The crisis/the crises

The internal crises of social movements tend to generate a strange fascination. From the outside, they are often given simplistic and biased readings, and some even interpret them – conveniently – as definitive proof of their incoherence; from the inside, they are often experienced as a dispute between incompatible narratives and forms. But transformative organizations rarely enter into crisis for a single reason. And when we try to explain them based on good guys and bad guys and opposing sides, we almost always fail to understand what is really happening. It takes a lot of honesty to want to address the issue in all its diversity, complexity, and depth.In recent weeks, the crisis experienced at GOB Mallorca has caused an avalanche of comments, speculations, and positions. The resignation of ten women, members of the board of directors who had promoted an ecofeminist candidacy in 2023, has brought to light discrepancies regarding governance, occupational health, ways of understanding leadership, and organizational models. For all this, a broader and deeper reading is appropriate about what this conflict tells us in relation to the challenges faced by environmental organizations and many other social movements today.Environmentalism is experiencing a paradoxical moment. Never before has the validity, urgency, and necessity of its denunciations been so evident – the monster is growing larger, with more tentacles, refining its narrative and strategies, and accelerating devastation, overwhelming the real capacity for impact of social movements – nor has the necessity of its proposals been so urgent. The climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity, touristification, and resource depletion, but also their vital consequences in ecological, environmental, and social justice terms, provide ever more arguments for decades of environmental struggles and lead us to the need to join forces from the grassroots and converge with other active struggles and demands (the housing struggle, the union struggle, the struggle for public services, the feminist struggle, the anti-racist struggle, the anti-fascist struggle, the peace movements...) to be able to drive the eco-social transformations we desire. It is a confluence to which all transformative social movements tend, and proof of this are initiatives such as Revoltes de la Terra, the state Social Forum working for the 'Beyond Growth' Ecosocial Pact, the meetings of international networks against touristification, reflections at anti-capitalist summer universities, to which GOB has been invited in recent years as a benchmark, and the debates (and also conflicts) within benchmark environmental organizations such as Ecologistas en Acción and Greenpeace. We are no longer just in time to resist, but to go on the offensive and advance as a lever for change, and for this we need a broad and cohesive social base that works hand in hand with a common and transversal objective: to guarantee the sustainability of life in a world that ferociously attacks it from all sides. And yet, and perhaps precisely because of this, the movements that drive them, especially those with years of trajectory, as is the case with GOB, experience tensions, wear and tear, and difficulties in sustaining themselves.It is not just a confrontation between conservationists and those who defend social ecology (no one questions the defense of territory and biodiversity, as axes around which the entire environmental movement pivots; because without territory and its resources, life is not possible). It is not, only, a matter of clashing generational visions, of nostalgics versus young and critical visions, of reformists versus revolutionaries. Nor is it simply about clashes regarding governance models between those who try to incorporate the values of the changes and transformations we would like to promote externally, within the organizations themselves, and those who would like a directive organizational model measured in terms of performance indicators. It is not just a matter derived from the discomfort generated by critical review from feminisms of the structures, values, hierarchies, and objectives of the entities that should be levers and tools for social transformation and the furious reactions it generates. It is not just any of these issues by themselves. It is all together and at the same time and amplified by the urgency to act in a world where the margins of possibility for the real changes we urgently need seem increasingly narrow.The challenge for social movements in general, and for GOB in particular, lies precisely in their capacity, or lack thereof, to incorporate all this complexity and dimension into their strategic reflections in order to become something useful to the society of these islands in the present and future scenarios we will have to face, marked by the ecosocial crisis and multiple uncertainties. Today we need all organizational structures and, even more so, entities with a trajectory and solvency like the GOB has been and continues to be – despite certain mantras that are repeated until they function as accepted truths (that the capacity for mobilization has been lost, that street presence has been lost, that what was done before is no longer done) even though great mobilizations have been promoted, even though new fronts of struggle have been opened, even though the capacity for social and political impact has been expanded– to be the pillars for the impulse of the changes we need, understanding the defense of the territory and the biodiversity that sustain us as another tool for social justice, democracy, and collective action.I believe this is a truly necessary reflection at a time when it is tempting to read any internal conflict as a demonstration of failure by some and victory by others, and to move forward without incorporating any element of critical review that conflicts oblige us to if the goal is to advance as a collective and as a society. If this is not done, we will not be facing progress, but a major setback that will end up being regretted.