How we can re-make our democracy

I have these past months been busy ‘re-inventing democracy’ with a group of inspiring people interested in changing themselves and society. 

I had been thinking that we would come up with a project that might show how, in a small way, democracy could be improved. To signpost how we might move from an egoistic, identity-based, enemy-blaming and hero-worshipping, divisive ‘democracy,’ to something that allows us to move from the ‘me’ to the ‘we’ and to see the whole.

We were taking the M.I.T ‘Ulab’ course together, to get away from trying to ‘solve’ the problems of democracy by thinking and use our senses to try to discover what needs to emerge. We ourselves, despite our firm intentions, cannot simply cast off thoughts of the ‘they’ that think differently, the ‘he’ or ‘she’ who threatens us and all the rest. I was stepping out of my comfort zone and in this group using mindfulness practice, emotions and ‘body work’ to get out of my head. My intention was to create, with others, something to help reinvent democracy.

I discovered today that after a process at turns exhilarating and maddening, strange and wonderful, that whilst we as a group may have no ‘prototype’ or ‘pilot project,’ we have quietly but surely shown a path to a new way of being together in a democracy. We are different voices, from bold experimenters in the corporate world to the soulful and meditative; creative and scientific; grassroots and in government. We have shown that doubt and not-knowing about our place or our purpose in a community and the resulting unease or even conflict can be productive forces that need not be barriers to coming into relationship.

The members of our group each have individual projects that include how alternative communities can avoid disruptive power-struggles and how a political party can avoid cliques and hierarchy and still be a contender for power. A vital ingredient in all such plans I feel is creating spaces to allow each of us as ‘political animals,’ as members of a democracy, to express who we are so that we can be with others. When people feel threatened or disconnected – Remainers and Leavers alike – we become resentful and we lash out to re-assert the ‘me’.

We have prototyped this in a small way, shown how entrepreneurs and the spiritual, the young and the older, people of different backgrounds and from Asia to the Americas, can form a strong community in which difference is encouraged. We need to make our work creating more spaces like this. Not spaces that are about reducing difference, political movements based on how similarly right we all are in this room and how wrong others are.

What these spaces look like concretely we are still working on. But we feel they must be inviting spaces of diversity that allow everybody to be themselves and tap into their powers within. And they must be playful if we are to find the humanity we all share. The prize, I think, is that to ‘be political’ you don’t share mocking memes nor berate the ‘them’ for some dark conspiracy.

To be political you know how to sit down and form solidarity with those from different tribes and none. You laugh together, not at each other and find common ground. And you work together. Now that is the start of something that would really scare the powers-that-be.

Can we unite as the Government conspires to give none of us what we want?

“Nobody’s going to get what they want,” the headlines were screaming as I started to write this. Brexit would end our influence whilst likely not ending freedom of movement for good. The biggest explosion of political interest and conversation in living memory ends like this?

The referendum has left us divided but most of us feeling frustrated

Disenchantment and anger is a great motivator – if it finds a channel. Our job as community organisers is to point people towards this constructive outlet for their emotions. In the absence of this, the referendum provided the method for many to signal what they were feeling. The vote left half the country feeling newly worried about the future and suddenly not feeling part of their nation – joining the leavers who had felt like that for a long time.

This led to frenetic and unfruitful activism, everything from petitions for a re-run, to organised hiding of tabloid newspapers and memes about Boris and his ‘NHS promise’ bus. They cannot understand why so many were, as they see it, duped. And they are bemoaning what will be lost, including that cherished vehicle for promoting a global outlook in young people, the ERASMUS exchange student scheme. The leavers, I find after leaving my social media echo chamber, are becoming increasingly anxious about back-tracking. Why is article 50 not yet triggered and why are they talking about staying in the single market and keeping immigration? Their feeling that the metropolitan elite show contempt for them seem confirmed.

Social media has been an oulet for both Remainers and Leavers

Perhaps our biggest need is an exchange programme in our own country. We urgently need empathy and to find common ground if all the ties binding us are not to unravel. If we do not, more violence will surely follow and mainstream parties, especially Labour in the North, will be rejected. We need constructive channels and we need them now.

