<http://www.blackcommentator.com/171/71_cover_wal_mart.html> -
Towards a Movement for Democratic Development
[by BC Editor-in-Chief Glen Ford]
<snip>
We need information on every aspect of the city. We need information so that people can develop their own plans for the city.
Corporations know everything they need to know before they target a city - infinitely more than the city officials with whom they "negotiate," if you can call it negotiation. The actual process is more like corporate bullying and extortion.
Activists seeking to build a Movement must know as much as the corporations about the city's assets: public and private, infrastructure and installations, vistas and brownfields. A basic task is to do an audit of the city's assets, as the basis for people-oriented planning, and to bargain competently with corporations. This requires assembling teams of experts from many disciplines - civil engineers, architects, progressive city planners, educators - people who collectively understand what makes a city tick. Plus organizers, organizers, organizers.
[...]
========================
This diamond hard common sense and impeccable logic demonstrates why I admire the Black Commentator in general and Glen Ford in particular so much.
Woj often (and quite correctly, in my view) chides folk on the left for clinging too fondly to old and cozy formulations. The way to create new ones is by knowing your situation as completely as possible. Even Zizek, known primarily for high flying flights of theory, said as much during Doug's interview with him in 2003 (stating that an acknowledgment of weakness was the first requirement for acquiring strength):
<http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2003/03_04_17.mp3>
To use a personal example, I'm becoming increasingly involved in anti-DRM (digital rights management) efforts that seek to maintain some sort of information commons. At first, it seemed sufficient to shout about the evils of the usual suspects – Microsoft and so on. But fairly quickly it became clear that I needed to understand at least as much as my adversaries do about how the entertainment wing of Capital works to be at all useful to the campaigns that I hope will become a movement.
This same principle of knowledge informing action is critically needed when deconstructing issues large and small within the the political arena (everything from an analysis of War Plan Iraq and the torture and detention archipelago that's developed around it to what your city council is up to and why).
.d.
---------
<<<<<>>>>>
'Of course, you do realize this means war?" Bugs Bunny