SUSHMA SHETH

Sushma Sheth is a communications strategist and organizer. In 2001, she returned to her hometown to join the Miami Workers Center, an emerging grassroots organizing and progressive strategy center. She jump started the strategic communications program, directed staff and programs, as well as convened regional coalitions to move progressive initiatives in Miami. Sushma was awarded the 2002 New Voices Fellowship and named 2007 Miami Fellow and “Top 25 Power Women of Miami” in 2006. Currently, Sushma is a graduate student. She supports social movements and institutions, including the national Right to the City Alliance, as a strategic communications and planning consultant, writer, and facilitator.

I think a lot about problem solving.  Part of this is the residue from my nerdy school days, when my team competed to build the tallest structure of marshmallows and raw spaghetti.  I thought about it as an organizer at the Miami Workers Center, sitting on a member’s stoop, when her family was evicted for the third time.  And I continue thinking about it now, walking through in the marbled halls of management and public policy school.

I recently enrolled in a leadership class at grad school.  A former surgeon who used to run emergency operating rooms teaches it. He makes an interesting distinction between technical leadership and adaptive leadership.  He defines technical as leadership you exercise when you have the expertise to solve a known and familiar problem (e.g. routine tonsillectomy).  Adaptive leadership, conversely, is recognizing that you are facing a new problem and engaging in a creative (often disruptive) process of learning and reflecting to develop new tools and solutions (e.g. responding to a natural disaster or new disease).

One year ago, Organizing Upgrade posed a dilemma:  The rich history of organizing and left theory provides tools for progressive change: base-building, campaign development to expose contradictions, political education, leadership development, cadre-building, and united-front building for power. Many of us use these tools to intervene on the social challenges of our time.  We have had some inspiring successes – but membership remains at lower than we would like, the social safety net continues to rip apart at the seams, and our incremental, local reforms cannot keep up with the global pace of change.

The traditional actors and systemic forces that we are up against are also changing shape and tactics.  In just the last year, we have seen Wal-mart employ organizing tactics, business economists challenge the assumptions of self-interest, and the emergence of grassroots populist movement, forming cross-class alliances, and running people, from within their ranks, for office. That movement is not ours, but it should be.

In these times, of what my professor would term a “new, adaptive problem”, we can benefit from an honest and open conversation on what solutions are working and where we need to be more creative.  Do we need a new division of labor?  Is it time to diversify away from non-profit organizations?   Dare we begin thinking collectively about “ideology” or “revenue generation”? Organizing Upgrade is contributing to fostering these conversations in the following ways:

- Encouraging organizers to step back: No, we’re not asking you to stop.  Instead, we are inviting organizers to step away from the demands of the day-to-day and talk to each other from the bird’s eye view of our collective work.  OU has been an attempt to move the whispers from behind the water-cooler, or after hours at the bar, to a larger intentional conversation on “where are we going?”

- Fostering a dialogue between theory and action:  We are helping draw the dotted line from the slogan on a picket sign to the foundational theories on capital accumulation and collective action.   We are sharing the work of theoreticians that think about campaigns as well as organizers who turn to theory.  There is a dynamic and creative process between the two realms that OU is committed to supporting.

- Comparing notes within issue areas:  “Fast Forums” serve as periodic pulse checks or snap shots of how the progressive left is tackling the political challenges currently in play. From elections to Haiti recovery, immigration reform to non-profit vehicles, Fast Forums highlight new work, emerging organizers, and spaces of agreement and difference.

- Engaging the ‘soft side’ of organizing: Organizing is a risky and deviant endeavor. We recognize that this raises particular challenges for the communities you serve, the leaders and staff that you develop, and your own stamina.  Our February issue on “Love & Organizing” had the highest hit rate to date.  With the rise in organizational instability and staff turnover, this continues to be an important area for us think  about together.

- Lifting known voices and new: OU is committed to providing a platform for superstar ideas and popular practitioners, as well as serving as a launch pad for emerging actors and new trend-setters.  We need icons as well as iconoclasts as we think through how best to attract and retain organizers, activists, and broader forces.

- Meeting you online: Through facebook, email, texting, and subsidized software, we are trying to make theory, networking, and strategy accessible to today’s progressive-left organizers.  OU is using our existing social and political networks to consolidate discussion threads, expand access to them, as well as cast a broader net to engage interested people.  Essays and posts are being used in universities, staff retreats, and shared among colleagues and friends.

I believe we are in new and disorienting times. There is a strong argument that would differ with me.  It would say that we are not in unexpected territory at all; rather, that the Great Recession, the national chauvinism, and global energy/climate crisis are all the anticipated symptoms of neo-liberalism unchecked and globalization gone wild.  This could be the case.  But, I encourage us to think about which of these perspectives is more useful? Specifically, which perspective is most useful in upgrading our capabilities to achieve membership in the thousands, self-sustaining organizational budgets, permanent affordable housing solutions, popular participation in governance, and the energizing and expansive social movement we’ve all been waiting for?

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HARMONY GOLDBERG

A founding member of SOUL: School of Unity & Liberation, Harmony Goldberg has run left political education programs for grassroots organizations around the country for more than a decade. She is currently a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and she continues to support grassroots organizations and the broader left as a popular educator, writer and facilitator.

I helped to start Organizing Upgrade a year ago because I was scared. I was scared that we were never going to get our act together. Two years ago, we saw one of the biggest political openings of our lifetimes (speaking, at least, for my generation). Between the unprecedented level of mobilization inspired by Obama’s campaign for the presidency and the mass discontent inspired by the economic crisis, the boundaries of what we considered to be politically possible in this country were being pushed open. You could feel the potential for building mass social movements that could open up deeper critiques of capitalism and empire. But instead of a push to bring our forces together to map that out – to figure out how we were going to build massive mobilizations in support of a transformative health care program or waves of direct actions against the discredited banks – I found myself in meetings where we were busy debating the obvious – like whether or not Obama was going to support U.S. imperialism. I was scared that we were going to miss the immense opportunities of that moment because we were not only coming up with the wrong answers; we weren’t even asking the right questions. Instead of asking questions of strategy and program, we were remaining stuck in critique and in marginal left debates.  So I helped to start Organizing Upgrade to try to put the right questions on our collective table.

