Climate Action Teams: Dynamic CATS
Fields of Action Post #16.3
Climate Actions Teams or CATS are vital to helping us be dynamic enough, our fourth Movement characteristic/imperative/goal, which involves a forward-driving tension created by the relationships between the tried-and-true, discipline, and two of our other Movement Values, freedom, and creativity.
As for tried-and-true, there is tons of information available about small group dynamics in general and what makes them work best. There are all kinds of lessons from faith traditions, the Civil Rights Movement, and other social change movements, and from more recent experiences utilizing social media and various Apps. We must not hesitate to tap into the tried-and-true.
CATS must have discipline to make our contribution. We won’t become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world without discipline. We must come together regularly. We must remain true to our vision, our Movement Values, our Major Goal. We must be trustworthy and do what we say. We must keep the faith and finish the challenge. We cannot do any of this without discipline, both as individuals on the team and the team as a whole.
As I said in an earlier post, Climate Action Teams are one of the greatest expressions of freedom in history. We are born with permission to be in one. But we must choose to be a part of one. We must choose to stay in one. We must choose to give ourselves fully. We must choose to participate in the actions of the CAT. We must choose to struggle together towards justice and the fullness of freedom as we make hope happen and our future come faster.
Each CAT is effectively a blank slate and a free state, a place where the organic nature of successful movements can really thrive — messy, non-linear change that simultaneously results in more resilient and creative results. As Artist-Athlete-Members we are free to choose how to be a team. No one has the authority to tell us what to do. We can model ourselves on other CATS, we can take counsel from the wisdom of the past.
But those are choices, not requirements. We can, if we so choose, chart our own course.
As individual Members, we are free to create our own role on the CAT based on our gifts and abilities and the feedback and advice of our Teammates, or from mentors, friends, or Artist-Athletes from outside our group. Creating our own role is quite different than other social forms like organizations, where roles are already fairly prescribed.
But we must never lose sight of the fact that all of these choices are the means to freedom; they are not the fullness of freedom.
Freedom is not doing whatever the hell we want. Freedom is choosing rightly to create a better world, which only arrives when everyone is free to be who they were created to be and exercises their freedom to become so. This means a world where justice reigns, a justice that comes from love. Love is the ultimate power-source of both freedom and justice. And Climate Action Teams are the most natural place in the Climate Movement where we can choose to say the L-word and let love grow, let love out, let its power be made manifest in our actions to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better, actions to create a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything.
Again, part of our freedom is the freedom to do things differently than was done in the past. We must learn from the past and benefit from the tried-and-true. But we must also let our Movement Values of wisdom, pragmatism, and creativity help us see that past lessons may not fit present realities. They may need to be adapted, or new approaches may be needed. We must have the discipline to stay true to achieving our vision, purpose, and Major Goal even if that means doing things differently, even if it means transforming or even abandoning long cherished and comfortable traditions and approaches. Needed change takes discipline, a discipline driven by love.
This is why discipline, freedom, wisdom, pragmatism, and creativity must all work together. And when they do CATS can produce both organic and strategic change (a topic I will discuss more fully in our next post in this CATS Subseries).
We can be quite creative with CATS because each one is new or relatively new. Again, this is different than, say, being a professional in an organization. When folks are in professional mode, it’s hard to think outside the box because they’ve been trained to work within the box; in some cases, they’ve made the box!
But in the Climate Movement we must not be beholden to the boxes of old if they no longer quite fit. As the need arises, as creativity inspires, we must create new and bigger boxes, or get rid of the box altogether as we form a circle! We must let organic change enjoy its full flowering. In Climate Action Teams this will be much easier to do.
(BTW, for all those working in climate organizations and campaigns, environment and conservation organizations, and other organizations where climate is your focus, I would urge you to consider being a part of a CAT where you can be and do things you may not be able to do in your job. It’s also where you can do things differently, or be pushed out of your comfort zone by your CATmates.)
And yet, as much as we need creativity, as much as we honor and benefit from the organic, we also want to be efficient and effective and achieve our Movement Value of success, i.e., we want to be strategic, which gets us back employing wisdom and pragmatism as we look to the tried-and-true for ways that will minimize or eliminate floundering around — because we are on the climate clock and we don’t have time to waste.
Time to become a part of something greater than yourself. Time to create or join a CAT and be the driving force in creating the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world as we make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our just future come faster. Join us!
If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in the Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.