“We can meet the moment”: Will Potter on Tomorrow Movement’s new strategy
Tomorrow Movement core volunteers workshop, Dharug and Darkinjung Country, 2025. Will Potter pictured end right.
Since launching its new strategy earlier this year, youth-led organisation Tomorrow Movement has seen young people return in numbers not seen since before the pandemic. They are joining local teams, learning to organise and bringing their friends. We caught up with National Director Will Potter to find out what’s behind it.
What does youth-led organising bring to the progressive movement?
There’s a vision, there’s hope, and there’s boldness and bolshiness that comes with working with young people. In the broader movement, these are things that are really needed. A vision for a better future, and hope for a better future, are hard to come by, and we’ve relied on the youth movement to provide these things. But also, we’re in a time when people are unhappy with the way things are and a bold vision is what’s needed. A lot of eyes are turning to the youth space for that reason. We want to be able to provide a platform for anyone to come along with us, to create visionary change.
If we want to grow as a movement, we need to be welcoming, we need to be hopeful, we need to be caring. We need to have a strong idea of justice and what that takes. It’s pretty typical for young people to be only in movement spaces for about two years. We’ve bucked that trend, we’ve doubled, nearly tripled that. But even then, we want people to come in and be in it for life, and in all the different ways that they can show up. That’s what we want to create, and at scale, because that’s what’s really going to deliver a healthy democracy.
Tell me a little more about Tomorrow Movement’s new strategy.
It comes from this root understanding that people are feeling instability right now. There are four needs that people have, that underpin that feeling. And if we meet those needs, we can meet that feeling. And maybe we’ll build a movement, change the world, but at the very least, we can make people’s lives better.
Those needs are connection, so bringing people together, bringing them out of their online bubbles; agency — showing that they can have influence; story, an explanation of the world as it is that’s not simplifying things, with a vision for what a better world could look like; and material support, so when people are really struggling, there’s an alternative like mutual aid, for example, that shows we’re serious about changing people’s condition at scale, by doing it locally first.
We work in an organising cycle that has public events, training, education, cultural events and direct action, to bring people together, build connection and show agency with campaigns in local areas, like better public transport and our campaign against data centres in Western Sydney.
Together, we have the power to change these systems and build stronger, more caring communities. We have more than enough resources, compassion and creativity for everyone to live happy, connected and safe lives. We want to see more connection, more agency, needs being met, giving us more control over our lives to better engage in democracy.
This is such important work, it’s also hard. What keeps you going?
This is not the first time we’ve seen undemocratic forces rise in Australia, yet alone the world. I particularly feel that I stand on the shoulders of giants as an Aboriginal First Nations person, the knowledge that the system doesn’t work for us is baked in — it was never built for me and my family — so I know for a lot of people around me it feels existential, and it is, but we’ve done it before, is really the critical thing.
Also, we’re better prepared this time, we’ve learned a lot of lessons from the past. I know that AI is seen as different, and the climate crisis is seen as different, but I think if we can return to ways of being that existed before this fast-paced, technology-driven extractive world that we’ve got, return to a more caring culture for each other and the land we’re on, and a stronger focus on our communities and the people we exist around, that will go a really long way to improving our lives and improving politics.
We have a good shot at it too. We have really good people, a really good plan, and we can do it at scale, I think we can meet the moment we’re in. That’s what we started this whole process with — what will it take to meet the moment? That was the big question, and now we’ve got it with our strategy, and that’s 90 percent of the work. Now we just need to bring people in, we’ve got to fund it, we’ve got to organise, and that feels more possible now that there is a north star, there is a goal, there is a plan that we think will work.
