Emma River-Roberts
@ER_Roberts_
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Founder & Director @_WCCA | Working Class Environmentalism & Movement Building | @This_is_Rise
London, England
Joined October 2020
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"Can we all just encourage them [the middle class] to pick up a book that’s been written by a working class person in the present? Can we get them to understand that Marxism doesn’t have to stand in opposition to more relational approaches to understanding the world?"
"Despite claiming to stand in alliance with the world’s working class, swathes of middle class activists are perpetuating classism by excluding, discounting and devaluing working class perspectives."
✍️
@ER_Roberts_
Full article 🔽
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An absolute classic ethnography, which includes the most memorable acknowledgments section that I've ever read:
"University was an experiential black hole for me, sucking all of human value from all I had ever known and everything that I was."
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"Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify as working class?... these interviewees are able to tell an upward story of career success... while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped key moments in their trajectory."
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Racist Billy no mates staging a one man protest in Crawley.
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1/2 "Whilst mainstream environmentalists continue to agonise about how little their messages are taken up by the wider population, there is a simmering working-class environmentalism ready to be supported and followed."
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The
#BeyondGrowth
#BeyondGrowth2023
has just finished, and the working class has barely been mentioned outside of discussions relating to trade unions - which highlights, yet again, that post growth/degrowth still has no idea on how to approach social class 🧵
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"Not only are working-class people unfairly labelled as culturally inferior, but a 'prosperous' working-class person is perceived as a disruptive force, one that challenges the established social order."
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"There’s no doubt that universities, particularly elite schools, function as ideological training grounds. However, it is not Marxism into which students are socialized, but rather the neoliberal ideology of the professional class."
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"The homogeneity of elite educational institutions establishes conditions for the most ruthless forms of discrimination that I’ve ever seen."
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1/9 Well this is exciting, I’ll be starting an anthropology PhD at Goldsmiths
@GoldAnth
in September under the primary supervision of
@PHellermann
!
Surprisingly, I’ll be looking at how class shapes people's experience of the climate crisis in England, looking at 3 key areas:
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The
#degrowth
movement has a lot to say about what needs to be done. But it has far, far less to say about how we'd be able to organise amongst ourselves to achieve it beyond theoretical discussions.
We need more voices & different perspectives in movement building strategising.
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"To ignore or make class invisible is to abdicate responsibility (through privilege) from the effects it produces. To think that class does not matter is only a prerogative of those unaffected by the deprivations and exclusions it produces."
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Some further reading which may be of interest following the panel discussion -
"Students who considered themselves socialists were not so much interested in the poor as they were desirous of leading the poor, of being their guides and saviours."
Our panel discussion from Tuesday with Payal Parekh
@payalclimate
, Assad Shoaib
@assad_shoaib
, Matt Huber
@Matthuber78
and Michael Albert is now on YouTube!
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"We tend to exaggerate our differences. The results of such exaggeration are often catastrophic... we can easily forget just how minor these differences really are."
David Graeber & David Wengrow
@davidwengrow
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This is one of the books that I revisit often. Charlesworth's indignation at elitism runs through the entire text. It reads as a working class person speaking in 'our language', a rarity in academic writing. It's beautifully unapologetic. It's a challenging read, but worth it.
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"To be working class in a middle class world is to be a ghost. Excluded, marginalised and subjected to violence... We are left with a choice between assimilation into a middle class world, leaving our working class origins behind, or total annihilation."
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100% with Stuart here.
This is a key blind spot in climate communication (and more broadly, all policy communication in general), which is the assumption that greater knowledge about the climate crisis = action, + a lack of action means that people need further education. No! 🧵
If, dear climate scientists
@IPCC_CH
, you feel so profoundly angry, fearful and despairing then maybe it's time to step out of your nice tenured comfort zone and try something louder.
@ScientistsX
@ScientistRebel1
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1/4 How should degrowth confront the lack of working class presence and participation in the movement? I’ve written a short piece, and created a space online to talk about class and degrowth, to help bring in more class-perspectives to the movement.
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If the degrowth movement doesn't want to get decimated by the right and far right, its most visible/recognisable voices (eg academics, policymakers, politicians) *must* make more of an effort to visibly engage with working class and other underrepresented voices. 🧵
Terrorist sympathisers, woke extremists and de-growthers are holding our country to ransom.