This moment offers us an opening to step out of the margins where we’ve contained ourselves and to start playing a serious role in real mass politics. I believe that – if we play our cards right – we still have the opportunity to achieve a scale of popular movement much larger than we have seen over the past several decades. That would allow us to both advance immediate victories that will improve the lives of oppressed people and to build a real left in this country that will be better positioned to fight for our longer-terms aims. But we have to play our cards right; that outcome is far from inevitable. It depends on our orientation and our level of preparation.  If we don’t take real advantage of those opportunities quickly, we are in danger of relegating ourselves to permanent irrelevance.  But in order to do that, to take advantage of this moment, we need clearly articulated left strategies that can unify and guide our diffuse organizing work.

Changing Our Orientation

In order to move towards this more strategic stance, left organizers will need let go of many of our past methods of work, some because they were appropriate for slower political times and are therefore not appropriate for today and others because they were self-marginalizing methods that we have now outgrown.  Specifically, we will need to overcome the tendency towards ideological purism (where we are more concerned about the political line of our work than we are about its scale or impact), methodological purism (where we have fetishized a particular organizing model so much that we limited our broader impact and even our ability to actually build larger-scale working class power), our wariness of building broad alliances and engaging in mainstream politics and – in many cases – our doubt that we could actually move masses of people. A friend once said to me, “Our interpretation of being ‘left’ has unfortunately become the limiting factor on being ‘mass.’  But is that a necessary contradiction? Our left politics should be facilitating factor in building our work to scale instead of limiting us.” In the past, our left politics have focused mainly on social critique, and they have manifested primarily in our political education and leadership development. Today, instead of focusing so much on questions of abstract political line, we need to prioritize questions of political strategy.

To meet the demands of this unique historic moment, we need to be more than the “leftest” we can be.  Instead, we need to be the best left strategic thinkers and actors that we can be. We need relevancy-oriented revolutionaries who have an orientation to engage in a serious way in real mass politics, who can tap into the growing anger and spontaneous resistance of working class communities as well as engage in the complicated politics of electoral work and alliances with mainstream progressives and liberals. A clear left strategy would allow us to have the tactical creativity we need to reflect the changing times, recognizing that tactics as wide-ranging as mass direct action, electoral organizing and multi-class alliance-building all have roles to play in opening up new space for mass struggle. I believe that Organizing Upgrade’s contributors have started to layout the broad brushstrokes for the kind of dynamic and flexible strategic approach that we need, pointing towards multi-sectoral struggles, creative tactical plans, uncomfortable alliances and new ways of doing our work.

There are several strategic questions that I believe are central to engage, many of which have been addressed by our contributors. We need to recognize that the struggle and crises that we are facing today are going to have a very long arc, and we need to develop a long-term plan today for how we will intervene in them over the next thirty to fifty years.  Specifically (1) The economic crisis is not over, and we need to keep building on our strategic reflections and dialogues on this front.  I believe that – because the U.S. empire is going into decline – the current economic crisis is only the first shock wave in a series of economic crises to come. We need to engage in serious dialogue about our lack of adequate response to this last crisis to prepare ourselves to jump into action when the next wave hits. (2) Similarly, we all know that the devastating wave of ecological disasters that will result from climate change have only just begun. Several of our contributors – Jason Negrón-Gonzales, Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan and Bill Fletcher – have reflected sharply on this front of our struggle. We can’t be caught by surprise by disasters like those that hit New Orleans or Haiti any longer; we need to develop a more coherent and proactive response that can respond more rapidly and transformatively. (3) The fact that the United States will no longer be a majority-white nation in thirty years means that we need to plan for an intense struggle over national identity over the next several decades. We need to reflect on the struggle in California in the 1990s (when the state became majority people of color and the electorate responded with racist and anti-immigrant ballot initiatives) and today’s Arizona for signposts in that fight. Even larger anti-immigrant shockwaves will be coming, and we need to shift towards a more proactive stance in that fight, as Marisa Franco, Aarti Shahani, Subhash Kateel and others have reflected. But – while building a fight-back against anti-immigrant attacks is absolutely crucial – it is not all that we need to prepare for. We need to prepare ourselves for the long-term struggle to transform this country’s national identity.  I hope that our contributors will engage some of these strategic questions over the next year.

What is the role of Organizing Upgrade in advancing this process?

On the most basic level, we built Organizing Upgrade to provide a space where left organizers could explore these types of questions and start to lay out the broad strokes of a new left strategic orientation. One of the main challenges of the tendency to do our organizing work through non-profit organizational forms is that we are often isolated in our organizational work and that we lack cross-organizational and cross-sector spaces for broader strategic thinking.  We hoped that Organizing Upgrade could serve as one of those spaces, and – based on the feedback that we’ve heard from organizers and movement-builders from around the country – we seem to have at least started to succeed in that role. Is the conversation that has taken place here sufficient? Have we developed the kind of clear relevancy-oriented left strategy that we need?  No.  But we have started the conversation, and that is the first step.

