The People's Campaign (Keith) by X.

The People’s Campaign organized an electoral challenge for three city council seats in 2000 in New Brunswick NJ, after years of organizing on the Rutgers campus and five solid years of organizing with the New Brunswick community around education, housing, and police brutality. Our work prior to the electoral campaign gave us a number of contacts within the community as well as some recognition and respect as dedicated organizers. We began by conducting surveys of the various communities as the basis for a platform. (1) The surveys also gave us the opportunity to discuss the campaign and its next step: an open convention where the candidates, platform, campaign manager, and steering committee would be voted on. The convention was one of the campaign’s great successes: Hundred of people attended and the students were represented in numbers closer to the portion of the population that they actually make up in the city (unlike in previous events). About nine people vied to be chosen by the convention as candidates. Some had the backing of an organization while other ran as individuals.

The three candidates chosen at the convention were an Afro-American bus driver, a Latino van driver (who only spoke Spanish) and a white revolutionary who had graduated from Rutgers. In addition to electing candidates, the People’s Campaign featured –a first in the United States– an elected campaign manager and a steering committee that most people at the convention felt should be broad and representative of different communities and social classes opposed to the existing political machine. So the revolutionaries had to not only deal with small business people and petty landlords among others but also to negotiate to keep them supportive of a radical program—these were real lessons in coalition building and “politics” which much of the Left, because they refuse to engage in grassroots electoral work, has never even experienced.

The program was extensive and radically redistributive. New Brunswick had been re-nicknamed by city officials the “Healthcare City” because of the number of hospitals and medical research facilities in town. The People’s Campaign platform called for free healthcare for all residents, admittance to Rutgers University for all New Brunswick high school graduates, rent control, an elected civilian police control board, affordable housing, a public swimming pool and so forth. The candidates and all positions of responsibility were subject to recall at any time up until two weeks from Election Day. (The group decided to place this limitation on recall so that everyone could focus on the election in the final weeks.)

Our opponents were long time incumbents of the Democratic Party, one of the most powerful political machines in the State of New Jersey. The previous mayor, John Lynch, is not only mobbed up (now under indictment), he is also the king maker of the statewide democratic party. The machine is backed by Johnson & Johnson (J&J), a global corporation whose world headquarters are located in the center of downtown New Brunswick. The local Democratic Party does J&J’s bidding and J&J rules the city with a mix of coercion and consent. They set up NGOs that attempt to determine the cultural and social life of the city, making sure it is corporate friendly while striving for pseudo- hipness.

The local Democrats dominate local small business through intimidation. For example, they have fire and health inspectors that can shut a business down. Small businesses are expected to make substantial financial contributions to the machine as part of the cost of business, and display Democratic Party propaganda. The machine also awards contracts and can make sweetheart deals for things like property purchases and liquor licenses. In order to work for the city as a firefighter, cop, in sanitation, or in the parks department you must regularly attend fundraising dinners and make campaign contributions. These workers are also the machine’s ground troops, they tear down opposition posters, hand out and post machine literature and work the polls on Election Day. We learned this during the course of the People’s Campaign became a crash course in politics—politics 101. Despite five years of organizing before the electoral campaign we had little sense of how the city was actually run until we faced off against the machine for political control of the city at the ballot box.

We organized to win, not to protest. We handed out over a quarter million pieces of literature (no shit!) and recruited hundreds of new people to the movement. Clausewitz famously commented that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Well elections are the closest thing to war without bloodshed. We battled their hired campaign goons on the streets: When they ripped down one of our posters, we ripped down ten of theirs. We ran from the police, got caught by the police, and finally negotiated with the police with the help of supportive attorneys that since the machine was tearing down our literature (and the police weren’t stopping them) they would no longer stop us either. While we negotiated this agreement, we had won it first on the street: The police couldn’t stop us since our numbers were too large. They agreed to stop bothering us so that they would no longer look like incompetents.

Election Day was the major battle. We recruited progressive lawyers to volunteer to monitor for fraud on Election Day (the machine is notorious for cheating through fake residences for supporters, vote suppression, etc.) We had some two hundred and fifty volunteers at the polling stations and getting out the vote (GOTV). This required high levels of organization and planning. Much of it is very basic: All campaign workers must be fed (that has to be organized and planned) and we need people at every polling station handing out literature and talking to people, winning votes and reminding supporters. Inside the polling place, we need challengers and lawyers who monitor the process and determine which supporters have voted and which voters still need to brought to the polls and so forth—it is a tremendous effort.

Nonetheless, electoral politics, at least for the foreseeable future, is one of the best ways to engage with the day-to-day struggles of the majority of people, they provide a vehicle for revolutionary democratic forms of organizing and they allow for the actual seizure of power by the people. Winning control of a city council or winning a mayoral election means the control of jobs, resources, and the ability to pass laws: The war on drugs could be over in your town, the domination of landlords could be ended, minimum wage laws can be passed, etc. Running and winning local election is a school of revolutionary democracy and a way to build the movement. Not the only way, but an important and necessary way.

Zen and the Art of Electoral Politics:
The Conclusion of the People’s Campaign

In Alejandro Jodorowsky's surrealist western El Topo, the gunfighter protagonist (for whom the movie is named: El Topo or the Mole) confronts four master gunfighters. The philosophy of one of the gunfighters should be adopted when engaging in electoral politics. The gunfighter tells El Topo that he no longer tries to win gunfights, he only tries to attain perfection in each fight; and thus bullets have no effect on him and he never loses.

The major error we made in the People’s Campaign was long term planning. We failed to consider seriously what we would do if we won, if we lost, and most importantly how to maintain, consolidate, and grow the movement that we had built during the course of the campaign. Indeed, winning or losing is a secondary concern that we confront at the level of tactical consideration: The strategic question is beyond winning or losing, the strategic question is how to grow a revolutionary democratic movement where people work and decide together. If we do that, we can then do certain things if we win the city council seats and other things if we don’t, but the main thing is that the movement grows with people taking control over their lives, working and deciding. We develop the revolutionary process whether we win or lose.

