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<DIV><FONT size=3>Thank you, THANK YOU, Jim Wiegel. This seems so on
target - and just the long-range image we need to plunk our strategies
into. As ICA is thinking about our next 50 years ...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3>Janice Ulangca</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=LAURELCG@aol.com href="mailto:LAURELCG@aol.com">LAURELCG@aol.com</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net
href="mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net">dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, June 06, 2012 5:37
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Dialogue] Visionary
Organizing</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT id=role_document color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>
<DIV>Thank you for sharing this, Jim. Really revolutionary, it seems to me. Is
anyone you know going to Detroit in July? What an opportunity for young(er)
facilitators.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Jann</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 6/5/2012 8:04:59 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, <A
href="mailto:jfwiegel@yahoo.com">jfwiegel@yahoo.com</A> writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>Visionary or protest organizing?<BR><BR>Living by the Clock of
the World: Grace Lee Boggs’ Call for Visionary Organizing<BR><BR>By: Matthew
Birkhold<BR><BR>Date Published: <BR><BR>April 17, 2012<BR><BR>In response to
a question regarding advice for young activists, 96 year old movement
veteran Grace Lee Boggs recently told Hyphen Magazine that activists should
turn our backs on protest organizing because it “leads you more and more to
defensive operations” and “Do visionary organizing” because it “gives you
the opportunity to encourage the creative capacity in people and it’s very
fulfilling.” This quote made its way around facebook, twitter, and tumblr,
as fans of Grace reposted it like it was common sense while others thought
the quote bordered on conservatism.<BR><BR>To better understand Grace’s
call, we need to understand the historical perspective in which it’s
rooted. We also need to understand how visionary organizing differs
from protest organizing, how Grace understands revolution, and that the way
history develops means that ideas that were progressive or even
revolutionary in one era, can become mental roadblocks to progress in
another era. Although I largely agree with Grace, I write this to clarify
her position, not merely endorse it. My hope is that we can debate these
ideas in ways that contribute to the theoretical, reflective, and practical
work that movement building requires.<BR><BR>Rebellion, Revolution & the
Clock of the World<BR><BR>For Grace—as well as for her late husband James
Boggs—the present is the culmination of thousands of years of human
responses to structural conditions. These responses include consent to
state policies, rebellion against them, and revolutions. In the
development of human history, the Boggses believed rebellions were important
because, contrary to consent, they represented moments when oppressed people
stood up to assert their humanity by protesting what society has done to
them. They argued that rebelling masses “see themselves as victims and call
on others to see them as victims and the other side as villains. They
do not yet see themselves responsible for reorganizing society, which is
what revolutionary social forces must do.” While rebellions disrupt
society—questioning the legitimacy of existing institutions—they cannot lead
to the reorganization of society.<BR><BR>In contrast to rebellions,
revolutions create new societies because they begin with “projecting the
notion of a more human human being” whose development has been limited by
structural conditions. Revolutions are not significant simply because
they involve seizing state power but because they create societies more
conducive to human development. A revolution is not for the purpose of
resolving past injustice. Rather, “the only justification for
revolution is that it advances the evolution of man/woman.” Understanding
revolution as “a phase in the long evolutionary process of man/woman,” that
“initiates a new plateau, a new threshold on which human beings can
develop,” the Boggses saw revolution as a period when human beings rapidly
advanced.<BR><BR>In 1974’s Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth
Century, Grace and James asked, “What time is it on the clock of the
world?” They answered by visualizing 3,000 years of human history on a
clock where every minute represented fifty years and argued that the age of
revolutions was only four or five minutes old. Scientific revolutionary
thinking, as represented by Marx and Engels, was just two minutes old, and
the epoch of global revolution represented by the anticolonial struggles of
the 1950s-60s was a mere thirty seconds old. In 1974, the US Civil
Rights Movement began merely 15 seconds ago.<BR><BR>The Boggses stressed
this long view of history because it’s necessary for thinking
dialectically—understanding that things are always changing. Because
