The New Southern Strategy – The Politics of Self-Determination in the South

Kamau Franklin has worked as a community activist for over fifteen years in New York City and is now based in the south. In addition to his work as an activist attorney, he is a leading member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). An organization dedicated to human rights advocacy and building grassroots institutions in the black community. The organization works on various issues including youth development, fighting police misconduct, and creating sustainable urban communities. Kamau has helped develop community cop-watch programs, freedom school programs for youth and alternatives to incarceration programs. He recently moved to Jackson Mississippi to do political work, and he reflects on that move and its strategic implications in this piece. You can read more of Kamau’s thoughts on his Grassroots Thinking blog.

Many people I know expressed surprise at me moving to Jackson Ms., being from Brooklyn (back when it was the BK- but that is another story). The surprise is even more startling for Jackson folks under 30 who with amazement in their eyes ask WHY WOULD YOU LEAVE NEW YORK? Part of the answer is that I have committed myself to the fulfillment of certain ideas. So my career is the politics of black self-determination. It does not pay well by any means; you can’t always get the most qualified people to fulfill certain positions and the hours suck; but over 20 years ago I was bitten by the bug of revolutionary black politics. Those politics have cost me financially and sanity wise, but at the same time they have led me on a life mission, some great comrades and the love of my life. So on balance I still feel as if I am coming out ahead, however back to Jackson, Ms.

I would like to believe that as a committed organizer that the work I do has a larger purpose. That it is coordinated in such a way to gain results that are tangible and that build towards greater community control over social, economic and political institutions. I came to Jackson, Ms with such ideas in mind. The thinking is that the city of Jackson due to its size, demographic makeup and history could be a great place to re-test ideas both historic and current in the struggle for black self-determination.

It is way too early to suggest success; however my first twelve weeks in Jackson is a good guide to early satisfaction with the actual move. I have done more multilayered organizing here than I have in the last 5 years in either New York or Atlanta. I have met and worked with various groups and individuals from people in community civic leagues, church groups, home associations, electoral candidates, cops, preachers, politicians, farmer groups, civil rights workers, and international allies, but relatively few of the pro-black militants or overt left radicals that I have worked with most of my organizing life. Obviously most of these folks don’t necessarily share the full range of my politics but we have enough in common to work on various initiatives which can lead to progressive/radical changes in Jackson. My debates have been substantive and have led to action as opposed to conversations that only ignite plans without success because of follow thru abilities, desire, finances, scale, or scope. I have worked on achieving economic development, international solidarity, electoral strategies, and food justice issues.

More specifically we have already established the largest community garden/farm in Jackson (over 5 acres). A campaign for policy changes on healthy food is in the works. We have supported the successful election of the first Black Sheriff in Hinds County Mississippi (Hinds was incorporated in 1820) which encompasses Jackson and is over 70% black. This is a victory coming on the heels of electing Chokwe Lumumba (an MXGM founder) to the city council two years ago. We are now beginning work on a second city-council race and looking into buying property as a center and we have purchased our fist property for economic development purposes.

The overt work of struggling for self-determination in the south predates me by a few hundred years; however 40 years ago the groundwork was laid for a modern struggle that recognized the south as a battleground in an ideological and at times physical battle for self determination. In 1968 the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) was formed and later in the 1980s the New Afrikan Peoples Organization (NAPO) provided a revolutionary nationalist position for organizing in the South where the majority of black people still live today. People have changed their lives, uprooted their families and died for attempting to convince black people that the south could be more than just a place of oppression but it could also be a place of rejuvenation and control.

Two years ago a new phase of this struggle began. Momentum has been built over that time when we got directly involved in the previously mentioned electoral candidacy of Chokwe Lumumba for City Council. We made several other attempts in nearby cities to do similar work but the time seemed overtly right this time when several months prior the US electorate, partly due to an economic meltdown, open-ended wars abroad and the changing demographics of the U.S. population, voted in a moderate Black democrat as its President, who at the time for many appeared to represent much more.

The southern black population is similarly dominated by local moderate black democratic officials. As the black power movements of the 60’s and 70’s retreated under immense attack by local and national US government forces. The void was filled by “safe” politicians who did not do much to upset the economic balance of power that favored white power brokers and embraced moderate Democratic Party rhetoric on governing. In essence making places like Jackson Ms, a post apartheid South Africa, plenty of electoral power never translated into actual political power, a black petty-bourgeoisie happy to live off the scraps of the minority white capitalist class that calls the shots.

It is in this context that MXGM saw an opening to support the candidacy of Lumumba. For the black political class the needs of the community take a back seat to their own individual career paths. With no commitment to anything, beyond getting elected these officials don’t bring any overarching principles to city-government beyond the principle of careerism. This gave us the opportunity to respond with a candidate who could highlight real choices. In no other place except the South could we play on a city wide basis, where over 50% of the U.S. black population still lives and where in major cities in the South blacks still represent over 50% of the electorate. It is here where we can highlight the politics of self-determination versus the politics of careerism and moderation.

We have also borrowed from our friends in places like Venezuela with the concept of Peoples’ Assemblies. Organizing the community into specific blocks for a more direct democracy that begins to set the agenda for what candidates that are elected should be fighting for as opposed to just hearing what candidates say they are going to do. This work must be done in an intentional way, one that involves planning for what the city/community should look like and how it should be governed. Even if candidates don’t overtly share our politics they are responsive to them for the first time. In addition the Peoples’ Assembly is a larger base where policy thru community organizing can be achieved. We are developing Assemblies for each of the seven wards in Jackson and by the beginning of 2012 we should be supporting the start of two additional Assemblies in Jackson.

On the challenging side the politicizing of young people will take a while. The ideas of politics being outside of mainstream discussions is now a foreign concept to many young people. The idea that life chances are all about personnel responsibility now once again dominate discourse and that will change only through more victories. In addition despite my needed respite from only working with “professional” organizers the need to expand what we have is great if we are to keep the momentum going. As Lenin and others have pointed out the vanguard party cannot easily be discarded when thinking through strategy and planning.

We hope to facilitate several mechanisms for people close to us to move to Jackson through some of our economic development plans but that is a few years away. Unlike the past where activist would move based on what were the strategic needs of a movement they were a part of, today’s organizer is less likely to make such a move unless it’s tied to the adventure of an international struggle or a semi-natural disaster. We don’t want to overwhelm Jackson with transplants but I believe with ten more trained organizers steep in the politics of self-determination we could test our theories that much faster. My goal and hope is that within two years this work will produce real results in making Jackson a capital of black progressive change and positioning the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement as a leading community force that even if not liked by all will certainly be recognized as one to reckon with.

On Jan 15, SOUL (The School of Unity and Liberation in Oakland) organized a panel and discussion on Occupy with veteran organizers from community and labor organizations who have been deeply engaged in the Occupy Movement. Maria Poblet (of Causa Justa/Just Cause), Shaw San Liu (of Chinese Progressive Association), and Brooke Anderson (of East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy) share lessons from on-the-ground mobilizations in Oakland & San Francisco, and exchange ideas about challenges and opportunities in this new moment in the fight against the 1%.

Listen to the panel here

Having trouble listening to the audio? Listen on SoundCloud here.

Panel Speakers:

Brooke Anderson is the Port Driver Organizer at East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, working with immigrant truck drivers who service the Port of Oakland.

María Poblet is the Executive Director of Causa Justa::Just Cause, a housing rights organization uniting working-class black and brown communities from San Francisco and Oakland.

Shaw San Liu is the Lead Organizer for the Tenants and Workers Center of Chinese Progressive Association.

Intro and Framing: Tina Bartolome

Listen to the intro here

Listen to the discussion here

Having trouble listening to the audio? Listen on SoundCloud here.

The event was co-sponsored by: Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Asian Youth Promoting Advocacy & Leadership, Causa Justa::Just Cause, Chinese Progressive Association, Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth and People Organized to Win Employment Rights.

Audio clips from the streets for the panel recording are from “Voices from Oakland’s General Strike”, by LeftBay99, below:

What will it take to Bring Obama Home?
Obama vs. The Left: There’s Enough Criticism to go Around

In St. Louis, I remember vividly a community workshop put on by The Justice Institute to assess President Obama’s first 100 days. JI is a progressive organizing and training institute. It assessed Obama’s performance up to the 100 days in three areas: education, healthcare and peace. The new president received a few B’s, mostly C’s and D’s. He received no A’s – too early to be an exemplary president but he received no F’s – too early to tag him as a failure. Clearly, by the 100 days, the thrill was gone for the transformative change that Obama supporters were promised.

During his campaign and after his inauguration as the 44th U.S. President, Obama told us to hold him accountable, to keep his feet to the fire. We have failed to do so and I believe the lack of leadership by the Left can be pointed to as the main reason.

African Americans who make up a significant part of the Democratic base were initially ambivalent about this black man with a funny name.

Many were loyal to Hillary Clinton until she lost the Democratic nomination. Eventually, the charismatic, articulate black man of Kenyan descent won them over during one of the longest presidential campaigns ever. After wailing and praying that he survive a racist’s bullet, black folks went to the polls in record numbers and got our Messiah.

President Obama was cut a lot of slack from the beginning of his term given the hot mess that George W created during his 8 years. The Bush Administration added $4 trillion dollars to the national debt; created a net loss of over one million jobs taking the crown from President Herbert Hoover as having the worst jobs-creation performance by a President. Bush gave the rich elite big tax breaks, a $700 billion dollars no-strings-attached bailout, and deregulation. He took the country into an expensive and illegal war. Obama inherited a tanking economy and the list goes on. Add to the mix, the stifling antics by the Grand Ole Party of No and the explosive racial fears throughout the nation that are always simmering just below the surface.

President Obama is no leftist and has never proclaimed to be one. Some of us have tried to keep that notion in political perspective but far too many of us have unreasonable expectations on various levels. We believed that Obama wanted to or could make change without understanding the political landscape that he would have to operate in. I am painfully aware of the Obama tailor-made blunders, i.e. no public option to the health care bill, beery polemics at the White House with Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley, etc.

Obama is no community organizer. He did what a number of self-serving people do – learn just enough of the organizing basics to advance their agendas and careers. I see this pervasive practice operating most notably within labor unions and the nonprofit world.

This brings me to the progressives, the radicals, the social movements, the real organizers. What did we do during the Obama campaign and what have we been doing since he came into office?

I give Barack Obama his props for running an effective and imaginative campaign that drew in millions who actively participated in generating a massive tidal wave that swept him into office. Obama is probably single-handedly responsible for the 7.5 million more Democratic voters that came out in 2004 for John Kerry. His savvy use of social networking brought an unprecedented number of young people into the electoral process. His grassroots approach to fundraiser produced a record-breaking half billion dollars from almost 4 million donors. To the Left, I said “Take notes!”  We didn’t.

While the fury of the campaign raged on, sections of the Left were embroiled in the age-old debate about the efficacy of electoral politics. Others jumped into the campaign with everything they had except an independent political strategy. Those remaining hardly created a critical mass to impact the Obama campaign or his administration. Based on the historic numbers of young people, people of color and working class voters engaged by the campaign, our organizational memberships should have increased ten-fold and new energy and fresh creativity infused into the mass movements. It didn’t happen.

