It’s Time to Organize or Die

I saw a message from a veteran friend of mine recently:  he had just received a picture of a dog eating a dead baby in Gaza.

Revulsion, anger, sadness, rage:  of course, at the Israelis for their genocide in Gaza and everything they have done in Gaza and on the West Bank against Palestinians, and for the Biden Administration for encouraging and enabling such atrocities.

But, also, revulsion, anger, sadness, and rage against the left, particularly in the United States, but also around the world:  we could not stop this shit, nor the US Government from supplying the weapons and political support to allow it to happen.

And revulsion, anger, sadness, and rage against the left, again particularly in the United States, but also around the world for being unable to stop the impending climate catastrophe already happening.

Etc., etc., etc.  And, unfortunately, in my mind, this is all connected.

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Let me regress.  I am a strong leftist and especially anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist.  I’ve been a political activist since “turning around” while in the US Marine Corps over 50 years ago and joining the anti-Vietnam war movement inside the US military.  I’m a socialist of sorts but belong to no established organization because my approach differs:  I am a leftist despite the left, not because of it.  I have researched, written, and published around the world.  Although I’ve lived most of my life in the United States, I don’t see the world through an “American” lens; I see the world through a global lens.

And what I see—and this will probably piss off many in the left, however defined—is failure:  we have failed to build organizations that can force social change while radically altering power relations.  Yes, we have forced changes, but they have been short-term at best: we have failed to build long-standing, POWERFUL organizations that can force social change.  And most of us don’t even realize this.

One of the most profound understandings by the late Jane McAlevey, developed in her  book , No Shortcuts, is that she delineated between advocacy, mobilization, and organization.  Advocacy was speaking up for someone else, such as lawyers for clients in a case.  Mobilization was motivating people to stand up to fight a civil injustice, such as the murder of George Floyd, but it generally depended on relying on the same good foot soldiers, again and again until they burn out.  And then, there was organization:  building on-going organizations that would engage people on an on-going basis and educating them and reaching out to those still unengaged so as to build power.  In other words, the idea of organizing was to BUILD POWER by developing, maintaining, and expanding our organizations, and seeking engagement by more and more people in our respective areas and training them to become leaders.

But, within this, there needs to be the understanding that leadership exists within groups; it doesn’t emerge only with the presence of outsiders.  In fact, as McAlevey recognizes, we need to build on, develop, and help refine the leadership that always exists among groups of people; we must work with and build upon existing leadership, not ignoring or replacing it:  this is key to facilitating organizational development.

We—in general—have failed to adopt McAlevey’s understanding of the need to organize, and that is immobilizing us.  And this failure has been keeping us incapacitated and helpless.  And ineffectual.

Yes, we can analyze things on a sophisticated basis.  Yes, we can recompose history with dedicated archival work.  Yes, we can snivel about “injustices” anywhere in the world.  But we cannot do a damn thing about them because we refuse to organize to build power from the bottom of society upward.

I live in Michigan City, Indiana, on Lake Michigan.  This is a city of about 30,000 people, in the rust belt, and with the majority of people (53%) living month-to-month.  It’s a city that’s generally about two-thirds white, one-third African American, although race relations seem pretty relaxed; not perfect, but generally people at least tolerate each other, especially at the same economic status level.  Our recently elected mayor is an African American woman, the first to win the position.

Now, Indiana is not a progressive powerhouse, to say to least:  it is controlled by Republicans at the state level (governor), and Republicans control a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate.

We live in what’s considered “Northwest Indiana,” which is an area dominated by the steel industry and its (conservative) union; other than in Indianapolis, we’re the only area that votes consistently Democratic.  Nonetheless, it’s a conservative Democratic area.

Yet we are living in an area that has been under economic and political assault for somewhere around 40 years.  In this period, a number of steel mills have been closed, many union locals busted, and a lot of ancillary jobs destroyed.  In turn, this has decimated many of smaller companies that serviced the mills and their workers.  We live in a state where today’s minimum wage, like the Federal minimum wage, is $7.25 an hour; trying raising a family on that!  And tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour!  And where fast food is a major industry!

What can progressives do in such an area?  It’s a long-standing question that I think needs to be addressed across the country; I think lessons from our work might be helpful for folks living in many areas of the country, whether in a “blue” or “red” state.  I think recounting some of our experiences might provide some ideas….  (And I hope others will share their experiences as well!)

