Report on Claiming our Future Activity 2012

Introduction

This report to the Claiming our Future General Assembly in November 2012
summarise the work and achievements of the year.

• In the first section, the work plan which was adopted at the 2011 General Assembly
  presented (in black), with a description of what was achieved under each of the
  headings (in red).
• The second section comprises short reports from each of the Working Groups.
• The final section sets out the financial report for the year.

What we set out to do and what we did.

National Events: We will hold three more National Events:

• Economy for Society’ a look at the alternative models of economic development’
  to be held in Cork in the Autumn.
• Changing the Way we Govern ourselves’ to be held in Dublin in early 2012.

Outcome: The ‘Economy for Society’ Event was held successfully
in Cork in late 2011, supporting the work of the ‘Economy for Society’
working group. The ‘Political Reform’ event took place in Dublin in
May 2012. Both were well attended and consensors reports are posted on the web-site.

The third planned Event for December 2012 was postponed due to lack of perceived
momentum and competing commitments.

On-line Deliberations:

• We will hold on-line deliberations in the run up to each of the National Events
• We will use our  web-site to promote debate on the other Claiming our Future
  themes and relevant topical issues

Outcome: On-line deliberations in the run up to the National Events
were established, but with limited engagement from the membership. The web-site
did not develop into a format for the type of debate envisaged, and the web-site
redevelopment is still in progress (see below).

Targeted Campaigns:

• Initiate actions on income equality arising from the Galway event
• Develop a targeted campaign in the build up and response to the 2012 Budget.
• Initiate actions on foot of national events on an economy for society and on changing
  the way we govern ourselves.
• Translate our themes and values and the action points arising from our National
  Events into a single short document which sets out the key ideas which we believe
  should guide the national response to the current crisis.
• Seek support and endorsement for this document from key organisations and the public.

Outcome: The ‘Income equality Working Group’ established
on foot of the Galway event has worked to explore approaches to campaigning on an
issue such as this and to identify factual bases for such a campaign. Further details
are set out below.

A Campaign Working Group was established and met several times in the early part
of the year. A very well attended workshop on campaigning was held in Mandate in
the early part of the year and heard contributions on web-based campaigning and
the political and economic context. The ‘Plan B’ campaign (see below)
emerged from this work and was the main focus of campaign activity during the year,
drawing together all the objectives here. No other web-based campaign was organised.

The key outcome from the working group on an economy for society was the “Futures”
event held in Croke Park which is described below.

The democracy working group took up the issues from the event on political reform.
This work focused on exploring the potential for advancing these issues through
the proposed constitutional covention and this work is described below.

Local activities

• We will support the development and operation of local groups in every county
• Local groups will be encouraged and supported to
• Prepare a short activity plan
• Engage in any by-election to promote our values and themes
• Hold ‘hustings’ during the Presidential election to promote our values
  and themes
• meeting with elected TDs in Spring 2012

Outcome: The planned local activity did not advance as planned.
A number of exploratory meetings and contacts were pursued in Cork, Galway and Dublin
but progress has not been achieved. A significant partnership was developed with
TransitionTowns Kerry as a new form of organising local presence and action. A joint
deliberative event on resilience was organised jointly in Tralee.

Movement Building.

• Deepen our relationship with Cultural, Global Justice and Youth organisations, including
  inviting a representative of each sector to participate in our ‘Quarterly
  Expanded Co-ordinating meetings’.
• Develop a series of initiatives to deepen the engagement of organisations from the
  different sectors of civil society in Claiming our Future and to support their commitment
  to cross sectoral cooperation.
• Distribute a monthly email newsletter to all engaged with the movement.
• Develop effective systems of support and communication between national and local
  level structures and activities.

Outcome: Some development was achieved in contacts with the Cultural
and Global Justice sectors. A number of exchanges were engaged in with community
arts groups. These groups participated in Claiming Our Future initiatives. However
it remains that Claiming Our Future has to build an agenda that is relevant to this
sector. Global Justice groups were engaged in the ‘Economy for Society’
working group. There was good participation from this group in the futures event
held in Croke Park. This engagement will continue with the joint event planned with
Dochas and the Wheel for 2013.

The ‘Quarterly Expanded Co-ordinating’ meetings were convened but did
not succeed in drawing together the broader based and organisational participants
of Claiming our Future. They did not provide an effective basis for deepening the
engagement of other civil society sectors.

