It is important to be willing to change tactics with the changing circumstances.

I am boycotting participating in or contributing to the direction and management of the project so long as the problems that I stated on my strike thread are unresolved.

Muga is busy with his family and work and the other two sites of his with which we are sharing resources. Bad deal for him, bad deal for us. At best, it holds us back. At worst, it leads to all of the power struggle problems we see at the other boards and in the other organizations.

Most members are already engaged in this boycott. They show up when they feel like it, and if some post strikes their fancy they post. They have no loyalty or repsonsibilities to any one project, and if another board somewhere else seems more interesting for the moment, that is where they spend their time. Can't blame them, of course. "It is Skinner's board, and you are just a guest in his house." Why would anyone care about his house, then?

So really I am joining the boycott that most members of most boards and organizations are already participating in.

Other alternatives for consideration:

Start a new board.

Look for an existing bloggers collective and join it.

Go to work for a labor or immigrant rights group that already the structure, goals and organizational issues handled, but needs board and discussion and communication and tech help.

Work outside of the activist community altogether.

I remember once back in the early days of the organic movement (when it meant somethong) in the late 60's and early 70's, a farmer/activist said to me "I am discovering that if we want to see more organic farms, that it is a lot easier to turn a farmer into a hippy, then it is to turn a hippy into a farmer." Since then, small family farmers have steadily moved toward the ideals of the irginal organic movement, without the slogans and pamphlets and fund-raising and placards, while the organic movement has moved steadily away from farmers and farming.

Working with "like-minded people" may be the worst thing we could do if we want to be effective politically in the real world, rather than spending time and energy forming an exclusive club for entertainment purposes. Maybe if we want to see more collective political action, we will find that it is easier to turn an everyday working class person into thinking like a political activist then it is trying to turn a political activist into an advocate for the everyday working class people.

I have found that it is a lot easier to turn an everyday working person - who is not "into" politics, unknowledgable and undeducated and even Republican-voting - into a socialist than it is to take intellectuals who are nominally socialists, liberals, progressives, and Democrats and get them to connect to the real world and everyday poeople in any way. That is analogous to the hippy-farmer example above.

I think that most people on the Left are trying to change hearts and minds, change attitudes, change the culture, reform human nature, convert people to new belief systems, and that this cripples any effective political action, drives everyday people away, and prevents any solidarity or organization. When we are looking deep inside people to see if they are properly "being the change the want to see" and are embracing the right beliefs and acting on them, it is just about impossible to plan, organize, and act. It all becomes a mysterious process of self-transformation, where everything anyone says or does is suspect and subject to endless dispute and analysis, as people jockey to be more "right" in their hearts and thinking then the next person.

The most simple and basic organizational principles cannot be discussed or implemented as a result of the mix of spiritualized cultural issues masquerading as politics, and the rampant thread of libertarian individualism. The result is paralysis and a power vacuum. For a while, there is chaos, and that is kinda fun, but it inevitable leads to petty dictatorships. So long as the leader, or owner, is "on our side" in the spiritual and cultural sense - pure in heart and mind - the members tolerate dictatorship - don't even notice it, and will in fact vehemently defend the dicator as though they were defending the cause itself.

People throughout history have organized to get things accomplished, until now. This new "no organization" style of organizing works nicely for a certain group of people. People whose everyday lives are fine, who have power and self-determination and control over their lives, can band together loosely and periodically to do things like chat on a board, attend a meeting, or vote Democratic. That isn't organization. That isn't effective. That isn't even political. For most of the people in the country, every day is a struggle and everything about their lives is political. Attending a meeting, or writing a check to an organization, or voting Democratic has no meaning or relevance in their lives.

I have found that it is a lot easier to turn an everyday working person - who is not "into" politics, unknowledgable and undeducated and even Republican-voting - into a socialist than it is to take intellectuals who are nominally socialists, liberals, progressives, and Democrats and get them to connect to the real world and everyday poeople in any way. That is analogous to the hippy-farmer example above.

I think that most people on the Left are trying to change hearts and minds, change attitudes, change the culture, reform human nature, convert people to new belief systems, and that this cripples any effective political action, drives everyday people away, and prevents any solidarity or organization. When we are looking deep inside people to see if they are properly "being the change the want to see" and are embracing the right beliefs and acting on them, it is just about impossible to plan, organize, and act. It all becomes a mysterious process of self-transformation, where everything anyone says or does is suspect and subject to endless dispute and analysis, as people jockey to be more "right" in their hearts and thinking then the next person.

