Introduction

The Embroidery Collective was a mutual aid project started in Ireland by activists from migrant and minority ethnic backgrounds as a way of connecting when the COVID-19 pandemic made connection more difficult than ever. It was formed of women and marginalized genders who used to organize together on housing, reproductive justice, anti-racism and anti-fascism before the start of the pandemic and found themselves alone in the face of loss, grief and anxiety during lockdown. The Collective became a political space of shared experiences and now, in a ‘post-pandemic world’, there are some valuable lessons to be drawn from the Collective about reimagining community and political organizing in spite of and alongside the ambivalence we experience as community organizers in a world of growing anxieties.

During the pandemic, the Collective challenged those of us involved in community organizing to rethink what a political space and political organizing meant for us. Was it just putting your body out in the street? Leading marches and protests? Managing social media accounts? Projecting our resources outwards? Or could a more quiet, internal and self-reflective form of organizing be as valuable and perhaps more sustainable during the pandemic? The Collective showed the importance of care and hope in political organizing. Building on these questions, and with the perspective of the last few years where disasters, wars and genocides dominate our everyday news, I learned that it is important for community organizers to consider the central roles of hope and care, because, if we want to preserve our communities, we need to make sure these two concepts are central to our organizing.