I‘m not a youth,
I‘m actually getting up there in age, I
hate to say but last night I had the chance to talk with a
few youth who are active in building the State of the Union actions, among
other things, and wanted to share a few observations with your site.
We had a really good discussion about what is up right now
in the world what are
the underlying (and different) tectonic
plates, as one
of the people put it, and what is their motion and how is that giving rise to
the rumbles in the ground and even the potential earthquakes we are feeling (to
pursue her metaphor); how do we see different possible futures coming out of
that; what kinds of things do we need to be doing to get to the future that we
want; how do we see all that manifesting right now; and a whole lot of
other things. What I mainly wanted to
share, though, came a little later in our discussion.
We were talking about how things were shaping up for the 31st
and the 4th. Most people
thought that there had been a real change in the mood of people. But there was also a little bit of
frustration in the room about actually organizing this and giving it expression. One of the people who is very dedicated and
tireless and brave, really, sort of put it this way (and I hope I get it
right): All
these people tell us they‘re
interested, we have hundreds of names and numbers, but then we can‘t get people to come to meetings. Not only that, but there isn‘t the same kind of buzz that there was
among high school students leading into November 2 there are bigger questions up in society and the youth also have these big
questions. And third, yeah, there‘s all these prominent people and celebrities
and even congressmen now signing the Call, but there seems to be this gap with
people coming from the grassroots.
So we tussled with those questions, and I‘ve thought more about them overnight as
well. And since time is short and we‘ve all got to wrangle as hard as we can
to make the 31st and 4th as powerful as possible, here‘s my two cents.
All these
people tell us they‘re
interested, we have hundreds of names and numbers, but then we can‘t get people to come to meetings.
Let‘s take
that apart. The most important thing
reflected in that question is that all
these people tell us they‘re
interested and we have hundreds of names and numbers. For starters, that‘s
a whole lot better than nobody
will give us the time of day. What is it telling us about the political
situation we‘re
operating in? Why are all these people
interested or to
put it better, what are the different reasons that different people are
interested and what can we learn from that?
How do they see things? What do
they think needs to be done about the situation? What is their mood? Yes, what‘s
holding them back but what‘s drawing them forward, at the same
time? We can‘t
be obsessing about the second part of the statement to the extent that we‘re missing the depth and richness of
the first. We have to grab hold of the
first part of the relationship being described and really work on that if we‘re going to have a chance of mobilizing
people on the level needed for the State of the Union actions.
Still, we do have to look at that second part: but we can‘t
get them to come to meetings. On one level, that‘s
not so surprising. Hell, I didn‘t like to go to meetings when I was
young. Matter of fact, I hated ‘em.
I wanted to do
things, not go to meetings at least, that‘s
how I saw it then. Anyway, I figured
someone else would call the demo or whatever, and I‘d
be there. So I‘d
go to a meeting, and get turned off when I couldn‘t
fit myself into what seemed like some little slot people had in mind, and then
just get frustrated and discouraged and not come back. I‘m
not saying that our meetings are like that, I‘m
just trying to remember why I didn‘t
like to go to meetings and what the content of that was. Didn‘t
mean, though, that I didn‘t
want to do things be just the
opposite.
The thing is, people shouldn‘t
have to go to meetings to get active.
Are we giving these hundreds of people kits on the spot? Kits with stickers, green whistles,
posters, flyers, little FAQ sheets or a sheet of ideas on stuff to do, things
to do on the 31st, and so on? And are we
talking with them, learning about where they hang out and what they‘re into and who their friends are and
how they see things and so on so that we can talk with them about how they can
use that kit? Are we calling them up, e-mailing them, seeing how it‘s going? I‘m
sure there‘s a lot
of that being done, but to the extent there isn‘t
. . . well, I think that could be something that could help get a better
dynamic going.
Getting back to my own story, after I finally did get
involved doing things I began to see the need to meet. I wanted to get together and figure out how
to do it better and also find out how people were dealing with questions that
came up and to
raise some of my own as well. And then I
began to see the need to take more responsibility.
But right now ain‘t
no time to be calling meetings and trying to bring people to them and only then
starting to organize them; we gotta be out there with the kits and materials on the streets and on the web and
calling people and
letting people know where they can hook up like every night between now and the
31st so that
people know, okay here‘s the place to be at 6 each night to
get more materials and if I want to ask someone about some of the questions and
arguments that people are throwing at me and to find out more about what this
thing is all about anyway. And then yeah, there needs to be meetings too where people can get together and plan
things out. But for a lot of people,
they want to do things
they want ways to change the world
and they don‘t always
see how coming to a meeting does that.
Next point: there
isn‘t the same kind of buzz that there was
among high school students leading into November 2nd
there are bigger questions up in society and the youth also have these big
questions. There‘s
a lot to take apart here, but let me focus first on the bigness of the
questions. Big
questions are
good! Yeah, they put a challenge on us,
but if people don‘t have
big questions then they‘re
not going to do big things
and driving out a president through mass political action is a pretty big
thing! People get involved and put a
whole lot on the line, and they get hit with stuff from the police and the
school administrations and also their families and friends, and then they
wonder: What good
did it do? Is it worth it? Do we really need to change the world? And even if we need to, can we? How are we gonna go from the people who are
into this now to the millions we really need?
And this Bush thing is so big
maybe we can=t really
deal with that and need to start with something smaller? Or maybe it‘s
not that bad? Maybe there‘s something else I need to be doing
instead that‘s more
important. And so on.
