"There is a mind, soul and body shift that is necessary": Generative interview with community economist and organiser Guppi Bola

As part of our generative inquiry which asks, 'What is a just transition?', we spoke to Guppi about health justice, solidarity economies and relational organising.

Guppi Bola.

Guppi is a ceramicist, fermenter, community economist and strategy geek, based in Oxford. She is co-founder of Decolonising Economics, with a background in both economics and public health.

In this generative interview Guppi told me that these parallel knowledge bases mean that she is driven in her work by “the inequity behind health outcomes that are often a result of things that are outside people's control.”

Guppi is passionate about a transition away from an extractive economy and towards something that is just, democractic and community-focussed, and her organising work is underpinned by key concepts like just transition.

So, the first question is arguably the simplest and the most complex, and we’ve had all kinds of answers to it so far: What is a just transition? What does that phrase mean to you? How might you use it? How might you evoke that concept in your work?

Because Decolonising Economics is an entity that is born out of two spirits, I guess – mine and my organising partner Noni’s – we found clarity on the term just transition through a framework that we have used since we established ourselves in 2018 called the Strategy Framework for Just Transition, produced by Movement Generation.

Just transition organising as a political strategy stems from historic organising in Latin America for workers to access their rights in relationship with the land, through various forms of production and land work. So the spirit of our work stems from there, and for us the conception of it is the strategic interventions that we need to make as communities who are most marginalised by the extractive economy to move towards regeneration.

For us, that fits into a set of principles that look like re-democratising resources and materials, relocalising production, considering past harms within the extractive economy and repairing those past harms, recovering cultures and practices and knowledge that has been lost through the dominance of the extractive economy, and providing the skills that are necessary to engage in democratic participation and movement of resources into community control.

We recognise that that's a big ask, but at the moment the extractive economy dominates so much of the way our relationships and resources are determined, or the movement of and principles under which our resources and relationships exist, and is governed by a really punitive, militaristic kind of force. I think we can be cultured into a problematic mindset that is individualising everyone's efforts and creating divisions between communities. And so divesting from that, and from the pillars of the extractive economy, is part of the work of the just transition.

In my personal pursuit in this work – I'm a health justice organiser. I have a background in public health, and I am always fascinated by and driven by the inequity behind health outcomes that are often a result of things that are outside people's control. So my question has always been: What would enable people to have the control and power that they need in order to live healthy lives and not be subjected to ill health that is unfair and avoidable?

I think structural change at an economic level is ultimately what is necessary. Any activity towards the pursuit of that, even if we don't actually reach a regenerative economy, is a medicine in itself. That's how I sit within the terminology.

Thank you. That's really interesting that you've got a public health focus. Maybe it's a bit of an obvious question, but why is just transition important to you, and how do you see the things that you've just described, those principles, play out through the work that you do on just transition?

Well, firstly, the economy is always transitioning. I guess it‘s a question of which direction it's transitioning towards. Are we transitioning towards more dominance around inequity, injustice, degradation of human rights and extraction of land and natural resources? Or is it transitioning towards something equitable and just, a deeper democracy, a sacredness towards all living beings? It is clear that the current late-stage capitalism, or racial capitalism, or whatever frame you want to give it, is in movement and is struggling to maintain itself in the context we're in now.

I feel that there are many things that we can do, or have tried to do. I suppose the 1940s and the Declaration of Human Rights and everything that happened in the post-war era feels like it was a real liberal approach, a kind of sticking plaster approach to patching up something about the system that is inherent, but has clearly not met the kind of goals of human rights and justice.

So I'm committed to just transition because I am committed to the transformation of this economic system. I'm committed to the idea that the economy is not owned by a certain group of people that hold power, but that we all participate in it, and that we all have responsibility and capacity to participate in it and to appreciate it, and that there are various strategies and practices that are really important to enable us to strengthen community power within those spaces.

You asked a question about principles and I can't quite remember what…

Well, I was just referencing your own interpretation of just transition, why it's important and how that plays out in the work you do. You referenced that you've got a strategic framework. Was that something that you came up with between you or was that something you came across?

No, no – everything that we use has been written by some other genius!

The just transition framework was developed – I don't think it's actually anything new, I think it's just what it is – by an organization called Movement Generation, possibly nearly a decade ago now. It involved three years of traveling across parts of the Americas to explore the experience marginalised communities had of the dominant economy and their visions for what a new economy would be. It has this thing called a ‘values filter’, so that we can't transition from here to there if we're not holding these values. Often they're values that get lost within slightly nerdy political spaces that work on economics.

I mentioned earlier the restoration of cultures and knowledges, the commitment to racial justice and social equity, because those elements are alongside the material shifts that are necessary. There is a mind, soul and body shift that is necessary within communities around our conception of the way that we are – whether we're units of work or whether we are people in relationship with each other. And not just with each other, but what is our relationship to all living beings, be it the land, the food we produce and other living beings. It's much more widely supported and protected now, but we're losing indigenous cultural knowledge of how important those relationships are, because forces around us are trying to separate us from each other and other living beings.

