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6 ESSENCE March 17, 2010

Building the New WorldAcademia and Activism from UVics

IMAGES CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: JESSE HOWARDSON: GUERRILA

GARDENING; MARK WORTHING:MATT LOEWEN IN ACTION; KELSEY COLLINS:

CASEY ROCKWELL IN CONTEMPLATION; MILA CZEMERYS: SPEAKING OUT

FOR FARMERS

MARK WORTHING

On these surprisingly warm spring days,

with crocuses exploding out of grassy

patches, one can feel the loosely frayed

edges of the day blooming into the almost

touchable tapestry of the future.

Te School of Environmental Studies

is interwoven with a strong activist com-

munity. Te interdisciplinary nature of the

department brings together a diversity of

ideas and tactics. Among many things, En-

vironmental Studies students are writers,

biologists, political scientists, engineers,

anarchists, and business students, mak-

ing for a broad base of theory and experi-

ence.

Te faculty is a safe-haven for progressive

environmental thought. While the major-

ity of students involved in the department

are empowered with unique, valuable and

politically challenging perspectives, those

who choose to transplant that knowledge

into the public domain often find them-

selves cultivating a garden more radical

than anticipated.

Students are often forced to make a

choice: sacrifice a portion of academic suc-

cess for their politics or sacrifice their poli-

tics for their studies. Another challenge,

then, is to deal with the reality of being

highly invested in society while having

dwindling faith in its sustainability.

For many student activists, i ts a constant

struggle to find a way of living that does

not further perpetuate environmental and

social injustices. Te challenge is defining

ones political stance, when pragmatically,

Academia and Activism are sometimes

mutually exclusive.

In Planet U by Justine Starke and

UVics professor Michael MGonigle, the

authors note: a gap exists between what

we learn for tomorrow and what tomor-

row needs from us today. And what of

this gap? What does it limit?

From Library, to Street, to Forest

Recognizing the downfalls resulting

from the constituency of UVic as an up-

per-class institution, the School of Envi-

ronmental Studies is and can continue to

be a laboratory for progressive environ-

mental thought. o construct of a conduit

between experimentalism on the page, and

experimentalism in the public domain is

our greatest challenge.

Michael MGonigle, the Eco-Research

chair of Environmental Law and Policy

at Uvic, co-founder of Greenpeace In-

ternational, says Im lucky because Im

an academic. Its part of your job to be

thinking all the time about stuff that is

not necessarily practical or going to hap-

pen tomorrow.

He smiles as we sit in his offi ce, En-

vironmental Studies students are the best

students on campus as far as Im con-

cerned. UVic is a luxury school, but teach-

ing ES students is the best deal around. ES

students are doing stuff not because they

want to be credential-ized, but because

they want to learn why things are the way

they are, and they care about how things

could be. Tat is so unusual! Te mix of

academic and activist work in the faculty

is great.

Matt Loewen, Political Science and

Environmental Studies undergraduate

student, and activist explains, You could

be the nicest person in the world, but if

youre living in accordance with capital-

ism, if youre a business manager for ex-

ample, then you have a tendency to act in

certain ways that are inherently violent.

You have to be able to change those struc-

tures to ones that espouse and nudge you

towards sociality and away from coercion.

It means not thinking individualistically

about solutions. Individualistic solutions

like recycling, buying organic, green con-

sumption, or shorter showers, arent nec-

essarily solutions because they dont alter

systemic hierarchies.

Maintaining a connection to the realities

of learned knowledge is diffi cult to do in a

culture where we are so far removed from

the basic ecological processes that dictate

our lives. And as a result it is very hard to

internalize the implications of Norwegian

fish farms degrading the wild salmon of

BC, for example. Uninformed activism

can be a pollutant for a social movement,

but informed and inactive is equally as

toxic.

MGonigle notes, Tere must be an at-

tachment to those changes you want to see

in order to make them happen.

Cross-pollinating Activism and Aca-

demia can be a challenging ecology.

Prefgure this Decade

An applied method of direct action

that works to immediately create a new

social fabric, without having to wait for a

revolution or reformed social institutions,

is called prefigurative politics. Gandhi

would likely agree this is a fancy term for

being the change you want to see in the

world.

A prefigurative political approach to

imagining the future would try to draw

the threads of the present toward the fabric

of the future. And in certain niche com-

munities these threads are being mended,

sewed, darned, and knitted together giving

us a present composed of future.

Re-imagining the future aught not only

be a forward projection, but also an active

synthesis of reality. In our daily lives we

should act in ways that do not perpetuate

the injustices, hierarchies, and harmful ab-

stractions in our own systemic actions.

Fortunately, addressing injustices has no

bounds. Garments are stitched and knit-

ted, one thread at a time and social change

is created in the same fashion.

