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eloquent-tantrums · 3 years
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Our Talk with Nora Loreto
The first official campaign event for #Refund2020 was a talk with Nora Loreto (writer, journalist, and host of Sandy and Nora’s podcast). Nora has a background in student activism, and has since been advising and encouraging others to get involved across Canada. We were very excited that she agreed to speak with our panel and engage with the audience that attended.
While I don’t have a transcript of the event, I will carefully characterize her responses.
We started with the question:
Why does Concordia admin owe us free/reimbursed tuition?
While our panelists spoke on the services we paid for and did not receive, Nora pressed us a step further, encouraging us not to focus on education as a commodity (because then the capitalists win), but to demand education as a right. This (somewhat profound) insight prompted a bigger discussion than we initially planned. While we still believe Concordia students are owed a refund for the 2020, and now Winter 2021 semesters, we need to consider our place in this movement—fundamentally, what do we want to win for students to come?
I thought back to a book I read last year, Escaping Paternalism by Rizzo and Whitman (2019). In the second chapter, they speak of behavioural economics under neoliberalism. They present a few key considerations that impact whether or not members of a given community will change their mind: framing effects, endowment effects, and status quo bias. You can view these in a snapshot from Google Books: https://books.google.ca/books/publisher/content?id=w4DCDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA47&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U3mq8_-lBm3K5EpeS-4LqLC2TIkvw&w=1280 (Rizzo and Whitman, 2019, ch. 2).
After speaking with Nora, I’ve been looking at framing and status quo bias. Has my own bias gotten in the way of achieving more? Has our framing centred on the status quo by viewing education as the commodified experience it’s sold to us as? Always considering, always learning.
The second question that our panelists took on was:
How would a refund/free tuition work?
And the answer among members of our campaign was that we hold the administration accountable, but ask them to stand with us as needed to approach the provincial government.
Nora put it more bluntly: that we need to demand it from the province. That we need to build coalition with universities across Québec and get it done (admitting this would be difficult under the CAQ).
The more I think about it, the more I see two goals: one, to demand better of our administration, and two: to continue the fight for free tuition in a way that won’t grow stagnant at our campus, but have reach across the province. This gives me a lot of hope and excitement about where this movement for economic justice can go.
One great question from the audience concerned union organizing methods that could be adopted by the student movement. Nora shared plenty of tips, many of which can be found in her work, “From demonized to organized : building the new union movement (2013).” This crucial advice, naturally, had me revisit some of the class readings we had: namely, Shragge and McAlevey.
In chapter 5 of Activism and Social Change, Shragge provides the following critique of Lotz’ ideas on community development:
“Although there is a rhetoric of change, in contrast to the social or community action approach, this change is usually focused inward on the community itself rather than outward on the wider social, economic, and political structures. Further, the process of working towards these changes is through consensus-building across interests rather than organizing to promote specific interests of the poor or oppressed groups. The emphasis is on meeting needs and finding pragmatic ways to do so that do not challenge those with power. There is little discussion about inequality, interest, power, or the ways that development can challenge these factors that play such a large role in shaping the social issues and problems. (Shragge 2013, p. 101-102).”
I think, whether we aim to fall to one side of this or the other, asking these questions regularly as we build any movement for change is crucial. And we can hardly speak of organizing for bigger changes without looking to Jane McAlevey, who writes of a union-organizing campaign that took place between 1998 and 2001:
“We thought in terms of ‘workplace/nonworkplace’ issues, rejecting ‘community/labor,’ the latter implying that workers are not members of the community and that community members do not spend most of their time at work. Everything about this model is focused on creating synergy between workplace and nonworkplace struggles, and recognizing the labor movement’s need to be at the table inside and outside the shop.
“We organized the ‘whole member’ by integrating the members’ concerns. Plenty of economic forces outside the shop conspire to negate even direct wage and benefit gains made by the contract. (McAlevey, 2003, p. 31).”
This reminds me, personally, that the paradigm through which we base or organizing matters. We are students, but we are also largely residents of Québec. And international students, who may not be residents of Québec, are still members of our student (and typically local) community. And in order to achieve change for our communities, we must be in community. The reason this is so often difficult is because we are simultaneously entities in a system designed to overwhelm disband us.
