Revolutionizing Egypt by the Day: An Eyewitness Report

By Bob Wing and Hany Khalil

Veteran analyst Bob Wing and Egyptian-American activist Hany Khalil recently met with a dozen key revolutionaries and spoke with numerous people on Cairo’s streets, in the cafes and taxis, and in their homes. This article serves as a dissection of the new living democracy in Egypt, including eyewitness and grassroots reports of the  established political organizations, revolutionary start-ups, and their complex, and sometimes messy, interactions.  A window into what it means to build democracy from the ground up, this article is both exciting and sobering.

June 25: Cairo–The political situation in Egypt is volatile, as all Egyptians and their organizations scramble to find their bearings following the unexpected but historic ousting of former dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Excitement and trepidation abound and colorful revolutionary graffiti fills the public space. New parties, alliances and campaigns are announced one day, only to disband the next. Strenuous debate about the order, rules and content of elections and a new constitution is at the forefront.

Suddenly everyone is a revolutionary and a democrat. But the “leaderless revolution” is still leaderless and thinly organized while the military, the temporary government and the Muslim Brotherhood retain great strength.

The Tunisian Revolution has the workers’ movement as a backbone; the Egyptian Revolution is still searching for an anchor.

18 Days That Shook the World

In the last few years, protests were growing in frequency, especially strikes. But the January 25 actions were called by new, loosely organized youth groups. The actions were unexpectedly transformed into a revolutionary movement by a spontaneous and massive rebellion of an aggrieved population.

The turning point came on Jan. 28 when “millions of demonstrators overwhelmed the stunned internal police security forces throughout the country and, shockingly, this long feared and well armed apparatus literally vanished overnight,” reports journalist and activist Ahmad Shokr.

The Muslim Brotherhood took up the call of the revolutionary youth, adding organized strength to the street actions, followed later by some unions and key professional groups. When the U.S. called for Mubarak to step down and the Egyptian military opted not to attack the demonstrators, the regime collapsed.

In eighteen days Egyptians dispatched from the stage of history one of the most longstanding regimes in the world, one backed to the hilt by the U.S. until its death throes. Unbeknownst to itself or anyone else, the Mubarak government had rotted to its core. One brief but powerful people’s hurricane blew it away.

Revolutionary Street Power

There was astonishingly little organization or political definition to the revolution other than calling for the ouster of Mubarak and his closest cronies. Slogans such as “Freedom, Justice, Dignity” ruled the day, but social and economic demands were very low profile. Ruefully we are told, “Everyone now claims to have been in Tahrir Square.”

At first it is baffling to hear many of the revolutionaries describe themselves as liberals. But we soon learned that liberal democracy is a revolutionary demand in a country that has been ruled by foreigners for two millennia and by military regimes for decades.

Still, a mad scramble to organize and develop further political coherence is now afoot. The Egyptian revolutionaries are struggling to retain their unity and expand amidst emerging new divisions over the future of the revolution.

“The strength of the revolution is its massive street presence: its political definition and organization lag far behind. However, no one knows how long the population will remain mobilized, so this is a very fragile situation,” says Sherif Alaa of the newly formed Free Egypt Party.

Youth as Vanguard

The key street mobilizers still appear to be the middle class youth groups, especially the April 6 Movement, We are All Khaled Said and the Revolutionary Youth Coalition.

The most recent huge action was held on May 27 in protest of continued political repression by the military and the temporary government. Half a million or more Egyptians thronged Tahrir Square despite the expressed opposition of the Muslim Brotherhood and the military.

The youth groups, like everyone else, are in a state of change and flux. Although they are the vanguard of revolutionary action, they are not necessarily radical in their socio-economic vision and have scant organized base.

Mohammed Adel of the April 6 Movement claims his group has an organized and active national membership of 7,000. It has launched a nationwide survey to clarify the people’s opinion about what should be in the new Constitution. April 6 is also trying to unite all the parties and groups behind the presumed presidential candidacy of Mohammed El-Baradei.

Adel believes “the key is to defeat the remnants of the old regime and to establish a transparent liberal political system.” April 6 and others project the remnants of the old regime, including the military, will tacitly back the expected presidential candidacy of Amr Moussa, the longtime foreign minister and Arab League president under Mubarak.

Importantly, some prominent intellectuals and activists, including We Are All Khaled Said just recently launched a “Poor First” campaign, marking the first major entry of class issues into the public debate. In a powerful post entitled “The Poor First, You Bastards,” Mohammed Abul Gheit argues that “the Egyptian revolution cannot be complete without social justice.”

Over the last three years more than 1.5 million workers have struck their employers. Perhaps they, along with the peasants and urban poor, may rise to the fore in the coming period.

Ferment in the Brotherhood

Meanwhile there is frenetic activity to form new political parties that can contest elections. According to veteran leftist and famed journalist Amina Shafik, “Mubarak successfully coopted, tamed or repressed all organized opposition during his reign. Parties that existed prior to the revolution were compromised to the point of now having no future, with the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The Brotherhood is the only party that has wide name recognition let alone organization or mass support. It is a complex and diverse political coalition founded in 1928. Our interviewees estimate that if elections were held today, the Brotherhood would carry between 20 and 30 percent of the electorate.

However, the program and unity of the Brotherhood are increasingly strained by the new forces and ideas unleashed by the revolution. To address the new situation, the Brotherhood has set up the supposedly ecumenical Justice and Freedom Party with a Christian as Vice President.

Still, one of the Brotherhood’s well known leaders, Abdel-Moneim Abul Fotouh, and a significant section of its youth members have split off to form a more liberal, civic-based movement called the Egyptian Current.

Fotouh plans a presidential run while the Brotherhood has promised only to run parliamentary candidates.

The Brotherhood also lost credibility when it refused to back the massive May 27 demonstration. Since then it has been feverishly maneuvering to find its bearings and preserve its unity in the fast changing environment.

Two, Three, Many Parties

Mozn Hassan of Nazra for Feminist Studies told us, “The strongest new political trend appears to be the formation of liberal parties”–parties whose central demand is a transparent, liberal democratic political system but who do not advocate major social or economic change. She describes them as being in “fragile, incipient stages of development,” often largely confined to middle class intellectuals in Cairo.

Our interviewees estimate that the current combined electoral strength of all the parties to the left of the Brotherhood is considerably less than ten percent. Their most ardent partisans hope to gain one-third of the new parliament so that they could block any two-thirds votes by more conservative forces.

Perhaps the party with the most potential strength is the Free Egyptians Party. It was founded by Naguib Sawiris, a Coptic Christian who is one of the wealthiest people in Egypt. His vast empire includes a major newspaper and a leading television station. Sawiris reportedly has no presidential aspirations of his own, but he is rumored to have committed $10 million to build the new party.

Free Egyptians is noteworthy for its strong secularist position, which has won it the ire of the Brotherhood and especially the Salafists, the most radical Islamists. So far it has not advocated for any significant economic or social changes, other than ridding the current system of cronyism and corruption.

The Justice Party is another liberal party backed by some big businessmen. It also eschews major economic change and is considered conciliatory towards the Muslim Brotherhood.

The third main party is the Egyptian Social Democratic Party. It is trying to forge a center-left alternative that is similar to the European socialist parties but is apparently struggling to get off the ground.

In response to what some view as organizational weakness and a lack of internal democracy, a split recently occurred in the Social Democratic Party leading to attempts to build the Free Egypt Party led by Amr Hamzawi, a well known public intellectual.

There are two overtly left parties in formation, but both are considered much weaker than the center-left Social Democratic Party: the Laborer’s Party which is based in a few independent trade unions and has a significant Trotskyist component and the Popular Alliance Party, a new left unity electoral and organizing effort.

Constitution First?

Perhaps the biggest issue currently being debated is the order and relationship of drafting a new Constitution, electing a new Parliament and voting for a new President.

The Brotherhood and, tacitly, the military and temporary government backed a March 19 referendum calling for the parliament to be elected in September, for the parliament to then choose a constitutional drafting committee for popular approval, to be followed by a presidential election.

Despite virtually universal opposition from the principal secular revolutionary organizations and the Coptic Christian community (which constitutes about ten percent of the population), the apparently fair and free referendum carried more than sixty percent of the electorate. Some interpreted this as a vote for restabilization.

Undeterred, revolutionary coalitions have launched a petition campaign, a survey and a mass education campaign in favor of drafting the constitution ahead of elections. Apparently they fear that the Brotherhood and remnants of the old regime are much better organized and could capitalize on early elections.

“We prefer to emblazon the revolution in a new constitution before elections,” says Ahmed Fawzy of the Social Democratic Party. This might also allow the new parties to get organized.

However, cracks in this alliance are now appearing, as some are concerned that conservatives could also dominate a constitution which would be much harder to change than a president or a parliament.

Still others feel that the debate over the order of these processes is overshadowing discussion of the direction and content of the revolution.

In this respect, the Poor First and similar campaigns may be a salutary development both to add substance to the public debate and to rally the popular sectors.

The Arab Spring and the Changing Dynamics of Global Struggle

Bob Wing is a longtime activist and the founding editor of ColorLines magazine and War Times/Tiempo de Guerras newspaper. He now lives in Durham, NC.

The Arab Spring, the Japanese nuclear accident, the progressive/labor motion in response to the rightwing attacks in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest, and the demographic changes reflected in the 2010 U.S. census, are reshaping the U.S. and global political terrain.

These events are not immediately connected and each has its own particular dynamics. But together they advance and aggravate the two big world trends I outlined in my “Notes on Election 2010”: the global rise of the developing world and the relative decline of U.S. and Western power as well as the intense struggle within the U.S. as to how to navigate that global sea change together with the impending people of color majority. Indeed the IMF recently announced their estimate that according to one key indicator China will surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by 2016.

These notes address some of the new dynamics underscored and advanced by the Arab Spring, including its implications for U.S. politics.

Changing Dynamics of Struggle in Developing World

The Arab Spring was completely unpredictable in its timing, form, rapidity, politics and Arab-wide form, and it remains to be seen what its outcomes will be.

At another level, however, it was completely predictable. Much of the developing world, including the Arab world, has gone through dramatic economic development in the last thirty years. The corresponding socio-economic transformation has given rise to new social forces that the old repressive regimes, most of more than thirty years duration, proved unable to incorporate or suppress.

At different paces and in different forms, mass struggles by sparked by new social forces against reactionary regimes–whether Kings, military or military backed strongmen or former revolutionaries turned dictators —have swept Asia (1990s—e.g. Philippines, Indonesia, S. Korea), Latin America (2000s—mainly through leftwing electoral victories), parts of Africa (esp. southern and sub-Saharan Africa), and now the Arab world. One might even include the demise of the former socialist camp and the recent “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics in this context.

These uprisings are notably diverse according to national and regional particularities. But they are also remarkably different from earlier mass struggles in the developing world: they have focused on turning out local dictators as opposed to focusing primarily on anti-colonial or anti-U.S. aims. The Arab Spring has thus far not even targeted Israel.

These movements have been mass democratic struggles as opposed to mass anti-imperialist struggles. Of course, democracy and anti-imperialism are very often intertwined in the developing world. But the leading element seems to have switched to internal democratic struggles compared to the mass national liberation movements of the 1910s through the 1980s.

Indeed a number of the revolutionary nationalist leaders of the 1960s and 1970s who ended up degenerating into undemocratic regimes are now the targets of democratic uprisings–Mugabe, Gaddafi and Assad. And it is also they who are among the most violent defenders of their regimes.

