http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22019
July 16, 2009
By Eric Mann
[Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by
ZCommunications] http://www.zcommunications.org/zparecon/reimaginingsociety.htm
--
The core of our argument:
1) that any discussion about reimagining socialism, particularly in
the United States, has to be rooted in anti-racism and
anti-imperialism and the support for self-determination of oppressed
nations and nationalities inside and outside of the United States;
2) that the Obama administration needs to be engaged by the U.S. Left
from the perspective of contradictions within the united front
against racism, fascism and imperialism and that the center of
gravity for revolutionary change and socialism is situated within the
leadership of the Latin American Left; and
3) that the present and future struggle against racism and
imperialism and the viability of a reconstructed socialism has to be
tied to a deliberate massified set of counter-hegemonic demands and
powerful social movements led by the multi-national working class
and oppressed nationalities communities. So, this is and integration
of the two papers into one. We hope you enjoy reading it.
Two Defining Moments
We are living in exciting times, a period of mass movement to the
left in the world. We in the U.S. Left, especially those with deep
ties to social movements and those developing an independent base in
the working class, have the chance to be part of a broad united front
against racism and imperialism, built on the ground one person at a time.
In 2009 there have been two defining moments that give shape to any
U.S. approach to socialism in the 21st century.
• In April at the Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez placed
forcefully into Barack Obama's hands a book, The Open Veins of Latin
America. Chavez's move was conscious and tactical, an anti-colonial
intervention against the president of U.S. Empire. With a strong base
in his own country, his own military, and his powerful leadership on
the continent, Chavez, along with many other elected left heads of
states in Latin America, advised, lectured, and warned Obama that
neo-colonial interventions in Latin America would not be tolerated
and would be resisted.
• In July, Barack Obama, a Black president of African ancestry,
went to Ghana to tell Africans that they should get over the
Transatlantic Slave Trade. He told an audience in Ghana that "a
colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict. The
West has often approached Africa as a patron or source of resources
rather than a partner. But the West is not responsible for the
destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade or wars in
which children are enlisted as combatants." He also blamed
post-colonial Kenya for being riddled with "tribalism, patronage,
nepotism and corruption." In doing so, he situated himself as a
neo-colonial ideologue with no heart for the sufferings of his own
people, an imperial lecturer hiding the U.S. role in the
Transatlantic Slave Trade, the ongoing consequences for Blacks in the
U.S. and throughout the world, and the ongoing U.S. crimes (through
the CIA and World Bank) in assassinating post-independence African
leaders and driving countries into debt peonage. He used the enormous
good will of Black Americans and Africans who supported and elected
him seeking civil rights and greater self-determination to position
himself as a conscious, willful, opponent of the movements for
reparations, African self-determination and human rights.
The Present Period: World Crisis, Latin America, and Obama
The world is in flux as the planet and its inhabitants confront a set
of interrelated economical, social and ecological crises that are
rooted in the destructive and unethical practices of capitalist and
imperialist consumption and plunder. Yet we are also living in
exciting times. The Latin American Left is generating an alliance of
left governments and powerful regional social movements. The Latin
American Left is coalescing a new center of anti-imperialist gravity
in the world today, opening some of the most hopeful new discussions
for the future of socialism in the U.S., including the 42 million
Mexicanos, Chicanos, Central Americans, Caribbean Islanders and Latin
Americans who reside inside the United States.
In the U.S., the election of Barack Obama has created watershed
openings for the Leftespecially for those of us with deep ties to
social movements and those developing an independent base in the
working classto build a broad united front against racism and
imperialism. Both of us supported and worked for the election of
Barack Obama. Eric wrote an article, reflecting the views of most
Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union leaders, Ten Reasons to Turn Out
the Vote for Barack Obama. With a clear grasp that Obama was running
for the presidency of U.S. Empire, he argued that electing Obama
would create new contradictions in the U.S. ruling class that would
create historic opportunities for an independent anti-racist,
anti-imperialist platform, and that the Left should work to elect
Obama in a united front against racism and fascism in order to defeat
the Far Right. We stand by that assessment and our tactical choice.
