Transcript
CHRISTY ADEOLA BRAHAM
In terms of mobilising people. I think it’s really important to firstly explain the issue. You also want to explain the impact of the incident on the person at the centre of it. But more importantly, you want people to understand the implications of this incident on wider society, that race has a place in housing, that Black and minority ethnic people statistically often have very negative experiences in the housing market. It’s also helping people to understand also that policing and criminalisation is also part of housing and helps to propagate mass inequity.
When you’re connecting the dots between these seemingly disparate issues, I feel that you’re inviting people to think deeper about these issues. You’re inviting people to widen their perspectives. You’re creating an opportunity to engage in a new way.
And when people engage in a new way, they also speak about these issues in a different way to their own networks. So at each level, you’re generating new interest and new ways of thinking about these really important issues. I feel that that’s a really important thing that I’ve experienced in my mobilisation work from various different issues previously as well.
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The advice I would give to any emerging leaders about how to engage in collective action would be just to get stuck in. Just jump right in, join a union, get active in a local campaigning group, get active in an online group. And if they don’t exist yet, start at yourself, and just come with an open mind. Be ready to learn and be challenged. The longer you go along on your journey, the more inspired that you’ll be to really get stuck into the action.