The democratic uprisings in the developing world of the last twenty years have also been notable for their largely peaceful strategies compared to the mostly armed national liberation movements of the 1920s to the 1980s. Indeed, that wave of revolutionary nationalism, like Marxist-Leninist socialism (and European social democracy), was eclipsed in that latter decade. Most movements since then have different dynamics and different leadership.

Indeed, the Middle East, led by Nasser in Egypt but also the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party (including Hafez al-Assad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq) and the Palestine Liberation Organization, was one of the world centers of the revolutionary nationalist, socialist motion of the 1950s to the 1980s. Although these regimes made powerful progress in their early years, they or their successors eventually degenerated into narrow dictatorships and even allied with the U.S. In the 1990s radical Islamism emerged as the main rallying center of anti-imperialist sentiment.

In this context, the emergence of the Arab Spring is a welcome mass democratic counterpoint to Islamic terrorism. There are, of course, radical differences between mass-based Islamic political groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas compared to narrowly terrorist groups like al-Qaeda whose targets are often civilians. Nonetheless the Arab Spring’s mainly peaceful, mass driven and secular democratic flavor is a powerful development that seems to be eclipsing the al-Qaeda-like approach and having much more positive impact. Perhaps this will be strengthened in the wake of the U.S. assassination of Osama bin Laden.

Finally, as a result of the much higher level of economic development of the developing world compared to the past, these movements are largely urban-based rather than rural based, and extremely diverse and complicated in their social composition and political orientations. They cannot be fit into simplistic or outdated categories or theories. Instead they must be studied and interacted with based on a concrete analysis of each movement in its own terms.

The Developing World and the Intensification of the Fight for Energy

While primarily local democratic uprisings, the Arab Spring events, like the fights in Asia and Latin America, are reconfiguring global economic and political power. Many countries are rapidly gaining new economic power and are strengthening the economic ties among themselves, independent of the West.

The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are most notable in this respect. The IMF recently announced that it expects the Chinese economy to replace the U.S. as the world’s largest by 2016. And China has replaced the U.S. as burgeoning Brazil’s main trading partner: economic interaction among developing countries among themselves has exploded.

Fast on the heels of the BRIC are the Next 11 (the “N11”: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Korea, Turkey and Vietnam). South Korea is the first former colony to become an advanced capitalist country. No less an imperial leader than Goldman Sachs predicts that by 2050 only the U.S. of the current G8 will rank among the top eight economies of the world.

The rapid economic development of the Global South is creating massive new demand for energy, just as peak oil is reached. And, whatever the exact outcomes of the Arab Spring, oil political expert Michael Klare believes that with it the “old oil order is dying, and with its demise we will see the end of cheap and readily accessible petroleum—forever.”

Meanwhile the Fukushima disaster shows the pitfalls of turning to nuclear energy to fill the gap. Along with climate change, these developments underscore the importance of moving away from fossil fuels and toward renewable and safe energy sources.

Changing Politics of the Middle East

The Arab Spring is a turning point of global importance because oil has been central to world economic development and politics since WWII.  Over that time, the U.S. has spared little expense or scruple to cobble together a reactionary alliance of Arab police states with Israel to safeguard its interests. The formation of OPEC in the 1960s and 1970s was a critical turning point in world economic history, but the West managed to reconstruct a web of power. Now the Arab people are disrupting that arrangement.

Although the struggles are still intense and the outcomes not at all clear, the genie is out of the bottle for the old regimes. Some new level of democracy is likely in many of the countries, and that by itself is enough to disrupt the old straight up imperialist/authoritarian alliance. This has been duly noted by the Obama administration and outraged U.S. rightwing.

Unlike previous U.S. regimes that routinely, and often brutally, backed their allied dictators throughout the world, the Obama administration has addressed the Arab Spring with halting but nuanced steps in a new direction. Its aim remains the same: to advance U.S. imperial interests. However, Obama’s actions also represent an understanding of new limits on U.S. power.

Washington surprised many by early on calling for Egypt’s Mubarak to step down, despite the fact that Mubarak was a lynchpin of U.S. power. Indeed it was the second largest recipient of U.S. aid (after Israel) for three decades, to the tune of $30 billion. Washington then backed an orderly electoral transition only to see Mubarak unceremoniously thrown out by the people.

In Libya Obama eschewed traditional U.S. unilateral military action in favor of multilateral action, indeed multilateral action spearheaded by France and the U.K., not the U.S. He clearly hopes to circumscribe the U.S. effort rather than to be drawn into another long and likely failed war. I do not back his policy, but still take note of its new characteristics. Indeed, it is optimistic to think that the Libyan attack will lead to any stability in the short run, and Obama runs the risk of having his administration defined by Afghan and Libyan quagmires.

Meanwhile Israel, the Saudi Kings, and the U.S. Republicans hew to the hard line and hope to salvage the old alliances against the Arab masses and Iran (whose influence has risen with the U.S. stalemates in Iraq and Afghanistan and alongside the Arab Spring) by using whatever force is necessary. The Republicans rail against Obama taking a back seat to France and want all out war in Libya, and cannot imagine peace with the Palestinians. The U.S. rightwing and the Israeli rightwing are lockstep.

Indeed Israel is a dangerous wild card. Fearing the loss of its main allies in the region—Turkey and Egypt—it is faced with the potential of having to choose between making substantial peace with the Arab world, starting with the Palestinians, or an even more dangerous war stance including a possible attack on Iran. Such an attack would loose entirely unpredictable forces into a Middle East already wrought by U.S. invasions and mass uprisings.

The recent unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah is a major development that accelerates and deepens the Arab Spring and the various conflicts it involves. It was brokered by the caretaker Egyptian government ushered in by the overthrow of Mubarak, demonstrating the regional, indeed global, significance of the political shift underway in Egypt.

The new unity has been denounced by Israel–and the U.S. rightwing–who may now face a united Palestinian front for the first time in decades, one that includes Hamas which the entire Western establishment has labeled “terrorist.” Palestine is once again at the center of Middle Eastern and world politics.

The Pivot of Politics

The Arab Spring is the latest demonstration of the drive of the people of the developing world to democratize their governments and empower themselves. It also highlights the complicated, multi-layered process of struggle in the developing world.

The tremendous variance in politics of the developing world gives the U.S. and the West significant room to maneuver and divide. Yet there is little doubt that, overall, this motion is increasingly limiting the power of the U.S. and is ushering out the brutal phase of history characterized by Western colonialism and imperialist domination.

The fight over the shape and pace of this inexorable process is the main battleground of history in our time, shaping both world and U.S. politics.

The varying responses of different political forces in the U.S., both within the ruling circles and within the population as a whole, lie at the root of the sharp polarization of politics in this country.

International competition is one of the root causes of the rightward motion of the economic elite over the past forty years and its attacks on the living standards of working and poor people, especially people of color, in this country. Fear of the loss of U.S. supremacy is also fundamental to the powerful rise of far right populism in that same period, especially its latest incarnation, the Tea Party. The attempt to reassert U.S. supremacy has also given rise to the gigantic increase in U.S. military spending—which has more than doubled since 2000—and murderous military adventures.

The polarization between those who are determined to reassert U.S. dominance by any means necessary—an inherently racialized notion–and those that understand that such a policy is dangerous, destructive and unrealistic is the pivotal dividing line in U.S. politics today. The racialization of politics is particularly pronounced due to the tremendous growth of people of color in the U.S. and their clear leftward politics. The right cannot win without isolating people of color and the left cannot win without mobilizing them.

To be sure there are important divisions on the center/right, between reactionary Tea Partyists and old line Republican conservatives, and on the center/left between realistic elitists and genuine progressives. I would argue that the building of a powerful progressive trend inside and outside the Democratic Party is key to exposing, splitting, and defeating the right.

However, as we undertake to build that powerful force, we must try to avoid letting the right split us from moderate allies and thereby prevail. This will be complex given the right’s momentum and the elite realists (and affluent centrists) tendency to collaborate with the right in attacking progressive-leaning social sectors even as they do battle with the right electorally and otherwise.

Only a progressive bloc that is far stronger, more combative, flexible and strategic than what we have now will have a chance to navigate this terrain. Still, the old adage, “unite the left, win over the middle, and isolate the right” was never more relevant.

The stakes are enormous for the people of the world as we enter into the 2012 political season.

Thanks to Max Elbaum for his usual insightful suggestions.

Blocking Highways! Blocking Hallways! How do we build a workers (and unemployed people) movement in the United States? Lessons from Argentina

Paul Getsos is a widely recognized expert on strategy development, organizing, leadership training and community power-building. Paul has extensive experience working at the national, state and local level. He has been a lead staff person on two national campaigns focused on jobs and unemployment and health-care reform, as well as a key strategic partner representing Community Voices Heard (an organization he co-founded) on national welfare reform, TANF re-authorization and global justice issues. He is also the co-author of Tools for a Radical Democracy. The following is reflection written by Paul Getsos on in early March when he was in Argentina studying unemployed movements, seeking for transferable lessons for U.S. based organizing.

The main objective is easy. Stop the normal operations of society. No business as usual.  Stop the means of production be it the flow of products and services or the ability of government workers to go to work.

It is simple. We need more localities, cities and towns in the United States to erupt in protest, civil disobedience and militant action demanding jobs, unemployment benefits, no cuts to poor and working people. We need working and middle class people to demand taxes on the rich and corporations and to bear the costs of education and basic services and community needs for all.

We do these things and then we can beat back the current right wing attacks and begin the long term work of  building a mass based left progressive movement that takes on corporate power and the politicians who feed at the trough of corporate contributions and then heed their will and demands.

In Argentina where the unemployed movement has been organizing for years, workers without jobs block streets to stop the transport of goods and workers.  In Albany, workers who want jobs and under-employed poor people who need government support block the halls to the State Capital. In Wisconsin, tens of thousands rally at the State Capital to preserve worker rights.

Blocking highways, blocking hallways. Marching on capitals.

Disruption of the normal flow of business is the tool that is most available to workers who have no jobs or those who are under attack.  It is the tactic that those who are part of the labor market, but who are not actively working, have at their disposal as workers. Employed workers strike or engage in slow-downs. Workers faced with firings and layoffs occupy factories. Workers without jobs block the transfer of goods, services and other workers. Its the tool that is at their disposal to force those with both economic and political power to answer to their demands.  If its jobs, cash assistance, food, or education, these tactics are key to reinforcing the identity of those without jobs as workers who are still part of the labor market.

When the hundreds of people from Community Voices Heard and NY VOCAL held banners across the entrances to the State Capital and forced state workers to take another path, they were echoing the actions of workers without jobs in La Plata, Argentina. Here 1200 people took over the main highway two weeks ago to demand that the federal government release millions of pesos for jobs programs in the state.

The protests in Albany and in La Plata included those without work, low-wage workers, students, working class supporters and retirees who saw the importance of working on this issue.  In La Plata, the two local union affiliates sent hundreds of people along to block the highway in solidarity with those seeking work.

I have been studying social movements of unemployed workers and the poor here in Argentina for 3 months. I have been meeting with organizers and leaders who have worked since the mid- 1990′s on these issues, and talking to workers and poor people themselves.

In all the various movements and organizations I have talked to,  there are four main points that those who seek to build a movement in the United States should think about when organizing around the issues of jobs, benefits and services for the poor, working and middle class.

These points are:

1. Organize people as workers and have a clear “working class identity.”

People do not want to identify as unemployed or even poor.  People are workers. Some with jobs, some without.  Some don’t have enough work to sustain themselves or to save for the future.  Some are not making enough at 40 hour a week jobs. By starting from this common identity as workers – you lay the ground for keeping people involved in political action and your organization or movement, even when they get a job.

