Amie Fishman of Catalyst Project and Chris Crass recently developed a toolkit on anti-racist organizing in the Occupy moment.  We are excited to share the introduction to the toolkit with our readers.  You can access the whole toolkit here.

Why anti-racist organizing?

Catalyst Project believes that anti-racist practice and organizing can help us to build the vibrant massive movements for global justice we need to create a world where all people are free from oppression. We are fighting for a world where everyone has housing, income, food, education, health care and is able to live in a way that is sustainable and in harmony with the earth. We call this collective liberation, and it is at the core of our work.

In the United States, we have seen that racism is deeply ingrained in the structures of every institution and in white people and white communities, including those of us who are a part of the struggle for justice. Institutional and internalized white privilege and racism have hindered our ability to build the strong movements we need by keeping communities divided and pitted against one another.   Anti-racist vision, leadership, and practice can help to ensure that visions for liberation are not compromised by divide and control tactics and keep us focused on long-term social and institutional transformation instead of short-term gains that oftentimes come at the expense of communities of color.

What better time to engage in anti-racist work than now?

We are living in extraordinary times, with a rising popular movement for economic justice in the United States full of potential to make profound social change. Under the banner of Occupy and the 99%, millions of people have marched, camped, taken direct action, been arrested, participated in and led General Assemblies, sent food and supplies to encampments, brought issues of inequity to their community gatherings and kitchen tables, led political education sessions, joined committees at encampments, defended foreclosed homes, closed down banks and bank accounts, made connections between encampments and local racial and economic justice organizations, mic checked politicians and CEOs, shared stories of hardship and resistance, made art and media, and stepped into their power.

The 99% movement has grown quickly, and as with all popular movements, it manifests the deep and painful dynamics of privilege, oppression, and power that permeate the world we live in.  As always, the lack of anti-racist politics and practice among most of the white activists in a majority white movement has damaging consequences.  Rather than distance ourselves from these issues, the problems of racism and white privilege in a movement moment like Occupy require anti-racists to bring our leadership, dive into the messiness and possibility, and build together.

We know that the majority of people reading this have been actively working to challenge racism and white privilege in the 99% movement.  We have assembled this resource to support your efforts.  For those who haven’t, please consider that Occupy is an incredibly significant opportunity to build movement and win victories for positive social change. We hope this packet will inspire deeper participation.  It is designed specifically for white activists to work with white people in Occupy and in the 99% because we believe that white people have a responsibility to address the racism within ourselves, as well as within our families, organizations and communities. However, many of the essays and materials in this tool kit are useful for work with a wide range of people and communities.

In addition to these resources, we also send our love and encouragement.  What this movement is doing is profound and historic, and could have long-term impacts on the future of our society and the planet.  You are vital to what happens next.

GOALS OF THE CATALYZING LIBERATION RESOURCE PACKET

1.  We want to build up powerful, working class, feminist, multiracial movements for collective liberation.  The movement of the 99% is a powerful convergence of movements for economic, social, racial, gender, and environmental justice.  It not only resonates with millions of people, but it actively invites millions of people to participate in creating both the movement and the vision of global justice that we are working towards.  This resource guide is a tool to help build up the movement of the 99%, deepen its anti-racist analysis, and support respectful and transformative multiracial alliances and collaborative organizing efforts.

2.  The movement of the 99% opens tremendous opportunity to work with a wide range of people and communities.  We want to give anti-racists around the country tools for organizing in white communities, including those already involved in Occupy and those who have no relationship to it yet.  We want anti-racist organizers and leaders to support other white people in finding ways to express their outrage about the profound inequalities of capitalism while challenging white supremacy.  We want white people to have meaningful ways of working together with communities of color for justice.  We want to support anti-racists to step into this political moment, and move hundreds of thousands of white people to understand that racism hurts everyone and is part of what keeps the inequalities of capitalism intact.  We want to support white people to take action for economic and racial justice, in ways that help them understand the necessity of ending white supremacy as part of their own liberation from systems of oppression.

3. We want to challenge the ways that racism divides movements for justice, and give white people tools to work against these divisions. We want to support white people standing with communities of color in ways that feed and nurture a culture of solidarity, dignity, and love.  While we work against the impacts of systems of oppression in our communities, families, and lives, it is essential that we also build up liberatory culture, relationships, alliances, and practices.

SUGGESTIONS FOR USING THE RESOURCE PACKET AS PART OF BUILDING A MASS COLLECTIVE ACTION OF THE 99% & THE OCCUPY TOGETHER MOVEMENT

Share this resource packet with people in Occupy efforts locally and nationally.  When you share it, through email, Facebook, or by handing a paper copy to a friend, use it as an opportunity to express your own thoughts on why this is so important and a way of recruiting people to help move this work forward. Us this toolkit as an opportunity to share your thoughts and ask people questions about what they think about these issues.  This offers a way to begin conversations, as well as move existing conversations into action steps.

There are a lot of really good articles on analysis, strategy, and action steps.  Take time to study these articles for your own growth as an organizer.  Read them with other people and form both a study and action group.

If you are already part of a group of people taking thoughtful action together, you can use the packet to strengthen your efforts. Use the ideas in the packet as a jumping off point either to discuss topics new for your group, or to evaluate the goals you have for the work you’re doing, the strategy you are using, and how you would like to move forward.

Go big- reach out into broader circles of people, and offer them ways to learn and connect. The Occupy movement has created incredible opportunities to connect with a much wider group of people than many of us are used to.  Think about groups, institutions, and networks in majority white communities and beyond that might be open to hearing someone talk about the issues Occupy highlights.  Millions of people all over the country are talking about economic injustice and Occupy.  Start by thinking about your own (or the people in your groups) connections to different parts of your community.  You’ll likely be able to come up with a lot of exciting possibilities.  Some ideas include:

- Giving talks or workshops on economic inequity through an anti-racist lens at community centers, places of worship, classrooms, or people’s living rooms. (On this, read the interview with the Rural Organizing Project in this toolkit and check out their packet on Occupy organizing in small towns linked on our website.)
- Arranging with teachers or students you know who could bring you and/or another speaker into their classroom or student group event.
- Connecting with people who are members of a spiritual/religious community who might want to host you.
- Gathering a group of friends for a living room discussion.

Remember to always include “What can I do next?” steps to help people get involved.  Often for those of us who have been to lots of demonstrations or activist events, we assume that it’s easy to figure out what to do, where to go, and what to do once you get there.  Helping people who have never been involved in the movement imagine how they could be involved – and supporting them to get there – is key for successful organizing. Not everyone will or is able to join encampments, marches, or demonstrations, and those are not the only meaningful ways to engage. Think outside the box about the endless ways that people can plug into this movement, and help make it happen.

Experiment with ways to help more and more people join the movement by participating in demonstrations and events.  We all learn a tremendous amount through direct experience.  When Occupy is having a demonstration about the foreclosure crisis, corporate greed, immigrant rights, attacks on unions, or economic inequality in general, think about ways you can help bring in new people, particularly groups of people (like those who came to a living room discussion, were at the teach-in, and so on) who can come out together.  Help people feel welcomed and wanted at the demonstration or event. Talk to people about what they think, what is exciting/confusing/feels good/feels hard about this event. Ask them how they relate to this personally. Help people understand the context of what’s going on; this gives you an opportunity to frame the demonstration or event in a way that supports anti-racist and liberatory goals.  If possible, create space for people to get together at the end to share reflections on the experience, discuss next steps, and build their connection to the overall movement.

Find ways to make anti-racism, feminism, queer liberation, and collective liberation politics the norm in Occupy.  Reflect on the following questions to help deepen these politics in the movement:

- What steps could be taken to make these politics the norm, while still being a movement that everyday people can be part of?
- What would that look like?
- Why is that important?
- How will anti-racism  support the 99% to achieve our goals?
- What are steps you can take to move Occupy in that direction?

Use the power of stories to radicalize and unite people.  Remember the “We are the 99%” tumblr (http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/)?  One of the ways it became clear this was a powerful “movement moment” was when tens of thousands of people began publicly sharing their stories of economic inequalities, and locating themselves in the 99%.  Creating space for story-sharing across race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and age is a powerful way to deepen analysis of systemic problems, and to build relationships.  Helping people move from sharing stories with one another to taking action together is a key goal for us as organizers.

Take space to breathe, connect to your vision, clarify your goals, and ground yourself in whatever helps you feel a sense of your own power and your ability to share/create power with others before and while doing this work. Those of us who are white need to keep trying, practicing, reflecting, and learning how to move through the world in new ways that are shaped by our values instead of our internalized racism. Mistakes, challenges, awkward stumbling moments, are all part of the process.  Be loving and kind toward yourself as a practice to help you engage others with love and kindness.  Remember, we are not trying to be “perfect” anti-racist organizers– there is no such thing. We are building a beautiful and powerful movement full of complex, flawed, remarkable, everyday people.

Amie Fishman has been a member of Catalyst Project since 2001. Catalyst Project is a center for political education and movement building based in the San Francisco Bay Area.  We are committed to anti-racist work in majority white sections of left social movements with the goal of deepening anti-racist commitment in white communities and building multiracial left movements for liberation.  We are committed to creating spaces for activists and organizers to collectively develop relevant theory, vision and strategy to build our movements.  Catalyst programs prioritize leadership development, supporting grassroots social justice organizations and multiracial alliance building.

