>
> But none of us, not SNCC, not the southern NAACP chapters, not SDS,
> not
> the nmerous local groups such as US in Bloomington/Normal or JOIN in
> uptown Chciago, not the Panthers were poor little sheep who had lost
> their way and could only huddle together around a focus on process. We
> focused on ends; the focus on process was derivative.
>
> Take a look at the list of works cited in MOrgan's book.
>
> Carrol
>
>
> On 10/16/2011 9:56 AM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>> carrol:
>>>
>>> P.S. Probably no one has noticed that a month or two ago the word
>>> "organize" disappeared from my vocabulary to be replaced by
>>> "mobilize."
>>> Marv in a post described his ideal "organizer," and in my response
>>> to
>>> that post I quoted that and said something like "that sounds about
>>> right." Then after I clicked the send button I began to think, and
>>> the
>>> more i thought the more I began to feel that we really did not want
>>> Mark's super Organizer; that in fact in so far as we were
>>> successful
>>> in
>>> the '60s it was through mobilization by groups, not by organizers.
>>> Organizers belong in the back room keeping the web site up to date.
>>> The
>>> better ones will of course emerge to work with others in
>>> mobilizing, a
>>> collective task that needs no superheroes except as part of that.
>>> \
>>
>> I'll do what I can to write about this book, won't have the time or
>> patience to sit on my fractured tailbone! In Freedom is an Endless
>> Meeting Polletta illustrates what you are saying, discussing the
>> benefits and drawbacks of mobilization through prefigurative,
>> process-based politics that emphasizes participatory democracy and
>> the
>> cultivation of a mobilized citizenry from which leaders emerge in
>> the
>> process of ongoing struggle.
>>
>> One thing I wanted to relate was the role of workers education
>> movements in the early 20th century. Most of these efforts
>> (Brookwood,
>> ILGWU Unity centers, Bryn Mawr's Summer School for Women) were
>> founded
>> on the idea that workers needed a liberal arts education, a sense of
>> empowerment through learning how to participate in political
>> decision-making, and a kind of Deweyean philosophy of learning
>> through
>> doing - chores, fieldwork, etc.)
>>
>> These schools were initially supported by unions but they did so
>> with
>> some trepidation. Later, unions moved to shut them down or defang
>> them
>> because they radicalized the workers too much, rendering them too
>> radical to put up with the business unionism that dominated the
>> labor
>> movement.
>>
>> The common thread Polletta finds is with people like Myles Horton
>> (who
>> later founded the Highlander Folk school integral to the civil
>> rights
>> struggle in the South) and Ella Baker who had attended Brookwood.
>>
>> "Baker and Horton would continue to practice and disseminate the
>> radical pedagogy of early workers' education efforts. Participatory
>> decision-making should both train ordinary people in the skills
>> needed
>> for political leadership and develop their broadest aspirations for
>> the movement, they believed. They would treat participatory
>> decisionmaking as a critical tool in organizing, and the young civil
>> rights workers whom they trained would do the same. But Baker and
>> and
>> Hortaon's influence on participatory democracy 1960s style was
>> quiet.
>> Few 19602 activists would identify them as sources for their
>> understandings of how movement organizations should operate and even
>> fewer would cite the tradition of workers' education on what they
>> built." (p 36-7)
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________
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>
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>
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