Also it is important to redefine what a worker is and what working class means, both within your organization and as you talk about your movement to people outside of your organization. When you engage politicians, corporate targets, new members or the press use the language of working class identity for everyone that is not benefitting from the economic restructuring of society.

2. Build a Multi-Sector Movement.

Every organizer and leader I have met in Argentina told me that the thing they learned is that a multi-sector organization and movement is critical for winning enough power to win.  While it takes work, the importance of both getting people of each sector to work together on a common issue and supporting each others struggles is the key for building a strong movement.  Students, union members, retirees, welfare mothers, and workers without jobs, are all key to building enough power to take on corporate power and conservative political interests.   An example of the importance of building these multi-sectoral organizations and movements, is that when the state starts to crack down and repress the movements, broad based support will help to neutralize the repression.  When politicians work or make offers to divide and conquer the interests of each group, it will be easier to maintain a united front and have mutual support. For one another struggles.  The tactics of pueblados, when entire neighborhoods or towns go on what is essentially a general strike to support militant actions and protect the participants of these actions  against state repression is the most important result of multi-sector organizing here.

3. Organize at the local neighborhood level and engage in easy fights to win things that people say they need.

Working at the local level and building organization in the neighborhood  helps to get people working cross sector because they will ultimately work on and win things that will impact the whole community. They will learn  and understand the power of working together.  In the process of this work, they will build relationships and accountability with their neighbors. When the work, meetings and campaigns are based locally, they will more likely turn out their friends, families and neighbors to mass actions, increasing the scale of the movement. By achieving local wins, they will stay involved in the longer battles.

4. Invest the time and energy to engage in deep democratic processes and political education.

By building organizations that are democratic and rooted in the base and where community level decisions inform the larger movement, you can keep people involved for the long haul. Make sure community members are informing the campaign and making decisions about demands and tactics. Have clear organizational structures that include representation and participation from the base at every level of the larger organization.

When engaging in the work at all levels, make sure political education and critical analysis is a key component of the work. Maintain and articulate a vision beyond a single demand and one that has a vision for the world we want to build.

These are only some of the lessons from Argentina,  but these are the key ones, where people from every movement and organization agree.

These are points that might be useful to consider to those who seek to build organizations and movements that seek to address the challenges of the new economic realities in the United States, attacks on unions and workers, a jobless recovery, and attempts to dismantle the already bare boned social safety net that exists for those without work and in need.

Arab Spring Sparks Washington Scramble for Plan B

Big Brother and the Holding Company:

Turning Repression into Resistance

Ricardo Levins-Morales – veteran movement activist, artist and one of the founders of the Northland Poster Collective – shared his reflections on the implications of the recent repression of anti-war activists in the United States. He argues that we need to have three types of political response: prevention, defense and counter-offense.

The cold winds of political repression have begun to blow a little colder. The widening FBI probe of the anti-war and solidarity movements–launched with coordinated raids in Minneapolis and Chicago in September, 2010–attests to the expanding reach of Washington’s repressive apparatus. The new face of domestic repression is characterized by rapidly developing technical capacity for surveillance and data sharing, the integration of local policing into the national security system and a blurring of boundaries between private and government police functions and goals.

Repression–the use of state power to limit political action and discourse–doesn’t develop in isolation. It compensates for the weakening of other, less intrusive methods for ensuring social stability. Today it corresponds to growing economic inequality driven by the flight of manufacturing, the demolition of public sector services, the decline of union power and the ascension of a ravenous financial sector. These changes severely strain the mechanisms that maintain popular consensus.

Our task in the following pages will be to note current trends in political and social police repression, identify some of the systemic vulnerabilities they betray and to find points of leverage from which to launch a pro-democracy counteroffensive. We are experiencing a system-wide assault on the democratic public space that, besides police activity, encompasses attacks on academic expression, criminalization of whistle-blowing, corporatization of elections and hobbling the open internet. Piecemeal, defensive strategies will not be adequate. We will need to mount a challenge to the repressive enterprise as a whole. In particular I would assert that our strategy should promote solidarity and cooperation among the sectors that bear the brunt of repression but have historically remained separate in their responses.

Within days of the September raids, several hundred people turned out at a south side community church in Minneapolis to begin organizing a defense campaign. Several days later, a similar-sized crowd gathered on the city’s north side to support the family of Fong Lee, a Hmong teenager killed by police in 2006, at that time appealing his case to the US Supreme Court. Between them, these cases embody the two levels of a police-repressive system that has operated in the United States since its earliest days.

The September raids marked a shift in the “anti-terror” narrative. Until then the domestic front of the “war on terror” had targeted dark people with foreign names and accents. Almost all of the thousand or so terrorism cases pursued since 9/11 have been instances of entrapment, involving financially desperate, mentally unstable or otherwise vulnerable men in Muslim communities. These hapless individuals have been cajoled, threatened and even bribed into conspiratorial activities conceived, financed and equipped by the FBI. These prosecutions have not foiled real threats to public safety but they do “send a message” that the nation is under attack from Islam at home and abroad and must “circle the wagons” in defense.

This time the targets are US citizens, predominantly of European descent and with respectable, mostly white collar jobs; well-known in their communities for public protest and educational activities. Repression usually targets those who can easily be isolated and moves up the social ladder as it builds the case that enemies are all around us. This is the principle famously summed up by Pastor Martin Neumoller in his 1946 statement, “First they came for the Communists…” The September raids represent a rather abrupt leap up that ladder, risking an outpouring of support for their targets that has, indeed, materialized.

It has been widely noted that the raids came on the heels of a Justice Department report critical of the FBI for spying on peaceful activism. Their timing suggests a defensive move on the part of the Bureau, saying, in effect, “See, peace activists really are in league with terror!”

The report was released by the DoJ’s Inspector General under pressure from Senators, following a Pittsburgh newspaper expose. A revealing incident in its pages involves an agent sent to observe a protest organized by the pacifist Thomas Merton Center. When pressed by investigators to justify the spying, Bureau officials quickly created a false back story (complete with paper trail) to pretend that their intent was to keep tabs on Farooq Houssaini, the director of the local Islamic Center. The problem is that they had no legitimate reason to spy on Houssaini either! The officials seemed to assume that by linking the protest to a prominent member of an Ethnically Targeted Community (an ETC), they would escape criticism. A similar ploy may be discerned in the September raids; the inclusion of a single Palestinian, Hatem Abudayeh (the respected director of Chicago’s Arab American Action Network), to provide the necessary intimation of guilt (more Palestinians were targeted in a subsequent round of subpoenas).

While the DoJ report may explain the timing of the raids, their pretext flags them as a test of new police powers stemming from the Supreme Court ruling in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law. This ruling criminalizes interaction with groups deemed “terrorist” by the feds, even for the purpose of conflict resolution, investigation or humanitarian aid. This new instrument is, logically, being tested on leftist activists rather than mainstream institutions like the Carter Center which has expressed alarm over its draconian reach.

Colonial Legacy

Today’s police system has its roots in the colonial past. Control over Ethnically Targeted Communities was the operative principle of the early slave patrols and, later, of the urban militias who monitored a growing number of free black workers and Native people (whose movements were subject to a pass book system). As these organizations morphed into police departments, their mandate would evolve to include maintaining order among immigrant factory workers, keeping wages down by suppressing union agitation and, eventually, becoming the enforcement arm for corrupt political machines.  

In a racially stratified country, compliance with the social order is based on a two-tiered modality: collective management of ETCs and other low social strata, but individual treatment for offenders from the privileged classes. Charges might be pursued against a white person who disturbed the public order whereas an entire Black community would be punished if one of their own stepped out of line.

This pattern is familiar to US communities of color. It plays out in the indiscriminate rage directed at local communities when a member of the force has been shot by an unknown assailant; in post-Katrina New Orleans where the police acted as enforcers to assist white communities and suppress dark ones; in the contrasting responses to the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing and the 9/11 attacks. The first, perpetrated by white Christian racists was treated as individual criminal pathology whereas the latter unleashed a full-bodied assault on Muslim and immigrant communities which has yet to end.

A shift in police philosophy, beginning in the 1970s, places domestic policing into a frame of counterinsurgency. Rather than seeking out the perpetrators when crimes have been committed, counterinsurgency emphasizes widespread surveillance and infiltration to identify and neutralize threats before they materialize. Based as it is on a war paradigm, counterinsurgency (“COIN,” in the professional jargon) justifies police action on the basis of intent, suspicion and association rather than the higher standards of evidence associated with a crime-fighting model. Within the logic of COIN, civil society is a breeding ground for subversion, crime and terror and must be closely monitored to guard against outbreaks. There is a presumed natural progression from truancy, petty theft and political discontent to protest, organized crime and terrorism. The more effectively you disrupt these threats to stability when they are seeds, the more you will succeed in preventing their becoming thistles. Spying on and disrupting pacifist groups, mine protestors, death penalty opponents and civil libertarians, therefore, are not instances of careless overreach or poor supervision but, rather, are the purest application of counterinsurgency logic. In communities of color– where preventive disruption has long been the norm–the introduction of COIN has, through “community policing,” increased police reliance on informants to trigger reckless paramilitary home raids.

These developments fit within a broader cultural offensive aimed at dividing and disrupting civil society.   Thus we see the imposition of racist immigration laws in Arizona (to keep down labor costs and redirect white economic fears) linked to the banning of Ethnic Studies instruction (to undermine the seeds of cultural resistance).

The racialized dual structure of US policing finds expression in the deepest racial/cultural divide in our society: the chasm that cuts across public perceptions of the police. The admiration and trust for police with which white, middle class children are inculcated stands in irreconcilable contrast to the hatred and fear with which they are viewed by the young of the ETCs. These sets of perceptions are rooted in real disparities in treatment experienced in these communities. The fact that cases like Fong Lee’s (or the better-known Oscar Grant) are commonplace is not known to white USAmerica, where conflict with the police is seen as evidence of criminality. Poet Bao Phi distills it clearly:

Put a blindfold on me

Tell me who you fear

And I will tell you

Your skin.

When Fong Lee and his friends were confronted by the police, it’s not surprising that his impulse would be to get away. Officer Jason Anderson, an officer with a brutal history, chased Lee around a school building, shooting him eight times. A handgun which materialized later turned out to have come from storage in a Police Department evidence room. As a young member of an ETC, it would be assumed by the white public that he must have done something pretty bad to attract police bullets. The attorneys for the city exploited this bias by repeating the word “gang” as many times as possible in connection with Fong’s name while excluding evidence of the officer’s anti-Asian racism and penchant for brutality.

An Expanding Web

Racial and political repression is systematized through vast databases that have morphed into virtual maps of their respective social sectors. State-level gang databases are, like lobster traps, easy to get into but difficult to leave. In some states saggy pants and hip-hop sensibilities are enough to flag you as gang-connected and that, in turn, implicates your friends. For young people in trouble with the legal system, a gang “association” can bring enhanced penalties. Anti-dissident databases are equally sweeping in scope. Data collected from direct surveillance and infiltration, commercial sources, phone, car rental and travel records, public sources (such as Facebook) and past investigations are amalgamated through over seventy regional, state and city “fusion centers.” These are staffed by police and agents from multiple agencies alongside private security contractors (who are conveniently exempt from oversight laws). The resulting map of personal connections and associations identifies key hubs of activism for closer inspection.

Revelations involving fusion centers in Missouri, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Los Angeles and Texas, among others, expose a systematic pattern of spying on legal activity. In some cases the data is collected with the assistance of corporations who are the targets of protests and who, in turn, receive intelligence reports about their critics. An inadvertently posted memo from the director of Homeland Security in Pennsylvania highlights this cozy relationship: “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies.”