The Left is now being left out of the Obama administration. We couldn’t even save Van Jones’ job. Our impotence as a political force is no longer a secret. We will not be able to philosophize our way out of this malaise. We will not be able email or text our way to freedom. It will take some real Ella Baker-style organizing to build the kind of political base needed to confront the empire and bring about the kind of changes one man can never bring on by himself.

So, if the Left was assessed on the same quality of life indicators that The Justice Institute evaluated Obama on, and say throw in housing and juvenile crime, what grade would we give ourselves? We don’t have to go far for the truthful answer; a look at our working class neighborhoods and its residents says it all. The Left must get serious about analysis, strategy and organization and not just to impact federal politics but to drill down deeper on the local level.

What is the challenging work ahead for the Left?

We must educate and train an army of new organizers while updating and strengthening the skills of veteran organizers. Our determination should be fueled by the fact that neither the white power structure or the masses take us seriously. I’m not talking about the good, mass work of individuals; I’m talking about an entire movement.

We need to intensify the fight-back and claim some victories in the every day struggles of working people. We have to earn the respect of the people that the social movements tend to glorify in their rhetoric or mission statements but whom they have little meaningful relationships with. You have to know the people, understand the conditions and organize resources through face time not Facebook.

We have to be involved in the bankrupt, bourgeois democratic process because it’s one of the few spaces where we can engage masses of people into envisioning a new kind of society. The caveat is not getting sucked into the Democratic Party but to have a dual strategy that is implemented internally and externally. The electoral arena is not the only way to build power but it is an important one.

To that end, we must begin grooming potential candidates for public office so that we can have some real choices and expect allegiance to a progressive agenda. It should be time out for candidates merely seeking a job or a political career on the backs of working people.

Progressives must be accountable to one another and to our base of supporters. We must end sectarian and individualism as they are harmful to our operational unity and to our goals. No one is beyond constructive criticism; we should be sophisticated enough to value criticism and self-criticism.

The Left should do more than hold Obama to his campaign promises; we should help materialize them. If nothing else, the GOP strategy is consistent and it is steamrolling across the country, making laws and decisions that will affect our quality of life for years to come. We can’t be smug as we throw daggers at the centrist president; we now know his weaknesses, his alliances and his thought-processes. President Obama’s power is limited, ours is unlimited if we use it wisely.

Forward to building a genuine people’s movement led by those most affected by poverty, racism and gender oppression.

Jamala Rogers is a long-time community organizer in St. Louis, MO. She has held and currently holds leadership and membership in many organizations that share her vision for a more just and peaceful world. As a black radical feminist and human rights educator, she views her organizing through these lenses. Jamala is a founding member and former Chairperson of the Organization for Black Struggle, a mass organization with roots in the African-American community for over 30 years. She also serves on the National Executive Committee of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. She is a featured columnist for the award-winning St. Louis American newspaper, the city’s largest black weekly and is on the editorial board of Black Commentator. She has authored many articles for both local and national publications on issues that she is passionately involved in. Her first book, The Best of the Way I See It and Other Political Writings, has just been released.

“WHAT DO WE WANT?!” Before you say “Justice!” … what if we asked you to be a little more specific? As the Arab world builds new societies from scratch, as we prepare for another U.S. presidential election, the question of what we want is increasingly important. Chicago resident Daniel Tucker asked his neighbors to think a little harder this spring when the City of Chicago had its first new mayoral election in close to 20 years. Instead of simply responding to or critiquing the candidates’ platforms, this cultural organizer had hundreds of Chicagoans articulate their vision for the city in a novel community art initiative.  “Visions of Chicago” was featured by Timeout Chicago, art industry blogs, and the Chicago press. Its now being published as a book.  Daniel sat with OrgUp editor Sushma to discuss imagination and ideology during election season:

What blocks imagination and our ability to reinvent ourselves and our cities?

DT: In Chicago, I observed that the most significant casualty of having the same mayor for 22 years (who is also the son of another mayor for nearly that long) was the stifling of the collective political imagination of Chicagoans.

The trajectory for restricting they city’s imagination was, in effect, planned out and premeditated. A prime example was a 2005 PR campaign launched by the Chicago Housing Agency around the demolition of the city’s public housing stock.  The CHA worked with the Leo Burnett advertising agency (the same folks behind the Army of One campaign) to roll-out a re-branding effort for the CHA called CHAnge. The intention of this campaign was paradigmatic of the strategies cultivated throughout Daley’s reign (and I do not use that phrase lightly), which also have echos in Obama’s 2008 branding. They wanted to define, own, and formally close the definition of “change” as it related to demolishing public housing and the giving away former CHA land for nothing to private developers. The most egregious part was that they used testimonials from CHA residents to illustrate that the change was wholly positive, progressive, and a done deal.

Stepping back from the local context, I see our imaginations stifled by the perceived edges of our current reality. Robin Kelly said it best in the article Organizing Upgrade published, “How do we produce a vision that enables us to see beyond our immediate ordeals?” Meaning, we often cannot imagine a life which is that much better than our current reality because our current reality actually structures and dictates a significant portion our time, our relationships with other people, and the pragmatic objectives of our work as organizers. We spend so much time concerning ourselves with what is realistic that we forget how to imagine a significantly better life.

That is why when I asked people what their visions were for this project, many of the visions were articulated as slight improvements (to the status quo) that were barely beyond the edges of the current reality of life in Chicago: better schools, more jobs and less violence. If you are at the bargaining table, I understand that you sometimes have to take what you can get. But this public art project wasn’t the bargining table and much of our daily lives are not spent at the bargaining table. So why is it so hard to think about dramatic changes that would make life significantly better that can at least give us something to strive for? I’m not even talking about utopia or fantasy – I am just talking about having the ability to generate visions of lives which are better than some kind of social-democratic welfare state.

What mindset or experience were you seeding amongst participants and the Chicago public with “Visions for Chicago”?

DT: The Commercial Club of Chicago generated a vision for the kind of public-private partnerships they wanted to see in public education in this city. I want that kind of bold imaginative process to be encouraged amongst a diverse range of community activists across the city.

This project was really about going through an informal creative process to generate and visually represent our visions for the city. So I kept things pretty open-ended and simply asked people to make a yard sign about their long term visions for Chicago.

In my conversations with the contributors, I was struck by how many people found the process both difficult as well as rewarding and enjoyable. I think both of those reactions had to do with how little time most people feel they are allowed to think about big picture and long term plans. The challenge is finding the mental or creative time and space to brainstorm, draw and articulate ideas. That is also where the fun part came for many people…once they find that space, it becomes clear that it is actually really important to let yourself ‘go there’ sometimes. The “drawing board” shouldn’t just be for professional communications workers, artists, or students.

I hoped that this small effort might provide a platform for some of the visioning that most people had not done while Daley was mayor and most people were not going to do while scrambling to figure out who was going to replace him and if they could effect the outcome with relatively little lead-time. It was a way to use the occasion of the election and all the excitement, shit-talking, door-knocking, debating and energy to talk not about candidates but talk about the city as the subject in and of itself. Understandably that is not what some folks wanted to do, they wanted to get in the political ring and make moves. But it felt like it would be a missed opportunity if there wasn’t some effort at engaging people with political vision to actually articulate that somehow. The challenge of representing our ideas and visions is a truly important and overlooked terrain of possibility, inspiration and rejuvenation.

Visions for Chicago was featured in art blogs, art magazines, and the Chicago press. You’ve published a book to boot.  How do you understand ‘the media’ and communications in your art and organizing work?

DT: Getting press has a few motivations. One is quite simple, and that is that if you ask people to take the time to do something out of the ordinary (if it attend a gathering, an action or in this case make a yard sign and be photographed with it) then you need to reflect appreciation and respect for that on multiple levels. Obviously, that includes being kind and well-organized in direct interactions but I believe that people also respect media coverage (even if people get their news elsewhere) and have an understanding that if it is covered in the media that it is worthwhile. Without getting too much into how people value their time and energy, I think that a consideration of this dynamic is the duty of good organizers. There is nothing wrong with affirmation if it gives people the motivation and courage to keep pushing the boundaries of what they will do to express their discontent and aspirations.

The other major function of working the media angle is that it produces a kind of mythology around an idea, event or project. In real material terms, Visions For Chicago involved about 85 people making signs for their front yards, 15 people writing short vision statements and me and my intern walking around taking photos and sitting on our computer. It is small potatoes, dinky and insignificant if you see all these fragmented pieces as they are. But when you combine portraits of the signs and signmakers into a published catalogue, website and articles in the major weekly papers then it becomes this compelling story about tons of people across the city creatively refusing to express their visions through endorsing disappointing candidates and generating really compelling ideas to share with their neighbors and communities in this unique way. That the release party for the catalogue happened on the day Rahm Emanuel took over as Mayor meant that the story of this project was presented along-side the story of him taking office. It literally was a featured article in the same Timeout Chicago edition that had rare one-on-one interviews with both Rahm Emanuel and Daley which pretty much ensures that the story about all these people across Chicago making Visions signs and criticizing both of those guys made its way into their press secretary’s hands if not their own. The Tribune, Reader, Timeout or other outlets that promoted the event would not ever consider publishing articles about the abstract concept of political vision, but they will promote something done under the auspices of “public art” made by a diverse range of Chicagoans.

Finally, the media is just one among many sites of distribution for ideas and meaning. This project operated on multiple fronts, including but not limited to: the often collaborative processes the signmakers went through with their friends and families to come up with the words or images to represent their ideas, the incredible exchanges that I had directly with the participants about their perspectives on local politics and on the concept of political imagination and vision; the interactions the sign-makers had with neighbors about the signs in their yards; the sign-makers put in symbolic dialogue in the catalogue and website featuring the portraits of them with their signs; the media coverage of the overall effort; and then the word-of-mouth that circulates when something this multi-faceted happens.

In a recent interview, you mentioned that this project was about extracting and professing ideology. What do you see as the role and use of ideology in engaging people during the electoral cycle?

DT: The project engaged ideology in two ways. One is through opening up the possibility for people to express their complex and long term visions and goals in a manner that was all about their subjective point-of-view and without any direct correlation to their job, party, community or scene. They were simply photographed with their sign in front of their home and the book and website present them with their name and the ward number (correlating to our city council system) connected to their home address. There is no mention of who their elected representatives are or what they think about them. It is simply a way of indicating the political geography of the city. In this case they were invited to say what they want and that could potentially reflect a really honest presentation of their ideological position. This perspective allows the audience to encounter a wide range of positions that don’t neatly fit into commonly understood ideological frameworks because people are frankly more eclectic than most of our organizations, parties, and communities typically acknowledge.

A more critical perspective on this would require analyzing the ideas implied by their signs and reflecting on how those ideas do or do not reflect the dominant ideologies of capitalist society such as social democracy or neoliberalism. I did not attempt nor invite that level of critique though one can certainly learn a lot about what people do and do not feel capable of demanding by looking at and reading the signs and vision statements collected.

I think that electoral cycles are great opportunities to talk about seemingly abstract things like political vision because elections are the condoned time and space in which political thought and activity is allowed to take place. Since people commonly conflate politics with elections, I believe that elections are strategic terrain for engagement by those of us on the left. That is not a new insight by any means.  But I grew frustrated realizing who was in office and how their style of governance was stifling to political imagination –  for those taking elections seriously as well as those who were disengaged (like I typically was in the past).

