“Provide hope and inspiration for collective action to build collective power to achieve collective transformation. Rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams.” Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter, 2013
“Hope offers us clarity that, amid the uncertainty ahead, there will be conflicts worth joining and the possibility of winning some of them… It is too soon to know what will emerge from this emergency, but not too soon to start looking for chances to help decide it.” Rebecca Solnit, Guardian 7/4/20
What does this mean in Hastings?
The word crisis comes from the Greek for ‘decision’. In the early 15th century it denoted the turning point of a disease, by the 1620s it was also used more generally for the point at which change must come, for better or worse.
Hastings is already the 13th poorest local authority in the country. In Hastings, as everywhere, the crisis impacts will be both health-related and economic. Right now we need to save people’s lives and protect their mental health. Soon we will need to rebuild an already-precarious and now-destroyed economy. The previous economic development tools (Seaspace, Seachange) are already discredited and in any case inadequate for the scale of the challenge. The force of disruption has created the chance for change. The question is who will shape that change – same old power structures reconvened or a genuinely different approach?
I would like to argue for three big shifts that could grow from the experience of this crisis and positively shape the future of our town.
- A presumption of inclusion and involvement. Let us collectively as citizens and community, share in the ‘place-making’ role alongside councillors, officials and consultants. Nothing about us without us. Every plan that affects our town, our lives, our health, wealth and happiness, should at the very least be informed by widespread and sustained conversations with local people. Plans that emerge from the grassroots should be encouraged, respectfully assessed and given a platform for collective consideration. Unequal participation in civic life must be overcome through substantial and targeted investment in universalising access – childcare, physical accessibility and facilities, shared language, expenses, transport, food, etc. Such investments can help create a new economy based on social goods.
Let us commit ourselves and our town to shared and accessible place-making.
- The valorisation of mutual aid as the bedrock of society, with the support of an ‘enabling state’ and a ‘fair market’ (both concepts requiring deep, wide and challenging debate). Multi-node networks are strong and resilient. When we start with person-to-person we recognise the humanity of each and every one and we are moved towards solutions because, yes, I can do your shopping and, if I get ill, you will put soup on my doorstep. Beyond this one-to-one reciprocity is many-to-many solidarity – locally, nationally, internationally and within distinct communities. While we may be, for once, ‘in the same boat’, the virus is not ‘the great equaliser’ – it impacts differently and we see more clearly the injustices that create and exacerbate vulnerability and suffering. But maybe the choices we make now can turn the misanthropic Covid-19 into a driver for equality, as the second world war led to the welfare state. We are facing the opportunity to reshape the state and the market to serve a mutualised society. Will we take it?
Let us commit ourselves and our town to helping each other and recasting our relationship with the state and the market.
- A full-throttle focus on learning. We have seen what can happen: an unprecedented scale, scope and speed of learning. Most obviously in the move to online tech, which is both a skill in itself and the gateway to learning.
Learn a language, or a craft, a fitness technique, or a project management system
Learn to sing, clap, laugh on screen, learn to mute and unmute
Learn to stay in, learn what 2 metres looks like, learn which jobs matter most
Learn epidemiology and furloughing
Learn that everything was not fixed after all,
come to understand that TINA (There Is No Alternative) was always a fake.
Let us commit ourselves and our town to enjoy and prioritise learning because it is what humans do best.
And let’s keep talking about what happens next…
The way to drive a paradigm shift is “… you keep pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm, you come yourself, loudly, with assurance, from the new one, you insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather you work with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded” – Donella Meadows in Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate Change World Ray Ison (2010) p62-76
Spinning Plates 