Presentation

Against the dark backdrop of the Coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, Europe was experiencing the “first pandemic of liquid modernity” (Bauman, 2013). Across our various social bubbles in which we desperately sought safety, the phrase “we won’t go back to normality, because normality was the problem” became widespread.

Discussing this idea in-depth would require too much space (and would be off topic), but the sentence gives us a useful measure of the distance between those who immediately saw the structural issues within our society at the root of the pandemic crisis, and the rest of the world who sought desperately to go back to normal. Acknowledging this distance is the only hope we have of achieving progressive political change.

Let us just consider the situation: the human costs of the pandemic, the problems with crisis management at all institutional levels, the political elections going on in several countries, the directives about post-crisis recovery, social behaviours and, last but not least the recent conclusions of Cop26 suggesting that lots of things were wrong before and during COVID. So going back to the slogan mentioned above, the point is that we won’t be able to go back to any normality: we are already in a new kind of normality, that is much worse than before.

Why social mobilisation is crucial to social, ecological and gender justice?

Many factors contribute to the current picture, and most of them are hard to identify. On the one hand, the unexpected suspension of ordinary life during COVID has been gradually followed by a reset. This, in turn, has generated another huge rupture. On the other hand, this is a matter of collective thinking, relational and dialectical capabilities. The divergence in our analyses and feelings regarding this huge event (even though it provides few clues to solve the emerging political puzzle) is also central

All in all, though, what is certainly lacking in this phase is social mobilisation.

With some limited and disputable exceptions, this is a huge absence in such troubled times. Firstly, without collective mobilisation, we cannot build collective thinking. Secondly, mobilisation is essential to outweigh other, more powerful forces, that appeared at the start of the pandemic.

If we look at the past, regardless of geography, the power of social mobilisation is obvious for everyone to see. Mobilisation varies notably in forms, languages, and contents, but it always has powerful effects. We should be aware that no political change can exist without it.

However, politics does change without social mobilisation, as the pandemic has reminded us.

This is why we cannot achieve gender, ecological and social justice without focusing on how to mobilise people. Social mobilisation works as a magical ingredient in all issues and all struggles: it is the explosive mixture necessary to convert a political agenda into a process of change.

Is everything lost? – My personal experience with this cooking method

At the periphery of Western Europe where I live (in the city of Napoli), many things do not work. Uncertainty is a structural pillar of collective and individual life. Social, gender and ecological injustice have a gory and explicit face.

Informed by a certain number of stereotypes that for a long time have painted the city where I was born as a paradise inhabited by devils, intersectional inequalities lead to periodical explosions. Of course, Napoli is no isolated case, but it is the context where I have been able to actively participate in some immersive disruptions of normality over the last twenty years.

At different steps of involvement, I have participated in “multitudinous     ” mobilisations on education, war, economic and employment conditions, waste management, pollution and “commons     ” (i.e. all kinds of goods that, for their intrinsic nature and/or social function, cannot be considered neither public nor private). All these events have taught me something different and given me tools and inputs to want to achieve political change. The most important lesson I have learned is that timing is certainly important, but the time for change never expires.

Warnings

Salt cod is one of the most delicious and popular dishes in the world. It is prepared in hundreds of different ways, depending on local cultural and social traditions. The critical point when it comes to mobilisation is, like salt cod, there is no single recipe. How do we go about comparing the October revolution with the Lutheran reform? What do the Arab springs and the Polish Women’s movement have in common? How about the strategies of acampadas and Black Lives Matter? What is the relationship between the Kurd’s Democratic Confederation and youth protests in Hong Kong? Heterogeneity and complexity are the main rules of communities’ mobilisation and cannot be reduced to one single recipe.

We can only suggest a few ingredients that might be of use to you.

Ingredients

Listening. If you think that people will mobilise just by listening to your solutions, you will certainly fail. The first ingredient for organising is to listen to people, to their problems, their feelings. This should not be a rhetorical exercise, but a real research and study process, where a high grade of humility and curiosity are needed.  

Communication. Speaking well does not mean that people will listen to you. Quality communication is needed to mobilise your group. Quality communication means ability in transmitting ideas, sharing emotions, finding solutions for common issues. It is an exchange based on      social (not vertical) relations.

Activity. The difference between a communicator and an activist is that listening and communication are followed by actions. It seems banal, but often people think that communication is enough and someone else will act. Activity is a crucial ingredient: it is a way of life. Activity also means being flexible, open-minded, and able to experiment with different praxes for different cases.

Pragmatism. For utopist s, pragmatism often sounds like a bad word. However, it is hard to mobilise people starting from abstract topics. The best way to raise political issues is to talk and fight      about small and pragmatic      things. Just think of the famous slogan Bread & Roses, and of the role it played in historical strikes and protests, inspiring millions of people to act.

Imagination. Here is where the ingredients end, and where preparation starts. Imagination is needed to find unexpected solutions, to make people love and fall in love with the idea of change (for love is a huge catalyst for transformation), to fill the motivational gap arising over time due to the slow progress and modest results of your action. Imagination is not only creativity, it is the mechanics behind mobilising people.

Preparation

I am sorry… but everyone should experiment with their own preparation…! By mixing the suggested ingredients, everyone can find their route. Be wary of those that try to impose on you their recipe: they are clearly skipping the first ingredient!

Starting from 1994, Caminar preguntando has been the key concept behind a prototype of durable, sizable and innovative contemporary mobilisation: the Zapatist revolution in Chiapas. Following this methodological approach, the indigenous people of South-East Mexico have experimented with a mix of practices that have dramatically cut off the history of Latin-American guerrilla, bursting into worldwide politics and reclaimed the dignity they had lost with the constitution of the Mexican State. The lesson offered to us by the Zapatists, though, is not to replicate their practices, but to “make the road by walking” ourselves. Be brave and good luck!

TIPS

If you are curious to know more about how others have mobilised communities in their own local contexts, or about a few of the things I have cited in this recipe, you may want to check out the reading list below:

Bauman, Z. (2013). Liquid modernity. John Wiley & Sons.

Davis, A. (1981). Women, Race and Class.

Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire.

Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2009). Commonwealth.

Korolczuk, E., 2016. Explaining mass protests against abortion ban in Poland: the power of connective action. Zoon politikon, 7(7), pp.91-113.

Mattina, A.F., 2009. Bread and Roses Strike. The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, pp.1-2.

Ocalan, A. (2002). Beyond state, power, and violence.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action.

Petrillo, A. (2009). Biopolitica di un rifiuto. Le rivolte antidiscarica a Napoli e in Campania.

Subcomandante Marcos (2005). Conversations with Durito: Stories of Zapatistas and Neoliberalism.

Subcomandante Marcos & Yvon Le Bot (1997). El sueño zapatista