paidoutlander

I sent the following email to Feminist Economist Nancy Folbre, after hearing an interview with her at Making Contact.  http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2009/0709.html

She has a blog at  http://blogs.umass.edu/folbre/

hello,

i just listened to your interview that was posted on the making contact website.  i am a white man and a child care worker.  i was really struck by what you said about a pink collar stimulus as a different kind of long term investment that should be being talked about in addition to "green jobs."

i have a lot of thoughts in response to what you said, but i guess mostly was wondering if you know of specific initiatives to effect policy to push for more support for caring jobs as part of economic stimulus?  i am a member of NAEYC, but i haven't noticed them pushing anything immediate, with an economic stimulus frame.

just on a personal note.  i ended up quitting my previous day care job in august. i knew the economy was headed down a scary road but i made the assumption that demand for child care would actually increase as more people sought second jobs, or as family members who had been watching children decided they needed to re-enter the work force; i figured eventually as folks gave up looking for work and unemployment increased, people would start pulling their kids out of day care, but i thought that would come later.  what i found though was that by november, the place i had been working had to lay off staff, the agency that administers head start in my area instituted a hiring freeze, and the county was looking at closing one of its three high quality child care centers (tragically the center that specializes in working with special needs kids.)  meanwhile i started hearing from friends in the school system about cuts being made there. i have no idea how many
home based day cares in the area have closed there doors. 

i ended up finding a job i am really happy about at the YWCA, but i was just struck by how short sided it was that care and education of children was on the leading end of job loss in my area. as you stated so well in your interview, not only is early childhood education and care important investment in our future, but its availability is so critical to folks being able to find and hold down jobs. 

thanks,

jonathan

Hello.

I am now interested in learning more about the platformists.  I am embarrassed to admit that I shied away from learning much about the anarchist communist tradition solely because of the communism part.  (Of course I understand that it  is  c-communism not C-Communisim.)

"And finally, yes, it was a mostly townie, middle class group, and I felt uncomfortable.  Had it been a bunch of farmers and mill workers, even though the politics likely would have been more conservative, I would have been more in my element."

You know the truth is groups like KFTC and SOCM and individual supporters like me are really guilty of believing that these organizations have more of a working class base than they really do.  It is frustrating. SOCM's roots really were in a truly working class struggles around taxation of big land companies and strip mining. And that identity is really important to the organization, but there is this on going identity crisis within the organization about class.  It seems like middle class liberals are better at figuring out how to work with in the non-profit industrial complex and the fact that SOCM is often labeled as an environmental group  also made it easy for white middle class liberals to take a lot of ownership over the organization. 

As an organizer it was something we worried about a lot: why is it that professionals and retiree's come to dominate local meetings and the organization.  We knew the answer was classism, but could quite figure out where to go from there.    (Actually I think we had some ideas but didn't make them a priority.)

I know that there is this really dynamic space where more conservative, more working class folks, get moved to take action that goes beyond their immediate self-interest because they have experienced success through organizing, and have had experiences that make it clear that their goals and struggles are completely linked with those of other folks.  I think it is even possible that sometimes liberals (middle class and professional) are part of the glue that can stick this together.  For instance by supporting a voting rights plank in the first place, liberals help create an opportunity where by disparate parts of the working class base of the organization (in SOCM's case, white folks in east Tenn. and  Black members in middle and west Tenn.)  are able to challenge each other, learn from each other, etc.    I think it also may be true that the kinds of organizational structures that the non-profit industrial complex requires and middle class folks are so good at navigating, may help hold a group together while it works in that dynamic space.  But if everybody's politics get watered down in the process,  and white middle class liberals take over the organization, it is not really worth it.

An explicit class analysis is probably what is needed, but what mainstream organizations have that?  Even unions which are in their structure class based rarely manage an explicit class analysis.  Honestly, it seems like community groups (like Labor Community Strategy Center) that do have an explicit class analysis come off a little creepy.  (And at least in the South, violence perpetrated against workers from Harlan Co, KY to Gastonia, NC, during militant class based struggles in the '30s, probably make people a little wary of joining up with an organization that talks about class.) Excuses, excuses.

Anyway I think your reasoning for being frustrated with and even suspicious of KFTC, is correct.  Despite this I find something really hopeful about these groups, and hope that people will continue to try to figure out how to work within them.     
    
Thanks for your thoughts/thinking.

Jonathan

Today I was working on raking leaves out of the culverts along the road up to where I live, and was thinking about how I spend a little bit of time each day reading other people's blogs.  I was also thinking about how I have over the last year been sending out emails (sometimes unorganized rants and sometimes better thought out letters) to friends and family about my concerns and hopes, about politics, the economy etc, a bunch over the last year.  I thought, that at least as a way to structure my own thinking, it might be useful to start organizing some of these emails, and I thought this blog might be as good as place as any to do so.

www.southernstudies.org/2008/12/us-senate-calls-hearing-on-tenn-coal-ash-disaster.html


The negligence that allowed this spill to happen is so sad and so scary. I am pretty sure that I read about it first on the Facing South blog on Christmas Day.  I can not even imagine how devastating this disaster has been to the communities around the Kingston Steam Plant.

I have to say though, that this was not just negligence by TVA for allowing a catastrophic failure in their impoundment.  The negligence is really that of the whole coal combustion industry and regulatory apparatus, as well as legislative and executive branches of government and environmental groups, that have seen the main "problem" to be overcome with coal combustion as an air pollution problem.  Instead of realizing that at every step: coal mining, transportation, combustion, and the disposal of coal combustion waste, the coal to energy process threatens people's health, heritage and our environment.  The response to concerns about air pollution at coal fired power plants has been to create a toxic solid/liquid waste problem.  Instead of toxins being diluted in the air we all have to breath (which of course is not a good option)they are collected and concentrated and stored in specific local communities.  We shouldn't have had a "wake up call" in
Martin County several years ago, with the disaster there, and it unconscionable that we've had a second reminder of the problems of coal combustion waste now in Roane County, Tenn.

On top of my frustration that this disaster was ever allowed to happen, or maybe more correctly was bound to happen because of our failure to address the problems inherent in the entire coal to energy process, I am also frustrated that Southern Alliance for Clean Energy continues to be a prominent voice in coverage of this issue.   For the last decade SACE has flirted with the idea of clean coal and at times out right endorsed coal gasification. While SACE has at times acted in solidarity with folks facing the unclean energy experience of coal extraction, the organization has focused on coal as an air pollution problem, that is coal energy is unclean energy only so far as it makes our air dirty.  I think it is this narrow focus on air pollution as the only problem associated with energy derived from coal, on the part of environmental groups, policy makers, and the coal and energy industries that led to this disaster.  TVA's negligence just pushed it over

hopefrompeople.com/2008/12/16/the-need-for-change-the-need-for-hope-reclaiming-the-ethical-capital/

Was Obama's campaign grassroots or horizontal in any ideal way? No. Was it significant that it did rely of mobilizing volunteers in the South to talk to their neighbors about a Black candidate? Yes Was it significant that tons of folks in my county were engaged in some kind of political practice that was not limited to the privacy of the voting booth for a few minutes one day out of the year? Yes, of course it was.

