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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Organizing Upgrade is excited to repost this Media Mobilizing Project interview with two Pennsylvania organizers about the impact of Occupy on rural Pennsylvania.

Episode Description: In this episode Audra and Miguel speak with Mitch Troutman and Kara Newhouse of PA from Below about the occupations across Pennsylvania sparked by #OccupyWallSt. We also get to see stories from occupiers in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania, a report from the UNITE HERE action against Aramark for fair work conditions, and the recent Working People’s Media and Communications Forum.

If you are having a hard time watching the video on our site, you can also find it here.

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

Listen to the panel here

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

Panel Speakers:

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

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

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

Intro and Framing: Tina Bartolome

Listen to the intro here

Listen to the discussion here

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

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

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

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Kai Barrow,  a long time left organizer, activist, mentor to many and inspiration to more, is leaving her long held staff position at the prison abolition organization, Critical Resistance. As she leaves she has reflected on her time in the movement and her work in CR, producing the “Swan Song Manifesto.” This enlightening piece is over 20 pages long! Here we excerpted two sections from the introduction, which bring very good and clear challenges to left organizers in these times, based in a personal historical analysis of movement work. For everyone who hasn’t met Kai, or learned from Kai, this is a great introduction to one of our unsung movement heros.

Born at the tail end of the fifties and raised in Chicago by activist parents, I cannot recall a time when I was not politically engaged. I was surrounded by influences and energy that (in retrospect) produced a visceral desire for revolutionary change/liberation.  In third grade, I organized a walkout along with a few of my friends against the Vietnam War. We made signs and chanted “Humphrey, Humphrey, he’s our man. Nixon belongs in the garbage can”! (not the most revolutionary message, but hey…we were in third grade).  In fifth grade I refused to stand and recite the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance because I found it to be “hypocritical to Black people.”  My parents supported my analysis and decision, and after meeting with the teacher and the Vice Principal, Mr. Phillips, my parents and I negotiated a victory. I would sit in the VP’s office every morning during the “Pledge.” Sometimes Mr. Phillips and I would spend our time chatting, sometimes I would read or work on my homework. But I always felt good about my decision. Perhaps for the first time I understood the importance of taking power.

My fifth grade school year was also the time of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. As is the tradition, many young people from throughout the country arrived in Chicago to protest the War and other repressive policies and my family and other residents of the co-op apartment we lived in, agreed to house several of these protestors, among them David Dellinger.  After Mayor Richard J. Daley gave the order for the Chicago Police Department to “shoot first, ask questions later,” my new out of town “friends” arrived back at our house broken, bloodied, and angry at the police, the mayor, and a system that shoots and kills its children.  I was heartbroken to see people in pain and I too became angry. Later that night, I was awakened by gunshots as the police surrounded our apartment and forced Dellinger out of the building. That day I experienced grief, anger and terror—all directly linked to the violence and abuse of power by the State.

During this period I also saw the rise of the Blackstone Rangers (a prominent Chicago street gang) who scared my grandmother, my best friend, and me. I saw families loaded with Christmas Day paraphernalia (bags of gifts, leftovers packed in aluminum foil trays) standing on the corner waiting for a bus while snow fell and the kids did the “I’m cold dance” to keep warm. I saw my mother cry for the first time and my father punch a hole in the wall in reaction to Dr. King’s murder. I attended a Saturday “survival school” organized by activists where I learned about the culture and contributions of African diasporic people.  I felt safe and proud when strangers passing me on the street raised a fist, gave me a smile and greeted me with “Black Power, little sister.”  I watched the creation of the Wall of Respect, one of the first murals of the Black Arts Movement, and had the privilege of placing a brush stroke of color on a corner of the Wall. My household was filled with the music of John Coltrane and Sarah Vaughn, West African masks, prints by artists such as Henry Ossawa Tanner, and a library of books on the Black experience. Culture and the arts were extremely important to me—both as an educational tool as well as for the deep pleasure it stirred within.  Early on, I knew I wanted to be an artist.

