"I need to get organized" and "We need to get organized" are certainly two of the most common imprecations to pass the lips of folks of good will these days. If they are not part of someone's speech, that person is likely missing an important part of what the present moment necessitates. The 'Masters of the Universe' have a scheme, the ruling classes are implementing their directives, all manner of politically and 'spiritually' reactionary groups express a certainty about the respective paths to nostalgia or paradise that they recommend.

Around the planet, however, progressive people of good will lack any overarching, unifying theme or nostrum that might act to unite them in any kind of movement toward an equitable future that can create the prior conditions for peace and prosperity to abound. Unfortunately, this lack of motif and consciousness regarding organization is most deeply apparent in the United States. The article that follows provides primarily simple advice based on the author's experience in matters of community education and political action, while also insisting, very quickly now and with slightly less dispatch at the culmination of this communication, that we consider weighty matters about politics and power that most of us fear even to discuss in these times of terror about 'terrorism' and governmental responses to it that are at least as terrifying as the thing itself.

The central point of this communique about how to mount successful transformative campaigns has three parts. First, the problems that regular people face have similar sources, some mixture of a disparity of power and resources on the one hand, and a lack of responsible collective democracy on the other hand. Second, no attempt to solve our larger problems piecemeal can succeed at this point in history. Third, the depth and scope of current crises require new models and a willingness to work in ways that are revolutionary, both in terms of approach and in terms of goals and objectives. Inevitably, these interlocking rationale suggest that most contemporary attempts at organizing are doomed to paltry advances at best, and utter failure and despondency at worst, in a day and age when we likely must find a way to network with each other efficiently or die.

All that said, the primary narrative below concerns the basic attributes of successful organizing as I've witnessed them over the years, either as an observer, a participant, or a leader. This passage in the main, therefore, does not concern itself with the critical ideas just above. Only at the very end do I return to the aspects and implications of the multilayered core notion that I have just stated.

This revolutionary element will perturb almost everyone who reads the piece, since Americans are still so fat and happy that the advice of Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Mary Harris Jones, et al., et al., et al., seems far too bitter a pill to swallow. Hopefully, however, given the much more routine particulars of the majority of this text, readers may gain some measure of insight or useful knowledge in the paragraphs that follow that will at least allow them to ponder the possibilities that my primary point suggests.

As the great humorist, Will Rogers, was wont to say seventy-odd years ago, "Well, see, the communists they have a plan, the Democrats, they obviously have a plan, and even the Republicans, yessir, even Hoover and his crowd have a plan: 'Nobody's lookin', Stan, take all that you can.'" The critical importance of organization was behind Rogers' quip, as much as an accurate swipe at the G.O.P.s predilection for grand larceny in the guise of policy.

Thus, while we have to view the political-economic expediency of "Homeland Security" and the "War on Terror" in light of the financial exigencies of graft and 'no-bid' contracts, we also need to insist that progressive people, despite their discomfort at buckling down to participate and lead the way, also must come up with creative and credible methods to defuse the current crisis and plot a course to a sustainably prosperous future for ourselves, our cousins, and our progeny. How are we to accomplish this?

The fulfillment of such directives requires that, in the words of 'Mother' Jones and others, we 'stop mourning(or moaning, as the case may be)and organize!' The deeper question is how do we do this, on the one hand, and what purposes are we pursuing in doing it, on the other. This little essay examines these issues. At the end, the 'bigger fish to fry' that I mention above will again come to the fore, but much more merely mundane matters of practice and planning and strategy appear in the interim.

The presentation hence consists of four parts. The most basic is at the level of prioritizing the practical. The next aspect is the plotting and carrying out of real plans. The third necessity is the examination and establishment and constant reconsideration of strategy. The fourth portion of successful organization, a vision that unifies and directs, only for a short while reengages the notion of revolutionary reform in the final paragraphs.

