I think several decades of experience in the U.S. with Alinsky-style organizing have shown its rather serious limits. Community organization after community organzation and what do we have to show for it? Some co-opted into being junior real estate developers and bankers, many of them very cleverly by the Ford Foundation, and others ineffectual. They have done nothing to reverse the impoverishment of vast urban areas, nor have they had an influence on politics at the regional or national level. They were completely disarmed in fighting welfare reform, too.
Doug
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I won't argue that in some larger view all that isn't true. It is. But, first of all that process has marginally radicalized thousands around here at any rate. And, second, because of that community base and its work, many many people have lived better lives than they would have without such work. And finally, when larger scaled conditions change, that is the oppression lights up just a little, things get better, faster than they would without those organizations.
I know this sounds bleak, but we are never going to arrive. That isn't going to happen. So, the question has to change into how to make it livable, healthy, and yeild as good a life as possible. That is all that can be demanded. In my limited street level view, those kinds of goals have been met most of the time, with many people, and for a long time--almost thirty years.
And there are very long term results that follow, but you have to go back. The reason a place like Oakland or SF has these kinds of organizations and alternatives is because they have always been here right back to the gold rush. Each generation, each era, each change of conditions produces a variation on the same general themes and forms. In the Thirties and Forties it was unions, then civil rights, then anti-war, then anti-poverty and on and on. A lot of this is cumulative and so all these kinds of organization are still here, still working along their ways.
This isn't defeatism, but the opposite. These are not battles and wars you win. They are wars you live.
Chuck Grimes
PS. I went out and bought Butler and started reading last night. Ugh. You know, I was tired and I had one of those reactions. What BS. Have any of these writers had children? What's all this garbage about the formation of the subject through power. Isn't that just fancy language for socialization? I am certain that Mike and Judy (Foucault & Butler) were terrible toddlers who resisted potty training, felt smug in their soiled diapers, wet their beds, and then harbored disturbing resentiments because of they were made to feel ashamed about it.
BTW, where's Kelley. She started all this didn't she?