1/6
The 'green movement' and 'peace movement' don't exist, or at least not in the way most people think these movements exist.
The term movement is really inspiring. It has the air of a huge wave of people moving towards reaching some goal. Unfortunately I think people expect the wrong things from most movements called 'peace' or 'green' (or climate) and that leads to a lot of confusion and wasted energy.
People generally conflate protest movements like this with social movements.
2/6
For me the key difference is in how these two kinds of movement are constituted and how they reproduce themselves.
In other words, social movements involve people changing themselves and changing their conditions of life, and gaining strength and energy from that. Labour movement, women's movement, gay, trans disabled and even national liberation movements can be like this.
The more successful a social movement is, the more energy it gains.
3/6
A protest movement is usually people working on behalf of something exterior to themselves. The energy of the movement comes from people devoting energy and resources they have got from elsewhere, in their spare time.
The change a protest movement achieves doesn't necessarily affect the movement itself at all. A protest movement can be very successful and gain zero energy for itself at all.
4/6
So to cut to the chase - my point here is that people expect social movement outcomes from protest movements.
Why don't green and peace protests lead to wider changes, and why is it always so hard for them to mobilise? Why, because the work of protest is external to the people involved. And because the energy funneled into protest is coming from elsewhere, meaning it is primarily coming from people who already have money or other resources.
@LALegault I don't think you've understood my point. I'm not saying protest is infiltrated by outsiders I'm saying protest is fundamentally limited by its focus on that which is external.
5/6
Part of the confusion is because protest movements have often been rooted in social movements. The labour movement was the base of the peace movement in the UK, for example.
Also there can be overlap. People trying to protect their own homes from an industrial project can be a green protest as well as being a social movement.
But I'm general what we call the green and peace 'movements' of Europe and north America are moral protests based on acting on behalf of something external to us.
6/6
My conclusion is we need to focus on social movements more, so that they can be a stable base for protest movements. Expecting things to work the other way is just trying to defy the laws of physics.
Energy for action has to come from somewhere and if your movement isn't devoted to liberating energy then you'll always be reliant on the spare time of the middle class.
And postscript: this overall point in this thread is also why I spent six articles putting together an argument for how disabled liberation, in my case autistic, should and could be constituted as a social movement based in class activity: https://mastodon.nu/@Loukas/112326471967837638
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