Climate and Capitalism
April 5, 2011
Building a movement with “radical horizontality”
Brett Rhyno and Julien Lalonde are independent climate justice community organizers who are helping to organize the 3rd People’s Assembly on Climate Justice in Toronto, April 23rd, 2011.People’s Assemblies are a new organizational paradigm in the Climate Justice movement, based the dynamic process of radical horizontality. Climate Justice community organizing in Toronto has identified empowerment, self—sufficiency, and the creation of radical, sustainable alternatives as essential to strong local communities in confronting the climate crisis in the urban context.
In this article we trace its origins back to the Reclaim Power action in Copenhagen during COP 16, the World People’s Conference on the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and the G20 summit in Toronto.
Copenhagen
Dec 15th, 2009. Copenhagen. The day before what CNN referred to as “the most hotly anticipated action of the summit,” nearly a thousand activists huddled together in a Danish squat — which became the focal point of grassroots mobilization against the United Nations’ annual Climate Change Conference [COP]. Lisa, an American activist and veteran of Seattle, gave a final pitch for the plan of action:
“We will use the combined mass of our bodies to push through the police lines and then break through the fence. Once we are inside the U.N. grounds we will secure a safe space where delegates coming out from the conference can join us and together we will form a People’s Assembly.”
Maps were distributed. Blocs were in the final stages of formation. There was one last heated debate over the adopted consensus of “confrontational non-violence.” Participants filled with anticipation at the thought of being part of a plan to change the course of history.
These actions in Copenhagen were the beginning of the Toronto People’s Assembly. As much as has been written and said about the day of Reclaim Power, it was the two weeks of frantic meetings, alliance building, and constant striving to create an inclusive and horizontal process which created a new model for organizing that could be exported around the world.
Cochabamba
Next, seeds were sown for the People’s Assembly in Cochabamba, where Bolivia hosted the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April of 2010. Toronto activists in Cochabamba observed a conference that, while engaging the grassroots participation of 30,000 activists from across the world, was largely implemented from the top down. The People’s Assembly drew much inspiration from Cochabamba, but the conference also acted as a compass for the Assembly to be critical of its own process.
The main development which came out of Cochabamba was a collective understanding of the beginning of a new effort based on the principle that the best way to answer the international call is to build your local struggle. One of the lessons drawn from Bolivia, was the need to put in place impactful structures and formations to maintain and build a movement that is more substantial, consistent, and long term. The call from Cochabamba was to begin the building of a worldwide climate justice movement.
Back in Toronto, the weeks in May immediately following Cochabamba, and in June prior to the G20 were a crucial and transformative period for the social and climate justice community. Talks and discussions were ongoing to evaluate which elements could be drawn from Cochabamba. Raul Burbano, an organizer of the June 23rd Assembly, explains how “the People’s Assembly is an extension of the dialogue, organization, and mobilization that took place in Cochabamba. It’s an instrument through which local activists can create new spaces, and generate new possibilities.” As conferences, panels, and report-backs raged on, local organizers, young and old, converged with a fresh and renewed sense of purpose; an understanding that we needed to start building. Consciously or not, the People’s Assembly kept evolving through new and different channels
Toronto G20
In Toronto after the COP, during the early months of 2010, post—Copenhagen burn—out was a factor for many organizers, and initial attempts to reconstruct the People’s Assembly process never materialized. This was due partly to the need to convince Toronto—based organizers that an Assembly needed to be a priority, that one organized around a completely horizontal process could be successful, and partly because many organizers shifted their efforts to that other summit on its way to town, the G8/G20.
As June and the G20 grew closer, a call was put out through the Toronto Community Mobilization Network for a day of resistance for climate and environmental justice. Responding to this call, a circle of non—aligned CJ and environmental organizers started meeting weekly in a park outside the 519 Community Centre. Two plans for action emerged. One was a rally that would become known as the Toxic Tour. The other was the People’s Assembly on Climate Justice.
Together with allies as part of the growing community mobilization against the G20, the first People’s Assembly was formed on June 23rd, 2010.
The G20 hit Toronto like a storm, and in the aftermath the organizing community suddenly found itself in a new environment, with new conditions. The collective response in Toronto was quick and widespread, and the resounding call to establish new relationships was not only heard, but understood. In July and August with the intensity of organizing remaining high, with action camps happening across the country, and with various groups in Toronto together stressing the immediate need for movement building, there was no longer any doubt that a second People’s Assembly would take place.