The most simple and basic organizational principles cannot be discussed or implemented as a result of the mix of spiritualized cultural issues masquerading as politics, and the rampant thread of libertarian individualism. The result is paralysis and a power vacuum. For a while, there is chaos, and that is kinda fun, but it inevitable leads to petty dictatorships. So long as the leader, or owner, is "on our side" in the spiritual and cultural sense - pure in heart and mind - the members tolerate dictatorship - don't even notice it, and will in fact vehemently defend the dicator as though they were defending the cause itself.

People throughout history have organized to get things accomplished, until now. This new "no organization" style of organizing works nicely for a certain group of people. People whose everyday lives are fine, who have power and self-determination and control over their lives, can band together loosely and periodically to do things like chat on a board, attend a meeting, or vote Democratic. That isn't organization. That isn't effective. That isn't even political. For most of the people in the country, every day is a struggle and everything about their lives is political. Attending a meeting, or writing a check to an organization, or voting Democratic has no meaning or relevance in their lives.

Hi Mike, Heres an email about organizing and what needs to be done, I've removed all the contacts, its a forwarded forwarded email, but interesting thoughts:

Hi everyone,

I think Kevin is right. What we're doing is not working. And we need
to re-think our strategy. I've been thinking that our problem is
that we've been way too passive. We need to go on the offensive. And
I want to make two specific proposals.

Here are a few theses, to introduce the action ideas.

1. There's a disjunction between our protest actions and our
analysis. We have tried, successfully, to convince a majority of
Americans that the war is wrong. Given the fact that all of the
major media and all government functionaries have opposed us, that
is a phenomenal accomplishment.

2. However, most of us understand that we don't live in a
democracy. Our analysis tells us that the decisions about where to
send our military and how long to fight are made elsewhere. It's
hard to say where. It's also not just Bush and Cheney. If it were,
the Congressional Democrats would be with us. There's some
combination of members of the power elite who have various interests
and strategies. They want the hydrocarbon law. Who knows what else
they want. But the passive disagreement of the majority of the
population doesn't really bother them.

3. The political system has tuned us out. I now see that the
surge and the Petraeus report were a major test for the relationship
between our protest and their power. Neither of us understood it
that way, but that's the way it's turned out. They told us to wait
for the Petraeus report and we did. Now I'm asking myself, what
exactly were we thinking Petraeus was going to say? That we should
bring all the troops home? That maneuver got them two things. First,
it got them six additional months. Second, it showed them that, when
they tell us to wait, we wait. It convinced them that we can't bring
anything against them that they can't control. As a result, even
Hilary is now saying that the surge is working. I recently listened
to an off-the-record panel of three Iraq "experts," with very
important connections to power, "left," right, and center, and all
three agreed the US is going to be in Iraq for the next 20 years.
The anti-war movement plays absolutely no role in their calculations.

4. Our demonstrations are obviously not working. We've
brought 500,000 activists into the streets a couple of times. That
now barely makes the newspapers. It's getting harder and harder to
get the people into the streets, since they can tell the demos
aren't having an effect. I've now begun to think that it is
irresponsible on our part to be convincing our base to do actions,
like peaceful demonstrations, that we know in advance cannot change
the dynamic. If we keep doing that, we'll lose them.

5. Our legislative work is also going nowhere. And certainly
not because we haven't tried. Sue Udry and her team are the best in
the business. We've sat in at congressional offices, we've
videotaped them and embarrassed them on YouTube, we've shouted and
argued with them. Sure we have a handful of supporters in Congress,
but the rest of them are not going to go our way until they're
forced to do so. There's been a revolting amount of backsliding
since the Petraeus report, and they're on target to approve more
money this year for the war than they have in any previous year.
Those who need to vote against the war politically do so, and the
rest of them guarantee that nothing changes, except for the worse.

6. It seems obvious to me now, though I must admit I didn't
see it earlier. We need to alter our strategy to correspond to our
analysis. The big corporate players help decide these issues. Let's
take aim at them. I suggest a two-fold strategy to break out of the
discouragement that is bound to set in among our fellows soon.

7. We need to aim at the corporate elite. We always have to
remember that our base-building and organizing always has (at least)
two aspects. We're not just organizing for a particular action,
we're also conveying a particular analysis of the problem, and of
its potential solution. When we organize our people to participate
in peaceful demonstrations, or to talk to our Congresspeople, we're
actually telling them that we live in a democracy and that, if
enough people come into the street, the elite will suddenly wake up
to their mistakes and pull us out of Iraq. But of course we don't
believe any of that. Our democracy, to the extent we have one,
doesn't work like that. And of course the Iraq War was not at all a
mistake.

