What is Coliberation?

Have you ever felt like the world is on fire and there is nothing you can do about it? Maybe you’ve felt hopeless in the face of climate change? Or perhaps you’ve felt helpless against our most pressing social issues, from increasing levels of hate crime to the cost of living crisis. Or maybe you’ve felt powerless in the depths of our broken political system and the terrifying global rise of fascism???

There’s a chance you’ve given up, accepted that this is ‘just the way things are.’ Or perhaps you’re still trying, stuck in the seemingly endless loop of the status quo, exhausted while nothing seems to be working.?

Maybe there’s another way. Maybe, if we want to make a difference, then we need to do things differently.?

I was talking to a client recently who told me that her team wanted to avoid the term ‘anti-racism’ because it came off as too negative. As an anti-oppression expert this frustrated me. Surely racism is a negative thing, and in order to dismantle such a negative feature of our society we need to be able to talk about it! But while I still feel my point stands, so does hers - her team wouldn’t engage with anti-racism and yet racism was still causing significant issues for their organisation, from reputational damage to failed client relationships.??

So what’s the solution? What’s the alternative? If anti-racism is against racism, what is it for??

There are some that may feel that equity, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) answers this question. But I don’t think so. EDI are a set of practices, but they aren’t an outcome. And if you’re not outcome focussed then you have no metric for measuring success, which means you can lose sight of what you’re trying to achieve. For example, you can include marginalised people into an oppressive system without changing the system itself. People do it all the time. Marginalised people are regularly placed into harmful environments in the name of EDI. It’s often why EDI initiatives fail.?

Anti-racism is more systemic, it calls for a restructuring of social systems and a redistribution of resources. The pursuit of anti-racism isn’t just for the global majority to be included in a white-centred system, but to change the system entirely into one that works for everyone.?

We have a word for this: liberation.?

Sometimes people hear this term and their minds jump to significant moments of freedom or escape like the abolition of slavery or the salvation of the politically imprisoned. But liberation can take many forms. People can be liberated from all sorts of things, from domestic violence and homelessness to shame and hatred.?

There are many different liberation movements, from Black Lives Matter (liberation from racialised police violence) to Pride (queer liberation) to Reclaim the Night (liberation from gender-based violence) to Nothing About Us Without Us (liberating disabled people’s voices) to Extinction Rebellion (liberation from climate collapse). The list goes on and on. And all of these movements do hugely important work for liberating marginalised people and making society more fair.?

Sadly, despite the valuable aims of these movements, we still see huge groups of people who vilify and attack them. White people will tell you that all lives matter and there are still people who think that feminists hate men. But what we don’t talk enough about is, for example, that there is significant evidence that racist policies also hurt white people and that patriarchy also hurts men.

The fact remains that we live in a society where the majority of people feel disenfranchised and disempowered, unable to address common social issues impacting them and their families. While levels of privilege certainly vary, there are significant problems, from corporate carbon emissions to deepening wealth inequality, that are harming the vast majority of people.?

Systems of oppression hurt everyone. Some more than others. But we all stand to benefit from creating a more fair and equal society. Anti-oppression work must not only be intersectional, but must also seek to involve everyone in the fight for mutually-beneficial liberation. Effective social movements require large numbers of people, and everyone stands to benefit if as many people as possible get involved in one movement for the liberation of all.?

We call this: coliberation.?

Sometimes spelled as 'co-liberation,' this approach functions from the position, as Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein argue, that:

‘oppressive systems of power harm all of us, that they undermine the quality and validity of our work, and that they hinder us from creating true and lasting social impact’ and therefore ‘the key to co-liberation is that it requires a commitment to and a belief in mutual benefit, from members of both dominant groups and minoritized groups; that’s the co in the term.’?

This is not an altogether new idea. As the Combahee River Collective argued in 1977:

‘the fact [is] that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives’ and so ‘if Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.’??

We cannot liberate people of the global majority from racism while patriarchy still exists. Not only would women of the global majority remain oppressed, but much of what defines patriarchal standards and norms is rooted in racist and colonial histories. All systems of oppression work together to maintain and uphold one another. And so if all systems of oppression have to be dismantled together, then what we need is coliberation.??

Yes, we need separate movements for the liberation of particular groups, but these should work collaboratively with one another as part of a larger movement for the people. As the Building Movement Project argues, ‘our liberation is intertwined, and we must work together towards our mutual freedom and redistribution of power.’?

I have been working in queer liberation for roughly a decade. In this time I have come to find that I am significantly less concerned with whether someone is a good ‘ally’ who has reflected on their privilege and unlearned their unconscious biases, and I would much rather they get involved in the practical application of liberating queer communities from the systems that oppress us.?

But appealing to empathy can often inadvertently slip into calling for pity and asking for saviourism. Instead, I’d rather the straight and cisgender allies in my community each had a stake in the game. I’d rather that they understood that improving trans people’s access to healthcare improved everyone’s bodily autonomy, that respecting the identities of queer young people means that all children can have freedom of expression, and that dismantling gender norms enables all of us to take on the roles and qualities that best suit our unique selves.?

As Fannie Lou Hamer once said: ‘Nobody's free until everybody's free.’

We deserve to feel hope in the face of our world's biggest problems. We deserve to feel that we can help make a positive social and environmental impact. We deserve to feel empowered and powerful in driving the direction of our shared future. This isn't 'just the way things are.' We can each make a difference. We can break free from the seemingly endless loop of the status quo. Together, we can achieve our coliberation.