The Big Other Doesn't Exist (Keith) by X.

“The question of revolution is a question of seizing power”
-Mao

“We must organize to take power where we can literally put our hands on it”
-Amiri Baraka

To see the immediate relevance of these seemingly radical comments we must use imagination. Power is available now. It is not a question for a revolution in some distant future. During the “People’s Campaign of 2000”* we learned power can be something as simple as a roomful of angry parents.

The New Brunswick Board of Education (appointed by the mayor) decided to use a series of trailers as classrooms for elementary school children while new schools were being built. An outrageous plan, it drew the ire of the teachers union and parents. Over a hundred people gathered at the board of ed meeting where the plan was to be discussed. The board, as is its custom, appeared on a platform, saluted the flag, pledged allegiance and then adjourned to a “closed door session” for about a half hour before returning to the platform to address the assembly. The custom is an outrage and a scandal against democracy, but also our opportunity.

After the board left the room, a hundred odd people had nothing to do but sit and wait for their return. A number of campaign organizers attended this meeting including two of our city council candidates. We decided to use the opportunity to hold an alternative meeting and while the board conspired behind closed doors, we would hold an open democratic meeting. The board had left microphones (they intended them to be used under their direction.). Our candidates turned the microphones on, power was seized. We spoke to the audience about our campaign and the question of education and invited parents and teachers to take the microphone themselves. It was a bold but simple move. Nothing stopped us but our own fears. We are socialized, in school, in families, in churches etc. to sit quietly, to give our consent to idiotic un-democratic authority. Although the system is not afraid to resort to the gun, they don’t have enough of them. They must rely on our consent, our fear of acting without authorization, our fear of acting without credentials--our instinctual submission to authority or anything that sounds like an authority. Although I am not religious, what makes Jesus so radical is the comment he makes over and over before he teaches: “You have read such and such in the scriptures but I say this and that.” Who authorized him to say “this and that”? No one. As X has been saying “there is no spoon.” This is something that we have to learn as a movement and as individuals.

Indeed, realizing “there is no spoon” is only a beginning, and on this occasion it was as far as we got. We might have been able to make more of it if we were better prepared. We could have organized the parents and teachers into a more forceful opposition, placing the question of democracy before them in its most radical fashion —self-determination, democracy means, in part, you do it yourself— nor did we succeed in moving the crowd out of protest mode, but we learned an important lesson. When the board returned they were surprised to see the people getting along quite well without them, and although they immediately restored their version of order and the meeting proceeded according to their agenda they were not able to carry forward the trailer plan, and I like to think that in the moment they returned from backstage and saw people taking the matter into their own hands they got a glimpse of their future irrelevance.

* The People's Campaign was a progressive, grassroots, independent and democratically-run campaign that ran three candidates for City Council in New Brunswick in the 2000 elections against the long-entrenched city machine. The progressive platform of the campaign was developed by surveying over 1,000 homes throughout the community and it was approved -along with the three community candidates- at an open convention of New Brunswick residents and allies. The People's Campaign won 28% of the vote in this first attempt at applying a revolutionary democratic organizing approach to an electoral campaign in New Brunswick. More discussion of the People's Campaign and its impact will soon appear on the Pirate Caucus blog. (X)

Keith, who contributed this article, was one of the three People's Campaign candidates for the New Brunswick City Council in 2000. (X)

“THERE IS NO SPOON.” Part II (X.) by X.

It is an unfortunate (although predictable) weakness of the Matrix script that it promotes a pointless individualistic outlook: Once Neo can deconstruct the Matrix and “see the code”, he is reborn as a super-hero who can bend the rules of the Matrix all by himself. Not surprisingly, the tantalizing threat/promise that Neo makes at the end of the first movie (to wake up everyone and see what happens) never comes to pass in the sequels. The original script idea is betrayed, and by the third episode the plot degenerates into the deflating martyrdom of Neo the savior. We never get to see the episodes that should have been, where more and more people awaken to revolutionary consciousness and learn how to bend the rules of the Matrix.

The script’s shortcomings reflect the US Left’s own inability to get past the protest/advocacy mode and to recognize a new process of revolutionary change. The movement’s narrowness of vision fails to inspire the progressive and revolutionary artists to consider the real transformation of the system outside the realm of fantasy. Since the activists of the progressive “loyal opposition” cannot conceive how to build a movement here and now that enables the great majority to take part in changing the world, the progressive artists inevitably fall back on the Hollywoodian myth of the lone champion. Not only the Matrix, but most recent big budget fiction films with a progressive or revolutionary theme such as “V for Vendetta”, “John Q”, and the despicably cynical “The Life of David Gale” all rely on a central superhero and/or lone martyr to bring about change.

