As the year ends, we’re looking back on our favorite stories of 2023. We can all draw inspiration from the regular people who are creating cultures of solidarity and abundance in their communities.
In addition to publishing our stories and podcasts this year, Shareable launched SolidarityWorks, our new organizing program to meet the challenges our communities face. Be sure to check out the new Emergency Battery Network Toolkit, an open-source guide designed for folks to create their own community-owned backup power supply.
Another world is not only possible – it’s already being realized in communities across the globe. Here’s a glimpse in 10 stories:
1. From Bayanihan to Talkoot: Communal work practices from around the world
“For all of human history, societies have depended on communal work to sustain themselves into the (often unpredictable) future. However, at a certain point, that all changed. Market forces took over, and communal projects ceased to have the same significance. The individual took precedence over the community, and large public works became the purview of burgeoning states.” This story explores the key elements that differentiate communal work from other collective activities and several examples of what it has looked like in practice.
2. Mutual Aid and the movement to Stop Cop City
Writer, organizer, and teacher Dean Spade (‘Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And The Next)”) wrote a feature story about the critical role mutual aid has played in the ongoing movement to stop the construction of Cop City—and the deconstruction of parts of the Weelaunee Forest—in Atlanta.
3. How to grow your own toilet paper
Robin Greenfield is a writer, researcher, and activist who makes a strong case for growing your own toilet paper. Greenfield argues that ‘Toilet Paper Plants’ are not only easy to grow but are a way to opt out of consumerism and contribute less to the harmful environmental impacts of the toilet paper industry. Check out this How-To Guide, to start growing your own toilet paper in the new year.
4. The Response: Forced labor and immigrant dreams — Saket Soni in conversation with Rebecca Solnit
This episode of The Response podcast is the recording of a live conversation between Saket Soni and Rebecca Solnit on Saket Soni’s recent book, The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America.
The Great Escape is the harrowing story of how 500 disaster relief workers from India were trafficked to the United States under false pretenses and exposed to inhumane conditions while rebuilding New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
5. Black radical imagination helps us transform our relationships to energy, land & economy
“For those of us interested in exploring alternative visions for the future of land, economy, and energy, the answers on how best to achieve collective liberation may come in lessons hard-learned from the past. Two places to start are Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, which spans centuries from continental Africa to colonial America and the United States, and the “Black Freedom Struggle”, which offers transformative and regenerative possibilities for imagining and building a world without white supremacy.”
6. Legal tools for Land Return
Janelle Orsi, an Oakland-based “sharing lawyer” and a director of the national nonprofit Sustainable Economies Law Center, offers her thoughts on tools that could be useful to land justice movements as they work towards and realize #LandBack, land return, and reparations. In the piece, Orsi explains, “I’m writing this for the people – especially those who own land – who are feeling animated toward repair, healing, and return of land to Indigenous and Black people. I’m also writing it for myself. As a land justice lawyer, I have tinkered with the nuts and bolts for 15 years, and I’ve found them increasingly hard to stomach. Now, I’m attuning to the ways law and legal tools have disrupted the flow of inspiration that motivates land return.”
7. Andrea Roberts: Countering displacement through collective memory
This Cities@Tufts recording tracks the history of displacement and dispossession that has led to the destruction, neglect, or dismantling of communities initially designed to protect African Americans from structural racism.
Dr. Andrea Roberts explains how these communities’ unique challenges require new planning and design tools to detect the interplay of historical and contemporary conditions contributing to the cultural erasure of African American placemaking.
8. The Spanish Civil War: Lessons in economic democracy
“The Spanish Civil War and Revolution of 1936 was arguably the 20th century’s greatest experiment in economic democracy. Seizing the opportunity opened by the conflict between the Spanish Republic and right-wing Nationalists, Spain’s workers and peasants built a new economy in the midst of the chaos.”
9. Artisans Cooperative: An Etsy alternative, owned and run by artists and makers
Etsy, the online arts and crafts seller, raked in record profits in 2021, yet still increased artist transaction fees by 30%. Etsy’s business model relies on artists, yet the company continues to exploit and take advantage of them. Enter Artisan’s Cooperative, an online cooperative owned and run by artists and makers, not a greedy corporation.
10. Emergency Battery Network Toolkit
This past summer, Shareable piloted the first new program of SolidarityWorks, the Emergency Battery Co-Lab, to aid organizers in building their own community back-up power supply. The Emergency Battery Network Toolkit is centered around the recordings of the pilot and includes all trainings and ‘office hours’ (edited into bite-sized chapters), summaries of each lesson (including key takeaways), graphic recordings, customizable templates, and other resources.
Learn more about the project and our partners in the project, People Power Battery Collective (a project of People Power Solar Cooperative) by checking out this episode of The Response Podcast: The Response: People Power Battery Collective with Kansas, Crystal, and Yasir.
Bonus: Everything you wanted to know about SolidarityWorks
If you can’t tell, we’re excited about the new direction we’re taking our work with SolidarityWorks. Since 2009, Shareable has been instrumental in radical transformative cultures — we’ve published more than 4,500 stories and 300 how-to guides, distributed 50+ seed grants, and advised hundreds of organizers, policymakers, and social innovators. We are utilizing our history of storytelling, our role in the solidarity economy ecosystem, and our convening experience to help local communities move from inspiration to action through Co-Labs, trainings, and comprehensive toolkits.
