Visibilizing the invisible: Exploring grassroots leaders’ extraordinary resilience, mutual aid practice & belief in community solidarity through the shift to online during the covid-19 pandemic.

Visibilizing the invisible: Exploring grassroots leaders’ extraordinary resilience, mutual aid practice & belief in community solidarity through the shift to online during the covid-19 pandemic. Digital technologies and social media are now embedded in our society and accelerated by pandemic lockdown measures. In 2018 over 91% of Canadians used the internet and 88% owned a smartphone (StatsCan). Social media access has resulted in more active participation as user-generated content is encouraged. Digital access and equity are about much more than basic internet access and are understood to incorporate critical digital literacy, comfort levels and skill development (Murray, 2021). Using digital technology is one thing - using it smartly (VanderArk, n.d.) purposefully and as a tool for community mobilization is another. Living through Covid-19 was a digital transformation in practice that left some behind. While businesses, agencies, and institutions were able to dedicate financial/human resources towards digital upskilling and adapting to online environments, community builders, organizers, and grassroots activists whose work is voluntary, unpaid, often ‘invisible’ and under-resourced were left with few opportunities to do the same. Where state institutions fail, community rises. This paper argues that community members adopted Mutual Aid methods and rose to the challenge of pivoting online during the pandemic. They played and continue to play a critical role in their communities, responding to crisis through mutual aid, fostering social cohesion and building community. This paper is based on online research interviews and focus groups with over 120 grassroots leaders from across Toronto’s NIA – Neighbourhood Improvement Areas (formally Priority Neighbourhoods), exploring their experiences – both positive and negative - of taking their grassroots mobilizing and community building work digital during the Pandemic (March 2020 – March 2022). Adopting a neo-Gramscian framework (Gramsci, 1971) that situates community leaders as organic intellectuals and utilizing an authentic community-based social justice methodology (Mertons, 2007), this research captures and visibilizes grassroots leaders’ experiences to learn from their experiences by identifying gaps and barriers, lessons learned, and highlighting exemplary resilience in the face of this unprecedented crisis. Research demonstrates that even in the best of times grassroots leaders’ roles are often unrecognized or undervalued due to systemic obstacles and inequities. Three major conclusions are illuminated through qualitative data analysis: 1) digital gaps are systemic, disproportionately impacting Toronto’s largely racialized lower and working classes; 2) community leaders through lived experiences, develop complex understandings of systemic barriers, and this knowledge illuminates creative, viable solutions and; 3) community leaders’ extraordinary resilience is grounded in profound personal unwavering commitments to communities and enacted through Mutual Aid approaches, despite and in the face of obstacles. Sources: Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell-Smith, Trans.). International. Mertens, D. M. (2007). Transformative paradigm: Mixed methods and social justice. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1(3), 212–225 Murray, K (2021). Achieving Digital Equity in Access to Justice. Legal Aid BC. Spade, D. (2020). Mutual Aid: Building solidarity through this crisis & the next one. Verso. StatsCan (Mar. 5, 2019). Non-profit institutions & volunteering: Economic contribution, 2007-17. Daily. Statistics Canada. (2019). Canadian Internet Use Survey, 2018. Government of Canada. Vander Ark, T. (n.d.) Tom Vander Ark on using technology to advance student learning. https://www.gettingsmart.com/2017/10/28/tom-vander-ark-on-using-technology-to- advance-student-learning/