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GROWING WINGS: Evolving Out Of the Non Profit Industrial Complex

Jidan Koon, FastForum Guest Editor

THE SILVER LINING: You know that curse which becomes a blessing in disguise?  That’s what faced INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence five years ago when it chose to search for opportunity in what appeared to be a crisis.

Here’s the back story: In February 2004, INCITE! received a letter from the Ford Foundation letting them know that they’d been awarded a $100,000 general support grant.   A short time later, however, a Ford Foundation board member decided to conduct some independent research on INCITE!.  Upon finding a statement supporting the Palestinian Liberation struggle on the organization’s website, the board member challenged Ford’s support of INCITE and the board  voted to pull the grant.

Stunned, INCITE! decided to move forward without Ford’s funding.  They embarked on a grassroots fundraising drive and quickly raised the money that they initially were counting on from Ford.  Not only did INCITE! completely shift its own perceptions of its dependence on foundation money, it embarked on fundamental questioning of the non-profit structure and the ways in which it controls and manages radical dissent.

Recognizing the power of the moment, INCITE invited its colleagues into this conversation, resulting in the first ever The Revolution Will Not Be Funded conference in May 2004.   The conference convened hundreds of organizers and activists nationwide to name the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) and explore strategies for maintaining the autonomy and integrity of the social justice movement in America.

Last year, a record number of non-profits have shut their doors.  On the average, non-profits took cuts of one third in government and foundation funding.  This year looks just as bleak.  The issue of the social justice movements’ use of non-profits as a primary vehicle for organization is more pertinent than ever.  In times of economic crisis, when services are needed most and opportunities for fundamental change are the highest, non-profit structures find themselves strapped by funding cuts and fighting for survival.

THE QUESTION OF FORM: Many of us learned in science class that as temperature increases, water moves through different phases: the solid form of ice, the liquid form of water, and the vapor form of steam.  The H2O molecules do not change in composition internally, rather they change in their relationship to each other as the external environment changes.  Similarly, we can see that as the conditions of the world change, so does the form of the social justice movement.  Like the water molecules, the essential make up of what we do and the crux of what we hope for does not change: freedom, love, justice.  However, our form and the relationship between our different forms are changing as we speak.

Its clear that the NPIC is not going away any time soon.  Although record numbers of non-profits are in fact shutting down, within current non-profits people do good work as well as build community, base, and leaders.  Rather than expecting a presto-bingo abandonment of the NPIC, what we will undergo in this next period is an evolution out of the NPIC.  The first birds started off ground bound reptiles and incrementally grew small stubby wings that first allowed them to flap and glide like chickens, and then eventually gained the physical structure to fly and soar like condors.  Our evolution as a movement to forms (old and new) that allow for autonomy and political integrity, and thus a movement capable of real transformation, will be like growing wings – shifting incrementally out of the form we currently have and into forms we intentionally want to move towards.

This Fast Forum seeks to explore further the nuances of the evolving out of the NPIC.  Contributors answer the following questions from their own experimentation and experience in work inside and outside of non-profits as well as project current new thinking into the future.

• What kinds of work are most suited to the non-profit form and what kinds of work are suited to an outside form?
• What should be the relationship of the non-profit forms to the outside forms?
• The Revolution will not be Funded highlighted NGO’s from abroad, but what models exist domestically of alternatives to non-profit forms of organization?
• What is the role of radical leadership development?

….AND CHECK OUT THE USSF WORKSHOP ON THIS TOPIC:

Anak Bayan East Bay, Serve the People, Xicano Moratorium Coalition, and Asian Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership will be sponsoring an interactive youth friendly workshop at the USSF on the Non-Profit Industrial Complex and how their organizations connect grassroots (not-foundation funded) organizing with existing non-profits.  The workshop is called Growing Wings: Evolving Out of the Non-Profit, June 23rd, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. at the WSU Student Center, Rm 786.

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PUSHING OUR IMAGINATION, SIN FRONTERAS

Katie Joaquin is the Chair of Anakbayan East Bay and an Organizer for Filipino Advocates for Justice and the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON). She organizes Filipino immigrant workers and caregivers to fight for their rights and Filipino youth to join the struggle for National Democracy in the Philippines.

“Making demands too big for any CEO to meet”*

In October 2008, 130 grassroots organizations from 23 countries assembled in Manila, Philippines at the 1^st International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) to oppose the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), a state-led initiative advancing neoliberal policies. Rejecting the GFMD’s framework of commodifying migrants, the International Migrants Alliance organized the IAMR as an alternative to demand governments address the root causes of migration by nationalizing economies and ending US-led global war on terror.

In contrast, many U.S. non-profits participated in parallel activities, demanding human rights and migrant voices be at the center of GFMD talks.  These reform efforts operate within the forum’s framework while exposing its contradictions.  Both non-profit and grassroots (not foundation funded) approaches to challenge the GFMD are necessary, but only when we combine efforts do we get a demand too big for any CEO to meet.

Non-profit organizations have developed working-class immigrant leadership to wage reform battles and build collective power.  However, our most advanced leaders need to elevate their leadership. Grassroots organizations fill this need; their political direction is determined only by the concrete, ever changing conditions and needs of members – not funding streams.

A GRASSROOTS MODEL FOR ORGANIZING SIN FRONTERAS

Anakbayan (AB) East Bay is a mass-based group that organizes Filipino youth around the collective interests of working class peoples and immigrants, while linking our local struggles with the Philippine movement for national democracy.  AB is a member of International League of People’s Struggle, the mother organization of the aforementioned International Migrants Alliance, and of BAYAN-USA, an alliance of 14 grassroots organizations across the U.S. fighting for national democracy in the Philippines.  BAYAN-USA is an overseas chapter of BAYAN Philippines. We are not a solidarity organization, but part of the same movement addressing the root causes behind the problems of Filipinos internationally: US Imperialism, Landlessness and Corrupt puppet governments. We believe our freedom in the U.S. is dependent on achieving genuine national democracy in the Philippines and all over the world.

One of our main goals is to develop and defend radical working class leadership.  Red baiting is rising as U.S. Imperialists desperately defend their failing system.  Melissa Roxas, a member of a BAYAN-USA affiliate in Los Angeles, was abducted by the Philippine Military while on a medical mission, accused of being New Peoples Army, and tortured for 6 days.  At every turn we must expose the targeting of member-leaders who are fighting for the interest and needs of the people.

GREATER THAN THE SUM OF OUR PARTS

An example of non-profit and grassroots group collaboration is AB’s leadership in the API Movement Building Pipeline.  Grassroots and non-profit organizations are sustaining our members’ leadership by identifying stepping stones to transition to different organizations based on their social and political development needs.  Instead of competing for funding or credit, we have a powerful relationship based on political unities and commitment to dismantling U.S. Imperialism.

Anti-imperialist organizations that want to participate in efforts to address root cause issues internationally should join the 3^rd International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico November 7 – 8, 2010.

* Adapted from line of “Movement Poem” by Maria Poblet

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COMMON FIRE & THE NON-PROFIT STRUCTURE:

A BRIDGE TO TOMORROW

Kavitha Rao is the co-founder of Common Fire which helps to create accessible and sustainable intentional communities as a means of cultural transformation. She is a mother, a yoga teacher, a facilitator, and an organizer.  She has worked with grassroots organizations around the world and is humbled by the immense commitment and vision she has witnessed from people unwilling to accept that the violence, injustice, and poverty that may surround them is the only way things have to be.  Her work and the work of Common Fire are explorations for how we can live the just and sustainable futures we all deserve NOW and in solidarity with all peoples on the planet.

