The camp for climate action 2009 recieved lots of criticism, much of it is superficial and fails to get to the roots of the problematic relationship between anti-capitalism and environmentalism.
Climate camp is over, all physical traces have gone and all that remains are the idea’s, arguments and debates that the camp created. The camps media conscious strategy wasn’t very successful this year. With no direct action for the media to string out over a weeks reporting, the media resorted to criticising the middle class nature of the camp. This line of criticism was reproduced by several radical groups, including this report from the Cambridge anarchists . Sure, many of the activities highlighted at the camp such as compost toilets, morning yoga and the insistence on a militant vegan space may have seemed alien to many outside the fencing of Blackheath common, yet to critique the camp on these grounds is to use a weak, sociological understanding of class. It’s unlikely the camp would have been more radical if the yoga and soya milk was replaced with whippets and lager. A critique of the climate camp based upon sociological categories of class is not a progressive approach to take. Whilst a more diverse variety of activities may have broadened the appeal of the camp, it would not have improved the political content of it.
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pretty sound analysis imho. that said, i'm curious about the future blog post:
rejecting the 'working class as identity' is important, since working class is obviously a material condition rather than a set of cultural signifiers, but i'm interested where you go with this. i actually recently re-read 'Give up activism' which you reference in the blog. it's kinda depressing, if not surprising the 'lessons of J-18' have gone so unheeded over the last decade.