Although retired now, for 18 ½ years and after getting my PhD at age 51, I taught at a local four year university called Purdue University North Central (PNC), later changed to Purdue University Northwest (PNW) ; a part of the Purdue University system.  (Purdue is the land grant university in Indiana.)  This is a four-year university located in a rural area, 4 ½ miles out of the two stoplight town of Westville.

My primary teaching responsibility as a sociologist was to teach a course on “Race and Ethnic Diversity,” and over the years, I eventually taught 57 sections of this course at a university roughly 87% white and generally conservative.  What frustrated me was that we had no established social organizations or networks for students to plug into once they got a taste of what was really going on in the world and wanted to stay engaged after graduation.

Fortunately, that changed.   A student named Vince Emanuele came to campus.  Emanuele was a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, and he was trying to recover from the war, a difficult journey, I assure you:  he had survived some vicious combat.  We hit it off:  I was a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, although I had lucked out and had stayed in the States for all four years of my enlistment.  Nonetheless, we bonded.  And over time, we talked about and thought through many of the problems of our area, and he decided he wanted to do something about this.

Emanuele, after participating in a number of social movements—Occupy Wall Street, Obama, Bernie, environmental, antiwar—was also dissatisfied with the “left.”  He knew the state of our region, knew the state of the left, and wanted to do something about it.

Somewhere around 2015-16, Sergio Kochergin came to town; Kochergin had been a platoon-mate of Emanuele’s in Iraq; they were inseparable, both helping the other recover from their wartime experiences.  They, along with a couple of other people from this area, journeyed to Standing Rock to support efforts there.

The idea that emerged from hours of conversations along the trip, following multiple conversations beforehand between Emanuele and me, was that they decided to establish a community cultural center in town.  Michigan City really has no place for people to relax and enjoy themselves together without having to pay money, and they wanted to set up a site where people could socialize that didn’t require money but where people could meet freely and get to know each other.  At the same time, Emanuele and Kochergin also wanted a space to explore political ideas and community-based organizing in an area such as Michigan City.  Eventually, they found a storefront that they rented, and they established PARC, which stands for Politics, Art, Roots, and Culture, in 2017.

PARC was an amazing place.  Both Emanuele and Kochergin made folks feel welcome; they painted the place, gathered couches and chairs, established a large lending library, established a performance space, and always had a pot of coffee on.  Other than when alcohol was served at evening events, when you had to be 21 or older to enter, there were no limits on who could join activities on site.

They welcomed everyone in the community.  Interestingly, in a city largely self-segregated, they invited African Americans to come and share their spoken word poetry and to produce other events directed to African American audiences; some nights, the audience was 95% African American, which is very unusual for a “white” space.  Yet, they also had heavy metal bands perform, as well as folk singers.

Eventually, different community-based groups used PARC as a meeting place.  This included the West Side Little League, the NAACP, as well as some progressive pastors in the city.  I think there were one or two weddings at PARC.

PARC also had family-focused events:  most important was “Friendsgiving Day,” instead of Thanksgiving; we all brought food and shared, while the kids ran around and drew pictures on paper on the floor.  They also held family game nights, sponsored art installations, welcomed hip hop events, initiated electoral candidate roundtables, etc.

Along with this, PARC showed political movies and provided political speakers:  along with my colleague, Lee Artz, I spoke on the then-current situation in Venezuela (which is still being attacked by the US Government today).  They had other guest speakers, in person and via Zoom.

But PARC also featured sporting events—both Emanuele and Kochergin were fans of boxing and mixed martial arts, and some of us were pro football fans.  They got a big screen TV for engagees.  Everybody was welcome at PARC!

Ultimately, PARC was trying to find ways to mix cultures and races, seeking to unify across established social barriers instead of just merely “tolerating” the existence of others.

Over time, and what we hoped for, was that a few people came around and wanted to do something to improve their city.  Some of them had joined together previously and had been active.  They created OUR MC, which stood for Organized and United Residents of Michigan City, and we worked together to create a social justice group that would fight for the betterment of the city.  (Accordingly, there was an overlap between the people of PARC and OUR MC.)