NeEddra James is a writer and graphic designer working towards ecological transformation, social justice, and holistic healing through the development of sustainable and economically cooperative communities. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Common Fire Foundation and Planting Justice, a food justice nonprofit in Oakland, CA.

Common Fire is a non-profit 501(c)3 corporation. It supports the creation of intentional communities created by and for a true diversity of people that are geared toward the transformation of society, from the inside out, and from the ground up. We seek to build a world that is more loving, joyful, just and sustainable, one community at a time.

Like many of our colleagues working toward a more just and sustainable world, we too recognize, not only the shortcomings of the nonprofit structure as a long-term solution to the troubles of our time, but we also believe that the current social, environmental and cultural crises we now face cannot be remedied at the same level of thought that produced said crises. Given this, we are committed to personal transformation, communication that breaks personal and collective silences to forge healthy relationships across lines of difference, and cooperative communities organized around resource sharing and consensus based decision-making. These features are the cornerstone of our work in the area of intentional community building; features that we envision will eventually supplant the “individual” of (neo)liberalism and its attendant “rights,” as well as capitalist notions of individual property ownership over land, food, and other vital resources.

At the same time, we are quite clear that community building at this scale – multi-acre affordable sustainable housing with organic farmland, retreat/learning centers and other buildings – requires considerable amounts of funding and still occurs within the existing legal, economic and political cultures we seek to transform. So, we use the nonprofit structure to negotiate the dominant culture. For us, the non-profit is a tool we harness toward an end for which it was not originally intended: radical social change. Our board is comprised of people who embody the vision and mission of Common Fire. Thus, unlike traditional BODs, which tend to be comprised of big donors, lawyers and the like, our board is full of innovative change-makers.

In our hands, the non-profit structure enables us to support grassroots groups as they organize themselves into shared housing and cooperative economic communities that put the transformative values above into practice. Through the non-profit structure, we are able to provide community groups with training opportunities in areas like nonviolent communication, grassroots fundraising, sustainable building practices, and permaculture. The non-profit entity also enables us to provide concrete support like bank accounts and legal resources to the communities with which we partner. Most importantly, the non-profit helps us secure financing for land acquisition, which is a feat that would be fairly difficult for the groups we are currently partnered with in New York and California, where their individual economic realities keep them rooted in their current class position. In community people are able to experience relief from the economic burdens of living as solitary families and single people.

Our ultimate goal is to shift the underlying culture by creating communities that model what future societies can look like. At Common Fire the nonprofit structure is our bridge to tomorrow.

Check out Common Fire’s workshop at the US Social Forum.

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SERVE THE PEOPLE: THREE LESSONS LEARNED

Jidan Koon is currently a Senior Fellow at the Movement Strategy Center with over 15 years of community organizing and youth development experience.  She is a founding member of Serve the People, artist, and involved Oakland community member.

Mike Tran loves richmond, oakland, youth, tacos, bikes, using e. honda, the art of roasting but cries like a baby, Serving The People!

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Serve the People (STP) was birthed in Winter of 2006 as a grassroots (not 501c3) organization that builds radical leadership of mostly South East Asian adults and young people in the East Bay, CA.  Our relationships with non-profits have been critical and intentional.

Lesson 1: Start with Who You Know, Go Slow

The STP founding core members had long standing relationships with each other and years of youth organizing experience through non-profit work.  Even with this background, our official pace for growth is slow and deliberate.  Tired of the restrictions of our 501c3 work, we began with a 3 – 5 year commitment amongst the core members to build a grassroots organization. Although there was a high level of trust from the start, we needed to know each other deeply to make it over the long haul.  We nurtured our core over months of meetings with home cooked food, games, and visioning.  By the time we figured out what we wanted to do, our alignment in purpose allowed us to adopt a decentralized leadership structure.  We also pay close attention to capacity since all the work is volunteer; we even cut back on frequency of general membership meetings when they got too large for our infrastructure to handle.

Lesson 2: Movement Building = No Organizational Borders

Grassroots groups can cross many of the organizational boundaries that the non-profit system maintains.  From the start, we used our paid positions in youth-serving non-profits to recruit youth to STP and intentionally built relationship with non-profits with South East Asian members.  At first, some felt that STP was duplicative or competing for membership.  We had to be clear about our intention to partner and create a division of labor between grassroots groups and non-profits.  We build partnership into our structure by encouraging all members to participate in other organizations and make it a requirement for our leaders.  Adults also thirst for a method of connecting culturally and politically outside of non-profits. We are building out an adult membership structure to address the increasing requests from adults.  The cross-organization relationship building within STP has led to cross-pollination and increased collaboration amongst all groups involved.  For example, STP joined with eight other (grassroots and non-profit) groups to form the API Movement Building Pipeline to support local, working class API youth and young adults through life transitions in order to maintain a lifelong commitment to movement building.

Lesson 3: Division of Labor

A mutually-supportive division of labor has emerged.  From our vantage point, non-profits meet people’s current needs for employment and services as well as organizing to resist and reform the institutions that impact our communities.  Grassroots organizations have flexibility to acts in ways fundamentally counter to the current system through either taking really confrontation stances (not reform, but dismantling) and/or to build the alternative to the current system.  When non-profits and grassroots groups partner, our communities can work within the framework of the current system as well build our vision of a radical alternative future.

What is the political significance of the anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona?  What are the critical interventions that the immigrant rights movement needs to be making right now on a national level?

We have incredible contributions from: Salvador Reza, Puente and Alto Arizona; Maria Poblet and Sanyika Bryant, Causa Justa / Just Cause; Gerald Lenoir, Black Alliance for Just Immigration; Subhash Kateel, Florida Immigrant Coalition – Deportee Defense Network; and Gihan Perera, Miami Workers Center.

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CATCHING UP TO THE PEOPLE

Salvador Reza is veteran activist who organized day laborers, taco vendors and fights to defend the rights of immigrants in Phoenix, Arizona with Puente and ¡Alto Arizona! He was interviewed here by Sushma Sheth.

What is the political significance of bill SB 1070 in Arizona?

For the first time in a while, the US is allowing a state to use the concept of race to interrogate people. This is not solely the case but the bill does not exclude racial profiling. We haven’t been exposed to this since type of policy since the 1960s.  This is like an apartheid system we haven’t seen since the Apartheid era in South Africa.

This legislation is also significant because it sets a precedent. Since 2006, we were building essentially an anti Arpaio movement.  Joe Arpaio effectively impacted one county but we know this wasn’t true. From the beginning, we went after the furniture store not solely as a local target but the example of someone who was exercising the Obama and Bush formula for militarizing and making the US a police state.  When we were able to defeat the furniture store, we then went after Arpaio himself.  Arpaio became the target so we could expose him for what he is worldwide: a human rights violator. But with that came the reality the human rights violator is not just Arpaio, but also the Arizona and the United States governments that are creating a nationwide police state. The state bill is a game changer because this issue is no longer local, its now national.  Ohio, Colorado, South Carolina and another 10 states will emulate this immediately.

What role has the Obama administration played and what demands are being placed on him now?

Obama’s selection of Napolitano to head Homeland Security: When Napolitano was getting attacked by the right, she mollified them by moving anti-immigrant measures under the pressure of Arpaio and other police units and municipalities to expand what Arpaio was doing.  When Obama invited her to Washington, she went to Homeland Security with a ready script and formula.  This is why we are in this situation today. Basically, Obama brought her on to help him mollify a rightwing attack which he was sure to get.  He is empowering and positioning Nepolitano to emulate the Arizona formula nationwide.

