Why Eckhart Tolle’s Evolutionary Activism Won’t Save Us

[Searcher08]

Could I have the small steps initially?

Examples
"working in solidarity with women" is NOT sensory rich and NOT what I want
but
"I called a women's refuge and they said they needed a website to raise funds, so once a week you can see me sitting at a computer, doing a website project in Adobe Dreamweaver, ocassional yelling in frustration at my PC!"

"work with poor people" = No
but
"Once a month, I act as a mentor to an adolescent entrepeneur in a 2 hour meeting whichis full of laughter, great coaching and inspiration and which that leaves her focused and smiling and inspired"

The more examples (even if you think they are trivial) the merrier.

Does that make sense? The purpose of this is that conceptual description is a bit like the menu and the sensory reality is the nourishing meal (or Map vs Territory if you will...) and I want to eat some 'food for thought'

I feel this thread is turning into something very valuable...

There's a gazillion different things that people could do which would help make the world a better place- and a huge number of single issue campaigns. My personal emphasis holds that things which somehow will move forward the goal of systems change, profound changes in our social relations are crucial right now.

It would be impossible to do a list that is fitted for all people in all places, even if we narrow things down to this historical moment.

That said, here's a few sample activities:

First para
Reclaiming unused urban spaces- cleaning up dirty vacant lots that belong to absentee landlords- for community gardens that model inter-ethnic cooperation, community building and etc. Organizing for widespread resistance should those with the deeds decide to send in the gendarmerie.

Second para
Organizing to free political prisoners- and explaining why these individuals felt the need to resist the status quo. Building on that and working for prison abolition, an end to our "American" War on Drugs, etc.

Third para
Building a linked network of counterinstitutions: linked housing co-ops and squats, alternative schools, extralegal sexual assault groups, food co-ops, alternative media based on sound principles etc.

Fourth para
Grassroots labor organizing, especially supporting immigrants and precarious/part-timers and even unwaged workers.

Does that begin to get at what you're looking for?

Yes!!!, thank you so much for this-
I think that if you could help me with just one more 'round' that will make things of a size and richness that I sense would translate across to many apolitical and / or New Age people.
I am aware as I am writing this of at times having very intense feelings surface - I will briefly report these so not to be too swamped by them and in case some other people might be feeling anything similar

The first paragraph
Reclaiming unused urban spaces- cleaning up dirty vacant lots that belong to absentee landlords- for community gardens that model inter-ethnic cooperation, community building and etc. Organizing for widespread resistance should those with the deeds decide to send in the gendarmerie.

This creates a clear picture for me of people of all shapes sizes colours genders working together to physically transform the mess that others have left and who havent cleaned it themselves!

If I know of some unused space - what are the very first physical tanglible actions involved? What does 'organizing' look and sound like? My instinct is that this is second nature to you and I'm realising I havent a CLUE what the first steps to take would be. I dont even know if that matters!

I just felt such intensely embarrased at my lack of knowledge that turned beetroot red!
<breathes deeply>

Second paragraph
Organizing to free political prisoners- and explaining why these individuals felt the need to resist the status quo. Building on that and working for prison abolition, an end to our "American" War on Drugs, etc.

There is so much here!

Could we make this more sensory based? My feeling is that this might look and sound quite a different type of organising than the 'first paragraph' community organising.
What does second paragraph 'organising to free political prisoners' look and sound like?
(Reflection: Sorry, AD - I'm observing my default mental pictures are zooming dramatically between pictures of busting people out of North Korean prison camps (!) to evenings at the pub writing letters as part of an Amnesty International group - this is why if you make it specific and real - even more concrete)

If I wanted to also be 'explaining why these individuals felt the need to resist the status quo' - what are the first physical action steps you would see me taking?
What is the result you want to create through these explanations?

Reflection: I'm used to taking individual action, leading teams, consulting on strategy and here - Feel frozen with fear and very exposed (I feel this is true science, using oneself in the experiment!!)
I havent a clue how to do what you describe.
There is intense guilt present for my physical inaction.
I'm seeing in my heart that my being just a 'keyboard warrior' is not enough. Ugh


Third paragraph
Building a linked network of counterinstitutions: linked housing co-ops and squats, alternative schools, extralegal sexual assault groups, food co-ops, alternative media based on sound principles etc.

WOW
I am personally really thrilled to read that. Is a 'linked network' one where people and ideas and possibly resources and skills flow between / across these organisations / counterinstitutions?

Let me try to picture and see if it matches...
Im seeing everything from 'light links' -
where you are just 'pollinating' the different organisations by just talking to people in one about what others do, moving on to the next kind of like an organisational Johnny Appleseed through to
more formal 'heavy traffic' links
like a food co-op might provide expertise and the housing co-op might provide space for a roof garden to help grow organic food for the alternative school???
Now what is it ACTUALLY like?
You know what's coming next -
What in real world actions would you see / hear me do if I was building a linked network of counter-institutions?
What would be the first tiny physical real world actions steps?


