Collective Liberation
This reflection is dedicated to Shilbee Kim, an anti-oppression educator, passion coach and exceptional human being who works to bring about a future of collective liberation.
Liberation is defined as the act of setting someone or one’s self free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression; release.
In the words of People and Planet; student action on world poverty and the environment, ‘Collective liberation means recognizing that all of our struggles are intimately connected, and that we must work together to create the kind of world we know is possible. We believe that every person is worthy of dignity and respect, and that within systems of oppression everyone suffers. Collective Liberation is not just a value, but an action. When we work together across the barriers kept in place to divide us, we strengthen our organising. When combined, our diverse identities and experiences give us the tools to dismantle systems of economic, political and social oppression, and to create a world in which all people are seen as fully human.’
For the past several years I worked with The United Church of Canada’s innovation team, partnering churches, universities, municipalities and friendship centres and hosting day-long social enterprise challenges. These events were much like the popular CBC show Dragon’s Den, except instead of venture capitalists buying equity from a scalable start up, anyone with an idea to make the world a better place was welcomed to join and receive free support from mentors. As a community collaborating rather than just competing, participants were supported in operationalizing their idealism and building tangible business plans to bring a product or service to market. The day ended with a mini pitch competition where judges awarded nominal grants to the top participants.
I found great meaning and purpose bringing together participants of every gender, ability, age and worldview to work together and bring a form of love and justice into the world. The ideas brought forward were as diverse as the participants who attended, usually motivated by personal experience and ranged from mobile phone applications aiming to address culturally appropriate mental health care to water sanitation solutions and the gamut in between. The common denominator was that they all sought a positive change in the world through the use of a market mechanism, that is, by selling a product or service that would allow for a more just way of being in relationship with one another and the earth. For the entirety of my time organizing these collaborative events across Turtle Island, I had a growing awareness of the limitations of what I was trying to achieve among other concerns.
While I was immensely grateful to create community spaces based on the common cause of creating positive social change, I also feared that I was at best training an army of neo-capitalists. I felt I was perpetuating the narrative that the primary and best way to seek social and structural change was through market mechanisms, by creating, buying and selling socially and environmentally responsible products and services. At worst, I feared I was contributing to a Neoliberal Takeover of Social Enterprise.
It can be tempting for members of oppressed or marginalized groups of people (anyone who doesn’t have an equal opportunity to pursue employment or social freedom as others in dominant identities) to pursue an individualized form of liberation, most often achieved through economic liberation. This is to say, freedom through amassing enough wealth to shelter one from the pain, suffering and injustice of the world…at least within eye and earshot. This kind of wealth allows one to drink fine liquors on islands in the sky, fly to Caribbean islands for weekend getaways (outside pandemic times, or during them if one really assumes no accountability for public safety) and generally avoid engaging in labour or spending time in places that are anything less than fully manicured to one’s personal tastes and desires.
In my former role, working through an anti-oppression lens, I felt I was creating spaces for people seeking justice; Women, Indigenous Peoples, folks living in poverty, folks with disabilities, immigrants, queer folk. Through the project they sought to build and scale, they were being encouraged to seek justice through an offering that can be commodified and sold. Not discounting economic justice, this is a tricky thing to grapple with because we do indeed need the proliferation of ethically produced products and services that not only respects, but reveres and honours labour, land and Spirit and moves wealth to the margins. In addition, I have a great deal of respect for those who do this kind of market-oriented work, such as my friends Stefan Hostetter and Barnabe Geis who support early stage entrepreneurs working to decarbonize our atmosphere at the Climate Ventures accelerator in Toronto.
As I came of age and was politicized and radicalized against the structures of white supremacist, hetero-patriarchal settler state hegemony, I learned the three main approaches to social change as markets, policy and culture. Not only are these approaches not mutually exclusive, but they are actually interconnected and positively reinforce one another. This could look like a policy that bans single use plastics catalyzing a market for compostable and reusable cutlery or bags. Such a transformative policy, I believe, is largely achieved through constituents pushing their elected officials to take structural action. Folks may have become aware and inspired to act on the plastics problem from a film produced by a public agency such as the National Film Board, who might have reserved certain grants for environmental awareness films. This is an example of how policy, culture and markets are inextricably intertwined.
While markets and policy can be powerful tools for social change, I believe that culture has the potential to be far more agile, dynamic and transformative. I am most inspired by radical groups of activists, faith communities, neighborhood associations and everyday citizens of humanity who don’t wait for policies or market solutions but step forward for each other and take in the homeless, feed the hungry and share their time, resources and skills without financial remuneration. I don’t wish to encourage the neoliberal narrative that is solely individuals’ responsibility to create change. Rather, I wish to hold a healthy tension between the palliative work of caring for immediate needs and midwifery of structural and policy-based solutions to address chronic social problems.
Culture affects consumer behavior by creating an understanding of situations that compel consumers to live their economic-solidarity through social procurement; for example purchasing of goods and services from businesses run by Black, Indigenous, people of colour, queer folks, folks living with disabilities, women and others who may experience structural barriers to dignifying their existence within capitalism. Shifts in culture also bring in more advocates to push governments to change policies that bring more structural shifts.
In a world where we primarily express our values, however consciously or not, through what we spend our money on, we must ask ourselves what collective liberation might look like without centering economic solidarity. How do we think of others’ struggles as intersecting with our own and how do we respectfully share the burdens in the struggle for liberation?
In the wake of George Floyd’s state-execution that set off worldwide actions and cascading conversations around white supremacy, media organizations producing news and fictional content are rethinking the ways in which they portray BIPOC folks and companies are prioritizing diversity and inclusion. These changes did not come about through policy changes or market-demand but rather by folks demanding accountability for centuries of harm.
The climate activist group founded in the U.K., Extinction Rebellion, is a radical group that brings attention to the urgency of climate action by causing disturbances in public spaces to signal that we can no longer go about living our lives as usual without cataclysmic effects. This is a poignant tactic used by movements but largely for more immediate causes such as hunger strikes for prisoner rights or folks who occupy public spaces to bring attention to a given cause.
Given the current state of lockdown and limited opportunity to go out, inward is a great place to go. It is a great time to reflect on what Bob Marley asks in his song So Much Things To Say, “who you are, and where you stand in the struggle.” The current moment holds an incredible opportunity to deconstruct what we believe about how the world works and what it might look like as we emerge from the rubble of the economic and social fallout from Covid-19. How might we create long-lasting structural change by shifting our culture? The answer might lie in what Paulo Freire dubbed, Conscientization, in his seminal book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a process by which individuals and communities develop a critical consciousness through a process of reflection and taking action against oppressive elements in one’s life. My dad recently told me that he read a prescription on how to stay balanced during the lockdown in three easy steps; exercise, do something for others, and learn something. With a plethora of critical journalism and webinars on prison-abolition, anti-racism, poverty eradication and all the many forms of awareness and activism, this is a rich and Kairos time for individual and collective learning. By committing to raise our consciousness of each other’s struggles, we poise ourselves for meaningful action based on the understanding of our intertwined fates as we journey toward collective liberation.