The newly intense interest in politics is, for me, a Remainer, a silver lining to the large grey clouds. I, too, was frustrated at my ability to affect change, and I am someone who has had the luxury of being able to think about this stuff. Before the referendum, pro-EU politicians had swept the problems under the carpet to present a binary choice of you are either ‘in’ or ‘out’. The outrage of spending nearly half the budget on mostly needless agricultural subsidies, much to large landowners, is something we had to overlook. This was the consequence of politics being too binary. Life isn’t that simple.

Some post-referendum ire was focused on those in power, not on other people – like this re-branded ‘NHS promise’ bus. Photo: Mehul Damani

And for all May’s meaningless but forceful ‘Brexit means Brexit,’ there are many different Brexits. It’s urgent, therefore, that whether or not some of us try to fight leaving the European Union, or to ensure that we do, there are some who devote energy to finding this common ground. Inequality and unease at the direction of travel of our country led to not only a majority of working-class voters backing Leave, but also a third of BaME voters and even a quarter of Green and Lib Dem voters.

Perhaps we can agree that our NHS should be a priority for immigration quotas, that we need to stop neglecting our suburbs and young people; whatever it is, kneejerk populism won’t cut it. For the Left’s part, saying simplistic things ‘trade is bad,’ or ‘globalisation is bad,’ and pretending we can solve things by simply doing what ‘the people, not elites’ want is the other coin of the populist Right. Where the populist Left has won power in Europe, it has, for instance, banned AirBnB and Uber, following valid concerns, but leaving many reliant on this income newly impoverished.

Populism only stores up anger for the future when it is discovered that you often necessarily have to make trade-offs. And no one leader can solve everything nor has the monopoly of wisdom. We have to come out of the comfort zone of simply being pro- or anti- the EU (or AirBnB, or anything). We should be looking outwards, to other people, not upwards, to some leader. We have to trust in ourselves as a society to together discuss, agree and get the changes we need. To form, say, a people’s alliance for seaside towns, not a seaside ‘czar’ foisted on us.

To achieve this, rather than just hoping someone in power sort it out, means listening to those with whom we disagree. To find what we have in common and can unite around. Otherwise we stay divided. While those in charge are busy. Busy coming up with plans that give none of us what we want.

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s avoid the massive distraction of ‘making a difference’

After a sabbatical I have only just caught up with the final evaluation of the community organisers’ programme that set me on this amazing journey three years ago. Much of what the independent assessment says about the programme’s successes and failures rings true from my experiences.

The start of my journey: leadership that involves standing back

How and when community organising succeeds

The headline of the evaluation, released without much fanfare over Christmas, is that more than the target number of so-called ‘voluntary community organisers,’ community leaders, were found. What’s interesting, though, is the opening up of a discussion on how and when community organising succeeds, and when it fails. People acting is not enough, it rightly suggests.

The evaluation points out that the skill of the community organiser is only one factor; the second is the capacity of the area – whether there’s a history of community action, whether hope is still alive. But they found an organiser can make some difference even in the areas that are toughest given the previous history in that community. This part leapt out at me as ringing true: whether an organiser is able to let go.

A community organiser is, in a sense, a leader; and so, it is understandable that, like many, they saw their leadership role as to get out there, and lead from the front.

Many organisers focused on projects, not networks

This led to many organisers “doing for” others, going against the cardinal rule of the trainers of the programme, “giving significant energy to individual project-delivery”. The problem, in part, was that the second key success criteria of the programme was the number of “projects” that volunteers ran, which understandably, led to organisers project-managing, a massive distraction from what the best organisers bring, put succinctly by the evaluators:

“Successful organisers showed leadership [but] rather than trying to dominate the network, they helped it to grow. Successful organisers used their leadership skills to develop others.” 

Community organisers programme evaluation

When people realise their powers, and link up with others, that’s when the powerful worry – not when ‘movements’ relying on small numbers of leaders to operate form

As I’ve said before, it’s easy in this work to see the end task as bettering the lot of people, and to see this end as more important than the means that are chosen. Indeed, some organisers have told me we need to do what works, and this will in turn build hope and power. But this is when people end up as mere pawns in a power-game.

