<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>'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.'</div><div><br></div><div>Pauli Friere spoke about this in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>Anna</div><div><br><br></div><div><br>On 25 Jan 2015, at 11:38, P2P Foundation mailing list <<a href="mailto:p2p-foundation@lists.ourproject.org">p2p-foundation@lists.ourproject.org</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/andrew-willis-garc%C3%A" target="_blank">https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/andrew-willis-garc%C3%A</a>9s/another-politics%E2%80%94from-anticolonial-to-occupy<blockquote type="cite"><div>
<div><font color="#0000FF" size="+1"><b>Another Politics-from
anti-colonial to Occupy</b></font></div>
<div><i><b>Chris Dixon's new book identifies four principles that
underpin the success of transformative social movements.</b></i></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Andrew Willis Garcés 7 January 2015</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>[This article originally appeared in<i> Waging
Nonviolence</i>.]</div>
<div><br>
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.<br>
<br>
"What was the big theme there that stuck out to you?" he
asked.<br>
<br>
It was a good question. At that moment, the DJ Unk song "Walk It
Out" was booming from a nearby car.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
I explained more about what that meant to me.<br>
<br>
He shook his head, amused.<br>
<br>
"That's a tall order!" He thought about it a little more.
"When will we get time for all that?"<br>
</div>
<div>That tall order is the subject of Chris Dixon's book<i> Another
Politics,</i> 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.</div>
<div><br>
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:</div>
<blockquote>. being against domination of all kinds;</blockquote>
<blockquote>. prioritizing the development of new social relations and
forms of social organization in the process of struggle;</blockquote>
<blockquote>. linking struggles for improvements in people's lives
to long-term transformative visions; and</blockquote>
<blockquote>. grassroots organizing from the bottom-up.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>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."</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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?</div>
<div><br>
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<b> No One is
Illegal</b>:</div>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>"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."</blockquote>
<blockquote><br></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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."</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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.<br>
<br>
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.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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:</div>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>"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."</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>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.<br>
<br>
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).<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
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?</div>
<div><br>
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.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div> (((((( )))))</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><i><b>Andrew Willis Garcés</b></i> 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 <a href="http://www.porvida.org/" target="_blank">www.porvida.org/</a>.<br>
</div>
</div>
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