Ending some work
Two summers ago I wrote an essay entitled “Working with folks who have committed harm” for the Class Work Project. It was an attempt to distill the previous 6 years of work into 2,000 words of reflection, at the time I was still knee deep in working with working-class men who had committed various forms of interpersonal harm, and involved in supporting the various community processes and practices that had either facilitated or emerged from that work during those years. Over the last few months I have been gradually wrapping up my involvement in these processes and practices, by the end of next week I will be done with it. Over the next year or so I’m going to be digging into my notes, having some chats with those I worked with, and sharing some essays that reflect on the community accountability work that I first got involved with in the winter of 2015, and now in spring 2023 I’m stepping away from.
I don’t end it with any ill will, any significant disappointment, frustration or regret over participation in this work. There are several reasons for me moving on, but I’m deeply grateful that I was invited into this work, work which I do consider some of the most politically and emotionally rewarding work of my life.
In coming to an end, writing final emails, drafting short reports for groups, last phone calls, logging out of WhatsApp groups, I am thinking about all the collective effort that has been put into all this community care work, by people of all genders, by the people who invited me in, by those who joined in the years that followed. From council estates in the North West, to Traveler sites in Home Counties from tower blocks in Yorkshire cities to small towns in the Midlands, some of the most economically marginalized and culturally stigmatized working-class communities have poured time and energy into one another despite those resources being desperately short in supply, in order to take care of their community with all the love and kindness they could muster.
Why would I end this work now then?
After 7 1/2 years I feel like I need a substantial break from it and to take the time to work out what I’ve learnt, and what could have been done better. It’s not really the type of work you get an structured break from, so deep reflection hasn’t really been possible. Plus, I might go a few days without doing anything, but the phone calls and emails I receive can come at any time, and some aspect of it is never very far from my mind. This has led me to putting in place a few emotional boundaries, ones that perhaps mean I care a little less, that I am invested a little less than I’d ideally like to be.
A sizable portion of this work has been to enter into dialogue with men who have committed interpersonal harm, and the men who following the harm have tried to understand their role in facilitating such behavior. This means listening to thoughts of violence, thoughts of abuse committed by and to these men, it has meant trying not to become frustrated with self-pity, self-justification and denial. Hence putting in some emotional boundaries, but when it comes to doing the other parts of the work -doing group meetings with young people who want to set up a play park on their estate, or a group of single mum’s who want to campaign to keep their library open, or some traveler kids who want me to facilitate a radical politics discussion group with them- it means the emotional boundaries I’d put in place to protect myself get in the way, and if in future I return to this work I’d like to be able to carry out without such restrictions.
Another reason is that these communities have very rarely overlapped with the ones I live in, and I am a fierce proponent of the importance of organizing where you are as a step towards radical transformation. This is what I have spent much of my political life doing prior to leaving Nottingham 4 years ago, and at some point I’ll do it again. I’ve never really been totally comfortable with the person who goes into a community to help out for a while and then leaves. The relationships you build in those circumstances are too light, too likely to dissolve, and if there’s one thing political organizing is to me it’s the building of deep relationships that negate the individualisation of neoliberalism.
I also have new things on my horizon, my partner is expecting our first child in the next couple of months, a change in our lives that I’m excited about and more than a little nervous, I’m working on PhD at the University of Manchester on how whiteness and masculinity hinder political solidarity, and new organizing projects keep emerging, ones I’d like to engage with as much as the baby allows me to.
So, I’ll say good-bye for a while to working with people who committed interpersonal harm for a while, and I suppose the essays I’ll write over the next year or so will be my love letters to that work, but more so to the folks of all genders who I’ve met and broken bread with since this journey began. And with any luck I’ll be able amongst all the scribbled notes, and fragmented memories I’ll be able to find something of substance to share with anyone who wants to read it.