Relatedly, we hoped that Organizing Upgrade could serve as a place for principled and productive debate, so that we could help to overcome long-standing patterns of divisive and destructive ways of handling difference in the left and in broader social movements.  Gaining the deep left strategic clarity will not be easy, and it will certainly not be neat and clean. We are going to make mistakes – to the left and to the right.  If we are going to find our way forward in this complicated balancing act, we will need to be able to engage in honest dialogue with each other – to challenge each other and to keep each other on track. That dialogue will need to be direct, and it will require us to assume the best in each other. I wish I could say that we have succeeded in creating that space for productive debate, but I am afraid that isn’t the full truth. We have heard that people either don’t know that our “comment” function exists or that they are too intimidated to use it.  More problematically, in the last two months, I have seen a number of troubling counter-examples: mass emails full of destructive and sometimes inaccurate critiques, facebook blasts dismissing whole categories of organizers and activists and scathing blog posts gone viral. The methods of these critiques make it difficult to engage in productive political debate to work through our real differences. Let me be clear: I believe that debate and difference are crucial. Clear political poles and honest polemics can be helpful.  Principled engagement can push us all to be sharper, clearer and more honest.  But indirect and destructive methods of debate result in inaccurate polarizations and unnecessary resentments. I want to challenge those practices and encourage us to engage in honest and informed political dialogue and debate with each other. We are offering Organizing Upgrade as one vehicle through which a more direct and productive conversation can happen, and we hope that our readers will start to take advantage of that opportunity and to encourage others to do the same.  (That is, please start to use the “Comment” function!)

That said, I think that the fact of many of these controversies and debates is good.  It shows that we – left organizers who are rooted in and trying to build various social movements – are shaking up our old limited ways of being and leaving our comfort zones.  I hope that Organizing Upgrade can continue to play a role in pushing towards relevancy, impact and strategy within the broader left and towards a clearer and more radical strategic vision within the world of community organizing.

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JOSEPH PHELAN

Joseph Phelan has been active in left movement work for the last decade. Originally from New York he cut his teeth in the global justice movement as an activist and agitator, was grounded in organizing in the CUNY student movement, and now builds the capacity of grassroots leaders to tell their own stories to the world as the Communications Coordinator for the Miami Workers Center.

I wrote this piece while reflecting on the role of Organizing Upgrade. In order to do that I reflected on where we are at as a movement and where we have been. So rather than reflect on OU, I am putting this out as an example of why I think Organizing Upgrade is important. It is a space for left organizers to challenge ourselves and each other. It is a place where people are encouraged to advance our theory, leap-frog our practice forward, and most importantly think. Along that line, I put forward this piece and call for three controversial and challenging directions: 1. We must win today. 2. We must reconnect with our hearts. 3. We must build a leftism based in the idea of “America.”

September 12

I was sitting in a meeting room in Charas Community Center on the lower east side of Manhattan. The room was packed, hundreds of people. There were people I recognized from my previous nine months of making the rounds to different left activist events in the city. This was just like any of those countless meetings I had been to: facilitators trying to bring the gathered group of people in a particular direction, disagreements over process standing in for honest and clear political debate, over the top political debate standing in the way of moving the meeting forward to some conclusion.

But looking back through rose colored glasses, I am amazed at the clarity that people in the room had about what was coming to our city and our nation. Someone put forward the rise of nationalism; someone else, the quashing of dissent. The ideas kept coming: the rise in racist violence, the coming devastation of immigrant communities. These realities were brought into the room, and people were trying to figure out how we, a group of mostly individuals with left politics could wage a fight-back against these coming realities.  We were damn smart, analytical, historical, all of it. Except….

…something was missing. No one seemed to be terrorized; no one seemed to be angry at the guys with box cutters who killed thousands of people with a horrible conviction and violence. Why weren’t we angry? Why weren’t our hearts aching?

September 11

I watched the towers burn. The flames seemed so far way, so small. I thought, “Remember this day.” I was two blocks away, standing with a crowd of people, the backs of our heads reaching back to our shoulders. I had a cup of coffee from a coffee truck. Black and sweet.

The first tower came down. The sides of the building wrenched off first with the horrendous sound of metallic tearing. Then the top just fell in. Rumble. Collapse. There was silence for a moment before the world around me erupted into screams and action. People dove under cars and into doorways to escape the grey tsunami flooding the streets.

I escaped on my bicycle, the wave of soot, smoke, incinerated office chairs and bones, licked my back wheel.

I saw the second tower fall from a midtown cycle messenger dispatch office. Later that day, when I finally got to a radio and started to understand what happened that morning, my first thought was not “Oh my god, thousands of people died in front of me, crushed in a building I had delivered packages to not a week earlier.”

No. My first thought was, “We are going to war, and thousands more will die before it is over.”

I felt nothing. And I jumped into action.

Back in the Saddle We Never Left

That meeting of leftists (mostly white leftists) in the Lower East Side, as the dust settled over our rattled city island, was amazingly absent of raw sorrow, of raw anything. Looking back, the meeting was full of what I now see as canned responses from the left, and I was definitely throwing some out there.

Over the years I have come back to my own lack of emotion. There are a lot of excuses. The one I use most often is that my political analysis, my leftist politics, got in the way of me being able to feel anything about the death of over 3,000 people right in front of me.

I told people, when asked, that I couldn’t get over the implications of what was coming, about how I jumped right into action and didn’t have time to feel anything. I argued that millions of people have been killed in the name of colonization, capitalism, white supremacy. That hundreds of millions had been raped and molested, that the death on the September 11 was no more than part of a cycle of violence, that it was a part of life under these mega systems that sought to extract profit and power from our lives.

This justification for not feeling anything, for not having real emotion about my own experience on September 11, was reflected back at me from the left movement in New York. This was almost an automatic response. How could we feel sorrow, how could we feel angry about the violence done to our neighbors, to our city, without being complicit in what that sorrow and rage was going to be used for: expanded wars (that we are still in now), domestic oppression of dissent, the racist baiting of Arabs, Muslims and anyone perceived to be either (including Puerto Ricans). How could we be sad and angry when the same cops who became heroes at ground zero were the ones who had been shooting young black men (It’s a wallet not a gun).

We lost our heart that day. Or maybe it was already lost, buried deep inside our chests, guarded against decades of devastating defeat and in the worst cases, death and imprisonment. But in the year and a half leading up to 9/11 there had been a reinvigoration of the left, grounded in a cross-sectoral militant street movement that found expression at the Battle of Seattle, April 16, 2000 protests in DC, and the RNC in Philly in 2000 and the Critical Resistance Conference in New York in 2001. We were riding this wave of invigoration when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center Towers. On that day we lost connection with that feeling of what is possible, we entrenched ourselves in left critiques and dogmatic reactions. We lost our hearts. But it is time to find them again.

