A pretty good example can be found in the piece on Power in the Movement by Alex C.  The graphic gives a clear image below:

 The piece though is a little harder to put your arms around.   First, Alex argues that “we must shed the invincibility complex.”  Since he’s arguing that we must admit the ability to err, that seems beyond dispute, though perhaps unusual that it is the first consideration in looking at power within a movement.  The second point went like this:

Second, a thought model may come in handy. We can view

the goal of social justice as necessarily passing through a

Feng Shui of Power with flows shaped by human action and

intentionality. With this paradigm we can proactively push

the movement to a place where all feel empowered and not

left out. Concretely, radicals must make use of “tracing”—

i.e. recognizing power and tracing it back to its origins—

to build a cartography of power. With that knowledge we

can actively shape the conditions for it to flow harmoniously

throughout all occupiers and society.

I’m not clear reading that piece that I have much of an idea of where to go next in thinking about power within the movement?  Alex then lays out a basic one-two-three on power analysis mapping research which is once again inarguable.

On the other hand the piece by “Rira” entitled “Matrix as the Core Element” is an excellent analysis of the importance Occupiers ascribe to place and space, the General Assembly (which many in Tidal argue as their primary contribution to movement thinking and work), and other issues.

Enough said.  If you are interested in how the Occupy Movement is beginning to lay down its process and thinking on theory and strategy, “Tidal” is worth a look.  If you can’t find it, send me an email, and I’ll send you a copy of the PDF.

Toronto

ACORN Canada organizers who had spent time in the general assembly process at Occupy Ottawa, Occupy Toronto, and Occupy Vancouver shared similarly maddening and difficult experiences with the painstaking and time consuming consensus decision making process.  Clearly each place is a little different and here in Canada we are several steps removed from Wall Street, which has set the model for this process, but the basic elements seem standard and replicable.  The solidarity system of repeating what is being said to neighbors without a sound system has been picked up and repeated.  The elaborate systems of hand signals indicating agreement, disagreement, withholding consensus, and so forth has also spread throughout North America and likely the globe.  In fact the Canadian newspaper, the National Post ran a story indicating that there are now Occupy locations in 154 countries and based on monitoring Twitter traffic they believed that Canada was now the second most active Occupy movement after the United States itself.

I had a long chat with one of our young Ottawa ACORN organizers, Alex MacDonnell, who had spent quite a bit of time with Occupy Ottawa including participation in general assembly meetings and several committee meetings.  His argument to me was both fascinating and important, and we’ll see over time if it is also true.  As time consuming and difficult as the process was, he believed that the one thing that might survive in our work from the Occupy movement might be the assembly process.

Andy Kroll writing in Mother Jones makes the same case in a piece about the origins and organizers of the Occupy movement (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-international-origins).  Like all movements, no one can take credit for a movement, but whether on Wall Street or in Tahrir Square there are always “organizers” and others who kept pushing forward until something happen.

The assembly decision making structure seems to come directly from spring protests in Spain and one can read a widely translated and fascinating “manual” of sorts on “How to Cook a Pacific Revolution” on the www.takethesquare.net site, which Kroll referenced as well.  A thumbnail of the process was included in the highlights of their manifesto of sorts:

“We’re organizing around assemblies, reaching decisions openly, democratically and horizontally. We have no leaders or hierarchy.
Since there’s plenty of work, all sorts of work, to be done, we’ve organized the task at hand around three types of bodies: commissions, working groups and general assemblies.

The commissions and working groups operate independently. The commissions are structural and organizational and serve as tools for the movement (the Legal and IT Commissions are two examples). The working groups are platforms for collective thought, debate and research on specific subjects (we have working groups on subjects such as politics, the economy and the environment, for instance).

These commissions and working groups are open to anyone who wants to participate. They hold their meetings in public spaces, announced in advance, and all their decisions are recorded in minutes that are published on line. They all organize around horizontal assemblies, but each group collectively establishes it own modus operandi, which is permanently open to change and optimization.

All-important decisions made by these commissions and working groups are subsequently raised to the General Assembly for assessment and ratification by the movement as a whole. Hence, while our work gets done efficiently and independently, it is coordinated horizontally by our assemblies.”

The assemblies are run not by “leaders” or “organizers” but by facilitators.  I’m betting that a lot of their “training” is based on the translation from the Spanish of the “Quick Guide on Group Dynamics in Peoples’ Assemblies” (Quick guide on group dynamics in people’s assemblies). For all of the handwringing and make believe of the Tea-people, my friend Glenn Beck, and others, there is an important and fascinating infrastructure underneath this movement which is absolutely worth organizers studying thoroughly and coming to understand.