 

As a volunteer for the campaign, I had no input on decisions -even very local strategy, there was very little opportunity for volunteers to talk with each other about their ideas and hopes, and whether I relied on web-based “decentralized” tools or the local field organizer, the process was very top down. But that doesn't mean my experience or the campagin was insignificant. It is significant that the Obama campaign contested the South; it is significant that they did that in part by relying on a volunteer base; and it is significant, that that volunteer base got to feel like our time, our interactions with our neighbors, our effort resulted in a win.

 

And while the “win” was still a win for capitalism, for the state, probably in some twisted way even for racism, it was still significant -- it was still historic. It matters that people, all sorts of people got excited about this campaign, and that it appeared their excitement lead to something. It matters that in the South a Black man was at the top of the Democrat ticket – this is the same Democrat party that used physical violence to keep African Americans away from the polls after reconstruction.

 

That's pretty complex, twisted –right? There are all kinds of ways easy and difficult ones, to problemitize this election, but it is hard to down play its significance.

 

I can't imagine the folks that are freaking out about this call, not being excited about a union victory where the workers who voted for that union, got out there and worked their butts off before the vote, were excited that they won, believed the win would result in real concrete change in their lives, and believed it was their win. We would still be excited despite the union drive being directed by a mainstream labor union – with a pro-capitalist agenda, that had not intention to be directly democratic; despite the election being overseen and endorsed by the state; despite the reality that any changes that the union would be able to bring about in that work place or in the lives of the people who worked their would just serve to continue to prop up capitalism. I bet in addition to being excited, we would desire to show up at the victory rally. We would show up in solidarity, wanting see our own hopes reflected in the hopefulness of the folks there. We would want to build relationships with the newly unionized workers and talk with them about their dreams, and about our ideas. Even if we weren't excited and didn't show up for the rally, we probably wouldn't protest outside: yelling at these workers that they had been duped, had betrayed their fellow workers, etc, etc. (Maybe the news media just didn't run the picture of the black bloc interrupting the Smithfield worker's victory march.)

 

Of course the Obama campaign and a union drive are very very different in form, in function, in outcome, in symbolic importance, in real implications for people's lives. Neither campaign represents a direct assault on capitalism, hierarchy or the state, but the participation of people in both kinds of campaigns represents potential.

 

 

Of course “social power” as it existed in the Obama campaign “is only *potentially* horizontal and collective but is *actually* vertical and exclusive.” But potentiality is where we reside. We believe in the potential for a different kind of society, that is the best we've got-- our hope and belief in the potential. And people together feeling agency, being hopeful – even though their participation was in something that was only potentially horizontal, that is people pushing up against alienation – that might just be folks considering the possibility that are not OK with their own oppression, people prepared to dream of something different.

http://hopefrompeople.com/2008/12/20/stray-the-course/

reading this really made me rethink the line i was taking after the ride,  the way i sort of shrugged off the inevitability of it feeling like i was caught up in something that was out of control and that i had to just support what ever any individual did because it was what i had signed up for.

(speaking of which did you hear this american life this week, about the influence that one person has over a group?  www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx )

given that the ride started almost an hour late.  why couldn't there have been space for people to talk through, before hand, what their hopes were for the ride, what level of confrontation they were interested in etc.  maybe that would have resulted in two rides... so what? 

on the one hand i was pretty worked up about greece, and had kind of resigned myself to participating in the ride no matter how it went because it seemed to be the only game in town.  i was feeling really isolated and so some interaction was preferable to none.  but when i think about it i wanted two things: 1) i wanted to be part of a group of people who were saying to the broader community - something is happening in greece, take a minute to check it out. 2) i wanted to be part of a conversation among a group of people who care about/desire dramatic political and economic change, where we talked about greece and talked about our own lives and communities and greece.

but for some reason, the only "conversation" that i was part of at the ride was that the manarchist with the bike trailer said to the group: Ok everyone is going to follow me and stick to my pace.  that was it. 

it seems pretty clear that there was some for thought among some group of folks at the ride, that there was some agreement and plan. it seems like there were a couple of options of how to deal with that.
- someone could have said, some of us have already talked about this ride, here is what we are thinking, if that sounds good to you should follow this guys lead. if not you are free to organizer your own plinter ride.
- someone could have been given the role of approaching "new" people as the arrived, asked them what their hopes were and filled them in to some extent to what had already been planned
- if "security" was a big concern, and people didn't want to disclose their plans before the ride started, then they could have had someone who would volunteer to lead a tame ride, and then the folks who had agreed among themselves that they were going to take a certain course of action could have splintered off and done so.

ben you were right! there needed to be people with babies.  that would have really changed everything.

yesterday i learned that the bush administration finally pushed through a change to the Stream Buffer Zone rule, a common sense rule that prohibits mining within 100 feet of a stream. this is despite two rounds of public hearings at which people overwhelmingly expressed support for enforcing the existing rule. yesterday i also learned that a member of Save Our Cumberland Mountains, Roxie Sells had passed on. Roxie lived at the base of a potential mountaintop removal site, when i got to visit with her as an organizer she talked about how the community where she used live as child had been completely destroyed by strip mining, the land scape had been so changed that though she wanted to visit her families old home place before she died, it was impossible to tell where it had been. as an older woman the threat of mountaintop removal literally loomed over her.

 

here are a couple of things I said in my email to Obama.

 

In the small towns and hollows of the Tennessee coalfields everyone is effected by resource extraction. And while there is no consensus about coal mining, no one would deny that coal has an impact on the lives of people in the region and no one would call coal clean. A national energy policy that includes mountaintop removal transforms a promise into a nightmare. Mountaintop removal destroys cultural heritage; timber, water, and wildlife resources; and completely alters the actual landscape. We must not make the Appalachian coal fields a national sacrifice zone. Just as it is unjust for those of us who live outside of the Gulf Coast to ask folks in Louisiana and Mississippi to abandon their homeland because of our ineptitude or our unwillingness to protect the region from natural disaster, it is unjust to pursue an energy policy which requires the mountain community removal that is part and parcel with mountaintop mining.