conditions change, if progressive ideas don’t change in ways that correspond
to changing reality, they become limitations on human development. As
history develops, what was revolutionary in one period may not be
revolutionary in another. From the American Revolution through the present,
this premise was central to how the Boggses understood history and the
changing nature of revolution.<BR><BR>American Contradictions, American
Revolution<BR><BR>By analyzing history dialectically the Boggses concluded
that every movement in the history of this country has been incorporated
into the capitalist system because they have all ended up internalizing
capitalist values. While progressive, the American revolution also initiated
a contradiction between economic development and political
underdevelopment. By eliminating slavery from the constitution for the
sake of national unity, the founding fathers pursued economic development at
the expense of black humanity.<BR><BR>Similarly, while Northern
industrialists and abolitionists were progressive for their position on
slavery, their actions also furthered the contradiction initiated by the
founding fathers. After the Civil War, Southern forces agreed to
support Northern capitalist presidential candidate Rutherford Hayes if
Northern politicians agreed to recognize “state’s rights.” This 1877
compromise dismantled the Freedman’s Bureau and led to the creation of Jim
Crow. Placing economic interests first, black humanity was again
forsaken and the contradiction between economic development and human
underdevelopment became a rewritten law.<BR><BR>In the 1930s-40s it appeared
as though a strong, integrated labor movement might be able to resolve this
contradiction, but its consistent willingness to compromise shopfloor
conditions and the rights of black people for wage increases simply
furthered it. Seeing a historical pattern, James Boggs concluded, “all
organizations that spring up in a capitalist society and do not take
absolute power, but rather fight only on one tangential or essential aspect
of that society are eventually incorporated into capitalist
society.”<BR><BR>The labor movement’s ability to secure wage increases was
related to international factors. Following WWII the United States was
the world’s sole hegemonic power which allowed US transnational corporations
to keep wages outside the US lower than in the US. Using profits made
abroad, US firms were able to subsidize annual wage increases for US
workers. Because others were paid less, US workers became the highest paid
workers in the world.<BR><BR>A raising standard of living in the US was also
made possible by industrial automation. While before the war, food,
clothing, and shelter were scarce, after the war, automation developed
manufacturing capacities to a very advanced stage. Not only were human needs
being met, but there was such an abundance of products that particular
brands developed varying prestige. For the first time in history, working
people were able to derive status and identity from the consumer products
they bought.<BR><BR>Rise of the Welfare State<BR><BR>With global economic
growth following WWII, the tax base governments drew upon to provide
services also grew. Thus, when social movements emerged to press for
more access to benefits, states had the means to meet those demands and
welfare states took hold throughout the industrialized world. As
global economic growth continued, new jobs were created, higher wages were
paid, and both the working and middle classes enjoyed vast increases in
their standard of living. Because this economic growth provided the
basis for the state sponsored poverty programs of the 1960s and 70s, many
activists working on these issues developed an unintentional economic stake
in maintaining US hegemony.<BR><BR>In the midst of such abundance and global
economic factors, the Boggses concluded that revolution had to be rethought.
While third world revolutionaries could organize around basic needs,
American revolutionaries had to “discover the purpose of a socialist
revolution in an advanced country like the United Sates where material
abundance and technological advancement already exist, where more is stolen
in the ghettoes everyday than is produced in most African countries during
an entire year, and where many of the oppressed have a higher standard of
living than the middle classes in most countries.” The Boggses decided that
socialism in the US meant putting political and social responsibility in
command of economics.<BR><BR>Because the Black movement almost universally
prioritized the question of what it meant to be a human being over economic
demands in the 50s and 60s, it looked as though it would resolve the
contradiction between economic development and human underdevelopment.
However, according to James Boggs, after the urban rebellions from
1965-1968, when concessions were granted to blacks and crime increased in
black communities, the black movement became incorporated into the
capitalist system because leaders “made no serious effort to repudiate the
bourgeois method of thought on which U.S. capitalism is based, which
involves each individual or group just getting more for itself.”