Back in 2018, mainstream spaces weren't really talking about the colonial roots of the economic system or some of the ideologies of patriarchy and white supremacy that are embedded specifically into the extractive economy in order to maintain its purpose of creating profit and wealth for a few. They're the tools of the economic system, the tools of capitalism, as opposed to social issues that just exist because we're all humans. They’re social constructs.

I feel like we're able to have that conversation a lot more now. Post 2020, folks have a much stronger political education. Now the question is: How are we actually going to begin building outside of that? And for us, being able to focus on the values filter of: What does our practice actually look like together and how can we guide it in the leadership of those who have that wisdom and be accountable to each other? It just places a different emphasis on who we actually need to pay attention to when it comes to economic transition work – people who have held that knowledge and practice and wisdom, and often that's elders in our communities, those who are most displaced.

When you understand the value spaces behind that frame [of just transition], you understand what you're trying to do is emerge out of quite a toxic existence and dominance of a colonial mindset that is only possible when we really try and break down the internal powers within us and between us. Which sounds very amorphous, but ultimately, it's just: do community organising really well! Do community organising really well, in an understanding of the structures around us and what we're up against, and being conscious of what people are up against in community organising to do it effectively.

So we appreciate the values filter. It sits somewhere within the practice of anti-oppression, but not wholly, and there's some other tools that we use to consider the different interventions that we organise, as ourselves and also as Decolonising Economics.

Thanks for that. What are you involved in, or what are you aware of, related to just transition that you’d like to see more of? What is a really interesting, good practice example of something that you're involved in or have seen?

There are a lot of really excellent things happening. It's really hard to pinpoint one, because if you think about the first ‘themes’ of the economy, you've got the things that just have to be in operation in order for society or community to exist. We've got folks working across food and land, health and healing, housing, workplace organising, energy utilities and water, shifting the financial system. So there's all these different sectors that will, in a different economy, still exist, because we all need those elements of economic exchange and production. And this is how that exchange production actually is practiced.

We haven't mentioned this yet, but our focus within the just transition is actually on establishing solidarity economic practices. Solidarity economic practices are that bit within the value filter that is economic relational organising within a set of principles that meet the goals of a just transition. It's kind of extensive. There's a website called the Solidarity Economy Principles, and it goes into depth into what those principles look like in practice. I would really encourage people to explore that website. It's really beautiful in its own right, and also in depth in organising practices that I think people will really recognise when they read it, but it's hard to just say it without context.

So that's one thing. In the last two or three years, I think maybe through being able to envisage or dream a bit bigger than survival after the pandemic. Loads of Black and people of color communities and other like-spirited marginalised communities, like the queer community, have been more mobilised around land and housing. Not just fighting against high rents or shitty landlords, but really thinking about, ‘We can barely organise together because we can't even convene in a place that's ours.’ Most places are inaccessible to folks who use wheelchairs or just culturally inappropriate because they're old stately homes with bad vibes. There's been more of a movement, both at a local and national level, for global majority communities to really ask for self-governing spaces and for the sustainability of their community organising.

I do think land and housing is really at the core of so much injustice, because it’s the most structural thing that prevents communities from being together. I live in Oxford – so much inequality in the city, and so much excellent organising that's happening on the edges of the city, in the spaces where global majority communities who have been here for a long time are being pushed towards. The city’s a very weird place to live. Kind of like some parts of London – you go to some places and it's incredibly deprived, and then you go round the corner and then you've got this huge house. People living side by side, but with very different life experiences.

The history of colonial thought and practice stemming from the city [of Oxford], and in the university and institutions around it, really motivates a lot of marginalised folks here, and there is a really strong working-class organising culture as well that has sustained itself. I work with an organisation called Oxford Community Action – probably some of the best organising I think I've done in my 40 years of existence. But I would claim that a lot of that, at a really micro, local level, is really happening elsewhere as well.

If you look at OCA’s website, they run a food redistribution service on Wednesdays, they do sports activities for kids during summer holidays and they run a catering service. So it looks all very ‘lovely’. But beneath all of that is this deep political, transformative and quite radical agenda that doesn't come out immediately. Because some of the stuff that is the most transformative is day-to-day things that we often, I think, as activists and organisers don't do, because we get stuck in the hugeness of the system we're trying to shift.

Can you see promising relationships or connections between the local scale and the planetary scale of this work?

