Agency: working with, against the system, or…?
Yes, I resonated with the association of words as well. However, the Centre for Political Beauty works completely against the system, or parrallel to it at best.
Woodbine as well, from past conversations, seem to be on the revolutionary side - although someone in the collective mentioned working in public hospitals and guiding people through the system, fully aware that at the end of the day the system is failing us all. This past discussion on the Woodbine sustainability and interaction with the system is truly enlightening: “agree that we have to study the idea of both being within the system and out”. What came out was the question of whether teaching prevention, taking on a single point of system failure could be lower hanging fruit for groups like yours who make a real contribution but also risk overburdening or taking on too big a task. Meeting basic survival needs like housing or food, which are traditionally system tasks is more difficult and involve a certain work with the system in order to build that major capacity - i.e. charities or grant funded organisations. @maymay can confirm if this is a good summary.
Over these 20 years GalGael is surely becoming a repository of learnings and things which work, or dont. How did you work over these years in relation with existing institutions?
This is just one of the many points of congruence we found in opencare community. It all goes back to how we build the infrastructure needed, a point nicely made by @Woodbine .