Driving the expansion of police powers is a decline in the global position of the US, shifts in its racial makeup and growing inequality globally and locally. The accelerated integration of private and public police functions reflects a parallel integration of corporations and government at all levels, from the federal cabinet (composed increasingly of executives from the most powerful corporate sectors); to legislatures selected with unlimited private contributions; to the leadership and staff of regulatory agencies. This merger has given rise to a brazen kleptocracy in which corporate criminality carries little risk of punishment while those who expose or protest it are treated as insurgents.

Growing inequality and impoverishment produce three predictable responses from the base of the social pyramid: protest, crime and psychological/emotional breakdown. These expressions of social distress–not the systemic exploitation which engenders them–are the problems which an expanded police universe is assigned to contain. All of these challenges will increase as a returning stream of psychologically and physically wounded war veterans collides with a drastically downsized social safety net.

Into this volatile mix corporations have poured hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsor a resurgence of right wing political action. The agenda of the new rightist groups is to support corporate-friendly measures (dressed up as defenses of personal liberty) and to pin the blame for societal collapse on vulnerable populations. Counterinsurgency policing exactly complements this conservative agenda by disrupting the opponents of corporate power and suppressing the responses (organized or random) of the hardest hit communities. There is a high degree of overlap between the targets of hate radio and its vigilante followers and those of Homeland Security and the repression-technology complex.

Stripped of its ideological baggage, the grievances of the Tea Party rank and file can be summarized as: “things are getting worse and I’m being treated unfairly.” The right wing sound machine directs these sentiments into resentment toward “elites” who conspire with brown people, foreigners, queers and the parasitic poor to deprive white citizens of all they have worked so hard for. The same frustrations (albeit with a different narrative) are experienced in the marginalized communities that came out of the shadows to elect Obama only to find him expanding the policies they had rejected. Whatever the actual reality, the idea of fair play is deeply engrained in US culture. Painful as financial hardship is in its own right, the perception that there are privileged people who rate special treatment is what turns frustration into rage.

Evidence of impunity stares us in the face every day although different expressions of it are visible to us depending on where we stand: Wall street gamblers unleash massive social destruction and are rewarded with the keys to the treasury; BP destroys the Gulf ecology and is protected by the government; police kill unarmed youth, falsify the evidence and face no punishment; Blackwater mercenaries massacre civilians and are spared prosecution; an investment banker crashes his car into a cyclist and faces reduced charges because the prosecutor feels that a felony record could have “serious job implications for someone in (his) profession” ; simple consumer purchases and services come wrapped in complex agreements that allow companies to change the rules at will; wars are unleashed on the basis of faked evidence and kidnapping and torture are routinized with no consequences to the perpetrators; Dick Cheney and Haliburton slip free of criminal bribery charges in Nigeria by paying a fine smaller than the original bribes; retirement benefits guaranteed in union contracts are gutted with court approval to protect shareholder investments; police beat, raid, frame and harass on the street with little concern for fallout even when caught on video; insurance executives who deny needed treatment to the ill and injured remain free and powerful. Those who protest or resist these injustices are the ones that face investigation and harassment at the hands of the criminal justice system.

Turning the Tables

The repressive universe has grown quickly and haphazardly, post-9/11, creating a profusion of organizations and a confusion of interests. Such uncontrolled growth creates its own contradictions and vulnerabilities. Foremost among these is the size and technological prowess of the system itself. Unassailable superiority easily leads to “power blindness”; an overreliance on a few blunt tools to control a complex and changing cultural reality. This has proven the downfall of US ambitions in Iraq and Afghanistan; its lopsided advantage led planners to assume they could roll a massive military machine across these societies without regard to their cultures, history and traditions. As I observed in a 2003 piece (The Return of History), this weakness would doom the occupation virtually from the start. What an opponent considers its great strength may be its Achilles heel.

The full spectrum nature of the repressive assault produces another unintended consequence. It largely removes the option of seeking personal safety by staying below the government radar. Even seemingly inoffensive activity falls within the purview of the national security state now under construction. That construction must be blocked and reversed or it will continue to besiege the shrinking democratic space.

This sets the stage for exactly the kind of political challenge that repression is meant to prevent: the building of broad alliances among segments of society that are traditionally fragmented but who can perceive an increasing danger to their own interests.

The simple answer to this stark challenge is that we must organize. But piecemeal, or defensive, organizing is rarely effective in the face of a systemic assault. For challenge on this scale, organizing efforts need to be harmonized within a common counteroffensive. An ensemble of jazz musicians all playing at once must either coalesce around a common theme or they end up at cross purposes, unable to convey a coherent message. This is one of the keys to the right’s rise to power: while we were coming up with brilliant solos, they established a few common themes with which to unify their multiple campaigns into a unified current.

Following are examples of tactics that can begin to shift the initiative. They are meant to fulfill three requirements: to capture the attention of communities impacted by repression in its various forms; to immediately put our opponents on the defensive and; to unite our friends and divide our enemies. The mechanism can be called “guerrilla legislation.” It takes the lawmaking process–often seen as a way to steer popular aspirations into safe channels–and turns it into a flashpoint for organizing. Distinct from organizing itself, these initiatives function like the lead goose in a formation: to point the direction and create a “wind shadow” with which organizing campaigns can align themselves. The Republican representatives who voted to repeal the health reform bill knew that the gesture would not be successful in the sense of passing the measure. It was more important to advance the story.

The easiest point of entry for these measures would be to have them introduced by friendly legislators at the appropriate levels of government. Their utility derives from the favorable polarization they create and does not depend on their passing.

1)    The Integrity in Law Enforcement Bill. This measure will impose harsh penalties on police, prosecutors, coroners or other employees, officials and subcontractors of the policing world if found guilty of pursuing contrived charges; falsifying, planting or concealing evidence; or soliciting or engaging in perjury for the purpose of securing a conviction or who bring charges against any person or group of persons with the intent of stifling or discouraging political dissent. Police and politicians can neither support nor oppose such a bill without undermining their own legitimacy.

2) The International Peace and National Security Act. A federal bill making it “the legal equivalent of treason” to manufacture evidence; present false testimony before Congress; plant deliberately false information in the media for the purpose of involving the United States in a state of military or covert conflict with state or non-state entities outside of its borders. Failing to report such criminal activity will be an enhanced felony. Simply forcing Congressional hearings on such a bill would rivet international media attention as well as galvanize the anger of families of fallen soldiers. The prospect of the death penalty could have a sobering effect on mid-level functionaries called upon to carry out the routine but illegal tasks of empire. Being forced to respond to this reasonable proposal would place the White House and Congress in an untenable dilemma both domestically and internationally.

3) The Health and Wellbeing Under Confinement Act. This will make it a serious felony to deny medical treatment, access to medications or necessary nutrition or activity to anyone held in the criminal justice or immigration detention systems or any other institutions of involuntary confinement. Such inhumane practices are widespread. This issue will resonate deeply in both immigrant and US-born communities of color.

4)    Freedom from Entrapment Act. Manufacturing a crime for the purpose of prosecuting people who otherwise would not have committed one will constitute a major offense, triggering serious prison time and lifetime banishment from law enforcement.

5)    Other measures will criminalize the diversion of public police and security resources to the service of private interests (as in the Pennsylvania DHS case).

These proposals would all include a “betrayal of public trust” sentencing enhancement modeled on the “gang enhancements” which are used to extend prison time of poor youth of color. Public and police officials, who like to claim that police abuse is the work of “a few bad apples,” would be invited to endorse these clean-up measures.

The theatricality of these ideas aside, they take aim at official impunity and stimulate deeply held grievances; exposing the gaping chasm between what they must say and what they must do. If no elected officials can be found to introduce such legislation it will illuminate the moral distance between them and their constituents. A public campaign to force these bills onto the agenda would echo the 1789-1791 demands for inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. The grievances embodied in these proposals are as deeply felt as those which fuelled popular anger in 1789. Such efforts would resonate in the community and “ethnic” media which are relatively independent of corporate control and are relied on by tens of millions in the most affected communities. They would also bolster local struggles. The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal from Fong Lee’s family for a retrial of his killer. The legal arguments presented by Minneapolis’ attorneys relied on the statements of officer Anderson –by then fired for lying under oath in another case.  Had the case come to the Court against the backdrop of a national movement against police impunity it might have seemed more compelling for the Justices to consider.

Dividing the Dividers

Following the decline of the urban political machines, police departments emerged as the most powerful component of city government, overshadowing the mayors and city councils to which they supposedly answer. Since 9/11 they have become increasingly integrated into the national security apparatus centered in the Department of Homeland Security. “National Security Events” such as Democratic and Republican conventions and ministerial meetings are used to accelerate this process. Local police and sheriff departments are showered with shiny military-style hardware, advanced training, direct lines of communication to the feds and the new, exciting self-image of frontline troops in the war on terror. This further weakens the leverage of city governments, who find themselves sidelined as “their” police align themselves ever more with Washington. This parallels how the training and weaponry lavished on Latin American militaries in the 1970s and 80s produced an officer corps more loyal to Washington than to its respective governments. City councils today end up as  little more than liability insurers to their police, doling out large cash settlements in brutality and wrongful death settlements but wielding little influence over the departments themselves.

The national security universe is comprised of over 1,200 government entities and almost 2,000 private companies competing, cooperating, sharing and withholding data, often attempting to enhance their standing by exaggerating the supposed threats they are uncovering. (The Ramsey County Sherriff’s Department, which spearheaded harassment of activists opposing the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota, claimed to have investigated 22 domestic and 11 international terrorist groups operating in its jurisdiction in 2009–figures which turned out to be fabrications.) Databases are riddled with inaccuracies and bloated with useless entries. Local police departments sacrifice strategic coherence in their scramble to re-define such distinct phenomena as gang violence, organized crime and political speech as sub-categories of anti-terrorism. This complex landscape–and the full spectrum assault on civil liberties which underlies it–gives rise to divisions inside and out of the police sector.

In the big picture, repression serves to keep people disorganized and divided, thus holding down labor costs and regulations and preventing civil society from competing with the top 1% for resources. The current wave is part of a concerted effort to roll back the era of reform ushered in with the New Deal almost a century ago. This agenda can be seen in the current offensive against public sector unions, intended to eradicate unionism altogether as a factor in society; preparations to erode social security and Medicare; the Presidential green light to corporations to dismantle inconvenient regulations; and the engineering of budget crises to justify gutting popular public services.

As a practical matter, repression depends on fomenting division, fear, confusion and isolation among marginalized communities and political movements. It only works when we obligingly become divided, fearful, confused and isolated. Repressive agencies do not aim to imprison everyone who harbors dissenting thoughts. Instead they target the few so as to frighten the many. In fact, repression is never completely effective because the very conditions that make it necessary will continually generate new resistance. Their hope is to disable democratic protections sufficiently that whatever opposition emerges can be prevented from becoming a political force.

Three levels of response are called for:

1)    Prevention: preparing activists and communities to identify and resist divisive tactics, intimidation and entrapment;

2)    Defense: supporting and defending those singled out for persecution; and

3)    Counter-offense: building a movement across traditional social barriers that targets the sources of repressive power and legitimacy.

