[P2P-F] [NetworkedLabour] [Networkedlabour] Another Politics - After Syriza

Thu Feb 5 10:24:26 CET 2015

by the way, I am not disagreeing that such a radical shift is desirable,
what I am pointing out is the complexity of this wished for change, and
especially the belief that this radical change can happen in an instant in
time, rather than a process;

the only realistic option is that the people who think they are ready,
start right now with micro-communities ... as someone who has lived in
three failed communes, I can tell you, not even that is easy ...

but we are practicing what we preach in the p2p foundation, with
difficulty, with problems, but attempting it nevertheless

but I don't find it productive to blame social movements because they are
not perfect and in that way, if support is withdrawn rather than
constructively embraced, to in fact support the social forces that are
tremendously worth ./

we have already seen how the anti-political and purist attitude of some 15M
and Occupiers led to radically worse right wing governments destroying the
social fabric even more,

so I am with the people who are imperfectly trying to better the situations,

radical vision, meliorist approaches .. until we can move faster and
further, as reality will dictate

Michel

On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 6:22 PM, Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:

> Hello June,
>
> Thanks for your contribution. The attachment you gave is only the abstract
> of the article you mention. Can you give a link to the full article?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Anna
>
>
>
> On 29 Jan 2015, at 21:31, P2P Foundation mailing list <
> p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org> wrote:
>
> Well, I am late to this conversation below but am energized by the fact
> that someone else led the charge on these always
> "never-time-to-fully-excavate" but in the end, trumping issues of how
> human beings and ultimately all human organizations succeed or do not
> succeed.  Either these issues are explicitly addressed in any "new"
> government model from its inception and thus run differently from its
> inception, or history has taught us they will face breakdown on the same
> old deeply taught emotional/social oppression that Anna so effectively
> quotes below.  Hooray Anna, that you raise your voice on this so eloquently
> again.  I know the silence that we still face, and I support you for
> trying, regardless.
>
> Here's the thing and I will frame this far less eloquently than you did,
> Anna: patriarchy is at root a "bully culture".  If any true
> transformational change is to be imagined, it has to be imagined in an
> explicitly non-bully "frame" (non-patriarchal, non-soley-left brain
> rational quantitative discounting of qualitative and felt experience and
> intelligences), from its inception.  Otherwise, as has been the historic
> reality, once the rational and thoughtful men finally do get into power you
> still get "power struggles", (as happened in the French Revolution, the
> Russian Revolution, all "revolutions" that didn't "revolve out" these
> underlying power premises).  This, despite the often truly "enlightened"
> and liberating well argued rational dominant understanding that still
> doesn't address these deeper emotional social constructs in any explicit
> way from the beginning of that "new" power assumption. Thus, ultimately the
> "bullies" always end up winning those power struggles as the old
> patriarchal paradigm reasserts itself, having never truly been transformed
> at the level that it most matters and actually changes human relationships.
>
> I truly understand and even empathize Michel, with your frustration, so
> similar to my rational computer engineering but truly radical thinking
> husband on these same "global challenges" -- how big they are, how critical
> some things are that must be addressed to retain any possibility of
> sustainability together, against the powers amassed against any potential
> transformation at all. But you will ultimately find, as Anna and I have
> pointed out numerous times before with specific examples even within this
> organization as with any organization trying for these deep and true
> lasting transformations, that the breakdowns will happen in communication
> and mostly mis-communication, in emotional game-playing, in ego battles
> that no one was willing to prepare for addressing.  Anna and I know they
> will.  We have watched it all our lives from the outside seats.  As have
> others of either gender, but still on "the outside".
>
> Dante understood this premise as the base of the underlying
> emotional/social and cultural construct that currently dominates,  which
> includes patriarchy at its intrinsic base. A base assumption that generates
> all of its subsequent superiority/inferiority divisions which ultimately
> always come into play including racism, classicism, elite-educationism,
