The Evolving design of Protest

Conducted 11:00 am 24th February 2010by Urgyen Badheytsang

Interview with Jessica Bell

On the topic of personal experiences as an

activist and the effects of digital media

on social activism

Conducted 11:00 am 24th February 2010by Urgyen Badheytsang

The Evolving Design of Protest

interview series

Interview with Jessica BellPersonal experiences

and the changing face of activism

in the digital realm

Conducted 11:00 am 24th February 2010by Urgyen Badheytsang

urgyen badheytsang Hi Jessica, thanks so much

for joining me today. If you would like to briefly describe your

involvement in social issues, that would be great.

jessica bell I’ve been an activist for seven and a half years, mainly working on direct action campaigning, because I just think direct action is the most effective way to create change and win. A lot of what I do is focused around environmental justice work, and for me that means looking at environmental issues like climate change, and pollution and toxics, and logging. But also, adding that human rights element. Who are the people most affected by these issues and what can I do to support their efforts to stop it? And I find that that kind of focus is, its just very powerful on a personal level and its very powerful in terms of creating policy change. And so in Canada I’ve done a lot of work on climate change and I’ve also done a lot of work supporting the Haida first nation in Northern British Columbia and the grassy narrows first nation in Northwestern Ontario.

Jessica Bell has worked in various environmental orga-nizations such as Rainforest Action Network, Climate Action Network, Wild Gift Foundation,etc. and spear-headed numerous campaigns in protesting about and demanding change in governmental response to the environmental crises.

BELLJESSICA

ub What made you get more involved physically, growing up

as a youth?

jessica That is such an interesting question. Because I think a lot of people face that dilemma of ‘Oh, I’m interested in this issue but none of my friends are.’ Like they’re kind of interested but they’re not going to be active. And I actually had that scenario as well where I first started learning about the climate change issue when I was 13. And I saw a televeision show on how climate change is affecting poor people in Bangladesh because of the flooding. And I remember at that time, watching the television show and thinking, “I HAVE to do something about this.” Because my country is contributing greatly to these problems but no one else around me was interested in doing anything.

My parents, they were sympathetic but they weren’t intersted. My brother, no, my friends, no. My teachers, you know, not really and I didn’t have any examples of any activism around, at all. So I didn’t do anything, And it took me like 10 years, until I was 23, to start becom-ing active, and even then, it took a trip to Nepal. I was in Nepal, I was just traveling, I was like “What am I going to do with my life?” and it was only when I got to Nepal I met this lady who was an activist and she worked on hu-man rights issues in Nepal, on women’s rights issues and it was my first experience spending time with a person who had deliberately chosen to become an activist.

ub You were just a tourist at the time in Nepal right?

jessica I was just a tourist, and I remember I had volunteered for her a few weeks and I was like “You can be an activist, like this person is an activist, and I wanna be an activist too and I can see that it is possible. And you know, when I went to the States, I didn’t have any activist friends but at that point I was like, ‘Alright I’ve got to find activist friends’. And I deliberately set out and found

I think a lot of people face that dilemma of ‘Oh, I’m

interested in this issue but none of my friends

are.’ Like they’re kind of interested but they’re not

going to be active.

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people who were interested in activism too. Then it kind of went from there, but it was a long challenge to reach that point.

ub You were probably aware of activists even before you

met the person in Nepal too right? And it was just a matter of

meeting the right person I guess?

jessica Yes, I was aware but it was so abstract, it was, I’d watch someone on telvision or I’d walk by a protest on the street, or I would attend a protest but I wouldn’t be one of the organizers I would just go for an hour and then leave. I didn’t identify with people who did it everyday.

ub Right, It wasn’t enough to see them on TV, to inspire

you until you met someone that you actually had a physical

interaction with.

