A Final Reflection on Major Lessons Learned

As I sit here in the post-“the holidays”/pre-new year, post-San Francisco/pre-Florida calm/limbo, I look over my blog entries and all that I learned over the months in the Anne Braden Program. I want to hold on to this transformation, to remember what I learned as well as remember that I learned it, that I didn’t always know it, and that other people can learn these things, too. 
(I also have scattered in random photographs - for some strange reason, it never occurred to me to be posting photographs earlier, so I'm putting things up to give some feel for the environment - they aren't really related to each paragraph.)

Structural Oppression (-isms) as Tools
Perhaps the most overarching gift is the clarity that all structural oppressions (sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, able-ism, etc) are tools used for the same purpose – to maintain economic injustice: to keep wealth in the hands of a few.  They are wedges used to drive people apart, people, who if united, would be working together towards a more equitable distribution of wealth. Racism keeps whites from working with blacks, and keeps blacks from working with Latino/indigenous immigrants. Sexism keeps men from uniting with women. Homophobia keeps straights from working together with gays. Classism keeps middle class folks from uniting with working class people.  The success of capitalism depends upon these divisions – capitalism would not work without these divisions! People only accept low paying jobs because they are taught that they are competing with someone else – usually of a different race – who will do the job for less. 
One clear example for me is around the massive labor movement of the 30s. So much was gained – 8 hour workday, minimum wages, breaks, etc – for most industries, and it could have been for all laborers – but unions, who most often were white men only –  compromised – and let farm work and domestic work be specifically excluded from labor laws that covered all other industries.  Why? Because farm work and domestic work is work for women, for blacks, for immigrants – and racism taught the white union men that they could only benefit at the expense of others.


The Fish Finally Sees the Water
One of the hardest things I think for people living within domination, is that we often can’t even see that the systems we are living under are just one possible way of being. We learned to see how the culture we are familiar with – one of individualism, competition, and perfectionism – is not universal, but particular to a white and male supremacist capitalism – and that other societies don’t have that same culture. Or that Christianity has taught us to view everything as good or bad, and to see as part of our mission the need to convert people to our way of being.  I was like, yeah, but don’t all religions lay out good vs. bad as a cosmic battle, or believe in converting others to their religions – and people had to sit me down, and be like, no, actually they don’t. Think of animism, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, or other native spiritualities – nowhere in there is the need to dominate and convert other people.  A friend who spent time in Cuba kept talking about basic values there are different in a way she never could have conceived – things she had assumed were universal were, indeed, not – and that not being capitalist gave people a whole other way of seeing each other.

I can’t change the destructive aspects of my culture if can’t see them.  I can’t say that I can totally see all the particularities of our culture, but they are becoming more perceptible.  And those who are not part of my culture can easily see them – and those perspectives are extremely important.

Class is for Real
A major lesson for all of us in Braden was to understand our own class background, how that has shaped us, and how class dynamics work on a national level. In most countries, class is the most major factor dividing people – yet in the U.S., race is the most major factor. We have been taught that class is not important, and even, that class doesn’t really exist.  So many of us, whether working class or upper class are taught to see ourselves as middle class, that it is rude to talk about money or ask someone’s salary, and that differences in class or wealth is due to an individual’s actions or lack of action. I learned about how class perpetuates itself, and if we don’t acknowledge class, we don’t really see how people are tracked for incorporation into the economic system.

Organizing vs. Activism
I think it dawned on me the difference between an organizer and an activists.  An activist takes action on something, an organizer brings together many people to take action on something.  Bringing people together to take action goes much much further than inviting people to planning meetings or actions – it’s the education and paradigm shifting that precedes someone even being interested in a meeting; it’s the slow development of honest and true relationships (activist and non-activist) that really reconstruct a new society and draw people into a politic they might not otherwise be interested in; it is listening to people’s concerns and passions and creating the space for those in the social movement, so that the movement really meets people’s needs and interests; it is helping people find a role that is both valuable and compatible with their lifestyle.  One of the clearest lessons I got from Catalyst and my mentor, Rahula Janowski, is that we need a revolutionary movement of a MASSive scale – and if our definition of activism or movement work doesn’t include highly valued roles suitable for parents, career people, people with mental health or addiction issues, youth, etc – then 1. we’ll never reach the massive scale we need to truly succeed and 2. the movement won’t be responsive to the needs of all those types of people, who are a majority in the world.  Changing the world is not going to happen quickly – we are each moving change along as much as we can during our generation.

Leadership by the many, in many ways

Related to this expanded view of movement building is an expanded view of leadership.  There is a tendency among anti-authoritarian cultures to renounce the idea of leaders, but leadership always exists and is needed, so instead of denying it, why don’t we make structures of leadership more visible? Why don’t we share and rotate defined leadership? Why don’t we recognize that each person has some leadership capabilities, in any number of different styles and arenas? Why don’t we work to build up the leadership in every person?  Leadership skills are resources that are gained often via the influence of white, male, or class privilege and need to be intentionally shared. Instead of doing something because you do it the best, actively teach others to do that thing – so that overall capability is multiplied. The more leaders we have, the more we can accomplish.  And sometimes building up someone’s leadership is as simple as building up their confidence - listening to their ideas and saying “hell yeah, go for it!” And sometimes it requires more support, such as helping them figure out how to go for it, and sharing what skills and resources you have.

Accountability is Three-Pronged

My understanding of accountability was expanded to include accountability to your organization (following through on the things you said you would do), accountability to constituents/impacted people (talking about what you do with the people it affects and being open to their perspective, opinions, criticisms, and suggestions), and accountability to your politics and mission (staying true to your larger mission and guiding principles even when it is hard or in conflict with the above).   Especially as people working from privilege, our own perspectives on what we are doing are not accurate and complete – we have to constantly seek out perspectives from people affected by what we do or don’t do.  We also must continually evaluate whether our actions are staying true to our political mission.  A clear example for me was when Rachel Herzing of Critical Resistance talked about their controversial stance over the “justice” of a police killing incident.  Many of CR’s members were outraged with the killing of another innocent young black man by police officers, and wanted to see the cop prosecuted and sent to prison.  But CR’s purpose is to abolish the prison system – so saying that justice is sending someone to prison as in direct conflict with their politics. In this case, how do they stay accountable to both their members and their mission?

Lean in closer vs. move away

We spoke of the tendency of educated, and anti-racist whites to distance themselves from “ignorant” or “racist” whites.  While, of course, I never intend to stand with a group of racist whites and be seen in support of their politics in order to “build meaningful relationships” with them – I need to not just run the other way or focus on how I am superficially perceived – I need to stay committed to those people and invest in their education around racism and related issues – just as people stood by me and believe that I too could learn and grow.

Funding

We really looked at the assimiliationist impact of foundation or government funding to social movements, and came to clearly understand that no, the revolution will not be funded.  Foundations were specifically created to shield rich people’s money from taxes (and thus take it out of the public budget where theoretically the public control it) and are systematically used to lure people away from radical, revolutionary movement and into less threatening arenas – like how the Stonewall riots (of mainly poor, transgender women of color) became the birth of the “gay rights” movement which is currently wrapped up in mainly white, middle and upper class gays and lesbians looking for marriage rights. I’m not against marriage rights, per se, but will they radically shift privilege, wealth, or personal safety for queers and transgendered people in this country? So much foundation and government money and energy goes into the fight for marriage, while poor, transgender women of color are still being murdered on the streets in frightening numbers with little to no attention.

