> This is a crucial
>point: Parochialism invites co-optation. The reason is simple: you
>have a particular problem and a rich benefactor offers to help you
how is this a direct causal link? it's true that community organizers can be pretty narrow in their views. but, there are plenty who aren't. how is it that accepting money from a benefactor necessarily co-opts them? why the either/or? i mean you (generic you) can start sounding a lot like ken kesey and the merry pranksters: proclaiming the world-transforming potential of acid-laced kool-aid, rock 'n' roll, and sound 'n' light shows but *all* of it was plugged into the power. they just didn't notice (metaphorically) no matter how many times they tripped over the cords and wires or plugged them into the outlet.
there is no outside to power. no pristine place that'll make you pure. parochialism *and its opposites are the result of a complex of factors, the primary one is that society is incredibly complex which goes hand in hand with rampant individualism. the overwhelming difficulty of the question: where do we even begin to start to attack the big problems? doug articulated this not too long ago on the constitution thread. if he can feel this way, then so can those poor slobs that y'all think so highly of.
btw, alinsky inspired organizing and/or pedagogical practices don't *have* to be narrow, nor was it intended to be narrow. i've done it before, modified adding a lot more big picture stuff, w/ regard to plant closings.
it is possible to bring ppl along enough to see that simply fighting a plant closing and gathering to address its effects at the community level isn't enough. what did it accomplish? well the plant relocated. but, the next time a plant closed the workers just walked instead of going along with it. yeah, big deal. but in an extraordinarily anti-union community *that* was something. it also brought people to recognizing that this was global economics at work and that they needed to make alliances with workers and communities all over the world. it sure overwhelmed them, that one. in any event, these revelations are important, i think. slow, evolutionary. you bet. but they are all too often left to languish. i'm truly at a loss as to what else to do, unless you want me to get my dealer's license back again and start ordering weapons for the revolution.
>Connecting this to the suburbanization of the US, suburbs are a
>perfect sterilizing environment for political action, a very effective
>geographic barrier to organizing.
sure. so, what to do eh? neo-urbanism?
>And, despite opinions to the
>contrary on this list, the Constitution and myriad state and local
>laws are also extremely effective barriers to generating a greater
>breadth of political thought and action.
dunno. free speech was pretty helpful. as was the right to association. lessee there's the 14th.... but once again you folks miss the points, which were two, for me.
1. appeal to the constitution is pretty powerful stuff, symbolically. you can use it to your advantage. when we protested the war we brought along lots of flags so the supporters, ra ra America didn't get to keep it for themselves. martin luther king and langston hughes understood this. you shame people into realizing just how inadequate their social institutions and practices are that sets the stage for transformation. "What does America Mean to Me?" was that the title? but hey mr. sole possessor of Wit with such high regard for everyone, un-american doesn't mean NOT american.
yeah yeah doug i hear ya: "oh but it's republican. oh but it was designed by those wig wearing pigs." again, though, what the hell isn't contaminated??? absolutely nothing. see y'all are looking for some archimedean point upon which you can stand and proclaim foundational truths yourselves. we might as well figure it out now: there isn't any such place.
2] the *idea* of a constitution is also powerful stuff, a covenant between people and that state or whatever you want to call the delegation of power.
in a complex, mass society such as we live in we *have* to delegate power and so you need some way of reigning that in. some basic, formalized principles that we've agreed to live by but that are subject to constant scrutiny, conscious social reproduction as amy guttman calls.
>The question then becomes, why this parochialism of thought? Is it
>that the over-arching theories of democracy versus elites are too
>impoverished? Is it because Marxism is seen as the only (unsanitary)
>alternative to localized political action?
parochialism may well be inescapable and it may not be a bad thing. there is something wrong with the opposite, too --doncha think? people learn to be moral people in situated contexts. they then learn to be more universal as they acquire abstract thought. and they learn to integrate and move back and forth between the two in a process that, we hope, never stops for the rest of their lives. it is hard work, everyone knows this. it is not simple, not easy. damn good thing too, i think. the question is, William, how do you propose to get people to commit to themselves to something abstract, distant, big? [see anderson's imagined communities.] that's one way, the creation of some human community--heavily invested w/ symbolism-- to which people see themselves as belonging. that has it's problems, does it not? so what's the alternative?
theories of democracy are undertheorized, naive, simplistic, impoverished. i baked a rant up about that last week. the problem is something that's been alluded to in the past on this List.
kelley
“touch yourself and you will know that i exist.” ~luce irigaray