- Home
- Commentary
- Preserving our sanity amidst the consuming madness of the times
- Removing the mask of the insecure babyman
- The internet: from digital democracy to digital dementia
- Doubt as an asset, certainty as an affliction
- Fascism, collective insanity and ourselves
- Navigating disinformation, uncertainty, individualism and the poison apple of conspiracy
- If nothing changes nothing will change: the Voice referendum
- What can we learn from disaster communities?
- New year, a time to embrace the uncertainty of it all
- We could be non-binary
- Adaptive resilience vs safety paternalism
- Left wing, right wing? What just happened to politics?
- Covid, class and the addiction to certainty
- Neoliberalism, the Life World and the Psychopathic Corporation
- Democracy is about our bodies, not just our minds
- What’s your motivation: is it yourself or the change you’re making?
- Mind over matter: The world of abstraction is driving us to destruction
- The real threats to our liberty and survival
- Avoiding the abyss of conspiracy theories
- The difference between a legal system and a fantasy novel
- What’s a conspiracy and what’s just common garden variety corruption?
- Unpredictability, humility and an emerging anthropandemic
- The trilemma – climate change, economic collapse, and rising fascism
- Happy New Normal for the decade ahead
- The race to the bottom in australian politics
- Fires, liars and climate deniers
- Talking about lock-on devices – an article in ‘The Conversation’
- The Ponzi scheme is teetering
- Regenerative culture a key part of the blockade experience
- Staying sane in the late Anthropocene
- Extinction Rebellion
- Major parties have failed on climate, it’s time to rebel.
- Elections In The Late Anthropocene
- It is the Greens that are defeating the Nats and it’s all about your preferences
- Australia’s powerhouse of democracy and innovation is in the Northern Rivers
- Is identity politics a problem for the left?
- The climate emergency and the awful state of Australian politics
- Democracy and rights under threat in corporate police state
- Liberty, freedom and civil rights? Do any of us understand these things anymore.
- The forest wars are back, time to mobilise
- …more commentary
- Workshops
- News & Events
- Media
- A Flood of Emotions – Sydney Ideas Event
- Participatory democracy in the COVID era – SCU podcast
- Activism educator Aidan Ricketts explains how and why protests can be peaceful
- Bob Brown Is Taking “Shocking” Anti-Protest Laws To The High Court
- Anti protest laws could arrest nannas, seize tractors
- “They blinked first”
- Colin Barnett quick to protest against ‘activism degrees’ – The Australian, 16/10/2014
- ‘Degrees in activism’ put brake on growth – The Australian, 15/10/2014
- Magistrate throws out vexatious police case against CSG protesters
- Outrage over school PR ‘by stealth’- The Northern Star
- CSG clash a certainty
- Communities use new tactics
- Gas group attacks lecturer
- …more media
- Activist Resources
- Reviews
- Menu Item
Activism and campaigning workshop Huon Environment Centre Huonville, Tasmania
29 January 2012 http://www.huon.org/
Hi, Thanks to Huon Environment Centre for flying me down to Tassie for these workshops and thanks for keeping up the resistance to industrial logging in Tasmania. The workshops on 29 January will focus upon campaign strategy and planning in the morning and in the afternoon we will be exploring campaign sustainability and ways of avoiding individual and organisational burnout.
These workshops will employ several road-tested techniques for campaign success such as conflict mapping, whole of campaign strategic planning techniques for personal and group empowerment The workshops will be set against the background of the ongoing struggle to protect Tassie’s old growth forests and its toll on all concerned.
In the days before it was great to visit the folks at The Florentine blockade. http://stillwildstillthreatened.org/main-categories/camp-florentine
Inspiring to experience again the warmth, the stress and the camaraderie of blockade camps. Congratulations to the Florentine mob for holding the line there for so many years and incidentally for their great performances in the recent film “The Hunter”. It was on from the blockade to a rally outside parliament , with a live cross over to Miranda in the Observertree: http://observertree.org/
Update
The workshops were a great success, not only for the training but also for the value of bringing together the various groups involved in direct action to save wild forests still threatened by rampant old growth logging and roading.
Groups represented included
Still Wild Still Threatened http://www.stillwildstillthreatened.org/
Code Green Tasmania http://codegreentas.org/
And of course our hosts the Huon Environment Centre.
It was a great opportunity for frontline activists to take some time from the day to day actions and look at the wider picture, and particularly useful to have the various groups in one place to focus on planning and survival. The Tassie forest dispute is like an old growth social movement issue in itself so it was great to focus in the workshop on the life cycle of social movements and reach some consensus about where the current direct action campaign fits within the history (on the frontline of course). It was very interesting to explore the roles played by established environment groups and the front line blockaders and activists of today.
All power to the tireless warriors of the southern forests.
I like these sites
Community Organisations
- Code Green Tasmania
- CSG Free Northern Rivers
- Friends of the Earth Melbourne
- Generation Alpha
- Huon Valley Environment Centre
- Lock the Gate Alliance
- Nature Conservation Council NSW
- North Coast Environment Council
- North East Forest Alliance
- Plan to Win
- Rainforest Information Centre
- Save our Foreshore
- Still Wild Still Threatened
- The Change Agency
- The Wilderness Society