Lessons from 350

[Joshua Vial]

Well that's been a pretty consuming 6 months, but boy was it fun.

Starting out at just one meeting every tuesday night in may, my commitments to 350 Aotearoa steadily evolved to building the website (naturally), maintaining the facebook and twitter accounts, registering a new charity, serving as trustee, volunteer recruitment and looking after the finances (I love xero). The crunch was having my office invaded - 6 people in a 15 sqm space for 6 weeks!



The October day of action was a huge success and we're just starting to gear up for activity around Copenhagen but it's nice to take a break and pause on some lessons learned so far.

Follow the passion
Both your own and other peoples, if something isn't exciting then think twice before pursuing it. Instead of trying to convert other people to what excites you, find what is sparking their interest and look for overlaps where you can work together. That's where the magic is.

This is particularly important when trying to get projects off the ground - there was lots of talk about projects that could or should be done but the only ones that were, and more importantly done well, were the ones where the project leads were passionate about the idea and often involved in the original formation of it.

Give up control to get buy in
We went from 2 actions last year to over 200 this year because we didn't go out and ask people to do what we wanted them to do. We asked them to do what they wanted to do.

There is a balancing act with helping people stay on message and stifling enthusiasm - this is a delicate art and one we're keen to refine. In my opinion, the future of environmental movements depends on doing this well - one way is to...

Keep it simple
One of our greatest advantages was the amazing work the 350.org team had done on distilling our key message "350, it's the safe level of CO2 in the atmosphere - we're having a massive international day of action on October 24 and inviting people to host local events calling for a strong climate treaty at copenhagen". I've lost track of how many times I've used a phrase similar to that but having a clear message and hammering it at every opportunity is what gives a message resilience.

The message will always get mutated but by keeping it simple you do a few things;
a) you make it more viral as it is easier to understand, remember and pass on
b) you make it more resilient as it is harder to distort and get wrong.
c) you leave room for collaboration

Like musicians improvising the space you leave is as important as the space you fill - as people trying to grow the movement our role is to lay down a predictable and steady framework to create a space for other people to flourish in.

Break the mold
There is power in doing the unexpected, nowhere was this more clear to me in the way we engaged with our politicians. Before the day of action we had an event at parliament which was just after a petition handover about the recent funding cuts to Adult Community Education. Now I fully support their cause but my god the speeches went on. How many angry protests and petition handovers do you think your average politician has been to?

In comparison our event had 50 students from half a dozen local schools show up and mingle with 20 MPs (including 4 or 5 from not so climate friendly national). It was chaotic, everyone split into four groups with some students and MPs in each and read out one sentence of a joint statement on climate change. We had a big banner which most MPs and students signed - there was a photo and then the students sang a song.

Now it's not hard to get politicians to show up for a photo opportunity but we've since had meetings with representatives from four parties and have paved the way for productive working relationships.

By breaking people's expectations about what a protest is you create a an interesting space where new relationships can flourish - how can you convince someone of your position if they won't return your calls?

What lessons have you learned from 350?

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from www.joshuavial.com