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.