Above: Grassy group and Rainforest Action Network have collaborated on numerous actions like banner hanging and mock teepees in front of Queen’s park to voice concerns over issues like unsustain-able logging and corporate breaching of contracts with indigenous communities.

jessica No, no it wasn’t but what’s funny Urgyen is that it was actually a show on television which educated me about this issue in the first place and piqued my inter-est. But the process of me getting involved and active everday involved me finding other people to work with, on a day to day level.

ub I think thats true, that there’s a multitude of processes

inolved, not just one thing.

jessica Oh yeah.

ub You mentioned in a commentary in an article, that “just

like George Bush provided the peace movement an ambition

to drive the Republicans out of the office, that you, Harper,

have provided the climate movement an inspiration to orga-

nize you out of power if you do not change course.” I believe

that it can be noted from turning points in history that a gov-

ernment’s responsiveness to action ultimately determines the

sort of action that is used to create a response from them.

jessica Yes.

ub It also determines the sort of government that takes its

place. So the fact that, being of the conservative government

and not acting so well on the Copenhagen Summit, I guess it

lays the path for conservatives not being trusted in terms of

environmental issues.

jessica I think so. And I think so particularly for this new generation of activists, people who are under 25, who are getting active for the first time, who have only voted a few times, and they’re seeing an issue that they deeply care about, environmentalism and young people over-whelmingly care about environmentalism more than older people. And they’re seeing that the Harper government is not only not doing much, but is lying about it. You know,

the goverment is saying “Oh we’re gonna do something” but then a scandal breaks and you see internal cabinet units saying that they had no intention of meeting those pathetic greenhouse gas reduction targets. So not only are these people saying that governments lie, but they’re saying that governments actively work on an international level to sabotage efforts to create a meaningful climate change treaty. And I think that that learning experience is gonna galvanize people, its gonna keep them active for a long time on these issues, and I hope thats how people respond.

The negative consequence could be “Oh, well, there’s no hope”. But I don’t think that’s happening. The people who I’m working with on these issues are turning around and saying, “Well now we need to work harder and we need to get more people involved ‘cause it’s a bigger pie.”

ub I’ve read from another article from U of T, that says that

you want to get people from ‘Interested to Active’.

jessica Yeah

ub Would you like to explain further what you mean by that?

jessica Well I guess its that question around, so many people are interested—our school system, our university system, our high school system, our newspapers are doing a reasonably good job at telling people that we have issues in the world. That we have human rights issues, we have war, we have a huge environmental problem, and basically, you know we’re killing our planet. And I think a lot of people know this. There’s a lot of people doing that, and it’s part of society, it’s instituionalized, people are getting paid to do it.

But then there’s this next step of, there’s barely any people out there who are actively working to change, to ad-dress these problems. And with this small slice of people,

There’s barely any people out there who are actively working to change, to address these problems, and there’s only a small percentage of that slice that’s working at address-ing the root cause of these issues, or at least trying to think of systemic solutions to these issues.

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there’s only a small percentage of that slice that’s work-ing at addressing the root cause of these issues, or at least trying to think of systemic solutions to these issues. And when I say that I mean, when you look at the environ-mental issue there’s a lot of people who are like “well i’m going to make personal changes to my life to address these environmental issues. I’m going to recycle more, buy second-hand clothes, turn the heat down at night..”

ub And you believe thats not enough.

jessica Well I think that’s important but my experi-ence is that there’s only going to be a small percentage of people who do that, and what we need to do is change society so everyone can do it. And that involves changing legislation, it involves changing government, it involves changing the systems that govern society. And there’s only a small percentage of people who are willing to focus on those macro problems and come up with macro solutions and agitate, and educate.

