Power and Community: Mistakes in organising

So, I’m slightly behind on writing the second part of “On the beach”. Partly because I’ve been sorting out my desktop, during this sortout I found the folder of essays that were going to make up my 2nd book. In that folder I found this essay, which seems to fit a little with this substack, and didn’t make it into the book. It was written four years ago, and having read through it I would certainly write it quite differently if I wrote it now, but it’s got bits that are relevant to the work I’m trying to get to on this substack, so I’m sharing it.

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For 5 years I bounced around the radical left scene in Nottingham and the UK like bull in a china shop, kid in a sweet shop, I unraveled several times, tied myself in knots on many occasions. I did the protest circuit, summits, mass mobilisations, in the UK and Europe. I was part of organizing gatherings and demonstrations, of setting up many short lived projects. I sucked in a lot of information, which once filtered through my classed experiences, my gendered and racialised power, my trauma, spewed out over others I was organising with. From conversations I've had in the intervening years, this 5 year period wasn't hugely different to the opening five years of many who enter into and become part of the radical left mileu. I was a little older then most who go through this, I was 27 when it began and 33 when it ended. It'd be nice to write about it with some clarity, to critically reflect over the strategic mistakes and the organisational failures of the myself and the collectives I was part of, but in truth the speed of it, the wildness with which I went through it. The fact that during it I had 2 mental health crisis, 1 minor heart operation, too many drunken nights, and on the positive side entered into the big romantic partnership of my life, means that critical reflection on the politics on a granular level would be a fools errand. My analysis is in big broad strokes, and it's hard to separate the ways in which the divergence of lived experience between me and my comrades played out and effectiveness of the political work we were trying to. By the end of 2012 many of us had decided to place more focus on the local, a solidarity network, a local newsletter, a street play project, a small anarchist group doing organising fundraising events and protests, but a few of us, including myself took part in the early mobilising days for the G8 in London. In my head, we could link up the local community struggles with this broader anti-capitalist mobilisation. Unfortunately I had not developed the ability to articulate this, neither in my own head really, never mind to those I was trying to present the argument to. Within a local solidarity group I kicked off an unpleasant argument on our internal email list, which played a role in the group withering away. With the stop g8 process I and others pushed for a more localised emphasis, but our position garnered much support, and I stepped away from the process.

Around this time in the middle of 2013 three things developed. Firstly, the street play project which had been irregular and on a Saturday afternoon, became a daily project which we slowly moved from the street into the local social centre. Two of us made this decision, committing ourselves to the daily sessions, with others coming in and out as occasional volunteers. Secondly, myself and 3 others organised a series of workshops around the city called “take back control”, attempting to generate networks and discussion around ways local communities could organise themselves in defence of austerity. Thirdly, I got a job working as a Community Organiser as part of the government funded programme which ran from 2012-2013.

The transition from the street play project to what became known as the Sumac Youth Club was not a particularly smooth transition. The street play project had been occurring on and off for a couple of years, a group of local residents, predominantly associated with the Sumac Centre, but others who were part of local N.G.O's were given equipment from the city wide play scheme organisation called Playworks, and one evening a week would descend for a couple of weeks on one of the streets which had the been identified as having the most local kids hanging out on it. Over time one street was settled on, the volunteers from the organisations dropped out and there was shift from weekday evenings to Saturday afternoon. The transition to it being a daily activity began over a school half-term primarily because the kids asked for it, and myself and a friend were able to do it. We moved into the Sumac Centre one evening when it was raining, as I was a key holder and the center wasn't being used. We broke the kids into groups, based primarily on gender and age, each group having at least a couple of sessions a week, we'd often run two sessions a week. It was far from smooth sailing, the relationships with the young people talk a while to build, as well as developing levels of trust with the families, who primarily came from Pakistani heritage, recent Romanian arrivals in the UK, and some of the poorer white British families in the area who had tense relationship with “do-gooders'' whether or not they were connected to state apparatus or not. Over the three years we were at the Sumac we worked with over 300 kids, between 30-40 were with us for more than a couple of years, I became close to a number of the families and this would feed into some political work that would happen later down the line. One shift in our organising of the Youth Club, was that there was clear cut leadership roles, the two of us who moved the project into a daily activity, were also the only two of the volunteers who came from poor working class families, myself from a neighbourhood within the same postcode as the one we were working in, and my comrade from a rural Slovene family. For the first year of the project the decisions from the activities we'd organise to the ways in which we created boundaries, and everything else were very clearly made by the pair of us. Other volunteers were expected to follow the framework that we had decided upon. This was a shift away from the consensus based decision making model that many of us had become used to, and there were different degrees of willingness to accept this shift, but we were steadfast and eventually many were content with being able to turn up for a 2 hour session once or twice a week without having to engage with the project beyond that.