On Election Day our candidates received over two thousand votes each (28% of the total) and our first meeting following the electoral loss was still attended by over 80 people. The possibilities were enormous. We had accomplished more than any other grouping that challenged the local political machine in decades. But our accomplishment was not the number of votes we got (although that reflects what was happening), our accomplishment was bringing people together to work and decide, to build an electoral movement based in democratic participation. Unfortunately, most of the people who attended the post election day meeting didn’t return for another. They never returned because our conception of revolutionary democracy only really emerged after the campaign was long over. We focused, unlike the master gunfighter, on winning and losing, rather than on building revolutionary democracy. The initial meeting deteriorated in petty bickering and half-baked proposals. We had failed to consider what to do if we lost (not to mention what to do if we won). We could have immediately planned, discussed and debated the next election, what had gone wrong during the last campaign, what went right, etc. etc. We could have consolidated a movement of very committed people.

By trying for perfection the gunfighter wins without trying to win. The same is true in electoral politics. It is not that winning is unimportant. We are not advocating running electoral campaigns as protest campaigns, or agitation campaigns, or to get a certain small percentage of the vote and then get matching funds. We run electoral campaigns to build the movement and do our utmost to win the election, to organize people to seize power little by little, bit by bit. Elections are a tactic. If we build the movement along revolutionary democratic lines, if we strive for perfection, if we keep our strategic goals in the forefront, if we grow a movement of fully engaged people, working and deciding together, we will win at the ballot box and everywhere else we take on the system.
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(1) Surveys are a great way to learn about issues people face day to day. The mistake with our survey was that we generated the questions for people to answer and rank amongst our core organizers and then went to people to discuss them. A better way would be to add an additional step and let people develop the survey itself.

Speak Truth to Power? No Thanks! Let’s Take Power! Electoral Politics: Build Dual Power, Dismantle the State (Keith) by X.

Participation in electoral politics is one of the more controversial issues among significant portions of the Left. Many revolutionaries don’t vote and don’t participate in local elections. Two misconceptions blind revolutionaries to the possibilities of electoral politics. First they see revolution as an insurrectionary event in the distant future to prepare for, and the primary means of preparing is protesting and perhaps publishing a newspaper. Revolutionaries opposed to electoral politics have many other objections but let’s not rehearse them all here; they are as familiar as they are tired. Electoral politics is one of the best tactics available to revolutionaries who want people to seize power immediately to dismantle the state piece by piece and replace it with the revolutionary democratic power of organized self-determining people. Elections and the system’s (false) claim to democracy are the Achilles’ heel of the system which is only protected by our own inactivity.

“Protest Mode” is the way that Amiri Baraka described a form of organizing that made demands on the “powers that be” but failed to actually take on the task of organizing to take power. As Baraka put it, “we need to organize to take power where we can literally put our hands on it.” What does he mean? In the 1994 speech, he joked that would-be revolutionaries announce “death to the bourgeoisie, we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do that to the bourgeoisie” but these revolutionaries can’t get a school board member elected in a local election, “they can’t even elect a dog catcher.”

Participating in electoral politics is full of risks, but the risks are our opportunities as well. The system tries to constrain electoral campaigns to promote the individual candidate and limit mass democratic participation. This undemocratic structure is even more developed and dangerous once a candidate wins. Once the newly-elected official enters the halls of government, the people are kept out! This way the system can work over politicians like Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We cannot surrender to this imposed anti-democratic structure. But the best way to destroy it is to organize electoral struggles along revolutionary democratic lines and to build a revolutionary democratic movement that retains precedence over individual candidates. We not only need to beat the system in the elections, we must continue to beat the system after the elections. A real “people’s campaign” must maintain its independent momentum and organization (dual power) to support its candidates after they have won but also, if needed, to remove them by recall if they decide to sell out. This is one of the best ways to build dual power because it strengthens the movement while at the same time it weakens the power of the system by undermining it. One of the main tasks of an elected revolutionary democratic candidate is to start dismantling the antidemocratic structure of the system from within.

Strategy & Tactics (Keith) by X.

Revolutionary Democracy is a strategy as well as a broad set of tactics and organizational forms or structures. Revolutionary Democracy provides an organizational form because it poses that the people who do the work should make the decisions, and that this is the most effective, efficient and powerful form of organization. The strategy is about the long term and the goal of the movement. The strategy of revolutionary democracy is then to build a movement, an alternate society, a dual power, where the people who do the work make the decisions. From this strategic idea almost any tactic is possible. Tactics would be things like protesting, lobbying, electoral politics and so forth. The strategy informs the tactics because the point of any tactic is to advance democratic participation. Organizing, for instance, a protest against the war is a tactic. But what is the point? That is the strategic question. Usually there is no point, unless we are utterly naïve and believe that Bush or the Democratic Party will make decisions based on our protests. Millions protested the war against Iraq before the first bombs were dropped. In many countries the majority of people opposed the war and made their views known through protest yet their governments went ahead and supported the war. Protesting, however, is not futile if the point is to organize people—not into little sectarian grouplets—but in a revolutionary democratic fashion so that they begin to participate, do work and make decisions about that work collectively. Most existing left-wing groups are either secretive about their strategy or are only interested in getting people to join or follow their little thing. Instead revolutionary democracy empowers people to participate fully in the transformation of society, wherever they are. That is the strategy for which the tactics are means. Ani DiFranco says “every tool is a weapon if you hold it right” and we say that any tactic can be revolutionary democratic if it organizes people to work and decide together.

Advocacy at Tent State (Erik) by X.

Tent State University is a mass revolutionary democratic event where students take over public (university) space to radically redefine education and demonstrate a student run alternative to the undemocratic university structure. Students camp out, run classes, workshops, play music, and engage in planning and coalition building. Tent State also includes an advocacy campaign where passers-by are encouraged to call their state legislator and call on him to support higher education. Advocacy serves a number of purposes. It allows us to work in coalition with, and receive funding from, more centrist minded organizations like the student governments. It allows us to reclaim university space with the tacit approval of our administration, because they share our goals of increased funding for the university, and see student advocacy as a great avenue to get it. It creates sympathy among moderate students for the hard work we do “defending” Higher education. It allows us to have access and credibility with politicians who can potentially spark movement building reforms. The legislative presence also aids us in attracting media who might react to a bigwig political name over a radical activity. TSU makes use of the traditional advocacy process to engage in highly revolutionary activity, and to engage and gain the sympathy of the more moderate students.

Advocacy & Lobbying (Erik) by X.