Daniel Tucker has worked as a cultural and political organizer in Chicago for the last decade, initiating a number of large-scale local projects, publications, and events. The themes he focuses on are primarily public space, leftist history, and geography. As a communications consultant he has worked for activist groups such as Metropolitan Tenants Organization and academic groups like University of California Institute for Research in the Arts and the Center for Urban Economic Development in Chicago. From 2005-2010 he served as the editor of AREA Chicago, a print/online publication dedicated to researching and networking local social movements in Chicago. He has written and lectured widely about the intersections of art and politics, exhibited videos and artwork internationally, and recently published Farm Together Now, a book of interviews with activist farmers across the country. miscprojects.com

From the author: These notes are in response to a number of inquiries and hardly represent a fully thought out strategic view. I invite your comments: bobwing68@gmail.com.

This election highlights the extraordinarily high stakes of this period in U.S. and world history, and is a barometer of which way the country is moving. As I see it the Republicans scored a remarkable victory at a critical juncture in a historic struggle marked by two huge trends.

1. Although the U.S. is still clearly the most powerful country in the world politically and economically and militarily, the clear trend over the last 60 years and especially the last few decades is that Western domination of the world is eroding and the rest of the world is rising.  In the last few decades the U.S. has been losing its position as the world’s only superpower and non-Western countries, led by the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China), are quickly growing in power. For example, the G-8 has been supplanted by the G-20; many countries now ignore the WTO and the IMF; regional economic blocs are becoming more powerful and are linking to each other without going through the West; and the U.S. could not build a broad coalition behind its war on Iraq.

The country and the world are in a particularly aggravated period of that transition marked by a battle over whether or not to accept the loss of superpower status, how to navigate it when the U.S. is still the strongest country in the world, and indeed whether to fight to retain superpower status by extreme violent and aggressive means (the Bush II line).  This debate is particularly sharp now due to the economic crisis which focuses the issue of the decline of the U.S. The environmental/climate crisis is also part of this discussion. How quickly or slowly will the decline of the U.S. How rapid will the developing countries led by the BRIC countries move forward and what economic and political forms will they take? How violent will the process be? What new role or roles will the U.S. assume, and what other countries will gain power? How will the U.S. economy, government and military be reshaped to meet these challenges?

2. White domination of the U.S. is eroding as peoples of color and their allies within the U.S. are gaining more power, economically and politically, and as their numbers grow state by state and in the nation as a whole. The clock is ticking on when peoples of color will become the majority of the country driven by immigration and higher birth rates. Again we are at aggravated transition symbolized by the election of a black president that many perceive has moved the clock up on this process by decades as well as high immigration levels. How peaceful or violent will that process be (armed militias are growing at an alarming pace)? How short or long? How skillful will the adversaries in this process be?

In the world of U.S. politics these two huge trends combine: increasingly the axis of U.S. politics is how to deal with the growing power of people of color at home and abroad and the decline of white American privilege and power at home and abroad. The Republican Party, especially its powerful far right, fairly consistently represents the reactionary position. The Democratic Party, mainly the leftwing of it, haltingly and unevenly represents the other. The center is an increasingly volatile and active majority and wildly vacillates. It is this historical clash that shaped the 2010 election perhaps more clearly than any before it. Without a doubt the Republicans and the far right won a big victory in 2010.

Republicans and the Far Right

Since 1964 (Goldwater) and especially since 1980 (Reagan) the Republican Party has increasingly become the party of aggressive imperialism and aggressive racist backlash. It has dominated U.S. politics, especially the presidency, since 1968, not only reversing the historic civil rights movement but cutting away at the welfare state, adopting a more aggressive foreign economic and military posture and shifting U.S. politics far to the right. In today’s political spectrum the policies pursued by Richard Nixon might make him a liberal Democrat.

Over that period the traditional pragmatic center-right of the Republican Party has been losing power to its ideological and hardcore racist right wing based in the white South, Southwest and Rocky Mountain states. The Tea Party movement is the latest incarnation of the far right, this time with an urgency that stems from the two trends above, spiked even more by the economic crisis that has stoked fears about those processes even more, and symbolized by the election of a black president and the rise of immigration. They feel they are “losing their country” to people of color and their allies and to China and other uppity Un-American countries. Forty percent of voters this year said they backed the Tea Party, including 47 percent of people over 65.

While the Tea Party got most of the headlines, the main factions of the ruling class, feeling burned by health care and financial reform and feeling emboldened after having been bailed out, clearly swung back to support the Republicans in this election after having largely backed Obama and the Democrats in 2008 and was willing to unite with the reactionary Tea Party to ensure a Republican victory. Their clout was even greater than usual after the Supreme Court cleared the way for unlimited corporate campaign contributions. Whether they will resume their brief flirtation with Keynesianism and a managed move away from their superpower status or whether they will opt for reestablishing their supremacy through domestic social austerity and foreign aggression is a huge question. If they do the latter, the attack on government workers and poor folks may be withering and foreign affairs will be fraught with the danger of shooting and trade wars.

The victory of the Republicans, spearheaded by the Tea Partyists and the main sectors of big capital, signals that they have reorganized and reseized the initiative in a major way.

The Democrats and the Left

After forty years of Republican ascendance and eight years of a uniquely disastrous Bush presidency including historic military, diplomatic and economic failures, in 2008 Obama finally galvanized the center left to victory. The main sectors of big capital and most of the center tilted Democratic in 2008. However, without a dynamic or strong force to his left that could seize the initiative for a people’s response to the economic crisis, Obama got stuck in the vacillating center and was over the last two years got isolated.

The forces to the left of Obama, the strongest of which is by far the labor movement, failed to seize the opportunity provided by the economic crisis to galvanize the country in a people’s opposition to the economic crisis, thereby providing a vacuum that the Republicans, both ruling class forces and reactionary populist Tea Partyists, seized. The black/brown vote saved the Democrats in California and in a few other races in the Southwest, but the Democrats suffered one of the largest mid-term setbacks ever at the federal, state and local levels. This defeat will reverberate for many years as the Republicans are positioned to try to institutionalize many of their gains in the Redistricting battles that loom in the next year.

The Active Center

Since the 1990s, marked by the Reform Party of Ross Perot, the center of U.S. politics has become active and dynamic, and more politically defined around pragmatic, non-ideological, non-partisan fiscal conservatism. It is no longer the “silent majority” that it usually is. It is important to note that the most successful third party in U.S. history, the Reform Party, came not from the left or right of U.S. politics, but from the center. The Party won 19 percent of the vote in the 1992 election and, without Perot, about 9 percent in 1996. The center, which had tilted Republican since 1980, was willing to torpedo the Republican Party (Bush I) in order to assert its political independence, throwing the 1992 and 1996 elections to Clinton. Although the Reform Party died once Perot withdrew his millions, the activism and independence of the center is still strong and is likely to continue to be so because their politics are based in the realities of the changed economy since 1975 in which they and most of us are left to fend for ourselves and “take personal responsibility.”

I believe they are about 40 percent of the electorate and include much of the most moderate sections of both parties as well as the growing independents. Independents are far outgrowing both the Democratic and Republican parties. For example they make up 40 percent of the electorate in Massachusetts, larger than either the Democrats or Republicans. Clearly large parts of the center are tending to move together in elections.

In my opinion the center is primarily defined by being pragmatic fiscal conservatives. This is why it has a strong tendency to unite with the Republicans and even the Tea Party which are also committed to fiscal conservatism. However, the center is not ideological about anything else (making it different from the far right) and is sometimes willing to support government spending on the economy or the environment. The center itself has left, right and centrist wings, largely based on what different people are willing to support in terms of government spending and foreign policy. The Obama victory signaled that large sections of the center was willing to support government spending to try to solve the economic crisis but clearly large sections have, for now, recoiled from spending on that and especially on health care. This is a volatile, politically active center.

Final Thoughts

The stakes in politics are extraordinarily high and 2010 was a major flashpoint in a fight over the future of the country and the world. The far right and its other Republican allies are acting appropriately alarmed at the world and national trends and are being pretty damn clear about what is at stake and pretty damn strategic about fighting for their politics. The social justice left is not very alarmed when it should be, instead often focusing on its (very real) disappointments with Obama and the Democrats rather than the very real threat of the Republicans and especially its far right. Many refuse to recognize that the Democratic Party, with all its faults, is the main political vehicle for defeating the right in the historic battle for the future of the country and either remain out of the electoral fray, in third parties, or confine their work to non-partisan (registering voters and GOTV) field work. Many are overly critical of the strongest component of the movement, labor, and are estranged from it. Labor is all-out in partisan politics but often treats its allies as tertiary appendages. It has also diverted tremendous resources to unproductive sectarian internal fighting. One of our key needs is an updated version of the Rainbow Coalition that can unite liberals, progressives, and leftists, and work both inside the Democratic Party and the electoral arena, and outside of the electoral arena.

It is my belief that the left can only grow if it shows an ability to be a strong leader in the fight against the right, which in its essence is a fight against the U.S. as a bullying racist superpower and for peace. It is a fight against the attempt to turn back the growing power of people of color. It is a fight against social austerity and for a more democratic, environmentally friendly government and economy and indeed a fight to give space to the rest of the world to develop and improve the qualities of their lives with less danger and threat from the decaying superpower. It is, in essence, a fight against a U.S. form of what in other countries has sometimes been called fascism, but which in the U.S. takes the unique form of an aggressive racist, imperialist/militarist but individualist and anti-government populist rightwing.

The labor/civil rights initiated One Nation effort with its focus on jobs was a year and a half late but is still a promising direction, regardless of the immediate fate of One Nation itself. The fight for jobs, including a fight to decrease the military budget in order to do so, is the cutting edge of the fight against the right and the reactionary sectors of the ruling class at this time and has potential to cohere and strengthen a broad progressive alliance.

The objective trends of history militate against the Republicans and the far right: there is no staunching the erosion of the U.S. world position nor can the demographic trends in the U.S. be reversed. However this does not guarantee the decline or defeat of the right. Indeed, I think it is possible that the right will win if the left does not play a major role as moderates often lack the political will to wage the kind of staunch, mass based and protracted fight against the right that is needed. We must break out of the left strongholds that so much of the non-profit left confines itself to, out of the sectarian in-fighting in labor and organize organize organize to build the broad, mass based front that is needed to defeat them. We can and must win. In the years to come, the future well being and shape of the world is literally at stake.

Bob Wing is a senior organizer and media coordinator with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ). Based in Durham NC, the SCSJ promotes justice by empowering minority and low-income communities to defend and advance their political, social and economic rights.  Prior to this position, Wing was director of strategic projects for Community Coalition, a Black-Brown grassroots organizing group in South Central Los Angeles.  Wing was the founding editor of ColorLines magazine, a national magazine of race, culture and organizing, and edited and cofounded the anti-war newspaper War Times/Tiempo de Guerras. A longtime activist, writer and editor, he has been activite in national and international struggles, especially racial justice struggles, since the late 1960s.

