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This information prior to 2009 is provided for historical background purposes, since ISBO grew out of the struggle in New Orleans, through PHRF and POC. |
2011
June 2011
Learning to Be Egalitarian from the Ground up in the Now
A Report on the Organizing Process of the ISBO Collective in Jamaica
June, 2011
The slim, ebony arm of the sixteen-year-old girl went up. "Maybe it truly was fair, or maybe it was unfair, I don't know, but I think last time, Howie got too much and some people didn't get enough. All of us have needs, and what he got could help him with his needs, but what some of us got wasn't enough to help us with our needs. I think Howie should get less this time and some of us should get more."
Maurice said, "Well, it's according to how much work you do, and he did most of the work."
The facilitator asked, "Is that the principle we agreed to? Get paid by how much we work, like any other job?"
Several people responded, "It's by need, not only by work."
Howie said, "Maurice did a lot more work this time than he did last time; he helped me tend to the chickens many days; he should get more money this time."
A woman who is new to the group and very shy said, "I think what Marcia said could be right. Maybe it wasn't fair before. We should look at people's needs, too."
An older woman said, "I was uncomfortable about Marcia last time, too. Four people each got the same small amount, but one of them has parents who support her so her money was just spending money; two of them have other income; but Marcia doesn't have any income at all, she has to beg rides to school, so it looked equal but it really wasn't fair."
Richard, who had been reluctant to say anything at all, finally said, "All I can say is, each one of us has an inner soul. We all have to look into our inner soul to see what we think is fair and right. Last time, if you remember, those four got that amount because I put back a lot of my part. The only thing I can say is all of us can look into our inner soul." After that, there was silence until finally Howie said, "Take off 25% of my money and put it back in the pot."
This is a small part of an hour-long conversation at the last meeting of the Organizing Class led by ISBO (International School for Bottom-up Organizing) in Jamaica.
[For background about the project in Jamaica, please read the appendix.]
The Organizing Class is part of the community group in Jamaica. It meets once a week and works on several fronts. Members consider themselves as working for the community, and they do the day-to-day work of the group: making house calls to harvest ideas and encourage people to come make their voices heard at general meetings, making phone calls for those meetings, preparing the site, facilitating the meetings, and doing the same organizing steps for each workday and fundraising event. That is one front. Another front is studying the history and experience of previous revolutionaries, including the mass struggle to abolish slavery in the Americas (led by slaves and former slaves), communist or socialist attempts to create egalitarian societies, and recent and contemporary history and events. We discuss our own internalized racism and how to combat it, internalized sexism and how to combat it, and how the ideas and values of the Two Percent (the owners and rulers of the world) seep into our own values and how to combat them. We are looking for how to create an egalitarian world that does not make the same mistakes that defeated our ancestors and predecessors.
The third front of the Organizing Class is our egalitarian enterprise, which is what this article is about. Members of the class started our enterprise in March to provide material support so organizers can be free to do the work of the community. It is part of our vision of creating egalitarian prototypes of the world we want to build, learning egalitarianism by doing it, and becoming self-sufficient so our communities can sustain themselves independently of the government and the Two Percent. The economic principle of the enterprise is that we distribute the proceeds according to need: "each person does what they can, and each person gets what they need." This article is about the amazing, exciting, painful and scary challenges we are confronting in working through the problems in our enterprise. Eventually, we would like to see the enterprise grow to include all the whole community and all of its needs; eventually we want to do all of this without money.
So far, our enterprise is raising chickens to sell for eating, and making wicker products to sell both local and internationally. We have raised and sold two sets of fifty chickens so far. With the help of donated start-up money from supporters abroad, we now have chickens maturing every three weeks and have a small flow of income from them. We also sold three wicker picture frames, but have not made any more yet due to lack of time and people to do all the work, but they will be coming soon.
Here is the story of our successes and challenges in our chicken enterprise.
We create a market for our chicken by going door-to-door every three weeks to take orders. We explain our vision and that the income goes to support the organizers who work for the community: they know about the community work already. So far, we have delivered all of our chickens the same day we harvest them.
After selling our first chickens and some wicker products, we had a very happy and excited meeting where we pretty easily agreed on how to distribute the money. 70% of it went to a blind, unemployed man who did the day-to-day work of taking care of the chickens as they grew. (Everyone helped with cleaning, picking and marketing.) Everyone got something and went home happy; but later on there were some second thoughts.
The quotes at the beginning of this article were about distributing the money from the second set. This time it was not as easy, as you can see from the quotes. One person who had done very little work for the past month decided to leave the meeting early without really explaining why. We all left the meeting feeling pretty good, though. Our words to each other were not angry. We reminded ourselves that none of us know how to do this, that we are doing the best we can at figuring it out, and that we will get better as we go along. We are creating a new world, and just like childbirth, that cannot happen without pain; some of our mistakes will be painful, but we will learn from them: that is our spirit as we move forward.
The next day, several members talked to each other about the mistakes we could see after sleeping on the meeting the night before. We agreed that it still wasn't fair: Howie still got too much, several people got too little. One of us said to the facilitator of the meeting: "You'll get the blame for it, too, you know. If you had just said how it should go, and proposed a more equal solution, everyone would have been relieved." The other said, "but then the solution would be coming just from her; we want everyone to be part of the process and say their part." For her part, the facilitator knew she was feeling her way just like everyone else, and didn't actually have a "solution" to propose that night!
Here are some of the issues we will be discussing over the next week and longer:
- The work of the enterprise is not just the chickens. It is all the work we do for the community, because the whole purpose of the enterprise is to support the organizing.
- It is not a business where we get a salary. It is about providing for the organizers' needs so they can work for the community. NEED is the main way to decide.
- Each time we distribute money, let's put some of it in the community group treasury.
- We have to look more clearly at our own sexism. One thing that happened as a result of looking too much at work, and only at the chicken work, is that the three men got more money than the four women. But if we look at NEED, we can see that at least two of the women have very great need, more so than any of the men. If we had the understanding at the time that ALL the work the organizers do is considered "work," we would have included all the organizing work the women had done: house calls and phone calls for meetings, etc., not only the work they did with the chickens. We would have realized that the women did plenty of work!
- Talking about women's needs, there is one thing we have to discuss more, which we already have talked about some. That is the fact that in our community, women and girls are forced to sell their bodies when they don't have any other way to get food, shelter and other necessities for themselves and their children. Our priority is to prevent that happening in our community, starting with doing everything possible so it does not happen to our organizers!
We should hold up Marcia as a great example for speaking up at the meeting. In spite of her youth, she showed leadership, and it comes from her own situation. She has already turned down propositions from taxi drivers to trade sex for her fare to get to school and most days goes without lunch. Many women and girls are shy about speaking up in meetings. All of the women felt the distribution was unfair, but only Marcia said something about it. We will encourage women to speak out more and louder at meetings, because their voice is what we need to stay on the egalitarian path! This is why ISBO says we need leadership from the poorest and darkest, ESPECIALLY WOMEN.
Addendum: Quotes from this week's organizing class discussion
"We have to look at the meaning of equality. Is it the same money, or money based on your standard of living? Some of us don't have income, some have other income, some are educated, some are not educated. So we need to decide on the meaning of equality, then we can figure this out."
"This is a test drive. We expect to make mistakes and work them out as we go along. But this is not about work; we have to put work out of the discussion completely or we'll have a problem. This is based on need."
"Remember the world historical context: equality is exactly the place where everyone messed up: Russia, China, even Cuba; they lost it, they have some very poor and some rich. So we should give ourselves a break and expect to make mistakes and correct them. It depends on total honesty and trust in one another."
A Special Note to Our Comrades and Friends in Other Revolutionary Organizations
Part of the reason for writing this article is to appeal to you to think about our experimental projects in building egalitarianism in the now. We think you share our goals of creating a world of egalitarianism by the hands of the oppressed masses, ending racism, nationalism and sexism, and making an historical monument from the ruling two-percent that has caused most of our misery for centuries.
We have concluded that it may not be preferable to start the process by first overthrowing the state. Our work is based on the idea of creating an egalitarian mass movement by building egalitarian, self-sustaining collectives in the poorest, darkest communities worldwide. (You can read more about our ever-developing ideas and activities at www.peoplesorganizing.org; please look particularly at our first two books, The Bottom Will Rise and Create a New World, Books One and Two, both available in full and downloadable from the website. You can also see photographs from our organizing projects in Jamaica and Colombia.)
Our theory (practice will prove it right or wrong) is that by developing such a movement, there will be masses of people with a very sophisticated, practical knowledge of egalitarianism alongside a deep and passionate commitment to defending it. At this point, state power will truly become a "paper tiger," and the new society that follows will already be in the hands of the people themselves. IT IS VIVIDLY CLEAR FROM OUR PROJECTS THAT THE GENIUS TO LEAD OUR MOVEMENT EXISTS AMONG THE PEOPLE AT THE BOTTOM: THE POOREST, DARKEST OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS - ESPECIALLY OUR SISTERS!
What we ask from you is several-fold:
- critical readers for our writings; all of our writing is a result of collective experience and discussion; we want the benefit of your experience and thoughts, too
- venues to discuss our work with potential supporters and other interested people: we can provide speakers
- people from the "bottom" where you are who want us to train them in egalitarian organizing
- financial support
- all other forms of support: medical, legal, technological, in-kind material support, volunteers
- "folk tech" energy technology, water technology, etc.
- social networking, YouTube and other electronic expertise
- connections with like-minded people all over the world
- circulation of our writings, websites, etc.
When ISBO first started, some of its founding members had been in existing revolutionary formations that seemed to be spinning their wheels, waiting for objective conditions to change so that the old ideas would gain new popularity. We decided to quit waiting and try something new. Because we came out of bottom-up, black-led organizing in the 1960s, this is where we have ended up. So far, we think we are in a good place! We are not asking you to quit what you are doing, however; we are just asking for your thinking, expertise and support.
We are very excited that poor, grassroots people are struggling with the very issues that stymied the revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba and elsewhere - how to distribute the product of our labor in an egalitarian way. This is not happening in an isolated "commune" among people with alternatives: it is happening on the ground in rural, "third world" communities where people have run out of alternatives. Will you join us in learning from these brilliant, profound, and courageous people, and in spreading knowledge of their work far and wide?
* * *
Appendix:
Report from Jamaican organizing class to the ISBO School in Colombia
March 2011
Introduction:
The organizing in Jamaica has been in process for nearly four years. It has evolved during this time and is at a deeper place now than four years ago or even one year ago. Some of the things we are thinking about and working on have never been done before in the way we are doing them. We think about our work as a laboratory for experimenting with and learning about egalitarianism and self-sufficiency.
We have passed through a stage of dealing with dishonesty and selfishness. This caused us to become very vigilant and principled about how we deal with money and who we trust. Whereas in early events, people doing the work at our events sometimes stole money, food or drink for themselves and gave to their friends, in our most recent event, the Valentine dinner (which was our best collective effort yet), everyone from the group who worked also bought their own ticket and no one stole or took more than their share.
We always have internalized racism on the front burner. We have passed through a stage of everyone deferring to the white person, which is still an ongoing struggle. But we have improved in this because the same set of organizers has been active for a year and a half, and they have become much more experienced and self-confident. They facilitate the meetings, handle the money, do the door-knocking and the phone calls and organize the activities. In every event we evaluate, we discuss how internalized racism was there and how we dealt with it, so we continue to learn and become stronger.
We continue to learn about and deal with internalized sexism. We have had some very deep and honest conversations about our experiences with sexism, male and female, and this shows that we are honestly trying to deal with it, and that we trust one another very much. Most recently, one of our high schoolers brought to the group that a taxi driver had asked her for sex in exchange for rides because she does not always have her fare. We discussed this long and hard, and decided to go together as a group to help her talk to her mom about it. In the end, we weren't quite satisfied with her mom's response, but decided to abide by it unless the man approached her that way again. We will be vigilant about it from now on. It is also our principle that all activities we do have male and female involved; we agree that nothing is "men's work" or "women's work."
Organization:
We have three bodies that meet regularly.
The highest body in the community group is the general monthly meeting. For that meeting, we do house calls and phone calls (about 120 calls) to invite everyone from the two or three communities to attend. The meetings rotate venue to make them accessible to the whole community and demonstrate our principle of unity. The general meeting hears reports of all activities for the month, hears a financial report, and discusses and makes plans for workdays, fundraisers and other activities. It opens with a cultural or spiritual offering and ends with everyone standing and singing with hands joined in a circle. All meetings are facilitated according the People's Circle method of equal voice and consensus decision-making. The facilitator rotates to different members of the organizing class. We take a collection at each general meeting.
The leadership team is composed mostly of elders and some representatives from the organizing class (not always the same ones). It is open to anyone who wants to help do its work. This group meets once a month, the week before the general meeting, and decides the agenda for the meeting, makes recommendations to it for work and activities, and assigns tasks for decisions agreed to in the general meeting. It is held in the yard of one of the members of the team.
The third regular meeting is the organizing class. This is a weekly training class for organizers taught by ISBO organizing trainers. It is also voluntary, but only accepts people who have shown themselves to be honest and have the people's best interest at heart. The regulars include an elder woman (the trainer), a young adult man, two middle aged men, and three teenage girls. Sometimes, one or two of the girls' moms attend; sometimes one or two other teenage girls also attend. There was an older teen youth who used to attend, but he had to move out of the community. This group has been together more or less since the ISBO school in Jamaica in 2009. It had existed before then, but with a different and changing set of people.
Egalitarian self-sufficient prototype:
The organizing class members think of themselves as part of ISBO and as organizers who work for the community. The topics listed in the beginning of this report are main topics for the organizing class (that is, honesty vs. two-percent selfish attitudes, struggling against internalized racism and sexism). Several of them have taken some concrete steps toward creating an egalitarian prototype. This began about a year ago when the general meeting discussed self-sufficiency and planned toward having a community farm and farm market, an ongoing crafts committee and baking committee for bake sales.
About five organizing class members recently started an enterprise. The reason for this is that members of the organizing class are sometimes not available to do their organizing work because they are forced to focus on personal necessities. Several members of the class do not have enough food to eat, and at least one, sometimes two, of the school girls do not have transportation or lunch money for school. Sometimes members are too tired and hungry to concentrate during meetings or are in danger of sexual abuse as mentioned above. We decided that as a set of people trying to build a new world who love and care about each other, we had to begin to solve these problems collectively. We see this as the embryo of making our whole community self-sufficient on the basis of an egalitarian principle, which can then be an example that can spread to other communities, link with similar projects in other countries and spread to the whole world.
Our enterprise is currently making wicker products and raising chickens. The guideline for the work is that each person will give and do what they can and know how to do, and each person will receive according to need. We have had several discussions about how to do this and have not completely figured it out yet. We all know how the two-percent pay for work according to the hour or day; we will not do it like this. We also know that the capitalist way is that whoever starts out with the most resources gets out the most; our enterprise will be the opposite of that: the person with the most resources will probably not get out anything at all because they don't need it. Some of our members have other income and their needs are not as great. Even if they put in as much time as another person, the person with the most need will get the greater share of what we produce. Up to now, we have not sold anything yet; we have made some wicker products (picture frames) and have started raising chicks. We have not figured out how we will share out the proceeds, but we do know that we will first put aside what we need to keep the enterprise going. We also have consensus about who has the most need. So we are pretty confident that we will work out something fair. We have decided that as long as we are honest and caring, we will be able to correct any mistakes we make and gradually figure out the best method.
Another principle of the enterprise is that whatever we produce comes with a message about egalitarianism. Everyone involved with the enterprise is required to help market our products by going door-to-door for orders and explaining our principles and our vision. When we sell picture frames, we plan to put needlework in them that also says something about our principles. If we sell things outside the community or abroad, they will come with a printed tag explaining our principles so they become ambassadors for our egalitarian prototype.
The organizing class has also just launched another experiment: it is a fund for our members. Beginning in mid-February, we began throwing money in a can at each meeting. We said that those who are working can throw around one to one and a half percent of their income, and those who are not can throw whatever they might have even if it is very little. The one member who collects a pension in US dollars is throwing three percent of the income, because that money goes farther than Jamaican dollars. The purpose of this fund is for organizing class members to draw from when they need urgent help with food, educational expenses or medical expenses. We have decided we will keep a portion of it each month toward major, unexpected medical expenses. Also, we agreed that if a person does not have money but has food, they can donate the food, since that is one of our needs. We are still having discussions about how to manage the fund and what to name it. We have consensus that the money will be given out according to need, not according to how much a person put in.
Here are some of the suggestions for names so far:
- Fair-view fund
- Oh freedom fund
- Wise-equal-life fund
- Life care fund
- Equamor fund (equal + amor/love)
We have consensus about the two people with top priority to receive from the fund. One is a disabled man who does not have a job and often does not have food. At first he resisted everything out of pride. Then he said he would not take out from the fund until he had put some money into the fund. We pointed out that it is the two percent who say money is the most important thing and we don't agree. He has already put in more work on the enterprise than anyone else, he is honest and we know he will use the money for the agreed purpose. We all agreed he should take from the pot before he has money to put in (which he will get once the enterprise begins to sell). One young woman said, "we are family within the group, and if we're family then anything that's mine is yours, share and share alike. If you have a need, you shouldn't put pride in it and you shouldn't feel guilty, because you are not taking something that doesn't belong to you." He finally agreed.
The next person we agreed needs urgent help is the high school girl who is begging rides to school. One man in the group gave a passionate speech about how he feels for her because he was in the same position as a child, eating one meal a day and no carfare for school. As he said, "she is part of us, one of our soldiers" Everyone agreed that she was very skilled and dedicated to make sure she got to school every day with no money and no food. We decided to help her by buying snacks for her to sell in school to raise money for her fare and lunch. We know that she has done this before and spent off the money or was careless with it and it got stolen, so we also said that if she loses the money, she can only come to the fund for taxi fare a limited number of times for the month. One of our adult members agreed to oversee her buying and selling, because she said she couldn't manage money, so we need to help teach her how.
Conclusion:
These things are experimental and we will see how they work out. We know there will be ups and downs. As far as we know, nobody has tried to do this inside the revolutionary movement in the last hundred years, even after they controlled nations. They never had confidence that the people at the bottom could work according to egalitarianism instead of individual self-interest. We are giving ourselves permission to make mistakes and then correct them, based on our commitment to egalitarianism, our love for each other, and our honesty. If we can do this on a small scale, we think we can take it to a bigger and bigger scale. Our first step in the direction of bringing in the community will start next month, when we cook one meal per week together, with whatever anyone has to put in the pot. We will invite a few friends and family to partake with us and spread the idea of share and share alike. After dinner we will show a movie and discuss it.
We are excited about the Summer Project, where we will build a windmill to start generating our own energy, and learn many skills that can help us learn from the elders and communicate with other communities all over the world. It will help us move from just taking care of a few of our needs collectively in a small group toward eventually taking care of all of our needs for everyone in the community!
March 2011
Minutes of the ISBO Local School Session in Colombia, March, 2011
People came to the ISBO school from mountain and valley communities in Cauca, from Cali, Medellin, El Choco, Bogota, and also from England, Finland, France, the US and Jamaica. They came from all walks of life, including high school and university students, farmers, workers, teachers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers and professors. Several had been reading and following ISBO for a few years. A core group of about twenty organizers attended all week, and an additional forty-plus people came for various lengths of time during the week. They were women and men, young and old, of all colors, but predominantly dark-skinned and predominately young, between the ages of 18 and 35.
Day One, March 6, 2011
On the first day, everyone introduced themselves and responded to the questions: "why are you here, and what do you want to learn in this ISBO school this week?" Below are quotes from some of the dozens of answers.
"I know who I am; I want to know who I can be."