> imperialism, homophobia and numerous others of these most powerful
> de-railers of cross-cultural communications within any true "commons"
> vision of the "people".
>
> You, Syriza, Podemos...all can be understandably overwhelmed with the
> immediate political-economic priorities.  But there are many who deeply
> understand that these socially destructive realities too are a deep
> priority and the deeper essence of any true geo-poitical transformation and
> willing to spend their time -- if validated and empowered to --  addressing
> it and reminding you of it, as an essential priority too, now not later.
> Or, what we also know deeply is that without this focus too,  any real
> change will implode on these lines more completely or...not truly be a
> "change"of any real transformation in the end, at all.
>
> For those interested in the deeper context of that kind of true
> transformation where it makes the most difference in our resulting human
> relationships and organizations, my attached article here for the Journal
> of Sustainable Education's next issue (out on Valentine's Day) addresses
> these concepts explicitly in, "What has Love Got to do With
> Transformative Education?"
>
> I don't mind it being disregarded or considered "down in the noise" of the
> immediate, pressing "realities".  We all have our areas of expertise and
> deepest effectiveness.  The key is to know when they are blinding you to
> other potential huge pitfalls avoidable by listening to and including those
> "other" voices that warn you of the areas you are not validating or
> understanding, as potentially most destructive to your hopes and dreams in
> ways you haven't the ability or natural interest to see and thus prepare
> for preventing.  Because you'll never get the "time" later, in time to
> avoid the conflict-constructs already embedded and allowed to continue at
> these levels.
>
> Sincerely meant, as I know how deeply you do work on the parts that you do
> believe are most critical.  Nonetheless, this too can still be done...by
> others who know why it also is potentially, just as critical to include,
> if true "change" actually is allowed and empowered to happen.
>
> Best hopes,
> June
>
>   ------------------------------
>  *From:* P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
> *To:* P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
> *Cc:* "networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org" <
> networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org>
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 29, 2015 6:39 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [P2P-F] [Networkedlabour] Another Politics - After Syriza
>
> After my enthusiastic foray into Otto Scharma's U.Lab I have to report
> that I found it another liberal attempt to encourage people to become
> 'change makers', supporting them in a self blaming exercise, where fear
> and greed are seen as the problems of our social dis/ease, without linking
> this to social and economic pressures.
>
> Some good ideas of deep listening, connecting head, heart and will, moving
> from ego to Eco, focussing on what is emerging, but falling short of a
> radical critique which could reveal the enormity of the task in hand.
>
> Going beyond the shift in consciousness required to let go of old habits
> of thinking, takes us to an unexplored place on the edge of what we know.
> Few are willing to go there, because everywhere we judge, and we are
> judged, by what we know. In this culture ruled by science, there does not
> seem to be any room or any relevance for not knowing. Yet I persist in
> trying to bring it to the attention of those on this email list.
>
> Anna
>
>
>
>
>
> On 28 Jan 2015, at 10:57, Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:
>
>   A very different answer to the same question from Otto Scharma :
>
> [–]rodneyrod <http://www.reddit.com/user/rodneyrod> 6 points  6 days ago
>
> Otto, as you have worked with change makers across the globe where have
> you seen the most resistance/discomfort in people as they attempt to enter
> the "presencing" stage of listening? How can those observations assist us
> as we open this journey to others?
>
>    - perma-link
>    <http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2t6gy3/iama_a_senior_lecturer_at_the_mit_sloan_school_of/cnw57t3>
>
> [–]OttoScharmer <http://www.reddit.com/user/OttoScharmer>[S
> <http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2t6gy3/iama_a_senior_lecturer_at_the_mit_sloan_school_of/>
> ] 5 points  6 days ago
>
> i have found that most people who, regardless of their sector, are exposed
> to real world change, and have to hold the space for people related changes
> (or are exposed to the creative process one way or another) are already
> well prepared to drop to these deeper levels of operating. so where is it
> not the case? with people who are stuck in powerpoints worlds of
> headquarters and politics--sometimes also people that are just very remote
