I spent last weekend with an amazing organisation called Trash Free Trails in the Welsh countryside (namely a place called Staylittle), who invited me to host a visible mending workshop for their A-Team. If you don’t know them, they are an organisation that promotes removing single use pollution from our wild places in the UK, while at the same time encouraging nature connection. The weekend was packed with workshops on how to organise, facilitate and record a trail clean and how to also allow people to connect more with nature at the same time. Many shared about their experiences of organising community events that involve trail cleans and how frustrating it can sometimes be, when people only seem to come to them to ‘ride’ or ‘have fun’ and not to connect with or care for the place they are in. It made me wonder how that happens. How do we become so estranged from nature that we don’t even want to connect with it when we’re literally in it. We just want to consume it for our own enjoyment or pleasure with no desire for reciprocity.
Frantically trying to finish reading ‘Citizens’ ahead of the book club I got to experience the manifestation of what it means to be raised as a consumer rather than a citizen first hand. It made me reflect on how many times I have been more of a consumer than a citizen in my day to day life.
We are not external to nature, Consumers of it. We are nature – participants in it, Citizens of it. Indigenous leaders believe that this difference in mindset is the difference between living a harmonious and sustainable life on the planet, versus our current tragic trajectory. – p. 30, Citizens
Check out our Notion document, which has a lot of extra resources including podcasts, essays and articles all around the topic of being more citizen. Feel free to add, comment and share!
This month’s takeaways: Citizens by Jon Alexander
To be a consumer is to be able to choose from the menu. But most of us don’t realise that the real power lies in creating the menu. We have been made to believe that our influence doesn’t go beyond conscious consumerism or consumer activism. Having control only by what we buy and don’t buy. When we become citizens we take it a step further.
Being a citizen means moving out of the consumer story. As consumers we are passive. We are being sold to and served. The focus lies on our individuality rather than on our interdependence. Being citizens implies engagement, contribution, and action rather than a passive state of being or receiving. This is the most accurate sense of the word etymologically: Citizens are literally ‘together people,’ from the Latin, humans defined by the very fact of their togetherness. – p.95
To understand ourselves as citizens is to acknowledge the inherent worth and potential and power of every one of us to contribute what we each uniquely have to offer, just as all the lifeforms in an ecosystem have a vital role to play. To accept that all of us are always smarter than any one of us. To trust ourselves and each other. – p.40
Voting is important but they way we live our lives on the daily can have a far greater impact. While voting is a meaningful act when it comes to encouraging change at a systemic level we should never underestimate the influence of how we live daily – the convivial and pragmatic dynamics of making choices, compromises and agreements in every sphere of life. This is the domain of Citizens, and it is a space in which voting must take its place as one action among many, not the sole and defining contribution. – p.101
In a citizen society we recognise the tax we pay as our contribution to sustaining the whole. Rather than a bill we’re dreading to pay, because it leaves us out of pocket. Ideally we’d understand and witness how our financial contributions benefit everyone in our communities including ourselves.
A crisis seems to be bring out the best in us. If we think back to March 2020 and the start of the pandemic. Remember the amount of mutual aid groups that seemed to appear out of nowhere? Neighbours helping each other out and supporting each other through this trying time. In A Paradise Built in Hell, her 2009 book about human response to disasters through history, Solnit describes how communities invariably come together during and after crises, developing new ways not just to survive but to thrive, healing old wounds, and finding joy in the process. – p.113
In order to be able to be Citizens, we need to make sure everyone is heard. Citizens can only succeed where our voices and opinions can be heard. Depending on factors like skin colour, gender, faith, ability, income and level of education, some of us may be unwelcome or even forbidden from expressing our views and taking action. –p.104
For more info on how to make our movements and communities more inclusive, read our newsletter about working class environmentalism.
All eyes on Taiwan. Taiwan has created the world’s leading Citizen Government. In the early 2000’s the conventional government wanted the people to leave all the decisions to them, their message being that it was too complicated to involve regular people. In 2011 with the Arab Spring revolts, Taiwan had its own ‘Sunflower Revolution.’ It was a group of developers and programmers who created a parallel government with similar websites to the government ones, making the stories and visuals engaging. ‘They showed - in deeds not words - exactly how civic participation in public decision making could operate, if only the government was open to it.’ – p. 237
Want to be more Citizen? Create a climate action Venn diagram for yourself. Start by answering these three questions: What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? What part of the climate problem would you like to help solve? The goal is to spend as much time of your life in the middle of those three circles.
Up next: ‘It’s not that radical’ by Mikaela Loach in collaboration with Vestpod
Our next book club will be a special one! We have teamed up with Emilie Bellet from Vestpod (letter ‘V’ for Vestpod counts right?), a community empowering women to manage their own money.
About the book:
For too long, representations of climate action in the mainstream media have been white-washed, green-washed and diluted to be made compatible with capitalism.
We are living in an economic system which pursues profit above all else; harmful, oppressive systems that heavily contribute to the climate crisis, and environmental consequences that have been toned down to the masses. Tackling the climate crisis requires us to visit the roots of poverty, capitalist exploitation, police brutality and legal injustice. Climate justice offers the real possibility of huge leaps towards racial equality and collective liberation as it aims to dismantle the very foundations of these issues.
In this book, Mikaela Loach offers a fresh and radical perspective for real climate action that could drastically change the world as we know it for the benefit of us all. Written with candour and hope, It's Not That Radical will galvanise readers to take action, offering an accessible and transformative appraisal of our circumstances to help mobilise a majority for the future of our planet.
The book has just come out, so you will probably not find it second hand or in a library yet, but you can get it via your local book store or Hive (if you live in the UK).
Join us for the event on the 9th of May – all tickets are donation based and all proceeds will go to charity.
Calling all purpose-led women working in social and environmental change
The Escape Programme returns for the fifth year this May to help women step into their power as impactful and resilient change-makers. Do you have a project or dream you want help getting into the world or need time to stop and reflect on your personal and professional life and consider what’s next? Starting with a four-day retreat in the beautiful Devon countryside, followed by four months of virtual connection and peer coaching to work on new goals. You’ll be part of a cohort of 15 amazing women, all supporting one another to deepen their resilience and impact.
To learn more, follow the link or contact Joey@sustainableyou.co.uk
Bursaries are available to ensure inclusivity.
Thank you for reading this month’s newsletter! You can now support our work by getting a paid Substack subscription. If you want to join us for one of our upcoming events, make sure you follow us on Eventbrite or Meet Up. If you have any questions please add a comment to this post or send us an email to hello@andthefuture.com
Lisa & Tash ✨