Organising people’s assemblies in Hull has convinced Gully Bujak of their transformative power. Can they help us to survive and even thrive in the face of challenges like climate breakdown?
A wave of local democracy is sweeping across Europe, positioning humankind’s basic goodness and common sense as the antidote to collapse. My own trust in humanity, recently underlined by a unanimous jury acquittal, is now vindicated daily on the streets of Hull, where democracy is coming to life through people’s assemblies.
Assemblies are public meetings where local people get together to discuss and decide on a specific issue, without political interference or hidden agendas. A simple tool with immeasurable potential, these assemblies can help us fundamentally rethink how we make decisions in our society, and create strong, active communities in the process. To survive ecological breakdown and the collapse of our failing economy, we need both, urgently.
Cooperation Hull is holding Neighbourhood Assemblies across the city, and in each one we are learning what happens when a room full of strangers upend social norms to break bread, hold hands (an ice-breaker) and voice their honest opinions on the most important questions of our time.
People all over Hull have pondered our responsibilities as citizens, named the biggest challenges facing Britain and exchanged ideas on how to overcome them. Earlier this year, we gathered around fold-out tables, spicy soup and coleslaw to discuss how society makes us behave either selfishly or cooperatively. We identified the power of divisive media, political polarisation and wealth inequality before brainstorming some steps we could take to even the odds in favour of cooperation: coherent community organising, media literacy and education, and more conversations like this.
What if all those people got in a room together, worked out our differences face to face, and decided to disrupt this system and replace it with something better?
In places like Hull, deprived by austerity and neoliberalism for generations, the culture war has gained a lot of ground and the consequences are clear from the riots earlier this month. Overcoming these divisions is one of our biggest, most pressing challenges, and one way to do it is to create opportunities to take action together. Through assemblies, it’s possible to form self-organising communities where we lift each other out of the conditions that these ideologies prey on.
Gully talking to people about Cooperation Hull on the city’s streets. Image: Patrick / Cooperation Hull
Where we are forced to work alongside people we disagree with or even dislike, and organise positive initiatives that feed us, lower our energy bills, give us purpose and contribute to a stronger community spirit. Our assembly ground rules ask us to look for what we have in common, and there is a wealth of agreement to be found if you care to look for it. We all want healthy families, somewhere we can be proud to call home and a safe future to look forward to, and none of us are convinced that anything coming from Westminster is going to get us there.
In the run-up to the general election, we asked hundreds of people who is more useful to them: Sunak, Starmer or a potato and the potato won every time. So, our basic premise is this: what if all those people got in a room together, worked out our differences face to face, and decided to disrupt this system and replace it with something better?
In 2023, Bujak faced prison for her involvement in Extinction Rebellion activism, but was acquitted by a jury following a three-week trial. Image: Gareth Morris
In 2018 it was Extinction Rebellion’s disruption that changed my life forever, but not the physical kind. ‘Tell the truth’ didn’t just mean the facts of climate breakdown, it meant the heartbreaking truth of our own potential. It’s this spiritual disruption that I am glimpsing again in Hull, in rooms full of strangers, assembling on a cold afternoon to practise dreaming together. In decisions made by the very communities who will feel the consequences, and deliberations that consider the effects of our actions not for the next election cycle, but for generations down the line.
The potential of assemblies is nothing short of revolutionary. It is the potential to change everything
Soon we will launch the first citywide assembly: hundreds of people weighing in on a big issue, then attempting to make practical changes with the help of local organisations – and there are groups like us popping up from Cornwall to Glasgow, and Italy and Germany, too. It won’t be long before The Hull People’s Assembly is working with The Sheffield People’s Assembly, organising regional supply chains, coordinated emergency responses, high-impact tax strikes and so much more.
The potential of assemblies is nothing short of revolutionary. It is the potential to change everything. And in 2024, with warnings of Atlantic tipping points, food shortages, the reality of war and the rise of fascism, nothing less will do.
Main image: Gully Bujak photographed by Helena Smith / composite
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