My visceral experiences and the daily snapshots of a people in struggle were facilitated and named by my elders. They offered me a way to make sense of the problems, solutions, contradictions and victories and directed me to become a critical thinker. So, after finishing The Autobiography of Malcolm X, at the age of ten, I proclaimed, “I want to be a revolutionary!

A culture of resistance, protest politics and institution-building by people of color, feminists, queer people, and poor people in the 1960s and ’70s filled me with pleasure and purpose.  It was a period of design and imagination—a period where people re-envisioned and re-structured their lives. Even as a kid, I knew that things were changing. I saw and felt the electricity of change. Nothing was static.  It seemed to me that everything was in question: from diet to living arrangements; interpersonal relationships to altered identities, from the ways that people asserted and responded to power to a new articulation of labor and production.  During this period, people reached beyond national boundaries and re-defined themselves as members of a global community (and in some cases, interplanetary community—see Sun Ra). And though these shifts were taking place on different scales and at a different pace, corresponding to class, race, gender, age, geographic location and sexual orientation, everyone was influenced by this cultural, social, political and economic re-imagining. This was a transformative moment, one that unleashed our imaginations and spurred our actions. We saw what we could be.

We were unprepared for the brutality of the State. As beautiful as this period was, we were also powerful enough to pose a threat so significant to the functioning of the State, that it systematically set out to squash our burgeoning revolution. Individual leaders were discredited, driven into exile, imprisoned, and murdered. Intra-and inter-organizational conflict resulted in a weakened movement that we are still recovering.  Culture was depoliticized and exploited.

Since this period, our movement continues to fight.  However; our electricity is contained. The passion for liberation is muted. Instead, we fight for our survival. And this is not enough.

I am motivated to do this work because at an early age I experienced the possibility of what could be.  Despite the conditions that we struggle with on a daily basis—that belief in our ability to change our lives; to transform ourselves and our environment, has never left me. It is deeply rooted and difficult to pinpoint through a single transformative moment, experience or observation. Instead, I am an outcome of my geography—time, place, and location in both material and imaginative space.

I work to dismantle the violence of the State—particularly the multiple layers of the prison industrial complex (PIC) I work to build a society that neither needs nor relies upon violence—State or interpersonal—as a solution to social, economic or political problems.  I work to re-charge that passion for liberation that was so significant and yet, short-lived. With the privilege of history and analysis and the willingness to boldly assert a liberatory vision, we can redesign our lives and shift our material conditions.  I see this as both an artistic and scientific process. It requires organization and vision beyond the limitations and concessions offered by the State.  It requires us to take the risk of challenging societal normatives in both our values and our actions. Like my ancestors, who took on this fight to end the violence of slavery, I am a prison industrial complex abolitionist.

The PIC is energized by racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and capitalism. It reproduces these systems while simultaneously creating and reinforcing fear, violence, abuse, broken communities, isolation, scarcity, and dependency. In other words, it creates harm as it claims to be about the business of punishing harm.

Our responsibilities are to articulate vision, build organization, and create practices that are PIC abolitionist. We work to “shrink” the system into non-existence using four key strategies: 1) Intervention. Developing strategies of decarceration, disrupting policies and practices that strengthen the PIC (through scope and breadth), and decommissioning structures that currently exist. 2) Prevention. Working to stop the building of more (or “better”) prisons/jails, policing and surveillance methods and strengthening the capacity and resources of a community so that it’s needs are met. 3) Accountability. Developing community-driven holistic models for intervening, preventing and repairing harm and facilitating processes and practices that strengthen a community’s efforts toward self-determination. 4) Transformation. Challenging individual characteristics that reinforce and reflect the intersecting oppressive systems that empower the PIC and other systems of control.  This work is neither linear nor static. Intervention, prevention, accountability and transformation are ongoing and function interdependently.

