Movement ecology

Movement ecology is a way of seeing each component of a movement as entering into a relationship with the other groups and individuals that are part of it. It is an invitation to see different strategies than the ones we use as assets for our movement.

“We have to recognize the validity of different actions, identify niches and try to fill them...And collaborate as much as possible. Social change is not a competitive market - this approach is opposed to what is needed to initiate transformational level change." - Thinking, doing, changing

The ideas and knowledge shared on this page come from:

1) An instagram live with Stu Basden, moderated by Kenzie Harris (HUB team member). Ideas coming from Stu are highlighted throughout.

2) Knowledge compiled by HUB franco librarian Isabelle Grondin Hernandez.

Instagram live speaker

Stu Basden (he/him): Stu is one of the ten co-founders of Extinction Rebellion, a globe-spanning social movement. Stu was one of the initiators of Toronto350.org, and was elected as President twice. He is a founding member of the Defend the Sacred Alliance and the Being The Change Affinity Network. He has facilitated hundreds of workshops, retreats and training courses around Europe and Turtle Island.

What is movement ecology?

It is inevitable that movements will be made up of people and groups who...

• Have different views of where the problem lies
  
• Have different ideas for solutions
  
• Take different actions to bring about the change they want to see.

Indeed, social movements are made up of groups fulfilling a multitude of roles. Recognizing these roles, building bridges and finding ways to use each group's contribution to the benefit of a movement can be the key to success. The struggle against imperialism in India offers an interesting case study.

Some of the main approaches to activism/organizing include:

community organization (Structure-based organizing)

mass organization (Movement-based organizing)

the creation of alternatives (Prefigurative 'politics)

Some of the main 'roles' groups can contribute to the movement, according to Bill Moyer include:

• The helper/citizen: focuses on direct service. Doing what they can in their own circles to support a cause.
• The advocate/reformer: focuses on communication with people who hold the power to change a policy or practice.
• The organizer/change agent: focuses on collecting masses of people who may not know each other. They use the power of numbers to force change on people in power.
• The rebel: focuses on making a commotion to force people in power to make a change.

Experimenting with different approaches to movement contributions

• [Paraphrased] In XR we did a lot of organizing and culture building to desist anyone who wasn't committed to non-violence, because our tactics and strategy rely on the public and politicians seeing us this way. Not to say it's not effective to use a different approach, there are times when this is effective.
• We need a mass array of tactics. In the Global North, those in the sphere of American influence, we are the heart of the neoliberal empire. From the inside, there's not much we can do to take it down. That's going to be done by people in the Global majority. By activists in Africa shutting down mines and forcing de-growth on the Global North. By countries in Southeast Asia saying the debt they're told they have, that they don't believe it. That will force de-growth.
• We need to get serious about our limitations in these contexts. Let's look into the ways that certain approaches were effective at one time, and how that usefulness has declined over time. Often what happens is when a new idea comes in, it's effective for a bit, and then the system comes in and adapts and it becomes less useful.
• Can activists use big data in the same way that money power does? We haven't really done that, that's a possible tactic.
• Sabotage. I think it's time for it. Destroying infrastructure, and getting in the way.
• All of these things are needed. There will be charities that fear their status by doing or encouraging these things. But maybe there can be some support, where they can have plausible deniability. There's a time to be brave and take risks. Pushing the edges of what's possible is what's needed. There's a cost to pushing sometimes, but there's a greater cost to not pushing.

Challenges to using a movement ecology lens in climate activism

• [Paraphrased] There will be disagreements. A lot of the time, those of us racialized as white will runaway, unfriend people and both sides will try to be right. We need to recognize these are just roles, conversations move. Learning to be in disagreement, and stay in love, learning to take conflict as a sign of creativity and to remain in discomfort... these are the tools that were stripped from communities in Medieval Europe from brutal regimes and this trauma spread around the world. To recognize that our ego life just a part of the earth.
• I'm not ready to die for any particular movement right now. That is a limitation. I'm limited in what I can do. To achieve liberation is to rid those trappings, and to do so without white heroism. This is complex, and a journey.
• Recognizing the inner work, unpacking our own patterns, that liberation work may be more important than the direct actions we do. We often prioritize the big actions, and neglect the inner work.

Movement Mapping

When we say movement mapping we are talking about painting a portrait of the different groups that militate alongside us as well as the role or roles they fulfill. We draw a portrait of our activist community in order to better situate ourselves in it and realize the links that unite us. It is a question here of our reality on the ground, ecology being a broader concept encompassing many activist communities.

We begin by drawing a portrait of our group and its resources. Then, we can include mapping of our movement: the groups, our relationships with them, their approach/role and their resources as appropriate. The following is an example of a 'social change ecosystem' developed by Deepa Iyer from Building Movement Project:

Deepa Iyer, Building Movement Project. SM, © 2020 Deepa Iyer. All rights reserved. All prior licenses revoked.

Applying movement ecology and mapping to global solidarity

• [Paraphrased] Connecting to these majority world struggles is important, and figuring out what we can do.
• 70% of the world's mining finance goes through Toronto. Highlighting where the mining is happening around the world, in Toronto, to block the silence and not send in another death squad to assassinate another round of activists in the Global South, and get away with it, because they do.
• I was chatting with one of the originators of the XR Internationalist solidarity network, he's a refugee with status in the UK. He's said we here in the UK need to pay attention to what's happening in Africa. People there have communities and networks of resistance that are stronger than we can imagine, we don't have that here. What they're afraid of is if they die and it's not seen. They see the necessity of challenging this global system. For us to approach them with humility that we don't know how to form a community of resistance, where we have people willing to die for it. We don't have those skills. They've been in resistance for centuries, and in so-called Canada, Indigenous communities know that. They know what they're doing and have so much to teach.
• Whiteness teaches us nothing important is going on in the rest of the world, and some of the reason it's not talked about in the media is also that people are killed for sharing that they're part of a group. These communities have to be quieter. When we in the North try to organize with them, we might bring our expectations of how organizing is done. They'll come back and say "well, that will get us killed." We need to do the work of building trust. That's part of our work as people raised as white, that there are different ways of organizing in these communities that we need to be attuned to.
• There's a book Hospicing Modernity that is a critical book for those of us racialized as right to see the difference between high intensity struggles where people are likely to get killed, vs low intensity struggles where we'll just get arrested and sent home. There's a disconnect that we need to be able to speak to and build trust between.
• In the UK we have this term 'Glocally linking' to these struggles in the majority world, building that trust slowly. It won't be tied to your latest campaign, it's about building trust over time. And if we can bleed some of the finance from the Global North to them, if they get that, it becomes more effective in those communities. And we can't expect them to be accountable as they need to be quiet about where the money is so they don't get killed. It might appear like money is disappearing, but this requires trust.

If you have any suggested revisions or additional resources to share related to the above content, please email them to kenzie@lehub.ca.

Back to Homepage