Chris Crass is a longtime organizer working to build powerful working class-based, feminist, multiracial movements for collective liberation.  Throughout the 1990s he was an organizer with Food Not Bombs, an economic justice anti-poverty group, strengthening the direct action-based anti-capitalist Left.  As part of the global justice movement, he helped start the Catalyst Project in 2000, and was part of the leadership collective for eleven years.  He is now a stay at home Dad, involved in the Occupy movement, and working on his book “Towards Collective Liberation: anti-racist organizing, feminist praxis, and movement building strategy”.  He lives in Knoxville, TN with his partner and their son, River.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This piece was originally posted on Huffington Post on December 16, 2011.

Yesterday, something wonderful happened in America.

Yesterday was the day the American Civil Rights Movement merged their hopes and dreams with Occupy Wall Street.

Led by Dr. Ben Chavis, civil rights leaders announced the formation of Occupy the Dream, an organization to mobilize Americans around the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who sought to wage war on poverty, unemployment and economic injustice. Dr. Chavis announced that the first major march of Occupy the Dream will take place on Martin Luther King Day, January 16, 2012 in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Jamal Bryant, pastor of Empowerment Temple in Baltimore with 10,000 members, joined Dr. Chavis at the National Press Club where they rallied their followers together with leading advocates of Occupy Wall Street.

Launching their movement, Dr. Bryant explained the crisis now facing many Americans in stark but eloquent terms:

Ladies and Gentlemen, in just a few days, about 200,000 of our sons and daughters will be returning back to the United States in a large way indicating the end of the war in the Middle East. Regrettably they are going to be coming to another war. It’s not going to be a War on Terror as indicated by then-President Bush. It’s not even going to be a War on Drugs implemented by Nancy Reagan or a War on Obesity by Michelle Obama – but they’re going to be coming into a war on poverty – a war on poverty, unemployment and economic inequality and greed has in fact ravaged our nation down to its core.

Defining the merger of the movements explicitly, Dr. Chavis announced the historic coalition:

When Dr. King articulated the dream, it was inclusive. It is in our interests to build coalitions beyond ourselves. In fact, that is what the beauty of today represents. We are not trying to achieve economic equality and leave others in economic inequality. If you want justice, you’ve got to have justice for everybody. If you are for economic equality, you’ve got to have economic equality for everybody.

Kevin Zeese of Occupy Wall Street/Washington DC affirmed his enthusiasm for the expansion of the OWS movement:

“I think this is a very important step toward the American Spring. . . . This American Spring is going to be a historic, transformative movement. It’s going to be a moment in history that’s going to change things in ways that they can’t imagine. It’s going to be a moment in history that dominates the year more than the presidential campaign does.”

Although he was not present at the National Press Club, Russell Simmons has been instrumental in promoting the expansion of the Occupy Wall Street movement. From his offices in New York, Simmons issued the following statement:

It was Dr. King’s dream that the civil rights community would come together with the unions and cultural icons, and they would produce a revolution that would promote economic equality in this country. I have been there to witness the energy and the courage and have been inspired by these young creative people who have a high aspiration for our country, who are politically astute and who are themselves inspired to make this country greater.

Dr. Benjamin Chavis is a veteran civil rights icon who served as an aide and acolyte to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While working with the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ, Dr. Chavis came into direct conflict with highly organized racists who opposed the desegregation of public schools in Wilmington, North Carolina. The clash resulted in the Wilmington Ten trial and imprisonment of ten civil rights workers who served substantial time in prison before they were exonerated in federal court.

Rising through the ranks of the civil rights movement to become Vice President of the National Council of Churches, Dr. Chavis went on to serve as Executive Director of the NAACP. In 1995, Dr. Chavis was appointed to the post of Executive Director of the Million Man March.

In recent years, Dr. Chavis has worked with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons to energize and activate the music industry and its huge audience around the cause of civil rights and economic justice.

An important episode in Dr. Chavis’ life as a civil rights leader was novelized by the acclaimed author, Timothy Tyson, in his bestselling book, Blood Done Sign My Name. The movie starred Nate Parker in the role of the young Benjamin Chavis. Dr. Chavis has appeared in the film Belly, and in Spike Lee’s, Get on the Bus, a fictional but compelling account of the Million Man March.

At the press conference, David Degraw of OWS, said, “Dr. Chavis, of course, his entire life has been a battle. He’s led the way. . . . Are you ready to go another couple of rounds?”

To that question, Dr. Chavis responded, “Absolutely.”

Somehow, very tangibly, Occupy the Dream seems like a gigantic and brilliantly wrapped Christmas present to the 99%.

The Occupy Strategy Lab of Organizing Upgrade is excited to share the thoughts of movement innovator and strategist Max Rameau. With his experience founding the Take Back the Land movement and advancing land-liberation and eviction defense strategies, Max is well positioned to provide some insight into how organizers can and should strategically connect with the Occupy movements. Over the last few months, Max has been engaged in strategic thinking, dialogue and planning with Occupy movements in Miami, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Wall Street. This article is part of a series in which Max explores the potential for movement building within the Occupy movements. Forthcoming pieces will address the Basis of Unity (between #Occupy and Liberate) and a proposal for a  2012 Spring Offensive.

The last few years have been hard for us: record foreclosures, high unemployment, drastic cuts in social services, and government actively doing the bidding of big business at the expense of regular people.

With a combination of bewilderment and frustration, concerned global citizens had asked one question over and again: when and where are people in the US going to rise up and take to the streets?

Turns out, the answer was September 17, 2011 on Wall Street.

Of course, for all it’s simplicity and elegance, that answer is not entirely accurate. Communities of color, albeit in smaller numbers and with less media, have taken to the streets for years around issues of police brutality and the impacts of the economic crisis, particularly gentrification, foreclosures and evictions.

Since 2007, The Take Back the Land movement has identified vacant government owned and foreclosed homes and “liberated” them by breaking in and transforming vacant houses into homes for families. Our objective is to transform land relationships to secure community control over land and elevate housing to the level of a human right. With the crisis deepening, many more organizations are liberating land or waging eviction defenses with increased success.

This one grand crisis, then, has elicited two very different responses, each strong and each relevant to its core constituency. With the combination of low-income communities of color and working and middle class whites taking to the streets, this society is on the cusp of a major social movement, the likes of which have not been experienced in the U.S. in more than a generation.

Far from homogeneous, this budding movement is evolving towards parallel, but interrelated campaign tracks: #Occupy and Liberate. The two look similar in many regards, but are distinguished by three important characteristics: composition, primary frame, and target/base.

1. Composition. #Occupy has mobilized mainly, though not exclusively, disaffected young and impacted working and middle class whites. Liberate is mainly low and middle income people of color.

2. Primary Frame. #Occupy’s primary frame is the economic system and the injustice it produces. Liberate frames issues in terms of land control and use (such as housing, farming and public space);

3. Target/Base. #Occupy targets those symbols, institutions and persons responsible for perpetrating the economic crisis–the 1%–through the “occupation” of public and private spaces, most notably New York’s financial district, the Oakland seaport and individual bank branches. Liberate’s base are the victims of the crisis, who are protected via land liberation and eviction defense.

Social movements are not single celled creatures on a linear path, but dynamic complex organisms with multiple moving parts, each responsible for a different series of tasks. Such a division of labor must be understood, appreciated and fully embraced. This movement is a complex organism with two tracks, and each track performs unique and critical functions.

Two intractable images of the housing crisis include the banks responsible for this financial mess and the homes from which families are evicted. This movement must take the fight to the banks, protesting and occupying them on their turf. Those same banks are occupying our communities, neighborhoods and homes. We must end that occupation through Liberation and eviction defense. The crisis simply cannot be resolved by choosing to fight on either one front or the other.

Not only must we both #Occupy and Liberate, but the chances of success for one-track increases exponentially with the actual success of the other. Therefore, the Occupy-Liberate dichotomy is not an antagonistic one; it is complementary.

We must occupy the 1% and liberate the 99%.

That is not the job of one organization, but the mission of everyone’s movement.

There is growing awareness of the two tracks, their characteristics, strengths and limitations. As we struggle to properly understand and define this relationship, we must resist the tendency towards two competing orientations:

The first tendency is to examine both tracks, note their size, frames and composition and conclude that each track actually represents its own separate and unique movement essentially unrelated to the other. The second, and polar opposite, tendency is to remark the similarities in approach and tactics and conclude the tracks are effectively identical and must be merged into a singular monolithic track. Both tendencies are wrong.

We must take care not to expect large numbers of Blacks, Latinos, indigenous, and other oppressed nationalities or immigrants, each with particular historic relationships to the police, to “occupy” banks and financial institutions. In fact, it is not clear that #Occupy could have succeeded if first executed by people of color. We must also resist the temptation to allow 1,000 young white kids to “occupy” historically people of color communities, still reeling from the more onerous occupation of gentrification. At the same time, we must find creative, effective and empowering ways to work together through parallel, supportive and even joint actions and campaigns.

