by Veronique Raingeval
Food for thought was aplenty on the 2011 edition of the Leeds Summat. Great speakers (Maurice Glasman, Peter Tatchell, Hilary Benn MP, Maryam Mir, and Rommi Smith were amongst those I was able to listen to) and great workshops.
It was really hard to make a choice between the huge amount of excellent sessions. For some people, the generous and buzzing atmosphere at the Student Union Building of Leeds University was almost enough!
I attended the 10am Big Questions Panel hosted by Harry Gration of BBC Look North fame, a session entitled ‘What is moving and awakening around the world’ at 11am, and a session called ‘ Economic Democracy: Remaking a broken system’ at 4pm.
The session at 11am in the Common Room gave us a rare access to wounded but resolute activists from Greece, Egypt and Syria. Tales of collective and individual humiliation, torture, secret police kidnaps, closed court trials, displaced and exiled neighborhoods brought the room to a sober realization of how still comparatively easy our lives are. Mahmood, the Egyptian activist and co-founder of ‘One Humanity Network’ said to us :’ We are busy dying for our freedom. We haven’t got the space to reinvent a world system that is badly in need of overhaul. You have. Do it!’
In the Riley Smith Hall, politicians pointed to fragmented good news stories, from which no one could see clear patterns of change emerging. Businessmen acknowledged interdependence from their communities, and pleaded for more understanding and collaboration. Poets and activists challenged the room to dare thinking and behaving differently, Rallying around the Leeds Credit Union and setting an example from Leeds of a new banking behavior was mentioned by several contributors.
The crowd was at time angry, confused and unsure. A speaker acknowledged the difficulty for alternative ideas to gain critical mass, outside of a mainstream media, which wouldn’t consider publishing much left-field thinking. A woman said she felt frightened to speak up for her beliefs. She talked about group-think and still being shamed for thinking differently. Someone mentioned feeling powerless against multinationals interfering with our national destinies. Maria from Greece summarized the Western confusion: ‘How on earth from a respected civilization the Greeks can be branded lazy and corrupted tax evaders to the rest of Europe?’ She cried:’ We haven’t seen these €380bn, our supposed debt! Where has the money gone? What was it used for?’ Indeed, a collective headache seemed to grip the audiences throughout the day trying to comprehend the long-term consequences of the current economic crisis and what they could do about it.
We are at such different places. The violence of Arab governments is clear, present and unbearable. It attacks so many human emotional, physical and intellectual needs at the same time, that it is pushing its population into a simple and unequivocal collective effort to say ‘no and no more’. What happens after is anybody ‘s guess. The energy needed to throw out the old regime is so great that there isn’t much space to think of afterwards.
The growing complexity of our western world on the other hand is imprisoning us in a sticky spider web of dependency, ambiguity and fear. Peter Tatchell - in the last 4pm session – bemoaned the lack of collective rallying around to challenge the shadow side of capitalism. He mentioned the suffragette movement: 100 years on, the complexity of our western societies doesn’t offer an obvious weak underbelly where we could strike. The problem is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The enemy – like the money that oils our system - is largely invisible.
And yet, at the Summat there was also evidence of much going on, from Transition Towns to new social entreprises cropping up everywhere, traditional businesses beginning to take seriously their corporate responsibilities, people recycling, reusing and deserting the consumerist society, a revival of crafts, allotments, green energy trials all over the place. Tip to observers: those who ‘are the change they want to see’ look calmer and much less frustrated than those watching from the side. Yet at a collective level we are missing a sense of urgency here - unlike in the East, where the clock is counting down. It seems to me, we still have too much to lose…It may have to get still worse, before we can really meaningfully respond to the prayer of our Arab brothers and sisters.
Food for thought… Indeed, Feast for Thought, at the Leeds Summat 2011!