everyday social democracy

The organisation I help run - Compass Youth held a highly successful workshop and debate at the Progressive London Conference. Over fifty people took part and the results of the 'progressive future' ideas and campaigns will be announced shortly.

Compass Youth Obama Campaign Workshop

Obama won the Democratic nomination and then the American Presidency on the back of inspiring and innovative campaigning. Not only did he offer a refreshingly optimistic and hopeful message, but he harnassed technology in new ways to communicate with and mobilise his supporters.

There is much the progressive left can learn from his campaigning techniques, and with that in mind Compass Youth has organised a campaign workshop with three excellent speakers:

Matthew McGregor worked for internet strategy company Blue State Digital for three months during the Obama campaign, and has now set up Blue State Digital's London office. He also ran Jon Cruddas' deputy leadership campaign, winner of Channel 4's 'Political Campaign of the Year' award. He will talk about what set the Obama campaign apart, and what we can learn from it in the UK.

Tom Miller from Compass Youth has blogged for a number of years, now doing so on several platforms, including his own; newerlabour, and LabourList, the newly launched website which aims to provide a space for Labour-based debate. He will discuss the current use of technology in British politics and where things are heading.

Max Freedman is a Parliamentary researcher and the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Kingston and Surbiton. He helped canvass in Ohio during the Obama campaign, and will about how the field campaign operated so effectivly.

For more information or to book a place please contact youthchair@compassonline.org.uk or join the facebook event here.

"The crisis changes nothing"

The crisis of global capital and the lefts reaction to globalisation; a Compass Youth think-piece - Adrian Bua-Roberts:

"...if the left reverts to the comfort zone it naturally finds within statist discourse it is surrendering its chance to influence the reformation of the transnational state structures within which capital is continually entrenching its dominance.

It is of crucial importance that progressives and the left realise this. Organized labour, acting within the nation state framework, has proved structurally incapable of combating the increased transnational coordination of capital. Improvements in communication and technology have enabled capital to tap into reserve armies of poverty stricken workers around the world, pitching their governments against each other to become more "competitive" in what amounts to a regulatory race to the bottom. In the West, this has began to dissolve the myriad of rights gained through centuries of class struggles and has created a huge downward pressure of wages. Stagnating wages led to increased debt, feeding the capitalist systems' fetish for consumption, laying much of the groundwork for the present crisis."

Read the full article on the compass website.

Finally a word from our friends:

President Bush backed US 'Missile Defence' since he was elected in 2000, including unilaterally withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in 2001. Designed to give the US military 'full spectrum dominance,' it is destabilising relations with Russia and causing concern across Europe.

President Barack Obama has not yet given his full support to the system - join us in sending him a clear message of opposition in his first days as President.

Speakers include the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, Michael Connarty MP, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, and Green MEP Jean Lambert, who will be joined by parliamentarians and campaigners from Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland.

The conference will be held on Saturday 31st January from 10am-5pm at SOAS, University of London. See the Europe Against US Missile Defence Conference page for full details.

To register email campaigns@cnduk.org or phone 0207 700 2393 and click here to download a leaflet. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Something that stood out from the debate "in government we trust?" was the question - what happens when we unleash the free market? Think about the pharmaceutical industry and you'll see that the market there will always survive, but in many cases customers don't (like if we don't provide free access to generics). The private sector will always walk away, but the government can't and the citizens are stuck either way. I'd also like to pull my woolly hat off to the man like Crudddas - great facilitation of the debate, almost like being in his surgery, with the added populist bonus of a vote at the end. Next time, let's push people out of their narnian comfort zones and move beyond the nationalisation-privatisation debate (which the speakers did, although the audience did't follow them, I guess Narnia's a warm place to be in the winter...). Let's ask how much centralised nationalisation do we really want without it smothering the space for innovation and the human touch by staff and the users they work with? Even if we have FDR style infrastructure projects, it's very likely that "public sector industry" multinationals will just walk away with the cash and come back when they've spent it all on peerages or consultants. This also brings us to the debate around public sector ethos and how it's being pervaded by the private sector (esp now with the financial sector having swallowed itself up). If we get stuck at stopping public services getting privatised, then we end up with the NHS which has been nibbled at through new public management & efficiency savings right through to slowly but surely putting all the pieces to the privatised jigsaw that the NHS now is. We need to look at how we can embed public service values of equality, quality and care. We need to start with the people on the ground, not with the Whitehall/Westminster/Treasury "menage a trois" of choosing between privatisation & nationalisation. A story brings this to mind. Personalised budgets for social care do individualise people's risks and even destinies. However, many of the "service users" have pooled these budgets together, not because they want to be seen to be progressive, but because they don't want to get ripped of by private care suppliers and actually instinctively feel the need to come together with people in their situation to collaborate. Equality, fraternity, liberty - we ain't supporting these values all the time in public services, but they're fighting for it anyway.