It is time to face up to the complications of social change. We need to do the heart-work of building our movements: this means sometimes being vulnerable and connecting with all the sadness and joy, the loss and newness, all of it. It also means breaking from old patterns, old ways of doing our work, of protecting our work. Connecting to hearts means we are willing to not only be right, it means we are willing to be wrong (but not in a criticism/self-criticism “you didn’t follow the plan” sort of way, but in the deep “we went the wrong way” sort of way, the “cause this shit ain’t working” way).

When we are wrong, when we are not being effective, and we are just going about this work in the same way, with the same analysis, we aren’t just cheating ourselves; we are cheating the movement we supposedly want to create.

This is about winning.

The Changes we need to Make!

I want us to connect with our hearts, and even lead with them because I want us to win. I want to win here and now, so that we can continue building power to win tomorrow and the next day, until we finally just win. I know, I know that if we win reforms today and actually improve people’s lives than we are just colluding with the power structure and lying to our people about the real problems and real solutions. If you believe that, stop reading now, and move on. You are not going to like the rest of this essay.

I am talking about winning along the path. The path that we are creating as we move on it, the one where we often find dead ends and have to back up and feel our way forward. For those of us who organize we know that even with the best practical and ideological training, we often come to dead ends – big and small – and we have to change directions.

It is the wins on this path to greater change, the wins that allow us to consolidate our forces, win over those who are up for contention, and alienate our enemies. To feel out those wins we actually have to feel. We also have to be realistic about what it is we can win today and tomorrow and what bigger wins those initial wins point to. Let’s set a path for the quantitative change so that we can see the qualitative change.

And to win we have to touch people’s hearts, not their heads (uh-oh more about hearts).

September 13

It was beautiful day. I was in the city for the weekend. A friend and I had just stopped at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory to get some Black Sesame Ice Cream (you have to try it) and walked south. All of a sudden we were standing where I stood nine years earlier watching the towers pour black smoke into the sky. The sun was warm on my arms. The sky was beautiful blue. People pushed past on the way to the subway at City Hall. I felt it in my chest, not just the loss, not just the attack on my home, my city, I felt the horror of that day. I felt the fear of the people in the building as it started to rumble and the sides shook free. And even in that moment, I couldn’t cry because I did not want to collude with the symbolism of that day. I didn’t want to collude with the last nine years of nation-building. And most importantly I didn’t want to feel the confusing emotions that seemed to contradict my left training.

America on the Left

I came away from that walk that day with my friend thinking a lot about America. We went to the memorial and you couldn’t get away from America. Everything was about America. I do believe that memorial is for the 3000 people who lost their lives, but also for a city that was shaken that day. And I know it will be used by some to justify continued wars abroad and repression at home. While others, those who lost family or friends, will find it as an honor. We need this honor in New York, just as we need memorials for the tragedies that have (with the help of greed) befallen workers, enslaved Africans, women, Indigenous people, queers. But the lack of those two city block memorials does not erase the need for the one we have.

We still haven’t constructed an Americanism that is left. Or put another way we haven’t constructed a leftism that is American. A lot of us can’t even say the word America (let alone spell it correctly Amerikkka) without bristling because of what it means; racist, imperialist, capitalist, etc. The problem is there is a very clear Americanism being developed in this country. It is multiracial, it is multi-ethnic, it is multi-lingual, it is multi-gendered, and many are fighting to also make it at least accepting of queer people.  But because of it’s explicit capitalism and its racist history, many of us refuse to be a part of it. We refuse to engage with it. And thus we give it up. There isn’t even a battle; we just hand it over. We hand it over to those who shape it without resistance because our struggles are outside the construct of America, and we are proud of it.

I contend that it is time to stop placing ourselves outside of America and start placing ourselves squarely in the middle of it. I am not asking for all of us to wrap ourselves in the flag, but I am asking for us to participate in the life of this country. To relate to the contradictory ideas and values that Americans have, such as: the importance of hard work, caring for neighbors, multi-racialism, and multi-nationalism.  We must draw on the liberation history of this country such as: the Green Corn Rebellion, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, etc.  We must look to American Heroes such as: James Baldwin, Sylvia Rivera, Ella Baker, Langston Hughes, Leonard Peltier, etc. And we have to be relevant. We have to ground ourselves in the very American experience of people’s everyday existence if we hope to build a movement that will win the fights we need to win.

So there you have three pretty clear assertions made on the anniversary of what I think is a pretty cool project, Organizing Upgrade. Now use this forum what it is supposed to be used for: challenge me, advance theory, and shape new ways of creating the world we are fighting for. Let the controversy and name calling begin.

In our first year, we’ve gotten alot of love:

Thank you to Harmony, Sushma, and Joseph for initiating this project.  And big ups to the first contributors to this website.   I look forward to the many strategic dialogues to come.  (Vinny Villano)

LOVE IT – crucially important resource, great initiative! (Anita Sinha)

Thank you for this new resource that y’all have put out into the world! We need some space to dream, imagine and reflect on where we’re at or where we’re go’n. I’d be interested to see future topics that look at the internal issues organizations face in changing times…in particular what are the resources, approaches, or frameworks people are finding most useful to the most challenging internal issues? (Patrick Masterson)

I want to thank you for doing this site. I’ve been looking for something like it for awhile. It’s not easy to find insight or practical advice on organizing. (Mitch Troutman)

I think it’s definitely time that we have this conversation and experiment! Thanks for inspiring those of us on the front-lines to think big picture in working towards an alternative to capitalism. (Thomas Assefa)

And some criticism:

The problem is we have effective community organizers and social workers but not effective revolutionaries. There is a difference between winning for a campaign and setting the stage for taking power. Organizers tend to take  the micro for the marco and bring a reform energy to radical struggles. This is the problem I find with Organizing Upgrade. (Kazembe Balagun)

Now we want to know…what do you – our readers – think?

