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Tossers in Berkeley?
Now, wait, just a minute. Them sounds like fight'n words. First, I don't have a pony tail, and second what's left of my hair isn't gray (grey is an English spelling, what are you a Tory?). And third, the left over gray tossers from late 40s McCarthy era taught the first big student movements how to do. Then fourth those guys, along with the gray haired tossers from the national orgs in the civil rights movements taught the rest of us. And in turn, I spent many, many hours spreading the `How To' to another generation of disabled students, and many of the current now aging law and policy types hereabouts developed much of disability law and social concept, directly beholding to the civil rights lawyers from the 60s. Although, I have to admit, Marta Russell's book on these subjects, certainly changed my view of that history...
A couple of weeks ago some kid working in the old student program was talking some issue, I can't remember what. So I explained how we got the administration to make changes. I also had to explain that the war on poverty act that funded part of the program (and still does) was mandated to achieve and sustain `systemic' change at the local educational level. Successive generations of program staff and directors had forgotten all about that part of their job (lacky revisionists!). I explained you work for the system, but the students don't, so they organize `outside' the system, while you support them on the `inside'.
BTW, this concept of inside-outside working in tantum comes straight out of the French and Russian revolutions (in their early phases), as well as the disasters of Weimar, the New Deal programs, and of course the civil rights movements.
``...Is it whining to wonder what structures are in place (or will be in place) to bring this pressure to bear?''
No it isn't whining. But on the other hand, all those structures are in place around here and many other places. There are more local political groups and lawyers here than I can count or know about. They've evolved over time to become an in-depth local system or `structure' that is permenantly mobilized on every issue from Gay rights to Green stuff, to health and welfare and education. All the local issues are also the issues the elected officials like Barbara Lee, Loni Hancock(state assembly), to Barbara Boxer deal with on their various committees. So there is almost a direct link between the people on the street, so to speak, and the policy struggles in city, state, and federal governments.
You have to look around locally to find these community level systems and their interface to government and public policy. Track an issue and you will find them. Take education, technology, environment, healthcare, etc. Try google, `Philly, NCLB', the acronym for No Child Left Behind. Of course I disagree with the concept under pinning NCLB, but that's another matter. Looking for local structures is the point here, and this is one way to find them.
Most elected officials in this region are beholding to the local political groups who put them in office. A lot of these groups were not from the dull witted Democratic party machine. That's the key as I see it.
This is a long hard slog, but it definitely can be done and it can be sustained year after year after year. The first step is to see it as a war of attrition. You literally breed the motherfuckers out of existance. Excuse me. I mean, you help change the demographics.
You can dismiss this as something unique to Berkeley. It isn't.
The master plan...
The university and state college system produces the managerial class, the so-called professionals who will be running the social institutions. So this is a target, especially law and the social sciences. The plan was to radicalized the students and retain them for graduate studies, and in turn move those departments. Of course there were already plenty of sympathetic faculty---but the old foot dragging liberals dominated. In any event, then work with the job placement systems to get these graduates, professional jobs were they could become the next generation of movers and shakers. This plan actually worked for few years. It produced or set the foundation for all kinds of disability access and rights that percolated through local, state, and federal governments, their agencies, civil service, and the society as a whole. But then the university administration cut the head off of the student service program. The effort was lead on the faculty side by a political science professor. Years later, I realized he was a neoconservative and neoliberal and probably understood exactly what was going on, and helped clean house.
If you re-think the above in terms of race and or low income, you will see this is straight out of the War on Poverty playbook, i.e. the way to build a more thoroughly egalitarian society. It ain't the revolution, but will have to do in the meantime. And of course it is still a battle ground, since many of these programs were co-opted in various ways.
It was pretty obvious to me, that Chicago must be rife with neighborhood orgs, local issues and political machine struggles not too far off what's going on here. I say that thinking about Obama's so-called community organizing---and the great party he got on election night. Detroit too, although I didn't see any mainstream media on it.
Think about Obama's mother. She was an anthropology grad student working in Kenya, among other places. You could tell from my stories about my anthro classes, that anthro was back then on the front line of all sorts of issues, relativity of culture etc. What that tells me, is that Obama was a product of what I am talking about. He was raised on that stuff. Not anywhere near radical enough for my taste. But that also tells me, he very definitely can be pushed to the left, by the right people. And Berkeley among many other places, has just the right kind of people in public office who can do that. How? Lee, for example is a member of the CBC, ...
Sustaining the Plan.
Start simple. Teach your kids to share. The off the cuff remark about sharing sandwiches is socialism was a whole lot more revealing to me than it was to the Right. Sharing is socialism. That's how it starts for kids. Share and be generous, learn group cooperation. Sounds trivial. It isn't. Pretty soon the kids are volunteering to collect donations for UNICF (or something), marching just like good little comrades door to door with public duty in mind. (The group my kid was in actually got in the local papers for collecting the most... Reagan pulled the US out of UNICF a year after. He knew it was a commie front!) By the time kids are in high school they are joining local issue campaigns that effect their school and communities...
This is getting too long. You get the idea. Also think about quite a few members on this list. What are they doing in `real' life? At a guess, they are part of their own local systems and networks, pushing from the left on several different levels from professionals to community level. They usually don't identify themselves as such for various reasons. But I can smell'm. They are out there and they are working at it, and that's good.
CG