In an ideal universe, we would deal with these elements in reverse order. This article proffers them to readers in the fashion that it does for a conscious reason. Inasmuch as many people, and particularly so-called 'middle-class' Americans, bridle at such notions as "vision," or, God forbid, "revolution," as if these ideas somehow stunk of mystical nonsense and imposed totalitarian strictures simultaneously, any note that began with the concept of a vision of revolution would have folks foaming at the mouth, walking away in disgust, shutting down their critical functions, or all three at the same time. Thus, even though each and every attempt to effect practical organization that has political impact will fail utterly without adequate vision at the outset, even though the times in which we live command us to imagine revolutionary levels of creativity, activism, and development, these matters only show up again, relatively briefly, at the conclusion of this essay.

The Practical Matters of Organizing
An initial issue to consider here is an inquiry about whom we intend to organize and how we intend to relate to them. This missive presumes that the task of 'organizing everyone' is beyond the scope of our interest, even if such a monumental effort might ever make sense. Organizing, by its nature, can apply to every facet of human life: economic organizations like labor unions are among the most important in existence, time immemorial; political movements are more recent in human history, although they now range from political parties to single issue campaigns of differing duration; social organizations range from affinity groups to collectives that address primary matters of equity.

This note takes the view that any particular problem today has so many interlocking attributes that only by organizing across the board, so as to encompass political, economic, and social patterns, can any attempt at mounting a campaign achieve successful results. The idea is not to organize everybody, but to make sure that all people who have any sort of stake or might in some way benefit, hear the pitch about the campaign in a way that serves them, where they are, rather than asking them to move their butts to a different position in order to support a new need. An example here might help to illustrate this idea.

In 1977, a grand vizier of the Ku Klux Klan who lived in Tuscaloosa planned to march in support of "White people's rights," and by implication their superior nature. In a matter of days after we heard about this, using a few simple flyers and outreach to different 'stakeholder' groups that might object to the Klan's presumption to represent 'Whites' and 'superior' genes, a small number of collaborators helped to turn out 4,000 counter-demonstrators to line the route that the seventeen robed klansmen followed.

The point of a thirty-year-old recollection is as follows: the messages that we used to elicit such a large response did not try to convince folks about the 'evils' of the KKK, or the hideous injustices of racism. While we appealed to history in our conversations with leaders and academics, every flyer that we distributed on the streets, and every outreach to regular people on and around campus at the Crimson Tide, emphasized the theme that 'Racism doesn't pay the bills,' or that 'The only beneficiaries of a divided populace are the ones already in charge,' or that we would always wonder, 'Who's next?' if we failed to take a stand.

We made explicit and clear how people really had their own interests, at that moment, in play in this matter. At least in some small way, this recognition of confluence marked a turning point, according to many professors who participated in one way and another, in that student groups, African American churches, labor unions, and others had a continuing basis to communicate and consider ongoing cooperation.

Another point that is necessary to begin an assessment of the street level practice of community action concerns the expression of benefits that organizers bring to their work. A consideration of the institutions that our species has created, whether of the church, the state, or commerce, or some other origin matters not, can be helpful here. Every one of them that has managed both a continuing presence and impact has served to feed and clothe and heal and otherwise address people's most critical needs. The commands of the future and the cries of heaven simply will not carry much weight when a listener is hungry, homeless, or missing key ingredients of a decent material existence.

Any group, therefore, that thinks it might address today's problems powerfully, without a commitment to serving some basic set of needs, is merely demonstrating some combination of fantasy and foolishness. The point should be obvious, at the same time, that what is fundamental for homeless people will differ from what is fundamental for homeowners, or teachers, or students, or factory workers, etc., even as whatever are those foundational matters must be paramount in the daily practice of organizing.

This applies particularly to attempts to organize, as opposed to efforts at lobbying. Also, it is pertinent if activists have any hope to evince a consistent application of power, as opposed to mounting single demonstrations of concern. A campaign here in Atlanta in the early 1980's illustrates this maxim well. The peace movement has shown an ability to lobby with at least minimal effect; furthermore, turning out thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people on the streets has happened again and again. Developing a mass movement that might actually impact the politics and economics of war mongering has eluded those who would "war no more," however.

The Jobs-With-Peace campaign was one of the only recent expressions of the longing for a peaceful world that showed some promise in bridging the gap between begging and screaming, on the one hand, and commanding and negotiating, on the other. JWP did this by making the link explicit between various constituent groups' needs and problems and the war economy of our country. This effort was the first, in my experience throughout the South, when consistently, large numbers of union members and other working people, representative numbers of Blacks, and leaders of poor-people's groups showed up to meetings, provided input as to strategy, and otherwise played more than an ancillary role as marchers and chanters and 'protesters.'

