Mass Movement

‘Revolutionary Movements’ Fear Of Money Helps Oligarchy

June 2, 2014 Carl Gibson, www.occupy.com Educate! Mass Movement, Money, oligarchy, Organizing

This is the second part in a two-part series looking at ways that social movements inadvertently help the oligarchy. Part 1 challenged the non-profit industrial complex for duplicating and fundraising off the work of revolutionary organizations. Part 2 challenges revolutionary movement culture for stoking an irrational fear of money and making our efforts impotent in the process. Ask yourself these three questions: Who has more money – us or them? Who is more organized – us or them? Who’s winning – us or them? If you aren’t independently wealthy, want to work full-time helping the real movement get concrete wins, and don’t want to work for the D.C. nonprofit-industrial complex, then you’re shit out of luck. And if you are one of the few truly revolutionary movement organizations doing important work with enough of a budget to hire a staff, your workers are likely underpaid, overworked and burned out. All of the blame for these situations can be laid at the feet of revolutionary activist culture that teaches people to be afraid of money, to never ask for it, and to never openly say you want it or need it. And because of our own counterproductive views about money, the oligarchy continues to kick our ass and run laps around us.

A National Call to Link Arms for Democracy

June 2, 2014 Victoria Collier and Ben-Zion Ptashnik, www.truth-out.org Organize! Democracy, Mass Movement, oligarchy, Wall Street

"When I despair I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall, think of it - always!" - Mahatma Gandhi For Americans, these are dangerous and momentous times. We have only a small window of opportunity to break the grip of moneyed interests on our government, before an advancing oligarchy consolidates power and locks in tyranny. This article is an urgent call to organize a mass-based political movement in the coming months and through the 2016 elections. If we rise to the occasion and fight, we can reclaim democracy, regain control of our future, and preserve the dreams of our children, and for the coming generations. Without a sweeping grassroots movement, loudly pushing and protesting for reforms, populist candidates, or coalitions in Congress will never have the power to defeat the forces of a corrupt ruling class. Robber barons have resurfaced with a vengeance in the past four decades, openly attacking our democratic system, while buying power to extend and protect their privilege in perpetuity.

NGOization: Depoliticizing Activism In Canada

May 27, 2014 Dru Oja Jay, www.newsocialist.org Resist! Canada, Mass Movement, NGO

Across Canada, movement organizations are preparing for the People's Social Forum, coming up in August. There's a buzz of excitement and anticipation in the air as committees elect delegates, and strategies are debated. When hundreds of activists gather in Ottawa in a few months, we will be drawing from a rich, long-simmering cauldron of theoretical discussion and insight issuing from astute on-the-ground observations. Members of a variety of organizations will gather to debate proposals and hear reports from paid organizers. Thousands will gather in major cities, and crowds ranging from dozens to hundreds are expected in smaller centres. In Kenora, a delegation of Indigenous activists are expected to present a proposal for a major change in the role of First Nations in Greenpeace campaigns. In Montreal, a left tendency within the membership is said to be preparing a resolution that would shift the Council of Canadians' considerable campaigning clout to align more closely with the explicitly anti-capitalist student movement. In BC, the Sierra Club will hold a series of general assemblies, bringing together its thousands of members for similar discussions. Canada World Youth, Engineers Without Borders, KAIROS and Amnesty International are holding local meetings to select delegates and discuss priorities. Southern Ontario is aflutter with activity as cross-sectoral workers' committees meet independently of their unions to discuss strategies to proactively prevent the next plant closure and fight it with broad public support if it goes forward.

Social Unrest Starts With Soaring Food Prices

May 9, 2014 Stefanie Krasnow, www.alternet.org Strategize! Climate Change, Food and Agriculture, Mass Movement

From 2008 to 2014, insurrectionist activity has sequentially erupted across the globe, from Tunisia and Egypt to Syria and Yemen; from Greece, Spain, Turkey and Brazil to Thailand, Bosnia, Venezuela and the Ukraine. In every instance, there was a tipping point: in Tunisia, it was Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation; in New York City, it was the Wall Street bailout; in Istanbul, it was a few threatened trees in Gezi Park; in Brazil, it was a 20-cent increase in transit fare. Today, the rest of our world seems poised to erupt, with every nation near and far harboring its own Achilles heel, its own tender nerve of geopolitical vulnerability at risk of getting pricked. Thanks to corporate media, which conveniently co-opts the restless amnesia of the news cycle to distract attention from ongoing, systemic issues, this global revolutionary fervor has been presented to us as a bunch of sound and fury that rises and falls and amounts to nothing. But beneath what we’ve come to perceive as isolated and distinct events is a shared but neglected root cause of environmental crisis. What most people don’t realize is that outbreaks of social unrest are preceded, usually, by a single pattern — an unholy trinity of drought, low crop yield and soaring food prices.