“This (Thatcher- Reagan neoliberal) revolution aimed at releasing markets and morals to govern and discipline individuals while maximizing freedom, and it did so by demonizing the social and the democratic version of political life,” notes Wendy Brown in her 2019 book, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism (p. 22). She later adds, “By the end of the 1970s, exploiting a crisis of profitability and stagflation, neoliberal programs were rolled out by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, again centering on deregulating capital, breaking organized labor, privatizing public goods and services, reducing progressive taxation, and shrinking the social state
The above account, hewing to a neo-Marxist approach, formulates neoliberalism as an opportunistic attack by capitalists and their political lackeys on Keynesian welfare states, social democracies, and state socialism (p. 29).
This attack is ongoing, and we’ll only be able to stand against it with the power of empathetic, strategic collective organizing. We're extremely grateful to Nora Loreto's assistance in pointing this out, and are focusing even more on building the right coalition as we move forward into the next phase of the campaign.
Sources:
Rizzo, Mario J., and Glen Whitman. 2019. Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy. Cambridge University Press.
Loreto, Nora. From Demonized to Organized : Building the New Union Movement. Our Schools, Our Selves Book Series, 7th. Ottawa Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 201
Shragge, Eric. Activism and Social Change : Lessons for Community Organizing, Second Edition, University of Toronto Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordia-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4931319.
McAlevey, Jane. 2003. ‘It Takes a Community’. New Labor Forum (Routledge) 12 (1): 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/10957960307158.
Wendy Brown. 2019. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism : The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. The Wellek Library Lectures. New York: Columbia University Press. https://lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2088020&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
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eloquent-tantrums · 3 years
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The Launch of the #Refund2020 Campaign
It was around November 2020 when I joined a recurring CSU event called ‘Tuition Talks’. We listened to the reps talk to us about concerns that had come up, and a few points they were fighting for. I offhandedly suggested they add something on proctored exams, as that was the trending topic on the Concordia subreddit at the time. It wasn’t until I heard Fightback member Martín speak that I realized the power we had, and that it hadn’t yet been exercised.
Martín’s message was clear: this was not enough, and we should demand a major reduction in tuition. From that point on, the meeting changed. Many of us echoed and stood by their message, quickly turning the core demand to free tuition. We were mobilized and ready to fight on this platform, which included demands like increased mental health support for students, based on a perceived lack of access, and on early studies of mental health under the COVID-19 pandemic, such as Vigo et al.’s contribution to The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry (2020).
As we learned reading Shragge, ideating and mobilizing was one thing. Getting organized behind a campaign is another. Reflecting on GMAPCC—a Montreal organization focused on poverty—he says, “it is important to remember that this voice was won through organizing and struggle. If the struggle is forgotten, and there is not an active participation, then the voices become weakened. Tokenism then becomes the result of representation without organization (Shragge, 2013, ch. 2).”
We struggled to organize. We had a lot of approaches, a lot of pushback, and so much circling dialogue and meetings that it felt impossible to get anything done. But I couldn’t knock the feeling that we needed to be in this fight (particularly after listening to Sandy and Nora’s podcast episode on the lack of student movements at the time (Hudson and Loreto, 2020)).
So a few of us got organized, after the winter semester had already started, knowing we were late, but ready to work. And the #refund2020 campaign was born. Behind the scenes we researched, we partnered, we designed, and we heard from students across departments as well as oceans.
When it was go-time, we launched this campaign, along with a petition for our list of demands, and a letter to the administration, on Monday, March 22. Borrowing again from Shragge, we followed the approach of recruiting from organizations over individuals, which he attributes to Alinksy (Shragge 2013, p. 82). We spoke to classes and organizations, with the petition currently holding hundreds of signatures. We also hosted an event, in which I interviewed a panel including Nora Loreto, a journalist and activist who inspired a lot of this work (more on that in the next entry).