We continue to see the organized racist, fascist Rightreflected in
the Republican Party and its right-wing thugs and paramilitary
groupsas the main danger. We see a relationship of unity and
struggle with the Obama administration. We have unity with its
progressive actions, unity in a united front against the racist,
fascist Right, and a relationship of struggle with its many and
growing reactionary policies. There is already growing opposition to
its bailout of corporate America and to its bloody interventions in
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. There is increased awareness and
opposition to his ideological role as the defender of a "post-racial"
empire and his efforts to defeat a Black/African alliance and any
other anti-racist, anti-imperialist challenges to the U.S. Empire.
Anti-imperialism Is the Key to Reconstructing U.S. Socialist Theory
and Practice
In the racist, imperialist society of the U.S., the only viable
strategy for the Left is to build a movement against racism and
imperialismor else the Left, as Eric has written, "is condemned to
ally with the imperialist class and degrade its struggle to a larger
share of the spoils of empire." There can be no socialism in the U.S.
outside of anti-racism and anti-imperialism. U.S. imperialism is a
system of monopoly capitalism requiring the exploitation, oppression,
and subjugation of whole nations and peoples. Given the social
formation of the U.S. as a settler state based on virulent white
supremacy, the racialization of all aspects of political life
operates as a material force in and of itselfshaping and infecting
every aspect of the political process.
Clearly, the centrality of anti-racism/anti-imperialism as a strategy
has its own merits but it is also fundamental to a socialist strategy
within the United States. At a debate among left organizations about
the Future of the Left at the first U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta in
2007, Manuel argued that anti-racism/anti-imperialism has to be "the
central building block for a carefully and slowly reconsidered and
reconstructed socialism. Any working unity must be built on an
anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-fascist united front. This united
front is the foundation for any real socialist future but it is also
the defining politics to defeat any form of so-called socialism that
is neutral on fascism, weak on racism, weak on anti-imperialism. This
united front is, in other words, the defining politics to prevent the
social chauvinism that would actually hurt the struggle against U.S.
imperialism."
At the Strategy Center, organizers have chosenwithin the strategy to
struggle against imperialism from inside the U.S. Empireto focus on
building social movements of the multinational working class to lead
the anti-racist, anti-imperialist united front. Eric has been
evolving a theory of Transformative Organizing to create a structure
and methodology to guide our everyday organizing work. A central
objective of our work has been to organize mass social movements and
new organizations that, in the course of waging resistance struggles
against the fundamental ideals of capitalism, build leadership,
consciousness and organization among oppressed nationalities, women,
immigrants and the multiracial working class.
We believe one of our best contributions to this forum is to
encourage a regrounding of U.S. Left theory in mass practice. We
believe the main tactical aim for the U.S. Left at this point is to
build mass organizations that are explicitly anti-racist and
anti-imperialist in everyday practice. In other words, we have to
massify our message among oppressed nationality communities and the
working class. We can't be "independent" Left intellectuals and
activists discussing the future of socialism or strategic aims
without engrossing ourselves in that discussion with our own base and
with a broader population. Mao said, "Seek truth from facts." As
grassroots organizers of all persuasions say to each other, we at the
Strategy Center say, "The only way I can understand your theory is to
see it in practice." To reimagine socialism, we must have fusion in
our work. We cannot be a separate organization that talks about left
ideas without taking these ideas out into the streets in mass
campaigns, in the public arena of ideas and policy changes that must
be won. We will go into a discussion of how we try to generate a
theory-driven practice later in the article.
Outrage and opportunity: Anti-imperialist left strategy under Obama
In the months since his election, Obama has garnered much outrage not
only from the Left but also from many quarters of his own base and
his own party. Some of the Obama administration's policies are
causing an angry backlash among key and often-prestigious supporters.
Progressive members of Congress, of the armed forces, as well as
liberal and progressive public interest groups and commentators are
already challenging Obama. Several former generals have openly
criticized Obama for his continuation of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
policy. There has been strong criticism of him for rejecting single
payer health care in favor of corporate health care. There has been a
profound disagreement in Congress with his continuation of the war in
Iraq and Afghanistan, but the "progressives" are not ready to stand
up to the threats by Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff or risk
"isolation" from the president. And finally, there are the beginnings
of rumblings among the volunteers who joined "Obama's Army" for
"change they can believe in."
