On Tuesday 3 May thousands of parents kept their kids off school for the day in protest at Year 2 National Curriculum Tests (SATs).
Hundreds of people (most recent estimates are 1000!) attended a lively and colourful rally in Brighton’s Preston Park where I spent the morning. I wrote a report about the ‘kids strike’ for Red Pepper’s website and you can see some more photos from Brighton’s rally here on Flickr.
To find out more, see the Let Our Kids Be Kids campaign website.
After more than two years I have left the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and am working as a freelancer full time. I’ve learnt a lot at IDS and met some great people but the time has come for a new challenge.
Here is some of the work I did in my final months at IDS:
‘It’s time to decolonise feminist knowledge’ (BRIDGE) – a report from a Signe Arnfred lecture on the decolonisation of knowledge production. The lecture highlighted the close relationship between the colonial process and knowledge production in Africa.
In January I went to Belize as part of a learning exchange. I worked for two weeks at the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) as part of the Open Knowledge Hub Project. These posts for the OK Hub and Eldis outline some of my experiences, touching on data, development and the response to climate change in the Caribbean.
‘Urbanisation, health and the Sustainable Development Goals’ (Interactions) – part of a series looking at how specific topics are reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals, including gender-based violence, unpaid care work, economic empowerment.
‘Faith, Gender & Sexuality: A Toolkit’ (Sexuality, Poverty and Law) – I edited this new resource for faith leaders in Africa and beyond.
Platform campaigner Emma Hughes was detained at Baku airport on her way to cover the 2015 European Games, which runs from 12-28 June. The country has seen a crack down on people critical to the government, including activists and journalists in the lead up to the event and Azerbaijan now has over 100 political prisoners.
I wrote for the Transition Free Press blog about Platform’s work and the links between activism, oil and the European Games.
Read the full post here on TFP.
This week I had a couple of posts published on the Transition Free Press blog:
At the Institute of Development Studies, I have been working on three features for the Interactions website, focused on how the project’s key themes: unpaid care work, gender-based violence and urban health of women and girls in low incomes settings, relate to the Sustainable Development Goals. The first article on unpaid care work is now published here.
This week Transition Free Press Editor, Charlotte Du Cann announced that the newspaper would no longer be printing due to lack of finance.
I’ve learnt a lot while working as TFP’s News Editor and been constantly inspired by some of the amazing things that communities are doing all over the UK and the rest of the world. It’s also been a pleasure to work with such a dedicated and skilled team.
We are all proud of what we have achieved and grateful for all the lovely supportive messages we have received this week.
Read more at the TFP site.
Climate activism, fossil fuel divestment, cohousing, fermentation, power dynamics, sea kayaks, bike trains, community energy, draught busting, TTIP, First Nations’ resistance and plenty more in the new Transition Free Press, out now.
You can get Transition Free Press in a variety of locations all over the UK, or subscribe to get a copy through your door or a digital version. There’s also an online version here on issuu.
This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of New Internationalist magazine.
In 2009, the Iranian Green Movement became headline news as millions of people took to the streets to protest against alleged vote-rigging in the presidential elections. Scenes of green-clad protesters and their brutal repression by the security forces went viral on social media. One of the most iconic, and tragic, videos circulated was of the fatal shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan; it became an internet phenomenon.
Behind the headlines, online activists including Cameran Ashraf, then 29, worked around the clock to spread the information. Based in Los Angeles, Ashraf first heard about the protests on the news, and realized he could use his technical skills to support the movement. ‘I’m half Iranian and my cultural ties with Iran are pretty strong,’ he explains. ‘I just really believed in it. These were people that looked like me, people my age; they weren’t doing anything violent.’ Ashraf says he quickly became highly trusted among some of the movement’s key activists, and was engrossed in hosting services for a website and providing digital security. ‘I barely slept for two years,’ he reveals.
