Brass Tacks: Critique and the Making of a New Movement.

I've had a few different videos talking
about critique and the role of the critic in political movements in general specifically a course in veganism ecology animal rights etc as in a sense political and social movement look there's more than one angle from which this is interesting to discuss and there's more than one set of misconceptions that I think we need to address one of the misconceptions I would say is that people think of criticism as something that only comes after the fact there's something that arrives too late in the same way that a movie critic you know reviews a film when it's already made and obviously it's too late to improve that particular film maybe you can influence the sequel or maybe even influence other films in the future in politics that's really not true and this video I want to talk about politics I'm really talking about any positive aspiration to make the world a better place including humanitarian work obviously including veganism including dietary change or public education about what's healthy what's that collective responsible and what's ethical in the human diet so I'm using politics in a very broad sense in this video not talking strictly about lobbying City Hall or deciding who gets elected to go to Parliament this sort of thing many political movements begin with critique that's the origin of the political movement and again we're not necessarily talking about a protest we could be talking about a civil society organization we could be talking about a charity we could be talking about humanitarian work in the industry to sense and I think that for this generation it's hard to understand because they assume that these questions begin from a blank sheet of paper that you start with a blank chalkboard and then you write down a bunch of moral principles or some lofty goal and then you create an institution or you create a political movement he created charity and pursuit of that lofty goal and that is almost never true I mean charities don't come out of a vacuum to give you an example of the bat it's really closer to veganism I was inviting recently a vegan activist to come on this channel you know do a podcast talk about her current worker current projects and she's a former member of and a former supporter of peda people who that the treatment of animals now I have no reason to think that she she's turned against Heather or dislikes but had no reason that at all but in her years of work and involvement she's vegan but obviously other other issues and animal rights would have you were also vendors to her she became aware of a niche she became aware of an important issue that pedda fails to address and that's really to do with how animals like raccoons animals that are considered vermin are trapped and relocated and in many cases exterminated in the United States and it turns out this is a field that requires quite a large degree of technical knowledge and really technological knowledge about the actual traps and barriers how you manage these wildlife populations what you do with them when they're trapped how you prevent them from coming back in the city in the first place there are all kinds of questions that require quite a lot of research quite a lot of book learning so you start to develop technical expertise in this so it starts with a critique so it's an awareness of a blind-spot or failing something another agency is not addressing something another part of the political movement is not addressing a problem they're not solving and ultimately pet I can't do everything doesn't mean you hate pet it doesn't mean you're angry at petaa say okay this is a limitation this is some they're not able to handle then step two is research becoming an expert in this issue to some extent yourself and that's maybe a question of the video how much expertise do you need before getting the valta kinda thing it's a difficult question and then of course the next steps involved fundraising formal organization and she has incorporated that charity for this and she does do fundraisers and ask for donations and does do outreach in public education and above all else she lobbies the government because ultimately it's very often city governments there was a municipal question the local mayor's office rather than federal state or provincial government very often the local governments left for this question of how to deal with rats and uh I don't know whatever you got in your area you know rats and raccoons and other wild animals to come into the city and try to eat human garbage and try to live you know in the spaces under human homes and what-have-you and that create this kind of conflict between wildlife and and urban human populations so that to me is a completely standard example of how critique of how recognizing a shortcoming in another agency or in the in the responsibilities of recognizing a political blind spot in terms of the current you know context around you of what's what's being done what's not being done you know gives rise to new engagement new agencies new charities new activism yes and you know new ways of lobbying government influencing public policy ultimately bottom line now when I was involved in Southeast Asia I saw a lot of this process going on and when you met people who didn't go through those first two steps every single time was a disaster they didn't go through the process of critique of criticizing what already is being done doing a survey of the services offered in the area concerned the type of humanitarian work concerned what have you and then doing research into the issue there were groups who really have groups and individuals start people face-to-face who read a newspaper story about human trafficking and by human trafficking we here really mean a form of prostitution exploitation of women which is illegal even within countries where prostitution itself is legal or has some kind of special semi legal status it's very often with argument here very meta social context in which they're both legal and illegal brothels is both legal and illegal prostitution very complex you've got to do research into it but I again again met both individuals and institutions that were set up apparently in response to you know like a mainstream newspaper article something with a very very low level of information and these people just got outraged they wrote down some kind of moral principle on the black board they started raising money and asking for donations and because of the salacious nature of the the cause the cause and the crime involved they started taking donations and they then waded into a situation where they were not really capable of understanding the context they were working in they weren't even capable they were didn't give of understanding what other agencies and charities were offering what role was being played by public authorities by the government by the police and um they be met with you know disappointment and frustration and culturally incomprehension and in many cases also you know violent conflict they didn't think through the extent to which you know if you actually kick down the door of a broth and confront the pimps and drug dealers who run the place they may be pimps and drug dealers they may be pimps who were also involved in gambling running illegal illegal casino illegal gambling operations that's their livelihood you're taking away from them and you are not Batman you know you're some kid from Switzerland or you know New Zealand or America who got into your mind to collect donations and do this and not only are the pimps angry at you and they may be willing to kill you they may be with you know you've got an office with your name on it II hope you're not hard to find they maybe wanted to hunt you down and kill you for disrupting their operation or destroying