We think the contradiction between Obama's vague but clearly stated
civil rights and anti-war campaign and his actual actions open up
great organizing opportunities among people who voted for Obama and
want to demand real changes. The challenge is, how can a U.S. Left
grab these new openings to engage in the political arena, put forth
clear politics, organize actual working class people, oppressed
nationality people, and people of all classes and races to a specific
set of anti-imperialist demands that we bring on corporations and the
government with the goal of winning them.
The openings fall into three categories: key strategic, winnable
policies; people inside Obama's administration who can be moved;
militant, direct challenge against Obama's most reactionary positions.
PoliciesHigh Strategic Impact, Winnable.
Ask people working on issue-based workthey know when the
administration is moving backwards and when there are small or even
significant victories.
• The decision to open up travel and remittances by Cubans in the
U.S. to Cuba helps the Cuban revolution. The more Cuban Americans go
to Cuba the power of the exiled Gusano generation is weakened, the
chance of U.S. invasion lessened, the possibility to struggle for the
lifting of the blockade is greater.
• The Justice Department's decision to begin investigating the
discriminatory impacts of convictions for crack cocaine and powder
cocaine will mean years and years of difference to Black prisoners
and a greater challenge to the entire war on drugs.
• The U.S. assigned a new ambassador to Venezuela and reopened
diplomatic ties with the government and Hugo Chavez.
• The nomination of Sonya Sotomayor and the Right wing attacks on
her for indicating there are issues of discrimination facing women
and Latinos is a blow to the Right and will help decisions at the
Supreme Court. She does not have to prove to be a great liberal if we
understand the racist attacks on her candidacy give greater openings
to fight for affirmative action and women's rights beyond what she
and President Obama would attempt.
• The Climate Bill coming out of the House is very weak. The
entire concept of the buying and selling of air pollution credits is
bizarre and unenforceable. But it does create some pressures on
polluting firms (as well as many loopholes). There are principled
people arguing it is worse than no bill, other strong
environmentalists pushing for its passage. The fact that there is a
bill to organize around is light years away from what McCain and
Palin would be doing now.
• The healthcare bill is similar. Without yet being able to study
it we know it makes many concessions to the insurance industry but it
does purport to provide government sponsored health care to 50
million people without it. Again, the working class will understand a
strong left movement to strengthen it, criticisms of the president
for freezing out the advocates of single payer. They, and we, will
not agree or have the nerve to argue that a health care bill is just
a reactionary trick or is of no actual benefit to working people.
PeopleGenuine Progressives Inside the Obama Administration.
There are hundreds of people in significant positions in the Obama
administration who are genuine progressives and took those positions
to carry out, and struggle for, anti-racist, strong environmental,
civil rights and civil liberties policies within the Obama
administration. We know some of them are already sick about some of
his moves to absolve the West from genocide in Africa, and very
disappointed on all the deals needed to pass "any climate bill." We
are working with members of the Obama administration on our national
campaign, Transit Riders for Public Transportation (TRTP). The fact
that there are people at the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal
Transit Administration, and Department of Justice who are open to
proposals and demands coming out of mass work gives hope to
organizing. The "locked door" policies of Bush/Cheney made many
people feel that any organizing to change national policy was
hopeless. If you have a base, built on clear demands that reflect an
environmental justice, anti-war, anti-racist and anti-imperialist
perspective, with an e-organizing tactical plan to put issues in
front of Congress and other elected officials, there are openings, at
times quite small, but good organizers figure out how to develop a
base that can drive a wedge into that opening, and in the united
front, find allies inside the Obama administration.