"How to create self-sustaining mechanisms."
"What is the limit we need to go to finish racism and all the things that are stopping us."
"I want to know what I can do so that people in my community understand that the project, process and land is theirs, and they need to appropriate it. Also: how to make our own gas and electricity, and how to eliminate money. How to raise children collectively, so the raising of children is not just the responsibility of the father and mother, so we all feel responsible for the children."
"How to eliminate poverty and the sense of being poor, because I feel that I am excluded, pushed away by people in different places where I go because of that. The government and society reinforces this and keep poor people down so that we can't stand up and fight for our rights."
"Every moment in my life makes me be here. To be Afro makes me be here."
"I'm here because I want to change our history."
"I'm here for the knowledge we can learn from each other. The process of the school is very important. From our community roots we will come up together. It is important to have unity: we can't do things alone."
"My worry is to do with food security. What can we do to make the small farmers, campesinos with very little income, and all the people that are involved in food . . . organize a working plan to counteract the current ways how food is produced and moves."
"I'm interested in learning the concepts of the school: machismo, racism, and to hear some experiences people have had."
"My friend from ISBO said he went to Jamaica and learned that Jamaican culture gives lots of importance to Afro culture. I learned about sister Nanny, and it has always been very emotional for me to know about Granny Nanny and my ancestral culture. So this is the moment for me to come here to share and visualize how to blow up this movement here in Colombia so people know about their culture and history."
"I want to learn all that I can, especially how young people can have a higher respect for saying we are Afro, we are black. Because among our Afro youth, there are many influences from other cultures and it's important for me to know that I can go out in the street and see that people feel proud of who they are and where they come from."
"I want to learn your strategies how to organize so I can apply them here in the palenque."
"I want to learn what is the best strategy so we can make the multinationals not contaminate our territory."
"All the processes that have to do with sustainability: I'd like to know about that."
"I want to learn deeply about ISBO, the things that will be shared about machismo, racism, all the things on the table, so I can integrate it into my music and AV projects."
"I like to be part of an organization that really takes what the communities have so we can show it to everyone, and learn how to do this without government intervention."
"I want to discuss how to deal with themes of trust. And how do we get women to participate more. How to maintain our community projects and processes without the use of money; how to become self-sustaining."
After the introductions, the overall plan for the school was laid out: former graduates of ISBO schools would meet in the mornings, and the overall school would open at 2:00 PM every day. The organizers would plan the sessions around the questions people had raised in the first session. All meetings were open to anyone who wanted to attend. The facilitator then made a few general points about ISBO:
"Our school will start every day at 2 PM. And the reason it will start at 2 PM is so the sisters that work in the kitchen, and work in the center, and work on jobs can also attend.
Here are some major features of the ISBO school. One is, we think everybody's equal. So we talk about racism and sexism up front, and we do that in every school session no matter what. One of the reasons we do that - even though Africa is the mother of all people on the planet, and most people on the planet today have African blood in their veins - all people, really - so when we talk about lifting African people up and making them our leaders, we are not talking about putting anybody else down. So that's why we have that discussion, so you get it right: we're talking about saving humanity. And women are all of our mama. And they too are trampled on. Isn't that amazing that we trample on our mamas? Those are two subjects that will be on our agenda, you should know that.
The other main issue on our agenda is: how do we make our communities self-sustaining? And as we talk, remember that if we are one people all over the earth, and we are, and there are 6.5 billion people on the planet, then we should know everything as a people, right? There shouldn't be anything we can't learn, right? So shoot high in the sky when you think of what you want to learn, because there's nothing we can't learn."
Day Two: March 7, 2011
The first thing we do in our school sessions is to have people from our projects give reports on what we've been doing since the last time we were together. There were four reports for this session, one from Jamaica, two from Colombia, and a report on the Underground Railroad research.
The first report was from Jamaica, accompanied by a slide show of photographs of the work. The report is attached.
The Jamaica report included a description of three types of meetings: a general meeting to which the whole community is invited, a leadership team which plans the general meeting, carries out some of its plans, and involves community elders in overseeing the work, and an organizing class led by ISBO organizers which studies current events, history of revolutionary movements, and issues related to the organizing, and which takes responsibility for organizing the meetings, facilitating the meetings, doing house calls and organizing the work the meetings agree to. The school emphasized that these three meetings - general community meeting, leadership meeting and organizing class - are three elements ISBO wants its trainees to create and maintain in all of our projects.
After the report and questions, we did a round of reflections on the report. Here are some quotes from that round:
"The thing that got my attention was that we are organizing in an egalitarian way, working for the common good, not the individual."
"What affected me was the story about the girl and the taxi driver. All the things women have to do for wanting to better themselves. I know I've been harassed and have tolerated it because I want to better myself. It was interesting that we helped her not to be harassed."
"That kind of story is reflected here, too; that's the reality of life. You can see it, like the girl may be here in the park - they might offer their body so they can travel to work or school: very sad."
"I really liked to hear the story of the young girl - that even with what she went through she kept on studying. I think that was a very good example."
"I particularly liked hearing that there is someone very committed to his work, giving all his energy to it who is blind, and he's going to receive more from our project because he's in greater need. That's a very novel thing. It would be so good to multiply that here and have that type society."
"I liked the opportunity you gave to the blind man to work, because so many people discriminate against blind people and think they can't do anything. And it was good to hear about the relief fund to help the most needy. Also the idea of creating our own energy is very good."
"What caught my attention was the unity in the group. The idea of cooking food collectively in the street and everyone chipping in, that really sounds like a family!"
"That there are three communities working together to become one family to benefit the poorest - that is really a good example to take around the world. I particularly like the young people uniting to work together for the most need, being independent from political parties and working on independence about energy so they don't depend on anyone. Those stories are very important for us to learn from and apply it here. That's what I want to do, work for my people, not depend on a job for a multinational so that I work and give my time so they can get richer.
"The whole story is very interesting and we have to look at it, reflect on it. The idea of autonomy from the government, the way the meetings are done, the thing about honesty around resources, fighting the minimizing of our identity - racism - the thing about sexism, machismo. It's very interesting about giving more to who is most needy. I think it is very daring, very interesting and contains many things that shake people's everyday life. These are all themes to reflect about."
"What impacted me was to see that people in other places in the world are working together to get to that dream world."
"The slide show was very impacting, to see the cultural expression of Jankunu, which is the same here - the difference is that you are doing it for the collective, where here they do it to ask for money for themselves. This is the kind of thing we have to reproduce in all our communities, also the productive project to give to the most needy. And the thing about honesty: sometimes people stole, but then started to learn that not stealing the resources is very important. We are very used to that here, people running away with the resources of the community. People need to understand that's bad. What the Jamaica project is doing is completely the reverse of capitalism, and that is super. We have to start bringing down those foreign processes like capitalism, and fight the individualistic mindset that people work for themselves only. We have to work together for the collective good."
At the end of the round, the facilitator commented on how profound the responses were and pointed out that it was the result of listening. He explained that listening is more important for an organizer than talking, because all the genius we need in the world is in the hearts and minds of the people, so we need to listen in order to get what we need.
The second report was on the Underground Railroad research project. The report is attached. In the discussion afterwards, the following points were mentioned:
** the role of the Masons as a significant part of the leadership of the UGRR in the US and Canada.
** if we had several thousand organizers in each nation in the Americas (the number the UGRR had in the US and Canada), the people could take over now.
** the movement made an error putting a white man (John Brown) in front in the military campaign to take over the South, because he got soft-hearted about the white prisoners and delayed movement until he could reassure their wives, causing them to be surrounded and defeated
** their constitution gave equal rights to women and all property owned by the community
** Lincoln freed the slaves to prevent them taking their own freedom and taking over the South
** because of the genocide of indigenous peoples and the mass importation of Africans, there ended up being more Africans than indigenous in most of the Americas: all Americans are Afro-descended
There was a wide-ranging discussion of racism and internalized racism, with many stories from the history of the Americas. A final comment on the type of organizing done by the UGRR was made by a Colombian organizer:
"This is the kind of organizing we are looking for. It is complicated to do within the oppression and harassment we are subject to as black people. We know that Haiti was marked after their revolution (1804), and because of that white people organized even stronger against the movement. Even today we know for a fact that when we try to organize, we are being watched because they say we know too much. In our town we've been trying; we know that the government has tried to break our process through legislation against it. What we're trying to do is get people away from political parties and politicians. What we're doing is our own politics, the politics of people."
In the evening, there was a round of reflections on the stories and reports people heard today. In addition to some people repeating thoughts expressed earlier in the day, several people focused on leadership: that in ISBO projects, the community is the leadership, that leaders are equals and shouldn't be big-headed, that their role is to unite people. They mentioned the need to train people to respect themselves so they can respect and serve the people; they mentioned the need for female leadership. Others mentioned accountability and transparency about money, learning to put down self-interest, producing collectively for the community.
"The boss in the organization is everyone that comes to the meetings. That is the most important thing, because if the boss is just, everyone will work justly - and the boss is the community!"
"ISBO's idea is interesting. It's looking for a new world, an egalitarian world, more just, democratic - it invites us to think of the possibility of creating a form of alternative organization that can help our communities get rid of poverty and move towards a world of egalitarian development."
"The way that ISBO projects work as a team, with equality and fairness, creating a new world from the bottom, from the community, is important, because we see each other as brothers and work together with our hearts, without looking for our own interest. The work is done in unity - I get educated and can also educate others. We can unite hands and work together toward a better future."
"I noted that the organizer is not someone who is going to look down on people, and who takes into account the opinions of everyone. All opinions uniting to build a model to create a new world. In our context, many of our leaders don't have that idea of leadership - they say "I invest, so I rule like a dictator." But we want to change that and create an egalitarian model of leadership."
Final session of the day was "hot and cold," in which people said what was "hot" (good, high points) of the day and what was "cold" (needed improving).
"Hot" comments included:
** it feels like family
** all the knowledge we can use in our community work
** well documented, good teachers
** easy to understand
** opportunity to know what's going on in other countries, and that what happens here also happens there
** I've met friends, I feel good and want to keep learning
** the organizing ideas and the political ideas
** seeing lots of women here
** sharing with everyone
** learning some English
** see new faces and learning about Afro history
** logistics done well - food, tables, spaces
** hearing the responses to our report made me see we are really making progress
** seeing that we are doing the same things in Colombia and Jamaica even though we are distant from each other
** the food, the attention, the love that can be felt here
"Cold" comments included:
** we need to know more about this organizations so we can become part of it and develop our community objectives
** our memory won't hold all this; we need it in writing, even if it is in English and we have to get it translated later
** many of us women are making ourselves shadows; we need to work on being more assertive
** the translation takes too long: the language impediment is the cold stuff
** people here should invite more people, create more spaces where people can be involved
** too bad more people from Jamaica couldn't be here
Two areas for improvement were mentioned over and over again: the language barrier and providing written documentation (which is really a problem of translation because the documents exist in English only).
Day Three: March 8
The morning started with a discussion from the youngest people that it was hard for them to listen to the morning report repeated in the afternoon. After a round of suggestions, it was agreed that the youth would listen to the report in the morning and summarize for the new people that came in the afternoon. It was also agreed that we would break every 45 minutes or so to do some singing, chanting, polyphonics, etc.
We planned to hear reports from Villa Rica, and in the afternoon spend time discussing sexism. Today is International Women's Day. The women who volunteered to spend the week cooking for us have the day off today, and the male organizers are doing all the cooking and serving.
Villa Rica presentation
This will be in three parts:
1. Haga que pase (Make it happen)
2. SK Productions
3. General work in the Palenque (report to be given by Fundacion Villa Rica later; the first two in the morning. Also Mi FinK discussion this morning and viewing video this afternoon.
Haga Que Pase report:
Viewing of video interviews from Ecuador and Brazil.
Slavery was abolished in Colombia in 1830. There was a plantation in Villa Rica at that time called Hacienda del Alto. In 1830, a boat arrived with hundreds of slaves, and the owner of the Hacienda, Julio Arboleda, bought them. Although emancipation happened, he decided he couldn't give away the slaves because he had paid for them. He gave them two alternatives to achieve their freedom: continue working for him until they could pay for themselves, or if others bought and released them. Since Hollywood hadn't invented superman, there was no saviour, so we had to work 18 years to free ourselves. A youth in this hacienda escaped while working, went to the high land to get with other slaves like the San Basilio Palenque, and then began organizing to come back and free others. He learned a lot of voodoo. A big board appeared in the woods, which the slaves couldn't read: "Christ didn't go farther than the cross, Julio Arboleda won't go farther than this." One day, as Arboleda was walking with his bodyguards, he came upon the billboard. As soon as he started reading the billboard, many maroons came from the bush, led by the young man who had escaped. The young man threw one bullet with his hand and killed Julio. The bodyguards all jumped into the bush, but couldn't find anyone. That's how the people in Villa Rica got their freedom, and Villa Rica is sitting on the land of the hacienda. Villa Rica used to be called La Bolsa ("the bag") because Arboleda carried the money the money he used to buy the slaves with him in a bag. From then on people appropriated the land and planted food.
All people had was a barter system until the sugar cane mills came 1948, exactly 100 years later. The sugar owners started taking the land of the liberated people. In the early 1950s, they tried to negotiate with people to sell land for sugar planting. People knew the land was a symbol of freedom, and everyone said no, but the sugar people created strategies to appropriate the land. One was to bring plagues to destroy the crops. Our grandparents tell us that in the nights there were airplanes fumigating the crops with diseases until they were killed. Since the land was all they had to survive on, they ended up having to sell their lands. Here is how the sugar companies did it: they sent people house visiting with the strategy of creating problems, then proposing solutions. They would tell people, "if you depend on your traditional farms, your crops will die from the plagues and you don't have anything to live on, so we propose you lease your land to us, and with that money, you can survive until the plagues pass. Just for one season." So people accepted, and were giving lots of money for rental. After the first cycle of the sugar, people tried to plant food but it wouldn't work because the chemicals they used on sugar had killed all the microorganisms and depleted the soil. So then the sugar companies' proposal was: since you can't use the land, sell it to us. Many people accepted. When they valued the land before buying, they said the land was dead and therefore the price was very, very low.
Another way they got the land was through the agrarian bank, which offered credit to save crops, but at very high interest. Because sugar kept fumigating, people didn't make enough money to pay the credit and had to turn over their titles to the bank. They mortgaged the land and the banks repossessed it and sold to sugar mills. So today in Villa Rica, unemployment is high, crime is high, and people became slaves to the sugar mills, which pay slave wages. The local government made an agreement to create an industrial estate around here, and now everyone works for these industries.
These companies won't hire people directly: they employ subcontractors to hire people to work, so people can't join unions. Most people nowadays work 12-14 at $4 per day, no holidays, no overtime pay. Many have to work nighttimes and are paid 5-6000 pesos per shift (less than $4 US). The worst thing is that young people have no time for anything but work, so every weekend they drink and go to discoes all weekend. No one is protesting the situation, because they know there are thousands of other young people waiting for their jobs, so there seems to be no way to change the situation.
Because of this we started the campaign "Make It Happen" ("Haga Que Pase"). We talked to the few people who never sold their land, and compared their life with the modern life of Villa Rica. Those people who keep resisting are happier than those working in mills and factories. We produced a documentary film based on their lives: Mi FinK. The documentary launch was here. We decorated this place as a traditional farm. J&M brought plantains from their farm, and there were many fresh products, and we told people to come take anything from "your farm." And people loved it. The main idea was to make people reflect on the loss of their farms. The invitation was to organize to recover our land.
The education offered by the government to the Afro-descendants and indigenous people is the lowest, so when they try to access higher education, they can't pass the exams to get into the university. They also don't have the money. So many have to join military, go into paramilitaries, form a gang to steal money to eat, or go work in the sugar mills and other industries.
Haga Que Pase is about that: we contacted a few organizations in London and made a tour with the film. The idea is to start recovering our land, whether legally or by going and taking it ourselves. While we were on the tour, we met a man and woman from the Brazilian landless movement. They said they wanted to speak to me, that they have the same problem and want us to come to Brazil and to visit Villa Rica. We also met a woman from Ecuador, who sent a youtube video which told almost the same story. In the video, she said, "they took the shackles off our hands and put them on our minds."
Discussion of report:
** the importance of not letting the government or NGO's control our stuff: SK was able to flip the script with the NGO that funded the film, forcing them to use our ideas and train our people in filmmaking
** the NGO's intention was a documentary for the ministry of culture to use as part of the Colombia bicentenary. They wanted a film about the slavery stories, now you're free. We told them we want to show how we are still not free in our own land - they said no. We said: "how can we talk about 200 years of freedom if we are still not free?" Since we had already signed the contract that we were going to do the documentary, and we went ahead and did the one we wanted, made them train us, and refused to let them launch it - instead we launched it without their money or support. We also did not allow them to keep the rights to the film, which they wanted so we wouldn't share it publicly. It was a fight all the way through.
** there have been lots of documentaries about Villa Rica, but everything is taken away and the community left with nothing.
** the process: 4 or 5 weekends of consulting with the community, getting gthe stories and deciding how to structure the film. Two more weekends to do the filming. Another weekend for editing. We learned to srite script, check it step by step.
** Very important to let the elders speak because of their experience, and the younger farmers because they are the future.
** like the SK tour in England, we used to have the Freedom Singers. The Spanish brought small pox and killed most of the indigenous (Mexican story) and also brought slaves until more Africans than indigenous. They methodically created castes based on skin color, by deliberately impregnating women with white sperm. They put it in our brains to compartmentalize ourselves by hue and think of ourselves as separate people, but all the colonizers did this purposely. After emancipation in the US, blacks bought 1.6 million acres and today have lost nearly all of it by the exact same process that happened in VR/ Colombia. But my people and your people don't know we are one people! "I want us to figure out how we can know in our hearts and our souls that we are one people" - that all our groups in Colombia, in Jamaica, the US, the school we'll start in Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil - they are all the same. We've got to figure out how to make them all the same. The Freedom Singers used to spread the word in music and to raise money for our organizing. (played video of Freedom Singers). "I hope by the end of this, we realize we are all one, and SK become OUR freedom singers!"
Two members of SK then performed "Haga Que Pase." A suggestion was made for them to try to change the lyrics from "I" to "we." Your presentation was bigger than your song - you need to make your songs as big as all the things you have presented to us! SK needs to speak for the whole world!
Afternoon addressed by Mama Anatulia Olaya Cortez (Manato)
Facilitated by Eliana, introduction by Guillermo. G helped Manato recover and record her stories of the Africans in North Cauca at her request, working Sundays for 2 years. Includes rising above slavery, how the people freed themselves, life in the 1920s on the fincas, black warriors called banditos who used to fight those who wanted to take the land. Also, she tells traditional stories like Duende, and has been leader of the Oraciones which she inherited from Santiago. The book also contains fuga songs, death rites, bundes songs. Sulma is doing a thesis on slaves - rites of passage. Book also includes information on fifty figures in North Cauca history, including original African surnames.
Manato spoke for a long time. Because her stories are all published in the book, we refer readers to that book for the most complete and accurate telling of the stories. Briefly, Manato told the same story about emancipation that is in the report above about VR; she told about her own memories of the banditos, her personal experiences with farming, childrearing, and spiritual happenings. She also recited poems and songs from the rites mentioned above and from the Oraciones.
Sexism discussion
Facilitated by Maria, introduction by Curtis as follows:
"Today we say thank you mama, thank you sister, thank you Miss Comrade. We're so thankful to be your children, thankful to be your husbands, to be your brothers and you the mother of our children. Someone declared this day to be the international day of the woman. Let us all give a hand to you.