Their lot may on occasion be bettered, but it might also be by some regeneration programme delivered from on high. A cleaned-up park or a shiny new door doesn’t change the way things are. What is transformational is when people grow, when they can further their interests on their own.

The biggest impacts are when people develop

The biggest impacts of the programme were in terms of developing people touched by it, the evaluation says. Both us, the organisers, and the community leaders who got stuck in. The delivery of projects – showing a difference – was a massive distraction. When people build confidence and realise things can be different; when they form lasting links with others in a network of people whose consciousness has also been raised and who are alive to new possibilities.

That’s why newly acting people did not become a powerful new movement, they saw their role as doing something for others, whilst we were in turn doing things with them.

When we facilitate and inspire more and more people who are ready to worry the powerful, and not because someone has cajoled them. It’s why we at London Community Action believe so passionately in training.

People-power: not deploying ‘flesh and blood,’ unleashing potential

Community organising: to change society – but also to change self-belief?

WHY community organise? To change the world, is a common answer. We bring people together because people have much bigger impact collectively than they do on their own. Want a dangerous road you live off made safe or rented homes fixed up around your neighbourhood? And it is certain that you’ll struggle to do that without others, and without good organisation and tactics. But, for me, making things happen is not enough.

Collective action is necessary to bring about change. People need to stand together so that opposition is visible and demands are heard by the powers-that-be. But there is more than one way of bringing people together to make demands together.

I have seen tenants associations and campaigning organisations packing people onto buses and handing them placards so that an aim can be achieved. This asks of people to get behind a purpose that’s already been agreed. Leaders decide the goals and tactics; members or supporters simply give their energies and time to achieving that purpose. This is, as Paul Mason put it, “swarming”: coming together temporarily to achieve a specific aim. It might change a policy, or at least influence a debate. But it largely leaves the world as it is.

If people are merely mobilised by others exerting authority over them, with little or no say on aims and tactics, they remain powerless, pawns in a power-game. The organisations leading them mirror the power relations in wider society: a, ‘trust us; we know what’s best for you,’ approach. Consequently, they feel no long-term belonging to an organisation, and are in it for a specific aim. There is another way.

People: not pawns in a power game

It is possible for collective action to be something collectively agreed. For people who believe that official channels must be tried and advocates prevailed upon, to start to see themselves that power relations can and need to be challenged. For the motivations and ideas of everybody to count for something. Community organising involves asking people questions about how things are the way they are, and working with them to figure out how to change them. It’s messier; but it pays off.

I’ve seen the reward with ACORN London with Jonny Butcher, its Newham branch just two months old, having facilitated its group of emerging leaders, who have travelled from a point where the discussion was of councillors and imams intervening, to a shared belief in people-power. From a point of felt powerlessness – with comments such as “they’ll never listen, there’s no point” – to self-confidence.

The culmination was last week, when three leaders came with us two organisers to confront a Newham housing boss. We asked plenty of questions of the leaders before the meeting. This way, we went from a point of people believing we were going to ask for help, or to start a relationship, to confidently asserting what they would like them to do. By the end of it, we had together come up with questions and demands for our confrontation with power.

Emerging leaders: ready to confront power

When we got into the room, the leaders were ready for bluster and evasion, and the warm embrace of the well-meaning official love-bombing us. They were ready to counter this with assertive, if still cordial, things to ask of the official, and came out, I think, with a sense of both the possibilities of collective action, and the limits of relying on the powers-that-be to do things for them.

We have a meeting tomorrow where I’ll ask the leaders what they felt we got out of it, and what we should do next. I am proud that we’re both facilitating “the participation of people in their own liberation,” as Paolo Freire would have it; and more simply the goal-driven numbers game of building power from “flesh and blood” in order to attack external powers.

To change society, we need to change the self: to stop falling into the easy trap of throwing our weight around to challenge injustice; of seeing power as a zero-sum game, something we must seize to give to others. And instead see it as something that can multiply.