What do you think about the first year of Organizing Upgrade?

What do you want to see in the next year?

Use the “comment” function below to share your thoughts and feedback!

To help our readers navigate the overwhelming number of incredible workshops that will be taking place at this year’s Social Forum. Organizing Upgrade pulled together the following list of workshops that we felt reflected our mission: to upgrade strategic conversation among left organizers. We’re looking forward to seeing you all in Detroit!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23

Excluded Workers’ Congress

Wed, 06/23/2010 – 1:00pm – 5:30pm,  Cobo Hall: D2-15

National Domestic Worker Alliance, National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) and Jobs with Justice

This PMA focuses on how we can expand workers’ rights to organize. It will bring together workers who are excluded from the right to organize and other labor protections in the United States, for discussion on organizing strategies and the potential for reforms to strengthen workers’ rights and democracy through the expansion of the right to organize to include all workers. We seek to bring leaders from the various sectors, including domestic workers, day laborers, restaurant workers, taxi drivers, farm workers, workers in the right-to-work-for-less states of the South, welfare/workfare workers, formerly incarcerated workers, and guest workers, together, to share conditions in our industries and learn from one anothers experiences organizing. In addition, we seek to identify potential for collaboration, campaigns, and a common agenda for reforms at the federal level (including as they relate to the National Labor Relations Act) that could ultimately address the exclusion of our sectors from the human right to organize and collectively bargain.

Queer People’s Movement Assembly

Wed, 06/23/2010 – 1:00pm – 5:30pm, Cobo Hall: W2-67

Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice, FIERCE, Queers for Economic Justice, Affinity Community Services,  Southerners on New Ground

The 12 members of the Astraea Foundation’s Movement Building Program will host a four-hour session to discuss resolutions that have been submitted from LGBTIQ People’s Movement Assemblies that have been held throughout the country leading up to the USSF. The goals of this meeting will be to 1. Identify and discuss the major issues that have arisen from queer-focused PMAs; 2. Work toward a strong resolution (or resolutions) of direction for a national strategy. The meeting will be limited to representatives of those groups who have held queer-focused PMAs and have placed their resolutions on the USSF website. PMA resolutions must be placed on the USSF website by May 15, 2010. Affinity Community Services Allgo: a statewide queer people of color organization Audre Lorde Project Center for Artistic Revolution Esperanza Peace and Justice Center FIERCE National Queer Asian Pacific Alliance Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project Queers for Economic Justice SONG: Southerners on New Ground Sylvia Rivera Law Project The Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex (TGI) Justice Project The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice

Transformative Organizing 101

Wed, 06/23/2010 – 1:00pm – 3:00pm  UAW Building: Ford

Social Justice Leadership

Transformative Organizing is an entirely new form of social justice organizing that equally values personal transformation and societal transformation, and sees them both as essential and integrated into a unified theory of change. Transformative Organizing 101 and 201 workshops will emphasize understanding new frameworks that distinguish change from fundamental transformation, and focus on concrete practices that change the organizer as well as the organized. The workshops will be based on the work of the Transformative Organizing Initiative (TOI), a multi-year training program that is currently training 85 staff and 70 grassroots leaders from 17 organizations in New York City. TOI is developing a model for transformative organizing – a model that is based on the belief that transforming ourselves (by aligning our behaviors/actions with our values and beliefs) and the way we do social change work can lay the foundation for the long-term transformation of society. TOI focuses on generating transformative practices that inform organizing strategies, organizational development, political education, and personal transformation.

Transformative Organizing 201

Wed, 06/23/2010 – 3:30pm – 5:30pm  TWW: 5

Social Justice Leadership

Transformative Organizing is an entirely new form of social justice organizing that equally values personal transformation and societal transformation, and sees them both as essential and integrated into a unified theory of change. Transformative Organizing 101 and 201 workshops will emphasize understanding new frameworks that distinguish change from fundamental transformation, and focus on concrete practices that change the organizer as well as the organized. The workshops will be based on the work of the Transformative Organizing Initiative (TOI), a multi-year training program that is currently training 85 staff and 70 grassroots leaders from 17 organizations in New York City. TOI is developing a model for transformative organizing – a model that is based on the belief that transforming ourselves (by aligning our behaviors/actions with our values and beliefs) and the way we do social change work can lay the foundation for the long-term transformation of society. TOI focuses on generating transformative practices that inform organizing strategies, organizational development, political education, and personal transformation.

THURSDAY, JUNE 24

The Fight for Jobs and Economic Recovery

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 10:00am – 12:00pm, Cobo Hall: DO-01A

AFL-CIO, Jobs with Justice, National People’s Action

The jobs and economic crisis is so deep and broad that no one could remember any parallel since the Great Depression. No one has all the answers to solve the problems nor the capacity to do it alone. This session will discuss the different approaches and activities that are being put into motion by national networks and organizations to fight for an economy that works for all working people, including those who have always been marginalized.

Eco-Justice 101: Ecological Crises, Impacts on Communities of Color, and Strategies for the Future

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 10:00am – 12:00pm, WSU Cohn: 224

Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project

Communities of color stand to be first and worst impacted by the multiple ecological crises that are developing today. These crises: of water scarcity and pollution, climate change, waste and toxic pollution, food and agriculture, and the loss of biological and cultural diversity, are a result of the same systems that have driven exploitation and oppression in our communities. They demand the urgent attention of our leaders and organizers as we build our resistance and fight for a better tomorrow. This workshop, which will feature audiovisual presentation, small group discussion, and interactive exercises, will explore: 1. What are these developing crises? 2. How will they impact low-income communities of color in the US and globally? 3. What are examples of community resistance that we can learn from? and 4. How can understanding these struggles create opportunities to advance our work on other issues like housing, jobs, immigration, community development, education, etc? This workshop is also offered in Spanish.

