Michael Albert
I
think we have a problem. From Seattle through Prague and San Francisco, we have
established an activist style needing some mid-course correction.
What’s
the problem, you might ask? Thousands of militant, courageous people are turning
out in city after city. Didn’t Prague terminate a day early? Aren’t the
minions of money on the run? Isn’t the horrible impact of the WTO, IMF, and
World Bank revealed for all to see?
Absolutely,
but our goal isn’t only to make a lot of noise, to be visible, or courageous,
nor even to scare some of capitalism’s most evil administrators into
shortening their gatherings. Our goal is to win changes improving millions of
lives. What matters isn’t only what we are now achieving, but where we are
going. To win “non-reformist reforms” advancing comprehensive justice
requires strategic thinking.
But
isn’t that what’s been happening? Aren’t we strategizing about these big
events and implementing our plans despite opposition?
Yes,
but to end the IMF and World Bank now, and win new institutions in the
long-term, we need ever-enlarging numbers of supporters with ever-growing
political comprehension and commitment, able to creatively employ multiple
tactics eliciting still further participation and simultaneously raising
immediate social costs that elites can’t bear, and to which they give in. That
is dissent’s logic: Raise ever-enlarging threats to agendas that elites hold
dear by growing in size and diversifying in focus and tactics until they meet
our demands, and then go for more.
From
Seattle on, if we were effectively enacting this logic, steadily more people and
ever-wider constituencies would be joining our anti-globalization (and other)
movements. Our activities should have continued to highlight large events when
doing so was appropriate and useful for growing our movements, but they would
also emphasize more regional and local organizing, in smaller cities and towns
and directed more locally, reaching people unable to travel around the world to
LA or Prague or wherever. There are folks working on all this, to be sure but
they need more help, and these trends need greater respect and support.
Why
aren’t our numbers growing as much as we’d like? Why aren’t new
constituencies joining the mix as fast as we would like? Why aren’t the venues
of activism diversifying more quickly to local sites and gatherings?
Part
of the answer involves no criticism of our efforts. Progress, after all, takes
time. Movement building is not easy. Another part of the answer, complimentar,
is to note that in fact there is some rapid growth – for example, the
proliferation of IndyMedia projects providing alternative local news and
analysis. Indymedia operations and sites now interactively span nearly 30 cities
in 10 countries, a virtually unprecedented achievement. But IndyMedia growth
occurs by refining the involvement of those who are already largely committed.
Of course that’s not bad. It’s wonderful. But it is internal solidification,
not outward enlargement. Similarly, the preparation, creativity, knowledge, and
courage of those who have been demonstrating are all impressive and growing. But
this too occurs not based on outreach, but by manifesting steadily increasing
insights and connections among those already involved.
Let
me try an admittedly stretched but Olympic analogy to illustrate my point.
Imagine a marathon race. As thousands of runners burst out at the starti, folks
are bunched in a huge moving mass. Yet however entwined at the outset, everyone
competes. These faster runners want to escape the impact of the huge mass. They
break off and speed up. In time, inside this fast group too, there is uneven
development. Some runners are having a better day, for whatever reasons. Before
long, they want to open a second gap, now between themselves and the leading
group they have been part of, and to extend that gap sufficiently so those left
behind lose momentum for want of connection with the inspiring faster runners,
just as had been done to the massive pack, earlier. Eventually, it happens yet
again, with the few who will compete down the stretch breaking away from the
already tiny lead pack.
Like
a marathon, movement struggle goes a long distance, requires endurance, and has
to overcome obstacles. A big population is involved and we would like to succeed
as quick as possible. Speed of attaining our ultimate ends matters greatly and
even reaching secondary aims like ending a war, ending the IMF, raising wages,
or winning a shorter work day is better quicker than slower. But still, winning
social change is not like a typical race, or shouldn’t be, because the winning
logic isn’t for those who develop unequally and are “faster” to leave the
slower pack behind and cross a finish line first. The only way to win the
“social change race” is for the whole pack to cross together, as fast as it
can be induced to go. The fastest and otherwise best activists need to stay with
the pack to increase its speed, not to go as fast as they can irrespective of
the pack, or even slowing it. A little spread between the more advanced and the
rest, in the form of exemplary activity, may be excellent, but not too great a
spread.
So
here is our current problem as I see it. There is a partial disconnection
between many of our most informed activists, and the bulk of people who are
dissatisfied with the status quo but inactive or just beginning to become
active. And this disconnection induces some to become highly involved and to
interact fantastically well with one another, even having their own supportive
subculture, but to lose touch with others who become long distance spectators,
watching the action, or detached from it entirely. I speak every so often at
college campuses and there this division is perhaps easiest to see. The
activists look entirely different, have different tastes and preferences, talk
different, and are largely insulated rather than immersed in the larger
population beyond. The situation exists in communities as well.
Lots
of factors contribute, of course. None are easy to precisely identify much less
correct. Still, one that is relevant here is that over the months since Seattle
dissent has come to mean for many looking on, traveling long distances, staying
in difficult circumstances, taking to the streets in militant actions involving
civil disobedience and possibly more aggressive tactics, and finally risking
arrest and severe mistreatment.
This
is a lot to ask of people at any time, much less at their first entry to
activism. For example, how many of those now participating in events like LA and
Prague would have done so if it wasn’t the culmination of a steady process of
enlarging their involvement, but instead they had to jump from total
non-involvement to their current level of activity in one swoop? Consider people
who are in their thirties or older, and who therefore often have pressing family
responsibilities. Consider people who hold jobs and need to keep them for fear
of disastrous consequences for themselves and the people they love. How many
such folks are likely to join a demo with this type aura about it as their
initial steps in becoming active – a demo seeming to demand great mobility and
involving high risks?