8. We should change the content of our organizing message.
We should plan actions that convey our understanding that our
democratic influence on the government's foreign policy is highly
tenuous. We should "say" with everything we do that we understand
that the corporations run the country,

9. I therefore suggest, first, that we begin a major boycott
of one of the major oil companies. It seems to me that it doesn't
matter which one. We should create a campaign, like the lettuce and
grape boycotts in the days of the Farmworkers, in which everyone
progressive would refuse to buy gas or any other products from, say,
Exxon Oil. Buy from anyone else, just not from Exxon.

10. Exxon would immediately take notice, consider it a very
big risk, and ask what we want from them. What we want, we'd say, is
for them no longer to contribute any of their PAC money to any
Congressional or Presidential candidate who does not demand
immediate withdrawal from Iraq. We'd shift our business to other oil
companies. If we can get one to bend, then we could go against one
of the other oil companies. If it's working, we might also go
against Walmart, or McDonalds. There's an anti-globalization message
implicit in this as well, and that's all for the good.

11. Would Americans go for this? Absolutely. Everyone I talk
to is disgusted with the government and desperate to find something
to do to express their discontent. They don't want to do anything
illegal, or anything that might get them fired. But everyone is
stretched real thin economically at the moment, everyone is angry
that the rich are getting richer and we're barely holding on. If we
provide some channel for their anger, they'd jump at the chance.

12. The advantage of this strategy is that it focuses
everyone's attention on the fact that the corporations support the
pro-war candidates with their campaign contributions, they run the
country that way.

13. I'd also suggest a second front. This one is harder to
articulate. In my view, the most powerful slogan in the history of
the movement has been "All Power to the Soviets!" I don't mean to be
stupid, but we need to start building something like the Soviets
everywhere. (Of course we wouldn't call them Soviets!) Remember,
those were a kind of alternative to the provisional government, that
rose up spontaneously in the Russian Revolution. Any group could
form a Soviet. Then there would be occasional national congresses.

14. The point would be to threaten the control the government
has over us in terms of the news media and its total control over
our individual lives. At the university, for example, we could form
a group of faculty and students and staff, and we could begin
thinking about what we could do, locally and concretely, in terms of
all of the issues that are important to us—health care, racism, the
war, inequality, climate. In other words, we need to threaten them
somewhere outside of the war issue. We need to take seriously
the "freedom" part of the UFPJ name. We need to make it clear that
the movement will continue to grow as long as they provide us with
the war as an organizing device.

15. It would be hard to form these groups purely on a local
basis. There needs to be some national framework if this is going to
appear as a national strategy. If there were a national movement,
something might come of it. It alters slightly the UFPJ strategy,
which is to link together anti-war activist groups from around the
country. We have a fabulous selection of religious and other peace
organizations. I'm thinking we need to expand to increase the number
of groups based in the places where we work and study. Nothing
illegal, nothing that competes with the unions. Not a political
party. Just a place to organize locally and yet connect to a
national movement of such progressive groups.

16. We have to make it very clear that, if they keep fighting
this war, it's going to cost them.

I'm very grateful to Kevin for starting this discussion. I'm sure
everyone has been thinking about how to get us out of the tragedy
the government has created. I hope we can have a really wide-ranging
discussion about all of this.

Peace.

R.

Thanks Mary.

When the organizations themselves are top-down, when they are precisely copied after the corporate management model and sales and marketing methods, when full participation from the bottom up is discouraged, it is impossible to effectively challenge or overcome those same corporate management models and methods in the larger society.

I can remember when the shift to this style of activism was being debated, and when the change happened. "Fight fire with fire" was the argument for modeling activist organizations after corporations.

Thanks Mary.

When the organizations themselves are top-down, when they are precisely copied after the corporate management model and sales and marketing methods, when full participation from the bottom up is discouraged, it is impossible to effectively challenge or overcome those same corporate management models and methods in the larger society.

I can remember when the shift to this style of activism was being debated, and when the change happened. "Fight fire with fire" was the argument for modeling activist organizations after corporations.


