CA/Community Assembly Continuations: Difference between revisions

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(→‎The Necessity of Organizing: Continuing edits.)
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* Connecting communities, near and far
* Connecting communities, near and far


== The Necessity of Organizing ==
== Organizing Is Essential ==
During the past four decades, [[wikipedia:Right-wing politics|Right-wing]] "[[wikipedia:Think tank|think tanks]]" and other pro-corporate front groups have so successfully "pushed an agenda that spread wealth at the top and insecurity below" that one of the genre's early innovators declared "mission accomplished" and closed up shop during president George W. Bush's second term.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9901EEDD1E39F93AA15756C0A9639C8B63&pagewanted=all Goals Reached, Donor on Right Closes Up Shop]</ref> For those pushing pro-corporate, anti-democratic policy agendas the loss of one front group was little cause for deep concern; organizations pushing out a continual flood of right-wing propaganda have proliferated exponentially over recent decades.<ref>[http://www.publiceye.org/research/policy.html Resources For Studying Right-Wing Funding and Policy-Making]</ref>
During the past four decades, [[wikipedia:Right-wing politics|Right-wing]] "[[wikipedia:Think tank|think tanks]]" and other pro-corporate front groups have so successfully "pushed an agenda that spread wealth at the top and insecurity below" that one of the genre's early innovators declared "mission accomplished" and closed up shop during president George W. Bush's second term.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9901EEDD1E39F93AA15756C0A9639C8B63&pagewanted=all Goals Reached, Donor on Right Closes Up Shop]</ref> For those pushing pro-corporate, anti-democratic policy agendas the loss of one front group was little cause for deep concern; organizations pushing out a continual flood of right-wing propaganda have proliferated exponentially over recent decades.<ref>[http://www.publiceye.org/research/policy.html Resources For Studying Right-Wing Funding and Policy-Making]</ref>


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=== Globalized Anti-Democracy ===
=== Globalized Anti-Democracy ===
The current economic order--variously characterized as "free-market capitalism," "neoliberalism," and "predatory capitalism"--has devolved from acting merely anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian and utterly ruthless. Those traits continue to persist, but predatory capitalism has also become an existential threat to living beings on an relentlessly persecuted planet. It's a threat that will never go away voluntarily or quietly reform itself, although biospheric collapse<ref>[http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/biosphere-collapse-not-climate-change/ BIOSPHERE COLLAPSE, not “Climate Change”.]</ref> might kill it, while also snuffing out every living thing.
An anti-democratic economic and social order has "infested"<ref>[http://twitter.com/#!/Colttech/statuses/156653134696026112 Video: Russia's Neoliberal infestation just another face of evil- a destructive force "Russian faux Left" bit.ly/ytXBaA]</ref> a growing number of economies across the world. It's a "globalized"  marketplace characterized by extraction, consumption, widening inequality and massive exploitation. "Resources" are extracted to the point of depletion, provoking continual social, political and environmental mayhem in the process. Billions of ordinary people are transformed into consumers of products and services, with each consumer heavily conditioned to feel an unquenchable thirst for "more." A relative handful of multinational corporate entities profit while countless humans and other living beings, and their habitats, are degraded or destroyed.


This economic and social order has integrated into a growing number of economies across the world (called an "infestation"<ref>[http://twitter.com/#!/Colttech/statuses/156653134696026112 Video: Russia's Neoliberal infestation just another face of evil- a destructive force "Russian faux Left" bit.ly/ytXBaA]</ref> by some observers). It's a "globalized"  marketplace characterized by extraction, consumption, widening inequality and massive exploitation. "Resources" are extracted to the point of depletion, provoking continual social, political and environmental mayhem in the process. Billions of ordinary people are transformed into consumers of products and services, with each consumer heavily conditioned to feel an unquenchable thirst for "more." A handful of multinational corporations profit at the expense of everyone else.
The fact that pro-corporate forces have captured virtually all major governments across the globe has unleashed profound consequences. They've brought an economic order variously characterized as "free-market capitalism," "neoliberalism," and "predatory capitalism." These "free-market" arrangements produce anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian and utterly ruthless social policies. As a result, predatory capitalism has become an existential threat to all living beings inhabiting our relentlessly persecuted planet. It's a threat that will not voluntarily go away or quietly begin to reform itself, although biospheric collapse<ref>[http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/biosphere-collapse-not-climate-change/ BIOSPHERE COLLAPSE, not “Climate Change”.]</ref> might kill it.