 

Mr. Obama I want to ask you to think back on your time as a community organizer (it was in fact this experience of yours that inspired me to volunteer for your campaign)and remember the folks that you spoke with, people who everyone else had given up on and taken for granted, who were ready to fight with all they had against incredible odds for their communities. It is the same with folks in the coal fields whose homes and communities are threatened by mountaintop removal. In Appalachia there is no Goliath that matches the coal industry and their mountaintop removal. Will you stand with us and help bring an end to the egregious practice of mountaintop removal?

 

I am really glad that I got to be part of your campaign, and I will be proud of the work I did regardless of what action you take on this issue. It was truly a historic campaign. But I promise you this: those of us who either cut or sharpened our teeth working on your campaign and who are outraged by mountaintop removal, will continue to put this issue before you until there is justice in the coal fields.

i decided to work on the obama campiagn here in nc, and
was feeling pretty sheepish about it. on ace's recommendation i read some stuff
his friend cindy had written about this year's campaign. so i have come to
terms with working on the campaign. but i don't think i could talk anyone into
registering to vote.

i guess one thing would be to sort of think through what are your reasons for
registering and then see if any of them really make sense.

for example is it because of a candidate or ballot initiative? and is there any
chance at all your vote matters for that candidate or ballot initiative? is it
to experience something? (being part of the process? voting in a "historic"
election? hoping to run into neighbors at the polls?) what do you loose by
"opting in" this time? is it worth what you hope to get?

i am glad that i have been volunteering with the obama campaign, there are
definitely so ways that i've been disappointed, but i think they are more
related to my unwillingness to give more than 8 hours a week (well and just that
it is a stupid national electoral campaign.) i have gotten to know the
neighborhoods around where i live better. i've gotten to talk to a couple
"progressive" type people about my politics, and i have met a few people that i
think i could reach out to if i was trying to do organizing around here. one
disappointment has been that i don't think i have gained any access to anyone
who think i could talk to about coal stuff nor have i been able to build a block
of volunteers that are as pissed about clean coal as i am. and of course there
is a ton of really obnoxiousness messianic hero worship type crap... but oh
well. and then there is the part that i feel most goofy about, which may or
may not be relevant to your trying to
decide about voting: being engaged in the election in someway has made me feel
more hopeful than not. oh well, again.

have ya'll been listening to the stuff on this american life about the financial
meltdown? i have found it all pretty helpful in feeling like i have some kind
of handle on this crazyness. (i mean i love this american life anyway.) i was
listening to the global pool of money one and i thought: dude as much as people
want to criticize neo-cons with their hubris, arrogance, fanaticism, whatever
when it comes to their foriegn policy and military world view, those neo-cons
don't have anything on the hubris, arrogance, fanaticism, etc of neo-liberals on
global economics over the past 20 years.

so as ya'll know, i think, i've been trying to figure out buying a car. i've
spent the morning trying to figure out if US made 2009 corolla's are considered
uaw-made. i just spoke to a pr person in detriot, it is all pretty ridiculous.
as it turns out they are, technically... it is one of those crazy gloablization
things. the parts are sourced from multiple countries, corollas with certain
vin numbers are are assembled in the US by uaw workers, other vin numbers are
assembled in canada by non-union workers and then some are assembled else where.
so weird. i guess there is a uaw fight at a toyota plant in kentucky. blah
blah solidairty blah blah.

oh one other thing, this william ayres stuff is tripping me out, he is the
editor of this social justice in early childhood education series i've been
reading. it kind of makes me wish i was working at the day care still so i
could point out to matt the libertarian leaning conservative christian lead
teacher i worked with that the terrorist that obama pals around with is also
cited in the text book for the education class he is taking at community
college.

one of my roommates in knoxville was obsessed with the whole idea of peak oil, obsessed in a unhealthy way.  my dad interestingly is also pretty freaked out.  i went to a talk at the anarchist book store in baltimore that i actually really liked. 

the guy's first point was that individual lifestyle changes are not going to effect this thing, and that it is not in the interest of corporate power to do so.  (low supply high demand = huge profits, talking about resource scarcity will make people scared which will make them not consume as much, and corporate power can count on state power to go to bat for it e.g. iraq and the iraq oil law.)  his second pointed out that usually in US history expansion of civil rights and liberties happen during times of economic expansion.  repressive regimes do well in times of economic contraction.  third i think he believes that most privileged folks in the global north will experience, fear and suffering all around them a rather soft landing rather than a crash, but will still see tons of chaos, fear, and suffering  around them.  his suggestion was though that there will be a window of  time where lots of people, will be open to really new and challenging ideas.
there will be a time when it is clear that dramatic change is a foot but before the right sweeps in to "save the day,"  that all options will be on the table.  his thinking is that folks on the left should organize themselves to get in front of the trend, not because our little al-gore-ian life style changes are going to reverse any trend, but so that we will be in a better position (not struggling to adapt and stay afloat)to take advantage of the window of time when people are most open to new ideas about social and economic reorganization.  anyway it was interesting to think about it all that way.


a second piece of thought and then i'll chill out:  i think that what we may be facing may be qualitatively different than the great depression, because i think we are up against some finality of resources, oil and water and because of other scary environmental stuff like global warming.  but it is interesting to think about that time.  so how did the left manage to push FDR towards New Deal social and economic reforms, when it really could have gone the other way.  why did the people of Spain respond to that time with a very progressive republic instead of fascism like in itally, germany,  portugual etc?  i heard a commentator the other day saying look the idea that the movement around obama could be similar to movements that pushed FDR, JFK, and Johnson to the left, is problematic because in the 30's and 50's-60's there were social movements independent of electoral politics that were strong and organized and ready to do this pushing.  what is going on
with the obama candidacy is not a social movement is electoral politics.  still it got me thinking.  the next 4 to 8 years could be really nuts, it would be nice to all be in a position, to end up with something more like the Spanish Republic or at least like the new deal (or heck something like autonomous municipalities in Chiapas) and less like fascist itally or nazi germany.

i am really starting to worry about resource driven/climate change
driven economic collapse. i heard someone from shell (!) oil on NPR
talking about peak oil production being in 5 to 12 years. (there are
some folks who argue that the oil production peak was reached
novemeber 2006.) the food riots have me freaked out. etc etc

in the near term i am just worried about us as a group of friends
staying connected over great distances. i cannot see how plane ticket
prices will not just continue to go up up. i worry that if times get
harder we will face economic strain that will make it feel as if time
is more scarce. and in the longer term i worry about other freedom of
movement issues... like will economic contraction mean a swing to the
right (even further to the right) which brings a further clamp down on
civil liberties including freedom of movement.

anyway i know this all sounds a little weird. but i just wanted to put
it out there that i wish we could figure ways to think about, support
each other during and keep in touch despite craziness going on out
there in the wide world.

i sort of have three levels of concern (panic) related to impending economic or ecological collapse; about each of which i either fell powerless or unprepared.