We can and must help all to unleash their powers through leadership development and training as part of a community organising drive. We must always be wary of a ‘we know best,’ top-heavy organisation – and with ACORN community organising, leaders can be as much in control of the organisation as the organisers.

A visit to the Paris banlieues: how can community centres better make a difference?

A TRIP to France has brought to the fore for me the challenge of actively involving people in changing the destinies society sets for them because of their postcodes, backgrounds and colour of their skin.

The group of London and Paris community workers

I was accompanying fellow Locality trained community organiser, the inspiring Moussa Amine Sylla, and community workers and leaders from his extensive network in Tottenham on a visit to the Federation des Centres Sociaux de Seine Saint Denis, a network of over 50 community centres in outlying eastern suburbs of Paris, or banlieus. Visiting one centre in Clichy-sous-Bois, where riots flared up a decade ago, Centre Social L’Orange Bleue, we were given a presentation on how the project wishes to promote “active citizenship”. The centre’s vice-president was blunt. “People are not actively involved in these communities.”

They were not involved in the Clichy-sous-Bois’s “imposed” structures for participation and also “lacked self-confidence,” she said, with up to half of people unemployed on the estates. The centre saw a role in their personal development so that they can “better express their needs”. A walk out of the centre and into the community rammed home one of the most obvious needs: for justice.

Saying goodbye at the Clichy-sous-Bois centre

Local children clamoured around us, perhaps not used to getting visitors, especially a mixed ethnicity group; definitely excited by our party’s Mario Balotelli-lookalike, Ken Hinds, as we walked around the banlieu. We were headed to a street re-named in the memory of Zyed and Bouna, two young people who died after being chased by the police, complete with a memorial. There is a sense that little has changed in the ten years since, and the BBC has reported that things are worse in terms of joblessness and the image of the area, despite some extra spending. A debate in my break-out group the next day at another centre in Aulnay sous Bois, Club loisirs Moulin de la Ville with Celine Heitzmann, pointed to the reason.

There is structural discrimination by those in power that is internalised by those suffering it, lowering their aspirations and denting their confidence, my group agreed. We also discussed how structural problems needed structural solutions, such as stopping discrimination by employers rejecting young people they do not see as “a cultural fit”. So what can community centres do? Can they change their ways of working to help to address the power imbalances in our societies?

At the memorial to Zyed and Bouna, killed ten years ago after being chased by the police

One youth worker, Souhila Nachar Laouami, told me that city halls demand “projects” before she has had a chance to engage people, mitigating against true involvement of the kind that would allow young people to better take on ‘the system’. “We should move away from people being ‘consumers’ of our services to being actors,” she said. One way of young people being doers, not done to, would be a more enterpreneurial approach – as the impressive Tottenham participant Teriy Keys of ROAD Entertainment underlined. Community centres with enterprises would be less dependent on funding from Governments, which prevents them from confronting the powers-that-be.

Community centres could, then, facilitate groups that campaign for change – a point made powerfully by Ken Hinds, who works to keep the police in check in Haringey. If people from a banlieu are having applications from particular employers rejected, only collective action could hold these companies to account. Community organising can start such things happening, allowing a real dialogue where people can speak about their needs to those they perceive as more powerful – as is happening with ACORN Newham, a community union I’ve helped set up.

Being prepared to take new approaches is urgent. Therese Wenang Pegba, another youth worker we met, said it was frustrating to be working hard trying to help young people when she often knew “it’s not going to work”. Let’s make it work.

How Murdoch’s power can be usurped: more power to journalists, and readers

THE MEDIA Democracy Festival: the name’s surprising, given the threat to our democracy posed by powerful media outlets being in the hands of a few. I went to the ‘unconference’ excited about the prospects of a grassroots-run community journalism to strengthen local people-power. I came away feeling we and should be more ambitious, and rival the powerful news corporations.

Hyperlocals can give more power to their readers as members – but how can the powerful media corporations be challenged?

