>Yoshie reads me as saying that organizers have to "start with folks
>who hate your guts." Needless to say, I didn't suggest any such
>thing, but her reaction indicates the emotional underpinnings of
>this subject.
I used the phrase "folks who hate your guts," because, quite often on this listserv, many writers suggest that we go talk to people (whom they homogenize as "ordinary individuals," as if they were one indistinguishable bunch standing in separation from "leftists") _randomly_. If leftists brought their maximum programs to strangers in the USA randomly, they would find that the majority of individuals they meet consider them nuts (and some of them "hate their guts"); if leftists brought only one particular issue, demand, or grievance to strangers randomly, they would still find that one in two or three or four or five individuals (the proportion depending on the issue or demand or grievance in question) would "shut the door in their face," so to speak. Among the individuals who don't immediately "shut their doors" are many "fence-sitters" who are "undecided until the last minute" and thus of no assistance at the beginning of movement organizing because they won't make up their minds until they see the movement grow much, much larger. Given the fact that no leftist has unlimited time to devote to organizing (and, moreover, most of us are not full-time paid organizers but volunteer organizers who try to squeeze a couple hours per week at maximum for political activism after they take care of their work, family obligations, personal affairs, etc.), trying to talk to people randomly doesn't make sense at all. Given very limited free time at disposal, leftists must prioritize. Hence the rule of thumb: (1) start with what you got (i.e., organizers and activists who already agree with you and are eager to work with you) and then (2) go to likely folks (i.e., regular and sometime activists who are likely to agree with you, though you have to ask them to get their commitment to take action) in critical constituencies (i.e., the most important constituencies for the growth of a social movement in question); only after you pull off (1) and (2) successfully and (3) sizable sectors of folks in critical constituencies beyond usual suspects get involved can you hope to (4) expect others (with the exception of a quarter to a third of the population who are and will be dead set against you) to come into contact with you directly or (in the majority of cases) indirectly.
>Of course, you start with small groups. The question is: what kind
>of group? How do such groups operate? Do they operate from a
>hyper-defensive, closed-off position, or an open,
>two-way-communicating position? It seems to me that the feminist,
>civil rights, labor, etc., organizations which have had success have
>operated the latter way.
I have no disagreement with you about the imperative of openness and two-way communication, but feminist, civil rights, labor, and other movement organizers didn't go about their organizing randomly -- and they tried to organize strategically when they could. Also, remember that, even at the heights of feminist, civil rights, labor, and other movements, only a sizable minority of the US population directly participated in them regularly. A social movement, even a successful one, won't attract the majority of a given society to its side as regular and active participants.
Also, however open your small group is, you can't expect even folks who are sympathetic to what your small group is doing to come join you eagerly to do organizing work. Folks are busy, and organizing takes time. Folks have jobs that they can't afford to lose, and organizing can put their job security at risk. Folks are practical, and small groups don't usually look like they can achieve anything in the near future. And so on, and so forth. Hence the difficulty of making a leap from (2) to (3).
>there is more sympathy there for the idea of changing the capitalist
>system than you might think
I'd expect that about 5% of the US population already have such a sympathy (though most of them won't put it as "changing the capitalist system" as such), but the sympathy doesn't necessarily translate into any action unless there exist some practical struggles in which they can participate. The job of organizers and activists is to identify issues and problems (by listening to folks as well as discussing amongst themselves), help transform them into demands and grievances around which folks can organize, and then go from (1) to (2) and do what they can to help make the leap from (2) to (3) to (4) possible. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>