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sebastienneOn Thursday night I found myself, yet again, at a political meeting in Oxford Town Hall.
However, this felt entirely different from any other political meeting that I've ever attended there. Perhaps it's my mental state being generally more positive (..despite a few blips) since the new year; perhaps it's just chance. But at this meeting...
I felt hopeful. I believed, for the first time, that there is a chance that we will resist the ideological destruction of the welfare state. Not just that we will win a little concession here, a grudging "protection" there - that we can actually create a movement which can provide a viable alternative to current dominant media/political discourse.
I step aside from the rhetoric of "resistance", here, because I've been reading Ursula le Guin this week. One of the most compelling images I've picked up so far from Left Hand of Darkness has been that of political discourse as a road. That to engage in direct resistance, to simply say "no, don't do this", is to stay on the road that has been chosen for you, but to try to push back against the flow of traffic, the direction of power. Whoever wins, you lose, because you've allowed those in power to define the terms of the discourse, and your endpoint is still a point on their road. It is far better, therefore, to strike off the road, to show the other way as best you can.
Nominally, Thursday night's meeting was about library cuts. In Oxfordshire, 20 libraries are earmarked for closure - small, local libraries, most intimately linked with schools and social justice initiatives, and the absence of which will have a catastrophic impact on the quality of life in the surrounding community.
Previously, individual groups had campaigned around the closure of their individual libraries, and in this context had been approached and offered the chance to bid for a council grant to keep their libraries open. Many community groups were in the process of preparing their bids - until this meeting happened.
Because over the course this meeting, a series of excellent speakers - from Philip Pullman's fifteen-minute speech to 60-second pitches from local campaigners - completely changed the tone of the debate.
Pullman demonstrated - masterfully, given the composition of the audience - that this bidding process took services away from those who needed them the most, and handed them to those with the free time, administrative skills, and connections, to make a successful bid. That by engaging with the bidding process we are accepting a thousand implicit assumptions of what he called "free market fundamentalism" - when in fact, we can step right off that road, refuse to accept that competition is a force for good, we can instead co-operate.
The very idea that we must choose a cause to fight, resist the single cut that is the most evil, and stay true to that campaign, is our defeat. We feel it, because the size of the whole project terrifies us, but to come to the place where we choose we have already implicitly accepted so much.
The head of Oxfordshire County Council, when called on these issues, is very fond of asking "well what should we cut, then?" - to accept this question is to accept defeat. The only answers we should give, Pullman pointed out, are the following:
"It's not our job to cut services - it's your job to protect them!"
"Given that those with the free time, ability, and inclination to volunteer are already doing so, which current voluntarily-run organisation do you want us to cut to provide community library services?"
Just as making a community bid to protect (say) Headington library is analogous to crossing a picket line (in that it makes it harder for other libraries to defend themselves), the same is true for any piecemeal activism. Most importantly, it means that the causes most appealing to those with the time, skills, and connections are the ones with the greatest chance of succeeding. Not the causes with the most at stake - the ones where people's most basic rights and freedoms are about to be taken away - but the ones whose proponents have the most persuasive letter-writing style, or the largest numbers for marching on London.
And that is why - whatever your biggest concern about the coming political upheaval - I'm asking you to go and read this post, listing the ways that you can help in the fight against cuts to disability benefit. These are cruel cuts, cuts taking away the last dregs of agency from people who are already screwed over by a system demanding that they degrade themselves regularly through box-ticking "medical" interviews designed by insurance-loss-adjustors to find loopholes and excuses not to give them the money they need to live. The people whose lives are hidden inside taboos, who society Others so completely they can't see that these benefits are for them, too - that nobody is ever more than temporarily able-bodied. So many proposed cuts have the potential to destroy lives; few do it quite this openly, but somehow this has passed mostly under the radar. I thought it was common knowledge as so many people on my friends list have spoken about it.. but have I seen any coverage in the popular media? No. All I keep seeing is that tenacious narrative, "woman signed off work with back injury caught flying rocket to moon", that somehow builds up in common consciousness, although it makes no sense - like one person faking food poisoning to cover for a hangover means we shouldn't have an NHS.
1% fraud. 20% cuts. You can do something.
