{"id":54890,"date":"2020-09-02T07:04:46","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T12:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54890"},"modified":"2020-09-02T07:04:46","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T12:04:46","slug":"a-letter-to-real-power-a-letter-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54890","title":{"rendered":"A letter to real power: a letter to us"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

A letter to real power: a letter to us<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
\n
\n

When I heard that Culture Declares Emergency<\/a>\u00a0was organizing a series of\u00a0\u2018Letters to Power\u2019<\/a>, I thought to myself: \u201cRupert, you should probably write one\u201d. You see, I have spent much of my life attempting to talk to, persuade, even beg those with power \u2013 our elected leaders, heads of banks and businesses, big organisations or media companies, for example. I have written many,\u00a0many\u00a0<\/em>letters to power before.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Though to be frank, it\u2019s been largely pointless; while some appear to listen, most fail to hear and even more refuse to act.<\/p>\n

Trying once again felt a bit like bashing my head against a brick wall. I felt my enthusiasm for the project draining away.<\/p>\n

But then I stopped for a minute and really\u00a0thought<\/em>\u00a0about power. Especially in the context of these last three tumultuous years.<\/p>\n

I started to re-assess my assumption about who this letter would be directed to. When I looked up the dictionary definition \u2013 \u201cthe capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events\u201d \u2013 and I recalled the way the world has changed since 2018, it became clearer where the power really is.<\/p>\n

With us<\/em>, the people.<\/p>\n

We were the ones who, earlier this year, initiated\u00a0precautionary<\/a>\u00a0action when, at least in the UK, our government was clearly going down a different, deadly, route of (non-) response to the\u00a0Covid crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We were the ones who supported our family, friends and\u00a0neighbours<\/a>\u00a0with countless good deeds during lockdown, and who stood in public solidarity with the NHS and key workers.<\/p>\n

We were the ones who questioned, and continue to question, the motives of our\u00a0rudderless governments<\/a>\u00a0in their stance on coronavirus.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A letter to real power: a letter to us When I heard that Culture Declares Emergency\u00a0was organizing a series of\u00a0\u2018Letters to Power\u2019, I thought to myself: \u201cRupert, you should probably write one\u201d. You see, I have spent much of my life attempting to talk to, persuade, even beg those with power \u2013 our elected leaders, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13249,28817,379,643,657,6665,30248,2080],"class_list":["post-54890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-climate-emergency","tag-coronavirus","tag-government","tag-power","tag-protests","tag-resilience-org","tag-rupert-read","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54891,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54890\/revisions\/54891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}