A Space for Political Education?

How different from Highlander, Citizenship and MS Freedom Schools!  Bernice Robinson said that "the Civil Rights Movement was built on the foundation of the Citizenship Schools."

See excerpts from Volume II of The Occupied Wall Street Journal Below (Thanks Chia and Katherine)

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From  Manissa McCleave Maharawal

Manissa McCleave Maharawal is a doctoral student in the Anthropology department at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also a longtime New York City based activist.

October 4, 2011

And when I left [the occupy wall street gathering] ... I felt something pulling me back to that space. ..... I think this is what Occupy Wall Street is right now: less of a movement and more of a space. It is a space in which people who feel a similar frustration with the world as it is and as it has been are coming together and thinking about ways to recreate it. For some people this is the first time they have thought about how the world needs to be recreated.

....Maybe this is how movements need to maintain themselves, by recognizing that political change is also fundamentally about everyday life and that everyday life needs to encompass all of this. There needs to be a space for a talent show across from anti-patriarchy meetings. There needs to be a food table, medics, and a library. .... And that within all this we will keep talking about Troy Davis and how everyone is affected by a broken, racist, oppressive system. Maybe, maybe this is the way?   

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From a friend of a friend October 9, 2011

Optimism from the Usually Less Optimistic Cindy Milstein:
Occupied Wall Street seemed, to me, an incoherent, contentless, disorganized mess when it first started; now, some 3 weeks into it, people have stumbled through an accelerated learning curve. Here's a report on last night's results from my dear friend Joshua Stephens: "Last night, I was part of a nearly 3hr meeting that involved coordination of direct action trainings, legal strategy education, political education, historical education, support strategies for teachers of color in NYC, skillshares & theater to combat patriarchal behavior in organizing, support for indigenous remembrance in opposition to Columbus Day, and means of putting the struggles of marginalized communities in NYC at the center of it all. This involved management of TWO google groups, multiple schedule tracks of classes, 3-4 web calendars integrated into one web platform, and fuck knows how many twitter feeds. It also involved liaising, federation, and mutual support between no fewer than five thematic working groups and adherence to principles laid out by a directly-democratic general assembly. The next time you hear someone say Occupy Wall Street is disorganized, please slap them."

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Excerpts from Volume II of The Occupied Wall Street Journal

Nonviolent Direct Action: The Onion Theory

Bruce Hartford has just written an addition to his collection of essays,  notes and links on the discipline and strategy of nonviolent direct action.

He calls it his Onion Theory.

The purpose of Nonviolent Resistance is to affect peoples' thinking and build political movements for social change. From that perspective, Nonviolent Resistance is a broad concept encompassing education, organizing, alternative social structures, personal-witness, noncooperation — and, of course, direct action protests.

Some nonviolent actions are large-scale (boycotts, mass marches, strikes, civil non-cooperation, etc) others are engaged in by small groups (pickets, sit-ins, freedom rides, occupations, etc). Regardless of size, the point of a demonstration is to influence people towards affecting some kind of social/political change. When we study the actual impact of nonviolent protests it's like peeling away the layers of an onion, with each layer representing a different audience. From the core to the outer layer, the effect of a nonviolent protest on each audience varies in the number of people who are influenced, the intensity of the effect, and our control over the content of the message they receive.

At its simplest, the four basic layers of the protest onion are:

1. Participants. The nonviolent resistors engaged in the protest.


2. Observers. The individuals at the businesses or institutions the protest is targeting, and the uninvolved bystanders who encounter or observe the protest.


3. Grapevine. Those who directly hear about the protest from some other person whom they know (including through personal social media such as Twitter, FaceBook, & etc).


4. Media. Those who learn of the protest through impersonal mass media

READ MORE......

Labor joins Occupy Wall Street

from NY Times -- Seeking Energy, Unions Join Protest Against Wall Street

So, one of my key components of a social movement is now being fulfilled -- COALTION BUILDING!

When the college students at HBCUs (historical black colleges and universities) staged their sit-ins at 50 plus locations in 1960, CORE, NAACP and SCLC wanted the youngsters to become youth chapters within the adult led organizations.  Ella Baker, however, advised the students to create their own organization -- SNCC.  Baker and King organized a conference at Shaw University which allowed the students to create an independent organization.  At the conference, Baker and other veterans helped the students define what their organization was about.  I am hoping that the Occupy Wall Street youth are in the process of consulting with veteran organizers as they refine their understanding of what is involved if you want nonviolent direct action to be effective.  Look in the selections below what the labor movement can contribute to the Occupy Wall Street folks (e.g., learning how to articulate specific demands directed at those who can grant them). 

