Petition fatigue: in defence of clicktivism.

Every. Single. Day.

Every single day there’s another damned petition to sign. Is it about anything sensible or reasonable? No. It’s about trying to prevent only the most stupid / villainous / malicious / self-serving people from doing the most ludicrous and outrageously stupid things they could ever possibly dream up to do.

It makes me wonder: when are we going to get petition fatigue?

NEVER.

And here’s why:

1. Because passivity is exactly what they want. The same MPs who think that clicktivism doesn’t have value “because it’s not real action” want you to stop clicking, because then they can show how little the public care about this issue, and can vote how they like. (It might be noted, too, that saying “Yay” or “Nay” in Parliament is not very far removed from clicking on website, but let’s not judge these cretins by their own standards or we’ll be here until Christmas cataloguing their hypocrisies.)
2. Because engagement is a stepping stone to a better democracy. By realising we can express our desires granularly, and this has an effect, we are awakening to the possibilities of a truer democracy which encourages genuine progress in harmony with our human and humane desires. The age of subjugating ourselves to outmoded, outdated, outrageous economics is coming to and end. This is where and how we define and decide what we want the future’s values to be.
3. Because this is how we express ourselves. We are too busy, too disenfranchised, too disconnected from the decision makers, too small to feel we matter. We matter. We really, really matter.And this is how we show it. And this can be the new picket line.
4. Because this is important. We have been made aware that OUR resources OUR heritage OUR lives OUR commons are being frittered away, privatised, destroyed, and put beyond reach by a reckless minority. And the fact that some individuals do all that on a deluded ideological whim or self-interest is disgusting.
5. Because we want a say. We don’t buy the bullshit that A or B is the only option. We demand better. We deserve better. We do not believe that we need to kills bees in order to have food, because that’s demonstrably nonsense. We do not believe that all seeds must be privatised in order for farmers to make a living, because we’re not idiots. We do not believe that privatising the NHS is sensible, because if the private sector worked we wouldn’t have needed an NHS in the first place. We want to agree that this stuff matters.

We shall fight them from our mouse-pads, we shall fight them from our tablets, we shall fight them from our mobiles in the fields and in the streets, we will text and share from the hills and valleys and we will never, ever surrender to the banalities presented to us by spineless corporocrats – because we know this is a tipping point. We know this is a moment upon which the entire future trajectory of all humanity rests – and we know that it is up to us to make the difference – and we know that this is one of the only weapons we have left.

So, please, take to your mice once more and join me now in another click, because they’re at it again. The very essence of all life, no less, as today they’re legislating to ban the sale and exchange of traditional and niche adapted seeds – the very same ones we need so desperately to grow to feed each other in our climate-changed resource-depleted future.

Get on it, because the future is in your hands.

Route 1: Very clear information, alternative solutions, and insights, and  a list of the right people to email via Open Seeds (h/t @permagriculture)

Route 2: Background, links to petitions, links to emails via Real Seeds

If you tweet this article please include the hashtag #saveseed