It hasn’t been easy. We had to postpone a rally due to the pandemic’s recent rise in cases. But this is far from the end. As we finish up this semester, we’re brainstorming the next phase of the campaign, which may mean more listening than talking, as we aim not to represent, but to give a voice to those who have not held as much power in negotiations with the administration. We’re forming alliances; in coalition we’ve become partners with the incoming CSU, who ran on the Brick by Brick slate. What we haven’t yet recovered from 2020, we plan to address in a bigger way now in 2021. Many of these lessons are rooted in what it means to campaign against power in the first place, some of which we can find in Chaudry et al.’s Organize! Building from the Local for Global Justice. In Activist Research: Mapping Power Relations, Informing Struggles, Chaudry and Kuyek focus on applying research to action, while ensuring that action is rooted in the context it’s meant to serve, by “attending to specific contexts, maintaining and developing relationships and strategic collaborations, looking for contradictions and tensions that exist in the systems, structures, and institutions that we are up against, and commitments to long-haul struggles for change (Chaudry et al. 2012, p. 39).”
Personally, I have a lot of appreciation for the call-out in Bishop’s Becoming an Ally, which helps to keep me in line: “I have some advantages that I can offer to this struggle— some people will hear me who might not hear a racialized person say the same thing; I can take risks with fewer or less serious repercussions — but the shape and direction of the struggle does not belong to me (Bishop, 2015, p. 11).”
Sources:
Activism and Social Change : Lessons for Community Organizing, Second Edition. University of Toronto Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordia-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4931319
Created from concordia-ebooks on 2021-04-15 09:19:13.
Sandy and Nora’s Podcast: Finding Optimism at the End of 2020 (episode 135). 2020.
https://sandyandnora.com/episode-132-finding-optimism-at-the-end-of-2020/
Bishop, A. 2015. Becoming an Ally; Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in People, 3rd Edition, Fernwood Publishing.
Choudry, A. A., Eric Shragge, and Jill Hanley, eds. 2012. Organize! Building from the Local for Global Justice. Toronto : Oakland, Calif: Between the Lines ; PM Press.
Vigo, Daniel, Scott Patten, Kathleen Pajer, Michael Krausz, Steven Taylor, Brian Rush, Giuseppe Raviola, Shekhar Saxena, Graham Thornicroft, and Lakshmi N. Yatham. 2020. ‘Mental Health of Communities during the COVID-19 Pandemic’. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 65 (10): 681–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743720926676.
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eloquent-tantrums · 3 years
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On Kuyek's Community Organizing: A Holistic Approach
Chapters 9-11 Kuyek, Joan Newman. 2011. Community Organizing : A Holistic Approach. Winnipeg: Fernwood Pub.
This is my first time having a chance to deep-dive into Kuyek, and I'm glad I did. I almost want to say she was ahead of her time, but it reminds me so much of Angela Davis, and both channel the ideas of Marx to our time as it has evolved.
These chapters were focused on economy, in the traditional sense (not the Chicago School of Economics sense)—the goods and services that sustain a community, and the labour of the community that produces them.
What spoke to me most was the following passage:
Protecting the Commons
The commons refers to resources that are held collectively by all humans. This can include everything from land, minerals, plants and water, to the products of human labour, to the human genetic code itself. The transformation of the commons into private property is fundamental to the accumulation of wealth and power by elites. The corporate paradigm seeks to transform everything into private property—commodities that can be controlled, bought and sold.
I've given a lot of thought to circular, community-based economies over the last year. That's what Community Power is all about. But what I've come to learn more recently was that (of course) colonizers and settlers broke up communal assets and reassigned them as individual commodities. This was done to Creek Nation as it was forcibly relocated via the trail of tears.
Today it's easy to look at water as a right and argue that Nestlé shouldn't be able to privatize it. But why is it so hard to see the forest from that single tree? It isn't just water. It's everything. This legal system, which supports this neoliberal economy, is the driving force of the climate crisis, and of the generations-long humanitarian crisis we didn't realize was happening until we all collectively burnt out when given the chance, during this pandemic.
We need a legal system that supports collective assets.