Established a voice for alternatives

• Develop and upgrade our web-site and social media presence in order to :
• Become a promoter of other progressive activities.
• Become a core resource for all concerned with debates on alternative approaches
  to the crisis.
• Support an engagement in targeted campaigns.
• Build the movement.

Outcome: A template for the upgraded web-site has been agreed and
drafting of the content is currently in hand, with a view to relaunching the web-site
before the end of the year.

An ‘Alternatives for Transformation’ event is being planned to progress
the ‘movement building’ objective.The event on 9th March 2013 in Maynooth
will be a day long series of workshops on 8 ideas for alternatives - 2 economic, 
2 social, 2 environmental and 2 democratic . A call for proposals for ‘ideas’ 
to develop a draft paper and ‘host’  a work shop will go out end November to
a mix of academics, COF, Cultivate and Interface in NI.  The US sociologist
Erik Olin Wright pioneered this appraoch under the banner of Real Utopias in the
US and will be an international respondant reflecting on the process/ideas and politics
of trying to create public discourse about alternatives . The Irish Journal of Sociology
will publish  a special editon on the theme.

Develop our media work (including  a media strategy and agreement on Claiming
our Future spokespersons)

Outcome: A PR organisation has agreed to assist in preparing a
media plan for Claiming our Future, on a pro-bono basis and it is planned to progress
this early in 2013. A number of spokespersons appeared on the media on behalf of
Claiming our Future during the year.

What the Working Groups achieved

(i) The Democracy Group

Since the first meeting of the Democracy Group in November 2011, the group has provided
a forum for progressing Claiming Our Future’s theme of political reform.  Meeting
regularly the group has developed background papers on reforming local government
and on creating the conditions for real political participation.  The group
was responsible for contributing to the development of the ‘Reinventing our Democracy’
event held in Croke Park in May 2010.  The group is currently working on the
development of a Claiming our Future Values Audit of the Constitution, and is contributing
to civil society responses to the Constitutional Convention.  The group meets
every six weeks in the evenings in Dublin.  

To get involved contact [email protected]. 

(ii) The Campaign Group and Plan B

Since starting in January the group held a number of monthly large meetings and
workshops with over 60 activists taking part. The main questions at that time included
the necessity to develop a coherent and credible alternative to austerity that would
provide options in the short to medium term and how to mobilise around such alternatives.
The concept of developing a constellation that was the alternative we were aiming
for and taking action around its ‘stars’ was promoted.

We then worked on producing such alternative policies in an accessible way that
we could distribute to the public and use as a form of education. We also decided
to include a petition aimed at the Budget that people could sign. There was some
discussion about whether we should include a critique of the Government’s
plans or just concentrate on emphasizing the alternatives. We produced Plan B information
leaflets outlining alternative Budget choices and the petition aimed at the government
for the Budget. In late June we launched Plan B with Fergus Finlay, Tom Healy of
NERI, and Union of Secondary Students.

The Plan B group has continued to meet and has organised leafleting of Dart Stations
which will continue up to the budget (with 3 or 4 people each week), a further press
conference for November 15^th, promoted the petition through email (over
1000 have signed the petition), and also emailed all TDs with Plan B. The group
also brought together NGOs and economists who are working on Budget submissions
to explore developing common messages which was seen as a specific contribution
that Claiming Our Future could pursue. This meeting was very positive and it was
agreed that COF would act as focus point for putting together key messages with
arguments, particularly in relation to taxation. A useful network of economists
and COF has emerged out of this, which is supporting the Press Conference on Nov
15^th.

The current Plan B group is not able to meet the potential of the Plan B campaign
and what is required because it is a handful of people voluntarily contributing
their time. However, COF could play an important role in continuing to develop and
promote Plan B – in the context of the necessity to convince and communicate
and involve the public with the real credible alternatives that exist. COF’s 
unique civil society perspective offers a good potential to reach broader audiences.
It can also play a role in finding what  NGOs, unions, communities can unite
around as alternatives to austerity (which is broadly Plan B) and popularising and
mobilising, and political influencing around these for Budget 2014, and 15.

