Eight - Relational ethics and transformative community organising in the neo-liberal US context

Summary

Introduction

Throughout the world, recent decades have been marked, at least in part, by instability and inequality as evidenced by the growing impacts of climate change, economic crisis, terrorism and racism/xenophobia. Tied up in the extractivist and growth-oriented economy of neo-liberal capitalism, the era is distinguished by the grave dangers of climate disasters and threats of mass extinction. In an economy based on infinite growth that extracts from both the environment and workers and that facilitates gross profits for the few, resulting in a shrinking middle class and desperate forms of poverty and suffering for many, some believe that we are at a tipping point (Korten, 2006; Klein, 2014). Other social issues, such as racism and xenophobia, are foregrounded as continued domination of others in the neo-liberal era has been actualised through increased policing of borders, militarisation, incarceration and retrenchment of basic public social welfare supports (Alexander, 2010; Reisch, 2013). Moreover, in a globalised context, the interrelatedness among issues such as racial justice, immigrant rights, worker well-being and environmental justice is coming more sharply into focus. There is good evidence that timehonoured, reform-oriented organising is not enough to gain the kind of traction needed to create change; rather, something far more transformative for both people and planet is required.

Scholar-activists such as David Korten, Joanna Macy, and Grace Lee Boggs have identified the current times as ‘a Great Turning’, marked by a shift from an extractivist growth-oriented society to one that is life-sustaining. Grace Lee Boggs, who was a Chinese immigrant to America, and an educator and community organiser based in Detroit, Michigan, wrote:

My hope is that as more and different layers of the American people are subjected to economic and political strains and as recurrent disasters force us to recognize our role in begetting these disasters, a growing number of Americans will begin to recognize that we are at one of those great turning points in history. Both for our livelihood and for our humanity, we need to see progress not in terms of ‘having more’ but in terms of growing our souls by creating community, mutual self-sufficiency, and cooperative relations with one another. (2012: 133–4)

Enter transformative organising. Aligned with transformative justice and transformative social change, transformative organising seeks this kind of sea change through the evolution of self, the economy, institutions, and social policies and practices (Mann; 2011; Dixon, 2014; Pyles, 2014, 2018; Brown, 2017).