There is no justice until all of us are free.

Experience, relationships, and power are not limited to what we can see or say. They can be visible, invisible, and hidden, and they play out at both small and large scales within our organizations and society. To adapt a simple definition of racism* to oppression, we could say:

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Privilege + Prejudice x Power = Oppression

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Solidarity is the ongoing active practice of confronting our own power, privilege and prejudice and supporting others in their struggles.

Oppression is the ongoing unjust treatment or use of authority over others.

Privilege is an advantage or entitlement that benefits members of certain groups above others.

Prejudice is a preconceived feeling or opinion about others.

Change does not happen in a vacuum. We need to support each other’s struggles in order to secure a fairer world. This is solidarity. It is not always easy to confront these challenges and discomforts within ourselves but long-term solidarity is important. This can mean making personal sacrifices, changing our own worldviews and forgoing friends and family in order to do what’s right.

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Oppression lives in systems and can affect all of us in different ways at the same time. We have adapted the “Four I’s of oppression”* into five levels to show how oppression works upon us. Trying to challenge oppression at any of its system levels will affect and draw on the others:

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• Internal (What level): What we believe about ourselves, defined by the inequalities, information, structures and beliefs of the dominant system.

• Inequalities (How level): The system elements, flows and buffers that ensure different life outcomes and income among ourselves - and how they interact and feed back on each other.

• Interpersonal (Where level): The access to information and relationships that affect how we perceive each other in relation to intersecting identities. 

• Institutional (Who level): The institutions and structures that treat people who hold different identities differently because of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and more.

• Ideological (Why level): The ideas, assumptions and beliefs that shape our understanding of what is right, good, fair, and just.

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Just as systems overlap and interact, oppressions can combine, divide and unite people. 

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Intersectionality, a term created by Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, describes the overlaps between social identities like race, gender, and class, and oppressions like racism, sexism, and homophobia. These take different forms depending on the place or cultural context where someone is. It is important to be aware that this theory was rooted in work Professor Crenshaw did on the experiences of black women in the justice system. Intersectionality as a lens and analytical approach was fundamentally about racism - particularly anti-blackness, overlapping with sexism and classism. 

Privilege is any special right or advantage experienced by an individual or group. People with multiple intersecting identities tend to experience multiple kinds of oppression and sometimes privileges ahead of each other, so their perspectives and experiences differ from those who experience fewer oppressions. Simply considering the “most marginalized” groups can be risky because “most marginalized” is often defined by our inability to recognize our own privileges and biases. We need to think beyond our usual limits.

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The longest-lasting stories based on the stars in the sky result from proactive community collaboration, the desire to find common understanding over many centuries. Collaborating with intent in this way is like applying our own gravity to the world around us.

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To achieve the results we want, we need to proactively dismantle oppression to create healthier systems. Problems affect different people in different ways, so we need to work together to find solutions that work for everyone. Working together to tell powerful stories with important messages can positively impact society for many years.

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Over the last 100 plus years, most campaign plans in Europe and North America have largely failed to focus on dismantling oppressive systems or making space for the most oppressed to build power. We propose taking a radical approach to power, systems, and solidarity to support others in achieving their goals:

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1. Review: Look again at each level of your target system’s star chart to see how oppressions show ideologically, internally, institutionally, and interpersonally.

2. Learn: Educate yourself with the many resources online or offline about oppression and intersectionality. Listen to groups impacted by oppressions perpetuated by the system and observe the key relationships that keep it strong. Really seek to understand this. Do not put burden upon impacted groups by asking them to educate you. Practice continual self-reflection on your own privileges and assumptions. Ask yourself, what is your role in both upholding and dismantling the status quo? How can you do your bit with the privilege you have? 

3. Create: Make space for oppressed groups in joint decision-making, in ensuring and reflecting on disaggregated data, and in your messaging. Bring them with you to advocacy meetings with decision-makers. Center their voices to ensure they are heard alongside you, not behind you. This affirms the movement’s equity and starts to shift the harmful norms bound up in the system.

4. Share: Share information, working spaces, funds, volunteers, and other resources.

5. Repeat: Be consistent in delivering on your commitments. Resist recreating an unjust hierarchy in the movement. Solidarity means being prepared to sacrifice your own beliefs for the good of the wider movement if the most oppressed group believes this will best support its cause. Create representative membership of key groups and organizations within your own campaign. Reflect on who makes up the leadership. Be visible, practical, proactive, and committed.

