Top Down vs. Bottom Up
Back in 2014, I had the opportunity to attend a two-day event in Toronto talking about the climate crisis with some of the biggest environmental non-profits in Ontario. The idea was to share ideas from different parts of the province to see what was working well and where folks could best put their energies. I was there on behalf of Transition Guelph, a transition town initiative that was thriving at the time with a dozen or so projects on the go. I was initially recruited into the group to help with communication and a new website, but quickly fell in love with the grassroots approach and found myself as staff for a short contract and then on the board of directors, which I chaired for 4 years. While Transition Guelph is an official non-profit organization, I felt very small and inexperienced at the event. I shared the table with CEOs from organizations like Ecology Ottawa and the Toronto Environmental Alliance, groups that had a much bigger history (and budget) than our little Guelph crew.
I was invited to the event because my predecessor was well known in activist circles, and it was widely known that TG had some unique perspectives on the climate crisis and a rich network of volunteers doing work on the ground. I won’t go into those aspects in too much detail, but I soon discovered that this approach was not typical for larger NGOs doing work in the environmental sphere. In fact, every other group that was present over those two days was focused almost entirely on government lobbying and advocacy work. It was my first foray into policy discussion, and needless to say, I felt in over my head. I think anyone treading into government policy work for the first time will find that it’s not easy to navigate. By the end of the two days, I felt comfortable enough with my new colleagues to casually admit that this laser focus on policy was new to me and that TG was really working on the flip side of the coin: citizen engagement.
They were actually quite surprised at this: the idea that people would make the required change without the need for top-down policy implementation felt very pie-in-the-sky for them. They all felt that the implementation of government policy was a much more effective and less time-consuming approach to seeing positive change. A few even held firm that you couldn’t make change happen without implementing policy at the government level.
As the years have passed, I can look back at this experience as a critical point in my life where I could see the seeds of anarchist theory start to take root. I have a deep respect for environmental groups that are focused on government lobbying, but I have also experienced the opposite: that committed, caring citizens are capable of making change happen from the bottom up. During those years I spent with TG, we planted community orchards, held community festivals and potlucks, hosted talks and workshops, and held regular weekly meetups. We launched a local time banking system and had hundreds of folks participate. We had a network of 3000 people who were eager to participate and share their time and who wanted to learn how to change their behaviour to create a more resilient community. None of this was driven by policy change or top-down politics. There was little to no resistance.
My time with TG also taught me a really critical life lesson: if you want something to happen, you go and do it. You don’t need credentials; you don’t need permission. You can literally call up a bunch of other interested people and just make shit happen. It’s actually really easy. Clothing swaps, community gatherings, potlucks, homeschool co-ops - all of these things have come into existence because I felt like they were missing from my life and that they were probably missing from other people's lives too.
The thing is, I think that the folks from those big NGOs actually have it the other way around. Expecting change from the top down is going to take too long. We have to decide to make the changes required on our own. Sure, municipalities can ban plastic bags or require factories to limit their emissions, and those things are important, but there are too many politicians who have commitments to folks who are more concerned about making money than they are about slowing this climate crisis. We’ve all witnessed this over the last 10 years: governments are moving too slowly. We’re not going to see the changes we need coming from tough policy crackdowns that make a difference. We need to start implementing the grassroots solutions at the bottom to meet those policy changes at the top.
And the goal isn’t to stop the climate crisis. FFS we’re already in the middle of it. The goal is to try and make life less hard while we’re in the thick of it, not just for ourselves but for everyone. By building more resilient systems that rely less on government policy, we ease the burden on each other.
Please don’t wait for others to do this work; start right now. Host a swap. Start a neighbourhood co-op. Share some food. Build a network. Throw a party. Present a workshop. Forming these connections now will help you, your family, your neighbours, and more.