Above : A video clip from democracynow.org shows

Denmark police struggling to control a huge helium-filled

ball that crowds rolled around in the protest. of the Copen-

hagen summit

There’s a quote by this guy called George Likey and he said, “You only need 1 % of people in society to be very active to have a revolution”. You only need 1 % of people. And I really do believe that. You just need a few, and if we just had a few more, we’d have churned amazing things. So that’s kind of where I choose to focus myself, getting these ‘interested’ people, to ‘active’.

ub And that was probably your main goal at the activist train-

ing event at U of T.

jessica Yes, absolutely. Because, I mean, one of the beauties of doing trainings is that, OK, for people who have nuts and bolts skills, there is the question of, how do you write a press release, how do you do public speaking, how do you organize an action or protest? But most im-portantly, you get all these people in the room and you’re like, “Hey, all of you are interested in activism, so make friends with each other, start working together.” So that I think is one of the most important things that comes out of those trainings.

ub Creating mutual trust and bonds.

jessica Yes, the networking. I guess another thing that’s so valuable about those trainings is that, the media currently doesn’t do a very good job at showcasing activist success stories. And there’s kingpins that win concrete victories all the time, all around the world.

ub And I guess there’s the negative connotation with activ-

ists as people who are generally unhappy or always complain-

ing about things. But theres all these good sides to it.

jessica Yes, exactly.

Most importantly, you get all these people in the room and you’re like, “Hey, all of you are interested in activism, so make friends with each other, start working together.”

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ub Speaking of victories, I would like to talk about your ar-

ticle about the Haida Gwaii victory, where you protested at the

Weyerhaueser meetings, and the indigenous community was

able to actively participate and shut down logging operations

at their site.

jessica Oh absolutely. And they’ve won so much on that island. They’ve gained so much control over their local economy and their land. But the media doesn’t tell us so much about these stories, and even if it does, they’re presented with thousands of other stories that tell us about all these bad things that are happening in the world, and it’s hard to decipher. It’s hard to, you know, pick. But those trainings and workshops and things like that, it allows activists to tell other new activists, “Hey this is a really effective way of bringing about change. And here’s all these examples of works happening around the world. Keep this faith inside of you because if you keep sticking on an issue you’re gonna have change too.”

ub As part of my research, I’ve read some studies that have

shown that people, especially heavy internet users, might

possibly be less emotionally responsive in the digital age due

to the heavy flow of information online, which gets processed

faster than the mind has time to respond to. That these

people might have become complacent or less responsive.

What are your thoughts on such studies, and have any of

your experiences reflected any of those statements in your

personal experiences?

jessica That’s very interesting that you say that. I guess for me as an activist, I look at this question of the internet, and for me I think about it’s values, and I think about what it’s not so good at. When I think about it’s values I think it’s really good at sharing information so that people who are already emotionally invested can do stuff. So for instance we organized a series of direct ac-tions across Canada in the lead up to Copenhagen where people occupied Conservative elected official’s offices and protested. And we use the internet to communicate

with all these people across the country, we did like 7 or 8 protests and it was very effective in communicating that information. But when it comes to getting people emotionally engaged, I find the internet to be remarkable ineffective. I feel that if you want people to take a risk, and stand with other people, you know, if its in the workplace, to risk their jobs or higher wages to go on strike, or if you want people to risk going to jail and risk being hurt by doing direct action with people, getting that kind of com-mitment, it involves emotion in so many ways.

ub Right.

jessica The internet’s not going to do it, in my mind. It’s making friends with people, its building trust with people, it’s hanging out with people and being like, ‘I can work with you and if you want to go down that direc-tion and do that protest or run that campaign, I want to do that with you too.’ That’s never gonna happen—well maybe it will but I havent’ seen it happen on the internet. It happens through face-to-face organizing. So with Stu-dents for a Free Tibet, it’s an international issue but people work locally to build that global campaign. People in Toronto organize together to build protests, and its those connections with your friends locally which keeps people involved.

ub And e-mailing people about something definitely doesn’t

get them suddenly riled up or coming to a protest.

jessica I don’t think so, no.

ub Do you know about the Metrolinx trains in Toronto?

jessica No, tell me about them.

ub So basically there’s these diesel trains...

