[News] How the People’s Climate March Became a Corporate PR Campaign

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Weekend Edition September 19-21, 2014*
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/19/how-the-peoples-climate-march-became-a-corporate-pr-campaign/*


Business as Usual in Manhattan


  How the People’s Climate March Became a Corporate PR Campaign

by ARUN GUPTA

I’ve never been to a protest march that advertised in the New York City 
subway. That spent $220,000 on posters inviting Wall Street bankers to 
join a march to save the planet, according to one source. That claims 
you can change world history in an afternoon after walking the dog and 
eating brunch.

Welcome to the “People’s Climate March” set for Sunday, Sept. 21 in New 
York City. It’s timed to take place before world leaders hold a Climate 
Summit at the United Nations two days later. Organizers are billing it 
<http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/biggest-climate-change-demonstration-ever-un-new-york> as 
the “biggest climate change demonstration ever” with similar marches 
around the world. The Nation 
<http://www.thenation.com/article/181634/how-define-success-peoples-climate-march> describes 
the pre-organizing as following “a participatory, open-source model that 
recalls the Occupy Wall Street protests.” A leader of 350.org 
<http://350.org/>, one of the main organizing groups, explained, “Anyone 
can contribute, and many of our online organizing ‘hubs’ are led by 
volunteers who are often coordinating hundreds of other volunteers.”

I will join the march, as well as the Climate Convergence starting 
Friday, and most important the “Flood Wall Street 
<http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/come-peoples-climate-march-stay-flood-wall-street/>” 
direct action on Monday, Sept. 22. I’ve had conversations with more than 
a dozen organizers including senior staff at the organizing groups. Many 
people are genuinely excited about the Sunday demonstration. The 
movement is radicalizing thousands of youth. Endorsers include some 
labor unions and many people-of-color community organizations that 
normally sit out environmental activism because the mainstream green 
movement has often done a poor job of talking about the impact on or 
solutions for workers and the Global South.

Nonetheless, to quote Han Solo, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Environmental activist Anne Petermann 
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/13/1321335/-The-Need-for-Clear-Demands-at-the-Peoples-Climate-March>and 
writer Quincy Saul 
<http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/26215-like-a-dull-knife-the-peoples-climate-farce> describe 
how the People’s Climate March has no demands, no targets,and no enemy. 
Organizers admitted encouraging bankers to march was like saying 
Blackwater mercenaries should join an antiwar protest. There is no unity 
other than money. One veteran activist who was involved in Occupy Wall 
Street said it was made known there was plenty of money to hire her and 
others. There is no sense of history: decades of climate-justice 
activism are being erased by the incessant invocation of the “biggest 
climate change demonstration ever.” Investigative reporter Cory 
Morningstar 
<http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2014/09/15/this-changes-nothing-why-the-peoples-climate-march-guarantees-climate-catastrophe/> has 
connected the dots between the organizing groups, 350.org 
<http://350.org/> and Avaaz, the global online activist outfit modeled 
on MoveOn, and institutions like the World Bank and Clinton Global 
Initiative. Morningstar claims the secret of Avaaz’s success is its 
“expertise in behavioral change.”

That is what I find most troubling. Having worked on Madison Avenue for 
nearly a decade, I can smell a P.R. and marketing campaign a mile away. 
That’s what the People’s Climate March looks to be. According to inside 
sources a push early on for a Seattle-style event—organizing thousands 
of people to nonviolently shut down the area around the United 
Nations—was thwarted by paid staff with the organizing groups.

One participant in the organizing meetings said, “In the beginning 
people were saying, ‘This is our Seattle,’” referring to the 1999 World 
Trade Organization ministerial that was derailed by direct action. But 
the paid staff got the politics-free Climate March. Another source said, 
“You wouldn’t see Avaaz promoting an occupy-style action. The strategic 
decision was made to have a big march and get as many mainstream groups 
on board as possible.”

Nothing wrong with that. Not every tactic should be based on Occupy. But 
in an email about climate change that Avaaz sent out last December, 
which apparently raked in millions of dollars 
<https://secure.avaaz.org/en/24_months_loc_donate/>, it wrote, “It’s 
time for powerful, direct, non-violent action, to capture imagination, 
convey moral urgency, and inspire people to act. Think Occupy.”

