As the pandemic forces us into lockdown, activists across Europe demonstrate that there are still ways to organize and practice solidarity at a safe social distance.

The coronavirus pandemic is confronting us with unprecedented contradictions. The foundations of neoliberal capitalism are crumbling before our eyes, as governments in the EU are taking control over their economies in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago. Restrictions on public spending have been lifted, private hospitals are being nationalized, wages are being temporarily covered by the state and universal basic income schemes are being drafted. At the same time, states are also implementing draconian emergency measures to restrict and monitor our mobility, which we cannot rightly oppose out of fear of spreading the virus.

This leaves the left in the predicament of having a unique opportunity to force a rapid transformation of our capitalist system yet lacking any way to do so through collective mobilization. Many of us have been left disoriented by this situation, not least because we have to reorganize our everyday lives on top of figuring out how to stay politically engaged. Across Europe, activists are already hard at work to find ways of organizing collective action even under conditions of lockdown.

NO SPACE TO MANEUVER?

Countries across Europe have implemented measures banning gatherings of more than a handful of people and many have mandated outright curfews that restrict any movement besides commuting to work and buying groceries. Most countries have also closed their borders — including the EU itself — halting international travel and migration completely. Certainly, many of these restrictions are necessary to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. However, they also carry the severe danger of permanently restraining our rights and curtailing our ability to mobilize political opposition.

When the immediate danger of the pandemic has passed, we now face a dual threat of either returning to the same neoliberal order that led us into this crisis, or seeing these “states of emergency” turn into permanent forms of authoritarian state capitalism.

This transformation is already underway. Hungary has effectively become a dictatorship, as Viktor Orbán received carte blanche to rule by executive decree for as long as he wishes to. In Austria, the government has adopted cellphone tracking as a new surveillance practice to monitor the population. Many countries have introduced harsh punishments for curfew violations. The Danish government was only narrowly prevented by the far-left and liberal parliamentary factions from giving police the right to force entry into the homes of people suspected of infection.

There will also almost certainly be concerted efforts across the EU to keep heightened border security measures in place in order to further restrict the movement of migrants and diminish the ability of asylum seekers to enter Europe.

These developments are highly alarming. Without minimizing the need for social distancing, we should be very worried about the descent into authoritarianism unfolding around us. The fact that governments are acting out of a genuine need to cope with the threat of a global pandemic does not make their measures any less undemocratic. In fact, authoritarianism is quite often the reaction of a government fearing a loss of control during a phase of heightened uncertainty, such as an economic or political crisis.

However, such a loss of control is usually the result of growing social resistance against the government’s rule, which is not the situation we are in today. Most governments are not threatened by any major social mobilizations in addition to the pandemic, so their implementation of authoritarian measures does not run into immediate opposition. Indeed, the need for social distancing prevents most forms of political mobilization, forcing activists around Europe to innovate.

FROM PROTESTS TO PODCASTS

Physical meetings and actions are largely out of the question at the moment. Some countries still permit demonstrations but these are quickly shut down if people do not keep a minimum distance from each other. Activists have therefore switched to digital communication and begun organizing political events online.

Housing movements originally planned to coordinate public actions across Europe for an international Housing Action Day on March 28. Instead of just canceling the event, they proceeded to protest from their individual balconies and windows, making noise and putting up banners. A day later German activists protested against the EU’s treatment of refugees by simulating an entire demonstration online, advising people to flood the social media feeds of various public institutions that they “passed” along their “route.”

The climate movement Fridays for Future has shifted its weekly climate strikes online as well, sending millions of pictures and political demands across social media platforms. Activist from the movement have also started hosting the online show Talks for Future, where they engage in discussions with academic experts. Indeed, a whole congregation of activist groups and critical think tanks have taken this opportunity to start hosting their own podcasts and livestreaming political debates. On a more day-to-day basis, community organizers across Europe have shifted their consultation services to phone conversations and email.

This transition to online activism is certainly borne out of necessity rather than proactive political choice, but it can provide us with some important long-term benefits. For large sections of the left, particularly political parties and critical academics, the decision to invest more time and energy into their online presentation has been long overdue. Social distancing has effectively forced their hand to catch up with how most — especially young — people are already consuming media.

This is even more true under the current lockdown conditions, as almost everyone is forced to spend much more time at home — and therefore online. There is a good chance that this may lead to a heightened politicization across civil society, which makes it essential that the left is able to reach this captive audience. By making full use of the accessibility and flexibility of online activism, the left may expand the reach of progressive messages and quickly build up larger networks. At the same time, it needs to be aware and critical of the heightened surveillance risks posed by online platforms like Zoom and work towards building its own alternative online infrastructures.

