Category Archives: Organizing

Across Color Lines, Billionaires, Democracy, Health and dignity, Organizing, The War on the Poor

The Problem with the “Hands Off” Protests Is Not What You Think

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First off I just want to say that this is a stressful time for almost everyone. This is not an easy period that we are living through – whether we’re accustomed to ongoing crises or we’re more recently waking up and feeling it. My heart and love goes out in solidarity to all of us who are experiencing fear, grief, anger, uncertainty, disillusionment, and many other challenging emotional states and real life consequences resulting from the crisis in the capitalist system. 

But there is “hope”, many say, as evidenced by participation in the April 5th protests around the United States, broadly cast as “anti-Trump and Musk”.

My socials are filled with folks proclaiming how “hopeful” it is to see so many people take to the streets in these symbolic protest actions. And along with that “hope” comes the withering criticism of those of us with a “critique”. 

We’re just so naive/misguided they say. “How can anyone sit there and criticize folks who are getting activated for not being “correct” or “radical” enough? We have to meet people where they are!” 

And to that – I completely and unequivocally agree! My criticism is not with the people who showed up for this rally. That would be ridiculous. We need masses of people taking action together, now and always! 

But I don’t believe that the turn-out is in and of itself a beacon of hope. It’s an indication of possibility, but it will take much more to turn that possibility into real hope. Just as faith without works is dead, hope without clear, connected, competent and committed leaders is empty. 

Do you remember, or have you ever heard or read about what happened on February 15, 2003? 6-10 million people worldwide took to the streets to protest the Second Gulf War. The largest protest in human history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. 

Wall Street interests prevailed, the war proceeded, slaughtering 1,000,000 Iraqi people in the course of the war and its aftermath. The U.S. service members who were forced to wage this war were crushed by Gulf War Syndrome, depression, and PTSD, as well as chronic health conditions from toxic exposures.  

On November 4, 2023, the largest protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people took place around the globe, with estimates of more than half a million in the streets. The Israel-led and U.S. backed genocide rages more ferociously than ever. One child is killed every 30 minutes in Gaza. 

In the course of the summer of 2020, an estimated 26 million people participated in protests connected to the George Floyd uprising. 4,600 people were killed by the police in the U.S. during the Biden administration. White people comprise the largest number of those killed by the police, while Black people are 3 times more likely to be killed by police with figures for Indigenous people ranging from 3-7 times more likely. 

In his important book “If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution”, journalist and author Vincent Bevins examines the global wave of protests between 2011 and 2021, asking the critical question: Why have the upsurge of protest movements around the world not resulted in serious and lasting change?

Which brings me back to my point – what exactly is my criticism? Do I stand against “hope”? 

Of course not!

And yet, I do believe that our hope must be based in reality, not fantasy. 

Our hope must be based in each other, not the misleaders who have kept us on a treadmill of hope and despair, mobilization and demobilization, lying to us about the source of why things have gotten steadily worse across the entire working class in this country for the last 50 years. 

Our hope must be based in each other, not the party that the ruling class used to continue to degrade the position of the working class through NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement (1993) which resulted in massive industrial job loss; Welfare Reform (1996) which replaced a social safety net with market-driven “workfare”; the Telecommunications Act (1996) which led to the rise of media monopolies and the age of disinformation; financial deregulation and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999) which led to the 2007-2008 financial crisis; the Troubled Asset Relief Program (2008), or the bailout of Wall Street at the expense of the working class, and the Affordable Care Act (2010) which preserved, expanded and protected the private insurance system that profits off our sickness and death.**

These are among the policies that helped pave the way for the degradation of our living conditions such that we now count 140 million people in the ranks of the poor or those of us one healthcare or housing emergency away – nearly half the country. 

Just like we can’t expect an engine that runs on fossil fuels to belch out anything but polluted air, we can’t expect an economic and political system that runs on systemic racism, poverty, environmental devastation and militarism to produce anything but more of the same. 

So I’m here for the big tent – believe me! The tent I’m building is big enough for 140 million people – and guess what – those people are hurting – across the color line, the party line, and the urban/rural divide. I’m not here to listen to anyone speaking from the podium who says that the problem is chiefly or exclusively Trump. I don’t want to go back to the normal of 2023-2024, when 25 million people were kicked off of Medicaid in this country. We need to go forward.

I’m here for the big tent – but my tent does not include the billionaires and Wall Street – the economic forces behind the two party system in this country. 

I’m here for the big tent – but I refuse to be operationalized and co-opted by one section of the capitalist class in order for another section to prevail. We’ve been there before – we went from the period of Reconstruction after the civil war to the backlash of the Redeemers. We went from the upsurge of independent working class organization in the wake of the Great Depression to the New Deal Coalition which saved capitalism from itself. I refuse to set the table for the capitalist class to continue to eat while we starve. 

The nationwide rallies can be hopeful IF:

The people attending and organizations turning out their members demand of the official sponsors that no politicians be allowed to speak from the podium. The primary task of these figureheads is yoking us to a hamster wheel of 1) mobilization, 2) demobilization and 3) voting for the bad or the worse because they are yoked to a system that puts profit over our lives and planet. Here’s a great example of what it means when poor folks take the stage. 