They make our streets and campuses a no-go zone for upstanding citizens.
We must end this intimidation and defend our democracy.
@LordWalney
’s recommendations must be implemented.
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1/2 Statement from the Working Class Climate Alliance
@_WCCA
- written by the team and our members, about the far-right unrest in the United Kingdom.
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I'm right at the front - strong turnout from the fascists lol
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Why do left movements continue to ignore class politics?
For the
@_WCCA
's upcoming panel discussion we've invited Payal Parekh
@payalclimate
, Assad Shoaib
@assad_shoaib
, Matt Huber
@Matthuber78
& Michael Albert to talk about it.
Link to sign up below 👇
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Because working class people can't pay their bills with morals Connor.
I'm sick and tired of this smug, self-righteous crap that keeps on spewing from people in the left who have no clue about how working class people live
I know people need to work to live etc but I cannae understand how folk can morally work in an arms factory
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"In 2024, socialism without ecology, biodiversity and the climate at its core is not a socialism that has any relevance for the people who are about to go through one of the greatest struggles in human history."
Socialism without ecology and climate at its core is not a socialism that has any relevance for the people who are about to go through one of the greatest struggles in human history,
@AdsGNDMedia
writes.
"Socialism is dead."
Read it here ⤵️
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2/2 "Yet working-class environmentalism, rather than being cultivated, is often challenged by divisive discourses."
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"The bourgeoisie has little to hope and much to fear, from the education of the working class"
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In a nutshell: put 'em on the bloody panel discussions!
There's a working class supporting base for degrowth - more than I think people might realise. But they don't want to sit and listen to a bunch of middle class people tell them what to do.
@ER_Roberts_
powerfully talking through
#Degrowth
and climate change at
@AWCAcademics
@GCU_SPIRU
#AWCA2024
building collective power.
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Some really interesting (and welcomed) thoughts from
@JKSteinberger
on class, classism + movement building which I encourage everyone to read, especially as this shines a slightly different, middle class perspective on things.
And i'll include some of my own thoughts below 🧵
I managed to catch up on two talks/panels given/organised by
@ER_Roberts_
and her organisation Working Class Climate Alliance
@_WCCA
over past days and I have lots of (mostly extremely positive) thoughts to share with you all. A 🧵.
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This is a really important thread that everyone needs to read.
It is not sufficient for Global North scholars and researchers to claim alliance with the Global South. Put your words into action and provide the conditions for Global South autonomy.
I call upon Global South scholars & researchers to reconsider our presence in Western academia.
By now it is abundantly clear that Western nations & institutions incl. universities are fully committed to maintaining their colonialist domination over the world, at any cost.
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Interesting insight into the link between climate denialism and masculinity:
"For climate sceptics, it was not the environment that was threatened; it was a certain kind of modern industrial society built and dominated by their form of masculinity".
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The edited transcript from my talk is up:
"I have severe ethical concerns about attempting to bolster working class support for it [degrowth]. Currently, rather than serving to emancipate the working class... our social class is being de-emancipated."
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How are the working class mobilising for progressive change, & how can the left cater better to, & support voices who sit outside of the white, middle class & global North demographic? Come to the
@_WCCA
's upcoming panel discussion and find out!
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"It is not the responsibility of the working class to carve out spaces of inclusion in areas that we have been excluded from. If anything, it is egregiously insulting and arrogant to expect those with the fewest resources to do the greatest legwork."
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"It is actually the liberal PMC that stands in the way of the political revolution necessary to forge a different kind of society and world... It wants to play the virtuous social hero, but as a class, it is hopelessly reactionary."
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1/4 Attaching my name to being a master is stretch of the year buut I'm super excited to be hosting 3 workshops (May-July) about integrating class-perspectives into activism, & how it can help strengthen movements in London, all are welcome🙂
@space4coop
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Open letter to the degrowth movement co-written by Vlad Bunea and Félix Garnier
@_FGarnier
"Decouple recognition from status and merit.... Some were lucky to become well-paid academics, some are toiling on assembly lines, on farms, or in cubicles."