Organizing Upgrade was initiated in the aftermath of the economic crisis and Obama’s election because – as we saw it then – “the terrain of politics is rapidly shifting beneath our feet.”  The mid-term elections on November 2, 2010 represented another significant shift in the political terrain. Not only did the balance of power shift in the House of Representatives, but the election of dozens of Tea Party candidates indicated disturbing trends in popular political consciousness.

We wanted to share a round-up of reflections that a range of left thinkers and organizers put out in the aftermath of the mid-term elections. We don’t endorse the opinions of these pieces, but we believe that they are all significant positions to understand.  Please feel free to suggest other relevant pieces using the comments section below. We plan to feature more pieces written by progressive and  left organizers on the implications of these elections in the coming months.

Organizing 2010: Turnout, Demographics, Message

Laura Flanders talks with Gihan Perera and Claire Tran of Right to the City Alliance about left accountability in electoral politics.

An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum

By Tim Wise

“I know, you think you’ve taken “your country back” with this election — and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking, cuz that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how dare anyone else say otherwise — but you are wrong…You have won a small battle in a larger war the meaning of which you do not remotely understand….You’re on the endangered list. And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving. In forty years or so….there won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach about them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious feelings, or those of the so-called “greatest generation” — a bunch whose white contingent was top-heavy with ethical miscreants who helped save the world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of it here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil rights struggle…Because in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it…Do you hear it? The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently? Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.  So know this. If you thought this election was payback for 2008, remember…Payback, thy name is…Temporary.”

“This dramatic reversal is not the result of bad policy as such; the president made some real policy gains. It is not a consequence of a president who is too liberal, too conservative or too centrist. And it is not the doing of an administration ignorant of Washington’s ways. Nor can we honestly blame the system, the media or the public — the ground on which presidential politics is always played. It is the result, ironically, of poor leadership choices. Abandoning the “transformational” model of his presidential campaign, Obama has tried to govern as a “transactional” leader. These terms were coined by political scientist James MacGregor Burns 30 years ago. “Transformational” leadership engages followers in the risky and often exhilarating work of changing the world, work that often changes the activists themselves. Its sources are shared values that become wellsprings of the courage, creativity and hope needed to open new pathways to success. “Transactional” leadership, on the other hand, is about horse-trading, operating within the routine, and it is practiced to maintain, rather than change, the status quo. The nation was ready for transformation, but the president gave us transaction. And, as is the case with leadership failures, much of the public’s anger, disappointment and frustration has been turned on a leader who failed to lead.”

Today’s Fight for Our Morale, Tomorrow for Our Future

By B. on B is for Blog

“Last night was demoralizing. Watching election results was crushing.  For those who hadn’t totally come off the hopium of 2008, this was quite a crash….It’s times like these that call us to fight stronger and harder than ever before. But if we do it from a place of despair, a place of hopelessness, the work will only become another form of punishment that the world is already too ready to mete out to us… Their claiming seats of power should not also lay claim to our spirits. Because to be honest, there is a lot to make us optimistic. Change is coming from the Global South and within the US, poor people and people of color led movements are getting stronger and tighter and more ready to greet it…The DREAM Act students, the movement in Arizona, and those Taking Back the Land have shown all of us that bold action is not only possible but sparks a movement when taken. The linkage between indigenous people within North America and the global South and the call for the rights of mother earth demonstrate that in the face of corporate globalization, we can internationalize our communities and our struggles at the grassroots.”

Progressives And the Post-Election Politics of “I Know What’s Going On”

by John Sirota on Open Left

“While I don’t buy the idea that President Obama will face a primary challenge (despite polls showing a near majority of Democratic voters supporting one), I do think Fund is right that there will be – and should be – increasing post-election progressive pressure on Obama to deliver on his campaign promises. We will, of course, hear a lot of “wait until after the next election” nonsense that is the typical excuse for inaction – and we will hear that nonsense at a greater decibel level than ever because it will precede what is expected to be a closely fought 2012 election campaign.”

Latino Voters Save the West for Democrats

by Julianne Hing on Colorlines

“While last night’s election was dismal for the Democratic Party across the country, things looked quite different in California, Colorado and Nevada, where Democrats won key races that many expected them to lose. Political analysts have long been hailing the growing power of the Latino vote, but the numbers from these western races seem to make it clear now: Latinos brought it home for the Democrats and saved what would have otherwise been much closer races for both Jerry Brown and Harry Reid.”

Dems Suffer Without Young Voters of Color Who Stole the ‘08 Show

by Jamilah King on Colorlines

“Today, as Democrats are solemnly tallying up their losses, there’s one inescapable fact about what the midterm electorate looked like: it was overwhelmingly whiter and older than 2008. The questions for President Obama now are what happened to the energetic base of young voters of color who thrusted him to power in 2008? And what will it take to bring them back into his party’s fold before 2012?…’We need a bold leadership that inspires young people from both sides of the aisle to fight for our interests,’ [said Rob “Biko” Baker, executive director of the League of Young Voters]. ‘Without that, we’re gonna lose a whole generation of young people we just activated in 2008.’”

The original article “New Kids on the Historic Bloc”  was written by Jon Liss and David Staples This article  takes off from where that one left off and  is based on an interview between Rishi Awatramani and Jon Liss.

New Kids on the Historic Bloc – Workers’ Centers and Municipal Socialism – A Summary and Postscript

Crisis, Capitalist Refounding and the Reagan Historic Bloc

Over the last 30 years capital has ‘re-founded’ itself by imposing neo-liberal programs (see Theodore/Peck) linked with imperialist expansion.  This refounding was a response to a crisis of accumulation or declining profit rates.  Components of neo-liberalism include: privatization, aggressive attacks on unions, attacks on the ‘social’ wage in general and women of color in particular.  We use a framework of ideas, institutions and program of actions to describe the New Right program for the last thirty years. The dominant ideas of the New Right include concepts that support ‘getting government off the people’s back’, stop taxing and spending, etc. Institutions that propagate and implement neo-liberalism range from the Manhattan Institute (urban policy) to the U.S. Congress, while programs have included efforts to cut taxes on the wealthy or slash welfare as we know it.  Up until the last 18 months their program could largely be classified as a smashing success.  Because of their ideological hegemony, both dominant electoral parties accept some variation of their ideology concerning the role of government in the functioning of the economy.  These politics and policies were made dominant through the forging of an historic bloc that both elects like-minded officials but also serves as a political tail wind that keeps things they way they are. By expertly blending racism with appeals to capitalist mythology, Reagan manufactured an anti-new deal majority that was tied to industrial capital, military and industrial capital, extractive industries/capital, white workers, farm owners and outer suburbanites.  In one form or another this bloc has set the parameters of dominant politics for the last thirty years.  However, the twin jolts of economic collapse and demographic shifts (massive immigration from Latin American and Asia) created the reality of Obama’s election and indicate a conjunctural opportunity to aggressively challenge the dominant ideas, institutions and program of the last 30 years.

Recomposition of the Working Class

These massive changes in the political economy had major effect on the composition of the Working Class in the US. There are a number of factors responsible for this re-composition: 1) Over the last 30-40 years, manufacturing jobs moved overseas. In this period in particular, the US experienced massive de-industrialization of sectors that had been at the heart of the economy and the main provider of stable employment for the dominant white male sector of the working class (and therefore a central site of Working Class organization and struggle). Flexible and unstable employment in the low-wage service sectors, public service  and government jobs, or some form of state welfare dependence emerged as the primary bread-winning opportunities for working-class people. 2) During this same period, there was a significant increase in immigration, due  to both the liberalization of immigration policy in the 60’s and 70’s, as well as the deepening economic crises of working people in the Third World (crises which were caused primarily by the creation of massive national debts through Structural Adjustment policies). 3) The disappearance of well-paid working class jobs and the increase in unstable, low-wage jobs meant that women of color in particular were to, more than ever before, be forced to work double time: in their unpaid labor in domestic work in their own homes and in paid work, typically in low-wage service sector positions (in some cases, doing paid domestic work for other families).

Through these changes, the working class has been recomposed, and is much more populated by immigrants, people of color, and women. Significantly, this recomposition has also created a more unstable, highly flexible, and poorly compensated working class that faces speed-up pressures, contingent work, and limited benefits.

A central task for our period, then, is to figure out which are the key nodes in this reshaped political economy at which we must build strong, fighting mass organizations, and which are the key historical actors that can build unity and lead a movement against capital and exploitation. For example, a part of our project is to develop demands for child care providers, taxi drivers, janitors, and even computer or biotechnology workers (who share the contingency of work and low/no benefits with other members of the new working class).

We face an uphill battle to achieve the key tasks of this period, as we fight against a dominant ideology which is not on our side, labor laws that do more to divide workers and protect the interests of bosses than promote workers’ rights, a historical trajectory that has left us with diminished social movements and organizations, and spatial divisions that isolate our organizations and movements.

Social Reproduction: gender, market integration, and a rising history maker!

Part of the dominant class response to the accumulation crisis was to bring fully into market conditions socially reproductive labor, or in other words, to move work that was not traditionally waged into the waged work world.  This is work usually done by  women that is involved in the reproduction (schooling, childcare, housekeeping, elder care, etc.) of the next generation of workers.  Capital continually looks to fill its insatiable need to expand by moving unwaged work to waged work.  The movement of women into the labor force, particularly its most undervalued and super-exploited sectors, expands the labor market and the production of surplus value.

Neo-liberal restructuring drove a polarization of wealth and power and created a new demand for a whole range of domestic service and services.  This emerging stratum of the working class is the lowest paid, works the longest hours and is in perennial crisis.  In addition, immigration laws further segment the labor market creating a gray market for undocumented workers who have little legal productions under the law.  At this intersection of race, class and gender has emerged the rising history maker – working women of color – who are largely the social base of the new working class organizations that have arisen in the last two decades.

In Northern Virginia this has meant immigrant women who work in hotels or the service industry who join Tenants and Workers United. Elsewhere – in urban areas throughout the country – it is women of color who have come together to motor the overwhelming majority of  New Working Class Organizaitons that have developed over the last 20 years.  Particularly for the 40 organizations who are members of the Right to the City Alliance our political demands are centered around social reproduction that is around needs and wants associated with sustaining and raising working people.  This includes fights for affordable or public housing, high performing schools and a range of social services.

Organizing During the Neo-Liberal Era: Pragmatism in Unions and Community Organizing

For decades, the old-school Alinsky form of organizing has dominated community- and workplace-based organizing, and it is time to formally declare it’s failure. The Alinsky model of organizing emphasizes a purportedly non-ideological, pragmatic approach to organizing that is ill-equipped to winning power for the oppressed people. It grew in the space created by the decline of the New Left, the rise of progressive or liberal foundations, and the decline of organized labor. The internal crisis of ACORN in some ways flows directly from the political limitations and failures of the Alinskly model, and ACORN is in the beginning of a period of serious decline in which it will lose dominance in it’s two former foundational strengths: electoral organizing and fundraising from private foundations.

At the same time, the labor movement, with few exceptions, is not organizing the most militant and dynamic sectors of the working class, and it has not adapted well to the formation of the new working class referenced above. Over 87% of the workforce in this country are not union members. The Labor Movement on the whole has not broken from a Gomperist (see Fletcher and Gapasin, Solidarity Divided) relation to the dominant class.  That is, it fights to get a slightly better deal for its members vis-à-vis the rest of the class.  It does not fight for the class as a whole, nor does it challenge the fundamental rules of capital.