They become moments to raise class consciousness, unite across issue silos, and talk about the fundamental problem. We are not a compendium of identity groups who need “allies”. We are a diverse working class trying to survive a war being waged on us by Wall Street, whether we currently know it as such or not. We need to get together, desperately, and see our common problems. We need people from the ranks of the organized poor to grab the mic, teach the historical and economic roots of this current crisis, shift the focus away from “experts” and “VIPs” and help the poor and dispossessed to understand ourselves as the only people capable of unsettling this society and putting us on a path of transformation. Here’s a great example from the Rev. Joe Paparone in Albany, NY.

We use them to bring people into the politically independent organizations of the poor and dispossessed. Many people are ready to mobilize, but not yet ready to organize. However, we need to train thousands of leaders NOW as we prepare for much bigger eruptions and outbursts that will inevitably result from the unsustainable organization of and relationships that govern our global economy. Those upswings and outbursts will not as easily be led, co-opted, and directed by the powers that be. As we raise the consciousness of the people turning out for “Hands Off”-style demonstrations, we can immediately begin to help those who gravitate toward us to see themselves as PART of the working class, not simply the “middle class”. This is the beginning of the journey for many folks getting mobilized right now. The work of member-led, staff free networks like the National Union of the Homeless and the Nonviolent Medicaid Army point the way forward. 

Thank you for all that you do every day to put people first.

Some more helpful reading:

Why We Make The Struggle A School: Identifying, Developing, and Uniting Leaders
Program of the University of the Poor
It’s Not Enough to Be Angry

**[For further reflection: For those of us who voted for this party that has pursued these policies for the last 50 years – have we been voting against our own interests? Should we be held accountable – as everyday people with no property and power to speak of – for the massive social dislocations, hollowing out of our industrial base, depression of wages, culture of misinformation, out of control healthcare costs, the opioid crisis, deaths of despair? Are these things our fault for voting this way? Or were we simply making the best choice we felt we had at the time?]

Across Color Lines, Organizing

How did we get here? A story.

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Hold onto your beenies folks. 

Our story starts 60 years ago. The civil rights movement gave way to the Watts uprising in 1965. The Watts uprising shook the foundational assumptions of the civil rights movement and called into question its gains.

Let’s revisit what MLK said to musician, actor and activist Harry Belafonte, shortly before his (MLK’s) assassination: “I have come upon something that disturbs me deeply. I’ve come to believe we’re integrating into a burning house. I’m afraid America may be losing what moral vision she had. Until we assure the underclass has justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears at the soul of this nation.”

And at the Mason Temple in Memphis Tennessee on April 3, 1968, speaking to striking sanitation workers the day before he was assassinated [chills] King said “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?”

What King is speaking to here is the failure to resolve the problems of the “underclass” – which in King’s time he counted as 40 million and which today constitutes the 140 million people in the United States that are poor or near-poor. It was the poor and dispossessed that rose up during the Watts Uprising, not the Black petite-bourgeoisie of nearby Baldwin Hills. The co-optation and diversion of the civil rights movement by the powers that be paved the way for a comparatively small segment of Black people to ascend into higher echelons of the state and the public and private sectors.  The contradictions of the class structure in the United States remained unresolved. 

Address Delivered at the National Conference on New Politics August 31, 1967
Source: Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Let’s let MLK bridge us into another piece of context for how we’ve gotten here today. The automation of the 3rd Industrial Revolution – the invention of the microchip and the adoption of computerization across the economic system resulting in the ability to offshore/outsource production and create global supply chains.

From a presentation on the economic crisis by Chris Caruso

The third industrial revolution began to displace large numbers of workers and heralded the shift from an industrial workforce to a service economy. At the same time, as a consequence of this increasing automation, the ruling class rolled back social welfare programs. Not as many workers needed = not as much support needed to keep workers alive. Less incentive on the part of the capitalist class for social investment into workers’ healthcare, housing, education and overall well-being. Remember, the capitalist class sees our class (their labor force) as a cost of production. Therefore, the retrenchment of the state and social programs. Therefore –


In the shadow of the 3rd Industrial Revolution, computerization, the shift from an industrial economy to a service economy, and the retrenchment of social welfare programs we get (drum roll please) NONPROFITS TO THE RESCUE!!! Now, the nonprofit sector is varied and includes everything from the United Way and the American Cancer Society to PETA and other things. I’m going to focus here on the “social justice” side of nonprofits. These are the organizations that get funded by the wealthy to make change in society (as long as that change does not involve taking the wealthy out of power and reorganizing society in the interests of the poor and dispossessed). A lot of great work has been produced about the nonprofit industrial complex.

I want to summarize some fundamentals as someone who has been part of, adjacent to and working in and around this sector for about 20 years now. And this is not to completely foreclose on the possibility of real potential human and material resources coming out of these formations. However, how we’ve gotten to this place in our “resistance” is important to understand.

