How can we build left organizations that are _productive_. Not mutual masturbation societies where we organize in order to protest, engage in street theater, hold cyber sit ins, show antiwar film festivals, or create artists collectives for mutual aid/support among musicians, writers, artists. Rather, I mean productive in the sense that within the course of daily operations, we _help_ people in whatever small or large ways we can.
It seems to me--in my limited experience--that there aren't that many lefty groups that actually help people organize around immediate issues and/or do something to "help" people. I mean, I guess I've mainly been involved in activism that responds to direct issues and 'helps' people. e.g. Clinic defense (in Terry Randall country), addressing a teen pregnancy/women's health crisis, working for plant closing legislation, organizing to support unionization efforts at Landis plastics, working against radioactive dumping.
But what I'm thinking about are more sustained efforts at creating organizations whose purpose is to pick an issue, any issue, focus on that issue and help people to address those issues. There could be a larger umbrella that embraces local, decentralized networks.
For instance, unionization is great, but what about the unemployed? How could lefty groups work to help the unemployed organize to "help themselves" and, thus, experience what it feels like to actually accomplish something? Which is to say, it wouldn't be 'helping themselves' in the conventional, individualistic sense. Rather, it'd be helping themselves _and_ helping others.
I'm thinking here of Dorothy Sue Cobble's work in _Dishing it Out_. Cobble traced the history of waitress unions. Yes, really. Waitresses used to be unionized--well, about 25% of them anyway. But they weren't taken seriously in labor history lit b/c their model of unionization departed from the type of labor organizing that dominated the 20th century (in the U.S.). They were more like professional associations. In part, they were attempts to make waitress work more respectable (since early on it was associated with prostitution). Thus, these unions helped place waitresses in jobs, acting as a kind of employment agency. They also trained waitresses, providing the kind of professional association services we've come to associate with professional orgs that offer conferences, workshops, classes.
This kind of "helping" wouldn't have to be in the service of teaching people how to be good little "worker bees" of course. Rather, these places can be forums for _consciousness raising_. Ehrenreich talks about how workers don't really know what the going wage is. What better way to find out than in an atmosphere where that kind of sharing of information is encouraged?
I don't want to make this too long, because I'm more interested in hearing from others about similar efforts and ideas. Do people organize around literacy? Would people think that's worth their while? (I'm thinking a bit of Saul Alinsky type efforts.) There used to be a lot of activism around housing --and there probably still is, yes? What if we actually create relief/aid/assistance orgs for the poor, for the working class falling through the cracks. What about groups to help people fight bureaucratic red tape? Food kitchens? What about groups that help people poor people get the tax deductions, etc. they're entitled to (we've had discussions in the past about poor single women not realizing they could file for EIC)?
Other ideas?
What are the problems with what I'm envisioning? Not enough resources, of course. Are we opposed, in principle, to charity? Is working in "civil society" something leftist ought to oppose, in principle, because those voluntary civil society organizations prop up capitalism?
Other crits?
Kelley
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'