The internet’s not going to do it, in my mind. It’s making friends with people, its building trust with people, it’s hanging out with people and being like, ‘I can work with you and if you want to go down that direction and do that protest or run that campaign, I want to do that with you too.’ It hap-pens through face-to-face organizing.

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jessica Yes.

ub ...that are going to run everyday and they’re planning to

run them through Parkdale.

jessica Yes. I live in Lansdowne. They’re running it through my area too.

ub And there was a protest movement against that. Unfor-

tunately whats’ happened is that they weren’t able to stop

the trains. And I found that there was a huge Facebook group

on it recently, and I don’t think the Facebook group was able

to bring out the amount of people apparently shown on its

list. I don’t think most of them came at all to being physically

involved.

jessica Absolutely. I think it’s a case of, I find, we need to integrate online social marketing with face-to-face, on-the-ground, nuts-and-bolts organizing. And so, thats like a strategy that our movements need to improve right now and I think it’s gonna happen pretty quickly. And so when it comes to facebook, it’s a case of saying, “Well OK, we have like a thousand people or five thousand people, let’s do a phone bank and bring these people out and talk to them about why they signed up to the group and how they want to get involved. But really building on that hu-man connection I think is the next step.

ub And I guess, I think it becomes even more important as

we become increasingly more reliant on digital media to com-

municate with people.

jessica You bet.

ub I mean, I was only able to contact you because I have

your facebook contact.

When it comes to facebook, it’s a case of

saying, “Well OK, we have like a thousand people

or five thousand people, let’s do a phone bank

and bring these people out and talk to them

about why they signed up to the group and how

they want to get involved. But really building on

that human connection I think is the next step.

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jessica Isn’t that funny?

ub Yeah, and 2 other people as well I was only able to

contact you because of Facebook, otherwise I would have had

such a hard time.

jessica I know! Isn’t Facebook wonderful too? Like I’ve been able to find out so much about my friends at high school, I never ever would contact them. But, you know what I mean, ‘cause we’re old friends but I can still be like, “Oh,” you know, “You’re having a kid” or, “You’re getting married” so it’s cool.

ub So I guess it becomes increasingly more important to

recognize social media as a very strong tool.

jessica Absolutely

ub But at the same time, you know, the importance of physi-

cal involvement.

jessica Absoulately. So what’s the deal with the trains, they’re gonna go ahead eh?

ub Yes they are, they’re not going to be electrified for an-

other 15 years.

jessica Really? Whoah. I’m sure the campaign is still going ahead though right?

ub Well the website for the campaign apparently says they’re

happy with what came out of it. But I don’t see why they’re

happy because the trains are still going.

jessica F***. That’s just so bad though because once you create diesel trains, that means they still buy ‘em, and

then there’s going to be this industry that’s set up around diesel trains which will be harder to change later on. Let alone the pollution.

ub For sure. It’s a bad news case.

jessica That is so bad, I’m gonna look that up.

ub Okay.

jessica Not now but I will.

ub So, going back to talking about how socializing has

become increasingly digitalized. There’s good sides and bad

sides to it. So do you believe in physical involvement, like

rallies, direct action, verbal protests and such as crucial in

maintaining a movement and a dedicated group of activists?

From my research I previously concluded that ‘The street is

no longer visible’ in reaction to the constantly changing social

sphere and people’s increasing reliance on less physical

modes of communication. How effective do you think a march/

rally still is as we dive into digitally reliant forms of awareness

campaigns and action?

jessica You know that’s a very good question. I guess there’s a part of me that thinks it’s still critical because it’s still critical. I guess one of the reasons is because the internet is good at communicating things, and it’s good at raising awareness. But you can have a fully educated population that’s totally behind you on an issue, and that issue still goes ahead you know. The nuclear plant still gets built, the diesel trains still run, the coal plant still releases mercury. These things are still gonna happen in the real world.

Communication is only one part of the campaign, to stop whatever you are trying to stop and build whatever you are trying to build. And so the beauty of direct action and

the beauty of protests, and the beauty of going to City Council meetings and pressuring elected officials is that you’re not only communicating about the issue but you’re creating pressure, or you’re putting your body in the way of something happening. That’s one element of it.