Here are 3 foundations of the social justice sector of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex:

  1. The right way to make our society more “just and fair” is for each identity group to fight for its own version of diversity, equity and inclusion. Each group has a unique set of interests that it needs to fight for on its own. 
  2. Creating [insert identity group]-ONLY spaces is what leads to people feeling “safe” and “comfortable” and is the right way to organize. People would be “harmed” by having to be around others who are not part of their identity group. 
  3. The backdrop of the blood-soaked, ill-gotten gains of the ruling elite is white washed through this process and they co-opt an entire layer of BIPOC “leaders” from the working class who rep them. (Conservative billionaires = bad, liberal billionaires = good) even though both sets are bound and determined to keep this dumpster fire capitalist system going for as long as they possibly can. This is not the same as rich people throwing their lot in with the working class – quite the opposite. 

So here’s what we’re left with:

  1. Class struggle has taken a back seat. The entire “social justice sector” precludes class struggle because it compartmentalizes each grouping of people (largely on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, gender, gender identity, immigration status and ability) and pretends that “liberation” is possible for each of these groups independent of a struggle to take the ruling class out of power which is necessarily a CLASS struggle.
  2. The cornerstone of the ruling class’ strategy is divide and conquer. The “social justice” sector plays right into the ruling class’ hands (being as its owned and controlled by ruling class resources and strategists). There’s no way that the liberation of any specific group can take place in the context of a society based on exploitation that is well underway to structural unemployment heralded by the 4th Industrial Revolution we are living through today.
  3. Demands for human rights are summarily dismissed as being “not specific enough”. There’s an accepted maxim that “people of color and marginalized people have always been thrown under the bus when we try to work in coalition” but that’s largely based on what W.E.B. Dubois called “the propaganda of history”. Numerous examples like Reconstruction, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, The Bonus Army, The Original Rainbow Coalition, the Original Poor People’s Campaign, National Welfare Rights Organizing, labor history and others provide a blueprint for how our ancestors came together across the color line and changed what was politically possible. The false propaganda of history is devoured by these loyal opposition forces who largely take their cues from the academy (particularly elite institutions) and then regurgitate it to train up new generations of miseducated yet often well-meaning leaders and organizers. 
  4. White people are written off as un-organizable, not worthy of being organized, reactionary, backward, etc. Because of a faulty, flawed and idealistic understanding of reality, the assumption is either that “all white people are rich” or “no white people have a stake in changing society because they have privilege and benefit from the way things are”. This is bullshit. All this line of thinking has done is pave the way for the ruling class to develop the kind of politics of resentment that got Donald Trump elected and keeps the working class deeply divided. If people don’t see themselves in your picture of reality they will find another story to believe in. Remember the 66 million poor white people from the graphic above?

We don’t have to wonder how we got here. One of the reasons we got here is because “friends like these” are actually operating at the behest of our enemies, whether they know it or not. Many don’t know, but some certainly do. Many people are asking questions and looking for answers at this critical time. Welcome those who are.

Billionaires, Democracy, Organizing, The War on the Poor

Don’t Believe Billionaires, Ever

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There is a broad and fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the state in our society today.

The state is not merely elected politicians. As we’re (re)learning in real time, the state is an incredibly deep far-reaching apparatus of 3 million people who carry out the functions of the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

It’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it’s USAID, it’s the Pentagon, it’s FEMA. It’s the IRS and the EPA. It’s 438 federal agencies and sub-agencies.

Speaking of USAID…

From USAID at 60, An Enduring Purpose, a Complex Legacy
From USAID at 60, An Enduring Purpose, a Complex Legacy

The state is an instrument of the class that rules. And what class rules, you ask? Well, spoiler alert, it’s not the working class. The Trump administration is funneling state control to an even fewer number of billionaires, but the reality has been (and will continue to be, should the nation be able to flip flop back to Democratic control in 2028):

Vox Article from 2015 Study: Politicians Listen to Rich People, Not You
Vox Article from 2015 Study: Politicians Listen to Rich People, Not You

Which all goes to show why this tweet is a great example of our miseducation as a class:

I hope you’re getting the point here – even before the intensifying and direct billionaire takeover of the state now playing out before our eyes, the politicians were “an executive committee to manage the affairs of the [capitalist class]”

The guts of the state apparatus are being exposed for the first time in our lifetimes. Let’s learn the right lessons, and not allow the billionaires to continue to confuse us anymore about the role of the state.

Stay tuned for part 2: Why I Don’t Believe in Comparing Social Change to Science Fiction where I will look at some current and historical examples of the state working in the interests of the vast majority (true democracy) rather than in the interest of a tiny minority.

Health and dignity, Organizing, The War on the Poor

Thoughts on King Day 2025

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Every King Day, invariably the same silly debates arise. 

“King was cool, but he was into that nonviolence bullshit, and I don’t believe in that.”

“I know right? That shit ain’t gonna work. I’m more of a Malcolm X person myself.”*

This King Day, don’t waste your time debating about the “radicality” of violence vs. nonviolence. That’s making the mistake of confusing tactics and strategy.