And I got some great video clips for the How to Live in 21st Century competition on some cracking issues - criminal justice, allergies and ID cards...

Thanks to zero spin for the photos used under Creative Commons licence.

It's not because Ken Livingstone isn't Mayor of London any more that we should stop fighting for cheaper public transport, more social housing or the environment.

Our generation gets stereotyped as always wanting instant gratification, pessimistic that everything's wrong with the world and apathetic that they can't change it because those in power won't listen to them anyway.

But there are so many everyday heroes off the radar of opinion leaders who work in the shadows trying to creating positive change in their communities, maybe even where you live or work.

This is why at this session facilitated by Compass Youth at the Progressive London Conference, we have invited an exciting range of speakers to talk about the issues that matter to young people and how we can campaign for a progressive future across London:

David Lammy MP, Minister for Higher Education & IP
Samuel Tarry, Chair of Compass Youth
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, NUS Black Students' Officer
Nii Sackey, Director of Bigga Fish
Emma Jane Cross, Chief Executive of Beat Bullying

Young people in London are changing the world around them all the time - lobbying for the living wage, fighting against fascism, giving people the freedom to express themselves or campaigning against knife crime & child violence.

We want to make connections that will keep the progressive movement in touch with the most dynamic and innovative ideas and campaigns.

Come and be part of our participative and interactive debate on how we make the future for Young Londoners a progressive one!

At the heart of what drives this session is that it will be shaped by the ideas and people that take part in it.

Register now at http://www.progressivelondon.org.uk

Have you got a spare minute?

Why not spread the word to other young people living in your street, halls of residence or even your neighbourhood! Take the pledge here or text ‘pledge younglondon’ to 60022.

...We are the people we've been waiting for

...Get inspired, get involved, get ready

...It's time to take back society

Watch this space for more info!

Oh yes it does...oh no it doesn't? Moving away swiftly from pantomine mode, there's a debate going on here about how much background matters to living a good life. There's even a whispered hint of the re-emergence of a discussion about class.

So background has got a lot to do with what assets your family have - the money to give you the private education to get into Oxbridge, the old boys club to get you into the City - the money to get you a financial adviser who gets you off paying any tax and so on...

But not coming from a privileged background shouldn't make you unhappy, as adwilliams134' dad shows so well.

"Life is bloody marvellous. It's not for working yourself to death over or acquiring the petty trappings of wealth. It's for having a good time, a beer and a fag, and a laugh with your mates. Take what you need, spend the rest and don't worry about leaving any to the kids. If they're of any use they'll get there on their own."

Society convinces us that what we consume defines how successful we are, how independent we are, how worthy we are of attention? Because it's what we respond to best. Because deep down, we prefer the conformism of running the rat race like a hamster on a spinning wheel and the standardised consumption of “keeping up with the Jones”. We prefer the quick fixes of consuming, because we fear the freedom to do things for the pleasure of doing them without calculating how we appear to others.

But then again, if we don't have money we have to depend on others, which opens us up to the threat of being dominated or even exploited by those that do. And if that sense of feeling exploited is passed on from generation to generation, people feel a sense of inevitability about their powerless to “get ahead”. Their eyes are wide open to their background and subconsciously so are most of us – programmes like Little Britain or Shameless expresses the dirty little secret that we still see society through the lens of class.

If having a privileged family background gives a lift up, would providing people with greater assets (like the Child Trust Fund), help give less privileged people a lift up too?

Thanks to sleepydisco for the photo provided under the Creative Commons license and to Tom for the link to Richard Murphy's great post.