It has been proven that diverse and unexpected movements, where people experiencing different oppressions organize together, can have a huge impact on political decision-making.

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Sources: *Read more on the four Is of oppression: https://www.grcc.edu/sites/default/files/docs/diversity/the_four_is_of_oppression.pdf 

**Privilege wheel https://unitedwaysem.org/wp-content/uploads/2021-21-Day-Equity-Challenge-Social-Identity-Wheel-FINAL.pdf

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In 2019, traffic and air pollution in Bangalore were major problems. People were stuck in traffic for hours. Due to lack of public transport, private ownership of vehicles was higher than ever. Trees were being cut to build even more road lanes and bridges. 

Climate and mobility campaigners urged citizens to pledge to become car-free, and successfully pressured the local authorities to build a 75 km cycle lane. But the public transport system was abysmal, while car-friendly infrastructure meant that people instead spent more on their cars, making the problem worse and leaving the cycle lane hardly used. The campaign had failed to explore the real levers for change.

So Greenpeace India teamed up with allies to dig deeper and find a way to decrease vehicle usage and improve urban mobility. They took the following steps:

• Learn: Conducted a major audience research exercise among groups of people affected by intersecting systemic exclusions, barriers and oppressions. They found that almost 40% of commuters were women. These women were experiencing multiple, overlapping,forms of oppression severely impacting their safety and agency in the transport system:

  • Interpersonal (Where level): One of the biggest barriers for women commuters in Bangalore was safety - from public transport to cycle lanes they experienced multiple threats from harassment to kidnapping or even worse. 

  • Inequalities (What level): When Covid hit, the vast majority of the working-class population could not afford cars and so they had to walk. 

  • Institutional (Who levels): Women from  working class socio-economic backgrounds did not have cycles or two wheelers, so the time burdens of their daily tasks - from  dropping their kids to school, coming back and cooking for the household and then going to their  workplaces, like factories - multiplied massively.

  • Ideological (Why level): Cars have always been a status symbol in much of India. But also, in general,  city residents felt much safer in private vehicles and so preferred them. 

  • Internal (How level): The safety threats, barriers and costs of  commuting, and increasing time burdens of work and unpaid care  combined to make things very difficult for most women.

• Create: The coalition decided to focus on women commuters as their primary audience. It designed the campaign around their needs and barriers:

  • The coalition asked women from different sectors to join the campaign in planning and advocacy. This included feminist groups, women-led shopkeepers’ associations, transgender movements and several unusual allies joining hands to reclaim and share the city space and affirm their right to commute.

  • Over 200 citizens got together to deliberate on how the city’s budgets should be used and what the mobility system in the city should look like. 

  • In Phase 1 the coalition aimed to shift the narrative around the entitlement of the working-class underprivileged women to have access to less costly geared cycles which they could ride wearing saris. 

  • In Phase 2 the coalition aimed to make public transport more affordable and accessible, by campaigning for bus lanes that would ensure a faster commute. 

• Repeat: 

  • A key message was to associate commuting with freedom. This resonated with women especially in the cultural context that the campaign was operating in. 

The campaign had some big wins:

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• A system-focused approach helped women working class  socioeconomic groups to drive and secure system-wide change.

• The opposition political party made a manifesto commitment to make buses free for women. When this party won the state election, they kept their promise.

• Daily female passenger numbers rose from 39% to 57%.  

• This big win around mobility and gender increased a sense of agency felt by women across the movement, no matter where they came from. 

• Citizens involved in city level decision making were able to feel part of a collective and garner solidarity for other issues that helped them reclaim their rights and space in the city towards creating more sustainable equitable urban spaces.

The audience-empathetic approach to really understand people’s emotional and psychological barriers helped them to design strategies that shifted the narratives around the city’s mobility. The conversation around gender responsive, safe, mobilities for women and girls has risen in prominence across India. There is no doubt that campaigns like this have played a role in building the critical mass where women are driving conversations around the role of government putting forward policies and resources to address this issue. For example, The Mumbai Development Plan 2034 included a new chapter on gender and inclusion, acknowledging the importance of   gender analysis and responsiveness in city planning.

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