Thing is, we gotta draw out how those (and other) questions are actually
posing themselves to people and try to speak to them, deeply and concretely. We have to listen and we have to
struggle. And we have to let ourselves
be challenged by those questions and think about them anew, so that we can
speak to them in fresh ways that really reach people. I know everybody at this meeting last night
is trying to do that, too, and I‘ll
bet they can lay out the way different questions are posing
themselves to different people a whole lot better than I can. I can say this, though: even if you‘ve
been organizing people politically for years or decades, you always need to be
getting better at this, learning (and re-learning, sometimes) how to do it and
do it better.
In specific, we‘ve
got to help people understand what they did
and did not
accomplish. Their actions in November
opened a really big door. It gave people
all over society hope that you didn‘t
just have to take it as this whole ugly direction went forward, that you could
actually stand up and resist that direction, and change it. That‘s
part of why so many people rallied round to defend the Hampton University
students, and other students too.
Without those actions, the people would be in a whole lot worse place
right now.
But opening the door is not the same as walking through
it. In other words, now we‘ve got to build on what was done
and get it to where it needs to go; we‘ve
got to walk through that door, and the high school students again have a huge
role to play: by again coming out but
this time mobilizing many more people and spreading this much further through
society. We‘ve
got to walk through that door and get society into a different place. We don‘t
want people to look back on November 2 and say, Gee,
what a shame it
looked like they might have had a chance to stop what was going down, but they
were never able to take it further. No! We
want them to say, Wow, who
knew that those demonstrations on November 2 would turn out to be a turning
point in history, the first step in throwing out the Bush regime and really
changing the whole direction of society?
I also want to say that we can‘t
begin in retrospect to idealize the days leading to November 2. I went to the World Can‘t Wait site quite a bit during that
period, and as I remember it it was mainly in that last week or two that you
began to see that there was a lot brewing among the high school students. And one good thing is that I remember that
the site was trying to speak to all that, and putting up a lot of things from
the youth themselves. There were
interviews and reports on things and little essays that people got and put up
on the site, and that was very important.
Right now I think we‘re
getting in that period where people are thinking it over and making up their
minds and when and I‘ll get to this in a minute people are getting more active and
more ready to act. But that doesn‘t relieve us of the need to speak to
the big
questions and again, speaking to those questions
is something we should want. If we can do that in the few days remaining getting up on the web or doing it in
talks or in our street organizing
it‘ll enable people we reach to act with a
whole lot more conviction, imagination and effectiveness. And hey, we should want to do that anyway don‘t
we want a world where people are always raising questions about
what they‘ve
accomplished and where it‘s
going and what it‘s all
going to mean?
One more thing on this, we can‘t
underestimate to bring home to people what is going on in graphic ways kind of like the guerilla theater
piece around torture in the Fall. There‘s just been the whole Bush tribunal
and there‘s other
ways as well to bring this home; we need to be creative and bold and give
people real content and substance besides.
Third and final point that was raised: yeah,
there‘s all
these prominent people and celebrities and even congressmen now signing the
Call, but there seems to be this gap with people coming from the grassroots.
On the one hand, I‘m
not sure that‘s
entirely right. I‘d
just read Sunsara Taylor‘s
post on her Georgia trip before this discussion and that day I‘d seen the Georgetown students on CNN
standing up to Attorney General Gonzales (in a way that kind of reminded me of
the guerilla theater that the World Can‘t
Wait youth were doing in the Fall). So
we should try to keep the bigger picture in mind and not be blind to how things
can be changing and how the way we step to people can jar things loose.
But even granting that things aren‘t
uniform, I gotta say again where do we grab hold of the problem?
Don‘t take
those prominent people signing the statement for granted. Let‘s
ask ourselves why did
they sign on to something as controversial as World Can‘t
Wait? Why did the politicians sign on,
when they know they‘re gonna
get flack and as a
matter of fact, that snaky Karl Rove himself went after the Democratic
congresspeople and politicians who signed as part of a highly publicized talk
the very day the ad appeared. (And
remember how O‘Reilly
went after Tom Duane, the New
York State
representative, after the first Times ad.)
Why? Cuz
they realize the heaviness of the situation.
They see what‘s
up, maybe even more sharply in some ways, from being on the inside. They‘re
breaking ranks, if you want to put it that way, because of how ugly and
radically bad this Bush program is.
Then you have to look at what‘s
up with the artists and intellectuals who‘ve
signed the ad, which is a little bit different thing. These artists and intellectuals also come in
for all kinds of flack when they take these stands and it=s no light thing for them to weign in;
like Tim Robbins said on the CNN clip that‘s
up on the site, they do their homework first.
They know it‘s no
game, and they pay a price. And like
Sunsara Taylor said on the same clip, when artists and intellectuals who are
respected for their work and their opinions (and I would add, their integrity
and dedication) step out, people see that and feel that much more freedom for
them to take a stand. I also thought it
was a pretty good indicator of things in the country that in the vote
that was taken by that tv show
they asked the question: Have
celebrities gone too far in bashing President Bush? the majority sided with the celebrities.
Two things on this: one, we should get the word of this
around even more and it should challenge people to think about just how dire
the situation is; two, the more we get this around, the more freedom people
will feel to actually act. It‘s a good thing when people who are
well-known take this stand
we need even more well-known people to sign on (and sometimes just a sincere
appeal, even a hand-written letter, can get someone‘s
attention and be the first step to them signing) and when they do we need to
back them up and we need to find the ways to translate that into
bringing forward the grassroots.
Like I said, we all wrangled with this for a while, and I
think everyone wished we could‘ve
stayed a little longer. But there was and is
work to do. A lot of work, if we‘re going to meet our goals. So we broke up and went back out, all of us
with a little bit different perspective on how to go at the problems we face in
the next few, crucial days.