To get involved contact [email protected]

(iii) Income inequality Thematic Group

The agenda for the group is framed by the Consensor Report from the event in Galway,
2011. While something in excess of 30 people signed up at the Galway event, in the
end just four people have been active. At an early stage, one of the Galway proposals
– the need to control high pay – emerged as the issue that the group
will concentrate on.  Since then, the group has been considering how to take
this forward, recognising that real change on this issue is likely to be a long-term
project. Questions and issues with which we have been grappling include:

Do we try to build a direct campaign with our own resources? If so, what is the
learning around successful campaigning – i.e. one which yields real, sustainable
and long term change. This issue is one to which we have given a lot of
consideration.  In the process, we identified a very promising approach which
is outlined in detail on the website www.valuesandframes.org.
This approach uses recent social psychology research - particularly on values –
to provide a lens through which campaigners can analyse the full impact of existing
campaigning practices and consider how to secure broad, long-term public engagement
with a whole range of problems such as climate change, global poverty, inequality
and more.  In June of this year, we held a small workshop which provided a
hands-on approach to exploring the importance of the values that underpin concern
about many social and environmental issues and which also highlighted some of the
problems that can arise when communicators, campaigners and activists rely inadvertently
on tactics that are likely to deepen people’s concerns about self-interest, economic
benefit, or social status. We will be organizing a bigger workshop in early 2013.

Do we have adequate data to build a convincing case?  Much of our
time has been spent on this issue: reviewing material and data – both international
and national and talking to those with expertise on the issue including TASC and
Brian Nolan, UCD. We explored the possibility of identifying an individual/organisation
to prepare a state of play document, written in lay person terms, that would capture
the most recent evidence on the inequality issue both internationally and in Ireland. 
As yet, we have been unsuccessful in this.  However, the group is currently
compiling the data/material it has gathered/reviewed into one document.  Once
this is completed, we will assess what further is needed on this.

In terms of the substance of a campaign, should we confine ourselves to the principle
of income equality (for example, do we begin to raise awareness of a ten-to-one
ratio) or do we also engage with the mechanics of the policy implications, for example,
do we campaign on redistribution through taxation or pre-distribution through income
capping or both?

What should the campaign focus be – for example, do we focus on those who
having earnings in the stratosphere, i.e in the millions per annum? Do we confine
it to the private sector (as the UK Commission does)? As yet, we are at
an early stage in relation to these two last questions.

To get involved contact [email protected]

(iv) Economy for Society Working Group

The working group has met regulary to plan the event in Cork and to address the
follow up from the Cork event and to assist with the event on resilience in Tralee
with Transition Towns Kerry. The group exchanged information about new ideas in
relation to an economy for society, explored means of doing local audits in relation
to local economies, and focused in on using a futures methodology with a particular
focus on the issue of economic growth.

A successful futures event was held in Croke Park which focused on the economy in
2030. This involved five representatives from trade unions, community groups, global
justice groups, environmental groups and Claiming Our Future. A report on the outcomes
was posted on the website. The group has not met since this event.

To get involved contact [email protected]

Financial Report

	Focus Ireland Ltd
	Claiming Our Future 2012
	Income	Amount	Period	Year
	Balance brought forward from prior report	30,175.08	11	2011
	43657 - Trade Union TV- Claiming our future	370.00	11	2011
	CAF bank ltd GP	12,500.00	8	2012
	Sub Total	43,045.08
	Expenses
	Petty Cash	300.00	12	2011
	Reclassify Deposit on May 28 Event from Prepayments	600.00	2	2012
	Intern Expenses	725.00	2	2012
	Event 2nd/3rd November 2012	768.26	2	2012
	Croke Park - Claiming our future - chq	2,650.00	3	2012
	Claiming our future Monthly admin budget	1,500.00	4	2012
	RDS  - 2nd - 3rd November 2012	1,536.52	4	2012
	Tosach - 1 Year Office Share Contribution	3,000.00	4	2012
	Travel expenses	50.00	5	2012
	DOT NET Solutions	147.78	5	2012
	Travel expenses (Speaker)	315.08	5	2012
	Petty Cash	500.00	5	2012
	Future Is - Facilitation of full day workshop	600.00	5	2012
	Petty Cash	674.94	5	2012
	Petty Cash	1,000.00	5	2012
	XPANDO Media	1,581.06	5	2012
	Davis Events – Croke Park Event	11,528.79	5	2012
	Croke Park Stadium - Room Hire	85.00	6	2012
	Croke Park Invoice	623.37	6	2012
	Petty Cash	1,000.00	6	2012
	XM Solutions	113.50	7	2012
	Buswells Hotel	150.00	7	2012
	Expenses	209.81	7	2012
	Trade union TV	275.00	7	2012
	XM Solutions	293.96	7	2012
	Printing	268.25	8	2012
	Petty Cash	500.00	9	2012
	Croke Park - room hire + food	1,251.10	9	2012
	Sub Total	32,247.42
	Surplus/(Deficit)	10,797.66

 

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