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eloquent-tantrums · 3 years
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Response to the Samara Centre's "Flip the Script" MP Exit Interviews (vol II)
Morden, Michael, Jane Hilderman, and Kendall Anderson. 2018. “Flip the Script: Reclaiming the legislature to reinvigorate representative democracy.” MP Exit Interviews: Volume II. Toronto: The Samara Centre for Democracy. https://www.samaracanada.com/docs/default-source/reports/flip-the-script---by-the-samara-centre-for-democracy.pdf?sfvrsn=2d09002f_2
“I laid down the F-bomb a couple times. In the Whip’s office
 And the lawyer comes in and says, ‘Well, you can’t do this.’ And I said, ‘I tell you what.’ I says, ‘The House is recessed. We’re the only ones here.’ I said ‘You find a fucking spare for me. And I know you can’t.’ And I walked out. And I went back in the committee room and I just sat in my chair and waited. [They] came in and said, ‘OK. We’ll have your—your amendment will go through.’ (Morden et al. 2018, 23)”
If the picture the Samara Centre paints of modern-day Parliament is an accurate one, perhaps its Members ought to be using more “f-bombs.” Morden et al. open the analysis claiming, “representative democracy is in trouble (Morden et al. 2018, 4).” They capture some astonishing personal insight from former MPs, which they use as a basis to conclude: “To make meaningful change, priority must be given to reforms that can alter the incentive and power structure within Parliament (ibid, 33).” They go on to make the case for beginning with reforming committees, which will “offer the best promise to empower MPs. (ibid)” In this analysis, I will call into question Samara’s conclusions, offering instead that Members can best reform Government toward representative democracy in Canada by using collective action with a hardened focus on representing their constituents. Or as the former Member (quoted above) so eloquently put it, for party Whips to “find a fucking spare for (them)” when MPs “know (they) can’t.” (ibid, 23)
Political parties are, or ought to be, a national example of the power of collective action. Theoretically, they’re filled with experts on campaigning, on rallying for causes, on pushing through bureaucracy, and on forming a united front to make big, important changes. However, after 54 interviews, a key takeaway from MPs in this study was that being a Member of Parliament is having a “job with no description,” (ibid, 4) implying that many who run for office don’t fully understand what they’re running for. Accounts of debate periods in the House of Commons describe them as “scripted, theatrical and playing to an empty house”, as well as “show business for ugly people” who “read from a script with a different conclusion”, making “no attempt to address” one another’s arguments (ibid, 13). While this clearly raises important considerations for how our Parliament functions, one must also ask how new Members seem to simply adapt, or take this in stride, when they’ve spent months or years committing themselves to serving their constituents. According to the study:
Leaders have grown in strength and capacity relative to the party caucus. Unelected staffers to the leader—the ‘boys (and girls) in short pants’—carefully manage the party brand. As the MPs in our first round of interviews explained, any dissent from the party leadership is rare, inconsequential and swiftly punished. Step out of line, even on an ostensibly free vote, and ‘your name’s now on somebody’s hit list.’ (ibid, 9)
Assuming this were just a result of party leadership, one would expect leadership changes to have an impact. Nearly every party in Parliament had faced leadership changes in the studied duration (2011-2015). If those leadership changes did not have an effect, one must ask: at what point do the Members themselves become complicit? Why didn’t this lead to more leadership reviews? Why weren’t they able to caucus around these shared experiences, or the crisis some have claimed is happening, going so far as to describe that Government’s actions as “autocracy faking it as democracy (ibid, 15),” or more aptly, “evil (ibid, 20).”
Morden et al. present a solution that includes a possible “second chamber” for “more opportunities to hold the Government to account (ibid, 17).” But if Members aren’t performing that key aspect of their role in the first chamber, why should we expect any different in the second? They claim this solution could “provide opportunities to reach the public in creative ways (ibid),” but as members of the public, do we really want our tax dollars going to what are essentially in-office campaigns, or do we want our representatives to do their jobs, even if it means stepping “out of line” (ibid, 9)? If anything resembling campaigns must be run while our Members are serving their term in office, why not caucus to change the circumstances that stand in their way, within their own parties and across party lines? Surely if anyone has the capacity to rally their colleagues toward a cause that benefits everyone involved, professional politicians ought to. Referencing a study by Vox Pop Labs, Morden et al. recount that “Canadians want to see clear lines of accountability, but also collaboration across parties (ibid, 11).” While this may be true in part, it seems to be missing an essential clause: “collaboration across parties” for the good of their constituents.
