Dynamics of Power – Resistance and Alternatives
- Community-based economic models
- Successful pushback against corporate power
- Democratic reforms that have worked
Introduction
Hello, Ivy here,
We are on the final video Podcast series relating to Power Dynamics and exploring Resistance and Alternatives to all decisions being made by and for the benefit of Elites and Oligarchs positions, as opposed to the wishes of the Electorate. Power being implied and exerted on other nations that certain Heads of State wish to forcibly grab and make another State in the USA. We looked at media and how that has faired over decades, and where it is now, and the way power is used to persuade/brainwash etc. Last week we explored the Human Cost and we see that all around us in various parts of the world, and def in the USA right now, and yesterday an Elected UK official whose Party is not in power currently, basically stood up at a political event and gave a long speech, which pretty much echoed that of the current USA President. He was advocating for deportations, border controls, citizenship not being a right, even if born in the UK, look after White UK citizens first, and a whole range of RW measures. // After researching for the Human Cost episode, it emphasised the total lack of concern about the people who are poor and struggling. Many of those in the venue supporting and cheering this speech are not affluent, and debateable on the intellect front, but they were cheering and the MP giving the speech, even ended the speech by saying “Let’s Make Britain Great Again”. Note he did not say “UK” because i suspect he knows that a vote like that is in doubt in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. // My feeling is that it will require a huge push by ordinary people, but ordinary people from every societal tier. It is no good lots of people coming forward from one or two tiers. Those in Tier One will not give up their centuries of power lightly. I have always felt in recent years, that the UK needs a Revolution, much like the French Revolution. That movement came from all levels of society. They found their common ground and focused on that. Not advocating for hanging and the guillotine etc, but the community can fight back. From an academic perspective, i would say it needs a modern day Doughnut Economics approach. The UK has a Labout Government in power, but in all honesty it is the Conservative government wearing a lighter shade of colour coat to that of the Party that almost destroyed the UK with its right wing rhetoric.
The current Labour party are the puppets of Elites and finance organisations, and their punitive measures have targeted people i have never known a political party target previously until the USA current President came along. Now the UK is doing the same. Targeting veterans, pensioners, eg removing financial payments from pensioners, that were given every winter to help with fuel bills. What kind of soul lets pensioners freeze or starve in the winter – as they cannot afford to pay for both. I would love to how UK communities can come forward to challenge the government of the day. In the USA the President ignores Judges Orders, and the Senate and Congress say nothing. It only leaves the people to step forward. I have listed a few examples, and quoted extracts from reports to give the viewers links to more detailed information ( e.g., various financial models of help, including credit models offered by community banks etc) but i think that is part of a package of processes and systems that is much needed, but my personal belief is that those at the top need to be removed from office.
I keep coming back to the French revolution, and i could never see how else the Monarchy at that time, could have been removed. It needed the people to come together. Doughnut Economics in operation.. It does not have to be Doughnut Economics, it is that i am very much an advocate for that approach in today’s political climate, but i am very open to a range of possibilities.
I’d like to offer a perspective that resonates with emphasis on collective action across societal tiers:-
The path forward requires a multi-layered coalition that transcends traditional divides. When history has witnessed transformative social change, it has rarely come from a single demographic or movement, but rather from unlikely alliances finding common cause. The Doughnut Economics model offers a compelling framework—balancing social foundations with ecological ceilings—but its implementation demands something more fundamental: the reclamation of democratic power by citizens across all strata of society.
Real change begins when those who have never seen themselves as allies recognize their shared interests. When farmers and academics, healthcare workers and tradespeople, young activists and retirees stand together, they form a counterweight to entrenched power. The most effective resistance isn’t necessarily found in dramatic upheaval, but in persistent community organizing, mutual aid networks, and the steady building of alternative economic structures that demonstrate better ways of distributing resources and opportunity. The question isn’t whether revolution or reform is needed, but how to build sufficient people power to make either possible.
I think the farming and health are two good ones to expand on, because certainly in the UK both of those are dying services, and it is happening with the help of UK politicians. All the other parties apart from Labour have received money from Elites and Organisations with power, which amounts to just over £2 billion. Labour, the party in power now, meant to be for the working class, has received payments over 3 times that amount!! Payments made to individual MPs. Both services are shrinking because of removal of financial packages and soon there wont be many left. They have lost a third already.
