LISTENING LEARNING
So part of the context here is how do we create a learning interface between technology, media and education. In a language that ordinary folk can use to help them to articulate what is going on around them. And in the world.
Amílcar Cabral reminds us, particularly when activists are working with ordinary people
“Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children…”
Basic principals need to be adopted before setting off on any journey, guidelines or values that serve as the foundation for behaviour, decision-making, and systems that suit various contexts. These pages are about getting started.
Asking. What are the things that use up most of our time, our thoughts and energy. How do we find, or make the time for public life, in order to take part with others in building more creative ways of living and spending our time.
Someone asked Ralph Nader’s mother, how she had time to work in the community as well as having four kids to look after. She answered it is part of the same thing, kids and the community. The reason why many teenagers maybe have no, or little interest, in their community is because they were never introduced to community life as kids. It is such a crucial time to support our young in the transition to adulthood, when our government is failing them. There is a real need for the movement to capture their interest.
Another big problem with organising and organisers in general is sometimes the gap between where the people are and where the organiser wants people to be, is too wide. So this is the space we see AYNTK, might help fill. The space where most people are at.
We need rather to focus on common interests, through trust, listening, starting from the same page, separating facts from opinions. And making it about building strategy through, the work done, “in the community in and around people”, rather than on a computer.
Some recent challenges
In some working class communities, there’s a minority of folk who have lost the plot and are drifting out to the far right, but there’s also a big chunk of people who are at risk of going that way, but haven’t fallen down the trap-door just yet.
There’s also folk who haven’t got all the way over to our side, on activism and community organising, but who feel the need to do something and don’t know what.
So we reckon there’s a massive opportunity for WYNTK to produce content and activities, for those who would like to know more, because they’re exactly the folk who are best placed to persuade the others in the community at risk.
Basically the racists stirring things up are asking so many of the right questions about cost of living, crumbling services, everything getting worse. We just need to help people to find a better answer to those questions, than putting Nigel Farage in power,
So in this project we need to remember, learning always has to operate as a two way street. People get involved in things from all different levels of experience, knowledge and interests. Everyone is an expert in their own experience. The challenge here is to build a collective experience through shared knowledge and understanding that can be achieved in helping folk to construct their own arguments, in explaining exactly where they are and where they want to be.
What that knowledge is, or how it can be applied, will only be made clear as interests converge into useful ideas that might help towards building strategies for change. But the least that could be done, would be to set people up with some basic tools for understanding the many layers of propaganda, buearocracy and subterfuge working against their interests. We are treated by the state as, consumers and audiences, not citizens exercising political power. How do we rebuild the spaces where citizens can act together to address the imbalance, and not merely watch from the sidelines? That is our mission.