ed. note: The following is a Letter to the Editor from a community organization that we believe is worth sharing with our readers.
What happens when people come together on our own terms?
On January 18, 2025, the first city-wide Richmond People’s Assembly brought together over 500 people to connect, share a meal, and grow capacity for participatory community initiatives – a new kind of infrastructure for power on the neighborhood level. The day was joyous, filled with new friendship and bonding, the exchange of resources and ideas, art making, discussion, and skill building. Yet beyond this, it also sought to challenge what it means to live today in Richmond, Virginia, a city marred by, and still living in the shadow of, slavery, the Confederacy, and, before that, the genocide and displacement of the Arrohattoc peoples of the Powhatan Confederacy.
The uprisings of 2020 brought Richmond’s historical tension out of the shadows and onto the streets. The material removal of Confederate monuments and signage from schools and streets attempts to paint an image of a city reborn. Still, we remained one of the nation’s most segregated cities. As new, wealthier residents displace historic ones, the wealth gap grows.
Those of us who came together to form this coordinating committee are from different backgrounds (agriculture, construction, landscaping, administration, socio economic, gender) Some of us have live here all of our lives while others have made it their home. We share in the belief that another world, another Richmond, is possible. We want to live in a Richmond that contends with its history and strives for liberation. We wanted to figure out how we can reconcile the contradictions and build a shared pathway for our future, all of us, together.
Two weeks after Trump’s second election, we called for a Resistance Assembly. We hoped to pull together different people, different perspectives, with the commonality being anxiety, rage, fear – a drive for action. Over a hundred people showed up, spilling out the door of our small venue. Three hours of conversation ensued. How did we get here? What coordination do we have in our city to be prepared? What’snext?
One month later, we called for a second Resistance Assembly, which brought more focus to our ad hoc and experimental efforts. Inspired by a national call, the Festivals of Resistance, we held a joyful gathering the weekend prior to Trump’s inauguration. The call asserted:
Once Trump takes power, it will only become more challenging to make connections with our neighbors, create the networks that we will need to face down his assaults, and share the skills we will need to survive his reign. Right now, we have a precious window of time in which to prepare.
We agreed with that logic. We were bringing questions of our own, too, reflecting on the Resistance Assemblies held a month earlier: What if we reimagined how we organize society? What kind of world do we want to live in? And, if we want to live in a different kind of worldfrom our present reality, how can we build strategies for victory?What would it mean to win?
Although the People’s Assembly sprang up from recent resistance efforts against the emerging Trump regime, Trump is not the crux of our struggle. We regard him as a symptom, a symptom of the authoritarian tendencies latent in our society. Resistance to Trump requires us to see beyond one man to the world of techno-fascist billionaires, American-funded wars, and ever more restricting borders and policing. It requires us to challenge the whole system.
From here, the city-wide People’s Assembly emerged. At the Assembly, we discussed and shared an abundance of resources, skills, and materials. But we also realized that we lacked one significant resource: organization. Neighbors don’t know one another. Neighborhoods don’t have shared goals or strategies. We don’t have a consistent means of communication or coordination across neighborhoods, organizations, and groups. In the past, when Richmond residents did form these connections, they emerged in crisis and disappeared quickly.
In hindsight of these facts, the coordinating committee has proposed a city-wide structure for coordination and strategy-building, the Richmond People’s Assembly. This assembly is more than the inaugural event, more than a joyous day of food, information, and workshops. It’s an organizational force, composed of many small bodies – neighborhood assemblies, formal organizations, informal organizations, workers’ collectives, unions, study groups, action groups, identity-based caucuses, and whoever else is organizing towards liberation. The city-wide Richmond People’s Assembly will meet four times a year, with the goals of sharing “report backs”, or updates, about what each smaller group has been up to, their goals, reflections, etc., and to strategize towards common initiatives which can improve all of our lives.
Since January 2025, seven neighborhood assemblies have formed. Brookland and Highland Park, Jackson and Monroe Ward, The Fan, East End, Southside, Maymont/Randolph/Oregon Hill, and Northside (Bellevue and Ginter Park) have all established neighborhood assemblies. These groups are meeting on a regular basis in parks, community centers, and libraries. They are open to anyone in alignment with the shared principles and who live in the area. As we begin the process of neighborhood organizing together, most groups are focusing on getting to know one another, establishing their structure, and mapping power and resources within their immediate communities.
