Elections

Elections are an ideal way to stop thinking and forget who we are.

Vote if you must but please don’t think too much about it. It matters very little and you matter very much.  

Radical Citizens Network Idea Outline 1.o

We form this network of voluntarily interrelated people and organizations to radically transform this crazy world. What do we mean by “radical”? Part of being radical is not requiring the reduction of all interests to a single unity. Instead it is a commitment to making fruitful our differences as we struggle for deep seated, egalitarian, and people-centered change, fighting to replace helplessness and coping with freedom and its enacted dreams, strengthened by our knowledge of the interconnectedness of all struggles and the determination to support all those who struggle against injustice by means of freedom.

(So, ps, this has a little excessive detail but you need not accept everything, it just made it more interesting for yours truly! db)

How can I join the network?

Prospective members to the network must be invited (and vouched for) by two current network members. Once invited, you are asked to choose a delegate and network buddy and can choose to join the network, either as a radical resource or as a network member.

Radical resources do not pay dues and as such are welcome to participate in all network events, programming, and resources, but do not have access to other member’s contact information or decision-making rights regarding network planning and resource allocation.

Network members have access to the various databases, decision making rights regarding network planning and resource allocation, receive a free network discount card, and must pay monthly dues equal or greater to .5% of their monthly income (so if you make $1000/month you would pay $5/month, with a minimum dues of $3/month for those who have no income). Those who pay dues for certified network organizations may deduct the cost of such dues from their monthly network dues.  

What can I do?

You can…

n         Help grow the network or create a sub-network of radicals by contacting folks who share with you a profession, passion, or location (lawyers, or immigrant lawyers, or immigrant lawyers in MN for instance) within which you can

• Take leadership! Become a volunteer organizer for the network or sub-network
• Mentor a student or someone in your own sub-network (or just be a mentor)
• Be a network contact for your profession, serving as an official contact for those in need of advice, work, or action by those in your field of expertise
• Be a network moderator for your profession, moderating your professional network’s email-list 
• Host events in your neighborhood, home, or workplace for radical community members in your subgroup, or for the community as a whole
• Help people get jobs or internships in your sub-network, particularly to help organizing via the radical-network job hookup
• Grow the network or sub-network(s) to other Cities through your contacts

n Create spaces to build the radical community by creating or participating in…

• An EXCO class, learn more about EXCO at www.EXCOtc.org
• A caucus for a group with which you identify (by race, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, etc)
• A stress at work discussion circle to radicalize others
• A Shift circle for those transitioning between jobs or life-phases
• A story circle to grow memory within the radical community

n        Help create a culture of solidarity…

• Pay your dues and participate in deciding how they are spent   
• Organize your workplace
• Commit to donate or donate property to the Radical Land Trust (or Cooperative Housing/Property Association)
• Sponsor events and discussions
• Fly the flag of solidarity, committing to supporting those in need, or wear a solidarity bracelet to indicate that you are willing to talk with others members
• Take part in the Radical Time Bank
• Join the skillshare and self-education database to offer up your skills and to find others interested in learning together!
• Participate in the variety of other events, programming, etc, being offered through the network!
• List jobs in your workplace, particularly to help organizing via the radical-network job hookup
• Homestay a young activist, so that they can spend their time building the network of radical projects in your local area and benefit from your experience and keep you informed on recent goings on 
• Use Indymedia to post your announcements, issues, and stories, and put your upcoming events on their calendar

Related Institutions Needing to Be Created:

n         Radical Citizen’s Network Foundations 

n        Radical Land Trust(s) or Cooperative Housing Association or Network

n  Self-Education Network/Skillshare Database perhaps through…

n  Free Education Networks: EXCO, IWW Work Peoples’ College, etc (existing)

n        Sub-networks/sub-network organizers by profession, passion, and location

n         Stress at work circles to radicalize fellow workers

n         Groups by Identity (some such groups currently being formed)

n         Radical Homestay Network

n         Radical Job Hook-Up

n         Radical Time Bank

n         IndyMedia (existing)

n         Flag/Bracelet of Solidarity

n         Shift Circles for those going through life-phase transitions (a local model exists: SHIFT, primarily targeting professionals, run by U of M prof Jan Hivley)

n        Radical Church? (weekly, family friendly events at the same time/place each week…Sundays at the Bedlam! etc)

Radical Community Plan Draft 1.o

We are told that we have always lived in a world of haves and have-nots, a world where some people are powerful and others helpless, the few using their power to steal what is made possible by the work of the many.

