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  • Too many words, I probably missed many of them.
    But joining and encouraging people to join any of the many existing organisations may be more productive than trying to magic a new movement from a cycle forum - XR, JSO, transition projects. Join the biggest ones related to your line of work - change your sector. Lobbying policymakers or changing the minds of those who influence them is often the most effective route to change. Hell, writing to your MP. Hands-on local neighbourhood projects or global disruption - whatever floats your boat. Do it.

    Is it working? Not really. Not many great successes to be seen. But unless you want to just give in to fatalism, taking action means persevering in the face of continual failure. At least this is what came to mind last week at a "5th birthday" of a climate action group, where the person speaking was like "look at all these things we've done - great success! Celebrate!" and I just thought - if we succeeded, we wouldn't need to exist. These are not successes.

  • Getting people engaged, and giving them a space where they can feel they're contributing and not just lost, isn't a small thing. Modern life tends to put people in a context where they feel lost and powerless, which is not a context where they're the best people they could be. Enabling them to work together constructively isn't trivial.

    if we succeeded, we wouldn't need to exist.

    You're needlessly dooming yourself to despair if that becomes your outlook. Even a healthy society would be one that requires regular engagement and action. New challenges arise, existing ones turn out to be more complicated than you thought. Society is a thing people create and participate in.

  • I think attempting to use few words misrepresents me. I'm all about making space for collective action. I'm all about not dooming to despair. But the celebration aspect has always irritated me. I think many activists give up when they don't see short term "success" and I guess my point in this is you have to move beyond that and keep going. But for me (I realise this is personal) branding things as successes when they are not is not helpful and not motivating.

    And, I'm not taking offence, but your second half comes across quite patronising.

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