The Help Africa Petition
Have a look, this month, at Michael Wills’ article about his and his colleague’s attempt to get EU agricultural policy changed, and the money saved spent on African health care.
Even as I look at that sentence, I can feel people shutting down. Not noticing. Skimming over it. Moving on to something more interesting, something more immediate. I can even feel my own eyes starting to flicker and close.
Now that’s interesting. I wonder why?
Michael wonders, too. As you’ll see in his piece, he discovered that a million signatures from the European Union on a petition would, by the EU’s own constitution, force the Commission to look at the issue and act.
He wrote some good articles for it. I read one in the Guardian, in fact, and emailed him to congratulate him on it. But he was, understandably, discouraged.
“I can’t seem to get people interested in it,” he said morosely. “But you think it would be a no-brainer. We’re giving MILLIONS in subsidies away to millionaire ‘farmers’. I mean, the Prince of Wales! The Duke of Westminster! This is money that could be spent on health!”
Now the interest in this for EAP is not the political one, or even the activist one. It is literally why people — all of us — are blind to what is in front of us. Why we frame things in the way we do. Because, as it is generally agreed by all sides, we are in a mess now. And attempts to clean up the mess within the present framework seem just to make that mess that much worse.
We need a new frame.
First, though, we need to be conscious of the old one.
One way to do that is to ask: “Why, when I read that first paragraph up there, does my brain start to turn off, go to sleep, look for stimulation somewhere else? Why? And what does that mean for how we all move forward as a group? And what does it mean for how we can be manipulated by those who know how and who profit from it?”
It’s good to ask those questions. Anyone wanting to write something about asking those questions…email me immediately; I’m looking for you.
And in the meantime, while we analyze, we can’t forget that it’s important to act. If you are in an EU country, please go to helpafrica.com and sign the petition. Send the link to all of your friends and families and urge them to sign. helpafrica.com. Even if you’re not EU, you have friends and family in the EU — send it to them. helpafrica.com. Inject the link into the blogosphere wherever you can. helpafrica.com. There. That was easy — I mean in comparison, of course.
Now we can all get back to thinking how things are going to change…