Michael Albert

I

think we have a problem. From Seattle through Prague and San Francisco, we have

established an activist style needing some mid-course correction.

What’s

the problem, you might ask? Thousands of militant, courageous people are turning

out in city after city. Didn’t Prague terminate a day early? Aren’t the

minions of money on the run? Isn’t the horrible impact of the WTO, IMF, and

World Bank revealed for all to see?

Absolutely,

but our goal isn’t only to make a lot of noise, to be visible, or courageous,

nor even to scare some of capitalism’s most evil administrators into

shortening their gatherings. Our goal is to win changes improving millions of

lives. What matters isn’t only what we are now achieving, but where we are

going. To win “non-reformist reforms” advancing comprehensive justice

requires strategic thinking.

But

isn’t that what’s been happening? Aren’t we strategizing about these big

events and implementing our plans despite opposition?

Yes,

but to end the IMF and World Bank now, and win new institutions in the

long-term, we need ever-enlarging numbers of supporters with ever-growing

political comprehension and commitment, able to creatively employ multiple

tactics eliciting still further participation and simultaneously raising

immediate social costs that elites can’t bear, and to which they give in. That

is dissent’s logic: Raise ever-enlarging threats to agendas that elites hold

dear by growing in size and diversifying in focus and tactics until they meet

our demands, and then go for more.

From

Seattle on, if we were effectively enacting this logic, steadily more people and

ever-wider constituencies would be joining our anti-globalization (and other)

movements. Our activities should have continued to highlight large events when

doing so was appropriate and useful for growing our movements, but they would

also emphasize more regional and local organizing, in smaller cities and towns

and directed more locally, reaching people unable to travel around the world to

LA or Prague or wherever. There are folks working on all this, to be sure but

they need more help, and these trends need greater respect and support. 

Why

aren’t our numbers growing as much as we’d like? Why aren’t new

constituencies joining the mix as fast as we would like? Why aren’t the venues

of activism diversifying more quickly to local sites and gatherings?

Part

of the answer involves no criticism of our efforts. Progress, after all, takes

time. Movement building is not easy. Another part of the answer, complimentar,

is to note that in fact there is some rapid growth – for example, the

proliferation of IndyMedia projects providing alternative local news and

analysis. Indymedia operations and sites now interactively span nearly 30 cities

in 10 countries, a virtually unprecedented achievement. But IndyMedia growth

occurs by refining the involvement of those who are already largely committed.

Of course that’s not bad. It’s wonderful. But it is internal solidification,

not outward enlargement. Similarly, the preparation, creativity, knowledge, and

courage of those who have been demonstrating are all impressive and growing. But

this too occurs not based on outreach, but by manifesting steadily increasing

insights and connections among those already involved.

Let

me try an admittedly stretched but Olympic analogy to illustrate my point.

Imagine a marathon race. As thousands of runners burst out at the starti, folks

are bunched in a huge moving mass. Yet however entwined at the outset, everyone

competes. These faster runners want to escape the impact of the huge mass. They

break off and speed up. In time, inside this fast group too, there is uneven

development. Some runners are having a better day, for whatever reasons. Before

long, they want to open a second gap, now between themselves and the leading

group they have been part of, and to extend that gap sufficiently so those left

behind lose momentum for want of connection with the inspiring faster runners,

just as had been done to the massive pack, earlier. Eventually, it happens yet

again, with the few who will compete down the stretch breaking away from the

already tiny lead pack.

Like

a marathon, movement struggle goes a long distance, requires endurance, and has

to overcome obstacles. A big population is involved and we would like to succeed

as quick as possible. Speed of attaining our ultimate ends matters greatly and

even reaching secondary aims like ending a war, ending the IMF, raising wages,

or winning a shorter work day is better quicker than slower. But still, winning

social change is not like a typical race, or shouldn’t be, because the winning

logic isn’t for those who develop unequally and are “faster” to leave the

slower pack behind and cross a finish line first. The only way to win the

“social change race” is for the whole pack to cross together, as fast as it

can be induced to go. The fastest and otherwise best activists need to stay with

the pack to increase its speed, not to go as fast as they can irrespective of

the pack, or even slowing it. A little spread between the more advanced and the

rest, in the form of exemplary activity, may be excellent, but not too great a

spread.

So

here is our current problem as I see it. There is a partial disconnection

between many of our most informed activists, and the bulk of people who are

dissatisfied with the status quo but inactive or just beginning to become

active. And this disconnection induces some to become highly involved and to

interact fantastically well with one another, even having their own supportive

subculture, but to lose touch with others who become long distance spectators,

watching the action, or detached from it entirely. I speak every so often at

college campuses and there this division is perhaps easiest to see. The

activists look entirely different, have different tastes and preferences, talk

different, and are largely insulated rather than immersed in the larger

population beyond. The situation exists in communities as well.

Lots

of factors contribute, of course. None are easy to precisely identify much less

correct. Still, one that is relevant here is that over the months since Seattle

dissent has come to mean for many looking on, traveling long distances, staying

in difficult circumstances, taking to the streets in militant actions involving

civil disobedience and possibly more aggressive tactics, and finally risking

arrest and severe mistreatment.

This

is a lot to ask of people at any time, much less at their first entry to

activism. For example, how many of those now participating in events like LA and

Prague would have done so if it wasn’t the culmination of a steady process of

enlarging their involvement, but instead they had to jump from total

non-involvement to their current level of activity in one swoop? Consider people

who are in their thirties or older, and who therefore often have pressing family

responsibilities. Consider people who hold jobs and need to keep them for fear

of disastrous consequences for themselves and the people they love. How many

such folks are likely to join a demo with this type aura about it as their

initial steps in becoming active – a demo seeming to demand great mobility and

involving high risks?