Making Mexico’s government beholden to the US: Why didn’t Mexico lean heavier on Obama or vic versa? The Mexican presidency is dependent on President Obama and Plan Merida.  There are a billions of dollars supposedly for the drug fight but is essentially transforming Mexico into a police state and this is same thing that is now happening in Arizona. The same arguments are being used to expand the border.

There is a race-based split emerging between the Democrats.  Today, Luis Gutierrez, Le Jalva, al Pastor were asking President Obama to basically  “You can stop this now if you wanted to. You do not have to wait for court challenges.”  They are putting the blame and power on the Obama administration.  It wasn’t too long ago that Washington advocacy groups said that they did not want to follow that strategy and were instead supporting the Schumer bill. That now is being criticized and the Schumer bill has been equated with the Arizona bill here.  Some Democrats, like Congressman Vijalva, are echoing the call for a boycott of Arizona.

How is the national immigrant rights movement responding?

What can immigrant right community do? They can catch up to the people. Families for the first time are realizing that their lives are on the line because there are a lot of mixed families.  What is happening is that they are ready to fight because they have nothing to lose.  If the price of fighting is deportation, well they are going to do this anyways.  People are realizing that we are in an apartheid system, in the United States today.

Immigrant rights advocates have been left behind.  People’s movements are spontaneously reacting to this law. There is no central organization right now. Last week, 100 demonstrators shut down the El Paso/Juarez port of entry.  There is boycott of the Diamondbacks (Arizona’s Baseball Team) in Chicago where even season ticket holders will not attend. This movement has been built through text messaging, Facebook, and the internet.  The same tools that Obama used to get elected are now being used to fight these policies nationally.

There has to be a national uproar and national uprising.  Right now, text messaging has surprised the traditional power brokers. Those guys are still debating tactics (whether or not to have a boycott). While they are talking about it, people are texting the call to protest the Diamondbacks.

What is behind the Diamondback boycott?

Diamondbacks make money and they give political money to Republicans like Governor Jan Brewer.  This is a national boycott they are calling for.  So wherever the team goes to play, they are asking Latinos and people in support not to show up to the games. They are not waiting for La Causa or someone else to tell them.  They are not waiting for the traditional pro-immigrant issue organization that have been calling for immigration reform in the past.

What role can progressive, left organizers now play?

Progressive advocates and organizations that have capacity should be helping in the analysis of what the most effective targets might be.  Especially, if there is a boycott or divestment of Arizona.  Right now, the Diamondbacks have been suggested because they are very visible and because a lot of Latinos like the Diamondbacks. People are doing this on their own.  No one is telling them what to do or can tell them want to do.  They are saying we marched, we picketed and created petition but now as though they need the world to know what regime they are living under.

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CHALLENGING THE STATE OF HATE

Gerald Lenoir is the Director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). BAJI is an education and advocacy group comprised of African Americans and black immigrants from Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean. The mission of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration is to engage African Americans and other communities in a dialogue that leads to actions that challenge U.S. immigration policy and the underlying issues of race, racism and economic inequity that frame it.  Parts of this piece were excerpted from the BAJI Blog, supplemented with an interview by Harmony Goldberg.

What is the political significance of the anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona?

On Friday, April 23, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law SB 1070, legalizing racial profiling of Latinos in her state. Local law enforcement is empowered to stop and question anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” of being undocumented, which is not defined in the bill. There is already rampant racial profiling in Arizona and now, it will be done under the color of law. Legitimizing racial profiling threatens the rights not just of Latino immigrants, but also all people of color, including African Americans.

The criminalization of black and brown people has been happening for a long time in these United States. One only has to look at the disproportionate incarceration rates for our youth versus white youth. Now, immigrants of color are being criminalized. So-called “illegal aliens” are being demonized for the “crime” of crossing the border without legal papers, which is a civil, not criminal, offense.

But who are the real criminals? The U.S. government and U.S. corporations who are complicit in forcing the flow of migration. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for example, Mexico opened its markets to subsidized food crops from the United States. The result is that three million Mexican farmers could not compete with cheap U.S. commodities and lost their land and their livelihood. Many of them, along with their families, have migrated to the U.S. looking for jobs.

So, let me get this right, the United States invades the economy of another country and the economic refugees that come here are labeled illegal? What’s wrong with this picture?  I say that people have a right to stay in their own country. U.S. intervention has deprived them of that right. And now Arizona – the State of Hate – will punish the victims.

What are the critical interventions that the immigrant rights movement needs to be making right now on a national level?

U.S. Senator Charles Schumer promises to increase the hostility towards immigrants and create the United States of Hate, if you will. Senator Schumer stated on Monday, “We believe our blueprint is even stronger than the Arizona senators’ proposal in stopping the flow of illegal immigrants because our plan both increases border security and prevents employers from hiring illegal immigrants.” People who are trying to support themselves and their families are driven from their homes and their country, risk their lives in the harsh Sonoran Desert, and if they make it to the United States, face being treated as criminal, jailed, and deported without due process.  I think there needs to be debate and discussion within the immigrant rights movement about the Schumer bill.  There are many undercurrents of discussion about it, but these debates need to be upfront. We need to engage the whole immigrant rights community – and also other communities in the debate about what kind of bill we need in Congress and what we should be supporting or opposing.

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We all must oppose the blatant oppression of immigrants. I especially call on the African American community to link arms with Latino and immigrant communities to speak out against these blatant forms of racism and economic exploitation. The rightwing politicians, organizations and movements that oppose immigrant rights are not the friends of African American communities. We have more in common with immigrants of color. We know firsthand about racism and economic exploitation. And we have faced the hostile mobs, biased employers and racist legislators. I think that the immigrant rights movement should make a concerted effort to build alliances with the African American community and not just call on Black leaders to support this or that proposal.  We need to do some real work in African American communities around immigrant rights issues and – actually – some real wok that goes beyond immigrant rights. I don’t think that we can treat immigrant rights as a stand-alone issue. It needs to be a part of a broader effort at movement-building that involves multiple issue that impact multiple communities.

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WE NEED TO BUILD JOINT STRUGGLE

María Poblet is the Executive Director of Causa Justa / Just Cause in the Bay Area. She has ten years of experience organizing San Francisco tenants and the Latino immigrant community. María is a founder of the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition. She also served on the National Planning Committee for the U.S. Social Forum.

Sanyika Bryant is the Regional Civic Engagement Coordinator at Causa Justa / Just Cause.  Sanyika was trained by the Labor/Community Strategy Center where he worked on the Bus Riders Union and Frontlines Press projects. He is also a graduate of the Strategy Center’s National School for Strategic Organizing, class of 2003.

What is the political significance of the anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona?

What Arizona’s 1070 represents is a decisive advance of racist right-wing forces in the U.S.  After the election of Obama, fascist tendencies have grown in size and in militancy, calling on racist fears, economic hardship, and a hegemonic complex of superiority to win the falling middle class to a reactionary agenda.

This legislation represents and inside/outside strategy of the right wing, where certain sectors are working within government and the electoral process to re-invigorate the Republican Party and move it further to the right, while more radical forces work explicitly against the government.

It also puts on display the spectacular failure of the Democratic Party to defend the interests of working class people of color, and the lack of an effective inside/outside strategy from progressives working in the national electoral arena.   While some individual Democrats have stood up for legalization, most do not even question 287g, let alone the neoliberal economic system that pushes people across borders in the first place.  In fact, the Democratic response to this nakedly racist and unconstitutional attack has been to affirm their commitment to the militarization of the US/Mexico border!

