Lotus & Rice: Reclaiming Our Organizing — Convening Zine Now Available
Earlier this year, GAR brought together over 100 organizers in Chicago for our Membership Convening, Lotus & Rice: Reclaiming Our Organizing*. Together, we shared practical tools for building working-class power, strengthened our skills to contend with pro-authoritarian forces, and deepened our connections with one another across the movement.
The Convening created space for organizers to share practical tools, reflect on our collective experiences, and deepen our commitment to building powerful, connected movements. Together, we explored how we can strengthen our organizing, grow our skills to better inoculate against pro-authoritarian forces, and build relationships across our membership.
To celebrate the wisdom and lessons shared during Lotus & Rice, we created a Convening Zine that captures key reflections, frameworks, and takeaways from our time together. This resource is a way to continue the conversations sparked in Chicago and support organizers as we bring these lessons back to our communities.
We invite you to read and share the Lotus & Rice zine as we continue reclaiming our organizing and building the power of working-class communities.
*More on the theme–Lotus & Rice: Reclaiming Our Organizing
“Lotus & Rice” is inspired by the historical call for “bread for all, and roses too,” from early workers’ and women’s movements. Lotuses and rice are both essential to the survival and cultures of many Asian communities. Farmers often plant lotuses in rice paddies because they help enrich the soil and support stronger rice growth. Together, they embody our vision: a movement that feeds our people’s material needs while cultivating a world where we all have dignity, justice, and safety.
This year’s theme, Reclaiming Our Organizing, comes at a time when fear in our communities is growing. These fears are not abstract; they come from conditions working-class people face more and more everyday: economic hardship, displacement, policing, and surveillance. But our communities are no strangers to resistance. In both the loud and quiet ways, we’ve fought against exploitation, violence, and injustice. This moment calls on us to reclaim and build on that legacy so that we can strengthen our collective power to move from reacting to crises and towards shaping a better future for all.