It is a useful exercise from time to time to try and see ourselves as our opponents see us. The resources which the government is devoting to the repressive endeavor make clear that it sees in our nascent movements and battered communities a serious threat to be contained. Our custom on the US left of seeing only our own weaknesses and our opponents’ strength does not serve us well. The advantage in political conflict does not accrue to the side with the greatest technological and financial might but to the side that can seize and retain the initiative. This is clearly understood by the right, which is setting the national political agenda by defining and fighting for a set of values. The left, in contrast, fights mostly defensive battles, hoping against the evidence that the liberal wing of the establishment will provide the leadership which we ourselves have abdicated. This is of particular importance in relation to repression, where a liberal White House is championing the both protection of state secrecy and the eradication of personal privacy (to the extreme of claiming a right to order extrajudicial assassinations of enemies foreign or domestic).

A reckless corporate feeding frenzy has thrown families out of their homes, workers out of their jobs and students into debt. The current trajectory is aimed at evicting all but a small, bloated elite from the governance of society, a course which will lead to still greater inequality. The national security-police-prison complex has been assigned the impossible task of ensuring that this process goes smoothly. Its primary mission is to prevent the emergence of effective solidarity within and between domestic communities and with the international victims of the same exploitative policies. Challenging repression, however, can open new avenues for building that very solidarity. Just as President Nixon demonstrated that the cover-up can be more damning than the original crime, so repression can be the Achilles heel of a regime that comes to rely on it. Mistreatment at the hands of the police has more than once sparked youth-led movements, organizations and uprisings in the US and beyond that quickly draw attention to the injustices it was intended to defend. How we rise to the challenge will determine, more than any other factor, whether today’s chill wind will usher in a new ice age.

Harmony Goldberg interviewed Cindy Wiesner for Organizing Upgrade in February 2010.

Let’s start with a reflection on the last US Social Forum (USSF).  What were the major accomplishments of the last forum in 2007?

First, it was important that we imported, integrated and adapted the Social Forum model from the global movement to the United States.  Sometimes, movements in the United States work in a chauvinistic way and try to tell the rest of the world what to do.  In this case, however, we were able to learn from the World Social Forum process that was developed by social movements since 2001 in the Global South to strengthen our movement building work here in the United States.  More than twelve thousand people came to the first US Social Forum in Atlanta in 2007 which was organized around the theme that not only is another world was possible, but that another US is necessary.  In our generation, the USSF was an incredibly diverse 5-day gathering in terms of representation of people who are often marginalized both in society and in the left.  We also had a breadth of political ideologies present and most sectors of the progressive and left movement.  And overall everyone brought their best selves forward.  That does not mean that there was not struggle, difference or opportunism. But the way the National Planning Committee of the USSF modeled different ways to deal with movement contradictions was impressive. We collectivized problem solving in the way that we dealt with the multiple flares and fallouts: we self-reflected publicly when we were wrong; we challenged people gently but clearly; and most importantly we held the importance and integrity of the whole event at the forefront of our actions.

The Social Forum is introducing a new methodology on why and how people need to come together. It invites us to unite under key principles of diversity, inclusion, democracy, plurality, transversal integration of issues and thematics to name a few. It is a 5-day event that encourages convergence of social movements to deeply engage with each other and to cross-fertilize our work.  The organizations and individuals that participated in the first USSF were incredibly transformed by the experience of that gathering; it began to break us out of the silos that we had been stuck in for the past twenty years.

A number of alliances were either launched or formed at the first US Social Forum.  People often talk about the inspiring launches of the Right to the City Alliance and the National Domestic Workers Alliance that took place at the 2007 Forum, but there is a whole laundry list of other formations and collaborations that were born or took a leap there. For example, the Solidarity Economy Network utilized the last Forum as an opportunity to start a dialogue on alternative economic models in the US, and they convened the first Solidarity Economy forum a year later.  The organizing process towards the last Social Forum also helped to cultivate a stronger relationship-building process among organizations in the Southeast; from the Southeast Social Forum process  (which happened in North Carolina one year prior to the USSF) that laid the groundwork for ongoing Southern Strategy meetings hosted at the Highlander Center. There were also important dialogues that started at the last Social Forum among the queer left and the Black left, dialogues where organizers strategized about bringing a more radical lens to the work and developing stronger organizing in their communities. We also had the largest Family Reunion of former prisoners and their families at the USSF. There are countless examples of movement building processes that occurred: the Freedom caravans from the Southwest to Georgia; having International companer@s present and participating in the debates about what’s next; and countless tents and spaces that were created for people to attend and learn about different issues and communities.

Can you give a brief update on the state of the organizing towards the next social forum?

We are nearing 100 days from the start of the second US Social Forum, which will be held in Detroit, Michigan. Detroit is the perfect site for the next Social Forum. Like New Orleans, Detroit represents the impact of government abandonment of our communities.  In Detroit, we see more than thirty years of deindustrialization and more than thirty years of government abandonment and complete disregard of a city that is more than 90% African American. It is ground zero of the economic crisis and corporate collusion with the auto-industry bailout.  But Detroit is also a site of true resilience; there are so many inspiring examples of how communities have responded to exploitation and abandonment by creating alternatives.  For example, there are no major supermarkets in Detroit. Knowing that their communities needed healthy food and fresh vegetables, community organizations and food justice movement in Detroit have built more than 300 community gardens.  They’ve taken a “dual power” approach, understanding that we need to more than just fight the government and the corporations, but that we also need to begin to create alternatives. Detroiters have a deep and long history of workplace organizing: militant strikes; a strong dissident UAW rank-and-file movement; the very inspirational history of black workers in DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) challenging not only the auto factories but also the white led unions. It is also the home of Grace Lee Boggs and the incredible work Detroit Summer has been doing with youth leadership and organizing. It is going to be very powerful for people to come to Detroit and see that legacy and the current work on alternative models.

The National Planning Committee of the USSF is working to make some key advances in the organizing model of the Forum. The strength of the social forum model has been that it is an “open space,” that it’s a big tent where you can encourage self-organized participation and leadership from different sectors of the movement. But there has also been self-reflection about the limits of the model both internationally and nationally. People have been saying that we need more than just open space, that we need to come together to have a real conversation about where our movements are at and to figure out a way to work more strategically against neoliberal policies and practices.  We need to ask ourselves: Have we been able to interrupt privatization?  Have we been able to stop these trade agreements?  Have we been able to protect workers rights and increase environmental rights? We’ve seen global capital act very smart and adapt to changing conditions; we also need to be flexible and strategic in our work. The hemispheric movement against the Free Trade Area of the Americas won, but the US created new strategies around pushing their agenda through regional and bi-lateral agreements between countries in Latin America and the U.S.  In this USSF, we are trying to figure out how to respect the diversity of the movement and how to uphold that concept of the open space but also to find a way to have movement take a sober look at where we at in terms of relevance and power in this country. We need to ask ourselves:  What are our visions for moving forward? What alternatives do we need to create, and what campaigns do we need to build to be clearer around the failures of capitalism?  Clearly, that vision can’t be dictated by the Social Forum’s National Planning Committee.  So that’s where the different veins of the movements, the organizations and collectives have to come together and be prepared for that kind of conversation this summer in Detroit. What we’ve been encouraging people to figure out is, “How can your movement come to the Social Forum with a plan? How can you come to the Social Forum with some self-reflection about where you need to grow, what are our limitations as a movement? How can you use the Social Forum to gain new insights and new political alignments?”  That’s the opportunity. People shouldn’t just come to the Social Forum to showcase their own work; people should utilize the space to do that strategic alignment work with each other. We may never get full unity on strategy or even on tactics, but can the US movement act with a little bit more cohesion? Can the movement come to see itself as moving in generally the same direction? Can we increase our militancy on the streets to fight the state and the right? Can we practice not only the language of what we are for, but continue to grapple what it means to create alternative models in a capitalist country?

Organizations and movements should come prepared with some clear political interventions that they want to make.  For example, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance – an alliance of grassroots organizations rooted in working class and communities of color around the United States – will be promoting the idea that we need a stronger internationalist approach to our work.  Our member organizations have been deeply transformed by participating in past World Social Forums where we have learned so much from our compañeras and compañeros from the Global South – from the landless peoples movements in Brazil and international feminist organizations to the experiments with democratic governance in Bolivia and Venezuela.  So we’re working to make sure that the US Social Forum is not U.S.-centric and that we can push ourselves to think on a global level while simultaneously working locally.  We’ll be doing that by organizing discussions and debates with grassroots leaders from the US along with our International allies representing social movements, we want to have discussions about building power and creating alternatives, articulating demands with a global vision and practice that is grounded in our mass work.

We also want to promote the voices and leadership of the people who are directly impacted by neoliberalism here in the United States: low income tenants, excluded workers, working class youth, immigrants, queers and communities impacted by gentrification and so on. It is important to keep shifting the paradigm on who are the experts; frontline leaders not only have the lived experience but also are critical and conscious forces that bring forward the vision.  We feel like we really succeeded in promoting those voices and actual presence at the last Social Forum, and that’s something that we want to be very intentional about continuing to bring to the social forum process. This is not to say that left intellectuals are not key; they absolutely are. But we want to expand the notion of who are the visionaries, tacticians and strategists.

Can you describe some of the events that will take place at the Social Forum to give people a sense of what it’s going to be like?

We’re experimenting with some exciting new technologies.   At the World Social Forum in Belem, there was something called “Belem Expanded.”  So we’re doing a process called “Detroit Expanded.” People who can’t actually get to the Social Forum can submit workshops under “Detroit Expanded,” so that there will be Social Forum activities happening all over the US and even internationally. We’re figuring out ways to use technology so that we can have videoconferences with other people in the US and with people around the world.  “Detroit Expanded” will multiply our numbers and the reach of our dialogues and exchange.

The People’s Movement Assembly (PMA) will also be an important process.  The PMA comes out of the World Social Forum process where different social movements felt the “open space” principle of the Social Forum was not enough but also wanted a process where they could come out more of a clear critique of the dominant economic system and put forward ideas for collective action. So they created the “Social Movement Assembly” as a space where movements – like indigenous peoples movements, youth movements or the women’s movement – could deliberate and actually propose concrete action.  For example, the largest simultaneous global action in history – the protest against the Iraq war in February 2003 – came out of a Social Movement Assembly.  People were able to organize in their own countries and their own communities around the war, but they were united by that shared call to action. So in Detroit, we are “upgrading” the Social Forum model to include a PMA process within the Social Forum before, during and after.  At the USSF, we’re asking groups to have strategic discussions within their sectors and/or regions throughout the four days of the Forum so that we can have that level of concrete output during the People’s Movement Assembly on the last day.  For example, the anti-war movement could think about using that process to gain some collective agreement on a joint action, whether it’s around Afghanistan or Iraq or Palestine. We will not get 100% strategic unity, but at least there can be some level of common action coming out of the USSF. If some sections of the anti-war movement could begin to have conversations now and then use the Social Forum process to gain some level of unity towards a proposal, then they could put out a call to the broader movement during the PMA.  Then people who aren’t always up in the anti-war movement can go home and say, “Hey, there’s going to be a national day of action around the war on this day with these set of demands.” That would be a way to that the anti-war movement could gain a higher level of support and buy-in from other movements.  That’s just one concrete example of what the PMA process is set up to do, but there could be People’s Movement Assembly process where different movements could come forward with resolutions and statements around the economic, environmental, political and cultural crises.

What is the long-term trajectory for the US Social Forum?  Do you think they should continue in their current form, or do you think we need something else?