1) the increasing amount of suffering that will be experienced by the most vulnerable (or those who are in the wrong place), around the world and eventually in the US.

2) myself.  what does my future look like?  what are the freedoms and comforts that i want to really work hard to maintain? 

3) my family and friends.  everything from staying in touch to supporting each other.  i worry about freedom of movement, ease of communication, time, becoming overwhelmed and isolated etc.


i am attaching a write up about "investing in peak oil" that i found pretty unhelpful and depressing, but thought i'd share it anyway.

here is a link to something that a community in california is doing. 

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/08.10.05/willits-0532.html 

i guess one thought i have to integrate concern 1 & 2 above is to work with others to approuch my local government around related issues of local energy , local agriculture, and disaster preparedness.

anyway, i think it would be helpful to continue to think about this, and also figure out how to balance being thoughtful and prepared, with continuing to deal with life at present instead of becoming obsessed with some possible apocalyptic future.

I have been really lucky over the last couple years to be part of a conversation about how folks involved in organizing and activism can support other organizers and activists with kids.  Here is an link that my friend Megan in Portland sent me:  http://www.hipmama.com/node/31621 .

Someone posted a comment to this journal which made me look at it for the first time in a couple years.   It is kind of interesting that anonymous made this posting because I have been thinking about MJS a lot lately.   First because it is the two year anniversary of Katrina, and at the US Social Forum there was a lot of talk about how people could be/could have been/were mobilized to work in solidarity with communities on the Gulf Coast.  The questions of how to do good Katrina Solidarity work remind me of some of the questions that came up around Mountain Justice Summer.  Second because I am currently active with the Stadium Workers Ally Group (SWAG) which is trying to work in solidarity with the United Workers, a human rights organization that is fighting for living wages at Camden Yards.  At SWAG there are often conversations about our role in providing support at the direction of the United Workers versus the possible role we might have as providing a more militant edge that wouldn't get pinned on the United Workers. My reaction to these conversation is alway grounded in my experience with MJS.  For example, is it really useful to the leadership development of either a group like SWAG or a group like the United Workers, when the most grassroots folks involved in a campaign cannot claim the most militant tactics?

Two years later:

 I do have the impression that today there is more organized regional cooperation around mountaintop removal than there was when I was (briefly journaling around MJS)and that there is more cooperation between SOCM and more campus based activist allies (e.g. Tennessee Alumni & Students for Sustainable Campuses) than when I was organizing around mountaintop removal.

I can't say to what extent MJS helped either of these things happen.  My sense is that the regional cooperation was more a response to the troubles that the Citizens Coal Council was having and lead groups in the region attempting to coordinate fund raising strategies.  I think that there is a good chance that me leaving staff made more room for cooperation between SOCM and  activist allies.  I think it is possible that MJS helped pull some of these activists into work around mountaintop removal and cause them to want to work with groups like SOCM, but I don't know that for sure.  I do know that SOCM was doing a good job making mountaintop removal in Tennessee a well known issue even before MJS got off and running.

It seemed to me that MJS worked best in West Virginia.  In West Virginia, it seemed like MJS did a really good job of having local grassroots leaders be the face of actions --every time i saw media reports about actions in WV that summer, local leaders were out front.  MJS helped bring a level of militancy that it seemed like grassroots leaders, like the folks at Coal River Mountain Watch were ready for and interested in.  It brought extra hands and attention to the epicenter of mountaintop removal.  It is my opinion that MJS worked in WV because there really was a collaboration between MJS and Coal River Mountain Watch.  That collaboration was possible because folks at Coal River were interested in the tactics that activists proposed.  That is MJS saw Coal River as having a legitimate leadership role and Coal River welcomed MJS activists as bringing resources, experience, and people power, that Coal River saw as being in line with what they wanted/needed at the time to advance their goals.  However I don't have any sense of whether the form and function of MJS in WV as compared to Tennessee resulted in more, fewer, or just different concrete wins on the mountaintop removal issue.  That would be interesting analysis for someone to do.

A couple weekends ago a scary thing happened. A guy, who lives in Elk Valley, called the office to say that some young people had come by his house saying that they were with SOCM asking about mountaintop removal. But, according to him, they didn't look like SOCM people.

It seemed like it was possible that A) he heard them wrong and they did not say that they were with SOCM and actually they were with Earth First! or Mountain Justice Summer, B) it was folks from EF! or MJS and they DID say they were with SOCM, or C) it was not EF! or MJS folks and it was someone else saying that they were with SOCM.

I thought OK let me assume that this guy heard correct and assume that EF!/MJS would not masquerade as SOCM. Conclusion C really scared me. I realized that actually this time where there is going to be a lot of "outsiders" coming into the coal fields working on MTR and where there is not a great level of trust between Earth First! and SOCM would be a perfect time for someone who wanted to mess with either group to pull some stuff. How would it effect SOCM or Earth First! or work around MTR in general if the FBI or the coal industry got some people to try to pass as Earth First!ers and walk around Elk Valley doing dumb stuff or maybe just as bad or worse walk around Elk Valley saying they were with SOCM.

I would say things are already a little tense in Elk Valley. Things are already a little uncomfortable between SOCM (at least that staff) and Earth First!. Things will get more tense in Elk Valley as either groups steps up activity around mining there. It will not be hard to turn some folks in Elk Valley against SOCM or Earth First! or to turn Earth First! and SOCM against each other.

It turned out that probably the A scenario was what happened. And while a B scenario would really piss me off, the possibility of C is what scares me.

Last Thursday Mountain Justice Summer called for a ‘National Day of Action’ against strip mining and MTR (http://www.tnimc.org/feature/display/4300 ). I guess for me it was a normal day at work. I thought it would be interesting to just think through what I did that day in the context of a National Day of Action.

I spent most of Thursday trying to set up visits for a lobby trip to DC about the federal Abandoned Mine Land (AML)program. AML should be an "easy" issue to organize around and win. Basically the program was set up by the 1977 surface mining law to pay for clean-up of areas that were impacted by mining before 1977. Coal operators pay a fee into the AML fund and then that money is supposed to come back to states for clean-up. Of course it doesn't work that way and a lot of the money just stays in DC.

It should be an easy issue to organize around because it is supposed to be "win-win." When AML money gets spent on clean-up it takes care of environmental hazards and puts people to work. For a variety of reasons it has not been an easy issue to organize around.

It turned out that one of the things that ended up distracting from the DC AML lobby work is that the Senate Energy Committee is scheduling this terrible "Future of Coal" hearing. I ended up spending some time working on coming up with some comments to be submitted about this stupid hearing.

There are a lot of things that makes a campaign that deals with DC and Congress frustrating. One of them is how there is just no control over what Congress is fixated on at a given moment and there is just no interest at all in making it easy for folks outside of DC to bring their concerns before Congress. No surprise there.