The Young & The Restless: Celebrating Contributions of Youth in the Fight for Liberation

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 10:00am – 12:00pm, Cobo Hall: DO-5A

SOUL School of Unity and Liberation

Communication for Liberation: Communications in the Social Justice Movement

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 10:00am – 12:00pm, Cobo Hall: W1-53

Design Action Collective

Urban Congress 2010

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 1:00pm – 5:30pm, Cobo Hall: W2-66

Right To The City Alliance

The recent economic crisis has unmasked the vast racial and economic inequality in the U.S., once hidden under the veil of the “middle class”. While many are just beginning to feel the impact of this crisis, urban America – poor and low-income families, women, immigrants, communities of color and other city dwellers -have felt it for decades. Urban Congress 2010 will serve as an opportunity for those living and working in grassroots communities to reflect on the state of urban America since the start of the recession; to reevaluate the notion of the ‘right to the city’ in light of the current political climate; to get inspired by local efforts to combat gentrification and displacement; and to learn about Right To The City’s national campaign for housing, jobs, and sustainable communities.

Immigrant Rights from Below Movement Assembly

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 1:00pm – 5:30pm, Cobo Hall: M3-31

Puente Movement, Immigrant Youth Justice League, Southwest Workers Union, Centro Obrero.

How do we make an immigrant rights movement from the bottom up? How do we act effectively & win the max for our communities? How do we relate to the beltway and capital hill? How do we consolidate our presence within the broader immigrant rights movement? We are in a special moment of opportunity & crisis & the stakes are high. We know conditions are worsening. If CIR passes, what will we do? If it doesn’t what is our plan? What is our strategy in this new reality? This is the time and the place. Come to Detroit to envision an immigrant rights movement from below.

Justice in Palestine

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 1:00pm – 5:30pm, Cobo Hall: Riverview Ballroom (W1-52)

US Palestinian Community Network, IJAN,  American Muslims for Palestine

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict touches on all Americans as it has figured centrally in U.S. foreign policy at least since 1968 when the Johnson Administration provided Israel with its first supersonic aircraft in order to achieve a military edge over its Arab neighbors. While this history makes it incumbent upon all Americans to participate in finding a solution to the conflict today–the major stakeholders in the struggle for Palestinian self-determination are Palestinians themselves. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the consequent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, the Palestinian national body has been fragmented several times over. Today Palestinian identity is bantustanized into those who are citizens of Israel vs. those who are residents of East Jerusalem vs. those who are under occupation in the West Bank vs. those who are under occupation and siege in Gaza vs. those who live in refugee camps throughout the Arab world vs. those who exist in a global diaspora. Such fragmentation limits the potential for organizing among Palestinians to decide on a collective future and its concomitant strategy. Moreover, external involvement both imperial (i.e., the US) as well as regional (i.e., Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon) has divided Palestinians into broad categories of “good” and “bad” in relation to the U.S. and European political establishment. In order to transcend these divisions and engage in a process of self-represented self-determination, Palestinians in the U.S. seek to coalesce themselves into a cohesive body that can join other parts the world over from South America, Canada, Europe, the Arab world, the Occupied Territories, and Israel. The PMA seeks to begin this conversation, agree in theory on its value, encourage its attendees to join the USPCN and participate in its Second Popular Conference, and to introduce a resolution to the general Forum body.

Please note that Organizing Upgrade & SOUL”s “Left Strategies from the Grassroots” panel has been cancelled because of conflicts with other relevant sessions in this time block.

Transformative Organizing Theory: Conscious Organizers Seek to Build Anti-racist, Anti-imperialist Politics Rooted in Working Class Communities of Color

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 1:00pm – 3:00pm,  Cobo Hall: W2-63

Labor/Community Strategy Center

As the “Tea Party” Right rises in U.S. politics and the U.S. Empire continues to reach around the globe, there is an urgent need to build a new left that roots a creative, explicit, anti-racist, anti-imperialist politics inside working-class communities of color. In this session, Ai-jen Poo (National Domestic Workers Alliance), Steve Williams (POWER), Cindy Weisner (Grassroots Global Justice), Patrisse Cullors (Labor/Community Strategy Center) and other prominent organizers will discuss with Eric Mann how his Transformative Organizing Theory, as outlined in a new pamphlet, can help guide and strengthen our work toward this goal. Drawing from Mann’s experience as a veteran of CORE, SDS, the UAW, organizer of the Bus Riders Union and director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, Transformative Organizing Theory identifies 7 core elements of social movement building that have powered grassroots organizations on their way to winning historic struggles against slavery, war, apartheid and empire. The 7 Components of Transformative Organizing Theory is a companion to Mann’s forthcoming book, The 21 Qualities of the Successful Organizing: A Journey in Transformative Organizing (2011).

Glenn Beck’s Nightmare: What it Will take to Build a Movement for 21st Century Socialism

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 3:30pm – 5:30pm, Cobo Hall: W2-63

People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER)

Glenn Beck and other right-wing pundits have drummed up the fear of a socialist takeover of U.S. society. At a time when capitalism is throwing millions of people deeper into poverty and continuing to poison Mother Earth while engorging a few financial speculators, this is sadly more rhetoric than reality. Not only don’t we yet have a strong movement that can challenge capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy, we also don’t have a vision that can unite our different struggles and we don’t have a movement that can play different roles at different times. But we have built organizations and institutions that could bring such a movement into being if we act in a coordinated way. And the times are on our side. It is the time for bold action for those of us who see the need to move beyond the capitalist system and who are building the capacity of oppressed and marginalized communities to fight for this change to take seriously the challenges of building a multi-issue, grassroots movement that can win liberation for all people and the planet. This workshop will bring together activists, organizers and leaders to explore a vision of a 21st century socialism that can unite our movements and to sketch out a plan to make this vision a reality— and to make the right’s worst nightmares come true.

Presente! Left Movement Veterans Discuss the Path to Power and the Role of the Left in the US.