Activists like Ashraf can be repeatedly exposed to traumatic situations as they fight for what they believe in. These experiences can bring on post-trauma symptoms including flashbacks, insomnia, sudden personality change or withdrawal. If these persist, they may develop into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The British National Health Service estimates that one in every three people who have a traumatic experience is affected by PTSD.
‘Burnout’ has become a common term, but the deeper psychological impacts on the activists are rarely discussed.
Warning signs
Emily Apple is one of the founders of Counselling For Social Change, based in Cornwall, southwest England. In 2014, the group plans to begin retreats to a permaculture site where activists and campaigners can receive therapeutic support.
The organization was partly inspired by Apple’s own diagnosis of PTSD after many years as an activist, including experiences of police violence and undercover surveillance: ‘We’d seen so many people go through PTSD and realized that we are not making activism sustainable,’ she explains. ‘It is opening up that debate and saying that trauma work is actually part of the resistance.’
When experiencing post-traumatic stress, some push away the warning signs that something is wrong. Ashraf explains that this was his experience: one signal came in 2009 when he went to see a new Star Trek film at the cinema. ‘I was a huge Star Trek fan but seeing people laugh was so alien, seeing people enjoy themselves was so weird. I was, like, “What the heck is going on? Happiness is foreign.”
‘I think when you believe in the cause so much, you can actually view these warning signs as deficiencies, as proof that you’re not doing enough. So rather than hearing them, I basically kicked enjoyment out of my life.’
Ashraf began receiving treatment for PTSD in March 2011 after his darkest period. It was a decision that, he says, changed his life: ‘I had a breakdown where I completely went dark for two weeks. I didn’t talk to anybody; I don’t remember anything about that time. I just remember not turning on my computer, not answering anything – but stuff was still going on, people were being arrested… I just lost it.’
Emily Apple says that these warning signs are key: ‘I carried on far longer than I should have done and would have been far better if I had got help earlier, but it took me getting physically ill.
‘When people are being physically tortured by the state, people want to take action; but when you’ve got police harassment, intimidation and long-term psychological damage because of the tactics that they’re using, we don’t take action.’
Theoneste Bizimana is a psychologist and co-founder of the Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities programme (HROC) in Rwanda, which provides support to trauma survivors.
He has seen many activists with post-trauma symptoms, including PTSD. ‘There is no support for activists in my region,’ he explains. ‘Many activists fully commit themselves to serving and solving other people’s problems. Activists need time to work on their own trauma and be encouraged to write or tell stories and communicate about their work.’
Emotional first aid
Simon Griffiths is a member of Activist Trauma Support, which was founded in 2005 and provided ‘emotional first aid’ that year to activists during the G8 summit in Scotland, including a missing persons helpline. It also became involved in the Climate Camp movement.
The bulk of Activist Trauma Support’s work is now web-based. It provides information on activism and mental health, and a directory of places where people can get support. It also runs awareness-raising workshops.
‘I think when you believe in the cause so much, you can view the warning signs as deficiencies, as proof that you’re not doing enough. I basically kicked enjoyment out of my life’
Griffiths says that there can be a dismissive attitude towards taking the psychological effects of activists seriously: ‘It’s the kind of work that isn’t seen as being as important as direct struggle. But, on the whole, it does seem like those attitudes are changing.’
Activist Trauma Support encourages campaigners to support each other and take steps to protect themselves. Griffiths says that basic things such as sleeping, eating healthily and exercising are vital but easily forgotten. ‘Although it may sound counterintuitive, keeping a journal can be a really good way of de-escalating things like panic attacks, intrusive thoughts and nightmares. A journal allows you to take a measure of control and get some context, as well as making you aware of any patterns.’
Brian Martin is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He believes support networks outside of activism are useful: ‘Sometimes it’s like, if you’re not doing late nights and so on then you’re not a real activist – you’re not committed to the cause.
‘Activism is like any kind of activity: you get ups and downs. Sometimes you’re totally elated, sometimes it’s very depressing because things are going badly. If that’s your entire life, then it can be quite damaging.’