Here’s what seems to be going on. Avaaz found a lucrative revenue stream 
by warning about climate catastrophe that can be solved with the click 
of a donate button. To convince people to donate it says we need 
Occupy-style actions. When the moment comes for such a protest, Avaaz 
and 350.org <http://350.org/>blocked it and then when it did get 
organized, they pushed it out of sight. If you go to People’s Climate 
March <http://peoplesclimate.org/march/>, you won’t find any mention of 
the Flood Wall Street action, which I fully support, but fear is being 
organized with too little time and resources. Nor have I seen it in an 
Avaaz email, nor has anyone else I’ve talked to. Bill McKibben of 
350.org <http://350.org/> began promoting it this week, but that may be 
because there is discontent in the activist ranks about the march, which 
includes lots of Occupy Wall Street activists. One inside source said, 
“It’s a branding decision not to promote the Flood Wall Street action. 
These are not radical organizations.”

Branding. That’s how the climate crisis is going to be solved. We are in 
an era or postmodern social movements.

The image (not ideology) comes first and shapes the reality. The P.R. 
and marketing determines the tactics, the messaging, the organizing, and 
the strategy. Whether this can have a positive effect is a different 
question, and it’s why I encourage everyone to participate. The future 
is unknowable. But left to their own devices the organizers will lead 
the movement into the graveyard of the Democratic Party, just as 
happened with the movement against the Iraq War a decade ago. You 
remember that historic worldwide movement, right? It was so profound the 
/New York Times/ dubbed global public opinion, “the second superpower.” 
Now Obama has launched an eighth war and there is no antiwar movement to 
speak of.

Sources say Avaaz and 350.org <http://350.org/> is footing most of the 
bill for the People’s Climate March with millions of dollars spent. 
Avaaz is said to have committed a dozen full-time staff, and hired 
dozens of other canvassers to collect petition signatures and hand out 
flyers. Nearly all of 350.org <http://350.org/>’s staff is working on 
climate marches around the country and there is an office in New York 
with thirty full-time workers organizing the march. That takes a lot of 
cheddar. While the grassroots are being mobilized, this is not a 
grassroots movement. That’s why it’s a mistake to condemn it. People are 
joining out of genuine concern and passion and hope for an equitable, 
sustainable world, but the control is top down and behind closed doors. 
Everyone I talked to described an undemocratic process. Even staffers 
were not sure who was making the decisions other than to tell me to 
follow the money. It’s also facile to say all groups are alike. Avaaz is 
more cautious than 350.org <http://350.org/>, and apparently the New 
York chapter of 350.org <http://350.org/>, which is more radical, is at 
odds with the national.

But when the overriding demand is for numbers, which is about visuals, 
which is about P.R. and marketing, everything becomes lowest common 
denominator. The lack of politics is a political decision. One insider 
admitted despite all the overheated rhetoric about the future is on the 
line, “I don’t expect much out of this U.N. process.” The source added 
this is “a media moment, a mobilizing moment.” The goal is to have 
visuals of a diverse crowd, hence the old saw about a “family-friendly” 
march. Family friendly comes at a high cost, however. Everything is 
decided by the need for visuals, which means organizers will capitulate 
to anything the NYPD demands for fear of violence. The march is on a 
Sunday morning when the city is in hangover mode. The world leaders will 
not even be at the United Nations, and they are just the hired guns of 
the real climate criminals on Wall Street. The closest the march comes 
to the United Nations is almost a mile away. The march winds up on 
Eleventh Avenue, a no-man’s land far from subways. There is no closing 
rally or speakers.

An insider says the real goal was to create space for politicians: “If 
you can frame it as grandma and kids and immigrants and labor you could 
make it safer for politicians to come out and support. It’s all very 
liberal. I don’t have much faith in it.”

When I asked what the metrics for success for, the insider told me media 
coverage and long-term polling about public opinion. I was dumbfounded. 
That’s the exact same tools we would use in huge marketing campaigns. 
First we would estimate and tally media “impressions” across all 
digital, print, outdoor, and so on. Then a few months down the road we 
would conduct surveys to see if we changed the consumer’s opinion of the 
brand, their favorability, the qualities they associated with it, the 
likelihood they would try. That’s the same tools Avaaz is allegedly using.

