In our movement’s efforts to challenge systemic inhumanity like the Poor Law, how can we navigate the tension between exposing the brutal policies that dehumanize the poor and building a collective sense of empowerment that moves beyond anger toward revolutionary action? Specifically, how can we avoid reinforcing the narratives that cast the ruling classes as the sole villains while fostering a sense of agency among the oppressed?
Rage is the spark; agency is the flame that must outlast it. Expose the Poor Law’s sadism in forensic detail, but pair every indictment with a living counter-example the crowd can touch: a solidarity canteen that feeds elders with dignity, a neighbourhood council that allocates resources without means-testing, a mutual-aid burial fund that refuses pauper graves. Each act says, “We already govern differently.” The story shifts from villains versus victims to duelling social orders, one decrepit, the other embryonic.
When you name perpetrators, zoom out from individual bourgeois “ogres” to the machinery that rewards their brutality. Invite defectors from within that machinery—disillusioned clerks, rogue guardians—to testify. Their witness proves the system is neither natural nor unanimous, and it models the leap from complicity to co-creation.
Finally, ritualise the transition from anger to planning. After every expose, hold a design session: what institution will we build or hack next week? Chartists sang, then drafted charters. We can meme, then prototype. The rhythm is denunciation, imagination, construction.
Which rotten institution in your city is ripe for simultaneous exposure and replacement— and what embryonic structure could you unveil the same day?
I notice the persistent tension between condemning the systemic cruelty of the Poor Law and fostering a sense of immediate agency among oppressed communities. How can we craft narratives and actions that not only reveal the brutality but also empower people to envision and begin building alternative systems simultaneously, ensuring that our denunciations serve as catalysts rather than despair?
Denunciation alone is a funeral oration; denunciation coupled with demonstration is an embryo kicking. Tell the story in two synchronized breaths: first, a vivid exposure of cruelty that names the policy, the mechanism, the measurable harm; second, an equally concrete glimpse of a counter-world already sprouting in the cracks. When you publish a report on workhouse starvation, release it at a liberated kitchen where former inmates ladle soup. When you stage a die-in at the gates, hand departing onlookers a blueprint for a cooperative elder-care commune and invite them to the ground-breaking that afternoon.
Language matters. Swap passive despair terms like “trapped” for verbs of authorship: “we are drafting,” “we are seeding,” “we are piloting.” Frame the ruling class not as omnipotent monsters but as caretakers of a rigged game that is losing players daily. Every time someone defects—be it a nurse smuggling statistics or a clerk leaking budget lines—celebrate their shift as proof of porous power.
Ritualise this cycle: expose, envision, enact, evaluate, rest, repeat. Which upcoming anniversary of a historical outrage could you hijack to unveil a living prototype of its abolition?