Organizing

How the Occupy Movement Began: The Full Account

November 1, 2013 Nathan Schneider, www.truth-out.org Strategize! Occupy, Organizing

I started looking for the planning process of some great cause to follow and to learn from. It turned out that this would be easier than I expected - and that the spectacle would be the process itself. Revolution didn't seem like such a crazy idea in 2011. Just a few weeks into the year, two dictators had already bowed to the power of the people. By late February, the victorious Egyptians were phoning in pizza-delivery orders to the occupied Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison. Unrest followed the summer's heat to Greece, Spain, and England. Europe's summer was Chile's winter, but students and unions rose up there too. Tel Aviv grew a tent city. While Tahrir Square in Cairo was still full, the boutique-y activist art magazineAdbusters published a blog post imagining "A Million Man March on Wall Street." But the United States appeared to go quiet after Madison, its politics again domesticated by talk of the "debt ceiling" and the Iowa Straw Poll; when tens of thousands actually did march on Wall Street on May 12, few noticed and fewer remembered.

Creating A Strategic Core That Builds A Mass Movement

October 30, 2013 J.M. Smucker, www.devoketheapocalypse.com Strategize! Occupy, Organizing

What our opponents are wrong about is the equation of radical with fringe. The word radical literally means going to the root of something. Establishment forces use the labelradical interchangeably with the disparaging label extremist—as a means to “otherize” the movement. But clearly the radicals did something right here. We flipped the script by framing the top 1% as the real extremists—as the people who are truly out of touch. By striking at the root of the problem and naming the primary culprit in our economic and democratic crises—by creating a defiant symbol on Wall Street’s doorstep—a new generation of young radicals has struck a chord with mainstream America.

Grassroots Campaign To Take Back Chicago From Its Mayor

October 22, 2013 Kari Lydersen, www.inthesetimes.com Resist! Democracy, Education, Government, Organizing

About 1,500 Chicagoans and a lineup of city and state elected officials convened Tuesday night to announce their intention to “take back Chicago” from a city administration they describe as rewarding corporations while punishing working people. A wave of recent cuts has left almost 50 Chicago public schools shuttered, six mental-health clinics closed and thousands of public workers without jobs. According to a report released last week, these cuts have primarily hit Black and Latino neighborhoods, even as majority white and downtown neighborhoods have prospered—thanks in part to the city’s Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, program. TIFs are meant to revive blighted areas by funneling property tax dollars to development projects, but critics see the program as a corporate giveaway, diverting dollars from public coffers to private corporations. Tuesday's event marked the official launch of a campaign by the Grassroots Collaborative, the alliance of 11 neighborhood, housing and labor groups.

Intervention as Radical Struggle

October 6, 2013 Javier Sethness, www.truth-out.org Strategize! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Organizing

In sum, it seems clear that radical struggle is the order of the day. Intervention, if it is to have concrete meaning or be relevant at all, seeks human happiness, tranquility, liberation - like art that is worth its name, in Marcuse's formulation. Undoubtedly, the threats aligned against the realization of these ends are considerable; Hegel was largely correct to identify history as a slaughterbench that sacrifices the happiness of humanity to hegemony. We can clearly see such analysis confirmed throughout the calamitous world today: Think of the recent Tazreen and Rana Square disasters in Bangladesh, or the 2011 Somali famine. However, it is also clear that humanity is capable of far more affirming projects than those that hold power today. Dialectical thought, and the praxis that may follow from it, can serve to overturn negation.

Mapped: Every Protest On The Planet Since 1979

August 23, 2013 J. Dana Stuster, www.foreignpolicy.com Educate! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Organizing

This is what data from a world in turmoil looks like. The Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) tracks news reports and codes them for 58 fields, from where an incident took place to what sort of event it was (these maps look at protests, violence, and changes in military and police posture) to ethnic and religious affiliations, among other categories. The dataset has recorded nearly 250 million events since 1979, according to its website, and is updated daily. John Beieler, a doctoral candidate at Penn State, has adapted these data into striking maps, like the one above of every protest recorded in GDELT -- a breathtaking visual history lesson.

Movements Need Catalysts And Voices Not Leaders

August 20, 2013 Bill McKibben, www.tomdispatch.com Strategize! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Organizing

All through my activist life, I’ve seen police looking for leaders to negotiate with or suppress. A body with a head can be decapitated, but headless organisms charge on as long as some of us remain. And many people -- Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas, David Graeber of the Occupy movement, Bill McKibben in the climate-change movement, possibly even Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement -- have been mistaken for leaders when they were really something else: catalysts and voices for our movements. They weren’t and aren’t leaders because we aren’t followers. We don’t obey them, but sift through and adopt their ideas, frameworks, and strategies as we see fit, while contributing ourselves. No shepherds, no sheep -- which is a triumph of political evolution and a measure of how far we are from the authoritarianism of the past.

