[Distributed at the U.S . Social Forum 2007]

BRINGING IT

“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it” – Franz Fanon, Algeria, 1961

The walls are going up, the wars are going down, empire pushing out, borders closing in. But look below, look to the left, look to people in struggle, and you see the cracks being made in the old order, windows being opened into another kind of world. Within the borders of a society accustomed to detachment and passivity, young people are coming to the left in search of a new way of being and seeing, without borders; of the possibility of something different; of a way to grow beyond the established horizons of the present. We want to remake a movement – a young left where our collective struggles can build and sustain a culture of justice-making, equality and freedom.

As two young radicals and as participants in recent student struggles, we hope to help reopen a conversation among the young left about the movement we have and the movement we want. Ours are but two voices, grounded in our own thinking and experience, so we wish to invite more voices to join in this conversation in the days to come. Against the system’s conspiracy of silence, a young left must find itself and speak to itself through its own collective voice.

Why now? This is a decisive moment for movements. A time not only for action-it is always time for action-but also for reflection, for reinvention. If we intend to contribute to a broad-based and deep-rooted transformation of our society, we have to collectively trace our paths towards that transformation, and shape our own work accordingly. People’s movements on all fronts are walking towards the other politics, the solidarity economy, the free society we know is possible. For our young left, it is necessary to evoke our own visions of a free society. But that is not enough. We have to actually bring it.

Making the Connections

“There’s no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we don’t live single-issue lives” – Audre Lorde

Today, the young left and its project of movement-building is complicated by the seeming disconnectedness of its many struggles. Our left seems, at once, rooted and adrift in the past, present and future, in uncertainty of where it began and where it, as a whole, is going. We fail to remember that struggle is everywhere, has always been and will always be. We also fail to remember that action alone does not make a movement. If we want to make a movement, we need to bridge the gaps which currently keep us apart, which keep us from moving toward our common goal of making this tired world new.

This project of (re)building our movement must be one of mapping and creating connections between people and peoples’ struggles, and between “issues” and the bigger systems of which they are a part. Until these systems are named, confronted and dismantled, the “issues” will never be resolved, and every generation will face its Iraqs, its Katrinas, its everyday oppressions. Creating and maintaining a movement in our young left requires a shift in how we organize with one another toward a more comprehensive and practical understanding of how our “issues” intersect, how our struggles are connected.

Building such a movement also calls for a profound shift in how we view, contest and negotiate the borders that separate us as human beings and prevent us from making meaningful connections in the fight for a more just society. We must begin to actively question and creatively approach those things that separate us, not to erase them, but to redefine them in ways that connect rather than divide us in this struggle. A movement must recognize the necessity, at once pragmatic and visionary, of solidarity across it – not unanimity or uniformity within it.

In a society where injustice permeates our lives and communities in multiple ways, a strong movement must recognize the importance of fighting injustice on multiple fronts. Our left must also understand that individual struggles are never won alone. We are struggling to change a society which depends upon multiple and reciprocal systems of oppression and domination for its survival. In order to create enduring change in such a society, our movement must nourish interconnected and mutually sustaining struggles of liberation.

Insurgent Ideas – for Action

“Consciousness Commitment = Change” – Slogan of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers

Movements have always been inspired by insurgent ideas, often emerging from the “organic intellectuals” of everyday life and rising up against the ruling ideas of our society. Yet the U.S. left finds itself burdened by the movemental lack of direction that accompanies action without thought. Ours is a system where even “successful” organizing does not produce substantive social change if it does not target the systemic roots of injustice and inequality. A young left needs to think critically about what it hopes to achieve through action and why. Action without insight, without strategy, will not sustain change.

On the other side of the coin, some of the left has a preoccupation with “Theory.” That is, theory divorced from its practical functions in the lived world or, perhaps more importantly, the ways in which the theoretical must be rooted in the daily experiences of people in struggle. The theoretical and ideological components in a working movement should be shaped and enabled by active, lived components. Much of the stagnation that frustrates the left is related to our tendency to organize around thinking (or talking) about social change, without putting theory into practice or practice into theory.

An effective marriage of thought and action must make critiques that are relevant to people, build connections between the seemingly separate issues they confront, and fashion alternatives grounded in their needs and desires. Thought and action cannot exist without each other. They must be in continuous conversation. This has to be a conversation shaped by all affected, led not by elites, but by insurgent ideas in action.

BREAKING IT DOWN

Their Wars – and Ours

“The project of the New American Century seeks to perpetrate inequity and establish American hegemony at any price. [We] demand justice and survival. For these reasons, we must consider ourselves at war.” – Arundhati Roy, Porto Alegre, 2004

Our generation watched as the rulers of the United States declared a war without end, a war supposed to last our whole lives. As we fight to end that war, let’s remember the other war of which it is a part – a world war of power and profit against peoples, one that’s been going on much longer than the “war on terror,” one that is intrinsic to the system of systems which we call capitalism, racism, patriarchy, authoritarianism. The battle lines run deep through every society, much deeper than the “clash of civilizations” touted by the rulers to mask what lies beneath. Let us unmask it.

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