astra on organizing
astra taylor on organizing
via this:
Enumerating what programs should be implemented is easy. The difficulty lies in figuring out how to actually make things happen and who is going to do the work, writes @astradisastra. https://t.co/mPrjw4jiYQ
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/newrepublic/status/1598597158315368449
links to her dec 1 2022 article: the long game – [https://newrepublic.com/article/168802/expanding-citizen-power-beyond-ballot-box] – Expanding Citizen Power Beyond the Ballot Box – Responsive organizing is essential to achieving policy reform
notes/quotes:
Such scenarios lend even more urgency to the work ahead.
indeed – for (blank)’s sake and why i do what i do
Like many progressives, I envision myriad domestic reforms that could be implemented in the coming decades.
yeah.. what we need is just one.. deep enough for all of us.. today.. ie: org around legit needs
*Enumerating what programs should be implemented is easy. The **difficulty lies in figuring out how to actually make things happen..t and who is going to do the work. What’s the strategy? Can we build the solidarity and institutional formations required to pull it off? The future turns on our answers to these kinds of concrete queries.
*actually .. what has perhaps been our biggest problem.. taleb center of problem law et al.. spinning our wheels on stuff not deep enough
**this becomes the easy part.. if get deep enough problem.. ie: org around legit needs
It’s the story of student debt cancellation that I know best, because I’ve been organizing around the issue for nearly a decade. Our hard-won victory provides a heartening example of the outsize power that a scrappy, well-organized coalition can wield, and a reminder of how much of a boost Democrats can get from doing things that materially help regular people.
imagine how much .. if we org/focus deeper..
As my allies and I correctly prophesied, Biden’s decision to bail out borrowers appealed to folks across the political spectrum. Bridging social and ideological divisions and short-circuiting resentment and cynicism are possible—if we identify common interests.
again.. imagine if we .. org around legit needs (that 8b of our souls crave)
That also means identifying common enemies—for example, the economic elites and their henchmen who immediately got to work trying to find ways to stymie Biden’s debt cancellation plan.
yeah.. see.. this wouldn’t have to happen if we org around legit needs
gershenfeld something else law et al
With that in mind, I’ll make one addition to my policy wish list. By 2050, should our nation and democracy endure, I hope we can overcome a bit of our rugged individualism and formally recognize organizing’s importance to a decent and sustainable society. We need a legal regime that facilitates the development of what some scholars have called “countervailing power”—*citizen power that extends beyond the electoral realm. This proposal may seem obscure, but it is hardly unprecedented. Consider labor unions, which are structured and protected by law. We could start by dramatically strengthening that domain and then expand to other organizational formations: **tenants unions, debtors unions, consumers unions, worker cooperatives, citizens assemblies, and more. ***Why shouldn’t the state help our organizing efforts instead of hindering them?
*imagine if we just focused on listening to the itch-in-8b-souls.. first thing.. everyday.. and used that data to augment our interconnectedness.. we might just get to a more antifragile, healthy, thriving world.. the ecosystem we keep longing for..
what the world needs most is the energy of 8b alive people
**irrelevant s if we org around legit needs
***because any form of m\a\p messes with us.. it unmoors us.. cancerous distraction et al
“The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think,” Virginia Woolf mused in her journal in 1915. We know today, more than she did at the time, what horrible things were in store. But maybe the fact the future feels unknowable, even terrifying, is a good thing, on balance. Certainty—even a false sense of it—has a way of fostering complacency. Wasn’t that part of the problem, not so many years ago, when the conventional wisdom essentially said history was over? People who should have known better were lulled by *the false idea that the die had been cast, that their kind of people were in charge, and that nothing would fundamentally change. No need to struggle to bend the moral universe’s arc, to sacrifice your Sundays to endless meetings, or your lunch breaks to texting the skeptical and inviting them to come and join, too.
Amid such uncertainty, organizers know that we must cultivate hope among as many people as we can manage to reach. Real organizing is a kind of alchemy. It’s *a process that turns alienation into connection, oppression into strength, despair into dedication, darkness into light. The odds that we’ll win do not look good, but we keep trying. And **if we do try, by 2050, the future may actually turn out to be bright.
*ie of process: org around legit needs
**if we legit try a nother way.. could happen by 2023
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be you. 