While engaging the dual tracks in parallel actions is a prerequisite to building a holistic and powerful movement, it is not sufficient to guarantee trust and success. Two sets of actions, even during the same time frame and in the same city, will not result in an instant movement.

Forging these dual tracks into a cohesive movement with mutually supportive actions, requires at least three basic understandings:

1. Basis of unity. Why are we fighting and what are we fighting for? Do we want the same things or are we just doing the same thing in order to get to different places. What is the basis of our unity.

2. Framework of unity. How are we working together? How are decisions made? What do we do when one track disagrees with the other?

3. Next steps. What are we doing next? We propose a 2012 Spring Offensive.

We must Occupy to Liberate.

Max Rameau is a Haitian born Pan-African theorist, campaign strategist, organizer and author. He is one of the founding members of the Take Back the Land movement and is currently with Movement Catalyst, a movement support organization, providing campaign development and other support to social justice organizations. 

Approximately 50,000 people turned out to mass actions held during the Oakland General Strike on November 2nd, called by the General Assembly of Occupy Oakland at Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant plaza, and supported by dozens of community based organizations, unions, and activist groups. The actions shut down every major bank in downtown Oakland, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Chase, and then shut down the port, and in the process built solidarity beyond anything we have seen in the SF Bay Area since the days of the movement against the US war on Vietnam.

The call for this general strike mobilization came from the General Assembly at Occupy Oakland immediately following the violent police attack which razed the encampment and fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowd (inflicting a critical brain injury on young Iraq vet Scott Olsen) thus galvanizing the Occupy Oakland movement into the national and international spotlight. A petition started by Causa Justa :: Just Cause at the moment of the attack, and picked up by Moveon.org, garnered 60,000 signatures in support of the 1st amendment right of the Occupy Oakland camp, and against police abuse. A mere 24 hours after the police attack we delivered this petition to Mayor Jean Quan — 60,000 signatures from her base — with an entourage of community and labor organizations demanding that the police stand down. That night back out in the streets when the fences came down and the camp re-established itself with an outpouring of community support — with not a cop in sight — it was clear that the general strike was going to be a historic moment.

Occupy Oakland General Assembly while reclaiming the camp after the police raid and after forcing the police to stand down.

The answer to the General Strike call came from all over the SF Bay Area, from organizations, unions and groups spanning different sectors of the progressive movement, from unaffiliated individuals, and from an emerging formation knows as “Left Bay 99.” Left Bay 99 developed after a successful mobilization on 10/12/11 to “Foreclose Wall Street West”, which brought together Causa Justa :: Just Cause, UNITE/HERE 2850, Occupy San Francisco, The Ruckus Society, and dozens of direct action activists, unions, and community based organizations. That mobilization shut down Wells Fargo’s corporate headquarters in downtown San Francisco and, maybe even more importantly, left us all eager to collaborate again, and to continue building across sectors towards a movement of the 99%. [watch videos and read press coverage here]

Coming out of that mobilization, community organizers and activists came together to discuss what we could do to support Occupy SF and Occupy Oakland, and what we could contribute to those efforts.  We were involved in different ways, some as members of the general assembly and camps in each city, some in solidarity as grassroots organizations, and all in advancing demands of the 99%.  We believed that these emerging relationships were important for building a long-term movement for racial justice, gender justice, and for building an alternative to the plunder and suffering that the current economic order causes in our communities here in the US, and to communities around the world.

The exciting combination of seasoned organizers and newer activists formed into committees to advance the work.  Camp defense was a high priority, and we created a rapid response network that could mobilize people in the case of a police raid.  We leveraged relationships with elected city officials that organizations and unions built over the years to secure meetings with the Mayor of SF and the Mayor of Oakland, advocating in each meeting alongside Occupy campers for the right of the camps to remain, for an end to police violence and harassment, for the release of people who had been jailed unjustly during protests, and in support of the first amendment rights of protesters.  In addition to that, we formed an action committee that worked with campers to develop and carry out mobilization plans, and a communications committee to support those actions with media work, all of which came together as a major contribution to the general strike in Oakland on 11/2/11.

Our organization, Causa Justa :: Just Cause, was deeply involved in all areas of this work.  We called the first mobilization on 10/12/11, seeing lots of alignment between the critique of Walls Street and our bank accountability campaign work against Wells Fargo Bank. And as the momentum grew we continued investing time and energy, committed not just to our own campaign but to making a contribution to building a movement bigger than any one campaign or organization.

A key priority was to respect the suspicion of some Occupy Oakland campers that organizations wanted to come in and dominate.  We worked hard to maintain constant communication to campers and camp committees, so that our work would complement and amplify the camps’ work, while adding the much needed participation and perspectives of working class people of color and their organizations.  This was an experiment, and it was not easy.  It’s never fun to be called an “outsider” when you have been organizing in Oakland against the 1% for 10 years.  But people brought their most generous spirit to this project, a healthy sense of humor, and a commitment to building the relationships and trust needed to advance the movement.  An important part of building these relationships and trust is the fact that many of us are active participants in Occupy Oakland, attending General Assemblies, contributing to work committees, volunteering at the camp, and members of people of color and feminist caucuses of the camp. Activists from Arab, Muslim, and anti-Zionist Jewish communities, including members of AROC, PYM, and IJAN set up an “Intifada” tent, where overnight campers affiliated with LeftBay99 stay, and Causa Justa :: Just Cause set up a “Serve the People” tent where free know-your-rights information is provided to tenants and homeowners facing foreclosure, to immigrants encountering ICE, and where volunteers and ally organizations provide mental health counseling, referrals, and other crucially needed social services.

The outcome of this joint work was impressive.  On November 2 city workers, teachers, students, union people, elders, children, chanted, swayed and danced through the streets of Oakland. We roared, “We are the 99%” as we marched through downtown, with dozens of inspiring actions and contingents forming part of the celebratory day.

Causa Justa :: Just Cause helped organize a march to shut down the Big Banks demanding  a moratorium on foreclosures; and demanding banks like Wells Fargo stop investing in detention centers, dirty energy, and predatory payday lending.  The marches highlighted the responsibility these banks have for the economic crisis, called for them to pay their fair share in taxes, and highlighted Black and Latino families struggling to save their homes from foreclosure.  Given that both Oakland and San Francisco bank with Wells Fargo, there was also talk of the need for cities to divest from big banks and instead create local and community-based banking options.

“This economy does not benefit us, it benefits from us. It’s time to change that,” said Causa Justa :: Just Cause Immigrant Rights organizer Cinthya Muñoz Ramos. “Our communities are being pushed out of the economy, jobs, homes, and neighborhoods into prisons and detention centers as slave labor.”

At the State Building, teachers and youth demanded greater funding for education, and disabled people and homecare workers demanded greater funding for social services.  The children’s brigade started with story time at the public library, and carried signs reading “Don’t you dare steal my future!” and “Share!”

Labor had a strong presence, including the participation and endorsement of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, Service Employees International Union and Oakland Educational Association.  The Alameda County Labor Council was also supporting, and served grilled hot dogs and hamburgers to protesters, in a delicious show of solidarity.

Maria Reyes, of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Mujeres Unidas spoke before the crowd, reminding us that immigrants are part of the 99% and have been waging the battle for fair treatment long before the Occupied movement kicked off.

“We take care of the 1 percent’s children and their grandparents and their elderly.  While we’re taking care of the elderly and their children, our children stay late at school or home alone and we come home from work frustrated because we don’t get treated right. That is why we want a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights so that we are treated fairly.”

Movement veteran Angela Davis spoke: “We do not assent to economic exploitation. We do not assent to global capitalism, to police violence, to corporate inequalities. We do not assent to the prison industrial complex… the eyes of the world are on our city.”

Following the bank marches people took to the streets again, shutting down the Port of Oakland,  the fifth busiest port in the US.  Jack Hayman of the ILWU stated in a press conference that the Longshoremen had stopped work on their own in the morning. The port was shut down. “The trucks with containers are backed up for at least a mile. None of the cranes are moving… and the rank and file of the Longshoreman’s Union did this on their own. The leaders of the union wanted them to work today, but they by and large are not working the port.” Thousands then marched to the port, shutting down the roads for miles around. By 6pm the Port of Oakland announced that “all maritime activities” had been shut down because of the sea of thousands of protestors descending on the port.

Dozens of protestors clambered up on cargo boxes and truck cabs as a sea of marchers could be seen coming across the bridge toward the port.

Oakland was the site of the last great general strike in 1946 when 130,000 workers refused to work in solidarity with 400 female retail clerks.

Dwight McElroy, president of the chapter 1021 Service Employees Union said, “Our city and our coworkers are taking furlough days, they are losing their homes. We have individuals having to choose between their mortgage and having their cars repaired. We need to stand in solidarity. America has caused a marriage between the occupy and labor movement — it’s something that should have come some time ago but it’s never too late.”

Hundreds of teachers and nurses came out as well. Sharon Blaschka, a nurse practitioner, and member of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United Union said, “I believe in the OWS movement. It’s been a long time coming. It should have happened a long time ago. The 1 percent count on the fact that we don’t have enough time to get out there and do something major because we have to support our families and they’re counting on that fact. I had patients today but I rescheduled all of them and when I called them to tell them why — they were excited about it.”

