community: it’s something to practise
There is plenty of hope in the world right now – we find it in collective action. So here is where to look for community.
January felt like a whole year on its own. While the democratic fabric of the western world as we know it is rapidly eroding, there are many stories of resistance with people building something powerful in its wake all around us.
So let’s look at these revolutions big and small, and what they tell us about countering the feeling of hopelessness.
Bangladesh Uprising
In the summer of 2024 Bangladeshi students and workers showed the world what commitment to justice and democracy looks like. In the face of a brutal regime that continuously rigged elections to consolidate its hold on all levers of power, students began a protest that authorities turned into a massacre. Throughout the summer echoes of the violent repression that the police used against workers protesting poverty wages in the months before were clearly evident. Workers themselves recognised this as common struggle and joined the students’ movement.
In response, Sheikh Hasina ordered an Internet shutdown to try and quell the uprising, but by then organising was spreading like wildfire through word of mouth and local communities. Mutual aid networks, providing food, shelter and assistance to injured protesters formed across major cities. The bonds between students, unemployed young people and workers, including thousands of garment workers paved the way to this victory. Together, the people of Bangladesh succeeded. They toppled a despot and ended her reign of suppression of rights.
And we supported them by giving voice to this historic moment, shining a light on a movement that the whole labour movement should be learning from.
On the eve of a general election in Bangladesh, we remember the 1,400 people who lost their lives in the uprising. We hope the next government will learn the lessons of the uprising, and we know that should they need to, the people of Bangladesh are ready to fight for their rights and freedoms.
Protestors during Bangladesh’s 2024 Uprising
Antisweatshop Activists Against Apartheid
What do you do when your government is complicit in a televised genocide, and you discover your revered democratic system is anything but? You try and unravel the ties to the industry you’ve already campaigned in for years to mobilise the community of people you have towards action authorities refuse to take.
Antisweatshop Activists Against Apartheid, which we’re part of, is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a community of people that have found each other through working for justice in the garment industry, who are now focusing the lens on the gravest injustice of our time: the ongoing genocide against Palestinians, and how fashion dresses it up, funds it and gives cover to it.
What makes this a real community is the commitment to sharing information, as well as sharing care. AAAA members do collective research, amplify sources and reject gate-keeping. We also recognise that organising against the Israeli state comes with additional threat to our rights to protest and to free speech, and we protect each other accordingly.
Minneapolis resists ICE
One minute you’re defending other people’s right to existence and self-determination, and the next your own streets are a sight of mass state repression. This has been the experience of organisers in Minneapolis and across Minnesota, many of whom have come through climate, BLM and Palestine struggles.
But the current community response to ICE, Trump’s storm troopers kidnapping, brutalising and murdering citizens on the streets, has been truly impressive – and instructional. Contrary to what some commentators claim, the escalating violence by ICE agents is not an unfortunate result of undertraining, it is a deliberate tactic to instil fear and break the resolve of protestors.
After thousands of citizens signed up to patrol their neighbourhoods, record ICE agents and send out warnings to neighbours, the very act of filming agents became a possible death sentence. This is done to divide the community and make those relatively privileged white Americans who can go home and shut the door to the brutal immigration raids and detention camps do just that. But what Minnesotans understand – and what we must all learn, and learn quickly, is that the bonds of community are all we have. They are our only protection against authoritarianism, against climate disasters, against barbarism.
Community in practice
What these different examples show us is that community is a practice. It’s not about finding the people that agree with you on everything, and sealing yourselves off in a bubble, as tempting as that might be. In fact, it’s sort of the opposite.
Community is built on sharing what we have and what we know with each other. It is also built through real communication. The online world brings down barriers of distance but erects barriers of control and ownership. If we are serious about meeting the political challenges of today, we have to start by meeting on our own terms and on our own turf – at events, protests, even on the pages of good old print.
Building community is about going out and meeting people, being open to knowing your neighbours and what they struggle with, organising spaces of solidarity and support, so when the time comes (and it will come!) and this connection is needed, the trust is there, even if there isn’t full agreement.
As one of the Minneapolis organisers put it beautifully, ‘It’s like building a muscle of solidarity across race, across class’.