In my area, the Brixton Blog and Brixton Buzz, ‘hyperlocal’ offer some compelling content, but increase access to what the powerful are doing. I went to the Media Democracy Festival hopeful such initiatives can become more widespread and also, crucially, tip the balance of power in favour of the people. There were sessions led by representatives from co-operatively-run and other not-for-profit hyperlocals challenging a local press that has cut costs and shed jobs, meaning less money for journalism (my first job at Johnston Press I got £9,000 to churn out and lay-out dozens of stories a week). What I got from the day was we need to aim higher.

Hyperlocals are doing a good job, providing investigative journalism and giving people more of a say than the traditional press, which is run by firms headquartered far from where they operate. They invite the public to shape their content and vote at annual general meetings. But as academic Andy Williams said on the day, the majority of the hyperlocals are not making enough money to pay staff: 87% bring in less than £500 a month; for 13% of the total, under £100. Voluntarism only partially fills the news black holes caused by the traditional press retreat and job-shedding. How, then, to sustain this news resurgence?

Crowdfunding was held up as one method. The Bristol Cable raised £3,300 in one crowdfunding drive. It has also secured grants and donations from organisations. Such sources provide invaluable ‘seedcorn’ money, and it was what the Brixton Blog & Bugle turned to in order to have its first paid member of staff, raising an impressive £15,000. But I doubt this will provide on-going funds, year-after-year. The co-operative model has much to recommend it, given this: the model means that the organisation has an on-going relationship with you as a member, and not a fly-by-night donor. The Bristol Cable‘s Drew Rose said that with 500 members, each paying £1 each a month, “we can pay journalists”. Advertising income also needs to be looked at.

There can be tensions – as when the Brixton Blog/Bugle backed a campaign for the Ritzy Cinema to pay the minimum wage – and areas with a less buoyant private sector will find less potential – Sam Kinch of the Hastings Independent warned that this alone “does not bring in enough”. But the powerful message from The Canary, a new “disruptive” national news outlet was that good journalism does have a potentially large audience and its true value is not currently going to journalists. “We are being shafted,” said Kerry-Anne Mendoza, given a freelancer is paid a couple of hundred even if a million pairs of eyes see it. There is a market for good reporting, she maintained: at Scriptonite Daily her readers paid her to report from Gaza.

I believe that to challenge the powerful, we need to focus on creating both economic value and social value. The value of compelling content needs to be captured, whether in membership, or advertising. That is why Drew Rose, of the Bristol Cable, is also the politics section lead at The Canary. “We need something big to challenge the Murdoch press,” he said.

Changing ourselves, changing the world

How to bring lasting change in the world around us? How to better work with others around us? The two questions are being asked a lot – and I think that they are linked.

At a training session at the Liberal Democrat autumn conference, delegates grappled with how political parties can reach huge swathes of the population they do not have an audience with. Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are under-represented in the party, making it very difficult to bring about change in areas with large BAME populations.

London: political disengagement and some communities left behind

At a gathering of members of the International Association of Facilitators. Talk turned to both the limits and possibilities of what many facilitators do: going into an organisation to assist those working there to collectively change so the organisation does better.

At a lecture at the London School of Economics, the question was posed: why do some cities succeed, and some fail? Is there anything that city leaders can learn from a widening divide in the fortunes of the two Californian cities of San Francisco and L.A over the last 40 years, asked Professor Michael Storper.

The problems discussed in these various recent encounters are various. How to communicate with those not receptive to you, in the case of the party. The best answer was to get away from ‘pushing messages out’ – the monologue seen in one party’s ‘BAME leaflets’ with key messages for this ‘target audience – and to instigate a dialogue. Starting a dialogue, a two-way conversation, is easier said than done. But Lib Dem campaigner Teena Lashmore said that key to this was to be aware that, if you are white, you have more power. We can make things more equal, one idea being a ‘pow-wow’ on a sofa in the street, a more neutral space than foisting yourself onto somebody in their house.

But how to sustain a dialogue, and ensure that this dialogue leads to action, when you are an outsider and not an insider?

Facilitation starts dialogue for change. But how to sustain it?

