I never wanted to be an ‘Expert’ or ‘Specialist’.
Perhaps that’s why I spend most of my life doing library and information work, for to do so effectively one need to know something about everything. Though the main skill is to know just where to find that information.
Now I am retired most of my time is spent in campaigning work.
Though in order to do so I have to read a lot of specialist reports, daily newspapers, periodicals, and websites.
Now that I am retired most of my current campaigning centres around those issues where there are very few activists to share the work with, or which are so very time consuming that it would be impossible to follow these issues while in full time employment.
While I was still working much of my activist time was spent using my information organising skills. That starts with organising filing systems, scanning for information, and so forth. I’m still doing the same.
Lifestyle and Campaigning.
There was a popular saying much used in the 1960s & early 1970s: –
Think Global Act Local.
Though to that I would add that it is impossible to do effective campaigning without looking at how one structures ones own life.
Thus the importance of recycling, having a vegan diet, walking or taking public transport, cutting down on ones energy usage, and using sustainable materials rather than plastics.
Though none of this is easy to achieve unless more people are doing the same, while constantly reading the ingredients or contents of everything one buys.
The greater problem is getting more recycling facilities where we are all live.
Urban allotments, solar panels and vertical wind turbines to power our homes and street lighting, inner city orchards, more foot paths and tram routes, are what we should also be campaigning for.
While one of our greatest needs is to shrink the suburbs, so that all the space used on roads would become forests. Many people think that this might result in overcrowding in our inner cities, but the concreted over suburban sprawl does result in more flooding. While if the concrete covered roads and squares were covered in plants and trees, then it would give us more flexible housing space. In the same way we need to cut the various out of town shopping centres, and large out of town factories. Then we can have more specialist shops and work shops, and repair centres where we all live.
There is also another aspect of shrinking the suburban mess which needs to be considered. It would help combat the social isolation which is such a depressing feature of many peoples lives. This is especially so in areas where there are very few social contact points such shops or libraries, and where public transport is so abysmal.
None of this is a utopian vision.
All of these aims can be achieved via joined-up-campaigning.
It can be done !