> of real reality, like old style academia... but overall i am VERY surprised
> how significant the readiness for these deeper levels are --although that
> readiness is usually not conscious (yet)
>
>    - perma-link
>    <http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2t6gy3/iama_a_senior_lecturer_at_the_mit_sloan_school_of/cnw5gks>
>    - parent
>    <http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2t6gy3/iama_a_senior_lecturer_at_the_mit_sloan_school_of/#cnw57t3>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 5:01 PM, P2P Foundation mailing list <
> p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org> wrote:
>
> hi Anna,
>
> At the p2p foundation we stress personal and interpersonal change and
> facilitation, but at the same time, we have to be realistic in this, what
> is already possible but very difficult in small groups of committed people
> may not be possible for society at large ... For understanding this, and
> though I'm critical of the authoritarian interpretations of that tradition,
> the integral psychology of clare graves remains fundamental ..
>
> Detailed studies by Susan Cook-Greuters have determined that at most 2% of
> the population have integrative consciousness, with 30% more or less having
> this as a aspirational consciousness ..
>
> I take great comfort in the growth of participative culture and skills now
> evident in the new mutualized working spaces  but this is far from being
> the general culture ..
>
> Again, referring to the scheme of John Heron, I would say that for the
> greater masses, we are at the potential change of stage 2 to 3, with
> significant minorities at four ..
>
> so here is how I see it:
>
> * develop fully participative cultures for mature peer producing
> communities
>
> * develop deeper participative potentialities for the aspirational parts
> of the population (active citizenship)
>
> * embed participative process in the general social technology of our
> time, to upgrade the general culture ..
>
> A lot then further depends on the relative positioning of scarcity vs
> abundance dynamics ...
>
> for abundance context, the generalization of peer governance is very
> realistic
>
> for scarcity contexts, the choice between hierarchical,
> democratic-representative, and market-driven allocation mechanisms remains
> entirely open
>
> see for example how the wikipedia re-introduced a rather toxic bureaucracy
> by re-introducing artificial scarcity ... (notability requirements to be
> decide by elite editors)
>
> just today, I am involved in a frustrating dialogue with a feminist
> activist who did not even want to share even excerpts of her book on
> 'moneyless living' .. in other words, she is creating a artificial scarcity
> of her own book, that is technically freely copyable, in order to 'swap' it
> in exchange for something else  ... reproducing the artificial scarcities
> in so-called advanced milieus ... moneyless living for those that have the
> money to buy it ..
>
> I'm sure you can find similar contradictions in all of us, including me ..
>
> in conclusion, we are not ready to shed relative domination processes for
> any pure egalitarianism any time soon,
>
> Michel
>
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Amid all the euphoria in celebrating the Greek landslide, and following
> Michel's integrative approach, the points in the article below need to be
> emphasised. We all carry within us the wounds of oppression however much we
> feel we have cast them aside, and they will surface again in the new post
> capitalist structures unless we put some focus individually and
> collectively on healing ourselves and becoming whole.
>
> 'the wounding through oppression that we all experience shows up in our
> organizing, and have permeated organizational culture except where the
> influence of feminists and others committed to transformational work has
> created a different way of creating structure, that prioritizes a strategy
> and collective struggle rooted in healing and wholeness.'
>
> Pauli Friere spoke about this in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
>
> What does that mean? How do we do that? Often it seems there isn't time to
> go into this now, let's get into power first, then we can see to these
> issues. That's when the multitude becomes an instrument, and arguments
> between hierarchy and horizontality appear to be abstract concepts with no
> people involved.
>
> How do we become more fully human in our relationships with each other?
> What makes it particularly difficult is that there is no ready made formula
> - follow these steps and you will get there. No. This is a step into the
> unknown. But that also makes it an exciting exploration.
>
> Anna
>
>
>
> On 25 Jan 2015, at 11:38, P2P Foundation mailing list <
> p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org> wrote:
>
> https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/andrew-willis-garc%C3%A
> 9s/another-politics%E2%80%94from-anticolonial-to-occupy