She added, “I also came with my family to support our family and our schools. The Oakland Unified School District is closing five elementary school, but yeah, we can drop a billion dollars on Libya. So, if we can drop a million dollars on the war then why can’t we drop a billion dollars into our education system?  Like they say, if you’re not outraged, your not paying attention.”

Said Nell Myhand of the day’s actions. “It was fantastic. This is the moment we have been working for — many of us for years and years,” said Myhand, who is Oakland Homeowner Clinic Coordinator for Causa Justa :: Just Cause, and fighting to keep her own home from foreclosure: “We get divided within our class. But we can see this dramatic shift when we start talking about the 99%. We can see the divisions that the top 1% capitalize on based on our differences in class. Well that’s over. We see the thing we have in common is that the banks are bankrupting all of us.”

The tone after the march was one excitement about what is to come, but there are many hurdles ahead of us.

Unfortunately, some media outlets focused on incidents of property damage instead of on the thousands of people who participated in the strike, and are intent on re-framing away from the demands of the 99%.

This serves law and order types in the city, including certain city council members, who have leaped in opportunistically, attempting to paint a picture of disorder and violence in order to advance their agenda of gang injunctions, curfews, and an overall increase in policing and decrease of rights.

And besides fighting back against these attacks on the movement, there are crucial conversations to be had within the movement now.  How do we continue building on this momentum?  How can we branch out from the camps to a much broader community-based resistance to the 1%?

There are two crucial components to this next phase:

One is to get clear on the US’s role in the international arena, since our government is the 1% to the rest of the world.  We must tie our local fights to the international sphere.  We can’t separate the lack of investment in affordable housing in Oakland from the massive investment in military occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We must make those links that will make our movement stronger, and grow our movement to the international scale, which the 1% operate in.

Two is to get clear on our demands. Only demands can help us win concrete changes that our communities so desperately need, and only demands will help us avoid co-optation.  Once we have demands, we can work with more mainstream or center forces, and benefit from their expertise and resources in policy initiatives that reflect those demands. Without demands, with the danger of co-optation looming, if our only reference point becomes the camps, then the possibilities to advance are limited.

With a strong set of demands, and a clear internationalist perspective, the 99% can continue to grow as a political force, have greater influence over the mainstream, and move one step closer to building a movement too big to fail.

by María Poblet & Rose Arrieta, Causa Justa / Just Cause

María Poblet is the Executive Director of Causa Justa :: Just Cause. She is Chicana and Argentine, and has more than a decade of experience in Latino community organizing. At St. Peter’s Housing Committee, María was instrumental in transforming a service provision model into a membership and organizing structure, and a grassroots leadership development and political education program. In 2009, she helped lead the merger between St. Peter’s and Just Cause Oakland that created Causa Justa :: Just Cause, bringing together the organization’s respective work in the Latino community in San Francisco and the African American community in Oakland into a single, regional organization for racial and economic justice. She has been a leader in movement building work at the grassroots, including the US Social Forum and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. Maria had the privilege of being mentored for many years by June Jordan, and was the Artistic Director of Poetry for the People before she fell in love with community organizing.

Rose Arrieta: With over 20 years of journalism experience from mainstream to community media. Rose has come on board to lead our organization’s communications work. She’s originally from Los Angles and her work has been inspired by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the Chicano Movement, American Indian Movement, and lots of conversations around the kitchen table with her pro-union family.

One significant aspect of the relationship between community organizing and Occupy movement in New York City is the synergy between Occupy Wall Street and several community organizations that have been organizing around revenue issues for the past year.   This piece is a dialogue between organizers from two of the organizations – Community Voices Heard and VOCAL New York (formerly known as New York City AIDS Housing Network / NYCAHN) – that have been active in that revenue organizing. This organizing around revenue issues – which included a civil disobedience action at the Capitol on March 1, 2011, a Wisconsin-inspired overnight occupation of the New York State Capitol in late March and the May 12^th Mobilization on Wall Street – has put CVH and VOCAL in closer relationship with larger community organizations and labor unions on the one hand and, on the other,  with many of the direct action activists who helped to initiate Occupy Wall Street.  Since the occupation began in September, VOCAL and CVH have related to it in several different ways.  In this interview, CVH and VOCAL organizers reflect on those experiences and discuss their vision for how those relationships should unfold.

SONDRA YOUDELMAN: Sondra is the Executive Director of Community Voices Heard (CVH) in New York State, a membership organization of low-income New Yorkers fighting to influence policy change around issues that affect low-income families.  She serves on the Boards of the Pushback Network and Grassroots Global Justice, and she is active in National People’s Action and the Right to the City Alliance.

HENRY SERRANO: Henry is the Lead Organizer of Community Voices Heard (CVH) in New York State.  He is also on the Boards of both the North Star Fund and the Progressive Technology Project.

JEREMY SAUNDERS:  Jeremy Saunders has been organizing in New York since 2001. He has worked at ACORN, Community Voices Heard and the North West Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition. He is currently the lead organizer for VOCAL New York, formerly the NYC AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN), which organizes low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS, the formerly incarcerated as well as active and former drug users.

CHRIS KEELEY: Chris is the Coordinator of the New Deal for New York Campaign, a collaboration of community organizations across the state of New York that are working collaboratively to lift up the need for new revenue raising and increased investment in job creation and critical social services.

JEREMY: VOCAL got involved in the revenue fight when our flagship AIDS housing bill – which would have ensured that 10,000 low-income New Yorkers who are living with HIV/AIDS would not have to pay more than 30 percent of their income towards rent – was vetoed by Governor Paterson. Paterson had been supportive of the bill, but he said he couldn’t approve it because it would cost too much, and the state couldn’t afford it during a crisis.  So then, we found ourselves stuck in these reactive fights to defend AIDS services in New York City. It was clear that these dynamics were only going to get worse – that we were going to end up focusing on defending a smaller and smaller pool of services – unless we fought on revenue issues.  So, on March 1^st of this year, VOCAL New York and CVH organized a big action in the hallways of the Capitol building to protest the fact that the government was cutting services for poor people at the same time as it was giving tax breaks to New York’s wealthiest.  Seventeen people were arrested that day, and it got a lot of attention. Everyone – from the media to the police to elected officials – said that they hadn’t seen anything like it in a long time.  That action put us on the map. It was what got us working with these larger community organizations, unions, and direct action activists. It helped to build towards the overnight occupation of the Capitol in late March and the May 12^th actions on Wall Street.  As we started to plan more and more actions together over time, we’ve built up good working relationships.

SONDRA: Community Voices Heard started getting involved in organizing around revenue and the big banks about a year ago.  Recovery funds were dying out very rapidly. Everything that we were demanding was based on a proactive plan that would require more money, but instead we were having to fight against budget cutbacks. We felt like we needed to move into working on revenue issues and to really think about proactive revenue fights and alternative taxation campaigns if we were ever going to be able to win and fund any of the stuff our members wanted.  At first, it was this weird wonky set of issues around taxes that seemed too disconnected.  It didn’t resonate well with our members.  Then, when the recession started to get talked about in the media, and there were tons of stories about inequality, our members began to react. “Recession?  It’s a depression!  And we’ve been experiencing this for years.  But at least people are talking about it now.” The fact that government needed to be forced to invest back in people and communities if we were going to turn things around was pretty clear to our members.  And, when government kept saying there was no money, that’s when the need to get it from the institutions and people that have more to give started making sense as something to work on. This recession put us in a moment where everyone needs the safety net, so we have a chance to build broader alliances around safety net fights.  However, our members had hesitancy about what it means to build that broader front: will our issues get lost?  When we fight for the broader safety net, our constituencies – like African American and Latino workfare workers – are not the main-ticket items that are going to get the press. But we knew we needed to build this broader fight around revenue if our issues were going to have any chance of winning.  So we started working on the revenue campaign, which made it clear that we needed to do statewide work, perhaps with some new partners.  It was during the May 12^th actions that our organizations met some of the people who helped to initiate Occupy Wall Street.  There were working relationships across our organizations and the activists, which has made it easier to integrate our work since it all exploded.

HENRY: There has also been a realignment of some of the other political forces that we’ve been working with: labor and some of the other community organizing alliances. Some of those   broader forces have been humbled over the last several years, and – at the same time – we’ve been growing, so we’re more powerful than we were in the past.  That doesn’t at all mean we have more people than they do, not even close.  But there’s a perception that we have power.  What was happening with some of those broader forces?  The former ACORN forces have been in a period of transition because they were attacked organizationally and shut down; they have been rebuilding.  The unions were humbled through the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) fight.  They tried to pass EFCA proactively and instead they had their collective bargaining rights shot down across the country.  Even Wisconsin – which is an important part of the inspirational narrative over the last year – was a reactive fight to defend collective bargaining.  Labor has had to reconsider what they have been doing.  At this point, union members have had to fight to defend basic quality of life issues, so it’s still a “self-interest” fight.  But what’s changing is that it can’t just be a fight for a narrow self-interest. Even a fight around self-interest has to engage broader issues because of the crisis.

