Onwards and upwards...

This post was first published just over a month ago on our sister blog, Stirrings from below. It was one of a series of fairly introspective posts looking at where that blog and also, this At the grassroots project was going. Sometimes, you have to take a few steps back to look at things, decide what is and isn’t working, and then move on. This post was a part of that process. In the interests of transparency, we’re re-posting it here on At the grassroots. A few minor amends have been made for the sake of context.

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In this post published a short while ago, I said that I’d be taking my foot off the gas for a bit when it comes to blogging so that I could have the time and space to think about where this project is going: Something feels...off… 5.4.25. Part of that process has involved walking out into our local countryside to try to find some piece and quiet, to escape the cacophony of the modern world, even if it’s only for a few hours. This includes getting closer to nature, the importance of which I wrote about in this post: A message to the nature hating bastards 10.4.25.

The next stage of the process is to greatly reduce my consumption of social media, in particular, the rage porn and divide and rule bullshit that’s too much of a feature on the X (formerly known as Twitter) platform. Weaning myself off social media has proved harder than I was expecting. Still, it has to be done, if only for the sake of my mental health!

This process of partial withdrawal and some necessary introspection is ongoing and is continuing into May. Part of it involves being honest about where I’ve veered off in the wrong direction, particularly when it comes to outrage and rage baiting without offering any solutions. This was something I started to address in this post, albeit I still have a lot of work to do in this area: Getting away from the fear porn merchants, rage baiters, pedants and grifters 30.12.24.

The direction I want to go in increasingly tends towards prefigurative action – starting to build the world we want and setting up the parallel systems we need in the here and now. This is something I wrote about in this post: The whole point is to bloody well change things! 21.2.25.

It’s easy to know what you’re against in a dysfunctional, unsustainable and increasingly dystopian world. Railing against the world we have to endure may make you feel better but…does it lead to positive change? We know that the political, economic and social system we inhabit is rapidly heading towards its use by date and that we have to bring about radical change if we’re going to survive. There are many ways of bringing about the change that’s needed. What this project is about is what can be done in the here and now to boost sustainability, community cohesion and neighbourhood resilience in an increasingly volatile world. It’s about building the new world we need and want in the decaying shell of the old one we currently endure.

One of the key parts of what At the grassroots is about is this – The Directory. It lists a wide range of grassroots projects and initiatives in Bristol, Bath and the surrounding region. These range from community vegetable gardens and food banks through to local campaigning groups and social centres amongst others. Each of these projects in their own way, offer a glimpse of what a future world could look like if we could work co-operatively with each other at the level of the neighbourhood.

To help promote At the grassroots, we’ve brought out a paper. There are a number of events coming up which we plan to attend so we can hand out papers and have some meaningful face to face conversations with people. We’re also on the lookout for any venues sympathetic to what At the grassroots is trying to achieve to take bundles of the papers for their patrons to read and take away. Ultimately, what we want from distributing the At the grassroots papers is for people to be inspired to start taking action where they live. As has already been mentioned, the whole point is to bloody well change things!

The paper is part of an overall plan to move back towards more analogue based ways of conducting our activity: Moving back towards analogue? 28.2.25:

Many people have reached a point of digital overload to the point where a) they feel overwhelmed and b) they want more in the way of real life, face to face contact and also, printed reading material instead of just staring at a screen. My gut feeling is that there’s a bit of a turn against the digitisation of many aspects of our lives and a desire to step off the digital treadmill and back to a more human way of interacting with each other.

Stickers are another way of getting a message across. Even if they only stay up for a couple of days before being removed by the council, or torn down by people who don’t agree with the message, given the way our reach on social media is getting throttled out of existence, they’ll be seen by a lot more eyeballs than anything we’d post up on X. Both the paper and the stickers are a manifestation of our commitment to start shifting the balance of our propaganda back towards analogue.

To return to the main theme of this post, we’re about doing what we can to facilitate change from the grassroots upwards. In the past on the Stirrings from below blog, I’ve been guilty of letting off steam by ranting about issues that grind my gears without offering anything resembling a roadmap towards a solution. Ranting for the sake of it may satisfy the doom mongers but, it’s doing absolutely nothing to build the world we want. The same applies to some of the intellectual grandstanding and ‘oh so clever’ analysis I’ve seen on a number of blogs where the faults of the current system are ruthlessly exposed but, no roadmap has been offered as to how we find a solution.

Given the situation we’re in where building an alternative to the dystopian shit show we currently have to endure is an urgent priority, ranting and grandstanding simply isn’t good enough. So, from this point onwards with Stirrings from below, once it’s fully back up and running, offering some ideas for solutions and ways to bring about radical change will hopefully, feature more in our posting.