Grassroots Movements
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
- Audre Lorde
Grassroots movements use independent community organisation to effect change, encouraging collective responsibility and self-determination at a local level – usually in order to improve conditions for the whole by setting a precedent for justice. They establish a bottom-up structure, and are therefore considered more democratic, especially among people who might be disenfranchised or even marginalised by the official policy-making system.
New Paradigm
Mainstream culture does not offer ample opportunity for self-determination and autonomous self sufficiency, nor does it provide a solution to the interconnected and systemic problems we now face at a global level – because they are caused by our existing expansive and extractive economic paradigm. Rather, we are manoeuvred into consumerist activity. To build a sustainable and harmonious world—post capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism—we cannot expect the powers built atop these foundations to implement the required changes. They are conservative by design, not to mention wholly dependent on a winners/losers hierarchy.
Traditional democratic infrastructure is proving too slow, too entrenched in the old, outdated ways of doing things to get anything done: let alone in the time we have left for this transition. In grassroots activism, power flows upward, unlike traditional top-down governance; securing outcomes far more quickly and directly than orthodox routes.
Local Enfranchisement
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then surely no one person or group should be granted the lion’s share? So, for infrastructure to answer to respective community needs, they should come directly from those people affected, with direct understanding of collective local needs. Change must come from the ground up if it is to be equitable and reflect the challenges of the day, incorporating the wisdom of those that have lived well with nature for generations and can teach us how to do so in the future, as well as those facing the worst of the converging crises under the present system, with the vital experience to share what is needed to recover.
Resilience-Based Organising is a branch of grassroots activism gaining popularity in communities who have long been ecologically conscious, but who realise after ongoing systemic failures that transformation will only come from collective action. Implementing policies that have been directly and democratically agreed upon by those affected (although not legally “sanctioned”) by issues such as pollution, corporate colonialism, climate change, and environmental racism, is a way of practicing resilience, adapting expediently and at a local level when the wider system won’t bend to address the issue.
Systemic problems require systemic solutions and connected approaches, and these organisations will often form a wider network of relationships among themselves, demonstrating the power of solidarity between movements. They don’t ask permission because they refute the legitimacy of the Powers That Be telling them what they can or can’t do to protect their lands and livelihoods.
Contesting for power is therefore another aspect of this movement: meaning if it’s the right thing to do, we have every right to do it (which comes in response to accusations of criminality from officials). Resilience-Based Organisers have been known to follow the mantra “Take back, make productive, contest the title”, proving by way of subsequent successes that their reoccupation of privatised land is mutually beneficial for people and planet, and therefore inherently justified – according to Earth jurisprudence.
Visions of Change
As said by the organisation Movement Generation, “What has anchored so much transformative organizing is a willingness to articulate a bold vision worth working for”. Grassroots activism is so transformative because it provides workable, sensitive solutions to global problems based on the insight of those worst impacted by systemic issues, then amplified via connection with broader communities. These movements show how the transition to justice can be best guided by the people facing the worst injustices—supported by a wider network—and by us acknowledging our place as part of nature in addressing a broad range of interconnected crises.