To be clear, I am now going to speak from my own personal perspective.  I think that the Social Forum process is a very useful tool and vehicle. I think it is the most powerful one we have in the US for now. The organizing process itself has been an important way to learn how other people work, to build trust and unity even though we might come from different political backgrounds and use different political frameworks and different language There is no other space that actually pushes people into interaction with such a broad and diverse grouping of organizations and movement sectors. We sometimes do more colliding that coming together, but this part of the struggle of learning how to work together and build trust (or to be clear you don’t actually want to work together).  It gives us a way to see who is in motion, who is accountable to a base, to hear peoples’ political analyses of the moment, to learn about peoples work.  This year, the USSF is going to be particularly crucial. It will be a year and a half since the economic bubble burst and the global crisis began. It will be a year and half since Obama got elected and the visible resurgence of the right-wing.  Movement forces really need this moment to come together to assess the impact of all those transitions, to talk about where we’re at and where we need to go from here.  We need to honor the value of that kind of space for dialogue and strategic reflection.  We don’t have that on a national level.

But I’m not convinced that we should have permanent Social Forums or that they necessarily have to happen every three years. They take an immense amount of time, energy and resources to plan, and we need to be clear that we’re putting that energy in the right place. Ultimately, the biggest question is that we are in a race against time with the economic crisis and the ecological destruction that the globe is facing.  I don’t know if we can continue having a process for the sake of process.  I think that the future of the Social Forum needs to be dependent on its strategic value to the movement in the US and globally and I think that the movement needs to mandate that this process and space is needed and help support its ongoing development. And, if it is the case that people want to keep the Forum process going, then the movement in this country needs to help resource this process and support the organizations that are taking up the work to maintain and lead it.  But we cannot keep doing this without the explicit investment of the people most impacted by all multi-dimensional crises both here and globally.

The first Social Forum showed us that we could come together, that all of the people who are often marginalized in left and progressive spaces – people of color, working class folks, immigrants, young people, queers, disabled folks – could lead a massive movement-building process.  We need to meet and exceed that qualitative goal, but the challenge for the Detroit Forum is to answer the question of “What’s next? And how do we get there?”  Maybe we need another Social Forum in 3 years, but we need to be mindful that nothing is permanent and that the only reason that we should do another Social Forum is if it has a purpose and helps advance the movement. It’s important for us to keep grounding the lessons and values of Social Forum process with a clear political purpose and meeting our overall objectives. I want to share the NPC’s overall goals for USSF 2010.  These were updated from 2007. These are our benchmarks, the visions that we hold all of our work accountable to:

• Create a space for social movement convergence and strategic discussion
• Advance a social movements agenda for action and transformation
• Build stronger relationships and collaboration between movements
• Deepen our commitment to international solidarity and common struggle
• Strengthen local capacity to improve social conditions, organizing and movement building in Detroit

The Social Forum should not be a carnival of workshops or activities. It can actually become a place where our organizations and movements can come to understand ourselves as having collective power and most importantly, take action. We can see that model so clearly in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Last year, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance was honored to be invited to a discussion with presidents from some of the ALBA countries – Evo Morales, Huge Chavez, Fernando Lugo and Rafael Correa- that had been organized by the social movements at the Belem World Social Forum.  Morales and Chavez said to the audience, “We are nothing without you, the social movements. We are only here because of the work that you have done in this last decade – electing us, pushing your left agendas.  You are the ones making sure that we’re pressing forward and building alternatives to neoliberalism and US imperialism, that we all in our different roles are making that other world possible.”  To see that tide turning in Latin America and the Caribbean has been very inspiring. That’s not to say that there’s not problems or issues in those countries, but people and movements have been able to make significant changes in the economic and political systems that they live. And that didn’t happen because one left leader got elected.  Social movements have been working for decades to make that possible.  And now that work is started to manifest, both at the level of national elections but at the level of really powerful changes in people’s daily living conditions and social relations. Those social movements were clear that they were working to construct that new world and that it does not end with a left leaning elected official. They have fought for that world to come into being, and they are starting to win.  We need to be that audacious at this next US Social Forum.  We need to bring bold questions, but – even more importantly – we need to start putting forward bold solutions.  Our communities, the land, our international companñer@s are demanding it.

Another World is Possible!

Another US is Necessary!

Another Detroit is Happening!

www.ussf2010.org, help build the road to Detroit. June 22-26, 2010

Cindy Wiesner, is a queer working class Latina originally from Hollywood, CA. A community activist and organizer for the last 20 years. She has organized with HERE (Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union) Local 2850 and POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights). She worked as a trainer and organizer for GenerationFIVE. Has served on the boards of the Youth Empowerment Center, Women of Color Resource Center and GenerationFIVE. Cindy was also the leadership development director at the Miami Workers Center and currently is the political coordinator for Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ). She represents GGJ on the National Planning Committee of the US Social Forum and also on the Hemispheric Council of the Americas Social Forum and the International Council of the World Social Forum. www.ggjalliance.org

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

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!

Interviewed by Joseph Phelan and Sushma Sheth

What is new about the current political context, especially as part of the Obama era?

Since January 20, 2009, we have experienced what feels like an unprecedented shift and have [probably] assumed that it is a function of a refreshing Obama Administration. However, the major shift that we feel is the absence of a revolutionary Bush Administration. Bush’s tenure as President marked the most revolutionary era because for the first time in modern history, our head of state supplanted secular language, otherwise mandated by the Establishment Clause, with religious language in discussing matters of foreign and domestic policy.

True, all elected officials are expected to accept a religious framework, imagine a President ending his talk with “May humanity bless America!” But that invocation is meant to be personal—an individual moral compass—no one is obligated to mention God, Christ, the Bible or its counterparts during their political leadership except during moments of national crisis or grief. This was not the case with George W.

His religio-political lexicon initiated a domestic polarization among American society that freshly crystallized and emboldened a long-standing identity: Whiteness in its nativist form.

We basically saw a White American identity emerge in a vacuum—absent the context of other salient socio-political issues like economic systems and the maldistribution of wealth and resources.  It rose as an identity based primarily on cultural values. The emergence of such a reductionist identity influenced a shift in political discourse in the United States wherein culture, as opposed to other distinguishing markers, came to dominate political analysis.

Here we have neither an attribution to race or class, but instead to a white identity that it is not about whiteness as a construct but about a white nativist culture, and particular cultural markers being attributed to whiteness. This is a scary shift that unfortunately has not waned with Obama’s assumption of the Presidential office. To the contrary, his Presidency makes this shift starker, precisely because of the racial and cultural implications of his Presidency.

Consider the predominance of cultural paradigms in the discussion of the “war on terror.” The rise of terrorist attacks was described by pundits as a “clash of civilizations,” which attributes terrorism to a certain people and not to the act of inflicting politically motivated violence against civilians. So it is “terrorism” if x, y, or z performs the violent act and/or it is terrorism if a, b, or c suffered from these violent acts. Especially in Bush’s cultural framework, but certainly preceding it as well, terrorism in the Middle East has not referred to the categorization of unacceptable forms of violence but instead to cultural groupings; there are those people who have the privilege to point at what terrorism is and those who could only be its perpetrators and never its victims.

This permeates the work that I do in the Arab and Muslim world.  Discussions concerning conflicts throughout North Africa, the Levant, the Gulf, and even into Afghanistan and Pakistan, which Bush included in the “New Middle East,” were no longer attributed to political conditions, as they would be in any other nation.  So whether the issue was war, the economy, jobs, refugee status, stress on limited resources, the discussions around conflicts in the Arab and Muslim world became explicitly attributed to culture.  For example, commentary about violent intra-national struggle over limited resources, did not emphasize a global food shortage. Instead, under Bush-speak, such violence was attributed to barbarism. I think that this was in fact the trend that defines our current era, more than the Obama Administration.

In fact, the Obama Administration has the unintended potential to make it worse. I think the polarization within the U.S. will become more stark and will be led by those who have a lot to gain from an inflammatory cultural discourse and who see that, under the leadership of a Black son of an African immigrant, they are steadily losing what they had gained. Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, and others calling for the failure of Obama are leading that trend.  This call for failure is not driven by partisan loyalties, but by cultural ones and it concerns what it means to be “American.”

That makes our work much more difficult. We clearly never organize along reductionist terms. To the contrary, we’ve developed a complex social justice lexicon that sees privilege operate on several axes with multiple intersections. While I am not advocating that we alter our discourse, the fact that we may be speaking to an audience that cannot hear us presents a clear challenge.

Bush’s other outstanding legacy was his supplanting of diplomacy with militarism.  Militarism has historically constituted the U.S.’s primary form of global engagement, however it became more pronounced during Bush’s two-term Administration. As an aside,  Obama has reverted the U.S,  back to the status quo of “reasonable militarism,” wherein we can fight a ‘just’ war in Afghanistan but not Iraq.

In Palestine, Bush’s “might makes right” approach did little to alter the realities on the ground. Palestinians have been enduring colonialism since 1948 and military occupation since 1967—structural violence shaped by race and culture (i.e., apartheid) has defined Palestinian existence.  So while Bush’s era accelerated the swift acceptance of Israel’s elastic security discourse, the difference was a matter of degree and not of kind.

Our challenges have to do more with a critical coming of age in the aftermath of Yasser Arafat’s death.  Despite his questionable leadership in a post-Oslo era, Arafat was a charismatic leader with the ability to both unite Palestinian identities despite our fragmentation as well as balance calls statehood and self-determination, which are not one in the same.  Without forgiving him of his deleterious impact on the Palestinian liberation movement, Arafat’s death and the consequent absence of a national liberation program has represented our primary challenge.

The grassroots work that I do seeks to create a united Palestinian identity that is transcendent of political factionalism. My work is also aimed at empowering our Palestinian diaspora to represent itself and effectively resuscitate an international leadership in the form of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

In the work that I do aimed at a broader American audience, and not just a Palestinian one, we are trying to encourage taxpayers to challenge U.S. Middle East policy in an era when  the two state solution has achieved political consensus.  It is now controversial to negate Palestinian statehood, when for most Palesinians, two states is not necessarily what we want at all.  The bantustinization of the West Bank, the Judeazation of Jerusalem, and the ghettoization of Gaza renders the two state solution unrealistic as opposed to what some commentators may deem “pragmatic.” We seek to be self-determined, afforded with the ability to govern ourselves and determine our own fates rather than be subject to Israeli prerogatives.

While Obama has made finding a resolution to the Palestinian-Israel conflict a priority—evidenced by his grappling with the issue in his first term in office—he has not challenged long-standing U.S. foreign policy towards Israel. The U.S. has been opposed to Israeli settlement expansion officially since 1993 when the Bush Senior Administration oversaw the enactment of a public law that reduces loan guarantees to Israel by the amount spent on settlements. It would be refreshing and beneficial if Obama used his Presidential tenure to add texture to the discussion of the Palestinian-Israel conflict by addressing its colonial roots and racist and exclusionary dimensions. Still how far Obama can push is also contingent on how much a U.S.-based movement can push him.

Sadly, political mobilization of our communities has not been an option.  We haven’t had the privilege to push Congress to support Obama in meaningful ways because we’ve been overwhelmed by other concerns namely the fact that we are being starved, with near global unanimity, in Gaza,  strangled in the West Bank because of the expanding colonization project,  and within Israel, the Palestinian citizens of Israel are facing a right-wing rise that some may describe as fascist.

You mention the right-wing political movement within Israel. I met anti-occupation Israelis and heard that that movement is at a low level.  Bill Fletcher spoke about how one of reaction to Obama domestically is an opportunity for the left but also a huge opportunity for the right to consolidate power and move that agenda.  The situation in Israel and Palestine are different but I am wondering why we are seeing the rise of the right-wing and fascist element?

