The Freedom Tour (driven by Trust the People) will be romping through the UK this summer, stoking up youthful hope everywhere
The Trust The People network - post-XR, and profoundly for the people - is always vital, always coming up with new projects to revitalise the basic community roots of democracy.
And we are very happy to announce the commencement (indeed, it’s in its early days) of their Freedom Tour - which they describe as “a moving romp through the UK, aiming to connect and grow the wider movement for a democratic, ecological and sane society”.
Apart from the main website, where you can sign up to participate and see their map, there’s a project pack available (we’ve uploaded it as a PDF here - which has an full itinerary, principles, methods of engagement, and much more - all in the usual enabling and practical Trust the People style
You might also want to sign up to their Instagram account (see above). In the meantime, we’re delighted to run this evocative, poetic essay from the one of the Tour’s core organisers, Gully Bujak
Gully Bujak: Young people meet Britain’s splintering society face to face, and ask the question ‘What’s Next?’
What does it mean to be British? Does anybody know anymore?
I have never been more keenly aware of the precariousness of the concept of Britishness than I am today. As a white privileged woman, I have rarely been asked to confront the myriad contradictions and abuses upon which my national identity rests. But it is now impossible to ignore the reality of a confused country ripping at the seams.
We continue to vote for parties and politicians who explicitly hold us in contempt. We grip on to our idols - who exist only in our imaginations - with a desperate irrationality, so that a statue is worth more than a life.
Freedom Tour, Day 5 (instagram)
And now even the three lions - those stalwarts of Britishness - seem to be on shaky ground, as the fans who just a few weeks ago stood together against financial greed in the form of the Super League now decry kneeling players as ‘Marxist’. We’ve said goodbye to Europe and Scotland inches ever closer to independence.
Like the stranger in town who feels lonely even in a crowded room, we are at war with ourselves, adrift on a dying sea.
For the group behind the Freedom Tour, it is clear we are at a crossroads. And though it is frightening, it is an opportunity we simply cannot afford to let pass us by.
With the shock of the pandemic still scrambling our wires, against a backdrop of parasitic capitalism, (relatively) sudden globalisation and our planetary ticking clock, there is a chance to relearn Britishness, to upend what we know and forge new ways of being.
We need a new model for cohabiting on our small, vulnerable island, that will help us survive what’s coming.
In a society at war with its own identity we must do the complex and unknowable work of remembering what has been lost, of shedding what does not serve us and of envisaging what comes next. We must surrender our watchful guard as Churchill’s keeper and become ancestors again, wardens of the earth and forebears to the children whose future now trembles in the heat of the midday sun.
To do this work we must take the risk of trying something new - it requires us to be brave and bold and to reconstruct the notion of people power - to find that which unites us, and harness it.
Over the years we have swallowed the lie of powerlessness sold to us by the billionaire-owned press and opportunistic politicians - it’s a lie that says other powerless people are the reason that we ourselves are powerless. It says that the people at the top deserve to be there. It says that nothing can ever change.
In believing all this, we have fulfilled our own prophecy; in being divided we have been conquered, and we have forgotten much in the process.
More from the Freedom Tour instagram
We have lost precious knowledge of our radical roots, of our ancestors who depended upon each other and their environment, of our inherited struggle and the history of the underdog - ratified in cracked stone and old soil around the edges of our shopping malls.
It is time for this knowledge to be relearned. And in relearning we will collectively rebuild power where it is needed: the power of the commons, the power of listening, the power of a shared life and the relentless resilience of nature, of which we are a part.
This summer, those who are disillusioned, suspicious and afraid are being called upon and asked to entertain new ideas - ideas of collaborative rather than competitive power, ideas of true democracy, expansive belonging, and political and spiritual revolution.
Led by young people, keenly aware of what the future looks like and daring enough to try and alter our course, the Freedom Tour will travel around the country, arriving eventually in the capital. We will spend the summer of 2021 connecting existing local grassroots movements, introducing and practicing tools of participatory democracy, sharing ideas of civil disobedience and instigating crucial dialogues that will challenge us all.
A staggering 4.3million children in the UK live in poverty, 75% from households with at least one working parent. In the North East of England, child poverty has increased by more than a third in the last 5 years. The Freedom Tour will start there.
Beginning in Durham, it will head to Hull then Grimsby and reaching Plymouth by August, listening to the struggles and dreams of the people that make up Britain. It will attempt to weave together a story of our time - one that swells with the remembered potential of people power - so that we can begin to plot a path forward.
We will remember a shared history of bravery, ingenuity and kinship and we will ask you to remember with us.
We will speak of our own power, lost and found and unsteady still, and we will invite you to speak of yours.
We will ask our fellow citizens to recognise that those who stake a claim on power tell us who we are, in order to limit our potential. But it’s time to find out who we are—for ourselves. And in tearing down the poorly fabricated walls of hostility, neglect and misunderstanding, perhaps we’ll discover there’s more room on this little island than we thought.
We are the people of the Freedom Tour, and we invite you to join us.
What have you got to lose?