SOLIDARITY AND THE COMMONS

Not all forms of activism can be done online, however. The current crisis highlights the urgent need for local mutual solidarity, not only to protect the most vulnerable communities but also to lay the foundation for the commons-based socioeconomic alternative that we so desperately need.

Local solidarity networks have provided mutual aid during humanitarian crises in the past and many continue to do so now. In Greece, activists have built a huge network of solidarity initiatives due to years of austerity and many of them are now organizing the distribution of food and other supplies to precarious communities under curfew conditions by sending individual volunteers to shop for whole neighborhoods. This practice can be easily adopted anywhere else in Europe and could alleviate the strain on those who are less financially secure or mobile to sustain themselves. Solidarity with asylum seekers is particularly urgent, especially in the context of refugee camps whose conditions are quickly deteriorating. On the Greek island of Lesbos, medical volunteers are working around the clock to provide aid and stem the spread of COVID-19 among the refugees trapped in the camp.

But vulnerable groups require urgent help also in the urban centers of northern Europe. In Berlin, activists have been occupying empty apartments and turning them into improvised squats for the homeless population, while carefully abiding by medical safety conditions. Across the continent, there is also increasing domestic violence against women who are now forced to stay at home with abusive partners. Because of this, women’s shelters continue to operate, albeit under strict sanitary conditions, and volunteers of anti-violence networks offer to hold consultations in person in case of emergencies.

These forms of solidarity work have to continue not despite, but because of the pandemic. Mutual solidarity, so long as it is provided under careful sanitary conditions, is a crucial way to support vulnerable and marginalized social groups for whom the virus and lack of mobility create existential threats. By creating local support networks, we can also continue engaging in political activism at a grassroots level, in a way that raises both the security and political consciousness of our communities.

The mutual ties we are now forging through neighborhood solidarity can be a basis for future collective mobilization, as well as convince people of the possibility of enacting more transformative political and economic changes. Since the sheer lethality of the globalized market economy and austerity politics is more obvious than at any other time in recent memory — at least in Europe — the left needs to double down on its struggle for a commons-based alternative. By making it obvious to everyone that local community-based solidarity is capable of helping us through this crisis, we can build a solid foundation for our struggle for the commons.

STRUGGLES FOR REDISTRIBUTION

Since the pandemic is deeply intertwined with a crisis of capitalist reproduction, we are already seeing new waves of redistributive struggles, which will only become more forceful as the economic crisis unfolds.

Many companies and public institutions still expect their employees to show up for work, especially in sectors that are deemed systemically essential like transportation, retail or public security. The increasingly unsafe working conditions in these areas have sparked a number of new labor struggles, even without the opportunity for collective mobilization.

Italian unions have called a general strike because multiple sectors are forced to continue operating even after the government initiated an economic shutdown. Amazon has been hit with labor protests due to the retailer’s reckless endangerment of workers by forcing them to work with minimum safety protection. French unions have announced a month-long strike notice for the public sector in order to protest the government’s “anti-social” relaxation of labor conditions under the guise of fighting the pandemic.

Tenants unions have called for an international rent strike to suspend living costs for people whose income has been compromised by the lockdown. These struggles are still few and far between, as many workers and employees have been sent into home office, temporary leave, or were laid off entirely. The conditions for labor mobilization will continue to be difficult, as the imminent threat of economic collapse and rapidly increasing unemployment will put workers under great financial pressure.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to be hopeful. The current crisis is radically changing our perception of which forms of labor are relevant for societal reproduction and which are not. Formerly undervalued professions like retail employees, delivery drivers and transport workers have transitioned from being labeled as “unskilled labor” to being “essential” to the survival of society. Healthcare staff in particular are increasingly regarded as playing an outright heroic role and their working conditions have become a central political talking point.

This experience of being indispensable for the survival of society will undoubtedly boost the collective class consciousness of people working in these sectors, which can greatly strengthen their ability to organize. So far, the public’s appreciation for these professions has been mostly limited to symbolic gestures like collective applause, but the underlying shift in collective consciousness can be the foundation for long-term solidarity.

Similarly, the fact that many families now have to home-school their children may increase people’s respect for educational staff and childcare employees. Although there is little reason to believe that the lockdowns are contributing to a more equal redistribution of gendered house and care work, the experience alone can provide additional fuel for future feminist struggles for collectivized social reproduction.