In Shut Them Down! – a book reflecting on the 2005 G8 summit – Activist Trauma Support wrote about how emotional support for activists is an important tool in making state repression less effective: ‘Beatings, arrests, isolation custody, violation of rights, threats, lies… Their focus is on creating fear, getting inside our heads and stopping us from taking action again.’
Ashraf is certain that a better understanding of mental-health issues would build stronger and more sustainable movements. ‘It’s essential for modern movements to survive, especially as many are movements of attrition. For example, you can see it’s going to be a long process in Egypt; it’s going to take a while to get some kind of healthy situation.
‘It’s really vital that these issues be opened up and talked about. The more people do that, the more comfortable people will be. In Iranian culture – in a lot of cultures – any discussion of psychological issues is taboo, so it has been hard.
‘The first thing is to respect what you feel. There is a level of self-disrespect that goes into activism, I really believe that. Feelings that come up, you mustn’t shut them out, because they will help you get through it – and they’ll help you keep going.’
Since the beginning of 2014 I have been working as the News & Sport editor of Transition Free Press, a quarterly newspaper working alongside the Transition movement and covering stories of community resilience and topics such as climate change, energy, food, sport and the arts.
We have been beavering away on the Spring/Summer issue over the past few months and this week the new issue arrived back from the printers. Stories include, the relaunch of the Totnes Pound, a Welsh cafe using waste for for tasty meals, a boost for community energy and a campaign to protect the surfing waves of Cornwall.
The full paper is online here on ISSUU and to get it in your hands, check out our list of distributors here on the Transition Free Press website.
This article was originally published in the April 2014 issue of New Internationalist.
John Krey moved to the village of Bulga in New South Wales expecting a quiet retirement. The 73-year-old did not expect to be taking up another full-time job: fighting mining giant Rio Tinto. For the last four years, Krey, with fellow-members of the Bulga Milbrodale Progress Association (BMPA), has worked to stop the expansion of the Warkworth open-cut coal mine to within 2.6 kilometres of his community.
‘It’s a David and Goliath battle and we’re determined to beat the buggers,’ says Krey, a former quantity surveyor. ‘The history of open-cut mines in our area is that it destroys villages.’
In April 2013, the BMPA won a legal challenge against a previously approved expansion of the mine. In the ruling, the judge highlighted the project’s ‘significant adverse impact on biological diversity’, as well as negative social effects and noise and dust pollution. However, soon after, the New South Wales government proposed policy changes, which gave economic benefits a higher priority. Rio Tinto reapplied for expansion and it was granted by the Planning Commission in January 2014.
‘The Planning Department has worked hand-in-glove with Rio Tinto to ensure this project was fast-tracked to approval,’ said Steve Phillips in a press release for the Lock The Gate Alliance, an Australia-wide movement that fights coal and gas expansion.
The mine’s expansion should be global concern – Greenpeace predicts that Australia’s coal exports will account for 1,200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide pollution each year by 2025.
The Supreme Court is now considering the case and, at the time of going to press, was expected to give its decision in March 2014.
Meanwhile, the BMPA has also taken its case to the Independent Commission Against Corruption and is not ruling out direct action. Activists from elsewhere have said they are prepared to ‘stand in front of the bulldozers,’ says Krey.
I have recently made a new podcast for New Internationalist on the FAN network…
Nearly two years ago my partner persuaded me to go with him to a FAN meeting in Cardiff. He had stumbled across the group through work but had become hooked. I wasn’t keen to give up some of my Saturday morning but decided to give it a go eventually and was glad I did.
Friends And Neighbours (FAN) groups began as a network of people making a difference through the power of conversation. When fear and anger towards the ‘stranger’ next door is often promoted by politicians and the mainstream media, FAN successful brings people together, not through some kind of top-down ‘cohesion’ exercise but through community run groups which just ask people to talk on a subject for five minutes. Nothing more.
Although FAN began in Cardiff, the idea has now spread as far as Pakistan, all with the same structure and principles. For this podcast I spoke to FAN fans in England, Wales and Pakistan.
Amy Hall 