Place for honesty, vulnerability, love
In trying to undo male and white supremacist culture, we need to actively learn how to incorporate an ethic of love into the way we work, how to allow space for emotions, how to be honest about our strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerability.

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So these are the major lessons I learned through the Anne Braden program, which has also affected me in ways too subtle to enumerate here.  Thank you to everyone who has read along with this blog, to everyone who has supported me materially or morally during this journey, and to everyone who wants to nourish the seed of change within themselves.

Hear it for Yourself

One of the awesome things Catalyst organized for us were panel discussions with major movers and shakers in the social justice world. Now, these sessions are recorded for your pleasure!  We had three major ones, and here are video and audio links for two of them (the third is coming through).

Anti-Racist Organizing Strategy Panel

A panel discussion on Strategies for Anti-Racist Organizing with Linda Burnham longtime leader for racial, gender, and economic justice, Dawn Phillips of Just Cause Oakland, Alicia Garza of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Carla Wallace of the Fairness Campaign and Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.  Panelists ground current anti-racist work within a legacy of long-term social movements, share strategies for building working class power in communities of color in Oakland and San Francisco toward systemic change. Panelists layout what those big picture strategies look like in practice. They share lessons and strategies for anti-racist organizing with white people and ways white people can be part of efforts to build vibrant multi-racial movements for justice.


Video: http://www.forealtv.com/antirace.html
Audio: http://www.nationalradioproject.org/community/strategies-for-anti-racist-organizing-sun-nov-15-2009/

Indigenous Resistance Panel 

Panel discussion with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Randy Burns, Ras K’dee and Cathy Chapman.  The panelists discuss the historic process of European colonization of North America and indigenous resistance struggles historically and today.

Video: www.FoRealTv.com/500yrs.html
Audio: http://www.nationalradioproject.org/indigenous-resistance-and-colonization-in-north-america/

Graduation!!!

So our closing ceremony was on Saturday. It's official - we're not racist anymore!!!  Just kidding. It's never been just about us being racist or not, it's been about how to fight the structural racism within our society which lives on still even if many individuals don't hold racial prejudices!

Anyways.  So it was beautiful.  Many participants spoke about the impact of the program on their beings and their work.  We heard from two speakers who really tied together the significance of organized, anti-racist whites allied with people of color led movements.  Two groups of participants presented stories of white resistance to racism via songs:

Participants of Irish Heritage sang a song about the St. Patrick’s Brigade. Irish immigrants to the U.S. that had been recruited to fight in the war against Mexico in the mid 1800s. These Irish people saw how the U.S. fighting Mexico was just like England’s war against Ireland, and actually defected from the U.S. army to fight on the Mexican side. They were later captured and executed by the U.S.

Participants of German Heritage (including me!) sang a German song of freedom of thought, which was used in many anti-censorship protests, as well as taken up by resistance to fascism and Nazi Germany.  One group in particular that used the song was the White Rose, a student group that spread leaflets against Adolf Hitler and his particular breed of violent racism. One member, Sophie Scholl, played the song (Die Gedanken sind Frei) on her flute outside of Ulm Prison, where her father was detained after speaking out against Hitler. Six members of the White Rose were later arrested by the Gestapo and executed.

And here's the 2009 graduating class of Anne Braden:

Staying Committed to White People and Organizations

A long noticed tendency is for white people who are following an anti-racist path to step away from and distance themselve from whites who have not worked to undo their racism. To not be associated with those racist whites and never talk to them.  But this is counter productive to the goal of really transforming society. Especially as white people, we must stay committed to developing the anti-racist perspective in other whites.  Someone took the time with us, and we must do so for others.

Tendencies of Some Educated Anti-Racist Whites
Anne Braden, whom this program was named after, was someone who really took the challenge of organizing and educating other whites seriously.  She noticed the tendencies between anti-racist whites towards not-yet-anti-racist whites and suggested another way.

Tendency: Lean Back
Suggestion: Move in Closer

Tendency: Monitor and fear
Suggestion: Use vision-based, historically grounded assessments (understand why people are the way they are based on systems of domination and oppression)

Tendency: Police and control (the behavior and words of "racist" or "ignorant" whites)
Suggestion: Supporting and developing the bigger picture strategy (working with them to becoming anti-racist)

Tendency: Critique from the sidelines
Suggestion: Leading and developing leaders to move from the center (from within the community)

This is not saying to sign on with racist things that people are saying - no you must stay true to your politics, but instead of abandon people to their racism, engage them in debate as their community member. Stick with them and help them move forward instead of leaving them behind.  We speak so much about how capitalism has taught us individuality - that the important thing is for you to get ahead. We want to transform ourselves to be thinking, how can we all get ahead.

Your leadership is Needed

The phrases "your leadership is needed," and "thank you for leadership," have been tossed around so much they went from being meaningful, to being a joke, to not even being funny anymore. But there's something there.

Anti-Authoritarian Leaders
What we looked at in our final sessions was what it means to be a leader and how to call forth the leadership in each and every person. In anti-authoritarian circles, there is this desperation to assert - there are no leaders! We are all equal.  But as Chris Crass's article, "But We Don't Have Leaders" points out by evaluating tendencies within Food Not Bombs, this claim masks the truth that some people are leading, and not being able to identify the leaders shields them from accountability as well as hinders other people from seeing how to step up their own involvement. It also prevents other people from truly being able to share the responsibilities of leadership.

Betita Martinez says "As organizers, we need to reject the idea of leadership as domination, but without denying the existence and need for leadership. Denial can lead to a failure to demand accountability from our leaders. That demand must be embraced, along with anti-authoritarian methods, in leadership development. Accountability takes the measure of a person's responsibility; it means being accountable to one's fellow organizers, to the goals of one's collectivity, and ultimately to the people one claims to serve."

What is suggested instead, is the recognition that all people have the potential to be leaders and that organizations work best when many people are taking leadership in different areas - and then sharing skills and rotating those leadership positions.  A key here is the skills sharing.  I have come to see that the skills I possess in certain areas are actual resources that I need to share with others.  That my real job, if I want to move from being an activist to being an organizer, is not to take on a project and do it because I'm the one who best knows how to do it, but to train someone else to be able to take on that project. We need to shift the expectation and the culture from "Just do it" to "Each one, teach one."

The idea here is COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP.  We looked at the model developed by Sista II Sista as they stepped away from non-profit structure and into a volunteer-run collective focused on developing leadership among their communities.  They say "Although we do not promote individual leaders, we recognize the uniqueness of every individual involved.  Our experiences continue to show us that real and long-lasting change comes through collective leadership and struggle."  There are clear leadership circles within the organization - for accountability and clarity of responsbility - but people are rotated in and among those circles of leadership as new people are trained and encouraged.

Another key is encouragement.  It is egging people on to step into something (and then providing support and training when they do!). It is listening to what they want to do, and telling them that they can do it, then helping them figure out how. It is building the confidence of others! And this doesn't always happen in a formal way, it can happen all the time within a friendship or authentic relationship.  That work counts!

Heres are a couple definitions of a leader:
* A leader helps everyone understand that their role is necessary.
* A leader is someone who takes someone else somewhere they wouldn't have gone alone.