Also of note in this article (selected quotations below) is the concept of a "counterweight to the Tea Party."  One of the reasons Obama has had to drift so far to the right in his policy making and in his "pre-emptive compromises" with the Republican leadership is that there HAS YET TO BE a counterweight to the Tea Party.  But remember -- the Tea Party Caucus has 62 members in the House of Representatives and 4 Senators.  We have a long way to go before we get Obama the political counterweight that will allow him to move back to left-of-center.  But what a terrific beginning.....movements move...let's hope this one can do so.

Stuart Appelbaum, an influential union leader in New York City, was in Tunisia last month, advising the fledgling labor movement there, when he received a flurry of phone calls and e-mails alerting him to the rumblings of something back home. ...and on Wednesday, several prominent unions, struggling to gain traction on their own, made their first effort to join forces with Occupy Wall Street. Thousands of union members marched with the protesters from Foley Square to their encampment in nearby Zuccotti Park

Several major labor groups — including the Transport Workers Union, the Service Employees International Union, the United Federation of Teachers and the United Auto Workers — took part in the march on Wednesday. Some more traditionally conservative ones, like those in the construction trades, stayed away.

Several union leaders complained that their own protests over the past two years had received little attention, though they had put far more people on the streets than Occupy Wall Street has. A labor rally in Washington last October drew more than 100,000 people, with little news media coverage.

Behind the scenes in recent days, union leaders have debated how to respond to Occupy Wall Street. In internal discussions, some voiced worries that if labor were perceived as trying to co-opt the movement, it might alienate the protesters and touch off a backlash. Others said they were wary of being embarrassed by the far-left activists in the group who have repeatedly denounced the United States government.

The labor leaders said they hoped Occupy Wall Street would serve as a counterweight to the Tea Party and help pressure President Obama and Congress to focus on job creation and other concerns important to unions.

Still, it may not be easy for organized labor to mesh with this new movement. Labor unions generally represent older workers, while the Occupy Wall Street protesters are younger. Unions are hierarchical, while the Occupy Wall Street protesters are more loosely knit and like to see themselves as highly democratic.

Unions invariably have a long and specific list of demands, while Occupy Wall Street has not articulated formal ones. Union leaders often like the limelight, while Occupy Wall Street is largely leaderless.

Education, History and Organizing for Social Justice

In attempting to convince people of the importance and relevance of studying the detailed history of Southern Freedom Movement (aka Civil Rights Movement), I have often been rebuffed with the argument, "nothing fundamentally changed as a result of that movement."  In other words, it failed so it is not worth studying, never mind studying in depth.

But it did not fail.  It succeeded brilliantly is so many ways.  One of many important and relevant ways was in training a generation of activists who went on to be leaders of a larger social movement encompassing women's rights, gay rights, free speech, the environment, tenants rights, anti-war and so much more.

Bruce Hartford cites Bernice Johnson Reagon in calling the Freedom Movement the "Borning Movement"

The Freedom Movement — the "borning movement" — inspired a generation of participatory activism. A particular kind of activism. An activism rooted in community organizing, an activism focused on building popular support through effective education.

So what did change as a result of such a "particular kind of activism?"

Many many things!  but let me focus just on one -- Lynching. In 1955, with the lynching of Emmett Till, the black population with white allies fundamentally changed the nature of American culture.  If you can stand it (it is extraordinarily painful), take a look at the gallery of POSTCARDS made of lynchings.  Think about it, postcards -- people made a living making postcards of lynchings. People posed for them, bought them, mailed them to friends and family with notes scrawled on the back such as: "This is a picture of the BBQ we had last night.  I am the one on the right. Your son, Joe." Today, however, such generaly accepted and casually psychotic attitudes are the nail in the coffin of Rick Perry's candidacy --- i.e., his membership/ownership of a hunting camp (surreptitiously?) called "Niggerhead." Not a fundamental change?  Really?

Allow me to quote Bruce again:

• According to official reports, at least 76 people — most of them Black — are lynched in 1910 (that's more than six a month). But many lynchings are never reported, so the actual number is unknown.
• The number of Latinos, Asians, and Indians lynched in California average more than 4 per year between 1850 and 1935. No figures are available for the other Western states, but many lynchings are known to have occurred.
• 
  The national press pays little attention to lynchings because they're such a common event in American society. A significant segment of public opinion supports lynching as an effective and necessary means of keeping racial minorities, immigrants, and dangerous radicals in their place.

