Decompiling Oppression #153
Sam McVeety
As we begin 2026, I was reflecting on the past year, and how it has shaped me and those around me. It has been a hugely challenging year, for all the obvious reasons, and, it has also been a year that has driven us to hasten the work of liberation, towards envisioning and bringing into being a future of greater possibility. It has been a year when we have needed each other, perhaps more than ever. I want to express gratitude for everyone who has taken the time to respond to one or more of this year's entries, whether with a question or a simple note of something that was resonant.
Looking back, one feature of the last year that has felt particularly essential has been the presence of strong political organizing homes (in a broad, change-through-action-and-advocacy sense, not a narrow partisan one) along the way. These shaped the year in many ways, from phonebanking with SURJ, celebrating the many political wins across Washington State with Progress Alliance, or attending an Indigenous drag show at the Solidaire convening. While their aims and actions were different (though often complementary), the throughline of these groups and spaces is that they provided a sense of belonging, structure, and purpose.
When I think of an organizing home, I think of a community that is built around a sense of shared values and purpose, one that has its own sense of identity and can still be accountable to and operate in coalition with other partner groups. By "sense of identity", I mean something that feels personal enough and intrinsically motivating enough to its members to generate its own momentum and energy; it isn't wholly dependent on another entity to define, grow, and take action. I think of something that is relational and intimate enough that you wouldn't think twice to have a subset of folks over for dinner, while also maintaining ties to networks that are millions strong. I think of a culture of consistent engagement, where shared values and social ties are regularly exercised and strengthened. Perhaps most importantly, I think of a space that is joyful to share, one that leaves you wanting to come back.
Importantly, I don't think that an organizing home needs to look a certain way. Maybe it's a book club that formed around a shared love of reading, but that also intentionally partners with advocacy organizations to change laws and regulations. Maybe it's a running group that has chosen climate justice and action as its shared value. What is important is to have some level of intentionality around the themes above, to not exist in isolation or operate so sporadically that momentum and growth become impossible.
There are plenty of existing places to start, too. Organizations like SURJ are working to provide local organizing homes for people across the country, with ready-made opportunities for engagement and growth, all connected to a national effort to build a movement for racial and economic justice, powered by people. Some organizing spaces will focus on specific identities, in an effort to "get your people" and dig into the forces that shape that identity, while others will be spaces that mix across race, class, gender, and more.
Effective organizing is a journey for all of us. If Google's search statistics are any indication, a more common term than "organizing home" is "political home". I'd imagine that the latter term can lead to some misconceptions and stuckness, with people hearing "political" and opting out, given today's partisan rancor and frequent fecklessness at the national level. While political parties are a highly visible example of organizing homes, they can also feel like huge monolithic institutions, and obscure the reality that there are so many other ways to be involved in change, political or otherwise.
Political parties can also train us to think of organizing as just being defined by a set of labels and slogans (progressive, liberal, conservative, and the like) that we ascribe to ourselves. Organizing spaces should be first and foremost relational; otherwise the work becomes impossible to sustain. A few years ago, I made a list of spaces that, based on their stated values, might be places for me to engage. Crucially, though, as I explored each group in turn, I paid attention to how I felt about it, and whether I found myself wanting to come back. Listening to those feelings (rather than looking for the activity that is "most" values aligned on paper or that I "should" want to go to) has made all of the work that followed more joyful and sustainable.
The year ahead will need millions of people to mobilize for justice. One of the things I think that organizing homes can help with is the feeling of overwhelm that comes with our modern organizing landscape, with so much need and so many different ways to try to meet it. When you're operating as a single individual, looking at all the possible options can leave us stuck in a state of decision paralysis, weighing the pros, cons, and unknowns. But that's the thing; organizing liberation and resisting fascism should be a team sport, and these aren't decisions that we should expect to need to make alone.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: What are organizing spaces you would like to try out? Who are the people you'd like to try them out with?
Communal: How do we build and nurture the cross-group relationships that allow us to engage in large-scale collective action?
Solidarity: Support the Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Education Fund and their work to end white support for white supremacy, as part of a multi-racial movement led by organizers of color.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
FAQ
Can I share this newsletter with non-Googlers? Yes! Feel free to forward this note externally; it does not contain confidential information.
Is this an official Google newsletter? Nope. The views expressed in this newsletter are not the official position of Google, and we are not affiliated with any particular ERG.
I am leaving Google or transferring to another bet. Can I still receive this newsletter? Yes! You can join the external list here.