The “Take Back Control” project had its moments, but was fundamentally a deeply flawed project. It involved four of us, who had been part of the autonomous left and anarchist movements for different degrees of time, hosting events in 5 different neighborhoods around Nottingham. In each one we would present ideas around anti-capitalism, the Nottingham Solidarity Network project and the Stop G8 mobilisation, then facilitate a wider conversation about the connections between the capitalist system and community issues. We would flyer the neighbourhoods in the weeks before hand, leaving posters in local meeting points, and then just rock up. Whilst at each event there were people who we hadn't come into contact before, and on some occasions people who hadn't been to political discussions before, the events did not create an especially creative or politically productive space. As a collective we were lacking in facilitation and organiser skills, each session began and ended with a loose body of individuals, with diversity of perspectives and inclinations. Nothing wrong with that in theory, but the way we ran the session did little to create a common bond within the group, so the events ended without a common purpose. This lack of skill set was amplified by our failure to build from the events, this was partly due to an assortment of personal and interpersonal issues that began to generate within the group. These issues, on top of a lack of strategic planning and basic administrative failings, meant we maintained very little contact with many of those who attended the events. This was particularly the case with regard to the events we held outside of the NG7 postcode that all four organisers lived in.

Finally, the community organiser programme which I became employed by in the middle of 2013, was a government funded 5 year programme which deep into the austerity programme set out to train individuals to use Saul Ailinsky's methods to generate communities which would pick up the pieces from the devastation in working class communities that government cuts were causing. I was sceptical going in, and fairly disgusted coming out. The training used the language of radicalism, community power, solidarity, autonomy, what the programme set out to and the training made clear was that the aim was to pass on responsibility in the name of active engagement, but without touching upon any of the systems of power. It was encouraged that we weren't to organise in the neighbourhoods we were from, although I was given a neighbourhood very close to my own, and instilled a culture of us “organisers” being the particularly enlightened helpers of a deprived community. The benefits of taking this role on a personal level was that it gave me the highest wage I'd ever had, allowing me to fund the youth project in it's initial stages. There was very little oversight, we had a local host organisation who were busy with other things, and when the national organisation wanted to arrange a meeting it was something that could be tolerated. It also gave me time and space to practice knocking on doors and striking up conversations regarding the everyday politics of people in the neighbourhood I was assigned. There was a set model with which you were supposed to engage with people, a model I can't for the life of me remember now, but after trying that out for the first few weeks, I decided to go for a more unscripted approach. I would introduce myself, tell them I lived over the way, and say that I'm going around finding out what people think about the state of society and their neighbourhood. This led to lots of doors being shut in my face, lots of people cussing me out, and lots of half an hour tirades about the problems of the world and the individual followed by me being cussed out and the door shut in my face. It should be clear, that I am a socially awkward person, and am not someone who puts people at ease or makes them want to open up. I was not (am not) friendly and approachable, nor particularly verbally articulate, undoubtedly people were just a bit put off by having me at the door trying to start open ended conversations. Overtime a few people moved beyond  my weaknesses and engaged in substantial conversations, some of these were just conversations, some moved forward, I was able to link up people who raised similar issues, and facilitate meetings with groups of people who had particular goals in mind. On occasion these panned out and people moved forward to set up projects of their own, and others were dismal failure. The most depressing failure for me, involved a 3 month process with 4 individuals, daily conversations and weekly meetings to build to a launch event for a Bedroom Tax Campaign. The event was to be at a local pub, the plan was to have a couple of the planners give little speeches about the ways in which they were being affected by the bedroom tax, and then for some karaoke. In the week leading up to the event 3 of the group dropped out, and I said I'd take on the tasks for the day that they'd be scheduled to carry out. On the day itself, no two people turned up, both of whom from outside the neighbourhood and regular campaigners around similar issues. The fourth member of the group texted me to say he wasn't going to be able to make it. Needless to say I got drunk.

