About

Contact

Email tim@beyondclicktivism.com or leave a comment.

This site features guest posts by various authors. For interested contributors, the ideal post length is 600 words: I can help you edit down a longer version and we can link to the longer original post elsewhere. Material does not have to be unique to the site and remains your work.

Copyleft

You do not need permission to repost anything I have written on this site or to reuse my images for non-commercial purposes. They are all published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) licence. A link back to the original is a nice courtesy. If it is a guest post, please contact the original author for their permission. If you have any doubt or wish to use the material in a commercial publication, please contact me.

Site History

Beyond Clicktivism was set up following the first netroots uk event primarily to address the following questions:

• What can we do online that is uniquely progressive so that if others emulate us their response is informed by progressive values?
• How do we get people climbing the ladder of engagement, moving from Facebook “Likes” to actual concrete action?
• How do we integrate progressive use of social media with non-political use of social media?
• How can we build tools that can also be used to call politicians to account and stop the next Blair or Clegg from flying in the face of the principles of their parties and shamelessly tearing up their pledges to the electorate?

The scope and ambitions of the site have evolved since then.

Long term goals

“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

Hubert H Humphrey

More and more, the focus of Beyond Clicktivism is to look at ways in which technology can help empower alternatives to a corrupt, corrosive and environmentally unsustainable system of global, free-market capitalism.

There is enormous anger in the country about the way in which the Conservatives are using a crisis caused by those who fund them as an excuse to attack the most vulnerable in society and to turn back the clock to a more brutal period of history in which most lived lives of utter misery.

Claims to be the greenest government in history have been exposed as yet another lie by budgets and policies that make a mockery of environmental policies.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the general consensus in Britain has been that capitalism is the only viable political system, an imperfect but necessary evil for want of an alternative.

Time and time again, a pseudo-Darwinian language of the survival of the fittest has been used to justify the rich stamping in the face of the poor: yet when the self-styled financial wizards overreached themselves and crashed the world’s economy, everyone had to pay for their greed and arrogance – except for them.

Neo-liberal capitalism does not even live up to its own values. It is a sham designed to protect a privileged elite. It is a system which allows millions to starve worldwide in the name of a necessity that is anything but necessary. It is a system that is inherently short-termist and accepts the destruction of the planet as an acceptable price to allow a few to live in unimaginable luxury.

But it is pervasive, a psychological matrix in which most are trapped and unable to imagine an alternative. Decent people stand by and watch as companies destroy communities and the environment and accept the argument that corporate law means that this has to happen, never thinking for a moment that those laws could change.

Most find it easier to imagine the end of the world than an end to capitalism.

But neo-liberalism has now had its Berlin Wall moment and the old regime refuses to leave its palaces.

This collapse has led to the finance industry demanding socialism for the rich and austerity for the poor. This is morally unacceptable.

Right now, we have a unique opportunity to build on the widespread anger and disgust at what is happening and to offer an alternative to a system that justifies environmental destruction and the ruin of lives in the name of a god called profit.

Technology can drive this resistance. It has its dangers but it gives ordinary people a historically unprecedented power that can help drive unimaginable social and political change if we put our minds to it.

We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to create radical change in the world. Technology can help us. We must not squander it.

Sukey (29/01/11 – 7/5/11)

I joined Sukey on 29 January 2011 during their first successful run of the software. That day we helped protect students from being kettled during demonstrations against tuition fees increases and the scrapping of the EMA. I left Sukey on 7 May.

Although there was some overlap between my role as editor of this site and that as press spokesperson for Sukey for those three months nothing I write or publish on this site can be taken as a representing the thoughts of the team behind Sukey. Nor can anything said by other members of Sukey ever be said to represent my thoughts.