The way we glow when having a great conversation, building off each other’s ideas, finding solutions we can all be satisfied with. The way we spark together when marching and chanting in protest. This is living democracy.

Yes, the world looks bleak. Across our society there’s a mounting sense of desperation in the face of the climate crisis, gaping economic inequality and racial injustice, increasing threat of war, and a post-truth politics divorced from reality. Extinction is in the air.

But what if the solutions to our ecological, social and political crises could all be found in the same approach? What if it was possible for us to not just survive, but thrive?

In Living Democracy, Greens activist Tim Hollo offers bold ideas and a positive vision. It’s the end of the world as we know it, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. In fact, around the globe, people and communities are beginning an exciting new journey.

This book will inspire you, inform you, and get you fired up to co-create our common future. A living democracy.

Reviews:

‘Everyone who reads this book is generously invited to get involved in the project of our times.’ – David Ritter

‘A brilliant conversation and action kick-starter from a man who walks the talk.’ – Christine Milne

‘It’s pretty clear that the world we’ve known isn’t working very well anymore; we need to reinvent it, and this book brims with good ideas about what that means!’ – Bill McKibben

‘A great vision for a bloodless coup of mutual aid and rule-governed anarchy.’ – Tyson Yunkaporta

‘A manual for making a new and better world that shows us, with lucidity, courage and compassion, that the tools for building that world are already in our hands.’ – James Bradley

‘I have been waiting for this book, and now that Tim Hollo has written it, I’ll be putting it in the hands of pretty much everyone I know.’ – Danielle Celermajer

‘Timely, vivid and urgent, this is a book that meets the challenges of our age head-on.’ – Scott Ludlam

‘A brilliant treatise for our future and based on a deep understanding of First Nations knowledge – Tim Hollo has given us so much with this beautifully written work.’ – Tjanara Goreng Goreng

Living Democracy

4. The evolution of anti-ecology

3. What on earth is 'ecology'

2. An ecological many-festo

1. Introduction: To not simply survive but thrive

The Green Institute's Series "The Missing Peace: Talking About Nonviolence" held 8pm AEST, Wednesday 7 August 2024.

The language of peace is starkly missing from politics. And the practices of nonviolence, from the interpersonal to the global, are less and less part of the way we act. It is crucial that we reclaim the language of peace. We must talk about nonviolence, read brilliant works seeing to understand it, work to define and articulate it as an active, even aggressive (as Judith Butler says), force for change.

To support this, the Green Institute has launched The Missing Peace: Talking About Nonviolence, a program of work on peace, nonviolence and demilitarisation. And to begin this important conversation, we were delighted to have two of the founders and elder states-people of The Australian Greens, Jo Vallentine and Bob Brown, come together to discuss why peace, nonviolence and demilitarisation were core to the Greens’ founding ideology, how this has played out over 40 years, and why it is as crucial as ever in the 2020s.

Jo Vallentine was elected to the Senate for WA for the Nuclear Disarmament Party in 1984, and re-elected for the Greens in 1990, serving until 1992. A life-long peace activist, Jo has been arrested at Pine Gap, was involved in the Jabiluka blockade, and helped found the Alternatives To Violence Project.

Bob Brown was founding leader of the Tasmanian Greens, entering the state parliament in 1983, immediately after being released from prison, having been arrested at the Franklin blockade. He was elected to the Senate in 1996, and served as leader of The Australian Greens until 2012. Among Bob’s first public political stands was a hunger strike on top of Mount Wellington, protesting the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise docking in Hobart.

Appreciate this discussion? Become a FroGI and give a bounce to our work, leading, seeding and feeding transformative Greens politics. Join now at www.greeninstitute.org.au/frogi

The Missing Peace Podcast #1: The Greens’ commitment to peace with Bob Brown and Jo Vallentine

The Green Institute's Series "The Missing Peace: Talking About Nonviolence" held 8pm AEST, Thursday 12 September 2024.