PREPARING FOR WHAT LIES AHEAD

In a few months, when hopefully the imminent threat of the pandemic subsides and we are hit by the full force of the economic crisis, the struggle for how to reorganize our political, social and economic systems will take center stage. As grim as the situation is, this provides us with a unique opportunity to fight for a fundamental emancipatory alternative. With the existential threat of neoliberal capitalism being more evident than ever before, the European public is growing aware of the need for a massive expansion of social protection, collective control over the economy and the reorganization of labor.

As hundreds of billions of Euros are pumped into the failing economy, there is an opportunity to force companies to abide by new social and ecological standards and hand more democratic control to their employees. Governments can also take this a step further and transfer the companies’ ownership into public hands entirely, which would finally allow us to initiate a transition towards the more socially equitable and ecologically sustainable economy that we desperately need. We now have proof that such a radical transformation is entirely feasible and only depends on the political will to make it happen.

For such a progressive change to become a reality, the left needs to hit the ground running. As soon as lockdown conditions are lifted, we need to organize broad social mobilizations, engage in struggles for redistribution and eventually achieve decisive political shifts in government.

We need to use the current phase to prepare for these struggles. Online activism can enable us to expand our networks and reach new audiences. Local solidarity can alleviate the worst impact of the pandemic and get new people engaged in a movement for collective social and economic reproduction. And by relying on the newfound structural power and public solidarity of “essential workers” we can put pressure on companies and governments to implement changes they would have never agreed to before.

As people across Europe are already demonstrating, we can do all of these things at a safe social distance. Even under quarantine, we can continue to fight capitalism.

The post Organizing under lockdown: online activism, local solidarity appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The majority of participants were from the US and Canada, so as you can imagine, “inclusion and diversity” was a recurring theme. How do we gather without the men dominating women? How do we respond when White folks demand extra work from People of Colour? What do we do about the settler-colonists stealing space from Indigenous people?

In US & Canadian political spaces we put a huge amount of work into building “safer spaces”, which are designed to counteract any oppressive behaviours that seep into our organisations and gatherings. Sometimes it feels like this is exactly the work we should be doing: how can we struggle for a more equal society if we can’t even build a more equal organisation?

But other times this work feels like it completely distracts us from the targets we should be focussed on. We are knee deep in a mass extinction event. The water, the land, the food, the fucking air we breathe is broken. The 8 richest men in the world have more wealth than the poorest 3.6 billion. Sometimes it is hard for me to see how our Safer Spaces and Conflict Resolutions and Community Agreements are making progress against these existential threats.

Now the retreat is over, I need to distract myself from yet another self-inflicted case of multilateral heartbreak. So I want to take some time to analyse how we include a diversity of cultures in our organising spaces. If we want to do a better job of including diversity, is it a question of methodology or epistemology: do we just need better methods, education, and tools, or do we need a fundamentally different understanding? I wonder if there are other approaches that are easier, more fun, more honest, more agile, more delightful than what I’ve encountered in North America?

This is an enormous topic, with many threads of trauma woven in, so I’m going to put a little structure around my exploration. In the first part, I’ll introduce myself so you have a point of reference for my subjectivity. Then I’ll sketch out my understanding of “the US & Canadian progressive approach to inclusion and diversity” so we’re thinking about the same thing. I’ll offer an alternative way to consider interconnected oppression, from Black vegan feminist Aph Ko. In part two I’ll consider different parallel experiences: guests at a party, foreigners invited onto native land, and lovers opening up to each other. Maybe these analogies will give us some clues that we can take back to our organising. I don’t have many answers, but hopefully some of my questions highlighted with italics will trigger some new ideas.

Part one is context and theory, part two is a fun exploration. I won’t be offended if you skip ahead

Hi, I’m Rich

Let me put my bias up front: I’m a straight man, a member of the settler-colonist class in Aotearoa New Zealand. At home I identify as Pākehā, though in the rest of the world people recognise me as White. Being born into this body means society trained me to dominate women, demand extra work from the People of Colour, and steal space from Indigenous people. I’m undoing this training as fast as I can, but we’re not done yet.

I’m also right-handed, taller than average, and my body works basically the way I want it to. I co-founded a software company, English is my first language, and my passport gives me easy access across most international borders. These are just some of the lenses that distort my vision.

I realise that I’m only thinking “what comes after safety?” because I spend so much time feeling safe. I realise that is a rare privilege. I know it is controversial that I believe privilege is a resource to be collectivised rather than eradicated.