Advocacy consists of convincing people in positions of power to change laws and rules. Advocacy is usually associated with elected officials, but can apply just as easily to working at reforming any undemocratic system by essentially trying to convince the people who control power that they should use that power to do what you want. Conscious consuming is just another form of advocacy. Lobbying is the most advanced form of advocacy and involves actually paying people to advocate on a full-time basis.

The radical Left mostly rejects advocacy because they perceive it as ineffective. They see advocacy as dominated by professional lobbyists who represent giant corporate interests, and who can use the allure of highly undemocratic campaign contributions, and the permanence of (often times multiple) full time lobbyists to monopolize control over politicians who depend on their money to stay in office.

For the mainstream Left however advocacy is the only ways to enter the political system. Many advocates may object that grassroots mobilization is a big part of much advocacy work, they get petitions signed, hold educational events, invite politicians to campus, etc. But they only work directly with people to get money or to substitute public support for money when they advocate. They still see the people as only a means to influence power (leaders) not as having power themselves.

Advocacy offers an opportunity to make small improvements in people’s real lives that are beyond what the movement could accomplish without political support. In order to use advocacy correctly the movement must ALWAYS remember that power flows directly from the people, and that the politicians are just avenues through which to exercise that power for the growth of the alternative independent movement. By eschewing traditional lobbyists the movement can culture jam advocacy campaigns by making them about mobilization. Legislative victory becomes (a welcome) consequence of growing the movement, not the purpose of growing the movement. Legislative goals should serve to advance the ability of the movement to grow either directly or indirectly by improving the lives of the people you hope to organize. No legislative goals are as important as building independent institutions and mass revolutionary democratic activity.

The "Great Rutgers Walk Out" of 2007 (X., Tim) by X.

In a short few weeks leading up to fourth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq a small coalition organized an antiwar walkout at Rutgers University. (1) On March 20, 2007, between 400 and 500 students walked out of class and joined an antiwar rally. Some 300 then marched to a local recruitment station and temporarily took over a major highway. The Rutgers antiwar organizers pulled off this protest –one of the largest on any US campus this year- without any support from any national organization and with very limited resources. Their revolutionary democratic approach to the protest tactic dramatically improved the turnout, diversity, boldness and outcome of the event.

Going to the Students & Addressing Everyone

The walk out organizers engaged a large section of the university community through active outreach (handbilling, dormstorming) rather than passive outreach (tabling, flyering). They distributed thousands of handbills directly to the students announcing the upcoming walkout. They crafted different messages to address the various concerns of different segments of the university, alternately focusing on the need to bring the troops home, on the cost of the war, on the massive killings of Iraqi civilians, on the illegality of the war, on the impact of budget shortfalls on higher education, etc. A special appeal was made to all students to consider their responsibility to get their peers out of Iraq (many of whom had to join the army to get ahead in life). The entire focus of the mobilization effort was to assume mass support and to call on the overwhelming majority of the university community join the walkout on their own terms, not just to reach out to the usual suspects in the “activist” community.

Assuming Support

With the protest still a month away, a handful of organizers decided to start creating antiwar armbands for distribution on the day of the event. The purpose? Many expected that their peers would not walk out of class. Therefore they could “participate” by wearing an antiwar armband! Several assumptions were made here, but the most important being the assumption that on the date of the walkout, students would not walk out of class. As the date approached however, organizers realized that instead of assuming hostility of the student body, they should assume support.

On the day of the rally, the crowd was told to contact people wearing red armbands if they encountered any problems. Since the armbands had already been haphazardly distributed, there was no way to know who all had received one. By putting armband-wearers in positions of responsibility (even if they had no formal link to the organizers of the rally), these supporters were invited to take a more proactive role in the success of the rally, and to make it theirs in a much more real sense. Thus the tactic of creating armbands was thus shifted from “resistance mode” to a revolutionary democratic organizing tool.

Diverse Coalition & Unity of Action

The walkout coalition was small but diverse: It included student groups from a variety of communities (Middle-Eastern, Latino, African-American, “white” Left, hippies, pirates, etc.) A number of these groups had previously worked together (on such issues as immigrant rights, university democracy, etc.) and had held joint cultural events, building an important foundation of trust. Additionally, off-campus alumni and antiwar community activists participated (mostly in an advisory and support capacity) and added to the experience of the group.

The coalition was new and its goal ambitious. The organizers had to quickly establish a rudimentary communications and decision-making process in order to maintain unity despite real differences of opinions. Despite the inevitable flaws in this ad hoc process, a firm commitment to the success of the action, to open discussion and to respect for democratic decisions kept the group together at critical times.

Building up Momentum & Claiming Space

As the date of the walkout approached, the organizers stepped up their activity: They spread word of the walkout door-to-door throughout the dorms and made announcements in dozens of classrooms (before class or during class if they had the support of the professor). Individual initiatives were welcomed: When a new organizer proposed to hang a pro-walkout banner from her dorm room window, the group quickly adopted the idea and produced dozens of antiwar banners to hang from the windows of friends and sympathizers and even on the trees leading up to the classroom buildings.

The organizers chose a key location for the walkout rally (the largest concentration of class buildings at the university) and began to claim it as an antiwar space way ahead of the day of the walkout. For weeks, thousands of students going to class got used to a constant presence of antiwar organizers handing out handbills, unfurling large banners and wallpapering buildings with flers.

The university grounds were claimed visually and physically but also educationally and culturally: When isolated reactionaries criticized the walkout in the student newspaper as being counterproductive to learning, the antiwar organizers responded that the walkout was a revolutionary and democratic form of education sorely missing from the standard curriculum. Creative cultural approaches played an important role in winning hearts and minds among students and professors: One organizer announced the walkout in a Shakespeare class by reciting one of the legendary bard’s classic antiwar sonnets to great applause. (2)

Numerous letters to the editor and a full-page ad in the student newspaper put a final touch on the peaking momentum in the days leading up to the walkout. A collective sense of anticipation could be felt throughout the campus. Unlike many isolated antiwar actions that had been ignored or dismissed by the majority of students in the previous couple of years, the walkout became a fact to be acknowledged before it even happened. Posters all over campus counted down the days until the action and students everywhere began to talk with their friends about what they planned to do on March 20.

