What we’re doing next…
A Revolting Class (ARC) didn’t begin as a formal organisation with a strategy document and a roadmap. It emerged out of shared frustration, long experience, and necessity.
Many of us have spent years organising in social justice movements that speak the language of equality while operating through deeply unequal internal economies. We’ve watched working-class organisers carry movements on their backs – through unpaid labour, emotional work, credibility, and risk – only to burn out, be sidelined, or quietly disappear when their lives became too unstable to sustain the pace.
ARC came together to name that pattern for what it is: structural, not personal. And to begin experimenting with ways of doing things differently.
ARC was formed in 2024 by a small group of organisers, most of whom are working-class and have lived experience of poverty, housing insecurity, addiction, criminalisation, care systems, and informal economies. Collectively, we bring decades of organising experience across housing struggles, prison abolition, mutual aid, renters’ unions, wealth redistribution, and political education.
From the beginning, ARC has been intentional about leadership. This is not a space where working-class experience is consulted, extracted, or showcased while decisions are made elsewhere. Working-class organisers are central to analysis, strategy, and direction – not symbolically, but materially.
Supporting working-class-led redistribution in practice
One of ARC’s first areas of work has been supporting local, working-class-led wealth redistribution groups. These groups bring together people with very different levels of access to money and security and organise the collective redistribution of resources to working-class individuals and organising efforts.
ARC has helped connect groups that were already doing this work in isolation, enabling shared learning, political clarity, and mutual support. Rather than centralising money or control, ARC has focused on strengthening the conditions that allow redistribution to be collective, accountable, and led by working-class members.
Through this work, resources have been redistributed directly to people dealing with housing insecurity, criminalisation, health crises, and organising burnout – not as charity, but as part of an explicit political strategy to challenge how movement economies function.
Political education rooted in lived experience
Alongside redistribution, ARC has developed and delivered political education spaces bringing together grounded working-class experience and sophisticated theory and analysis of the working-class thinkers who struggled before us.
These have included classes, reading groups, and facilitated discussions focused on class, wealth, power, and movement economies. Rather than offering prescriptive models or polished frameworks, ARC’s education spaces are designed to sharpen analysis, surface disagreement, and connect ideas directly to organising practice.
Convening and listening
ARC has also prioritised listening and collective reflection. In 2024, we hosted a multi-day gathering that brought together working-class organisers and redistribution practitioners from across the UK. The aim wasn’t consensus or alignment, but shared analysis: understanding what people are experiencing, where existing models fall short, and what support actually looks like in practice.
Following this, ARC carried out interviews and group discussions with working-class organisers to document patterns that are often treated as individual problems – burnout, exclusion, instability – and situate them within broader economic and organisational structures.
This process has shaped ARC’s direction. Rather than rushing to scale or formalise, we’ve focused on learning from what already exists and being honest about what isn’t working.
Establishing clear boundaries
From early on, ARC has been explicit about political boundaries. We do not work with police, prisons, the military, political parties, or fascist organisations. We engage cautiously with institutions and philanthropy, prioritising material benefit to working-class organising over reputation, growth, or visibility.
These boundaries are not about purity. They are about survivability – protecting the integrity of the work and the people most affected by its outcomes.
What this phase has taught us
So far, ARC has not “solved” class inequality in movements. What we have done is create space for honesty, experimentation, and material intervention where those things are often missing.
We’ve learned that working-class leadership cannot be sustained without resources. That redistribution creates friction – and that this friction is often a sign that something real is shifting. That education matters most when it changes how decisions are made, not just how people talk.
Most importantly, we’ve learned that doing this work slowly, collectively, and with care is not a weakness. It’s a political choice.
What we’ve done so far has laid the groundwork. The next phase is about building on it.