Kin, community organising & more

The story of my work isn’t unique but I’m proud of it. At some point I stopped thinking about how bad our ecological, economic and social crises were and I began taking the little actions that I could. I joined demonstrations and marches and then I started to organise them: events with tens of thousands of amazing people, giant art installations symbolising the thousands of children killed in Gaza or the hundreds of small boats risking the channel crossing to a hostile environment.

But the drivers of the issues we face are systemic and the solutions to them require a different kind of organising. My analysis isn’t unique either – reinventing the wheel takes time away from practical action. I dream of a system based on communities allocating resources democratically to where they are needed to create a fair, thriving, sustainable, innovative economy. To achieve this requires grassroots democratic, worker and community-led organising and a cultural shift towards one that puts cooperation, humanity and healthy ecosystems above competition.

We also need the right tools. After years of researching and trying different approaches, I came across the tradition of savings clubs used by communities around the world. With the help of an amazing team, specialist lawyers and the wonderful Ben Mango, we created Kin Cooperative: a financial mutual aid platform. Effectively, Kin allows groups to create mini credit unions based on mutual aid rather than trying to make profit by charging interest. We have hundreds of members already but we dream of this old idea empowering communities across the country in conjunction with other kinds of organising to prefigure the world we want to live in – one not based on amplifying scarcity but on sharing and care.

If you want to read more about Kin and the other organising work I am involved in, read my writings below, subscribe to my newsletter or visit kin.coop.