13 Lessons About Social Justice From “Harry Potter”

August 19, 2013 Krystie Lee Yandoli, www.buzzfeed.com Strategize! Organizing

We take lessons from many sources. In this case we were open to reading what we can learn from -- the Harry Potter series. We thought the author found some good lessons that we can learn from this novel. And, we want to build a mass movement so we try to provide lessons in ways that reach different people. We hope that those offended by this approach will allow others to be open to it. We particularly like the last point "One of the major themes in the entire series, love plays an essential role in overcoming the worst kinds of evil. It is a universal emotion that all human beings (and wizards) can relate to in one way or another, and is a major driving force behind social change. Love is strong enough to inspire Narcissa Malfoy to protect Harry against Voldemort because she wanted to know her son was safe."

Lesson From Egypt: Changing Sides Doesn’t Always Make For Transformation

August 1, 2013 Erica Chenoweth, www.wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! Egypt, Organizing, Wars and Militarism

This article provides lessons on how resistance and military relate from resistance movements around the world. Civil resistance campaigns should avoid the belief that the people and the military are always “one hand,” as has been chanted so often in Egypt. Instead, they should see that security forces have their own interests, and they can easily manipulate the movement to suit their own purposes in ways that undermine the movement’s own agenda. Movements with massive and diverse participation, nonviolent discipline, and the ability to withstand repression have been historically capable of forcing those in power to change. But only when a campaign pressures elites to suspend or reevaluate their own interests will they step out of the way of genuine transformation.

‘Walk For Dignity’ To Sanford Begins In Jacksonville

July 25, 2013 Staff, www.fightbacknews.org Organize! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Organizing

Even the summer afternoon rain couldn’t stop more than 25 activists from meeting in downtown Jacksonville’s Hemming Plaza, July 22, to begin a five-day walk to Sanford, Florida. Activists took the first steps in the “Walk for Dignity – Enough is Enough” event, demanding justice for Trayvon Martin and the resignation of State Attorney Angela Corey, who prosecuted the George Zimmerman case. Called by the Southern Movement Assembly, a network of activist groups around the South that met in Jacksonville last April, the walk will end with a large rally in Sanford. Activists from the Jacksonville-based New Jim Crow Movement, Project South, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Coalition for Justice for Trayvon, Southerners on New Ground and other organizations are participating in the walk.

A ‘Sitting Man’ at Goldman Sachs

June 29, 2013 Nathan Schneider, www.wagingnonviolence.org Organize! Finance and the Economy, Organizing

The reason for my meditating at Goldman is that I seek to extend compassion to its employees and demand that they do the same for the worldwide billions affected by the bank’s practices. By meditating, I’m quite literally modeling a technique that cultivates the capacity for emotional states like compassion and empathy. On another level, I’m trying to communicate that I come in peace; I understand that Goldman Sachs bankers are people just like you and me. There’s nothing inherently evil or malicious about them. Like all people, they are the beautifully complicated products of a personal and social history. Does that mean that we allow them to acquire huge amounts of money, while exacerbating global inequality and its effects? Absolutely not. But we intervene in the way that a family might intervene when their son has a drug addiction.

Community Organizing for a New Economy

June 23, 2013 Staff, www.community-wealth.org Create! Finance and the Economy, Organizing, Poverty

Murray stressed that ultimately any project must come from a base of people holding power — from community organizing. Foundation and anchor institution support can be helpful, but without the participation of community organizations and members as key stakeholders, any project — no matter how well intended — will unravel over time. People power is one of three critical prongs necessary to achieve systemic change — Murray pointed out, “we need to have economic power, people power and political power all at the same time.”

King Center on Nonviolence, First Summer Session

June 16, 2013 Staff, www.thekingcenter.org Educate! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Organizing

The King Center will hold the 2013 “N.O.W. (Nonviolence Opportunity Watch) Encounter: Kingian Nonviolence in Action” summer camping session on its campus from June 17-21 for 120 participants, including 94 students ages 13-18 and 30 adult chaperones, it was announced today. The King Center will teach participants techniques for leveraging Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence to resolve conflicts in their daily lives and empower them to serve as ‘ambassadors’ for nonviolent social change. King Center C.E.O. Bernice A. King explained “The 2013 N.O.W. Camp will provide an action-packed, fun-filled and life-changing week, which will challenge and engage young people to use the power of nonviolence to help fulfill my father’s dream.”

Global Skills Exchange, June 8, 9 and 13

June 7, 2013 staff, www.globalskillsxchange.net Organize! Corporatism, Democracy, Finance and the Economy, Organizing, Solidarity

Global Skills Exchange in the week leading up to the G8, it seeks to share tools, skills and experience to take back to our local struggles, while defining common projects/actions/campaigns for global collaboration – moving away from capitalism and fake democracy towards fair, sustainable futures. People will be able to participate in-person in London or via live stream via video. The sessions will focus on the following themes: Real democracy, assemblies and horizontal organising, economical, social and political alternatives, strategies of resistance and action, and online platforms/resources/tools.

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