In late March and early April, we invited partners and allies from across the social, economic, and environmental justice movements to join a community call. Our aim? To learn from each other's work to transform the economy in the wake of COVID-19; to collectively reflect on shared challenges and opportunities; and explore ideas for how we can stay better connected and engaged to advance common goals.
To do that, we gathered more than 50 partners and allies, experimenting with a new format for sparking conversations online. The result? Valuable insights on the shared challenges of building a just recovery from COVID-19.
From the very positive feedback about the calls, it's clear we're not alone in craving more meaningful ways to connect and strategize on these issues! We heard a number of suggestions about what would be good use of time for future calls, including drilling down on specific issues and more space to find intersections between people’s work. To that end, we’re planning a series of follow up calls—scheduled quarterly—to do just that.
Our plan for the quarterly community calls is to zoom in on a number of key issues raised in the first ones. Namely:
- June—Aligning Demands: In these calls, we’ll share more about how groups are diagnosing the systemic drivers of current crises and what they’re proposing to address them. We’ll unpack questions like: What is “politically feasible” in the current moment? What opportunities are there to connect specific debates to a broader reform agenda? What does an agenda look like that is sufficiently focused, but that represents “first steps” towards more transformative shifts?
- September—Untapping the Potential of Rights: In these calls, we’ll dig deeper into—and brainstorm ways to address—some of the identified challenges in using human rights to frame demands for economic transformation.
- December—Synergies in Strategies: In these calls, we’ll continue to share intelligence about advocacy targets; brainstorm ways to coordinate and combine “insider” and “outsider” tactics to influence them; and bridge gaps between online and offline activism.
Why these issues? They’re cross-cutting, global, determinative of other efforts, and help to identify entry points for transforming the global economic system.
Format for upcoming calls:
We’ll keep the format largely the same, including having collective notetaking and paired conversations. But we’ll give ourselves a bit more time (an extra 15 minutes) and experiment with some different methods as well. Like with the first calls, we’ll share the agenda a week or so in advance.
Our asks from you:
Please complete the Doodle poll to RSVP for the June calls. In the spirit of growing community, we’d also really encourage you to pass on this invitation to one or two others from among your partners and allies who you think might be keen to take part as well. If you do so, please just copy us so we have their contact information to send the agenda, Zoom instructions, etc.