There are Four Stages a Preconception goes through on it's journey to disintegration.
My preconceptions of what you do
have gone from:
1 Having an 'obvious' implicit knowledge that it would be something with elements like my satire
to
2 Realizing I actually hadnt a *clue* and then was *very fearful*
to
3 Realizing my mental map was *embarrassingly* then *hilariously* inaccurate
to
4 Realizing the newly seen possibilities for participation / making a difference/ creation / service are like the beautiful words c2w used... The emotion of this...

It's being four years old, standing outside the living room as the door swings open on my birthday and there are amazing gifts to give and to receive and to share and the room seems huge and full of love and light and sparkles. And the CAKE!!!

[brainpanhandler]

bph -
Useful for no one? Really? Or just not for yourself because it doesnt speak to or match your experience?
What if elements of it match someone elses experience, e.g. mine?

I had seen this searcher, but it seemed such a minor point that to belabor it to the potential detriment of the thread and more substantive conversations that were taking place seemed petty. But fwiw, and that's not much, This is what I wrote,

..serves no good purpose whatsoever and it does not square at all with any experience I have ever had of collective action. It's more the sort of thing I would expect to read on a Fox News blog.

Which is a judgement call. It's not as if there is no reflection of the truth in there, I just don't like to even inadvertently serve the interests of those who oppose organized self governance or see others do it who I believe don't really mean to. That's all.

There are Four Stages a Preconception goes through on it's journey to disintegration.
My preconceptions of what you do
have gone from:
1 Having an 'obvious' implicit knowledge that it would be something with elements like my satire
to
2 Realizing I actually hadnt a *clue* and then was *very fearful*
to
3 Realizing my mental map was *embarrassingly* then *hilariously* inaccurate
to
4 Realizing the newly seen possibilities for participation / making a difference/ creation / service are like the beautiful words c2w used... The emotion of this...

If only more people could learn this sort of flexibility.

[Searcher08]

@AD,
....concluding from my previous post
Fourth paragraph
Grassroots labor organizing, especially supporting immigrants and precarious/part-timers and even unwaged workers.

I dont have any idea what that looks like at all - sorry if that sounds incredibly dumb... I think this may be revealing something useful though, which is the "Real world" activist has an activist vocabulary that the apolitical / New Agers lack, but isnt just like say IT where 'GANTT Chart' doesnt come into daily use in ordinary conversation , wheras 'organizing' and 'support' do...

So again (I really appreciate your patience around this) what small but real world concrete tasks would a 'Newbie' be seen doing that provided evidence of grassroots labor organizing, especially supporting immigrants and precarious/part-timers and even unwaged workers?

If you could do that, I will bring all the pieces we have done together. Once again thank you for your time, trust and goodwill on this collaboration.

@bph
I appreciate your clarification, especially after doing the long reply last night. My own pictures of your work have been as inaccurate as mine of AD .

I had you in my mind as a high power lawyer, like an East Coast version of... ermm Arnie Becker

It's good to be wrong

[General Patton]

American Dream » Wed Jun 26, 2013 11:12 am

It would be impossible to do a list that is fitted for all people in all places, even if we narrow things down to this historical moment.

That said, here's a few sample activities:

[b]Reclaiming unused urban spaces- cleaning up dirty vacant lots that belong to absentee landlords- for community gardens that model inter-ethnic cooperation, community building and etc. Organizing for widespread resistance should those with the deeds decide to send in the gendarmerie.

Make sure you test the soil, there are several labs that will test it for you. A lot of low rent urban areas have factory/other pollution that may contaminate the soil.

Check em:

[American Dream]

American Dream » Wed Jun 26, 2013 11:12 am

It would be impossible to do a list that is fitted for all people in all places, even if we narrow things down to this historical moment.

That said, here's a few sample activities:

[b]Reclaiming unused urban spaces- cleaning up dirty vacant lots that belong to absentee landlords- for community gardens that model inter-ethnic cooperation, community building and etc. Organizing for widespread resistance should those with the deeds decide to send in the gendarmerie.

Make sure you test the soil, there are several labs that will test it for you. A lot of low rent urban areas have factory/other pollution that may contaminate the soil.

Check em:

Yes- in some U.S. cities there is a municipal office which will offer free testing for soil contaminants, which are numerous and can be incredibly dangerous for edible crops. Soil substitution may be an option...

[American Dream]

@AD,
....concluding from my previous post
Fourth paragraph
Grassroots labor organizing, especially supporting immigrants and precarious/part-timers and even unwaged workers.

I dont have any idea what that looks like at all - sorry if that sounds incredibly dumb... I think this may be revealing something useful though, which is the "Real world" activist has an activist vocabulary that the apolitical / New Agers lack, but isnt just like say IT where 'GANTT Chart' doesnt come into daily use in ordinary conversation , wheras 'organizing' and 'support' do...