At the same time, things started shifting internally. Our members’ sentiments started changing after Egypt.  We started to get calls from our leaders around these kinds of actions.  I’ve been organizing at CVH for ten years, and this was the first time that our members started talking openly about being willing to take arrests.  During a statewide strategy meeting, we talked about this spectrum of actions that went all the way out to more militant actions including civil disobedience. When we got to the point in the spectrum that talked about civil disobedience, at first everyone was silent.  And then one woman stood up and said, “We just need to go Egypt on their ass.” I saw a real change in the sentiment in the leadership during that meeting. They had been going through these long, slow struggles, and now they were ready to get more aggressive.  That was around the same time that we connected with VOCAL to start this statewide work around revenue.

SONDRA: So our work was shifting externally around our issues and we were shifting internally in terms of tactics. And there was a realignment of the groups that we were working with.  All of that positioned us to be players at a state level in a way that we weren’t before.  And then the Occupy moment happened, which opened a whole new amount of space. We were on this trajectory of building statewide power, and then suddenly there’s this massive shift in public consciousness that we could take advantage of.

HENRY: We have been working on issues related to revenue and the big banks for about a year now. In that work, we have been working on parallel tracks with the activists who initiated Occupy Wall Street, and our work intersects.  About six weeks ago, we started planning a week of action around the banks that was largely driven by labor, and then Occupy Wall Street pops up.  We’ve continued to work with them, and what they have been adding is scale and media attention.  For example, we had been planning this “Millionaires Tour,” and we expected to have about 150 people participate.  We got 700 people.   And, for the first time that I’ve ever seen, our action became a joke on Saturday Night Live: this guy who was playing Bloomberg started giving addresses to other rich peoples’ houses so they’d leave him alone. That kind of attention impacts our members.  Our membership has always felt isolated in their fights.  They feel solid in directing the actions and doing some incredible work, but they have always felt isolated and like no one pays attention to them.  And now suddenly the media is paying attention to us.  We have gotten more media hits than we’ve ever gotten.  That came under the banner of “Occupy Wall Street” but – when that banner comes together with our organizing – it can have a more tangible policy impact.  Occupy Wall Street…they aren’t trying to have a concrete policy impact, and I think that’s fine.  They bring general frustration about the bigger issues. I wouldn’t actually want them to put more structure on that or develop more concrete demands.  I would discourage them from taking on a specific issue or a structure.  What they bring is a different level of scale and media attention to a wide range of issues.

JEREMY: We had the same experience.  VOCAL went down to Occupy Wall Street with five members, and they had turned that into 300 people within 48 hours.  Our five members worked with a handful of Wall Street organizers to organize somewhere between 300 and 500 people to march to the District Attorney’s office and then to march on Cuomo.  We went down there that day because we had this leader from VOCAL who had participated in the OWS actions when they were trying to evict them. He got the shit knocked out of him by a cop, and his attack became one of the most prominent attacks by the cops because of how blatant and, probably more importantly, because it was widely captured on video. So we organized a march to the DA’s office calling for the investigation of all OWS attacks, an end to all police attacks and to demand the NYPD stop listing our leader, Felix, as wanted. Here was this low-income person living with AIDS who’s homeless and who is  a highly marginalized  person at the protest that day.  Just yesterday, we found out the charges have been dropped. After the DA action we mic-checked to the crowd that Gov 1%, Cuomo was going to get a “Gamechanger” award from HuffPo across town, so we led about 200 to 300 people across town to protest Cuomo as well.  There is just a huge shift in the kind of scale and an energy that you can mobilize quickly right now.

HENRY: That may start to change now that OWS doesn’t just want to be a “mob for hire.”  They don’t just want to show up to action to be there.  They may start organizing their own stuff and stop showing up at ours.  We’ll see.

SONDRA: That’s their strength, not ours. Our strength is not in having thousands of people in the streets or holding one big march. It’s consistent action around the public debate – whether that’s through media or hitting a target strongly or creatively enough to get attention.  You don’t actually need thousands of people to do that.

HENRY:  We should take the relationship between our work and theirs as far as it goes. We shouldn’t try to decide what they’re going to do. It’s a different constituency with different class issues and different racial issues.  I’m not big on critiquing Occupy Wall Street for being a bunch of white people. White people should do these kinds of things. They have specific issues.  They’re 63% of this country. Yes, they are entitled in a way that we will never have among our membership. But that kind of entitlement isn’t bad.  We could use more of it. They are more entitled in their demands and in their approach to confrontation. Right now, white people are the majority while we’ve always represented a strong minority. You’re going to approach politics differently when that’s the situation.

JEREMY: There is a certain level of absurdity to people – including progressive groups – saying things like “Wow. This is amazing. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”  Organizers have always known that if you did crazy shit, you’d get media coverage.  Earlier this year, we did this occupation in Albany, and we got a ton of media. We’ve shut down the Capital. Other organizers have taken over highways and shut down cities. Another part of the absurdity is how much people forget when these kinds of militant actions have happened before.  Like ACT-UP marching down the street with a dead body, or the May 1^st immigrants rights march or the time when Justice for Janitors took over the freeways in Los Angeles. The World Trade Organization demonstrations and the FTAA protest in Miami were also good examples of a moment when there was strong (though usually off the record) labor-activist support and collaboration. There’s such a forgetfulness on our part, to read this moment like nothing like this that has ever happened. There’s been an anger in this country for a long time that we’ve seen explode in a number of ways. It may have been stifled but that doesn’t mean that we should forget about it.

SONDRA: There are some things that are different about this moment though.  I think that occupying a physical space for an extended period of time adds a new element. Of course, not everyone is focused on occupying that space. There are many community organizers and leaders that are going in and out of the physical occupation over time. But it’s significant that they have created a space where people can go and – just by going – they can feel like they are part of a movement, whether they sleep there for a month or go down there for an hour.

HENRY: We’re looked at as part of the political system.  They are looked at as organic.  The fact that they don’t have an issue is an advantage.  We say, “We want money for public housing.”  They are saying, “I’m angry at our government.”  That’s great.  They should do this broad messaging and visioning stuff. We can do the policy stuff. That’s fine. They can take care of organizing on emotion; we’ll organize on policy. We have to keep doing our own very specific policy and campaign work.  No one else will take that on, and the issues of our constituencies will get lost.  The best way to interact with the Occupy movement is that we need to occasionally interact with each other, connect in specific moments around specific actions.

SONDRA: It would be stupid to reorient everything around Occupy Wall Street. And it would be stupid to not realize that we can’t do the same old thing in this moment.  It’s a fluctuating environment. We need to keep our focus on the place where were trying to get to, keep our eye on where we’re headed in terms of building power for low-income families (like we’re focusing on a point far in the distance) and be ready to navigate reality as it changes and shifts.   My hope is that this moment helps us shift that long-term vision to the left.  That’s my hope for Occupy: to shift everything to the left. Occupy Wall Street creates a moment when we can push for more around policy, more in terms of our demands. If we need to do anything with respect to Occupy Wall Street, it’s to push them to make sure to keep pushing. Because even the radical organizing groups have been limited to fighting around crumbs.  We don’t need them to consolidate into a 501c3 and consolidate their issues into specific demands.  They need to do what they’ve been doing: to focus on the public discourse and create a climate where it’s not crazy to call for bigger things.

JEREMY:  My general feeling is that this collaboration is great and needs to continue. When it comes to our organizations’ involvement I do have concerns. I’m worried that this can detract from all ongoing work that has major impact on our membership/constituency. We’re being asked by progressive allies, funders and a few OWS work groups to engage in various ways, like meetings, actions and so on. We want to stay connected. We want to continue to find moments where we can support each other, but we have to realize that the amount of time we dedicate to OWS takes away from other work. There’s just no way around that.

We’ve got to keep doing our work. We can’t let go of the campaigns we’re working on, which are all about addressing specific issues impacting our membership that others aren’t going to take up (and don’t necessarily need to) like the AIDS housing bill or changes to welfare. At the same time, we have to find moments to connect with and support Wall Street with our members when it’s around issues that we both support. This has been happening pretty well. We have to think about building a core team of people from OWS who want to help support and build community organizations that haven’t been able to grow to scale in the past because they lack a broad base of volunteers. There’s a number of OWS protesters who’ve shown that they’re willing to dedicate time and energy and want to support building stronger grassroots organizations.

I’ve heard this continued call by the progressive community, prior to OWS, to get out of our silos, to build collaboratively, to build a broader movement. We at VOCAL feel like we’ve done that in a serious way. We’ve gotten out of our silo, dedicated serious time and resources to fighting for a fair economy. We rarely ask for our agenda to be included, because we realize it’s not the space for that and that there are moments to put that to the side for the larger cause and to accept that we’ll have to fight for our specific campaigns on our own.  We get a small amount of resources to do this work, and it often doesn’t feel mutually beneficial. It often feels like we’re being asked to take action by much larger, better-resourced organizations, without recognition of our ongoing work. I don’t mind joining coalitions, breaking out of silos, and I don’t even mind others not taking on our issues, but it has to come with some acknowledgement of what’s at stake and why some of us may feel hesitant to drop everything to “join the 99%.” I think this is a moment when those dynamics can start to change and – regardless – we know that we need to throw in on the fight around the economy.  So we’ll be down there.  We just hope it will play out differently this time.