What radical really means is “getting to the root”. Radicalism is not a function of tactics but of strategy.** It’s about whether or not your tactics are part of an actual strategy for transformation that gets to the root of the fundamental problem at hand. Any effort lacking an assessment of the root cause, and a course to address that root cause, is simply not radical. The question of “violence or nonviolence” doesn’t begin to address whether one has a clear understanding of the fundamental problem, why the problem, who can solve it, and how.

What made King radical (in the sense of getting to the root) was not nonviolence. What made King radical was that as he evolved as a leader through the experiences of the civil rights movement he began to place himself explicitly on the side of the poor of all races. He began to conceive of a strategy to end the root causes of the interconnected evils of racism, poverty and militarism – first making the correct assessment that all three actually cannot be separated from each other or solved independently of each other. Specifically, linking up with the National Welfare Rights Organization and leaders like Johnnie Tillmon helped stoke the flames of King’s growing radicalism and would lead to the development of the first Poor People’s Campaign of 1968.

These days, it’s possible for some people to make a damn good living off of endlessly describing all the symptoms and manifestations of the fundamental problem that we face. Very few actually offer an actual assessment of what needs to happen – based in a study of history, a scientific understanding of the basis for change, and an assessment of the current conditions and terrain. Fewer still are actually moving on that path with other people to unleash the human possibilities of our time.

Most (so-called “progressive”) leaders speak from the vantage point of their own experience, ignorant to the historical experiences of the working class over time. They have the wrong diagnosis of the disease, therefore they cannot write an accurate prescription. Their diagnosis of the problem is that it’s “white people”, Republicans, “the racial wealth gap”, and a myriad of other (literal) dead ends. They don’t actually focus on the system that concentrates great wealth in a very few hands, is destroying the natural world, and continuously reproduces the false ideologies that sustain it.

Learning the legacy of King – and particularly the deepening awareness he developed over time which brought him from a civil rights framework to a human rights framework, means committing yourself to a collective process of liberation. It means divesting yourself from the false solutions of “buying up the block” or “using passive income from rental properties”. If the solutions someone is preaching are individualist then they are not radical. Period. 

Demands for “access”, “affordability” and “opportunity” are not in keeping with King’s legacy. As described in Dr. Colleen Wessel-McCoy’s definitive book on this topic, King argued that economic opportunity was not the same as the right to employment, decent wages, or a minimum income. We must speak and lead from the position of guaranteed human rights as our basic needs that must be secured by the society regardless of whether or not it’s good for Wall Street.

And it’s not just about our understanding – this is not an academic exercise. Humanity and the very planet is at stake. This is about taking action together.

Quoting from Wessel-McCoy: “The maintenance of oppression depended on the cultivation of a sense of incapacity and bewilderment among those who in reality hold the power to transform society. King argued the oppressed were ‘schooled assiduously to believe in their lack of capacity,’ blocked from understanding their own ‘latent strengths’. But taking action together would help them ‘break out of the fog of self-denigration’, study ‘the science of social change’, and ‘embark on social experimentation with their own strengths to generate the kind of power that shapes basic decisions. (Where do we go from here: Chaos or community)

Like Jesus, King was executed by the state.***

So let’s continue to deepen our understanding of King – particularly his evolution as a leader, the lessons he learned throughout the phases of his life, as well as why he was killed.

This King Day let’s take some moments to light a candle and say a prayer for the state of our nation and of our world – for all that has been lost because of the deep failures of distraction, division, false solutions, sectarianism, syndicalism, individualism, opportunism, co-optation and collaboration that have plagued the working class on its path to power.

Can you imagine, where we might be now if a national Poor People’s Campaign, wielding liberation theology with U.S. characteristics, had been building continuously since 1968? If we had continued to love our class, and to work to “kill the system before it kills us”? (Willie Baptist).

We don’t have a moment to lose. Every day we’re not organizing the working class, as a class, united across lines of division, is a day we’re losing ground.

——————————————————————————–

*[Malcolm X was a genius who deserves our love, respect and sincere study of his development over the course of his life (spoiler alert – neither King nor X were static figures and their thinking actually developed and changed significantly over the course of their lives)]

**[oversimplified definition for the purpose of this writing] Tactics are the like the tools in a toolbox, whereas strategy is like the blueprint of the house that you’re about to build.

***For more on that, check out “The Plot to Kill King” and “Orders to Kill” by William F. Pepper.

Across Color Lines, Organizing, Proletarian Internationalism, The War on the Poor

5 confusions to leave behind as we enter 2025

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The capitalists are in crisis. There hasn’t been this level of polarization within the capitalist class since the civil war. When the capitalists get the sniffles, we get long Covid. Their infighting will result in the increasing polarization of the working class as long as we are weaponized against each other instead of them. However, those who are clear on the true face of state power, which is that the state is a tool of the class that rules, can avoid being pitted against each other and instead build a movement to end poverty led by the poor – the only possible solution to the “polycrisis” bed that the capitalists have made. Faith in every single institution is breaking down – because those institutions have brought humanity to perpetual war and ecological collapse. We, the 140 million who are poor or near poor, don’t need pity, or charity. We need to know that we are the people who can find a way out of this mess because we are the first to wake up. The position of the poor and homeless today is the position of the so-called “middle class” tomorrow. We are at the forefront of understanding that there is no “going back” – any narrative that invokes the idea that we can go back (whether to the New Deal or to the post WWII “American Dream era”) is false. We must move forward, using all of the productive capacity of humanity to end poverty for all – everywhere. This is now possible for the first time in human history, and it’s about 3,000 billionaires up against the interests of 8 billion of us.