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It's *so* hypocritical for people to get angry when others have misrepresented certain theories, aims of leftist movements but then go on to do the exact same thing when it comes to class.
Stop misrepresenting the working class because you're too lazy to consult the literature.
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A very interesting thread in response to this recently published paper:
"We really need to dare to imagine radically different ways of living... A commitment to techno-modern ideology seems to be throttling even degrowth scholars’ capacity to do so."
A new paper by degrowth scholars
@jasonhickel
& Dylan Sullivan suggests we can ensure public luxury & techno-scientific advancement for all with the right policies.
But it ignores the already visible & accelerating impacts of climate & ecological breakdown on such ambitions.
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V concerning development in attitudes towards climate change
"A third of UK teenagers believe climate change is “exaggerated” a report has found, as YouTube videos promoting a new kind of climate denial aimed at young people proliferate on the platform."
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Excellent words from
@fraserjfstewart
:
"Energy and climate change have been dominated in the UK by the white middle classes; smart people, rightly concerned about the breakdown of our ecological systems and the urgent work we need to reduce emissions"…
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Spoiler
An alternative reading of tonight's talk is that I'm describing my rapid descent into madness due to some people consistently failing/refusing to talk about the working class from *their* perspective
*screams into the abyss*
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Haven't read the article but this response from
@larney41
is hilarious
Extinction is a destructive force, but it also increases biodiversity. Humans need to acknowledge that awkward truth if we want to survive,
@Leigh_Phillips
writes.
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The whole discourse on carbon offset projects turned out to be greenwashing?
Well I never.
"This report documents the prevalence of ‘worthless’ or ‘likely junk’ carbon offsets in the global Voluntary Carbon Market."
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8. Any radical reimagination of society will fail unless the working-classes are included in discussions. And that goes beyond just speaking on behalf of us, it includes inviting working class people on panels to speak on behalf of themselves.
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1/5 Well this is timely, I've written about degrowth's problem of being predominantly comprised by the Professional Managerial Class. This is a reflection on the movement up until now, so I am excluding ecosocialists from this piece.
It is fundamental that movements are continuously critically self-reflective in absolutely *everything* that they do. We must be pragmatic and brutally critical of our approaches.
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"The perception of the council estate is bound up in the myth that the poor will always be with us, & the existence of cheap housing to contain them is a nasty fact of life. You’ve got to put them somewhere after all. Preferably somewhere a long way away from the rest of us."
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David Harvey - "The more alliances you can build, the more powerful your movement could be... In order to build alliances, you have to have a picture of the totality of a capitalist society."
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Looking forward to presenting at this conference. I'll be talking about the lack of input from working class people in regards to degrowth policymaking, and the need to (quickly) reverse their exclusion - otherwise, it'll never gain traction in the UK.
*UPDATE* The full conference timetable is out now, and available below 👇 Sign up details are coming early next week, and this great lineup of 40 speakers is absolutely FREE to attend (in-person and online)! R/T 🙏
@GCU_SPIRU
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@redrumlisa
Some more tried to join but they got chased off as quickly as they appeared
Shout out to the legend who turned up in a Mr Whippy van
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"Even when they do enter such elite institutions [Russell Group universities], working-class students often report feelings of social isolation and class-based microaggressions by their peers and staff."
Elite universities and professions are still the preserve of the middle classes | Letters
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I appreciated the enthusiasm from the plenary talk of
#9thDegrowthConference
. However advocating for any level of depoliticisation of
#degrowth
is automatic failure. The climate crisis is political. Class politics is political. If we back down to any extent then we lose.
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In her disciplinary hearing GP Sarah Benn said there was no evidence that she had caused patients to lose trust in her as a doctor.
If I was her patient I'd trust her even more for what she did.
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From my work in the UK degrowth does appeal to some of the working class (how many exactly? We need more research here).
The largest roadblock that I've encountered so far is an aversion to degrowthers *themselves*. They see them as stuck-up, out-of-touch virtue signallers. 🧵
Don't agree with everything here, but the main point is spot on: degrowth ideology only appeals to the relatively affluent professional class in rich countries. Rooting this appeal in societal atomization/anomie is a brilliant argument.
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"The only way to check this downward spiral is through the slow, persistent, patient work of building a working class movement rooted in class and place."