Thu, 06/24/2010 – 3:30pm – 5:30pm, Cobo Hall: W1-51

Freedom Road Socialist Organization/OSCL

Long-time activists Bill Fletcher, Lian Hurst Mann, and Chokwe Lumumba join other Leftists that have plied their trade for over 30 years in an urgent discussion on the role of the left in today’s social movements. These Movement Veterans have seen the Left transform significantly from a period of widespread, frantic left activity to the period of decline the left has found itself in recently. Today, both the Left and social movements in this country are faced with immense opportunity to play a role in changing the oppressive conditions in this country and striking a blow against US-led Imperialism. What role will or should it play? What must the organized Left do to help create real and profound change in the US and the World? How will it transform itself to be ready to take on these challenges? Our panelists will tackle these and other critical questions. Join these veterans as they put their decades of experience to use in discussing these critical questions with you! Other invited panelists include: Grace Lee Boggs, General Baker, and Jane Slaughter.

FRIDAY, JUNE 25

Converging Crises: Economy, Ecology & Empire. What is the grassroots internationalist response? Converging Movements!

Fri, 06/25/2010 – 10:00am – 12:00pm, Cobo Hall: M3-31

Grassroots Global Justice Alliance members along with International Allies will speak to the need for a global response from below to the converging crises of the financial collapse, ecological destruction, and ongoing promotion of empire. Speakers will discuss what movement convergence means for grassroots organizing and how we build a conscious, internationalist powerbase to challenge capitalism and begin to build the alternative economic, political, cultural models.

New Majority Organizing

Fri, 06/25/2010 – 10:00am – 12:00pm, Cobo Hall: W2-61

Right To The City Alliance

Right To The City members San Francisco New Majority, Virginia New Majority, Florida New Majority will present an emerging approach to voter mobilization, building the united front through civic engagement, and leadership development within the context of elections. They will also discuss the cycle of broad electoral work and more narrow consciousness development, campaign building, and impediments to democracy. Lastly the will discuss voter mobilizations strategies targeting new and traditionally marginalized demographics including African Americans, and immigrants.

Developing Radical & Revolutionary Approaches to Reform Struggles

Fri, 06/25/2010 – 10:00am – 12:00pm, WSU Cohn: 220

New York Study Group

In the past year New York Study Group has been trying to tackle the tough questions about the relationship between contemporary reform struggles and the long-term revolutionary process here in the United States. Through our observation of and participation in local struggles in New York City and through our collective study and reflection, we learned hard lessons from defeats but also gained inspirations through victories. Our reform struggles open up exciting new possibilities, but we also know that old tactics are not enough to effectively win struggles in this day and age and that we need to change the way we do our work if we want to lay the groundwork for a more radical movement in the long run. In this workshop, the New York Study Group will be convening radical organizers from around the country to reflect on their reform struggles and to dialogue about how we need to do our work differently if we are serious about building a more relevant left and stronger mass movements.

Inter-Alliance Dialogue Convention – Grassroots Responses to the Economic Crisis and Critical Issues of our Time

Fri, 06/25/2010 – 1:00pm – 5:30pm, Cobo Hall: O3-45

Inter-Alliance Dialogue, Grassroots Global Justice, Jobs with Justice, National Day Laborers Organizing Network, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Pushback Network, Right to the City Alliance

Enough is Enough / Basta Ya! – A Peoples’ Movement Assembly Forging Alternatives to the Economic and Ecological Crises of Our Times. We are living in uncertain and momentous times. The current economic crisis, a global ecological crisis brought on by global capitalism, and a shifting landscape of political power on global scale, have created a historical moment marked by volatility and change. The impacts of these interpenetrating crises are widespread and inclusive. All of us, including Mother Earth are affected. Amidst this uncertainty, this is also a moment of opportunity. Around the world and at home, we are witnessing the convergence of social movements that are not only battling against the devastating impacts of global capitalism and climate change, but also posing sweeping agendas for change that include how we organize the economy, how we interact with one another as human beings and how we create a sustainable future for the planet. The Inter-Alliance Dialogue invites you to participate in movement assembly to hear the testimonies of those impacted by the current crises, gain inspiration from the joint struggles that we and movement allies are doing to address current realities, and build a common platform for action this year to strengthen a movement for long-term change for a democratic and sustainable economy in the US and around the world.

Seizing Opportunity: Plotting for a New Majority Future

Fri, 06/25/2010 – 1:00pm – 3:00pm,  UAW Building: 1032

Center for Social Inclusion

People of color are estimated to be the new majority in the US by 2042. This can either entrench the role of race as a wedge that divides or transform it into a force for progress. The difference depends on our ability to think and act now on key questions of policy, power and identity. Through a presentation and group dialogue, we will explore how shifting demographics calls us to proactively redefine concepts of race and ethnicity to forge a united front for equity. We will also address the following: how do we seize opportunities for alliance building across race and ethnicity, especially in regions experiencing new and dramatic shifts? What issues and policies can unite communities of color and bridge an increasingly non-white younger generation and a white senior population? How do we guard against attempts to wedge communities of color and anticipate backlash from those with something to lose? The Center for Social Inclusion will provide an analysis on what the changing demographics could mean and grassroots leaders from the field, including Adrienne Maree Brown Executive Director of The Ruckus Society, Angelica Salas Executive Director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), and Gihan Perera co-founder and Executive Director of The Miami Workers Center will share their experiences and expertise on challenges and strategic opportunities.

