First I’m going to straight-up admit I don’t have the disposition for them. I just don’t like sitting or standing in any audience or crowd. But I have reasons as well.
In a way, the bigger the crowd, the less social it becomes. Of course it’s social in a really basic way, but there isn’t much genuine interaction.
Everyone’s attention is fixed on one figure at a time who’s front and centre. They tend to degenerate into recitations of the most simplistic slogans. Ideas are made blunt, words are rendered almost meaningless in order to reverberate and hold everyone’s attention. There’s very little openness or freedom to converse or break off and reorganize around emerging themes. Planned speakers say what they more or less planned to say. Everyone is subtly or not-so-subtly pressured to agree — if they didn’t already. Everyone goes home having reinforced the same ideas they went in with.
These anti-prorogation rallies around Canada will probably accomplish something, but they’ll also perpetuate the same old problem of politics-as-theatre that prevents genuine conversation and collaboration from occurring.
There are times when protests are very helpful, there are times when protests are necessary (though I’m not sure where exactly to draw the line), but they are never sufficient and I worry they distract people’s energy away from doing other stuff that might be more effective — even if less noticeable.
The web is a great tool for bringing people together, but that’s just the beginning. The web can do much more than bring crowds together to complain. Where the web is really maturing as a medium is in its ability to bring people together to learn and create something new.
We can and should use the web as a platform for collaboration, to share information and improve our ideas, to suggest problems to solve, attracting participants and identifying experts, deliberating and assigning tasks, signaling intent, cultivating mutual trust, facilitating ongoing feedback and discussion, and aggregating everyone’s progress with different aspects of complex projects.
This is what I meant when I wrote about reseting the agenda for democracy. We haven’t nearly explored the full potential yet. We have a long way to go.
We have more than just a voice, we have imagination; let’s start using it.
*** Update @ 3:35 ***
Attended the #noprorogue rally here in London — primarily to observe, but also to see if I could meet a few like-minded people and promote a more collaborative approach (unfortunately I was reminded I am not a natural activist, nor politician; I ended up mainly observing).
I was hesitant to go because the list of speakers made it look like an NDP event. That ended up being more or less accurate (apart from a speech by one Green candidate and some remarks from Glen Pearson, read on his behalf). Someone was handing out NDP signs that were made for the occasion, and a number of union flags flew above the crowd.
Most of the rhetoric was straight-up anti-Harper and anti-Conservative. Not much in the way of non-partisanism or trying to build anything. Tim Carrie from the CAW even brought up the damn gun registry, before starting in on pensions and putting people back to work in manufacturing. There were more than a few corny inflammatory jokes — the same kind that conservatives make about left-wing politicians — to which the mostly left-wing crowd responded with the same sneering exaggerated laughter you’d see at any party’s own convention.
But there was at least some diversity in the crowd, albeit queit for the most part.
When Cory Morningstar from the Council of Canadians went on for 10 minutes about climate change, saying Harper is turning the planet a “living hell” (giving a speech that may have been prepared for another occasion, at one point saying “this is the third year I stand in front of you” about this issue) a small pocket vocally reminded her the rally was for Canadian democracy. The majority encouraged her to continue, which she did.
So far, politics as usual.
I hope during the time off we’ll have more discussion about a) cutting the rhetoric, and b) brainstorming and trying a few blue-sky ideas of what democracy can be, beyond what it is now.
I don’t want to see this merely become an opportunity for other parties to gain points in the same old game.
We can do better. We deserve better. We need to do better to address the issues that otherwise risk tearing the country apart.