We do not have to be told the obvious: most of the Democrats are very
difficult to work with and many are downright reactionary. But we are
already working with more than 28 congresspeople, including a letter
by Illinois Congressman Lapinsky to get an increase in operation
funding into the federal transportation bill. Congressperson Russ
Carnahan of St. Louis has a marker bill proposing that 30% to 50% of
all funds in the bill to be available for operating funds. We are
working to change the language to "dedicated" rather than "flexible"
because construction lobbyists will want all the money for highway
building. More than 15 community groups are working with Transit
Riders for Public Transportation to educate members in their
communities and put pressure on local congress people. The stakes are
high. If we, Amalgamated Transit Union, and other civil rights and
environmental allies pass this provision, it will generate tens of
thousands of new green jobs for union bus drivers, mechanics, and
service workers. It will also allow dramatic fare reductions and
service expansion. If it is defeated, working people will be faced
with a dead job market for bus and rail personnel, high transit
fares, and massive service cuts. Only in an Obama administration
could this struggle be had with Congress. We cannot imagine any group
of pro-socialist bus drivers and riders who would not think the
election of Obama is helping their organizing and giving them a
chance for a better life. In this case they look to the Left, to the
Strategy Center, to TRPT, as leading that battle and want to join us.
Militant and Direct Challenges Against Obama's Most Reactionary Positions.
There are organizers already speaking out in direct opposition to
many of the policies of the Obama administration. The Rachel Maddow
Show on MSNBC has guests almost every night criticizing the
administration from the left. She showed footage of 25 gay and
lesbian demonstrators being arrested in front of the White House
challenging Obama's weak policies on gay rights including his
vacillation on ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the military. There
are obvious challenges to the murderous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and the incursions against Pakistani sovereignty. Challenges to the
weakness of the climate bill, challenges to Obama's refusal to attend
the U.N. World Conference Against Racism.
But the goal of left organizing is not simply to "expose" President
Obama statement-by-statement, act-by-act, as if we are keeping a
scorecardalthough that is a contribution to movement building. The
primary challenge is to build movements rooted in the Black and
Latino working class and communities as part of a broad united front
to demand that the U.S. government retract and reverse its policies.
This campaign assumes we have a base in our communities, know members
of Congress, are building respected and powerful mass movements that
can directly challenge the administration and have some tactical plan
to win victories, often small and incremental, but victories that
force the government to change policies. For isn't that the point of
revolutionary organizing? In our work, we keep repeating a
formulation based on Frederick Douglass, Huey Newton, and many
grassroots organizers: "Power is the capacity to get people and
institutions to do things they otherwise would not do." While we plan
to play an active role in aggressively challenging Obama's
reactionary statements and policies, we want to differentiate
ourselves from those who condemn his actions in order to prove that
there is no strategic difference between moderate corporate
imperialists (Obama) and the pro-fascist Right (Bush). We think the
building of movements on the ground with working class people would
not allow that formulation because it contradicts their everyday
experience and reading of history.
The next goal will be to develop some organizing muscle behind one of
these demands and have a mass action at the White House or in a major
urban center, with a broad united front criticizing the president,
taking him on, and demanding that he and Congress change their
policies. We understand that imperialism is a stage of capitalism not
a policy (thus we are not asking the president to "end imperialism").
But whether on his deplorable remarks in Africa, the bombing of
civilians in Pakistan, the clear efforts to permanently occupy Iraq
and Afghanistan, the Left needs to lead. But we also need to build a
broad united front against his policies, to pressure the most liberal
members of Congress to stand up to the president, reach out to those
who worked for Obama, prominent clergy, people who it is understood
are taking a risk to openly oppose the administration and carry out
actions that are tactically creative, that force media coverage, and
find a way to put the policy directly in his way. The specifics of
those tactics will be another discussion but there is no arguing here
for a "honeymoon" period. The question is how we can organize
protests that are forceful and impactful.
Taking the opening: Theory and Practice of Transformative Organizing
Our theory of Transformative Organizing will be explained in far
greater detail in Eric's forthcoming book: The Twenty Five Qualities
of the Successful Organizer: A Journey in Transformative Organizing.
This theory is a unique synthesis of revolutionary theory and history
that has been developed and evolved through four decades of Eric's
practice. For this discussion Eric has summarized his formulations
into three interrelated concepts:
1) Transformative Organizing directly challenges the systems of
racism and imperialism and is based on an international united front
against imperialism. As such it is working to weaken, isolate, and
defeat the U.S. Empire in its specific occupations, wars and
interventions throughout the world.