Helplessness then is the core enemy of all people and it is only through becoming independent will be free, and only through freedom will we be able to live the lives we want to live and save the humanity of those who currently rule over us.

Why are we helpless? Because we have nothing to sell but our ability to work. Because we have nothing we are forced to accept the conditions we are given in the workplace and in the world. Because we must constantly scrape together our survival we have no time to figure out how we want to live and bring it about. And because we haven’t organized ourselves to be powerful we have nothing and are in no position to change our conditions.

It is time to say enough of this helplessness. It is time to attack it at the root, to build our own power, and to salt the earth in which it grows. And this can be done today, and it is our responsibility to take it on, for our ancestors and their blood, sweat, and tears, that brought us to this day, and for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, whose futures we must always keep in mind.

How do we eliminate helplessness?

• We attack work and the conditions that force us to work
• We build and live out the world we want to live in
• We grow the movement
• We transform the world

We do this by building assets, building community, building power. And we do this in the right way. If there is one thing we have learned from our bosses, our politicians, our cops, from all the corrupt faces of power, it is that people act in their own self-interest whoever they pretend to stand for. We must take this into account.

Our world then must do away with representation that allows people to speak their interest in the voice of the many, and the centralization that puts the rule of one over the interest of all. In our world all people will be involved in running things in a direct participatory way. In our world there will no be centralization of control, no single group to make uniform our dissenting goals.

No to representation! Only direct democracy is real democracy!

No to centralization! Only we can speak for ourselves!

Work can be attacked by replacing fear with freedom. We attack the current conditions of work by organizing workplaces, creating fair and democratic alternative workplaces through cooperatives and by building the infrastructure and support system to undermine our need to work all together by building community self-sufficiency and a culture of solidarity and mutual aid.

We can build the world we want to live in by replacing fear with freedom. We treat each other with respect and dignity, we talk in person, we intentionally build our relationships to each other, and we speak of each other and our different goals and ability with critical respect. But that is not all. We create our own spaces and cultural institutions, we find and work together with like minded people, we create a welcoming culture of solidarity, friendship, and joy

We grow the movement by replacing fear with freedom. We build relationships and collaborations with our natural and unlikely allies. We make better use of our existing infrastructure. We think seriously about winning, about creating real, non-compromised solutions to every problem, and we target strategic people and institutions accordingly.

We transform the world by making our freedom international, by linking together with and inspiring others all over the world.

Want more details? Keep reading! Also, consider the free online book Getting Free by James Herod, and joining the EXCO class by the same name this February, 2008.

Ideas for the Twin Cities’ Radical Community:

When we think about the pathetic state of affairs and the pathetic attempts to change them we must be confronted by the facts that helplessness is an enemy that can only be overcome by people themselves, and that we are not building a world based on free stuff, we are building a new world. As such, while it is crucial that we take advantage of charitable donations and the variety of other nonprofit mechanisms, at the heart of our plan must be the building of a new, just and sustainable economy, and new assets…new sources of life.