"Our organization, sponsoring this event is called the International School for Bottom-up Organizing. What we mean by that, we are learning how to organize the people who are the poorest and the darkest. We recognize that poverty and suffering in the world is mostly done to people of dark skin all over the world. The world is now suffering for the need for justice, the need to get rid of poverty, and the people most qualified to lead us are those who have suffered the most. The darker you are, the more you suffer. We want to change that.
"We believe that the women of that group are most capable of leading us. Women have always been our caretakers, always been able to make a pot of beans share for everyone. They have been able to care for us even when times were hard, hard, hard. We believe in the hearts of women is the greatest example of justice. So our school is trying to train dark-skinned people, people of color, and all people, but putting women in our leadership. That is not to say dark-skinned people are better than others: they are not. But they know more about suffering. And the women, especially. So we humbly pass the leadership of this session to you women this day. We hope it is every day."
A page or two was read from the sexism chapter in ISBO's book two, then the circle was asked to share personal experiences with sexism. Here is a selection of the comments:
** Our African ancestors said all you get from women is food for dogs, but my mom never said that to me. Women are judged to be only good for gossip; I don't agree.
** Manato: it is because of women that men exist.
** Machismo creates different tasks for men and women, defines women as submissive. Sexism and racism are two plagues we need to eradicate to have a just society.
** some parents think women shouldn't go to school.
** sexism humiliates women as if they are less than men.
** cooking and watching kids should be shared by everyone
** sexism is a capitalist strategy to oppress women, make them seen as object that has nothing to offer society; women are foundation of society
** sexism is cultural backwardness, reflects low education. A civilized person cannot hit his partner and treat her badly.
** sexism is more than domination, it is history written mostly by men. We need to de-learn sexism, because even women are sexist. Mothers treat daughters differently; society approves violence against women.
** women need to learn we have the same capacities as men
** it's a divide and conquer thing, like the division between campesinos and Afros. We need to learn to create one people.
** my cousins can stay out as long as they want, but not me; they say "you're my treasure." We still live with this sexism.
** Sexism carries the weight of history, brought down generation to generation that girls are only good for having kids looking after the house, cooking. We see women in history as objects, not subjects.
** sexism isn't distinguished by race; it happens everywhere. We need to develop spaces to find how to resolve this.
** our parents have preferred men over women, say women shouldn't have rights. Women have value and we have to give them rights. I've always been a fighter.
** we're all women at my house, so I don't have any experience with sexism
** in some ways, the woman in the house is boss; the men don't know where anything is; when they are alone they can't figure out what to do
** our house is all women, but obviously we experience it in the streets
** I lived a long time in London and I have taken a hard punch coming back here. In the countryside, women stay home, cook, don't go out, get fat, have lots of kids. Men go out and work, but many women don't work in the fields and say it is the men's responsibility.
** I have recognized that I have been machisto all my life; my experiences abroad widen my vision of sexism, but I am still sexist and trying to overcome it and hope you women can help me. Sometimes women give us confusing messages: what limit can we go with flirtation, for example? Reggaeton lyrics make us think it's okay to speak about women's bodies, but I think that is insulting.
** we can't solve poverty and illiteracy of the glove without unity of men and women, without mutual love and respect. I propose a code of behavior: men who demonize women orally should get a piece of tongue cut off; slap, fingers cut off; fist, hand cut off; rape, get that cut off too. That will stop people from practicing sexism.
** Sexism smashes women and also brings pain to men, because they have been separated from their natural role of nurturing humanity. We need to bring everyone into the love and humanity of our movement so we can free ourselves.
** If you let men take care of tiny babies, fix food for children, change diapers, take care of family elders, wash clothes - we have lost the ability to care for our people. all human beings should care for their young, helpless and old. That is what produces humanity. Sisters, please help us get back our humanity.
** we are sexist in ourselves, so it is important for us as women to be together to talk, recover spaces where women used to celebrate rituals; in that way men can learn from us.
** my mom brought us up as equals, and it goes down to the grandchildren. We all sit and discuss problems together, don't swear, share with each other. We need to do this with all kids, even if they're not our own.
** I'm the opposite - only girl of 6, and all the housework and cooking is on me.
** I understand what people have been saying about sexism, but we also need to recognize that in the black community, women are the boss of the house and in charge of the family government. The image of the man as macho is different. We have been trying to help youth go to university, and we see that 90% are women. I think in five years, our communities will have women at a high level of education, and men without many possibilities of getting jobs. I think we have to take this into account as well. In five years, we will be talking about how to motivate men to better themselves.
** our process here is about educating, learning and de-learning about gender and equality. What I can do, women can also do, so don't put women down. I am ready to make that step, but women need to teach us, correct us. Mothers are the ones always with the children; they need to teach us from we are kids.
** as men we have to be aware that all that work is not just for her; we have to collaborate, help the kids with homework, help raised the kids, pick up things, clean house, cook. Cooking doesn't take our gender away. Things get done quicker that way. Money creates a problem with sexism too, because men can get better jobs; women get exploited in shit jobs, especially single mothers.
** we can't pretend to be each other. Women are special because they give the gift of life. Little children are attached to women more than men, because we are different.
** What G said is very important. I am a white woman trying to learn from the people who need to be our leaders, which is people with the dark skin. I have noticed the same thing G said. In Jamaica it is already as G said: 80% of university students are female. In my community, there are many men with nothing to do, no job, no money, and the government and press say they are no good, lazy, criminals who desert their children. Unfortunately, many women also say these things. J, C, and C asked for women to guide them, and as a woman I think this is what we should do. Of course when someone is abusing us, we need to stand up and fight back. But while sexism is smashing down women, it is also paining the hearts of men. I think we need to bring them into the love. We must have unity if we are to defeat the two percent and liberate ourselves.
Day 4, March 9
Introductions, Curtis read a few paragraphs introducing ISBO for the new people. Present this morning were CAIS Maloka people, two from Choco/Medellin, SK and a few from the Palenque
CAIS Maloka presentation
CM is a project which began in the belly of Babylon. We lived in London 15 years, and worked with organizing projects with young immigrants and artists, including Refugee Youth. We used PAR (participatory action research) as a tool to find the problems of the young immigrants/refugees and found out what they wanted to do, find solutions to the problems. PAR is a spiral process: investigate, find possible solutions, implement them, evaluate - ongoing process. We began to realize the problems of refugees started in our home countries. The only way to discover why people migrate was to go back. One principle for CM is to investigate why we are poor and from there begin the process. This will be our 4th year here in Dagua; we're here with our fellow members.
We've been in a slow process, because we have to work at the people's pace. We use arts, theater, dance to get to know people. We started working with the local action group (junta). When we arrived it existed, but then dissolved. So we started meeting with people, investigating why it dissolved. We did people's circles and gave everyone an opportunity to express what was problem with last junta, and what we want to do. We arrived at consensus that the junta failed because of lack of information, communication, and also because the government wants us to organize the junta their way, in conflict to how the community wants to organize. In our work with young people, we had become very good friends, so we started to meet with the guys to speak about idea of taking the junta as a young people's junta. People had little idea how to form a junta, never had been given voice before. We investigated: what is power behind the junta? Agreed it was the people, and should be a circle, not a hierarchy. In a hierarchy you give power to one president, and then everyone else becomes dependent. We had to play the game, so on paper we are organized the way the government requires, but in practice we are egalitarian.
We've had some struggle with some people, because they are not used to seeing a youth junta, but it was a legal process, there was a ballot box, a government representative was there.
Several other CM members spoke about their experience:
** The president of the junta is an 18 year old male, the secretary a 25 year old female
** fundraising, Christmas party for kids, Father Christmas from London
** pine cultivation threatening water source; ongoing struggle about it with forestry
** productive project of organic farming, learning to make fertilizers and pest control from natural sources (ashes, chilies)
** the vegetables are for our own consumption and if extra, to sell
** also about creating identity and belonging; creating common good for everyone
** dealing with mayor about transport to school for children, machinery to clear the roads; so far they haven't done it
** collective community work
We're talking about self-sufficiency, to create our own petrol, food, and in that way liberate ourselves from money and capitalism. We're working with ISBO, to find experts to teach us and at the same time give them access to what we're doing: an exchange. One of the things we've lost is the knowledge of our elders. We need to find it back. We're looking to create a community council based on egalitarian principles of cooperation, the leadership of women, dark-skinned, and the principle of consensus, not voting. Every time we practice voting, we exclude a big part of the community. It creates problems when people don't feel included.
In most places, the same people have been in power for 25-30, usually older men who take this power and don't share it with community. They are organized in a pyramid shape. This form reflects corporate organization, not the reality of community. So we are investigating how to create community based prototypes better adapted to people's reality.
One of the big problems is pines taking over our spring water area. The company is in Ireland. As you know pine trees are not native to our mountains; they take out a lot of water. 35 liters per day per tree. So if we got 3500 hectares of pine trees, you can work out how much water it takes out. The fathers are the ones who built the present aqueduct so water gets to all our houses. It's very modern, we don't pay for it, it is our mother's milk and we resist all companies who want to take over our water and we'll defend it with our machetes if necessary. This is an example of self-sufficiency. We're looking a way to build Villa Rica an aqueduct that belongs to the people so each house doesn't have to have a big tank. On our aqueduct we've got work groups to maintain the pipes, clean. Every month two families clean the tanks. This is voluntary work. The 3000 pesos people contribute for water we keep for repairs. Before it was used to pay the person to clean the tanks.
Lately the government has been making requirements and if we don't do it that way, they can legally take the water management from us. Some years back, they put meters in our village to measure water and without the community tore out the. That's what we hear from our older members. We believe that there's a great genius among the people on the bottom, waiting to be released. Everyone has the ability to free themselves, liberate this genius, create these self-sufficient communities, led by women especially of dark skin, because they have most knowledge of justice.
Brief explanation/discussion of ISBO international work
ISBO believes everything we need to be healthy and well, the knowledge already exists in our collective communities. We believe our suffering, poverty, oppression is a result of our lack of organization and unity. Our work is to organize, organize, organize. We want to put an organizing school, more specifically an organizing class, in every country, community, town, and city in the whole world. Those are the parameters of our international work. So we want to talk to our sister from Choco about starting a school down there with you. J said something last night: we believe that everywhere in the world there are people who think like us. It's our job to find them. The main feature of the international report is the research about the underground railroad. That name will change depending on where you are, but what we are researching is the methodology and technology the slaves used to run away to freedom. Also the communities they established: what kind of governments they established, how they defended themselves from attack. We want to understand how they were able to build their communities and provide all necessary institutions, without aid from anyone.
We are planning summer projects in several communities to begin to build some of our institutions to become self-sustaining: windmills, learn to make fuel for cars and cooking - taking that off people's budge will improve their lives.
We ask people to think about this vision: do we have confidence in ourselves to make it happen? Do we believe we can put an organization in every country in the world in the next forty years? Let's think like that. Develop an international consensus against oppression.
Comments:
** society tells us we're poor, makes people want material things, then develop a culture of begging from government agencies, etc. What are the real possibilities for people to reclaim their land? In VR we used to always have plenty of organic food and animals. In Dagua it's pines; here it's sugar cane, took over our farms.
** we have concept of poorness stuck in our head, always expecting government help. Relationship with politicians is always what they can give us; after elections they forget us. The only way to advance is to understand the problem starts with us.
** the constitution and human rights are not reality.
** need to rediscover our ancestors' wisdom and experience, indigenous and Afro: they worked by cooperating. We get seduced by the life the media projects and forget we already had our own knowledge and wisdom. Capitalism destroyed it, but it's in the memories of our elders, there to discover.
Introduction of people from Choco
J: I work for ISBO and SK productions; while in London I met the Uhuru Movement working on political prisoners. I invited the sister here because she's from Choco and we're very interested in Choco.
M: Choco is a region where the majority of Afros are; they came as slaves. It's an important theme to discover the ancestors' history so we can better our conditions. My ethnic and cultural identity guide me; I became part of the Rastafarian movement, created a Rasta group in Bogota around reggae music, translating Bob Marley lyrics, learning about Haile Selasse. I dealt with violence against black women based on the theme of straightening hair: the natural beauty of black women is attacked. I work at the university in Medellin teaching communication science, formed a group for Afro-descended students to discuss their needs. Some are from poor backgrounds in Choco, many are children of corrupt politicians. We focus on African identity. Eleven years ago, Law 1320 said Afro and indigenous communities have to be consulted on issues effecting their environment and economy, water, air, etc. They call the student group Quilombo (maroon) Group, the majority are law students. This symbolism brings unity, because there were also indigenous in the palenques, even though they were created by runaway slaves. We would be open to ISBO coming to teach us organizing skills. We work with a variety of organizations and enterprises, especially the Uhuru Movement. The group is in Medellin, not Choco; the main group is in the US and we are developing groups in Medellin, Buenaventura, San Basilio.
(Curtis: I know the Uhuru people well, their history, beginning and organizers. ISBO would have trouble working with them. We'd like very much to work with you, but Uhuru is 35 years old; I've been in the struggle 50 years, and they have been a serious problem to our movement historically, though I'm sure there are good people in there. We'll talk more later about this.)
M: We have an Afro newspaper (presented it); I write for the Medellin section.
J: could we organize a session like this with the people from the bottom and find out what's going on in their communities?
M: yes. It's not just one collective, many working together. I have contact with the Mayor of Medellin, but conscious to deal with community in a participatory way, create networks like the women's network, SK, Quilombo - be open minded about other paths.
C: how is your work funded?
M: from our own resources, donations, and by selling advertising. Sometimes by submitting proposals to the government, selling food, a store, a magazine.
C: who is the "we" that directs this work?
M: it's disorganized, that's why we want help in organizing
C: this is an emergency, because this type of situation is an enemy's gold mine. I guarantee you the enemy is always there. We need to go set up a school with you.
Underground Railroad Research report
The report was read aloud, followed by discussion of the need for us to solve the translating and interpreting problem. (Report is in Book 2)
Elder Nicolas Possu told the story passed down to him about his ancestors. (Also on video) Notes:
I'm finding in my research and what I'm hearing, my family name is Bolu. I know my family, from family stories, they were brought from an island called Isla L'Oro, somewhere near Greece. My granddad said his great granddad who was brought here was the leader in that tribe, which was an egalitarian society. The Greeks went to Isla L'Oro, taking people from there, that's the ancestral story. He let them capture him so he could come rescue part of his family that had been taken before him. When he got here, many people were coming in a boat, they were dying of hunger and being squished: many were brought but so few arrived. They were distributed in Cartagena and other places. Because he was of noble lineage, he knew several languages, including Latin, and when he was brought to the haciendas he was able to communicate with slaves who spoke many languages. So he was telling them not to work too much, and revolutionizing them. The people were blind; he was trying to wake them up. He encouraged them to leave, go to the jungle and grow their own food and live together. The slave master would see that his slaves were decreasing, and would say, what's happening? So every time they realized it was this man making them escape, they would sell him to another hacienda, so that's how he traveled the coast all the way to here, La Bolsa (Villa Rica), the pioneer. He finished with a few haciendas here, encouraging escape. Julio Arboleda realized it was him getting his slaves to escape, so he ordered him punished He had to punish him himself, to show everyone that he would finish the black bandit. They sent him to the wall to tie him up, the panibulo - a thing made of wood they'd tie the slaves to - tied up with chains there, belly down. When he was tied up, Julio Arboleda raised the whip in his hand, and at that moment the chains broke and a black panther appeared before him. When he saw that, soon after he went to arrange moving this man from his hacienda. He went to talk to the owner of the Japio hacienda, his friend, who agreed to buy the slave, so sent him to go to the new owner. He sent him with another slave, who he gave a paper saying, "here are the two slaves I'm selling you." Night came and they hadn't reached, so they stayed under a tree. So he was telling his slave friend let's see what the paper says, but the other said no, it is forbidden. He saw his friend had fallen asleep, so he took the paper and read it. He put the paper back in the other guy's pocket and left him there and escaped. He went to another hacienda to liberate the other people, and continued traveling all the haciendas he knew getting people to escape. He stayed around here as a maroon. Then abolition came. My name is Nicolas Possu Ballanta. Moskera Navas through my mom.
A discussion followed comparing the oral histories and traditions in various countries: Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico. The ancestors were immersed in the topic of freedom. The songs and dances were codes about escaping: this is one reason why people hate the dances of African people and say rap, kuumba, etc. are satanic. Many of the dances and festival traditions, nine-nights, are very similar in all countries. It's important to rescue this history and culture.
Day Four, March 10
Presentation from Leonila Dinas
Sra. Dinas is the 70- year-old woman farmer featured in the SK film "Mi FinK." She came to share her experience with the school.
"I was raised on a finca in Puerto Tejara. My parents brought me up with what the farm would produce. There were so many things to eat in those times, oranges, etc. We wrapped everything in viado leaves: this is how we used to wrap meat and salt. My mother used to say that her mom had left that land to her and that she wanted her children to keep it.
"So she died and she left the land; there were four of us. We thought about sharing it, but it was too little for all of us. It was only one and a half acres of land. So we sold it to the industrial park. Everyone got their money for it and took it to the Santander Bank. My daughter was saying to me, don't sell it, then we'll be without land. So I said to my daughter, I won't spend the money on bad things: I'm going to buy a new plot of land with it. So we went with my brother looking for land, to find the best place to buy. The money was safely kept in the bank. One of my sons wanted me to buy two carts to do pirate work (taxi work). So I said, I don't want any carts, I want to buy a piece of land. We walked and walked until there was a piece of land me and my brother really liked. We bought one and a half acres. The guy who was selling to us told us it was two acres, but it was only one and a half. My brother and I just divided it in half.
"And since then I've been going to my farm every day. The trees were full of moss, there were bees and ants; I had to control all of that. So I was making it better bit by bit and now it is a different farm. Because it is a bit far from here, I bought a bicycle so that I could come and go. I ride my bike there and bring my food. I feel so good in my farm. I come to my farm, I get my shovel, do the weeding, clear the dead leaves off my plants. I take the seedlings out, take the dead plantains out, make the plants new again. Because there are lots of hard weeds, I cut them off. My coffee plants, I take the old leaves out and leave the new ones; that's how my parents used to do. We do the same with the cocoa. Take a potato sack and wrap the stem to keep the moss out. You can see the trees changing. I paid a worker to come take out the pines growing in the orange trees, and to kill the ants. There was so much bees and ants. So I used to get a stick, light it at one end and burn the bees and all the bad insects.
"I feel a bit bad sometimes that the farm is surrounded by sugar cane. People keep telling my daughter to tell me to sell the farm because it is too dangerous, it is a lonely place, or that I should sell it so they can plant cane. But since I've been going there, nothing has happened to me. And it's really hurtful to sell, because I was born on a farm, and a farm is what bears fruit. Every time at orange harvest, I get 10 sacks of it. Or tangerines, cacao, coffee. At the moment I'm planting a cacao hybrid. In any case, I'm trying to see how long I can go with this, because of all my illnesses. I don't have a son that helps me. I get to my farm, put on my work clothes, and start working and singing. (She sang "Don't Write to Me" after the audience asked for a song.)
"I've won prizes for singing these songs for various groups. I have six children. When kids die, I don't want to sing the bundes, I do the Oraciones for the baby Jesus. I sing, I tell jokes, I make rhymes. I'm very loved. Not everyone loves me, but most people do. I work with Manato, I'm a part of that whole team."