  1. Fascism is a cruel right-wing break with the existing social, political and economic order. FALSE
    • The F word is going to be all the rage in 2025 and certainly for the next 4 years. But remember, we live in an anti-intellectual and ahistorical culture where the working class is purposefully miseducated. Let’s not throw this word around while misunderstanding its history and what it really means.
    • Fascism can be described as an “open terrorist dictatorship of finance capital”. It is not the exclusive territory of one of the parties of Wall Street or the other. It is not embodied in a single person. It is an outgrowth of capitalist democracy in decay. It’s a solution for the crisis of the capitalist class when their version of limited “democracy” for the rest of us is inadequate to ensure their profit-making. Don’t perpetuate distracting falsehoods about fascism. Fascism and Social Revolution by R. Palme Dutt is a highly recommended work on this topic.
  2. The working class has nothing to complain about – everything is fine! FALSE
  • Please don’t share memes about how great the stock market is, or how busy stores are, to reinforce ruling class narratives that the working class is doing okay and has nothing to complain about. Wages have been practically stagnant for the last 50 years. We are mad, and we should be! Fighting mad – not at other workers – from anywhere in the world, but at a system that controls our lives and labor and then denies us all the basic necessities of life, because our wages aren’t enough to buy them. That’s why 800 people are dying every day from poverty in the richest country that’s ever existed in the history of the world.

So with that being said, anyone who is part of or who wants freedom for the working class should JUST SAY NO to things like this:

Victim-blaming much? Seriously stop with the Stockholm Syndrome.

3. Well, it’s all fine and good to talk about ending poverty, but to meet everyone’s needs or bring the entire world to a decent standard of living we would need additional planets, or there will be total ecological collapse. It’s just not possible! FALSE

  • The world that global capital has made is one in which technological capability and productive capacity is not used to meet human needs, but to produce unlimited commodities for the market. This anarchistic production for unlimited drive for profit results in war and devastation for people and the planet. The technology and productive capacity we have today is the result of the creative genius of hundreds of years of working class labor and millions of workers all over the world who deserve our undying love and respect. Yet, because the working class doesn’t own and control what we’ve produced, its used to emiserate and kill us. This excellent research shows that economics planned around human needs would drastically reduce unnecessary over-production and production for commodity exchange. Living standards can be raised for all people when we leave behind the insanity of anarchic production for profit.

4. Okay, but after all there is a Global North and Global South and poverty in the US is nothing like poverty elsewhere. Our role is simply to be “allies”. FALSE

  • As Jae Hubay of the Ohio Nonviolent Medicaid Army has brilliantly shown in these visualizations, the poor of the U.S. are much closer in position to the global poor than to the billionaire class that is holding the planet hostage.
Comparing the global poverty measure to the U.S. poverty threshold to Bill Gates’ daily income
Visualizing this in distance, starting from the Wall Street golden bull in New York City a person living on the daily income of the global poverty measure can get about a foot away from the bull. A U.S. person living in poverty can get across Broadway.
A billionaire can get all the way to the Bean in Chicago. We’re much closer than we’re taught to think. Workers of the world unite. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

5. But with this new administration coming in, I can’t even! Life is over. We’re about to face never-before-seen attacks. FALSE

The attacks that we’re about to see are a CONTINUATION of the war on the poor that has been intensifying over the last 50 years and has reached new heights in the “Great Recession” of 2008 and since the Covid 19 pandemic. Since April 1, 2023, more than 25 million Americans have lost their healthcare. The Supreme Court has now made it legal to criminalize us for not being able to afford housing. Deportations under Biden just last year surpassed those during Trump’s first term in office. Don’t fall into the trap of being weaponized against other working class people because of the polarization in the ruling class.

I could go on… I thought about adding a 6 or 7 but 5 is a good number for now. Bonus confusion to leave behind is that acts of individuals are enough to save the day. They are not. The ruling class has the power of the “pen (media), the purse (money) and the sword (military)” to quote Frederick Douglass. What we have is our numbers, and our numbers mean little without organization. Organization requires “intelligent and unselfish leadership” (W.E.B. Dubois). And leaders must be clear, committed, competent and connected. (Willie Baptist). So let’s get clear and let’s get organized!!

** Top image is unsold Tesla inventory, visible from space.

Black Lives Matter, Covid19, Organizing, Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, Proletarian Internationalism, Put People First! PA, The People's Forum, The University of the Poor

Nijmie doing things

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some stuff I’ve co-created in 2020 so far

Where Do We Go From Here with the University of the Poor

https://phl17.com/in-focus/in-focus-nj-and-de-primaries-and-2020-presidential-election-race-and-the-law-poor-peoples-campaign-virtual-rally/
Interview on PHL 17 In Focus on the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival Mass Digital Gathering
Black Lives Matter protests swept small towns in Pa. this week. Here’s why that matters
Talking about the role of Put People First! PA in the BLM uprisings across PA
Nijmie Zakkiyyah Dzurinko: “Our goal is to build permanently organized communities”
Profile with the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Video of me at Philly protest sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation

Short from The People’s Forum on the International Response to the Crisis

From Elections to Politics
On various forms of state violence, with People’s Dispatch
20 Change-making Philly Women Honored this Month with Temporary Street Art Installations Around Philly
Honored for Women’s History Month in Philly
Health and dignity, Organizing, Poems

But How Will We Pay For It?