Organizations for the new class: Emergence, Approach and Self-Analysis/Critique

Over the last 20 years a new urban movement is emerging in the growth of new working class organizations – such as Just Cause Oakland (now Causa Justa/Just Cause), Miami Workers Center, Tenants and Workers United, Domestic Workers United, POWER, and others.  These organizations social base is oppressed nationality women; including African American’s and others forced into the low-wage labor market because of welfare ‘reform’ and globalization-forced immigration.

These groups attempted to organize whole neighborhoods, cities, or sectors of the workforce in campaigns that raised demands against the state. Through direct action, conscious political education and raising counter-hegemonic demands (that is, framing demands in ways that challenge the dominant class’s ‘common sense’), these organizations fought for affordable housing and an end to displacement in the face of intense land privatization, recognition of domestic work as dignified work, the rights of marginal and informal workers, access to quality transportation for these new tiers of workers, and an end to the wanton criminalization of youth of color.

Perhaps most uniquely, there is a conscious effort amongst these New Working Class Organizations to link local base-building work with work against the US empire, by engaging members in struggles and solidarity actions against war, occupation, and financial control of the Third World, but also by developing a tier of leaders from this new working class that is highly conscious of the role the US plays financially, politically and militarily in the world. Whereas an most unions would focus leadership development exclusively on skills to be used for the narrow purpose of workplace organizing, these new organizations prioritized a form of leadership development that developed ‘hard’ leadership skills with ideological development and analytical skills.

This form of organization is relatively new, however, and has many weaknesses. The leadership of NWCO is primarily university educated, ‘middle class’ and oppressed nationality, with relatively few advanced leaders directly from the new class. It is dependent on foundations for its financial base, which has meant that, while most NWCO’s are organizer-centered, they are not typically funded to have a density of organizers moving any one campaign; new funding streams more often lead to more campaigns rather than a larger base organized around larger scale campaigns. As a result, most organizations have expertise in developing a small handful of very sophisticated members and very little success in organizing large organizations with large mass bases. New Working Class Organizations have generally focused narrowly on organizing this new sector of the class and has limited experience with broader formations. The financial crash and the corresponding drop in foundation funding has left many of these groups in financial crisis.

Interestingly, over the last two years an increasing number of these organizations are experimenting in electoral work.  This is creating opportunities to organize more broadly both spatially and also broader strata within the class.

Right to the City: further self defining as a new urban movement

In 2007, 40 community-based organizations – representing many of the most ideological of the New Working Class organzations – allied academics and resource allies (eg, Advancement Project, Florida Legal Services, the Data Center) met in Los Angeles and created the Right to the City Alliance.  This coming together represented a collective jumping of scales for a maturing and r9ising sector of the working class.  Organizations, heretofore, had generally just worked on demands at local and state levels.  Cominmg together we have begun to enunciate a collective vision for our cities – for all, green, feminist – as well as begun the difficult process to make national demands on the federal government and to claim political space at the national level vis a vis unions and other national formations.

The state: a new moment

One can see in the electoral majority that elected Obama the prefigurative possibility of a rising historic bloc – centered on a unified Black nation, with wide layers of immigrants and other people of color, unionists, and broad stratum of the cybertariat and new economy working class (many with self-identified as working class.  New Working Class Organizations broadly share much in our approach to organizing: a historical subject, a broad but common understanding of race, class and gender, and our strategy for change. An area where we have less in common is our analysis of the state.  We believe that our strategic approach should draw from Poulantzas and create political space that neither builds a parallel state that leads to a complete replacement  of the old with the new, nor simply elects new people to fill the existing state. By creating new structures and laws we seek to create fissures that increasingly alter the class, race and gender power disposition of the state. Examples of this may include efforts at democratizing the system – same day voter registration or mail in voting, felon voter registration (still an arduous process in Virginia and elsewhere in the south), others might work to eliminate structural obstacles that systematically disempower people of color such as statewide election of senators, non-proportional elections, or participatory budgeting. Others challenges could seek to democratize the economy through taxes on financial transactions or community control over banks or other flows of capital.

New organizing approaches with this in mind

Along with the above-mentioned aggressive, innovative forms of campaign work and organizing, many NWCO’s are engaged more and more in electoral work. For New Working Class Organizations (Right to the City organizations, for example), electoral work presents the opportunity to push our strengths in organizing to a scale we have been unable to reach up until now.

Often confused with social democracy, this work, when led by NWCO’s can allow us to:

1) Develop counter-hegemonic demands, or at the very least counter-hegemonic framing that we advance through issue-based or even candidate campaigns. While these campaigns are in some way assessed by a simple measure of success (i.e. winning the election), NWCO organizations must use their electoral efforts to challenge the underpinnings of neo-liberalism and empire.

2) Win concrete material demands that improve life for our social base, build a sense of movement for our social base and force resources to be moved from the war economy to the social wage (increasing the social wage, albeit on a smaller scale, is essentially the hallmark campaign form of most NWCO’s).

3) Advance our practice and theory through engaging broader mass forces in, what is for the most part, their principal form of political involvement (elections).  Thus we (and our allies) will be actively engaged in strategizing that will force us to continue building our base but also actively constructing a historic bloc – or ensemble of race and class forces – necessary for a new order no dominated by Capital.  This provides an opportunity for different organized sectors – unionists, teachers and students, NWCM activists and others to work together in a coordinated manner.

4) Practice limited forms of governance and power. NWCO, Alinsky organizations, and Unions have experience fighting targets and powerbrokers. We don’t have experience with even limited forms of power at his scale, and for a budding movement, it is crucial practice for different epoch in history when questions of revolutionary democracy, working class power, and organized accountability will be staring us in the face.

Finally, the scale at which our organizations must fight are always changing. While it is important to not necessarily concede political space to the ruling class, some scales of power might present opportunities at various moments in history that beckon us to action. This moment in history, due to the convergence of the economic, ecological, and political crises (the latter represents the crisis in which the ruling political classes find the legitimacy of their system of power waning) presents opportunities for struggles at the national scale which are essential to moving our base, and oppressed people broadly, into action and towards victories against exploitation. We would do well to seize these opportunities.

Jon Liss has been organizing in Virginia for almost 30 years. He was a founding member and is currently the Executive Director of Tenants and Workers United and Virginia New Majority and a founder and steering committee member of the Right to the City Alliance.   Prior to his time at Tenants and Workers United, Jon was involved in a number of grassroots organizations in Virgina, including: Proceso de Educación Popular, the Rainbow Coalition/Jesse Jackson Presidential Campaign,  Northern Virginians Against Apartheid  and the Fairfax County Taxi-drivers Association.

Rishi Awatramani is Lead Organizer at Virginia New Majority (VNM). VNM is a member of the Right to the City Alliance. Rishi is on the US Social Forum National Planning Committee representing Leftist Lounge, has previously worked as a union and community organizer, and is a long-time activist with several organizations.

Welcome back to Fast Forum!  Consider it a “Plenary-to-Go” or, maybe an “Insta-Debate!”  We pick a hot topic and ask 3 – 6 organizers from across the country to weigh in. They will have about 500 words to make us go “….hmmmmm.” Our hope is to draw out new ideas and to encourage new voices to take a stab at the freshest challenges facing our community. This month, we asked four organizers for their reflections on the question:

How does electoral work support or undermine grassroots organizing efforts?

We have incredible contributions from: Mattie Weiss, Wellstone Action and Erik Peterson, Wellstone Action; Rishi Awatramani, Virginia New Majority; Charles Lenchner, Organizing 2.0; and Jessamyn Sabbag, Oakland Rising.

What should we talk about next time? Got something you think people need to hear? Email us: upgrade@organizingupgrade.com

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BUILDING REAL, SUSTAINABLE POWER

Mattie Weiss, the director of Campus Camp Wellstone (a program of Wellstone Action) is a long-time youth movement organizer, writer, and leader. Mattie wrote two chapters of the book, How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office, which she toured around the country, organizing and speaking on behalf of the League of Pissed Off Voters in the 2004 presidential election.

Erik Peterson has 25 years of experience as a community-based educator, trainer, and community and electoral organizer. He has served at all levels of campaign organizing in state and local races, most recently as the lead consultant for Mark Ritchie’s successful 2006 campaign for Minnesota Secretary of State, and as the northern Minnesota Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) director for America Votes.

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Building Power

“Electoral politics without community organizing is a politics without a base.  And community organizing without grassroots electoral politics is a marginal politics. And electoral politics and community organizing without good progressive policy is a politics without a head – without a goal.”    - Senator Paul Wellstone

Wellstone Action is focused on building long-term, strategic progressive/Left power and enacting strong, resource-distributive, progressive public policy. We do this work within a framework we call,  “The Wellstone Triangle.”

Grassroots Organizing

In one corner of the triangle we have grassroots organizing (encompassing community, identity-based, and labor organizing), where we grow our organizations and movements. This is the work of building relationships and trust within communities; finding common ground that ties our issues together so our collective efforts magnify each other; building commitment and infrastructure around a compelling vision; and recruiting, training, mentoring, and supporting new leaders.

Electoral Politics

Another corner of the triangle represents electoral campaigns, in which we elect decision-makers committed to our agenda and accountable to our communities. It involves investing in candidate recruitment and development with a long-term strategy for moving good candidates toward higher office; and investing in training a new generation of grassroots political campaign organizers.

Public Policy

The third component of the Wellstone Triangle is about setting an agenda. Ideas inspire us; values ground and center us; public policies are how we enact our ideas and values in the real world. Moving policy is not just about drafting good legislation. This is the place of idea work, where we develop strategies to shift values and debates at the level of mass consciousness. We also develop the new generation of intellectuals and policy writers who are connected to our two other corners of grassroots organizing and electoral politics.

Why?

Historically, progressives and Left organizers within each of these three corners of the triangle have operated in silos, away from and even disdainful of one another. This has seriously weakened us. For example, over this decade young people have gotten more powerful in their capacity to mobilize around elections. We were the heart and many of the limbs of the Obama campaign. But now that our candidate is in office and the battle over health care, war, civil rights and immigration is going down, our voices are noticeably absent. While we were building our capacity to work on elections we developed precious little experience mobilizing around local, state and national policy, such that the man we put in office has no reason to be accountable to us.

Similarly, policy and decision-makers without a grassroots movement of people behind them are frequently either ineffectual or create policy that is damaging to our communities (intentionally or not). At a training we did with prostituted women several months ago, a sympathetic state senator came to talk about the anti-trafficking legislation she had authored. She is a strong supporter of the rights of sex workers and has the capacity to move ideas into law, but she had drafted the legislation without the voices and certainly without the mobilization of those directly impacted by the policy. When the women sat down with the language of the bill, they immediately identified ways it would backfire and increase harassment by law enforcement.

And grassroots organizing and great vision, without a voice at the tables of power, is a stymied power. Paul Wellstone decided to run for office after years of frustrating fights around welfare, farm foreclosures, apartheid and veteran’s benefits—so that the people of MN would have somebody in office on their side when they mobilized their communities around issues that impacted them.