HENRY: The next step is that we have to open up the political opportunities for our membership, so our membership can get more engaged in this sense of entitlement that happens at OWS. OWS is hungry to have conversations with the communities that we work with. We haven’t gotten our members down there enough to have interactions so they can engage and help to move what’s going on down there. In some ways, staff may have even acted as a barrier for our members going down there. It could be important to figure out how to engage our members in the organic process down there.  Our members have been fighting in their individual lives forever, and they’ve been fighting collectively with us for a few years. But being down there will give them a sense of being part of a much larger movement.  Our leaders have experience in direct action, in campaigns, in not being intimidated by people in power. The people down at Occupy Wall Street could benefit from that. And our members could benefit from this sense of entitlement.

CHRIS: Getting members to go down to Wall Street is an important part of the political opportunity.  Occupy Wall Street is seen as the anchor for the broader Occupy movement around the country.  If we can build relationships and they acknowledge the members and leaders of the community organizations that have been part of this fight for a long time, Occupy Wall Street could serve as a model for other occupations in other cities and help build some important relationships.

I just finished reading Sally Kohn’s piece in the American Prospect titled “Follow No Leader” that outlines her criticism of the Occupy Wall Street (for a good explanation of the action check out this Voices from the Frontline  Occupy Wall Street protests).  Now, I know Sally to be thoughtful and articulate.  I am especially proud of her courage being in the Fox News studios going head to head with the Michelle Malkin’s of the world.  That respect made her article even more curious to me.  In the article she basically reduces the Occupy Wall Street protests to “making noise for its own sake,” and cites a New York Times writer, Ginia Bellafante, who accuses Occupy Wall Street of “pantomiming (maybe I am dumb, but I had to look that word up to make sure I knew what it meant) progressivism rather than practicing it.” Sally even seems to co-sign the Times writers’ characterization of the protestors as hippies and anarchists.

The line I found most interesting?  This one:

“I tend to favor the sort of well-ordered, well-bathed protests of the early 1960s”

Apparently the preferred well-bathed protests in the article are those of the New Bottom Line.  An organization that, no doubt, seems to be doing good work rooted in real communities to hold big banks accountable for their plunder of us small fries.

To be sure, Sally’s point about the disconnect between seemingly privileged participants of Occupy Wall Street and the struggling folks of the five boroughs is well taken. I have heard the same criticism from a bunch of people on the ground.  That being said, the main point of the article left me feeling kinda sideways (Ginia Bellafante, if you are reading this, look that up. The same way I had to look up “pantomime”).

Let me get one thing out of the way.  Sally, I love you, but I am not sure how you could, with a straight face, present a piece from the New York Times as your exhibit A considering that the main social movement the Times helped build in New York is the one pushing working people out of their homes in Harlem, Flatbush, and Jackson Heights to make way for Times’ readers (read: the yuppie friends of those “anarchists and hippies”).  Oh, there is the anti-war movement that the Times helped build, by helping Bush build a fake case to go to war in Iraq.

Ok, I got my “believe 50% of what the Times tells you” bias out of the way.  Moving on…

Sally, as I was reading your article, I came across this video clip of a young man supposedly arrested at the Occupy Wall Street protests. If the reports of the video are to be believed (still investigating), this young man – who doesn’t fit the profile of a white hippie/anarchist – was arrested after sitting down in front of the bank that allegedly took his parents’ home. That doesn’t mean he represents the majority of Occupy Wall Street or that he erases any of its organizational flaws.  But it does sort of mean that the actions or occupations (or whatever people are calling them) have a lot more purpose to some than just “making noise.”

While I appreciate your invocation of the “well ordered” protests of the early 1960’s, the riots of the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s seem to indicate that those protests only went so far in addressing the root causes of the problems we are facing today.

The fact is, the people who caused the financial crisis that we are in didn’t just cripple a small segment of the population, they crippled entire continents.  The fact also remains that there are probably more immigrants in jail for selling boot-leg videos on Wall Street’s sidewalks than there are crooked financial planners, investment bankers, ponzi schemers or corporate welfare queens who looted billions out of regular folks’ personal savings.  None of the movements that any of us are in – the Ron Paulists, anarchists, ex-ACORNists, code pinkists, Catholics, bloggers, the people that wear “V” masks – have built 1/100^th of the movement needed to bring true economic justice to this situation.

If any single protest, movement or type of organization had the answer, we wouldn’t see the frustration, pain, anxiety, or anger we see everyday amongst the folks we love.  For us to figure out what will work, we have to seriously try damn near everything until we can truly engage even 20% of the people who have been screwed by this mess into the process of trying to fix it.  That means doubling, tripling and quintupling the attendance at our community organization meeting, prayers meeting, house meeting, fantasy football game meeting and so on.  Until then, we can’t in good conscience play the “we are more effective” card.  And we probably shouldn’t throw darts at or make light of people that are being arbitrarily arrested, corralled, and maced for taking a stand at Wall Street.

One last thing, Sally.  I used to always see this phrase, “Another world is possible,” usually on cheesy t-shirts.  After the execution of Troy Davis, as my Facebook feed was flooded with virtual tears and screams of injustice, one hint that another world was indeed possible was the small yet significant convergence of people protesting Troy Davis’ execution onto Wall Street.

Sally, I know you know that another world is possible.  I know you are dedicated to building it. So why don’t you and me, the guys on the block who I grew up with, the folks who our families went to or didn’t go to church/mosque/mormon temple with, the smelly anarchists and bleached out republicans, the way too hetero and the drag queens, the bikers and Bloods, and B-Boys and Emo kids come together and do this.  Let us figure out in the cleanest and messiest way possible how we can all build a better world now.

Subhash Kateel is the Co-Host of Let’s Talk About It! a Miami based talk-radio show that talks about the real issues that affect the lives of real people.  He is also a long time Immigrant Rights organizer and a past contributor to Organizing Upgrade. 

For more information go to: https://occupywallst.org/

This is a response to the None of us are winning, yet by Subhash Kateel which we posted late Tuesday night as a challenge to Sally Kohn’s original piece in the American Prospect which criticized the nature of the Occupy Wall Street Protest. We are publishing this back and forth because  our mission at Organizing Upgrade is to upgrade the theory and practice of left organizing, and this exchange is great example of real time debate about what is happening right now. Also, it is great to see two people with so much respect for each other engage in a principled public debate. Big ups to Subhash and Sally. For more information on Occupy Wall Street go here:  https://occupywallst.org/. 

Subhash Kateel is one of my heroes. He launched one of the most visionary, cutting edge community based organizations in the country, Families for Freedom. While I want to make clear what I attempted to convey in my original piece that any form of struggle is inherently worthwhile and admirable, two things about Families for Freedom caught my eye initially.

First, it was an organization not started by well-meaning white folks who wanted to help immigrants. Those are great, but we have plenty of ‘em. Families for Freedom was started by two visionary organizers of color in touch with the communities they were organizing and personally shaped by the issue of deportation.

Second, yes, Families for Freedom sometimes protested for protest’s sake — understandable given the desperation and powerlessness many of their members felt. But they also used creative tactics designed to make a real impact. Once, passing by some embassies in Washington, D.C., I noticed folks wearing Families for Freedom t-shirts. Huh? It turns out, rather than just pressuring the United States government to stop deportations, Families for Freedom was enlisting the home countries of immigrants to fight for their nationals. Their campaign drew on novel interpretations of international law to push bold and tangible demands. It was strategically and tactically brilliant. [As a footnote/disclaimer: I was so inspired by Subhash and Families for Freedom’s work, I agreed to serve on the board for a period and helped the organization raise money.]

My piece in the American Prospect, imperfect though it may be, was intended as a constructive critique and prompt for self-reflection about all of our organizing and protest tactics, using Occupy Wall Street as a timely lens. Apparently, the jokes about smelly anarchists fell flat with many (though I suspect just as many laughed) — but I’m more saddened that my defenses of Occupy Wall Street and the value of their taking action were apparently obscured by my critique. I’d encourage those interested to read my piece for CNN.com (actually, written before the American Prospect post) in which I defend not only Occupy Wall Street but the necessity of protest and direct action in general.

That said, a lot of things understandably ruffled Subhash and others about my critique of Occupy Wall Street. But I hope that being ruffled — that challenging our assumptions, reflecting on what works and doesn’t work in our field, engaging in healthy debate not among our opponents but our friends — is precisely what will make us stronger.

I quoted the New York Times not because I believe it is a bastion of truth but because I believe it fairly closely represents what I would call “official mainstream opinion” — that is, most Americans don’t read the New York Times but they get their news and information from media makers who almost exclusively rely on the reporting and framing of the Times. So if our goal is to get out on the streets and vent and protest, it doesn’t matter what the Times thinks. If our goal is to reach the progressive choir through progressive media outlets, it doesn’t matter what the Times thinks. But if our goal is to reach mainstream America, to shape and shift popular opinion and popular will, then at the very least the New York Times is an appropriate barometer.

My favorite part of Subhash’s post was, “To be sure, Sally’s point about the disconnect between seemingly privileged participants of Occupy Wall Street, and the struggling folks of the five boroughs is well taken. I have heard the same criticism from a bunch of people on the ground.” In fact, that was the entire point of my piece — that we should see protest as a “collective art form”, the collective coming from “deeper, sustained work of movement building”, the art coming from innovative and unexpected forms of disobedience.

