This is not to be just another government hand-out scheme, placing a band-aid over a gaping wound. This is about working with and for communities, building the resilience needed to survive. Community hubs are not means-tested and available to all members of the community.
Hubs are welcoming, dignified community spaces that work with existing community groups: where community food projects exist, they are properly resourced to be able to provide for their communities. Where no such projects exist, they are set up. We demand they are designed according to the needs of the community – consulting with existing community projects, not imposing a standard template on all communities, and created in collaboration with This is Rigged and our allied groups.
Why Community Hubs?
It is crucial that we continue to mitigate the worst of climate collapse, but we must also accept what we have already lost. The idea of security as we have known it previously no longer exists, so where do we go from here?
When the current system is failing to meet our basic needs, we must take collective responsibility for our survival. As the climate crisis intensifies, food shortages will increase – as will corporate profiteering.
As it stands, social scientists would have us scrapping over the last loaf of bread in Tesco, starting bloodbaths in the Morrisons’ aisles, committing GBH over a Pot Noodle. This is not who we are. It doesn’t have to be like this. So, what could our future look like?
Community is revolutionary: the Black Panthers’ free breakfast programme was called “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” by the then-director of the FBI; the miners’ strikes were sustained by communities organising in hubs, making sandwiches for families that had gone months without income, ensuring no one went hungry; the chaikhana, or teahouse, is at the heart of the Rojava revolution. Food is revolutionary – community is a necessity. When our crops are failing, water sources dry up, and the land on which we live is decimated, the real revolutionary thing is to take collective responsibility and stand with one another. To weather the coming storms, communities need resilience to survive. The current system if failing is – we must take our futures into our own hands. This is life or death.
Hubs will provide 3 nutritious meals a day and a cup of tea whenever. Meals should be vegan: this is the cheapest and most accessible option for nutritious meals and accommodates the widest range of faith-based diets.