And then the second element is that, one of the beauti-ful things about doing a protest or doing a direct action is that people who are watching are inspired, because they see people taking risks and they see people doing things that they don’t usually see being done. And it can move people to get involved in a way that a facebook group can’t. Starting an online group isn’t hard, or doing something on the internet isn’t so hard. It doesn’t inspire people in the same way, because they can do it too. So that inspiration doesn’t necessarily exist online.

ub For sure, I guess when you’re more physically involved it

resonates with people, to kind of reflect your action...

jessica Yeah

One of the beautiful things about doing a protest or doing a direct action is that people who are watching are inspired, because they see people taking risks and they see people doing things that they don’t usually see being done. Starting an online group isn’t hard, or doing something on the internet isn’t so hard.

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Above: No one is illegal protest in Toronto, in 2009. Jessica Bell also works with various other organizations on the side, providing important de-escalation and demand tactics for new trainees in direct action and campaigns.

ub And the fact that someone just like them is actually more

involved...

jessica And is doing something that other people think is scary, and different, and new, and hard.

ub You mentioned that you’ve been involved in activism

for 7 ½ years now. So I guess 7 ½ ago, you’ve dealt with a

huge leap in terms of communication. 7 ½ years ago maybe

the internet wasn’t such a huge part of life. And activists are

more web 2.0 savvy I guess, with things like Twitter, facebook,

youtube.

jessica I agree.

ub So how do you feel about such changes, in your perspec-

tive? How do you feel about the ever-changing, digitalized

medium?

jessica I think it’s very exciting. I think it’s important for activists to stay abreast of all these new changes, and to assess them, and to decide whether it’s going to work for them, and who they’re trying to organize. I work a lot with young people, in Canada, in urban areas, and people in Toronto are very internet-savvy. The people I work with are very internet-savvy.

ub All the more reason for you to keep up.

jessica Exactly! And so being on facebook, being on the internet, and being on Myspace and going on online event calendars and all that kind of stuff— it’s critical to get the word out. And spending time to learn those new skills and to learn those best practices is a very important thing to do.

But I think you also need to put it in perspective too. Be-cause a lot of people are not working with people who rely

When you want to orga-nize a workplace to build

a union these people usually don’t communi-cate via internet. You’re

gonna have to go to their worksite and talk to

people one on one and get them on board and go to their houses and

talk with them. So I think it depends on what your

goals are.

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on the internet. When you want to organize a workplace to build a union these people usually don’t communicate via internet. You’re gonna have to go to their worksite and talk to people one on one and get them on board and go to their houses and talk with them. So I think it depends on what your goals are. But for me I find it very effective, and I try to stay up to date as much as I can.

ub With a good balance of your physical involvement of

course.

jessica Oh yeah totally. Well that’s more fun right?

ub Yeah haha, that’s true

jessica It’s so much fun, I love it.

ub I was trained by you for the Ottawa campaign, when we

chained ourselves to the gate at the Chinese embassy, and I

found that, much more than the effectiveness of the aware-

Above: Jessica with other members of the Service Em-ployee International Union (SEIU). SEIU is the largest and the fastest growing union in North America, with over 2 million members in Canada, the United States, and Puerto Rico. The website lists the or-ganization’s mission as one “to improve the lives of working people and their families and lead the way to a more just and humane society.”

ness that we raised, it impacted me deeply as a person who

was involved...

jessica Yeah and that’s the key. You know how I went back to that statistic of how you only need a few people to be very active, to create huge change?

ub Uh huh.

jessica That’s what’s so powerful about doing direct action is that you’re working with people, you’re making friends, you’re taking risks together, you’re having fun. You’re deciding whether you wanna keep working with these people on these issues, there’s so much learning happening. People walk away, if it’s a successful direct action, feeling empowered and liberated. There’s so many wonderful things that can come out of it.

