Introduction
Find out about recent achievements and future priorities of The Commons Social Change Library in the 2024-25 Annual Report.
Message from the Director
Looking back over July 2024 to June 2025 one word comes to mind: ‘polycrisis’. As historian Adam Tooze stated, ‘In the polycrisis the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts’ (Financial Times, 2022).
Take for example, the combination of the housing crisis; cost of living crisis; climate crisis related extreme weather events; along with the erosion of public services.
Or the combination of genocide; displacement of people; economic downturn; and far-right influenced anti-immigrant policies. The harm of each element may be amplified by the others, ‘entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects’ (The Cascade Institute, 2022).
What does that mean for people working toward social, economic and ecological justice?
Many campaigns focus on a distinct winnable issue, rather than the tangled web of injustice. This can mean people stay in siloes, avoiding working on issues that are outside their carefully crafted strategies. The risk in this approach is that crucial ground is lost while different groups and communities are scapegoated and undermined, one by one.
For example, the trend of increasing criminalisation of protest has been justified through racist targeting of Palestinians and the people who act in solidarity with them; or climate activists have been targeted at the behest of the fossil fuel industry. People working on issues other than genocide or climate crisis may not speak up at the time, but the resulting laws may be used to restrict their political action just as much.
Naomi Klein coined the term ‘the movement of movements’ to recognise the diversity of interests that can converge in relation to globalisation and climate justice.
This approach allows people to continue to push for their particular goals, while recognising they are part of a broad movement ecosystem with related interests. When people have done the work to analyse the systems that hold them back; see how those systems harm others; built relationships of solidarity; and taken strategic action together, we may live to see ‘the people united will never be defeated’.
Both crisis and opportunity motivate activists around the world to access the diverse resources on The Commons Social Change Library. What has been learnt in one movement can be implemented in another. Recognising the just cause of one group deepens awareness and resistance in others. The past offers lessons for the future.
Let’s keep learning together, to meet escalating crisis with unstoppable people power.
Access Annual Report
The Commons Social Change Library Annual Report, 2024-25.