By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 7th, 2012 
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 . . .
Read more: Between Radical Hopes and Practical Projects: Reflections on the Flying Seminar Session with Bill Zimmerman
By Esther Kreider-Verhalle, November 30th, 2011 
Event Recap
The third session of the Flying Seminar offered an opportunity to deliberate possibilities for the next phase of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Bill Zimmerman, a self-described veteran troublemaker, gave an account of his many experiences with progressive actions in the United States. Not unlike the two earlier sessions, in which OWS members compared notes with Polish and Japanese troublemakers, the current activists were able to compare and contrast their knowledge and their ideas with yet another out-of-the-box thinker.
Bill Zimmerman was in New York City to give talks and promote his book, a memoir that recounts a history of American political activism starting in the 1960s through Zimmerman’s personal experiences.
When it comes to organizing people, Zimmerman opened a box full of tactics that he and his fellow activists have used over the years to spur and demand change. He started off with letting us in on a lesson he learned early on. After having been active in increasingly militant protests against the Vietnam War, he realized that this kind of activism did not resonate with the public. The movement was forced to reconnect with people or otherwise lose its essential support. As it turned out, Americans responded to the call for humanitarian aid and Zimmerman was able to organize the international charity Medical Aid for Indochina, which brought humanitarian relief from American citizens beyond enemy lines. This prompted a serious discussion about the need to connect and stay connected with ‘your audience’ and how to get people who are sympathetic to a cause to participate.
Inevitably, this also brought back the more strategic question of wanting to work within the current capitalist system or striving for an alternative scenario through a systemic social-economic change. Most discussants were in favor of the use of creative instruments within our current system. Of course, Zimmerman’s experience lies exactly there. He was active in electoral campaigns, organized populist movements, produced political commercials, and worked on ballot initiatives, an instrument of direct democracy that is allowed in 23 states. As Jan Gross put it, “The framework is not your adversary, it can be filled with friendly initiatives.”
The systemic question reminded those around the . . .
Read more: Dec. 3rd: OWS Meets Bill Zimmerman (Video)
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 11th, 2011 
What do these people want? What are they advocating? In the opinion of many, including Gary Alan Fine in his last post, it is easy to discern what OWS is against, but unclear what they are for. They know how to say no, he knows, but he wonders if they can say yes. He thinks this both about OWS and The Tea Party, as a detached but sympathetic observer of both.
Looking at OWS up close, taking part in a small but significant activity, I think the positive commitments of OWS are actually quite clear, and in marked contrast to The Tea Party. As I maintained in The Politics of Small Things, the democracy is in the details. I had an opportunity to look at some details in a corner of Zuccotti Park, joining the OWS Think Tank.
Many of the OWS activists who have taken part in The Flying Seminar sessions are active in the Think Tank. We started working together at The New School teach in. They have been among the active members of the seminar. I have visited them a couple of times in Zuccotti Park, and earlier this week, on Monday, I joined them in their work there. It was an illuminating afternoon.
From noon to 6:00, the Think Tank conducts discussion sessions of a special sort on a variety of topics. Many different people facilitate the discussions. I responded to an email call for help and volunteered to do my part. The workshop topics range from the quite general, to the immediate and practical. They hope to inform decision-making in the park and to further understanding of problems of broad public concern, and even contribute to the formulation of policy positions and recommendations. It’s one of the spaces where the big questions about the occupation are being answered in daily practice, a striking case of the politics of small things. It confirmed for me that in politics the means are a significant part of its . . .
Read more: The Clear, Present and Positive Goals of Occupy Wall Street
By Kei Nakagawa, November 9th, 2011 
Contingency is of the essence for creativity. The Flying Seminar session with members from Shiroto no Ran (Amateur Revolt), an anti-nuclear and counter cultural social movement group from Japan, and Occupy Wall Street, I think, was not an exception. What started as a rash decision by the Shiroto no Ran to come to New York to show their support to the OWS protest and to experience the heart of the occupation first-hand took an unplanned change after a chance meeting. Through a New School effort to create the time and space for deeper and meaningful dialogue, a valuable Japanese – American encounter occurred.
I heard the news about Shiroto no Ran’s visit just a day before their arrival. During their short stay at the Liberty Square, we met and talked about OWS. From our conversations, I began to realize how difficult it was for them to actually get the opportunity to really meet and get to know the people who are most engaged in the OWS movement. The activists in Zuccotti Park were too busy and things were changing too rapidly there. I realized that there was a need for creating a space that would facilitate a dialogue between these two groups of activists. A teach-in session organized by two New School professors, Jeffrey Goldfarb and Elzbieta Matynia, not only opened a door of opportunity, but also gave a concrete structure to my vague idea. From listening to their ideas about the Flying Seminar, I realized that we could have a serious conversation between these movements from different cultures. Just two days after I proposed the event, we all met, and my sense that it could be worthwhile, proved to be correct.
