Organizing and Power

I'm a few days away from the half-month BlueSky post, and there's one whole thread that's too long to include anyway, so here it is in its entirety.

It's from David Roberts @volts.wtf, not too surprisingly:

I just got an email pushing a new book, and ... I'm not going to call out the book itself, cause I don't wanna ruin anyone's day, but ... I am going to subtweet it. 

It's yet another book on how the problem with climate change is the way we talk about it! "Framing"! "Messaging"!

It is genuinely amazing to me — has been amazing for many years — how obsessively the broad left-of-center focuses on language. I can't tell you how many books and articles and studies and surveys I've seen on "framing" climate change. Endless. They never stop!

Not just that people focus on this, but they focus on it to the exclusion of almost everything else. Like the amount of f'ing language analysis from the left and academia *dwarfs* the amount of, say, *power* analysis. Y'know ... power? Anyone? Power?

I don't want to do a whole long rant on this, so I'll just say: the reason fossil fuels and other aligned incumbents don't want to transition to clean energy is that it will *damage their material interests*. And folks, they understand their own material interests. Really well!

They are not going to be fooled into forgetting about those interests by the right combination of words. There is no magical messaging or phrasing, no "framing," that is going to distract them from their material interests. They are not open to persuasion on this matter!

If you want to beat them, figure out how to organize a bloc of economic actors whose material interests are served by the transition. Organize a bloc with *more power* and then *defeat* them. That's how this works. You're not going to fucking seduce them with your clever verbiage!

Quick addendum on this: the one part of the left that truly understood power was unions. Union organizers were never under the illusion that they could sweet-talk concessions from bosses with the right framing. They dealt in power.

That's why the right killed them.