Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>
> At 5:18 PM -0400 4/8/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >You're forgetting knocking on doors, selling the revo like Girl Scout cookies!
>
> Why don't we bring flyers and petitions to blacks by knocking on
> doors in black neighborhoods? Organizers and activists, of whatever
> color, have to give blacks still left out of the existing networks a
> chance to turn us down.
Canvassing (of various types) that I've participated in has always been carried out by "mixed pairs," one white, one black. It has usually worked well, but never on a sufficent scale because of lack of core cadre.
Not counting work in the civil-rights movement of the '60s, we did door-to-door work (on a _very_ limited scale) on three occasions. And because of its limited scale it doesn't provide much experience to go by, but it has anecdotal (i.e., suggestive) value.
The first was the 1978 Normal Fire Strike (when they sent the whole fire department to jail for 40 days). Several of the women in our group carried a statement of solidarity around a public housing project in Bloomington (there was no project in Normal).It was a fairly simple statement, demanding if effect that the Town of Normal give into the Fire Union at once. Black and Mexican women, as well as white women (Bloomington housing was still fairly mixed then) all signed it: in fact some of them volunteered to help carry it around. The kicker to this is that the Normal Fire Department were all white men.
Of course we never had any way to follow up on this. There were only a few of us, and the strike ended. But this sort of thing can grow, _if_ one can increase the number of cadre and thereby come into contact with more people in wider circles. The point of such canvassing, of course, is that it asks people to _do_ something -- sign a statement of solidarity or a petition -- not merely listen passively to being urged to vote for someone. The power of petitions and/or solidarity statements is that they _both_ provide an occasion to knock on someone's door and talk _and_ provide something for the new person to _do_ at once, sign the statement, as well as, possibly, take a second step of circulating the petition her/himself. Lacking both cadre and a national focus (that is, in Gary Wills's words, an agenda of our own) this support action for the Normal FD went no further, but it remains illustratory of possibility.
Our second 'experiment' in canvassing occurred when the Bloomington Teachers Union was negotiating a new contract. That was more extensive. (As in the case of the Normal strike, we didn't ask permission to offer support, and we created a front -- the Parents and Workers Committee to Save the Teachers' Union -- for the purpose of canvassing. I came across recently while going through old papers the statement Jan read to the open School Board meeting called to consider the teachers' demands, and I'm attaching it at the end of this post. It is fairly self-explanatory of the whole event. (I wasn't there, but Jan, who read the statement, said that the teachers in attendance seemed surprised that anyone would be supporting them!) The final sentence in the statement to the Board was empty -- again because we were too small, because the teachers' union was not about to make a real battle of it, and there was not national focus (agenda) that we could link to.
The third 'experiment' was carried out by the black woman in the group and me, in connection with our Central America solidarity work. A CISPES organizer had been in town, and he and I had had a long argument over the usefulness of house-to-house or one-on-one work. (At the time CISPES was trying to "reach" people in larger groups and bring pressure to bear on Congress: an essentially bureaucratic process.) The two of us prepared this statement of solidarity with the people of El Salvador, combined with a demand that the U.S. stay out. (Both of us suffered from depression, but neither of us knew it at the time: we just knew that it was exhausting work to force ourselves to walk up a sidewalk and knock on a door -- though it was pure pleasure from that point on.) We covered one building in a local housing unit -- four appartments, 3 black, one white. We picked up 6 signatures to the statement. Again no follow up. By this time our group was down to four people, the others having moved to other states. And of course CISPES had no real national presence in the public eye. But again, that 90 minutes of hard work (just forcing ourselves to ring the doorbell four times) and immense pleasure (talking to the people after we got in) was/is illustratory of what the potential dividends are from such work.
I hope people around the nation are making good use of this brief "opening" to establish as many links as possible with people who can become organizing cadre when the next dramatic openng for growth and action appears. This has been about the most successful mass organizing nation wide during my life time (considerably surpassing the Anti-War movement of the '60s) but it will be wasted if it does not lead to new (and more cohesive) continuing groups of activists, with agendas that go beyond the immediate crisis.
Carrol
Here is the statement referred to above.
***** October 13, 1976
Statement to the Board of Education, Bloomington from the Parents and Workers Committee to Save the Teachers' Union
I speak for the Parents and Workers Committee to Save the Teachers' Union - a group organized by several hospital and office workers who want to build unions of their own and know that what hurts one union hurts all unions. I'm here to present to the Board a statement of solidarity with the teachers signed by 400 local working people. The statement is simple: "We, the undersigned parents and workers, declare our solidarity with the Bloomington Education Association (the teachers's union) in its dispute with the Bloomington Board of Education. We demand that the Board of Education accept the contract proposal put forward by the BEA." In the neighborhoods we have canvassed so far, well over 90% have signed. But many did also have criticisms of the teachers, criticisms with which our Committee agrees. The chief criticisms are as follows.
1) The teachers should have demanded more pay. 2) The teachers should have resisted staff reductions and speed-up. 3) The teachers probably should have gone out on strike. They probably still should. 4) The teachers should have opposed, not supported, the tax referendum. District 87 suffers from misallocation of funds, not lack of funds.
All of our signers were very clear on one point - tht the Board's actions have had only one purpose - that of union busting. Most of our signers were also aware of another point - that administrative costs have increased while services to students have been cut.
Our committee intends to continue canvassing, continue talking to parents and workers in District 87 and begin investigating what the real situation is in our schools.
Thank you.