Seen the Russel Brand video? Despairing of politicians? Here's how you can_really_ make a difference

[fearmeforiampink]

So, you've watched the Russel Brand video, and you're despairing about the state of our politics. Or you're just doing the latter without having done the former.

But you want to do something that will actually make a difference, which Brand's call to arms of "Hey, don't bother voting!" will utterly fail to do. How can you get active, change things?

As someone who works in the area of democratic reform, I thought I'd try and put together a list of things you can get involved in to make a difference. (I'll note that this is just me personally doing this, due to I've seen a few friends asking what they can do - it's not anything official from any organisation). I do honestly believe that if more people got involved in these sorts of areas, it would help improve the system.

Will it be an instant change? No, theses sorts of things are a case of pushing over the long term, changing how people look at things. But the more people pushing, the more change will be achieved.

I'll start off with organisations you can get involved in, that are trying to fix politics:

— Unlock Democracy. http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk / https://www.facebook.com/unlockdemocracy
I'm biased, because this is the organisation I work for. UD campaigns for democracy, rights and freedoms. At the moment the concentration is on the (awful) lobbying bill that's going through parliament, but there's also stuff on local democracy, plus lords, electoral and constitutional reform. Local Works ( http://www.localworks.org ) is one of UD's projects, which works on giving people more power in their communities, and there's legislation they're part of that allows local communities to make changes that help their local area — one of the proposals there is to let local people call for their councils to be elected by a proportional system.

What can you do to get involved? There are regular 'speak out' campaigns where you can write to your MP through the website, and express your views on legislation. Whilst MPs are increasingly ignoring the petitions that take people two seconds to sign, they do notice personally written letters from their constituents, as they're the people that care enough to vote them in and out. There are also local groups across the country ( http://unlockdemocracy.org.uk/pages/local-groups ) where people can get involved in the local area, campaigning on local issues, but also having public meetings and other events to draw attention to national issues.

— The Electoral Reform Society. http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk / https://www.facebook.com/electoralreformsociety
ERS concentrates on electoral reform, but covers stuff from votes at 16, the problems of things like Safe Seats (where it's near impossible to unseat the incumbent MP or councillor), and other matters around the problems with our votes.

— Bite the Ballot. https://www.facebook.com/bitetheballot
They're the people who made the video I shared responding to Brand. They concentrate on educating & engaging young people in politics — making them votes worth winning.

— Republic. www.republic.org.uk
They're somewhat concentrated on getting rid of the monarchy, but they also call for a constiitution for the country. They do well at making their points when stuff on the monarchy comes up, and they're after activists around the country to be visible in doing just that.

— Reform Groups Network. http://reformgroups.net/site-list
A site for local groups that are pushing for reform to say what they're doing, how to get involved, and to share good ideas.

There are plenty of other organisations that focus on specific areas like the Open Rights Group ( http://www.openrightsgroup.org ) who have a particular focus or cause that they're concentrating on, and they're also good for putting your time, effort and support into.

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What about the political parties? I think there's two ways to go; there are alternative political parties, or there's getting involved in the major parties and trying to fix them from within. On the former, I know people say that those parties make no difference, but I'd argue that's not true — in 1989, the Greens got 15% overall of the European Parliament vote, and whilst that didn't get them any seats, it made the major parties suddenly had to treat environmentalism a lot more seriously; that was when they all started including greener policies. I think that can happen again.

I was going to include a list of alternative political parties here, but having thought about it, I'll be honest — they're not my area, and I don't want to advocate causes at people when I can't back up their worth. I invite people to make suggestions on parties that are worth supporting in the comments here, though.

The other option is to get involved in the existing parties, and make a change there. People are likely to laugh at that, aren't the parties the problem? But one of the issues is the way that people have disengaged from the parties, making it easier for the heads there to do what they want. The way the membership of the parties has dropped, if people started joining them again en masse, and calling for specific changes, then the parties would have to sit up and take notice.

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So, there you go. That's my thoughts, my suggestions for how to make a difference. I think there are real issues with things how they are, we need change, but I think the way to make that change is to get engaged, to actually *do* something to make that change happen. And if all the people who aren't happy with things did get involved in making those changes, we would see the difference it'd make. If anyone else has any suggestions for groups or points to add, I'm very willing to edit them in.

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

You advocate PR and a number of equally marginally effective measures. Honestly, of all the responses to what Brand said I found yours made me feel really really bleak. Someone was yelling from the rooftops passionately, let's change this, let's make things different, let's really alter things... and you offered subtle variants on same. Honestly, I like politics but your post really depressed me.