2) Transformative Organizing is based on an ideological challenge to
the master narrative of the empire itself. It brings new ideas to the
working class, and works to transform their worldview through
counter-hegemonic demands, revolutionary organizations, and political
education. It argues that anti-racism and anti-imperialism are mass
questions and transformative organizers must be bringing these ideas
to mass arenas, not having left conversations in the office and
narrow, pragmatic conversations in the field.
3) Transformative Organizing transforms the organizers themselves as
they listen to the people, consolidate their strengths, observe and
correct their own weaknesses, take on the police, the corporations,
the state, and get stronger through deep ties to the people and a
collective introspective and self-critical process.
(We urge comrades to address this theoretical frame for organizing
and to acknowledge its origins and initiation.)
Talking About Our Own Organizing Work
We are not writing an article about "where the Left should go." We
are writing about what we think and what we do and what we hope is
helpful to others in this discussion. We think further discussion of
the organizing work of the Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union will
help. Obviously we do think some of our conclusions can contribute to
the broader conversation about strategy, tactics, and future direction.
How Do We See the Strategic Alliance of Forces, What Is Our Base, and
How Are We Building that Base
There is a long and arduous process in front of us about how to unite
forces whose primary self-definition is "left." Among community
organizers, those carrying out a strategy of Transformative
Organizing, rooted in the anti-racist anti-imperialist united front,
and those carrying our a more "pragmatic" organizing there are many
political disagreements. But one critical currency of discussion is
"what is your base, what you deliver. On a given Saturday how many
working class members can you bring to the corner of Crenshaw and
King in LA, 125th Street and Malcolm X Avenue in Harlem."
20 Year Left Experiment
For the Strategy Center for the past 20 years we have focused on four
integrated tasks.
• Consolidating the organization on clear demands against the
system, reflected in our publication Towards a Program of Resistance
(available at www.AhoraNow.org.) and evolved in practice since it's
writing in 2000.
• Focusing on the strategic alliance of the oppressed nationality
working class, the oppressed nationality peoples in the United
States, the broad anti-imperialist united front of all races and
classes, and direct solidarity with Third World struggles against
U.S. imperialism. Recruiting and training leaders to transformative
organizations and that strategic view.
• Building a strong campaign driven organization with significant
working class membership based on those politics.
• Bringing those demands against the system in campaigns, campaign
we are fighting to win.
The Strategy Center is a left institution, an experimental form that
seeks to contribute to building a united front against U.S.
imperialismrooted in the strategic alliance of the multi-racial,
multi-national working class in alliance with oppressed peoples and
nations both inside and outside the United States. In this alliance,
the Black and Mexicano/ Latino working classes have a unique,
essential, pivotal, and irreplaceable rolesimultaneously as leaders
of the entire working class and as leaders of their own people's
struggle for full equality, national liberation, and self-determination.
The Strategy Center, given focus by the anti-racist, anti-imperialist
united front and the theory of Transformative Organizing has
generated what we call "theory-driven practice'the generation of
mass campaigns of the working class and oppressed nationalities, in
particular the Black and Latino workers and communities. We want to
highlight two of our mass campaigns to give you a sense of our depth
and practicethe Bus Riders Union/Sindicato de Pasajeros and
Community Rights Campaign. These campaigns are historically relevant
on their own terms, but also have real relevance to any transition to
an uncharted socialist future.
Bus Riders Union/Sindicato de Pasajeros
The Bus Riders Union (BRU)/Sindicato de Pasajeros (SDP)'s
transportation organizing is strategic because it's a race, gender,
economic justice, environmental, public health, and climate justice
campaign all packed into one. In 1994, our civil rights intervention
was to re-strengthen a grassroots Black and Latino led civil rights
campaign that pushed not only for the enforcement of Title VI of the
1964 Civil Rights Act (at a time when its enforcement was waning),
but also to push the bounds of working class communities of color
urgent demands to protect and expand the social wage with a clear
goal to "redistribute wealth" in a time period of lowered expectation
and neo-liberal dogma. Since 1994, The Bus Riders Union/Sindicato de
Pasajeros has worked at reaching over 500,000 daily bus riders, 90%
of whom are Mexican/Latino, Black and Asian/Pacific Islander, 60% of
whom are women, and 60% of whom have family incomes under $12,000 a year.