One of the more positive processes, began with two 16 years old trying (and succeeding) to persuade me to purchase them a four pack of Stella from the off-license. I spent the next 3 hours chatting with them in the park about how one of their friends had been set down for 4 years the week before, and another was still in on a bull shit charge from the uprising in 2011. Over the next few weeks they decided they wanted to raise a fund for their incarcerated mates, both to go on the commissary for them inside, and to help their families pay for the travel to go and see them. First they ran a raffle, selling tickets for 10p a pop to people in the pub at the weekend, one of their Mum's church friends, and teachers and students at the college they went to. They blagged prizes from local shops, and raised a few hundred quid, then they did it again. Then a jumble sale, then a car wash, and so on, many small events, one every couple of weeks. To start with just the two of them, and after three years about 30 people were involved, not just raising money for the original two friends but for several local youth who'd been locked up. On top of this they organised x-mas and b-day card writing sessions with their neighbours. One of the two got sent away for 8 years for his role in an armed robbery, and his mate carried on with the fund-raising whilst attending Trent University.

The Take Back Control project eventually morphed into the Robin Hood Solidarity Group, whose four primary activities were a regular newsletter, a drop in advice session, door knocking and supporting the youth project on a financial and administrative level. In my opinion the newsletter was solid, some of us had previously put out a newsletter for the area called the Forest Fields Fire, which followed the Class War model, whilst the RHSG Newsletter was perhaps a little too NGO slick. In the years since I've had conversations with locals who received both, and the preferences have been mixed. The part of the population who had moved to Forest Fields due to the party scene in the 90's, or the environmental movement that crossed over with it have a preference for the the Forest Fields Fire, although had some issues with the middle class gentrification bashing and the anti-police and prisons position. Whilst the RHSG newsletter connected with older locals and parents from the Pakistani British community, due it's clarity and less strident tone. The door knocking and drop in advice sessions were clear failures, for a number of reasons, and each of us involved will undoubtedly have a different perspective. In my view we weren't relentless and consistent enough in the door knocking, as I and another comrade were doing this s part of the aforementioned community organiser programme in other neighborhoods so we had limited capacity or patience with doing any more. I view this as an error in judgment on my part, I should have shifted my priorities in order to support long term aims. The drop in session was reliant on those door knocking sessions along with the newsletter, and as only one of those was done with a sufficient level of commitment the drop in session had very few people turn up. Perhaps more than anything was that whilst the four of us expressed an eagerness to politically organise together, there were perhaps too many differences in capacity and unresolved personal disputes for the project to sustain the early foundation building stages. Further tensions were raised when my car crash of a past came back and I had to confess to some of the ways in which I’d covered that past up from my friends and comrades.  These admissions rightfully diminished the others personal and political trust in me, and the work we were doing eventually faded away.

At the end of the one year community organiser training project, there was an opportunity to get funding to follow through on the organising work I'd be involved in. With the help of RHSG I was able to channel this funding into the Sumac Youth Club, and this work became my first priority. As I'll go on to talk about, the Youth Club work was some of the personally and politically richest activity I've been involved in and has solidified my belief that forms of community organising which begin with the material needs of the community open up huge political possibilities.