Reforming committees may be necessary, but it ought to be done in a way wherein Members are working on projects that directly impact the issues facing the communities in their ridings. Forming a deeper knowledge of subject matter is great, if that subject matter is related to one’s campaign promises. Reforming debates may be needed, but we need to be able to trust our MPs to use the time allotted to them to fight for us. This leaves Private Members’ Business, which is clearly not a winning mechanism to put bills forward, particularly with MPs hoping not to be called in the lottery system (ibid, 28).
But still, I’d point to PMB as key. Reform this as a practice. The only time an individual party member should need to go out on a limb is when their constituency has a unique need that cannot be met in any other way. But the lottery system must be replaced with collaborative action that focuses on the shared needs of ridings across the nation—not simply a meritocracy (ibid, 32). We ought to be seeing regional coalitions, language coalitions, coalitions for minority rights, for access to clean water and accessible health care, and so much more. To go through these procedures and collectively agree on only one thing, which is to waste time, is an insult to those suffering who held belief that their elected official would make things better. The performative bills, such as whichever one led to “National Appreciation Day (ibid, 29)” have got to stop. The example given by Morden et al. of “the MP who lobbied heavily among other parties, including the Liberals” and “infected and corrupted well over half (Ignatieff’s) caucus to (their) bill (ibid, 30)” should not be a one-off story, but the norm of what it means to work in Parliament. Perhaps if our Members shared this view, there wouldn’t be such hard lobbying required.
The problem at hand is the future of representative democracy. Creating additional bureaucracy like second chambers (ibid, 17) and more tenured committee positions (ibid, 25), sounds not only like more imposition in the face of action, but just as corruptible long-term as the status-quo. While Morden et al. may want to see MPs finding their voice among committees, one has to ask if that fulfils the issue at hand, or even helps define this “job with no description (ibid, 4).” Members of Parliament run for their ridings, bringing promises of change and better futures for their constituents. One Member had this to say:
These people pour out their hearts to us, as witnesses. And spend untold hours on a 10-minute presentation. And if nothing they say makes the slightest bit of difference, we’re making a mockery of the whole system. And it’s evil. (ibid, 20)
The Member in question was speaking to their work on committees. But isn’t that what happens every time they fail to act on promises made to those who put their trust into them as their representative? To those who send emails, make phone calls, campaign for them, or even make sacrifices in order to place their ballot? If Members are willing to be bullied into abandoning what they chartered as their core principles while Canadians in their ridings lack clean water, adequate healthcare, employment, education, shelter, or other very basic needs, it is difficult to find sympathy for their conflicted position, or the fact that “career success only comes with a role in Cabinet, or on the frontbenches of the Opposition (ibid, 33).”
To conclude, I’ll pose a question the Members who participated in this study, as well as any acting or aspiring Members who may chance upon this critique: being a Member of Parliament may be a job, but it’s not a career. It’s a role one ought to take with the utmost humility, with the weight of the thousands of constituents they’ve sworn to support. Is it harder than it needs to be? Likely. But perhaps before you next take a seat in the House of Commons, ask yourself the following: Are you willing to have those constituents’ backs? Are you willing to put in the groundwork on the Hill and caucus for change, even when it’s difficult? Will you be able to boldly say: “You find a fucking spare for me. And I know you can’t. (ibid, 23)”
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eloquent-tantrums · 3 years
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Reading: “Unsettled Expectations” intro by Eva Mackey
Mackey, Eva. 2016. Unsettled expectations: uncertainty, land and settler decolonization.
Summary
Mackey, herself a settler, touches upon the deep tensions between Indigenous communities and settlers in North America, particularly with regard to land sovereignty.
She presents a lot of questions (which are likely answered further in the book), including the deep emotional roots and responses settlers have when their ownership of land and property is threatened. She brings up our deeply problematic history as settlers, and its impacts in our cultures and laws.
Reflections
A lot of these questions have been swimming in my mind with increasing presence for the last few years. The more I learn about the atrocities we’ve committed against Indigenous people in the nation we call Canada, the more imperative I feel the cause to provide reparations and restorative justice.