Subhash ends by reminding us “Another world is possible.” Yes, and another movement is possible, too. If I’m guilty of wanting that movement to be as grounded and representative of all Americans, especially those on the front-lines of suffering in our broken economy, springing from the very same well of accountable leadership Subhash has demonstrated throughout his work, I can live with that.

Sally Kohn is a grassroots strategist actively engaged in movement building for equality and justice. She is a regular on Fox News (Hannity, O’Reilly Factor, Megyn Kelly) and MSNBC (Ed Show). Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, CNN.com, FoxNews.com, Reuters, The Guardian and the American Prospect among other outlets.

Willie Baptist and Jan Rehmann recently released a new book, titled Pedagogy of the Poor: Building the Movement to End Poverty, which is now available for purchase. Following are some excerpts from Chapter 1 “From the Cotton Fields to the Watts Uprisings: Interview with Willie Baptist (I).”  

Willie is a formerly homeless father who came out of the Watts uprisings, the Black Student Movement, and working as a lead organizer with the United Steelworkers. He has 40 years of experience organizing amongst the poor including with the National Union of the Homeless, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, the National Welfare Rights Union, the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, and many other networks. Willie serves as the Poverty Initiative Scholar-in-Residence and is the Coordinator of the Poverty Scholars Program.

Jan Rehmann (JR): Willie, I will not enumerate all your activities here, nor your manifold writings and responsibilities. Let me confine myself to just a few selections. As a youngster, you were a black student organizer in Los Angeles and worked closely with the local branch of the Black Panther Party; you then became a national organizer of the Union of the Homeless (1986–1991); then the director of education of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (1991–2005); a lead organizer of the March of the Americas (1999); cofounder and lead organizer of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign; co-coordinator of the University of the Poor, since 1999; and, from 2004 onward, scholar in residence at Union Theological Seminary, with the mission to inform students and faculty about the realities of poverty and the experiences of the poor, not only about their plight, but also about their fight and insight.

Let’s transition to the interview. Willie, you were born in Corsicana, Texas, in 1948, and when you were five, in 1953, you immigrated with your family to Los Angeles. From then on, you grew up in Watts, one of the poorest neighborhoods not only of Los Angeles but of California. In 1965, when you were 17, you got involved in the famous Watts uprising, and this involvement awakened and politicized you. Would you like to tell us something about your family, and how you folks lived in Corsicana, Texas?

Willie Baptist (WB): I left Corsicana at the age of five—that was more than half a century ago—that’s a long time to remember what happened to me at that early stage of my life. But there were certain things that struck me that I still remember—the main one being the prevalence of child labor in the planting, chopping, and picking of cotton. My parents, like other parents, would fashion cotton bags for children, and we’d be out there in the cotton field picking along with our parents. That was a very excruciating effort, especially for children. If you’ve ever experienced the cotton plant, the cotton fibers grow within a hard prickly shell, called a boll, that constantly pierce your skin as you attempt to separate the fibers from it. This excruciating activity has left an indelible impression on my brain. There’s nothing romantic about it. Plus the dire heat there in that area—upwards of 110 degrees, even in the shade.

JR: Could you inform us of the role of the cotton economy and its impact on poverty?

WB: I wanted to have people look at the map here [Fig. 1.1]. This map shows the area of the South, the so-called Black Belt, in which cotton was planted, chopped, and picked. When people refer to the Black Belt today they usually think in terms of black people, where they reside. While it’s true that this is where you had the enslavement of the bulk of African Americans, what “Black Belt” originally referred to was the soil. A major geological feature of this region is the deposit of black alluvial soil left by the Ice Age thousands of years ago. It’s a soil rich with mineral nutrients, which makes it conducive for cultivating the rigorous cotton plant. The high grade of cotton and the conditions that it required in terms of mineral nutrients could only be produced in this swamp laden, mosquito-infested area called the Black Belt. I think this is very important to understand if you’re going to understand the requirements of production.

For years, especially after the early merchant period of United States development, the cotton crop contributed the most value to the economic system. On into the 1860s, on the verge of the Civil War, you have tremendous profits being garnered from this crop, alongside other Southern crops—rice, sugar, tobacco—but “cotton was king.” The North participated in the process in terms of procuring the cotton and helping to distribute it worldwide. The cotton industry became the base of the first major industrialization of the worldwide economy. The end of the Civil War and the end of one human being owning another human being—slavery—did not end the fact that 55% of the world’s highest grade of cotton, the most lucrative cotton, was produced on less than 5% of the earth’s surface.

The question remained after the war: How you still procure this valuable crop without slavery? The answer took the form of sharecropping, a semi-slave form that lasted into the 1930s. As W. E. B. Du Bois has shown in his excellent study “Black Reconstruction in America,” the temporary attempts to create a true “abolition democracy” in the South were soon undermined and defeated by an alliance between the industrialists of the North and the Southern planters—”the appeal of property in the South got the ear of property in the North.” The economic elites of the North needed to get that cotton. They had used black people as a battering ram in terms of Reconstruction in order to beat back the political influence of the planters, to set the stage for Wall Street and railroad capital to penetrate that area and take advantage of that lucrative crop. Black labor was again reduced to unlimited exploitation, and the old plantation politics of dividing the poor along color lines and having the poor blacks policed by poor whites was reinstalled.

The system of slavery demanded a special police force and such a force was made possible and unusually effective by the presence of the poor whites. . . . It would have seemed natural that the poor white would have refused to police the slaves. But two considerations led him in the opposite direction. First of all, it gave him work and some authority as overseer, slave driver, and member of the patrol system. But above and beyond this, it fed his vanity because it associated him with the masters. Slavery bred in the poor white a dislike of Negro toil of all sorts. He never regarded himself as a laborer, or as part of any labor movement. If he had any ambition at all it was to become a planter and to own “niggers.” . . . The result was that the system was held stable and intact by the poor white.

In the map of poverty in the United States [Fig. 1.2], you can see that the former areas of the cotton crop along with the former areas of the slaves coincide with the highest rates of poverty. There is a concentration of poverty in the South as a whole, but the Black Belt area of the South has the highest, longest, deepest area of poverty still to this day. You can see in the wage system that the white worker in the South makes less money than the black worker in the North. The white worker in the South makes more money than the black worker in the South, but he makes less than the black worker in the North. There is a tremendous wage differential that reflects the continuity of poverty coming from slavery.

 Figure 1.2

JR: Now, what happened, when the mechanical cotton picker was put to work on a mass scale? Did this affect your family?

WB: In the early 1940s International Harvester successfully tested the commercial mechanical cotton picker, which was soon produced on a mass scale. It could outpick fifty sharecroppers, rendering our labor superfluous, both black and white. As a result millions of black and white sharecroppers were turned off the land. Some of the poor whites had the option to get into the textile industry, but most of the blacks did not. This gave rise to what has been called the Great Migration out of the South [Fig. 1.3]. Some estimates have it that in the second wave of the Great Migration between 1950 and 1970, 11 million migrated, including about 4 1/2 million blacks. This map shows the earlier period, between 1916 and 1930, but the patterns are the same. You can see how the streams of movement developed. The people from the Carolinas and Georgia basically went to Philadelphia, New York, Newark. Out of Mississippi, they went straight up to Chicago. They call Chicago “Up South Down South.” The reason you have Blues coming out of Chicago is that a lot of it comes out of that plantation area in Mississippi. Because of the racist housing covenants and other similar measures the Great Migration of blacks found themselves concentrated into the inner-city ghettoes. Whereas Southern poor whites were more dispersed.

 Figure 1.3 

I came out of the Black Belt—Navarre County, Corsicana; we migrated to California. Because of the fact that my father had been involved with casual labor in cotton production and other jobs that surround that economic activity, there was this whole effort to try to find a better and more secure living standard for the family. In 1953, the whole family spent that last year picking cotton. After it was all said and done we had $100 and we were able to purchase a jalopy. We made our way to the West Coast by way of this jalopy through Dallas, then on Highway 20 to Los Angeles. My uncle and my auntie had moved there earlier and encouraged us to come, saying there was much more stable employment.

JR: How did you and your family experience [the Great Migration]?

WB: One of the things that I noticed as I was coming up in Corsicana, which was primarily rural, is that our family and other black folks were very scattered. Our churches were very small. We had a very isolated community. When we were picking cotton we lived in a shack that belonged to the plantation owners. We knew the other black folks that were around, and we saw white folks, too. But for the most part, I didn’t see the kind of concentration of black folks until I moved into Watts, a community in South Central L.A.

Urban churches in L.A. were much larger than churches in the plantation areas of the South. I went to Paradise Baptist Church, a huge church to me. Seeing all these people—the concentration of black people—that’s the thing that I remember from that age. Looking back on it, you can see how the Klan’s influence was effaced, because the Klan is not built for that kind of concentration of black people. What I noticed was that the fear of the Klansmen ceased to be a factor. The Klan’s position in terms of control and intimidation was taken over by the police. That kind of concentration could only be managed by a standing police force. A lot of the Klansmen became policemen. Because of the economic conditions in the Watts ghetto, the relationship between the police and the black youth was very tense all the time. I remember that any time we had an encounter with the police, it seemed like every policeman was a southerner. He had the southern accent, and I don’t care how many times you gave him your name, your name was “nigger.” Those were the kind of encounters we had and which eventually ignited the uprising.