What are the critical interventions that the immigrant rights movement needs to be making right now on a national level?

It’s high time that the immigrant rights movement reach a higher level of cohesion and alignment, and move forward with an aggressively pro-active agenda for citizenship rights and broader anti-racist alliances, specifically with African-American communities.  It’s heartening to know that Black/Latino unity work is thriving in Arizona, and growing in grassroots organizations throughout the country.

This legislation has sparked solidarity actions all over the place.  We have pushed and won Arizona boycott/divestment ordinances in both San Francisco and Oakland, and we marched in raucous International Workers Day mobilizations.  For Causa Justa / Just Cause, this moment presents a unique opportunity to discuss the commonalities between segregation in the south and anti-immigrant policies today, and to highlight the opportunities for joint struggle of Latinos and African-Americans.  And, just as in the civil rights movement, we cannot ignore the social base of the far right, the reactionaries of the American ruling and middle classes. They must be actively struggled against.

In the bigger picture, the question now is whether progressives will be able to present socialism as a concrete alternative in the public discourse, and whether a cohesive inside/outside strategy will emerge to coordinate and strengthen this agenda.  The failures of capitalism are apparent and immigrants from the third world and people of color inside US borders are being blamed for the economic collapse.  We cannot allow the far right to repeat history and implement their “solution” to the crisis of capitalism.   We need to quickly build up to a scale where we can effectively swing votes as a block and put forth laws that will defend our communities and place impediments on the legal and extra-legal means the reactionaries use to attack our communities.

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ARIZONA IS THE NEW BIRMINGHAM

Subhash Kateel works with the Florida Immigrant Coalition – Deportee Defense Network, and he is based in Miami, Florida.  He was also one of the founders of Families for Freedom, a New York-based multi-ethnic defense network by and for immigrants facing and fighting deportation.

What is the political significance of bill SB 1070 in Arizona?

Honestly, Arizona has been a path to become what Birmingham was in the 1960′s, a testing ground for state sponsored racism.  Alot of it started when Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County (the county that houses Phoenix) pushed for what I would call an unholy alliance with ICE (the government agency that enforces immigration laws).  Actually, there are some that would take it back even further – to when the ramped-up border security in California pushed alot of immigrants coming in from Mexico through the Arizona desert.  But I would place Arizona’s thirst for immigrant apartheid on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s push for a 287 (g) agreement.  Traditionally, immigration laws have been the Federal governments responsibility.  287 (g) agreements allowed local police to get a piece of the action and gave local police alot more power than they ever had before.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio pushed this power, and its abuse to the max.  He basically made it fashionable for local government to have immigration powers, and marketed it to whoever would listen.  The political significance now is that local governments around the country  are going to become more and more interested in the same type of stuff found in SB 1070 (the Arizona bill).  If we don’t fight it now, every state government and local government around the country is going to want the same power that local governments in Arizona have now.

What are the critical interventions that the immigrant rights movement needs to be making right now on a national level?

Now, more than ever we have to make it clear that no one will tolerate SB1070 or any bill like it.  The interventions, in my opinion come on three different levels:

1) Working locally to defeat any local agreements (287-g, Secure Communities, etc.) that allow local governments to jump in bed with ICE.  Trust me there is no good in these agreements.

2) Work locally to support anti-SB 1070 work by following the lead of community groups in Arizona to launch boycotts, etc.  For example, organizations around the country have been protesting at venues where the Arizona Diamondbacks (a major league baseball team) are playing.

3) If you have the resources, see what help is needed on-site in Arizona. Just make sure it is done responsibly with a local grassroots organization.

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THE TIME IS NOW

Gihan Perera is a nationally recognized progressive strategist, community organizer, and leader in the US social justice movement.. He is co-founder and Executive Director of the Miami Workers Center, a community organizing institution for low-income Black and Latino communities in South Florida. Gihan also serves as Chair of Right to the City, a national alliance across eight urban centers of the U.S. dedicated to expanding human rights and democracy in the city. Perera is a regular contributor to The Miami Herald and The Huffington Post and featured in national publication and events exploring urban poverty, racial disparities, civic engagement and social justice in the U.S. this piece was written for the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON), and the emerging youth movement in Arizona, and it originally appeared on Huffington Post.

What is the political significance of the anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona?

We must recognize that the developments in Arizona are the manifestation of a profound and growing sickness, toxicity, in the hearts and minds of our nation, promoted by a hateful few.

We recognize the loss of certainty by many, particularly White and working people, in the United States. The economy, politics, and culture are in a state of turbulence. Fear is easily channeled to hatred and blame. We understand, but we must resist this urge.

We recognize that the passage of Arizona state law SB 1070 represents a qualitative shift in this toxic state. Its passage is a clear signal to the people of Arizona, the United States, and to people throughout the world, that state sanctioning of racial, ethnic, and class segregation and degeneration is acceptable.

The lines have been drawn. But no person of good conscience can allow this to solidify in our collective consciousness or become socially acceptable. The law mandates interrogation based on racial perception – specifically targeting Latinos and those who ‘appear’ Mexican, Central American, and/or of indigenous ancestry. It puts them in the cross hairs of an increasingly militarized and policed state. It makes their existence in the state suspect; an illegal act to exist. The profound cruelty and irony of the measure is this: Arizona and its neighboring states are the ancestral homelands of these very peoples. They are the dispossessed and dehumanized within the lands that they are native to. They are here as workers, dependents of an economy that they were forced into, because of the destruction of their traditional ways of life.

History has taught us often about the outcome of this type of social control. It is an untenable solution to codify and criminalize racial status. It will only lead to dire polarization, desperation, and death. The lessons of the Jim Crow South, the South African regime, Palestine, and Nazi Germany are clear – apartheid is dehumanizing for all involved. It is not a sustainable mode of governance. It makes the owners of authority illegitimate; they are forced representatives of a captive people. We cannot control and repress the basic needs for survival. Security for a few will not be achieved through systemic suspicion and criminalization. In fact, the opposite is true. The yearning for life and freedom and dignity will not allow it. It never has. Not in Cape Town, not in Selma, not in Phoenix. It never will.

However, Arizona is a signal of greater danger coming. If Arizona’s law stands, it will have a ripple effect. Policies modeled after SB1070 will spread to many more states. These measures will take our energy and our resources away from finding true solutions to our problems, and will further polarize us. It will take us back in time and reestablish a racial line of demarcation as the basis of politics in the United States, and we will have no choice but to choose sides.

What are the critical interventions that the immigrant rights movement needs to be making right now on a national level?

Now is the time for moral leadership, in high places and everyday places. It begins with our President. President Obama’s role in establishing the moral compass of our nation is as important as any other he occupies. The indignity that the people in Arizona now face is familiar to him, in his blood.

We look to him now, to act in sacred reciprocity. We look for him to recognize and honor the tradition of the plight and redemption of his African forebears who suffered the greatest brutality that the world has witnessed. We look to him now, to simultaneously recognize and honor the tradition of Americans who throughout history have chosen their calm and conscience over fear that was fanned to spite. He must remember those good people in Iowa who were the first to propel him to electoral victory, proving that this country can act on a sense of dignity and purpose despite all the pressures and easy access to prejudice and petty politics.

The time must come now, not a moment later. President Obama must act decisively, clearly, with resolve. As commander-in-chief he must draw the moral line, and tell politicians in Arizona that they have crossed it. He must immediately and unequivocally say no to the use of any federal resources, especially ICE forces, to enable and enforce a hate-filled and racist pogrom. He must act now, to show that there is no compromising when our human dignity is at stake.

