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

[P2P Foundation mailing list]

Hello all

I am doing the U.Lab MOOC
<https://courses.edx.org/courses/MITx/15.S23x/3T2014/info> at the moment
and this immersion is providing some very interesting lenses on a lot of
what I am seeing...

For instance, the personal-collective integrative process is central to
Theory U, so the theory provides a good context for understanding it
(especially for someone who has so far avoided Integral with a fair degree
of emotional resistance).

So, I thought I might flag that (as a potentially useful tangent),
and also flag that I am interested in any comments that others might have
about the applicability (or not) of Theory U in this sort of issue...
Would love to explore!

Cheers


*John Baxter*
*Cocreation Consultant & ​Co​Create Adelaide Facilitator*
jsbaxter.com.au <http://www.jsbaxter.com.au/> | CoCreateADL.com
0405 447 829
​ | ​
@jsbaxter_ <http://twitter.com/jsbaxter_>

*Thank you to everyone who came, helped or spread the good word about City
Grill!*
*Summary and links: cocreateadl.com/localgov/grill-summary/
<http://cocreateadl.com/localgov/grill-summary/>*


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/.
>>  _______________________________________________
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetworkedLabour mailing list
>> NetworkedLabour at lists.contrast.org
>> http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
>>
>>
>
>
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