Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Climate change, party politics, dialectics

[the climate camp movement] is not new. [...] it builds on the movements of the 1990s - Reclaim the Streets, Earth First!, Rising Tide; yet these were built on the movements of the 80s, such as the Greenham women; who grew out of direct action against nuclear power in the 70s; which drew upon the peace movement and Committee of 100 in the 50s and 60s; who drew upon the squatters of the 1940s; and so it goes back to the suffragettes and beyond. It's all about building capacity for social movements to succeed and it is obvious that the camp has built capacity, with a vengeance...

Grassroots movements make history, but political parties can combine with them as a necessary part of the process to get the policy changes we need
-- Derek Wall, Principal speaker of the Green Party (UK) in a letter to The Guardian.

[I was one of the approximately one and a half million people on a flight to or from the rapidly expanding Heathrow during the week of the camp.]

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