Just Transition Stories – Alive to the Call of Justice

These bite-size stories were recorded as part of an online event, Alive to the Call of Justice, on 28 February 2024. The session explores Just Transition through community action, asking, how can we ensure our movement is creating space for all to shape the future? 

This session unpacks how we can build a just transition through community action, exploring issues around migration, inequality, food access and colonialism. You can watch the session in full here (1 hour 22 mins).

Pauline O’Flynn is a community organiser and mental health practitioner working in social and environmental justice in Belfast. She shares some of her work and learning addressing land and housing justice with various partners in the city, including Transition group Grow, Anaka Women’s Collective and human rights campaign group Participation and the Practice of Rights.

Steve Jones has a passion for bringing permaculture and Transition to working class communities like his own estate in Bolton. He shared how these approaches are key to supporting communities to feed themselves, rather than only treating the symptoms of food poverty and food deserts. 

“It’s about fighting inequality through growing food, it’s about permanent change, it’s about inclusion, it’s about sharing knowledge from different cultures, different time eras, bringing people together and it’s about having a good laugh and job and being human. And its really easy to do this. We’re now a Transition group which i’m rather proud of, and anyone in our area can access our services and come and work with us.” 

Rose is part of Transition Heathrow, helping to protect three villages in the path of a proposed third runway, helping to bring hope, life, creativity and connection to these communities. 

She shares how they are making art, music and growing accessible to all, connecting people with the land, bringing together communities under huge pressure, environmentalists and artists, and shares understanding of how the challenges we face intersect.

“Many groups that are looking at social justice talk continuously about this work but actually, actively just aren’t really doing enough to truly engage…” 

Rakesh Rootsman Rak has decades of experience as a permaculture and forest garden designer, community activist and Transition Town trainer. He shares the work he’s doing in the international Transition movement to better equip groups to be truly welcoming and include people on the margins, and a project to collect stories of decolonising permaculture. 

Yaz Brien has decades of experience in working for justice in many different settings. They shared a learning journey the Transition Together team has embarked upon to go deeper into understanding oppression and how to be truly anti-oppressive in our work, culture, structures and relationships. 

“Without shining a light on inequities we limit the potential and potency of our visions for the future, what we can reimagine and how we rebuild our world together.” 

Watch the full Alive to the Call of Justice session here.