I also spent some time on Thursday setting up a conference call to plan what to do about a new mining company that is interested in sinking a deep mine in eastern Cumberland County.

There had been a day of door knocking scheduled in Scott County. I wasn't planning on helping with that but it got snowed out anyway. I did spend some time talking with another organizer about creating a presentation that we can do for hook and bullet groups that use a 53,000 acre wildlife management area that is slated for MTR.

Interestingly, the main target in that fight is TVA. TVA is a secondary target in work on the potential deep mine in Cumberland County. TVA was the target of two of the Day of Action actions in the Knoxville area. (I want to put a link here to the Knoxville News Sentinel, but their stupid web page won't let me get to their story.)

It is odd when, as an activist, I have participated in a "National Day of Action" around one thing or another, I 've actually found it really empowering. It feels good to know there is a focused effort around a specific issue by people all over the place. I feel like I am part of something bigger. As an organizer though, I tend to see national days of action as kind of a head ache. This is because they occur outside of what ever strategy the base I'm working with has set. Either I've got to work with folks to try and figure out a way that we can make the Day of Action fit with our strategy, say use it as a way to put pressure on a particular target, get media around an issue, etc, or I can just try and ignore it and hope that it doesn't create publicity that I've then got to figure out how to respond to. But it rarely happens that the Day of Action called by someone else comes at just the time we were ready to make a demand of a target and it is just as likely that any media that comes out of it will be focused on something I'm not focused on.

On February 10 two of the actions I know of, the one in the Knoxville area at TVA and one in Nashville at the head quarters of the Tenn. Department of Environment and Conservation ( http://www.tnimc.org/feature/display/4357 ), actually were focused on targets that are relevant to SOCM's campaigns. With a little work it probably would have been possible to make sure a message relevant to our campaign was in the mix at those actions. Oh well.

So both with the AML work where our campaign gets messed up because we don't control Congresses timeline and with Days of Action that don't occur within the context of our strategy there are examples of the constant frustration of not being able to work our own strategy on our own time table.

I don't think that I've written about this yet: When I was an intern at a grassroots group in eastern NC (http://www.ccarobesoncounty.org/), my boss talked about the difference between community organizing and a movement. He said, people are always talking about "we need a movement" "we need to get more people in the movement." But the truth is movements are a real mess. When you are organizing you are developing and implementing a strategy, you're looking at your base and your allies and your opposition, you’re establishing a timeline. In a movement, things start happening all at once. People just get empowered and taking action. They do stupid stuff, work at odds with each other.

I think about that a lot in the context of my organizing work around coal. On the one hand I believe that there needs to be a new movement to resist resource extraction in Appalachia (I hope that it can be a movement for human liberation). On the other hand I sure get frustrated when I look around and this lawyer is doing this thing and this group of activists is doing this other, and I'm just trying to keep a steady hand on the rudder; organize a base and there is all this distracting stuff going on.

The other day I was talking with a staff person from another organization in the region. I was describing what I had heard so far about Mountain Justice Summer as a list of tactics without a strategy. I know that "tactics without at strategy" is a little bit of a cliche, but from the little I know about Mountain Justice Summer, so far it seems to apply.

The fellow I was talking to then said: Well I guess that is an anarchist strategy for you. I am embarrassed that I did not have a stronger response but here is what I said: You know I think that a group of anti-authoritarians could get together and come up with a great strategy that really involved directly impacted people and also was inline with their anti-authoritarian values, and it could be a great "anarchist strategy."

It seems wrong-headed to explain your frustration with the strategy or lack of it by describing it as anarchist, or to use the term an anarchist to describe the absence of strategy. In my mind, that would be the same as calling an losing strategy a "Democratic" strategy or an elitist strategy an "environmental" strategy.

Within SOCM how can I when encouraging members to analyze how Mountain Justice Summer will impact their strategy and also discourage them from demonizing the folks involved in the project? Actually I don't think this will be too hard, it seems that most SOCM members are ready to accept that there are lots of different folks interested in MTR and while it will be unlikely that everybody will always be able to work together, it is to our advantege to appear as a somewhat united front. Probably more difficult will be not letting my own misgivings about Mountain Justice Summer be reduced to a criticism of the politics of the leadership of the project.

I think it is very possible that Mountain Justice Summer will inspire a violent reaction on the part of coal industry supporters. I admit, I often say things like: man those kids go up into these mountains talking about militant action and they are going to get schooled for sure. I need to make a real effort to not have any disagreement I might have about Mountain Justice Summer be articulated in a way that would condone violence against or repression of the folks involved. I really don't want SOCM to play good cop to Mountain Justice Summer's bad cop. I don't want there to be a comparison drawn between the anarchist activists and the reasonable community groups. If that comparison is drawn I want it not to be a comparison based on assumptions about the ideology of the folks involved but one based on an examination of different approaches to social change.

I think there is a good chance that in the end SOCM will need to distance itself from Mountain Justice Summer. If this happens, one challenge will be how to be distance without demonizing.

When I say Mountain Justice Summer seems like a set of tactics with no strategy, I am actually ignoring the complicated question of whether some tactics can also be considered, at least by some folks, a strategy. A clearer way to think about this is: are there some tactics that are not just a means to an end but an end-in-of-themselves? The answer is certainly yes. From an organizer’s perspective tactics which also give leaders experience in --say speaking publicly or examining a technical document-- also meet the goals of leadership development and thus are an end-in-of-themselves.

Lets look at direct action. In the context of community organizing I think of direct action as a tactic within a strategy. But I am sure that one could argue that direct action is not a tactic but a strategy. In Anarchy in Action the author quotes David Wieck (http://perspectives.anarchist-studies.org/2wieck.htm ) as explaining direct action is an “action which in respect to a situation realizes the end desired so far as this lies within ones power or the power of one’s group. One argument that direct action is not only a means to an end but an end-in of-itself might go: direct action is putting anarchy into practice; by engaging in direct action the activist is taking part in addressing a problem directly instead of petitioning a government institution to fix the problem. Thus direct action can be seen as creating the kind of self rule that is the ultimate end of an anarchist program.

Interestingly, many of the groups which are similar in organizing style to SOCM refer to their methodology as “direct action community organizing.” I think that rather than conforming to Wieck’s definition, these organizations mean something slightly different by direct action. Maybe by direct action they mean: people directly effected by a problem take action which directly confronts the institutions that either produce or mediate that problem. Under this definition a group of residents going to a county zoning commission meeting and demanding that their county not rezone an area for a landfill would be involved in direct action, while such an action certainly would not meet Wieck’s criteria.

