social movements in the US have typically relied on “professional organizers”, while in France this formal role is scarce. Quote: “This doesn’t mean that no organizing is done in France, of course. It just points to the fact that the various tasks associated with organizing work break down differently in France and in the United States.”. Petitjohn has a new book from Haymarket Press titled “Occupation: Organizer – A Critical History of Community Organizing in America”, based on research he did for his PhD at the University of Chicago. The Guardian newspaper has a recent article on the efforts of the French unions on protest the raising of the national retirement age.

For other looks at organizing, Joe Burns’ recent book Class Struggle Unionism “draws on years of labor activism and study of labor tradition … and outlines the key set of ideas common to class struggle unionism and shows how these ideas can create a more militant, democratic and fighting labor movement. “. Finally, for people trying to figure out where they might participate as an activist, Hillary Rettig’s book The Lifelong Activist “…is based on my many years’ experience as an activist and coach: work in which I learned which personal habits, thoughts and beliefs tend to help people succeed at ambitious goals, and which don’t.”. This book is now available free online.

Followup on “Tools next to tools” post by Ken Smith and activism

I really liked this post by Ken Smith on how FeedLand has a link-blogging feature (to help easily publish items of note) and his repeated call for activism and how tools can support activism. I thought that was great how Ken added a link to a “Get involved” page on how to be a part of how his NASA news product is put together.

My contribution to this discussion is to point back to two posts (Looking for tools for a citizen’s toolkit and Using non-violence techniques to achieve goals) where I collected some resources for training for activism. Ken, how can you and I get these into some of these things you are publishing? You talk about “Almost nobody’s helping us educate ourselves on activism that has a chance.” Well, let’s do something about that.

To start, I have just created a public OPML file with the links from these posts, it can be viewed here. If you have other links to add (or if other readers have links), I will add them. Then, you and I should continue to refer to this list whenever the subject of “how to learn how to be an activist” or “how to get involved” or FILL IN THE BLANK HERE comes up. How does that sound? Let me know what you think – over to you!

In the end, it is up to us

This phrase first came to my mind in a therapy session, but since then I have realized that it applies to every aspect of our lives. The first time it came to me, I wanted the therapist to “fix” something, but in that session, I saw that it was up to me and the others involved to solve the issue. The therapist could suggest options or encourage/facilitate dialog, but it was up to us to solve the problem in front of us.

In this current political, economic, social, and media atmosphere, there are many people (sometimes, it feels like EVERYONE) who are calling out problems wherever they turn. Many people are experiencing social and economic problems. Many people look to their local, state and federal governments for help, and those organizations/agencies/administrations all seek to address the problems of towns, cities, states, and the nation. Still – I believe that for almost all problems that occur in our lives, the first step to solving the problem starts with us. In the political realm, it may mean giving up the comfort of armchair quarterbacking the evening news and spending your time and money to support or fight against an issue or candidate. In the economic realm, it may mean having to seek other employment, education, or assistance. In the social realm, maybe the people you associate with are dragging you down, and a change is needed. For many, inaction is the default response to problems.

So, the next time a problem appears in front of you, ask yourself the question – is there something I can do about it? It may be that the answer is no, but the reflection is vitally important. I feel that all of us have agency to take some steps to improve our lives or where we live or our world. Indeed, in the end, it is up to all of us to work together to solve the problems that face us. 

Using non-violence techniques to achieve goals

In a recent post on Waging Nonviolence, organizer George Lakey related a story about use of non-violence training and techniques in a boycott of South African sport teams during the apartheid era. Through these trainings, anti-racism and anti-apartheid groups were able to work together to come up with a plan to stage de-centralized civil disobedience events. The New Zealand government could not handle this approach, and cancelled a tour by the South African rugby team.

With the upcoming mid-term elections, there may be problems resulting from election protestors and disrupters. These techniques may be of use in this troubled time. We will have to wait, watch, and perhaps take action to preserve our democracy through civil disobedience.