A neo-feudal social order is taking shape as familiar historical trends reassert themselves: extreme wealth concentration; social, economic and political domination over societies by a tiny clique of "elites"; environmental degradation and collapse.<ref>[http://michael-hudson.com/2010/05/neoliberalism-and-the-counter-enlightenment/ NeoLiberalism and the Counter-Enlightenment: The Counter-Enlightenment, its Economic Program – and the Classical Alternative]</ref> Indeed, for much of the planet's human population, these conditions have persisted, and now in the "rich," developmentally "mature" "democracies" these chickens are coming back home to roost.<ref>[http://links.org.au/node/2442 Tariq Ali on riots in England: Why here and now?; Neoliberalism’s chickens coming home to roost]</ref>
A neo-feudal social order is taking shape as familiar historical trends reassert themselves: extreme wealth concentration; social, economic and political domination over societies by a tiny clique of "elites"; environmental degradation and collapse.<ref>[http://michael-hudson.com/2010/05/neoliberalism-and-the-counter-enlightenment/ NeoLiberalism and the Counter-Enlightenment: The Counter-Enlightenment, its Economic Program – and the Classical Alternative]</ref> Indeed, for much of the planet's human population, these conditions have never entirely gone away. Now in the "rich," developmentally "mature democracies" these chickens are coming back home to roost.<ref>[http://links.org.au/node/2442 Tariq Ali on riots in England: Why here and now?; Neoliberalism’s chickens coming home to roost]</ref>


Control over one's own economic livelihood is quickly diminishing, creating a "[[wikipedia:Race to the bottom|race to the bottom]]" effect as growing numbers of economically imperiled people attempt to sustain themselves by any available means. As this wretched race (to the bottom) accelerates, it leaves leaves expanding human and environmental catastrophe in its wake.
As wealth and control over resources concentrate into fewer and fewer hands, control over one's own economic livelihood rapidly evaporates. This creates a "[[wikipedia:Race to the bottom|race to the bottom]]" effect as growing numbers of economically imperiled people attempt to sustain themselves by any available means. As this wretched race (to the bottom) accelerates, it leaves leaves expanding human and environmental catastrophe in its wake.


=== Institutional Failure ===
=== Institutional Failure ===

Revision as of 10:40, 22 May 2012

Let's build a movement together.

Community Assembly Continuations

On Saturday, May 5th, 2012 a coalition of 80 community, labor and social justice activists gathered at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland, Oregon to participate in a Community Assembly to Create a People's Budget.[1] One of the event's main objectives was to educate participants on the often opaque decision making that produces the City of Portland's annual budget. Another major objective was to show how budgets produced through genuine community participation contrast sharply with those produced behind closed doors, with little (if any) community input.

Participants also had an opportunity to educate each other about the struggles each faced in the current climate of economic austerity, imposed upon the citizenry by the same social and economic forces who demanded, and quickly received, massive bank and corporate bailouts. Students and parents from the Harriet Tubman Leadership Academy for Young Women talked about their ongoing struggle to take their school off the budget chopping block. Community activists from Right 2 Survive and Right 2 Dream Too described how cutbacks to already skimpy basic services for Portland's most vulnerable citizens heaped even more burdens on the already extraordinarily difficult lives of Portland's unhoused community. Laborers from Laborers' Local 483 showed how funds diverted to "urban renewal" projects result in the layoffs of city maintenance workers while further enriching bond-holding "investors."

The event's organizers also presented their research findings. The Community Assembly's "Where's the Money" group connected the dots on how urban renewal financing provides both investment opportunities and tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations while shifting tax burdens onto working people and main street businesses. Event organizer Shamus Cooke contrasted the "cuts only" approach--pitting vulnerable members against each other to fight over budgetary "crumbs from the table"--with community driven participatory budgeting initiatives. Although participatory budgeting approaches vary, the most democratic of them allow community members to control the entire budgetary process--from raising revenue to distributing funds and services.[2][3][4]

Throughout the five hour presentation, participants were encouraged to "share ideas on priorities & strategies" in table discussions and "report out" sessions, where a representative from each table shared concerns of the group from her/his table to the rest of the assembly. The assembly ended with a discussion on next steps: "short, medium and long term strategies" collaboratively decided upon by the assembly's participants.