Actively trying to create the desired

future can be something as simple as a

smile in the elevator. It can be squatting

on property owned by Concord-Pacific

in Vancouvers downtown east side, con-

sciously using non-violent language, or

establishing a tree-sit near Jordan River

instead of passively writing letters to

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on the Shell of the Old:School of Environmental Studies

IMAGES CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JESSE HOWARDSON: BARK

(HE)ART; MILA CZEMERYS: CAMAS AND A BUTTERCUP BLOOM, JESSE

HOWARDSON: DISCLAIMER FROM THE FREE FOO D COLLECTIVE ; JESSE

HOWARDSON: SOUP LABELS FROM THE FREE FOOD COLLECTI VE AT UVIC

members of parliament. It can also be in-

tegrating ones research with the subjects

or objects of that research, and internal-

izing the implications of that research in

relation to communities it relates to.

Prefigurative politics is actualizing the

future you want to see, while also work-

ing to improve institutions that may be

failing to achieve desired ends.

Te sun lights a poster of BCs Stein Val-

ley as I s it in MGonigles offi ce.

his decade is going to be the one

that forces a lot of people to make some

choices between being good little partici-

pants in the liberal public policy game and

incremental, agreeable change or very

much the opposite. We need to rethink

this, he says.

Needles that Knit and Darn, Bit by Bit

An outstanding example of prefigura-

tive politics is one of the many achieve-

ments of the Black Panther Party (BPP):

the Free Breakfast for Children Program.

Te program, beginning in Oakland, but

spreading across the country, had Black

Panthers cooking and serving food for

poor inner city youth.

Within one year of the programs con-

ception, the organization was feeding

10,000 children daily before school.

Not only did the program adhere to the

organizations radically established hopes

for a more egalitarian society, but also it

exposed the inadequacy of the American

welfare system while creating a solution.

In Planet U, Ingmar Lee, a UVic

Alumni and long time environmentalist

writes, We have to learn to overcome the

forces of destruction, and we have to do it

right here. When we work to bridge the

gap MGonigle and Starke identified ear-

lier, we should connect learned knowledge

with an envisioned objective. By putting

it into action, we give full allegiance and

loyalty to learned knowledge.

Wherever we tread, we should be an em-

bassy for our imagined future.

MGonigle explains: if you are an activ-

ist who is frustrated by the loss of some-

thing, like the subdivision of a wetland

or if you want to see better treatment of

homeless people, then you must do things.

You will want to do things. And you cant

choose not to deal with the nitty-gritty as-

pects of getting those things done.

O.U.R Eco-Village, situated on a 25-

acre property near Shawnigan Lake went

through a seven-phase development

process that resulted in one of the most

progressive examples of community sus-

tainability. Phases began with visioning

exercises, and went through land purchase,

rezoning, the establishment of the associa-

tion, to cooperatives, and building alterna-

tive land ownership structures.

If it werent for a prefigurative attitude

aimed at directly creating an imagined

future, it would have been illegal and un-

achievable for this project to go ahead un-

der current zoning, taxation, architectural,

and property laws.

Get to know your surroundings. As

you walk by a sidewalk patch of nicely

trimmed grass, try placing your hand on

the grass to acknowledge there is noth-

ing between you and that piece of land.

Nothing prevents you from digging up

that patch, planting leek, garlic, kale, or

radishes with a sign saying, Pick me, eat

me, water, me weed me!

Dive in to a patch of salal berries, make

some licorice root tea, eat some maple

buds, dry out some seaweed or cut up that

dead deer that would have gone rotten in

the municipality of Saanichs dump-yard

(its called venison!).

At UVic, were on ground zero with re-

gards to food security issues the CJVI

lands on the far side of Mystic Vale from

Ring road is a prime location to mix Aca-

demia and Activism. o apply the collec-

tive scale version of prefigurative politics

here can be raw and enlightening because

we can join people to establish commu-

nity-binding relationships. Real commu-

nity is created through this actualization

with others.

MGonigle reflects, Movement building

is a really big part of it. Te number one

thing that is the most important for UVic

is making the CJVI lands an agricultural

landscape. If we lose that we never get it

back. Its a perfect place to do it. How-

ever, there are so many obstacles for that:

legal, managerial, administrative, zoning,

and financial, so youve got to build a

movement. Be bold and willing to make

mistakes, willing to be marginalized. You

have to be single minded.

Remember the Future

he inclusiveness, accessibility and

positive implications of a prefigurative

approach to social, economic, and envi-

ronmental change are encouraging.

Before MGonigle leaves for a depart-

ment meeting, he finishes with, Tings

you should do are things that are catalysts

or metaphors for larger change. If it is

making an urban garden in Victoria, its

about restructuring the city in more fun-

damental ways. Your small actions are part

of a larger vision. It is diffi cult because we

dont just need bike paths in Victoria, we

need to get the cars out of here.

Similarly, Matt Loewen concludes, Tis

is where prefiguration comes in. Having a

vision of the future, means that you can

show people that this isnt the way it has to

be. Youre not just tearing peoples value-

blankets away leaving them with nothing.

You can take that blanket, like the Black

Panthers were doing, and start weaving a

new social fabric out of the decaying old

fabric.

Just as the crocus remains where it is,

the threads of the future are where theyve

always been: in our hands. We should all

hold the fabric of the future in mind, and

keep those knitting needles sharp. Perhaps

a prefigurative politics is the way to weave

Academia and Activism together at UVic.

And perhaps actualizing our knowledge is

the best way to learn it.

March 17, 2010 ESSENCE 7