I have highlighted two critical sectors facing significant challenges in the UK. Let me expand on how these areas could become focal points for cross-societal coalition building:
The agricultural crisis and healthcare deterioration represent perfect examples of how elite interests can undermine essential services while affecting citizens across all social strata. When farms collapse and healthcare facilities close, the impact resonates from rural communities to urban centers, creating potential common ground for resistance.
In agriculture, we’re witnessing the systematic dismantling of family farming through policies that favor industrial agriculture corporations. Small and medium-sized farmers, once the backbone of rural communities, find themselves squeezed between rising costs and stagnant prices, while agricultural subsidies increasingly flow to large landowners and conglomerates. This isn’t simply an economic issue but a matter of food sovereignty and national resilience.
Community-supported agriculture, farmer cooperatives, and direct farm-to-consumer networks offer practical alternatives that both circumvent corporate control and build solidarity between producers and consumers. When urban residents develop direct relationships with farmers, they create economic lifelines while building political constituencies that cross the rural-urban divide.
Similarly, the healthcare crisis affects everyone from frontline workers to patients across all demographics. The gradual privatization and underfunding of the NHS represents a transfer of public wealth to private interests while degrading service quality. When healthcare professionals – from consultants to porters – organize alongside patients and community members, they form powerful advocacy coalitions that can effectively challenge the narrative that austerity is inevitable.
Community health initiatives, from neighbourhood care circles to clinics run by healthcare professionals providing services outside the failing system, demonstrate alternatives while building the relationships necessary for sustained political action. These efforts provide immediate relief while creating spaces where citizens develop the political consciousness and organizational skills needed for broader change.
The £6+ billion flowing to the Labour Party from elite interests exposes the fundamental contradiction between the party’s working-class rhetoric and its donor-class allegiances. This recognition can serve as a catalyst for citizens to move beyond traditional party politics toward building power through democratic community institutions and direct action campaigns focused on specific, achievable demands.
The intersection of agricultural and healthcare challenges certainly provides compelling examples of how systemic issues affect people across society and create potential for unified action.
- Community-based economic models
- Community-based participatory research has a long-term commitment to principles of equity and justice with decades of research showcasing the added value of power-sharing and participatory involvement of community members for achieving health, community capacity, policy, and social justice outcomes. Missing, however, has been a clear articulation of how power operates within partnership practices and the impact of these practices on outcomes
- Successful pushback against corporate power
- Democratic reforms that have worked
Here are some observations and examples related to the points below:- :
- Resistance Examples:
- Labour Movements: One key example is the labor movement in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Workers organized strikes and formed unions to fight for better wages and working conditions against powerful industrialists.
- Occupy Wall Street: In 2011, this movement protested against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics. It highlighted how a small group of wealthy individuals could sway political decisions.
Occupy Wall Street (OWS), extended protest against economic inequality and the corruption of corporate law that occurred from September 17 to November 15, 2011, centred in New York City. The demonstration marked the beginning of a new focus on wealth disparity in American politics.
· Background and planning
- The Occupy Wall Street protest took place in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–08and the resulting Great Recession. The economic downturn significantly worsened the living standards of many Americans, particularly younger adults born in the 1980s, while increasing the disparity of income between the rich and the poor. Public resentment for the upheaval developed toward the United States’ financial sector, whose leaders not only bore some responsibility for the crisis but largely escaped criminal charges for their role in it.
- The idea of a protest in Lower Manhattan arose in conversation between Kalle Lasn, cofounder and editor in chief of the anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, and the magazine’s senior editor, Micah White. The men were inspired by how many Egyptians turned out to protest Hosni Mubarak’s regimein Tahrir Square in January 2011. Lasn registered OccupyWallStreet.org on June 9, and he picked September 17, his mother’s birthday, as the date of the event. The announcement of the protest in an Adbusters e-mail on July 13 quickly circulated on Twitter and Reddit, indicating strong interest. By August 9 a group of veteran organizers in New York City—most of whom identified as anarchists—had formed an organization they called the New York City General Assembly (NYCGA) to plan and direct the protest.