Asserting Dual Power & Democratizing Protest

The three dozen or so active organizers in the antiwar coalition managed to temporarily change the character of the university by creating a dual power situation through their revolutionary democratic mobilization efforts. Day by day, they gathered the support, sympathy and/or friendly neutrality of the vast majority of the faculty, staff and students. They built a loose yet enormous antiwar social network that forced the administration and local police to think twice about trying to stop or curtail the walkout. In fact, a number of sympathizers within those system forces ended up giving their tacit support to the action (the dual power situation emboldened them to oppose the system even in small ways). Because the coalition succeeded in drawing on the social power of masses of people (as opposed to the minor social power of a few activists), the authorities were unable to pick out specific targets for arrest or suspension.

The palpable sense of rising momentum in turn emboldened the organizers to plan, prepare and run the walkout boldly and powerfully. During the final couple weeks of organizing, they discussed previous walkout experiences at Rutgers and elsewhere (including watching the movie Walkout about the 1968 Latino high school walkouts in Los Angeles). The antiwar coalition debated, defined and visualized what the walkout event should accomplish - agreeing when they could, and otherwise agreeing to disagree.

On the day of the walkout, the organizers refused to be intimidated or distracted by a small group of reactionary provocateurs, wagering that encouraging their fellow students to ignore counter-protestors isolate these elements more effectively than arguing with them or exchanging insults. Organizers went into classes to help their fellow students gather their resolve to join them (starting with friendly classes with supportive students and/or professors). The rally kept speakers rolling (without interminable lectures), emphasizing students and peers as speakers (no “talking heads”), and offered a wide range of informative and engaging perspectives that kept the crowd involved with innovative call-and-response techniques.

The organizers further infused democratic content into the protest format by asking the crowd to decide where to march next and whether or not to take the highway, making sure to keep the best communications possible between key organizers from all the groups in the coalition. The assumption of mass support proved to be a successful gambit, and a learning experience, as many “activists” were surprised to see construction workers on the highway flashing peace signs and pumping their fists in support.

Following Through & Building the Movement

The walkout, rally and march turned out great; marchers returned to their starting point having closed down a major highway and (thanks to the mass number of participants) suffered no arrests. The students felt a real sense of accomplishment and empowerment, having pulled off the largest walkout at Rutgers in at least 20 years.

Organizers wanted to ensure that the enthusiasm of the crowd was not wasted when everyone went home and that participants would be given the opportunity to begin deciding the next step of the movement immediately; when the march ended, dozens of students signed up with the coalition. Coalition events had been scheduled in advance so that students signing up were all reached with one mass email announcing all the different groups, projects, etc. which they could join (not just being told to come to the next protest!). As a result, all groups in the coalition got to grow. The revolutionary democratic approach of the organizers helped the movement move away from the individualistic militancy typical of activism, and towards building the mass militancy of an organized movement.

Of course, the student organizers identified a number of shortcomings: There should have been more preparation of students in the classes ahead of the walkout, media coverage should have been better organized, the process of coalition democracy needed improvement, etc. But the overall success of the event left the entire antiwar coalition eager to plan for a bigger and better walkout next year.

The Rutgers walkout turned out to be a skillful use of the protest as a tactic within a movement-building strategy. Such success could not happen if you protested every week as a ritual– the point is to use the tactic at the right time, at the right place and to do it strategically: Organize large numbers of people, engage them in the building of (temporary) dual power, and use the action not merely as an end in itself, but as an opportunity to grow the movement. (3)
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(1) The original call for the Walk Out at Rutgers was issued by the student group Rutgers Against the War (RAW). RAW was soon joined by Students for Belief, Awareness, Knowledge, and Activism (BAKA), Tent State University, the Student and Education Workers Union, the Latino Student Council, the United Black Council and others.

(2) “But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a
heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads,
chopp'd off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day
and cry all 'We died at such a place'- some swearing, some crying
for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some
upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I
am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how
can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black
matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were
against all proportion of subjection.” (Shakespeare, Henri V)

(3) One of the definitions of a successful action is that it leaves the movement stronger than it was before the action.

Protest Mode, Advocacy Mode & the Loyal Opposition (X.) by X.

Most of the traditional US Left still functions either on the Protest Mode or on the Advocacy Mode (or a bit of both). That is, leftist activists take the tactic of protesting or advocating and repeat it over and over for its own sake, almost by reflex, as if it was the only possible means of struggle. In other words, they turn a useful tactic into useless strategy.

Despite their differences, both protest and advocacy modes of political work are fundamentally undemocratic in that they rarely provide many people with genuine opportunities to work together and decide together how to change society. Both claim to represent people’s aspirations, but neither is rooted in the practice of democracy and neither aim to build democratic alternatives to the current power structure. Consequently, they play the role of “loyal opposition,” either begging (advocacy) or demanding (protest) that the powers-that-be change their policies on this or that issue on account of their lobbying or protesting. The partisans of the “protest” and “advocacy” trends often criticize one another bitterly, and yet they fail to recognize that their political approaches –although different in form– are quite similar:

• Both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans are fragmented into a myriad narrow, issue-based groups and/or isolated sectarian organizations. Neither camp offers concrete or convincing proposals to build a broad-based, nationwide progressive movement that could radically change the system. Both thereby acknowledge an unwillingness and/or inability to organize the great majority of people. In fact, the very nature of their main activities is exclusive of the majority since few people can participate frequently in a meaningful way in protests or advocacy campaigns. These groups then end up simply asking people to donate money.

• Both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans elevate their tactics to the level of a strategy. Their chosen activities become the only means to be considered by the movement to effect change; they are presented as the essence of progressive action under the present system, because they are more “militant” or more “realistic”.

• Whatever their intent is, both “protest” and “advocacy” partisans implicitly or explicitly recognize and legitimize the system’s authority. Whether they are advocating for the powers-that-be to listen to their recommendations or protesting their decisions, it is clear that all decision-making power rests in the hands of the powers-that-be.

Just as "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" in England, the loyal opposition that dominates the US Left does not fundamentally challenge the system (i.e. capitalism): The advocacy mode because it merely reforms the system, the protest mode because -no matter how militantly- it merely criticizes the system. What differentiates Revolutionary Democracy from the Loyal Opposition is that it not only challenges the legitimacy of the system, but that it makes use of a multiplicity of tactics to organize people to practice democracy and directly challenge the ability of the powers-that-be to enforce their illegitimate control of society.

