So on Saturday 9 September, Jane Holgate and John Page are going to swim 10 kilometres down the river Dart to raise money for the Ella Baker School of Community Organising. That is about three hours in the water, the equivalent of swimming a marathon.

We are raising money for the Ella Baker School of Transformational Community Organising. Ella Baker (that's her in the photo) was a leading organiser and strategist in the African American Freedom movement. She played leading roles in organisations as diverse as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Ccommittee, but she has been sadly overlooked by most historians of community organising. The aim of her organising was to fundamentally transform power relationships as a necessary first step towards achieving social justice. This is something, that we believe is core to what community, or trade union organising should be about today.

While the school will celebrate her contribution, we are also really interested in looking at the lessons of UK organising (both trade union and community), whether that be the events of the 1880s 'New Unionism' movement, the suffragettes of the East London Federation, the Black Radical tradition that arose out of the New Cross Massacre Action Committee, or the way different waves of migrants have organised in response to hostility and racism, etc. We want to learn from social justice movements of the past, so that we can build for the future.

If you want to know more about the project, sign up here: https://goo.gl/forms/29gqleb37WxqcaRz1 In the meantime, your sponsorship would go a long way to making those 10 kilometres seem a little less daunting!