In response to a request for advice about how we can learn the skills to take care of ourselves, as if there was no government, she added:
"Then every family would have to look after each other, because then we would have to govern ourselves. There was a time in the past, before, and now there is another time, but for example I'm here and many young people are interested in what I do. I think the young people want to learn. But there's other young people that actually try to damage what we do. The Oraciones, for example, have been very good. But actually we are in a critical moment. The young people actually try to damage the things we do. Me and other ladies have a group called the Renaissance Group (rebirth) we treat all things old, chairs, traditional grinders, irons using coal, the old recipes for toasting coffee, carts that would bring water with a piece of bamboo in it, we'd tie the baby on our back with a piece of cloth, a big pile of clothes tied on my head to go to river to wash, a hammock made of sacks to put the children while we washed, made baby formula from plantain flour, invented foods without meat, you'd put in it cimarron, beans, (cimmaron was brought by Spaniards to fight black magic, but also used as condiment). But many young people don't like it. It's a very big struggle. I have nine grandchildren and none of them come with me to the land - it's such a struggle to encourage them to come with me. My daughter is also teaching young people the traditions, and working with those that are going the bad way, to bring them back to the good way."
The facilitator finished the session by describing in detail what we mean by self-sufficiency, that is, taking care of our own food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication, child care, health care, education and energy needs. We want to build windmills, learn the technology to sustain ourselves. We need any knowledge we can get, and wherever we have our school, we will teach all of that right here.
People's Circle: how to facilitate a meeting
The People's Circle document was read aloud and translated. Then each of the young organizers took a turn facilitating one of the topics raised by the people at Monday's meeting. That list was:
* food security (how to make a plan so food is produced and used locally and not going to international commerce),
* making our own petrol and electricity,
* how to get women to participate more, how to record our forgotten culture,
* how to make people feel proud of who they are and where they come from,
* how to stop multinationals from contaminating the earth, air and water,
* how to understand racism and sexism better and integrate it into our music
Food Security (facilitation was demonstrated in an enthusiastic, inclusive, upbeat fashion by J). Thoughts raised in the discussion:
- plant our own food working collectively
- use organic methods, ashes for fungicides
- rotate helping each other on our farms
- make the most of what's around us to make fertilizers
- create our own market in the village so people don't have to spend travel money; take food to poor communities that don't have markets; whatever is left, take to town and sell it
- if we don't have land, grow things in bottles, cans, rooftops
- food security is not just about food, it's also about relations between people: growing our own food together makes us stronger
reclaim the land of our ancestors
- if young people farm, it will impress the older people who don't expect youth to want to farm
- owning land collectively is best
- those who don't have time to join our productive projects, encourage them to form mingas (working groups)
- organize agreements among farmers to produce different products so we don't waste
- make agreements for barter with people in town
- add fish and chicken farming, use for food and fertilizer, a good way to have something to sell outside and support the village
- approach agricultural schools to get the word out to young people about what we're doing
- create a community food bank and a bartering system for food
- start to eliminate the idea of private land, "my family's land," own, work and eat from it collectively, barter the surplus
- figure out how we're going to take over one of the sugar cane plantations
- learn about hydroponic agriculture, don't need much soil
Discussion question: is barter egalitarian if some people don't have anything to exchange?
- a person can come help clean the farm, exchange work for food. If they can't do that, you have to find something else they can contribute.
- We should assume that everyone has something to offer; it's our job to discover that offering. We need to discover a new concept of value.
- Find things that are not a product, that we can share
- People have abilities they can share, like what Manato gave us: a song
- If people don't have something to exchange, they don't feel good about it
- In some Cuban factories, there's one person reading the news out loud to everyone: there's always something a person can "exchange." My mom can't bend her knees, so we made a platform for her to grow her stuff.
- Some people just want to know what they can get on our farm, but don't offer to work. I tell them to take what they need, but please be conscious when it's time for me to clean the plantain, I can't just work for you. They didn't come back.
- If we are just giving to poor people, we create dependency; we have to deal with that.
- Maybe we need a language that is not I give this to get that, but we all participate in the process and share what's produced.
- We're putting in so all can have, not so that I can take.
How to integrate our understanding of racism and sexism into our music
This conversation included some general discussion about learning not to be racist and sexist, including a suggestion that by being involved together in a collective process of taking care of the community, people will learn about equality. It was suggested that we make opportunities to talk to young people about the overt sexism in reggaeton, and at the same time produce and popularize our own music, which will be a tool for diffusing our ideas and experience. Also, spend time working with the artists we are involved with so they can begin to transmit an anti-racist, anti-sexist message loud an clear, and in particular get more women involved in our music. Show our themes in our actions, not only in our lyrics.
How to stop the multinationals from contaminating our earth, air and water
Demand more uncultivated space around our water sources; research the laws to find international support; hold people accountable for spraying poisons; find alternative energy sources; build unity and power in our communities and run the world ourselves; cut down the pines and dump them in a hole, make it unprofitable for them; develop our own resources so as we bring them down, we have something to replace them with; raise awareness that water is the people's resource, shouldn't be owned or sold; take direct actions to take back the land; produce our own gas; learn how to use technology to make our movement public internationally; multinationals bring military bases and paramilitaries.
How to get women to participate and lead more
Educate ourselves not to be submissive and quiet; give more visibility to the fact that more women than men participate in our processes, often leading; provide childcare always; more education of men; although families are matriarchal at the end of the day men have the last word (grandfather); value women's work more, stop saying man is head of family; we have to empty the cup so we can fill it again, reeducate ourselves; teach mothers not to reinforce sexism with their children; women work for love of humanity and without pay, as all humans should, and therefore have the qualities we need for leadership; make a rule that women and men participate in all our projects; women know more about equality and sharing from feeding everyone with a little; oppose and punish violence against women, must be 100% absent in our organizations; create safe spaces for men and women to talk openly; women need to stand up to men behaving badly in order for the men to stop; women replicate machismo to be attractive to men; giving life is the most important thing in life; inferiority of women is in the language, especially Spanish: "I am the woman of so-and-so" means I'm the slave of that person; make our own re-education a permanent exercise; women are the backbone of most organizations and just like dark-skinned people need to lead the struggle against racism, women need to lead against sexism and learn they are not weak, but strong because of their organizing and nurturing skills. Focus on role of women in our research, for example, women took seeds in their hair when escaping from slavery, used plaiting as code for directions to escape. SK should make a campaign of anti-sexism in music videos. Make our own novellas and TV shows.
House Call
Workshop was held on how to do a house call, using the "how to do house calls" piece. (Note taker was sick.)
Day Six, March 11
We worked collectively on finishing the film proposal for SK productions, due in London today. Simultaneously, there was a circle on what we would do if we had no money at all and had to rely on ourselves. Summary of that discussion:
Two-thirds of the world's dark-skinned people already live this way, so we should start doing this now. Start growing our own food, even on roofs of houses. The old revolution was to take nations from the rich. We can't wait for that. Our revolution is to be able for any of our organizers to be able to go into a community that is starving and teach them how to grow food and lift them up. We need to practice egalitarianism starting now, don't wait another moment: eat together, live together, work together, especially the organizers, to show people what it looks like.
"Hot and cold" about this week: how do we make our next school better?
Hot round (highlights):
- It was surprising to me to realize I have all the tools inside me, comforting to know of brothers and sisters that have lived that process and are teaching people to awaken and be able to articulate collectively that genius we have inside, so we can have a collective outcome.
- It showed me strategy and ethics and some principles that can help us to recover the degradation of black community organizations in Colombia. The 25 years we've worked on this is getting lost due to tiredness and burnout.
- Very inspiring to me to see that brothers and sisters are doing the same things we're doing in Jamaica
- Most organizations are disunited, but here we're all equal.
- We are the people we have been looking for. In the midst of people walking through, babies crying, one group of faces in the morning and another in the afternoon, we've still managed to continue, to be. It's been amazing so far.
- That I've been able to meet so many people, hearing you speaking English is really cool, and to know VR and its projects. It's like a coming together of our families.
- Discussing racism and sexism, sharing with so many people, we learned to fight it and be better people.
- Helps us strengthen ourselves, our unity. Thanks for your knowledge and support, which we can now give to our community and revolutionize it with a new process, because the people at the bottom will rise.
I apologize for not being here all week. I've been responsible for so many things, the sole support of my family, but processes like this are what strengthen me to keep resisting.
- Very deeply inside, I am very happy, because we've been trying to organize a session here since last year, maybe we were lacking the teamwork, but we have it now.
- Thanks to the Palenque, the VR collective, and all the ISBO organizers. My expectations were minimal, and this went over the top. I've learned so much about VR and the resistance of Afro communities.
- Wish I could do this every day.
- We never stop learning. It's been inspiring and beautiful to see our growth, strength of spirit and mind. It helped me clarify my ideas about what's happening in CAIS Maloka.
- (Everyone thanked the VR hosts for their hard work and welcoming.)
Round 2: what can we do to improve this?
- We the organizers should have been present more. The local organizers from here called people from the community, but we should have been here not the other way around. Also, we need to learn English and have more time.
- The calling of people was very limited, we could have called more from North Cauca, especially the people in the Afro organizations. If they had come they would have had an opportunity to reflect on what they're doing. We need to be more consistent, because we had different faces morning and afternoon.
- We tried to do two things, train organizers and meet with the people the organizers called. We need the organizers here, with a plan for them, then the others in the afternoon, and another plan for them. Use our time more efficiently, not drifting in and out and stopping so often. More women facilitating sessions beside the one about women.
- Have the school more often
- More women, more women, more women; more women's leadership. I need to learn Spanish, you need to learn English, better translators. More fun at night. More fruit and vegetables.
- Go to other places to see what they're doing, share with them.
- More people from other municipios where they are organizing.
- The fact that the girls from the Palenque are working here at the same time is distracting, because they have to be walking in and out. We should make the space so that only this is happening.
- We could rotate the cooking, so the women who volunteered to cook all week could also take part in the meetings.
- I'd have loved to have a meeting before this session to plan this session better. I'm going to have to learn to speak very concisely.
- 1) language 2) moments of too much chaos 3) make the most of the time, use evening
- We need more documentation so we don't need to read aloud and translate, and so we can take the documents home and use them.
Overall, the most repeated suggestions to improve the next session were: one, more efficient interpreting; two, more written documentation in Spanish; three, less chaos in the space; and four, more consistent attendance by the same people.
Summer Project discussion
Introduction: Technology is now out of the reach of the poor. When my generation was young, we knew how to do everything. Now we have been taught to screw one bolt or weld one spot and that's it. The ISBO summer project is to learn some of the technology we need to know to take care of ourselves without reaching outward.
The prompt was "if you want to invite people to come teach you something for a week or two, what will you say to get them to come?
- There are lots of people in the world who want to do this. They are sitting there in the old places that experimented with socialism (Russia, China, Cuba). I think they would die to come take part in this process. We need a letter to say this is who we are, come visit us and participate and give us their knowledge. Energy, bio-fuel, etc. If they were revolutionaries they would love the opportunity.
- It would be good outline our situation, what we want, the way we are submitted to the capitalist regime here.
- We have to reach those people who hope to build a new world with egalitarian principles, so they can share their knowledge and become part of our process. We need to be precise on what we want so that we don't get fifty people here who don't have much to share, if they don't have something to teach they can support us with resources.
We can encourage others to come be a part. Then they'll fall in love with us and can tell us who they know that knows how to do the things we want to learn.
- I would start the letter: VR is an Afro-descended community in North Cauca. Most people in VR have to go out every day to be able to eat. Electric bills are more expensive than food per month. We need to learn to make our own electricity so we can stop paying electric bills. Is there someone out there who can come help us start this this summer?
- Something that can actually be sent to people accompanying the letter, like a video or CD.
- Maybe the title should be "urgent call" to radicals, professors, students, everyday people, people with money, all those who really want to see and participate in the creation of a new world. The recipient can propose to us what they can give, what they have to exchange so they can participate in building a new world.
- First, let them know we are all the same people. Second, this is a different kind of process: we don't have self-interest, but rather collective interest. Third, we are in a process that has been going for many years and its philosophy is equality for all regardless of your color. Has to be built with the participation of everyone in the community. We are giving everything we have and ask them to contribute with their mental capacities and economic resources. It is of optimal importance, their participation.
- We should look within our communities, because I'm sure there are engineers and other human resources who can help us be more concrete in what we are asking for.
A true story: Years ago we asked some retired engineers from Detroit to design a cheap, durable car. They did it, mainly from plastic, and it became a boat when you drove into the water. We tested it out. Within a few years, all the engineers died in "accidents." So even though we sound like we're talking about sweetness and love, the boss man's not going to like what we're doing. We made a mistake and kept it small then - now we should make everyone know about it. Maybe we should try to get some people from Cuba to come teach us how to make cars, because they've kept cars running since the embargo started fifty years ago.
- We need someone who can teach us how to contact a satellite ourselves to have internet.
- I have a worry, because what is being proposed here, the state is not going to like it. We'll have very strong enemies, international enemies. So what is the guarantee that what we are starting, which is very delicate, is going to be successful without being killed by the government?
- Talking about energy, we need to be specific about what we need in of the three communities that have that problem. VR is about 7000 houses, so that requires a very different kind of technology from a small community. As far as safety: to build a new world, we'll have to stand up to the old world. There are no guarantees.
We agreed to discuss later how to deal with security. Some suggestions were to make connections with various movements and countries.
Other suggestions: reopen a closed cooperative sewing workshop in Dagua (the machinery is still there); investigate bottling the spring water there in bamboo or something to sell cheaply in cities as fundraising; electric-generating bicycles that go into motor mode for hills.
Afternoon assignments
One team to write Summer Project letter and translate it; one to work on a video to accompany it based on our discussion; three teams to go door knocking.
Evening (final session)
We summarized the importance of door-knocking. 67,000 pesos was collected, a gallon of paint, a paintbrush and two rollers: this is enough to paint the space. The painting will go on tomorrow morning and cleaning Mama Leona's farm in the afternoon. We learned a lesson from the great success of the house calls, and also a lesson from the fact that most people who participated in planning the house calls did not come do it!
The Summer Project letter was discussed and approved.
(See "Breaking News" section.)
Lots of hugs and good-byes, followed by some dancing.
February 2011
Jamaica Organizing Report for the ISBO School Session in Colombia
February 28, 2011
Introduction:
The organizing in Jamaica has been in process for nearly four years. It has evolved during this time and is at a deeper place now than four years ago or even one year ago. Some of the things we are thinking about and working on have never been done before in the way we are doing them. We think about our work as a laboratory for experimenting with and learning about egalitarianism and self-sufficiency.
We have passed through a stage of dealing with dishonesty and selfishness. This caused us to become very vigilant and principled about how we deal with money and who we trust. Whereas in early events, people doing the work at our events sometimes stole money, food or drink for themselves and gave to their friends, in our most recent event, the Valentine dinner (which was our best collective effort yet), everyone from the group who worked also bought their own ticket and no one stole or took more than their share.
We always have internalized racism on the front burner. We have passed through a stage of everyone deferring to the white person, which is still an ongoing struggle. But we have improved in this because the same set of organizers has been active for a year and a half, and they have become much more experienced and self-confident. They facilitate the meetings, handle the money, do the door-knocking and the phone calls and organize the activities. In every event we evaluate, we discuss how internalized racism was there and how we dealt with it, so we continue to learn and become stronger.
We continue to learn about and deal with internalized sexism. We have had some very deep and honest conversations about our experiences with sexism, male and female, and this shows that we are honestly trying to deal with it, and that we trust one another very much. Most recently, one of our high schoolers brought to the group that a taxi driver had asked her for sex in exchange for rides because she does not always have her fare. We discussed this long and hard, and decided to go together as a group to help her talk to her mom about it. In the end, we weren't quite satisfied with her mom's response, but decided to abide by it unless the man approached her that way again. We will be vigilant about it from now on. It is also our principle that all activities we do have male and female involved; we agree that nothing is "men's work" or "women's work."
Organization:
We have three bodies that meet regularly.
The highest body in the community group is the general monthly meeting. For that meeting, we do house calls and phone calls (about 120 calls) to invite everyone from the two or three communities to attend. The meetings rotate venue to make them accessible to the whole community and demonstrate our principle of unity. The general meeting hears reports of all activities for the month, hears a financial report, and discusses and makes plans for workdays, fundraisers and other activities. It opens with a cultural or spiritual offering and ends with everyone standing and singing with hands joined in a circle. All meetings are facilitated according the People's Circle method of equal voice and consensus decision-making. The facilitator rotates to different members of the organizing class. We take a collection at each general meeting.
The leadership team is composed mostly of elders and some representatives from the organizing class (not always the same ones). It is open to anyone who wants to help do its work. This group meets once a month, the week before the general meeting, and decides the agenda for the meeting, makes recommendations to it for work and activities, and assigns tasks for decisions agreed to in the general meeting. It is held in the yard of one of the members of the team.
The third regular meeting is the organizing class. This is a weekly training class for organizers taught by ISBO organizing trainers. It is also voluntary, but only accepts people who have shown themselves to be honest and have the people's best interest at heart. The regulars include an elder woman (the trainer), a young adult man, two middle aged men, and three teenage girls. Sometimes, one or two of the girls' moms attend; sometimes one or two other teenage girls also attend. There was an older teen youth who used to attend, but he had to move out of the community. This group has been together more or less since the ISBO school in Jamaica in 2009. It had existed before then, but with a different and changing set of people.
Egalitarian self-sufficient prototype:
The organizing class members think of themselves as part of ISBO and as organizers who work for the community. The topics listed in the beginning of this report are main topics for the organizing class (that is, honesty vs. two-percent selfish attitudes, struggling against internalized racism and sexism). Several of them have taken some concrete steps toward creating an egalitarian prototype. This began about a year ago when the general meeting discussed self-sufficiency and planned toward having a community farm and farm market, an ongoing crafts committee and baking committee for bake sales.
About five organizing class members recently started an enterprise. The reason for this is that members of the organizing class are sometimes not available to do their organizing work because they are forced to focus on personal necessities. Several members of the class do not have enough food to eat, and at least one, sometimes two, of the school girls do not have transportation or lunch money for school. Sometimes members are too tired and hungry to concentrate during meetings or are in danger of sexual abuse as mentioned above. We decided that as a set of people trying to build a new world who love and care about each other, we had to begin to solve these problems collectively. We see this as the embryo of making our whole community self-sufficient on the basis of an egalitarian principle, which can then be an example that can spread to other communities, link with similar projects in other countries and spread to the whole world.
Our enterprise is currently making wicker products and raising chickens. The guideline for the work is that each person will give and do what they can and know how to do, and each person will receive according to need. We have had several discussions about how to do this and have not completely figured it out yet. We all know how the two-percent pay for work according to the hour or day; we will not do it like this. We also know that the capitalist way is that whoever starts out with the most resources gets out the most; our enterprise will be the opposite of that: the person with the most resources will probably not get out anything at all because they don't need it. Some of our members have other income and their needs are not as great. Even if they put in as much time as another person, the person with the most need will get the greater share of what we produce. Up to now, we have not sold anything yet; we have made some wicker products (picture frames) and have started raising chicks. We have not figured out how we will share out the proceeds, but we do know that we will first put aside what we need to keep the enterprise going. We also have consensus about who has the most need. So we are pretty confident that we will work out something fair. We have decided that as long as we are honest and caring, we will be able to correct any mistakes we make and gradually figure out the best method.
Another principle of the enterprise is that whatever we produce comes with a message about egalitarianism. Everyone involved with the enterprise is required to help market our products by going door-to-door for orders and explaining our principles and our vision. When we sell picture frames, we plan to put needlework in them that also says something about our principles. If we sell things outside the community or abroad, they will come with a printed tag explaining our principles so they become ambassadors for our egalitarian prototype.
The organizing class has also just launched another experiment: it is a fund for our members. Beginning in mid-February, we began throwing money in a can at each meeting. We said that those who are working can throw around one to one and a half percent of their income, and those who are not can throw whatever they might have even if it is very little. The one member who collects a pension in US dollars is throwing three percent of the income, because that money goes farther than Jamaican dollars. The purpose of this fund is for organizing class members to draw from when they need urgent help with food, educational expenses or medical expenses. We have decided we will keep a portion of it each month toward major, unexpected medical expenses. Also, we agreed that if a person does not have money but has food, they can donate the food, since that is one of our needs. We are still having discussions about how to manage the fund and what to name it. We have consensus that the money will be given out according to need, not according to how much a person put in.
