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.
______________________________________________

(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.