Take a walk on the wild side (X.) by X.

Gandhi launched a nationwide revolution in India by walking to the beach. Does that sound ridiculous? The struggle for Indian independence lasted decades. Many lives were lost to the ruthless brutality of the British Empire. It was a hard and painful road to win that freedom. But the first step to victory came when Gandhi realized the people could shake the system to its foundations with a long, peaceful stroll to the shore.

The British had set up a colonial system to control all aspects of Indian life. They rigged the rules to exploit the people and their land. Those who resisted were arrested, beaten or killed. One typical colonial law said that only the British could produce or sell salt. Salt had always been easy to find on India’s long coasts. People would collect it for free on the beaches. Now they were forced to buy it from the colonial government.

Indians were denied so many rights – who would care about salt? But salt, it turns out, plays a very important role in Indian culture. It has a powerful symbolic meaning (to “eat someone’s salt” means to have a duty of loyalty towards them). Gandhi’s brilliance was that he figured out the salt laws were a critical weakness in the English colonial system.

On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and a few dozens of his followers began a 240-mile march to the coast. They walked for 23 days, going through dozens of villages. Thousands of others joined them along the way until they reached the beach on April 5. From wikipedia:

“The following morning, after a prayer, Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud (with reports varying as to how much) and declared, "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." He then boiled it in seawater, illegally producing the controversial commodity. He implored his thousands of followers to likewise begin to make salt along the seashore, wherever "was most convenient and comfortable" to them, not to the British Empire.”

The Salt March sparked a nationwide explosion of civil disobedience as thousands of Indians made and bought “illegal” salt. Caught by surprise, the British government threw over sixty thousand people in jail trying to stop the rising movement. In complete panic, a maniacal general ordered his British troops to shoot down nonviolent demonstrators in the city of Peshawar, killing hundreds of innocent people (the Indian soldiers had refused to open fire). For of its vicious repression of a mass movement, the British drew international condemnation. And although it took another 17 years and many more hardships for India to gain its independence, the Salt March was a turning point in the struggle: For the first time made it possible for thousands of Indians from all walks of life to defy the illegitimate rule of the British Empire.

Through years of practice and study, Gandhi and his fellow organizers developed a most revolutionary understanding of the Indian people and of British colonial rule. Gandhi grasped that the colonial system was not invincible and that its laws could be bent to the point of open rebellion: What was needed was for masses of people to subvert the system at its weakest point. To make this possible, he devised a mass direct action deeply rooted in the cultural, social, political and economic life of the people of India.

Some severe shortcomings of the Gandhian movement must be acknowledged regarding its lack of internal democracy (especially discrimination against women). But these shortcomings do not take away from the inspiring legacy of the Salt March as a revolutionary democratic event:

• It successfully united people across all regional, class, religious and ethnic boundaries that were all affected by the illegitimate and frankly absurd salt laws.

• It was a simple, culturally and socially legitimate event that almost anyone could participate in and yet it was a most subversive event that directly challenged the system’s legitimacy.

• It was a mass popular action that both radicals and moderates could support and yet it struck at the heart of the system’s political and economic authority.

• It empowered the Indian people to continue challenging the system on their own as they sold and bought salt, earning or saving a little money through continuous acts of civil disobedience that reaffirmed their legitimate cultural heritage.

• It demonstrated the system’s inability to stop masses of organized people and thereby established the beginning of nationwide dual power: the power of the people continually negotiating with the power of the system, until the system was overcome.

No one in India would have ever believed that a nationwide rebellion could begin over salt until the march occurred. Revolutionary Democracy assumes that a mass, popular direct action of this magnitude is equally possible under any other oppressive system, including in the US. It is up to us to figure out how to do it…

Dual Power (Keith, X.,Tommy D) by X.

At its core, Revolutionary Democracy is a strategy of dual power. The revolutionary democratic movement literally seeks to build a new, parallel society – however embryonic or preliminary – right in the middle of the oppressive system. Revolutionary Democracy mobilizes people to build their own democratically-controlled grassroots institutions (focused on the collective gathering and provisioning of social necessities such as education, healthcare, or even food, as well as on the production and dissemination of art and music, for example), organizations (neighborhood councils, student groups, tenant unions, etc.) and events (campaigns, festivals, rallies, etc.) that exist parallel to and in defiance of the system. These alternative instutions organized alomng revolutionary democractic line where people work together and decide togther are the base areas from which we can subvert, undermine, takeover, and overthrow the systems power. Dual power, for revolutionary democracy, is not only the building of an alternative, dual power is also the dismantling of the systems power.

The revolutionary democratic movement enables people to penetrate and take over the system’s organizations (city councils, school boards, trade unions, etc.) and institutions (universities, libraries, businesses, etc.) and to put them increasingly under the democratic control of those that do the work (i.e., not the millionaire politicians and appointed boards of trustees/directors) and those that live in the communities that these entities are intended to serve. In this dynamic of dual power, the alternative revolutionary democratic institutions and organizations provide the initial backbone for the movement and make it possible for organizers within the system to remain connected, to liberate resources (most of which are currently underutilized or even wasted) and to practice revolutionary democracy at every opportunity (within a union local, a project team at the office, a church group, a student government, etc). Revolutionary Democracy calls for the establishment of revolutionary democratic practices in our own spaces as well as within the system’s institutions (from city hall to the office to the church).

As the people that produce the resources (whether material, cultural or intellectual) begin to establish a regular practice of controlling those resources collectively and democratically, revolutionary democratic institutions increasingly become a direct challenge to the system, and to the system’s methods of garnering resources through exploitation and plunder.

The best kept secret (X.) by X.

The local movement based at Rutgers University and in New Brunswick, NJ experimented with the revolutionary potential of democracy for many years. But it was not until the founding of Tent State University in 2003 that we discovered the best kept of all secrets: Even though we had grown up and lived in a society that claims to be the most democratic of all, none of us had ever practiced democracy at all.

That spring, to fight back against the most drastic state budget cuts to higher education, local progressives and revolutionaries (mostly students and some alumni) decided to set up a tent university in the most highly-trafficked area of Rutgers class buildings. This symbolic protest (“Education is losing its home”) quickly grew into an entirely new experience for all involved. On the heels of the US invasion of Iraq, student organizers from the antiwar movement joined along with many others and built an alternative free progressive university in the midst of the old.