We also realized that we needed shared principles, ideas, and beliefs that bind us together. At the People’s Assembly, the coordinating committee proposed six common principles, standards to hold one another and our efforts of the organization in common. A massive crowd shared in reading aloud these principles, popcorn style. We believe that these ideas, simple yet potent, can allow us to transcend ideological differences as we struggle together towards another world. We’ll share them here:
Towards Liberation. We are active participants in liberation movements. We are committed to a free world. We work together to support all freedoms: freedom from racial discrimination, freedom from misogyny and from oppression of any gender or orientation, freedom from economic suffering and exploitation, freedom from unjust wars, and freedom from the politics of division in all forms.
Towards Solidarity. We are building a free society for all people and for our natural world. We are building with and caring for our communities beyond present reliance on state systems. We do not collaborate with any local, state or federal enforcement systems that threaten our community. We prioritize restorative approaches that seek to heal us and the world we all inhabit.
In Our Movement. We aregrowing our collective power. We believe in the importance of collective strategy building, beyond our own groups, cliques, and milieus. We recognize the intersectionality of our struggles and we fight together and for each other, rather than in isolation.
Amongst One Another. We believe that the struggle for liberation will require a diversity of tactics. We do not publicly disavow the tactical choices of any organization, group, caucus, or individual towards this end. Rather, we look for ways to augment each other’s work.
Within Ourselves. The strength of our interpersonal relationships defines our successes. We take care of one another, we check in on one another, and we support our community through the hardships of our personal and political lives. We celebrate each other and encourage each other to grow.
For All. We are building a shared vision of our city and our futures, all of us, together.
Our last city wide assembly was on April 12th, where over 150 people convened again at Studio 23 in Manchester. Having spent three months experimenting on the neighborhood level, groups now came together to reflect on their beginnings, share achievements and reflections, and ask for help from one another as they continue organizing. The meeting began with introductions and a grounding exercise to generate a calm environment. The principles were read aloud popcorn style to create a vibe of how we respect each other within this space. Next was a visioning exercise with the water crisis as an example of a failure from the current municipal system. We asked, How could Richmond develop a participatory democratic approach that would have municipal workers and residents meet to foster support, accountability, and promote sustainable improvements? Visioning guides us to what we can materially achieve. Seven different neighborhood assemblies reported back of what they had learned about their communities, as well as what they had been working on. The common thread of issues around food deserts, housing insecurity, and gentrification speaks to the issues of the last twenty years here in Richmond. The assemblies are meant to help guide our future twenty years, and beyond.
We didn’t create the assembly model. Two of our deepest inspirations are the “solidarity economy” framework and “democratic confederalism.” Let’s break both of those down:
- The solidarity economy is an alternative means of arranging economic activities, which prioritizes social welfare and ecological soundness over financial profits. Within the solidarity economy model, decisions of economics and governance are made in a participatory and democratic manner, empowering community members to act as active political subjects. The model emerges from experiments in Latin America and the Global South. The New Economy Coalition is one excellent source to read more about it.
- Democratic confederalism is a system of governance founded on popular self-organization. Originating among democratic, feminist liberation movements in Northern Syria and Eastern Turkey, it is not to be confused with anything having to do with the U.S. “Confederacy” or Civil War. Here, “confederalism” means a union of sovereign entities for the purpose of achieving shared action or goals. Democratic confederalism takes some of it’s roots from social ecology, yet another theory of organization elaborated on by American philosopher Murray Bookchin. It’s most well-known, however, as the system of governance for some 4.5 million people in a region called Rojava.
So, what do you get when you experiment with models of cooperative economy and cooperative direct democracy? Join us, and we’ll find out together.
To join or start an assembly in your neighborhood, read the assembly pamphlet and guidance. If you find yourself in alignment with those shared agreements and principles, we encourage you to join your neighborhood assembly. And if it doesn’t exist, make one! We’re looking forward to seeing and hearing everyone’s ideas as we strive toward a thriving city for all of us, together.
Signed,
Richmond People’s Assembly Coordinators
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