HOW TO ORGANIZE LOCALLY FOR DEGROWTH

Learn and act together. Educate each other and the degrowth-curious. Oppose the forces of growth in your community. Dispense with the surplus in festive gatherings. Forge alliances with other groups fighting for justice and ecology. 

Much of what DegrowUS has done is the result of small collectives collaborating with others in their community, supported by comrades around the country. DegrowBTV in Burlington, Vermont and DegrowUS Chicago are local chapters that have put on rad events.

Here are some ideas for getting started in your city or region:

start a reading group

Reading is a great way to learn about degrowth. Discussing degrowth with your friends and comrades over snacks provides another fruitful avenue to expand on and co-create thoughts and ideas relevant to place and context. Learning together offers varied perspectives, interpretations and stories helpful in creating a holistic understanding of what it means to degrow.

The Chicago degrowth group comes together to discuss readings, following the example of the longstanding reading group in Barcelona that has generated an entire school of thought on degrowth, including one of the first English-language books on the topic, Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era. Pick something from our list of degrowth readings to discuss with your existing book club or any collection of comrades who are interested in the topic. You may end up with your own degrowth reading group and, eventually, a local stream of ideas about degrowth.

throw an event

Bringing people together makes degrowth tangible. Imagining and enacting the futures we want lets us create more desirable worlds. Inviting folks to define degrowth for themselves generates new ideas, while teaching the theories and hypotheses of degrowth scholar-activists builds shared understandings. Collaborative art projects, interactive workshops, big protests, and celebratory happenings connect us with each other and build the movement of movements needed to transform everything. 

We have organized everything from pizza picnics to regional retreats. The Chicago chapter hosted a Degrowth Gathering that gave rise to this national movement. DegrowBTV put on DegrowthFest 2020, a neighborhood uprising of art installations and happenings that explored what crises reveal. In December 2020, DegrowUS organized an online teach-in and regional organizing meeting to prepare us for Degrowth & Action in 2021. Plan a post-pandemic party, or do something outdoors or online for now. Maybe organize a local event for Global Degrowth Day on June 5; this year’s theme is care. 

make a zine

Inviting people from other environmentalist, leftist, and anti-oppression groups into your degrowth collective lets you learn from each other and work together. Going to their events shows solidarity and starts to construct the movement of movements needed to liberate us all. Ask activists fighting for racial justice or trans-inclusive feminism what they think of degrowth, and how you can be accomplices. 

Degrowthers in Germany asked members of more than 30 different social currents and campaigns to reflect on degrowth, publishing the results online and as a book called Degrowth in Movement(s). Here in the United States, we have hosted an allied movements panel at the Chicago gathering and invited local activist groups to contribute to DegrowthFest. Much of our work with DegrowUS involves reaching out to other initiatives and trying to collaborate.

Scribing articles on degrowth helps spread the word through local publications. Submitting an opinion piece to the newspaper gives you a venue to connect opposing the latest fossil fuel infrastructure to your desire for a different society, one that pursues the good life, not growth. Criticizing your municipal government for favoring businesses over workers makes space to criticize the entire supposed need for “economic development.” Criticizing businesses, too, for putting profit before life could lead, in your writing, to questioning the importance of making money, or even the whole idea of making money. 

We have written articles about degrowth in the United States, popularly and academically, but little about regional or urban degrowth movements beyond short reports on our events. Help get that started so we can post your piece right here!

Putting our bodies in the way of the economy’s physical expansion is how we degrow it. Stopping new commercial developments or mega-infrastructures is literally stopping the growth of production and consumption, GDP. Creating campaigns against these projects of economic enlargement opens space to feed degrowth discourse into the mouths of members of our communities, many of whom will find themselves hungry for it and eager to repeat what they hear.

To our knowledge, no U.S. groups have yet opposed industry or infrastructure explicitly in the name of degrowth. Ally with whoever’s protesting extraction and pollution in your area. Make public statements about how economic growth does not bring well-being. 

Giving each other the things we need, freely, demonstrates that another world is possible. Organizing mutual aid networks liberates our communities from deprivation and, little by little, from being coerced to participate in the growth economy as wage laborers. Filling our neighbors’ bellies opens their minds. Putting on public feasts and gift markets (which are not really markets at all) provides a podium from which to talk about world-changing ideas like degrowth.

DegrowBTV’s members also organize the local Food Not Bombs chapter. Do something like that! Or just be generous and neighborly. Make sure there’s food and drinks when your reading group meets or you put on an event.