One thing Mackey notes that I hadn’t personally considered is the lyrics of our national anthem: “How do warlike images of standing on guard for the nation (Mackey 2016, p. 3).” Indeed, if our nation is illegitimate, this paints a difficult picture, especially when considering that the way we most frequently take up arms is via police forces like the RCMP, which was initially conceived to contain Indigenous peoples as the NWMP.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about individual vs. communal law. Under neoliberalism, property is legally individualized. I recently listened to a podcast, wherein Chris Hayes interviews Rebecca Nagle (Hayes 2020), of Cherokee Nation, who has reported on the recent SCOTUS case wherein a large percentage of land in Oklahoma was ruled to (still) belong to the Cherokee Nation. In the interview, she describes colonizers, following the trail of tears, forcing their communal land and assets to be assigned to individual property owners within the tribe. Ever since, I’ve been thinking hard about communal law, and am eager to see what provisions we have under Canadian (and provincial) law to change the system back to something that can be shared.
https://why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hayes.simplecast.com/episodes/whose-land-with-rebecca-nagle-SupX79Vt
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eloquent-tantrums · 3 years
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Reading: “Becoming an Ally” ch. 1-2 by Anne Bishop
Anne Bishop. 2002. Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression. Allen and Unwin.
Summary
In the first chapter, Bishop begins by describing her personal awakening to privilege; she recounts the moment in which she realized that allyship wasn’t about knowing the latest language, or tip-toeing around potentially racist pitfalls, but owning her racism, noting “of course (she) was racist (ch 1, p...).” She began to think about her responsibility as (instead) actively working against the power of whiteness. 
In chapter two, she begins to map out many of the systems of oppression and their connections. In doing this exercise, she shares with us her realization that the existing and problematic forms of oppression share common roots: notably the roots of colonialism. 
Reflection
My initial takeaway from this (from white person to white person) is that these are the sorts of realizations that really do have an impact on our perception of privilege and oppression in the world. And while some scholars have written on the subject of whiteness, I consider the work that needs to be done in this area, to further our understanding of our own history and the ways we continue to profit off of it. 
My second line of thinking returned to QuĂ©bec and its leadership under la CAQ. Legault and others in his administration continue to refuse to believe (or at least state publicly) that there is any systemic racism in QuĂ©bec. I find the idea that we would somehow be exempt from it nearly funny, but it would be nice to see it acknowledged the way Bishop acknowledges these truths within herself and her community. As she alludes to in these chapters, being impacted by one kind of oppression doesn’t make you exempt from another. 
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eloquent-tantrums · 3 years
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Reading: “Organize! Looking Back, Thinking Ahead” by Aziz Shoudry, Jill Hanley, Eric Shragge
Choudry, A. A., Eric Shragge, and Jill Hanley, eds. 2012. Organize! Building from the Local for Global Justice. Toronto : Oakland, Calif: Between the Lines ; PM Press.  
Summary
While this is an introductory chapter, it brings to light not only the focus areas of the book, but its own theses regarding organizing.
Theme 1 speaks of local organizing and activism (and the distinction of those terms) and their limits without a broader, more global political impact. “Local work is the starting point,” the authors state, “but is not the ultimate goal (Choudry et al. 2012, 15).” They emphasize forming “linkages beyond the local (ibid).” My understanding of their arguments in this section could be summed up with the idea that effective organizing is necessarily political, as it aims to bring change where governing bodies fail, and so having an awareness of your own political agenda or impact is imperative.
Theme 2 builds on these ideas, adding that “broader vision(s) (ibid p. 18)” is likely to lead to a point of contestation between the organizers and the (state) powers that be. It describes a struggle of many organizations, which must choose whether to be completely autonomous and removed from the state (financially and otherwise), or to rely on the position afforded to them by the state to make some progress.
Theme 3 gets back to the practical, explaining that “social analysis...often draws on informal and nonformal learning that occurs in the process of doing. (ibid p. 19)” The authors cite John Holst’s “pedagogy of mobilization (ibid),” which seems, on the surface, to imply that some amount of political awakening comes from doing the work. This section also reminds organizers to be reflective, to essentially put their praxis where their theory is (or vice-versa), in order to do the most good. 
Reflections
It was hard, initially, to read this piece and keep my own list of whataboutisms at bay. Being part of some small, young organizations that are all about keeping the focus on community, I may have failed to see the forest from the trees on my first pass. And while I am doing these readings to further my theoretical understandings, the anarchist in me is much more of a do-er than a philosopher. All of this is why I enjoyed this call-out:
“These questions about learning in struggle are often based on sophisticated macro-micro analyses of what, to an outsider, might seem a baffling network of relations and shifting power dynamics (ibid 19).”
