>I'm trying to approach organizing from the bottom, not from the top.
Can you really do that, and if so, is it the right thing to do? Is it desirable to organize people without challenging some of their basic beliefs? Isn't the common sense of ordinary people in part a way to cope with their oppression and/or marginalization, a way that may be adaptive in the short term but a way of thinking that preserves oppression/marginalization over the long term? Doesn't the organizer presume to know something the people to be organized don't? I know there's the danger of appearing arrogant and patronizing by advertising that knowledge, and the risk of alienating people by attacking their common sense understanding, but shouldn't we be honest about this?
As usual, those are all real, and not rhetorical, questions.
Doug