For the last week I’ve been on a wilderness canoe trip without any phone or computer or cars or humans other than my partner. It was the first time I’ve been without contact to the rest of society in…as long as I can remember. It’s been a new attempt at finding balance in my life – something every organizer I know is desperately searching for, since organizing is a thankless endeavor that takes over your entire life, to the point where you eat, sleep, and breathe the work. The pressure of striving to do your best to have you work guided by deep accountability to the communities and folks you work with is a tremendous responsibility that doesn’t seem to be in the lexicon of our elected officials.
I just stepped in to a canoe lodge on the Canadian/Minnesota border, and the first thing I hear about the outside world is a vice presidential candidate dissing community organizing. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities" ha ha ha. I’ve heard a lot of really foul things come out of the mouths of politicans from both major parties. Its expected. But this time I was just suprised more than anything else. Community organizing, whether on the Left or the Right is the lifeblood of this country and the engine of change.
Jay Smooth from Illdoctrine put it best:
And as shared on racewire, Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Center for Community Change, said:
When Sarah Palin demeaned community organizing, she didn’t attack another candidate. She attacked an American tradition —- one that has helped everyday Americans engage with the political process and make a difference in their lives and the lives of their neighbors.All across the country, in every state and every community, there are community organizers helping people find shared solutions to the shared problems they face. The candidates for President and Vice President should be working to solve our shared problems, too, rather than attack others who trying to do the same.
Yup. And as some friends of mine pointed out, we just saw what the Republicans really think of community organizing and peaceful protest, after turning the Twin Cities into what resembled a warzone, with tazers, mace, teargas, concussion grenades, mass arrests of bystanders and even media, rubber bullets, and the national guard. After that, snarky comments about organizers not shouldering responsibility don’t seem so bad, eh?
Joshua Kahn Russell is an organizer working to bridge movements for ecological balance and racial justice. He is a strategy and non-violent direct action trainer with the Ruckus Society, and serves communities directly impacted by fossil fuel extraction.
Joshua offers workshops, training, consulting, facilitation, and action coordination to groups and organizations.
He has authored chapters for several books and numerous organizing manuals, most recently Organizing Cools the Planet: Tools and Reflections to Navigate the Climate Crisis, with Hilary Moore, on PM Press. Joshua is a regular writer for the blogs Znet, Grist, Rabble.ca, WireTap, and It’s Getting Hot In Here, and his articles have appeared inYes! Magazine, Left Turn Magazine, Peacework Magazine,Upping the Anti, and Z Magazine, among others.
Joshua has worked internationally with civil society groups at United Nations Climate Negotiations and has been a leading voice in the International Youth Climate Movement. Joshua spent four years as Rainforest Action Network’s Grassroots Actions Manager, helping to win campaigns to stop corporations from fueling our addiction to coal and oil, and helping transform Wall Street with successful campaigns that shifted six banks away from financing fossil fuel projects.
Joshua has coordinated and helped build numerous civil disobedience actions, including the 4,000 person Capitol Climate Action in 2009. Recently he was a trainer and action coordinator for the Tar Sands Action which mobilized 1,250 people including scientists, senators, Indigenous leaders, farmers, teachers, mothers, religious leaders, students and celebrities to participate in 2 weeks of daily sit-ins at the White House. He has served on the steering committee of the Energy Action Coalition, a youth-led coalition of over 48 groups spanning the environmental spectrum, and helped found the “new” Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a national multi-issue youth & student group, which in less than a year grew to over 250 chapters and nearly 3,000 members nationwide. He helped revitalize the Activist Resource Center and other student groups at Brandeis University, where he coordinated university-wide student walkouts in 2003 and 2006. He was awarded a fellowship from the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life; The Elise Boulding Sociology and Social Activism Award; and the Karpf Peace Award. During that time he has done international solidarity work in Cambodia, Jamaica, and Mexico with groups such as the Womyn’s Agenda for Change and the International Jamaican Council for Human Rights.
His artwork has appeared on the cover of books authored by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, and Noam Chomsky, smartMeme, and in the Celebrate People’s History poster series.
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