The situation is further confused because often direct action is interchanged with civil disobedience. Strangely, today in the US many acts of civil disobedience are symbolic; they do not actually, to the best of ones ability realize the end desired. (Just as an example the SOA protest where 100’s engage in an act of civil disobediance but it does not really directly stop bussines at the SOA.) If the residents concerned about landfill, laid in front of the first truck bringing trash to their community they would be engaging in direct action as well as civil disobeance. But if they went and locked them selves to the gate of the trash hauling corporate office, probably their act of civil disobedience would have little direct impact on whether or not that truck made it into their community.

Of course there are many forms of direct action by Wieks definition that neither break the law (or are even all that militant) nor would they directly confront power the way that a protest outside of the state legislature might. For instance, as an act of resistance to the landfill residents might stop using the landfill company for their own garbage (a boycott) instead developing a community recycling program(developing parallel instituions.) They also might take the things they couldn’t recycle and dump them on the lawn of the executive of the landfill company (civil disobedience) or bring bags of it into the zoning commission hearing (possibly part of a “direct action community organizing” strategy.)

All this is to say that when I look at the list of activities that Mountain Justice Summer proposes, I see a list of tactics, but little about strategy. Someone else might see many of the activities as ends in-of-themselves. For SOCM members to understand how SOCM as an organization might respond to, impact, use, avoid, or participate in Mountain Justice Summer, they need to hear what are the goals –or “ends”—of Mountain Justice Summer. It would be helpful to know if the organizers of Mountain Justice Summer see the various activities as means to those ends or ends-in-of-themselves. Finally they would need to analyze how those activities might effect their own goals.

I guess it will be my job to help folks engage in this analysis. I need to figure out a way to do so that it meets the needs of SOCM, doesn’t demonize the Mountain Justice Summer folks, and also leaves my own personal frustrations with activists out of the conversation.

So, as I wrote two entries ago, after which I interrupted myself with a long explanation, I heard indirectly about a planning meeting for Mountain Justice Summer. From what I heard, folks planned to begin their listening project by going to Elk Valley. I know that the Campbell/Anderson Chapter of SOCM went ahead and talked about how to respond if people ask them what they know about the folks driving around the area talking to people about mountaintop removal. I guess with that Chapter-level discussion, SOCM has begun talking about Mountain Justice Summer.

I really don't get the listening project in Elk Valley. It makes me wonder if the organizers of Mountain Justice Summer think that SOCM has just been sitting on our hands for the last three years. It is as if they think that the only reason the whole of Elk Valley hasn't risen up in protest against mountaintop removal is because no one bothered to talk with them about it.

It is hard not to take the suggestion that there needs to be a listening project in Elk Valley as criticism of the organizing work that has gone on there. Maybe though, it is just that folks think that with a different approach they might be able to identify more people who oppose the mining in the area. Or it could be that folks with Mountain Justice Summer want get a real sampling of opinion in Elk Valley.

As I have written before I do think I need to be, SOCM needs to be, doing more work in the field. Maybe this listening project will uncover some new pockets of support for stopping mountaintop removal in the area. However, while the Chapter hasn't really had an in depth discussion about it, I can't help but worry that a group of new "outsiders" going around door to door will hurt our organizing work. I worry that people will be turned off or that folks that SOCM members have spoken to already will feel they are being badgered. It is also possible that I am wrong. For sure when one of the SOCM organizers drives around talking to people we are also outsiders, and maybe there isn't much difference.

It will be interesting to see if any members come back with stories --positive or negative-- about the listening project.

There are several reasons why it is important for me to have an individual, private identity that is separate from the organization I work for. This in contrast with the consolidation of image that can sometimes happen with an activist and the cause that s/he works on. It is also different than the way a leader within an organization may be identified with that organization. separation of identity isn’t necessarily apart of the culture of activism. This separation of the identity of the paid organizer from the organization is part of the culture of the kind of group I work for. And really makes sense both the organizer and for the organization.

When I talk about an “organizer” or the culture of an organization, in this entry and really throughout this journal I’m talking about these things as they are at SOCM and a bunch of other grassroots groups that follow a similar model.. These organizations and their organizers are part of what sometimes gets referred to as the Alinsky tradition. (Here is a link to a short blurb about Saul Alinsky http://www.itvs.org/democraticpromise/alinsky.html ) It is a white, male, organizing tradition that is separate from the tradition of labor organization and also from the many organizing traditions that have bubbled up form within oppressed communities. It is a tradition with its own baggage, for sure. It has some basic tenets and assumptions, some of which have been and need to be challenged and others which are fairly useful.

Some of the tenets this Alinsky tradition are that the organization and organizer are “a-political” or non-ideological and that the job of an organizer is to build a powerful organization. The tradition is based on some assumptions about who the organizer is: that he is someone from outside the community where he organizes, that he is paid (but not paid much), and that he will come with enough privilege that he can put his own “needs” on the back burner and work full time on the needs of others. I might actually even say the needs of “the other” because I think that some of the roots of this tradition are shared with those of academic disciplines like anthropology. (The following link is to a paper that talks a little about the roots of this organizing tradition, lists some of the basic tenets of organizing, and goes on to criticize this tradition of community organizing and examine organizing in India. http://comm-org.utoledo.edu/papers2001/mediratta/background.htm )

Interestingly SOCM, the group I work for, was not born out of this tradition. Although the first staff people were privileged folks from outside of the mountains, several of the early staff were local people. When SOCM started no one was a trained organizer –certainly no one had been trained a specific organizing tradition. People just tried different ideas and methods that seemed to work stuck. Some of SOCM’s orientation came not from the Alinsky tradition but from early members experiences in the UMWA. This is where the idea of building a powerful organization came from and I imagine that the policy of paid staff not speaking for the organization and having a dues structure also was borrowed from the labor movement.

When I maintain that, just because I as an individual have heard of Mountain Justice Summer, it does not mean that SOCM as an organization has heard about Mountain Justice Summer, or even though it is clear that I am thinking a lot about Mountain Justice Summer, I can say that SOCM has not yet talked about Mountain Justice summer and decided how to relate to it, that is because I see there being a clear separation between the personal identity of an organizer in their private life and their role working for their organization. This comes both from the culture of the organization I work for and my beliefs about the need for separation of a paid organizers role at work and her or his individual, private identity.

In the culture of organizating of which SOCM is part, it is the organizer’s roll to be in the background. Organizers are supposed to get members to come up with ideas and strategies and have those directly effected members out front talking about the ideas and implementing the strategies. The organizer rarely talks about her or his own thoughts or ideas, but instead the organizations positions or the thinking of a particular identity within the organization. Staff members aren’t quoted in the media and we do our best to have members reperesnt the organization at events.

There is one SOCM member, SOCM’s first president in fact, who will say: buddy I am SOCM. While I want members to have ownership of the organization, I don’t think it is good for any one member to think that they are SOCM, that is unless they mean in a collective way: we are all SOCM. But for sure no organizer who works for SOCM should say that they are or be thought of as SOCM. Members are out front in leading an organization like SOCM; a great organizer is invisible when s/he is leading.

