Partial workshop prep notes, campaigning with care: How do we hold each other through organizing?
What isn’t working in our spaces? What frustrates us? What makes us gossip?
Our focus often is on action and reaction: organizing, logistics and such given the ecological and social crises. What space do we have to talk about our well-being, physical, mental, emotional; How we are feeling and doing, given that our energies are fluctuating between time and space – particularly given the pandemic and the sanitary measures?
Some reflections:
Capitalism brings an individualist vision of care, that it’s the responsibility of the individual (1). Focus is on productivity, perfectionism and performance.
Emotional Labour
Tasks that are often not counted or shared by everyone.
It is often seen as ok to pass on the know-how on how to carry out a direct action or organize a protest than to see and value active listening and de-escalation of conflicts as important skills to build collectively.
Living in our current world and surviving the oppressions calls for a lot of emotional labour. In our groups, the emotional labour is carried out mostly by those who suffer from systemic oppressions. Often there’s an inequity in terms of who carries the load of emotional labour.
A racialized or trans person or woman, for example, might face a lot of micro aggression and there aren’t many places, if at all, to address those issues. They would need to process it outside of the group; it’s one more task, which is also frustrating.
Embodiment of radical, Anti-oppression politics
Does our actions match our values? Besides making long grocery lists of our values and principles, how can we think about how we embody those values.
Power dynamics, hidden hiérarchies, reliability/accountability, lack of transparency are issues that are cumulative and have an impact on (collective) well-being. How often do we think about these as a group and work towards addressing them? What spaces do we have for them?
For instance, we can say we are against sexism and racism; it’s written on our website and mission: but how do we interact with women, Black, racialized, black and indigenous people, non-binary, trans folks? Other aspects include how marginalized people, are not listened to. Who has space to express something and who is heard speaks a lot. For instance, women in general are not heard but if men say the same thing it’s heard.
What collective care practices can we put in place? We can think of it in three main areas at the outset. Others can be more deeper and involved.
Pointers to reflect deeper upon integrating collective care in our organizing
* Have an intentional strategy for bringing new people into the circle;
* Check-in with people who are dropping out;
* Analyze power dynamics and work to balance power;
* Bring awareness to existing hierarchies (visible and invisible), that is when we say we’re a flat-non hierarchical organization, and work to transform them;
* Analyze the makeup of our teams and consider who is not here and why (work to open spaces for everyone, regardless of their skin color, sexual orientation, gender identification, ability level etc. in particular those who are systemically marginalized);
* Be in solidarity and empathy with what others around us and what they are experiencing; – encourages people to open up in check-ins etc.
* Slow down and make time and space to rethink and reflect collectively – quality vs. quantity;
* Make responsibilities visible;
* Keep communications active and open, and share/delegate tasks;
* Take breaks; In general aim for marathon, not the sprint;
* Be aware of diversity of experience, and also of privilege linked to people’s experience and the monopolization of the proverbial mic;
* In the context of the movement, think about creating spaces where you can find respite, a listening ear, an activity that is not stressful, etc. In the past, different groups have created different spaces for this purpose, such as Maille à part, which organized creative activities such as creations using knitting and crochet etc, Stitch and Bitch, Yarn bombing, or workshops to learn knitting or crochet.
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Part of these strategies were included in our De quoi le care article in 2019
Also see:
— Caring About Thriving (a set of prompts/a checklist for collective reflection)
— Be careful with each other: How activist groups can build trust, care, and sustainability in a world of capitalism and oppression Briarpatch Magazine
— Collective care tips
(1) See, Who Cares from Upping the Anti
Politics & Care 