After more than 200 millimetres of rain fell on the Illawarra in just a few hours last April, locals rolled up their sleeves and did what they do best in a crisis.
They turned up at the hardest-hit homes with mops and shovels, asking where to start or just quietly getting on with it. They brought food, cleaned out garages and offered their homes and hoses to people they’d only just met.
Wollongong writer and activist Nick Southall says the region’s response wasn’t unusual – it was typical. He calls it "disaster communism" (also the title of his book released last year), the idea that when a crisis hits, most people don’t look away. They pitch in. They organise.
“The common response was to take action to look after those they care about, look after their neighbours, look after their communities,” he says of the floods.
“Doing repairs or recovery work, counselling, giving money, giving hours, helping with housing – a whole range of things that are probably still going on to this day.
“Most people respond to disasters in positive ways – people do incredible things to help each other, to redistribute wealth, resources, power.”
It’s a view he’ll bring to this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival: Live & Local, which combines live-streamed headline events from Sydney with in-person sessions with local writers at the Music Lounge in Wollongong Town Hall.
Nick will join author Claire O’Rourke for Grassroots to Global, a panel hosted by journalist Jennifer Macey, to discuss whether local action can actually make a difference when it comes to threats like climate change.
Nick says the conversation will cover “some of the most important issues of our lives, and what we’re going to do about them”.
“It’s also a chance to have some more engagement with hopeful ideas about the future and the potentials for transforming the world into a better place to live,” he adds.
The UOW academic says he’s optimistic because people have always stepped up and found ways to build fairer, stronger communities.
“I have seen in the past that those who have remained hopeful and have struggled against things like fascism, war and oppression have been successful in many ways,” he says.
“They haven’t got rid of those things, but they have created alternatives.
“They’ve supported growing relationships, solidarity, forms of genuine democracy and better ways of living.
“That’s happened in the past, it’s happening now – and I think we can keep doing that.”
Nick says he’s realistic about the challenges. From time-poor communities stretched thin to powerful systems working to “maintain the status quo or make disaster capitalism worse”, creating a caring future will be a long struggle – but one he says we can’t turn away from.
“The obstacles of capitalism and capitalist governments need to be demolished so that we don’t have continuing disasters being created and made worse by that,” he says.
“I’m not looking for some sort of traditional communist movement like Russia or China or something like that.
“I’m looking for something much more genuinely democratic that’s created by ordinary people at the grassroots – and then builds as part of a sort of global ‘movement of movements’.
“The world is going to rapidly and radically change – that’s the science, there’s no doubt about that.
“The question now is: in what ways is it going to do that?”
Sydney Writers’ Festival: Live & Local will take place on Saturday, May 24, at Wollongong Town Hall from 9.30am to 6.30pm. Tickets are available here.
Nick's book Disaster Communism and Anarchy in the Streets is available here.
Your guide to Live & Local
- Workshop: Writing Creative Nonfiction with Brooke Boland (9.30-11.30am). Learn how to write true stories that don’t follow a straightforward chronology. The creative writing workshop will look closely at examples by other writers, followed by writing exercises.
- Live-streamed from Sydney: AC Grayling on Cancel Culture (12-1pm). Philosopher AC Grayling traces "cancel culture" back to the ancient Greeks and tries to find a middle ground among the incendiary debates flamed by contemporary culture wars.
- Panel: Grassroots to Global (1-2pm). Wollongong writer Nick Southall and author Claire O’Rourke join journalist Joanna Macey to ask: can local action really make a difference on global issues like climate change?
- Live-streamed from Sydney: Ben Macintyre - The Siege (2-3pm). Ben Macintyre discusses his definitive account of the 1980 Iranian embassy siege in London which put the SAS on the world stage. With Richard Fidler.
- Live poetry reading: Mark Tredinnick and Kai Jensen (3.30-4pm). Award-winning poet Mark Tredinnick joins fellow poet and editor Kai Jensen for a live reading of their works.
- Streamed from Sydney: Ian Rankin - Master of Crime (4-5pm). Following the latest instalment of the Inspector Rebus series, Ian Rankin reflects on his career as an international bestselling author and the UK’s No. 1 crime writer. With Michael Williams.
- Panel: Love, Life and Death (5.30-6.30pm). Authors Brooke Boland and Catherine Rey talk with Meredith Jaffe about writing memoir and biography tackling motherhood, friendship, love, life and death.
