So We Stand for Self Determination

So We Stand is an emerging grassroots movement of people who consciously work for empowering social change to develop multiracial politics and self defence strategies for environmental and climate justice. DIY Popular Education Collective is our trading name and the training ground for popular educators.

We are people of all backgrounds creating tools to defend ourselves and our communities against environmental and climate injustice.

We use community ‘popular’ education leading to effective direct action.

We aim to build a movement to reclaim space, share support, ideas, and strategies with one another across our diverse communities to take control of our lives.

We are a think-and-act tank, linking the issues of global capitalism, environmental degradation and climate change with their local impacts. For us, this means working locally on issues such as anti-war, police brutality, prison abolition, affordable housing, healthcare and public transportation, environmental justice, racist immigration policies, and many more. We stand in support with other movements engaged in this work.

We are committed to enabling self-defence against oppression in all areas of our movement. This means addressing whose voices are heard, which priorities are chosen, what actions are taken, who does the work, and who gets the credit.

Radical environmental justice activists and grassroots groups struggling against the issue of poverty and racism have in common their work in exposing the structural nature of these issues and their belief in the need for social change in order to address the root causes.

However, despite these commonalities, there is rarely a dialogue between these groups, nor a recognition of the strength of uniting in action. Airport extensions, the increase in high emission activity, the open cast coal mines, and the proposed welfare reform bill affect all of us but people living in poverty and affected by oppression are the most vulnerable.

As these moves intensify, anti-poverty and environmental justice campaigners, who normally work independently, are coming together to expose the links between poverty, racism, welfare reform and climate change.

Our aim is to unite and develop more effective ways of campaigning, to mobilize and act together to address the most pressing challenges facing our planet and this generation.

‘So We Stand’ is about hope. It gives us all real hope that we can do something about the situation we are living in.