And we must support him in doing that. In every town and city and place of worship, we should be talking to each other about Arizona. We should be organizing vigils, and speak outs, and educational forums, and acts that display our moral outrage to the crime that is being perpetrated. We should be at federal buildings and immigration offices, calling on the federal government to act NOW.

In these uncertain times, I find that there is an important lesson in the ancient teachings of the First Peoples of the Arizona area. Their wisdom holds that we must consider the impact of our actions not just on the present, but on seven generations into the future. It is our obligation and our legacy for our children and their children. Therefore, we should all be making a moral pledge to act in good conscience to defy this law and stand for a much higher standard of being. We are the difference between harmony and disintegration.

As the disaster in Haiti reaches into its second month, what insights can the left offer to influence the mainstream response to Haiti?   What strategies for a just and sovereign Haitian recovery should left organizers in the U.S. take up?

We have incredible contributions from: Louis Herns Marcelin, Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development (Port-au-Prince); Noelle Theard, FotoKonbit (Miami); and Daniel Michaud, Political Organizer and supporter of Batay Ouvriye (Miami)

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

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TOWARDS NEGOTIATED SOVEREIGNTY IN HAITI

Louis Herns Marcelin co-founded and is Chancellor of the Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Institute has partners across the hemisphere and is one of the only independent research institutes in Haiti that focusing on policy research and rebuilding the academic system in Haiti. Working with community leaders, residents, students and local government, Dr. Marcelin has helped communities conduct their own research into the effects of international aid, community development, and urban violence in Port-au-Prince. As professor of anthropology at the University of Miami, he directs several large-scale studies on gang violence, HIV risk, and the increasing involvement of the juvenile justice system in the lives of Haitian adolescents and their families. His work has been featured in national publications including the New York Times and many academic conferences.

On January 12th, I was with five of my students in a shantytown community of Port-au-Prince.  We were meeting with youth leaders of Cite Soleil’s Community Forum to launch a new initiative when the ground tore beneath us. As night fell, I struggled to comprehend what was happening as the air filled with cries, chants, and ominous silence. The next morning, I took my students to safety inside the US Embassy, which had suffered little damage. Along the way, there lay the signs of Haiti’s devastation: roads blocked–by debris bodies. Twenty hours into the earthquake, there was no response and no communication. Not from government authorities or international agencies. The absence of the state was oppressive. And when the president finally spoke, his first and only words to the nation were: “Even I am homeless”.

As we pass the one-month mark of the Haitian disaster, we must come to terms with the reality surfaced by the quake. There is a gaping schism between the nation and the state in Haiti. The earthquake unveils a series of long-standing delusions and imperatives that we can no longer avoid, namely: 1) Haitian leaders have not created the conditions for their own sovereignty; 2) international agencies and NGOs need to focus on reinforcing state capacity and public institutions instead of undermining them; and 3) a new paradigm of negotiated sovereignty must be developed to leverage international resources and expertise while building the authority of the state and  the capacity to govern.

An Autopsy of Disaster

Haitian leaders have to come to terms with their own failures. They have failed to create the conditions for their own sovereignty. The immediate aftermath of the earthquake was instructive. For the first three days, there was no response from the state, no sense of who was in charge nor what people should do. When relief efforts began on day 3, they began only in the most accessible places. These represent less than 20% of the affected areas. 80% of the people affected by the earthquake were in places labeled “inaccessible” and “impassable” even before the earthquake due to poor (urban) planning. In the vacuum of sound policy and planning, slums emerged in the riskiest areas in Haiti, where communities live without sewer systems or waste management.  Haitian leaders have neglected the national agricultural system and instead facilitated unsustainable projects and developments. The combination of the state’s lack of investment and persistent negligence amplified rather than prevented the damage wrought by the earthquake.

For decades, NGOs had the dominant role in Haiti’s development. Even now, they play a crucial role in the relief process and provide the only safety net available for millions. For many Haitians, NGOs provide their principal connection to infrastructure, health services, and economic assistance as well as bridge remote communities to ideas, experts, and resources from all over the world. However, NGOs constitute an uneven patchwork of disparate and often competing interests that fragment society and undermine state development. They do this by outsourcing state functions,  opting to hire experts rather than develop indigenous expertise. Further, NGOs pay consultants almost ten times what the government or any local agency can afford. This has drained the state of capable personnel. More fundamentally, NGOs form a shadow state that lacks democratic accountability. The aftermath of the earthquake revealed that NGOs neither have the coordination, authority, nor scale to effectively manage a crisis. These are ultimately the responsibilities of a state.

Away from the Rescue Principle, Towards a Negotiated Sovereignty

It is vital that the path of recovery direct Haiti away from the “rescue principle”. The current state counts on external agents and external agents inevitably come to the rescue.  Unfortunately, we see that the humanitarian paradigm only perpetuates a humanitarian paradigm. It creates a perverse incentive to embrace crisis, both for NGOs who are invested in their own existence and for the state which is able to draw in substantial funds and resources. If this is the model for Haiti’s current recovery, then we will only recreate the status quo.

The promise of a new generation of policy makers and planners is what will help Haiti govern and regain its sovereignty. At this moment, the Haitian Prime Minister cannot take the lead because he lacks structural power to implement anything. His government will need international guidance and accompaniment for some time. Meanwhile, without an engaged, educated, and empowered civic society, the state will not have the support it needs to govern effectively. The development of civic oversight and community capacity will require a framework for a negotiated sovereignty. In the task of imaging a rejuvenated Haiti, I offer the following guidelines:

• Use basic needs to strengthen state capacity: Basic service provision can be a means to reinstate governance and help rebuild state legitimacy
• Incentivize delegation: De-concentrate decision making and resource allocation through a multi-nodal governance structure of the country
• Limit outsourcing of state functions:  Develop indigenous capacity and limit the short-cuts to state governance
• Invest in institution-building: New universities can create civic leaders for nation-building roles (administration, police and safety, urban planning, etc.)
• Avoid elite-gatekeepers and expand leadership: Launch public and transparent initiatives with multi-functions teams that allow for a range of perspectives, skills, and civic priorities.
• Partnership. Partnership. Partnership: By redesigning international relief as local partnerships,   we can begin unraveling dependence and fostering sustainable leadership and governance.

In order to move forward, we need to work within a framework of negotiated sovereignty in Haiti.  International aid can be an enlightened and accompanied process by engaging in a broad-based, dialogue around Haiti’s development. Negotiated sovereignty leverages the skill base and resource pools of the international community to build a sustainable and accountable state. A dual commitment towards negotiated sovereignty from the international community and local residents allows for measurable and enduring impact.

Over the Horizon

Haitians have not given up hope. Even when completely abandoned and uncertain about their fate, survivors put their lives in their countrymen’s hands. In neighborhoods throughout the capital, people dug through the rubble, rescuing one another, tending their wounds, comforting and praying for the aggrieved. We must appreciate and build on this latent capacity. We can redefine how we work with each other, as Haitian residents, emigrated forces, and international agents to create a positive rupture between the past and the future. This will take place when we acknowledge the failures of our past, erect new and true international partnerships, and together craft terms of negotiated sovereignty for Haiti’s future.

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THE LONG ROAD AHEAD

Noelle Theard is a Miami-based photographer, educator, and director of FotoKonbit, a photography initiative that creates partnerships between socially conscious photographers and local grassroots organizations in Haiti.  She holds an MA in African Diaspora Studies from Florida International University, a BA in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and a certificate of advanced studies from the Spéos photography institute in Paris.  She was born to a Haitian dad and French mom in the border town of El Paso, Texas in 1979.  Her work can be viewed on her website: http://www.noelletheard.com.