Refusing to acknowledge “that blacks are an integral part of the 5 percent
of the world’s population living in the United States and using up 40
percent of the world’s energy resources for their big cars and their new
appliances, just as whites are doing,” Boggs argued that the black movement
stopped thinking about projecting a vision of new man/woman and began
fighting for a bigger slice of the American pie.<BR><BR>Decline<BR><BR>As
the Black movement shifted its focus, a global economic crisis emerged and
the welfare state began unraveling. Unable to keep increasing wages,
US based firms laid off thousands of US workers to deal with increased
competition from British and Japanese based Transnational
Corporations. A domestic backlash calling for drastically smaller
government and lower taxes also emerged, fueled by white resentment towards
African Americans and other oppressed groups who had been engaged in very
successful sustained protests. With increased unemployment creating a
smaller tax base than what existed before 1968-1974 and with an increasing
number of tax expenditure limitations passed at the state level after 1974,
the economic base of the welfare state in the United States
crumbled.<BR><BR>In the midst of this crisis the Boggses saw that US based
exploitation of the global South had created such abundance that even the
most oppressed people in the US were able to advance themselves economically
at the expense of the rest of the world. Accordingly, they concluded
that the fundamental contradiction in the US lay between its
economic/technology overdevelopment and human/political underdevelopment.
While racism, sexism, and poverty are important contradictions, they can be
explained as a consequence of the tendency of Americans to prioritize
economic development and individual gain over political and social
responsibility. Having become more politically inhumane the more technology
advances, Americans have become “a people who have been psychologically and
morally damaged by the unlimited opportunities to pursue material happiness
provided by the cancerous growth of the productive forces.”<BR><BR>Because
these technological and economic advances have become a danger to the
physical survival of the rest of the world, demanding more things—regardless
of who demands them—has become a fetter on developing a revolutionary
movement. Therefore, the Boggses argued, “the revolution to be made in the
United States will be the first revolution in history to require the masses
to make material sacrifices rather than to acquire more
things.”<BR><BR>Because it would be incredibly difficult to organize
protests whose aim is material sacrifice, Grace believes organizing and
joining “massive protests and demanding new policies fail to sufficiently
address the crisis we face. They may demonstrate that we are on the
right side politically, but they are not transformative enough. They
do not change the cultural images or the symbols that play such a pivotal
role in molding us into who we are.” Visionary organizing can play
this role.<BR><BR>A Radical Revolution of Values<BR><BR>It is within this
understanding of historical development and revolution that Grace has called
on young activists to “do visionary organizing,” and to “turn your backs on
protest organizing.” Visionary organizing demands not only “repudiating the
bourgeois method of thought on which U.S. capitalism is based, which
involves each individual or group just getting more for itself,” but also
developing alternative institutions and communities that facilitate doing
“the work of re-imagining our selves,” and helping us “think beyond
capitalist categories.” Because we have all internalized the values of
this racist, sexist, capitalist system to some extent, we must all transform
ourselves by undergoing what Martin Luther King called “a radical revolution
of values” allowing us to become person, rather than thing oriented, if we
are to participate in a revolution that makes material sacrifices.
Rather than relying on protest to achieve this personal transformation,
visionary organizing facilitates this transformation by re-imagining
institutions that can facilitate new cultural images and symbols, molding us
into new kinds of people.<BR><BR>Because capitalism is a system that
flourishes when people think they can’t live without it, capitalist
institutions work to convince human beings we can’t create alternatives.
Having consented to this coercion, most of us have not developed the
creative capacities necessary to project alternatives to the capitalist
world. Instead, we make demands that corporations and the government
fix things they’ve broken. Alternatively, by placing an emphasis on
creating re-imagined spaces and institutions in which healthy relationships
with people, nature, and our selves can be built—by creating beloved
communities—visionary organizing heals us from capitalist dehumanization and
restores an awareness of people’s innate ability to create.<BR><BR>Beloved
communities should not be seen as a means to build unity so that we may
better build a protest movement. As communities in which King’s
“concept of love as the readiness to go to any length to restore community”
is primary, beloved communities are spaces where people can be nurtured and
heal the damage our racist, sexist, capitalist world has done, giving us a
foundation to develop identities outside of capitalist categories and
consumption, while creating a base for political power stemming from the
creation of alternative institutions, or dual power structures.