YES. I’ve decided to focus on micro because macro makes my head hurt. I’ve decided to work in a place of hope because none of us have the spoons to be constantly fighting. So what are you doing to me? But the next few lines brought my heart rate back down:
“We are not claiming here that all learning, evaluation, and analysis embedded in various forms of organizing are always necessarily rigorous or adequate. For Foley the process of critical learning involves people in theorizing their experience. They stand back from it and reorder it, using concepts like power, conflict, structure, values, and choice. Foley also emphasizes that critical learning is gained informally, through experience, by acting and reflecting on action, rather than in formal courses.”
Ah. The broader, political impact being spoken of here may not be taking on the whole class war, then. It’s not even planning expansions in advance. Our methodology of work is not what this calls into question. Rather, it’s our conviction and our openness. Conviction to know right from wrong, at least on a gut-instinct human level, but also on a class level. And openness to our praxis and ideas growing into movements.
Last summer (2020), my organization focused on gardening, and sharing/trading food grown by our own hands within a couple of boroughs in Montreal. We recognized this as an act of economic justice and sustainability. Because we believe in localized, circular economies. Because the system was so obviously broken that we were all willing to turn away from it to some degree. We looked for other organizers to help us in their own boroughs, with a modicum of success.
But the idea was to focus deeply on the local within our local, to bring back some sense of what it truly means to be neighbours and in community with one another. And this text is not saying that we were wrong. It was saying that these ideals we share can be shared by many. That even if our action looks different, there are partnerships. That even if our job is to work within a single borough, someone across the world could do the exact same thing where they live. And if enough of us engage in the same messaging, based on a real sense of where people are at, we can be part of a bigger movement, while maintaining our focus on the ground where we live. And that’s a pretty powerful idea.
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eloquent-tantrums · 3 years
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Reading: “Fighting Back in a Neo-Liberal Age” by Eric Shragge
Shragge, Eric. Activism and Social Change: Lessons for Community Organizing, SEcond Edition, University of Toronto Press, 2013.
Summary
This was a simple, informative chapter that highlights the functions and methodologies of a few key organizations; namely, IAF, ACORN, RTTCA, and FRAPRU.
The IAF “was founded by Alinksy” who began community outreach via existing organizations (namely churches), instead of targeting individuals, and ultimately included 50+ partner orgs (Shragge 2013, 82), with this number still shifting today. They began in Chicago, and extended to other US cities including Baltimore and Brooklyn. The IAF claims to be “non-ideological.”
ACORN used some of Alinksy’s methods to become a federally recognized organization in the US. This org uses a union-esque model of collecting dues from members. Perhaps due to the level of investment (literal and otherwise) demanded for membership, ACORN’s been highly successful in mobilizing for causes throughout the US, putting pressure both on commercial and political entities to enact change (ibid, 85-86).
RTTCA, unlike the aforementioned organizations, is solidly based in Atlanta, and exists “to build a vision of radical transformation of city power relations and real democratic practices. (ibid, 87)” While they do have partnership organizations, these organizations must fit into the RTTCA vision. It uses a bottom-up approach to force change into Atlanta-based communities, with a focus on anti-racism and toppling the power structures of capitalism and neo-liberalism (ibid, 87-91). 
Lastly, local to QuĂ©bec, is FRAPRU, a “coalition of organizations” within the province (ibid, 92). With a focus primarily on housing issues, they rely on community self-representation, likely to keep local visions targeted and specific. However, the structure of the organization includes “an elected board of directors” to “coordinate the internal functioning of the organization” (ibid, 93).
Reflections
As a community organizer myself (https://www.communitypowerorg.ca / https://www.facebook.com/communitypowerinitiative), this chapter has led me to consider how I want my own organization to operate. While we are small, it’s easy to gain a consensus or split work by what we’re most passionate about. And as we continue to partner with orgs around MontrĂ©al, we find ourselves becoming another piece of an exciting puzzle, while also serving the role of facilitator between existing orgs. This is the first time I’ve come across FRAPRU, so I’m encouraged to know that broad coalitions exist, though I now must take the time to consider their model and vision, before pursuing alignment.
