Someone asked today what my thoughts were regarding where activists and organizers should be focusing their time and energy. It can be easy to get caught up in the day to day, and just continue to do things the way we’ve been used to for years. It can also be easy to feel like our efforts only continue to be futile despite long, hard fought struggles and victories. Regardless, conditions have been changing in the US and across the world since 20, 30, 50 years ago. We have seen many victories, have felt many losses, and have watched many of our victories not fully realized. We’ve been living a change in labor force, reorganization and fracturing of communities, and new degrees of distraction and isolation. When and how will we adapt?
6 weeks ago I was in Zapatista rebel territory. The time that I was there, I felt something that I have been thinking about for some time; something I’ve seen in desires and dreams of my own and others. Something that I feel is generally missing from the dominant discourse about social change and resistance in the US. It may come up here or there, or maybe even be seen in practice on small scales, but it is largely missing from our conversations and organizing here.
In one word, “it” could be defined as autonomy, but it is perhaps so much more than that.
In my experience in various types of groups, I’ve seen a mix of ideas, methods, actions and analysis. Different ways to address global and local issues and need for change. Groups of people who are distanced from the issues they are working on, for whom the effects on life are more abstract. Groups that address large scale issues by pressuring decision makers to act according to their demands. Groups that focus on specific issues which effect them, and demand a voice in the decision making process, though do not always view themselves in the context of global resistance. Groups that maintain an analysis of global connections in resistance and the need for horizontal, localized decision making but don’t always find concrete ways to implement these ideas in a local community.
The question in my head right now is, how do we build a movement broad enough but which effectively addresses current problems in decision making; how do we build a movement in which people can address the common issues they face together, across a significant geographical area, but with an analysis of global and historical systems of dominance and injustice and the impetus to end such systems?
My thoughts and feelings in Chiapas can be contrasted with the new movie, the Battle in Seattle, which I saw this past weekend and which represents the glorification of large protests, against large enemies. Of course, protests against the WTO [1] and other institutions of neoliberal globalization include the voices of those most directly effected by world trade, and those most effected live in specific communities with other struggles as well. But these large convergence protests can also have a tendency to evoke certain emotions in those prone: the desire for excitement, the thrill of mass action, the dream and perhaps naivety that we can win if only we can mobilize enough people to face off with the enemy. But how do we build our numbers to be capable of facing off with those hired to protect capitalist interests? How do we hollow out and debase the ruling structure of the wealthy few over the rest?
When, where, how do we act on our decree that the governments, corporations and ruling few are not legitimate power-holders? When do we begin organizing ourselves as a free society, to do and provide for ourselves and those around us? At this moment in history many people are uneasily waiting to see what happens next: after natural disasters, record profits, skyrocketing food costs and monumental government-corporate bailouts, there may also be an expectation for drastic changes, for better or disaster. It would be naive to believe that, if the economy were to fail any measurable amount more than it does on a daily basis, that those currently in power would simply fall with it. When do we - and what better way to delegitimize the power holders than to - organize community-based disaster relief? Or harvest and distribute food amongst ourselves? Or in the many other ways, organize ourselves to make decisions, share resources, skills and knowledge, and do the work necessary to sustain ourselves?
How much longer will we decide to wait? How much longer before we won’t be able to? My question for revolutionaries and others struggling here and far: how do we define, how do we visualize our own autonomy? As we begin to formulate an answer to this question, I believe we’ll be able to move forward, hasta la victoria, siempre.