On Mar 29, 2011, at 1:01 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> And one more thing - there is no such a thing as "potential radicals."
> People become radicalized through participating in action, not
> through holding radical ideas.
Two things. Preexisting radicals often go to work for foundations or foundation-funded groups just to pay the rent. That deradicalizes them. And people who might be radicalized by more bottom-up activity aren't, because they're shunted into the crap that foundations like. Our activistism piece is a lot about that:
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Action.html
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Unreflective pragmatism is also encouraged by much of the left's dependency on foundations. Philanthropy's role in structuring activism is rarely discussed, because almost everyone wants a grant (including us). But it should be. Foundations likefocused entities that undertake specific politely meliorative schemes. They don't want anyone to look too closely at the system that's given them buckets of money that less fortunate people are forced to bay for.
Activistism is contaminated by the cultural forms and political content of the non-profit sector. Because nonprofits are essentially businesses that sell press coverage of themselves to foundation program officers, they operate according to the anti-intellectual logic of hyper-pragmatism and the fiscal year short-termism generated by financial competition with their peer organizations. When nonprofit business lead, the whole left begins to take on the same obsessive focus with "deliverables" and "take aways" and "staying on message." For many political nonprofits, actions - regardless of their value or real impact - are the product, which in turn promise access to more grants.
Nonprofit culture fosters an array of mind-killing practices. Brainstorming on butcher paper and the use of break out groups are effective methods for generating and collecting ideas and or organizing pieces of a larger action. However when used to organize political discussions these nonprofit tools can be disastrous. More often than not, everybody says some thing, break out groups report back to the whole group, lists are compiled - and nothing really happens.
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