OUR MC got involved in a number of campaigns.  We fought lead poisoning in the city—a very big problem in the formerly industrialized rust belt cities, as industry did not clean up the environment they had poisoned during their operations after they abandoned the area.  We fought an effort to establish a development along the last remaining sand dune along Lake Michigan in the area.  We fought the gratuitous development of a downtown plaza with taxpayer money, although it was intended to be used by those visiting only during the summer.  And we mobilized over around a thousand city residents for a couple mile protest march down a main street in town, protesting the killing of George Floyd and declaring that “black lives matter!”

Yet, we were more than just an “action group.”  We wanted to develop the consciousness and understanding of OUR MC members, of which many did not have a more complete understanding.  We knew that key to the survival and expansion of OUR MC over time was leadership development; we wanted to develop every person willing to take our proposed courses, as ultimately, it was expected that Emanuele and Kochergin would bow out.  We asked people what they wanted to learn.

We initiated classes at PARC that anyone was free to join.  Most important, I believe, were our classes on SWOT, which stood for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.”  SWOT analyses help illustrate our strengths and show where we could have the greatest social impact in the local political/economic scene, and where our greatest threats might come from.  We were also seeking to develop a structure that would facilitate our political program.

So, we combined a social movement approach toward issues based on broad mobilization (as mentioned above) with electoral work; rejecting a sole focus on electoral politics, what appears to be a common approach with many left groups.

The local mayoral race in 2019 was one of the places we intervened.  After interviewing a number of progressive candidates, we backed an elderly African American female candidate, and really went to work for her.  Michigan City has about 30,000 homes, and in one day, we talked with residents or left literature about our candidate’s campaign on doors of over 10,000 of them!  There was no other candidate with this kind of support.  Unfortunately, we found out that our chosen candidate had escalating mental health problems, and we decided we could not continue to support her; we felt it unethical to tell the community that she could handle the job when, clearly, she could not.  Still, she lost by only 200 or so votes.

So, OUR MC—and PARC—were seen as a growing power base for the people by the “powers that be.”  There was pressure put on our landlord to no longer rent to PARC.  That probably could have been overcome, but we had some internal problems that were not handled well.

This, too, might have been overcome, especially over time.  But the COVID-19 pandemic hit this area in the Spring of 2020, and that had a terrible effect on the region and on relations between people in it.  (The demise of Bernie’s second presidential campaign probably contributed as well, but I don’t remember that folks were that enthusiastic about his second run.)  We simply did not have the organization consolidated sufficiently to survive the social turmoil.

Nonetheless, there needs to be some analysis of PARC/OUR MC, and their strengths and weaknesses.  Understand that these are my personal comments, and probably would be disputed by at least some of the participants.  Yet, as an older, more experienced activist than others—so I should not be considered a “regular member”—these are things that I think need to be drawn out for continued discussion.

There was a gruesome set of internal conflicts that were ugly, that occurred with both organizations, and which I do not want to repeat.  The long and short of it—and what needs to be learned from—is that we never provided for handling internal conflict that might emerge throughout the course of the organizational history, and this was, in my opinion, a MAJOR failure; it led to the destruction of an incredibly innovative and successful community organization project.

There are two main lessons.  First of all, EVERY organization—no matter how well intended, no matter how well initiated—needs to be prepared to handle internal conflict, and to be able to do so in a way that does not destroy the organization nor force people away.  We had run into a thing where this approach—deemed “touchy-feely”—was denigrated from the beginning:  it basically prevented us from addressing emotional issues among members.  However, the greater the diversity of those involved—and we want the greatest diversity possible—the greater the chance of emotional issues emerging among members; and cross-class memberships seem particularly vulnerable to this.  (The violence that many working class people are subjected to—at work, in their neighborhoods, and in their daily lives—differs qualitatively from that experienced by more upper middle class folks, and resulting tensions can be explosive.  But other issues such as gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., as well as experience levels are all potential flashpoints.)  This must be expected and prepared for!  We did not, and when the crisis happened in 2021, PARC/OUR MC exploded and burned out.  An amazing project—especially in a “red” state such as Indiana—fell apart and disintegrated.

But tied to that must be another understanding:  internal conflict, while not desirable, is almost unavoidable over time.  Sometimes, it even energizes organizations, at least at first, forcing them to find new ways to be creative, to reach new people, etc.  As stated above, its likelihood increases as the organization gets more internally diverse.  But in any case, it is all but inevitable over time.  (Unfortunately, I speak with a lot of experience with this.)