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We pay for it every day with our lives

We pay for it in anxiety, sleeplessness and depression

We’ll pay for it by taking back what was stolen from us

We pay for it sitting in debtor’s prison

We pay for it with GoFundMe

We’ll pay for it by shutting down the war machine

We pay for it rationing insulin

We pay for it with a pile of pulled teeth

We’ll pay for it by eliminating the parasitic profiteers

We pay for it in funerals

We pay for it in tears

We’ll pay for it by shutting down the streets, taking over the hospitals, crashing the stock market

We pay for it in gravestones and waiting rooms

We pay for it in overdoses

We’ll pay for it by liquidation and expropriation

We’ll pay for it in revolution 

Organizing

Movement-killing behaviors

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Of special relevance within the context of movement-building organizations

The author pictured with Larry Gibson, Keeper of the Mountains on Kayford Mountain, 2008
The author pictured with Larry Gibson, Keeper of the Mountains on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia with the Poverty Scholars Program, 2008. Larry asked us to consider the question: “What is it in all the circle of life that is so important to you that you would give your life for it?”

We must be able to live by the principles that we set for others and for the society that we are in the process of transforming. If we are to help everyday people come into greater activity, leadership and collectivity then we must cultivate the utmost integrity individually and collectively, we must be trustworthy and cultivate mastery of “movement-building” practices while minimizing “movement-killing” practices. Otherwise we follow in the footsteps of all that have abused their power and applied a double standard to their own behavior while harming others.

 

Shared principles:

  • Our behaviors are not “who we are”.
  • We all make mistakes – the key is admitting, correcting and repairing harm.
  • Movement love does not look like co-dependence. We have an obligation to hold each other accountable.
  • Good practice can help build relationships. Bad practice can help destroy relationships.
  • Good process can help build relationships. Bad process can help destroy relationships.
  • We’re not always going to be happy with each other. Conflict and contradictions are a natural part of our process.
  • Your goal is not to avoid anyone ever being mad at you.
  • Regular feedback is an important part of our process.
  • Feedback is very different from attack.
  • We are all on a learning and healing journey.
  • We take responsibility for resolving our own conflicts as a leadership task whenever possible.
  • We all deserve patience, respect and care in how we are treated and talked to. That doesn’t mean sugarcoating just as it doesn’t mean being vicious.
  • Intention is not the same as impact. Assume best intention but attend to impact.
  • There is no basis for working with those who are not doing so in good faith.
  • The fact that you may be dealing with the impact of trauma and mental health issues does not place you outside the realm of accountability.
  • Everything changes – including our emotions.