Today, while Congress has still not passed any anti-lynching legislation, lynchings are rare events widely covered by the mass media, overwhelmingly condemned by the public, and usually prosecuted. These changes in both public attitude and government response are the result of nonviolent political action.

So what about official lynching today aka DEATH ROW (the New Jim Crow)?  The lesson to be drawn from the continued ways in which people manage to maintain social injustice is that we must relearn how to create situations that give birth to "a particular kind of activism."  How to turn around what happened and continues to plague leftist activism today.  Bruce has observed:

Unfortunately, in the years after the [1968] S.F. State strike, I regret to say that [the] lessons from the Freedom Movement ... I and many others forgot or ignored as the '60s turned into the '70s. Some of us began thinking of ourselves as "revolutionaries." Real revolutionaries — real activists — learn and adapt and grow and change. But some of us became too arrogant to do that.

We acted as if our theories and ideologies were a revealed and immutable truth that only we held. We spent most of our time arguing with each other.
We published flyers and newpapers read only by ourselves.
We became harangers rather than organizers.
We engaged in tiny provocative actions that provoked only fear and anger rather than building support.

And some of us treated everyone who disagreed with us — even if only in slight degree — as enemies to be defeated rather than as allies to be welcomed. As a result, we ended up with many enemies and few friends. That's not political activism — it's political masturbation. It might feel good while you're doing it, but it produces nothing, changes nothing, and challenges no one.

But for all of our errors — and there were many — we activists of the 1960s did get at least one thing right. We understood that if we didn't like the history we were watching on TV and being taught in school it was our duty to go out and make some history of our own.

 My plea is to understand that effective organizing involves education (as well as patience, humility and discipline)....but a particular kind of education that is time tested and has an honorable if currently ignored place in U.S. history.

• A History of Alternative Schooling in the U.S.
• Education and Social Protest: What Mississippi Can Teach Us Today

Wall Street Protests (continued)

Camping out for as long as it takes "to accomplish something"?  A powerful message?  to unite as one front?

Micah Philbrook, 33, who said he had been camping outside the bank for more than a week, cited the Wall Street protests, which began Sept. 17, as his motivation. “It spoke to me so much I had to do something,” Mr. Philbrook said. He acknowledged, however, that “it’s all blurring together.” Each evening at 7 p.m., he said, the number of protesters swells as people come from school or work and the group marches to Michigan Avenue.

As is true with the protests in New York and elsewhere, the participants are demonstrating for a variety of reasons. “We all have different ideas about what this means, stopping corporate greed,” said Paul Bucklaw, 45. “For me, it’s about the banks.” Sean Richards.... said he had dropped out of college on Friday and had taken a train to Chicago to demonstrate against oil companies. Mr. Richards said he did not plan to go back to school and would continue sleeping on the street for “as long as it takes.” “We’re sending corporations a powerful message that we know what they’re doing,” he said. “For people, we’re sending the message that we have to unite as one front.” 

 Central website "Occupy Together"

While I am excited about evidence (Elizabeth Warren, Wall Street protests, wall street protests) that people are fed up with the historic polarization of wealth in this country.   I worry, however,  that this energy will not be harnessed into a sustained movement.  A march or protest is not a movement, not even several protests or marches make a movement.

• What are the specific demands being made to specific people who can grant those demands?
• Is the point of any of the actions to get arrested? Because?  Then what?
• Are there a variety of roles for bystanders to play who develop sympathy for the cause and want to do something besides camping out or getting arrested?
• What are the concrete issues around which one can sustain this energy and passion over time?  What is the larger strategy?  
• Has research been down to anticipate the police reactions to the tactics? 
• What is the infrastructure that will support the organizers? (Adbusters and Anonymous and? )
• Who are the local leaders?  Are they having long arguments and strategy sessions about how to escalate this momentum? Are they consulting with experienced activists who have been successful in the past?  Are they connecting with the Ella Bakers, Jim Lawsons, Bayard Rustins, and Myles Hortons of today (are there people like this today?)
• Are coalitions being created around specific strategies?
• Are the protesters being trained (or have beeing trained) in the discipline of nonviolent direct action?