May 31st marks the fourth anniversary of the passing of Andaiye, social activist and co-founder of Red Thread. The Institute of Gender Studies at the University of Guyana, Guyana Gender Hub and The Breadfruit Collective are hosting a gathering that draws on Andaiye’s anthology, The Point is to Change the World, which gathers up some five decades of her writing and public interventions. As the organisers note, Andaiye wrote in the Preface of her collection that it “is meant for activists, younger and older, outside of and within the university, in the Caribbean, the Caribbean diaspora and beyond, who know—even if that is all they think they know—that the point is to change the world. It is about the power relations embedded in every facet of our lives and the need to organize together to overturn them.” The gathering, which intends to discuss the lessons which Andaiye shared and to align with the current efforts to change the world, takes place on Saturday June 3 from 1-3 pm at Red Thread, 72 Princes & Adelaide Streets, and all are invited. You can also join on zoom and register at https://shorturl.at/ABW59
Three years after publication, Andaiye’s book is not widely available in Guyana. Initial restrictions due to the Covid-19 lockdowns and prohibitive shipping costs since have so far made it difficult to get copies sent from the publishers. Such is the uneven world that we live in. Elsewhere the collection has been taken up widely; from course readings in university classrooms to study groups of community activists. The Trinidad based Bocas Lit Fest drew on the title to frame their 2022 festival, The Point is to Change the World. Selma James, who founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign – known today as the Global Women’s Strike – did a joint launch of Andaiye’s book alongside her own recent publication, Our Time is Now: Sex, Race, Class and Caring for People and Planet.
Two years ago, I received a letter from Caio Valiengo from Editora Funilaria, a new independent publisher based in São Paulo, Brazil, that they had acquired the rights to publish a Portuguese translation of Andaiye’s book. O importante é transformar o mundo was published last October, with a foreword by Brazilian sociologist and university professor Flavia Rios. I was able to join them in Brazil in November for the launch, arriving shortly after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections. There was a palpable air of relief, expectation and celebration, although to be sure, the excitement also had to do with watch parties for World Cup football! The first event, in Paraty, was a book fair for radical independent publishers, FLIPEI, where I was in conversation with black feminists Camilla Dias and Juliana Borges (Borges runs a bookstore in São Paulo and has authored two books, “Mass incarceration” and “Prisons: Mirrors of Us”).
The highlight of the trip was São Paulo, where one-third of the book’s first print run had been purchased by the Marielle Franco and Lauro Campos Foundation, the research arm of the Liberal and Socialist Party, and distributed to party activists as well as activists from the Movement for Homeless Workers (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto, MTST).
Along with MST (the Movement for Landless Workers, which started in rural communities), MTST is one of the largest social movements in Brazil and possibly Latin America, and began as a specific response to urban dispossession. There is a section of the Brazilian constitution that speaks about the social value or use of lands; drawing on this (we might frame this as implementing the law), MTST’s tactic is to identify and stage mass occupation of lands that are not productive, and enter into negotiations with the authorities to provide public housing.
We spent a day with MTST activists, mainly women, in São Bernardo do Campo at the site of a successful occupation. Coordinators are or were homeless, so they have a direct relation to the struggle. They spoke of what it meant for them to be actively involved: “Can you imagine a man living his entire life in a machista country and sees a woman, a Black woman leading? It can be a shock, but it is a necessary shock, to put our feet down, and for people to see that you have to respect us.” Among the women we met was Ediane Maria, a Black woman and the first domestic worker to be elected as a state deputy in São Paulo in the 2022 polls.
Eight years of federal and municipal negotiations in São Bernardo resulted in the provision of social housing – consisting of several apartment towers, with community members hired and trained to work on the construction – and financing put in place to enable formerly homeless persons to take up residence and secure titles. But this is much more than just throwing up a building. It is about attending to the physical and social infrastructure and the collective process of community. There is a children’s play area and discussions are ongoing about finding space for a health centre. “From the Roof to the Plate” was a phrase that we heard several times. Before meeting with some of the residents, we visited the community kitchen (Cozinha Solidaria), which was built in less than a month with entirely donated materials; the coordinator tells us that each of the clay blocks represents one person, one life, one dream. It was opened on May Day 2022. The image of Afro-Brazilian councilwoman, feminist and human rights defender Marielle Franco, assassinated on March 14, 2018, is part of a beautiful brightly painted mural on the outdoor walls.
The kitchen runs on contributions, and food is cooked daily and distributed. One of the women told us that “the main ingredients in all recipes are love and solidarity, because Cozinha Solidaria was built to nourish bodies and souls.”
