doing shit

"I don't need networking, I need people who are going to do shit." That was Alexis speaking, a friend and long-term activist organizer in Charlottesville, VA. I'd voiced my concern that cooperatives and collectives tend to come together around one or two highly motivated individuals, and that this ends up creating dysfunctional power dynamics down the road. "That's a 3rd or 4th tier problem," he said. "One of the cornerstone radio stations of the Pacifica network is incredibly dysfunctional, but they're why you have alternative news radio. A dysfunctional organization is better than no organization."

I reluctantly agreed, but I wasn't willing to leave it at that. What would it take for a group to come together, all of whom are motivated, responsible, and "doing shit" to for an organization? "You need a social network, otherwise people drift off when they find partners and want to have kids. That's what Kat (Kinkade - founder of Twin Oaks Community) pointed out. The only problem is you need a social network to create a social network."

"And there's the problem of economics," said Sue, co-founder of Little Flower Catholic Worker. "When people are busy getting their needs met they don't have time to do all these cool activist projects, let alone build the social network."

These two factors seem to form the crux of the problem, which, in my mind, all boils down to basic human needs, both material and social. Providing for these needs through systems and structures, organizations and institutions, that are based on a deep understanding of sustainability and justice, is both what alternative movements should be doing and what they need to be doing to grow.

And to accomplish this, yes, we need people who are going to do shit, and, I believe we need the networking, or, as my friend Jenny calls it, cross-pollinating. "It'd be great if y'all are going to start some kind of communal household that will also be a hub for the social network." Indeed, and not just for the purposes of socializing, but for bringing people together from different networks, organizations, and communities to help identify potential relationships both material and social.

Back in Portland, during a meeting I helped organize on fostering the emergence of alternative economies, Rebecca, Portland State University professor and avid anti-racism advocate, said "look, we just identified at least half a dozen organizations without even trying. I'm sure there are dozens more. Is anyone going around to these organizations and asking them what they need and what they can offer?" "Huh, no," was the cynical reply. "Why not?" "Most people involved in alternative organizations aren't interested in that stuff. They just want to focus on their group, either because their in it for the image, or the social life, or because they just want to make sure their group stays afloat."

Still, I though, someone should be asking those questions: what do you need? What can you offer? I'll be that someone. To me, this strikes at the essence of cross-pollinating, which, once Jenny articulated the concept to me last Fall, is what I realized I just do without thinking about it.

But I do agree with Alexis, we need people who are going to "do shit." If we are going to have the kind of social network and base of resources we need to grow the movement we need more nodes, we need more places for people to get involved, more places from which both relationships and projects can emerge. I'll be one of those people and I'll help create those places.

For me (not necessarily for anyone else), this is where my balance is, with my head in the clouds and my feet planted firmly in the earth, the merging of dirt and dreams. This is the work that has finally allowed me to understand the concept of having a "calling." This is the work that viscerally, I know I have to do. I've made my choice, and now I have no choice, and it is a great feeling.

culture and change

Last weekend Kassia picked up what appeared to be something like an activist's flashcard. On the front it reads, "Alternative popular culture." On the back it reads, "struggle to aquire, maintain or resist power using culture as the site of or for that struggle."

This reminded me of a group I ran into at the National Conference on Organized Resistance back in 2003, called SmartMeme. In their workshop they outlined the key points in the development of an activist campaign where, traditionally, mainstream media and other institutions take control of the situation by framing the issue and controling the language and issues. We looked at strategies for counter-acting that pattern.

"SmartMeme is about doing social change in a holistic way : shifting from issues to values, supplementing organization building with movement building, focusing on the intersections of story telling, relational organizing, communications, alliance building and creative new forms of civic engagement and action.

SmartMeme amplifies the impact of local and national non-profit and grassroots organizations with capacity-building partnerships, collaborations, and new strategy tools to change the stories that shape the dominant culture. We integrate the art of framing, the science of strategy, and the approach of grassroots organizing through our framework of story-based strategy." (from the smartMeme website)

I'm writing this as something of a follow up to my previous post. Somehow I'm finally starting to put the pieces together of this new culture that's emerging. To some extent it's a resistance culture. But it's primarily that in that in order to have the space to create the culture we want to live in we have to push on the boundaries of the dominant culture, because they're not leaving much room to work in. And this conflict is more about values, lifestyles, economics than it is about physical, or even formally political confrontation.


According to Wikipedia this idea is actually nothing new. "The phrase "culture war" is a translation of the German Kulturkampf, the name given to the struggle between the government of the German Empire under Otto von Bismarck against the power of the Catholic Church from 1871-1878.

Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in the 1920s argued that the reason the proletarian revolution had not advanced in Europe as fast as many Marxists had expected it would was due to cultural hegemony. The theory of cultural hegemony states that a diverse culture can be dominated by one class because of that class's monopoly over the mass media and popular culture. Gramsci therefore argued for a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, education, and other mass organizations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war

In my opinion, another reason that different political and social movements operating from a base of counter-culture creation have had limited impact is because there has been too much focus on ideology and rhetoric, as well as organizational structure and, as a movement develops, bureaucracy, and too little on the real point of the matter, which is to better the lives of those who are oppressed.

In my work, I hope to turn this around. I hope to work for the betterment of life circumstances for all, and to organize people and resources in a way that clearly makes their lives better. If it's not obvious, something's wrong. If there is energy wasted on bureaucracy and institution, something's wrong. If I can simply point to what's happening and say, "look we're helping people meet their own needs while meeting the needs of others through their own hard work and mutual support" it will be hard to argue with that.