As mentioned above one aspect of the Alinsky tradition of organizing is that the organizer and organization is non-ideological This tradition has its limits and there is very valid criticism that it prevents an organization from ever addressing root causes like racism or capitalism. However, I think that there is an aspect of this tradition that can serve to protect the freedom of the organizer to engage in civil society outside of work and can protect the democracy of the organization itself.

For the most part my work at SOCM fits OK with my anti-authoritarian political values, but I often have times when I don’t feel passionate about a particular piece of work. As I carry out these pieces of work I simply think: look this is my job, this is what SOCM pays me to do. There are times when I don’t really feel up to selling SOCM or when I have ideas that conflict with those which make the most sense in building the organization, but I figure I am getting paid good money to bring people into SOCM and build a powerful group. I just suck it up.

So while my politics inform my choice to work for SOCM they do not drive my work there. My work is driven by the agenda set by SOCM’s members. Of course there could be a conflict between my own political convictions and the organizations agenda that was big enough that I would have to leave, but for the most part it works OK. This separation allows SOCM to go own being directed by its membership and what ever collective agenda they can hash-out. It also lets me engage in my own polictical activities outside of SOCM. (If I’ve got energy left for them at the end of the day.)

The tradition of a-political organizing combined with idea that staff don’t represent the organization, help provide a buffer between an organizer’s role as an employee and what s/he chooses to do outside of work. It is necessary for people to understand that an organizer who works for a grassroots group does not represent that group when s/he is “off work.” I believe that someone who works for SOCM should have the right to on the free time go to an anti-war protest or, for that matter, an anti-abortion protest. However, it has to be very clear that their presence at either demo does not represent an endorsement by SOCM of that event or cause. If that was not clear, it would prevent SOCM staff members from going any where or saying anything without SOCM approval. No matter how clear it is made that SOCM organizers do not represent the organization when they’re off the clock, we have to be cautious. I probably shouldn’t go to an adult book store in one of the counties I organize in and I might want to steer clear of being quoted at in the media at a anti-Bush protest. I sure need to be careful if I happen to be at an event where issues SOCM is working on are being addressed beacuase it would be easy to be seen as representing SOCM.

So, just because I have been at events where folks have talked about Mountain Justice Summer, does not mean that I have been approached, as a SOCM organizer, about Mountain Justice Summer.

A final reason that I wouldn’t want an organizer to be seen as representing the organization they work for 24-7 is simply working conditions. At SOCM I am expected to work 40 hours a week. I know this is pretty humane in the organizing world –and probably for salaried workers in general-- but, I actually would like to see a world where no one has to work a 40 hour week, so I try to stick to my forty hours. You can imagine that after being “at work” all day I might not want to run into someone at a rock show and have to talk about SOCM’s work around mountaintop removal. If I did talk to someone about mountaintop removal at that show, it sure would be nice if I didn’t have to do so as a SOCM official. It would be like running into your friend who is an auto mechanic after work and asking her to help you fix your car, or asking your friend who works at Subway to make you a sandwich. You might see an neat car and ask your buddy what she thinks about it, but don’t ask her to change your oil!

In reality most of the above is based on my own personality and a little on the culture of SOCM. Organizing can happen all kinds of ways, and there are plenty of committed unpaid organizers that are always on duty. There are also lost of folks who organize in much less formal ways. I remember an older activist telling me that he did his best union organizing not while working in a plant but after he got laid off and was working as a bartender. But I just would rather keep it more formal. I don’t want someone thinking: is this guy hanging out with me because he enjoys my company or because he thinks I’d make a good leader in his group? It also keeps me more accountable, and part of me being accountable when I’m working is that there are times when I’m not working.

So today I heard indirectly a little about the recent planning meeting for Mountain Justice Summer.

With this entry (and the next one) I want to acknowledge that it may seem strange that on the one hand I say feel I can say SOCM has not been contacted about Mountain Justice Summer while on the other I sit here writing about it in this on line journal. Here I wrote about the “call to action” and thus could have found out about the meeting, and now I'm writing that I found out about what happened at it “indirectly.” And in fact SOCM organizers had heard that a meeting was scheduled from some of the other folks that were going. So why is it that I say that SOCM hasn't been told about Mountain Justice Summer, why do I keep acting like to SOCM Mountain Justice Summer is some mystery?

I guess I can identify two things that inform my perspective on what it would mean for SOCM ‘to know about’ Mountain Justice Summer or to have been asked to be part of a meeting. The first is my own and to some extent also SOCM's tendency towards formality. The second is the culture of community organizing and my position as a paid organizer.

PART I Formality and Intentionality

When it comes to SOCM I tend to think about relationships with other individuals and groups in a pretty formal way. For instance the distinction between someone formally being a member of SOCM and or not is one I give a lot of weight to. (Of course as an organizer I'm always trying to get people who aren't members to join.) I'm accountable to SOCM members; I'm not accountable to folks who aren't. Similarly, I am more responsive to groups that are part of a formal coalition with SOCM. (See my entry about coalitions on 1/2/05.)

I like for communication between SOCM and other groups to be direct and formal. If a group wants SOCM to help with something, I'm just more responsive if they address the organization directly. In general SOCM is pretty unlikely to be responsive to a request that is general and not direct. For example , suppose it is a request to endorse a Clean Energy Platform that PIRG has sent out. If we are one of twenty groups being sent an email that is seemed to be informing us about the initiative instead of making a direct request to us as an organization I would be very unlikely to send that email on to the appropriate group of SOCM leaders for them to make a decision about.

This tendency toward formality is in part because it is so easy for relationships between groups to just get sloppy and confused. At SOCM it is also just a screen. There are a million issues, problems, initiatives, campaigns, so what kind of relationship the organization has (or doesn't have) with a given group or individual is a way of determining what gets attention. Instead of a Kramer-like flailing around from this issue to that campaign to the next concern, looking at who the communication is coming from and how direct it is provides a means for staying focused . I think though, my tendency toward formality is also just about me being anal.

In addition, I think this formality also has something to do with respect. It shows thought. It shows that another group has gotten in contact with SOCM for a reason. Maybe most importantly, it is a way of demonstrating intentionality. I think being intentional is especially important in the context of an environmental justice issue. It shows that there is thought being put into who should have a place at the table, what are important voices to heard, and what are valuable communities to include.

It seems ironic to have all this formality when you contrast it with the -for lack of a better word- folksy-ness that makes for good organizing. When an organizer is out in the field s/he can’t be all ridged and overly concerned with being “proper.”. But in reality most of these elements of formality need to be there in any respectful and intentional interaction with people on the ground.