Here are some starting points, so let’s see how far we all get as we wrap our minds around this process and this emerging movement and its methodology.

Ho Chi Minh City

We have a strong delegation this year, as usual, with representatives from SEIU, BCGEU, United Labor Unions, Gameliel, ACORN Canada, Tides, Social Policy, and ACORN International.  Two of the most interesting meetings on the  first formal day of the Forum were with top representatives of the Ho Chi Minh City Labor Federation, headed by their vice-chair, and with the head of DoLISA, the Department of Laborers, Invalids and Social Affairs.

The hard problem in one-party regimes, like Vietnam, where the space between government and governing party is narrow, and where labor is part of the ideological foundation of the government and unions are an operating part of the ruling partnership through one single labor federation is parsing how much autonomy of action and independence of thought and initiative unions really have in such an alignment.  Even with the Cold War long over and the George Meany and Lane Kirkland wing long out of power at the AFL-CIO this is still a contentious issue with some of our friends still arguing relationships should be avoided with such unions, and others arguing their size and stature, and frankly in my view their sincerity and authenticity, mean it is necessary to engage them  deeply.  Kent Wong, a much valued colleague from the UCLA Labor Center, made the passionate case to me of the importance of the Vietnamese labor federations and full engagement from his many trips to this country.

Our early hours with Truong Lam Danh, vice president of the HCM City Confederation of Labor, and his staff were fascinating.  He described an array of programs under their hand for their 880,000 members, and couldn’t have been more accommodating of our questions.   For a minute though we could see the steel, when I asked how the federation would respond to a situation like the wild cat strikes in China:  would they embrace the workers and their cause or feel compelled essentially to shutdown the strike.  His answers were snappish here.  First he claimed to have no knowledge of any such problem among Chinese workers and insisted that this was the first he had heard of such situations.  Unlikely.  Secondly, he was brusque in indicating that the local union representative in such a situation would be replaced as ineffective and not satisfactory to the workers.  The mood then changed as suddenly with Danh asking more questions, more open, and more flexible.  We had hit a nerve perhaps, and then he was able to return to the interests of the dialogue.  These where obviously questions much on his mind as well.

It’s not hard to see the tension.  Outbreaks from workers would indicate impotence by the union.  The government is resting a lot of its economic program on foreign investment and labor unrest would be an issue.  There have surely been debates and instructions from every level.

Our labor friends insisted that membership was voluntary, and at about 25 cents per month dues, we suspected that they were right when talking about the vast majority of informal workers (my guess is 80% of the workforce in HCM City on a back-of-the-envelope), but though not compulsory they said where represented, the legal requirements are such that unions need to be recognized within 6 months of operations.  Later at the DoLISA meeting when we got down to brass tacks here there were admissions that foreign multi-nationals were giving them fits.  Vice-President Danh also was less than satisfied to hear how impotent our unions were when companies went bankrupt and left workers holding the bag, so these are issues we share.

There’s a lot more we have to learn to be able to say, but the questions are moving us in interesting directions so far.

New Orleans

At one level it’s a case of life imitating art and thinking it is life imitating life.  What the O’Keefe’s think they are taking from Alinsky, according to their statements on web interviews quoted in the Times is a sense of tactical extreme or taking a contradiction to its outer limits.  Most of these favored stories in Rules though were exactly that:  stories.  They were well timed and pointed tactical threats, boring on a common organizing principle (though I can’t remember if this were a “rule”) that the “threat is always more powerful than the action.”  Many of these colorful and oft told tales of Alinsky actions from Rules were only tales that demonstrated what might have been or backroom threats at what could have been, and certainly never were what actually happened.  It’s one thing obviously to threaten that you will bring busloads of African Americas to the Chicago Symphony or whatever after having filled them full of beans, but it is a whole different thing to actually organize people to do such a ridiculous stunt that most would find demeaning and even racist.  Never happened, captain!

What O’Keefe and the rightsters are missing is the power of the threat and the force of irony and paradox, both of which Alinsky understood exceedingly well.  Theirs is a misreading of the text.  They have taken bad jokes and turned them into wrongheaded tactics, as the Landrieu debacle well illustrates for one and for all.