Leadership Styles

A fun thing we did is look at this article on Leadership Styles, learn about the variety of ways that people lead others, and graph our own leadership style out. I encourage you to do it!  The styles that are laid out are:

• Idealist - the person who keeps clarity of the ideals that motivate the work
• Mentor - the person who focuses on developing the leadership of others via coaching, etc
• Achiever - the person who focuses on getting the team to get tasks done
• Innovator - the person who brings new ideas and methods into the group
• Synthesizer - the person who analyzes the situation and sees patterns
• Partner - the person who likes to team up with peers to do things together
• Enthusiast - the person who infuses energy into the group and keeps people excited about the group's mission
• Advocate - the person who will do anything to keep the group staying true to the group's mission and getting everyone involved
• Diplomat - the person who are genuinely wise about working with people and their various needs, mediating, and respecting individuals

10 Key Commitments of Leadership:

Challenging the Process
1. Search out challenging opportunities to change, grow, innovate, and improve
2. Experiment, take risks, and learn from the accompanying mistakes

Inspiring a Shared Vision
3. Envision an uplifting and ennobling future
4. Enlist others in a common vision by appealing to their values, interests, hopes, and dreams.
Enabling Others to Act
5. Foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust
6. Strengthen people by giving power away, providing choice, developing competence, assigning critical tasks, and offering visible support.
Modeling the Way
7. Set the example by behaving in ways that are consistent with shared values.
8. Achieve small wins that promote consistent progress and build commitment.
Encouraging the Heart
9. Recognize individual contributions to the success of every project.
10. Celebrate team accomplishments regularly.

Inspiration
Jacob, a participant in the program said, and I paraphrase, : If you want to build a ship, you don't just ask people to help you put lumber together, you strive to make them long for the endless beauty of the sea.

Tracing the Money

Let's talk about money. I have $15,000 in the bank. Me, who grew up on welfare and mac & cheese, and who scraped together odd jobs off craigslist to make my living.  Where did I, of all working class kids, get this?  I inherited it from Uncle White Supremacy.

You see, a few years ago, word was spreading about a friend of ours who got this amazing job that was paying crazy well and how they needed to hire someone else.  My friend Abby took it on, and in a matter of 5 weeks, she had $5000.  Selling drugs you might ask? Marrying wealthy foreigners who wanted US citizenship? No - mentoring poor, black and latino/mayan kids in public school.  Wow, that sounds pretty noble and even almost anti-racist, huh?

The next year the job had multiplied to four positions for 18 weeks for $20,000.  My friend, a white man from a middle class background, encouraged a bunch of us to apply.  I don't even think they formally advertised the position anywhere - just word of mouth among a white man's friends - and somehow we all got in. It was a white man, a man with a Jewish Israeli background, and two white women.

So I went to work "mentoring" about 15 immigrant kids in ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) - half of them Haitian, half of them Guatemalan or Mexican, with a couple other kids tossed in. They had been placed in a vocational program to learn HVAC technology (heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration).  They had an HVAC teacher, and I was supposed to be in class with them, to help reinforce and support their learning in there, and then have my own class with them around - get this - issues of substance abuse, teen pregnancy, personal economics, and gang violence.  I have also failed to mention that this program was put together by Junior Achievement, which is where local business people come in and teach kids how to fit in to capitalism. These were the people I remember who in third grade had us create our own pen assembly factory - teaching us to fall into assembly line.

What ended up happening is that the HVAC teacher for that school was out sick all year - the replacement they found was the school district HVAC maintenance man who had no teaching credentials.  The HVAC program at the school was a four year academy - the ESOL kids were getting half a year. The HVAC substitute didn't give a fuck about these kids, and barely taught them anything. Then I had them for my hour and talked to them about balancing check books and CPR. Eventually they kids were so frustrated and felt so lied to about this program they were in, that I ended up taking home the HVAC textbook, reading one chapter at a time and teaching them HVAC myself.

You may ask yourself - Lynne, did you know anything about HVAC to be teaching anyone about it? Lynne, were you trained in ESOL techniques? Lynne, do you understand enough about what black and latino/mayan immigrants are facing when they come to this country to be their mentor?  Lynne, what were your supervisors saying about the way the program was going?

No, no, no, and jack shit. I didn't know how to best interact and guide these kids. There was a supervisor who was supposed to be in the room with me at all times, but she was happy to disappear unnoticed.  And Junior Achievement didn't seem to really care how well the program was going, just how well it met funding requirements. And where was this funding come from?   A little program called TANF:

Under the welfare reform legislation of 1996, (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act – PWRORA – Public Law 104-193), TANF replaced the welfare programs known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) program and the Emergency Assistance (EA) program. The law ended federal entitlement to assistance and instead created TANF as a block grant that provides States, territories and tribes federal funds each year. These funds cover benefits, administrative expenses, and services targeted to needy families.

So let me break it down: 

1. The government takes money away from low income people (which is a multi-racial mix with the highest percentage of welfare recipients being white) and hands it over to the state to offer as grants to local governments and non-profits. This strips away a level of self-determination from low-income people.
   
2. Junior Achievement, an explicitly capitalist non-profit, wins this grant and does the bare minimum to look like they are fulfilling the grant mission.
   
3. The administrators take a huge chunk of the money and are willing to overlook the qualifications of their applicants. 
   
4. The site supervisors are also willing to overlook the performance of the "mentor-teachers" or how the program is being carried out because they are getting paid and can disappear. 
   
5. As a mentor-teacher, I don't fight too hard against the administrators or supervisors because I'm young, lacking in confidence, don't totally see what's going on yet, and am getting paid $100 an hour!!! - accumulating an amount of money which, having grown up poor/working class - have never seen in my life.  I'm not saying I didn't fight hard to make the program be its best for my students - I struggled every single day - but the truth was I not trained, did not have support, did not have major decision making power, and was inexperienced dealing with extreme structural hierarchies like existed via this program. As a white working class person I was exploited -  given access because of my whiteness (my educational background and relationship to other whites) and lured by money which I needed: 
6. The kids, coming from Haiti and Guatemala - where the US and other colonial racist powers have totally wreaked havoc - got almost nothing out of the program, except some steel-toed boots and other work clothes. 
   

The administrators got the highest chunk, the supervisors probably a fair deal, the mentor-teachers an amount that was nothing they'd even seen before.  Nothing trickled down from the money that was taken from the hands of the poor.

And that legacy sits in my bank.

Puttin' Your Shine on It!

In response to Radym's question of how to "bring your whole self" into something and encourage others to do so:

One of the more useful phrases i've head on that, and this comes from a Alicia Garza, a young black female leader at a group called POWER, is "put your shine on it" - whatever it is that you're doing, put your unique shine on it. Don't just do it efficiently, do it the way that puts your flair into it.

Here are some examples, both coincidentally about fundraising:

• At my job at EBASE, which is a progressive left pro-working people multi-racial non-profit organization , I was asked to take over leading the phone banking sessions. Coming into this job, I was trying to take a lot of clues on how I was supposed to act, how to dress, how to be "professional." The office manager, a young black woman, was really enthusiastic and always celebrated people whenever something good happened, putting on the intercom and wildly shaking this hand clapper thing. AND she dressed well. This encouraged me to not just host a boring, "efficient" phonebanking where I gave people call lists and guided them on what to say, but I thought about, what would make this fun for me? I made playlists of music around themes of "money" or "phone calls" - really silly stuff, even just some general pump you up C + C Music Factory stuff - and blared the hell out if when it was phonebanking time - and danced people into the conference room. Then we played some silly games before we moved on to the call lists and spiels. If you know me, I'm all about fun music and dancing and this was how I "brought my whole self" into my 9-to-5 office job. And people LOVED it!!!!

