[lbo-talk] USA and protests -or lack thereof-

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Mar 14 09:05:50 PDT 2009


shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
>
> your answers to those questions are probably the same ones others would give:
>
> -[clip]
> --i'm not good at organizing.
[clip]

Actually, no one is and everyone is. For one thing, it's a "skill" (if that is an accurate designation) that is only learned in collective practice -- when three or more people sit down in a room and brainstorm on how to get five more to sit down with them.

There is one terrible barrier to knowing how to organize, it is the superstition that it involves changing the minds of people rather than reaching out to the millions who on some one or more issues already agrees. The anti-war movement has been partly crippled from the beginning by the slogan, "Support the Troops: Bring them home." (It is important not to attack the troops, as posters on this list are attacking the "american people," but that's another question.) That slogan encapsulated the idea that movement needed to persuade people who were for the war to be against the war; that it had to appeal to people, and change their minds, whose basic principle was patriotism. This is nonsense. To begin with the movement consists of (say) 1 out of every thousand of those who ALREADY OPPOSE THE WAR. The other 999 are sitting at home wishing someone would stop the war or hoping that good politicians will get elected to stop the war.

IT IS THOSE 999 passive haters of the war that the movement needs to reach.

All agitation is directed at those who already agree but either are passive or don't know they agree. It is never directed at changing minds by persuasion.

It is the growth of the active movement (as well as events out in the world) that begin to change people's minds, not the arguments of the movement. Therefore the movement NEVER aims at "changing minds" with its arguments but ALWAYS continues to aim at people who already agree but aren't part of the movement yet.

That is the only theoretical principle necessary to become an organizer. EVerything else is to be learned on the job as it were.

But it is contemptible to blame the american people for passivity unless you are actively engaged yourself in some local organizing effort, no matter how futile it seems.

Carrol



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list