A Brief History

The inaugural Community Assembly event on Saturday, May 5th was the culmination of more than six months of intensive planning involving close to a dozen labor organizers and social justice activists. Work began in November 2011 after the Occupy Portland Labor Solidarity Committee tasked a group of volunteers to form a subcommittee to organize and launch a participatory "people's budget" initiative. On November 20th, Mark Vorpahl--a local union steward, anti-war and Latin American Solidarity activist--distributed a link to The Peoples Movement Assembly Organizing Kit[5] to others on the newly formed committee.

Vorpahl explained that he wasn't necessarily suggesting the committee follow the template provided by the Peoples Movement Assembly Organizing Kit, but felt it could serve as "an example that we can use to adapt what is relevant to our project, exclude what isn't..." He also suggested the committee "bring unions, community groups, and, of course, the various constituencies of the Occupy Movement together in forming this project." Committee member Jennifer Sims saw the "success of the Peoples Assembly coming from including the jane's and joe's of the neighborhood," adding that the "Peoples Assembly ... could be the way to connect the people to the (Occupy) movement." Vorpahl boiled the down the email discussion to a handful of clarifying questions, which included:

  1. Why (do) we need a Peoples' Assembly?
  2. What would a Peoples' Assembly look like and do?
  3. Who are we going to approach as partners in building this?
  4. What are our next steps towards putting this proposal together?

The first several organizing meetups took place at the Lucky Lab tavern in Southeast Portland, but eventually moved to the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland. The meeting schedule also changed from weekday evenings to early Saturday afternoons, and participation grew from "three or four (people) in a bar" to about a dozen labor organizers and community activists in a church. The date for the inaugural Community Assembly event was initially set for Saturday, April 7th but moved to Saturday, May 5th to allow more time for outreach and organizing.

Post-Event Debrief

On Friday, May 11th, primary organizers got together in a downtown Portland conference room for "an excruciatingly long meeting" to debrief themselves on People's Budget event and discuss "next steps." There was general agreement that the event attracted an ethnically diverse group of community activists, but participation by representatives of labor organizations was relatively scant. Written feedback from participants was generally positive, sometimes even enthusiastic, with minor exceptions. Most organizers thought the event's presentations were effective, although some, including event facilitator Trudy Ann, hope to put future presentations through a more vigorous "dry run" before letting them go "live."

Organizers identified numerous opportunities for improvement. Erica suggested that organizers speak directly to the concerns of each labor organization they reach out to. Greg felt organizers should make stronger connections with private sector organizations. Lisa felt strongly that main street business owners must be brought into the mix. Shamus pushed for clarifying the overall focus, while Mark wanted to see clearer demands, and not linger over "what's possible." Luis saw the need to craft a clearer analysis. Dave couldn't refrain from making wisecracks.

Consensus centered on clarifying focus, crafting a strong analysis, taking the "show on the road," and building a strong, diverse movement. The "next steps" organizers agreed on were to produce a "horizon" or vision statement, write a report summarizing the May 5th event, engage participants--especially those expressing interesting in getting involved in the "continuations" process--in "one on one" dialog to pull in their input, and focus on "three or four" main ideas to fight for.

Building a Unified, Grassroots Movement

* Dave's notes (see below).

Effective movement building begins with a lot of hard work by outstanding volunteers endowed with dedication, talent, discipline and organization. Volunteers are the heart, soul and backbone of any legitimate community organizing effort. In fact, the inaugural Community Assembly to Create a People's Budget event on May 5th was produced with all-volunteer effort.

Each of the primary organizers dedicated a great deal of time and energy to make the Community Assembly inaugural event a success. Two volunteers in particular, Trudy Ann and Lisa Neef, performed event planning and outreach tasks that went well beyond what is customarily expected of volunteer grassroots organizers.

In order to build on this initial effort, even more is required. In taking our "show on the road," increased administrative demand likely as event planning, facilitation, community outreach, training, research, documentation and information management claim a larger share of the workload. As organizing ramps up, organizing efforts will also benefit greatly by access to an office or dedicated meeting space. For these and other reasons, we must add funding to the mix.

