Extract from How Does Change Happen: Scenes From Frontline Activism

Through conversations with activists and organisers, Sam Gonçalves explores the power and limits of protest in the 21st century. From landless workers in Brazil to unionising chefs in Glasgow, he traces stories of collective struggle and resistance, challenging the idea that making a positive impact is an individual act and revealing the ways communities create change together.

A book by Sam Gonçalves

Through conversations with activists and organisers, Sam Gonçalves explores the power and limits of protest in the 21st century. From landless workers in Brazil to unionising chefs in Glasgow, he traces stories of collective struggle and resistance, challenging the idea that making a positive impact is an individual act and revealing the ways communities create change together.

​​My first conversation with Pinar Aksu happened in the Summer of 2024. We picked up some coffees and walked over to Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park to find a bench. She is a community organiser and educator, involved in several campaigns and deeply engaged with key movements in the city and beyond. 

It was one of those days when you can’t quite tell if it’s warm or if you have been in Scotland long enough for your concept of ‘cold’ to be skewed. Either way, we were going to talk about the hostile environment in the UK for refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants, as well as some of the organising that has been done to combat it – a tough topic to discuss comprehensively. In the first half of the 2020s alone, you can talk about immigration detention centres, dawn raids, low quality housing, and an openly racist atmosphere in the national media. Key legislation was passed, like the Nationality and Borders Act, the Illegal Migration Act, the Safety of Rwanda Act, all making life significantly harder for many people.

An incident at Glasgow’s Park Inn Hotel in June 2020 was a particular low point for Pinar, when an asylum seeker was shot dead by police after stabbing six individuals. “I would have assumed after [Park Inn] they would have maybe stopped using hotels or they would have changed something but no, they didn’t.”

The use of hotels to house asylum seekers has been criticised by campaigners due to the isolation, poverty and poor mental health it generates. They argue asylum seekers should be housed in communities, where they can integrate in ‘dignified, safe, habitable, and fit for purpose accommodations.’ Still, nothing’s changed.

It all contributes to a paralysing sense that things could not possibly get better, she continued. “People feel defeated because we are like, Okay what’s the worst that could happen that’s going to make things U-turn? Then worse things happen and things do not change.”

It’s not difficult to lose any sense of hope in a situation like this. “Sometimes I’m like, what’s the point?” Pinar explained, “because the laws are getting worse and worse.”

Governments May Use Different Words

Pinar came to Scotland from Turkey when she was eight years old. When you move countries at that age, you often don’t understand what is going on but Pinar has positive memories of her school and the community around her. At fourteen, she was taken to an immigration detention centre along with her parents and siblings.

Pinar’s community rallied around her family, gaining support from politicians, charities and campaign groups. Their efforts resulted in a positive outcome. After more than two months in detention, her family were one of the few to be released. Pinar, being the eldest of the siblings, became the translator for her parents. She had a front seat to the impact a grassroots campaign could have. 

In a piece for the End the Immigration Detention of Children campaign, she wrote, ‘I don’t see any difference between a detention centre and a prison. Governments may use different words to make these policies sound acceptable, however it is the same as I was being deprived of my liberty without cause. Our rights as citizens were taken away. As a child at the time, I saw many things that no child should see.’

She didn’t always want to be organising around these issues. Pinar was going to study chemical engineering at university, but at a certain point realised she might feel more at home pursuing a place in community development after spending her whole life witnessing campaigns and activists first hand. “I think all these things added lots of experience and I was able to see different issues in different communities and how communities come together, the importance of dialogue, not judging one another.”

Currently, as the Human Rights Advocacy Coordinator for Maryhill Integration Network, Pinar is part of a number of campaigns for the rights of asylum seekers including the Right to Vote campaign, advocating for asylum seekers to be able to vote on Scottish elections and the Our Grades Not Visas campaign, which identified the barriers for refugees to access further education. Both were clear and recent successes. Then there is the on-going Right to Work campaign, advocating for asylum seekers to be granted permission to find employment – which they are currently not allowed to do, and the End Hotel Detention campaign, backing community-based residential accommodation for asylum seekers.

Sat on the park bench, I was keen to ask her about two things that stick out to me about these campaigns. On the one hand, they seem to be moving fast. In the last few years there have been many legislative wins that had a direct impact on people’s lives. In early 2024, a campaign for free bus travel for asylum seekers received a positive response from the Government and looked like it would be implemented rapidly. On the other hand, the barrier to these campaigns is the immigration policy in the UK, the aforementioned ‘hostile environment’. Can the monumental weight of anti-immigration media coverage, public sentiment and policy ever be shifted? 

Pinar seemed to agree with these two elements of the organising she’s involved in. One of the main reasons it can be so difficult to effectively bring about change around this issue, she believes, is that the racism and hostility are deeply structural. They imbue the system. Even in administrations that are not openly aggressive in their discourse. 

Her point seems to bear out within that very same summer in 2024. After fourteen years of a Conservative government that was not only aggressive in the policies but used immigration as a regular rhetorical tool, Labour came into power with a campaign accusing the incumbents of being too ‘liberal’ on immigration. While they eventually scrapped the Rwanda deportation plan, the new government soon committed to reopening Immigration Detention Centres that were closed.

Pinar uses the example of the Right to Work campaign. It has been going for over five years, she has seen it all, been part of it for the whole time and nothing has changed. Recently, at a strategy meeting, one of the campaigners voiced their frustration saying, ‘What’s the point? I still can’t work, and this is so stressful for me.’

Pinar described responding to the sentiment. ‘I go speechless and I’m like, You’re right. It’s frustrating, isn’t it? So, I’m not going to go and lie to you and say, No, don’t be silly. It’s going to be fine. Things are probably going to get worse, but we need to talk about what we are going to do when things are going to get worse.’

It’s a difficult reality to take in, especially after years of campaigning, but accepting that truth and reflecting on the circumstances as they are is often the way through. As disputes like Right to Work and Free Bus Travel get more protracted, and decision makers more impenetrable, the ability to look at the issue from new angles is essential. Pinar believes there is a way to make it past these challenges: ‘We must think creatively about how we reflect the truth.’ 

In these moments that feel like dead ends, education becomes a vital tool. 

To read more on this, How Does Change Happen is available to purchase from 404ink.com