Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
These are posts on activism from the blog Base and Superstructure. This takes many forms. The focus here is on political activism, above all on activist organizing and base-building. One concern is how to build effective movements. There’s also a need to create solidarity with fellow members and build coalitions with other groups. The main aim of good movements is to work together to advance material interests. This section also includes critiques of electoral work, and discussion of how and when to use elections to advance activist goals. Navigating the balance between grassroots work and electoral work is difficult for everyone.
So, you’ve joined DSA. You attended your first meeting the other day. And like any right-thinking socialist at their first DSA meeting, you identified your politics as ‘to the left of the DSA.’ Now you’re sitting around thinking, ‘why doesn’t DSA have a real socialist caucus?’
Good think you clicked this blog post, my friend, because you’re in luck. I’m going to explain the 5 steps to start a DSA caucus. Read on and enjoy!
Suppose you’re in charge of designing the environment in the workplace or the classroom. What if you could design it so that everyone can access it. What if by designing features so that disabled or marginalized people can use it in the best ways for them, everyone can use it in the best ways? That’s the basic premise behind universal design. When you design something for those with the least access, you thereby design it for everyone.
It sounds great. But does universal design work? Does it run into limits? Let’s think about these questions.
Over the course of May and June of this year, I attended a set of training sessions called Organizing for Power. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation does the trainings, with Jane McAlevey serving as the lead trainer.
Overall, it’s a good training in certain practical matters of organizing. I’d recommend it. For the most part, they base the training on McAlevey’s popular books about union organizing. I’ve written about those books several times in the past, including a post on key lessons and a post on some problems and issues with McAlevey’s notion of an ‘organic leader.’
Does the course impart any key new lessons a person can’t gain by reading McAlevey’s books? Not really. But they structure the training around reinforcing lessons and practicing them. And not to mention helping people work through their ‘bias’ in favor of activists. Many of the fellow students organize within their own unions and social orgs. These things alone make the training worthwhile.
For readers looking to put theory into practice, I’d say do the training! I think the training could serve as a starting point to figuring out how to apply lessons to your own workplace or org. But I’d recommend balancing alongside astute critiques of the model.
Recent Iowa City mayor Jim Throgmorton wrote a book about his time on the city council in Iowa City. He calls it Co-Crafting the Just City. I’ll get to why he called it that in just a bit. But for now, I’ll say it’s a rare kind of book. People don’t often write about the politics of a small U.S. city. And certainly not in the kind of detail one finds here.
As some readers know, I moved to Iowa City in 2007. And I served on the city’s Housing and Community Development Commission from 2019 to 2022 (the final year as chair). So, I know about many of the political debates Thorgmorton mentions. I followed most of them closely – some very closely.
Overall, Throgmorton does a fine job listing the basic issues at play. He does so, of course, from his own (in some ways limited) perspective. That’s to be expected. I’ll sketch out some of the book’s goals and insights into Iowa City politics.
So, I’ve taken part in a ton of activist groups in Iowa City over the last 15 years. A couple of months ago, I wrote some reflections on the good and bad of Iowa City activism. I kept most of that rather local to Iowa City. In this post, I’d like to extend this to broader lessons.
With that in mind, here are 4 lessons from local activism!
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