riptidxs reblogged

notes towards changing the world

i feel like the main way to change the world is to not think on a global scale. one of the coolest things about complex systems is how agents in the system, focusing on the local level and following simple rules while cooperating with other agents can create global behaviors. a vision of solarpunk could be the attempt at imagining and prefiguring a world that embraces complexity for the betterment of all of the agents in the system.

so, to change things, thankfully we don't have to figure out how to bring about worldwide upheaval. if we can change the local milieu, that can reverberate outward. this is not to say that it's easy, but it's possible. this is also not to say to never think globally. it's a dialogue between spheres of distance. you have to have a revolution internally to have a revolution interpersonally to have a revolution locally to have a revolution regionally and so on and so on.

now, we can finally talk about how to change things. the general (relatively nonlinear) phases of this process are analyzing and trying to understand the world, creating visions, goals, and values from that analysis, creating strategies to reach those goals, and enacting tactics birthed out of those strategies.

Analysis

Identify the social issue: figure out the bad thing. try to understand the bad thing using complexity theory/systems theory. in other words, understand what the system is, what are the agents/elements are within that system (people, institutions, environments, etc), where the resources flow, what feedback loops exist, and what the vulnerabilities are.
Set your goals: The goal is to promote systemic change that addresses the root causes of the social issue, rather than simply addressing individual symptoms or surface-level manifestations. The guiding principles may include holistic thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Visions, Goals, and Values

Visions: think about what you want the world to look like. put on your utopian lenses. what are the dreams that you have for the community (and maybe even the world at large)? Try to stretch your imagination as far as you can.
Goals: based on your visions, what are some more concrete targets to aim for? for ex., if one of the aspects of your visions is a city that is in harmony with nature, what are the material changes that need to happen?
Values: what are the guiding lights that will inform how you reach your goals? This can be thought of as the ethical/philosophical foundation of your praxis. these would also be points of unity for other folks. some good ones to include in this would be solidarity, free association, and a militant anti-oppressive orientation.

Strategy

Universal goals: make some specific goals for your specific context. ex. “everyone can access healthy, culturally relevant, and dietarily conscious food.”
Understand where the community is: how is the community, on average, doing at reaching this goal?
Understand the population: figure out the population segments in the given community, and discover their “distance” from the goal. take not of those differences.
explore the system: look at and make visible the structures that support or impede each group or community from achieving the universal goal.
create bespoke responses: develop and implement targeted strategies for each group to reach the universal goal. using our food example, rich folks in a community might not need any help reaching this goal, while unhoused neighbors might be furthest from this goal. this allows us to create responses that help each group in the ways that benefit them the most.
dismantle the system: while providing an equitable response to the issue through your bespoke responses, work towards removing the root causes of the issue. equity is good, but we want to move toward the abolition of oppressive systems and enter a space of liberation.

Tactics

tactics are the actions that we take, informed by our strategy, which stems from our goals, visions, and values. to organize specific tactics, a useful mental model is to think of “encircling” your goal. essentially, we want to try to reach our goal using multiple tactics in parallel (or relative parallel), attacking issues from multiple angles. I think that it’s ideal to have as many tactics deployed as is reasonable, but I like the idea of 2-4 campaigns of tactics going at the same time. I also like these tactics to be across the spectrum of commitment, from very simple, low-lift, and “reformist”, to more high-lift and “radical” or “revolutionary”. So, while our goal is to destroy the rule of authority (and all of its associated ills), actions that directly do that are the most extreme, and most folks don't start off ready for that level of commitment. To build that capacity in practice, this strategy could look like:

One campaign starts by making appeals to authority and getting more radical from there (foot in the door). Some examples are basically all of the things that liberals say to make changes: calling representatives, signing petitions, writing letters, op-eds, case studies, and things like that. Realistically, if the goal is widespread change, these things won’t really be able to cut it. You can’t vote a revolution in. So, we can use the more liberal actions as a gateway into more revolutionary actions. We also HAVE TO make sure we’re transparent about this so that people retain their ability to freely choose how they engage. In this campaign, we’re marching towards more and more radical action.
One or Two campaigns that start with civil disobedience (foot in the face). Some tactics here could be boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, and the like. Similar to the above action, we march towards more radical stuff but start from a more antagonistic position.
One campaign that starts with more directly confronting authority (door in the face). This campaign would start at as far of a place that the people would want to go. This would escalate into more radical action from a very radical place.

The purpose of formatting our tactics in this way is to be fighting on multiple fronts in ways that makes the movement harder to clamp down on, while having folks move in a more radical direction.

Note that all of these tactics are informed by what comes before them. Like everything else, it is useful to think of this as a dialogue. We don’t want tactics with no conception of a strategy and such, and by doing our tactics, we should and can reframe our strategy.