However, this felt entirely different from any other political meeting that I've ever attended there. Perhaps it's my mental state being generally more positive (..despite a few blips) since the new year; perhaps it's just chance. But at this meeting...
I felt hopeful. I believed, for the first time, that there is a chance that we will resist the ideological destruction of the welfare state. Not just that we will win a little concession here, a grudging "protection" there - that we can actually create a movement which can provide a viable alternative to current dominant media/political discourse.
I step aside from the rhetoric of "resistance", here, because I've been reading Ursula le Guin this week. One of the most compelling images I've picked up so far from Left Hand of Darkness has been that of political discourse as a road. That to engage in direct resistance, to simply say "no, don't do this", is to stay on the road that has been chosen for you, but to try to push back against the flow of traffic, the direction of power. Whoever wins, you lose, because you've allowed those in power to define the terms of the discourse, and your endpoint is still a point on their road. It is far better, therefore, to strike off the road, to show the other way as best you can.
Nominally, Thursday night's meeting was about library cuts. In Oxfordshire, 20 libraries are earmarked for closure - small, local libraries, most intimately linked with schools and social justice initiatives, and the absence of which will have a catastrophic impact on the quality of life in the surrounding community.
Previously, individual groups had campaigned around the closure of their individual libraries, and in this context had been approached and offered the chance to bid for a council grant to keep their libraries open. Many community groups were in the process of preparing their bids - until this meeting happened.
Because over the course this meeting, a series of excellent speakers - from Philip Pullman's fifteen-minute speech to 60-second pitches from local campaigners - completely changed the tone of the debate.
Pullman demonstrated - masterfully, given the composition of the audience - that this bidding process took services away from those who needed them the most, and handed them to those with the free time, administrative skills, and connections, to make a successful bid. That by engaging with the bidding process we are accepting a thousand implicit assumptions of what he called "free market fundamentalism" - when in fact, we can step right off that road, refuse to accept that competition is a force for good, we can instead co-operate.
The very idea that we must choose a cause to fight, resist the single cut that is the most evil, and stay true to that campaign, is our defeat. We feel it, because the size of the whole project terrifies us, but to come to the place where we choose we have already implicitly accepted so much.
The head of Oxfordshire County Council, when called on these issues, is very fond of asking "well what should we cut, then?" - to accept this question is to accept defeat. The only answers we should give, Pullman pointed out, are the following:
"It's not our job to cut services - it's your job to protect them!"
"Given that those with the free time, ability, and inclination to volunteer are already doing so, which current voluntarily-run organisation do you want us to cut to provide community library services?"
Just as making a community bid to protect (say) Headington library is analogous to crossing a picket line (in that it makes it harder for other libraries to defend themselves), the same is true for any piecemeal activism. Most importantly, it means that the causes most appealing to those with the time, skills, and connections are the ones with the greatest chance of succeeding. Not the causes with the most at stake - the ones where people's most basic rights and freedoms are about to be taken away - but the ones whose proponents have the most persuasive letter-writing style, or the largest numbers for marching on London.
And that is why - whatever your biggest concern about the coming political upheaval - I'm asking you to go and read this post, listing the ways that you can help in the fight against cuts to disability benefit. These are cruel cuts, cuts taking away the last dregs of agency from people who are already screwed over by a system demanding that they degrade themselves regularly through box-ticking "medical" interviews designed by insurance-loss-adjustors to find loopholes and excuses not to give them the money they need to live. The people whose lives are hidden inside taboos, who society Others so completely they can't see that these benefits are for them, too - that nobody is ever more than temporarily able-bodied. So many proposed cuts have the potential to destroy lives; few do it quite this openly, but somehow this has passed mostly under the radar. I thought it was common knowledge as so many people on my friends list have spoken about it.. but have I seen any coverage in the popular media? No. All I keep seeing is that tenacious narrative, "woman signed off work with back injury caught flying rocket to moon", that somehow builds up in common consciousness, although it makes no sense - like one person faking food poisoning to cover for a hangover means we shouldn't have an NHS.
1% fraud. 20% cuts. You can do something.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-23 03:09 pm (UTC)...huh. Thank you for making this post. It's given me a lot to think about.