Tag: organizing
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Seek Common Ground (Beautiful Trouble – Essay 4)
When disagreeing with someone else’s ideas, it can be tempting to engage in narrative attack; to make a direct attack on one narrative from the vantage point, and in the language, of your opposing narrative. For example, when someone wraps climate change-denial views in the rhetoric of creationist beliefs, it is tempting to directly attack…
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#OWS: We are ALL leaders!
Download this post as a printable PDF What is the difference between saying none of us is a leader and saying all of us are leaders? At first glance these two phrases may seem like two ways of saying essentially the same thing. We believe in organizing in a way that is more horizontal than…
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#OWS: Welcome Visitors & Plug In New Participants
Download this post as a printable PDF Three Tips for Plugging People In Bringing in new participants and volunteers is essential to an occupation-or any group or organization-that wants to grow in size and capacity. The momentum of the Occupy Wall Street movement has quickly attracted a lot of people to occupations across the United…
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Occupy Wall Street: Small Convergence of a Radical Fringe
Why haven’t the protests on Wall Street sparked a prairie fire of populist rebellion across the country? Why, when Adbusters called for “reinforcements” did these not magically arrive? Why, if the protesters represent the feelings of “99% of Americans” have so very, very few of those represented bothered to support the initiative in any way…
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Disintegration of the American Public (pt.1)
Kevin Drum has a post today at Mother Jones titled Everybody Hates Everybody Else. Based on a recent Bloomberg poll (see the pie/donut chart below), he concludes that: …what it really means is that everybody hates everybody else. Democrats all think Republicans are responsible for screwing up the country, and Republicans all think Democrats are…
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Activism vs. organizing | reflections on Gramsci pt.2
In his essay Voluntarism and Social Masses, Antonio Gramsci argues that “the actions and organizations of ‘volunteers’ must be distinguished from the actions and organisations of homogeneous social blocs, and judged by different criteria.” He defines these “volunteers” as “those who have detached themselves from the mass by arbitrary individual initiative…” His language of volunteers…
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Interview: Jose Vasquez on Antiwar Organizing & IVAW
originally published on September 30, 2010 Listen to the full interview with Jose Vasquez: http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3523697345-audio-player.swf?audioUrl=http://beyondthechoir.org/interviews/01_Jose_Vasquez.mp3 Jose Vasquez shares his journey from Army Staff Sergeant to Conscientious Objector to Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against the War – and offers some reflections on organizing with veterans and GIs in today’s antiwar movement. To find out more…
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What Prevents Radicals from Acting Strategically? (part 3 of 3)
Reposted. Part Three of a three-part article from 2006, written in collaboration with Madeline Gardner. Read Part One here and Part Two here first. Many of us, when we become disillusioned with the dominant culture, we develop an inclination to separate ourselves from it. When we begin to become aware of racism, sexism, capitalism and…
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What Prevents Radicals from Acting Strategically? (part 1 of 3)
This article made the rounds on Z net and a bunch of Indymedia sites back in 2006. I wrote it in collaboration with Madeline Gardner. I’m reposting here in three parts, with no edits. Here’s Part Two. And here’s Part Three. And here’s the video. Ritual & Engagement It’s August and I’m back in San…
Jonathan Matthew Smucker 