Here are some of the suggestions for names so far:
- Fair-view fund
- Oh freedom fund
- Wise-equal-life fund
- Life care fund
- Equamor fund (equal + amor/love)
We have consensus about the two people with top priority to receive from the fund. One is a disabled man who does not have a job and often does not have food. At first he resisted everything out of pride. Then he said he would not take out from the fund until he had put some money into the fund. We pointed out that it is the two percent who say money is the most important thing and we don't agree. He has already put in more work on the enterprise than anyone else, he is honest and we know he will use the money for the agreed purpose. We all agreed he should take from the pot before he has money to put in (which he will get once the enterprise begins to sell). One young woman said, "we are family within the group, and if we're family then anything that's mine is yours, share and share alike. If you have a need, you shouldn't put pride in it and you shouldn't feel guilty, because you are not taking something that doesn't belong to you." He finally agreed.
The next person we agreed needs urgent help is the high school girl who is begging rides to school. One man in the group gave a passionate speech about how he feels for her because he was in the same position as a child, eating one meal a day and no carfare for school. As he said, "she is part of us, one of our soldiers." Everyone agreed that she was very skilled and dedicated to make sure she got to school every day with no money and no food. We decided to help her by buying snacks for her to sell in school to raise money for her fare and lunch. We know that she has done this before and spent off the money or was careless with it and it got stolen, so we also said that if she loses the money, she can only come to the fund for taxi fare a limited number of times for the month. One of our adult members agreed to oversee her buying and selling, because she said she couldn't manage money, so we need to help teach her how.
Conclusion:
These things are experimental and we will see how they work out. We know there will be ups and downs. As far as we know, nobody has tried to do this inside the revolutionary movement in the last hundred years, even after they controlled nations. They never had confidence that the people at the bottom could work according to egalitarianism instead of individual self-interest. We are giving ourselves permission to make mistakes and then correct them, based on our commitment to egalitarianism, our love for each other, and our honesty. If we can do this on a small scale, we think we can take it to a bigger and bigger scale. Our first step in the direction of bringing in the community will start next month, when we cook one meal per week together, with whatever anyone has to put in the pot. We will invite a few friends and family to partake with us and spread the idea of share and share alike. After dinner we will show a movie and discuss it.
We are excited about the Summer Project, where we will build a windmill to start generating our own energy, and learn many skills that can help us learn from the elders and communicate with other communities all over the world. It will help us move from just taking care of a few of our needs collectively in a small group toward eventually taking care of all of our needs for everyone in the community!
2009
November 2009
Provisional Constitution of the Harper's Ferry Raiding Party
Click here to download document - 79 KB
August 2009
2008
July 2008
Fire Next Time:
Social Justice in America
July 1, 2008
In the Black church,
there's a spiritual that contains the line, "It won't
be water, but fire next time," where God essentially
tell Noah right after the flood, "You ain't seen
nothing yet." I think about this when I examine the
actions of American government immediately following
the Civil Rights movement, and I wonder if they got
the message.
After weathering the
storm of mass organization and protests through
trickery, decapitation, intimidation and petty
concessions, America went right back to its wicked
ways before the ink was dry on the Civil Rights Bill.
Under the guises of Reaganomics, 'the War on Drugs,'
Get Tough on Crime,' and No Child Left Behind;'
exploitation, repression, and miseducation sought to
undermine any victories we supposedly won on paper.
But this time, prettier faces than Bull Connor and
Ross Barnett drove the point home. And here we are.
Schools have been re-segregated; Black ownership is at
an all-time low, while Black unemployment,
incarceration, and state-sanctioned mistreatment
threaten to surpass their 'pre-movement' levels.
To be fair, just as
the government is guilty of instituting these
practices, we are equally at fault as a people for not
recognizing what was going on and falling for the
trap. We cannot change the past, and it is the present
and future that are of concern to me. Each of the
disasters that have befallen this country in recent
times have presented opportunities for this country to
do what it says on the label, and each time, it has
failed miserably. I recall the U2 video, "The Saints
Are Coming," that showed the troops being called home
from Iraq to help people in need and military aircraft
dropping sandbags to fill the breached levees. Today,
that vision seems to have come from another universe.
Now, as desperation
overtakes caution, the results could very well prove
to be catastrophic. It is only for so long that a
people can be collectively exploited, oppressed and
degraded before those people begin to rebel. And now,
as youth and elder alike come to their senses, we
could very well be on the verge of such a desperate
time. I think back to that Negro spiritual, and I
think in this day and age it should read, "It won't be
marches, but action this time."
And when I speak of
action, I don't mean putting on shows or chanting
slogans or grandstanding by lukewarm organizations but
real change. The change I'm talking about is the
change that comes from recognizing the genius of the
poor, the overlooked, and the forgotten and realizing
that each of us has a contribution to make. Now more
than ever, an organized populace is essential to our
survival. We should all be well aware of what is
taking place. Whether through malice, neglect, or
incompetence the people of New Orleans were flooded
and then left to die. Our young men and women continue
to die on the streets of America's cities, and on the
battlefields of her unjust wars, and this current
economic crisis is sitting right on all our doorsteps.
But the time for complaining is past. It is time for
us to organize. Each and every one of us has to bring
his or her gifts skills and talents to the table, and
together let us determine how to best use them for our
collective survival. We are on our own, but with the
power that we have within us, sometimes I believe that
on our own is the best place for us to be. We each
have the potential to contribute to a better world if
we come together. Catch a fire, and let your light
shine.
Thank you
Jondrea Smith
Creating Bottom-Up
Organizations: a Working
Paper
Note: This paper is
an introduction to the
basic organizing theory
and practice of the
People's Organizing
Committee of the New
Orleans Survivor Council
July 1, 2008
Preface:
This paper is hoping
to help describe and
refine the working
models we are creating
to fight for and build a
new and just world. It
is based on what we've
learned so far and what
we want to share out of
"Bottom-Up" organizing
in New Orleans after
Katrina. This organizing
has not taken place in a
historical vacuum, and
we credit all those
people whose struggles
we've learned and
benefited from, from
Ella Baker (mentor and
trainer of young
"Bottom-Up" organizers
during the Civil Rights
Movement in the U.S.
during the 1960's) and
SNCC (Student
Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee, the
"Bottom-Up" organizers
of the 1960's Southern
Civil Rights Student
Movement), to the
sharecroppers' unions of
the 1930s and 1940s, to
the classic revolutions
and struggles in the
last century, and to the
centuries of struggles
by our ancestors around
the world. We present
this working paper in
the hope that with the
help of many other
people, we can also make
a contribution to that
ongoing journey. We ask
that you lend your
experience and ideas to
this process.
When the authors of
this working paper talk
about the "bottom," we
are referring to the
roughly 80% of the
world's population that
lives collectively on an
average of $2 a day:
poor, hard-working
people who mostly live
on the fringes of cities
or in their ghettoes,
and in rural areas, who
are the most lacking in
resources, health care,
and formal education.
Some work in various
industries and
sweatshops or on the
land, some are
unemployed, and some
work in the so-called
informal economy. They
are the folk who live on
steep mountainsides in
constant danger from the
next hard rain, who live
in shantytowns where
AIDS and tuberculosis
are rampant, whose
children die of
malnutrition, diarrhea
or malaria in ungodly
numbers, whose youthful
daughters are sold into
prostitution, whose
neighborhoods are
victimized by drugs and
gang violence. Pretty
much everywhere you look
in the world; they are
also those with the
darkest skin.
Bottom people are all
over the world, but the
writers of this
document, the People's
Organizing Committee (POC),
are a group of
organizers that began
our work with the bottom
in the U.S. POC is an
organization created to
assist those catching
the most hell with
grouping themselves
together to attack the
problems they face in a
collective and unified
way. POC is not an
exclusively bottom
organization. It is a
space to which all
people can come that are
willing to work for and
submit themselves to the
direction and leadership
of the bottom. All of us
in POC, whether from the
bottom or not, have been
working directly for and
with the people on the
bottom. In New Orleans,
where we began, the
bottom is organized
through the New Orleans
Survivor Council (NOSC).
NOSC has reviewed this
document to guide its
development. Now we
offer the same
opportunity to you, the
readers.
The vision of poor,
black people on rooftops
and floating in poisoned
water in New Orleans
after Hurricane Katrina
brought to us
graphically the reality
of how the current
economic and political
situation treats poor
people everywhere. It
challenged us to look
carefully at the
dynamics of the struggle
of our people and to
investigate the existing
assumptions of who
should lead it. We
decided we must harvest
the agenda and direction
for responding to the
aftermath of Katrina
from those most impacted
by it - the same poor,
black, working people
left in the city to die.
We consider ourselves
revolutionary
organizers. By that we
mean that we have
concluded that the
status quo will never
lift up that 80% or
provide that 80% with a
decent life because the
status quo is
permanently invested in
maintaining inequalities
of race, class, and
gender. We believe that
the 80% needs to build a
new and entirely
different world,
eventually eliminate the
world's current bosses
and the structures those
bosses have erected
along the way. Most
revolutionaries in the
past have focused on
defeating the old system
through bringing regime
change: having workers
in charge instead of the
rich, having black
people overthrow whites,
having women in power
instead of men. Several
of these movements
actually succeeded in
overthrowing
governments, and began
trying to build
societies without
exploitation and
oppression. So far,
those attempts at
building a new world
have failed. Our feeling
is that our information
on the enemy and the
need to defeat its
empire is fairly well
developed and must
always be kept in mind.
But the challenge of
learning how to create a
just and egalitarian
world still lies before
us. In our view, this
will be a world created
and led by the masses
themselves.
The History:
Our first attempt to
develop the agenda
described below began
immediately after
Katrina with calling
together a coalition
that came out of many
years of organizing in
New Orleans. Although
most of the
organizations involved
did not have that
constituency or
membership, the decision
made by the writers of
this document was to
begin the process by
going to the bottom. We
decided to look among
the people most
impacted, gather them,
and ask them -- with
equal voice -- to come
up with solutions. We
assumed that most of the
people and organizations
in the "movement" would
be happy to come to work
with the people and
would acknowledge that
the agenda and
leadership of the
process should come from
organizations comprised
primarily of the people
most impacted by
Katrina, the people on
the bottom: the same
dark-skinned, poor and
working black people we
all saw on TV in the
flood, at the Superdome
and then scattered
across the country. We
began to call this
process "Bottom-Up
organizing."
(See
Appendix 1a,
which
is a timeline of the
work to develop
Bottom-Up organizing in
New Orleans. We would
suggest the reader look
at that timeline before
reading the rest of this
document.)
The Purpose:
In the rest of this
paper, we will try to
allow you, the reader to
walk through the steps
we have used in the New
Orleans to begin to
develop this thing we
call "Bottom-Up
organizing." We hope
that you will then help
us analyze how to
improve on it. We are
particularly interested
in those creative
thinkers, workers and
organizers who want to
invest in and experiment
with this process. The
things we are doing are
not presented as
antagonistic to other
types of organizing
already being done. This
is a particular body of
work we are engaging in
within the construct of
human development at
this period in history.
We want to investigate
collectively how theory
and practice come
together.
What we have observed
through doing this work
is that when the folk on
the bottom come together
on a principle of equal
voice and egalitarian
organization, they will
make fair, just, and
correct decisions about
how to conduct the work
of building a new world.
All doors must stay
open; we can't have any
space where the mass
can't enter, or where
the "true" leadership is
not mass. However, we
are not romantics or
delusional. We don't
think that the bottom
will magically change
the world into a
paradise. We know that
the conflict between the
collective impulse and
the selfish impulse
exists there, too. We
know that the enemy
lurks in the background
waiting to attack, and
will. We know this will
not be a short, easy,
smooth or peaceful road.
But our experience of
the past year and a
half, and standing on
the shoulders of our
brothers and sisters
before us, tells us that
there is genius among
the poor waiting to be
harvested to direct our
movement; that those who
are the most oppressed
can understand and deal
appropriately with all
of the challenges has
they arise, and that
the reins of our
movement should be in
their hands.
Documentation
of the Work:
In this part of the
paper, we will describe
the steps we took in New
Orleans to build the New
Orleans Survivor Council
(NOSC) and root it in
the principles of
Bottom-Up. Each
organizing situation
will have its own
particularities. For
example, in New Orleans,
we had an onslaught of
hundreds of volunteers,
which is not likely to
be the case in most
organizing situations.
We expect that people
organizing in cities or
rural areas, in the US
or so-called developing
countries, and so forth,
will face different
particular problems and
needs. However, if we
are sticking to the
principles that those on
the bottom should lead,
of respecting the human
drive to take care of
the needs of humanity
equitably, and of
treating all of our
people with fairness and
humanity, we all may be
able to use elements of
the model developed in
New Orleans.
Step 1:
Door-to-door and house
call to begin
relationship building
with the bottom
The first step taken
in New Orleans was
sending organizers and
volunteers into the
streets to meet and talk
with as many poor and
working black hurricane
survivors as we could.
The purpose in doing
this was to begin
building relationships,
make some initial
guesses about desire for
involvement, and
establish agreement for
future communication
with people who would
then be invited to meet
together in what was to
become the New Orleans
Survivor Council (NOSC).
Simultaneously, the
visits allowed us to
obtain the people's
agenda about the
issues and what
solutions were needed.
Almost 6,000 visits
were done (remember we
had an outpouring of
volunteers). We found
that we were gathering
very similar information
from many people about
what happened to them,
how they were treated,
and what obstacles faced
them back home or in
their efforts to return
home. Even before the
first meetings, we knew
something about the
consensus developing
among the people about
what they needed and
wanted done. The visits
were the source for
developing the first
agendas for the
community's initial
meetings. Much of the
information we received
provided the basis for
the people determining
and prioritizing later
legal actions to bring
to address community
issues.
In door-knocking, you
mostly listen to gain
initial understanding of
where the person is,
what they are thinking
about, and their desire
for involvement. After
that, you identify some
of the things you have
also heard from others.
You then tell them about
a meeting where others
with these same concerns
are getting together to
discuss the situation
community members are in
and how to get out of
it. You try to secure a
commitment to be there
and you deal with
problems or reasons for
not coming
(transportation, child
care, scheduling
conflicts, disagreement,
etc.), trying to make it
possible for the person
to attend. You ask if
you can contact the
person in the future,
and write down contact
information. When you're
leaving, you may leave a
flier as a reminder of
the meeting, but the
door-to-door is not
introduced by a piece of
paper.
This describes the
first time you knock on
a person's door. After
that, when someone is
expressing interest,
coming to meetings, or
doing some work, you
follow up with house
calls. In these house
calls, you plan to sit
and spend time with the
person, build a
relationship with them
and help them get more
involved in the work, a
committee, etc. Building
relationships is the key
to developing people
socially and creating an
ongoing organization
with stability, where
people feel they can
rely on each other. You
also, periodically,
conduct follow-up house
calls with people who
have not been as
involved, after certain
community victories or
new developments related
to the concerns they
have communicated.
It is really
important to constantly
reflect on the new
relationships you are
developing, understand
where your relationships
are, and be deliberate
about growing them when
opportunities for growth
present themselves.
As a result of the
work described above, by
January of 2006, the
first meeting of what
was to become the NOSC
was held in New Orleans.
Several hundred
residents attended,
despite the fact that
only a tiny fraction of
the poor black community
was back in the city.
Even before the first
meeting of the NOSC,
their organizers were
assisting residents with
whom they had begun
building relationships
to address issues in
their community.
NOSC residents
directed the filing of a
lawsuit to stop
evictions of displaced
renters without notice.
They directed the
development of a report
on conditions related to
laborers and other
workers in their
community by having
volunteers find
community members and
ask them to contribute
their testimonials.
Similarly, they directed
the development of a
report on conditions
related to members of
their community dealing
with incarceration
during the Katrina
disaster.
However, because the
residents had no
organizational identity
for their community and
for their work, credit
for the reports and the
lawsuit was almost
exclusively given to the
attorneys who were
working for the
residents and the
organizations those
attorneys belonged to or
to the advocacy
organizations that
partnered with the
residents. Organizers
were able to talk about
these efforts and
successes by the
residents during
house visits and also
have it serve as an
example of the need for
residents to develop
their own organization
so that they could give
more direction and
supervision to their
solutions. Even the
disorganized resident
successes were useful in
feeding a desire and
need for the community
to get together and
develop organization.
Planning those first
initial meetings for the
community is very
important.
(See
Appendix 1b, for
more information on the
history of NOSC.)
Step 2: Creating a
safe space for people to
meet
Before the first
meeting of what was to
become the NOSC was
convened, their
organizers, who were
mainly young people, had
to think carefully about
how to conduct it in a
"Bottom-Up" fashion. The
method chosen came from
"story circle," a
meeting model which
community elders had
been using in other
contexts for years. The
fundamental principle of
the story circle process
(also called "people's
circle") is
egalitarianism, or
treating everyone
equally and fairly and
ensuring everyone's
equal voice. This
requires several
elements:
|
1) |
Make sure everyone
has equal
access to
the meeting
itself. This means
preparing the
meeting in a way
that takes
obstacles into
account and deals
with them. So, for
instance, each
meeting should
have
childcare
available, so
people with
children can come.
It should have
food,
so people don't
have to worry
about cooking.
These measures
particularly help
to remove
obstacles that
would otherwise
stand in the way
of women
participating, and
we have found that
women have taken
the lead in much
of this
organizing.
Transportation
should be
organized so those
without access to
it are enabled to
come to the
meetings. Chairs
should be set in a
circle
so everyone will
be able to see
everyone else's
face. |
| |
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|
2) |
Take measures to
assure equal voice
in the meeting. Estimate
the number of people
expected, choose and (if
necessary) train enough
facilitator
teams, which include
facilitators,
timekeepers and
note-takers. The
role of the facilitator
team is to make
sure everyone gets an
equal chance to speak,
create the agenda,
understand the process
and participate; to keep
to the agenda and help
the meeting run
smoothly, to monitor
that the rules are being
followed, to call on
people during cross
talk, and then help to
gather the
agreements that
have come out of the
discussion. The
facilitator team also
assists in getting
disagreements tabled
for further discussion
between meetings or at
other meetings. The role
of women is important
here. Most meeting
facilitators from among
the grassroots in New
Orleans have been women.
We have come to feel
that participants
(normally accustomed to
male leaders and
spokesmen of
organizations) take the
group as a seriously
rooted group when women,
too, are taking visible
leadership roles.
|
| |
|
|
3) |
Begin the meeting
in a way that invites
everyone and makes
everyone comfortable. We
always start our
meetings with a
cultural or
spiritual offering
from someone in the
circle. When possible,
it is great to organize
some children to present
a song or poem. Or the
offering could be as
simple as a prayer to
invite the spirit into
the circle. This can
also be a good time to
present a
thought-provoking
prompt and do
one round of reflection
on it. (For example, at
one meeting, the prompt
was, "If we woke up
tomorrow morning and the
whole government was
dead, and we had all the
money and resources we
needed, what would we
do?")
|
| |
|
|
4) |
The meeting
usually starts with
reports on the work that
has happened since the
last meeting: committee
reports, organizer
reports, etc.
|
| |
|
|
5) |
Following reports,
the agenda is set by
taking suggestions from
the floor.
|
| |
|
|
6) |
If the group is
larger than 15 people,
break it into
smaller groups
to consider each of the
agenda items.
|
| |
|
|
7) |
The method of
discussion is
equal time for
each person. A
timekeeper
assists in assuring this
by timing each speaker
for the length of time
agreed upon by the room
(two minutes, for
example), and clap hands
or make a sign when that
time was up, at which
point the speaker
finishes his/her
sentence and stops
talking. While one
person is speaking, the
others are listening -
not responding,
interrupting, asking
questions or thinking
about what they'll say
when it's their turn.