The People’s Assembly on Climate Justice
Enter the Toronto People’s Assembly on Climate Justice (PACJ). Taking elements from Reclaim Power and Cochabamba, the Toronto manifestation of the PACJ has since held two successful Assemblies, one immediately before the G20 summit, and another on the December 4th, 2010 Worldwide Day of Climate Action. The first focused on defining the meaning of Climate Justice, while the second focused on the collective work of building a stronger movement for Climate Justice in Toronto. For both Assemblies the starting point was the “Framing Question,” a direct importation from the Reclaim Power Assembly. The framing question is simply a general suggestion for direction, a starting point from which participants can begin to generate ideas.
The main innovation introduced in Toronto was an additional round of breakouts, which allowed more space for the Assembly’s horizontal process to both generate ideas and to orient itself for action. Beginning with the second Assembly, Toronto activists took the working group model that emerged from Cochabamba and reframed it as a series of permanent action-oriented bodies known as People’s Councils. During the December 4th Toronto Assembly, People’s Councils were created on Movement Building, Outreach & Education, Group Coordination, Building Alternative Spaces, Mass Action & Political Pressure, and Personal Development. Both assemblies generated more than 200 participants, and over 40 endorsements from community groups in Toronto.
Radical Horizontality – Inside the People’s Assembly
The movement inside the Assembly is an open collective dialogue which organizers have termed radical horizontality. Within the Assembly, radical horizontality is a two-pronged process which allows participants, through two rounds of break-outs and intermittent plenaries, to first generate ideas, and then to develop and form them together in order to establish mandates for the People’s Councils. This concept of radical horizontality also extends to everyday life, beyond the Assembly, and seeks to establish shared responsibility and accountability in the entire community, in order to make local resistance and organizing more sustainable.
From the beginning the Assembly stressed the need for a point of convergence inclusive to a wide range of organizations, from women’s groups and anti-poverty, to environmental justice and food security, cyclists, migrant justice, cooperatives, collectives, etc. To effectively transform communities, the Assembly posited a lack of separation between activism and everyday life. Raul Zibechi, a Uruguayan socio-political theorist, explains how “in the new pattern of action… mobilization starts in the spaces of everyday life and survival, putting in movement an increasing number of social networks or, that is to say, societies in movement, self—articulated from within.” The People’s Councils were modeled on the hope of facilitating the establishment of this sort of organizing on a permanent basis; to make the leap from simply activism to organized communities.
The post-G20 realities of community organizing in Canada presented us with a challenge, and a dynamic that calls for activists to develop, out of necessity, new methods of organizing. This requires ingenuity, responsibility, and a long-term willingness to sculpt a new grassroots paradigm. Small beginnings of creative examples were observed in Canada during the following months.
Various action camps took place throughout the country during the summer of 2010 themed around climate justice, indigenous solidarity, non-violent direct action, and Tar Sands/pipeline resistance. Organizers worked to build links between cities and to strengthen regional networks. Simultaneous people’s assemblies were held in December, 2010, throughout the country, organizers in Montreal began to develop the idea of a climate justice coop, and the climate justice community in Toronto started establishing the People’s Assembly on a permanent basis. Climate Justice organizers have used the momentum coming out of the G20 to create their own grassroots infrastructure.
Conclusion
The People’s Assembly in Toronto emerged on the tide of a paradigm shift towards popular assemblies as an alternative to the complete failure of international institutions and nation states to address the urgent global threat presented by the climate crisis. At the same time, a global Climate justice movement has grown organically; determining its own shape through horizontal structures and differentiating itself from mainstream environmental voices through a deeply rooted anticapitalist analysis.
The year 2010 also presented the organizing community in Canada with two major mobilizations to mount, one in Vancouver for the Olympics and one in Toronto for the G20. Toronto organizers took this confluence of factors as an opportunity, and the People’s Assembly was one element of the outcome.
By eschewing traditional hierarchical forms, the open and inclusive process of the Assembly is an invitation for community members and organizers to come together in an effort to build solidarity, share skills, and develop increased coordination. The aim of the People’s Assembly in Toronto is for the climate justice community and its allies to utilize it as a vehicle or a space through which it can operate as a movement, a self-articulated space that will allow it to remain a movement.
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