Besides dealing with hunger and food security, there is a small community library stacked with contributed books. There are activities for children and tutoring and literacy programmes for young adults. On the walls are images of Brazilian women (teachers, mayors, domestic violence advocates), encouraging visitors to learn about these elders, some now ancestors, whose shoulders current and future generations stand on.
The women described their “coolest activity”: challenging machismo through a monthly program in which the kitchen is run entirely by younger men for a day (they also work there on other days). This is an important intervention, because one of the issues that came up very early was domestic violence. When we asked about this we were told that the occupations take issues of gendered violence very seriously and address this in how they organise. Everyone is welcome to be part of the occupation, and one of the first things that is emphasised is that while there is discrimination based on colour, race, gender, sexuality, ability in society, the inequalities those differences produce have no place in the occupation. A Committee of Self Defence makes it clear that violence is absolutely forbidden. If violence does occur, efforts are made to address the situation in a way that is accountable and that breaks the cycle. Expelling someone is the last resort; as it was explained, if you are an aggressor inside the occupation and you are removed, you will simply continue to be an aggressor outside in society. For the women, expulsion represents the worst kind of punishment, and they phrased it movingly: “You lose the struggle if you are out of the movement.”
As the sun was setting in a rainy sky, we made our way from São Bernardo to the site of a recently established and ongoing occupation, named after the late Lélia Gonzalez, black feminist activist, philosopher, professor and public intellectual. This was where the São Paulo launch of Andaiye’s book would take place, amidst hundreds of temporary structures made of wood with plastic coverings. We were given a tour, and almost immediately I said to some of the coordinators, who laughed loudly and nodded knowingly, that it was obvious that women are in charge. There were at least two community kitchens, described as the engine room of the occupation; a communal laundry area; a daycare for infants and young children; a library; a well-stocked room with donated clothes and shoes for people to choose from; and a large outdoor open space that served as a play area for children. Murals and signs were everywhere; testimony to the creative expression of the community. A street sign nailed to a tree says Rua Marielle Franco, reminding people of who she was and that she was assassinated by a coward five years ago. Images of Black leaders adorned the walls of the daycare and library, Pelé, Lélia Gonzalez, Beatriz do Nascimento, Rihanna, Beyoncé. I ask about the paintings of ants on the walls and am told that it means you should not trouble with an ant because you will have to deal with the entire anthill. Other signs say things like: ‘Here are the people who are not afraid to fight’; ‘Without struggle there is no achievement,’ and the one I like the most, ‘Life is too intense to stay asleep.’
We gathered in a large room with calendars and notes pinned to the temporary walls. Here is where meeting and study regularly take place. A table was stacked with copies of Andaiye’s book that were shared. The room was full, those keeping vigil in the occupation, other MTST activists, interpreters, publishers. We met Brazilians and Venezuelans, Cubans and Haitians. Many were young people and there is a clear commitment to mentoring – one of the coordinators at the occupation was a young black trans woman, 18 years old, confident and committed. Camilla Dias moderated a conversation between myself and Ediane Maria; it was an incredible privilege to hear Ediane speak about her experiences of motherhood, domestic work, of homelessness, and political activism within the movement and her hopes as a recently elected state deputy. There is laughter and chants. The discussion was rich and moving; a Haitian man, who had left his homeland due to the ongoing crisis, and who spoke French, Kreyol, English, Spanish and Portuguese, asked MTST about international solidarity work. One of the coordinators performed a poem from her recently published collection. It was a space led by women (including transwomen), black folk and young people, that brought people together, and offered an example of care, joy, respect, solidarity, and love. This is not a romantic vision, for these are difficult conditions, and vast differences to be navigated and overcome. But it seems to me that there is no greater power than a commitment to process and struggle.
In 2012 in Guyana, after the community strike in Linden when four were fatally shot after police fired live rounds into a crowd, Andaiye came up with a memorable phrase: ‘How will we organise to live?’ And in an interview some years later, she reflected on the meaning of politics: “Too many Guyanese these days have a narrow view of politics, because politics has become so overcentralized…that everything is supposed to be about political parties and government, so that we don’t even have what we call politics at the local level or in the sector or in the community or wherever that you live.” And the late Richard Iton, a former colleague at the University of Toronto, political scientist and award-winning author, once defined politics not as the exclusive preserve of parties and elections, but as “a contest about what matters and ought to be subject to (public) consideration and debate.” What we saw in São Paulo was politics at its best, led by homeless workers, women especially, in all of these ways and more. Andaiye wanted her book to be useful for activists. The hugest respect to MTST for hosting us, and to Editora Funilaria for translating Andaiye’s book, and for understanding that there could be no greater and more generous audience, no better location for a book like this, than at the site of an ongoing social movement and occupation.