The setting for the Sumac Youth Club was Forest Fields, the neighbourhood inbetween the one I'd been raised in and the one I had been doing the Community Organiser programme  in. I'd been living there since 2007, and had come to view it as my home, finding it difficult to imagine leaving in the short or long term (I was wrong on that). The neighbourhood has a large South Asian population, predominantly with Pakistani Muslim heritage, and has over the past decade developed a decent size Eastern European community primarily Polish and Romanian families, many of whom identify as Roma. The white population is a mix between working class whites who have been in the neighbourhood or surrounding neighbourhoods like myself for several decades, and others from a more mixed class background who moved to the area due to the warehouse party scene of the 90's or the alternative culture and political campaigning that came around the late 90's and with the establishment of the Sumac Centre in 2002. The area also has the standard amount for a low income neighbourhood of housing for asylum seekers, many of whom if they receive legal status remain in Forest Fields. Unusually for what is for all intents and purposes a working class neighbourhood, there are no pubs in Forest Fields. The Sumac Centre is officially a working men's club, whose bar's opening nights have been variable for many years now, and now is seldom open at all. The Frog and Onion was a regular haunt for many Forest Fields residents, and was just outside the neighbourhoods boundaries, but has been closed since the mid 2010's. There are pubs very close in New Basford, the Lion, the Royal Oak, The Pelham and the Raven suit a variety of drinking styles.

The young people we worked with came from all of the racial and ethnic groups within Forest Fields, but of the 40-50 young people who regularly attended until the end of the project, around half came from the Roma families in the neighbourhood. These families were also the ones who we worked with most outside of the youth club. For the first couple of years we were relatively fortunate with our volunteers, even when the comrade who helped established the group had to take a step back and was only able to attend 2 evenings a week, we had a number of others who were able to commit to regular slots. It did not take long however for various tensions to arise. The first one was the boundaries for behaviour. When we were setting up the two of us were clear that we did not want to assume authority over the young people purely based upon our adult status, but for the relationships of trust to develop, and respect for ourselves and the space we were using to be gradually built. We had issues with the way the Sumac existed with the working class neighbourhood, and had made limited acknowledgements of the fact that when the collective of Environmental activists, Animal rights campaigners and general anarcho types had brought the space they had done so using a variety of forms of middle class capital. The building was one of the few spaces that could be used productively for a large portion of the community, but was a bubble of white alternative culture. We viewed the Youth Club as one possible way to start giving the space back over, and thus our work with kids had to replicate this intention. It was not a case of welcome to our space, follow the rules of our space, but we wanted to enter into negotiation with the young people about how they wanted to exist within this space. Coming from a similar context we were both familiar with some of the wild energy that comes from spending a large portion of your time playing on cramped and busy streets with few distractions. Most of our other comrades and those who volunteered with us did not come from that context. Some had been dogmatic in their cack handed anarchist principles that any rules or boundaries were oppressive, and criticised us in public and private for breaking the young people into groups based on age or gender, as well as for having volunteer guidelines, for them this was oppressing the volunteers. These people are ridiculous. On the other hand the majority of people felt that we were too soft handed, that we let the young people get away with too much, that we should set a firmer tone. We were clear that respect, trust and care would build over time, this was not acceptable to a portion of the Sumac regulars and individuals within it who had large amounts of social and economic capital. There were many who spoke out in support of the work we were doing, but in the end this was not enough. In the final 18 months of the youth club at the Sumac too much energy was spent having to argue with those who simply did not want the space used by young people from the neighbourhood. I'll be clear there were young people who came to our sessions whose behaviour we all found challenging, and the complexities of these young people's context was not something we were able to fully engage with. However, a lot of those who spoke out against the youth club tended to blend all the young people into one feral blob, they were viewed as invaders of the very special activist land, invaders without ethics who should be forced to see the error of their ways or be banished forever. This environment meant it all  came to a head in the summer of 2016, and we left the Sumac. I am still deeply resentful for how it ended, and for a long time held a pretty high level of contempt for many of those who are still involved in the space.. More important though were my own failures during the youth club work, everything began so quickly and instinctively, and when we had brief opportunities to think through short, medium and long term strategy I did not think with the amount of clarity that was needed.