The Missing Peace Podcast #2: The Power of Nonviolence – experiences in war and revolution

Can nonviolence really make change? Can it be a useful strategy in the face of war and oppression?

In this Green Institute conversation, facilitated by Tim Hollo, we were privileged to hear from three extraordinary women whose personal experiences in Serbia, South Sudan and Ukraine showed us that, yes, nonviolence has extraordinary power – that it is a tool of the oppressed that has been long successfully used to fight extreme violence and oppression, respond to war, and take down dictators.

With so much conflict in the world, from actual war and genocide through to deep divisions that feel impossible to cross, it’s understandable that many people, even in our movement and party, are sceptical of nonviolence. But, as Judith Butler writes in their book, “The Power of Nonviolence”, nonviolence is “a practice of resistance that becomes possible, if not mandatory, precisely at the moment when doing violence seems most justified and obvious.”

It’s easy, when violence is so embedded in our systems, to believe Mao’s statement that “power comes from the barrel of a gun”. But, as Hannah Arendt wrote, “Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What can never grow out of it is power. … Power springs up whenever people get together and act in concert.” Violence may be able to destroy. It can never create.

Arendt, like so many others, saw how the violence of the state, of the oppressor, can never be beaten by more violence. Nonviolence is the tool of the oppressed who seek to cultivate a better world. It is the tool that can make violent power crumble, offering people a path to defect, finding paths to build a future together.

Like millions of others, our three speakers have personal experience of this power. Be sure to have a watch.

Appreciate this discussion? Become a FroGI and give a bounce to our work, leading, seeding and feeding transformative Greens politics. Join now at greeninstitute.org.au/frogi

The Missing Peace Podcast #2: The Power of Nonviolence – experiences in war and revolution

From The Green Institute's Webinar Series "The Missing Peace: Talking About Nonviolence" held 8pm AEST, 2 October 2024.

Nonviolence is about a willingness to appreciate our coexistence, to respect our mutuality, our entanglement, and our differences, and to seek a path forward together.

In this way, a commitment to nonviolence is fundamentally intertwined with a commitment to consensus decision-making. And, indeed, strengthening our commitment to nonviolence goes hand in hand with strengthening our commitment to consensus.

It’s no coincidence that two of the Australian Greens’ best and most respected facilitators of consensus and difficult decision-making are also two of our staunchest activists for peace, and we were enormously privileged to have Janet Rice and Giz Watson join us for the third discussion in our series, The Missing Peace, on October 2.

Together, we explored how a shift in approach away from knee-jerk adversarialism and towards a willingness to come together across difference can transform politics from the hyper-local to the global, from communities and branches through to parliaments and geopolitics.

Be sure to have a listen.

Appreciate this discussion? Become a FroGI and give a bounce to our work, leading, seeding and feeding transformative Greens politics. Join now at www.greeninstitute.org.au/frogi

The Missing Peace Podcast #3 - Nonviolence, Consensus, And Politics Coming Together Across Difference

Conversation: Decolonising and nonviolence - relationality, entanglement and complexity

First Nations understandings of understandings of peace and security, violence and nonviolence, relationality and entanglement, have so much to teach us as we grapple with The Missing Peace.

The Green Institute was immensely privileged to bring you this conversation through which we explored the complexity of decolonialism and nonviolence with three extraordinary Aboriginal thinkers, activists and writers: Adjunct Associate Professor Dr Mary Graham, Professor Yin Paradies, and Nidala Barker.

Nonviolence as an active practice of resistance to oppression emerged in no small part through decolonial struggles – most famously through Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership and philosophy of satyagraha. This is not to say that all decolonial struggles have been, or must be, nonviolent. Indeed, we are coming to learn more about Aboriginal resistance in the Frontier Wars. But it challenges recent claims that decolonisation is necessarily violent, and that nonviolence is a philosophy and practice born of privilege.