Students pitched dozens of tents, attended and taught alternative class, hosted rallies, art performances, poetry readings, spontaneous sporting events and fed several dozen organizers with the help of supportive local businesses. During the day, organizers also mobilized hundreds of students to call state legislators in opposition to the budget cuts threatening Rutgers. (1) At night, Tent State University became the longest, free music festival in the state as the best local bands played outdoors along with firespinners, b-boys and b-girls, and capoera dancers. And the only way grassroots organizers with few resources could pull off this ambitious project was to learn to work and decide together, to learn to practice democracy…

In the evening, the organizers sat down together in a large open meeting among the tents to go over the tasks at hand. New participants joined in who had just pitched a tent, attended a class or just happened upon the scene. Unlike typical activist meetings, much of the discussion focused on concrete collective tasks: In order for Tent State to exist, all participants had to pitch in. All heads were needed to plan and all hands needed to run the kitchen, clean up the site, maintain security (the “feelgood patrol”), welcome new campers, and to organize the multitude of classes and performances for the coming night and day. In order to get so many different organizations and individuals to cooperate productively, democracy become more than a way to run meetings: Working and deciding together became a way of life, day in and day out.

Sure, at times things got messy. Sometimes the work didn’t get done right. Sometimes decisions were hard to reach. Sometimes people got upset when they didn’t get their way. But most everyone stuck around because the whole was worth more than the sum of the parts. Losing a vote on one proposal didn’t mean the end of the world because Tent State remained so full of potential for everyone. In this developing culture of democracy and revolution, of free education and artistic expression, of life affirmation in opposition to greed, war and oppression, the possibilities seemed limitless… if only for one week.

Tent State University turned out to be a life-changing experience for many organizers. The Tent State movement has now spread out to other US campuses and to universities in England and Australia (for more info on the Tent State University movement, check out tentstate.com). At Rutgers, Tent State University has returned year after year and grown from a single event into a recurrent, grassroots, progressive and democratically-run institution of learning. This institution continues to evolve with the ideas and labor of all of its participants: It now includes a large town hall, an Art City and a new tradition to liberate an auditorium for the nightly live shows when it rains.(2) And as Tent State evolves and grows as a microcosm of a possible revolutionary democratic society, its mass of social power begins to bend the rules that the Rutgers University administration traditionally enforces.

Tent State never applied for a permit to pitch tents, to hold rallies, to teach classes or to run concerts at night in the middle of the campus. Back in 2003, the Rutgers administration originally warned that they would not allow the event at all. The administrators backed off when they faced a broad group of determined organizers that set up camp during a class change with thousands of students walking by. By generating thousands of call to legislators on behalf of higher education and even getting a few state legislators to attend opening ceremonies, the Tent State organizers made it even more difficult for the Rutgers administration to try and stop the rising movement. By engaging thousands of students in a whole host of diverse activities over the years and organizing hundreds to build and determine the course the Tent State institution, they have won the support, sympathy or at least friendly neutrality of a broad section of the student population (although Tent State certainly has its detractors). By working closely with Rutgers staff and faculty and supporting the causes of their unions, Tent State developed many allies within the existing university system that provide key resources and assistance to the movement in the form of access to electricity, funds, or by bringing their classes out of the classroom buildings and into the tents…

Going on five years, Tent State is becoming a tradition at Rutgers. The old university’s administration has accepted that –for at least one week each year– it must coexist with the new university’s daily assembly. Security and safety at Tent State are handled by the Tent State staff (with no fights, no accidents and no injuries in five years) while the Rutgers police remains cordially on the outskirts. By empowering students to build a culture of revolutionary democracy and a mass base of social power, Tent State requires the system to negotiate with the movement over the limits of its authority.

This is what we mean by dual power: When masses of people organize themselves creatively and practice democracy in a revolutionary way, the system has no choice but to alter the enforcement of its rules if it wants to avoid a challenging confrontation with a risky, uncertain outcome. This dual power situation then makes it easier for the movement to consolidate its gains –both outside as well as inside the system– and to continue to expand. Tent State University is now growing into a progressive headquarters as it launches new initiatives that increasingly impact Rutgers University and the city of New Brunswick year-round.

Tent State University was the experiment that broke on through to the other side. It led us to rethink all of our previous activity. We now focus on the revolutionary potential of organizing all kinds of people to practice democracy as the process of building the new world within the old. And as we continue to deepen our understanding of the Tent State experience, we begin to explore the application of Revolutionary Democracy throughout all of society.

In all our endeavors, we should engage people to discuss, debate and make decisions about collective projects of all sorts to which they contribute work. Everyone should be encouraged to practice democracy in the movement (whether organizing a rally, a community program, a festival or a factory seizure) but also to extend, negotiate or smuggle democratic practices into all areas of their lives (from the workplace to the school to the church). We should mobilize people to actually take power into their own hands and to transform the social conditions of their lives today, circumventing and ultimately replacing the undemocratic structure of our current society. Within this new revolutionary and democratic dual power structure –with on the one hand the growing movement with its liberated resources and on the other the weakening, infiltrated capitalist system– people can develop new social relationships based on the principle that the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,”(3) laying the foundation for a new society.
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(1) These advocacy efforts did contribute to reducing the threatened state budget cuts by tens of millions of dollars; a positive if small step in the long struggle to guarantee the right to education for all.
(2) The pirate spirit of Tent State encourages the liberation of needed resources from the system when they cannot be obtained otherwise, under the classic slogan “Take all you can, give nothing back.”
(3) Marx, 1848.

Apathy is a myth (Erik) by X.

Apathy and alienation are two different ways to explain why not all people are involved in pushing for social change, but alienation is the only accurate and practical way for any non-elitist who cares about social change. Apathy is a state of not being emotionally invested in something. Alienation is a state whereby outside influences prevent you from responding either emotionally or with action to your natural inclinations. Take for example someone who refuses to make eye contact with you as you hand out post cards that ask congressmen to intervene in the Darfur genocide. It is possible this person is apathetic, which would mean they have no emotional investment in things like mass murder, human suffering, or ethnic cleansing, but I think we know that’s not true. Want proof? Torture someone in front of them and see if they don’t care about other’s suffering.