• During our first weekend in the Braden program, we were told to close our eyes. Someone guided us through a meditation about being at the bottom of the sea, and i was like, where is this going??!! When we were told to open our eyes, there were three of our leaders dressed in glimmery mermaid costumes and wigs! Then they talked to us about how fundraising was going to be a part of the program. Throughout the program, whenever it was time to talk about fundraising, they pulled out the mermaid themes and created a glittery ocean board to post our experiences with fundraising. Sure they could have just passed out some papers with what we would be doing fundraising and given us a motivational speech. But they were all queer and loved sparkles and dressing up and mythical creatures and they sure as hell put their shine on fundraising!

So those are some examples - they are both ones abo. Key points to me are:

• Verbally encouraging it in the culture! Noticing when professionalism is reigning unnecessarily!
• When people do it in a small way, thanking them and encourage them to bring it out more!
• Recognizing people's particular flair or strong points or that they are a good emotional barometer or whatever.
• Leading by example! When one person starts "bringin' it" it makes it easier for everyone else. If something's really on your mind but you think it "shouldn't" - freakin say it because maybe it's on other people's minds too!

So those are some thoughts.

Bringing our Whole Selves

I can't tell you how much I've heard the phrase "bring your whole self." It's definitely on my list of weird anti-racist organizer lingo that I vow never to use outside of an anti-racist study group. But the concept behind it is so healing and relieving and exciting, I wanted to take special bloggy time to indulge- that way if I ever slip and use this phrase out of context (and please spank me if I do!), you'll know what I mean.

What it means to me, is that often we are asked to check our emotions, quirks, and personalities at the door of the office/organization/meeting - and just be political, just be productive. In the end, be business like as professional activists/organizers/get-shit-done'ers. BBBOOORRRRIIINGG! And not only is that boring, it leaves us making decisions that don't actually address people's needs - which include emotional, social, spiritual, and mental needs. I would love to have a really clever example right now, but today I'm really struggling to be articulate.

Cause we are trying to build a new world that works ALL THE TIME, not just when people are thinking about being political. Included in "all of the time" is times when people are hungry, sleepy, horny, pissed off, depressed, lonely, bored, worrying about paying their rent, distracted by a crush, etc. If our movement doesn't address what people are ACTUALLY thinking about, then they won't be 100% invested.

So the idea of "bringing your whole self" is to bring all the different aspects of your personality and mood to the organizing table. To be loud and goofy, to crack jokes, to cry, to show off your fashion, to do that thing that you're especially good at, to talk about thinking about hookup possibilities at the upcoming conference, to figure out how we can get paid while doing our organizing work, to say that for whatever reason the plan seems politically admirable but totally boring, too hard, whatever. TO BE REAL with each other 'cause then you find things that REALLY work. This is how we find each others' strengths and meet each other's real needs.

Organizer, Organizer, You're an Organizer, Baby

Well, four months down the line, we decided it was about time to decide what an organizer was. When I saw that on the agenda, I was like, what? Shouldn't this have been session one or two? But really, I guess it was time to stop frontin' - or more like, time to reshape our understanding of an organizer - cause it ain't just about posting flyers or facilitating meetings! I know that I have previously thought of organizing according to a very business model around meetings, tasks, results, membership numbers, etc. But being business-like & focusing on productivity is just that, business-like - where business as we know it is based on capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and total disrespect for natural resources.

The ORGANIZER'S MIND
Organizing is about building people power, so its not about working on an issue, but working to transform power relationships. We do this by challenging threats and maximizing strengths collectively. Organizers think about structures and culture, to create ways that we can bring people together. Organizers work to support other people bringing their own strengths, flair, and capacity, taking leadership, and feeling a part of the struggle.

Organizing involves having fun together - Thank Goodness!
One of the biggest things that came out of this conversation was how real and effective organizing isn't all business! Yes, there are some people, who without knowing anyone, who are comfortable (often due to education achieved through race and/or class privilege) with just jumping in at a meeting or taking on tasks - which I am - but I know lots of times that I have gotten involved because I was friends with someone. Because we had danced together at a party, or flipped ourselves over in a canoe somewhere, or they had talked with me when I was all torn up because of a break-up, or spent hours scheming ways to get more free food from our cafe jobs.

Catalyst here talks lots about , and I kept seeing it in the more professional "networking" type light, but no, we mean normal relationship building - having fun together, making friends, talking through ethical/political dilemmas late at night, having crushes, bonding through miserable experiences, coming through in trying circumstances, being there over the long haul. Friends turn you on to new ideas slowly over time. This is part of how we shift collective consciousness. This is how we cement communities together that will then take on revisioning the world. Boy, I could keep going, especially cause I'm not sure I've really communicated what I mean, but I'll just try to wrap it up with one example:

A couple weeks ago I was volunteering as an interpreter (doing simultaneous interpretation for the first time - I was so pumped!!!) at a National Domestic Worker Alliance congress. Not my usual scene and I only somewhat knew a few people from the organization I volunteer with. At the end, one woman who I'd been in several workshops with, came up to me to thank me for volunteering. We chatted for a bit, then she gave me her group's pamphlet, wrote her personal cell on there and said if you are ever in New York and need a place to stay or want to know where to go out dancing, call me. And I totally imagined myself going out to a samba club with her and showing this non-activist side of ourselves - and then I'd really get to know her, and how much closer that would draw me in to the domestic worker movement.

Other aspects of Organizing
Anyways, that part is just one aspect of organizing. Here are some more, drawn straight from our session notes:

• Organizers make other organizers – how do they do this? – Building leadership and creating spaces for people to get involved. (will talk more about building leadership next week)
  
• Organizer has vision and purpose and also an ethic behind what they’re doing – Leads folks to reach goals, remain open to being developed and developing others, makes room for different styles
• Organizing is different than activism, organizing is about building power by bringing people together and focusing on power we have
• Collectivizing Struggle – Bringing individuals experiences together to help break feelings of isolation/alienation; helping people contexualize their experiences within broader system (i.e. it's not that i lost my job, can't pay my mortgage , and am now facing eviction because i am irresponsible - it's that the banking system preyed on people according to race and class, acted irresponsibly, then turned to the government for bailout, sparked an economic downturn, and is evicting people by the millions from their homes to let the homes sit empty)
• An organizer needs to be a good listener, offering questions to create new ideas
• An organizer is vision driven as opposed to "anti-something" driven (like many activists)
• Part of an organizer's job is to lay groundwork for future organizers - change comes slowly and we have to think long term!!
• An organizer exhibits integrity – What they say and what they do are consistent, remaining transparent, politics and action reflect what they say they're about-Holistic approach, bringing your whole self, building authentic and genuine relationships
• An organizer offers small inroads – actually asking folks to do simple concrete things that build confidence and connection
  
• Being able to create culture – relationships that aren’t just activist based
• Organizing as a role and not job – people with all sorts of position and jobs can be doing organizing: teachers as organizers, nurses as organizers, etc. – how are we bringing people in, enacting our visions, building power, etc?
  

Assessing Work via SWOT
We also looked at a tool Catalyst developed called SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Basically this is a way to analyze a situation where you might be deciding to do organizing work. From here you can develop your strategy.

Catalyst shared with us their SWOT assessment of working in New Orleans post-Katrina. I will include some examples here:

Strengths - What are the realities of the situation that provide momentum for organizing? History of Black Liberation struggle in NOLA, national outpouring of support after the hurricane, international media attention

Weaknesses - What is going on right now that makes it difficult to do organizing? many local leaders displaced across the country, massive divestment of public sector

Opportunities - What possibilities for positive change exist in this situation? thousands of young, white volunteers could be radicalized through this experience, national focus on racism could provide opening, we could contribute to racial justice in the rebuilding of NOLA

Threats – What could happen that would impede our mission? Bush administration could be not responsive to situation or deflect attention

The Nuts & Bolts of Anti-Racist Organizing

So, in the last two sessions, we've been looking at actual organizations that are working on social justice issues from an anti-racist perspective, led by people of color or white people. How are people ACTUALLY doing all this anti-racist work we've been gearing up for? What are the particular pieces that organizations weave into their work? From this I draw both from reading about organizations as well as looking at the organizations where participants in this program have been placed as volunteers.