The fact that First Nations peoples lived on the land we now call Australia for countless millennia with no wars of aggression or territory, with no word in any of their languages for invasion or conquest, reveals how much we have to learn from Indigenous philosophies and practices of relationality and entanglement, with each other, and with country, with the land that is the law. Decolonial scholarship rejects the dichotomy between violence and nonviolence. Indigenous systems of governance institutionalise conflict in ways which acknowledge the reality of violence, but suppress its use. This is in some ways the opposite of the modern State, which institutionalises violence and has become ever worse at managing conflict.

To help us begin to understand, be sure to listen to these three tremendous guides. Slides from Professor Yin Paradies available here: https://www.greeninstitute.org.au/events/decolonising-and-nonviolence/

Appreciate this discussion? Become a FroGI and give a bounce to our work, leading, seeding and feeding transformative Greens politics. Join now at www.greeninstitute.org.au/frogi

The Missing Peace Podcast #4: Decolonising and nonviolence

Nonviolent protest is central to democratic rights and change-making. As we have been exploring through The Missing Peace, we know it works to create real, lasting, significant change, even in the direst circumstances.

One of the reasons we know nonviolent protest works is because those in power work so hard to attack and suppress it! Governments, working hand-in-glove with extractive corporations and the corporate media, use their power to delegitimise peaceful protest, to criminalise it, and to lie about it, labelling it as terrorism, calling it violent.

Continuing to exercise the right to nonviolent protest, pushing back against its suppression, is crucial. And, in this final webinar for 2024, we heard from three brilliant and courageous leaders in this space, using their bodies, their minds, and their creativity to defend nonviolent protest: David Mejia-Canales from the Human Rights Law Centre (David will be appearing in his personal capacity); Joana Partyka from Disrupt Burrup Hub; and Dr Lina Koleilat, a Lebanese-Palestinian activist-scholar at ANU. Dr Koleilat opted not to be recorded.

Be sure to have a listen.

Appreciate this discussion? Become a FroGI and give a bounce to our work, leading, seeding and feeding transformative Greens politics. Join now at www.greeninstitute.org.au/frogi

The Missing Peace Podcast #5: Defending nonviolent protest from criminalisation, suppression and lies

The Green Institute's Series "The Missing Peace: Talking About Nonviolence" held 8pm AEST, Thursday 7 August 2025.

In the week the world marked 80 years since nuclear weapons were unleashed on the world with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Green Institute’s Missing Peace series continued with a webinar asking “where to for nuclear disarmament in a world of Trump and Netanyahu?”

Our superb panel for the conversation included Gem Romuld, The Australian Director of the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and Senator David Shoebridge, the Australian Greens’ Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, Peace & Nuclear Disarmament.

While Dr Emma Shortis, Director of the Australia Institute’s International & Security Affairs Program, was unable to attend, Tim Hollo shared some vital points from her.

ICAN achieved something many thought was impossible, driving the negotiation, agreement, signing and ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which came into force in 2021, binding its signatories and providing powerful normative pressure on the nuclear states and their allies.

Since then, with the re-election of Donald Trump, geopolitical certainties and assumptions have melted into air. Benjamin Netanyahu has further trashed any semblance of a global order, with Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Israel and America together attempted to destroy Iran’s nuclear program despite Israel being known to possess nuclear weapons and refusing to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, Australia is preparing to get even more deeply embroiled through the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal.

In a world of climate crisis, economic crisis and political crisis, as so-called leaders around the world rush to increase military spending for fear of wars, thus making wars ever more likely, we looked at the future for nuclear disarmament and where we find inspiration. We also covered some of the pressure points and discussed how we are to act.

Be sure to have a listen.

Appreciate this discussion? Become a FroGI and give a bounce to our work, leading, seeding and feeding transformative Greens politics. Join now at www.greeninstitute.org.au/frogi

Missing Peace Podcast #6: Nuclear Disarmament in a world of Trump and Netanyahu

The Green Institute is cultivating ecological democracy through ideas, conversation and action. We are seeding, feeding and leading transformative Green politics.

Missing Peace Podcast #6: Nuclear Disarmament in a world of Trump and Netanyahu

The Green Institute

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