Join
@This_is_Rise
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Considering I'm here to talk about alternatives to capitalism, this view from my hotel room is a bit of a piss take
Bouncing from one working class conference in NY to another in Glasgow! Looking forward to the talks, and to giving my own.
Organised by
@AWCAcademics
and
@GCU_SPIRU
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1/4 Very good article about how class shapes support for different types of environmental action.
(For those without institutional access, it's on Sci-Hub)
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"Fear is everywhere & we shall escape it only through... our own ability to destroy every existing kind of alienation... only by submitting everything – except ourselves, to the sole power of workers’ councils, possessing & continually reconstructing the totality of the world."
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5. There is a serious, chronic lack of anecdotal research that adopts class-perspectives, and it really shows. Where were the working class voices on the panels? Where was the consideration to class in discussions pertaining to intersectionality?
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"Internal temperatures in hospitals and care homes may become too hot for clinical risk assessments to take place."
Absolutely no sense of urgency from the BBC in the article about the heat, just oh it's going to be hot btw.
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I propose a new radical movement building strategy:
Spend time in working class communities, pubs, community centres etc. Become a part of the community fabric before you try and reinvent the wheel.
In other words - just talk to them and get to know them.
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The global South burns while the ruling class continues to line their pockets.
What went so wrong in people's lives that destroying the lives and homes of billions is worth the accrual of money and power.
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1/7 On International Women's Day, let's take some time to think about the women who are excluded from environmental decision-making in the mainstream climate profession.
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"Privileged academics might produce more rigorous theory if they imagined a dialogic working class other... to silence these women through theoretical debate... is to commit yet another act of symbolic violence."
"To ignore or make class invisible is to abdicate responsibility (through privilege) from the effects it produces. To think that class does not matter is only a prerogative of those unaffected by the deprivations and exclusions it produces."
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So an article about how young people are getting into degrowth has absolutely nothing on their opinions on growth-based economies etc. and just talks about changes in consumption habits - what?! This tells us nothing! This has nothing to do with degrowth!
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1/2 I spoke with Michael Albert last week about the failure of many in the degrowth movement to address class tensions and privilege, as well as many people's obstinate refusal to accept that there's more than two classes in contemporary society.
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Off of the back of recent conversations, I've written a brief commentary on why it's important for the degrowth movement to use accessible, non-academic jargon when communicating with the working class:
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1/2 Another casual association of the working class as an 'undesirable' presence in mainstream society in the DM - an everyday experience for many.
Another reminder that the class struggle also manifests outside of the economic. Being seen as unworthy of entering certain spaces.
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Media release from WEAll
@WEAll_Alliance
- exciting to see so many Beyond Growth conferences popping up over Europe 👀
Italy 18-19 April
Austria 13-15 May
Denmark 30-31 May
Ireland 25-26 June
France (end of September)
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1. Yes, trade unions are integral to mass movements and mobilisation. But what about those who aren't in trade unions, or who aren't in work? How can post growth build a movement amongst the most disenfranchised and alienated, which those outside of unions are?
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UAW building international workers power ✊
"The committee will think about what it would mean to have a just transition, what used to be called a ‘peace conversion,’ of folks who work in the weapons and defence industry into something else.”
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We must build a movement that is militant and unapologetic in its demands. Let's stop talking about creating convivial vegetable allotments and actually talk about the practicalities of mobilising the working class. We can save the fluffy stuff for another time.
Thank you to everyone who came to the conference today! We had 90 people in the room and 60 online. Now we’re going to focus on a strategy going forward - how to generalise and build on ecosocialist principles.
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So long as degrowthers continue to talk about the class struggle without reference to how how the working class have been marginalised by the middle class - it is an erasure of our history and as I shall argue, it is a classist form of movement building.
'The degrowth movement's erasure of the working class struggle'
Public talk by
@ER_Roberts_
27th February
7pm
Peter Froggatt Centre room 02/013
Hosted by
@Centre_SECA
and
@HAPPatQUB
@QUBelfast
Free and open to all
Register here:
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Out of the 139 homes, 14 will be "affordable" flats.