Los Angeles buses are the factories of the multi-national working
classfactories literally on wheelsin a period of heighten
segregated communities and the dispersive nature of the service
economythe bus is the primary space to find and interact with Black
security officers, Mexican restaurant workers, young Chicano fast
food workers, Salvadorian nannies, Guatemalan housekeepers, Black
cafeteria workers, Korean elders, Filipino homecare workers, garment
workers, light manufacturing factory workers, entry level nurses,
janitors, retired elders, the unemployed, the disabled community, and
multiracial working class high school and community college students.
We have raised this life experience of the working class into a
theory of transit racism and the bus as a new center of working class
life, struggle, and organization.
The BRU/SDP's explicitly ideological approach to organizing,
reflected in its slogans on posters, leaflets and T-shirts throughout
the city 'Fighting Transit Racism,' '1,000 More Buses, 1,000 Less
Police,' 'Stop the Corporatization of Government,' 'Mass
Transportation is a Human Rights,' 'Stop the Bi-Partisan Racist Mass
Incarceration Complex,' 'Build a City for Human and Civil Rights, Not
a Police/Prison State'explicitly challenges the accommodation
pro-corporate, pro-police policies of many former civil rights, labor
movement and left activists who are now powerful Democratic elected
officials. We are directly confronting the internal class dynamics
within the Black and Chicano/Latino community between the growing
multi-racial political and economic elite and the working class Black
and Mexicano/ Latino communities in a region with over 10 million
people and a State with over 34 million people.
What Our Work Looks Like and Our Reach
The Bus Riders Union/Sindicato de Pasajeros has been built as a
primarily Black and Latino organization with a solid Korean base, and
a small, but strong group of anti-racist white working class members.
Teams of organizers and members leave each morning to recruit new
members, and educate and engage bus riders and drivers. Our key
objective is to win political space on key bus lines and
neighborhoods for our demands. We have historically organized on four
major bus line for the past 14 yearsthe Wilshire line which carries
over 90,000 daily riders between East Los Angeles and Santa Monica,
Vermont line which carries 60,000 daily riders between South Los
Angeles and Hollywood, Crenshaw line which carries over 20,000 daily
riders with a large Black bus riding population and Soto line which
carries over 20,000 daily riders with Chicano and Mexico bus riders
that travel the Chicano barrios of Southeast Los Angeles, Boyle
Heights and Highland Park.
We organize on several L.A. buses six days a week. We do specific
community/bus line organizing in South Los Angeles, Pico-Union,
Koreatown, East Los Angeles; and we have a growing base in the San
Fernando Valley. In periods of heighten struggle, we can pass out
over 30,000 flyers and leaflets in a month. We speak and carry
organizing materials in three languagesSpanish, Korean and English.
We can generate hundred of signed and personal noted post-cards and
phone calls to target the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)
Board and City Council members.
As we board a bus, we often open up and break the ice by making a
short and loud pitch, such as "My name is Esperanza, I am a Bus
Riders Union organizer, a civil rights organization that is fighting
the MTA's racist fare increase and we are here to recruit new members
to the struggle." We cover the whole bus, flyer-it out, and recruit
bus riders. We engage riders on the root causes that impact the L.A.
transit systeminstitutionalized racism, the corporatization of
public policy and resources, and the ecological, moral, and ethical
impacts of the massive subsidy to the single-passenger automobile and
highway expansion. Our membership dues are $10-$50 a year. You can
start a membership for $1. Organizers and members collect phone
numbers and emails to follow up on one-on-one conversations. Each
year we recruit between 350-500 new dues paying members.
The Bus Riders Union/Sindicato de Pasajeros has monthly membership
meeting. Every third Saturday of the month (with no fail over the
past 14 years) we host a monthly general membership meeting that
attracts between 90 to 100 people. Between 15-25 new people come
through to our new member orientation meeting, where over 80% of
those who participate in the orientation meeting become annual dues
paying members.