Facilitators of dialogue within an organisation are facilitators of change, by allowing ways of working and patterns of behaviour and communication that have become invisible to be seen. But the IAF members and other facilitators – brought together by Martin Gilbraith – recognised that whilst this role is a powerful and necessary one, there is also a need within organisations for on-going ‘facilitative leadership’ – leaders suspending their role of influencing others in order to involve others. One facilitator at the meeting said he was ready to be part of an organisational hierarchy again, after a decade of being an outside facilitator coming into organisations, in order to play such a role. So becoming an insider, one aware of power hierarchies but able to limit their workings, is part of the answer.

But how to show such facilitative leadership? What does it look like?

San Francisco is one example. Professor Storper and his team at the LSE, whilst trying to work out why such a big gap had opened up in the incomes of San Francisco and L.A, looked at key decisions by city leaders on economic development. They concluded that what mattered was not particular top-down decisions on infrastructure or skills or local taxes, but ‘soft’ factors such as the organisation and culture of the two cities. In L.A there was a decision from on-high to expand the port. In San Francisco the city leaders had played a role in facilitating the formation of “milieu-crossing social networks,” academics, technologists and business heads. In short, it looks messy.

All these encounters make me aware that to transform the world, we need to transform ourselves, and our relationships with others, first. To seek power by exerting power over others is never going to work. To influence the working of power by triggering dialogue is going to work better. But, in a hierarchy, whether with business leaders or political leaders, the imposition of power-over can always reassert itself. Transformative leadership in any context will involve, not impose. This approach can encourage networks, ideas and innovation – as San Francisco has found. But it involves letting go and therefore some bravery; being open to unknown possibilities, letting come.

Transforming self, and society

How to apply this here, and now? A massive open on-line course I’m participating in, ULab, Transforming Business, Society and Self, led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is starting to show the way. How we can listen in a generative way to future possibilities, not only to extract information or to empathise with those with different points of view. Moving beyond merely blaming, and moving towards co-creating, ensuring our energies are poured into a new vision, and not only into trying to stop what those would impose on us. Some activists are not only opposing, but coming together to propose – from Haringey, to Southwark.

I believe such ways of working are urgent if we are to get out of the impasse faced in London with increasing political disengagement, economic crisis endured by many and decisions made without dialogue.

Progressives’ route back to power: standing with the powerless

Is community organising what can bring the Liberal Democrats back out of the wilderness into which the electorate has cast them? The party has an opportunity to give the phrase ‘community politics’ meaning – but the two contenders for its leadership seem wedded to an old campaigning model.

It’s a familiar story. The Labour party hierarchy apparently quietly abandoned its flirtation with community organising in the last Parliament, on the grounds it might mean helping communities challenge Labour councils. A move bemoaned by some in Labour. The party had taken the bold step of seeking advice from Chicago organiser Arnie Graf on how it could work with non-members on issues important to communities. The idea seemed like a master stroke: a way of treating local members as leaders, rather than “drones” taking orders from the party’s headquarters, and of building relationships with all those who would never join a party but feel passionate about things in their area.

In the end, though, whilst the organising ‘wing’ Movement for Change is still there, those at the top of Labour decided that the tried-and-tested method of getting out the vote was more important than building relationships in communities. Cynics have said that Labour politicians holding office did not want power to be shifted to communities from the town halls and constituency offices in which it was held.

I wondered, then, if the Liberal Democrats, which can point to a tradition of community politics, described as a movement to involve those who see themselves as non-political in local issues, would seize the opportunity instead. The former leader Nick Clegg was bemused by the Conservatives’ so-called big idea of a ‘Big Society,’ given what he saw as the empowerment of communities was something his party had already been doing at the local level. But the ‘localism’ he pushed in the Localism Act, whilst well-intentioned, was not truly shifting power: it was in the main setting up new sites for decisions, like area fora, to make council decisions more ‘participatory’. Truly letting go of power is to be happy with communities themselves making power, not being given it. The removal of a clause in the Act allowing local referenda to allow communities to set the agenda after lobbying from council leaders was not supporting communities to take power.

