Have any plans for the new year? Any goals or resolutions? Here’s an idea: join a tenants union! Don’t have a tenants union in your city? Start one!
Category: Activism (Page 30 of 31)
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.
What was your first protest like? I’ve been thinking lately about mine. It goes something like this.
I woke up yet again to the sound of my dorm neighbor’s TV blaring. Usually it was gospel music or some TV preacher’s program. The neighbor was studying to be a minister or gospel singer. At least, I think that’s what he was doing.
But this time it was CNN. Not that I cared. I think I pounded on the wall and asked him to turn that shit down, or something else suitably appropriate for an 18 year old college freshman who didn’t appreciate being woken up at the most ungodly hour of 9:30am.
I’m 35, and I believe most of you can do the math here. This was September 11, 2001, and I was a college freshman at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
Bernie Sanders lost in 2016. Cathy Glasson lost in 2018. Glasson is a Sandersista. Sanders is, well, the Sandersista.
Sandersistas have pursued many strategies since Bernie’s loss, with Cathy Glasson representing an electoral route. Sanders looms large over this strategy, endorsing candidates and providing support through organizations like Our Revolution. Doing things like organizing tenants’ unions and organizing against ICE represents an alternative strategy.
My readers won’t be surprised to find that I think there’s more potential to build popular power in the latter than in the former. Readers also already know I don’t think highly of electoralism as a central component of leftist strategy.
But elections are not totally hopeless, and they may provide lessons.
The Cathy Glasson campaign provides me with a convenient point of departure. One, I’m an Iowan. I saw the campaign literature, followed the press coverage, and know people who volunteered with the campaign.
Two, Glasson’s campaign is representative of how this strategy has gone, particularly in the Midwest. Successful candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have gotten more national press, as winners tend to do. But, e.g., Cathy Glasson, Abdul El-Sayed, and Pete D’Alessandro are more typical. Sandersistas usually lose, and often lose badly.
What lessons can we learn from the Cathy Glasson campaign? That’s my topic here.
Into politics? Thinking about making a run for office? Let’s talk about this. The left needs serious discussions on whether and how to win power electorally.
I’ll get directly to the point. All things being equal, running for office is a bad idea. I’ll say a bit about why. Along the way, I’ll make some recommendations for what to do about this.
The background to this post is that there’s a special election for a vacant city council seat in Iowa City. I live in Iowa City, and I’ve spent some time evaluating whether running for office here might be a good use of time. The city council, in particular, appears like it might be an outlet one could use for positive results.
Despite the obvious localism, I’ll draw out broader implications.
Leftists are building and learning new political terms and new political things.
Mostly this is a good thing. But we need to strategically incorporate words in ways that are inclusive and/or advance our goals, and are not counterproductive. See, for example, Sara Lynn Michener on some cases where use of new language can be counterproductive. Michener’s article is far from perfect, though perhaps that’s some of the point.
With that in mind, I’ll boldly (and at least somewhat seriously) propose this flowchart for deciding whether you should use political terms you’ve just heard.
