What is a collective?Each of us who participates in this space is accountable to each other in balancing of our own capacity with the capacity of those around us. There is no boss to compel labor or agreement.
A common refrain from new members of collectives is some variation of: “somebody should do something”, but who is somebody if you don’t put in the time to make sure other people agree and have capacity to help you achieve your vision? This is a hard lesson to learn for people who have lived their whole lives in our super-hierarchical capitalist structures. There is a certain comfort in having one person at the top to hold accountable when they fail to respond to your “somebody should do something”. This comfort is baked into how we are taught to relate to each other and what collectives seek to undo. One of our biggest challenges as an organization is to dare to say no. Sometimes, there is no “somebody” who has time to do “something”. Sometimes “something” requires more resources, labor, and organizational structure than we have at the moment. In these times some compromises might need to be made. “Something” might need to be split up into manageable steps. But this is also our biggest strength. We empower each other to act on our ideas and goals and values, to become the "someone" who (with support and resources from the group) makes the "something" we want to happen. When one of us doesn't have the capacity, others who agree with the idea can step up to enact it. So what is a collective? A collective is our commitment to work together on solutions to shared problems, to agree and disagree serenely in ways that allow people’s voices to be heard and a true assessment of our organizational capacity to be expressed, to take accountability for one’s own leadership, whether we are the ones leading or we are helping someone else.
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