Beloved communities thus serve as a transmission belt for the radical
revolution of values needed for a revolution in which we have to sacrifice
material things.<BR><BR>Turning Our Backs or Understanding
Limitations?<BR><BR>The current time on the clock of the world is incredibly
complex. We in the United Sates are experiencing a crisis in our
standard of living, something the Wisconsin labor protests, the movement to
defend education, and the occupy movements have all emerged in response to.
Yet, little of this organizing reflects an understanding that the US empire
supported welfare state made that higher standard of living possible in the
first place. Despite this, because rebellious protests have combined with
the current economic crisis to bring the legitimacy of existing institutions
into question, people in the United States are more willing to envision what
new men and women should look like than at any point in my lifetime. These
conditions lend themselves to the possibility of building a revolutionary
movement based on what men and women could be. Thus, Grace believes relying
solely on protest is a fetter on creating a revolutionary
movement.<BR><BR>Because we are a nation of people who have been damaged by
the way we’ve endlessly consumed, in order to take advantage of this crisis
we must heal. We must wage what James Boggs called a “Two-Pronged Struggle,”
and combine the struggle against the internal enemy with the struggle
against the external enemy. As unemployment rises, homes get foreclosed,
education and health care get cut, and state sanctioned violence against all
people who are not straight white men continues, people have immediate needs
that must be met and traditional protest movements can help meet some of
these immediate needs. We must recognize that there is a difference
between meeting the immediate needs of human beings in a society that is
destroying the world and meeting needs that will allow people to create a
new society with a vastly more human relationship to the world. These are
two different sets of needs and building the next American revolution
requires we put the satisfaction of our immediate needs in the service of
satisfying the needs that allow us to create a new world.<BR><BR>Resolving
the complex dilemmas of the current moment requires immense creativity and
imagination. While we must absolutely stop home foreclosures, we must
also understand that home ownership, as it currently exists, cannot be
separated from global finance and the destruction of the global South.
This means we can’t only stop foreclosures but have to also re-imagine
housing. Rising unemployment and individual states’ inability to
extend unemployment insurance means people have to find ways to survive.
Because the current jobs economy is so closely interconnected with the
exploitation of the global South, simply protesting to demand more jobs will
continue destroying the world. Accordingly, we need to create and
utilize neighborhood time banks and skill shares as a way to meet some of
our immediate needs without money. We also need to create businesses
that reflect the values of beloved communities. Protesting various
laws that create barriers to business creation might be useful
here.<BR><BR>These dilemmas pose incredible challenges. We are lucky to have
two upcoming events that might help us better learn how to do this.
From July 1-15 2012, the Boggs Center is organizing a gathering called
“Detroit 2012: Re-imagine the World, Transform Ourselves, Fight for the
Future,” where delegates from all over the US can come to Detroit for two
weeks and be trained in visionary organizing while sharing their work with
people in Detroit. If you can’t make it to Detroit, in New York the
Foundry Theatre is organizing a weekend-long event featuring Grace Lee Boggs
on the opening night, April 20, in Cooper Union’s Great Hall. The
entire gathering, titled “This Is How We Do It: A festival of Dialogues
About Another World Under Construction,” is in many ways inspired by Grace’s
concept of visionary organizing and features innovative practitioners from
throughout the US as well as from South Africa, Argentina and Brazil. For
those unable to make it to New York, the event will be live streaming at:
www.thefoundrytheatre.org<BR><BR>Matt Birkhold is a Brooklyn based writer,
visionary organizer, and co-founder of Growing Roots, a work group dedicated
to re-imagining ourselves, building new economies, and creating new
communities. He is currently writing a book on the evolution of
visionary organizing in Detroit and can be reached at
Birkhold<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>Jim Wiegel<BR>Jfwiegel@yahoo.com<BR><BR>I
can't say as I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three
days. Daniel
Boone<BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Dialogue
mailing
list<BR>Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net<BR>http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></FONT>
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