Systemic Justice’s central premise is that communities should be in the driver’s seat when it comes to using litigation as a tool in their campaigns for justice. They need to set the objectives, articulate the remedies, and frame the narrative, with litigators supporting the cause by doing the legal legwork that comes with it.  

We also centre communities in determining what we’ll work on as an organisation: we want to take our cue from those at the community level on racial, social, and economic justice and contribute where the most pressing need is felt.  

To understand what the priorities are from a community perspective, we conducted a European-wide mapping of priorities in racial, social, and economic justice. This consultation process consisted of:  

• Six thematic roundtable conversations with organisations, movements, and collectives who are at the forefront of challenging the most pressing issues in society in climate justice, access to justice, policing, social protection, free movement, and anti-racism; all themes were approached through an intersectional lens and across the digital and non-digital context;
• 100 1:1 conversations with community activists and organisers;
• Nearly 100 submissions to an online survey;
• The mapping of 1000+ organisations, movements, and collectives in Europe working on racial, social, and economic justice. 

In both the consultation and following analysis, we incorporated bottom-up, community-centred research principles, and participatory approaches to foreground the voices and narratives of those experiencing systemic harms. Once the initial input collection phase was concluded in early July 2022, Systemic Justice kickstarted a community-wide review of the findings to ensure our analyses reflected the input on priorities, most pressing needs, and experiences of those who engaged in the roundtables. We  ran sounding board sessions with key membership and umbrella organisations in Europe to share our initial findings and receive inputs. We then presented the full summary to roundtable participants in order to collect their feedback and finalise the analysis. Our report  shares the findings from this extensive Europe-wide consultation.

This process of identifying opportunities and priorities was not only to set the compass for Systemic Justice’s work. Our research is intended for everyone working on issues of racial, social, and economic justice to use. We hope the outputs will be useful for campaigners and for directing more resources towards the work that needs it most. For this reason, in September 2022, we published the findings in the form a report under an open license, accompanied by infographics and other supporting materials. Surfacing Systemic (In)justices: A Community View provides an insight into priorities as reflected on by marginalised communities themselves. That’s why we say this is a report made for and by communities.

At the end of September, we held a public launch of the report in London. The recording of the event, “Visions for the Future: Systemic Justice’s Report Launch Celebrations” can be viewed below.