My father worked as a dishwasher for a while, went to different kinds of casual labor, finally got into the construction trade and worked himself up. Both my mother and my father only went to the 8th grade, so for him to pursue that and get that kind of promotion was a significant accomplishment. But it was only over time, after I was grown up and out of the house. My mother worked as a domestic laborer for some rich white folks in Beverly Hills. When we first arrived we went from one relative to another until we could finally settle into a home. We kept moving from one home to another. I remember we were living in and around the train tracks.

JR: How would you describe the social conditions in Watts that finally exploded in the uprising in 1965? Was it a revolt out of poverty and unemployment or primarily against the unremitting racism, especially at the hands of the police? Or both together?

WB: At that time I thought it was only the issue of race. But on further reflection, you could see that at the same time as blacks were coming into the area a process of automation developed in the various industries and services, not only in the L.A. area but also throughout the U.S. economy. When the economy was restructured, blacks were among the first fired. That’s when the slogan “last hired, first fired” evolved. Because we were among the latest immigrants to arrive in the region, we were “last hired” into these plants, and when they restructured, especially when they developed new technologies, we were the “first fired,” since we represented the unskilled and semiskilled laborers. That’s where African Americans predominated, so we were laid off temporarily and often permanently; so you had concentration of unemployment especially affecting the youth, with unemployment rates reaching 70% among the black youth.

That environment was ripe for this kind of police relationship that was constantly antagonistic and would frequently erupt in some form. There were a lot of rumors, many of them true, about what police had done. There were cases of girls as young as 15 that were taken into the back of police cars and raped. There were a number of stories where African Americans were asked to get their identification and when they reached into their pocket to get it they were shot in cold blood, dead, under the pretext of having been reaching for a gun. There were bad relationships, but underneath that were the economic factors of unemployment.

One night I was hanging outside and fell asleep next to a tree. I was woken up by this helicopter from the LAPD 77th precinct. The whole street lit up like daytime and I was surrounded by all these policemen who were yelling, “Nigger, get up,” and “Nigger, wake up.”

And I said, “What’s up, man?”

They said, “Get the hell up,” and “What are you doing here?”

I asked, “What did I do officer, I live just across the street. What did I do? Why are you calling me all of these names?”

And they said, “Shut the fuck up,” et cetera. “They called into our office saying you had robbed something.”

I said, “I didn’t rob anything, I’ve been right here. I live right across the street.”

These are the kinds of incidents that created rage within the community. These incidents ignited the movement.

In terms of what happened in August of ’65, the rumor we heard was that the uprising was incited at Nickerson Gardens housing projects, where there was a concentration of unemployed youth and people on welfare.

So the night the riots started, this younger man Frye was pulled over and told to walk the line. He said he didn’t need to walk the line. They had a little scuffle. His mother came out of the project saying they shouldn’t mess with her son. The police ordered her to stay out of the way, but she refused. She insisted on them leaving her son alone. One of the cops took his baton and hit her in the stomach with it, and the rumor that went around was that she was pregnant.

Stories of that went throughout the community and you had something like 60,000–100,000 people hitting the streets after hearing about the incident. Within a couple of days, the police force was paralyzed. The police basically operated on the principle that became famously discussed in relationship to the Rodney King incident: You concentrate a whole force against a small force. That’s basic military strategy. When there was some kind of bust the police would assemble in a vacant lot in the area and then ascend on one spot at the same time. When you have 60,000–100,000 people on the street at one time, that nullifies the police strategy. So they brought in the National Guard.

JR: How did you yourself relate to the uprisings?

WB: As a way of protecting me and my brother, my father had started a Little League baseball team, and that saved my life. People I grew up with went through and sustained a lot of death over time as a result of going to Vietnam and also because of street activities. I was involved in a baseball Little League and I went on through intermediate, into senior and semi-pro. That’s where I got my name, Willie. At that time Willie Mays was the man, so if you played baseball and your name was William, Wilbur, or anything that suggests Willie, they’d call you Willie.

When the Watts uprising took place my father was concerned not only about me but also about the other players in the team and their parents. He made an effort to keep his sons from getting out there and getting into the fray and getting killed or something like that, as well as calling to make sure other people on the team were cool. He tried to keep me under wraps, but he had to go to work during the day and I snuck out on two days. At the first occasion, I went out to an area just watching stuff. You could see the situation just turning upside down in the midst of all this danger, the looting, sniping, the police play and stuff like that. You had this kind of festival atmosphere. At the corner this wino was drinking some Ripple or something like that—a bottle of very cheap wine—with a bag on top of it, and he directed traffic. I’ll never forget that. People identified places where they had bills they couldn’t pay and they would take the furniture and clothes from those stores.

Another day while my dad was working my friends came by and said, “Hey, man, come on out here. We’re having fun.” I didn’t want to be a poop-butt sitting home protected by momma, so I found my way out there. When I got out there I acted timid—I wasn’t trying to die out there. I saw tanks going up and down the community. I saw the sheriff’s department riding in long car caravans with their shotguns sticking out the windows to intimidate people. When we got to the area where some of the looting was taking place, we were trying to size up what we were going to do and before we knew it, here come the helicopters, like from Vietnam or something—that was all we could think about. The helicopter started chasing people with the microphones out saying, “Stop what you’re doing,” and “Freeze,” so we got the hell out of there. As we ran, my group split up and went all different ways, and I unluckily got caught with some other brothers that the police were able to round up by way of the helicopters. They pointed machine guns at us and had us get down with our face in the ground. I will never forget that experience. If that don’t wake you up to the social realities that this thing involved more than just your own individual situation, I don’t know what will. That this is a situation of the society and its military forces having to come down on a community left an indelible impression on my mind and helped shape my understanding today about the social character of these struggles we are currently involved in.

Let’s make a toast, but don’t drink yet

Thursday felt like time for a toast for America’s largest social movement, the folks fighting for immigrant rights. With the news that the Obama administration would review many of its pending 300,000 deportation cases and allow some of those with no “criminal” record to stay, you could literally hear the cries of joy jumping out of Facebook updates, twitter feeds, cafecito spots (I live in Miami), college campuses, and even a detention center or two.

After over two years of pressuring the Obama administration to use its executive power to stop tearing apart immigrant families and communities; after hunger strikes, 1000 mile walks, and mass arrests, after multiple insistences from the Administration that it didn’t have that authority, after multiple cover-ups by the administration of how many people they were deporting that had done nothing wrong, it seems like the Administration is finally listening. And while there are tears of joy, and sighs of relief, there is also plenty of healthy skepticism. After all, we have an Administration that has cried (falsely), “we only deport dangerous criminals!” more than that boy who cried wolf.

So the questions remain.

Who is going to be carrying out this new case-by-case review? Is it going to be the ICE agents whose union doesn’t want to use its discretionary power and calls this a  “back door amnesty?” What is their incentive to review cases fairly?

And when the administration says that they will focus on “criminals”, what do they mean? Isn’t immigration policy the same set of laws that famously calls people “aggravated felons” for things that are neither aggravated nor felonies? Isn’t ICE the same agency that deported thousands of suspected “terrorists” after 9/11 that were never really terrorists? And don’t ICE’s “worst of the worst” categories include a Baptist pastor with a 16 year old conviction from when he was homeless, a Gulf War Veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who was arrested for marijuana possession after his wife died, and a 36-year-old youth community worker who helps young people stay away from the mistakes he made as a 16 year old? If the Administration is really turning over a new leaf, does that mean ICE is turning over a new leaf?

And then there is what the Obama Administration still refuses to do. It still refuses to create enforceable standards for how it treats immigrants in detention so that they don’t die in custody. The administration still refuses to reign in the deputized powers it gives to bad sheriffs with long lists of civil rights complaints like the real-life Boss-Hog, Joe Arpaio. The Administration still refuses to call of its “creepy” Secure Communities program, which is looking more and more like the first step of a science fiction-like national database that may one day include everyone.

But the Administration is also failing to take the lead in pushing common sense legislation that will begin to fix the broken immigration system while everyone waits for the mythical grand compromise. For one, the best way to ensure the case-by-case reviews o f immigration cases is done right is to give immigration judges back the discretion they need (and lost in 1996) instead of pushing ICE employees to exercise the discretion many of them seem to not want (that they gained over a decade ago).

But lets not rain on the parade. This is no doubt a victory. Afterall, it seems like there are only a few constituencies of non-millionaires that have gotten any significant demand from the administration: the LGBT movement, the Tea Party, and the immigrant rights movement to name a few. And the tie that binds these movements together (for better or worse) is that they fought like hell and refused to just “let the President do his job.”

So let there be a toast. A toast to democracy-in-action and the thousands of squeaky wheels that provided the vehicle to demand more oil. A toast that remembers those families that new policies may never help, the ones that have already been separated and torn apart. And a toast to the hope that regular people are pushing the Administration to finally have enough courage to make real change.

Yep, its time for a toast…but don’t drink the juice yet.