Immediate Demands: In the short-term, we should continue to raise funds and get it into the hands of the Haitian people, and that means side-stepping the tax deductible contributions to massive relief organizations and researching and supporting established Haitian foundations and grassroots organizations.  These include: the Lambi Fund of Haiti, ORE, Fondation le Mabouya, Hope for Haiti, Fondation Seguin, Bassin Zim Foundation, and the Fondation Fondam.

While at the start of the crisis, dollars were needed more than material goods, now those who can should make efforts to bring or send needed supplies to Haiti – quality clothing, shoes, non-prescription drugs, condoms, feminine hygiene products, and most of all tents are needed now.  An international organization that has been doing great work in Haiti since the earthquake is Shelterbox, which provides essential equipment including temporary housing, cooking supplies, and tools to displaced families.

The Long Recovery: In the mid-to-long term, we need to keep an eye on how the billion dollars raised for Haiti is being spent.  US educated Haitians, especially Haiti’s elite, will have disproportionate access development funds.  Every effort must be made to ensure that peasant groups and those outside the Port-au-Prince have access to money for sustainable development projects, especially those in agriculture.  Haiti must grow its own food, and every effort should be made to prevent the dumping of artificially cheap imports from the US, which are supported by farm subsidies here in the States.

Manufacturing is being touted as an answer to Haiti’s chronic unemployment, but fair labor practices must be part of any new factory initiatives, and the important work of the Haitian labor unions like Batay Ouvriye cannot be erased in a quick fix push to make Haiti a bastion of cheap labor.

We also need to keep the story alive in the media, and we should support all efforts to tell this story from the Haitian perspective – not from behind the lenses of journalists who swoop in to Haiti at every disaster yet never during times of relative peace.  We must defend the right of Haitians to decide their own future, and we should listen carefully to what they ask of us and respond to their actual needs rather than asserting our own agendas.  Most of all, we need to remain optimistic and energized, because there is a long road ahead.

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AID DOES NOT EQUAL SOLIDARITY

Daniel Michaud is a long time political organizer and supporter of Batay Ouvriye. Originally from Haiti he now makes his home in Miami here continues to support workers organizing in Haiti, Miami, and beyond.

The earthquake in Haiti has shaken the conscience of the world. Current estimates of Haiti disaster relief funds range from more than $2 billion of current pledges to the more than $13.5 billion estimated reconstruction costs.  Lost in these figures are the conflicting class interests in struggle.

The January 12^th earthquake was not just a natural disaster, but also one that was exponentially worsened by manmade destructive forces. These same forces are now engaged in a struggle to determine what kind of Haiti will emerge from the rubble. Clearly, there are two different agendas in motion. Our task is to contribute to shaping the perspective of the exploited and dominated classes, the real victims of the disaster, and also to unmask the inhumanity of the dominant, mainstream, already bankrupt plan for so-called reconstruction.

Indeed, the aftershocks still rumbling, Hilary Clinton was saying “we already have a plan”, Bill’s plan is to establish Free Trade Zones and low-wage highly profitable assembly manufacturing sweatshops throughout Haiti, as per HOPE 2, the Free Trade legislation guaranteeing higher profits for US sweatshop entrepreneurs and slave like subsistence wages for Haitian sweatshop workers.

The imperialist high hopes are now stuck in the minutiae of massive relocations, legal land holdings with limited or lost records, 10,000 competing NGOs, an utterly incompetent undermined puppet regime, imperialist powers competing over their spheres of influence, and the coming rainy season.

Unmasked are the paper tiger, the useless MINUSTAH occupation force, the US Army stuck in its inherent, if not deliberate, incompetence to effectively deliver aid, and their puppet Haitian regime.

But on our side, the stakes are even higher.  We can forecast the failure of imperialist plans, but we cannot yet forecast our own success, although we know very well that the popular camp holds the only way out of this crisis. That is precisely why international solidarity with the autonomous organized struggles of the popular camp is so crucial today. We are at a crossroads.

The popular camp is engaged in a struggle to take over the distribution of the aid, the organization of the disaster encampments, the organized popular resistance to corruption, malfeasance, insecurity, unsanitary conditions, forced relocations, and to build from this struggle a network of popular organizations, engaged in a determined and uncompromising process to deepen the struggle to its very root. There is an ongoing process of building unity in struggle and through struggle. With all these issues at a boiling point, the need for a new state, a people’s state, structurally beholden to the interests of the popular masses, and guided by the liberating ideology of the working class is becoming more self-evident.

Progressives of conscience must recognize that “aid” does not equal solidarity. Mainstream aid, today, is reinforcing the imperialist agenda, well meaning as it may be. 33% of US relief aid goes to fund US armed forces, less than 10% for food and medicine. Our task today must be to build international proletarian solidarity. We must seek out sister and brother unions, workers movements, peasant and student movements, and neighborhood committees, and lend them our support. But even more, we must join together with them in struggle, because at the end of the day, we are Haiti: One Struggle!

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.

After receiving an incredibly warm welcome, Organizing Upgrade is excited to continue bringing you thoughtful opinions and strategic essays for left organizers. We also want to stir the pot!  We want new ideas and new voices to take a stab at the freshest challenges facing our community.

What can left organizers learn from the fight over healthcare?

We have incredible contributions from: Jonathan Kissam, Vermont Workers Center;  Michael Leon Guerrero, Grassroots Global Justice; Terry Marshall, Healthcare Education Project (SEIU); Jennifer Flynn, Health GAP; Trishul Siddharthan, Medical Student and Community Activist with Power U and Miami Workers Center; and Randy Jackson, consultant with movement-based organizations.

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

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TAKING ON THE RIGHT OVER HEALTHCARE REFORM IN VERMONT

Jonathan Kissam is a rank-and-file member of UE Local 203 in Burlington, Vermont, and a member of the Vermont Workers’ Center/Jobs with Justice. More information about the Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign can be found here.

Well-organized right-wing crowds disrupted most of the healthcare town halls that took place across the country in recent months. But the August 15^th healthcare town hall in Rutland, Vermont was different. The red placards and t-shirts of the “Healthcare Is a Human Right” campaign of the Vermont Workers’ Center/Jobs with Justice (VWC/JwJ) dominated the audience and the media coverage of this town hall. Anti-reform speakers got their share of time at the microphone, but they were unable to be disruptive because of the large VWC mobilization. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders – a long-time supporter of a single-payer healthcare – remained in control of the room and was able to challenge the lies that came from some of the right-wing speakers.  Media reports attributed the lack of disruption to Vermont’s tradition of civil debate, but the real reason was good old-fashioned grassroots organizing: dozens of volunteers making hundreds of calls to a base built over more than a year of our Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign.  The VWC/JwJ believes that there are important lessons to be learned from our success in turning back the right wing:

Putting policy reforms in the context of a values-based campaign: We built our campaign based on the idea that health care is a human right. Basing our campaign on a commitment to this basic value allowed us to build a larger and more engaged base than a narrow policy-based campaign could have. While many of the people we turned out to the town hall meetings may not have understood the ins-and-outs of health care policy, they were committed to the notion that healthcare is a human right.

Understanding that this is a struggle over power, not a debate over policy: Throughout our campaign, we have been clear that only serious struggle from the grassroots can win real healthcare reform.  While our campaign is focused on state heath care legislation, we mobilized our base for these town halls because we saw the federal debate as a critical battle in which our opposition has access to friendly media and unlimited resources from the insurance companies.