Listening is the
most important thing
going on in the meeting.
If a person "passes"
their turn, they are
offered an opportunity
to say what they think
after the round is
finished and before the
next round begins. Each
prompt or agenda item is
taken separately and all
opinions put on the
floor in this way.
|
| |
|
|
8) |
Once everyone has
said what they needed to
say,
cross talk
occurs for the time
agreed upon by the room.
Cross talk is more like
a traditional meeting,
in which the facilitator
calls on people as they
raise hands. However,
the goal is not debate,
but to work toward
everyone having clarity
about each other's
contributions.
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9) |
If the meeting has
broken into smaller
groups, these groups
come together once all
agenda items have been
addressed and report
back. Common agreements
are now listed and
plans
made to carry them out.
The facilitator helps
guide the discussion to
breaking the plans down
into assignments, and
asks for
volunteers to take
on the assignments.
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10) |
The meeting closes
with another cultural
offering, most often
with everyone standing,
holding hands and
singing together.
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(Note:
The NOSC conducts its
meetings using this
model. The terms
"people's circle" and
"story circle" are used
interchangeably.
See Appendix 2,
the People's Circle
document, to get a more
detailed description of
the method.)
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We are sharing this
process not because we
feel it is perfect or
the "only way." The main
thing is to develop
meetings in a way that
honors the
principles of equal
voice, harvesting the
agreements and
moving on them, and of
making decisions
by consensus
rather than by vote. We
are not trying to engage
in debate and create
winners and losers. We
are trying to move
forward on those things
people have consensus on
at the moment. By the
same token, we are not
trying to ignore or
paper over differences
and disagreements,
merely to continue
talking about them until
there is agreement to
accept or reject a
particular idea by the
group as a whole.
Whatever meeting methods
and styles achieve these
purposes would be fine.
In line with these
principles, the NOSC
decided to form a
leadership committee.
Previous to this, the
entire group had been
meeting weekly and found
it too frequent a
schedule. However, they
felt they needed someone
meeting weekly to keep
the work going, to be a
link between what
happened in the meetings
and the people doing the
work. They decided not
to have traditional
elected officers, but
rather volunteers for a
leadership or organizing
team, and the door
always stays open to
anyone who wants to be
in that group and do
that work. Meetings of
the leadership team are
conducted in the same
style, and it became a
consistent working group
of pretty much the same
people each week. This
meeting has also been
used for
skills/technology
transfer, including
facilitation training,
bookkeeping, managing
volunteers, organizing
staff, etc.
Step 3: The
Work
This is not so much a
"step" as a brief
report. The work is
circular: that is, the
community meets and
decides on solutions to
problems and identifies
teams or
committees from
the community to move on
the solutions. Work is
assigned to a committee,
organizers build
relationships between
community meetings to
help build the
committees (phone and
house calls for existing
relationships,
door-knocking for new
relationships,
leafleting for anybody
you miss); committees do
the assigned work,
develop proposals for
additional work and new
solutions, and bring
reports and proposals
back to the next
community meeting.
In the very early
days, the NOSC asked
itself the question,
"What do people need in
order to come home?"
Residents agreed upon
four needs: a place to
live, a place to send
children to school, a
place to take people
when they are sick, and
a job. The issue of the
safety of the levees was
always in people's
minds, but more
recently, sound levees
around poor black
communities have also
been noted as a basic
requirement for people
to feel safe enough to
come home, so it has
become a fifth need.
Within these five
needs, the NOSC realized
that the hundreds of
volunteers at their
disposal could mainly
help initially with the
first (housing), and to
some degree the second
(education). They
decided to prioritize
the gutting, cleaning
and rebuilding of homes
according to the
principle of most need.
As house calls created a
list of people who
wanted help with their
homes, priority was to
be given, first, to
elderly and disabled
people with no insurance
or resources, second, to
single parents, and
third, to other
residents going from
people without resources
to people with some
resources. Initially,
the NOSC focused on
low-income homeowners
because they were the
first members of the
community to return in
large numbers.
Subsequently, the NOSC
began to also focus on
public housing residents
and then renters.
Volunteers also gutted,
repaired and helped
reopen schools and
meeting places. Once
again, the
decision-making was
based upon an
egalitarian
principle.
Following the same
principle; the NOSC made
and carried out
decisions to reopen
public housing, help
people get trailers to
live in while their
houses were worked on,
clean up two schools for
reopening, reopen one
school, develop a
reconstruction skills
training project, create
a "technology transfer"
program (i.e. teaching
survivors all the
information and skills
organizers had at their
disposal, from meeting
facilitation to grant
writing to computer
skills), and reach out
to immigrant workers
brought into Louisiana
in slave conditions to
begin to create unity
with them. Committees
were set up to do
various aspects of this
work. Part of the goal
of the technology
transfer program was to
develop the skills among
poor and working black
people to be able to
account for and manage
any money raised for
this work directly
through their own NOSC.
In many of these
initiatives, questions
came up that challenged
the egalitarian
principle. For instance,
at one point it was
suggested to help
rebuild the home of a
man who had worked very
hard for the NOSC
rebuilding other homes,
but did not fit the
priority criteria
because he had some
insurance and resources.
In another example, some
people initially
questioned uniting with
guest workers because
those workers were
taking jobs previously
held by black workers
until Katrina gave
employers an excuse to
fire them. A few people
wanted to set up the
leadership committee in
a traditional hierarchy
and be bossy. In each
case, the group decided
in favor of the original
principle. In each case,
opportunism was rejected
by consensus.
Step 4:
Developing across
Neighborhood Boundaries
The NOSC was first
conceived as a space for
poor and working darker
people in and displaced
from the New Orleans
area to come together to
direct the recovery and
reconstruction of their
lives and community. The
organizers began their
first relationship
building in the
neighborhood that
members of that
community lived in that
was the most devastated
during the Katrina
catastrophe. As a
result, the residents
that began to
participate in the NOSC
were low-income
homeowners from the
Lower Ninth Ward.
Some months after the
NOSC began its work,
public housing residents
who were returning to
the city on their own
and taking their homes,
or who were returning to
the city on vouchers,
began to participate in
the NOSC. Quickly,
public housing residents
decided that they wanted
their own committee to
deal with the struggle
to reoccupy public
housing. Organizers
began to assist public
housing residents in
developing their
committee, which gave
birth to a new
organization that named
itself Residents of
Public Housing (ROPH).
This new space had
two interesting aspects
about it. One, as a
space for public housing
residents to come
together to address
issues of return, it was
for all public housing
residents, across all
the developments.
Second, though it was a
space for public housing
residents to make
decisions autonomous to
the broader NOSC, ROPH
maintained a
relationship to the NOSC,
including reporting
about its efforts,
relying on and
participating in the
Reconstruction and Media
Committees of the NOSC
to achieve some of the
solutions that ROPH
determined for their
neighborhoods, and
recognized the NOSC as
their broader community
space.
By comparison, soon
after the beginning of
the Katrina tragedy,
poor and working darker
people from various
countries outside the
U.S. were shipped into
New Orleans as a part of
current day U.S. slave
trade. NOSC organizers
began an effort of
developing relationships
with the new residents,
understanding that they
were members of the NOSC
community. However,
language and cultural
barriers between the
NOSC organizers and the
new residents
contributed to a need
for assistance from
organizers who were more
familiar with their
language and culture.
NOSC organizers began
to call for organizers
to assist with
organizing these new
members of the NOSC
community. When these
organizers arrived, they
began to build
relationships and
nurture the development
of an organization for
this new population
independent of the NOSC.
In fact, the new
organizers even set up
their own organizing
committee separate from
the NOSC organizing
committee. The result
was that these poor,
hard-working
dark-skinned people, not
familiar to the area,
found themselves in new
groups that were totally
separate and isolated
from the organizations
of poor and working
dark-skinned people who
had been in the area for
centuries.
To say the least, the
effort to connect both
the "new to the area"
residents and their
organizers to the
residents and organizers
who have been in the
region has been a much
more gargantuan task
than maintaining
connectivity between
ROPH and the NOSC. We
started the process with
dialogue and rebuilding
relationships between
the organizers doing
"bottom up" within both
neighborhoods. Our
second step was to
extend invitations in
both neighborhoods to
send delegations to each
other's meetings.
Meetings between the two
groups led to work
between the two groups,
which began to lead
towards recognition
between the two groups
that they are one
community catching hell
because they are poor
and working darker
people. Both groups
began calling for unity
and considering a space
for developing that
unity.
These experiences
have helped us to
realize the importance
of the whole community
of poor and oppressed
people of color working
together in one
organizational process.
Having members of the
same community working
together in separate
organizations based on
single issues works
against strengthening
the bonds of the
community as a whole. We
believe in an
organizational process
that brings all bottom
folk together so that
people are working
together as a community
struggling for justice
and then use a committee
structure to iron out
the details related to
the different issues
that we are confronting
on the bottom.
By keeping all
decision making at the
largest level of
community involvement,
the most inclusive
level, a committees'
need for resources or
support would go through
approval from the
community as a whole.
This ties everyone
together and helps to
curb divisiveness or the
practice of working in
isolation from the rest
of the folks who are
struggling for the same
thing.
Step 5:
Developing
Internationally
While initially the
NOSC formed during
trauma to respond to
urgent needs and it
continues to do so,
through the process of
developing the work,
people began to think in
broader terms about the
meaning of their work.
Developing unity between
homeowners, renters and
public housing
residents, for example,
broke down previous
barriers. Meeting with,
supporting, and being
supported by immigrant
guest workers broke down
further barriers, and
people began to see the
struggle as unity
against a broader system
of slavery. They began
to see that many of the
problems of the bottom
in New Orleans are
shared by poor people
all over the world.
This process
eventually led to a trip
to Venezuela, to meet
with the Communal
Councils there. The
Venezuelan government,
just after Katrina, had
offered to send
resources to help the
recovery, but this move
was blocked by the US
government. So in early
2007, a delegation of
organizers and members
of the NOSC and ROPH
went to Venezuela to
appeal directly for
those resources. They
met with the Communal
Councils and saw the
work those groups are
doing in the poor
neighborhoods of Caracas
and elsewhere. With
members of the Councils,
they met with government
officials to make their
requests for support.
They decided to try to
build a sister-city
relationship between the
NOSC and the Caracas
Communal Councils. The
process of developing
international unity
between those on the
bottom in both
countries was begun.
After this first
effort towards
international unity,
NOSC sent a second
delegation to Venezuela
to continue to nurture
relationships between
the people of the
bottom. Following the
second trip, a POC
organizer returned to
Venezuela to spend six
months, continuing this
same process.
Conclusion:
Moving Toward Developing
an International
Organizing School
What we have learned
from putting one foot in
front of the other in
New Orleans is that a
mass, collective,
consensus-based
organizing process built
on a foundation of
egalitarian principle
has shown great
potential as a beacon
for the future. By
defending this kind of
active space, people
could begin to see
themselves as the
legitimate governance of
their own lives and
future. We've seen the
collective take the high
ground on each issue
that came before it. We
are convinced that the
folk on the bottom have,
collectively, the genius
needed to figure out how
to run society, and that
those of us who have had
the opportunity to learn
about history and
develop various skills
have the responsibility
to put that knowledge
and those skills at the
service of the people,
and help them learn to
lead the decision making
process. In this way,
through practice,
experience in the
struggle, trial and
error, we will work
towards understanding
how to build a future
egalitarian society and
begin building it.
Although there is
much more still to learn
than what we have
learned so far, we feel
that we have a precious
embryo in our hands. We
want help in nurturing
and developing it. We
have begun an
international school for
organizers in the hopes
of learning from the
struggles in New Orleans
and around the world -
landless struggles in
South America, the
Communal Council
movement in Venezuela,
the campesinos in
Oaxaca, and other
struggles on other
continents - and in the
hopes of creating
connections between
those struggles so we
can begin to move
together to create the
future. We invite you to
help in this process, if
you find yourself in
fundamental agreement
with the idea of
"Bottom-Up."
(See
Appendix 3,
"Creating Prototypes in
the Struggle for
Egalitarian Revolution"
for more discussion on
the International School
for Bottom-Up
Organizing)
Please contact us,
People's
Organizing Committee &
International School for
Bottom-Up Organizing
June 2008
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New Orleans Survivor Council |
Spring 2008
Volume 2, Issue 2 |
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Doing
For Ourselves What the Government Won't! |
NOSC Encourages Reading
Throughout the City
In a time when
charter schools pick the cream of the crop and
the rest of the of our children are herded into
one of 5 public schools to sit in teacher-less
classrooms, a holding pen until they are forced
into holding cells, the members of the New
Orleans Survivor Council have decided to take
action. We have realized the only
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Special Features: |
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NOSC BookMobile passes out free books to
kids throughout New Orleans & St. Bernard
Parish! |
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Volunteers clean up overgrown lots in the
Lower 9th Ward. |
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Editoral by Council Member Jondrea Smith. |
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Contents: |
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Volunteers clean up Lower 9th Ward |
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A Valentine's Day to Remember |
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Fire Next Time: Social Justice in America
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BookMobile Summer Schedule |
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About NOSC |
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way to ensure our
children receive the education they deserve
to help them develop into literate,
productive members of our community, to
ensure they have the basic skills needed to
become anything they can dream; is to open
their minds ourselves. It is in this spirit
that the New Orleans Survivor Council (NOSC) received a Book Mobile.
The Book
Mobile, a mobile library, was donated to the
NOSC over a year ago. After overcoming many
obstacles such as the need for proper
insurance and a qualified driver, we were
able to fulfill our dream and bring reading
back to the Lower Ninth Ward, an area where
many schools remain empty or partially
knocked down. This lack of schools forces
the children who've returned home to wake up
at 5 am to make it to a bus that will carry
them into another community to sit in over
crowded classrooms because the only school
in their community has reached its capacity.
Through posting our contact information on
the literary network, we've already received
over a dozen boxes of books to give away to
the community and more books arrive every
day. We've also received donations of adult
books from the St. Bernard Parish Library,
creating the opportunity for entire families
to read together. Through visiting many
community businesses, we've received
donations to sponsor a community cookout
along side our Book Mobile. We serve free
hot dogs and snow balls, as well as bottled
water and cold drinks. Because many of these
businesses understand the value of reading
and care deeply about the community's
children, we've received their commitment to
support our community cookouts all summer
long.
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While browsing
through the numerous tables of free books, many
parents expressed the desire to donate books
their children had outgrown to the Book Mobile.
This has sparked a book recycling program where
families can bring their old favorites and pick
out new books to explore. The Book Mobile
provides the space for families to come together
to discuss the importance of education and
distribute books to fresh, young minds who enjoy
new adventures. This program is helping build a
stronger sense of community, as families are
cleaning out their closets to support each other
by giving away their old stories to families who
will use them. If you'd like to donate books,
food, drinks, and/or make a tax deductible
monetary donation to cover operation expenses
such as gas and insurance, please contact us at
504 655 2715. All checks should be made payable
to NOSC/IFCO and mailed to 2226 Ursulines Ave,
New Orleans, LA 70119.
To ensure that
all communities that suffer from a lack of
educational resources have access to free books,
we'll be cooking out in many different locations
all over New Orleans and St Bernard Parish for
the rest of the summer. Please check out our
Summer Schedule
to locate when we will be in a neighborhood near
you!
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Volunteers work hard to ensure displaced
residents are not fined
for overgrown yards. |
Volunteers Keeping It Clean
Since February of
2008, we have had over 200 volunteers cleaning
up lots in the lower 9th ward. They've been
working hard to ensure elderly members of the
New Orleans Survivor Council are not fined
$500/day for grass that stands over 18 inches.
Many of the elderly residents on our list are
still displaced to various parts of the country
waiting for Road Home to make good on their
promise to make them "whole". |
With the help of these volunteers, mainly high
school students from across the United States,
we have been able to clean and maintain 15
different lots. They were also able to paint a
rusted iron fence for a 70 year old widow, who
through the help of classmates was able to
return home but lacked the funds to replace the
rusted fence. Side-by-side with her
grandchildren, the volunteers restored the
beauty with a little elbow grease and a can of
paint.
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Volunteers have fun with a sing -along while
working to restore residents' homes. |
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After hard work, volunteers relax as Ms.
Walker prepares real New Orleans cuisine. |
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A
Valentine's Day to Remember
February 14th,
2008 was a day to show some love. Miss Ora
Green, an active member of the New Orleans
Survivor Council since January of 2007, was
finally able to plug in her deep freeze freezer
after it had sat, still in the box, on her porch
for over a year because the men who delivered it
refused to carry the freezer through her house
and set it up in her kitchen. For over a year,
Miss Green has feared that it would be stolen
before it ever entered the house.
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Once the help
was located, the fun began. To move the freezer
into her kitchen, the second to last room in her
historic 7th ward shotgun, NOSC volunteers Drew
and George helped her son, Freddie, load it into
the back of his truck. They then drove around to
the abandoned lot behind her house and lifted it
over the fence. They figured it would be easier
to take it in the back, rather than rearrange
the furniture in the house.
Soon to be 88
year old Miss Green played her part as well.
While the guys were busy lifting the new
freezer, she snuck into the kitchen and slid her
broken refrigerator out of the way, making room
for the new freezer. Miss Green is a constant
reminder that age ain't nothing but a number'.
After situating the new freezer, the guys hefted
the broken fridge out of the kitchen and into
the back of the truck, so Freddie could dispose
of it.
Within 30
minutes of the volunteers knocking on her door,
Miss Green was plugging in her freezer with the
biggest smile I've ever seen her wear. She took
a moment to pose for pictures with Drew and
George and appreciated the help, saying, "It's
good to have friends."
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Fire Next Time: Social Justice in America
An Editorial by Jondrea Smith
In the Black
church, there's a spiritual that contains the
line, "It won't be water, but fire next time,"
where God essentially tells Noah right after the
flood, "You ain't seen nothing yet." I think
about this when I examine the actions of the
American government immediately following the
Civil Rights movement, and I wonder if they got
the message.
After
weathering the storm of mass organization and
protests through trickery, decapitation,
intimidation and petty concessions, America went
right back to its wicked ways before the ink was
dry on the Civil Rights Bill. Under the guises
of Reaganomics, 'the War on Drugs,' 'Get Tough
on Crime,' and 'No Child Left Behind;'
exploitation, repression, and mis-education
sought to undermine any victories we supposedly
won on paper. But this time, prettier faces than
Bull Connor and Ross Barnett drove the point
home. And here we are. Schools have been
re-segregated; Black ownership is at an all-time
low, while Black unemployment, incarceration,
and state-sanctioned mistreatment threaten to
surpass their 'pre-movement' levels.
To be fair,
just as the government is guilty of instituting
these practices, we are equally at fault as a
people for not recognizing what was going on and
falling for the trap. We cannot change the past,
and it is the present and future that are of
concern to me. Each of the disasters that have
befallen this country in recent times have
presented opportunities for this country to do
what it says on the label, and each time, it has
failed miserably. I recall the U2 video, "The
Saints Are Coming," that showed the troops being
called home from Iraq to help people in need and
military aircraft dropping sandbags to fill the
breached levees. Today, that vision seems to
have come from another universe.
