A Global Citizen Movement — Weaving the Tapestry Through Relational Congruence

The challenge of building a global citizen movement to address our interconnected crises is an exciting and a much needed course of action.

I was invited into a dialog hosted by the Great Transition Initiative (GTI) a few months back. For those who don’t know about GTI, they are an “international network for the critical exploration of concepts, strategies, and visions for a transition to a future of enriched lives, human solidarity, and a resilient biosphere.” They convene wide ranging conversations on the theory and practice of this transition.

This conversation was about eliciting perspectives on building a global citizen movement (GCM) that can mobilize for change. In the conversation there were many different perspectives, use of language and definitions of what the crisis is. Are we in a polycrisis or metacrisis or permacrisis or civilizational crisis… etc. etc. is it patriarchy, is it capitalism, an industrial mindset, is it a deep pathology within the human species? Is it systems change or is it anti-systemic? How can we formulate actions without a clear shared diagnosis and analysis of what the problem is?

I learned early on through the World Social Forum process that the various social movements that are driving and advocating for change have a variety of definitions of “the problem”, with distinct temporalities. They conceptualize change depending on the movement they are part of and the issues that they are addressing. Each have implicit narratives and temporalities of change which are embodied — they exist within the experiential and relational mix of how different communities have come into being over time.

This is why I resonate with the metaphor of a tapestry of alternatives. Because one thread may never touch another thread; two threads may be completely parallel within one tapestry, but they are part of the same fabric. This is relational congruence.

A global citizen movement will inherently express this kind of diversity with its accompanying diversity of analyses and narratives. I’m therefore sceptical of the ability, let alone the wisdom, of trying to settle on one analysis and create one vision. So do we need to abandon the search for, and advocacy for, the single definition of the problem, the single diagnosis, the single vision? Do we need to be looking for the relational congruence between the variety of perspectives across the various actors and social movements whose hearts and livelihoods are connected to a desire for change?

The practical and theoretical work on commons and commoning is another way to consider a tapestry of alternatives. Ostrom’s many children (the many people she has taught and inspired) have pluralized the notions of commons into a wide variety of domains, whether they are ecological, urban, digital, affective/emotional, atmospheric, etc. etc. These different commons, furthermore, have been studied with great rigor, and we have learned that the internal logics within the variety of commons are indeed different. They can’t be easily conflated — there is no one-size-fits-all. We can only say very generally that something which we mutually depend on for our survival and well-being is a commons, and through our implication into that commons we are called forth to action, into the need to collaboratively govern this commons together (be it digital, urban, educational, atmospheric, etc). But beyond this their logics are diverse.

Unfortunately, the World Social Forum process, with all the richness of its diversity, failed in seizing the opportunity to create a strategic program for change. It did not allow itself to be a voice or representative actor for the many groups within its umbrella or orbit. Despite the efforts of some, there was never much respect for manifestos and vanguardism there. What I have learned from this is that it is not enough to create a space that holds diversity, we need coordinated and targeted strategic actions and programs of change. Many people acting together in concert. We are implicated into shared commons and many groups and people must learn to collaboratively govern and protect these.

But what if this acting together is not one but a multiplicity of change efforts with relational congruence, part of a larger tapestry? What if these became a social ecology of alternatives that supported each other?

The crux of the challenge is that a global citizen movement is required to mobilize and drive change, but this GCM is marked by fundamental diversities of culture, geography, sectors, themes and organizational types — different embodiments related to different commons. How do we support the emergence of a powerful GCM that expresses strategic and relational congruences (of analysis and action) within a GCM where diversity (ontological and epistemological) is inherent?

The following are some ideas to this effect:

• Strategic Pressure Points — Identify the targeted strategic pressure points necessary to trim tab change, and create high profile and high impact opt in projects where many organisations join. These need to be laser focused efforts that allow many organizations and people to join and support, possibly drawing from Collective Impact methodology.
• Bee and Flower Logic — Identify the types of strategic conguences that do not require people or organizations to be or think the same, “bee and flower logic”. The bee does not consciously know it is “exchanging a service for a product” (my pollen distribution for your pollen). The flower does not know it is exchanging a product for a service (my pollen for your transport). However they both sustain each other despite never entering into an agreement.cosmolocalism, for example, relies on this logic, as people don’t need to agree on an analysis or vision to share in the fruits of the virtuous cycle. Let’s look for all the places this bee and flower logic can be enacted.
• Swarm Futures — as there are many contexts and diversity, we need many images of the futures, stories, narratives, temporalities, to form the tapestry. Today the nihilistic stupor of late capitalist imagination pervades. Participatory futures projects can be used to intervene in the public images of the futures. Many relationally connected images of the futures can inspire and galvanize across diverse populations. As these futures grow in richness, quantity, quality, and power, they can eventually become louder, drowning out the nihilism of other “used futures” which can fall away into the dustbin of history.
• Protocol Commons — As the internet was born of HTTP when invented by Tim Berners-Lee, we may need to create our own version of HTTP for the global citizen movement. This Protocol Commons is a hypothetical way of enabling bee and flower logic across the relational diversity of a GCM. It is a potential meta-language or meta-system that allows for distinct groups and organizations to join the tapestry to connect and find their own relational congruences.
• Planetary Commons — what are the commons that all humans are implicated into? Where none of us can opt out? These are things that without we cannot mutually survive, let alone be well. The atmospheric commons is one. A de-nuclearized world, a global public sphere free from mis/disinformation, a world with real equity and free of oligarchs, these may also be considered commons. These general commons can become the basis for allowing many GCM people and orgs to play a role in collaborative governance (support, decision making, etc.). We could also create prototype governance systems for these various planetary commons.
• Living Labs for Movement Building — we don’t know how to build a GCM, yet. Much of what will work can only be discovered through a sustained commitment to experimentation. We will need to try, try again and learn and learn more. Yoda said, “do or do not, there is no try.” But he was wrong! We will need a diversity of experiments (trying new things) in a wide variety of contexts to find out what works. We can draw from the action research and living labs communities to learn how to do experimentation for building GCM.

We need to manifest imaginations that are bigger than the problems we are dealing with. This entails a number of highly strategic manoeuvres in methodological innovation, as well as calling forth new selves, new potentials and new possibilities from within.