For many people, Trust The People's training for a better, more resonant democracy feels like light in the darkness

Mario Purisic

Following the launch of the Trust the People movement of community organisers (previously profiled here), they have been going from strength to strength. On the eve of their second training course - six weeks, free, online - starting on October 26th (see here), one of the co-founders, Mags Mulowska shares her thoughts below. And after that, embedded below, Mags and co-founder Aneira Roose-McClew talk it through.

Something about Trust the People has caught hearts and imaginations and is helping generate the change we need. 

Some days, when there’s another horrendous piece of news about the climate and ecological emergency, or yet another story of more corruption from our government, it can be so hard to hold on to hope. For many people, Trust the People feels like a light in the darkness.

We were humbled by the phenomenal feedback from the first course this summer. We heard “this training needs to go on and on and on”, “it really does lift your heart and soul”, “couldn’t rate it highly enough, now we’re planning to take over our local council Flatpack style!”

Personally, I am so grateful for it, for the wonderful people inspired by it and for the incredible people I’ve been fortunate enough to build it with, past and present.  

As we develop, Trust the People is expanding its connections with other movements and groups. This second edition of our course includes a guest workshop from the Kurdish Solidarity Network on how People’s Assemblies can federate across regions in different contexts. 

We also have Annabelle MacFadyen delivering a session on neighbourocracy, a way of locally organising across households that originated in India (profiled here in the Daily Alternative) that the people of Frome are adapting to their own circumstances.

As I see it, Trust the People is gathering these democratic innovations - like threads of hope - and accelerating their uptake in the UK so that we can build a greener and fairer society from the grassroots upwards.

The core content of our course covers work on the self first. This means understanding our own identities and biases, and how our personal stories influence our interactions with others. We build on this to think on how to engage our whole communities and think about who is missing from our shared spaces. 

This groundwork is the basis on which we can build legitimate organising structures. We learn about using the People’s Assembly model to discuss ideas, generate solutions and co-create neighbourhood projects.

At the same time. we are building on our partnerships with two important groups:

1.     the Flatpack Democracy campaign: how to reclaim your local council away from party politics. See here for an introduction by Co-founder Will Franks)

2.     the Climate Emergency Centres initiative: a free and legal way of repurposing an unused building in your neighbourhood for community benefit. 

Right now several course graduates are looking at reclaiming their local councils away from party politics and there are now over 8 Climate Emergency Centres being developed in towns across the UK. Community assemblies are taking place across a range of neighbourhoods, addressing racial inequality, saving local green belt campaigns and more.

In the meantime, our relationship with Extinction Rebellion has shifted. In the early days of Trust the People, we had to regularly defend our existence in the movement. Some felt that we had no place in XR unless we started from a clear agenda of ‘Climate and Ecological Emergency’ first, other concerns second.

Whereas Trust the People’s stance is that community organising has to be founded on humility. You can’t share tools of organising and then tell people what they will use those tools for. 

I have to say, making the case for Trust the People was something I really enjoyed. It’s fun being rebellious in a movement of rebels ;-). Now, however, XR’s Feedback and Learning Circle are finding that democracy is something many rebels would like to see the movement focus on. 

Future steps for Trust the People? I’d like to see a mix of XR folk and non-XR folk in the organising team. We have a great range of ages which I’m proud of. We have a lot of work to do though to be representative of the communities we serve in terms of race and disability.

Many of us have families, jobs and other responsibilities and at times our own lives have struggled as we’ve put so much into Trust the People. 

At the same time, it amazes me how much a team of volunteers has been able to achieve. In the face of the gathering darkness that humanity is reckoning with, maybe it’s not a surprise that Trust the People is a light for so many.

See here for the full Trust the People programme starting October 26th.