I agree with Bill about the rise in the US.  It is fear for the loss of privilege as a function of a redefinition of an exclusionary American identity. The Republican Party is consolidating its power and purging its own ranks of those that do not fit into that identity.  What it will mean to be a Republican within a short time frame, two to four years, will be much different than what has meant in the past.  It will not just be about small government and fiscal conservatism anymore.

In Israel, the rise of fascism is a sign of weakness. A last ditch resort to maintain power when hegemony begins to crumble. For decades Israel has used a security paradigm to justify even its most horrific military operations, including its involvement in the 1982 massacre of nearly 3,000 Palestinians in Sabra/Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. However, Israel has normalized its relationships either politically and/or economically with the Arab world thereby diluting its security argument and exposing its military operations as brute force meant to pound dissenters into submission; this policy, more formally known as the “Iron Fist” policy is the legacy of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a 20^th century Revisionist Zionist leader.  Therefore, as Israel’s image of a weak David in the face of a menacing Arab Goliath fades so too does its moral authority in the region.

In addition to economic and political normalization with the Arab world, Israel has come to share similar interests with other Arab states as a result of aggressive US interventionist policies in the past decade.

Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the March 14^th forces of Lebanon, and Fatah of the Palestinian leadership together constitute what the Bush Administration configured into a “New Middle East.” These compose the “American bloc.” They believe their futures are intertwined with US interests.

The counterpart to this American bloc is represented by political Islamic movements and their supporters, namely Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.  Traditionally, Leftist movements would have constituted the political opposition, however in the Cold War’s aftermath and the fall of the Soviet Union, we saw a quick decline and fading political, as opposed to social, relevance of the Left. There no longer exists financial support to support an Arab socialist movement, a communist movement or any type of leftist movement. Their own agenda seemed to have failed with the fall of the Soviet Union leaving very few alternatives. They are weak and prey to authoritarian regimes.

The only segment of society that could counter that authoritarian drumbeat has been the political Islamic movement. This is because the religious movement cannot be killed. It is based on god, worship, and piety.  Moreover, many of these Muslim movements have focused on building a constituent base as opposed to strictly engaging the existing political establishment. In effect, they’ve implemented a grassroots indoctrination approach that marries politics and religious morals; a process, which makes politics both very personal and accessible. Political Islamic movements have a significant presence in Egyptian, Jordanian, Moroccan and Palestinian politics.

The Left in the Arab world, which is staunchly secular, has allied itself with these political Islamic movements based on its opposition to US imperialistic/interventionist policies. In effect, the two most significant political formations in the Arab world are political Islam and authoritarian regimes.

The “Anti-American” front or, opposition, are not necessarily the pro-Iranian front,. They do not necessarily agree with Iranian dominance in the region or the augmentation of Shia governance.  But they do form the opposition to US imperialism in the Middle East and by extension the dominance of authoritarian regimes whom the US supports politically and financially.

This development has led to a convergence of interests between Israel and the Arab members of the “American Front,” namely an opposition to the influence of Iran and political Islamic movements.

This reorganization of the Arab world and its convergence with Israeli interests, was most clearly evident, first in 2006 and then again in late 2008.  In 2006, when Israel first attacked the south of Lebanon under the proxy of attacking Hezbollah, all of the regimes, including the March 14^th forces in Lebanon supported the Israeli attack on the South. It was beyond normalization. Now, they shared the common threat of a political Islam, which Hezbollah represents, which Hamas represents, which Iran represents, and so they allied themselves with Israel. Similarly, in late 2008 when Israel first launched Operation Cast Led, those regimes, including the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Authority, immediately came out to condemn Hamas for the violence.

In effect, far from demonizing all Arabs as a threat to Israel’s security, today Israel officials proclaim that they share common enemies with its Arab counterparts. Dory Gold, the US’s former Ambassador to Israel has towed this line explicitly when he says that “Israel and her neighbors are all opposed to the same Islamic threat.”

This convergence has diminished the image of the “Arab menace” (circa 1967 War) making Israel’s security paradigm less compelling.  Also, I think because of the lack of a common enemy that has previously united Israel on the one hand, and the realization that Israel has diplomatic options available to it on the other,   has left Israel in a bit of an identity crisis i.e., if its not the righteous pioneer with a big [militarized] fist, than who is it. To Palestinians, it’s quite obvious: Israel is herself exposed, a colonial project that seeks to acquire land without its indigenous population.

If Israel indeed shares the same threat as its Arab counterparts, and if its clear that the threat to Israel is not a function of cultural dysfunction among Arabs i.e., to hate Jews, but rather a function of tangible political grievances, than one would expect it to reflect on a diplomatic rapprochement with the Arab world made possible by the dismantlement of institutional apartheid and colonial policies,  Instead, Israel decided to amplify its militant identity in its relentless pummeling of Gaza.

Little explains Israel’s provocative November 4^th raid into Gaza that broke the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between it and Hamas besides a decision to exercise its Iron Fist policy in order to eschew submission by force. During the four months of the ceasefire, Hamas rocket fire into Israel fell to single digits and Israel effectively brought more security to its citizens than it had been able to in all the months preceding the ceasefire and all the months since its deterioration in early November. Israel’s attack on Gaza was a response to a moral threat to Israel’s hegemony as opposed to a military one.

Consider that Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip at best total 15,000 operatives. That’s 15, 000 men out of a total population of 1.5 million. And yet the attack on Gaza was devastating—no one was spared: 1, 400 dead in 22 days, including 300 children, 14000 homes destroyed in whole or in part, 290 schools, 21 commercial factories in the context of a 2-year and counting debilitating blockade. How can Israel justify that in military means—without even going into the details of the attack and the relevant international law, how can Israel even explain the military necessity for such destruction?

What’s obvious to Palestinians is that we are not accepting colonial occupation and apartheid, so Israel’s response has become increasingly militant. Every year we think it can’t get worse, and yet it worsens in ways we didn’t think possible. All the while Israel has proclaimed “security” as its primary concern, yet this is more of a proxy for a colonial agenda than it is a genuine concern for a state desperately seeking peace (which is how Israel has historically presented itself).

Since its creation, Israel has envisioned expanding its borders—for some it’s a Greater Israel  whose borders stretch into Jordan, into the Sinai, and as far as historic Mesopatamia or Iraq. For those who are more “pragmatic” the borders constitute historic Palestine, and for the most liberal Israelis the borders don’t expand beyond the 1948 armistice line, also known as the “green line.”  But these expansionist aspirations have always been shrouded in rhetoric about security.

Since 1967, Israel has occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in the name of security and yet has not left the Golan Heights as a buffer zone but settled its own population into it and has made a consistent profit from the agricultural industry inherent to the Golan. Most recently, Gaza has shrunk by one kilometer along its entire perimerter. The apartheid wall has confiscated 13% of the West Bank and now new settlements in the Jordan valley, which are just west of the Jordan River, are also being built. The rhetoric for this kind of expansion has always been “we need to secure our borders.”  But, now it is obvious. There is no need. There is no encroachment onto Israel.  It is in fact the other way around.

I think the rise in fascism within Israel represents this identity crisis: not having a homogeneous enemy that represents a military threat. And Israel has reacted in ways that are increasingly violent. In addition to its violent reaction externally, internally Israel has turned on its own citizens.

Twenty percent of Israel’s population, or 1.2 million citizens, are not Jewish but Palestinian Christians and Muslims who did not become refugees in 1948 but instead remained and accepted Israeli citizenship. They have constituted a fifth column, or at best second-class citizens within Israel since its establishment, According to the State Department, Palestinian-Israelis, also known as Arab Israelis, are afforded separate and unequal educations, housing options, and workforce opportunities. That the Palestinian-Israelis are seen enemies of the state is no secret. In 2001, Israeli police forces responded to a Palestinain-Israeli protest against violence in the West Bank with live ammunition and killed 13 protesters. Israel’s unnecessary and excessive use of force is not equally applied against its Jewish citizens.

In late July, the Knesset [Israeli Government] proposed two laws aimed at testing its citizens’ loyalty to the State and proposed two laws: one criminalized the recognition of the Palestinian Catastrophe, or the Nakba. The other criminalized to the rejection or challenge to Israel’s character as a Jewish state. Both “thought crimes” would subject the violator to a fine and imprisonment. Imagine if the US Congress passed a law outlawing a challenge to the US’s character as a “white state.” Or alternatively, punishing its Native American citizens for mourning the systematic confiscation of their land which has effectively relegated them to 2^nd or 3^rd or 4^th class status in their own homeland. The thought is clearly abominable once applied to any other context. And yet opposition to the bill by liberal Israeli PM’s was that it would hurt Israel’s public image abroad.

Israel’s once firm moral hegemony is beginning to crumble and its anxious response is to thrash around violently in a state of paranoia—seeing its salvation in a firmer fist and greater thought control.

What are the priorities areas of intervention for the movement?  What needs to be happening internationally in strategic areas and what are key strategies within the US?

Previously, and this is often our problem in the Left, we have gotten so used to criticizing what is wrong that we haven’t imagined what could be right. We have imagined it, of course, but in very generic terms: “Israel is a settler, colonial state whose racially exclusivist and discriminatory policies need to be dismantled.”

And while that may be true there are several distinguishing factors.

We have never seen this political movement before.  We have never seen Israel so weak. We have never seen a US Administration take on Israel publicly-even it has been limited to rhetoric. This is the first time that Palestinian statehood has ever become a matter of political consensus, even if the potential for a viable Palestinian state has been diminished.  And so there is a real question that needs to be addressed: do our historic strategies of protest and dissent need to be nuanced?

I think that we have neither answered that question nor prepared ourselves to address it.

This is unfortunate especially because Arab-Americans have a seat at the political  table but without a clear vision of how we should approach this moment, the risk of their/our cooptation increases markedly. Some well-meaning communities want to benefit from a US-alliance because it means overall prosperity for the country but nothing in terms of per capita income, workers rights, women’s rights or the marginalized communities in the Arab World.  However without an overall strategy to consider how to attain these incremental gains, we may be accepting piecemeal offerings at the expense of rectifying broader structural issues. Doing so would further fragment our communities and in effect our collective grievances as well. The fragmentation of our collective grievances has the potential to pit us against one another in the worst case. But we also can’t reasonably suggest that we not engage in order to avoid the risk—how do we engage in ways that doesn’t risk sacrificing the rectification of broader structural issues.

I don’t know the answer to this question—I am trying to think of how we move forward but haven’t found “the” answer, I know that this means we need to invest a lot more effort in discussing these strategic issues as opposed to constantly discussing our suffering with ourselves and others.

I don’t think we can look to Palestine, or the Arab world for that matter, for the answer. The fact that political Islam is the only opposition puts a lot of leftists, especially women in a difficult situation.  Our gut reaction is to support these movements, but their social agenda is far, far from as radical as their political agenda.  It is not clear what is to happen.

It would be great for new movements to form outside of the Islamic framework that represent something we can align with without reservation, but that is not likely to happen. As much as we would like to think that movements flourish because of a compelling political ideology, they are nurtured by funding and resources.  Secular left movements in the Arab world do not have those resources available at present.

In Palestine, funding and resources have been absorbed by non-governmental organizations funded by western foundations that make it a prerequisite to sign away certain rights. The first right being, you cannot be critical of Zionism’s practical manifestation and its apartheid policies.  You have to accept Israel as is but you can fight to improve your living conditions.

This places a lot of onus on US-based Palestinian communities to imagine how to respond from within empire.  I hope that the unique moment we’re in inspires us to transcend our default i.e., embracing an over-simplifying discourse that proclaims “its about anti-imperialism and it all looks the same”.  It does not look the same anymore. For example, and most obviously,  our community’s elite has a class-based approach that aligns them with global elite interests, as opposed to nationalist ones in many instances. I have hope that we can marry different aspects of our movements and create different lexicons.