· Protest and occupation
- In an effort to stop police from preemptively closing the site, the exact location of the protest was not decided until the morning of September 17. After finding that law enforcement was indeed aware of the protest and had set up barricades around the NYCGA’s first choice site—Wall Street’s Charging Bullstatue—scouts directed hundreds of waiting demonstrators to Zuccotti Park instead. Arriving in small groups at first so as not to attract attention, about 1,000 demonstrators eventually arrived. Almost 300 people reportedly stayed for the night.
- Occupy Wall Street: Zuccotti Park encampment A woman walking past tents at the encampment set up by members of Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street, New York City, October 25, 2011.(more)
- Over the next 58 days, the number of protesters staying in Zuccotti Park ebbedand flowed in the range of 100–200 people. The camp evolved to include such amenities as free meals, wireless Internet, and a lending library staffed by professional librarians volunteering their time. Facilities that the park lacked, such as bathrooms and laundry machines, were donated by local residents and businesses. The cost of this increasingly complex operation reached $1,000 a day, but it was a price the NYCGA could easily afford: supporters donated more than $5,000 a day.
- Occupy Wall Street: “Arrest the bankers!”Protesters associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement blocking a bridge in Chicago, November 2011.(more)
- See all videos for this article
- Occupy Wall Street inspired similar groups and protest camps not only across the United States but around the world, creating an Occupy movement. Some of these efforts outgrew and outlasted Occupy Wall Street itself; Occupy London expanded to four locations, the last of which was not closed until June of 2012. The whole phenomenon reached its apexon October 15, 2011, when members of the movement and others joined together in a global “Day of Rage” protest. Demonstrations occurred in more than 900 cities.
- On October 10 New York City Mayor Michael Bloombergdeclared that the Occupy Wall Street protesters were welcome to stay in Zuccotti Park indefinitely. However, the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties, declared its intent to clean the park on October 14 and that it would ask the New York City Police Department to remove the demonstrators so that the cleaning could take place. The activists responded to this challenge by cleaning the park themselves, and Brookfield backed down.
Environmental Activism : Activist groups like Greenpeace have pushed back against corporate practices that harm the environment, often facing backlash from powerful corporate entities.
- “This thesis explores the relationship between environmental activism, environmental politics and the mainstream media. In exploring the power relations between government, activists and the media, this work draws on Foucauldian theories of governmentality, power and space (heterotopia). The central hypothesis is that environmental politics has witnessed a shift in power away from activism and towards environmental governance and free-market economics, nestled in a media discourse that has depoliticised many environmental activist movements. Foucault’s theories on power, biopower and governmentality are combined with a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of newspaper reports and original empirical research derived from a focus group with environmental activists. The empirical data and analysis provides original knowledge on relations between environmental activists and journalists. The premise that economics has become the dominant solution to the detriment of environmental activism movements is argued through a historical analysis of advanced liberal governments’ role in creating new green markets and instruments (‘green governmentality’ in Luke’s terms). The shift towards green governmentality has been accompanied by an increased application of state measures, from legislation and surveillance, to conflating environmental activism with terrorism, and the neologism of eco-terrorism. Journalists reaffirm such governance, and the critical discourse analysis charts the shift from positive to negative reporting in the mainstream media. However, activists also contest such power relations through social and new media, alongside traditional repertoires of protest within the space of activism, to challenge such advanced liberal discourse, and bypass traditional media practices. As neoliberalism has increasingly become the main position in environmental politics, it places activism into a discourse of deviance. The activists’ movement counters this measure through new media, liminoid practices and repertoires of protest.”
- Community-Driven Models:
– Microfinance: Initiatives like the Grameen Bank, founded by Muhammad Yunus, aim to empower the poor through small loans, fostering entrepreneurship and economic independence.
- Participatory Budgeting: This model allows community members to propose and vote on budgetary decisions. It has been successfully implemented in several cities worldwide, such as Porto Alegre in Brazil, enabling residents to influence how public funds are spent.
* Grameen is commonly regarded as the grassroots of microfinance models (Roy Citation2010). The Grameen model is a form of group-based, collateral-free lending approach that primarily assists those who are otherwise unable to obtain conventional financing.
. Microcredit is considered a “subset of microfinance” (Mia Citation2022, p. 3). While microcredit is limited to credit services, microfinance encompasses microcredit, micro-insurance, different saving schemes, consumer loans, remittances, and other financial products.