It may be a good thing however, that the Matrix sequels failed to deliver on Neo’s promise to awaken the majority and “see what happens.” Because rather than watching the story, we get to live the history if only we allow ourselves to recognize that it is by working and deciding together, by practicing collaborative decision-making, by practicing democracy that people begin to recognize that “there is no spoon” and to see the astounding potential of their social power to change the system radically.

To be continued...

“THERE IS NO SPOON.” Part I (X.) by X.

Since its viral opening in 1999, The Matrix has become a very useful frame of reference (I’m talking here about the first episode in the trilogy). It is useful because it uses incisive metaphors in its bold critique of the system and because most young progressives have seen it at least once. The Matrix makes it possible to discuss key revolutionary concepts in a striking and accessible way. I’ll focus for now on two of these important metaphors and their significance to the nascent movement for revolutionary democracy in the US.

The metaphor of the blue pill and the red pill is quite often referenced by progressives and revolutionaries. It powerfully expresses the life-changing experience that progressive activists and organizers go through when they first awaken to revolutionary consciousness. It’s the realization that your very understanding of the world does not reflect reality but a misleading set of illusions deeply ingrained in your mind after years of insidious indoctrination. It’s the sudden revelation that much of what you have been told about the world consists of outright lies by the system’s agents, of dingbat craziness perpetuated through sheer ignorance and mostly of confused notions borne out of the force-of-habit of the comfortably numb. The key dialogue between the young hacker Neo (budding activist) and the underground rebel Morpheus (veteran organizer) goes as follows:

Morpheus: We are trained in this world to accept only what is rational and logical. Have you ever wondered why? As children, we do not separate the possible from the impossible which is why the younger a mind is the easier it is to free while a mind like yours can be very difficult.
Neo: Free from what?
Morpheus: From the Matrix. Do you want to know what it is, Neo? It's that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me. But what is it? The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage... ... kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The script digs further into the loaded meaning of the red pill/blue pill metaphor by making crystal clear that in an information society, we face a choice pregnant with responsibility:

Neo: How?
Morpheus: Hold out your hands.
In Neo's right hand, Morpheus drops a red pill.
Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back.
In his left, a blue pill.
Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more.
Neo opens his mouth and swallows the red pill.

This bluntly symbolic scene has an uncanny impact on progressive students whose daily practice of accessing new information challenges the absolute dominance of the “official” version of events (even if most of the “biased interpretations” -read revolutionary analyses- have been filtered out of the textbooks). It exacerbates their feeling that “something is wrong with the world” and confronts them inescapably with the newfound revolutionary’s first dilemma: To know or not to know (soon followed by its twin: To act or not to act).

Yet as powerful as the red pill/blue pill image is (and I’ve referred to it quite often), I have come to see another scene in the Matrix as containing the most insightful and instructive of metaphors: the scene of the bended spoon. Although the script’s limitations only allow the metaphor to go so far, the Matrix introduces here the fundamental concept that our “reality” is not bound by immutable rules (just as the system is not ruled by immutable laws); we can affect our world (and our society) in amazing ways that we don’t even suspect if we just learn how. The dialogue takes places in the Oracle’s waiting room between Neo and a monastic-looking child of the underground movement that 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.

I can think of no concept more critical for progressives and revolutionaries to grasp than the simple lesson conveyed in that scene: The rules of the system can be bent; they are not immutable, they are not permanent, they are not absolute. And as in the movie, this is the critical concept that must be first understood and then mastered before attempting to change the system radically with any hope of success.

To be continued...

THE LOYAL OPPOSITION (X.) by X.

Today’s progressive US Left is mostly known for two types of activities. On the one hand is advocacy for reform with lobbying of the two-party system, the occasional local referenda and long-shot electoral candidacies. On the other hand are the protests such as rare strikes and even rarer large demonstrations, smaller rallies and direct actions at the local level, and isolated acts of vandalism. 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:

1) 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 frequently participate in a meaningful way in protests or advocacy campaigns.

2) 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”.

3) 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 the decisions of the powers-that-be, it is clear that all decision-making power rests in the hands of the powers-that-be.

The partisans of the advocacy mode and the partisans of the protest mode represent two wings of what Amiri Baraka (riffing off of Lenin) called the Loyal Opposition in discussions with revolutionary democratic organizers going back to the mid-90's. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, both trends end up legitimizing the powers-that-be by recognizing their right and ability to rule. 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 must differentiate the new revolutionary democratic movement from the Loyal Opposition is that it will not only challenge the legitimacy of the system, but that it will engage people all over the country to practice democracy as a direct challenge to the ability of the powers-that-be to enforce their illegitimate control of society.