Leadership Development
For real social change, we need to have the people at the bottom (most oppressed/most impacted, whatever terminology you prefer) leading the movement. Not out of some altruistic , affirmative action type standpoint, but because that is the only way to actually bring true change that will be good for everybody. People who suffer from the heaviest oppression are the ones who are going to know best what needs to change and how. But also because of the oppression they have suffered - which may lead to financial stress, lack of education, trauma from violence, substance abuse, or any other number of obstacles - their capacity to lead the movement may not be fully developed. Thus the need for leadership development - training and guidance on how to organize, how to run meetings, how to develop strategy, how to defend rights. None of us is really born knowing that, but those of with certain types of privilege get taught those things. I am really beginning to see how the knowledge of how to organize is a resource that I have because of privilege and not only do I need to use it, I need to share it with those without that privilege.

So how does one develop leaders?
For some organizations, it's theoretically straightforward: at La Raza's Day Labor Program, they had a 10 session training course for newly elected coordinators - teaching skills on facilitiation, strategy, legislative process, fundraising, etc. They also have a weekly popular education workshop series. Other organizations use more one-on-one mentorship. Or the idea that when assigning roles, such as talking to the media or running an event, you choose a team with one person who has experience and who person who does not.

A big hunk of leadership development is constantly showing how the things that individuals are experiencing are part of larger social phenomenon, as well as pushing people's politics to see how their struggles are connected with other people's struggles. Like how transgendered people's trouble around having ID's that match their name and gender leads to the same issues that undocumented immigrants face.

Another component is having various ways for people to plug in, participate, and lead that makes room for the various circumstances in someone's life. Someone may not be able to make it to scheduled meetings, but perhaps they can make phone calls from home.

Accountability
In the anti-racist organizer world, which I know is a very particular subculture, people talk about accountability a lot, but still it can seem ephemeral. Like what the hell is it? We came up with some good concepts:

1. Personal Level: Doing what you say you are going to do when you are going to. Creating clear structures can be really helpful in this - having workplans, a supervisor/lead that you regularly check in with, and clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
   
2. Organizationally: Making sure that the people who are impacted by your work have a strong voice in the organization, that you hear from them how the work you are doing impacts them and their communities. Part of this is also doing the work to meet people's needs so that they can participate, which also goes back to leadership development. For instance at the day labor center in Lake Worth, we really wanted there to be some workers at every organizational meeting, and the invitation was put out. When they didn't come, our director often said, well we invited them, that's the best we can do. No, we have to do more. We have to find out what they will need in order to be able to come - which might also entail changing the way we seek out input from them. Maybe it's a simple matter of changing the time, or providing food or childcare, or maybe the meeting structure itself doesn't work.
   
3. Politically: Keeping your politics and vision in mind, and making sure that the work you do is staying true to your politics

Sometimes these things may not point in the same direction, so there is a challenge of staying true politically while also meeting the needs, desires, and strategies of the grassroots people or "base." Some challenging examples of this is say that you are an abolitionist group (meaning that you think prisons should be totally abolished and no one should be imprisoned), then there is a cop that kills a young black man. The community is outraged and many sectors want to see that cop convicted and sent to prison. So here you have a community, young black men, who are the main targets of the prison system, who are advocating the prison system as a just way to deal with a terrible situation. Does your organization stay accountable to its abolitionist mission, or accountable to the population most impacted by the prison system? That is a choice that each organization, or each person, must make according to their own judgment. Of course, the long term answer is to constantly be in discussion with those communities about your politics and the vision behind them.

Multi-racial Relationship Building & Alliance
We didn't go too far into this but a couple things include having effective language translation so that people can talk to each other!, and working to find common issues to unite around. One example is that over here in the Bay Area, there is a strong "Brown-Black Unity" in resistance to the attempts to pit African-Americans against new immigrants over competition for jobs - when really both groups are deliberately being locked out of employment opportunities by a system that doesn't want either group to succeed.

Point from the Panel
We had yet another awesome panel that shared with us their experience in different organizations with different strategies and tactics. Some highlights

• That in the post-civil rights era, the right wing has been successful in delegitimizing race as an issue - meaning that they have convinced people that race is not a factor any more and it doesn't make sense to talk about it.
• The concept of "dog whistle racism" - where people are calling white supremacists to arms without ever using racial terms. One example is the current "tea party" movement.
• That meshing domestic anti-racist strategies with global anti-racist strategies are hard because everyone in the US benefits from imperialist capitalism - even black youth who are so targeted by domestic racism, are attached to the material goods, i.e. Nikes, that are produced as in sweatshops of imperialist transnational corporation.
• Two purposes, among the many, that the visibility of anti-racist white groups serves is to be a reliable partner in the struggle against racism - organizations/people of color knowing that you exist and can call on you when needed; and creating an alternative to right wing politics - people get to see options of how to interpret situations and can choose your side instead of right wing conservatism being the only visible option. This to me was something of a revelation, even though I know I have thought about it in the past, but the idea that just by existing and being visible, you help to provide options that can help shift the culture, that seems easier to me. Not that that's all you do, but that you're mere existence alone does something, helps.
• We got guidance from Linda Burnham on how to talk to people about structural racism - many people think of racism only as interpersonal, and we know it as structural and institutional as well, and how do we distill the 4 months of learning we've done on this into one conversation? Well, of course, it doesn't come down to one conversation, but what Linda said was that the important thing to do is to listen to people, figure out where their thinking is at, "enter their frame of mind", celebrate what's positive about it, and then MOVE IT FORWARD. Like if someone really believes in multiculturalism - then recognize that yes tolerance and diversity is needed, that their commitment to it is beautiful, and then show how their desire for racial equality requires some steps beyond the limits of what multiculturalism can achieve. Linda also referred us to john a. powell, director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University as someone who has done lots of thinking on structural racism.

We also talked a bunch about the scale of the movement we need to build - that we need to be reaching millions - much more than we can get via dooknocking. We didn't come up with "the answer" to how to do that, but one thing I think is that is where culture comes in. People talk about cultural workers - the poets, musicians, rappers, filmmakers, dancers, etc - and we need to recognize that this is one of the ways to really reach the millions, and their work is truly work and truly valuable. They/we are creating a culture of resistance and liberation that we hope will be more appealing than the current culture of domination. When it's "cool" for youth to be rapping along to Dead Prez's songs about black power or singing along with Riot Folk anthems about fighting global capitalism or reciting Alixa & Naima's words on Colombian struggles - instead of mindless songs about bling or obsessive monogamy or singing commercial jingles - that's when we will have a chance at succeeding on the scale we need to be.

Don't be disempowered by analysis!

The following is taken from my comrade Jonathan in the program, who also has a blog chronicling his time here:

An elder African American mentor of mine back in NC who is a longtime anti-racist activist and has been an important piece of my political development over the years, raised a few concerns with me before i ventured out here. They stuck with me and were on my mind yesterday. He noted the propensity for white anti-racist training to lead to people becoming disempowered and making counterproductive assumptions about their role within multi-racial spaces. He noted that many white people coming in to anti-racism become so terrified of stepping on the toes of people of color, that they receed far into the background, rendering their intelligence and commitment ineffective. This severe self-censorship also implies the problematic belief that folks are color are not able to stand up for them selves when a white person is dominating a space. He was also concerned with difficulty many white anti-racists have in balancing the acknowledgment of their unintentional complicity in white supremacy, with an ability to proudly bring their full humanity into organizing spaces.