The 'cash-out' that resulted from this different constitution of the struggle for peace was a street-level manifestation of participation and interest in things that had never before occurred in my experience. For a variety of reasons, most of which had to do with planning deficiencies, the bright promise of Jobs-With-Peace never reached anything like full flower, but its lessons manifested in various other developments that overcame some of JWP's difficulties.

In any case, whether the issue at hand is peace or environment or development or other 'middle-America' concern, the only way successfully to broaden the scope of involvement in such an enterprise to the point that it might conceivably become a movement is to broaden the scope of concern of the campaign. Thus, all literature and outreach must include, in clear and convincing terms, how the basic needs of core progressive constituencies, for whom the idealistic notions of college students and professionals simply cannot carry as much weight as the missing necessities of life, intertwine inextricably with any hope to address what people lack in their lives. The point is not, "yeah, yeah, peace will help the economy," as an afterthought, but that the political economics of poverty, the social strictures of discrimination, etc., are what underlies warfare and its intractable presence in our society.

Far from being primarily a moral issue, the complex reality is that the material and psychological all interconnect with the moral and the spiritual in areas concerning peace and such. So many erstwhile well-meaning groups continue to confound these matters, much to their detriment. They continue to decry the missing trade-unionists, 'minorities,' and poor people from their work, when in order to ameliorate this fatal dearth of participation they must be the ones to change their minds and actions.

A way of conceiving of all of these elements in one fell swoop is through the notion of participatory democracy. "Community Based Participatory Research," "Participatory Action Research," and other models help express such models. Unfortunately, however, the United States has only a tiny fraction of these progressive developments underway, and in the South, this work is practically nonexistent. One blessed exception is the Southeast Community Research Center, at www.cbpr.org, with which I had the honor and the pleasure of collaborating recently on a campaign that brought together many of the material elements of organizing in a powerful way.

A 'Citizen Panel' experiment last year in Atlanta, and various other work of the SCRC, have consistently illustrated a complete comprehension of the material basis of successful organizing. While a fuller telling of the exciting work involved would be lovely, for the purposes of this narrative I will merely lay out for the reader what these foundational elements are of setting people successfully in motion for practical and progressive political ends.

First, any campaign without leading participation by regular, working class Americans will have at best marginal impact on whatever the situation is, be it in the nature of protesting the present or manifesting the future. Second, the work must provide 'deliverables,' real gains for the average-American participants, which can include money, training, or other things but which absolutely must be measureable, real, and important to the stakeholders themselves. Third, some degree of capacitation of the common-citizen participants must take place, in the nature of training, practice, and involvement that serves to cause new learning that permits people powerfully to act and speak in areas where before they felt marginalized or incapable of participation. Fourth, those who would organize community action and carry out community education must make and fulfill a commitment to a continuing presence among those they seek to set in motion, so that the any attendant comes away from an event completely convinced that he or she will have additional and ongoing opportunities to grow, take part, etc. Fifth, and of utmost importance, community contributors must stand at the podium, must help formulate strategy, and must otherwise help to shape and guide the campaign itself, so that the reality is not of 'experts' and other 'know-it-alls' telling folks what is good for them. Sixth and finally, organizing that successfully involves community, and thereby has some hope of succeeding in a real campaign for transformation, will always be willing and able to model new methods, to try 'social technologies' that may not have much cachet with funders and activists here who are unaware of how the world is leaving the United States behind, in terms of how to motivate and activate masses of people to participate politically.

The Citizen Panel process in which the SCRC engaged in 2004 and 2005 provides interested readers with a recipe in this regard. Although the work did not completely succeed in all six areas, the program plan included all these elements, and all of them displayed real gains among the communities that played a part in the process. As well, other efforts of the SCRC around the South also demonstrate these tenets, all of which can help would-be advocates and organizers to strengthen and deepen their work

Any Plan Beats No Plan
A vision without a plan is like a painting without a canvas, no more substantial than a fiery gathering of neurons that for a brief moment seems to paint a magnificent picture that falls apart the way that a pleasant fantasy evaporates when the need to speak and act takes over from the realm of reverie. My biggest failures as an organizer, other than the personal perquisites of being another flawed masterpiece of man, were in this area. I failed generally, and sometimes spectacularly, to grasp the necessity of having a plan, not to mention being until recently confused or wrongheaded about the elements necessary to constitute an 'order of battle,' so to speak.