WHAT IS AN ORGANIZER? Part I (X.) by X.

A promising discussion is taking place on the US Left regarding the difference between organizing and activism. Mark Rudd, a key leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) back in the 60’s, addressed this topic in a recent speech at Drew University. He later told me that he got the formulation from punk organizer Andy Cornell in the book Letters from Young Activists. Andy and Dan Berger also address this issue in their recent article “Ten Questions for Movement Building and Reflection” over at Left Turn.

Organizing is a fundamental component of the revolutionary experiments in democracy that have taken place in New Brunswick in the past decade and a half. In the Tent State movement, the distinction between organizing and activism was first explicitly articulated by our brother Tommy D at least a couple of years back. This important topic deserves a whole lot of attention and I plan on getting back to it. For now, I’ll start with a brief, positive outline of what I believe are key premises of organizing.

FIRST DRAFT OF AN ORGANIZERS’ CREDO

1) Organizers know that changing our world requires a whole lot of people to act together, that a whole lot of people can only act together in a movement, and that building a movement takes a lot of hard work and time.

2) Organizers know that the movement requires both organization and community. It must address all aspects of life: political, cultural, social, economic, etc. if people are to join it and stick with it. Organizers value both the ideals of the movement and the movement itself, just as they value their own ideals and themselves.

3) In all activities, organizers seek every opportunity to work with others. They will only work alone if they absolutely must.

4) In all activities, organizers do their utmost to recruit, train, mentor and inspire others to become organizers.

5) No matter where they are, no matter what their circumstances, no matter how limited their resources, organizers strive to build the movement in whatever capacity they can.

So far, the points I outlined could apply to just about any type of organizer, be they political, religious or professional and of whatever ideological persuasion. The many organizers I have had the privilege to work with over the years on various revolutionary experiments in democracy also practiced the following additional principles:

1) Always expand and develop democracy in society. Seize every opportunity to engage people in the practice of democracy – that is, engage people to build together and to decide together, i.e. in collaborative decision-making.

2) Always expand and develop democracy within the movement. Promote equitable collaboration (everyone contributes to the work) and informed decision-making (everyone gets meaningful opportunities to determine the course of the movement).

3) Always expand and develop the evolving vision of Revolutionary Democracy. Connect the local to the national and to the rest of the world. Share with others and learn from others. Connect today to yesterday and tomorrow. Learn from the history and plan for the future.

To be continued...

GETTING THE STORY DOWN - Part II (X.) by X.

It’s a rather astounding contradiction that the grassroots US Left still fails to express itself widely now that it has access to the most revolutionary equalizer of the freedom of expression. The ubiquitous internet renders moot the old argument that we lack the means to broadcast our ideas. We just seem to lack the vision, the will or both. There is no more painful reminder of this fact than the skyrocketing success of liberal online communities that have formed around the Democratic Party through the work of dailykos.com and MoveOn.org.

Both Dailykos and MoveOn grew in just a few years to enable tens of thousands of Democratic Party activists to reach millions of supporters. Although somewhat controversial for the mainstream, these websites firmly support the two-party status quo and mostly promote mild reform of the system (not to discount their significant contribution to the defeat of the clear and present Republican danger). But they succeeded with very little means in large part because they single-mindedly focused on growth, never missed the chance to boldly express their views and worked hard together in innovative ways to provide useful information to their supporters.

True, there are a thousand and one progressive blogs, websites and e-mailing lists out there. Yet not one of them comes close to reaching one tenth of the impact of the two liberal sites just mentioned. Part of the challenge lies in the fact that – unlike political groups that merely take a side in the status quo (like Dailykos and MoveOn) – progressive grassroots groups must start nearly from scratch in a fragmented US Left that failed to build and maintain a nationwide infrastructure over the past thirty years.

The US Left is disunited and discombobulated today not just because of the many political splits of the 60’s that were never healed but because we have a whole new generation of progressive organizers that work in complete isolation from one another, each in their own little local world. Much of what is written on progressive grassroots blogs is written from a parochial perspective and mostly consists of the mere recounting of events, complaints about the injustice of the system or utopian prescription for the future without a plan to get there.

This sorry state of the US Left guarantees that the same mistakes are repeated by local progressive grassroots groups all over the country without any of the lessons learned being shared. It guarantees that each group’s best idea likely remains its main or only idea, because none of the ideas get transmitted. Worst of all, it perpetuates a state of fragmented disempowerment because thousands of small, broke, disconnected progressive groups are no match for the system.