Areas immediately identifiable as potentially requiring additional capacity beyond the purely voluntary:

  1. Administrative talent
  2. Office / dedicated meeting space
  3. Office expenses, materials, etc.

Continual Organizing

"Show on the road" activities include planning, organizing and facilitating the following kinds of activities:
  • Upcoming assemblies
  • Post-assembly actions and follow-through events
  • Alliance building
  • Collaborative content development
  • Connecting organizations, groups and people
  • Connecting communities, near and far

Organizing Is Essential

During the past four decades, Right-wing "think tanks" and other pro-corporate front groups have so successfully "pushed an agenda that spread wealth at the top and insecurity below" that one of the genre's early innovators declared "mission accomplished" and closed up shop during president George W. Bush's second term.[6] For those pushing pro-corporate, anti-democratic policy agendas the loss of one front group was little cause for deep concern; organizations pushing out a continual flood of right-wing propaganda have proliferated exponentially over recent decades.[7]

One such corporate front group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), provides a useful case study. With nearly one-third of all sitting legislators, or more than 2,000 legislative members representing all 50 states in their pockets, ALEC shows the seriousness pro-corporate forces place on controlling the legislative behavior of each state to the fullest extent possible.[8]

Globalized Anti-Democracy

An anti-democratic economic and social order has "infested"[9] a growing number of economies across the world. It's a "globalized" marketplace characterized by extraction, consumption, widening inequality and massive exploitation. "Resources" are extracted to the point of depletion, provoking continual social, political and environmental mayhem in the process. Billions of ordinary people are transformed into consumers of products and services, with each consumer heavily conditioned to feel an unquenchable thirst for "more." A relative handful of multinational corporate entities profit while countless humans and other living beings, and their habitats, are degraded or destroyed.

The fact that pro-corporate forces have captured virtually all major governments across the globe has unleashed profound consequences. They've brought an economic order variously characterized as "free-market capitalism," "neoliberalism," and "predatory capitalism." These "free-market" arrangements produce anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian and utterly ruthless social policies. As a result, predatory capitalism has become an existential threat to all living beings inhabiting our relentlessly persecuted planet. It's a threat that will not voluntarily go away or quietly begin to reform itself, although biospheric collapse[10] might kill it.

A neo-feudal social order is taking shape as familiar historical trends reassert themselves: extreme wealth concentration; social, economic and political domination over societies by a tiny clique of "elites"; environmental degradation and collapse.[11] Indeed, for much of the planet's human population, these conditions have never entirely gone away. Now in the "rich," developmentally "mature democracies" these chickens are coming back home to roost.[12]

As wealth and control over resources concentrate into fewer and fewer hands, control over one's own economic livelihood rapidly evaporates. This creates a "race to the bottom" effect as growing numbers of economically imperiled people attempt to sustain themselves by any available means. As this wretched race (to the bottom) accelerates, it leaves leaves expanding human and environmental catastrophe in its wake.

Institutional Failure

A complex society striving to build and maintain any sort of healthy democracy relies on a number of primary institutions, including education, media, religious, legal, political, military and economic. If we judge the legitimacy of these institutions by their capacity to deliver the greatest benefits to the largest number of people, they are all failures.

For instance: instead of instilling a genuine desire to learn, schools teach pupils to passively accept a culture of rigid hierarchy, domination and control. Too many church "leaders" focus more energy on demonizing folks they've already damned rather imparting the universal principle of doing "to others what you would have them do to you." Doing so ensures that the "flock" is kept divided and conquered.

Foreign military invasions are perpetrated to gain geostrategic advantage or to pursue resource domination, actions that degrade the actual security of the "homeland." Legal systems are degraded to favor those with sufficient political and economic wherewithal to corrupt the law. Politicians, much like harlots, sell themselves to anyone ready and willing to pay. Economic systems are rigged to favor a tiny elite at the expense of everyone else.

Managed Ignorance

It's instructive to look at our society's relationship with our major media. Major corporations have captured all of our primary media organizations. These are private companies that sell products to make a profit. They are not in the business of delivering vital information in order to serve the common good, especially if such information potentially threatens profits.

Put another way, we've allowed a handful of big businesses, motivated by profit and social control, to manage the information (including disinformation, propaganda, sales pitches and so on) we're exposed to. This is insane. Corporate-owned media companies have produced one of the most propagandized and heavily deluded societies the world has ever known.

References


* The views expressed belong to Dave Myers and do not necessarily reflect the views of other Community Assembly organizers.

Return to Community Assembly Continuations Main Page.