Because I have already poured forth more words than most people like to digest in a month, I will limit myself severely in the next couple of sections, abbreviating their length to approximately that of the final portion of this piece. Should an interest exist for a fuller consideration of planning and strategy, as well as vision, then additional articles are plausible at some future point.

One way to state the necessary aspects of a successful plan is in terms of allignment, production, involvement, and extension. So many folks figure that a plan is about daytimers, time-lines, and other tools that are ubiquitous in and on PDA's, PC's, and other acronyms of our contemporary lives. While these matters are no doubt of some consequence, the real elements of planning connect downward into the practicalities of organizing practice, and upward, into the realms of strategy and vision.

The allignment aspect of planning concerns the creation of parallel paths of action. If a new organization wants to create an ongoin stir or an established effort hopes to broaden or deepen a campaign, then it must insure that its efforts follow a more or less congruent path as the folks who are already in motion. If an activist has come to the conclusion that present efforts must fail for reasons that are strategic or visionary, then he or she must still make certain that a perfect allignment exists between what are the new process' premises and other organizations' raison d'etres, etc. Without at least this sort of congruence in need, any attempt to network must crash and burn.

The production portion of a plotted program necessitates that every campaign manage to create an ongoing expression of its purposes. God knows that such efforts may fall to pieces. However, any hope to establish political networks, or otherwise organize real communities, is fantastical nonsense unless such plans include concrete and common sensical plans for residual benefits from the process of organizing. A library, a committee, a film, something useful and substantial must outlast the energy and sweat and cost of coming together, or the the work is at best close to useless.

The involvement requirement for successful planning is one that in the past fifteen years I have finally gotten, after its lack for my first twenty years as an activist scuttled countless 'brilliant ideas.' Far too often, the idealistic and enthused denizens of this issue or that continue to imagine that their agendas are honestly more important than the blood, sweat, and tears of their elders and colleagues who have been walking the walk and talking the talk for lo the many decades prior to the newcomers presence in the parade. Inevitably, what results is an invitation to a 'fait accomplis,' which is like inviting Chief Sitting Bull to come listen to a presentation about 'The Implications of Social Work for the Indian Problem' on the eve of Little Big Horn. Stated most simply, any plan for organizing is hopeless in which the communities that are natural stakeholders do not have an original, equal, and regular role in the entire planning process.

The core priority of the extension component of planning flows out of the multilevel global crises that confront us all. As every section of human life is under attack, half measures increasingly seem not just unpalateable, but positively grotesque to consider. Any movement that does not reach out to the world cannot even reach the lowly level of 'half-measure,' so any planning process that does not specifically and insistently include the presence of ideas and models and organizations elsewhere on the planet is so hopelessly parochial and partial as, in any long run of things, to be useless under the best of circumstances.

Obviously, a lack of more businesslike planning elements can doom even a sophisticated scheme. However, even the slickest campaign, full of palm pilots and power point presentations and other palpitations of technological potency, not to mention daily 'to-do' lists and time lines, can achieve nothing other than empty motion without the elements analyzed here. On the other hand, a lack of Microsoft Office tools is relatively easy to cure if the central aspects here discussed are present. An organization that is especially adept at carrying out most of these steps when they work is the Georgia Citizens Coalition on Hunger, although the organizers there are generally so swamped that a discussion about such niceties would normally require an interested acolyte to sign on for some work in order to garner any kind of extensive conversation.

Strategy Is to Scheme as Fuel Is to Fire
Just as a plan is more than a series of successful 'to-do' lists, so too a strategy is much more than reasonable goals and objectives that result in a mundane planning process. We might imagine that the elements of a powerful strategy's success would have to include all of the following: first, a recognition of the underlying sociopolitical opposition, in both its present and historical dimensions; second, a practical appreciation of the alliances and other interrelationships that might support success; third, a commitment to propaganda and framing the work in such a way as rarely to let go of, and never to forego, the first two strategic elements; and finally, the contemporary recognition that every progressive strategic enterprise has as its primary opposition the state and its social underpinnings.