This work is critical for fomenting fundamental social change. Movement-building, cultural paradigm shifts, education, institution-building, and action (campaigns, projects, mobilizations), all provide opportunities to inspire and support people in recognizing our own power; challenging normatives; and taking responsibility for the well-being of all. This work is a collaborative process that is rooted in history and joins a continuum of freedom struggles. Though it must be ideologically grounded, organizing work itself must also be pliable—this allows for critique and dynamism. During my thirty + years in movement-building I have learned that these are critical elements for creating a liberated society.

In 1978, I became actively involved in grassroots organizing. Since this period I have been a member of, or worked closely with, several national and local organizations such as The Republic of New Africa, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Spear and Shield Collective, the Coalition Against Jon Burge, the Black Panther Newspaper Committee, the Black Panther Collective, the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM), the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, the NY3 Defense Committee, Jericho, the Ruckus Society, the Direct Action Network, Resistance in Brooklyn, Hands off Assata, Sista II Sista, Estacion Libre, FIERCE! INCITE! UBUNTU and Queers for Economic Justice (to name a few). I have lived and worked in Chicago, Atlanta, Jersey City, New Jersey, NYC, Durham, NC and now, New Orleans. I have been embraced by a broad community of activists and organizations throughout the U.S. and traveled to Chiapas, Iraq, Jordan, Buenos Aires, and Porto Allegro, Brazil to work with organizers and activists primarily in skill facilitation, grassroots campaign organizing, capacity-building, or organizing mass mobilizations. Additionally, I am one of the founders of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization to end the prison industrial complex, where I am leaving my staff role as the Infrastructure and Training Director.

My work with these organizations has allowed me to develop and assert a vision for social change that requires participatory democracy, agreed upon principles, harm-free methods for accountability and repair, and unleashed imagination.  Though the specific tasks have changed over the years, in essence, my contributions continue to center around stimulating collectivity, fostering abundance and creativity, practicing risk-taking, demanding self-determination, and building organizations with (social, political, physical and intellectual) rigor….

The major challenges facing Critical Resistance are also the most pressing challenges faced by the U.S. Left. In some form or fashion, we are all asking: How do we win?  And though I have problems with the concept of “winning” liberation (as I see this as an ongoing process), I think at the root we are asking “how do we topple a system that is hell-bent on escalating worldwide material and cultural genocide to serve its greed?”

Big charge.

I believe that this core question, leads to another set of questions: What is to be done? How do we build a mass movement? How do we articulate a revolutionary intersectional analysis through our theory and practice? How do we create strategic points of entry that weaken the system? How do we challenge the multiple ways we replicate systemic oppression?  These questions reflect the major challenges we face in our organization and in our movement and are amplified by the howls of our people.

Within capitalism, racism, patriarchy and heteronormativity, our desire for freedom is in constant opposition to condensed, restrictive, and rigid space.  This has been particularly true in the communities where CR operates and where I have lived and worked. Subways, housing projects, courtrooms, the lack of public space and the control of what remains as “public space,”[1] and the lack of money, work, housing, and healthcare, has created a people who are experiencing physical, spiritual, and mental harm. As a member of these communities, I experience this harm. Internalized oppression drives us to inflict self-harm: abusive relationships, substance abuse, deadly eating habits… while simultaneously fighting the harm of the State: homelessness, hunger, toxic environments, the bombardment of images that cast us as inferior, and police violence. Yet within this oppressive space, we still fight to be free.

This contradiction creates a “raw opposition” that is explosive.  It can change the terms of a space.  As organizers, our challenge is to identify the nature of our raw opposition and build/create within the space between oppression and freedom. We are charged with entering the space of raw opposition with clarity, precision, and analysis, passion, energy, and generosity. In Black tradition, this is known as the “Cool.” Think Miles Davis.

We are challenged to develop shared strategy and principles. Power-sharing, confronting privilege, and building trust are central to this work. We are challenged to willingly participate in ongoing critique of our methodologies and outcomes—making adaptations where necessary and continuing to build upon our strengths.