From today’s group discussions, it’s also become apparent to me that I’m not alone in questioning QuĂ©bec’s authoritarian/paternalist policies toward public health (namely the COVID pandemic). We also touched on the subject of learned helplessness, which I’m now considering in a new way. I have felt helpless as an organizer with this continually increasing police presence in our communities—not wanting to act on projects for our communities that may place marginalized/BIPOC folks in danger. But is this an excuse I’m using because the way forward is hard? Thoughts. So many thoughts.
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eloquent-tantrums · 3 years
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How the CAQ has used the pandemic to seize power:
Let me start by acknowledging that we are in a global pandemic and health crisis. I believe that masks are important, that the virus exists, and that the earth is spherical. But I also pay attention to policy, especially when it’s senseless and/or authoritarian in nature. While we all share a social responsibility to take precautions to keep one another safe, that is not necessarily synonymous with “following public health guidelines” enacted by our governments.
Here is a snapshot of (most of) 2020 under the CAQ:
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Do you see the numbers over the summer? Under 100 cases a handful of times. WHERE WAS THE CONTACT TRACING? WHERE WAS THE CONTAINMENT OF COMMUNITY SPREAD?
In his handbook for resisting tyranny, Timothy Snyder writes this as rule #1:
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What this isn’t: taking extra precautions to keep your community safe. What this is: sitting around because of a nonsense curfew that hasn’t been enacted yet.
My organization went out and met with homeschoolers and learning orgs in August, and began to develop a program to facilitate something called CommunityCare, where we’d help households within certain areas of the city connect with one another, and with nearby facilities, to build a sense of community and reimagine what schooling/childcare could look like. We were setting up measures for contact-tracing at that community level. It was practical and exciting.
Then the CAQ MANDATED children back to school (barring very few exceptions), on Sept 2 (above). This also ‘allowed’ parents to return to workplaces, which had also begun to open. You know, BEFORE THE SPREAD WAS CONTAINED.
This threw a wrench in our plans, but we assumed there would still be parents who would pull their children out. Because the government can’t actually force you to register your kids in public school.
But then, by the end of Sept (above), they threatened households with cops. Despite calls to defund, both the province of QC and city of Montreal raised their police budgets this year.
Police spent the summer going around to parks enforcing physical distancing measures like the ‘no touching’ guards in Arrested Development. They’ve gathered outside of high schools to fine students. They’ve continued to do transit checks en masse. And this fall, when the new “code rouge” measures went into place, they were granted tele-warrants, allowing them to enter our homes if they suspected illegal household gatherings, obtaining warrants on the spot.
CBC put a helpful data visualization together for this:
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Can you guess which communities our org (and others) were trying to serve? Let’s just say we couldn’t, in good conscience, risk having police bust down their doors.
That exponential rise in case numbers we see from Sept onward? Here’s data FROM THE GOVERNMENT about where they came from:
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#1: Workplaces #2: Education #3: Long-term care‹ #4: Child care
AND YET, the CAQ has insisted we’re gathering and partying too much. Now, I’m in no way suggesting we get reckless about it. But the onus they’ve tried to put on individuals (as neoliberal govs do), instead of working with communities, is astounding to me.
Tomorrow, not for the first time, this government is enacting even more measures to confine us: 8pm curfews. With WORK EXCEPTIONS, of course (gee, wonder what their priority is). I’m not sure if it’s occurred to y’all, but curfews just limit the hours we can do things in. Which means more people doing things like shopping, or grabbing coffee, in a shorter window of time. Which potentially means increased community spread. Oh, and the unhoused are a complete afterthought, which could literally cost (additional) lives.
The CAQ has let people die to hold up a pretty flaccid excuse for an economy. I’m guessing from the CBC graphic that it’s a lot of racialized folks, but they stopped even collecting that data. But it’s cool because “there is no systemic racism” in QuĂ©bec (thanks Legault). I have a whole other paper on the racism of it all, but I’ll jump to the point here.
I’m exhausted by constantly losing these battles. But I hope this delivers some insight. And anyone who can take up the torch of mobilizing (safely) against the power stolen from us during this pandemic, you’ve got my support. Do not obey in advance.
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