No one would take away from the import of goals and objectives in the more traditional sense, of course. Nevertheless, since at least the 1930's, when the fierce potency of communistic upsurge forced F.D.R. to "save capitalism from itself," less revolutionary reformers have insisted on the 'one big tent' vision of community organizing strategy. In such a view, everyone need only 'listen to reason,' and we'll all come to agreement and live happily ever after. Because such an approach precludes activists from identifying and then basing their planning on a strategy to either neutralize or overcome actual political opposition, such attempts will fail to accomplish long-term changes, even when in the short run they manage to stir up a lot of heat and noise. The recognition of historical aspects of this oppositional nexus is part and parcel of a successful strategy.

The second part of strategy creation ties in especially closely with the planning process. At the strategic level, a progressive who wants to foment truly new development in any area of concern must begin by being ferocious in his or her pursuit of natural allies. Gathering data about the problem, gaining expert opinion to support transformation, showing the poor decisions that have caused the current situation, none of these will have more than documentary significance in the process of manifesting a movement for change. Such organizational acuity absolutely requires slavish devotion to building broad bases of action, with all of the average folk who share the same objective needs and interests in relation to the problem. This is not a matter of data, but of networking and politics, and this point represents the difference between a plausible lobbyist and a revolutionary organizer.

The third point here, about propaganda and framing, is especially noteworthy to me, since a planning and practically "bass-ackwards" organizing attempt on my part---for the Southern Peoples Information Network---was strategically brilliant and visionary but nonetheless bankrupted me due to my failures as a planner and practical practitioner. I am a revolutionary propagandist, pure and simple. That 99% of erstwhile 'progressive' struggles completely miss the crucial centrality of strategic propaganda breaks my heart. I lighten up when I note that this gross ignorance only seems ineradicable here in the United States. The downside is that this is where I find myself, where my roots are, etc. Presented succinctly, the point here is that the messaging and recounting of organizational efforts will emasculate or destroy those efforts if these efforts at documentation are not resolute in establishing a popularly palatable expression of the strategic elements of a campaign.

The final element of strategy is in some ways parochial. A hundred years ago, or two hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, the point was arguably not accurate. However, in the current context, and until some great changes transpire, the analysis is irrestible that every single difficulty now, of any moment whatsoever, has precisely the same source. That source has two sides, one of which is the interlocking governmental structure that the United States leads, and the network of fantastically wealthy families that support that structure, and the other of which is the divided and sectarian state of the popular responses to each and every problem area. Whether the issue in question is global warming or hunger, war or species depletion, pollution or more routine matters of public health, each difficulty stems from this two-sided source: a state and its social supporters that benefit from the status quo, and a hideously divided and mutually suspicious mass of humanity that the problem continues to afflict and destroy.

Readers who want object lessons in strategic thinking might consider a visit to Project South, which has some of the most imaginative and deeply rooted strategic thinking in the country. Their work, their website, and their publications offer insights and outreach that are absent almost everywhere else in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

"Lasting Imaginative Visionary Equity" = L.I.V.E.
I promised to return to the critical role of vision at the end of this piece. As the master himself, Albert Einstein, was wont to remark, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." Not a single organizer with whom I work, even the ones who have so masterfully integrated strategy, planning, and practice, at the SCRC, the Georgia Citizens Coalition on Hunger, and Project South, has ever willingly engaged in a thorough conversation about vision, at least not since the early 1980's. Outside of the blessed minority of folks who are at the same time strategically sound, capable of true movement planning, and able to deliver material gains to their constituencies, the hundreds of groups with which I've labored, many of which consist only of good-hearted and decent folks, have positively fled from countenancing even a mention of vision, of hope for really defining, let alone achieving, what we truly want.

Anomalously, all are prone to complain about the way that the
Hoover Foundation and various other thinktanks full of clever thugs have so diligently and successfully turned the conversational paradigm to their advantage. Very few see that the 'right-wing' success flowers from its commitment of vision and envisioning, and no one has taken me up on my challenge to begin our own conversation in this regard.