Now, as
desperation overtakes caution, the results could
very well prove to be catastrophic. It is only
for so long that a people can be collectively
exploited, oppressed and degraded before those
people begin to rebel. And now, as youth and
elder alike come to their senses, we could very
well be on the verge of such a desperate time. I
think back to that Negro spiritual, and I think
in this day and age it should read, "It won't be
marches, but action this time."
And when I
speak of action, I don't mean putting on shows
or chanting slogans or grandstanding by lukewarm
organizations but real change. The change I'm
talking about is the change that comes from
recognizing the genius of the poor, the
overlooked, and the forgotten and realizing that
each of us has a contribution to make. Now more
than ever, an organized populace is essential to
our survival. We should all be well aware of
what is taking place. Whether through malice,
neglect, or incompetence the people of New
Orleans were flooded and then left to die. Our
young men and women continue to die on the
streets of America's cities, and on the
battlefields of her unjust wars, and this
current economic crisis is sitting right on all
our doorsteps. But the time for complaining is
past. It is time for us to organize. Each and
every one of us has to bring his or her gifts
skills and talents to the table, and together
let us determine how to best use them for our
collective survival. We are on our own, but with
the power that we have within us, sometimes I
believe that on our own is the best place for us
to be. We each have the potential to contribute
to a better world if we come together. Catch a
fire, and let your light shine. Thank you.
 |
|
Survivor Council member, Robert
Richardson, poses with his sign as
he recalls the early days of
protesting in the fight to return to
his home north of Claiborne Ave in
the Lower 9th Ward. |
|
Volunteer Ito reads books with
children
at BookMobile Community
Cookout in
the Lower 9th Ward. |
Bookmobile Summer
Schedule
May 31st -
MLK & S. Claiborne, Central City
June 7th - Caffin Ave & N. Claiborne,
Lower 9th Ward
June 14th - St Bernard Parish Library
June 21st - Ursulines & Roman
June 28th - Old Shadow Brook Complex
(Algiers)
July 5th - Caffin Ave & N. Claiborne,
Lower 9th Ward
July 12th - TBA, New Orleans East
July 19th - TBA, Central City
July 26th - Westbank
August 2nd - Caffin Ave & N. Claiborne,
Lower 9th Ward
August 9th - Chalmette High School, St.
Bernard Parish
August 16th - TBA, Upper 9th Ward
August 23th - Community Book Center, 2523
Bayou Rd
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About the New Orleans Survivor Council...
The New
Orleans Survivor Council meets every
Saturday to discuss community issues and
how we can solve them ourselves. Our
meetings are from 11am to 1pm at the Old
Pathways Baptist Church at 1910 Alabo St.
Our
organization is run according to the
Bottom Up' principle of organizing, where
the leadership of the organization comes
from its members. It is our goal to create
a safe, egalitarian space where decisions
are made according to the consensus of the
participants. All decisions regarding
resources, work, and the Council in
general are made according to this
process, and the benefits are twofold.
First, through consensus we ensure that
resources are allocated in a manner that
has the backing of the agreement of the
people, and secondly, through carrying out
our work in this manner, we grow
accustomed to the type of participatory
democracy that is necessary for us to be a
self-determined people. The primary goal
of our organization is community-building.
It is our goal to form the necessary
relationships to ensure not only will we
recover as a community, but that recovery
will be led and directed by the community. |
|
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2007
November 2007
Farewell Letter from
Curtis Muhammad
November 12, 2007
A Message from an
Organizer to the Left
and Progressive Forces
inside the USA - by
Curtis Muhammad
With this second
anniversary of Katrina
upon us, there are a few
words I wish to speak.
This letter is written
to the progressive, left
movement for justice in
the USA. In the last two
years, every left
organization has been in
New Orleans, but despite
that there is still no
sign of a mass movement.
There is still no sign
that most activists are
willing to put their
knowledge and resources
at the service of the
grass roots and take
their leadership from
the bottom. I have found
myself wondering, have
poor black people been
so vilified and
criminalized that they
are completely off the
radar even of the
so-called left? When
Katrina happened, I
hoped and expected that
this would be the
trigger to once again
set off a true mass
movement against racism
and for justice in the
US, led by those most
affected: poor, black
working people. When it
became abundantly clear
that this was not
happening, I found
myself at the crossroads
of hope and
hopelessness, and began
to wonder how to spend
the last years of my
life in the service of
my people.
The thing that I remind
myself when I'm
contemplating
hopelessness is the
beauty of humanity and
the fact that people
have always fought for
what was right even when
they knew they couldn't
win. They tried because
they loved each other; I
think it's because it's
built into human beings
for people to look out
for each other. There is
a drive in humanity to
be just, to live in a
society that is just,
equal and respectful. I
believe that ultimately
people will achieve a
just society; I believe
humanity came out of a
just society and will
create it again.
I do believe that there
was a time that the
lovers of life, the
lovers of humanity, the
lovers of justice
dominated the world.
Some say this was so
during the
hunter-gatherer days,
when though there were
evil people they could
never gain dominance.
Their numbers were
always small, less than
1%; people ran their
lives collectively, and
therefore the greedy
could not dominate. Well
then, I say what
happened, there is only
that same 1% who
dominates the world now.
This thinking, this
logic has been the
motivating factor in my
life of movement work:
the belief that there is
a basic humanity that is
inside the soul of most
people. That this
humanity can be
harvested and organized
into a movement for
justice to free our
people from slavery,
bondage, oppression and
exploitation. That the
80% of the world who
live on an average of $2
a day can and will
overcome the 1% and
return us to a
collective life
organized around love,
justice and equality.
Most of you who know me
also know I'm a
storyteller and believe
story to be a universal
language that can be a
vehicle for voice - the
voice of all regardless
of status, class, cast,
race, gender. Story is
an egalitarian language.
So I wish to share with
you my story, an
abbreviated story of my
organizing work from
SNCC in Mississippi
through the ghettoes of
the US to the villages
and jungles of Africa,
to CLU, PHRF, NOSC, POC
and finally the
International School for
Bottom-Up Organizing. My
story is meant to
clarify why I now choose
to live, work, teach and
write outside the US and
away from the grip of a
drastically de-energized
and often opportunistic
and reactionary left in
the USA.
* * *
I grew up in a community
that, of necessity, had
to take care of its own.
In rural Mississippi in
the 40s, 50s and 60s,
mothers and fathers,
grandparents, uncles and
cousins protected the
children from the
hostile, racist world
and collectively helped
each other meet their
needs. Nonetheless, when
I was a child traveling
to church on Sundays, I
had to pass the tree
from whose branches my
cousin was lynched. The
community of my birth
gave me both my strength
-- my faith in the
people, my dedication to
egalitarianism - and my
undying hatred of racism
and the oppressive few
that control the world.
When SNCC came to town,
I found my direction. It
was both a community of
love and a set of
organizers devoted, at
the risk of their lives,
to the folk on the
bottom: the poorest
black folk in
Mississippi, those who
had nothing, not even
the knowledge of how to
read. SNCC introduced me
to the struggles of my
brothers and sisters
around the world, and
particularly in Africa.
I became an
internationalist and a
revolutionary. The
lessons of Ella Baker
and SNCC have stayed
with me throughout my
life; I labored to make
them a reality from
Mississippi to the
ghettoes of our major
cities, from my time in
the revolutionary
movement in Africa to my
work as a labor
organizer, and I have
done my utmost to apply
them in post-Katrina New
Orleans.
In 1998, I helped to
organize Community Labor
United (CLU), a
coalition that was
founded with a
commitment to Bottom-Up
organizing. (CLU
principles included
"ending the exploitation
of oppressed peoples
everywhere; educating,
organizing and
mobilizing the masses
within our organizations
and communities from the
bottom up.") After eight
years of organizing in
some of the poorest
areas of New Orleans, it
became the "first
responder" after
Katrina, and led the
formation of the
People's Hurricane
Relief Fund (PHRF).
As a founding member of
PHRF and an organizer
and New Orleans
resident, I was back in
the city within 8 days
of the flood, struggling
with overwhelming pain
and anger. I felt that
Katrina represented an
historic moment. Never
before had all levels of
government united to
attempt genocide of
100,000 black people at
the same time. Even in
the 60s in Mississippi,
they were murdering us
in ones, twos and
threes. I threw myself
into the attempt to put
the knowledge and
resources of the left
and nationalist
organizations and
"movement" people under
the direction of the
bottom: the poor and
working class black folk
who had been left to die
in New Orleans. PHRF
became a coalition that
committed itself on
paper to that goal.
What followed was a
dramatic learning
experience for me and
for all those whose
commitment is truly to
the people and not to
their own particular
grouping. Within months,
mainly as a result of a
speaking tour I went on
for PHRF, we had raised
about a million dollars
from folk across the
country who were deeply
moved by the attempted
genocide of over a
hundred thousand black
folk. And by December,
there was already
conflict over who
controlled that money
and how it was to be
used.
The New Orleans Survivor
Council was organized by
PHRF with the
understanding that it
was to become the
leadership of the
organization and the
movement, and should
control all resources.
By April of 2006, when
the NOSC began to sound
like it wanted oversight
of the funds, the
interim leadership of
PHRF took the money and
ran, firing its own
organizers for daring to
tell the poor black
residents in NOSC that
they had the right to
control the resources
raised in their names.
Undaunted, the young
organizers continued
working for the
survivors and formed a
new group called
People's Organizing
Committee (POC).
This event was a turning
point for me. I realized
that the words of those
who I had considered my
comrades were empty,
that their so-called
commitment to Bottom-Up
was a fiction; that
their real commitments
were to various
organizations and their
own egos. Our attempt to
institutionalize
Bottom-Up had led
instead to a coalition
of opportunists.
When I had spoken to
mass audiences about
Katrina in the fall of
2005, I had spoken of my
discovery of the depth
of the fear and hatred
America has for poor,
black people. The images
on the media of those
left to die could have
been taken in
sub-Saharan Africa or
the Caribbean: those
people were very poor
and very black. With the
desertion of PHRF, I was
confronted by the
knowledge that this
hatred of poor black
people extended into and
throughout the
progressive movement,
even within exclusively
black organizations. I
felt very lonely in my
continued commitment to
lift up precisely that
segment of oppressed
Americans to lead the
movement.
But POC plunged ahead,
still dedicated to that
vision. Thousands of
volunteers came in the
spring and summer, and
many continue to come to
this day. The hearts of
so many people are in
the right place. The New
Orleans Survivor Council
and its member group
Residents of Public
Housing continue to work
to put Bottom-Up
leadership on the map
and fight for the right
of our community to
return and control its
own destiny. But the
past year has also
revealed further
weakness and lack of
vision in our movement.
From the days
immediately following
the flood, we recognized
that immigrants - brown
people, some of the
poorest and most
desperate of our
brothers and sisters
from countries to the
south - were being
brought into our city.
They were put to the
dirtiest, most dangerous
clean-up tasks, and
later to replace the
forcibly dispersed black
labor force, for slave
wages and in slave
conditions. From the
start, we called for
organizing this new part
of the New Orleans
community in unity with
and under the leadership
of the black folk on the
bottom.
This call was part of my
message in the speeches
I made in the fall of
2005, and several
immigrant organizers
heeded the call and came
to work with us.
However, despite many
serious attempts to
develop unity between
black survivors and
immigrants, it has
become clear that those
organizers refuse to
unite with and take
leadership from black
folk. They have
organized immigrant
slaves into separate
groupings with no
contact with the NOSC,
despite their initial
commitment to unity.
They are essentially,
wittingly or
unwittingly, following
the government's agenda,
which is to build a
racist, assimilationist
immigrant "movement"
that will serve the
needs of a war economy
and patriotism.
And so we come to the
second anniversary of
Katrina. Bottom-Up
organizing is still
embryonic, though
hanging on to life and
with a small, dedicated
band of survivors,
organizers and
volunteers. But the rest
of the movement is in
shambles, or under
direct or indirect
influence of our
enemies.
Through the experience
of the last two years, I
have also come to the
conclusion that the
infiltration of and
direct attacks on the
movement that started
(in my lifetime as an
activist) in the late
60s and early 70s with
Cointelpro have never
stopped. Our movement
has been successfully
divided into thousands
of groupings,
non-profits and NGOs,
and the left has been
rendered ineffectual. It
is not an accident that,
for forty years now, the
movement has been so
totally reformist, or
that those who want to
be revolutionaries are
so isolated as to be
irrelevant. The
government and its
agencies have a
stranglehold on the
people, the culture and
even the left. I do not
think it is possible in
the U.S. at this time -
for me - to develop and
train organizers with a
real understanding and
commitment to the folk
on the bottom.
And thus, I find myself
at the crossroads of
hope and hopelessness. I
find myself possibly in
the position of writing
not mainly to the
current readers of these
words, but to those
future revolutionaries
who will learn from our
impasse. I find myself
deciding to work toward
creating an
international organizing
school as a vehicle to
discover, recruit and
train radical
organizers. I want to
continue my
investigation of the
movements in Mexico and
South America among very
poor -- members of the
informal economy,
workers, campesinos and
landless people -- learn
more about how class and
hue interact to shape
oppression, take
inspiration from the
fact that the struggle
continues, un-abandoned,
worldwide, and share my
own knowledge and
experience with the
rebels of today and
tomorrow.
I have lived 64 years
and have struggled
intentionally for
justice for about
forty-six of those
years. I am thankful and
appreciative to all
those who have traveled
some of that distance
with me: those who
helped nurture my
children, who stood with
me when I was imprisoned
and tortured, those who
have always supported my
work and stood by me
when all seemed to stand
against me. To these
worthy friends, comrades
and loved ones, I will
always honor you, be
there for you, and know
you are there for me.
Still, I have arrived at
a place in my life where
I wish to share
everything I have and
know with the
"sufferers." My
principle continues to
be the struggle to
engage the poor,
oppressed, voiceless,
and those who have the
least and suffer the
most. The only struggle
that matters to me now
is finding justice for
those who have never had
it.
This is me, where I am,
trying to figure out how
to organize our folk in
a way that we always
look at need as the
principle of justice. If
you are looking for me,
look among the youth,
the poor, and the
struggling masses
trapped in slave-like
conditions throughout
the world, for I am no
longer available to an
opportunistic and racist
left. I NOW SEEK REFUGE
AMONG THE POOR.
This is my struggle.
Wish me well,
Curtis
Click here to view a
videotaped interview by
Amy Goodman on Democracy
Now
August 2007
Greetings from the New
Orleans Survivor Council
and Residents of Public
Housing:
August 2, 2007
Residents of Public
Housing is an
organization of public
housing residents from
the various developments
throughout New Orleans.
We are assisting our
family, friends and
neighbors in public
housing with returning
home and with improving
the living conditions
and quality of life for
those of us who have
already returned. We
work together with the
rest of our community
who are not public
housing residents
through our New Orleans
Survivor Council. The
Council is made up of
people from the poor and
working black community
of New Orleans and
includes low-income
homeowners (most of whom
are from the Lower Ninth
Ward), renters and
public housing residents
from wards and
neighborhoods throughout
New Orleans, and
immigrants who have been
brought into our
community to as the new
slaves to replace the
old slaves. We have also
been assisting our
family, friends and
neighbors with returning
home, rebuilding and
repairing our community
and our lives, and
taking charge of our
neighborhoods. Our
mission is to do for
ourselves what the
government won’t.
Click here to download
document -
284 KB
New Orleans
Survivor Council &
Residents of Public
Housing Katrina
Anniversary 2007 Form
Click here to download
document -
31 KB
July 2007
NEW ORLEANS SURVIVOR
COUNCIL / CITIZENS OF
NEW ORLEANS COMMITTEE ON
RECONSTRUCTION AND
REBUILDING
Bad Neighbor Commission
Contact Information:
504-872-9591
July 30, 2007
NOTICE OF VIOLATION
Click here to download
document -
28 KB
Bring Our People Back Home!
Residents of Public
Housing Plan Anniversary Activities
July 27, 2007
Residents of Public
Housing (RPH) met yesterday at Guste High Rise
Community Center. Twenty-eight residents came from
several public housing neighborhoods, including
Iberville, Guste, St. Bernard, Lafitte, B.W. Cooper and
Desire. With the second anniversary of Katrina only a
month away, residents discussed plans for the
anniversary.
“Bring Our People Home”
Block Party
On August 28, RPH will
sponsor a block party
outside the HANO/HUD
office on Touro Street,
starting at noon. At the
block party, we will be
presenting HANO and HUD
with a list of units the
community needs them to
reopen now.
Funeral Procession
and Memorial Service
On August 29, we are
having our funeral
procession and memorial
services for those from
the public housing
community who lost their
lives during the Katrina
tragedy. We will be
starting our
processional and
memorial services at the
St. Bernard Housing
Development at 10:00 AM,
and doing services at
St. Bernard, Lafitte,
B.W. Cooper and Guste,
and C.J. Peete. We are
looking for financial
support to provide buses
to enable residents who
are still outside New
Orleans to come home for
these events.
Please help us with
these events. Click the
“Donate” link on this
page so public housing
residents who are still
in exile can come home
to commemorate the
losses they suffered and
continue to suffer since
June 2007
REPORTS FROM NEW ORLEANS
SURVIVOR COUNCIL
DELEGATIONS TO
VENEZUELA, INDIA AND
WASHINGTON, DC: CREATING
INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCES,
SEEKING RESTITUTION
When: Saturday, June
16, 2007, 11am-1pm
Where: Old Pathway
Baptist Church, 1908
Alabo St. (2 blocks off
N. Claiborne) Lower
Ninth Ward, New Orleans,
LA
Contact: Ishmael
Muhammad, 404-664-3009
Members of the New
Orleans Survivor Council
(NOSC) have been seeking
alliances and support
both internationally and
nationally; their
reports on their
travels, observances,
and sources of support
will be presented at a
meeting on Saturday,
June 16th. Members from
each of the delegations
will be in attendance,
offering strategies for
garnering support and
translating it all into
opportunities for
survivors to return home
and rebuild their homes,
families, lives and
communities.
A delegation of 4 NOSC
participants went to
Venezuela (see full
information below) to
garner moral and
financial support from
the Communal Councils
(neighborhood People's
organizations) and the
Venezuelan National
Assembly to help poor,
black New Orleaneans in
their attempts to
reclaim their city. Both
the Communal Councils
and National Assemblymen
promised ongoing support
to the survivors and
expressed outrage that
the money they had
previously sent to New
Orleans never reached
the poor, most affected
people in the disaster.
Immediately after
returning from
Venezuela, two of the
members of that
delegation, Bobbie
Hammond and Gloria
Williams, went to
Washington, DC to meet
with Senator Mary
Landrieu to press her to
support legislation that
would re-open public
housing in New Orleans
and allow them to return
to their units to which
they hold leases.
Landrieu has refused so
far, and, in response,
Hammond and Williams,
along with others, are
participating in a
sit-in in that senator’s
office right now.
Another delegation
traveled to India, where
they met with survivors
of their tsunami and
discussed each of their
experiences with
“disaster capitalism”
that benefits the
multinational
corporations and
contractors much more
than the victims. The
NOSC participants
explained to the people
of India how rejected
and attacked our people
have been by the
governments on all
levels"New Orleans,
Louisiana, and US
Federal.
Representatives of each
of the delegations will
be present at the
meeting for reports,
questions and answers,
and interviews.
NEW ORLEANS SURVIVOR
COUNCIL DELEGATION
RETURNS FROM VENEZUELA:
FRIENDSHIP AND SUPPORT
FROM VENEZUELA,
REJECTION FROM U.S.
GOVT.
Four members of the New
Orleans Survivor Council
(NOSC) traveled to
Venezuela for one week
and met with elected
officials and members of
the Communal Councils
and got a rousing
welcome and show of
support. They arrived
back in New Orleans on
June 9th.