New economies:

• Cooperatives and cooperative conglomerates.
• A Radical Timebank where people can trade their labor equally to the benefit of all
• Property acquisition and sustainable use through a Radical Land Trust
• A mass-membership radical community foundation and bank

This foundation/bank would support in a variety of ways…

• Radical Citizens’ Network
• Strategic education through EXCO and a skillshare database
• Radical Land Trust
• Workplace organizing through the Industrial Workers of the World and other radical unionizing efforts
• Cooperative Conglomerate
• Repair cooperatives: Open Circuit, Sibley Bike, etc
• Radical spaces/radical neighborhood groups
• Collective purchasing operations
• National and international networking

Public Schools 2.o Draft1

Let’s assume that we currently spend $5,000/year per student in our public schools. And for now (though not for later) let’s ignore the fact that this number is too low, that race and class are key factors in determining how resources are spent, and that students are tracked, again by race and class, into different sectors of our economy, and that our economy is changing such that an ever larger proportion of people will be shat on.

Instead, lets think of a program like Teach for America, or Americorps, where citizens, often recent college graduates, “do good” and make a sacrifice to do it, getting paid shit and, particularly in Teach for America are thrown into awful situations to survive them. In either case both programs are by and large detrimental to making real change in this country because they prevent the analysis necessary to do so and they instill a lasting skepticism about making change in regards to our problems because we fail to be skeptical of the very methods through which we are going about making change. This plan is based on such skepticism.

I am now going to think small scale. What if instead of doing side-jobs paying roughly 12K a year so as to be able to organize I instead had 7 kids who would otherwise go to a school and not be served come to my apartment and have school there. Like many people who are in Teach for America or in Americorps (to which I applied) I have all the skills necessary to ‘succeed’ in our society. What if I was paid 25K a year to teach these seven students with a 5K budget to be divided half and half between me and the students and a 5K budget to support others involved in their education?

We ensure there is internet at the ‘school’. We take field trips to local libraries to get books and local recreation centers to run around…or to schools for that matter. Lets pretend that we get a 1K book and supplies budget? (We might also want say, markers, pens, paper, a digital camera, or a camcorder, etc).

Now, obviously it would be good if I had some common cultural connection to the kids I was teaching. I don’t really. Say the summer before I get a community mentor who will also be my and the kids’ mentor during the school year, and that they get paid say, 1K a year for a one-hour a week commitment year round, arranged as is suited best to teachings needs. What if it is also a requirement that I setup a gathering every week where kids and their parents or whoever best suits that role are invited to come together and say, share a meal, or a snack, or just have a discussion, lets say this costs an additional 2K, maybe we give parents some monetary incentive for coming who knows (1K left plus 5K of teacher/student discretionary spending). 

Of course, there is more to the picture than this. What are we going to do? For starters it seems best to have some common rituals that create respect. A program called Students at the Center (SAC) uses story circles to talk about common experiences and as a basis for writing. Perhaps we do that. The Algebra Project has come up with a sweet and peer-education based model for teaching math. Perhaps we setup a chapter and use that. But most of all, how about we use a model where I am a supporter of students projects, I make sure they are exploring something of interest, that it includes key knowledges and skills, and that we go from there?

I suppose it does depend on the ages of the kids, but if we are just choosing kids in my neighborhood, well, perhaps we’ll have a whole gambit of ages! And might that actually help us? The older kids can learn from, teach, and model for the younger kids. We can have common activities, say writing or reading or story telling, or presenting our projects, but also uncommon ones. What if I’m not good at math? How can I legitimately teach these kids something I’m not good at?

Well…let’s expand the concept. Say we have 4 such groups in my neighborhood. And as desired, we can work together, go to the library or gym or bakery down the street, to each others houses, and so on, or to the print-making collective. And wait! We still have 6K left to bring in other folks just for my 7 students! But first let’s get serious. Someone is going to have to coordinate all these little learning groups. There has to be some administrative cost. Ok, lets reduce our 6K to 3K. Moreover, all the schools in place are still going to be requiring maintenance, unless we sell them off or abandon them. So lets imagine all our schools converted into the seeds of new commons, huge community centers and low-rent office spaces for grassroots organizations, meeting halls, local businesses, community theater, etc.

