Monday morning, I took a bit of a break from my plan for the day. I decided my class preparation and work on some overdue papers would wait. After I replied to Corey Robin’s response to a critical passing comment I made about his book, The Reactionary Mind, on Facebook, I put off until later in the week my search for interesting conservative intellectuals. I decided to ignore the Republican madness, and not worry about the ups and downs in the upcoming Presidential race, and didn’t read the reports on the Super Bowl (the annual sports media event that I usually ignore but did tweak my interest this year, New Yorker that I am). Instead, I opened my computer and watched the video of the Flying Seminar meeting with Bill Zimmerman (which I missed because I was at that time at a conference in Sofia). It was a particularly interesting meeting, very nicely captured in the video (thank you Lisa Lipscomb). I entered a different world, beyond the mundane, considering the connection between radical hopes and practical projects.
This is what the Flying Seminar is. Recall, Elzbieta Matynia and I developed the Flying Seminar in response to Occupy Wall Street. OWS reminded us of our days observing and participating in the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement in Poland, and the great independent academic project of Solidarity times, the Flying University of the Polish underground. We started with a meeting with activists in Shiroto no Ran (Amateur Revolt), a counter-cultural anti- nuclear movement which came to take part in the occupation of Zuccotti Park. We then arranged a meeting with Adam Michnik, the outstanding Polish critical intellectual and political activist, who also visited the Park. Our third meeting was with Zimmerman, an old New Leftist (it takes one to know one), author of the recent book, Troublemaker: A Memoir From the Front Lines of the Sixties. Last month, after a technical delay, we posted the video recording of that meeting.
The seminar discussion got me thinking about a crucial problem: the relationship between challenging social movements and the broader public. This issue is most apparent in the Arab uprisings, in Moscow, Bucharest and in Warsaw in democratic movements, and in New York and beyond in OWS and related occupations. We have been reflecting upon these developments in each of these locations at Deliberately Considered, but there is a general problem common to all of them, which was discussed at the Flying Seminar. The starting point in the discussion with Zimmerman was the anti-war movement in the sixties.
Zimmerman and the seminar participants covered many areas. He reflected on the problem of a radical anti-war movement, too distant from the judgments of the general population to lead a popular movement against the war. They discussed election initiatives, legalizing marijuana, prison reform, the racist quality of the war on drugs, the need to treat drug abusers rather than arrest them, and the protests against U.S. intervention in Latin America. Zimmerman explained a variety of different innovative strategies he has used to reach the public, to make his radical commitments consequential. The use of the ballot initiative and the production of anti-war and anti-Bush and Company T.V. ads, made for moveon.org, were particularly interesting.
Zimmerman discussed a series of innovative victories in his long political struggle. “I have been struggling against capitalism for fifty years.” He celebrated the Internet, the only limit to reaching the public now is our imagination, he asserted. He was thinking particularly about the costs of emailing versus the cost of postage. He recalled throwing $100 bills on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange back in the day. Wall Street was then and is now both the symbol of the problem and site of the problem itself. His was an earlier innovative dramaturgic act in the belly of the beast, meant to show radical criticism to a mass audience. Zimmerman applauded OWS for its major discursive success. “It has stimulated a broad public to fundamentally question capitalism.”
There were differences of judgment at the meeting. All knew that connecting with the public is important, but there were different opinions about how this could be achieved. Some saw a global capitalist order on the verge of collapse, confidently sensing that people are waking up and a significant victory is on the horizon. Others were less optimistic, more concerned, believing that the forces of the old order are still alive and very able to defend their interests. Some were less sure of popular support.
The discussion sometimes lingered on generalities that make me impatient and uncomfortable (specifically broad criticisms of capitalism and celebrations of socialism), but they moved beyond empty rhetoric, impressed as the participants were both by Zimmerman’s long history of bringing major issues to the public’s attention, leading to political action, and by the recent successes of OWS in doing the same thing. The discussion was among colleagues. The OWS people say comrades, a term that makes me feel uncomfortable given my experiences around the former Soviet bloc.
The relationship with more conventional politics was an issue, as was the intersection of race and class in and out of the movement. One seminar participant, Jan Gross, strongly argued for a position that I find attractive. Prevailing political institutions, in the close connection between the government and the corporate powers, enforce inequality, but the system is open to cooptation (unlike the situation in authoritarian dictatorships). The liberal order’s democratic qualities can be utilized for progressive change. Lawrence Weschler passionately argued for a specific course of direct action, a mass boycott of under water loans mortgages and student loans, and extensive discussion about the boycott. Radical pragmatic action would both engage the public and address some severe problems, which affect many people. This led to the discussion about the relationship between the social movement, and class and race. An African American OWS activist forcefully argued that the problem of the poor is not about student loans and mortgages but community schools and drug arrests. Class and race divides society and social movements, but he suggested also the people around the Flying Seminar table. The problems of the middle class and the poor are related, but they are also different.
A constitutional amendment was discussed (money does not equal speech), as was a national student strike. One person declared that capitalism had to be saved from itself, while others reflected on the “S” word, socialism. (This reminded me of discussions on the left in the 1930s.) The broad strategy of building alternatives “on our own” was measured against active engagement with more conventional political institutions and the possibility of a third party.
Different tactics reveal different commitments, Zimmerman observed in his closing reflections. But, acting together is the key imperative. The path to power and radical change is paved by organizing, to which he has dedicated his life.
I regret missing this interesting discussion. As I was watching the video, I imagined how I might have spoken up. I may have expressed my conviction that all the talk about socialism, as some kind of systemic alternative to capitalism, is silly. I might have asked people to explain how it is they imagine a modern economy can be organized. But that probably would not have improved the discussion. But there are issues I would have liked to discussed: how a protest movement can move from saying no to injustice to figuring out how to do something about the injustice, what role do political leaders play, and what social activists can accomplish and how that relates to more conventional political agents in parties and states?
There is a proposal before the OWS General Assembly in New York today concerning a statement of solidarity with Occupy Oakland. In it, there is the declaration:
“We affirm Occupy Oakland’s freedom to use whatever means necessary to further
your [and our] struggle. A diversity of tactics is necessary, and it
means that there is no correct method to resistance. We trust our
comrades to make your own choices for your own community.”
Really by any means necessary? Aside from the questionable ethics of such a statement, I wonder how the people who consider it think it relates to the broad American public. How does the movement, which speaks in the name of the 99%, relate to the 99%? I think that the statement will be rejected. But it highlights the importance of the issues and experiences discussed at the last meeting of the Flying Seminar, and it suggests what we should examine in our next meeting.
It seems to me that it is crucial to think about the relationship between the movement and more conventional politics. I think that the relationship between OWS and Obama and the Democrats is similar to the relationship between the Civil Rights movement and Kennedy and Johnson and the Democrats, and some Republicans. It would be interesting to reflect upon how that worked. I am hoping that we will discuss this at the next meeting of the Flying Seminar, perhaps on the legacies of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement as it might inform the future actions of OWS.
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