What surprises me as an organizer is not just the bad reading of Alinksy, because who really cares about that, but the fact that these are bad tactics because even for the rightwingers involved the tactics seem chosen not to create change, but simply for narcisstic self-aggrandizement of the worst kind.  Threatening to monitor Landrieu’s office’s handling of their complaint calls – and generating more of them – might have actually moved Landrieu to do something.  Now, if anything, they have made her a warrior for health reform, which is something the left was never able to do in Louisiana or in Washington.  They have written her a free political pass and allowed her to move forward on health care in a protected bubble forever.

Alinsky in his own desire to popularize at the time asked for some of this problem of misreading.  He would fill the college halls and retell the stories over and over as if they were gospel for the sake of his evangelism.  He fervently believed that the ends justified the means, which is both wrong, and now a banner easily unfurled by the right as well.  Furthermore, he used to continually say – to my chagrin and others – that he didn’t care where the organization went once it was built, he was simply the organizer, which was a weak defense for the racism that erupted from the famous Back of the Yards, but was an ideological weakness that had to be corrected in building ACORN and so many other modern community organizations.

But, even if Alinsky in some ways asked for this kind of trouble, there is no excuse for the bad work now being done in his name.

New Orleans

The story gives way too much information about the internal conflicts lying in the back story of individual union organizers from broken families to weight issues to presumably everything else that they share with the life history of many in modern America.  John Wilhelm, the head of UNITE HERE, said many of these practices have been reformed, and I’m confident that this will be done at the human resources and personnel management level.

Having talked with a lot of UNITE HERE organizers though, I actually think the issue is deeper and perhaps more serious and lies at the heart of the fundamental interchange that organizers are trained to have with workers based on the construction of “one-on-ones” which are common in some forms of organizing methodology.  “One-on-ones” are commonly used by community organizers, especially in the faith based practice found in the Industrial Areas Foundation and other operations, as a basic construct for doing the hundreds of leadership visits to assemble a project.  They are designed to achieve many goals, but one of them is establishing a connection between the organizer and the community leader by deliberately sharing some personal experience to establish a common bond.

I should disclose quickly that although I understand “one-on-ones” as a methodology, I have never been comfortable with their practice or their claims, largely because in my view they inappropriately elevated the role of the organizer in a way that both create a false mutuality with potential leadership and a distortion of the roles that would most effectively build the organization particularly around the issues of organizer-dependency and a conflation of organizers and leaders making them almost synonymous.  It is neither the way I have trained or supervised organizers nor the way I have been involved in building organizations or organizing models.  Nonetheless, I have always been respectful of the practice, despite my reservations, because I was confident that the best practices in the craft probably protected against some of these potential problems.  In organizers’ shoptalk we used to kid about talking to organizers from other “schools” and having the conversation turn creepy when they started “one-on-one-ing” us and crossing boundaries on a personal level.  But, realistically in doing leadership visits and building leadership relationships over time, all of us understood that real personal friendships would emerge and rigid protocols would evaporate over years of work and mutual understandings.

As the use of “one-on-ones” from community organizing morphed into some labor organizing, I think the adaptation got even more bent.  In looking under the hood with HERE UNITE organizers, part of the construction of the “one-on-one” was more deliberately an effort to pull out of the organizers a core motivation for why they did the work that was deeply rooted in explaining their motivations, angers, and sense of powerless they shared with the workers based on intensely personal experiences in the organizer’s life.  Divorces, family issues, dependencies, addictions, and whatever else frequently emerged as core issues for sharing in the one-on-one.  Staff meetings and training sessions described to me were sometimes too eerily reminiscent of some of the old, hugely discredited Synanon sessions so notorious from the last years of the United Farm Workers under Caesar Chavez.

It’s easy to see how the fruit can start rolling from that tree and end up being stored away an allowed to rot when used inappropriately.

Wilhelm will stop abuse from the supervisors.  I’m confident in that.

Might be harder, though frankly way more important, to take a harder look at the core organizing model of UNITE HERE and whether or not the ways and means of using “one-on-ones” doesn’t need a total review and reworking right at the foundation level.

Chiang Mai

The tuber would load up to six passengers perched on top of the tube dangling feet in the water and would then drape his body over the side of the tube and launch off from the shore.  Furiously dog paddling across with the current they would all make their way diagonally across to the other side and come to rest against the concrete moorings of the bridge where they would alight and scramble dryly up the river bank.