Ok. So we still have 3K left. If none of the pods nearby can teach math maybe we hire a math tutor to use the Algebra Project curriculum to get us all to learn how to teach each other. Or we get a parent volunteer, or a member of the local community council. Or we join up with pods slightly farther away twice a week, or whatever. We figure it out.

And lets think this through a little more. With all their projects, the best resources for students are often going to be…not in my apartment but somewhere else, at local businesses, at the university, at the old folks home, the nonprofits, etc. So maybe we’ll set up twice a week all day internships for students, that can be a shared job between me and them. And maybe we’ll setup once a week times for students to help each other learn the hard stuff or tutor the younger folks. And maybe we’ll take field trips by stuffing into a shared minivan. Or maybe we’ll spend time watching lectures from Berkeley on a whole variety of college subjects or attending protests or teach-ins on police brutality or attempts to change the expungement policy for felons in MN, or organize or join a cop-watch, or make a zine to share our learning with the community or other school groups.

And if we have 4 such groups in the neighborhood we should probably evaluate each other and ourselves every semester, and maybe reshuffle the kids as best suits the collective desires of the kids, their parents, and us, the teachers. And obviously the us need not be fancy pants college folks. All that matters is they have most of the skills necessary to prepare folks for life, a little organization, and the ability to live at 25K a year. 

Of course, I believe most schools systems actually receive more than 5K per student so if we want to call this arrangement a public charter then we should have a bit more money to through around a perhaps put in pension funds for teachers.

A logistical nightmare? Not if kids live in my neighborhood or by an easily accessible bus-line. Test scores? An open question but I imagine we’d do quite well. And combine it with a little pre-community mapping and the building of an alumni base, well, it makes school into a full blown community building/social change apparatus instead of the opposite…like it is now.

Contemporary Anarchist Theory and Practice: Facing Today

I am tempted to say that contemporary anarchist theory has four elements, like hip hop: a) analysis of the multitude, with the work of Paulo Virno as its most impressive and useful writer, b) anarchist anthropology as a method for learning about the possible and understanding, compiling, and experimenting with new practices, as put forward by David Graeber, c) the compilation and enacting of concrete strategies within a larger framework as modeled by James Herod in his excellent and free book Getting Free, and d) the articulating of a hip politics, and attacks putting forth abundance on the level of culture, see Crimethinc for instance.

The brilliance and importance of the above work is however only a springboard for the action that is demanded of us, given our present situation in the world, the near nonexistence of substantive organizing channels and the coming shift in the global order. Whether this shift is Virno’s ‘new 17^th century’, the collapse of the global ecosystem and a new dark ages, or at the very least the destruction of the US as the world’s sole superpower, we are entering very interesting times indeed. Times where terms like sovereignty, the central state, legitimate/legal, the social pact, and so on are losing coherence, and when the two existing options for a declining superpower seem to be expansionist war and externally enforced structural adjustment in the world bank model…

If we consider the last transition from one superpower and one model of global capitalism to another we certainly find a bleak picture ahead, dreams of WWI and WWII…is it useful to ask who are the new Germanys? Or should we rather expect a broadening and war in earnest of what some are calling the 4^th World War, the war against corporate globalization?

Regardless how are we to build the sites/practices/culture to support/enact/generate resistance and new, transnational, mobile(?) societies? How are we to rearrange/create/escape the current push/pulls of the current economic and political forces and build a new world to attract immigrants, to partake in exodus/exit and to ever grow its scope, assets and culture? Here do we use an anarchist anthropological lens? Do we grow the commons considered as a frontier as a chance not a border? How do we build the online resources, the local assets, and the culture of solidarity to escape work, to escaping the constant enemies that have plagued our humanity since the beginning of civilization: the haves vs. the have nots, intergenerational struggle, cultural and biological reproduction, and through all of this the entrenchment of the privileged?

Are we right in our idealism that the elimination of dependence means the elimination not inequality of humanity? A basis from which allows us to live in freedom? And if so is this even possible? Do we have the bear by the throat or are we diving into a concrete wall of nature?