Movement Lawyering: How Legal Advocacy Can and Should Connect with Grassroots Organizing

Revolutionary on the Daily: Visions for New Societies, Revolutionaries Organizing Ourselves

Fri, 06/25/2010 – 1:00pm – 5:30pm, Cobo Hall: M2-30

RWIOT Revolutionary Work In Our Times

In the past year New York Study Group has been trying to tackle the tough questions about the relationship between contemporary reform struggles and the long-term revolutionary process here in the United States. Through our observation of and participation in local struggles in New York City and through our collective study and reflection, we learned hard lessons from defeats but also gained inspirations through victories. Our reform struggles open up exciting new possibilities, but we also know that old tactics are not enough to effectively win struggles in this day and age and that we need to change the way we do our work if we want to lay the groundwork for a more radical movement in the long run. In this workshop, the New York Study Group will be convening radical organizers from around the country to reflect on their reform struggles and to dialogue about how we need to do our work differently if we are serious about building a more relevant left and stronger mass movements. For this year’s Social Forum, our collaborators are: Left Turn http://www.leftturn.org, League of Revolutionaries for a New America http://www.lrna.org/, Solidarity http://www.solidarity-us.org/, Freedom Road Socialist Organization/ Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad, http://freedomroad.org/, LA COiL (Communities Organizing Liberation), New York Study Group, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement http://mxgm.org/, Labor Community Strategy Center http://www.thestrategycenter.org/, and Bring the Ruckus http://www.bringtheruckus.org/

We are living in amazing times.  Between the groundbreaking election of President Obama and the onset of the largest economic crisis that this country has seen in decades, the terrain of politics is rapidly shifting beneath our feet.  The left-progressive movement is currently engaged in a re-evaluation and reorientation (for example, the recent “Reimagining Socialism” discussion in The Nation and the “Reimagining Society” dialogue on ZNet). Within this broader dialogue on the left, community organizers need place to reflect on the particular possibilities and demands facing in this historic moment.

New Questions and Challenges for Community Organizing

It is dizzying to think about the political possibilities of this moment.  There are real opportunities to make significant impact – regionally and nationally – in the context of the Obama administration.  As we fall deeper into the recession, the broader public is beginning to discuss the limits of capitalism, the role of financial institutions, and the parameters of the “free market.”  Obama’s election has given community organizing a new profile and broadened the number of people who might be willing to engage in organizing for social change. The mainstream is up for grabs in a way that we haven’t seen in decades. The possibilities are there, but the left and the community organizing sector need more clarity and intention to take advantage of them.

The challenges are just as vast.  With the economy tanking, our communities are facing a new level of hardship.  At the same time, philanthropic support for our work is shrinking.  We are also seeing a rise in attacks on community organizing and intense red-baiting and race-baiting. From the forced resignation of Van Jones to the smearing of ACORN in the national media, community organizers and the left are seeing the rise of a militant and mobilized right wing.  All the while, day-to-day demands of organizing work are not letting up, even as new crisis and needs surface.  It can be difficult to take a moment to step back and reflect on the shifts in the broader political climate and how we need to reorient our work to meet the new climate.

This Project

Organizing Upgrade is an attempt to engage left leaders and innovators in the field of community organizing in a strategic dialogue.  We hope that this project can bring the kind of inspiration, vision and strategic clarity we need to strengthen our political impact, both in our immediate fight and in our longer-term efforts to build the social justice movement and to revitalize a movement-rooted left in the United States.  We hope that, by encouraging some of the leading innovators and leaders from the sphere of community organizing to put pen to paper and to speak their mind, we can develop unity and clarity about the key demands on left organizers in these times.

This project was initiated by Sushma Sheth and Harmony Goldberg with the support of Joseph Phelan.  Knowing that the day-to-day demands of organizing can make it difficult to step back and get perspective on the bigger picture and that most left thinking is focused on more abstract questions, we wanted to create a space that would push left organizers to articulate our thinking and to get more collective clarity about how we can build a more powerful movement and a left that is more rooted in and accountable to our communities.

Contributors have been asked to respond to the following three questions:

Conditions: These are dramatic times politically, socially, and economically.  What do you think are the most significant shifts happening right now, and how do they change the context of our work?

Strategic Priorities: There are a number of new opportunities for organizing presented by the new Obama administration and the economic crisis.  What are the key interventions that the community organizing sector should make in this moment? Are there particular contributions that left organizers should make in this process?

Changing Orientation: What is inspiring you these days?  What are old strategies that our sector should turn away from? Which new tools and ideas are you now experimenting with?

Our Contributors

In an effort to get a wide and sweeping view of community organizing from the Left, a range of organizers have been tapped across the country. Their expertise comes from their hands-on, day-to-day work in the very communities, organizations or national alliances that shape community organizing inside the U.S. today.  Their areas of interest and practice range from gentrification, workers rights, electoral work, immigration and detention, war, and Palestinian self-determination. Contributors include men, women, younger and older folks, straight, queer, white folks, and people of color and they share their thoughts in arrange of formats: essay, interview, panel and transcripted speech.

New “Upgrades” Will Be Released on a Monthly Basis

We plan to post three new pieces on the FIRST WEDNESDAY of each month to keep the conversation going.  So please come back regularly to see what exciting new ideas  are being shared.

The best way to stay updated is by joining our mailing list.  We will send out an email announcement to our mailing list each time we post new pieces, and this will also be how we communicate other timely information about Organizing Upgrade.  You can also keep updated by adding Organizing Upgrade to your RSS feed; the RSS button can be found at the bottom of the website.

The Dialogue & Your Thoughts

We really want to encourage you to participate in this important conversation about how we are going to take our work to the next level. Please use the “comment” function to enter the dialogue. We encourage you to say where you agree and where you disagree and want to suggest other ways forward.  We strongly encourage you to be principled and constructive in your feedback; things like name-calling, politics-baiting and personal accusations do not move our collective conversation forward.  We will be moderating all comments in the interests of promoting a productive dialogue.

You can contact us at upgrade@ organizingupgrade.com if you are interested in submitting a piece, but know that we have a long list of contributors already signed up.

Appreciations

Besides thanking all of our amazing contributors, we also want to thank:

• Chris Caruso and Jed Brandt for help designing the site.
• Sumitra Rajkumar for recording and editing the “Left Strategies from the Grassroots” roundtable video.
• Lisa Rudman (National Radio Project) for sharing her audio recording of the “Left Strategies from the Grassroots” roundtable.
• Left Turn magazine for allowing us to reprint the “Left Strategies from the Grassroots” roundtable article.
• All of the amazing leaders and organizers who are working so hard to build a more powerful liberation movement!

Welcome to Organizing Upgrade!
Sushma, Harmony, and Joseph (The Upgrade Team)