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EDITORIAL | The Nature of Campaigns

tcktcktck350

Above image from the 2009 TckTckTck campaign featuring partner 350.org. 

Jim Hogan, co-founder of desmogblog.com, as well as founder of the corporate communications agency ‘Hogan’, writes about the multi-million dollar worldwide campaign here. In 2013, as ecological collapse continues to accelerate, the world’s people have little to no understanding of the extensive damage this campaign actually did as the non-profit industrial complex grossly undermined the strongest positions put forward to the United Nations by the world’s smallest states. One could compare it to hammering nails in a coffin. [” The objective was to make it become a movement that consumers, advertisers and the media would use and exploit.” | Source ]You can read about it here: The Most Important COP Briefing That No One Ever Heard | Truth, Lies, Racism & Omnicide.

 

Intercontinental Cry

By Jay Taber

Mar 19, 2013

There is nothing wrong per se with campaigns, as they are part of how we manage multiple aspects of a movement over time. If we are intelligent in our analysis, campaigns are holistic and sequential, prioritizing those aspects essential to those that follow. Sometimes an unexpected window of opportunity enables us to advance on one campaign while others are backburnered.

Campaigns, however, are all that professional progressives do, so for them, the movement is not a primary concern. Sometimes their campaigns interfere with the well-being of the movement. They do what they can get funded; we do what needs to be done.

Campaigns are by nature tactical. Without the strategic guidance of a movement’s goals, they are sometimes rudderless beyond the moment’s objective. This is why we often see professional progressives celebrating tactical achievements that actually undermine strategic goals. Goals are not part of their purview.

With the indigenous peoples movement, there are many competing interests with conflicting stories about what objectives have been achieved, what is happening, and what goals we should commit ourselves to accomplishing. Those that limit their interest to campaigns and not movements are more inclined to adopt a romantic understanding of tactics and strategies.

The magic of iphones, colored flags and emotional slogans is less burdensome than long tedious preparations for self-governance and democratic revolution.

 

[Jay Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, an author, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as the administrative director of Public Good Project.]

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