So again (I really appreciate your patience around this) what small but real world concrete tasks would a 'Newbie' be seen doing that provided evidence of grassroots labor organizing, especially supporting immigrants and precarious/part-timers and even unwaged workers?

If you could do that, I will bring all the pieces we have done together. Once again thank you for your time, trust and goodwill on this collaboration.

Immigrants, including the undocumented, have organized campaigns such as the Coalition of Imokalee Workers in Florida, which are running fair food campaigns so that the pickers can get better wages, bathrooms and shelter from the Sun, freedom from literal enslavement and from sexual assault and exploitation, etc. In cities around the U.S. solidarity groupings are helping put pressure on individual chains such as Wendy's Burgers and Stop n' Shop Supermarkets to sign the Fair Food Agreement.

Unwaged workers who do the reproductive labor of supporting waged workers (often husbands) and raising up new workers are organizing for example through the London based Global Women's Strike, which, among other things, is pushing for more supports for parents of young children to be able to stay at home a bit, rather than simply push the kid out to daycare...

Precarious workers are sometimes organizing in a traditional manner- more acting in the capacity of individual resistance but here is a snippet that represents the flavor of at least one radical current:

Now we've expanded our understanding of work to include reproductive labour, and our working hours stretch further and further into what might have been considered leisure time, why not consider too those workers with no “work”? The constant demands of flexibility, “enterprise”, and availability at no notice for slim chance of reward is after all felt most acutely by the unemployed, now re-branded with subtle ideological semantics as “job seekers”. The demands placed on those claiming Jobseeker's Allowance now include an expectation of 40 hours of “jobseeking” per week monitored through the highly problematic and leaky Universal Jobmatch, useless and demoralising job club sessions, instructions to traipse around town all week giving your CV out in search of hidden vacancies – sell yourself! Make your own job! Here we see labour totally dematerialised – there is no actual work, but you've got to keep up the act of searching.

An affectively drenched regime of anxiety, paranoia, and suspicion

A lack of work, a lack of security, and the speed at which work and it's pursuit comes to occupy our lives and identities takes its toll on our minds and bodies. The demands placed on workers by creeping precariousness manifests in what anthropologist Noelle Molé describes as “an affectively drenched regime of anxiety, paranoia and suspicion”, in which workers can turn against each other. Her work focusses on the practice of “mobbing” in the Italian workplace. A phenomenon highly visible in the Italian workplace from the 1990s onwards, mobbing is the harassment of employees by either managers, co-workers, or both, resulting in the eventual dismissal or resignation of the workers. Mobbing is now legally recognised as a work-related illness, complete with clinics and lawyers, and a growing academic literature devoted to the topic.


Mobbing (I Like To Work)

Molé links mobbing to the rise of precarious work practices, against the memory of a protectionist economy with well established and hard won worker's rights. She discusses the psychological torment of workers facing unliveable working conditions combined with an ever present threat of unemployment, and characterises the precarious worker as full of dread for neoliberal horrors still to come, and identifying fully with their insecure and risky positions: I am a precariat, I am temporary. Traditional workerists have used this total identification with employment status as the basis for campaigning, with workers holding signs in photos displaying the dates their contracts run out with the words “I expire on...”.

As workers we're well aware of how the language of precarious and immaterial labour works against us. We know that management speak is bullshit, that “flexibility” means being disposable, a creative approach means doing more with less, a dynamic workplace is a transient one. During my induction at a market research call centre last year, our group leader asked us why telephone interviewers were like the wheels on the company's car. When one of our group answered, “because we get worn out really quickly and we're easily replaced?”, it took our trainer a few moments to regain composure and tell us it was actually because we're the ones who keep the company in contact with the ground and keep the machine pushing forward. It was pretty awkward.

We know that work makes us sick, that work follows us home, demanding more and more of our emotions and our personalities. So how do we resist this? The HR department's championing of a work/life balance is not enough, when not only is our leisure time consumed with the task of recovering from work and preparing for work, but our leisure time is itself co-opted by employers looking for “well-rounded” employees, who use their free time productively, investing in their skills, experiences and interests to contribute to their value as workers, to make us better employees.




Next week we will commemorate the struggle of the Haymarket martyrs, who fought with their lives for the 8 hour working day, with 8 hours for sleep, and 8 hours for “what we will”. We now see this hard won victory slipping away from us, and besides, why did we settle for 8 hours, isn't this still too much? We should be pushing harder, forcing back the imposition of the working week, rejecting the workerist of our selves with our jobs, and rejecting those “leftists” who demand a right to work, jobs for all, a party of work. Eight hours to do what we will is not enough.

http://libcom.org/blog/it-makes-us-sick ... m-27062013