Personal Transformation

So as we've moved away from the really painful histories of oppression and towards more practical sides of doing anti-racist liberationist work, it's been easier to step away from the emotional aspects. Today's session really asked us to move deep into ourselves and get in touch with our most personal fears and motivations. So I'm going to get really personal in this blog (though I'm already pushing to intellectualize it and get away from the emotions) - and I ask that if you want to read that, that you do it when you have some emotional space.

Idealized Self-Image
We did a lot of work around "idealized self-image"which is essentially the person we want people to see us as. We looked at it specifically around the theme of being a white anti-racist activist. So I was asked to describe the person I wanted everyone to think I was, and I include it here not only to expose my psyche, but to help describe the idealized self-image:

• An activist with burning passion
• A go-to resource for advice on political issues
• Someone who knows my place/role within multiracial settings/movements
• Someone who can always take criticism or being called out really constructively and never be hurt or defensive about it
  
• Someone who always calls out/critiques others in the most loving, supportive way possible

Our facilitators asked to focus on how demanding our idealized self-images are - requiring us to be awesome all-the-time, perfect, not make mistakes, etc... I know that we all say that no one is perfect, but really, sometimes it's hard to believe that people will really love you (personally or politically or ideally both) through your mistakes. As a side note (or not so side), one big transformation we need to make is creating a culture that really allows mistakes and has protocol for dealing with them loving, constructively, and supportingly. I lately feel like I've been taking a lot of risks and making a lot of mistakes which have hurt people and in turn become really painful for myself.

Fears, Doubts, and Negativity
Then we looked at the fears, doubts, and negativity inside ourselves that the idealized self image sets out to protect. For me a really serious thing is racial inferiority - that as a white person who recognizes the slant of racial supremacy over many centuries - I will never be as valuable as a person of color; that because being white is my "original sin", I am inferior to non-white people, and can only be valuable insomuch as a I contribute to the struggle for racial justice. My work is valuable, not my person. Someone in the group talked about similar feelings, and looked at how ingrained capitalism is into ourselves that we think we are only worth as much as we can produce. Yes, that feeling is really ingrained, and it's hard for me to imagine a living society where people value each other just 'cause. I know I strive for that, I long for that, and I believe a lot of time I love my friends not because of what they do, but because of who they are. But I oftentimes don't believe people will love me that way.

I also worry that I have no real place in the struggle for racial justice, or not a place that will feel good to me - and as much as I want to have something important to contribute, that I am only useful as a shuttle of resources and support to people of color who are the real activists and organizers. This is a distortion of white anti-racist analysis that says that I need to be supporting people of color led organization. One of the Catalyst staff referred to a conversation he had with a black organizer who said that he was tired of really powerful white organizers going to anti-racist trainings, getting an over-inflated sense of the negative impact of their actions on people of color, and essentially dropping out of the movement because they felt like they had no place. (this also replicates white supremacy by saying that white people's actions can make or break people of color's movements) Yes, we need to be conscientious of things, yes we need to be accountable to people of color, but we need to be doing things to be conscientious of and accountable for. I don't know if I am recreating this sentiment fully enough, it's something I'm still struggling with.

core strengths, values, and motivations
Then we were asked to look deep into ourselves with a loving lens and look at what our core strengths, values, and motivations were. This got real intense as the facilitators would ask people to step up and actually announce one of their own strengths, and then asked the rest of the participants to reflect back to them a moment when they noticed that person exhibiting that strength. For me, a lot of my motivations and values boils down to straight up love and a belief that anything is possible if we want it. That's what moves me. The love part is also a vulnerability for me because I'm real in touch with love, and crave more of it than I think I get.


Impacts
We then looked at how the idealized self-image impacted our anti-racist work and our relationship with other whites and people of color. One person brought up that she was projecting her idealized self-image so well that people believed she was all those things, got intimidated by her, and then pulled away. Another thought is that having unrealistically high expectations of ourselves then leads to others feeling that if they don't meet the same standard, they shouldn't be participating in the movement. That we often set the bar too high for ourselves or others to be able to participate.

The exercise we did at the end was joining in a circle and holding hands, then one at a time, turning to the person on your right, calling them out by name, and saying "Your leadership is needed,". Then the person on your left says that to you. It's a little hard to take seriously because the person is saying it because they're supposed to, but it's amazing how vulnerably I need to hear that from someone who I admire and believe. How do I balance believing that I am my leadership is needed and also believing that leadership by people of color is primary?

Grassroots Fundraising

So, after all this looking at how the non-profit, foundation-grant-funded organizational model can't be truly revolutionary - what's left to keep an organization running? Funding from the grassroots, of course! Not only is that the most strategically effective, it is actually the most realistic. During session a guest presenter and longtime fundraising expert, Nisha Anand, broke down a lot of statistics that I'd love to share with you all.

Where Does Organizational Funding Come From?
75% from individuals
7.5% from bequests
12.5% from foundations
5% from corporations

So why do groups spend so much time chasing down foundations and corporations - yes, they are large sums, but that makes it even more vulnerable. One foundation can change its mind (as has happened to several groups with radical politics (supporting Palestine, etc) and pull the rug out from under a project.

Who Gives in the USA?

• Seven out of 10 people give to non-profits
• 85% of money from individuals comes from households with a family income less than $60,000.
• Households that make under $10,000 give away 5.5% of their income every year.
• Households that make over $100,000 give away 2.5% of their income every year.

So it's true, the more you make, the less you give away proportionally. Also, looking at these numbers, you have to realize that the majority of money funding projects comes from people who have very little wealth! That could be a combo of just being more generous in general and of funding causes because they have a real chance of positively impacting their lives.

Which Fundraising Tactics are most financially effective?
(looking at the time you put in versus the money you get out)
0% Special Events (such as galas, etc)
1-2% Direct Mail
10-15% Door-to-Door canvassing
10% Phone call w/written follow up
15% Personalized letter followed up with a phone call
25% Personal Phone call followed up with a letter
50% Personal Visit with a face-to-face ask

We did a lot of work around why people feel uncomfortable asking for money - that capitalism requires us keeping quiet about money (and inequities in wages, etc) so we are taught never to talk about money. We looked at different fears people have around asking for money, and different strategies to use to do fundraising. We have all been tasked with raising at least $700 for Catalyst (our program registration fees don't come anywhere close to covering Catalyst's costs). So in a bit I will be asking all of you all to contribute what you can!

The Revolution will Not be Funded

Much credit for this mind blowing goes to INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence who have been leading the discussion in this arena for years.

So I've certainly heard that "the revolution will not be funded" before - when you think about it, of course, why would the class of people with exorbitant want to fund projects that will successfully end such gross inequities of wealth? When an organization is dependent on winning the favor of foundations or government grants, they actually tailor their work to meet the requirements of the foundation - and accountability to the people they intend to serve/empower (depending on the organization) is lost. The organization is less focused on what is actually working for their members/clients, but what looks good to funders.

The Taming of Social Uprising
An even deeper analysis (given by Andrea Smith in the anthology of essays "The Revolution will not be funded") looks to how radical, grassroots movements have been tamed and controlled by "incorporating" into 501(c)3 non-profits. A clear model is the gay liberation movement, which we all know erupted as a working class, multi-racial rebellion against police oppression.