CGAP aims to separate microfinance from its emphasis on human development in favor of a minimalist banking model focused solely on providing customers with easy access to credit (Roy Citation2010). The minimalist approach to microfinance is based on maximizing measurable efficiency, prioritizing business performance and financial efficiency over empowerment.
We mean two things by “modern”. First, we mean microfinance institutions created from the 1980s onwards, i.e. after the foundation of Grameen Bank Bangladesh. Secondly, we distinguish these microfinance institutions from more traditional forms of subsidized loan programs and other organizations that provide subsidies as forms of financial and technical assistance, such as the German (agricultural) credit associations.
- Pushback Against Elites:
– History has seen various movements where communities have pushed back against elite power structures. However, the response from those in power has often been violent or suppressive, as seen in the cases of protests in Iran, or the Tiananmen Square protests in China, where significant resistance was met with government force.
- Global Plan of the Elite:
– Your points about media barons and corporate control highlight how those in power often collude for mutual benefit, creating a system difficult for the average citizen to navigate. The convergence of corporate interests with governmental power can create barriers to reform.
- Necessity for Representation:
– Your argument for having representation from all social tiers is valid. Effective resistance often requires a coalition of diverse groups uniting over shared injustices and hardships. Historical revolutions that succeeded often had broad-based support from various societal levels.
- Common Ground for Revolution:
– Identifying a common struggle can indeed catalyze collective action. Movements like Black Lives Matter and climate change protests show that when different community interests coalesce around a common issue, it can lead to significant social change.
Overall, fostering a collective identity that bridges disparate social groups could be crucial for challenging entrenched power structures effectively. The challenge lies in mobilizing these diverse interests while navigating the risks posed by those in power who may seek to maintain the status quo.
Conclusion
Here are just two critical sectors facing significant challenges in the UK. The UK is not alone in respect of these two factors, and there are many more. These are just examples. Let me expand on how these areas could become focal points for cross-societal coalition building:
The agricultural crisis and healthcare deterioration represent perfect examples of how elite interests can undermine essential services while affecting citizens across all social strata. When farms collapse and healthcare facilities close, the impact resonates from rural communities to urban centers, creating potential common ground for resistance.
In agriculture, we’re witnessing the systematic dismantling of family farming through policies that favor industrial agriculture corporations. Small and medium-sized farmers, once the backbone of rural communities, find themselves squeezed between rising costs and stagnant prices, while agricultural subsidies increasingly flow to large landowners and conglomerates. This isn’t simply an economic issue but a matter of food sovereinty and national resilience.
Repeating some of the areas mentioned previously:-
Community-supported agriculture, farmer cooperatives, and direct farm-to-consumer networks offer practical alternatives that both circumvent corporate control and build solidarity between producers and consumers. When urban residents develop direct relationships with farmers, they create economic lifelines while building political constituencies that cross the rural-urban divide.
Similarly, the healthcare crisis affects everyone from frontline workers to patients across all demographics. The gradual privatization and underfunding of the NHS represents a transfer of public wealth to private interests while degrading service quality. When healthcare professionals—from consultants to porters—organize alongside patients and community members, they form powerful advocacy coalitions that can effectively challenge the narrative that austerity is inevitable.
Community health initiatives, from neighbourhood care circles to clinics run by healthcare professionals providing services outside the failing system, demonstrate alternatives while building the relationships necessary for sustained political action. These efforts provide immediate relief while creating spaces where citizens develop the political consciousness and organizational skills needed for broader change.
The £6+ billion flowing to the Labour Party from elite interests exposes the fundamental contradiction between the party’s working-class rhetoric and its donor-class allegiances. This recognition can serve as a catalyst for citizens to move beyond traditional party politics toward building power through democratic community institutions and direct action campaigns focused on specific, achievable demands.
The intersection of agricultural and healthcare challenges certainly provides compelling examples of how systemic issues affect people across society and create potential for unified action.
It’s true that major movements in history, like the French Revolution, have shown that collective action can lead to significant change. Finding common ground, as suggested by concepts like Doughnut Economics, can help align different interests toward shared goals.
Ivy Barrow
20th April 2025
Reference Sources
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15575330.2023.2247470
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/beer.12608
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Occupy-Wall-Street