Why We Need Social Movements

Anastasia (not her real name) has a son on the autistic spectrum. To access any kind of resources for him, she had to wait four years to get an official diagnosis, by which point her son was already six. The waiting lists for assessments are so long that another parent with a special needs child set up a private centre with subsidised rates so that parents can know what their children need – while they are still children. Her then partner had to take a case with the ombudsman in order to get minimal treatment from inexperienced staff, and go through a lengthy appeal process in order to be entitled to carer's leave. They now have to fight with the school and the teacher to get them to take their son's condition at all seriously in daily classroom work. Despite having to pursue this route, Anastasia does not feel that the official psychiatric diagnosis, or the practices in which their son's special needs assistant have been trained, really describe or help his situation very well; and she has deep-seated questions about how and why he is on the spectrum – but also why school and society are organised in such a way that it is excruciatingly difficult for autistic people to function within them. After all, school supports will mostly cease in children's teens or at best early adulthood; and all being well children outlive their parents. How are they to survive? With other parents, she has set up a local group which provides supports to parents and carers and helps people fill out welfare forms and campaigns for changes in the system: the local health board now refers parents with autism to them rather than changing its own practice. Because of her own health situation Anastasia is limited in her energy, but she also holds down two part-time jobs, in a community centre and an alternative school project.

Seán is a 'nice boy from a good family', but never really fitted into the macho world around him, partly because his parents were immigrants and partly because he was attracted to men as well as women. From an early age, he read intensively and in his teenage years became deeply affected by the suffering and injustice in the world. In his personal life, but also his work as a mental health nurse, he tries to act in ways that take all of this on board – challenging sexist and racist stereotypes among his colleagues, not eating animals, helping organise the local union branch – while also joining in more political actions when he can, from antiwar politics as a student to involvement in local food projects as an adult. In the small town where he now lives in another country, there is a real crisis situation around undocumented migrants, racist organising and Syrian refugees. Seán tries not only to help organise welcome and support structures as well as language classes for the newcomers, but also to develop anti-racist activities for local working-class youth.

Pat came from a very difficult family background and struggled to bring her sons up on a working-class estate without them falling victim to addiction or the police. She is a resourceful woman: when her sons' friends were hanging around the alleyway behind her house smoking dope, she used her comfortable 'mammy' persona to invite them in for a cup of tea. As teenage lads, they didn't quite know what to do except to come in and look embarrassed. Over the years she gradually won their confidence, not lecturing them about what they should be doing but listening as they talked about the lack of any obvious future; the way teachers, shopkeepers and respectable citizens treated them; harassment by the police; and the deaths of their friends by suicide or overdose. Slowly but surely she helped them to reflect more on the power relations underlying this situation, and as they did so they also found it easier to take charge of their own lives in many ways. She now spends a lot of time working with women's groups from council estates like her own, helping them think more about how society is organised and how they can improve things locally. She supported her daughter in her many battles with school authorities and is delighted that she calls herself a feminist.

MOVEMENTS ARE EVERYDAY THINGS

I could multiply these examples indefinitely, but these three snapshots give something of the sense of the down-to-earth and everyday nature of most social movement organising. In fact it is so down-to-earth that people involved often refuse the label of 'activist' and strongly resist the idea that they are doing anything special or different. Just like those around them, they say, they try to help when they can.

Indeed, they are likely to feel that they cannot do enough to respond to all the suffering they are conscious of, and this points to something important: few people are full-time, lifelong organisers. It is very common to dip in and out of different movements and activism (a word I use for lack of a better one) throughout people's whole lives. This is just as well: otherwise, movements would consist of the same handful of people, with probably very little resonance in workplaces or communities. Instead, sometimes – by no means all the time – people feel strongly enough, or strongly affected enough, about a particular issue or campaign that they decide to get involved, whether or not they have done so before.

Total newcomers often bring a great blast of energy and confidence, and a refreshing lack of awareness that some areas or groups may be hostile to movements, and these can be huge strengths. As Facebook groups previously devoted to gossiping about each other start sharing videos of police violence, or as friends or neighbours turning out for a march on an issue they are outraged about take a week to produce a brilliant banner together, there is a great jolt of life for movements and longer-term organisers.

But whether we are first-time participants, long-time organisers, occasional participants or for that matter observers keeping our distance, as soon as you start looking you see that social movements are everywhere. Not all the time, certainly, and not equally successful. This is part of what defines 'normality': since movements come together in part to challenge the way things are, 'normality' means precisely those times and places in which the social institutions and routines that suit the powerful, the wealthy and the culturally privileged are not significantly challenged. Even in periods of utter normality, however, people still come together to fight where they have to – to protect their children, in their workplaces or communities; and other people still resist injustice, whether official support for wars and dictatorship abroad or ecological destruction at home, even when they have little hope of success.

A lot of this activity is very mundane: the support group, the...