"In the wake of the riots, intense discussions took place in the city's gay community. During the first week of July, a small group of lesbians and gay men started talking about establishing a new organization called the Gay Liberation Front. The name was consciously chosen for its association with the anti-imperialist struggles in Vietnam and Algeria. Sections of the GLF would go on to organize solidarity for arrested Black Panthers, collect money for striking workers, and link the battle for gay rights to the banner of socialism."

Yes, gays sharing struggle with Black panthers and Third World Revolutionaries in the name of radical socialism! Today? The mainstream gay struggle is that, mainstream, and focuses on things like gay marriage and HIV funding, and has lost most of its connections with other oppressed groups. I think that transformation is a direct result of incorporating as non-profits.

Or for a more documented affect, Andrea Smith points to the work of Robert L. Allen in tracking how the "Ford Foundation began supporting Black civil rights and Black Power organizations such as CORE - and started shifting their focus from Black liberation to Black capitalism. Similarly, Madonna Thunder Hawk describes how the offer of well-paying jobs in the non-profit sector seduced many native activists into diverting their energy from organizing to social service delivery and program development."

If you think, it doesn't have to be like that, there are lots of really awesome philanthropists out there that sincerely support social change - well, I don't know enough to discredit that, but what I have learned is the origins of Foundations. Starting in the early 1900s, foundations were created as a direct tax shield for wealthy people and corporations. Think of how many billions of dollars which would have been public money (though I of course don't trust our government to put public money to good use) that very theoretically could be controlled by the public, instead a wealthy individual gets direct control over where that many goes - and thus chooses projects which are in his/her interest - not the public interest. I know for me, I would love to believe that wealthy philanthropists or boards of foundations truly have public interest at heart, but, even in the most altruistic scenarios, it is virtually impossible for people with that amount of wealth (or who run in those circles enough to be named to the board of a foundation) can actually EVEN KNOW what oppressed groups of people need to liberate themselves.

The Non-Profit Industrial Complex (ya know I had to go there!)
Another effect is the professionalization of the movement. With non-profits, certain people are chosen and then get paid to lead the work, and the effects are many:

1. People with more education, credentials, class privilege get chosen to lead work instead of the people most affected by the situation
2. Those activists then get attached more to the careerism and funding than in the effectiveness of the work
3. "The NPIC (non-profit industrial complex) encourages us to think of social justice organizing as a career; that is, you do the work if you can get paid for it. However a mass movement requires the involvement of millions of people, most of whom cannot get paid. By trying to do grassroots organizing through this careerist model, we are essentially asking a few people to work more than full-time to make up for the work that needs to be done by millions."
4. This funding scheme makes organizations compete with each other instead of collaborating, as they struggle to define to funders how their work is unique and more important than others' work.
   

Honestly, this article by Andrea Smith goes on and on with more and more brilliant points, and I could just keep quoting and quoting. Really, you should read the book!

We Need a Movement that Can Incorporate Everyone
Another article from this book, by Paula X. Rojas, really gets into how professionalized, incorporated models of organizing will never reach the scale or be accountable (and thus effective) to the majority of people who I believe should be the one rewriting the script of the world order. I think this not only applies to non-profits, but also to other movements with cultures that promote the idea that you must be a full-time activist in order to be committed, and that don't allow place for the majority of people - whose lives involve a healthy mix of childrearing, supporting other family, working for money, taking leisure time, caring for mental health and otherwise dealing with the real effects of centuries of oppression as poor, female, and/or people of color.

I know this makes me want to study Latin American social movements more, as they are able to involve millions of people in protest on a regular basis, or lead to things as the Zapatista uprising. And really do some thinking about how I can make sure that I'm putting my energy into projects that have a chance at succeeding on a mass scale, and not just finding a place for myself as an "activist."

Damn, y'all!

Visionary Politics

This week's session included a panel that was ON FIRE! People from truly visionary organizations really laying out the framework of radically different paradigms for the world they want to see.

We got to hear from four amazing women:
Rachel Herzing from Critical Resistance, Chela Delgado from INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Sara Kershnar from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan from Movement Generation.

Resilience - Resistance - Reimagining
Michelle spoke on Movement Generation's work to connect the people who are working locally to stop the disastrous effects of environmental racism in their communities - connect them to the larger global struggle around climate change to create - voila - the climate justice movement. Their approach is visionary: Resilience - Resistance - Reimagine. For resiliency, they aim to foster the learning of "hard skills" around sustainability - greywater reclamation, urban agriculture, etc - that will help peoples survive as the world's resources get exploited. In the Resistance arena, they look to "changing the system" via campaigns, new policies, and taking over governance. In Reimagining, Michelle spoke of replacing capitalism's place as "common sense" and shift to a more cooperative second nature, transforming the mindset of "gotta get min" to "let's share ours."

One of the most useful mindflips Michelle laid out was the shift from giving people "jobs" to looking at people's "roles." Looking pre-capitalism, people didn't have jobs, they had roles within society. Only certain people get jobs (namely the able-bodied, young & middle aged adults, with a heavy preference for white men) and they must compete for them, but everyone in a society has a role, and the sooner we learn to respect that, the sooner we can live in a more equitable society.

She also talked about how important it was to be creating a transformative counter narrative different from the one we have been taught (capitalist and based on domination). Stories are powerful - that is why cultural workers, who are slowly shifting mindsets on a major level, introducing new words and concepts via posters, stories, songs, etc - are so instrumental. The sooner more people see the world through a different lens, one that we have deliberately crafted, the sooner the world will actually become the way we envisioned it.

Why do we think punishment = justice?
Rachel spoke to us about the prison industrial complex: which is far beyond just prisons and police - it includes the whole machinery of punishment and surveillance that we accept as normal and necessary - militarized schools, depressed education system, unaffordable and inaccessible health care, normalized policing, etc.

From Angela Davis' article: "What then, would it mean, to imagine a system in which punishment is not allowed to become the source of corporate profit? How can we imagine a society in which race & class are not primary determinants of punishment? Or one in which punishment itself is no longer the central concern in the making of justice?" This last sentence is so crucial to think about - how often do we look at the doling out of justice solely in the terms of how heavily the perpetrator was punished? Does this bring back a murdered loved one? Does this actually ease someone's injuries from violence? Does this actually ever heal a community?

For anyone who might not instantly see how race & class are "primary determinants" of punishment, think about this: What's the difference between a "criminal" and a "lawbreaker"? Think of all the white middle class kids off smoking pot or doing acid or cocaine in their homes - are they "criminals" - then picture the black working class kids with a culture of hanging outside of the home - smoking pot - then ask yourself how easy it would be to call them "criminals" and watch them get arrested and sent through jails and probation. People are sent to prison, not so much because of the crimes they may have indeed committed, but largely because their communities have been criminalized.

The System is Not Broken
Rachel is fond of saying "The system is not broken; it is working perfectly doing exactly what it was built to do." This is deep. This is why reform of the "justice system" will never create a just society - so what we must do is abolish it completely and rebuild society to address issues in a totally different way. Another helpful quote from Angela Davis "The first step would be to let go of the desire to discover one single alternative system of punishment that would occupy the same footprint as the prison system." We need a holistic recreation of society that doesn't create the ills of poverty and racism that allows us to think we need a prison punishment system. Rachel talked about Critical Resistance's no compromise stance by saying we demand what we want, we don't settle for what we think we can get. The idea of the transformative counter narrative comes back here, as people are working to create a narrative of what holistic justice looks like, and this is the first step to making it a possibility. CR has a motto similar to Movement Generation's 3 prong approach: Change, Dismantle, Build.