Avaaz has pioneered clickbait activism. It gets people to sign petitions 
about dramatic but ultimately minor issues like, “Prevent the flogging 
of 15 year old rape victim in Maldives.” The operating method of Avaaz, 
which was established in 2007, is to create “actions” like these that 
generate emails for its fundraising operation. In other words, it’s a 
corporation with a business model to create products (the actions), that 
help it increase market share (emails), and ultimately revenue. The 
actions that get the most attention are ones that get the most petition 
signers, the most media coverage, and which help generate revenue.

Avaaz has turned social justice into a product to enhance the liberal 
do-gooding lifestyle, and it’s set its sights on the climate justice 
movement.

The more dramatic the emails the better the response. It’s like the 
supermarket. The bags and boxes don’t say, “Not bad,” or “kinda tasty.” 
They say “the cheesiest,” “the most delicious,” “an avalanche of 
flavor,” “utterly irresistible.” That’s why climate change polls so well 
for Avaaz. It’s really fucking dramatic. But it’s still not dramatic 
enough for marketing purposes.

One source said the December 2013 email from Avaaz Executive Director 
Ricken Patel about climate change was a goldmine. It was headlined, “24 
Months to Save the World.” It begins, “This may be the most important 
email I’ve ever written to you,” and then says the climate crisis is 
“beyond our worst expectations” with storms and temperatures “off the 
charts.” Then comes the hook from Patel, “We CAN stop this, if we act 
very fast, and all together. And out of this extinction nightmare, we 
can pull one of the most inspiring futures for our children and 
grandchildren. A clean, green future in balance with the earth that gave 
birth to us.”

Telling people there is 24 months to save the world is odious, as is 
implying an online donation to Avaaz can save the planet.

The same overblown rhetoric is being used for the People’s Climate 
March: It’s the biggest ever. There is “unprecedented collaboration 
<http://peoplesclimate.org/march/>” with more than 1,400 “partner” 
groups in New York City. Everything comes down to this one day with the 
“future on the line and the whole world watching, we’ll take a stand to 
bend the course of history.”

Presumably the orderly marchers behind NYPD barricades will convince the 
governments of the world that will meet for the Climate Summit that 
won’t even meet for another two days that they need to pass UN 
Secretary­ General Ban Ki-­moon’s “ambitious global agreement to 
dramatically reduce global warming pollution.”

Moon is now joining the march. But it’s hard to find details, including 
on the Climate Summit <http://www.un.org/climatechange/summit/> website, 
as to what will actually be discussed there. The best account 
<http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/09/15/Another-Corporate-Climate-Summit/> I 
could find is by Canadian journalist Nick Fillmore. He claims the main 
point will be a carbon pricing scheme. This is one of those 
corporate-designed scams that in the past has rewarded the worst 
polluters with the most credits to sell and creates perverse incentives 
to pollute, because then they can earn money to cut those emissions.

So we have a corporate-designed protest march to support a 
corporate-dominated world body to implement a corporate policy to 
counter climate change caused by the corporations of the world, which 
are located just a few miles away but which will never feel the wrath of 
the People’s Climate March.

Rather than moaning on the sidelines and venting on Facebook, radicals 
need to be in the streets. Join the marches and more important the 
direct actions. Radicals need to ask the difficult questions as to why 
for the second time in fifteen years has a militant uprising, first 
Seattle and then Occupy, given way to liberal cooptation. What good is 
your radical analysis if the NGO sector and Democratic Party fronts kept 
out-organizing you?

Naomi Klein says we need to end business as usual because climate change 
is going to change everything. She’s right. Unfortunately the organizers 
of the People’s Climate March didn’t get the memo. Because they are 
continuing on with business as usual that won’t change anything.

One prominent environmental organizer says that after the march ends, 
“The U.N. leaders are going to be in there Monday and Tuesday and do 
whatever the fuck they want. And everyone will go back to their lives, 
walking the dog and eating brunch.”

The future is unwritten. It’s not about what happens on Sunday. It’s 
what happens after that.

/*Arun Gupta* contributes to outlets including Al Jazeera America, Vice, 
The Progressive, The Guardian, and In These Times./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
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