The
irony in all this is that the efficacy of civil disobedience and other militant
tactics is not something cosmic or a priori. It resides, instead, in the
connection between such militant practices and a growing movement of dissidents,
many not in position to join such tactics, but certainly supportive of their
logic and moving in that direction. What gives civil disobedience and other
militant manifestations the power to force elites to submit to our demands is
the fear that such events forebode a threatening firestorm. But if there is a
2,000 or even a 10,000 person sit-in, even repeatedly, but with no larger,
visible, supporting dissident community from which the ranks of those sitting-in
will be replenished and even grow, then there is no serious threat of a
firestorm.
In
other words, dissent that appears to have reached a plateau, regardless of how
high that plateau is, has no forward trajectory and is therefore manageable.
Plateau-ed dissent is an annoyance that the state can control with clean-up
crews or repression.
In
contrast, growing dissent that displays a capacity to keep growing, even when
much smaller, is more threatening and thus more powerful. Civil disobedience
involving a few thousand people, with ten or twenty times as many at associated
massive rallies and marches all going back to organize local events that are
still larger, gives elites a very dangerous situation to address. Through
personal encounters, print, audio, and video messaging, teach-ins, rallies, and
marches, folks are moving from lack of knowledge to more knowledge and from
rejecting demonstrating to supporting and when circumstances permit joining it.
A huge and growing mass of dissident humanity restricts government options for
dealing with the most militant disobedience. This is not a plateau of dissent
for elites to easily manage or repress, but a trajectory of forward-moving
growth that elites must worry about.
It
follows, however, that if the state can create an image in which the only people
who should come out to demonstrate are those who are already eager or at least
prepared to deal with gas, clubs, and “extended vacations,” then at the
demos we are not going to find parents with their young babies in strollers,
elderly folks whose eyes and bones couldn’t take running through gas, young
adults kept away from danger by their parents concerned for their well being, or
average working people of all kinds unable to risk an unpredictable time away
from work. Add to this mix insufficient means to manifest one’s concerns and
develop one’s views and allegiance locally, and the movement is pushed into a
plateau condition.
The
problem we have, therefore, is an operational disconnect between the movement
and certain types of organizing, and therefore between the movement and the
uninvolved but potentially receptive public. I know this assessment, even
moderated by recognition of all that has been accomplished and recognizing that
there are even energies directed at these very problems, will sound harsh to
many folks, but even with the many exemplary exceptions, it is important to
acknowledge that these matters need more attention.
Consider
but one example. The internet is a powerful tool, useful in many ways to our
work. But with the internet, mostly we are communicating with folks who want to
hear what we have to say. They come to our sites and participate in our lists
because they are already part of the movement. How else would they know where to
find us? This is similar to what occurs with a print periodical or radio show
that we might have in our arsenal of left institutions. Only those who subscribe
or to listen almost always because they already know that they want to hear what
we have to say, hear our message. Don’t get me wrong. This is good, for
sure—and I have spent a lot of my life working on such efforts which I feel
are part and parcel of advancing our own awareness, insights, solidarity,
and commitment, and of refining our methods and agendas, tooling and retooling
ourselves for the tasks at hand. The trouble is, returning to the earlier
analogy, if done without prioritizing other more face to face and public
activity, it can lead to us becoming a breakaway, intentionally or not, and
thereby largely leaving behind the constituencies we need to communicate with.
Another
different kind of organizing is explicit outreach, aimed not at solidifying and
intensifying the knowledge and commitment of those who already speak our
language and share our agendas, but at reaching people who differ with us. This
is what is going on when we hand out leaflets or do agitprop and guerilla
theatre in public places. It is what happens when we hold public rallies or
teach-ins and we don’t only email those eager to come, but, in addition and as
our main priority, we go door to door in our neighborhoods or on our campuses,
urging, cajoling, inducing, and even pressuring folks to come to the events.
This face-to-face interaction with people who aren’t agreeing with us already,
or who even disagree strongly with us, is at the heart of movement building. It
is harder and scarier than communicating with those who share our views, of
course, but it is even more important to do.
To
the extent outreach is going to touch, entice, and retain new people in our
movements, it has to offer them ways to maintain contact and thereby sustain and
grow their initial interest. If the end point of a face-to-face conversation
about the IMF, for example, is that we urge someone to travel 500 or 1000 or
5000 miles to a demonstration, sleep on a floor or not sleep at all, and take to
the streets in a setting where, whether it is warranted or not, they expect to
be gassed and face arrest and extended detention keeping them away from kids and
jobs, few if any newcomers are going to jump in. But, absent continuing
involvement, with nothing obvious and meaningful to do, there is no way to
retain contact to the committed activist community that has piqued their
dissident interest. As a result, their anger will most likely dissipate in the
fog imposed by daily life and mainstream media. Thus, without mechanisms to
preserve and enforce its initial impact, outreach to new folks won’t take
hold. We plan the next demo, go to it, and celebrate with the same crowd as at
the last demo.
I
think this picture, with many variations, broadly describes a major problem that
prevents our efforts–as fantastically impressive as they have been—from being
not just impressive, but overwhelmingly powerful and victorious. So I think more
attention has to go to expanding and refining our agendas, not to eliminate our
more militant tactics – not at all – but to give them greater meaning and
strength by incorporating much more outreach, many more events and activities
that have more diverse and introductory levels of participation, and also more
local means for on-going involvement by people just getting interested, all
still tied, of course, to the over-arching national and global movements for
change.