Integrating the Triangle

When all three pieces of the triangle are working in concert, we build long-term movement and institutional power. Of course, at different times during any given cycle, certain actions and pieces of the triangle rise to greater importance.  Last year elections took greater precedence.  Our work on local, state and national races and ballot initiatives was an incredible opportunity for us to expand our base and engage people in conversations about their lives and what matters to them.  These new relationships and conversations are the foundation from which we build our issues and policy campaigns moving forward. And in the next elections, new people we have brought in and leaders we have developed through our issue organizing will be instrumental in winning victories at the ballot box.  That is how we build real, sustainable power.

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BUILDING THE NEW MAJORITY

Rishi Awatramani is Lead Organizer at Virginia New Majority (VNM). VNM is a member of the Right to the City Alliance. Rishi is on the US Social Forum National Planning Committee representing Leftist Lounge, has previously worked as a union and community organizer, and is a long-time activist with several organizations.

The dual objectives of 1) winning improvements in the lives of oppressed communities and 2) challenging US-led imperialism from within the US find their best chances for success if we are able to organize communities in not just effective and creative campaigns, but also if we’re able to organize in large numbers. Social movements in this country, therefore, have the responsibility of 1) building fighting organizations made up of leaders and members that will struggle in solidarity with oppressed peoples of the world, and 2) organizing the majority of people in their communities, and ultimately in the country to support political change that progressively builds social justice.

Yet, most grassroots organizations struggle to organize more than a few hundred active members, leaving the objective of organizing large numbers of people unrealized. The labor movement, in theory is less interested in organizing politically advanced members and more in growing the sheer numbers of organized workers, continues to lose members instead.

Ground Shifting Beneath Our Feet

There are unprecedented opportunities in this moment to grow our mass-based organizations in the number of people involved, and in the scale of impact we have. For example, in Northern Virginia, where I organize, over 45% of the voting population are People of Color, and that number is growing. Many U.S. cities are majority or near-majority non-White. This is unprecedented in most big metropolitan areas. Additionally, Communities of Color, along with many White (in particular progressive White) people united around the issues of the Barack Obama campaign on a scale not seen since the Jesse Jackson campaigns of 1984 and 1988. Both of these trends show a budding new majority (based on both demographics and political beliefs) that fundamentally changes our organizing terrain.

These changes are mirrored by the mobilization of right wing consciousness amongst White communities that has cut across class. While many communities were already organized, the virulence of their racist, anti-socialist attacks have recently grown in response to our first Black president and his perceived progressivism.

New Tasks for a New Majority

To effectively transform these conditions into advantages for building social movements in this country, we must make it a priority to converge this growing majority of people into sustained political action through the electoral process. In this moment, electoral work provides us with the opportunity to engage people in a form of political action they are more likely to engage in than any other. We have to build new organizations (like Florida and Virginia New Majority) that can organize communities on a large scale through the electoral process to shape the future of their communities and the country in a way we haven’t before.

The objectives of this work include involving thousands, if not millions of people in conscious political action, winning office for progressive candidates (including those that emerge directly from our base), training communities in direct accountability of elected officials we put into office, and sharpening our skills at running campaigns. The success of this work hinges on 1) using non-election time to organize communities to understand the electoral process as one step towards deeper forms of political change; and 2) involving the leadership from grassroots organizations in providing political leadership to the broad spectrum of people that will be mobilized through this work.

There are several challenges to this work: it requires massive resources; it’s difficult to develop other campaigns because of the frequency and intensity of electoral cycles; voters are less likely to get involved when there are not exciting candidates; many people, including undocumented immigrants and felons can’t vote; and it’s possible to develop false hope in our ability to eradicate exploitation with our votes. We need creative solutions to these challenges.

We must not mistake the political power we might win through this process as analogous to the power people might win through deeper forms of political change. It is equally important that we recognize the potential to create real benefits for oppressed people in the US and beyond through this type of political work. And more than anything, we have to build new organizations for the new emerging majority in this country that can build towards deep, lasting social justice.

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FACING UP TO THE CHALLENGES OF ELECTORAL ORGANIZING

Charles Lenchner is co-founder of Organizing 2.0 and 20 year veteran of electoral and advocacy campaigning.

Systems built around candidates do a poor job of recruiting and training leaders. Most campaigns don’t have the time or resources. Remember that much of what the Obama campaign did is not typical of electoral politics.

Electoral politics are rigged in favor of highly technical, top-down strategies that do not rely on mass participation. This holds true even when a relatively high proportion of money is spent on field work as opposed to advertising.

It’s a consultant and media based culture in which regular citizens and activists are often held in contempt as ‘amateurs.’ In most races, incumbents win with the same combination of money, power players and local grasstops that brought them into office. ‘Citizen empowerment’ often translates into the rise and fall of very specific community groups and sectors, not an ethos in which people simply matter. It’s a mindset that undermines small ‘d’ democracy.

That said, it’s also true that challengers and folks transitioning into electoral politics from other arenas draw on the skills and tools of community organizing. So organizers with a grassroots bent can see some local electoral campaigns as helping to strengthen the progressive movement. The election in New York City of Brad Lander, Margaret Chin and Jumaane Williams are cases in point. But they are the exception.

It’s also true that Presidential elections push a lot of money to specific GOTV efforts working with key demographics. The intersection of money, media attention and focus can be used to expand the circle of politically aware community members. I hope we see more career oriented grassroots organizers gaining experience in electoral politics to bring back some of the tools that work, especially online tools and databases.

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WE DON’T BELIEVE IN STRUGGLE. WE BELIEVE IN WINNING.

Jessamyn Sabbag is a Bay Area native, currently based in Oakland. Jessamyn has been active in progressive social change work for the last decade.  She cut her teeth in organizing through high impact anti-police brutality work in her hometown.  She is currently Field Director of Oakland Rising, an up and coming alliance of social justice organizations employing electoral strategies to move the issues and agendas of low-income communities of color to the center of city government.

Over the last 8 months I have run two electoral field campaigns and a civic engagement program that has collectively impacted over 14,000 Oakland residents. As Field Director for Oakland Rising, I spend a lot of time thinking about the possible marriages between electoral and grassroots organizing. It’s not an easy concept. 500 words is too short. But below I will examine three “marriages” that I have been trying to address in my work. And I’ll show how Oakland Rising is intentionally working to develop integrated grassroots and electoral organizing to build the power we need to win, to move the issues and advance the agendas of low-income communities of color to the center of city government.

1)    Culture Shifting: From Struggle to Winning

2)    Quantity AND Quality: One Hand Washes the Other

3)    Developing Leaders: Cross-Over Skills and Issues

1)  Culture Shifting: From Struggle to Winning

Since coming to Oakland Rising as Field Director, I’ve learned a bunch of quotes to describe our tactics and strategy.  One of my favorites is “We don’t believe in struggle.  We believe in winning.”  Oakland Rising is on the path towards developing a collaborative model that harnesses the scale we need for electoral power and the depth we need for grassroots progressive social change.   But shifting the grassroots base and intermediary organizations from a model and history of struggle to a model and program based on winning at all costs takes time.  We all agree theoretically that electoral organizing is different from grassroots organizing, including the realities of a short lead time for electoral planning, and a fast paced environment to achieve goals of significant scale.  Over the last 9 months, I have had the opportunity to usher in culture shifts by developing models that integrate the science of electoral organizing with the equation to build grassroots power.

2) Quantity AND Quality

Oakland Rising is committed to developing the quantity we need to win at the ballot box and the quality of voters we need to hold elected officials accountable. In our latest campaign, our scale nearly doubled when we contacted over 12,000 Oakland voters about local campaigns like the development of a local transit hub. In our 2-4 minute electoral style conversations we were able to engage in political education and get community feedback (outside of the social justice “base”) that helps redirect grassroots campaign framing and increase follow-up.  And our base-building organizations are currently doing more in-depth outreach with voters who were IDed as “hot contacts.”

3) Developing Leaders

Few things are more satisfying than a good win, right?  Fortunately, electoral organizing offers a couple opportunities a year to get a good win (especially here in California where it seems like we have an election every other month!). While phoners and canvassers can do quick-hit issue education and identify the supporters we need to win on election day, moving that win into a community of leaders takes strategic grassroots organizing.  Oakland Rising hires organizational volunteer leaders and community members to phone and knock as members of the electoral daily team.  Volunteer leaders who work on our Daily Team developed or deepened a new skill set which is continually used to help with grassroots organization-specific campaigns.

Joseph Phelan initially interviewed Gihan Perera in person in September 2009. Gihan further developed these ideas after leading a get out the vote effort, in Miami, in November 2009.

We are living in very particular political and economic times. What do you think are the most significant shifts that are happening right now?  How are they changing the context for left grassroots organizing?

I think there are two bipolar opportunities.  On one hand, there is the possibility for mass, large scale electoral participation based on progressive values. The Obama Movement (very different from the Obama Administration) that a year ago had so many inspired, showed that core left values, a broad multi-racial constituency, and anti-corporate sentiment may be forged as a mainstream popular movement within the existing political system.

On the other hand, we have the deep economic and ecological crises which expose the fundamental fault lines of capitalism: its wasteful production processes, and its basic inhumanity in deference to pure greed by the powerful.  The conditions beg for inspirational, morally just, and militant acts of resistance.  It is the best time in decades to expose and highlight the need for a new moral, political, and economic order.

These openings may seem to be opposite choices, but really they are two parts of what we can see as a larger strategy, a larger movement. We must be, at once, engaging the state as it rules and contest for more power in governance as it exists today, while at the same time demonstrate, through inspirational action, the world we want to be living in. This is a dual approach of engaging power and prefiguring a new world with different power relations. It is from this grounding in a two pronged strategy that I want to engage the question and lessons of electoral participation.

THE OBAMA MOVEMENT: The Obama Movement produced an absolutely amazing level of local, national, and global excitement; including a major uptick of young people’s involvement in politics. This movement was a sound indictment of the Bush regime which if continued (by others of his ilk), would have surely escalated its level of regressive policies. It put fundamental questions of race, the role of government, militarism, and unilateral United States aggression on the table. And, I would say, the Obama campaign moved those questions solidly in a left direction on a mass level. The contradiction for the left is that this mass movement came in the form of a Democratic Party electoral campaign for President of the United States.  And in President Obama’s electoral victory, it put the future of those questions largely in his hands.  Now we must answer: did the Obama Movement present a huge breakthrough or just provided a way to coopt an opportunity for real, radical change?

I would argue that this would have been a cooptation if we (the left) had something to coopt.  In fact the left was in a tailspin, with no ground game to speak of, no mass movement, and little critical mass of left activism.  The immigration, labor, post-Katrina, gender, anti-war, and environmental movements were all fragmented. The Obama electoral campaign not only gave them life but a possibility to go back on the offensive.  In that sense I think we have to understand the campaign/movement and the administration as to different beasts.

Just because a consolidated left didn’t produce Obama’s campaign doesn’t mean we should not learn from it.  Organizers trying to build grassroots-left organization in working class communities of color, saw a dramatic shift on the ground. After years of struggle the sense of possibility for change was absolutely palpable.  That feeling shifted the context of organizing. People were in motion, and expectations raised, both in terms of what was possible and what they wanted.  Every grassroots organization that engaged in the presidential campaign experienced a spike in activity and membership at that moment.

