Over the weekend of August 15-17 comrades and friends from Rising Tide organised Action Camp – a weekend of workshops, sharing food and time together. The camp was hosted at Addison Road Community Centre on unceded Gadigal Land.
Kai and I (Jack) ran a session as Tomorrow Movement on Sunday afternoon called ‘Building a Movement for Everyone’. The following summarises what we covered over 90 minutes. This was a discussion-heavy session and lots of ideas captured here were sourced from participants.
Setting the scene and developing shared language
We opened by making clear that the ideas presented are by no means original – we are part of a lineage of fighting for justice and learning how to organise going back thousands of years. These are things that have been developed, learnt and shared overwhelmingly by people and movements of colour and especially First Nations peoples.
We developed together a definition for ‘intersectionality’ how used it in the session – being the concept that ‘different systems of oppression can and often overlap to create complex experiences of disempowerment, oppression as well as privileges and dominance.’
It is critical to bring this concept to community organising in social movements because:
- It highlights the interconnectedness of our struggles. When we organise we organise for better lives for our communities, whether that’s your neighbourhood or an entire generation – and that means we need to address these systems of oppressions together.
- The forces we struggle against are connected and they know how to utilise the interconnected web of injustice.
- Single issue movements’ victories can be more easily hijacked by dominant systems – often capitalism and colonialism (like ‘green capitalism’).
Intersectionality in a movement can mean two different but related things. An intersectional movement in representation alone might make the movement look good but it does not necessarily guarantee that the movement will fight for everyone in it. Conversely, an intersectional movement in strategy alone can strive to fight for everyone but operating within the dominant capitalist and colonialist systems means that they often become internalised without being challenged – often influencing its strategy. We cannot trust a movement of well meaning trust fund kids alone to fight for the working class. In order to fight for collective liberation, we need movements that are committed to intersectionality in both ways – internal culture and external strategy.
Political Alignment – how we win the world we envision
From there, the framework of ‘political alignment’ was introduced. A political alignment is a range of social and political forces that converge around a set of values and a shared agenda for society. If a political alignment wins public support and political power, it becomes the “dominant alignment” – which defines the common sense of society and what is politically possible.
An example dominant alignment of the forces governing so-called Australian society today is pictured below left. This is one version of what today’s dominant alignment could look like – there are many other possibilities and players in the game! We spent some time with this concept and understanding what is politically possible when this alignment is dominant.
For example – urgent, co-ordinated action to solve the climate crisis is impossible when ‘extractivists’ hold outsized power over government. We will never be able to foster a holistic culture of community care while folks like the LNP and Murdoch media continually turn us against each other.
To win a world that works for everyone, we need to work towards ‘a people’s alignment’. An example ‘people’s alignment’ is pictured above right. Under this alignment, climate justice (including Land Back) and communities that care for people over profit are truly possible.
The purpose of visualisng the world in this way is to make clear the need for our movements to work together. We need our movements to be spaces for as many people as possible, and we need our movements to be really clear about who the real enemy. For our Movements to be powerful enough to challenge the dominant alignment, we need to be intersectional and organise across struggle. We know that organising for climate justice without talking about Land Back won’t get us to a safe future for all. We know that we can’t take down the landlords and property developments without closely examining the way that big corporations are taxed.
Where to from here?
When we view the world using the political alignment framework it becomes clear that to win our movements must be intersectional. So how do we do that? We broke out into small group discussions for the last 30 minutes of the session to think about answering this question. Some of the learnings/thoughts are summarised below:
What can movements do to model the people’s alignment we are trying to create?
- Enact what we want to see now – by working together and showing up.
- Share successes and acknowledge wins.
- Put time and energy into fostering trusting relationships between organisations.
What are the practices you’ve noticed in movements that you’re a part of that have enabled an intersectional approach?
- Built in practices of self-care and community care
- Having clear, referenced and well-communicated core values
- Having a ‘movement ecosystem’ lens – recognising we all have a niche to fill, and understanding the value of other niches.
What are the practices you’ve noticed are missing in movements that you’re a part of?
- Dispute and grievance resolution processes that are well-defined and functional to help us more through constructive conflict .
- Allowing evolution and flexibility to enable following where the energy is.
- A shared understanding and articulation of ‘the system’ and how we are planning to fix it.
If you’re curious about this session, any of the concepts presented or the importance of intersectional organising – we’ve love to hear from you!
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