We are also challenged to “reproduce” a future generation of organizers across racial, gender, sexual-orientation, class, physical/mental abilities, geographic location, age, cultural, and political boundaries.  We are challenged to replace ourselves—share leadership in a responsible way, making space for “new” voices while integrating the knowledge and experience of the past. Yet, replication is complex because political, economic, and social contexts constantly shift and we want more than to simply mint newer versions of ourselves.

We are challenged to draw upon collective abundance. Acting from a place of abundance allows us to challenge scarcity. Collective abundance produces flexibility, creative problem-solving, and courage. I am reflecting here on the ways that the Black tradition models a practice of abundance. Without access to and control of resources, we have managed to pay rent, feed our families, send our children to college, and create hip hop.

We are challenged to utilize our agency in the service of our shared goals and charged with a demand for constant creativity, risk-taking, and self-determination. Agency is as empowering as it is messy. It helps us challenge the “cops in our head” or the complex ways we internalize power structures in our daily lives.

Additionally, we are challenged to foster a healthy culture of accountability and repair.  Understanding that contradictions are integral to any process of change, we are challenged to construct a dialectical analysis. We are challenged to be fluid in our work, transparent about our mistakes, seek non-punitive methods of repair for the harms we both cause and survive, and willingly struggle to transform.

This is not the work of a selective “we.”  It is work that must be done by everyone. To willingly and actively take on the challenges above, places one in this working group. This is work that demands a deep commitment to foment transformative revolutionary change within our individual selves and among our families, friends, communities, organizations, coalitions, and allies.

I choose the challenges listed above as our major challenges, because they feed the numerous challenges that we bump up against on an operational basis. Challenges related to membership recruitment and sustainability, policy wins, uneven political development, effective communications, and resource generation (human capacity and material resources), are woven into the fabric of our daily tasks. History dictates that these skill-driven challenges ebb and flow.  We will have a large number of members and supporters and then we will have few. We will have money to keep our doors open, and then we will not. Without cultivating strategies and tactics for our major challenges, these operational challenges are doomed to repeat.

Picture it: A multiracial, multi-gendered, intergenerational group of about 250 people are marching down the middle of the street in a neighborhood of North Philadelphia. The people are a loud bunch, carrying signs that read “Free Mumia Now!” and “Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal.”  Community members come out on their porch to wave at the group or raise a fist in solidarity.  There is a pick-up truck with a loud speaker rigged to a megaphone. People are reciting chants that rhyme and have each phrase and pause dedicated to memory. This performance has become ritualized.

There is a lull.  The speaker/chant leader is tired and needs a break.  He hands the megaphone to me. I am known for my energy. I hold the dubious title of “Cheerleader for the Movement.” Holding the megaphone, I wanted to see if we could transform our ritual. Could we inspire spontaneity and surprise within ourselves and each other? Could we share with this Black, working-class community whose neighborhood we entered, an expansive vision—one where Mumia’s freedom was tied in with their own liberation? I placed the megaphone to my lips and faced the crowd.

Me: What do we want?

Chanters: Free Mumia!

Me: When do we want it?

Chanters: Now!

[reprise.]

Me: What else do we want?

Chanters: [silence.]

Me: No really. What else do we want? Shout it out. It doesn’t have to rhyme. It doesn’t have to be scripted. Let’s make a cacophony of sound, shouting out our visions of what we want. [pleading] We don’t even have to do it for more than 60 seconds.

Chanters: [silence.]

Actually, there wasn’t complete silence. A few people attempted to shout out a vision, but it was mumbled and lacked passion. For the most part people were unable, more so than unwilling, to go along with this shift. I began to cry (I do this often—cry) and passed the megaphone back to the lead chanter.  A few people hugged me. The Mumia march served as a catalyst that has prompted me to struggle deeply with questions on the uses of imaginative space in revolutionary/liberatory organizing.  How do we take opportunities to scream our vision—whether through words, sounds, or actions—to the point where our ears are ringing from our own voice—with no regard for propriety, no fear of retribution, no authority reigning us in? How do we make revolution like jazz? I believe it is the artist’s work to stimulate the desire and the organizer’s work to organize the output from this desire. This leads to synchronicity.