The “new technology” components of that campaign showed that we can move ideas and raise political money from regular people at an enormous scale in new ways. We should be using these technologies in a concerted effort to put out bold demands, ideas, and possibilities.  We need to unleash our creativity at the level of mass communications, and learn to use new, cheap, mass accessible technologies to do that.

Finally, we still have not recognized the impact of the Obama campaign in terms of race possibilities in the United States.  We should be asking ‘what was right about Iowa?’, where a solidly white state in the heartland, went for Obama against all odds and conventional wisdom.  The conventional wisdom on the left is based on a theory that the white working class has always sold out communities of color here and abroad, in order to satisfy their own private deal with corporate America and the government.  Iowa showed that that pattern may have real cracks, that now with clear betrayal of banks and manufactures, there are wide opportunities to organize white people to support a multi-racial popular and potentially progressive platform.

Looking at the Obama campaign, we can learn to make strategic interventions in electoral politics, especially at the local level, as a way to shift the broader political climate in the areas we’re working. It can significantly raise the scale of our influence and be a medium to engage a broader range of our constituency base and be a central arena to build alliances, raise resources, and learn how to impact ‘real’ politics in cities and states across the country.  Through electoral opportunities we can significantly expand our reach. There will be a learning curve, but tying this arena to our ongoing agitation and issue organizing is the key to building a movement with enough people and impact to shake things up.

DIRECT ACTION: Now, the second point, the need for out of the box direct actions, may seem completely counter to the first.  But we should be developing a range of strategy and tactics to inspire, win, and build.  As we build mass scale through electoral work we need to maintain deep bases that engage in direct challenges to the state and/or challenge hegemonic ideas.

The door is now open for actions that are both moral and militant: actions like the Republic Windows and Doors worker takeover in Chicago, eviction defenses, the squatting of foreclosed houses and buildings, and recent street movements to directly go after the Banks and their lobbying institutions. These actions inspire and have huge impact on ideologies and values. More importantly they show a way for people to do something very concrete, at the level of body and soul and their own power.  These actions are in stark contrast to the unfathomable amounts of dollars that were stolen and spent on the crises, the confusing policy discussions, and the mud of politics that get stuck while people continue to suffer.  These actions allow a smaller group of people to take a stand, assert our own thinking and values, and potentially spark much broader engagement. We need to ask ourselves, “Who are our strategically placed morally indignant forces who can speak up and change the debate?”

Beyond the direct action nature of these actions there is a huge possibility for people to start demonstrating and actually building the world we want. These practices in new forms of governance, economy, and simply ways of relating to one another are needed experiments and lend vision to the large scale electoral work.

How has the shift from the Obama Movement to the Obama Administration changed how the left should engage with the administration?

As we are now almost a year into the Obama Administration it’s important to understand the difference between the “Obama Moment” and the “Obama Presidency.”  Many on the far left point to his centrist positions and appointments, his weak stances and commitment on health care, climate, immigration, and the continued wars abroad and claim they were ‘right all along.’ This position is ideological comforting but it doesn’t do much to forward a real powerful alternative. The politics of the Obama administration are wholly predictable. I don’t find that very interesting, nor surprising.

We must understand that like any politician, Obama’s going to be a product of power battles raging at the national level. The right is correctly applying and leveraging pressure, but we are not pulling our side of the rope to force him left.  We don’t know how to play that game while still maintaining a relationship to the administration itself where there continues to be incremental and some important opportunities to engage and make some real differences.

As the Right attacks Obama, liberals and many progressives will have a tendency to simply circle the wagons around him, to try and protect him as an individual and to protect his positions at all costs.  They will shut down and ostracize any staking of alternative positions by the left and shut down our own discontent with what the administration is doing, even if ultimately serves the broader interest.  But the left will make our usual mistakes, in our difference and disdain, we will tend toward pure polarization as a principle. It’s what we do, but in this time it could easily play into the hands of the right at a time when we are not strong enough to sustain anything on our own.  This would be a cardinal mistake.

With that said, our role can’t just be in relationship the administration.  We need to go to the source.  Only we can directly challenge and call out the right and their institutions.  This is both around their political program which will not resolve the economic crisis, and around their political and racial witch hunt.  Whether it is ACORN, or Van Jones or immigrants or whoever is next on the list, there needs to be an organized response that draws a common line.  Initiatives like www.stopthewitchhunt.org and others that are emerging to directly confront the structural nature of these attacks should be supported. This is not a rallying around a particular organization or individual but a collective response and call out and targeting of the hate-mongers.

What do you think are the priorities in building left electoral work, and how does it allow us to shift ideas and values in this time of crisis?

For those of us who see serious potential in the mass electoral work, the main questions are: What vehicles are we creating for that electoral work?  I don’t think we’re in any place to create a mass independent left or progressive electoral party, but what we can and should start building the functions of an organization that can provide practical political information and direction to our communities, and at scale. At the most general level, we need to build operational infrastructure that will enable us to simultaneously engage masses of people in electoral and issue politics and use that infrastructure to promote alternative values and visions that are fundamentally different from the logic of how electoral politics currently operate.  In doing so our goal should be to build at two levels of scale: to build our own autonomous power to influence ‘vote shares’ in local and state politics, and to utilize these processes to grow and strengthen the relatively small numbers of core community activists in left community grassroots organizations. This difference is most possible and needed at the local and regional levels where the major parties are largely non-existent and/or non-important in the functioning of local politics.

I’ve found that electoral work is very different than the usual activism and organizing that I’ve done in community and labor organizing.  In the kind of organizing we’ve done in the past, we’ve become very practiced at defining an issue, taking the morally correct position, explaining why we’re right, and campaigning targets to agree with us by shame and through positive mobilization. To do this, we often work long, slow, and hard with relatively small groups of leaders to promote a deeper vision and to expand the realm of what is politically possible.  That work is extremely important and will provide leadership to the broader movement and will set our direction.  However, that has to be combined with other levers of power to be effective.

In our initial efforts at electoral organizing, I’ve learned that you have to build operations that effectively and efficiently reach people at a large scale. The trick is to employ simple messages that still align with our core values.  The issues have to be moved in an actionable way. The windows of opportunity are much shorter in electoral organizing than they are in community organizing, and to win you have to operate within the realm of what’s presently politically possible, even if you are at the edge of it. It feels and is much more transactional than what I’m used to.  I find that being clear about this is very difficult for most activists. We want every part of our program to be our maximum program, and electoral work clearly is not that. But as part of our strategy it can be extremely effective, especially in giving us much greater leverage on local elected officials and policy. It is effective as part of  larger two pronged strategy.

A veteran Civil Rights Movement leader helped me understand this. He was telling me about organizing SNCC [the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] in Mississippi in the early years.  He talked about his key lessons from Ella Baker, and he raised something that was incredibly enlightening for me.  He said that the basis for the success of the Civil Rights Movement was that they were able to find the edge of the current community consensus in those small rural areas.  The consensus was around some set of core values and political sensibilities, but not everything they thought was right and needed. They deliberately rode on the edge of that consensus and worked to expand it, but never went outside of it. That was the strategy of the Civil Rights Movement in its building phase, and that should be the role of our electoral work now. Our other organizing work, and other forms of organizing and organization can focus on shifting that consensus altogether, from both within and outside the current consensus. That’s the real inside/outside game.

If our electoral work is riding on the left edge of what our communities believe is important and what is possible, then our deep community organizing work is actually trying to shift the parameters of the consensus altogether and expand community consciousness and vision of what’s needed and what’s possible. We may sometimes choose to stand outside of the consensus and push it from the outside, and sometimes we may be coming from within that consensus and riding with current values knowing that they actually converge with our longer-term visions. That work of shifting ideas – which is as much “organizing consensus” than it is “community-organizing” – needs to continue in a deep way. One way this happens is through inspiring prefigurative actions and projects.

So you are saying there is an imperative to do electoral organizing in this moment.  What should be the approach of left community organizers to electoral work?

We need to ground ourselves in who we really are politically and what kind of work we prioritize as organizers. As left organizers, many of us will feel uncomfortable with the constraints of electoral organizing: working within the window of an election cycle, building different kinds of operations, using different messages and staying within the limits of what’s currently politically possible. We need to shift our culture to do this work, to be able to organize voters at scale and within the constraints of time and politics and electoral rules, but we need to keep a clear read on how this work relates to our longer-term visions.

If we do so, there are other dangers for the left movement as we move towards taking up electoral work. It can be seductive. There is such little actual organized base in our communities, that parties and candidates and demagogues are able to count on very small organized pockets, usually seniors and homeowners associations, to win the right to govern.  On our side, translating our organizing skills to establishing voter bases can quickly make us players in that realm. A relatively small organized electoral force can make a big difference, which comes with the seduction of being part of the power-brokering. We can easily narrow our demands rather than expand them. We need to guard against that drift away from our issue organizing, from our ideological work, from our movement-building work and from our long-range view.

We need ideological and structural guards against political drift. Our collective intelligence on how to do this well is pretty low right now. In the short term, we will need to be grounded, and ensure that our practice remains accountable to our base and to other leftists, both in the lessons and power and when the danger signs emerge. But we can’t figure out these dynamics in a vacuum. We need to get out there and start doing the work. We need to grapple with these questions and try to figure out how to do things right. It doesn’t mean that we’ll always land in the right place, but the practice of the work will help us to develop an advanced approach to electoral work and a sharper analysis of our current political system.

What are some examples of the new approaches to the work that are happening right now that you’re finding inspiring?  What are some old tactics or strategies that left organizers should turn away from?

Overall, it’s an amazing time for innovation and experimentation. I think there’s a tendency on the left to say, “You have to choose one. Either it’s radical outside tactics, or it’s electoral work within the system.’  Either it’s base-building work, or communications, or policy, or legal fights, or leadership development; the movement or it’s building strong institutions.”  In fact, we need a range of strategies to make a complete package for a movement. We may have a division of labor within that range of strategies; different people and different organizations will have their specific focuses and specializations.  But, for a mass movement, all of these different strategies would be seen as related aspects of that movement.

Currently, the existing organizations neither constitute a mass movement nor a mass electoral party. These experiments may spark one, but that’s the point. Since we don’t, we can’t actually have a coordinated strategic view except through fragmented lenses. Now is the time to re-imagine, both the forms and the strategies to win.

Interviewed by Sushma Sheth

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?

I think that the most significant shift is the intersection between the new media and Obama. I do not mean his election itself, but his campaign that became a symbol for a changing terrain.

Obama’s campaign surfaced what was already in play.  It uncovered race relations in the United States and the status of leadership within black communities.  The campaign symbolized the changing of the guard from the old civil rights establishment in the black community to a generation of black people who benefited from the civil rights revolution in the US. Obama represents this new black middle class that came up from the achievements of the civil rights establishment, but with a different worldview.

His campaign also symbolized a growing coalition. It brought together different segments of society suffering under the Bush Regime and the stolen election. There has always been talk of the “net-roots”, mostly the white middle class who had careers in silicon valley and became politically active through both the Bush’s stolen election and the falling economy. The anti-Bush stuff was their reaction to it.  Obama’s campaign brought those folks, black people and young communities of color a new leadership.