Bobbie Hammond, Alberta
McCathen, Ishmael
Muhammad, and Gloria
Williams went as the
second NOSC delegation
to Venezuela to spread
the word about the real
treatment of poor black
people in New Orleans,
the ways in which all
the governments in the
US have abandoned them,
and how the money
Venezuelans and others
gave to New Orleans
never reached the poor
people themselves. The
delegation made the
journey to get support
from the Venezuelan
people and government
for the poor people of
New Orleans.
The four New Orleaneans
visited poor and working
class people in Caracas.
They were sent by the
NOSC to carry a proposal
for aid to the displaced
black residents of New
Orleans to friends and
allies in the Communal
Councils in the poor
neighborhoods that were
made on a previous trip,
with the hope that
Council members would
accompany them to
present the proposal to
the government. The NOSC
wants to establish a
sister-city relationship
with the Caracas
Communal Councils and
obtain the aid that the
Venezuelan government
offered and the US
government rejected just
after Katrina.
They were welcomed with
open arms by the people
in Caracas. Said Gloria
Williams, "It was a
great, great, great
experience. I've never
seen all this love in
all my 60 years. The
people at the Communal
Council showed us so
much love that I cried.
They built an $8 million
ASPCA in New Orleans,
but nothing for us. In
New Orleans, white
people stepped over the
black people to save
other white people. But
the Venezuelan people
don't look at color.
They said they are from
the hood' and they will
help the NOSC because
they are in the hood.'"
Alberta McCathen agreed:
"They made us feel like
we were princes and
kings, showed their
gratitude for what we
went through. I've never
been further away from
home than Baltimore. We
had to come right across
the water to get all
this love. They love
us." Bobbie Hammond
added, "We had a great
week. I'm going back to
the projects. I feel
like we are going to win
this. We went to the
mountaintop in the
hood' in Caracas. The
people are living up
their comfortable,
happy, and it belongs to
them. If they can live
in the hills, we are
going to take our
community back. I don't
feel as down as I did
when I came here. They
lifted our spirits. We
have some brothers and
sisters right here in
Venezuela."
The words of these
Katrina survivors show
the immense power of
international solidarity
among grass roots
people. Their own
government has deserted
the poor and working
black people of New
Orleans, none of the
billions of dollars in
"aid" have reached the
hands of poor people,
their efforts to return
home are thwarted at
every turn, and all odds
are stacked against
them. But the love,
support and unity from
poor struggling people
abroad instilled in them
hope and determination.
As Ms. Hammond put it,
"I feel like I have my
dignity and pride back.
Everything is different
with us now. The fight's
not over. If they could
do it, we can do it."
Ishmael Muhammad added,
"The people of Venezuela
are supporting the
efforts of the poor
black people in New
Orleans displaced by US
government policy. They
are our friends. The US
government turned a
natural disaster,
Katrina, into an
unnatural disaster: we
charge them with
genocide, with the
responsibility of
killing 6000 people and
making it impossible for
hundreds of thousands of
poor black folks from
returning to their
homes, families, and
communities in New
Orleans. The US
government has denied
all our basic freedoms."
Together with Communal
Council members, the
NOSC delegation joined
half a million people
demonstrating in support
of the government's move
to close down a TV
station that had
participated in a
CIA-backed coup attempt
five years ago. Ms
Williams describes the
scene: "We were in a
parade with the poor and
middle class people for
Chavez. He has so much
support among the
people. They love him.
We must have walked
about 20 blocks, but it
was worth it."
The delegation also met
with members of the
National Assembly and
spent several days
attending meetings and
appearing on radio and
TV, spreading their
message to people across
Venezuela and other
Latin American
countries. The Communal
Councils took the NOSC
proposal to their
umbrella organization,
the Venezuelan
Commission on Citizen
Participation, which
then presented a
resolution to the
National Assembly to
support the NOSC and
making it an official
"sister Communal
Council." This would
mean the NOSC would also
be eligible for all the
support that Communal
Councils get from the
government.
One part of the NOSC
proposal asked for
support for a Training
Institute in New
Orleans. Said Ms.
Williams, "After meeting
with National
Assemblyman Francisco
Torrealba, he indicated
to the delegation that
he wants to see a
training institute in
New Orleans so our
people can be trained in
all the skills they'll
need for the recovery. I
told the National
Assembly that none of
the money they gave New
Orleans got to the poor
people. The congressmen
had tears in their
eyes."
Communal Council members
wanted the delegation to
stay even longer than
they did. They invited
NOSC to come back, and
offered to put people up
in their own homes next
time. The delegation
went back stronger than
it had left. As Ms.
Hammond said when she
was asked what she'll do
now that she's back in
her home town, "We are
on our way back. I've
been committed to the
Survivor Council from
the beginning. We will
work even harder. The
hood is our family."
MEDIA ALERT
For Immediate Release
Attention: News Assignment Desk |
Contact:
Nicole Banks
Renelle Carter |
WHO: New
Orleans Survivors' Council and Florida Public
Housing Residents
WHAT: Residents to Return Home
WHERE: Florida Public Housing Development
WHEN: Saturday, June 10, 2006 9:30a.m.
The Right to
Return to Public Housing
New Orleans, LA-
More than ten months after the devastation of
Hurricane Katrina, residents of New Orleans'
Public Housing Developments are still displaced
around the United States. After many months of
failed appeals to HANO, residents of the
Iberville, St. Thomas, and Gus Housing
Developments moved back into their homes
independently. Residents of the Florida Housing
Development have been inspired by these actions,
and after their own unanswered appeals to HANO,
they have decided to pursue a similar course.
Two weeks ago,
Florida residents came to the weekly New Orleans
Survivors' Council meeting. They asked the Council
to support their effort to return home by
assisting in the clean up process. The Council
came to the consensus to help and formed a
committee to focus on public housing concerns.
Last weekend over 60 people came out to support
the cause as Council members gathered with Florida
residents to remove debris from ten homes.
This Saturday,
June 10th, at 8 am Florida residents and Council
members are scheduled to clear the debris from
thirty additional homes. In continuation of the
larger Right to Return to Public Housing Movement,
two families will move back into their homes which
were not affected by flood waters or the resulting
mold. These families and the others that are
slated to follow hope to inspire HANO to begin
repairs and reopen the doors of the Florida Public
Housing Development.
"This is my home.
I lost my only brother in the Florida Housing
Development four years ago, over ten dollars, but
I am here with my daughters to make it a better
place- I'm staying. I worked and had a nice
place," says Renelle Carter, a Florida Public
Housing resident.
This is an effort
of the New Orleans Survivors' Council to empower
the community to return to their homes, public or
private.
Genocide
We are in the middle of
genocide of black
people, people of
African descent. This is
not the sort of genocide
that we have been alert
to in the past, where
millions of people are
decimated over a
relatively short period
of time in a small
geographic and political
region. No. This
genocide is moving along
at a steady, relentless
pace, moving faster and
faster with many focal
points. But make no
mistake: there is a
“systematic program of
action intended to
destroy a whole racial
or national group”
(Webster’s New World
Dictionary). Hundreds of
millions of people of
African descent are
being killed before our
eyes.
Read the rest of this
entry »
What is POC?
People's Organizing Committee
(POC) refers to a collaboration between a group of young
organizers from several different organizations that were
working under the People's Hurricane Relief Fund. PHRF was
founded on the principle that the people most impacted by
Hurricane Katrina should lead the movement to return to
and rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. In “PHRF " Who
We Are,” this principle was stated this way: “The purpose
of PHRF is to ensure that people from New Orleans and the
Gulf Coast region play a central role in all decisions
made about relief and the rebuilding of New Orleans and
Gulf Coast. PHRF believes that the people themselves
should be the leaders and that this is the only way
justice will be served.”
Read the rest of this
entry »
Donate
All the money people generously donated to support this
organizing work has been taken from us. There are some who
are in the process of taking legal action (see “Disclaimer”
on this site), but meanwhile we need money to enable us to
do this work!
Please make checks
payable to IFCO/NOSC, mail contributions to:
People's Organizing Committee
IFCO (Interreligious Foundation for Community
Organizing) / NOSC
2226 Ursulines
New Orleans, LA 70119 |
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May 2007
May 1st
Celebrating Worker's
Day, Afrikan Liberation
Day and Ending Slavery
Time: 1:30 pm
Where: 2635 Orleans Ave.
Come and support our
demands:
We demand a Just
reconstruction that
includes the people that
have been displaced.
We Demand the
Immediate Reopening of
All Public Housing in
New Orleans
We demand that
contractors and
developers who are
ripping off migrants and
black people in New
Orleans be investigated
and placed under citizen
arrest.
Stop immigration and
police raids on the
Latino and Black
community.
We demand that all
money and resources for
poor and working black
people and other people
of color in New Orleans
be controlled, managed
and directed by us.
We demand immediate
temporary housing inside
the city of New Orleans
for all poor and working
black people who are
still displaced.
We demand that the
rent in the city of New
Orleans be set at what
it was before Katrina.
We demand the
rebuilding and reopening
of public schools under
community control.
We demand the
rebuilding and reopening
of public health care
facilities under
community control.
We demand the same
or better levee
protection for our
community as is provided
to the rich white
community in New
Orleans.
Note: As an act
of solidarity and
unity between the
Latino and Black
Communities; Latino
workers, members of
the Day Labor Congress
will be rebuilding
Mrs. Green House. Mrs.
Green is a 86 years
old lady, who since
hurricane Katrina,
hasn't been able to
rebuild her house due
lack of money.
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NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE. NO
JUSTICE, NO PEACE.
|
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Supported by:
New Orleans Survival
Council, Peoples
Organizing Committee,
the Day Labor Congress
of New Orleans, and the
New Orleans Worker
Center for Racial
Justice. For more
information, please
contact 504-872-9591.
Click here to download
document -
463 KB
May
Day: Remember Katrina
The Washington Post recently
published an article
exposing the fact that the
U.S. government managed to
turn back and/or not use
almost all the hurricane
assistance offered by
foreign governments (see the
attached article). This is
on top of all the
well-documented things the
governments at all levels
did when Katrina threatened
New Orleans and hit the Gulf
Coast, and during the
subsequent flood in New
Orleans - from not
evacuating residents to
turning back rescue efforts
from land, sea and air, to
scattering our brothers and
sisters across the country
never to return to their
homes.
On this May Day,
international workers' day,
let us not forget that these
actions represent the
biggest racist attack
against the working people
of the US in recent history.
Over 100,000 mainly poor
black workers were left in
New Orleans to die, and
would have died had Katrina
hit the city as it was
forecast to do. They were
forced at gunpoint to stay
in "shelters" with no food,
water, toilets or
electricity. They died in
the thousands. All offers of
aid were turned back. They
were sent away from home and
to this day have not been
allowed back. Their
neighborhoods look like they
did just after the flood.
Their schools are closed.
The public hospital remains
closed though it did not
sustain flood damage.
Most of this fascist reality
has been allowed to fly
under the radar, even of
many people who will
celebrate May Day.
POC asks that everyone
celebrating May Day this
year hold up this ongoing
racist, fascist attack for
everyone to see, and commit
themselves to the ongoing
fight for poor black
residents of New Orleans to
reclaim their homes. Fascism
succeeds when ordinary
people stand by and ignore
the attacks going on under
their noses! Let May Day
truly be a day of
anti-racist unity, bringing
together the struggles of
black (former slaves),
immigrant (modern slaves)
and white workers behind the
leadership of grassroots
black folks fighting to
regain their homes and
livelihoods.
Click here to download the
Washington Post document -
33 KB
March 2007
Survivor
Council to Open Lawless High
School Residents and
Volunteers Face Down Cops
and School Officials
March 8, 2007
On Thursday, March 8,
residents and volunteers
working with the New Orleans
Survivor Council faced off
against the Recovery School
District (RSD). The NOSC had
previously decided to reopen
the public school system
themselves, because the city
has taken public education
out of New Orleans. They are
targeting mainly poor black
communities, and
particularly the Lower Ninth
Ward and the area around the
C.J. Peete public housing
development.
As a result of NOSC
pressure, Martin Luther King
elementary school will be
reopened soon in the Lower
Ninth, but residents are not
happy about the fact that it
is reopening as a charter
school. People need to know
that all of their children
are guaranteed to be able to
attend school in order for
them to move back home.
Charter schools choose their
students.
So a few weeks ago, the
Survivor Council decided to
reopen Lawless High School,
also in the Lower Ninth, and
Tom Lafon near C.J. Peete,
as public schools. Student
volunteers have been
cleaning Lawless out for the
past week. This week,
students from Wilberforce
and FAMU were in the
building, cleaning and
salvaging usable educational
materials, when the RSD sent
contractors to the school.
The contractors demanded to
know who had authorized the
students to work. They
answered, "the New Orleans
Survivor Council authorized
us; this is their school,
and we're cleaning and
reopening it."
The contractors revealed
that they had been hired to
clear out the "full
contents" of the school,
throw them away, and prepare
the school for demolition!
The second floor of the
building had computers,
books, software still in its
original wrappings, and
other salvageable materials.
At schools that have been
designated as "full content"
schools, contractors are
instructed to throw away all
the contents of the school.
Nearly all of the schools
designated as "full content"
schools are in poor, black
neighborhoods. Other schools
are designated "partial
content" schools, and in
those, contents are
salvaged.
Since both the volunteers
and the hired contractors
were under instructions to
clean out the school, the
POC organizers proposed that
they all work together. An
agreement was worked out
whereby the RSD contractors
would work on the first
floor, where everything
needed to be thrown out, and
the NOSC volunteers would
work on the second floor and
continue to salvage
materials. However, then the
contractors added "you have
one day." After that, they
said, the students would be
in the way and would have to
go.
The volunteers responded
that they planned to stay
until they got the job done,
and added that if anyone
started tearing the building
down, the students would get
in their way. When the
contractors reiterated their
demand that the students
leave the following day, POC
and the Survivor Council
decided to pull out all the
stops. That night, they
called residents and the
press.
The next day (Thursday),
nearly a dozen residents
donned protective clothing
to join twenty students in
cleaning out the school. The
press watched as the
students, many of them
having done a quick
orientation in civil
disobedience, prepared to be
arrested if necessary,
alongside residents who were
not about to back down on
their goal of opening a high
school for their children.
Looking for a response, the
press called RSD officials
on the phone. The officials
asked where the things taken
out of the school were, and
residents responded that
they had salvaged it,
because the RSD was going to
trash useful materials and
equipment. The RSD then
decided that they did not
want the publicity that
would come from calling
police to arrest residents
and their volunteers
cleaning out their own
school, and finally said
they would meet with NOSC to
discuss the reopening of
Lawless School!
After the experience of MLK
School, residents don't have
confidence in the RSD to
look out for their
interests, but they knew
they had won at least a
temporary victory that day.
The next day, they sent
another team into Tom Lafon
School so that residents
determined to reoccupy C.J.
Peete would also have a
school to send their kids
to.
New Orleans Survivor Council
Turns to Venezuela for
Support
March 2, 2007
Poor and Working Class
Black Hurricane Survivors
Visit Venezuelan Communal
Councils and Expose "Hatred"
of the Poor by Progressive
and Government Forces in the
U.S.
New Orleans, LA, March 1 - A
delegation of four members
of the New Orleans Survivor
Council and two Bottom-Up
organizers have just
returned from a truly
inspiring and life-changing
trip to meet the people of
Venezuela. True to their
commitment to Bottom-Up
leadership in New Orleans,
they went directly to the
bottom: to the everyday,
grassroots folk of
Venezuela. They met with
several of the Venezuelan
Communal Councils (organized
groups of neighbors within
Venezuela who run their
communities, and control the
resources for their
communities; much like what
the New Orleans Survivor
Council is attempting to do
within their poor and
working black New Orleans
community), and told their
stories of survival and
struggle to an undeniably
attentive audience. The
Communal Councils were
equally excited and inspired
by the meeting with the
survivors, and leaped at the
chance to bring their needs
and requests to the
Venezuelan government.
This was the first time a
group of poor and working
class black people visited
Venezuela representing
themselves and their own
organizations and were not
just a backdrop or exhibit
for other groups led by the
privileged. The effort of
the New Orleans Survivor
Council delegation to
develop camaraderie and a
direct working relationship
with Venezuelans who are
also struggling through
class and racial oppression
is unheard of in the modern
era. Most relationships
between the masses of the
people throughout the world
have not been developed by
the masses themselves but by
people who claim to
represent them, or advocates
for them, or those who have
styled themselves as their
leaders.
For almost except one
Survivor Council member, it
was their first time outside
of the U.S. They had no
passports before the trip
and all of the delegation
was awestruck to meet people
who had such solidarity in
their hearts for the poor
and working black people in
New Orleans, the U.S. and
throughout the world.
Everyone saw each other as
part of the same struggle
and each person, those from
the Survivor Council and
those from the Communal
Councils had such similar
experiences in their own
countries, lives, and
organizations.
Because of the revolutionary
act of these New Orleans
residents and Katrina
survivors, a delegation from
Venezuela will soon be
coming to New Orleans to
follow up on the first visit
of the Survivor Council.
They want to see the
situation in New Orleans
with their own eyes, and to
help lay the basis for
meeting the needs identified
by the New Orleans Survivor
Council, as well as
investigating setting up a
sister-city relationship
between the Caracas Communal
Councils and the New Orleans
Survivor Council. There is
great hope among the poor
and working communities of
both places that the roots
of international alliance
that were planted in this
visit, will grow into a tree
of established sisterhood,
whose branches stretch from
the barrios of Caracas, to
the hoods of New Orleans.
If you would like to learn
more about this story,
please review the included
documents developed by the
New Orleans Survivor Council
to share with the people of
Venezuela and the documents
developed by the delegation
during the visit. The
documents have also been
attached to this release.
Greetings to the People of
Venezuela from the New
Orleans Survivor Council
To the people of Venezuela
and to the Venezuelan
Community Councils, we come
to you as people who have
been deserted by the
government in our own
country. We are survivors of
Hurricane Katrina, members
of the New Orleans Survivor
Council, poor and working
black folk who have
historically been ignored in
our country and feel we have
been set up for genocide.
When Katrina hit, we were
left in more than 20 feet of
floodwater for over 21 days
in a city that sits over 13
feet below sea level - left
to die.
The events of the past year
have caused us to
re-evaluate the direction of
the progressive and
revolutionary movement. We
noticed that those left in
New Orleans to drown were
the poorest and
darkest-skinned people of
the city. Looking around the
world, we see that the most
oppressed and cast-aside
peoples are those with
darker skin. We are looking
deeply at this intersection
of skin color and poverty
and asking everyone to do
the same. We are committed
to building an egalitarian
society. We have concluded
that the only way to
accomplish this is to look
to those very people who
have been relegated to the
bottom of society's heap for
leadership. We call this
Bottom-Up leadership.
Our people have also been
deserted by most members of
the progressive community at
home. We know that everyone
comes to you for help; the
Harry Belafontes, the Danny
Glovers, and the very
organizations that we helped
to start and that later
deserted us: they have all
come to you. Often, their
talk is of oil money. Our
appeal to you is something
quite different. We think
the most exciting thing
happening in your country is
the communal council
movement, and that is why we
are here.
We are looking for a
relationship with you.
Because we've been deserted,
we need to rebuild our own
communities, schools, and
hospitals. We need to
rebuild our levees so we
won't be washed away by the
next storm. We need to build
relationships with people
who care about us. From
listening to your
leadership, it sounds like
you care.
We are looking to forge
sister-city relationships.
These would be sister-city
relationships of a different
type: not with the official
City Council of New Orleans,
but with the New Orleans
Survivor Council, the
organization of the most
oppressed folk in the city.
Our council is the council
of the people, the
grassroots people who were
the most impacted by this
disaster, the council of the
people who were left to die.
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