Placing the voices of people most affected front and center: At hearings that we held around the state, a wide spectrum of Vermonters shared their stories about the broken healthcare system, from union members with “good” health insurance who had been denied care to uninsured loggers who live with daily fear of accidents to women who stayed with abusive husbands out of fear of losing health insurance to the nurses who see needless suffering everyday. In the town hall meetings, this kind of powerful personal testimony stood in sharp contrast to the shrill rhetoric of the right wing.

Leadership development: Too often, campaigns are so focused on winning policy goals that we neglect to develop the skills and leadership potential of the people who we are organizing.  During the course of this campaign, the VWC held organizer trainings around the state. As a result, campaign leaders were prepared to speak up at the town hall meetings and to represent the powerful voices of the people who have suffered under the current system.

Taking on right-wing beliefs about government: VWC/JwJ chose healthcare as our major campaign not only because it is an issue that affects all sectors of the working class, but also because it offered an opportunity to engage people in a discussion about social values and a vision for a different society.  We don’t believe that progressive forces can win policy debates if we accept the values framework of neoliberal capitalism, that markets are inherently more efficient than government and that individuals are on their own to provide for their own welfare.  By challenging these values with a vision of a caring society, in which communities take collective responsibility for the general welfare, we hope to contribute to building a movement than can win universal healthcare and a just society.

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SHIFTING THE TERRAIN

Michael Leon Guerrero is coordinator of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ) and a member of the National Planning Committee for the US Social Forum .

The Battle of Ideas: The Right engaged in the battle of ideas in the health care fight. They utilized basic military strategic principles: set the stage for where your battles take place, and you will win. They are trying to shift the battlefield about the role of government by framing government as an enemy that will control our lives.  We need to fight on this terrain as well: take on right-wing beliefs about government and put forward our own visions.  If we focus only on narrow policy issues, we are missing the broader struggle. Winning ground at the ideological level can create space for us to win more concessions on policy and implementation.  We should not focus on pressuring the Obama administration. Instead we should work to open political space for the administration to win its more progressive reforms and position ourselves to push for more progressive policy later.  Our messages should target our real adversaries, including (1) the people who benefit from regressive policies, like health insurance companies and bankers, (2) figureheads in the Right, like Dick Armey and Rush Limbaugh, who are promoting the regressive agenda and (3) conservative policy-makers.

Provocative Tactics: The Right has succeeded by using a provocative agitational and direct action strategy, including carrying automatic weapons to Obama town hall meetings and drawing on Saul Alinsky’s tactics. Even though the people who disrupted the healthcare town halls acted crazy, polls showed that their strategy worked. The Obama administration went on the defensive and is prepared to cave in on key aspects of healthcare reform.  Recently, a confidential memo from the American Petroleum Institute (API) surfaced which called for a similar strategy in the upcoming climate policy debates.  The memo called on “member companies to ‘move aggressively’ to stage public meetings, similar to the recent protests against [Obama's] healthcare plans.”  Although this plan backfired and caused a split within the API, it suggests that we have not seen the last of the disruptive tactics of the Right.  We need to plan ahead and develop our own agitational strategies to sharpen the debate about the role of government and the economy.  Our strategies should focus on direct action – including rallies, town hall meetings, days of action and civil disobedience – and be coupled with an aggressive communications plan to promote our values to a wide audience.

Take Advantage of the Moment: There are key political moments – like the 2006 immigrants rights mobilizations and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – when we need to carve out time and take on issues that are not currently part of our work-plans.  This is one of those moments.  If the most progressive aspects of the healthcare reform are gutted and we lose more ground on energy policy, then the window of opportunity for progressive policy may close soon.  We need to act decisively and aggressively this year. What happens in the next six months will set the political tone for the next decade of our work.

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DON’T WAIT ON THE SIDELINES!

Terry Marshall has been involved in youth and social justice struggles for the past 13 years.  In 2005 he founded the Hip-Hop Media Lab, an intermediary that uses culture and new media to organize social networks. Today Terry is the Lead Youth Organizer for the Healthcare Education Project (1199SEIU), a Blogger for octavianprinciple.wordpress.com and enjoys being a heretic of the Left

The left has largely been absent from the fight over healthcare. There have been many important political developments that evolved out of this fight, and we need to understand and analyze them if we are going to develop an effective left strategy for our current moment.  One of the most important developments has been the resurgence of the grassroots Right and the return of red-baiting.

Obama’s election victory has revitalized the mostly Christian and white grassroots base of the Right in this country. Where did this resurgence come from? These people have seen the privileges they gained from being white within the American Empire wither away. They see the election of the first Black president as the final closing of the door on the America they imagine and love. Talking heads, such as Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, speak to the fears of white middle class and working class people. They have played on those fears to go on the attack and push back the possibility for progressive gains that came with Obama’s election.

The fight around healthcare is the first major policy battle where these groups came into play. These forces became the shock-troops of the resistance to healthcare reform. The funding for that resistance came from the big health insurance companies, but the interests of the grassroots base and big corporations do not actually always align.  We need to be clear where their interests actually diverge. Even with all of their red baiting, their confused rants and their racist attacks, we have to remember that these social forces are actually “up for grabs” by the Left. We need to learn how to win some of these forces over to a Left progressive agenda. We need to develop mechanisms that can speak to their issues and clear up the confusion promoted by the Right.  It won’t be easy, but it is absolutely necessary.

There are other valuable lessons that the Left can draw from this fight.

First, we need to move beyond critique. The Obama administration did blind side the single payer movement with his “public option.” But we were reeling from that for far too long.  Most of the left stayed stuck in critiquing Obama and didn’t move to develop a plan on what to do about it. The Left needs to move through our critiques and concentrate on laying out a plan for how to actually move our agendas through the Obama administration.

Second, we need to move faster. The Left jumped in the game far too late. Many of our organizations move at a glacial pace, even in the face of major crises and significant political shifts. We get caught up in our “three-year strategic plans” and such. We need a more flexible strategic orientation that can allow us to make fast decisions without losing our long-term focus.

This leads into the final lesson: we need new organizational forms. A large section of the left today is trapped in non-profit structures, and we suffer from the limits of that organizational form.  Many people have talked about the need to develop cadre structures, but we also need other intermediary forms. Some people have formed volunteer collectives outside of non-profits.  Some progressive staff and members who work at nonprofits have formed volunteer groups to do actions that they could not do within the limitations of non-profit structures. Some examples have been the Community Avengers in Miami and Young Voices Nation in NYC.

The Left needs to learn these lesson fast enough to be able to weigh in on the other upcoming battles: the fights over climate change and energy policy, education and immigration reform.  Training season is coming to an end. It’s time to get off the sidelines and into the game!

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HOW A GOOD IDEA WITHOUT A BASE BECOMES NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE

Jennifer Flynn was the co-founder and director of NYC AIDS Housing Network and is a current board member.  She is the Managing Director for Health GAP (Global Access Project) and writes about organizing, social justice, AIDS and healthcare issues for numerous outlets.

My job at Health GAP, an international AIDS advocacy and organizing group, meant that I spent a lot of time on the campaign trail during the 2008 Presidential campaign.  I heard the stump speech from every candidate at countless town halls and forums.  In every one, an audience member asked about healthcare.  And every candidate felt the pressure to release a policy document outlining how they would creatively restructure the way we deliver healthcare in the United States.  No one could deny that healthcare is an issue that is deeply and widely felt among people living in the United States.  No one could deny that there are creative ways to solve this issue.  Anyone who has been to a training on grassroots organizing could tell you: the fight over healthcare meets all the criteria for a great campaign.