Yes Peter, very exciting indeed.
pleased to say we received planning permission this evening….this is on edgware rd towards colindale …. very exciting
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"She took her tone-deaf display of privilege to the world stage, wrapped in the delusion that academic interest gives her a free pass to dabble in a culture that’s not hers while disrespecting the people and artistic expressions she claims to study."
This 🔥
The Privilege To Fail: How Rachael Raygun Made Breakdancing A Global Joke
She took her tone-deaf display of privilege to the world stage, wrapped in the delusion that academic interest gives her a free pass to dabble in a culture that’s not hers
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I'm overwhelmed at their bravery and resilience during such a difficult time
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10. Yet what makes it harder to confront is that when we raise this issue, we're labelled as difficult, rude, or ungrateful. That is not the case by any means. Conversely, it's an uncomfortable truth that people have to start facing.
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Bouncing from one working class conference in NY to another in Glasgow! Looking forward to the talks, and to giving my own.
Organised by
@AWCAcademics
and
@GCU_SPIRU
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4. We are not all the same. We are not all poor - and we are not all fascists either. On three separate occasions when I brought up social class the knee-jerk reaction was to talk about the far-right.
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A state education means absolutely nothing when the cabinet serves profit over the working class.
In no way is this is a victory. They're class traitors.
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9. I hope that in the forthcoming conferences... or in anything (!) class will become something more than a throwaway comment. It is the elephant in the room that for some reason, people keep ignoring.
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The microwave brain is me on the inside
Parts of the left and degrowth movement are moralistic not material and too comfortable in their own self assuredness
@ER_Roberts_
@Centre_SECA
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"Almost 80% of the respondents... foresee at least 2.5C of global heating above preindustrial levels, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit will be met."
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@marcgarrett20
Hands down the best book about mobilising through a class perspective that's ever been written
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Let the scientists fucking swear!
"Jo asked me... “was it time for scientists to be allowed to swear, as things are so bad?” My answer... is no. Because the public expect scientists to be calm, rational and to stick to facts - as soon as we 'become human' we lose credibility."
Jo Brand translated my science. I’m certain that comedy can connect people to climate change
And new video with me explaining why scientists cannot swear however bad
#climatechange
gets.
via
@ConversationUK
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"The failure to acknowledge... the PMC & thus the failure to develop the appropriate strategies to deal with these differences, may allow those in that class to gain excessive control... creating a society which perpetuates the stratified character of society being tansformed."
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I'll be talking about:
🟢 Why environmental movements led by the middle class cannot create the conditions working class mass mobilisation
🟢 The launching of the working class led grassroots movement
@_WCCA
🟢 The amaazing regenerative work by
@mikeriddell62
(and others!)
We hope you are all excited as we are for our webinar on climate and class later!🌱🌍
See you all at 7PM✨
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Fucking hell. This is beyond insulting.
I have never seen this expression about socio-economic diversity before. It’s in an advert for a job. It seems insulting on many levels to many people.
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"The PMC instinct is often to ban, prod and moralise to the working class, rather than empower it."
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3. Unless post growth/degrowth - or in fact, any radical movement starts to treat the working class as a heterogenous entity, all hopes of carving out a more prosperous life for all will fail.
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1/6 "Degrowth is only popular among the western-educated academic-activist-eNGO set." This is not true. Rather, there is currently a gross imbalance in whose perspectives are heard in degrowth - which, currently is mostly academically educated white people in the global North.
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6. Of course I couldn't be at every panel, and if i've missed something then that's on me. And I will be catching up on the one's I couldn't attend. Class may not be an issue for the middle class, but for the working-classes it defines everything that we do
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"Capitalism, Socialism & Communism all have one thing in common - their need for power. To back up their drive for power they all have theories, theories about taking power & what they want to do with it, but therein lies the problem. Theories & power."
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Seek out and support the voices that are spoken over, rather than just claiming to stand in alliance with them through your words. Support collectives such as
@SouthSouthMvmt
In a nutshell: put 'em on the bloody panel discussions!
There's a working class supporting base for degrowth - more than I think people might realise. But they don't want to sit and listen to a bunch of middle class people tell them what to do.
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Lots of discussions about mobilisation strategies floating about, there's 2 books I highly recommend on movement planning 🧵
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