As a participant in both movements, I see my contribution in creating a space for dialogue as a modest one. But on the other hand, as a researcher who is working on the Japanese 1968 movement from a transnational perspective, I am especially interested. I am fascinated how such a dialogue is now possible in . . .
Read more: Toward Sustainable Occupations by Amateurs: Reflections on the OWS – Shiroto no Ran Flying Seminar
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 28th, 2011 
Over the past week, big changes have occurred in the little virtual world of Deliberately Considered. We have put up a changed format that has been on the drawing boards for months. You will note that while now the text of only the most recent post is to be found on the home page, the titles and images of many more posts can be viewed and easily accessed. We have been thinking about doing this for quite some time, but rushed this week to get it going in response to events just south of my New School office in lower Manhattan, in Zuccotti Park and its neighborhood. We are part of the neighborhood and seek to have neighborly discussions.
The new format provides easier access to more of the unfolding reports, analyses and debates on our site, and allows us to bring forward posts past that continue to address pressing problems, particularly in the editors picks. And most important now, it will permit us to highlight more intensive investigations of pressing political issues, hoping to inform debate about those issues. Thus, now you will find the continuing posts on Occupy Wall Street.
Elzbieta Matynia and I find the occupation movement to be of great interest. For her, it is a case where her ideas of performative democracy apply. For me, the occupation is a clear case of the power of the politics of small things. We proposed and are now coordinating the Flying Seminar with our intellectual interests and our previous work together on the Democracy Seminar in East and Central Europe and beyond in mind. As we have already reported, it is off to a quick and extraordinary start. Occupy Wall Street and Shiroto no Ran on Tuesday, Adam Michnik on Saturday. And Deliberately Considered now has a space for the announcement of upcoming sessions of the seminar, for reports on the seminar sessions, including videos of the events, and for what I hope will be sustained ongoing discussions . . .
Read more: Deliberately Considered 2.0: The Flying Seminar, Occupy Wall Street and Our New Format
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 26th, 2011 ![Adam Michnik during "Kolorowa Tolerancja" in Łódź © HuBar (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons](../../wp-content/uploads/2011/10/450px-Adam_Michnik_Lodz-150x111.jpg)
Event Recap
The second session of the Flying Seminar presented the opportunity for a comparative historical dialogue about key issues of radical political engagement. Adam Michnik, a leading Polish dissident intellectual of Communist Poland and founding editor of Poland’s major newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Occupy Wall Street activists compared notes. There was much that separated Michnik from the Occupiers, which gave the discussion its critical edge. But there was also much that connected them: a commitment to democracy and experimentation, a critical attitude concerning political elites disconnected from society, an understanding of the importance of creative social action.
Capitalism separated Michnik from the occupiers. They often invoked the term to summarize what they were against. This was also clear and shared at our last meeting between OWS and Shiroto no Ran. Michnik was quiet on this issue. Capitalism is a normal economic situation, what the previously existing socialist system was not.
There was also a difference in the assessment of utopia. Michnik spelled out three characteristics of Poland’s self limiting revolution. It was against violence. It was anti-utopian when it came to political ends. And it was geopolitically realistic, aware of where Poland is on the map. (Here he was referring to Poland’s proximity to Moscow and what then seemed in 1980 to be the solidity, overwhelming power and steadfastness of the Soviet Union.) The tension between taking up political activity versus remaining “splendidly isolated” from mainstream politics dominated the meeting, evolving in different directions – both pragmatic and philosophical ones.
Against his realism (he is the author of a brilliant essay “Grey is Beautiful”), an OWS activists asserted that being against utopia means accepting the unacceptable, rejecting the need for fundamental change. The struggle for imagination against realism, for achieving desirable change without new forms of tyranny provided a fertile field for discussion, with broad agreement.
Michnik recalled how the older generation was sure that the protests in Poland in 1968 and of the seventies lacked clear political goals and, therefore, was doomed to failure. But he and his fellow students and activists persisted. He told an interesting story about the rejection of a self appointed leader in a tram workers strike that occurred weeks before the emergence of . . .
Read more: Oct. 29th: OWS Meets Poland’s Self-Limiting Revolution in Conversation with Adam Michnik (Video)
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 25th, 2011 Event Recap
It was a flash seminar that led to deliberate dialogue. The first session of the Flying Seminar was remarkable.