On the Burma side they would go up to a mass of sand bags around a gunner’s turret, pay a fee, and go on their way.  On the Thai side they were watched by three desultory guards from the levee’s height and allowed to freely move into Mae Sot.

The river supported two tubes working fulltime while we were there.  A group would be offloaded on one side and then the boatman, if I could call him that, would walk along the path of the river the 50 meters or so to the staging area under a tree below us to pick up the next set of passengers to Burma.  The same system prevailed on the other side though there were fewer travelers it seemed heading for Thailand.

Amazing!

Bangkok

The union organizers meet once a month to discuss their work.  Rudy Porter of the Labor Solidarity Center estimated for us that these five in the last decade had probably organized 100,000 workers with 9600 being last year where they were keeping the pace.  This is all the more remarkable since that level of production represents 20% of the total union membership in Thailand!

The model they described whether with giant auto conglomerates and supply plants or Chevron operations (the largest private employer in Thailand) was all conducted in total secrecy in home visits and snooker parlors where organizers could build the relationships strong enough to allow workers to weather the risk of likely terminations and blacklisting, if they were caught organizing a union before a majority had been reached.  There was “card check” here, but the process was triggered by signatures demanding negotiations.  If anything was premature, excuses for termination would fall as hard and quickly as the rain.

I asked if they ever used a “salting” program where organizers got a job inside and helped organize that way.  They all laughed that they were too old.  They weren’t of course, but what they were really saying was that workers were hired early and spit out used before 30.

They estimated that there were probably only 10 full-time professional union organizers in Thailand.  We asked about expanding capacity, and the answer was “thank goodness” for the rank-and-file, which means that despite their success there is little help coming to finish the job or accelerate the work if the law changes to allow public sector unionization.

Our community organizer colleagues assembled by our long time partners and friends at LOCOA – Leaders and Organizers of Community Organizations of Asia and its coordinator, Fides Bagasso, allowed me to see some old friends and meet some new ones, and gave everyone an opportunity to learn about the depth of commitment and conviction that has been the tradition of community organizing in this part of the world for almost 40 years thanks to many heroes like Denis Murphy, Herb White, Rabial Mallick, and scores of others in individual countries.

The stories were moving, but over and over there was a footnote of nostalgia.  Training and other programs that had existed before, but had been shut for lack of resources seemed to be an oft repeated theme.  I asked about resource limitations for international work, and everyone nodded in agreement.

We have to figure out a way, because in this part of the world there is so much will!

Washington

When asked constantly in recent days about the future for this great organization, my answer has been simple:  I have faith in the great strength of ACORN leaders and members and their deep commitment to the organization.

It always comes back to where the work starts and finishes right at the base.  No matter what’s on the front pages, internet, or even TV screens, where the work and connection to the base remains, there ACORN will continue to thrive and build.  There’s both hope and a plan there.  Members and leaders I hear from in recent weeks have been rock solid.  For all of the talk about the ACORN “brand,” it’s still gold on the streets, and that’s where this fight will be won or lost, and there shouldn’t be any confusion about that.

An old friend from the West Coast sent me a note from a posting on an ACORN newsgroup that underscored this point powerfully.  A manager reported that his top door knocking teams were dispatched into one of the ACORN base communities with a petition for signatures and support from people committed in the neighborhood to “stand with ACORN.”  The report indicated that the team didn’t do well.  The manager though listened carefully and found the answers that should not have surprised.  The team on the doors found that the vast majority of folks had no idea what was going on…stand with ACORN against what attack?  The manager noted the obvious:  the staff was obsessed with the crises and checking “Google alerts 3000 times a day,” so essentially had lost touch with reality.  The team actually had to deliver the news which was confusing to people and ask for support at the same time.  All that needed to be done was to send the teams out to build the organization and simply prepare them to answer questions and respond to members who had concerns.  Exactly right!

It’s back to fundamentals.  The hearts and minds have been won in countless communities by ACORN’s fundamental work and the members’ steadfast support and victories on their issues.  That is unassailable.  It can only be lost, if it is abandoned.  The old slogan that the organization is built every day on the doors is true as long as members, leaders, and organizers are on the doors every day.