Movement-Killing Behaviors

  • Shit-talking – speaking disparagingly of people when they are not present
    • How to interrupt: “Have you shared any feedback with this person?” “Please don’t talk negatively about this person in front of me, I don’t want to hear it.”
    • Alternatives to shit-talking: Incorporating regular feedback sessions into your meetings. Tell people what you appreciate about them and what you see as their areas for growth.
    • Talking about members and their growth and development in the context of base building and leadership development without them present does not constitute gossip.
  • Untruthfulness
    • Outright lying cannot be tolerated.
    • Some people live by exaggeration. It’s been a survival mechanism to help them to be heard or to get what they want.
      • Additionally, some people are not rigorous with their word or the truth. They have a pattern of intentional or subconscious laziness about how to portray what happened or what was said, constantly stretching the boundaries of reality like silly putty, adding to, omitting or changing parts of the story as they go along. We all need to be held to account for striving to be as accurate as possible in our representations of meetings, conversations, processes, plans, etc. If you know this is an issue for you please make a note that it’s something that you need to work on.
    • Don’t tell two different people two different things based on what you think they want to hear. Tell both people the same thing. Telling everyone a different version of the same events keeps people off kilter and is a mechanism to sow confusion and manipulation. If you find yourself telling many people a slightly different version of the same events or if you feel like you are hearing a different version than what was told to someone else, you’re likely participating in gossip, please see that section.
  • Accusation and attack
    • Making vague or general accusations instead of giving direct feedback
      • Don’t say “people do this”. Give feedback to specific individuals in an appropriate time and place (ie not in front of a group or when they are leading something). Do not generalize and suggest that the organization does something or has a policy that in reality happened with one individual inside the organization, or in a social setting.
    • Attacking the organization/enlisting others to attack the organization on social media, ie tagging the organization’s name on Facebook or Twitter with slanderous remarks
    • Blowing up a shared space, taking the opportunity in front of a group to air your grievances with a particular person or situation in ways that are unaccountable, not related to the matter at hand, and target particular individuals while they’re trying to facilitate or lead a group process.
  • Defensiveness
    • Refusing all constructive critique; repeated defensiveness + playing the victim when you are called to account
    • Defensiveness is the enemy of leadership. If you find yourself on the defensive, ask “what did I do to co-create this situation?” Go through this list and see if you have participated in any of these behaviors. Ask yourself about your follow through. For all of the ways that you want to lash out, question every justification that you’re providing for your own behavior. Do those justifications really stand up to the light of day?
  • Rugged individualism
    • Using the organization’s name and credibility to take action on your own rather than acting collectively with the organization, misleading others into thinking that you’re representing the organization when you’re only representing yourself.
    • It’s fine to have other organizational affiliations or roles! However, please be transparent about your intentions. If you’re running for office or leading another organization and you want to use the organization’s energy and work to bolster your visibility and win more allies (for example), you must make clear what your intentions are before embarking on any process so that everyone in the situation can make clear informed choices about how to proceed.
  • Refusing to participate collaboratively or to work with others on the basis of their gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, age, religion, documentation status.
  • Refusing to acknowledge the realities of power and oppression, to listen openly to others’ experiences and to acknowledge when you’ve contributed to harm.
  • Refusing to participate in political education and leadership development processes and studies.
  • Constant negativity. Consider that never being able to find the good in any situation and constantly thinking of what went wrong or what people didn’t do well is a reflection on how you feel, not on the process or other people. Please be careful that you don’t project the ways you may have been conditioned to be hyper-critical of yourself onto other people or to the organization.
  • Manipulation
    • Trying to operationalize or manipulate another member for your ends
      • If you see a situation in which a current member or someone who has already left the organization has attached themselves to you or to another member and is constantly “in their ear” about what they should be doing, and trying to use that member as a conduit to have influence in the organization without the operator’s explicit participation and accountability, this is a problematic situation that should be avoided. By the same token, don’t allow yourself to be operationalized by someone who is seeking to be outside the boundaries of community and accountability.
  • Being a “people-pleaser”. Telling everyone what they want to hear so as to avoid conflict. Never making tough calls or holding people accountable so that they won’t be mad at you.
  • Abuse or harassment whether verbal, physical, or sexual of any member.
  • Reactivity – reacting, responding, writing, posting before you breathe and check in with yourself. How is my response going to benefit myself, the other person and the organization as a whole? Reactivity is another enemy of leadership. It takes strength, resolve and courage to pause before reacting. It takes patience and wisdom to not always say the first thing that pops into your head. Reactivity is flawed practice. It is not the same as speaking your mind, being true to yourself, or being honest. It is possible to do all of those things – and do them well – without being reactive. Being reactive is responding with a lack of self and community awareness, defaulting to conditioned patterns rather than being in our choice, agency and power. Reactivity damages trust.
  • Stuck in place, refusing to accept that things change. A month ago, you may have been dismayed that another person wouldn’t step up and do their fair share. A month later, they are stepping up! Isn’t that what you wanted? It’s what you said you wanted, but you’re still harboring resentment for this person instead of appreciating the shift that has occurred. Holding onto past grievances as if reality is static as opposed to ever-changing is counter-productive. Go with the flow.
  • Fomenting conflict, ill will, troubles, and problems through any of the above means

 

Across Color Lines, Health and dignity, Housing, International, Organizing, Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, Public Education

Nijmie 101: Get to know me

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1968Cartoon_GettingIntoStep

 

Here are some snapshots from my organizing over the years in terms of some of the issues and campaigns that I’ve worked on, and the trajectory of my political orientation and theory of change.

 

Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

A New Poor People’s Campaign on the Dig (audio)

History of the Poverty Initiative (Kairos Center -) one of the two national co-convening organizations of the Poor People’s Campaign

Ending Poverty: Immersion in the Mississippi Delta (article)

Katrina: Poverty, Race and Ethics (article)

Healthcare is a Human Right

On building a diverse working class movement on the Dig (audio)

The Strategic Significance of Healthcare as a Human Right with Sarah Jaffe (article)

Revolutionary Common Sense on Hack the Union (video)

Education is a Human Right

Campaign for Nonviolent Schools (article)

https://mediamobilizing.org/mmptv-episode-6-no-education-no-life-preview/

Housing is a Human Right

Supporting the Community Leadership Institute in Philadelphia (article)

Community Preservation Network (article)

International Human Rights

International Women’s Peace Service (article)

The Landless Workers Movement in Brazil (MST) (article)

Co-founder: 

Media Mobilizing Project

Put People First! PA

Restarted and Former Executive Director

Philadelphia Student Union

Organizing

What’s Killing Me

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Steven Covey, author of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People talks about our “Emotional Bank Accounts”. Despite the fact that it’s weird to talk about banking in this context,  I think the concept of making investments in our relationships – actions that demonstrate trust, understanding and support – is a good one. He takes the metaphor further to suggest that when we violate trust or make a mistake, it’s akin to making a “withdrawal” against the investments that we’ve already made. I have often thought of this metaphor when I think about building trust with movement colleagues.