Anti-Zionist Judaism
Sara was a powerful speaker who brought to light the truly elitist roots of Zionism and the need for Jewish resistance to Zionism. A piece of IJAN's work is looking to rescue the humanitarian, liberationist roots of Judaism from the racist, colonialist Zionist strains that dominates public understanding of Jews. Or as Ricardo Morales says "Self love in Jewish life requires displacing the ultra-nationalist cult that has hijacked Jewish public life and caused so much suffering."

In ways similar to how the brutalities of maintaining white supremacy has stripped many whites of their humanity, maintaining the racist apartheid of Zionism in Israel has stripped many Jews of their humanity. Sara read a really powerful quote from Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, that was shocking to hear

“Palestine cannot absorb the Jews of Europe. We want only the best of Jewish youth to come to us. We want only the educated to enter Palestine for the purpose of increasing its culture. The other Jews will have to stay where they are and face whatever fate awaits them. These millions of Jews are dust on the wheels of history and they may have to be blown away. We don’t want them pouring into Palestine. We don’t want Tel Aviv to become another low-grade ghetto.”

This said in 1938, in the midst of growing fascism and the soon to come Holocaust.

One of the articles we read, Lihish'tah'weel by Ricardo Levins Morales, laid out the argument that if Israel's purpose was to create a safe and secure homeland for Jews, it has not worked. The Zionist, racially defined society has not worked and will never work, and any moves towards a two-state solution where Jews have one place and Arab Palestinians have another will also not worked - this will always be apartheid which requires force to maintain. "No polity, no matter how well intentioned, can govern a system based on racial privilege without becoming reactionary."

Making the Road by Walking
Chela spoke to us about INCITE!'s work and their commitment to using consensus based collective models, even on a national scale. Though there are many difficulties in working this way, remaining true to their ideals is extremely important. In speaking of the slowness of building a new world based on consensus, and the frustration that can bring up in real life organizing, she said "When you are making the road by walking, it's hard to run." Wow. Think about that for a while. If the work you are doing is truly groundbreaking, truly pioneering, it will be slow hard work.

Two more articles that were in this weeks reading packet were:

Love & Community
bell hooks' "love as the practice of freedom" which boils down to the fact that domination is built upon suffering and liberation is built upon love. "The absence of a sustained focus on love in progressive circles arise from a collective failure to acknowledge the needs of the spirit and an overdetermined emphasis on material concerns." She talks a bunch about the levels of despair created by the current system and how draining that is for everyone. She quotes Joanna Macy, " the energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies."

I think to how many of my closest friends and companeros that have been lost to depression and addictions and are no longer able to be active in the struggle for liberation. bell also says that "in choosing love we also choose to live in community, and that means that we do not have to change by ourselves." this is so relieving, to not carry the weight of transforming the world as individuals. I can be part of a collective process, where the workload is manageable, and together we will get somewhere. This I think to me is why I crave working in collective so deeply - it is easier and more nourishing.

Last Thing! La Mestiza
We read this awesome, beautifully written article by Gloria Anzaldua called "La conciencia de la mestiza - towards a new consciousness." It wove together crafted myth and poetry and political reality. The main thing I got out was the power of mixed blood people to be creating new ways of thinking that synthesize the contradictions of different racial & cultural beliefs. "In our very flesh, (r)evolution works out the clash of cultures. It makes us crazy constantly, but if the center holds, we've made some kind of evolutionary step forward." She speaks of alchemy, morphing, crossroads, borderlands, synthesis, transformation - the creation of something that is more than the sum of its parts. Like the way that transgendered people have created an understanding of gender that supersedes the binary system, and in doing so, liberates all from the oppressive implications of binary gendered socialization.

It is people at the crossroads of race, of gender, of sexuality, of class - that have the broadest range of experience, and thus are best posed to lead us all into liberation.

Assimilation into Whiteness in our Own Family Lines

“The great force of human history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do…It is to history we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations. And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this. In great pain and terror one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is and shaped one’s point of view. In great pain and terror because, therefore one enters into battle with that more historical creation, oneself, and attempts to recreate, oneself according to a principle more humane and more liberating, one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power and also changes history.” - James Baldwin, “White Man’s Guilt” 1965

Here's some hot quotes from this sessions readings:

• "A hostile posture toward resident blacks must be struck at the Americanizing door before it will open." - Toni Morrison, speaking of how immigrants are only assimilated into whiteness (and gain white privilege) once they learn to hate and mistreat blacks.
• "White men - from Norway, were they were Norwegians [not white people] - became white: by slaughtering the cattle, poisoning the wells, torching the houses, massacring Native Americans, raping Black women. This moral erosion has made it quite impossible for those who think of themselves as white to have any moral authority at all." - James Baldwin
  

Jewish Assimiliation
There were a few articles that looked at the specific case of Jewish assimilation into whiteness - in Europe, Jews were the "dark" ethnic minority subject to centuries of discrimination, slavery, and genocide. Come to the U.S., the community at large opted to become white and participate in racism against Blacks and other people of color, just as now it is the Zionist Jews who are oppressing the Arab Palestinian on the basis of race.
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The buildup for this week was extensive: we were asked to spend some time investigating our family histories - not just genealogy, but trying to put our ancestors lives into context. As we are all white, we know thatmostly our families came as immigrants from Europe. Why did they come? What challenges did they face as immigrants? What jobs/roles were open to them? What were their social networks?

Family Tree
I personally got caught up in climbing my family tree - tapping into online genealogy resources that helped you fill out your tree based on work others had done, as well as connecting you to primary sources - such as census records, land grants, newspapers, etc. (I did this thru ancestry.com, which is expensive but gives a free 2 week trial so I spent all my free time those two weeks really digging in.) I found tons of interesting things, such as the Spanish land grant proving one of my ancestors' title to land in Florida from 1816, stories of the first Purvis (John Purvis) coming to the colonies in the mid 1600s, confederate pension records of another ancestor, etc. I also talked to my grandma a bunch who shared stories and photos, like the gem to the left, which is my great-grandfather, maybe around 1916, with the ginormous tomatoes from the family farm. I learned that the German side of my family, which immigrated in the late 1800s, came over as Lutherans who wanted to escape conscription into the military. From then on, the Lutheran community was their main support network - which ends, on my lineage, with my mom.

Half of me was overjoyed to feel long roots in Florida, the other half was left with questions about how my family and their communities figured in to the Seminole Wars and the civil war. One of my g-g-g-grandpas was definitely on civil war confederate pensions, but said that he served home duty. I really wanted to uncover something that showed where my ancestors stood on the issues of slavery and native genocide - participants? slaveholders? economically locked out? passive bystanders? resistors? - but I didn't find anything that revealing.

During the actual session, we got together in small groups based on where in Europe our principal ancestry descends from, and just talked about our families and what we learned in our research.

Why Study your Family History?
Why did Catalyst put Family History in the Braden program? It is a deliberate strategy to fight the assimilationist force in the US by understanding the different cultures our ancestors came from. Our ancestors were not culture-less - that is part of the myth of whiteness. The process of becoming white goes hand in hand with loss and dehumanization, brokenness, violence - this is the legacy of white supremacy. But whiteness was deliberately created to break unity which means that it can also be deliberately dismantled. People have resisted and tried to reclaim history/culture (including ourselves). We can create a cultural shift which leads to social and economic shifts.

The questions we ended the session with was this: What's it going to take for white people to see ending white supremacy in our self interest? And what role are we going to play in making that happen?