In this Fellow-led online COVID-19 conversation, activists and community organisers explored ways to strengthen collaborative forces and build solidarities across different movements.
The COVID-19 crisis is overlapping with a wave of international activism following the police murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others in the US and elsewhere. This month, the bronze statue of slave owner Edward Colston has been removed from its plinth in Bristol and cast into the harbour where slave ships once docked. Minneapolis City Council has voted to disband its police force. The city of Ferguson, where Michael Brown’s 2014 killing sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, elected its first black and female mayor.
Since December last year in India, there have been historic, nationwide protests against discriminatory citizenship laws, led by ordinary Muslim women, disbanding just days before the lockdown. There are ongoing protests in Hong Kong, despite many setbacks, including the latest security law imposed by China. There are young people in Nepal self-organising through socially distanced peaceful protests to demand accountability and change in the country’s COVID-19 strategy. These are acts of collective justice – led by black and brown activists – for the restoration of our collective dignity.
Academic, journalist and activist Gary Younge makes the point that: “It does not follow that because the pandemic has illustrated a range of inequalities and inequities the state will address them. Indeed, if anything the government will desperately try to exploit them to reshape the world in its own ideological image. It wouldn’t be the first time we demanded an overhaul of ‘the entire infrastructure of justice’ and ended up with more injustice.” Organised movements, therefore, have to find ways of talking to each other and supporting each other better.
COVID-19 has made us revisit important questions about the struggle for change. What makes social movements work? What makes these movements stronger, and what lessons can we learn from challenges and successes? How do we connect with one another in a concerted way during the pandemic? How can social movements win against the might of the power-wealth-elite-politics nexus in this moment, and how do we stop society from going back to business as usual afterwards?
We heard from Joey Hasson, who shared his experiences of movement-building and helping to forge strong collective community power in South Africa and the UK, and Leanne Sajor, who spoke on civil and political rights in the Philippines amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and lifting up the work of the country’s civil society organisations as they fight against a repressive Anti-Terrorism Bill.
Richard Wallace from Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity discussed his work with the project Equity And Transformation, which serves Black Chicagoans working in the informal economy who have been hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis. Michael Wamaya from Project Elimu in Kenya talked about alternative arts education through ballet, nurturing and mentoring vulnerable children in informal settlements in Nairobi.
We also had a live performance by Kathputli Colony Artists from Delhi, India and a video contribution from the young musicians of Tinderbox Collective.
Panelist
Joey Hasson
Joey Hasson is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and a Senior Programme Officer for Human Rights at Sigrid Rausing Trust. He has spent over a decade working with grassroots movements and political campaigns that challenge systemic inequalities, in both South Africa and the UK.
Panelist
Leanne Sajor
Leanne Sajor is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and an intersectional and internationalist feminist from the Philippines. She has spent the past 10 years as a feminist organiser and advocate, working with grassroots groups and civil society organisations to address inequalities and amplify social justice agendas. She is currently the Director of the Funders for a Just Economy Program at the Neighborhood Funders Group.
Panelist
Richard Wallace
Richard Wallace is a community organizer and the Deputy Director of the Workers Center for Racial Justice and an Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity. His work focuses on organizing black workers to confront the impact of economic disparities in housing, education, and employment. As a formerly incarcerated Chicago native, Wallace returned to his community to empower black workers.
Panelist
Michael Wamaya
Michael Wamaya works for Project Elimu in Kenya delivering alternative arts education through ballet, and nurturing and mentoring vulnerable children in informal settlements in Nairobi. As a dance instructor, he combines the teaching of dance skills with social skills. Within our programme, we explore the individual human potential and creativity in a much broader sense: who they are, what they think and believe, what they want for their futures, which has brought them a lot of confidence and self-esteem.
Performer
Kathputli Colony Artists
Kathputli Colony is a colony of street performers in Shadipur Depot area of Delhi. For the last 50 years, it is home to some 2,800 families of magicians, snake charmers, acrobats, singers, dancers, actors, traditional healers and musicians and especially puppeteers or kathputli-performers from Rajasthan.
Performer
Tinderbox Collective
From grass-roots youth work to award-winning arts and music productions, Tinderbox Collective is a creative community of young people, musicians, artists and youth workers. Tinderbox aims to ignite a spark in people – one which fills them with confidence, imagination and sense of possibility, and which enables people to achieve things they never thought possible. Its work uses music and the arts to bring people together and strengthen communities, providing exciting opportunities that support young people to build their confidence, skills, self-esteem, and professional experience.
Chair
Crystal Simeoni
Crystal Simeoni is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and the Director of Nawi: Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective, an organisation working on a Pan African feminist framing of macro level economics. Her career has revolved around themes of inequalities, including economic inequality and gender inequality, and has also involved work around data.
Chair
Jack Nissan
Jack Nissan is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, a musician, and the founding director of Tinderbox Collective, a diverse community of young people, musicians, and artists. Through a range of activities - from creative youth clubs to alternative orchestras, young band nights, game design, arts festivals and events - Tinderbox Collective supports people to build their confidence and creativity, and explore what they have to say through music and the arts.
Banner Image: Photo by Amnesty International Kenya