On Saturday, we had a teach-in, proposing the seminar. From the floor a proposal was made to have a meeting between activists in Shiroto no Ran (Amateur Revolt) and Occupy Wall Street. We contacted the Japanese activists, who were camping out in Zuccotti Park. They agreed to participate. It was later reported to me that this is one thing they hoped to do coming to New York. I met with Harrison Schultz, the sociology student here most involved in the occupation, about the event. He spoke to friends. I went to the park to talk up the seminar, particularly with the OWS Think Tank group. It seems that there will be an ongoing relationship between this group and the Flying Seminar. We asked Jonathan Schell, given his long term focus on direct action and issues nuclear, to join us. We hoped people would come. And a diversity of interested people did, taking part in a fascinating serious discussion. As the video of the proceedings posted here reveals.
The event was defined by the people taking part. The New School provided a space for free thoughtful exchange and much was discovered. I will post my sustained thoughts about the discussion early next week. For now, I will just outline what happened.
I opened the seminar with a brief statement introducing our project. Then we started with the seminar participants introducing themselves as individuals. After which, the activists of Shiroto no Ran gave an overview of their political engagement through a slide presentation.
It turns out that they are a group of self-styled misfits, non-conformists centered in a kind of second hand retail store, where some live along with others who eat, drink, dance, sing, and exchange goods, all supported by the kindness of neighbors. Their small countercultural world (I would describe it as a quintessential example of the politics of small things), engaged a large public when they organized mass demonstrations after the Fukushima disaster. They took us through their experiences, how they reached people, where they stand in Japanese society. They explained how the size . . .
Read more: Oct. 25th: OWS Meets Japanese Anti-Nukers in Conversation with Jonathan Schell (Video)
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 23rd, 2011 
The Flying Seminar is taking off! At the teach-in yesterday, Elzbieta Matynia and I presented our idea (described in my last post) to a group of Occupy Wall Street activists and New School colleagues. It was received with strong support and also with creativity. We are already working to turn the idea into a reality.
We want to create a setting for making intellectual and political connections. We recognize that OWS presents something unique. We hope to learn from it, and we also think that experiences “past and present,” and “from here and elsewhere,” can not only inform our understanding of the world wide occupation movement, it can also help the occupation and other social movements act in an informed fashion. Our seminar is dedicated to this learning and informed action.
Elzbieta and I worked together once on such an activity in East and Central Europe, the Democracy Seminar, which she describes in her book Performative Democracy and which is also described briefly in my bio here. The comparison excited great interest yesterday from OWS activists and New School students, as did other comparisons that were discussed around the room.
One seemed particularly pressing and interesting. Kei Nakagawa, a graduate student at The New School from Japan, informed us that a number of prominent Japanese activists from Shiroto no Ran are now in New York to observe and support OWS, and that they will be here until the middle of next week. Shiroto no Ran is a leaderless, network oriented social movement organization, which focuses especially on anti-nuclear issues, responding to the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. By using the tactics of sound demonstration and non-violent action, the movement successfully mobilized people, especially young citizens, who have never previously participated in political demonstrations. On September 11th, the half-year anniversary of the disaster, Shiroto no Ran played a key role . . .
Read more: Occupy Wall Street, The New School and The Flying Seminar
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 21st, 2011 
Occupy Wall Street reminds my friend, colleague, and frequent “co-conspirator,” Elzbieta Matynia, and me of our long term engagement in the democratic opposition and alternative cultural movements in East and Central Europe. There and then, we coordinated an international seminar, before and after 1989, between scholars and activists, concerning the theoretical and practical problems of democracy, “The Democracy Seminar.” As we observe Occupy Wall Street with a great deal of interest, appreciation and in support, we are moved to act.
We therefore have proposed to The New School community and the activists in OWS the creation of a new seminar, as a place for mutual learning and discussion that can inform action, The Flying Seminar (the name inspired by a dissident academic program during the late 70s and 80s in Poland). The idea came out of an informal chat with one of OWS’ outreach people at Zuccotti Park. Tomorrow at 3:00 pm, we will have a planning meeting and a first conversation, as part of an Occupy Wall Street Teach In at The New School.
We propose to organize a series of portable conversations with key participants and dedicated observers in various movements and actions in the United States and beyond, which could help to crystallize the differences and parallels between projects of resistance then and now. We had in mind, for example, the Civil Rights Movement , SDS, the 1968 movements in Europe, the second wave feminist movement in the States, the Solidarity Movement in Poland, The Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa (its peaceful and its militant side), the Green Revolution in Iran, and the Arab Spring. Our goal will be to facilitate discussion about movements past, from here and elsewhere, as a way of guiding the future of movements present. The hope is that this discussion could help address the key question of what is to be done now.
We agree with many . . .
Read more: A Flying Seminar and Additional Reflections on the GOP, BHO and OWS
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