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“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” — Groucho Marx
We are living in times of destructive politics, in words and in deeds.
As country after country go to the polls, the loudest, on the coattails of growing fear and anger, speak mostly of destruction, elimination, removal, deportation, punishment, and blame (while taking more and more for themselves). Voices speaking in opposition, however, do mostly that: oppose.
How did we reach a place where our choices are increasingly about the lesser evil? When most of our energy is spent on what is wrong, on what needs to be fixed, or reformed, it leaves us exhausted and demoralised, it makes us blame each other, and it may well be counterproductive.
It also obscures the ways in which transformation happens, Bayo Akomolafe explains, “it risks locking us into ecologies that are becoming increasingly toxic” he says,”[t]hat is why we need a politics that creates, not a politics that merely critiques, but a politics that creates, a politics that stays with the cracks. And that’s courageous business.”
There are voices that are choosing to speak of joy and hope, but it tends to be mere rhetoric, because it’s a good marketing strategy, not because any meaningful creation or transformation is being proposed.
If we look at the work of mainstream organisations and movements, many focus on reform, repair, on asking for marginalised groups to be included, integrated, or asking the too rich to give a bit more, the extractive industry to extract a bit less. (To be clear, we are not speaking here of the grassroots groups that are barely able to survive, rather those that are in positions where they set their own strategies).
Reform gives permanence to a system, to institutions that are not serving the people and won’t serve us any better with small or incremental changes. As we have said before, the system is not broken, it’s working exactly as intended. And as more shocks appear, whether more violence or climate related emergencies, minor reform wins will be irrelevant or simply dropped as distractions by those in power.
We need new systems of governance, new institutions, new relationships, new mindsets. If we think about peace as an example, The Institute for Economics and Peace differentiates between negative peace and positive peace. Negative peace is the absence of conflict and the absence of fear of conflict. Whereas positive peace is when attitudes, institutions and structures lead to peaceful societies.
Yet it feels almost radical or naive to expect those in power to aim for positive peace. Sadly, as we see time and again, those who do are ridiculed, ignored, intimidated, silenced, jailed, killed. So we urgently need to be creative and listen to and support those who speak of creation, not destruction.
We can start by taking inspiration from the abolitionist and liberation movements, such as Black power movements in the United States and movements seeking liberation from colonial powers across the world. In simple terms, abolitionist movements start from the belief that the system or institution will never serve everyone, so it must be dismantled and replaced by a new one. Liberation is seeking freedom or independence from a system that is not serving our needs, i.e. we don’t want to join your sinking ship.
Angela Davis said that reform was the glue that keeps the institutions permanent, whereas abolition helps create alternatives and links with everything else that needs to change, it calls for jobs, healthcare, housing and free education, abolition “is not simply getting rid of an institution, but it is about creating a new world.”
So for some it means getting imaginative and experimenting with new strategies, new visions, new narratives. Can we think of liberation, rather than integration? Abolition, rather than reform, protest rather than compliance, shape-shifting, rather than permanence, for movements, for organisations, our relationships, ourselves?
For many who might not be involved in movements, it simply begins with unlearning the harmful ways in which our systems have trapped us into destructive ways of being, living and thinking. Ways that undermine creative thinking, that tell us rational thinking is the only way, a system that persists in dividing us, categorising us, isolating us. A system that tells us ‘surely there is nothing I can do about it.’
Heeding the words of Caleb Azumah Nelson: “In the wake of violence, acute or prolonged, we ask what we might need, how we might weather this time, how we might care for each other, how we might cultivate the space which encourages honesty, which encourages surrender. How we might build a small world, where we might feel beautiful, might feel free.”
Words, Veronica Yates and illustration, Miriam Sugranyes.
References
‘Generative Monstrosity with Bayo Akomolafe.’ IDGs Plus, The Inner Development Goals initiative podcast, episode 12. On all podcast platforms.
‘Positive Peace,’ The Institute for Economics and Peace, visit https://www.economicsandpeace.org/research/positive-peace/.
‘Angela Davis on socialism, how change happens and growing up in segregated Alabama,’ Ways to Change the World Podcast, with Krishnan Guru-Murthy, 25 March 2022. Watch here.
Small Worlds, Caleb Azumah Nelson.
Further Resources
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next), Dean Spade.
Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Angela Davis.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein.
“The seemingly simple act of listening to the environment often leads to unexpected complexities of thoughts, sensations and emotions that are not quantifiable or measurable. When we listen… we simultaneously take in the current conditions of the acoustic environment and those of our innermost sound world, our thoughts and emotions. [This] is both highly personal and at the same time universal. It is here where the real journey of listening starts.” — Hildegard Westercamp
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” — Albert Einstein
"I’m aware, you know, that I and the people I love may perish in the morning. I know that. But there’s light on our faces now." — James Baldwin
“I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness ... The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.” ― Nelson Mandela