As an example lets think about doing a good house visit. It is important to be clear and up front about what the relationship is. E.g. “Hi I'm from SOCM. I was trying wanting to talk to folks who live on this street and your neighbor Jamie suggested I talk to you.” It is important to let the person you're talking to know who you are and how, if at all, your related to them. This allows the person whose door is being knocked to have the right screen up. It is worth being direct. Eg. “I really want to talk with you because ADM is about to put a big feed lot at the end of the road and I want to know what you think about it.” The person needs to know why you’re there and what want from them. And it is good to show intentionality. Eg. “I really wanted to talk with you because you're the third house down from where they're looking at putting it. We really would like for you to be involved in our effort keep it from stinking up the whole community. We think if everybody on this road get together we might be able to do something about it, and we really wanted to see if you would be part of our effort.” It is important for them to know that you are interested in talking to them specifically and that you value their participation. (Well at least until you find out that their cousin works for ADM and their sister sold ADM the land in the first place.)

So from my perspective, as far as the organization is concerned, until SOCM has been formally contacted about Mountain Justice Summer it is just one of a million things going on out there. If the organizers of Mountain Justice Summer are wanting to involve grassroots groups they need to be intentional about it. And it appears the folks who initiated Mountain Justice Summer did show intentionally in reaching out to Coal River Mountain Watch. They went up to WV, met with members of that group talked with them about the idea and asked them to come to a meeting. And hey, in opinion if there is anybody who should be in the lead of a regional campaign around MTR it is folks like people at Coal River who live right there where the worst of it has been going on for the last decade.

But as organizers I think we all understand who is and isn’t at the table isn’t chance, it isn’t random. If you want to get somebody in the room, at the table, in the conversation, you got to do the work. Somebody might make the decision not be part of something, but first they got to be asked.

<< I want to be clear that nothing written here is an official position or perspective of SOCM. While I can not control who reads this journal, I would ask the following of "allies" (by allies I mean other groups and individuals concerned about MTR including people in the foundation world): please contact SOCM directly about the organization's positions on and work around mountaintop removal, please try to not let this staff person's thoughts color your view of SOCM.

I also want to explicitly state that I am not giving anyone permission to use material in this journal in news media stories (independent or mainstream.) This is of particular importance to me, because as a staff person at SOCM I do not act as a spokes person. >>

Today I was driving with a SOCM member to a meeting at Highlander. On the way, he mentioned that someone involved with planning the Mountain Justice Summer had been up to visit him. He said that he had taken him around to look at the mining site. The activist had asked about going on the mine site and the member said he wasn't going to trespass. The SOCM member went on to say that he really didn't feel like SOCM should be involved in any activity that breaks the law; that we constantly talk about wanting the coal companies to follow the law and we would loose some credibility if we were to break the law our selves. He said he didn’t mind sharing information with them but he didn’t think SOCM should get involved in anything where people would be breaking the law.

I asked him how he thought it would effect the work in Elk Valley if there was civil disobedience going on. He said he when you talk about Earth First! in the community people get kind of excited (excited meaning jumpy not excited meaning enthusiastic.) He said that we need to be cautious about groups that get too "radical," that it kind of turns people off.

I mentioned that Highlander had once been shut down because people thought their work was too radical, that they were accused of being a communist training school. He said that people called the United Auto Workers communists, because of the kinds of action that they took and that those actions were necessary at that time.

I explained that I thought that SOCM should never permanently rule out a tactic. But should decide what kinds of tactics made sense to use at a given time. I said, you know right now unions have trouble enforcing pickets, what if they did things like Earth First! He said right now things are getting bad and they are going to get a lot worse. We can't keep sending jobs over seas, people aren't going to have any money to buy things and the whole economy is going to go down. He said it is going to get real bad in the next five to ten years and maybe unions will have to do like they did before and take radical action.

One of the things that frustrates me about how Earth First! has approached the use of direct action around mining issues is that it colors SOCM members view of civil disobedience. Because the direct actions are not part of the strategy our members have developed they end up having to distance themselves from those actions. They say things like: We have some of the same goals but we have different ways about going about them. They may even say: We don't agree with breaking that law. I don't believe this has to be the case.

I think that there could be times that SOCM members would evaluate the available tactics and choose to do civil disobedience. To my knowledge there is no actual SOCM position against civil disobedience. I saw in a KFTC news letter last year that they had a training for coal field residents where they talked about civil disobedience as a possible tactic in their coal related work.

However, when the first introduction that SOCM members have to civil disobedience is through an Earth First! action I think it makes that tactic less accessible. This then re-enforces the attitude among more militant folks that "they are the only ones willing to do what it takes."

Later in the day one of the participants at the Highlander workshop talked about using more "radical" actions. During college I began to get very frustrated by the way that people use the word "radical." Punks in Anti-Racist Action would talk about radical actions; folks would refer to Earth First! as a "radical" group in comparison to a local non-profit. I believe that a better term is “militant.”

Radical means to get at the root of the problem. In my opinion a radical group is one that seeks to fundamentally change the balance of power or transform society. Directly confronting the Klan, as Anti-Racist Action promotes, is most likely a militant response to Klan organizing but it is not necessarily radical.

In fact, I believe that tactics that get referred to as "radical," but which I argue are more correctly labeled militant, could actually be used as a means to an end which is not at all radical. For example, a fraternity at the University of Tennessee could "lock down" to Dean of Student’s desk to protest the postponement of the first football game of the season. This would be a militant tactic, but you would have a hard time convincing me that it was radical. I certainly wouldn't refer the fraternity as a “radical group.”

When SOCM members have the idea that people in a community should have the right to determine what happens to the resources in that community, and that their rights should not be trumped by a company's desire for profit, I think it is OK for them to be called radical. When they rearrange the chairs at a public hearing so that directly effected people are "administering the meeting" and the government officials are asked to sit at the back of the room, I think they have used a radical tactic. They have used a tactic which points out a root problem: bureaucrats unaffected by a problem make decisions instead of the people who are impacted.

Many SOCM members can draw upon their own knowledge of militancy: UAW sit down strikes, the mine wars fought by deep miners trying unionize, or civil disobedience during the civil rights movement. I would like them to bring that knowledge to the table when considering tactics. I worry that Mountain Justice Summer will involve direct actions that not only are inconsistent with local groups' decisions about strategy but that also allow other activists to claim civil disobedience as "their tactic" and which force SOCM members to disavow more militant tactics.

On a side note. Tonight on a conference call I got to hear a little about the re-permitting of the Black Mesa strip mine on Navajo and Hopi land. It seems like over the last decade there have been so many people who have heard about this issue, so many people who care about it, and yet seems despite all the past action and education there is not a way to mobilize these supporters at this time of need.