I am in my 78th year and there are reflections made necessary by a changed intention in life. The intention of activism - ‘organising’ - is finally set aside, after an adult lifetime; after being resumed eight years back and pursued in the Robinistas network, in meet.coop and in `commons.hour`: finally, set aside.
- Robinistas - meet.coop - commons.hour
The fresh and I hope now settling intention that stands in its place - the doing and making that I mean to practice, specifically in *A book of skill* - is to write as before (in the noughties and teensies, in *Humble origins*) more personally and reflectively; but now in public. Humble origins
These eight years have made a large, deep difference. For one thing, engaging with the world of the Robinistas has meant coming into relation, late in a life, with the important reality of global civil society: ‘blessed unrest’ (Hawken 2007). Before I've been concerned day-upon-day with the remaking of work, in the sense of wage work (while embroiled myself in wage work: a lifetime as ‘a worker’ in struggle), and for 30 years with digital mans and (regenerative, renewed) skill in workplaces. In Robinista-space I've needed to engage with the passionate and essential work of civil society organising, and - not centrally, but necessarily - its digital means. Blessed unrest Hawken 2007
Most centrally, I’ve needed to discover what kind of affective, and then practical, relationship I can cultivate and sustain with the full and significant scope of commitments in ‘the mutual sector’ Mutual sector
# Patience? Solidarity? I found myself impatient, for example, with folks whose commitment is `Rescue`: for example, rescuing migrants in miserable persecution, poverty, entrapment. Migrants from Syria were a triggering instance; I found myself with a deep gut impulse to pack an AK47 and go blast the kneecaps off the entire pathetic Asad warlord dynasty. Rescue
My gut response was: The labour of fishing people out of the torrent of suffering is endless; for god’s sake, go upstream, prevent those who ceaselessly push them into the torrent in the first place: ruling classes, warlords, financiers and rentiers, oligarchs, demagogues, crazy charismatics, relentless acquisitors, apparatchiks, coupon clippers. And it took time to accept that this commitment to Rescue is recurrent and necessary and inescapable: being powerfully moved by the suffering of actual persons, some people will always commit in this way (will always gain connection and justification and identity in this way) no matter how endless the labour.
Through this and other reflections, eventually I found I could list ‘Seven Rs’ of persistent, inescapable mutual sector commitment, and to begin to practice both compassionate solidarity and practical relationship with the entire range of activist life commitments. In meet.coop in 2020-2023, the Seven Rs provided a main element in shaping and conducting `commons.hour` as a practice of moving *beyond the fragments* in our community of members. Seven Rs Beyond fragments
So: coming to inhabit the world of blessed unrest, gaining the vision of Seven Rs of mutual sector commitment and solidarity, resuming the 80s’ feminist-socialist commitment to movement beyond fragments: these are significant alterations in the relationships out of which I now will necessarily write ‘personally’, in the newly emergent life of a post-organiser.
> What about `Resistance`?
--- > There are further branches to this, opened out on subsequent days. Watch here for a list . . .