>
> *Another Politics-from anti-colonial to Occupy*
> *Chris Dixon's new book identifies four principles that underpin the
> success of transformative social movements.*
>
> Andrew Willis Garcés 7 January 2015
>
> [This article originally appeared in* Waging Nonviolence*.]
>
> Seven years ago I worked at a tenant and worker organizing group in
> Washington, D.C. We referred to ourselves as a "movement-building"
> organization, but weren't always clear what we meant by that. One evening I
> was out door-knocking with one of our members, James, an African American
> man in his 50s. He asked me about a conference some of us had attended in
> Atlanta the previous week, the U.S. Social Forum.
>
> "What was the big theme there that stuck out to you?" he asked.
>
> It was a good question. At that moment, the DJ Unk song "Walk It Out" was
> booming from a nearby car.
>
> "Well, I was most impressed by the groups that really try to walk out
> their beliefs-connecting all the dots between racism, capitalism, even
> imperialism, and the inner work we have to do as people to overcome the
> things we've learned."
>
> I explained more about what that meant to me.
>
> He shook his head, amused.
>
> "That's a tall order!" He thought about it a little more. "When will we
> get time for all that?"
>  That tall order is the subject of Chris Dixon's book* Another Politics,*
> newly released by University of California Press. The product of dozens of
> interviews conducted with community organizers over the last decade, the
> book is an excellent distillation of what Dixon calls "another politics," a
> shared political orientation that unites grassroots organizers working from
> similar principles in the United States and Canada across issue, movement,
> sector, strategy and identity.
>
> Through the interviews, he identifies four core principles that unite left
> "anti-authoritarian" organizers across different "strands" of struggle,
> transcending traditional notions of issue-based organization:
>
> . being against domination of all kinds;
>
> . prioritizing the development of new social relations and forms of social
> organization in the process of struggle;
>
> . linking struggles for improvements in people's lives to long-term
> transformative visions; and
>
> . grassroots organizing from the bottom-up.
>
>
> In regards to these different strands, he writes, "We braid them together
> as we work collectively and build relationships across politics, campaigns
> and movements: anarchist labor organizers draw on analytical frameworks
> from women of color feminism; radical queer activists use community-based
> models for dealing with violence, developed by anti-racist feminists and
> prison abolitionists."
>
> He explores how Occupy Wall Street, anti-colonial movements, and INCITE!
> Women of Color Against Violence, among other groups, have contributed to
> developing "another politics" across decades.
>
> Dixon digs even deeper, characterizing organizations practicing "another
> politics" as being explicit about their "collective refusal" of
> oppression-specifically, as incorporating "the four anti's" of :
> anti-authoritarianism; anti-capitalism; anti-oppression; and
> anti-imperialism, into their work. This left me wondering how some
> organizations might "fit" this taxonomy-what if your group has a handle on
> economic exploitation, for instance, but relies on charismatic leadership?
>
> But Dixon is nevertheless clear about organizations that he sees as
> practicing "another politics," and the book is most compelling when he
> recounts movement-building victories, like the story of Canada's multi-city
> immigrant rights group* No One is Illegal*:
>
> "In a stunning December 2007 action, some 2,000 people, largely South
> Asian, blockaded the Vancouver International Airport to stop Singh's
> impending deportation. And starting with an 'Education Not Deportation'
> campaign in 2006, NOII-Toronto launched a multi-year fight for Toronto to
> become a solidarity city, where all people can access city services
> regardless of immigration status. Organizing across sectors and services,
> they finally won in 2013."
>
>
>  Dixon also uses the book to highlight "ideas rarely in writing,"
> exploring dynamics of movement-building organization that don't get much
> print. For instance, he writes about the process of integrating not just
> issue lenses but our whole selves-creating community and organization that
> operates at the speed of the whole.
>
> As Dixon writes,  "recognizing and deliberately fostering feelings and
> relationships as essential ingredients for transformative struggle" is
> still not a widespread practice, and he points out that this is not a new
> phenomenon, as the Black Panthers and Student Nonviolent Coordinating
> Committee also sought "to develop common expectations about how people
> should treat one another."
>
> Continuing this thread, he also counts as emergent practices among
