TALKING POINT: Lobbying Elites: The Fast Track to Extinction

By Robert J. Burrowes

As we evaluate the outcomes of the recent UN climate negotiations in
Warsaw, one lesson that we are invited to learn, again, relates to our
strategy for getting effective action taken on the ongoing climate
catastrophe and other critical environmental problems. 

Is lobbying elites to change their behavior an effective strategy for change?

My experience, reinforced by decades of casual observation, is that
lobbying elites is a complete waste of time and that a strategy that
focuses on inviting ordinary individuals and groups to take action in the
desired direction is far more effective. Why do I say this?
Mainstream political processes are usually described as 'democratic' which
means that they are supposed to be responsive to and representative of the
popular will. When they were originally created, this was usually the
explicitly stated or implicitly presumed aim. However, with the passage of
time and the steady rise of corporate power, professional lobbyists and
corporate money have corrupted the 'democratic ideal' so that the
'people's representatives' are no longer responsive to the people.
Corporations and their industry organizations, front groups and lobbyists
have seized control of governments and key international organizations.
And other powerful non-state actors, including particular religious elites
(including Zionism, the Vatican and Wahhabi Islam) exercise
disproportionate power in particular contexts too.
In essence, this means that elites will continue to encourage us to
'exercise your democratic right' to vote and to lobby because once our
political effort has been so channeled, our dissent is easily dissipated
and thus ignored.
Conservative political 'action' groups of various kinds often play a part
in drawing us into using ineffective strategies and we need to be aware of
the part they are playing on behalf of elite interests even if this is
simply the result of an inadequate political analysis rather than
something more sinister.
Any organization committed to genuine grassroots empowerment and
mobilization would not waste its time lobbying delegates at a UN
conference given that the UN was captured by elite interests a long time
ago: A casual perusal of UN decisions will reveal that its orientation is
to serve elite interests, whatever flowery rhetoric fills the pages of
various UN documents, and when the UN Security Council sometimes makes a
move in the direction of justice (for example, on Palestine), the US
government will usually exercise its veto.
So what can we do instead? Well there are plenty of genuine grassroots
initiatives out there which are worthy of being considered for your
support. And given that the phenomenal paramilitary response coordinated
by national elites to thwart the Occupy movement illustrates how much they
fear genuine grassroots mobilization, we can draw some useful lessons on
how to improve our strategy in future. For example, good nonviolent
strategists have long been aware that tactics involving concentration
(where many activists are gathered in the same place, perhaps attending a
large rally) are more vulnerable to military/police repression than are
tactics utilizing dispersion (where activists participate without
gathering in large numbers). This is because it is much easier to direct
repressive violence at a crowd than it is by going door-to-door.
Hence, while gathering people in large numbers can be exciting and
empowering when it happens occasionally (and ways to minimize the risk of
repression can be utilised in these contexts: see 'Minimizing the Risk of
Police Violence' http://dkeenan.com/NvT/40/9.txt) the strategic reality is
that most of our struggle for peace, justice and environmental
sustainability must take place ongoingly, at a mundane level, in our daily
lives. Paradoxically, perhaps, virtually all of this struggle can be
conducted without risk of any kind, especially if enough of us
participate.
In short, the evidence teaches us that elites want us to lobby (or vote
for) them so that they can ignore us, and that mobilizations that
concentrate people in one place, while appropriate in some circumstances,
provide easy targets for repression. So we need to develop strategies that
primarily allow us to organize collectively in small local groups, to work
with people whose values we share, which mobilize new participants in an
empowering way, while minimizing the opportunities for military and police
repression.
So if you are someone who is inclined to take action yourself, rather than
to politely ask your oppressor to go easy on you for a change, then you
are welcome to plan or be part of effective nonviolent strategies that
will ultimately be decisive in shaping our future. If you don't know one
of these groups already, you might consider setting up a 'Flame Tree'
group in your household, street or neighborhood. See 'The Flame Tree
Project to Save Life on Earth' http://tinyurl.com/flametree

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and
ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an
effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a
nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?'