So total shared decision making is the way to go of course? how does that get organized? I had no clue how to judge the email, I'm really lost here, obviously, but willing, and curious, m

So total shared decision making is the way to go of course? how does that get organized? I had no clue how to judge the email, I'm really lost here, obviously, but willing, and curious, m

First we need to be asking the right question.


I think Kevin is right. What we're doing is not working. And we need to re-think our strategy. I've been thinking that our problem is that we've been way too passive. We need to go on the offensive. And I want to make two specific proposals.

The question is, why are the organizations so passive and ineffective? Why is there this assumption that some "specific proposals" or "concrete ideas" or "doing something!" will solve anything? There is a breakdown between leadership and the members. The leadership people are always emulating corporate middle management types. The membership is always taking the passive stance of "hey just tell me what to do, I am right there."

There is no need to re-invent the wheel here. Human beings for tens of thousands of years have successfully organized. It is something new and modern, and also something that is closely associated with liberalism, that is causing this confusion and paralysis. Therefore, it is not so much that we need to come up with something new, some new model, as it is that we need to recognize that there is something we are already doing that is the problem and that we need to stop doing that.

Can you see the absurdity of that email? Can you sense the frustration, the desperation, the wild flailing about?

The message is basically this:

- We need to form Soviets and take to the streets.... to advance the goal of "stopping the war??"

- If enough people don't share that goal (the goal of the leadership) we need to convince them to get on board with that.

- Local organizations can be encouraged, for the purpose of helping the national program (as defined by the leadership.)

- The context for the struggle is events and people in Washington and the mass media.

All of this is backwards. All of this is approaching the problem as though it were a corporate marketing and expansion and promotion challenge. It takes big challenges and funnels them down into very narrow channels. It takes particpatory democracy and whittles it down into cannon fodder for the advancement of the goals of the few - the leaders.

The "stop the war" thing - whatever that is anyway - should be put into the service of building the Soviets, not the other way around.

If an insufficient number of people share the goals of the leadership, the leadership needs to listen to the people, not figure out new ways to badger them into supporting the (very gentrified, limited, and upper class) goals of the leaders.

The leaders of the progressive and liberal movements have goals that are antithetical to the needs and goals of the people. That is the problem. The leaders of the liberal and progressive movements insist on management and organizational models that are antithetical to building cooperatives and collectives. That is the porblem. No amount of proposals, concrete ideas, or "doing something" will change that.

So total shared decision making is the way to go of course? how does that get organized? I had no clue how to judge the email, I'm really lost here, obviously, but willing, and curious, m

Well, of course. That goes without saying.

We are making this way more complex that it need be,

My Father's Wednesday night poker game is better organized than most liberal and progressive organizations are, and he and the guys have successfully achieved the shared goals of the game for decades. They practice "shared decision making" without needing to obsess over that or see it as some "new radical approach to problem solving." That poker game would have long since failed were it run the way this project here is being run. People would have been confused, frustrated, wandered off, lost motivation, and gone golfing or something.

We don't need complicated "proposals" or "concrete ideas" to "solve" the "problem" of the confusion and paralysis and ineffectiveness. We need to ask ourselves how it is that otherwise intelligent perceptive people could be so confused and paralyzed over the most simple and basic things, and act so helpless and powerless. Where is that coming from?

So total shared decision making is the way to go of course? how does that get organized? I had no clue how to judge the email, I'm really lost here, obviously, but willing, and curious, m

Well, of course. That goes without saying.

We are making this way more complex that it need be,

My Father's Wednesday night poker game is better organized than most liberal and progressive organizations are, and he and the guys have successfully achieved the shared goals of the game for decades. They practice "shared decision making" without needing to obsess over that or see it as some "new radical approach to problem solving." That poker game would have long since failed were it run the way this project here is being run. People would have been confused, frustrated, wandered off, lost motivation, and gone golfing or something.

We don't need complicated "proposals" or "concrete ideas" to "solve" the "problem" of the confusion and paralysis and ineffectiveness. We need to ask ourselves how it is that otherwise intelligent perceptive people could be so confused and paralyzed over the most simple and basic things, and act so helpless and powerless. Where is that coming from?