> "another politics" practitioners, forms of organizing that affirm families
> and domestic and reproductive work simultaneously with challenging systemic
> inequity, and moving beyond an individual-focused anti-oppression politics.
>
> Dixon and the people he interviews point out that the wounding through
> oppression that we all experience shows up in our organizing, and have
> permeated organizational culture except where the influence of feminists
> and others committed to transformational work has created a different way
> of creating structure, that prioritizes a strategy and collective struggle
> rooted in healing and wholeness. This increasing focus on wholeness and
> wellness, seen in the recent popularity of integrating somatics and other
> healing disciplines into community organizing, can only make us more adept
> at building a broader and more resilient web of movements.
>
> And Dixon helps unpack the challenges unique to movement-building
> organizations, which, he says, must move towards specific victories and
> goals, while also moving through a process that creates new ways of being,
> doing and relating, that avoid replicating oppressive practices. All while
> avoiding "ruts" common to anti-authoritarian groups, like knee-jerk
> non-hierarchy, and the "burn bright, burn out" cycle of organizations that
> rise and fall quickly.
>
> Dixon illustrates this point with a fantastic metaphor offered by Project
> South's Steph Guillioud, comparing different forms of organization to
> different kinds of cars suited to particular functions:
>
> "The variations in vehicles don't change the map, they don't change the
> road, they don't change the need for people to drive and people in the back
> or the people moving it. We will always have and need the people who can
> push it and the people that can work on the insides, the people who can
> never get a ride, et cetera."
>
>
> It's rare to find a book on social movements written explicitly for people
> with less academic credentials than its author. Dixon, who wrote the book
> for a PhD program, takes care to explain terms as they come up; he doesn't
> assume we know about ethnography ("analyzing lived culture while
> experiencing it"). And he gives his interviewees plenty of airtime to put
> their own spin on, for instance, "affective organizing," which becomes "not
> being a fucking asshole," in the wonderfully succinct words of Bay Area
> activist Harjit Singh Gill.
>
> Still, the number of concepts he introduces feels overwhelming at times,
> and I longed for a glossary or flow chart when concepts like
> "non-instrumental organizing" popped up (which, it's worth noting, refers
> to the analysis and strategies people can create when they come together in
> dialogue and struggle as peers, as opposed to treating people as
> instruments to be manipulated, or pieces on a figurative chess board to
> mobilize toward a predetermined end).
>
> "Anti-authoritarian," then, could be shorthand for "principled
> organizing"-organizing that gets down to the roots, that refuses to settle
> for electing a slightly better candidate, for selling out our potential
> allies to scoop up a superficial win, or that sees the path to victory as
> anything less than the destination itself.
>
> Towards the end of the book, I was reminded of my exchange that day with
> James. Clearly, as Dixon demonstrates, there are mixed-class organizations
> that make time for individual and collective healing practices, for
> skillshares and strategy seminars, for discussion groups, for intentionally
> developing and evaluating leadership, and for developing organizational
> structure. But increasingly, as people are forced to work longer hours for
> lower incomes, I have to wonder: How are organizations adapting to support
> their people to do more with less?
>
> I longed for more detail on what day-to-day life is like for an organizer
> in the six specifically-chosen cities from which Dixon chose his interview
> subjects. What does it look like to practice "another politics" in Atlanta,
> for instance? It's worth asking, given that the book is structured around
> questions like, "How can we most productively manifest our visions through
> our organizing work?" Like a good organizing mentor, Dixon (and his
> interviewees) gives us insight without "right" answers, helping to deepen
> our understanding of commonalities and remind us of the deep roots of the
> "another politics" leftist lineage.
>
>  ((((((  )))))
>
> *Andrew Willis Garcés* works with Training for Change and has led
> trainings for immigrant activists in several US states on campaign strategy
> and civil disobedience. Read more of his work at www.porvida.org/.
>  _______________________________________________
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
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>  <What_s Love Got To Do With Transformative
> Education-10-31-14-Revised.pdf>
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