Upholding our democracy

The United States is having challenges in maintaining and upholding democracy. In Oregon, all of the candidates for governor have all called each other “extreme” for one reason or another. In many states, people who deny the results of the 2020 presidential election won their primaries and are candidates for high office. The Democracy Day journalism collaborative held an event in September 2022 to highlight issues and seek solutions. In a post on Waging Nonviolence, the group outlined seven ideas for coming together as partisans for democracy:

  • Look beyond electoral politics
  • Define “anti-democratic” behavior beyond partisan identities
  • Bridge the understanding of “anti-democratic” behavior to mobilize against it
  • Calling out toxic othering
  • Now is not the time for neutrality
  • Partisanship for democracy versus bipartisanship
  • A cross-ideological democracy movement is both necessary and possible

This post is excellent reading, with many links to supporting material. As for each of us, let us do what we can to help uphold our democracy.

More thoughts on organizing information for use

I recently created a web app to use the opmlPackage NPM module from Dave Winer to display the contents of four OPML files at one time. The app uses the includes feature, which can read other OPML files from a single OPML file and save the content locally for processing. I created four OPML files myself for this test app, but the four files could have been created by anyone. 

So the main benefit of the OPML Includes site is that it can display multiple outlines (which can be edited by multiple people, not just one person) and have the content refreshed whenever someone goes to the site. If the content is changing on a frequent basis, this could be an easy way to see the updates. If the content is fairly static, it may not be significant. In that case, single page apps could be used to view the outlines separately, so perhaps there is not much benefit in using the includes feature in opmlPackage.

Ken Smith has had some thoughts about potential uses:

“And I’m still musing about uses. About the slide down into the archive problem of blogging and social media, and maybe using the app as a partial remedy. Keeping the good stuff in view, and adding to the good stuff over time and linking the good stuff to a wider circle of relevant content. Taking the web part of the web seriously rather than letting the slide down into the archive turn it all into ghostly memories.”

Again, an OPML outline, rendered using existing tools, could provide a way to collect that information in a single document. In 2010, Jay Rosen’s Studio 20 journalism program at New York University partnered with ProPublica to research the area of “explainers”, or explanatory journalism at a site called explainer.net. The site is still available on the Internet Archive. I think that this is a method of addressing the “slide down into the archive” problem, but it does take effort. Someone has to create such an explainer, and then monitor the Web for items related to that topic, read and curate them, and add them to the explainer as needed. The main problem is someone has to have the desire and interest to collect information on a topic and share that information. If there is no one with that interest, no tool for collecting and displaying that information is going to be of much use.

Resistance to learning something new

In “The Art Of War”, author Steven Pressfield talks about the concept of “resistance” as it relates to creative work, that writers/creators struggle to create and have to overcome obstacles (mostly self-induced) to create. I had the experience recently to have to learn how to use a tool for work, and to figure out some tool feature for personal use. In the work instance, I delayed installing the tool, because I knew it was take a significant effort to get up to speed. When I did try to install it, the installation failed, so I had to find an open source alternative. Then, I had to learn the quirks of the open source tool before I could use it effectively, which was a significant effort.

In the personal tool issue, I had three browser tabs with tutorials/examples waiting for weeks for me to look at it, but I didn’t. I just knew that reviewing those was not going to be enough, and that it would take several hours to get the understanding of the tool feature. I finally had some free time to invest in this tool over the weekend, and – sure enough – it took several hours of reading, searching, and running examples to get a basic understanding of the tool feature – ugh!

In these examples, I resisted getting started because I felt I would have to make a significant investment of time and effort. That feeling was proved out both times. For work, I eventually had to get that task done, so I had to work on understanding the tool. For personal use, I waited until I had the time and motivation to press forward with figuring out the tool feature. I guess I should have looked back at one of my previous posts to see that a way to make progress is to figure out a first step and then take it. I hope writing this down will help me in the future, and will help my readers as well.

Whose list is it?

I make “to-do” lists all the time. I try to do them electronically, but the most successful ones are just written on a pad with a pen, and completed items get struck off the list.

My wife also makes lists of things to do, but when she does that, I tend to think of it as “her list”, not my list. If there was something on her list that I was going to do, I would add it to “my list”

So, it is important when making a list to consider “Am I doing the things on this list, or do I think someone else is going to do things on this list?”. It would be good to have direct communication with anyone you have an expectation of doing something on “your list”.