The demographics of the monthly membership meeting on average is
about 40% Mexican/Latino, 40% Black and 10% Asian/Pacific Islander,
10% white. The monthly meeting is a major place to debate strategy
and tactics for the BRU fight, but it has also become an important
body that discuss national and international affairs from the massive
California prison expansion, to Hugo Chavez and Latin America Left,
to Global Warming and the U.S. government unwillingness to cooperate
in international green house gas reduction standards. We also vote on
the BRU's rejection or endorsement of statewide and countywide
propositionswith courageous votes rejecting the so-called 'parents
right to know' anti-choice propositions since 2004 and stand against
the anti-LBTQ California Proposition 8!
Our mobilization capacity has grown throughout the years, with its
most impressive mobilization on a weekday early morning MTA public
hearing with over 1,500 people that led to the LA County Fire
Marshals temporarily shutting the doors of the MTA $1 billion
headquarters. Over 400 bus riders testified, 99% of the riders
testifying against MTA's draconian fare increase and supporting the
Bus Riders Union. We have built an internal mobilization capacity of
about 300 people that we have been able to reach for several critical
mobilizations in the history of the BRU campaign. We have a monthly
mailing list that reaches over 1,000 people that is made up of
current dues paying and active members that are sent a monthly mailer
with the BRU monthly meeting agenda and current flyers and leaflets.
We have about 100 active membership base that attends at least four
BRU monthly members meetings annually. We have a solid leadership of
50 BRU members building critical leadership and tactical bodies.
Community Rights Campaign
The Community Rights Campaign has evolved out of a strategic and
tactical intervention from our own practice. Strategic in the sense
that after the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South
Africa and its primary demand for Reparation and Restitution for the
continent of Africa and the African Diaspora from the crimes and
legacies of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, we felt that we needed to
give specific attention to the demands for the Black Nation and one
clear manifestation of national oppression is the criminal legal
system of the United States that has locked up over one million
Blacks. An important revolutionary reform to win is to dismantle what
we have coined the racist re-enslavement complexa challenge not only
to end a clearly horrific violation of human rights, but also to
challenge the ideological underpinning of the role of police,
suppression and repression in the formation and maintenance of the
system. The tactical intervention was out of our direct experience in
our grassroots organizing within the Bus Riders Union where we
literally were meeting men and women on the bus heading to serve time
in LA County jail or as we organized young people and parents we saw
the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles School Police
Department handing out truancy and tardy tickets to become the first
interface of the criminal legal system for Black and Brown youth.
On any day in Los Angeles, Community Rights and Bus Riders Union
organizers are working at local high schools and on the buses to
build a movement to fight the growing police state, and the
criminalization of Black and Latino communities.
What we want: Free the U.S. 2 million! We need to free the prisoners
and end the criminalization of oppressed nationality communities. In
1980, at the height of the Reagan administration's law and order
regime, there were 500,000 people in U.S. prisons. Today, there are
2.3 million. These are our sisters and brothers. Of those 2.3 million
human beings almost 1 million are Black and more than 500,000 are
Latino. This level of structural racism is a human rights violation
against internally oppressed peoples. We must build a national and
international movement for self-determination and against national
oppression both inside and outside the borders of the United States.
We challenge the escalating rate of imprisonment among Black,
Chicano/Latino peoples, immigrants, and working people. The U.S. has
moved from being the biggest slaveholder in the world to becoming the
biggest jailer in the world. We see our work in Los Angeles, as well
as in California, as helping build a national and international
movement to free the prisoners.
We wanted to work more directly to confront the massive incarceration
rates of young people of color and particularly the Black and Latino
community and decided that we would concentrate our work two fold as
part of a broader movement: 1) to stop the racist "cradle to jail
cell" pipeline by addressing the role of the schools, what we call
preprisoning, and 2) contesting the growing police/prison state
(budgetary/legal jurisdiction) through the growing criminalization of
urban life through police enforcement policies (i.e., gang
injunctions and broken windows) and racist criminal justice
initiatives (i.e., Three Strikes, minimum sentencing, war on drugs).
Our goal over the next couple of years its to make inroads at the Los
Angeles Unified School District with over 700,000 student. Our
intervention is to take low-income/working-class Black and Latino
high-school students and parents from Los Angeles public schools,
particularly in South Los Angeles, Mid-City and the San Fernando
Valley, and train them in organizing and campaign development so that
they can be the change agents within a system that tracks them into
prisons and not Princeton's.
