Thursday, 21 May 2009 | posted by SimonM
Activism
The Future Summit focused on the world beyond the Global Financial Crisis, an endless stream of panelists from business, NGOs and government gazing into the crystal ball to foretell what is to come. And, it looks like we're heading into a world where it seems permissible and desirable to mention impressive sounding words with no clear meaning. Words like megatrend and crisitunity were common, and below, I've outlined what they've got to do with us as campaigners and activists.
Megatrend
Humans have an uncanny habit of trying to make patterns out of things, and imply causality. Reading the newspaper, you'd think that the rise and fall of the whole stock market is the result of minute events each day - a bank announcing results, Apple releasing a new product, or a CEO leaving a single firm. The same goes for politics, and the same goes in much of life. Megatrends, it appears, are about the much bigger patterns that are happening behind the scenes, slowly but surely, and which are transforming the world.Two of these had real relevance to our work as activists:
Connectivity. Technology is quickly becoming pervasive. Go back a generation and computers filled a room. Thanks to Moore's Law, computers now fill our pockets, and with inventions like mobiles phones and the $100 laptop, technology is increasingly reaching even the poorest and most remote communities. Access to the internet is expanding rapidly, and this has huge implications to how people can access knowledge and understand issues - a cornerstone of activism work. The challenge for us is to actually connect to and engage with the right people amidst all these information - which means that we need to be focused with our messages, and look at how we can use technology to engage people where they are.
Aging. This is mainly a rich country issue, but can be expanded to include the huge demographic transition that is underway all around the world. As death rates plummet because of improved healthcare and diets, we're living longer and having fewer kids. At the start, the means a baby boom, but later, it means lots of old people. This has implications for our campaigning because it talks to how politically relevant we are, and how we can use mass movements to create change.
Crisitunity
Crisis + opportunity = crisitunity.
It's a optimistic way to see the world, and one that I'm keen to subscribe to. How can we use crises as opportunities to drive social change. People tend to change their views and behavior most when they feel that their current practices aren't working. A crisis - like the Global Financial Crisis -presents a time when people are rethinking how they see the world.
As activists, we can use the current crisis to engage people in our work, connect them back to their community, and build the work that we're doing. In particular, the current crisis seems to be a crisis in values and perspective, one where many seem to have lost touch with what's important to them. And, as activists committed to building stronger communities, we can play a role in reconnecting people to communities and to causes.
But now, over to you - what are the big ideas that you think will have the biggest impact on the work that we do in the community?
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25 May 2009
Simon,
You are very right to subscribe to crisitunity, because a crisis implies a great opportunity to shift paradigms and construct new ways of seeing the world that may ultimately try to change the world pre crisis. This is because, after the crisis has occurred, people tend to go to the extreme opposite way of the person, idea or thing that we associate the crisis with. The living proof of this is president Obama, who was greatly benefited by Bush’s created crisis and thus more people voted for him and not for Mccain, who was seen similar to Bush and his ideas.
I guess that we, as young activists, can take great advantage from the connectivity item that you mentioned because it is one efficient and easy way of communicating our projects and ideas and thus involving people into them….
Finally, I believe that one of the reasons that the youth must actively engage ourselves in fighting injustices and getting our leaders to hear our voices is because of the aging population in MEDC´s. If we don’t act now, then leaders are most likely to do things that will benefit the elderly in order to gain more votes from the majority of the population. We as the present and future of this world, need leaders to listen to us and to include us into the agenda regardless of the percentage of votes that we represent. And this is our right to fight for.
12 June 2009
Obama invited McCain to this year’s White House Super Bowl party. McCain declined the invite. It would have been a chance for politicians from both sides of the aisle the get together with small talk and throw in some real important issues facing the country. McCain doesn’t want to take a leadership role in the GOP-Republican Party - http://www.ebook-search-queen.com/ebook/the/the+real+mccain.all.html . The guy doesn’t know how to lead. He should thank his lucky stars each day that he was born the son of an admiral.