Partly due to how previous projects had come to end my working relationship with many of those I'd worked with were frayed, and I had become steadfast in my belief that organising in working class communities needs to be led by working class people, not by the ex-student activist vanguard. I essentially felt that those I had worked with along a consensus model who wanted to participate in the work we were doing, needed to follow my leadership. Some were willing to do this to a point, they would be regular volunteers for 1-4 a week, turn up and do what was required. What I was unable to do, was develop the work outside the youth club sessions and the involvement of anyone else. Occasionally I helped arrange a work experience or a skill share, I helped find the occasional job for some of the young people using contacts within the activist community, but my role should have been to build relationships. I was able to support this between some young people and some volunteers, and between some of the families from different social and cultural groups which I'll talk more about shortly. But I wasn't able to support the growth in solidarity and mutual aid relationships between the activist bubble and many of the working class families I was engaging with at the time. This, along with my inability to facilitate the building of infrastructure and capacity whilst working with these families was a huge failure. From 2015-2018 before I left Nottingham, within the loose networks built up through the Community Organising training and the Sumac Youth Club, there had been dozens and dozens acts of collective political resistance, from eviction defences to arrestee support, slow downs at car washes by undocumented workers to gain paid lunch breaks to facilitating the escape of individuals who had been smuggled into the country and forced into sex work. All this work matters, and I'm happy to have played a small role in it, but I had the opportunity to play a more significant role in the building of collective working class power within those networks, and I failed. It may come across as arrogant to think that I could have played this role, but I was uniquely placed. Poor and working class people constantly find ways to defend themselves against the onslaught of global capital and the mechanisms of the nation-state, I might have chipped in, and my activity probably led to a little more in these two neighbourhoods then would otherwise have happened, however given the amount of social, cultural and economic capital I had access to at the time far more could have been done.

So, why wasn't it? Firstly I had lost trust in the radical left, not in the goodness or decency of the people within that mileu, but with their inability to comprehend their economic, social and cultural positions and the ways in which that can poison working class grass roots movements. It may well have been unfair, but I didn't want to talk about the organising efforts and activities with my close friends in the anarchist and leftist scene. In truth whilst many had been supportive of the youth project, I felt that many had avoided challenging those who were overtly undermining the project, it had felt to me that people wanted to avoid confrontation, or behave as if this was an individual disagreement rather than one based around power, resources and political ethics. That said, it's not as if connecting the dots between that political network with the community ones that were developing would have meant a stronger, more sustainable political force would have developed. It would have required a very careful process of bringing people together, whose lived experiences were very different. I don't buy the common organiser notion, that it is solely by politically organising alongside one another that we can overcome working class stratification and division. When there are sharp differences in social, cultural and economic capital it requires community building work on multiple levels to build trust and connectedness. This is the 2nd reason that it didn't happen, I did not have the capacity, and quite possibly wasn't skilled enough to do this work. There was so much harm reduction work being done inside and outside of the youth club, along with my full time job as a care worker and the self-management of my mental health, I simply didn't have the capacity. If those things hadn't been ongoing, I still might not have been skilled enough to navigate the community building. I was growing angrier about the lack of practical support for the youth club the project was receiving, half a dozen regular volunteers, a few folks helping with fundraising, but I'd created a context where I had full decision making power and full responsibility. This was taking it's toll.

In my head there's an argument that says had this all been planned out better it could have worked. If in 2013 those of us who had worked together had developed a five-ten year plan to build working class power in our neighbourhood it could have all gone differently. We'd have had to hash out our personal and political differences, built in structures which could deal with fallouts and conflicts. We could have used the harm reduction/service provision of the youth club and prisoner support (which I haven't mentioned much here, but went on throughout this period), not only as necessary work on the ground, but as a way to map the community and gradually build networks. We could have taken the time to train one another in different communication methods, built up analysis not just of how power works on the macro and meso levels of corporations, governments and institutions, but how it's reproduced interpersonally. First the Nottingham Solidarity Network, then Take Back Control and finally Robin Hood Solidarity Group we attempted to set up organisations before becoming grounded in any of the communities outside of the alternative political sub-cultures. The falling outs, the loss of trust, the political infighting occurred whilst we were doing work which was limited and only sporadically productive. This meant that the youth club was easy to attack, and the organising work that came from it was too difficult to build coherently.