So then why is healthcare reform facing challenges that seem insurmountable?  What seemed like our big chance for real reform and “ change we can all believe in” is becoming an increasingly distant opportunity.  We have been missing a crucial part of the equation: there hasn’t been a serious investment in real organizing around healthcare in years.  In fact, over the years, investment in healthcare organizing has been shrinking dramatically.

I hope that we will see a different outcome in the next big policy battle: immigration reform.  Why would we have a different outcome?  For the past five years, private foundations have consistently invested in progressive grassroots organizing among immigration issues.  This investment was necessary to combat the war on immigrants that escalated after September 11^th.  Because of this investment, I think that progressives will be more vocal and effective and that the broad debate around immigration reform will look different then the debate around healthcare.  At least, I hope so.

One of the reasons that private progressive foundations have cut funding for healthcare reform is because health inequities expose the complicated root causes of inequality in our country.  It is easy to see the reality that healthcare delivery is abysmal in poor communities, both urban and rural. The fight for better healthcare shines a bright light on our nation’s systemic racism and sexism.  By its very nature, working on the issue of healthcare means that we must address the body.  Organizing around other issues, like housing, is simply less complicated. We don’t have to look at ourselves. We can point to the landlord, at the structural damage and ignore our racism and sexism. It is less controversial and safer, and funders like that.

William Smith, the Executive Director of SEICUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) deftly identified that – in this debate over health care – elected leaders missed an opportunity to move thinking about “constitutional rights” to an acceptance of a broader “human rights” framework.  Because they missed that opportunity, they gave up debating what the “best idea” is. Instead, we are now fighting over the worse of different evils.  I would argue, that like during the Civil Rights Movement, the people who hold power are simply unwilling to create a crack that might let the light in and expose the deep inequality facing our people. What’s worse is that there are few progressive organizations that are positioned to shift this paradigm.  Powerful progressives gave up on the right to protect women’s bodies and on frank talk about sexuality because working on those issues would force us to expand our views about controversial issues around sexuality and gender.  We chose to find common ground and settle rather then change hearts and minds.  We gave up the fight. Now, when we need strong ranks, they are not organized.

The answer is to reinvest in organizing around these issues: support organizing among women, make HIV prevention an issue that is as commonplace as fighting for heat or lead paint removal in housing.  Without a mass of people demanding progressive social justice. change may come but it will not be the change that we seek.

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THE SUMMER OF DISCONTENT

Trishul Siddharthan is a community activist with Power U and Miami Workers Center and third-year medical student at the University of Miami

As a medical student, I witness the casualties of the healthcare fight on a daily basis. A sweltering summer of Washington debates and street protests didn’t produce any consensus on fixing the healthcare system. The political left remains fragmented: some people are working towards a government-run system while others want to maintain a market-based approach and add in a “public option.” As organizers, we should expect Washington to fail in passing effective legislation because three questions remain unanswered:

Who is organizing?

What is the message?

What is the base?

We can’t just watch these policy debates unfold. We need to be out there, organizing the base of people who are affected by these issues.

Meanwhile, local health care policies continue to get worse.  While public attention was directed at partisan politics in the Capital, state governments cut the type of programs that the federal health care legislation is supposed to support. For example, in Miami, two of our ten public health clinics will be closing this year. State funding for public education and housing continues to erode, even though education and housing determine health outcomes far more than access to health insurance does.

There are two principles that we need to remember moving forward from the fight over health care:

1) Health equity will not be achieved with specific health policy prescriptions. Health equity can only result from a full-spectrum investment in community infrastructure: education, housing, access to fresh food, clean and safe environments. We cannot limit our fight strictly to issues of health insurance and health-care access.

2) Dogma does not treat patients. Privileged people have dominated the healthcare debate, and that’s true on both sides of the political aisle. They maintain their political doctrines at the expense of the patients who face the daily realities of health inequity. Although we cannot compromise on people’s human right to health access and care, both sides need to make concessions to ensure the passage of health legislation this year. Although the current legislation does not reflect progressive demands, we need to get something passed this year. If we don’t pass a bill soon, the progressive movement will continue to be distracted from far more pressing issues, and the burden will fall firmly on the shoulders of patients like the ones I see every day.

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EXPOSE THE SYSTEM & BUILD THE FIGHT

Randy Jackson is a 15-year veteran of social justice organizing and activism. Most recently he served as Development Director of the Miami Workers Center, a strategy and organizing center for Miami’s working class African-American, Latina and Caribbean communities fighting for self-determination and power.

Expose the system

Let’s start with the larger forest we often fail to see because we are so pressed up against the tree: the system is broken, and this is not just about healthcare, but the system of advanced global capitalism in which we live. The health care system in the U.S. is emblematic of the failed nature of the broader system.  Capitalism treats human life as a commodity, and it treats the work to care for life as a commodity as well. Medical bills are the #1 reason that people in this country can’t afford to pay their rent or their mortgages and face eviction and foreclosures, and that’s an outrage! We should be a lot angrier than we are! This health care debate is a moment of opportunity to engage in exposing the failures of the status quo on a mass level. But as leftists we must ensure that this exposure is happening among oppressed communities (the unemployed, poor, and working class women and children, immigrants and people of color), the people who make up the lions’ share of the forty million uninsured in this country. For the past ten months the organized voices of the oppressed sectors of society have been absent from the broader healthcare debate; left organizers need to play a role in turning that dynamic around.

Visionary Demands – Towards a Visionary Alternative

In the context of health care, universal healthcare coverage (perhaps best captured in the single payer model in the context of the current debates) is the most visionary response. Period. We have the wealth in this country to cover this; that’s not the problem. Michael Moore in Sicko laid out multiple possible models based on health care system’s from at least half a dozen western industrial countries (and Cuba!). C’mon now, more anger please!  But if it’s the whole system in disarray, then demands around health care should be only a part of our total visionary alternative.  Families in the U.S. are making heart-wrenching and life-changing decisions where they have to choose between their next meal or paying a utility bill. One out of every six children in this country is not sure where her next meal will come from. medical costs force families out of their homes. All of these are daily events under U.S. capitalism. One lesson is clear: U.S. capitalism cannot care for the basic necessities of its people.  Since a leap forward to a new society isn’t on the immediate horizon, we need to develop landscape-shifting demands that move us closer to that leap. As we fight for a better health care system, lets put forward the demand for a total package of social goods: A social wage – guaranteed housing, health care, childcare, basic food, public transportation. In the current economic climate this is something that more and more of us can relate to. And it’s a glimpse of a visionary society, of the way things ought to be. Fighting for it will bring it closer.

Charting the Path – A Strategy

First, we have to continue the work of organizing the unorganized, and building fighting institutions of the most oppressed.

Second, we need sharp assessments of the broader political moment and the nimbleness to mobilize resources when the political moment requires us.

Third, we need to take it to scale. We lack the mechanisms for flexible coordination at a mass scale that can make an impact. There is an emergent trend towards greater coordination. Activists are becoming parts of collectives. Grassroots groups are aligning themselves into networks. Networks are forming alliances among each other. These are positive developments and they should be supported. Beyond these developments, we need a new kind of party: with membership in the hundreds of thousands that can represent the interests of the people most impacted by the system. One that truly represents the Latina family who had their home foreclosed on by the banks; the single black mother who had to chose between feeding or clothing her newborn; the subway conductor who was laid off and is now struggling to make ends meet.