The giant cookie my kid made with the Kids group at Radical Routes Gathering
This weekend I attended my 8th Radical routes gathering. In the last 3 years the network and community has made so much possible - not least being the main source of knowledge and support in the creation of Wirksworth Housing Co-operative where I now live with my two kids.
I used to struggle with existing in ‘activist’ spaces, in spite of being deeply committed to social change in everything I did for from a young age. While very different to the academic field, they were both environments where, in spite of having lots of knowledge and lived experience, I felt patronised and talked over as a working class autistic person. But within radical routes I found my political home, and although I’m deeply committed to the co-operative movement I also think it’s partly to do with the way the network organises around all of the invisible infrastructure, relationships and labour that underpin movement building. So I wrote a poem to explain why our quarterly gatherings are important.
Love & solidarity
We welcome ourselves in
To a world we long to meet
At a gathering that feels like luxury
When the climb to change feels this long and that steep.
But when we practice being present
It's not about escaping from the fight
It's about readying our foundations
To hold more people through the night.
This is love. This is resistance. This is solidarity.
We learn to feel it in our bones right here
So that we can feel it in the streets
Disrupting all the patterns
That we have known from old.
It takes more than just campaigning
If we want to dismantle narratives we were sold.
Every single slow and thoughtful conversation
Is a rehearsal for the time
When we've got to tell that judge, that cop, that bailiff
That if it's my neighbours problem, it's also mine.
This is love. This is resistance. This is solidarity.
Slow down to feel it in your bones right here
So that you can feel it in the streets.
And when we stop in all the chaos
To play games with all the kids
It's not frivolous, it's making sure
they've got the nervous system for all of this.
Because when we are tired or we are gone
They will pick up the fight again
They’ll learn from our mistakes
And continue building communal shelters from the rain
This is love. This is resistance. This is solidarity.
Slow down to feel it in your bones right here
So that you can feel it in the streets.
And when we're still here scrubbing pans
that held food for one-hundred bellies
And you're still there cleaning carpets
from the mud of two-hundred wellies
Thats when we remember
That saving our humanity
Is more than a protest placard
It's our shared reality.
This is love. This is resistance. This is solidarity.
Now we've felt in our bones right here
Let's take it to the streets.