their livelihood and very often the people who went into these things in a completely Navy way they didn't realize that the prostitutes we've met and the prostitutes don't want to be rescued as soon as they start dealing with these people they meet the processes the prostitutes are saying things like no I'm not going to let you force me to go back to the farm I grew up on forget it I moved to the city for a reason I want to be here and I remember especially with Catholic agencies Catholicism is a really bad history with washerwomen remember seeing a documentary about this the history that's just within Ireland Catholic Church in Ireland of taking what they perceive as fallen women and forcing them to become long dresses to do laundry for a living a lot of these women regardless of their story of how they ended up in the city or ended up as prostitutes they're suddenly in a line of work which actually is very highly paid and you know is not many hours of the day and so on they're used to earning a lot of money with a little bit of effort and very often when they go back to their hometown the farm or wherever they're from they have a lot of disposable income compared to their own parents in everyone else and you're talking about rescuing them by trying to force them into a kind of you know catholic celibate institution where they're taking on a job that they perceive as denigrating as beneath their station as beneath their dignity you're trying to force them to do laundry or they don't want to do and which pays next to nothing you know to work for maybe less than minimum wage and you're doing it because of your Western Christian Catholic notion of morality that you're imposing one of these people and had a complete ignorance something you read in Time magazine or Newsweek or what have you now there are a lot of interesting angles to this it actually brings me back this is one of the people I talked about this was actually a Hannah Chloe those of you are really into the vegan demi-monde will know Hannah Chloe's that I met and talked to a lot of people who were interested in getting involved in charity work some kind of political activism to make a positive difference I think just because they felt outraged in reading a newspaper article or some really shallow you know some shallow source information of that but they never went through that process of doing a survey of what the situation is what service area give me a critique criticism okay where are the blind spots where were the opportunities what is not being addressed by the police what is not being addressed already by these Catholic Charities or what is the positive difference we can make that's a very difficult answer and it almost always arises out of critique whether that's the critique of peda the critique of already existing ecological organizations etc or it's the critique of a complex situation like this the role of the police the role of the pimps the role of everything else if you're really looking at sexual exploitation in Cambodia and what positive difference white foreigners who don't really speak the language and don't really have that kind of a game but what caused the difference they can make difference you can make very thorny questions not not easily answered and not easy to be accountable to your donors and not easy to be morally accountable for the means you may have to employ if you're actually talking about hunting down these illicit institutions and intervening there and some it's a method soon enough it may not just be the pimps that imagine maybe the police also you may find yourself an enemy of the law whoo and I did do research on that that demi-monde and it is truly a demi-monde as part of my humanitarian work I did research on those questions in Thailand Laos and Cambodia is the number of as part of a number of very different you know humanitarian projects and you see the complexity of that and you see the sad outcomes of people who show up with good intentions but absolutely nothing else aside from good intentions to offer and it's not enough so criticism in politics in humanitarian work with again not just protests face politics not just electoral politics the role of critique in trying to make a positive difference in this world is dynamic and it comes at the beginning it doesn't come too late it doesn't come after the fact like criticism of a Hollywood film I'd say it's part of the the CSIs formation phase right but what's the basic thesis hey there's some way we can make a positive difference here whether it's you know some poverty-stricken area of Cambodia or its you know with what's happening with raccoons in Detroit Michigan whatever it is hey there's some positive difference we can make here in terms of how school children in Canada are educated about eggs and dairy and nutrition there's some way we can vote we got to do the research we've got to start with a critique of the existing organizations who currently is lobbying and influencing school boards on this issue as vegans there's a positive aura pratik who currently is advising the school boards on medical information there probably will be some agency there's an official group of doctors who show up once a year and do a consultation and look over you know the Board of Education plans and what they're going to they're going to cover on nutrition and maybe safety in a number of other issues what currently is the process and then again even look at a group like peda maybe there are other big you know vaguely vegan or ecological or animal rights agencies maybe it's the Sierra Club or something like this who already is lobbying who already is influencing that process what is the role we can play where are the gaps criticism is thought of as destructive because it is destructive from the perspective of people who do absolutely nothing with their time aside from complaining on Facebook I faced very harsh criticism lately from guy named Josh he uses the moniker vegan revolution although there's nothing revolutionary about his politics he's no aspirations to really make any kind of a change he said that I have no experience with activism with organizing political activism and that's not true I actually think that one of the profound differences to myself and Josh is that my experience however limited in even just in the City of Toronto we use none of my experiences with Paul it's from Asia before I really left insert living age rooms living in the City of Toronto organizing dissent and protests and movements at City Hall being involved ecological politics federally provincially but especially at the city level in Toronto I think that profoundly influences the way I see these things and the way I see and use critique itself you don't want to start off blind you don't want to start with a blank chalkboard and I do think that the passive pose of sitting and complaining on face but I guess it is truly passive-aggressive right that's such a different model it's such a different understanding of why we engage in critique at all even just compared to that one limited experience I have to use one example where I was part of organizing a real political movement trying to prevent a number of ecological catastrophes in the City of Toronto one was a sewage cultivation plants one was a fossil fuel burning power fund this number of ecological issues within the city you know there had to be exactly that survey of the situation the critique of existing institutions and existing agencies and what they were doing including that case political parties and political lobby groups where they stood on those issues then you had to look for the gaps you to look for the place the opportunity or a small number of people with a small amount of money to make it big difference critique if used properly is productive indeed it is indispensable to the pursuit of political progress