The

irony in all this is that the efficacy of civil disobedience and other militant

tactics is not something cosmic or a priori. It resides, instead, in the

connection between such militant practices and a growing movement of dissidents,

many not in position to join such tactics, but certainly supportive of their

logic and moving in that direction. What gives civil disobedience and other

militant manifestations the power to force elites to submit to our demands is

the fear that such events forebode a threatening firestorm. But if there is a

2,000 or even a 10,000 person sit-in, even repeatedly, but with no larger,

visible, supporting dissident community from which the ranks of those sitting-in

will be replenished and even grow, then there is no serious threat of a

firestorm.

In

other words, dissent that appears to have reached a plateau, regardless of how

high that plateau is, has no forward trajectory and is therefore manageable.

Plateau-ed dissent is an annoyance that the state can control with clean-up

crews or repression.

In

contrast, growing dissent that displays a capacity to keep growing, even when

much smaller, is more threatening and thus more powerful. Civil disobedience

involving a few thousand people, with ten or twenty times as many at associated

massive rallies and marches all going back to organize local events that are

still larger, gives elites a very dangerous situation to address. Through

personal encounters, print, audio, and video messaging, teach-ins, rallies, and

marches, folks are moving from lack of knowledge to more knowledge and from

rejecting demonstrating to supporting and when circumstances permit joining it.

A huge and growing mass of dissident humanity restricts government options for

dealing with the most militant disobedience. This is not a plateau of dissent

for elites to easily manage or repress, but a trajectory of forward-moving

growth that elites must worry about.

It

follows, however, that if the state can create an image in which the only people

who should come out to demonstrate are those who are already eager or at least

prepared to deal with gas, clubs, and “extended vacations,” then at the

demos we are not going to find parents with their young babies in strollers,

elderly folks whose eyes and bones couldn’t take running through gas, young

adults kept away from danger by their parents concerned for their well being, or

average working people of all kinds unable to risk an unpredictable time away

from work. Add to this mix insufficient means to manifest one’s concerns and

develop one’s views and allegiance locally, and the movement is pushed into a

plateau condition.

The

problem we have, therefore, is an operational disconnect between the movement

and certain types of organizing, and therefore between the movement and the

uninvolved but potentially receptive public. I know this assessment, even

moderated by recognition of all that has been accomplished and recognizing that

there are even energies directed at these very problems, will sound harsh to

many folks, but even with the many exemplary exceptions, it is important to

acknowledge that these matters need more attention.

Consider

but one example. The internet is a powerful tool, useful in many ways to our

work. But with the internet, mostly we are communicating with folks who want to

hear what we have to say. They come to our sites and participate in our lists

because they are already part of the movement. How else would they know where to

find us? This is similar to what occurs with a print periodical or radio show

that we might have in our arsenal of left institutions. Only those who subscribe

or to listen almost always because they already know that they want to hear what

we have to say, hear our message. Don’t get me wrong. This is good, for

sure—and I have spent a lot of my life working on such efforts which I feel

are  part and parcel of advancing our own awareness, insights, solidarity,

and commitment, and of refining our methods and agendas, tooling and retooling

ourselves for the tasks at hand. The trouble is, returning to the earlier

analogy, if done without prioritizing other more face to face and public

activity, it can lead to us becoming a breakaway, intentionally or not, and

thereby largely leaving behind the constituencies we need to communicate with.

Another

different kind of organizing is explicit outreach, aimed not at solidifying and

intensifying the knowledge and commitment of those who already speak our

language and share our agendas, but at reaching people who differ with us. This

is what is going on when we hand out leaflets or do agitprop and guerilla

theatre in public places. It is what happens when we hold public rallies or

teach-ins and we don’t only email those eager to come, but, in addition and as

our main priority, we go door to door in our neighborhoods or on our campuses,

urging, cajoling, inducing, and even pressuring folks to come to the events.

This face-to-face interaction with people who aren’t agreeing with us already,

or who even disagree strongly with us, is at the heart of movement building. It

is harder and scarier than communicating with those who share our views, of

course, but it is even more important to do.

To

the extent outreach is going to touch, entice, and retain new people in our

movements, it has to offer them ways to maintain contact and thereby sustain and

grow their initial interest. If the end point of a face-to-face conversation

about the IMF, for example, is that we urge someone to travel 500 or 1000 or

5000 miles to a demonstration, sleep on a floor or not sleep at all, and take to

the streets in a setting where, whether it is warranted or not, they expect to

be gassed and face arrest and extended detention keeping them away from kids and

jobs, few if any newcomers are going to jump in. But, absent continuing

involvement, with nothing obvious and meaningful to do, there is no way to

retain contact to the committed activist community that has piqued their

dissident interest. As a result, their anger will most likely dissipate in the

fog imposed by daily life and mainstream media. Thus, without mechanisms to

preserve and enforce its initial impact, outreach to new folks won’t take

hold. We plan the next demo, go to it, and celebrate with the same crowd as at

the last demo.

I

think this picture, with many variations, broadly describes a major problem that

prevents our efforts–as fantastically impressive as they have been—from being

not just impressive, but overwhelmingly powerful and victorious. So I think more

attention has to go to expanding and refining our agendas, not to eliminate our

more militant tactics – not at all – but to give them greater meaning and

strength by incorporating much more outreach, many more events and activities

that have more diverse and introductory levels of participation, and also more

local means for on-going involvement by people just getting interested, all

still tied, of course, to the over-arching national and global movements for

change.