Norman Lamb and Tim Farron need to learn to be comfortable with sharing power – with the powerless

Of the contenders for the leadership, Tim Farron has urged a revival of community politics, letting communities decide what the party campaigns on; and Norman Lamb has urged root-and-branch reform of how the party operates including reviewing whether a Westminster HQ is needed. Both seemed to herald a window of opportunity for a more locally-driven community organising approach in how the party campaigns.

A hustings tonight did not inspire hope. Pleasingly, both said it was important that the party works with non-members: Lamb evoked the Grimmond era, when with few trappings of official power, as now, the party worked with civil society to deliver change. Farron said that many of his volunteers in his constituency are not members. You achieve this, he said, by “inspiring” them to get involved (and Farron is a very inspiring speaker). Less pleasing was the vision of how the party campaigns. His vision for future campaigning? “We will deliver more leaflets than ever before.” Lamb, meanwhile, said that what would sway people was “the force of your ideas”.

Both approaches, either the folksy approach of Farron ‘ “we need to tell the public who we are”; or the clever approach of Lamb – “you don’t fight the welfare cuts by saying no – you come up with an alternative” are flawed. Whilst one uses the heart, the other the head, both essentially involve better getting our message out. This means forcing yourself on others: exerting power in order to gain power. Of course we need a good story, well told, backed by good policy. But campaigning must be more than a one-way conversation.

The liberal approach must be more than simply doing a survey in a leaflet and then using that to come up with a campaign. That leaves people passive or, at best, drone-like, as in the Labour party, doing the groundwork once a campaign has been decided; worse, the most powerless, the ones least likely to read a leaflet and fill in a survey, will be left as those either given up on politics or waiting for some campaigners to speak for them. This is not good enough. Whilst a political party can never give a community power, it can facilitate people building power.

The powerless may start to realise the collective power they have when they come together

In the London election, for example, the Lib Dems could, rather than simply descending on Brixton to tell the populace discriminatory stop-and-search is wrong, as if they didn’t know that, instead ask people on the street about their experiences, and bring those angriest together so they can, stand up for each other and exert power on decision-makers. The same could be done with the experiences of those with Job Centres that are exercising their bureaucratic discretion to issue more benefit sanctions than most. Or any number of other communities of interest with least power.

This will take many out of their comfort zone. It would take longer than simply seizing on an issue that is getting people’s blood boiling, the bandwagon-leaping approach, and telling people, “yes, we agree with you”. But it will mean building relationships with people who might never give us the time of day, and building them to become leaders, even though not all of them will join us. The prize, however, is that we affect change. Contrary to what Farron said tonight, it’s incorrect that the party can now with only eight MPs do “nothing” about the issues it cares about. As Matthew Taylor of the RSA brilliantly put it, to take power, you make power. You affect change outside formal power by building power in communities.

The party would be getting change whilst also getting a second great prize: at the same time increasing its valence, the perception that it can deliver on what it says. No matter how forceful your personality or how well-considered your policy, if you are not seen as having competency on what people care about, you can forget it. Given the party cannot change policy very easily, it needs to do what it can, with others, to change the power dynamics that have a bearing on policy. Standing alongside people rather than promising to sort everything out when you’re far from power is surely the right approach, no?

The answer to a democratic deficit is more democracy, not less

The various apparent faults of our democracy became the dominant topic in a post-election debate held by a forum aiming to make democracy more accessible.

Held in the surprising venue of a Mayfair club given this aim – although one that let everyone in, jacket and tie or no! – the GlobalNet21 discussion centred around what was wrong with our democracy. The narrowness of the debate, the over-mighty influence of the media, the unfair voting system, and the lack of engagement from the electorate themselves all featured in a series of ‘Speakers’ Corner’-style contributions.

With many speakers only selectively referencing those who had already spoken, if at all, it was a good display of our democracy in action: the minority of those enthused talking about what they want to, without necessarily engaging with what others say. A couple of the speakers drew sharp comment for telling the room what we apparently all think, without having heard from or met most of us. This gets to the nub of the issue, I think.

Are politicians really having a conversation with us?