And I don’t know if that happens online in the same way. It can, I mean I can’t discredit the internet because I love it, and I use it all the time. You know, like your participa-tion in an action and how you feel going out of it and the friends you made and what you learned, I think it’s just as important as the number of media hits we got.

ub Do you think it can go either way, that someone can have

a negative response to physical involvement and actually

swear it off as one of their modes of campaigning?

jessica Absolutely. I’ve seen it happen. Yep, I’ve seen it happen. I think overall, direct action as a tactic tends to empower people and liberate people and inspire them to keep going. But I have seen instances where people have participated in a direct action and they’ve said it’s not for me. I think it often happens when the direct action is badly organized, so people might go through a hard experience.

So let’s say they went to jail for 3 days and no one helped them, you know. Or they were beaten by a police officer, or they were asked to do something which was terrifying for them and they had no one else to do it with, you know, they had to do a protest by themselves, and they went through that horrible experience that was difficult for them and, no one was there at the end of it to say, “Let’s talk about that, let’s debrief that, how do you feel about that?”You know, supporting them as they go through it, I feel that that’s necessary, to make sure actions are posi-tive. If that doesn’t happen, if it’s disorganized or if there’s not a lot of communication or support, then people could walk away being like, “I don’t wanna do that”.

ub Right.

jessica And then it’s just the classic, you know, in terms of protests and direct action, I keep going back to this, but it’s a case of people taking risks together. And so, classic behaviours by people, that, you know, result in a loss of trust in any situation like people lying, people being unreliable, people bitching, and stuff like “I don’t wanna hang out with you because you’re not behaving very nicely,” or “I don’t really trust you, because you just complained about me to someone else and didn’t tell me what the problem was” or whatever.

I find that these things get really magnified when you’re in stressful situations where you need to trust people. And so, if that happens in a direct action scenario, I feel that sometimes people react even more negatively to it, and they’re like,”I don’t wanna do that because I had a really bad experience” you know.

ub So it becomes crucially important to always engage the

co-participants in a very socially conscious manner.

jessica I think so. Yeah, and I think our movements don’t prioritize the bonds between people as much as they

Classic behaviours by people, that, you know, result in a loss of trust in any situation like people lying, people being unreliable and bitching, I find that these things get really magnified when you’re in stressful situa-tions where you need to trust people.

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should. I think we’re often very goal-oriented, like ‘We need to do this action’ and it’s like, well, how we do this action and how well we get along is just as important as the end result.

ub Because there’s humans involved.

jessica Yeah!

ub So looking back in history, we find that people who have

mobilized the most people are the most witty, charming and

humorous people who have recognized the importance of

their day-to-day interactions with people. Like Che Guevera,

who is a more violent example, or Gandhi or Martin Luther

King were able to move people by the thousands because of

their ability to recognize the importance of verbal communica-

tion.

jessica Yea.. um. That’s a good question. I don’t know, this question of, the qualities that an activist should have to recruit people, I think that being charming and a good speaker, they’re some of the qualities, but I think that there are a whole lot of other qualities like being nice, re-liable, a good listener, and being able to read people. And I don’t think that one person has to have them all I think that a group as a whole just has to have them. You know, like there’s someone I know in a group who is a really good judge of character, and if there’s someone in your group who’s really good at making people feel comfort-able, I think that can go a long way towards recruitment.

ub Sure, and is there anything else that you’d like to add,

Jessica? Or something that you feel we didn’t touch upon?

jessica No, I’m pretty good, I’m intrigued to see what’s gonna come out of this. These are great questions.

ub Thank you so much Jessica, again I’m very grateful for

your time.

jessica No problem, keep me in the loop OK? I’m very pleased to see you’re still involved.

ub Ok, thank you very much and have a great day.

jessica Take care Urgyen.

The interview was re-corded using Skype and Call recorder for Skype. The activist interviewees were reached using email,

facebook and phone.