IDK! But I'm thinking? but while I'm thinking I'll share someone else's thoughts that kind of go with the doublespeak issue I brought up before, but on a macro economic level sorry to get weird on the thread, I'm a divergent thinker, and need to bounce thoughts around, never know where answers may be, if I'm way off track, blast me (did I link this right?)(and btw, thanks for the feedback):

Loaded Language and Loaded Guns

The Meaning of Opposites

By Charles Sullivan

One can no longer understand US governmental policy on the basis of conventional language or traditional wisdom. Language itself and its long-established meanings were long ago twisted and distorted in order to deceive the people. Now war is peace and terror and occupation is liberation. In order to make sense of what is happening, it is important to understand everything within the context of a specific economic philosophy, and the distorted capitalist system that spawned it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18499.htm

OK boycott over. People are talking again about the future of the project, and I will participate and contribute any way I can to that effort.

[quote="Mary TF":2u1vc6za]So total shared decision making is the way to go of course? how does that get organized? I had no clue how to judge the email, I'm really lost here, obviously, but willing, and curious, m

Well, of course. That goes without saying.

We are making this way more complex that it need be,

My Father's Wednesday night poker game is better organized than most liberal and progressive organizations are, and he and the guys have successfully achieved the shared goals of the game for decades. They practice "shared decision making" without needing to obsess over that or see it as some "new radical approach to problem solving." That poker game would have long since failed were it run the way this project here is being run. People would have been confused, frustrated, wandered off, lost motivation, and gone golfing or something.

We don't need complicated "proposals" or "concrete ideas" to "solve" the "problem" of the confusion and paralysis and ineffectiveness. We need to ask ourselves how it is that otherwise intelligent perceptive people could be so confused and paralyzed over the most simple and basic things, and act so helpless and powerless. Where is that coming from?

IDK! But I'm thinking? but while I'm thinking I'll share someone else's thoughts that kind of go with the doublespeak issue I brought up before, but on a macro economic level sorry to get weird on the thread, I'm a divergent thinker, and need to bounce thoughts around, never know where answers may be, if I'm way off track, blast me (did I link this right?)(and btw, thanks for the feedback):

Loaded Language and Loaded Guns

The Meaning of Opposites

By Charles Sullivan

One can no longer understand US governmental policy on the basis of conventional language or traditional wisdom. Language itself and its long-established meanings were long ago twisted and distorted in order to deceive the people. Now war is peace and terror and occupation is liberation. In order to make sense of what is happening, it is important to understand everything within the context of a specific economic philosophy, and the distorted capitalist system that spawned it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18499.htm[/quote:2u1vc6za]

Did you read Anaxarchos's long article on William S Volker and Libertarianism? It casts much of that article in a different light

OK boycott over. People are talking again about the future of the project, and I will participate and contribute any way I can to that effort.

So, tell us about these Australians, Mike.

[quote=Mike][quote="Mary TF":2145hsa5]So total shared decision making is the way to go of course? how does that get organized? I had no clue how to judge the email, I'm really lost here, obviously, but willing, and curious, m

Well, of course. That goes without saying.

We are making this way more complex that it need be,

My Father's Wednesday night poker game is better organized than most liberal and progressive organizations are, and he and the guys have successfully achieved the shared goals of the game for decades. They practice "shared decision making" without needing to obsess over that or see it as some "new radical approach to problem solving." That poker game would have long since failed were it run the way this project here is being run. People would have been confused, frustrated, wandered off, lost motivation, and gone golfing or something.

We don't need complicated "proposals" or "concrete ideas" to "solve" the "problem" of the confusion and paralysis and ineffectiveness. We need to ask ourselves how it is that otherwise intelligent perceptive people could be so confused and paralyzed over the most simple and basic things, and act so helpless and powerless. Where is that coming from?

IDK! But I'm thinking? but while I'm thinking I'll share someone else's thoughts that kind of go with the doublespeak issue I brought up before, but on a macro economic level sorry to get weird on the thread, I'm a divergent thinker, and need to bounce thoughts around, never know where answers may be, if I'm way off track, blast me (did I link this right?)(and btw, thanks for the feedback):

Loaded Language and Loaded Guns

The Meaning of Opposites

By Charles Sullivan

One can no longer understand US governmental policy on the basis of conventional language or traditional wisdom. Language itself and its long-established meanings were long ago twisted and distorted in order to deceive the people. Now war is peace and terror and occupation is liberation. In order to make sense of what is happening, it is important to understand everything within the context of a specific economic philosophy, and the distorted capitalist system that spawned it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18499.htm[/quote:2145hsa5]

Did you read Anaxarchos's long article on William S Volker and Libertarianism? It casts much of that article in a different light[/quote:2145hsa5]

Hi Kid, I did read it, I'll look over both again from a compare and contrast viewpoint and get back to you. may be a spell, may be quick.