Labour said they had five million doorstep “conversations” during the General Election, but came out of the experience with little apparent understanding of what the electorate wanted. This leads me to speculate that both these people were not being honest – and, indeed, the outgoing Lib Dem cabinet member Vince Cable, losing his seat, said the electorate had “misled” him – but, more importantly, that these were probably not conversations at all. A conversation is two-way; politicians prepared to listen on their failures and on uncomfortable territory, such as on immigration?

Whilst I agreed with all the speakers that the voting system is not fit-for-purpose and the press has disproportionate power and that some important issues are off the agenda, I agreed far more with the final speaker, the facilitator, who commented that most of us had bemoaned “the system”. For we can all take concrete steps to making politics different. I know that it matters how you do activism, and the same goes with the model which aims to change things through the ballot box. Can we have better, different political conversations?

Ones that are not simply about politicians empathising, and then blithely carrying on with whatever policy they’ve been advised to pitch and whatever message they’ve been told to communicate (the messages are in any event savaged by influential people in the losing parties and the policies often regretted by those at the top of winning ones). But conversations where the ins and outs of issues are fully explored. Some would counter that most people have neither the time, inclination or even the ability to grapple with the great issues of the day – indeed, one man at the debate was adamant that the electorate do not care about climate change, they would never back action on it at the ballot box. I disagree. We cannot reach conclusions based on the current lack of deliberation.

Community organising trusts the people to come to decisions

But the experience of citizens juries and deliberative democracy suggests that everybody is, if given the chance and undistorted information, able to contribute to debates, even about complex technological or ethical issues. And if you don’t give us this chance, we – organised communities – will force our way onto your agenda and re-write your policies on, say, the private rental market, whether you like it or not and whatever you think of our abilities.

So instead of losing politicians when losing is deciding to unilaterally re-write policies, as if the answer to an ailing democracy was less democracy, why not talk? Just don’t give us a monologue – as some do at Speaker’s Corner.

On the challenge of training budding community organisers

Training in community organising? But isn’t the whole point of the activity that there we are not bringing knowledge to helpless ’empty vessels’? How can what is essentially an emergent process, something that is born out of interaction, be taught?

Myself and my fellow ACORN London community organiser colleague Jonny Butcher found out it can – to an extent.

We hammered out a two-day workshop that would not be about lectures or taking notes, but which would, nonetheless, distill the workings of what is, after all, a model, an identifiable method of organising that you can apply in different contexts and with different people with similar levels of success – if you do it well!

ACORN London only started in the autumn, meaning we only had a certain amount of experience to draw on – although one trainee at our weekend said it was exciting to be in at the start of something new. She felt that Citizens U.K organising had been too fixed; too constraining. Ours is a model, but also something with a certain flexibility. So we took the trainees through the structure of the 1:2:1, the conversation out of which you start to tap into the motivations and energies people already possess, but they should adapt it in whatever way they feel comfortable – and judge the situation, too.

What works for certain individuals and certain cultures will be different: for example, the energy of an ACORN Canada 1:2:1 is strikingly higher! This said, it is not a free-for-all; there are certain principles for success, such as steadily increasing energy levels, at a level higher than the community member’s – but not too high. And, crucially, the depth

The trainees at the weekend starting to learn the art of listening

of the listening is crucial: to really unpack the problem, to allow them to think what solutions they want to see, and the role they might play in making them happen. To rush this part leaves ‘concern’ at a generic, not deeply felt, level.

We also stressed at the weekend that ACORN U.K was trying out new things not applied elsewhere by ACORN International, such as a staged approach, of meeting people at a stall, say, and then to continue the conversation in greater depth in their home.

After the two days, delivered with the charity overseeing the national community organising programme, Locality, the trainees were for the most part exhilarated and the majority signed up to come out and community organise with us: the only way to learn. Hearteningly, one said at lunch that it was a process that she was prepared to trust, arguing that if you go into it questioning it too much, it certainly will not work.

Now our welcome challenge is to take forward ACORN in Brixton, London and the U.K, to allow everyone to be an activist and everyone to take collective action on the things that concern them. We hope to meet this enthusiasm with both guidance, but also an openness to the trainees’ fresh perspectives and insights. We don’t know it all.