How we make safer spaces

Here’s a brief sketch of how I understand the prevailing approach to including a diversity of cultures in our political organising. This is common in many Western progressive spaces, but especially prominent in the US & Canada. This set of structures and behaviours is commonly referred to by the codename “safer spaces”. We say “safer” recognising this is an ongoing journey. Here are some of the ingredients:

• Before joining an organisation or attending a conference, participants are required to sign an explicit agreement about how they’ll behave in the space. This is variously known as a code of conduct, community agreement, etc. Here’s a template example.
• There are some sanctions designed to correct oppressive behaviour, like a harassment policy and a conflict resolution process to make reparations for harm done, or to exclude people who have done harm. (Ideally the sanctions are restorative rather than punitive.)
• There’s usually a designated person or a safety team who provide support to folks experiencing oppressive behaviour. They also educate people about what the agreements mean, and enforce the sanctions.
• Gatherings will often be punctuated by caucuses for different identity groups. For example, there’ll be a space for just women, or a meeting of exclusively Indigenous people to have the kinds of conversations that can’t happen when the White men keep grabbing the mic.

These explicit structures are the tip of the iceberg: it’s easy to see the agreements and designated caucus spaces. There’s much more of the iceberg underwater: I’m always paying attention to the powerful social forces of belonging-and-exclusion submerged beneath the surface. I see a lot of these interactions as a complex negotiation for how we’re going to be together. Sometimes we are up front, making offers and requests: “I need…”. More often this happens subtly, with participants expressing their preferences by alternately shaming and praising people or behaviours.

In the 6 years I’ve been contributing to “safer spaces”, I’d say we’re collectively getting better at it. But still, it seems like the negotiation process is flawed, slow and painful. Our negotiations are guided by a tacit hierarchy: we’re trying to give priority to people who experience more oppression.

One of the perverse outputs of this system is that people are implicitly encouraged to frame their needs in terms of trauma. See this example from Clare Mohan:

“I have in the past found myself disagreeing with policies for safer space building, policies made by people who are open about their traumatic history. I am a rape survivor, but I prefer not to disclose this as a general matter, for the simple reason that it is private and I don’t want this part of my history to be the first thing people know about me. But without acknowledging it, I have on various occasions been accused of ‘speaking over’ and oppressing those who are open about their history, meaning that I have to out myself, and render this trauma up for scrutiny.”

I wonder if we could try a process where everyone names their needs before participating? I have unique needs, not because of oppression or trauma, but because I’m a human. Capitalism and patriarchy keep trying to standardise me into a repeatable stackable box, but I don’t fit! I like my lumps.

At worst, the efforts to include diverse cultures can do real psychological harm to the participants. Many of us will recognise the awful tit-for-tat dynamic that can emerge: Person A misspeaks in a way that traumatises Person B, and then the group’s response results in Person A being publicly shamed. When Person A is a man and Person B is a woman, we call that a learning opportunity: sorry your feelings got hurt but it’s a small price to pay for all that male privilege you carry around. But what happens when Person A is Indigenous and Person B is Black? Yes, we may have all learned something, but both people are less likely to turn up to the next meeting. I don’t know how to recruit people into spaces like that.

The agreements+sanctions+caucus formula is designed to encourage more equitable participation from different people. We know it excludes some people too: most people simply don’t have the education to walk into a progressive space and express themselves without causing offence. Insofar as this barrier excludes patriarchal masculinity from dominating a conference, it’s a positive thing. When it excludes folks with less access to education, or less self esteem or social capital, that barrier is an “own goal” working exactly counter to its stated intent. I wonder how we can evaluate if our processes are doing more harm than good?

My instinct says that there is a better way, but first we need a different understanding. We can only get so far by tinkering with methodology — I wonder if it is time to upgrade the epistemology?

A different way to understand oppression

In her essay “Why Animal Liberation Requires an Epistemological Revolution”, Black American vegan feminist Aph Ko says very plainly: “…liberation can’t happen until we change the way we understand oppression.” She then lays out a challenging and intricate argument explaining how progressive and radical theories of interconnected oppression can reinforce a Eurocentric system. It’s well worth reading the essay in full (you can find it in Aphro-ism, an extraordinary book recently published with her sister Syl Ko). Here’s what I took away from the essay:

The Eurocentric map says there are many different kinds of oppression. Sexism is different from racism, and the two intersect: we can’t ignore racism while we’re fighting sexism. (That’s where Intersectionality and Third Wave Feminism came from: people were exasperated with the Second Wave being mostly for White women.)

