A Seeds for Change podcast, in conversation with community organisers. From stopping immigration raids on their streets to building renters unions, people are organising in their communities to take collective action against poverty, policing and the hostile environment. As well as fighting to improve the conditions of our lives now, these are struggles for a different future - for economic justice, decolonisation and abolition.
In this podcast we explore the theory and practice of community organising, and its role in bringing about political transformation. In each episode we bring people together to discuss a different question about how we fight to change the systems we live in.
In this episode we discuss what community organising is, and the argument for it as a political approach. We talk about the growing forms of community organising happening in Britain, how people are attempting to politicise everyday life, and the infrastructure we need for a community to exist.
Episode 1In this episode we talk more about the political questions involved in community organising, from sharing power to dealing with conflict and harm. We discuss the role of the organiser, the new wave of British abolitionism, and what it means to have an abolitionist approach.
Episode 2How does a community organise itself to survive in the face of state violence and neglect? In this episode we discuss how asylum seekers and refugees are directly creating the things they need to survive.
Episode 3This 2-part conversation brings together organisers in Manchester to discuss community organising as anti-fascist strategy.
In this episode we talk about the right wing riots of last summer, including the mass participation of young people, and the limitations of street counter protest in the fight against fascism. We reflect on the framing of far right narratives around material issues like housing, and the role of the state in the growth of fascist ideology. We discuss the story of England presented by the right, and countered by the real history of the working class population of England; one of exploitation, deportation, and divide and rule, at the hands of the British state.
Episode 4In this episode, we talk more about what it looks like to fight fascism at the community level. We think about what we can learn from antifascism in East London in the 1930s, and how to build solidarity with people susceptible to racist narratives. We discuss the atomisation of life in Britain, the aftermath of the miners’ strike, the loss of shared spaces, and the need for robust community relationships in fighting far right radicalisation. We talk about the kind of conversations and experiences that can counter racism in communities, and how we can build rather than react, in light of the crises we face.
Episode 5