Yeah, there are so many things that are necessary. I mentioned one thing around meeting the community's immediate needs. One of the other programmes that we do, that my organising partner Noni runs, is basically recovering cultural traditions around community resourcing. They're doing that project with a group called Kin. It's beautiful and worth looking at as well. Finding ways in which communities can be together in whole relationship, share resources so that their material needs are met and everyone feels safe, and then they're able to rest and envision together and dream and strategize and plan and take action and resist the extractive economy in whatever way is necessary. It’s about a realisation that the solutions are already in the communities’ hands – this is why the programme is called Medicine.

So that's one approach. And then, of course, there is in that a requirement to divest from the extractive economy, which I think is only possible at a planetary level if we have these powerful, resourced and well-skilled communities. The more that we distract ourselves from the necessary relational organising, the longer it's going to take, or the less well prepared we're going to be for all of the ongoing crises that keep buffeting us. And there'll be much more than what we're dealing with right now.

What I find interesting is that there are people with wealth and power who are also considering what those new financial institutions or infrastructures are and how they are contributing to it. The most obvious place at the moment is organised philanthropy, the construction of the endowment and what that means to bolstering the stock market, and what that means for the continuation of the extractive economy. So yeah, some positive planetary things around moving land into indigenous stewardship, reshaping philanthropy so that we're weakening the strength of the extractive economy.

This is the most optimistic question. It's important to ask it, I think. What's the best thing that could happen with everything that you've just described?

Oh, the best thing? Repairing of unnecessary divisions is one thing.

There are lots of great things that can happen. We can just live amongst art and great food and all of life's pleasure. Imagine if we had regulated nervous systems and regulated planetary systems – it would be amazing. But like I mentioned earlier, in the pursuit of all of that there is that capacity. So whilst we live amongst crises daily, in pursuit of that vision we also get to do some recovery with each other from quite a lot of pain that we've been subjected to, from narratives and stories that have been told to us and enforced on us, even through a parent-child lens, which is like a patriarchal relationship – that we move out of that and be in existence with each other in structures that are beyond what has been determined.

I have experienced moments like that, and will continue to build in my community organising to experience more moments in that way, where I'm like, ‘Oh, wow, this is just a totally different way of existing among people and within nature.’ Everyone having an opportunity for that experience would be really great.

I sit on the edges of extreme privilege and marginalisation. I think many people, particularly of my background, might have that transition between many different, multifaceted experiences of oppression and privilege, and being able to understand the pain that exists because of the privilege I hold, or what society has done to cultivate that. I think about that when I think about that division between people of color and white folks, and people moving out of their whiteness, or being able to work through that, or work through their heteronormativity and and just be in relationship in a different way with folks without that label. Even just that, I believe, is very powerful. So it's very much the small, internal acts that can shift and enable people to experience life very differently to what we've been given.

That's a really nice way of expressing it. It suggests that quite an important part of the work is trying to cultivate that appetite or that excitement for exactly what you've just described. And like you rightly point out, it's difficult for people to do that when they're working through grief and pain and not having very basic needs met. What might your invitation be, or your ask to other people or groups be, on the back of everything you just talked about?

I guess my invitation to people is firstly, don't feel like you have all the answers. Always give space for questions and recognise that if you hold slightly more power in a relationship, recognise that some people might respond in a way that has been constructed through a power dynamic and isn't necessarily meeting their immediate needs. And always find ways to be led by the way they practice their work, as opposed to a way that benefits you first. And then over time, it can become more reciprocal, more mutual, and you'll recognise how that happens.

But the initial relationship building and the practice is really important, and we're not all equal. I think sometimes very traditional organising, one-to-one organising, isn't actually effective because it assumes an equity that isn't there. So yeah, just some kind of interrogation about your position when you enter into relationship building is really, really important and really valuable.

Thanks so much for your time. I just have one other question, which is the strangest question: What meaning, if any was, made for you during the course of our conversation today?

When I reflect on where we are through these questions, I really enjoy looking back on what my answer might have been two years ago, and how different it is now, and the deeper developments that have happened. The knowledge is much deeper internally, and it's allowing me to look outwardly with a deeper vision and deeper strategy and deeper commitment, which I love. Just talking about the stuff reflects that a little bit. It's nice to have the questions asked and then to be able to reflect back on that.

I encourage people to watch the videos and the audio from the Solidarity Economy showcase that we ran in July last year. It was a celebration of economic practices and principles of solidarity economy that are rooted in Black and people of color communities. The programme was designed to explore how communities were resisting the extractive economy in the morning and then there was a set of workshops that looked at the practice of organising through the values filter. The afternoon was more visionary and looked at those who work towards building a regenerative economy.

One of the things we forget so often is the internationalist perspective and solidarity practices that are necessary within this that means that you can do local community organising. And actually, if you do the right kind of community organising, you're doing global solidarity work, because you'll meet people from all different backgrounds. And that's the best way in which you can begin baking in the more planetary, globalist approaches to systemic change.

Thanks so much for your time. That's all really fascinating.

Thank you to Guppi and everyone we spoke to for this generative inquiry. Learn more and read the other stories here.