Tax help?  The IRS didn’t fund ACORN.  ACORN can help lower income people with their taxes and benefits as they always did with new partners.  Housing assistance and counseling, foreclosure avoidance, and so many other programs can still be done with improvements in old partners and by casting the net to new partners.  As long as ACORN has its huge membership and support in the community and privileges its base, then the success of thousands of service and advocacy programs will still depend on ACORN delivery its contribution to the process:  real people with real problems who are ready to roll.  That can’t be replaced easily and will continue to be the key ingredient as ACORN provides voice and structure to the aspirations of its low and moderate income constituency.  It can only be abandoned by a loss of will regardless of any temporary funding challenges from others.

Having spent almost four decades there, I live daily with the courage and strength of hundreds of ACORN leaders and thousands of members I have known.  Most of them were always skeptical about our friends and allies anyway.  Poor and working people are so used to having to rely on each other that it takes a tremendous leap of faith and fancy to believe that those with influence, wealth, and power are ever real friends and allies.  They come and go. In the end you have each other and the organization.

As long as ACORN understands its place in that equation, then there is no question about its survival and its success in the future, regardless of any current challenges.  Where the commitment to the base is maintained and the work goes on, there the organization will be and will build.  Where it doesn’t exist, it will shrivel and have to be rebuilt in the future.

If the voices of the leaders, members, and organizers are clear and heeded in the councils of the organization, then the future is assured.  It is not the lawyers, consultants, accountants, pr people, and others that will win this day and save the organization.  Its people on the street of a thousand neighbors who hold the future of the organization in their hands, just as they did for the 38 years I was there.

If they are allowed to answer the question about ACORN’s future, I know what that answer will be without a doubt in the world.

Off to Thailand to visit with other organizers and organizations that are swimming like fish in the sea of the people!

Niagara Falls

Shribman did a good job actually.  I hope he is as clear spoken in Pittsburgh as he is in Toronto.  He nailed the issue on the head as not really being about health care at all, and it is easy to forget that right-left and middle all to agree that the system is not a system and is badly broken.  He zeroed in on the fact that the firecrackers and the fight are all about power.  Power and pent up anger at war, bailouts, and Bush.

The conservatives are unhappy that they are losing power and are desperately fighting back.

He quotes a Professor Sandel of Harvard in this way:  “This is the standard debate about the role of government in ensuring fundamental rights and equal opportunities for all citizens, but it is also a frustration with government that goes beyond the debate about markets and gets to a sense of powerlessness.  People sense that the forces that govern their lives are beyond their control, and I think this sentiment – a persistent theme in American politics – is not ‘right’ or ‘left.”  It was reinforced in recent times by the financial crisis and the bailout and the sense of outrage about the help given to the wealthiest institutions and the wealthiest Americans.”

Real wisdom and insight as Canada looks at the USA from a higher plane and a good safe distance.

I’m taking a deep breath as I come back to America after a week with my Canadian friends.

Silver Springs

These are not the narrow, crooked name changing city streets I have learned in a hundred cities, but long six-lane avenues as large as interstates without the high speed limits.  Driving by an area in Silver Springs there was a small park on the left as we motored by and in the early morning one could see Latino soccer players changing shoes at their trunks before going to work.

My friend commented that building the park with a soccer field had been controversial because neighbors in a huge apartment complex on the right thought there would be too much noise and whatnot.  Must have been the whatnot that worried them, because counting the lanes someone would have had to hear the excitement of a scored goal across almost eight lanes of road bulging with vehicles moving at a fast clip in both directions from a field that was set off the road so far that it could not be seen from the street.  For the complex to even consider using the park at all would have been an exercise in courage and reckless abandonment or a walk of almost a mile to circumnavigate the traffic.

My point about the suburbs is not an effort to raise the old canards about their monotony or homogeneity, because I have no idea what it would be like to live there.  My orientation if from an organizer’s perspective in trying to really learn the nuances of the geography and how it works for the people there in the process of unraveling the keys to the mystery.  The longer one looks the more one finds that many of these endless apartment complexes represent the only semi-affordable housing for miles around which has pushed some many people out there.  Gradually one realizes from various signposts that one is driving through miles of housing dominated by Latinos as I learn to spot the food trucks parked behind the stores and see the scores of day laborers around an abandoned gas station and the other sign posts.  With every trip up here I recognize more easily when I have passed into a Salvadoran area versus a Mexican or African American or mixed community.

We might scoff at the sprawl that has created these trackless expanses, but there are a lot of our people out here desperate to build organizations and with real opportunities to win.  I’ve learned that much now, even if I still have no idea where one town or county starts and the other one ends.  A map will tell me that eventually, but open ears and eyes are all that can teach me the real terrain.