Frances Fox Piven’s Theory Of Disruptive Power

May 8, 2014 Mark Engler and Paul Engler, www.wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! Mass Movement, Occupy, Organizing

Social movements can be fast, and they can be slow. Mostly, the work of social change is a slow process. It involves patiently building movement institutions, cultivating leadership, organizing campaigns and leveraging power to secure small gains. If you want to see your efforts produce results, it helps to have a long-term commitment. And yet, sometimes things move more quickly. Every once in a while we see outbreaks of mass protest, periods of peak activity when the accepted rules of political affairs seem to be suspended. As one sociologist writes, these are extraordinary moments when ordinary people “rise up in anger and hope, defy the rules that ordinarily govern their lives, and, by doing so, disrupt the workings of the institutions in which they are enmeshed.” The impact of these uprisings can be profound. “The drama of such events, combined with the disorder that results, propels new issues to the center of political debate” and drives forward reforms as panicked “political leaders try to restore order.”

Social Change: We Are The Problem We Are Seeking To Solve

April 14, 2014 Michael Johnson, www.truth-out.org Strategize! Mass Movement, Organizing

Developing useful theories for social change is very challenging. Two recent articles in Truthout show us that one major difficulty is to get theory to work from the bottom up. Once it wanders away from the reservation of experience, it's on a wrong path. Let me use an analogy to explain my thinking here. It's not meant to convince you, but to clarify what I want to say in this article. Think of society as a garden, full of a rich diversity of productive plants in beneficial relationships with each other. Think of culture as the soil they are embedded in, from which they draw essential nutrients, and to which they contribute their own stuff for its enrichment. Social change movements, at their best, want to fix a world dominated by exploitive relationships. Most social change theory, in my opinion, is aimed at fixing particular systems, practices, toolkits, etc. Theory that works from the ground up focuses on the soil itself, since this is what creates and sustains the dominant relationships.

Social Movement And Electoral Movements, Not One Or The Other

April 14, 2014 Michael Trudeau, www.truth-out.org Strategize! Elections, Mass Movement

On the left, it has long been argued whether electoral politics can have any lasting effect on positive societal change or whether activists should instead focus solely on building social movements. In the latter camp, commentators such as Patrick Barrett, writing in Truthout, argue that a run for president by Bernie Sanders, for example, would be a huge waste of time and resources, and some even call forboycotts of elections. Why? The "social-movement-only" proponents argue that electoral politics is counterproductive because it undercuts social movements by diverting too much energy to elections. The argument goes that even electoral movements independent of the two-party system, such as the Green Party, weaken popular movements by pacifying them and quickly devolve into duopoly politics as usual. The boycott argument goes that US elections are completely undemocratic, that voters are invited to choose between various representatives of the same corporatocracy.

Labor Movements: How To Fan The Sparks

April 2, 2014 Alexandra Bradbury & Jane Slaughter, www.labornotes.org Strategize! Labor, Mass Movement, Organizing

We troublemakers keep hoping for the spark that will set a wildfire of workers in motion. The worse our situation gets—economically, politically, ecologically—the more we yearn for a vast movement to erupt and transform the landscape. It’s not impossible. Look at 1937, when workplace occupations spread everywhere, from auto factories to Woolworth’s. The 1930s wave of militancy forced Congress to aid union organizing with new laws and to enact Social Security and unemployment insurance. Industrial unions formed during that upsurge continue to this day. So why not here and now? In our lifetimes, we’ve seen sparks—but we haven’t seen them spread like that. In some ways we’re more connected than ever before, able to watch each other’s struggles in real time on our phones. Yet mostly, the sparks haven’t leapt from one workplace or one Capitol rotunda to another. The Occupy movement is the shining exception.

Are We Witnessing the Birth of a Mass Movement?

March 22, 2014 Jim Hightower wwww.alternet.org Educate! American Revolution, Mass Movement

There's so much more underway, such as placing a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street speculators; a surge in co-ops as a democratic alternative to corporate control; getting Monsanto's genetically altered organisms out of our food supply; a vibrant and positive campaign by immigrants themselves for immigrant rights; battling giants such as Disney World and Walmart to win paid sick leave days for low-wage workers; freeing college students from Wall Street's loan sharks. All of these and so many more are the sprouting seeds of a widespread, flourishing Populist movement. The moment is ripe to bond them into something larger.

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