It’s week 28 of a period of time that, until today, we have been referring to as lock down. Yet so much has occurred since we first retreated indoors for the first time in April, that we feel it’s time for a reframe. A new term that properly acknowledges that in the midst of turmoil, some important new developments have occurred in the quest for a new politics. Not just reactions to the crisis, but the appearance of new visions and the capacity to deliver. Hence, welcome again, to Week 28 of The Shift.

History will no doubt record this as a slowly developing period of transition between pre-Covid and everything that ensued as a result of Covid. But given our long-term focus on the systemic changes that have been happening for over 20 years – since the birth of the internet – we’re planting a flag in time. As we see it, Covid is causing a serious acceleration of change, in the relationship between local and global public space. Understanding the difference between before and now is important.

Going back even a year, the IPPC report of 2018 had caused a lot of unrest. The assessment from this highly respected body of scientists that we had a twelve-year window to turn our environmental ship around triggered global movements such as Greta Thunberg’s School Strikes for the Climate and Extinction Rebellion.

However, in both these cases, the action was still protest-based; the locus of power was identified as within government. The people made a demand on their politicians to control those with vested interests in the old growth economy that was killing our planet. Their people-power was refracted, like light through a prism – unable to have any direct impact, other than as a spectacle.

When Covid appeared, it was only a brief moment before another form of response became the new ‘uprising’: people in their thousands joining mutual aid networks to do the job that government was not prepared to do. Checking on every neighbour, to see if they were able to leave the house to get their provisions. Organising food and medicine runs between them.

As we’ve documented more than once in these pages, these neighbourhood level, spontaneously self-organised networks rely heavily on technology – mostly WhatsApp or Facebook - to get them up and running. Yet these connections in turn are only possible because there is a prior expectation of shared interest, arising from their physical community. Living cheek by jowel, it’s in their interest to take care of each other.

Possibly only the threat of a virus spreading amongst them could have kick-started such action. Or was it primarily that in moments of crisis, people think immediately about the most vulnerable needing protection? From AUK’s own experience of community feeling, that distinction is impossible to make. The response is wholistic fear moving quickly to a desire to be in action.

As ‘social’ media, these mechanisms for reaching out to each other are generally accompanied by friendly and inquiring texts, by the wide range of emojis – all those extra engagement tools that make the connection relational, not simply functional or instrumental. What the technology has enabled increasingly over the past ten years, is the translation of “need-to-respond” into “able-to-respond”. Response-able.

Many reading this will say: hang-on, this is nothing new. Haven’t people been responding to the needs of others throughout the human record? And the answer has to be yes, without question. Particularly within communities there have always been networks of care, generally unpaid, largely run by women (see our recent blog on women and definitions of civilization).

In addition, there have always been activist groups, taking up the causes of injustice and inequality, which have found numerous ways to directly help those in need. These run alongside the civil society groups, more often better funded and committed to helping the vulnerable.

But the numbers and diversity of those agents rising up quickly and effectively at the start of Covid, signals the deepening response-ability of people who might never have thought of themselves in any of those categories. This includes those who were working from home for the first time, newly connected to the street on which they live. In fact part of the ongoing journey of people pulled into these mutual activities is that they become aware of long-term justice warriors for the first time, with the option to support them.

What will happen next is not easy to predict. Will these new neighbourhood entities disappear as quickly as they sprung up when the emergency recedes (assuming that it will, one day)? Or is the genie now out of the bottle in terms of community agency? Particularly since that experience of autonomy and agency often stood in contrast to years of frustration at their dependency on the council – themselves made almost powerless after years of austerity. (We’ve reported a lot on how positive attitudes here can wax and wane).

Some mutual-aid networks have found the capacity to move beyond tasks of physical help, into deeper relationship with each other. For example, the Trust the People group of ‘community transformers’ have found plenty of fertile ground for continued conversations.

In their case, the link between Covid and the broader environmental emergency has become explicit. Much of the facilitation capacity of the local Extinction Rebellion groups – running regular People’s Assemblies – has found new purchase.

As a result, these neighbourhood networks are beginning to address themselves to linking up with other neigbourhoods to talk about food and energy security. Or, in some cases, what it takes for a town or city to flourish. Most of these conversations are gentle - not too pushy - as people slowly reinvent themselves as conscious actors of one kind or another. It’s inspiring for them nevertheless, to link up with the Mutual Aid Networks in the USA, as some have done, just to swap method and practice.