The fact is the reason people don’t sign those post cards, don’t get involved in organizations, or follow politics isn’t that they don’t care, it’s that for one reason or another they don’t actually believe those things alleviate human suffering, or else they believe that there is no way to work to alleviate suffering without giving up oneself. And if someone has 3 kids and a 40 hour work week that is a very reasonable belief.

Apathy implies that we as organizers are doing everything right, but the people are at fault. Alienation implies that the people are fine, and some of our tactics/strategies are at fault. If you believe in apathy you think average people are cold, callous, and selfish beings, and social change will only happen when you and a few other elite “moral super heroes” manage to overcome the flaws of the masses. If you believe in alienation you believe that circumstances in your life have allowed you to both A.) have the time and energy to invest in caring about problems outside your own immediate well being and B.) have allowed you to raise your consciousness to empathize with the suffering of others, and that if other people aren’t there yet, it’s because organizers haven’t yet created the circumstances that would allow them to break out of their alienation.

In addition to being less elitist the biggest advantage of alienation over apathy is you can fight it. You can work to remove the reasons that people feel they can’t create change. You can be a better organizer, but you can’t build better people.

There is no spoon (X.) by X.

In the original Matrix movie (1999) a group of underground revolutionaries try and try again to overthrow an oppressive system that has lulled everyone into complacency. They keep banging their heads against this apparently invincible enemy. Even those who learned how to bend the rules a little –like veteran mentor Morpheus– believe that the system cannot be defeated without the intervention of a messiah. In the classic scene of the bended spoon, this “messiah” (Neo) begins to grasp that the rules of the system can be bent so far that what you thought was impossible becomes possible. Neo is talking to a monastic-looking child of the underground who seemingly bends a spoon with his mind:

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

This classic dialogue hits the fundamental problem that Revolutionary Democracy wants to overcome: The traditional US Left still believes that the capitalist system is so powerful today that people cannot change it. The only options available to the activists are to beg or demand that the powers-that-be concede minor reforms. We are then supposed to wait for a great crisis in the distant future when the system collapses on its own and the revolution “happens”. Most of the activity of the US Left these days consists of trying to “bend spoons”: The radicals protest militantly, the moderates advocate congenially and the “revolutionaries” recruit small exclusive “vanguards” or “affinity groups” and prepare for the day of the insurrection (just as the Christian fundamentalists wait for the day of the Rapture). Meanwhile, the system grows more controlling and oppressive every day, the movement keeps shrinking and weakening and the great majority of people feel more and more alienated from the very concept of revolution. The activists then conclude that people in the US are apathetic and that they reject change, which reinforces the belief that our society cannot be transformed. This cycle of self-defeat goes on and on…

We learn otherwise in the practice of revolutionary democracy: Once we understand how the system works, we can bend its laws so far that we can change and subvert it step by step until it is eventually overcome. We can do this sometimes with little steps and sometimes with big steps, so long as we recognize that the system is not invincible and that it can only be transformed by the social power of masses of organized people. Unlike the Matrix script, we can’t follow a predictable superhero plot. It is only as more and more people get awakened in their daily lives to the reality that “there is no spoon” that they can organize themselves and democratically revolutionize the world. This was the tantalizing promise that Neo made at the end of Matrix 1: To wake up everyone and see what happens (Matrix 2 and 3 betrayed that promise and sucked).

The premise of Revolutionary Democracy is:

• The capitalist system is not some unmovable, unstoppable machine that we can only rage against. It is built upon rules that can be bent, twisted and reshaped until society itself is completely transformed.

• The only force that can transform society is the social power of lots and lots of organized people. The most creative, powerful and long-lasting form of social organization is the one in which people practice democracy in a revolutionary way: Working together and deciding together in all things.

• Progressives and revolutionaries can work with all kinds of people right where they are to help them build and use revolutionary democratic social power.

• As people build and consolidate revolutionary democratic social power, they create a dual power situation that increasingly bends the system until it overcomes it. The transformation begins right away -even if in small ways- just as mass bends space in the universe. The more mass, the more bending.

That’s the strategy. The movement can choose any number of tactics to make it happen depending on the time, place and conditions. We can mobilize for rallies and direct actions, just as we can organize people to pass their own laws or take political power in elections, just as we can build independent progressive institutions like street universities or job cooperatives. No need to repeat the same tactic over and over. No need to reject any tactic off hand. (1) What determines the usefulness of a tactic at any given time is whether or not it empowers as many people as possible to organize themselves and to expand democratic control over society.

Sounds simplistic? It isn’t. The system structures everyone’s lives with the most undemocratic routines at work, school, church, in the home and of course on TV. Everywhere we are told what we can and cannot do as individuals. The very idea of working together to change the rules is banished (voting is only allowed on TV to select idols or eliminate survivors). The usual approaches of the traditional US Left will not succeed: We can’t just proclaim how great the world will be if people just join us; we can’t browbeat people into abandoning their way of life for the vague promise of a better future. And we can’t unite anyone by trying to frighten them with tales of imminent worldwide chaos and destruction. It’s been tried. It doesn’t work.

We must create the necessary conditions for everyone to learn that what they think is impossible (transforming society) is in fact possible. That is the challenge: To organize events, actions and programs where people can experiment with democracy in a revolutionary way; where they can experience the transformative power of working together and deciding together; where they can change their understanding of the world and of their place in it as they begin to build a new world amidst the old.
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(1) We do reject terror as a tactic (the indiscriminate use of violence against people) because it is completely antidemocratic. Violent tactics in general should be avoided in most situations (except in self-defense) because they undermine the ability of large groups of people to practice democracy. It’s not easy to work together and decide together when dodging bullets!

What is Revolutionary Democracy? (X., Keith) by X.

Revolutionary Democracy is a strategy for revolution. It works by expanding democracy to every corner of society. Starting today. No need to follow a great leader or join this or that organization or make a donation. No need to wait for some distant revolutionary event in the far future. We can all practice revolution as a social process here and now: Organize with all kinds of people right where they are to take control of society step by step; liberate and consolidate resources to build the movement both outside the system and inside of it; build a dual power of the people that grows and contends with the power of the system (capitalism, imperialism, whatever you want to call it).