The more that I work with this metaphor the more I become aware that this grounding is only useful when it is broadly understood and reciprocal. There is much that gets in the way of us treating each other with deep respect, including ego, competition, lack of self-awareness, and oppressive conditioning.

At times the lack of respect that I experience make the work almost unbearable. I also have said and done things that I’ve regretted, made lots of mistakes and treated people with less respect than they deserved. I am in no way saying that I do not exhibit problematic behaviors.

I am also working on improving my practice.

I think the thing that I’ve been most harmed by is that people that I’ve invested in heavily – that I’ve given jobs, provided opportunities, supported, mentored, helped, not over the course of months, but over the course of years, have been able to turn on me as a result of a real or perceived “withdrawal” that feels so asymmetrical – especially in light of our history of multiple, sustained investments of trust. That kind of betrayal really pains me. There has to be a way to understand, overcome and avoid it outside of simply not trusting anyone ever again, or being made to feel ashamed for being taken advantage of – like I’m the one at fault for “having it happen to me”. Also seems important to note here that every single person who has ever behaved this way toward me was a man.

Relatedly, I’ve recently been reflecting on the things that are getting increasingly difficult for me in the course of doing this work. There are a lot of narratives out there about how we are supposed to expect that movement work is a hard and never-ending slog through shit. However, I am very much interested in improving our practice and not having the work produce a lot of collateral damage. If the work that we are doing serves to re-traumatize ourselves and others, how exactly are we getting free? We are already situated within an economic, political and social system that prevents us from being our fullest selves. We have no choice but to transform it. However as we do that, the ends don’t actually justify the means when the means are bullshit. We all have to make sacrifices and compromises, and our hands aren’t clean. We can’t stand outside the system to do our work. However, as we make the road by walking, we have to clear the path through our actions, and act – create systems, structures and processes – in ways that liberate instead of oppressing, for ourselves and others.

As I’ve been doing these reflections, here are some places that feel like they are becoming untenable for me in terms of the emotional labor that I’m doing on top of the intellectual and physical labor of movement work.  It’s not any one of these that’s untenable, it’s the fact that sometimes it feels like I am doing all of these things, all of the time. No single one of these is a deal-breaker, but taken together, and when performing these tasks of emotional labor actually crowds out my ability to be well myself, and do the things that I really love, like strategy, base building, and study, they become unbearable.

  • Constantly mediating conflict between people for the good of the work
  • Absorbing people’s emotional outbursts, when targeted mistakenly at me or others; being expected to de-escalate and mend the situation even when it is re-traumatizing
  • Anticipating and troubleshooting problems and providing extra support proactively in order to avoid re-traumatizing other people – ie trying to solve problems before they happen
  • Accepting people being impatient, judgmental, negative or demanding in ways that are very challenging to deal with because of where they are in their leadership development process
  • Cleaning up after other people’s bad behavior, playing a reassuring or ameliorating role to calm people’s feelings because of someone’s unaware or intentional bad actions
  • Being someone that people come to when they have problems, being someone that is expected to fix people’s problems and make them feel better, rather than them fixing their problem on their own, or offering to help fix my problems
  • Constantly being expected to absorb negativity, people unawarely not balancing their critiques, complaints and problems with affirmation and appreciation
  • Making issues personal instead of understanding them as part of the process, organizational, and co-created (ie acknowledging their own role)
  • Being the object of the assumption that I am able to do a tremendous amount of work without strain, stress or pain
  • My ideas being repeated as if they were the original ideas of others who then get credit and recognition for them
  • Despite fighting for people, helping them and defending them, being treated as if I am not worthy of the same, being turned on quickly for the convenience and benefit of others
  • Having a position of non-conflict and nonviolent communication used as an excuse to be an “easy target” or scapegoat as needed because I won’t make the kind of scene that others will
  • Perceiving my work and my ability as a threat rather than an asset because of ego and behaving in ways that lack integrity as a result
  • Working with people who are afraid of conflict, therefore if conflict arises, quickly exit the scenario rather than take a principled stand for the sake of no one “being mad at them”; can’t distinguish between reasonable or justified accountability and unprincipled attacks
  • To not have the role of oppression acknowledged in situations, to have people around me not acknowledge power when being treated badly by someone that society imbues as more deserving of respect and dignity than I am. To have the oppressive component of the mistreatment ignored or minimized, to exhibit a complete unwillingness to assist the person doing the behavior to achieve greater awareness.
  • Being a constant cheerleader, having to maintain hope and continue to be inspirational during moments when others are lost or feel hopeless. Having to maintain discipline around hope and a clarity of vision that carries other people through difficult times.
  • People who use their privilege to step on you, using your emotional and intellectual labor for their own benefit and using it to maneuver themselves into positions of power or influence without giving credit or assistance to help better your situation.
  • Constantly getting the unaware and oppressive feedback that I’m aggressive, threatening and intimidating simply as a reaction to my natural way of speaking and being.
  • Not being allowed to express anger or frustration at the above treatment, expected to always appear to be okay with whatever is happening even when it is unacceptable, receiving reactions of anger and frustration for my reactions because they are seen as a distraction and an inconvenience when none was given for what caused them.