Reading through material from the GI antiwar movement, I came across a help wanted ad looking for *organizers* to work in a GI coffee house.
Typical bulleted list of requirements in the job ad. One caught my eye.
They wanted people who were ready to do organizing and who didn't expect to see wins any time soon. If you were expect to see victories regularly, the ad said, don't bother to apply. Instead, the wanted people who understood that they were doing *organizing* work, not activst work.
Now, this caught my eye since I've often pointed out that there are two issues we have to contend with, at least:
We have to contend with the fact that we won't see easy victories right now. We are too small, too weak. But we still have to keep working at it anyway, building a foundation upon which, when conditions change, we can build on a solid foundation.
This, in turn, means that whatever we do, we need to recognize that activists (as I call them, but the advert suggested there's a difference) need to feel like they are at least occasionally make progress, experience wins/victories. To substitute for that, some of our work during periods of political quiescence might have to artificially create small wins, small victories. It might also have to be the case that sometimes our work has to be directed at ourselves, that it's OK that the audience we reach is mostly us. It's important to have parades, protest, puppet shows, whatever, in order to create rituals of solidarity - experiences of a collective effervescence that remind us, every once in awhile, why it all matters, why we keep struggling.
The position announcement's language suggested that the distinction between activist and organizer was well-known and didn't really need to be explained.
so I'm wondering if any 60s veterans have any memory of this, might know where this distinction was theorized or defined. I was thinking perhaps it was Saul Alinsky? I don't remember anything in Rules for Radicals, but I haven't read it in years.
Speaking of "struggling", I came across the famous C. Wright Mills' essay that was apparently very important to the New Left. In the essay Mills talks about how leftists conceive of political struggle.
The essay has often been hand-waved in discussions of influences on 60s radicals. This is the first time I've seen the article referenced, let along published.
In all the hand waving, it has usually been said that the essay established a theoretical basis upon which much 60s activism apparently rested. For instance, it was a foundational document for the slogan, "The personal is political," as well as crucial to the 60s analyses of oppression as something distinct from repression.
Interestingly, Mills sounds like a flaming anarchist, throughout. Much of what he says about struggle, political organizing, etc. was simply restated by Occupy recently.
60s veterans -- I got my hands on a collection of writing from the 60s and 70s - position papers, pamphlets, articles published in newsletters, conference papers, etc.
Reading through material from the GI antiwar movement, I came across a help wanted ad looking for *organizers* to work in a GI coffee house.
Typical bulleted list of requirements in the job ad. One caught my eye.
They wanted people who were ready to do organizing and who didn't expect to see wins any time soon. If you were expect to see victories regularly, the ad said, don't bother to apply. Instead, the wanted people who understood that they were doing *organizing* work, not activst work.
Now, this caught my eye since I've often pointed out that there are two issues we have to contend with, at least:
We have to contend with the fact that we won't see easy victories right now. We are too small, too weak. But we still have to keep working at it anyway, building a foundation upon which, when conditions change, we can build on a solid foundation.
This, in turn, means that whatever we do, we need to recognize that activists (as I call them, but the advert suggested there's a difference) need to feel like they are at least occasionally make progress, experience wins/victories. To substitute for that, some of our work during periods of political quiescence might have to artificially create small wins, small victories. It might also have to be the case that sometimes our work has to be directed at ourselves, that it's OK that the audience we reach is mostly us. It's important to have parades, protest, puppet shows, whatever, in order to create rituals of solidarity - experiences of a collective effervescence that remind us, every once in awhile, why it all matters, why we keep struggling.
The position announcement's language suggested that the distinction between activist and organizer was well-known and didn't really need to be explained.
so I'm wondering if any 60s veterans have any memory of this, might know where this distinction was theorized or defined. I was thinking perhaps it was Saul Alinsky? I don't remember anything in Rules for Radicals, but I haven't read it in years.
Speaking of "struggling", I came across the famous C. Wright Mills' essay that was apparently very important to the New Left. In the essay Mills talks about how leftists conceive of political struggle.
The essay has often been hand-waved in discussions of influences on 60s radicals. This is the first time I've seen the article referenced, let along published.
In all the hand waving, it has usually been said that the essay established a theoretical basis upon which much 60s activism apparently rested. For instance, it was a foundational document for the slogan, "The personal is political," as well as crucial to the 60s analyses of oppression as something distinct from repression.
Interestingly, Mills sounds like a flaming anarchist, throughout. Much of what he says about struggle, political organizing, etc. was simply restated by Occupy recently.