Revolutionary Democracy is simple enough: The people that do the work should make the decisions about how that work is done, how it is organized, and how the products of that work are shared. In the revolutionary democratic movement, we work together and we decide together. Everywhere. We can learn how to practice democracy in a revolutionary way in the street, at work, at home, at church, at school, even in the army. We can use protest, advocacy, direct action, elections, service programs and any number of tactics to build revolutionary democracy. We can challenge the system in the process of overcoming it. We can take the system apart piece by piece and build the new world in the midst of the old.

Revolutionary Democracy is both a means and an end. All progressive and revolutionary trends are welcome. We can unite for practical action without a uniform theory. We just ask one simple question before we make a move: Will this empower as many people as possible to expand democratic control over the world?

In the following pages, you will find ideas and experiences developed by the emerging revolutionary democratic movement in and around Rutgers University and the city of New Brunswick, NJ over the past 15 years. Most of the key concepts in the article draw from a number of rich revolutionary traditions[1] but truly came into their own with the rise of the Tent State University movement (tentstate.com) that started at Rutgers in 2003 and has so far spread to campuses across the US, the UK and Australia.

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[1] Although the collection of articles titled 'The Revolution Starts Today' does not claim to represent his views, we want to acknowledge the essential contributions of Amiri Baraka who first introduced us to the theoretical concepts of dual power, protest mode, loyal opposition, etc. and who provided incisive insights into the dysfunction of the traditional US Left.

How the War on Terror Makes Us Slaves (Keith) by X.

It is widely acknowledged now that Bush rules through fear but what is not usually acknowledged is that fear, like all ideology, needs institutional grounding. Ideologies don’t just seep up out of the ground they need to be organized and disseminated. The institutional basis for fear is organized around the “War on Terror.” There are a number of apparatuses devoted to the production of fear in the U.S. like the department of homeland security and the Patriot Act. In New York City, for example, fear is produced and cultivated when we hear, while riding the subway, that “the police have the right to inspect all packages” or “if you see something suspicious call the police” or when we see in soldiers in Penn Station or police carrying automatic weapons. No amount of police can make us “safe” but their presence is not intended to make you safe, but to make you afraid. The anti-war movement, such as it is, must become a movement against the war on terror. As the majority of the country now opposes the war in Iraq we must make it clear that Iraq is but one symptom of the problem which is the war on terror itself.

The War on Terror dovetails with previously existing discourse to create a fascistic common sense of which Rudy Giuliani stands out as supreme spokesman. The fascistic common sense solidified through fear works in the following way: pose any social problem and the obvious solution is fascistic. For instance, the solution to crime is more police and more prisons, the solution to a terroristic attack or even supposed threat is the suspension of civil rights and police are allowed to search people on mass transportation at random. The correct response to these violations according to the ideology of fear is played back for us regularly by the media through the “man on the street interview”: “its worth it if it stops terror,” “its worth it if it saves one child,” “if you have nothing to hide you won’t mind being searched.” The “man on the street” in these examples (not chosen for prime time by accident!) is not only consumed by fear he is speaking like a happy slave. The War on Terror has consolidated a long turn from the “home of the brave” to the “home of the coward” from the “land of the free” to the “land of the slave.”

Long ago Benjamin Franklin made a remark that is often repeated of late: “Those who would exchange liberty for security deserve neither.” The meaning of his comment, however, is not as clear as it first appears in the present context. Franklin like the other so-called “founders” believed in Natural Rights and the social contract. The idea is expressed in the preamble to the declaration of independence which states: “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…” “Inalienable” means that they cannot be taken or given away they are sourced in nature or god, NOT the state or government. You cannot trade liberty for security because you cannot allow the government to take away your rights-- they are inalienable. The idea that the government gives you rights that it can take away was the definition of tyranny for the founders. According to social contract theory we join a government (the contract) to collectively protect our natural rights. If you think the government gave you the rights and you “allow” the government to take away your rights you do not deserve freedom or liberty because you accept your slavery.

Revolutionary Democracy, as we are developing it on the blog, needs a very different conception than the classical liberal theory of natural rights. Natural rights are based on “god” or “nature.” But, this is where Natural Right theory fails; “god” does not really exist, and god is certainly not going to intervene in the world to help us get the promised rights. We cannot appeal to god or nature to get back the freedom which the war on terror and the ideology of fear have taken. While fighting in the courts or appealing to the ACLU and the like is well and good, only the revolutionary democratically organized power of people can secure these rights. The rights are but codifications of social freedoms won by people “in the streets” or in the parlance of political science in “civil society.”

Interestingly towards the ends of his life Malcolm X began to argue that we needed to move beyond the struggle for “civil rights” and begin to struggle for “human rights.” He said we cannot fight within the United States for civil rights because what we are in effect doing is asking the people who take away our rights to give us our rights. Instead he argued we need to fight for human rights and take the struggle to the United Nations where other nations (especially the so-called third world nations) could support us. Malcolm is addressing the fundamental problem in natural rights theory: on the one hand the rights come from god or nature but on the other you need some sort of institutional power (the government or the United Nations) to get them. Malcolm recognized the problem and although a religious man he didn’t expect Allah to deliver the rights but he made a crucial error by appealing to the United Nations for rights. Moving beyond Natural Rights theory means we need both a new explanation (or theory) of where our rights come from (not god or nature, but organized people) an we need new institutions (what we call dual power) to establish and secure them.

In the 70’s when the movement was not yet utterly defeated there was a massive expansion of our rights and social freedoms. The Civil Rights Movement that Malcolm wanted to move beyond won rights not from god or nature or from the state, they won the rights in the struggle and the rights became codified in the state, e.g., desegregation, affirmative action, Roe V. Wade, birth control, sex ed, lowering the voting age, etc. Even the suburbs were affected. As a kid growing up in a NJ suburb I remember the public high school had an “open campus,” students were allowed to come and go as they pleased (the campus was “closed” with the Reagan onslaught). Now the schools are mini concentration camps with guards and metal detectors. The drinking age in the 70’s was 18 etc, etc.

The point is that rights do not come from the government as in fascistic theories of which we currently live under as common sense, nor do they come from god or nature as the “founders” believed, they come from organized people and the most powerful form of organization is revolutionary democracy because it wastes no one’s energy but utilizes and unites our collective social power. As we mentioned before the idea that “power comes form the barrel of a gun” is wrong (which, by the way, is why “the greatest military the world has ever known” can’t beat a country without much of a military to speak of). Power (and our “rights”) comes from organized people.