The image above kind of encapsulates what this project is about. We see two individuals, or if we look at it as two groups of people, or two political parties, or two sets of a myriad of beliefs, it doesn’t really matter. The point is they look to be disengaged from each other and view the world through their own narrow vision.
We all have certain beliefs and biases, from support of the local or national football team, political opinions, political parties, religious beliefs, class conscience, and so on. But the idea here is not to get bogged down on these issues, important as they are, but to look at what we have in common to work with against the overarching threats to our communities and the world at large, no matter our preferences.
All you need to know – to get on with things. Has specific purposes, which is the attempt to work with and in working-class, communities. As activists mainly to listen to people, to help out working groups already working there. To help in any way we can to build knowledge and strategy and where it is needed through a two way learning and listening process, help each other to articulate issues and problems in a language that is compelling and unifying to ordinary people.
We need to ask why in working class communities, many have lost their politics, their curiosity about things outside of family matters. Part of that is there are no more the industries that could engender solidarity through a common language, people understood, of bettering themselves and making a better life for their kids. The present designed chaos long ago put an end to that. We are now needing to be looking at different ways to reinvest and rebuild “old fashioned community”, where people looked out for each other a bit more.
In the old building sites the site foreman was usually an experienced joiner. The reason was that joiners tended to know most about and worked around all of the other trades. And they were usually the first on the site and the last to leave. Site foremen have mainly been replaced by college educated people, almost all with no experience of working on a building site or site workers. The present state of activism is much the same, it has been taken over by the university educated, who have replaced the working class firebrand, and many with little experience of communicating with working class communities.
That is not to degrade the many comrades who have been to university or from middle class backgrounds, who do great work. It is not to blame or find fault with them, but to realise a problem. If the left doesn’t start to engage more in working class communities, they will be left open to right wing agendas. There is an opportunity to transform education into learning. If we can persist and listen long enough for the sleeping giants, of community organising who live there to reappear.