Key to resolving this, I believe, is to think clearly about what is going on in advance of the conflict.  Absolutely the central question:  is this conflict internal, among members, or is it external, such as an attack from competing or outside organizations? This is an important detail for every organization, which should be prepared to handle both should either raise its ugly head.  The key thing to understand, however, is that we should treat internal conflict among members differently than conflict with external organizations.

We have to develop processes that treat members with respect, and try to work these problems out amicably, if at all possible.  The goal is to overcome the conflict and restore the health of the organization so good political/cultural work can be continued!

(There may be situations where this cannot be done and the individual or individuals must be expelled; but the goal should be to intervene before it gets to this level, and this should be avoided if at all possible; yet expulsion of some members is ultimately more important than allowing the organization to be destroyed.  The expulsion process should be developed early on, with due process procedures included for all concerned from the beginning:  you want to be clear and transparent, as other people and organizations will be watching, and you want to assure these outsiders that you’ve handled this as carefully and as humanely as possible; you don’t want to be denigrated for mishandling internal conflict by others.  And this problem intensifies as the problem continues over time; “friends” get involved, and often make things much worse, which argues for a clear, expeditious, and clean handling of internal conflict as quickly as possible.)

External conflict is another thing.  You want to train your members, so everyone understands what the organization is seeking to accomplish, and to be able to identify “friends” and “foes.”  This is why ongoing organizational educational efforts are important because with greater and more solid organization, you are better able to defend and maintain your organization.

The goal over time is to build an organization that can develop and carry out a program that is strategically based on clear analysis and understanding of the social-political-cultural fields your organization is operating within.  You want to build a stronger, better educated group of people who will work together in solidarity to better your respective community.  You want to develop and achieve goals that have been commonly agreed on by the largest collection of people possible.  You want to expand your membership numbers.  And, along with all of these organizational goals, you want to develop leadership within your organization, helping each person desiring such training to advance and get as much development as possible, and then using them to further develop the organization.  (And should they leave, for whatever reason, you want them to have the skills -and confidence to develop solid organizations wherever they land!)

You also want to develop processes by which you can decide—assuming there are compatible groups in the area—who you want to work with, and who you do not.  Ideally, organizations join in coalition with others seeking the same results, building community-based power and expanding further outward.

Also, there is one more thing I learned that needs to be remarked upon.  Just because you build a wonderful community cultural center that brings people together, you cannot assume these people want to become activists or will self-organize.  The reason, as we discovered in our work in Michigan City, is that people are not just waiting to be asked to join.  In fact, most have been trained over decades by social and political leaders to be passive, to not want to get involved.

What is the message generally shared:  let the politicians handle it!  (Oftentimes, a recipe for disaster!)  No, people have been trained for generations that they should vote every 2, 4, 6 years, and then to get back on their respective couches and go back to sleep until the next election.  (It’s why we need to engage people between elections….)  The individualism produced by contemporary culture has been reinforced by self-serving politicians, and we’ve got to recreate cultures of solidarity.

We have always to remember that progressives, however defined or however they have defined themselves, have been subjected to this same immobilizing message as everyone else.  This cannot be ignored and must be directly confronted.  Besides talking about it and trying to understand how it has affected each person in the organization, exercises such as public speaker training, door-to-door canvassing, and general assertiveness training can all help challenge those previous messages, and even better is engaging in on-going social movement campaigns.

In other words, organizations do not simply emerge:  they must be constructed with care, consciousness, and concern for the well-being of everyone.  We may not get it right every time, but we damn sure should learn from the past, so we don’t make the same mistakes over again.

Now, admittedly, there’s no certainty that without the Pandemic that PARC/OUR MC would have survived, either partially or together.  No organization is guaranteed success.  The larger social/political/economic environment that has affected the left overall—the past 40 years of neo-liberal economics, the demise of Occupy, failure of Bernie’s campaigns, killings of African Americans, attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement, the lack of trust of traditional politicians, the rise of the Tea Party and then the MAGA movements—affected us as well.  But having been a member of a number of activist organizations over the years in different parts of the country, I believe PARC/OUR MC came further than most.

After all, our goal is not to analyze the world, it is to change it.  This can only be done through building organization:  I can see no alternative.  We need to get to it!  And now!

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For more on PARC, including pictures, see an article by Kayla Vasilko, “Building a Network of Compassion in a World Waiting to be United,” about Scipes’ work in the Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement (Vol. 9, 2022), at https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1336&context=pjsl: 43-45.

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