In other examples, the recent wave of Black Lives Matter protests gave rise to groups of newly politicised people with little experience of self-organising. Mutual aid networks have often overlapped with their need for next steps. For example, activists for different causes, occupying the same streets and houses often find themselves sharing tools, and even facilitators. On our grapevine, we’ve heard the surprise and delight when an XR facilitator is invited to help a BLM group to get into listening mode: not least because, until recently, they haven’t been able to cross that divide.

Connected individuals in cosmo-local communities

We’re not simply paying attention here to the important but small changes that neighbourhoods can make – or worrying about whether or not they add up to enough. Rather we’re highlighting how these changes signify a shift in the locus of control in a broader way. In one of our on-line Citizen Action Network events for the Local Trust, we heard how people had got a taste of their own power “and were not about to give that back”.

As we explored in last week’s editorial, it’s common to feel fear when people power is evoked – it’s the legacy of populism. However, what we are pointing at here is not the people being triggered by extreme emotion and rising up against the state.

Nor is it the systematic harnessing of people’s needs by addictive practices – such as social media conspiracy QAnon. These two examples both point to external forces acting upon people and manipulating the energy of their reactions.

Instead, we’re noticing (and championing) the evolution of people finding their own agency in the moment of need, connecting with others and making something new happen. Individuals, in community, moving the locus of power from the outside to the inside and owning it.

Regular readers of The Daily Alternative will recognize the relationship between all we are pointing at here and the work of the powerful and enduring civil society platform known as CtrlShift. This group – of which The Alternative UK is a founding member - includes members of Transition Network, Permaculture Association, Flatpack Democracy, REconomy Centre, Shared Assets, the BioRegional Learning Network, WellBeing Alliance, the whole range of Cooperative and Commoning networks that form the burgeoning 4th Sector – see the website for more. Partners in helping these goals materialise include the Royal Society of the Arts and Open Democracy media amongst them.

Between ourselves and CtrlShift, we share an understanding that in order to meet the multiple crises we are facing, there has to be a shift of control from disconnected, hierarchical, governmental authorities, to one residing in connected individuals in cosmo-local communities.

Not anonymous people, ticking yes or no to questions set by those with opaque agendas. But people moving into relationship with each other, deliberating thoughtfully on the issues that affect them and others. Understanding the impact of their actions on other parts of the country and the world beyond that.

In the regular monthly meeting of CtrlShift this week, we all reported a distinct acceleration in the emergence of citizen action networks (CANs) – of which Covid mutual aid networks are just one example. In Hull, one of the developments of their year as UK City of Culture in 2017 has been a network of artists, sustaining the revival of the city through creativity. Titled Absolutely Cultured, they’re turning their attention to issues of new economies and democracy. In Hastings, we see the growth of skill sharing and adaptable ideas known being taken forward by Common Treasury.

Transition Towns, the forerunners of CANs have been self-developing along the notion of the “three horizons”, taken from the world of futures and scenario planning. Within this framework, they’re asking all their members – there are 34 Regional Hubs in the UK, with 2,600 affiliated projects in the wider world - to exercise their imaginations. Using co-founder Rob Hopkins book as inspiration, they are charting their futures, inquiring: What Is, What’s Next and What If.

About to be launched is Our Future Leeds: an independent group winning big lottery funding to develop participatory design across the city. Through a series of hubs, offering learning, training and facilitation, citizens will have the chance to design and take part in building their shared future.

In each of these CANs – our generic term - we hear reports of new tools of self-organising and decision making. Check out Vocal Eyes for cross community conversations and Mighty Networks for the latest in movement building tech.

In addition, the growing popularity of sociocracy practices – collective decision making that doesn’t get stuck on a single level or single issue (see some background here at Sociocracy for All). Of course, these are just the tip of an iceberg: across the globe, new tools like this are appearing every day.

Some will read this and wonder how all these relatively small actions will stand up to the forces of change sweeping across the planet, led by the authoritarian patriarchs we described last week. Others will recognize the new story of power that is indicating a new locus of control for individuals and communities everywhere.

The most radical might see the latter in the former. Meaning, that what looks like something breaking down, might instead be the early phase of the redistribution of power. Away from the singular authority at the top of an absolute hierarchy. To the greater participation of more people, on the rocky path to shared agency. Are you ready for The Shift?

Alternative Editorial: Lockdown Reframe