Growing Membership
Taking Action is our school based student led form. We have over 60
active participants of Taking Action at Cleveland High School. This
group meets twice a month on campus that attracts up to 40 students.
That reaches out to base of 3,800 at Cleveland High. This group has
been meeting over four years at Cleveland High School in Reseda in
the San Fernando Valley.
We have build solid base at Westchester High Taking Action with over
40 active participants. This group meet twice a month on campus that
attracts up to 25 students. That reaches out to a base of 1,800 at
Westchester. In fact, the Taking Action groups has been able to
survey over 75% of their entire population in our Pre-Prison incident
form and survey.
We have built a monthly Community Rights Campaign meeting that has
attracted between 30-40 participants from all around the city over
the past three months. These meeting have also attracted our first
serious level of parents and older concerned adults to our Community
Rights Campaign. Our goal is to reach at least 50-60 members by the
end of the year.
The Community Rights Campaign has built critical institutions of
leadership and organizing skill like the Summer Youth Leadership
Academy that has trained successfully over 30 youth over three
summers, who have in turn recruited scores of other youth into their
Taking Action chapters or BRU/SDP activities. We have also instituted
a Spring Break Taking Action weekwhere we have recruited dozens of
youth from many high schools in the region to take a week of their
spring break vacation to recruit on MTA buses on critical issues like
war and militarism and pre-prison complex.
The Community Rights Campaign and Bus Riders Union Drum Corp has
recruited and sustained impressive youth mobilization, over the past
six years, in opposition to the U.S. invasion and war on Iraq, we
have mobilized over 150 youth to anti-war demonstration each year and
the Community Rights Campaign youth base have also been a critical
base in defense of immigrant rights under our banner for Open
Borderswhere over 50-75 students have marched with dozens
of BRU/SDP members and allies at the May 1st mobilizations for
immigrant rights over the past four years.
Conclusion
In Los Angeles we have been carrying on a left experiment for 20
years. Our work focuses on raising the political consciousness of all
working people, providing an organized form where they can learn,
grow, and become organizers. To be clear, we are not talking about
"working people" as some abstract entity. These are our members, our
leadersthis is us. More than 100 people, 40 Black, 40 Latino, 10
Korean, and 10 white, majority women, majority working class are
reaching out to hundreds and thousands of people every day. There are
more than 1,000 people involved in Strategy Center projects over a year.
We focus on building the anti-racist, anti-imperialist united front.
We work to generate a left "think tank/act tank." We work on
developing theories and formulations to unite people and give focus
to their work. We talk about "theory driven practice, practice driven
theory" and have evolved the theory of Transformative Organizing to
give greater clarity to ourselves, those in the BRU/SDP, National
School for Strategic Organizing, Summer Youth Organizing Academy.
This article reflects that theory and practice. It reflects the full
consolidation and agreement of more than 100 of the most dedicated
leaders and has massified most its concepts to reach thousands of
working people in Los Angeles.
We focus on our practice to engage other groups in a discussion of
their own practice. We see this work taking on a growing national and
international focus . We see ourselves allied with the growing Third
World Left and in particular the impressive work of the Cubans,
Venezuelans, and Bolivians, with Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Evo
Morales as present day models of anti-imperialist power. We see the
organized racist, fascist Right reflected in the Republican party and
its right-wing thugs and paramilitary groups as the main danger. We
see a relationship of unity and struggle with the Obama
administration, unity with its progressive actions, unity in a united
front against the racist, fascist Right, and struggle with its many
and growing reactionary policies. We have put forth the theory and
practice of our organizing work and some of the very specific
reflections of Black and Mexican/Latino leadership, working class
leadership, and women's leadership to generate a discussion of theory
and practice. We are very appreciative of Z Magazine for taking this
important initiative and creating a space that in itself takes a lot
of organizing work. We look forward to the debate and discussion with
the goal of building a more unified Left in the U.S. that can fight
for the interests of the multi-national working class, the oppressed
nationality communities, and all progressive people who want to join
a united front against imperialism. This can provide more help to our
sisters and brothers in the Third World who need a stronger
resistance movement against an aggressive U.S. Empire.
--
Eric Mann is the director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angles.
Manuel Criollo is the lead organizer of the Bus Riders Union.
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