I have not figured it out, but it will start in the US by creating new discourses in our approach to Palestine so that we can reach more people and become more relevant and build on this political moment without losing and compromising more than we have already.

What are the old strategies are you veering away from?  What is outdated?

That’s a great question. Because we are always good at pointing out what is wrong, I don’t know that we’ve invested in identifying what can be right both politically and strategically. As a relatively new immigrant community in the US, we carry a lot of baggage. The Marxist-Leninist movements born in the Arab world have defined most of our activism.  Pan-Arab socialists came to the US to escape persecution, or have been forcibly exiled, and have continued their activism in exile.  This is where I was nurtured and where our radical left is located in the US.

The problem with that approach is that that radical left comes from a context where they were dealing with very limited resources and a limited means to confront conflict.  So our tactics have been very much rooted in protests, demonstrations, flyers, and propaganda. Its very much about creating ideas and getting the ideas out as opposed to ever thinking about achieving victories in quiet ways. This necessitates envisioning what a shift in US foreign policy would look like, and working backwards to map out incremental goals, and then developing a strategy of how to get there. I do not know that anybody will honestly tell you that all the protests being organized, with thousands of people, are actually going to lead to a political shift in the US. I do not think that anyone can honestly answer that they will.

Its important to note that these tactics were once the most relevant when Palestine represented something dirty in the U.S. When saying “Palestine” or the “PLO” was equivalent to screaming “terrorist.” Therefore,  loud tactics were necessary to assert one’s presence, one’s identity, making that unequivocal and making that accepted. I have been very much a part of that.

But, there are two major things that we need to grapple with now. One, the context is different.  Beyond being able to talk and share ideas, which is still quite revolutionary in the Arab world, it is not very revolutionary here in the US and anyone can do it. So beyond just those tactics of actually sharing ideas (i.e., education and awareness), how do we actually cash those ideas in, for a lack of a better metaphor?

Second, there are recent events that not only continue the Palestinian narrative of displacement and dispossession but which also represent organizing opportunities that can help us expand our political leverage.

For example, lifting the siege of Gaza. Since June 2007, Israel has imposed a debilitating blockade on Gaza—limiting even basic goods into the 365 kilometer-squared entity which has increased unemployment to 50% and the dependency on food aid for survival to 80% of Gaza’s Palestinian population of 1.5 million, ¾ of whom are refugees. No Palestinian or person in solidarity with Palestinians objects to lifting the blockade. Still, we have failed to organize nationally and collectively on a tangible foreign policy issue that requires not only grassroots activism but direct engagement with the U.S. political establishment.

The same is true in regard to the apartheid wall.  The Internal Court of Justice in 2004 issued an Advisory opinion condemning the wall and that international condemnation by the highest multilateral court on international law should have been our rallying cry.  But we could not agree on even this point. One of the reasons may have been because those that believe in a two-state solution thought that it meant a more contiguous Palestinian state and those believing in a one-state solution felt that focusing on the wall would legitimate the call for a two state solution.  In any case, we have not been able to develop either of these strategies.

We should incorporate new tactics that can result in incremental gains that clearly don’t sacrifice addressing our structural grievances.  For me,  that means marrying that grassroots energy and political education to actual shifts in foreign policy.  But to get from A to D (D being the policy shift), we need to engage those who are responsible for foreign policy in some way.

This does not mean politely asking for what we deserve is right, but it means we have to engage federal lawmakers responsible for foreign policy. They have to be made to know that they cannot afford to blindly support a deleterious policy in the Middle East. Of course raising the stakes for voting on Palestine is an incredibly difficult battle because in essence we’d be going head to head against one of the most powerful and effective lobbies in the US. I think we have to—going around them can only get us so far.

But taking on elected officials is not enough on its own either—it’s necessary but by no means sufficient. Other elements include the grassroots work, which is where we build generations of activists, movement leaders organizers-focusing solely on the top of the pyramid could bring us change but it will not be sustainable. That change is only as long-lasting as your opposition’s ability to build more beneficial relationships with the federal lawmaker. It’s essential to build a strong base as well in congressional districts so that they always represent a relevant interest group to the elected official. So in essence we’re still doing the basic base-building but doing it in congressional districts so that energy is translated into power-as a voting base that can either extend or end a politician’s career.

For the past few years-we’ve focused on organizing a Palestinian base across the U.S. I was one of the organizers of the National Popular Palestinian Conference, where we organized the Palestinian movement in North America to come together in Chicago. We spent two years in local and regional meetings across the US to meet with Palestinian communities and asking them not just to come to the conference but to partake in shaping it.  The purpose behind this was to bring folks together to start rethinking our movement and representing ourselves instead of being in solidarity with Palestinians back home, but rather to represent ourselves as an integral part of the global Palestinian diaspora. The vision is that this coordinating body will ultimately be able to challenge U.S. foreign policy as well as hold their own Palestinian leadership to account.

One of the things I have been grappling with recently is how should this base—a Palestinian diaspora base in the US, respond to the forthcoming peace plan to be formulated by Mitchell and Obama?  And the reason I have been thinking about that is not because I believe that this proposal will represent a comprehensive solution—it may include piecemeal reforms which we should not forgo, but the proposal itself will not address the structural issues in Israel—namely its apartheid nature. Instead, I see this as our opportunity to expose Israel’s expansionist project.  I strongly believe that they will reject whatever it is that Obama is about to offer .  It would be phenomenal if our communities can accept it with enough faith and confidence that Israel is going to reject it. We should let Israel expose itself and its agenda.

But I doubt our community would do that.  It would be strategic, but out community will not do that.  It would be difficult for anyone to suggest it as well given the flags that it would raise. Far from appearing strategic, it would appear as an opportunistic gesture. I don’t think the Palestinian community is unique in this regard i.e., attacking one another within a movement.

The second concept I am grappling with is moving away from the nationalist discourse to a rights-based discourse. I contemplate adopting a liberal discourse, which is of course very problematic but nevertheless relevant to a mainstream US audience, to a discourse that emphasizes  rights, equality, and freedom as a strategy.  I know this could rub folks the wrong way because liberal ideology regarding human rights and democracy in the global south is manipulated openly by the U.S., so we risk legitimating it. But if this ideology defines the U.S.’s political makeup than why cant we use that language to give voice to our struggle while continuing to build a radical base? So there is a question, do we legitimate this ideology or discourse by tapping into it?  Are we being more strategic because we are moving our cause forward? There really is no space to discuss this because we are held hostage by our own on-the-brink-of-extinction mentality that makes anything less than a virtuous proclamation seem like treason.

You are saying this about the Palestinian movement, but I think this dynamic pervades the entire Left in the US.  Can you put this in the context of a larger left?  This project is serving as a brain trust of radicals but also to breakdown the walls of different issues.  Can you talk about the fight for Palestine within the US Left?

Let me answer the second. Sushma witnessed my elation when at the New Voices Retreat, folks pulled me aside and asked for a 101 on Palestine. I literally shed tears because I know for a fact that most folks in the left have no clue.  People will say “free Palestine” and talk of a crazy Zionist conspiracy once in a while but they do not engage or support that position in compelling ways. It’s odd as a Palestinian engaged in this movement to constantly feel somewhat tokenized by Leftist counterparts who are in solidarity with me but can’t explain why.  “Palestine” as a concept evokes emotional solidarity.  The New Voices retreat was the first time, ever, that radical folks asked me. It was quite touching.

In terms of Palestine and the leftist movement, the left movement in the US advocates for certain rights (immigrant rights, HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ right) but that conviction is not always couched in a class-based analysis. Under a class-based analysis, it’s obvious how Palestine fits into the struggle because the US as empire seeks control of resources in the Middle East thereby supporting Israel as its watchdog in the Middle East and the cornerstone to its military-industrial complex. Historically, the opposition to the MIC immediately placed you in opposition to Israel.  Yet today, it is not as clear.

Take the United For Peace and Justice movement. They were explicit that their opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq has nothing to do with the occupation of Palestine. UFPJ is clearly liberal, but to the rest of our country, they represent our Left. So here is a Left that can bifurcate occupation in the middle east by a western presence and say that that bifurcation is legitimate because Iraq represents a quests for oil, but Israel represent a quest for the existential viability of a Jewish identity. It is a ridiculous suggestion to anyone who has a basic understanding of imperialism and empire. Because of the waning of a class-based framework  from our analysis, I think that it has become more difficult to centralize Palestine in current Left discussions.

This is coupled with a project led by right-wing Zionist groups i.e., the Anti-Defamation League, the David Project to collapse anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. This has made discussing Palestine a taboo because it has the inherent risk of being labeled anti-Semitic. This taboo also has significant financial ramifications, namely risking foundation and donor funding.  So people who might have an analysis around Palestine will not share it.

I’ll give you two examples.  The predominantly female board of the San Francisco Women Against Rape (SFWAR), who support other women who are victims of rape, articulated in their mission statement that they opposed all forms of xenophobia and chauvinism, including heterosexism, classism, and Zionism.  For taking that stand, the Jewish Zionist community in San Francisco protested loudly and did enough work that the city of San Francisco pulled its funding from SFWAR – stating that they cannot fund an organization that espouses a racist ideology.

There is a predictable and material ramification for taking these stances. And I think the Left in the US has decided to survive instead of taking a principled stand.  SFWAR is just one example.

Angela, a Native American and New Voices Fellow, tells me that UCLA’s Students for Justice in Palestine asked the Native American Law Students Association to co-sponsor an event on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. NALSA refused, despite the similar struggles and obvious parallels, stating that doing so would threaten funding for the organization.

There are too many of these instances to actually count. No one can be shielded from these attacks. Norman Finkelstein at DePaul University and Joel Kovel at Bard University are Jewish professors that lost their tenure for espousing a critical view of Zionism. Some people are subject to years of prosecution for the mere ‘accusation’ of being a terrorist—making it very similar to a witch hunt. Sami al-Arian is now under house arrest after five years in federal prison, including two years in solitary confinement because he supported Palestine publicly and forcefully. The Government’s endless efforts to find Al-Arian have failed to demonstrate any terrorist affiliations or violations of federal criminal laws and yet now they are trying to incarcerate him for criminal contempt on trumped on charges. There are real ramifications that suggest that when you speak about Palestine you are not just speaking truth to power, but speaking truth to a brutal power that can hurt you.  This excludes Palestine from Leftist politics in very dangerous ways.

On your question about the lack of strategy in the Left, I agree. It seems like from what I have seen, there is this knee-jerk reaction to survive and that means asserting a community’s distance from the political establishment as opposed to devising a strategy to ensure your viability.

I don’t know what that means for us. Can we preserve our Leftist ideology? Can we preserve our speaking events, our writing, our projects together while also being strategic? I think we can. I do not know we have tried. The only ones that have tried have been liberals and right-wingers and so it makes it really difficult for us to adopt approaches similar to those whose tactics and ideologies we disdain.

Any last thoughts?

Lastly, I really hope that whatever we are thinking about within our respective movements, find a way to share our reflections with one another and have one another’s back. If we are treading on a risk-taking approach (which I think is great) and if we do not work in the same communities, then how can we support one another in tangible ways? How do we align ourselves in a Leftist front, a Leftist Innovative Front, where we represent different interests and represent one another’s interests even if we are not doing this work together? How do we play out our solidarity beyond our rhetoric?  If we are ready to take risks as a movement, how can we do that in collaboration, in mutually beneficial ways? My last thoughts are always questions. Hopefully the next time we share we can address these questions and ask new ones.