As educators, theorists and organisers raise our consciousness of different types of oppression, our maps get more and more complex. In many political spaces I’m expected to “educate myself” about an ever-growing list of issues. First I learned that patriarchy shuts women out of conversations. Then I learned settler-colonialism shuts out Indigenous people. Racism shuts out people who are not perceived White. Nationalism shuts out people with foreign grandparents. Ablism shuts out people who think or act differently to the prevailing “normal”. Capitalism shuts out people who earn a living from their labour rather than their property. Speciesism severely limits our concern for non-human animals. This list is going to keep getting larger. I’m going to keep discovering new ways that I unconsciously perpetuate oppression.

What blew me away about Aph Ko’s essay was the proposal that we replace that extraordinarily complex map with a much simpler one. Her map has two categories: human and subhuman. In the human category you have an “ideal person”: a male homo sapiens who is White, right-handed, cis-gender, Christian, wealthy, tall, slim, educated, etc. Everyone else is subhuman.

“In our mainstream animal rights movements, the dominant thought is: Animal oppression is its own oppression and it has nothing to do with race or gender (or any other marker of difference). … The idea that oppressions manifest separately and then randomly “connect” at different points is exactly the problem I’m having with the animal rights movement and most other mainstream social justice movements…

“There’s almost something tragic and comical about activists failing to realize the blatant missing piece to the activist puzzle: that your own oppression is anchored to your citizenship as a “subhuman” or “animal” in contemporary society. This is what makes racism, sexism, and all other “isms” possible. These “isms” are expressions of being labeled less-than-human. Therefore, this issue isn’t just race-based or gender-based; it’s simultaneously one of species as well… If we’re not organising around this human–animal divide, then we aren’t properly getting to the root of our oppression…

“Within a Eurocentric analysis, activists have to spend all of their time “connecting” issues because everything is always and already singular and separate at the root. This should be our first sign that the theory we’re using is designed around the experiences of the white elites, not our own.”

How might we design for inclusion if we started with this alternative epistemology? How can our difference become a source of hybrid strength, rather than a constant source of tension and conflict? 

When I use the simplified human-subhuman map, I don’t have to fully understand sexism, racism, ableism, cisgenderism, nationalism, etc before I start to make progress on any of them. First I have to understand that every body is different and that every body is equally deserving of dignity. Then I have to understand that my epistemology, my way of making sense of the world, is infected with a virus. This virus erases the infinite difference of all those bodies as it summarises them into a manageable list of groups: women, Europeans, paraplegics, capitalists.

When I remind myself that everyone is more different than I can imagine, I stop making so many assumptions. It feels natural to speak from “I”, and extremely risky to speak from “we”. I want to check with you before I include you in the we.

Using Ko’s human-subhuman framework, we don’t need to figure out which branch of structural oppression to hack down first, we can take them all down simultaneously by aiming for the root: eliminate domination-submission relationships where they exist without consent. To understand the power balance in a given situation, I need to hold an awareness of the structural dynamics, while also paying close attention to the individual, peer-to-peer interactions. Structural oppression shapes the terrain, but each act of domination is perpetuated one person at a time.

In one-to-one conversation, it’s not so difficult for two people to maintain a shared awareness of each other’s emotional state (see also: presence). We can continuously check in with each other, verbally and non-verbally, to keep the conversation within safe boundaries. Starting with “small talk” gives us a chance to sniff each other out: ‘does this person listen? are they interested? do I trust them? are they emotionally responsive? do they have hidden motives?’ If the signs are good, we can gradually move to more risky territory, sharing fears, dreams and trauma.

Our dreams and our traumas are the raw material of social justice organising. Sharing them safely requires a very precisely constructed emotional space. I know how to co-construct that space in one-to-one conversation, and I’ve been there occasionally in small high-trust groups. But I’ve never been in a large, high-diversity gathering where this exchange has gone well. Maybe this is because I’ve never been in a group without me in it. Maybe people have built this lovely fragile space and I’ve come in like a bull in a China shop. No matter how “woke” I get, I’m still a straight White guy in a cisheteropatriarchal White supremacist society. It could just be me, but if it’s not, With these large gatherings, I wonder if we’re trying to walk before we know how to crawl? I wonder how we can each grow our capacity to do this emotional work? Can we have graduated spaces: you must be this emotionally intelligent to join this meeting?

Geez, this stuff is hard eh! After 2500 words I was planning to have some neat and tidy answers by now In Part 2: Where Can We Take Our Togetherness?, I’m going to continue this exploration from some fresh directions. Maybe we can learn something about inclusion by way of analogies: hospitality, indigeneity, and eroticism.

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Photos in this story are from Klahoose territory: Cortes Island in British Columbia.

The post Beyond Safe Spaces 1: Can We Grow Our Understanding of Inclusion & Diversity? appeared first on P2P Foundation.