Mass activism just clicks for more people than ever

Websites and networking help thousands to save climate, make change
BY PETER BAUMANN

COPENHAGEN – Over the last six months, hundreds of thousands of people across Europe participated in nonviolent direct action focused on corporate and government targets across the continent. The protests were designed to disrupt “business as usual” and force these companies and politicians into developing a sane climate-change agenda. In almost non-stop actions, thousands were arrested, raising public awareness of the urgency of action on global warming and raising the stakes and political costs for politicians and corporations who tried to ignore the issue.

“Financially and in a public-relations sense, we simply couldn’t afford to put a large percentage of the population in jail for nonviolent political dissent,” admitted Wolfgang Schäuble, the Interior Minister of Germany. “We had to change our policy. Personally, I was relieved; I’ve always been a closet environmentalist, and these activists made it possible, even fashionable, for me to come out of that closet.”

While much of the civil disobedience was spontaneous, or quickly organized by activist groups, at least one website helped make civil disobedience a mainstream phenomenon. BeyondTalk.net provided a convenient and accessible method for people to pledge to participate in direct actions. Those who signed up could learn the principles of civil disobedience, in the model of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and were then quickly given the opportunity to put that knowledge into practice. The website also offered an “action offset” program that provided those who couldn’t risk arrest with the means to help those who could, by donating funding for food, transportation, and bail.

“I used to get my energy and environmental policy from whatever energy company I was meeting with that day,” admitted a European Prime Minister who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I had no choice. They had financed my election, and our government was in so many ways dependent on them. But when thousands of people started blocking roads, rail lines, and docks, and occupying our offices and disrupting our meetings, I was suddenly able to point out the window and say: we can’t do this anymore. We need to change.”

“I got tired of seeing Parliament half-empty because people were handcuffing themselves to each other in offices, blocking doors, every single day, day in and day out,” said Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. “And I got tired of the media reporting incessantly on the protesters. Our only solution was to listen.”

“It got to the point where I started doing my government business at a wi-fi café,” said Sir Nicholas Winterton, a Conservative MP. “But then someone would spot me, they’d ‘Twitter’ or whatever, and soon I’d be surrounded by a horde of activists telling me about icebergs and refugees. They were fairly polite, but I got precious little work done.”

Even though most of its aims have been achieved, Beyondtalk.net and the civil disobedience it supports will continue. “There’s no rest for the wicked, but there’s also no rest for us,” said Isaiah Motus, one of the website’s developers. “Our next step is to outlaw corporate lobbying. Maybe then we’ll be able to relax just a bit.”