Excellent. I hope everyone shares this widely. A parallel school board, city council, or any other structure of government can empower people to envision a new world. And when combined with mass organizing can be a road map for a new society. Lots of lessons to be learned here. Thanks Carl!
Thank you for sharing this Carl. It's a powerful model with a lot of great advice for other grassroots movement organizations, education justice and beyond, on working the mass line, building power and sustaining organization.
This is a good model to work from. I especially agree with avoiding 501C3 status. In many cases, we can build better grassroots groups without it. But I have two questions. 1. CarlP says 'we don’t have a socialist movement in existence.' Does he mean in his district? Sacramento? Nationwide? There is certainly a socialist movement in California. How do we engage them? 2. You make no mention of an electoral arm. Or am I missing something? We need to tie campaigns like this to electing our Third Reconstruction candidates.
Excellent, both the article and the work. When I was on the Board of Tradeswomen, Inc we fought all these battles, including the 501c3 dilemma, the narrow issue focus, the urge to attach ourselves to a larger, more powerful structure (unions). I have to say that we did not win and TWI is today a non-profit, not a grass-roots org, albeit a good one. So heartening to see, as Jeff said, this 18 year struggle continues. A real lesson for socialists, as Elly said, practice, practice, practice.
Most impressive to me was that they sustained and kept fresh the organization for now some 18 years. I have been part of efforts to create community control type groups, from night school adult ed to wage theft oversight and prevention, that run out of steam due to resources or lack of "stick-to-it-iveness" or lack of independent research capacity etc, and the efforts die or become institutionalized and controlled by the institutions or people who aren't part of the solution. "Governing Power" or "co-governance" can be exhausting and tedious for people who are essentially movement builders. And the BPSB gives organizational and practical form to the broad concept of self-determination. An amazing story.
This is a terrific piece. Not only about the BPSB, but how to practice the "mass line." Listen to the people. Centralized and sum up their issues. Create a plan of action. Try it out in practice. Collect information on how it worked (or didn't). Centralized this feedback. Make adjustments ( or a new plan). Try out in practice ........
I really like the end of the article, drawing lessons for Socialists in their work among the people, particularly those who have historically been marginalized! excellent
I would agree with Carl Davidson connecting this to other efforts to show that Socialists can lead and government, and that we can use our very damaged democracy to duplicate the great victory in New York City by Democratic Socialists!
Excellent. I hope everyone shares this widely. A parallel school board, city council, or any other structure of government can empower people to envision a new world. And when combined with mass organizing can be a road map for a new society. Lots of lessons to be learned here. Thanks Carl!
Thank you for sharing this Carl. It's a powerful model with a lot of great advice for other grassroots movement organizations, education justice and beyond, on working the mass line, building power and sustaining organization.
This is a good model to work from. I especially agree with avoiding 501C3 status. In many cases, we can build better grassroots groups without it. But I have two questions. 1. CarlP says 'we don’t have a socialist movement in existence.' Does he mean in his district? Sacramento? Nationwide? There is certainly a socialist movement in California. How do we engage them? 2. You make no mention of an electoral arm. Or am I missing something? We need to tie campaigns like this to electing our Third Reconstruction candidates.
Excellent, both the article and the work. When I was on the Board of Tradeswomen, Inc we fought all these battles, including the 501c3 dilemma, the narrow issue focus, the urge to attach ourselves to a larger, more powerful structure (unions). I have to say that we did not win and TWI is today a non-profit, not a grass-roots org, albeit a good one. So heartening to see, as Jeff said, this 18 year struggle continues. A real lesson for socialists, as Elly said, practice, practice, practice.
Most impressive to me was that they sustained and kept fresh the organization for now some 18 years. I have been part of efforts to create community control type groups, from night school adult ed to wage theft oversight and prevention, that run out of steam due to resources or lack of "stick-to-it-iveness" or lack of independent research capacity etc, and the efforts die or become institutionalized and controlled by the institutions or people who aren't part of the solution. "Governing Power" or "co-governance" can be exhausting and tedious for people who are essentially movement builders. And the BPSB gives organizational and practical form to the broad concept of self-determination. An amazing story.
This is a terrific piece. Not only about the BPSB, but how to practice the "mass line." Listen to the people. Centralized and sum up their issues. Create a plan of action. Try it out in practice. Collect information on how it worked (or didn't). Centralized this feedback. Make adjustments ( or a new plan). Try out in practice ........
I really like the end of the article, drawing lessons for Socialists in their work among the people, particularly those who have historically been marginalized! excellent
I would agree with Carl Davidson connecting this to other efforts to show that Socialists can lead and government, and that we can use our very damaged democracy to duplicate the great victory in New York City by Democratic Socialists!