Paul Hawken's new book Blessed Unrest is a much-needed analysis of the movement that's poised to change the world as we know it. It's a must read, (excerpted here in Orion magazine) even if you're not a self-described grassroots activist. In it, he states that "the movement to restore people and planet is now composed of over one million organizations" working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. Maybe two million. And that:
By conventional definition, this is not a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join movements, study tracts, and identify yourself with a group. You read the biography of the founder(s) or listen to them perorate on tape or in person. Movements have followers, but this movement doesn't work that way. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. There is no manifesto or doctrine, no authority to check with.
Like we witnessed with the success of Step It Up 2007, the movement can't be divided because it is composed of many small pieces, forming, gathering, and disbanding quickly as need be. The media and politicians may dismiss it as powerless, but "it has been known to bring down governments, companies, and leaders through witnessing, informing, and massing."
This is one of his main conclusions:
It's the largest social movement in all of history, and yet no one knows its scope. From the local watershed council to immigrants' rights groups and the many great non-profit urban gardening programs, they're all part of this fabric. As he says:
The movement has three basic roots: the environmental and social justice movements, and indigenous cultures' resistance to globalization -- all of which are intertwining. It arises spontaneously from different economic sectors, cultures, regions, and cohorts, resulting in a global, classless, diverse, and embedded movement, spreading worldwide without exception. In a world grown too complex for constrictive ideologies, the very word movement may be too small, for it is the largest coming together of citizens in history.
And the time is ripe ...
Historically, social movements have arisen primarily because of injustice, inequalities, and corruption. Those woes remain legion, but a new condition exists that has no precedent: the planet has a life-threatening disease that is marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change. It crossed my mind that perhaps I was seeing something organic, if not biologic. Rather than a movement in the conventional sense, is it a collective response to threat? Is it splintered for reasons that are innate to its purpose? Or is it simply disorganized? More questions followed. How does it function? How fast is it growing? How is it connected? Why is it largely ignored?
Projects like Hawken's new catalog of worldwide grassroots groups called WiserEarth, plus networks like Idealist.org, the Orion Grassroots Network, and OneWorld constitute the connective tissue needed to bring the big picture of this movement into focus, giving the myriad groups working for people and planet ways to connect and act with one voice -- one that can't be ignored. That voice is growing, and it's not a second too soon.
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Comments
View as Flat
Laurence Aurbach Posted 5:56 am
03 May 2007
Ped Shed Blog
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David Roberts Posted 6:17 am
03 May 2007
grist.org
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d41295 Posted 6:26 am
03 May 2007
> environmental and social justice movements, and
> indigenous cultures' resistance to globalization
> -- all of which are intertwining.
What a joke. By any objective measure, liberals and progressives are getting their clocks cleaned on all of these issues. There is not overwhelming mass movement--on the contrary, the vast majority of the world wants only to become more consumeristic. They all want to live like Americans. Corporations have never been more powerful than they are today. Globalization has never been more interwoven into every aspect of society. Politics has never been more corrupt.
The only person benefiting from Hawken's point of view is Hawken, and that is only in the meager amount of books he will sell. This book will have the same effect as all of his other books, which is to say, no effect at all.
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Erik Hoffner Posted 6:45 am
03 May 2007
One of the next steps from this effort ought to be a way of telling the story of this movement. Hawken's done the first part, showing us what's there. And he tells some very powerful stories in the book. But the movement for people and planet's story is too huge for a book: how to quantify the number of miles of streams cleaned up by watershed groups all over the world, when there's no reporting mechanism? What's the cumulative effect of every mind that's been changed on an issue? Orion magazine's mission in large part has been to tell many of these stories over the last 25 years, but that's only so many pages of print. Wiserearth will have a role in this storytelling.
I think he took the argument as far as it can go at the moment.
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1000+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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