If we are to make real the revolutionary promise of democracy, we must accept our responsibility to share our knowledge without fear of criticism. We must extract the most valuable information from our own organizing experience and make it available to all, without fear of disagreement. We must compare our experience to the experience of others and relate it to what we have studied of our history without fear of failure. And we must keep developing the new ideas we have come up with or borrowed by applying them every day in our organizing work, without fear of the responsibilities of success. If we are serious about building a growing, diverse and capable nationwide progressive movement, we should all be organizing, we should all be thinking, we should all be sharing, and we should all be planning for the future.

And so after much procrastination and an endless stream of excuses, I will follow my own advice and join the process by writing this blog. The Pirate Caucus –which should welcome additional contributors soon– will first and foremost share perspectives drawn from a variety of revolutionary experiments in building democracy that took place over the past 15 years in New Brunswick, New Jersey at the initiative of several grassroots progressive student and community groups. The most recent and better documented such project in revolutionary democracy is the Tent State University movement, launched at Rutgers University in 2003 (find out more about it at tentstate.com).

This is but a small step to start with. There will be plenty more to come.

Do you know of a progressive grassroots blog or site that writes down and promotes its local experience and knowledge? Send me the link at xmanblog@gmail.com. (X)

GETTING THE STORY DOWN - Part I (X.) by X.

Like so many grassroots organizers on the US Left, I have mostly relied on live storytelling to share what I know of the precious experience of the movement. This oral tradition is a powerful way to transmit knowledge. It is the oldest form of communication and it remains in use for good reason: The emotional impact of storytelling helps listeners remember more. It is the magic of the griot, of the bard, of the poet that enthralls us like children at bedtime.

I was mentored through storytelling when I first began organizing in the early 90’s at Rutgers University. Most of what I learned about the history of local campus activism, I learned listening to other organizers recounting previous exploits. Sure, I read a broad array of “classics” that all kinds of people turned me on to: Zinn, Lukacs, Chomsky, Marx, Baraka, Gurley-Flynn, Alinsky, Malcolm, Lenin, Hoffman, Dubois, Mao, Brown, Snow, Feinberg, and many more. But there was no written record of the local movement’s experience, of its hard-working practice and hard-earned theory. That knowledge only got passed on haphazardly from one generation to another, sometimes at meetings but mostly at parties.

I did find that sharing a pertinent story while organizing together is an excellent way to help new activists develop into organizers. While out fliering on the eve of a big rally, relating a funny anecdote, an inspirational account or a cautionary tale delivers key information that really sinks in and generates a whirlwind of ideas. It comes naturally, fulfilling the task of default mentoring for a cozy, little, local movement.

As the movement grows however, individual storytelling can’t seem to keep up with the urgent need to transmit a growing body of knowledge to a growing number of new organizers. A slew of problems arise from this shortcoming, compounded by the lack of infrastructure and resources needed to support growth (which is typical of local grassroots movements). The most unfortunate consequence is that some organizers get easier access to knowledge than others simply because of who they work with, who they hang out with, or who they are dating: The informal channels of haphazard oral tradition consolidate into closed knowledge networks that weaken movement democracy by reinforcing the inequality of access to useful information (a feature of the system we live in).

It takes a while for a local grassroots movement to grasp this problem, and even longer to find the willpower to try and solve it. Efforts to organize the occasional training session or group retreat –while very positive– ultimately fall short because there are just too many experiences that must be methodically distilled into practical knowledge to share with all.

Oral tradition remains a way of life for small groups, be they grassroots activist groups, corporate boards or the extended family at Thanksgiving. Individual storytelling feels comfortable and doesn’t require much effort, even less planning. Above all, individual storytelling is safe. The tales told are not kept on record. Many stories get passed on, appropriated and adulterated from one speaker to the next. No one’s name is attached to the information being promulgated. No one is held responsible for the advice, good or bad.

Of all the obstacles to overcoming the shortcomings of live storytelling, it is this fear of responsibility that is most paralyzing. It is the fear of writing down and making public what you have learned, what you believe, and what you are boldly planning because it might expose you to criticism, disagreement, failure or even success. It is especially scary to US progressives and revolutionaries because the full might of the system is dedicated to ridiculing all that we stand for. Even in the universities a whole cadre of post-modernist faculty works overtime to de-legitimize any attempt by students to build a new progressive movement, encouraging their pupils to internalize their legacy of self-defeatism - a dangerous legacy that the late Kurt Cobain despaired over just months before his suicide:

What else can I write? I don’t have the right.

To be continued...