[andrewducker]

I honestly find this attitude horribly depressing.

There are, almost certainly, no massive sudden changes we can make to improve things dramatically.

So it's easy for people to shout "BURN IT DOWN AND START AGAIN!" - because they're shouting about the fact that life isn't perfect. It's the kind of thing I see from libertarians saying "FIAT CURRENCY IS BROKEN, WE MUST START AGAIN!" - easy to sloganise around, but doesn't get you anywhere good.

Whereas small, incremental, change that slowly improves things in a useful healthy direction _works_. We aren't going to end up living in The Culture next week, but we could end up a bit more like, say, Denmark, where people are apparently significantly happier. Although, shockingly, they still have politics.

The rational response to people asking for the moon isn't to offer them impossible things that sound just as impressive, it's to have adult conversations about what _can_ be done, and then try to do that.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Honestly though I doubt PR is an improvement in anything other than the most theoretical sense. It's a distraction from the real problems... and posts like this just put a very passionate and interesting speech into the category of "go and play, you've being very unrealistic, politics is really about finicky rules and counting systems".

I'm sorry but this is the least inspiring way I can possibly think to get someone interested in politics and the problem here it's because it's almost all focused on voting and voting is simply the least effective and least inspiring way you can participate in a democracy.

Well, I guess we find each other's viewpoint here depressing. Brand wasn't saying "burn it down and start again" but he was saying "this system is rotten and needs fundamnetal change"... he's right. And what's spoken about here just isn't fundamental change, it's nit picking change.

There's plenty of space in between bloody revolution (which Brand, incidentally, wasn't saying he supported he was saying was inevitable) and rearranging the deckchairs with another different voting system. Which is why I find this whole "well, revolution isn't going to happen/work so let's just sit down and twiddle a few useless knobs on what we have" a terrible response.

There's a hundred forms of activism, campaigning, grass-roots movements, collective organisation and so on which operate outside the confines of voting to actually make a genuine improvement. People who do that kind of thing are much more making a difference than someone who plods along to vote under any voting system.

When I saw this entry I was really hoping it would be something like that where people could actually productively use their time for something inspiring in the political field...

Sorry, this comes across as more bitter than I wanted it to because as I said, I do support PR and most of the things advocated here... but even if all of them were implemented tomorrow, it's a really flaccid response.

[andrewducker]

"There's a hundred forms of activism, campaigning, grass-roots movements, collective organisation and so on which operate outside the confines of voting to actually make a genuine improvement."

And several of those are above. Unlock Democracy is campaigning about lobbying at the moment, and as it says, organises people to help them to express their views to their MPs.

Bite The Ballot helps educate young people about politics, so that they can better get involved in campaigning.

Reform Groups Network are also campaigning against the "Gagging Law"

And the post also advocates getting involved in party politics of all stripes too.

So the post actually talks about those things you're advocating, but because it also talks about voting reform as _one_ of the things you can get involved with it's highly dispiriting?

[steer.livejournal.com]

So the post actually talks about those things you're advocating

No... it does not -- it talks about the things I'm not advocating. If you like we can divide our politics into "in system" and "out of system".

"in system" we attempt to change the politicians we have... by electoral reform, educating young people about politics, changing lobbying (fucks sake, we're in a system where the one attempt to change lobbying rules has somehow been sold as a "gagging law" and everyone hates it) and getting involved in party politics. Can you not see why I consider this a feeble response to someone saying "the system is broken".

"out of system" would be attempts to improve without the need for a political change of the central system-- not necessarily illegally but by movements which change how things can be financed, collective organisation... movements which can achieve positive things and real political goals without (or despite) the lack of change of the political system.

The post is highly depressing because as a response for a call to make a run around the current political system and achieve things without it, outside it, around it or despite it, this post is a call for people to invest more time in the political system, sink themselves into it and essentially do exactly the opposite.

The things in this post have their place but their place is for people who start from the point of view that the current political system is fine but could do with a patch up.

[andrewducker]

In that case I'm not actually sure what you're advocating at all.

Unless you mean things like communes? In which case history seems to have shown that the vast majority of people don't want that at all.

Can you give some examples?

[andrewducker]

And both myself and draxar have said that we're in favour of campaigns on a variety of things, of which voting reform is just one, but you keep coming back to that. I don't really understand why.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Because the variety of things are variants of the same type of thing.