Thus, the maximum we can anticipate from every source of the 'progressive movement' extant today are more prosaic attempts at organizing, which almost never rise above the level of workmanlike lobbying efforts, somewhat successful street demonstrations, and decent service delivery. On occasion, a network will come into being, but without a guiding vision, what will such a nodal nexus lead to? That most folks show no interest in a conversational nexus about our vision, about the modes of thinking and long term goals that are necessary, not just for our day-to-day political success, but to our survival as a species is dispiriting. On the other hand, since survival only seems likely in the context of such a conversation, that is what I will continue to demand, whenever folks ask how I'm doing, what I have in store, etc. We either force ourselves to act correctly in this regard, or the doom that is coming is exactly what we deserve.

The elements are possible to present briefly, and since this screed is already inordinately long, I'll only mention them very quickly at this juncture. I would refer anyone interested in further interchange to an ad on Craigslist which I've been running for a year or so, under the heading "Atlanta Community Educational Debates," and invite folks interested in a more extensive discussion to consider meeting about either the Southern Peoples Information Network, or the Southeast Review of Media, Culture, and Politics, two of the organizational forms that seem capable of embodying the sort of process that to me seems clearly critical to our capacity to continue our presence on the planet. Additional writing here is possible too, so long as my windy presence is not so execrable as to disincline readers to pay attention.

Anyhow, the question of vision seems to come down to a series of ideas. The first is that we're often not clear on what we really want. We can whine and complain about what we don't like with aplomb, but we cannot come to grips with our fundamental desires as individuals inevitably in relation to the rest of our cousins. This coming to grips with desire, and our willingness to pursue it is a choice. We need no reasons to support the effort. We need only recognize its existence as an alternative and choose it, for its own right. "I do this, I act as a citizen and a powerful person because that is what being human means."

The second step is that we recognize the phenomenal complexity of the dire straits which we face. We are akin to riders on a train who have the foresight to see that it is hurtling toward a chasm. However, we are not at the controls, nor do we have the ability to lay down a new track, or select an alternate route. Mere change is wholly inadequate. The level of transformation that is necessary is the emptying of the train while it is moving along, followed by the creation of a new mode of transportation, as the evacuation is occurring, to continue our necessary transit along life's highway. To note that our task is hard merely brings us back to the first point. We have a choice, no matter what the odds, to act in such a fashion as to make a difference, to make survival and human sustainability possible in spite of the far reaching and seemingly impossible paradoxes of our situation.

The third point is that this is a matter of collective responsibility, that is at its heart a moral and spiritual matter which transcends every single religion or sect, even as it includes what they all say they want to accomplish. While, limited and mortal and flesh that we are, not a single one of us can even approximate complete personal responsibility, we must insist on a process of collective care and concern that makes the most visionary words of the man from Nazareth seem small. We must love our neighbors as ourselves, see our neighbors as ourselves, see the children of strangers as our own progeny, and on and on to the ends of a collectivity that neither denies nor tries to crush our sweet longing to develop our own characteristics and concerns to the highest expression of personal power and happiness.

Paradox and contradiction are at the heart of the truth we must embrace. Without a willingness to deal with this we are lost. So saying, the final unfolding of successful organizing, the ultimate, elegant, and easy-to-comprehend manifestation of a campaign to save the human condition is simple to express.

We must become social democrats. The revolution in consciousness that this requires for Americans makes the political revolution on which this transformation depends seem trivial. But to me this much seems clear and irresistable: either we will all die, we will almost all live as hideous slaves to a tiny and vicious few, or we will be socialist.

As Jackson Browne intoned, bless his twisted heart,

"Some of them were dreamers; some of them were fools
Who were making plans and hoping for the future.
With the energy of the innocent, they were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey back to nature.
As the sand slipped through the open end,
With their hands they reached for the golden ring,
And in their hearts they turned to each others hearts for refuge,
In the troubled years that came, before the deluge."

I would pose the question to my fellows. If not us, then who? If not now, then when? What are we waiting for, other than the intervention of forces to save us that can only come from ourselves?