His leadership brought a lot of things to the surface: it’s not the 60s anymore. People from the 60s took for granted that post-WWII, all the imperialist nations economies were weakened.  That opened space for communist and revolutionary forces to start having liberation.  We have gone through a process now where a lot of people who thought that this was the solution are now stale. We are coming up in the world now, where we have to deal with this.  We do not have revolutions jumping off in front of us everyday.  The socialist project, in the eyes of many worldwide, has been discredited.  The old model does not work.

We are coming out asking what are the new solutions?  We are in a stage of experimentation.

There is all this rave about new media, but the key thing about it is its democratic nature.  Old media was built for “from one to many” and in new media its about “from many to many”.  A large scale or numbers of people can communicate with each other much more easily than in the post. We think about in Karl Marx’s time, it took weeks or months to get the word about something from one country to the next (Us to Europe).  Now, no matter where you are there are so many communications devices so that is instantaneous.  Time has effectively shrunk. What does that mean for us?  How does this change human beings? I think we are just in the middle of this.   The new media was produced by capitalism, the main mode of production.  The left has not comprehended how to change society and use new media as a liberatory project and not something that just seeks to make a profit.

During the immigrant marches that re-sparked May Day in the US a few years ago, a lot of young Latino folks were using MySpace.com to organize spontaneous walkouts on mass scales.  People find difficulty in organizing people in this day and age and yet you have all these examples of people self-organizing.  People are using new media technology but in a very organic way because new media has become such a part of their life.

Can we communicate our stories effectively to people? Which of youtube, myspace, Facebook all these social networking and peer to peer networks can we use to communicate more effectively our reasoning and our thoughts and make it a priority to expand the left as we know it.

New communication and new media allow us to share stories and deliver our narrative and which challenges the current hegemonic order and create counter-hegemony, as discussed by Antonio Gramsci.

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?

The key interventions right now should be:

FOLLOW OBAMA. What is the most progressive out of what he is doing, even if its limited. What are the loopholes where we can intervene?  Personally, I’ve been following Obama’s approach to service.  In the US, we do not have a clear national identity.  In just about every other country there is a full national identity. In what Obama refers to in his speeches, he seems to think that service is one way we can start to develop that national identity.  In a lot of ways, this is like nation-building.  (And people can argue with me on this!)  Service is an easy way to get people involved in organizing. They are one step away.  A person involved in service obviously cares about an issue or cause and is willing to do service around it. This is not that far from connecting them to Mao’s line on mass line and “serve the people” and connect that sentiment to organizing projects. Obama has set up a government site for service to connect service projects nationwide.  I am trying to get people to connect into this as a means of recruiting new, young people. We can connect them to organizing in general, as well as to the Left.  Its an open opportunity, an experiment.

WE NEED TO CREATE NEW MAJORITIES. There is no Left in this country.  When I say there is no Left is this country, there is no phenomenon or force that has impact on a societal scale and identifies with principles we call “left”.  There is nothing like that exists like that here, much less a large section of society that abide by these principles. There are only a few scattered individuals in reality. There maybe more people who can benefit from this, but are not aware or are caught up in their lives. We need to grow our forces in general as well as grow the left.  We need to think about how to do this in the US context.  We need to build new majorities. We can learn some things from the Obama campaign.  Obama created a new “we” – a new force, call it a coalition or alliance.  He created a new foundation of people, who in many cases were not active. My mother is from Barbados and recently got her citizenship.  She’s been in the country since 1968. She voted for the first time, not just because he was black. It obviously excited her, but there was an excitement to vote.  His campaign made people feel they were part of something bigger, part of a movement.  We talk about this, but he did it on such a massive scale.  What can we learn from this? How can we build a left? How can we build new majority? In what ways to storytelling, new media, and technology intersect with that?

USE NEW MEDIA TO AMPLIFY WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE MOVING.  What are the key projects we are engaging in? What are the political projects we are engaging in? Organizing projects? How can we see these media tools and technologies as amplifying or adding to what we are already doing? In my studies, I find that these technologies do not create social networks.  They only amplify connections that are real or networks that already exist.  Offline, we should learn how to build day-to-day connections to everyday working people. How do we build social networks with people?  I am not saying anything new. Churches, mosques, etc already do this. They are deeply entrenched in people’s lives. How do we translate this in a secular sense of the left.  Also, there is a religious left and (how do we) translate this into a emanicipatory project. These tools are only helpful if they are amplifying something that is already real.  How does developing relationships affect people’s connection to ideas?  There is a quote from Amilcar Cabral – people do not fight for ideas in the sky, they fight for real things. They fight for real, material things.  It does not matter if you come talking about “revolution etc. etc.” but the question is “how will I feed my family? Find work? Life a sustainable life?”

RE-ENGINEER DIRECT ACTION. There are actions around the world where people use GPS and Google Maps that helps decentralize the power that the state has. So many of these things, funny enough, that capitalism developed we can now leverage to use again elite power.

What are old strategies that our sector should turn away from? Which new tools and ideas are you now experimenting with?

A lot of stuff is old now.  First of all, there is something about Left culture where we are quick to polarize; where in some cases, it may not be the case.  You definitely want to polarize you and your allies from the elite powers that be.   The Left has taken this to be cannibalistic towards itself.  One small difference within different sects of the Left is polarized – we set a pole, only one of us can be right, and we battle to the death. It has helped kick-in sectarianism. We need to relook at how to have serious political debates and disagreements and not be at war with each other.  We can co-exist with different ideologies within the left. The truth will come out in practice. In my organizing work, it was not a concern to me what someone’s ideology to me.  At least it was not my primary concerns (we are progressive, revolutionary, etc.) , but when we finally put stuff in practice and we see what works and what does not.  Ideology cannot be primary.  I am not saying it is not important.  But that cannot be the only factor – how can we negotiate, debate and struggle together?

Second, we cannot continue newspaper selling. A lot of sectarian groups call themselves Left but do not represent Left forces.  They are very alienating to everyday people.  They develop a culture of talking down to people.  We are “above and away from the masses.”  “We come down and bring you the truth.”  This needs to stop.

There is outside knowledge as well as people’s knowledge from their everyday experience (Paolo Friere approach).  We need to combine the two.  Instead, I think you see one or the other.  That there is only people’s everyday experiencial knowledge and you cannot go beyond that or there is only this outside knowledge and we need to bring them the truth.  There has to be a combination, a dialectic, and come to a real emancipatory project.

Third, a lot of the tactics we use have gotten old, like marching and so on. We need understand the current conditions and which tactics and strategies need to flow from our analysis of current conditions.  We have a lazy period of non-studying or non-analysis studying and we are relying on a lot of tactics from the past. We are stuck in the 60s. The civil rights establishment is stuck in the 60s and the left is stuck in the 60s in this country.  We are not recognizing in front of our face what is new, what is different. How do we move forward, study it, move on, and make an assessment and concretize some gains? We rely on a march or a protest, and people do not come out to that. What will pull people out? What do people connect to?  At one point, marching was new and came out of new conditions.  It was part of the Industrial Revolution where people were coming into cities. There could be a debate now – should we leverage gains from the state or build alternatives? Or a combination of both?  This depends on the objective conditions.

Finally, we need some serious study. The left is lazy and does not engage in study. There are pockets of people trying to do that now. This project itself is an attempt to do that.

What is inspiring you these days?

Two things are inspiring me right now. They may not be typical of the left – or at least at first glance, they do not appear to be “left.”

THE ARTIST MIA: If you read her interviews, she talks about how people cannot define her genre. The reality is, she’s produced her own genre. She talks about her experience growing up in a third world country, but more growing up in refugee camps. And then, she talks about moving to the first world and having to live and cope with all this hybridity. Through technology and new media, the world is really connected.  When you are an immigrant or refugee, you are at the intersection of this.  She wanted to find a way through her music, through her art, to connect. The world is not longer in these distinct silos. This fact really comes out in her music. When you are an immigrant kid, she talks about how, “you do not know what is cool.” You might rock a Michael Jackson t-shirt and some stone-washed jeans. You are this mismatch of things, these excesses of the first-world that get dumped on the third-world.  Through mass media, for the most part, the first world used to produce what is “cool”. But with everything as connected as it is now, everyone is sharing. Third world, refugee kids are producing what is up. Her music and message reflect this. Some of her lyrics have revolutionary content.  But often people complain that all of her music is not revolutionary, that sometimes it is just about dancing or sometimes  too difficult to follow what she is saying! But what I have learnt from her is that we have been transfixed on narrow concept of political art. Some of us believe that when there is a revolutionary era, then all songs will have revolutionary lyrics, quoting from the Communist Manifesto. But is this what moves people?  Maybe you can have a song, where they lyrics talk about dancing and partying, but the feeling and effect of the song is more revolutionary. Can a song make people feel something or bring change in people’s lives?  Though her lyrics are often political, her fans concentrate on how she blends sounds from Aborigine people in Australia, to folks in Sri Lanka to folks in Jamaica. The sounds come together and become a way to connect people around the world. The song could be about dancing, but people recognize the sounds and start connecting to one another. It makes me think about how are we, as the Left, connecting people? It makes me question how we think about culture, music and what we think is revolutionary.

THE DANCE CREW CRAZE: Dance crews have popped up in the US as well as internationally.  Sean Paul came up at the same time that new dances came out in Jamaica. These spread across the Caribbean and through the Diaspora spread to the US, UK and around the world. At the same time, there are dances that come up in hip-hop songs. But the hip-hop artists are not making them up. They are going to the hood where kids are doing this organically in LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit and Harlem. This is very self-organized and organic. What’s amazing is that these kids now have jobs. They are now artists, they teach dances, they tour, and they perform in videos. They are part of the industry now. This is happening in an era where people really question the potential of these young kids.  Statistically, the prison population goes up for young black children and unemployment rises for young black men.   And yet, these young black kids are creating jobs for themselves.  Robin D. G. Kelly talks about people creating jobs out of play. Work out of play. All of these groups organize themselves, dance and have created an international network of dancers.  I like looking at the self-organization of the under-class, if you can call them that. The working class is self-organizing through culture.  How can we tap into this as a model and help them reach their full, emancipatory potential?

Any closing thoughts?

A lot of what I have been discussing can be traced back to Gramsci.  It’s all about hegemony.  In the US, we live in an advanced capitalist society. We cannot use pure force to effect change. Therefore, the question becomes: How are we going to have a revolution here? How do we create counter-hegemonic culture?

We need to be more effective in telling our stories and understand how stories affect people. How does the left design a left narrative?  This was the key thing that Obama figure out. After Bush, the country was divided.

Sometimes we are closer to crisis than we realize. Elites in this country have an understanding of how close we are to crisis, more than we. Maybe some feared another civil war given the country is so divided on so many issues.  Obama was concerned about division. To get elected, he needs a 51% majority.  For this to possible, he needed to build unity. He used a story, he retold the narrative of the US to build the unity he needed to win.

His new narrative: The US is an unfinished project.  He asked people to look at the founding fathers, and then the civil war. He marveled at US innovation and reminded us all that we are lucky to be here.  He took some truths of American mythology and created new myths with a more progressive feature.

The question for us is: Can we do this? Can we create a left myth that is more revolutionary?