Alternative Editorial: We Don't Need A New Story
One week on from the close of COP 26 and the energy around us has changed. In almost every domain of activity A/UK is engaged with, we’ve noted a new stepping up to response-ability. There is a shift away from shouting at the government and more focus on the domino theory arising from citizen agency within communities, new ambition from established projects such as Transition Towns, a newly articulated desire to be more autonomous and connected to each other and a warrior spirit.
There is more confidence that the offerings we have all been tentatively making are needed and wanted.
But we are, collectively, only what we call ‘the usual suspects’ – those that have dedicated our lives, some over many decades, to system change. Nothing can change unless the projects we are working on are designed to meet the broader society. That is the central challenge for community organising today – how to meet that criteria specifically. To move beyond our micro-solidarities, often arising homogenously amongst ‘people like Us’, towards actively including ‘the other’.
Too often, a discussion about values – however confirming for those in the room – can generate an antipathy towards those that don’t openly champion those values. Words like “freedom” are weaponized despite being at the heart of our concept of democracy, a human right.
In our own prototyping exercises Citizen Action Networks (CANs) have diversity of every kind – age, colour, gender, capacity, privilege - designed into the process of coming together. They become viable in the face of climate crisis precisely because they transcend the political differences that have disabled whole-society action until now. Other factors include cosmolocalism, enlivenment and an emphasis on incubation. A CAN is less like a network, more like a womb or a seed pod: a container in which everyone participating can grow whole in the process of connecting locally and globally.
These community spaces existed well before we started our work at A/UK - often initiated and run by women, mostly unpaid. The conversation around them is less to do with innovation, more to do with reclaiming ourselves in the face of the relentless demands and distractions of daily life. This in turn gives rise to a solutions-orientated way of being in the community, coupled with a very practical approach to supplying what is needed.
Add to that a determined openness, fuelled by a real desire to see everyone included. The recent spurt of mutual-aid networks appearing are typical of early-stage CANs. These are neighbourhoods connecting through WhatsApp, delivering food to those unable to get out while providing much needed conversation about COVID more generally.
This is not so much the language of “we need a new system” or even “we need a new narrative”. It’s closer to “we are the true system” and “we are the real story”. People waking up their own authentic ways of being in community, carefully amplifying them with technology, telling each other that “we are the people we’ve been waiting for”. When this spirit begins to take hold, there is excitement and courage to face whatever the mainstream press threatens. It also often – strangely - brings together disparate communities: Brexiteers and even anti-vaxxers, alongside with more traditionally resilient local actors. What they have in common is a desire to ‘take back control’ of their own lives and prove their capability in the face of failing elites. To get on with building something. In Germany, for example, some of those who refuse to be vaccinated, have withdrawn from mainstream society to set up their own communities, even going so far as to grow their own vegetables (ref).
However, looking back over the past decade of innovation there is an ever-present danger that this enthusiasm can burn out easily. Like sparks in a fire, they can catch or they can die out – unless the flames are actively fanned by those watching, hoping for heat. In real terms, this means some kind of funding to keep things going until the fire really takes off on its own. But it also implies connecting small initiatives up to each other and giving them a better sense of how their activities can have an impact beyond their small community. When that happens – as described in the cosmolocal reader launched last week – you begin to see the possibility of a global commons arising: sharing tools, practices and manufacturing blueprints.
A further, crucial catalyzing action is the establishment of a media system that helps the global network of CANs see itself reflected in the public space. You can come home from a good day’s work with people actively investing their time and energy into building something that works for their community. However, it’s then dispiriting to read headlines that suggest it’s not worth the effort - “the planet is a hopeless case!” We need – and we are building along with others – a new media system: one that allows all those activating our immense potential to upload their news directly onto a shared media platform. Watch this space.
Imagine if we already had a system of CANs in place now – how would we be responding to this moment? Firstly, we would all have somewhere to go, both virtual and actual, to deliberate our response towards the COP26 failure to protect our children’s future. It would be a space of learning, like a permanent citizens assembly. But it would also be a space of listening to the different needs sitting alongside each other in a community: some more vulnerable, some more ambitious for change.
Like Frome in Somerset, or Bristol City, there would be an opportunity to develop a climate emergency strategy for the place we live, coming to some agreement about what we are all prepared to do. When people are consulted directly, in a well facilitated space for speaking and listening, they are much more likely to get on board with the decisions made collectively.
While many reading will find these structural aspirations overly idealistic, consider how today no such space exists. As citizens, we are expected to simply follow orders in a media landscape that actively polarises us: at least half the population, at any time, is constantly encouraged to doubt the decisions made on our behalf. What can we lose by directly aiming to overcome this deficit – committing to building the powers of community that are missing in the places we live our daily lives?
As we keep emphasizing, this is not a novelty or an innovation – like the Big Society concept. That is, a huge expenditure of money to reinvent something that already existed (under David Cameron’s government, it was led by young men with good ideas). The deep relational infrastructure of CANs already exists – in networks, friendship groups, families – but they must be surfaced, and then built on. They must be given attention and invested in as the human capacity for being together - creating the conditions for not only resilience, but for thriving. The CAN, in this sense, becomes the container for a lot of disparate energy in a community - energy which is often wasted on social media, as people look for and crave belonging, meaning and purpose. In truth, they want a robust place to build relationship and trust, as a foundation for taking concrete action.
Imagine if such a community existed around young Kyle Rittenhouse – an 18 year old boy at the very epicenter of racial violence in the US? Imagine if those around him in the community where he lived could have invited him into a conversation about the thoughts in his head and why he is carrying a gun? In Hawaii there is a community process called Ho’oponopono where a criminal offender gets to sit in a circle with those he hurt, but also with all those who are in his social circle (family and friends). Together they work out how the offender came to think in this way and how to start afresh. Again, those who read this believing it could never happen should consider that such processes do exist already but are few and far between, not promoted by the state.
The possibility of such talking opportunities for the community as a whole could take the form of small groups, but also larger, festival-like spaces – where talking becomes an enjoyable and much needed activity. When people become connected like this, where they expect to be able to move into deliberation and decision making together on a regular basis, the future begins to look very different indeed.
