International School for Bottom-up Organizing

How can we build a new world? What lessons can we learn from those who came before us about the potential for a revolutionary movement that will avoid the mistakes of the past? How do we build a true egalitarian movement that depends on the leadership of those most oppressed, the dark-skinned folk on the bottom, rather than on a “savior” or the leadership of middle class intellectuals?

These are the questions the International School for Bottom-up Organizing seeks to study by creating a collective made up of active organizers doing integral work among people at the bottom anywhere in the world.

In the world today, two percent of humanity has come to oppress and exploit the great majority, and has created governing structures that enforce and maintain their control. The entire world is under the control of the rich and powerful. History makes it clear that the few will not give up their power, will not be voted out, and the system will not be reformed into a just system. In so-called “primitive” times, the mass ruled and kept the greedy two percent in line. Somehow, hidden by the mists of unwritten time, that was turned on its head. All of recorded history has been the struggle of the masses to seize the world back from the grasp of the greedy few and achieve a society based on equality.

For the past hundred and fifty years or so, that struggle has been particularly intense all around the world, and numerous revolutions have occurred. However, those courageous attempts at abolishing oppression were reversed, and we are left to face the same struggle as our predecessors and ancestors did. If anything, a deep cynicism has been the product of these attempts to transform society.

Many of our people have come to believe that it is hopeless to fight those in power. They have even come to accept some of the intense propaganda our enemies have created to make us feel that we are too stupid to be capable of creating and running our own society, or even our own organizations. This is especially true of those at the bottom of society, who are the poorest and darkest-skinned, including those who are working, unemployed or in the so-called informal economy. Perhaps this hopelessness helps explain why so many have latched onto the illusion of a “knight in shining armor” exemplified in the U.S. by the Obama campaign.

But we will not be rescued from the top. Our only hope is that the bottom will rise, express its genius, and lead us into an egalitarian future. This will not happen spontaneously, but only through diligent, persistent, courageous organizing over a very long period of time.

How can we move from where we are now toward creating a new struggle for an egalitarian future?

We think that what is needed is for those who are most oppressed, and who most desperately need it, to begin creating prototypes of the society we need for our liberation. By prototypes, we don’t mean isolated utopian communes. We mean to create organizations that will take on the needs of the most oppressed and that will function on the basis of love, respect and equality: each person will work and give according to their abilities and commitment, and the collective will take care of those with the most need first. Everyone will have equal voice, and decisions will be made by consensus.

What forms these groupings will take, what they will do, how they will relate to each other are not questions we can answer with great clarity until they begin to form and create a practice of their own. However, from participating in the movement over the last fifty years, we have developed some ideas. (See “Creating Bottom-Up,” “The People’s Circle,” and other documents.)

One thing that is clear to us is that ours is an international struggle that must be led by the poorest and darkest. Oppression by race, class and gender crosses all national boundaries. We all need the same freedom and equality; we all have the same oppressors, worldwide. Our movement will move toward an internationalist, egalitarian world, one without nations, without states, in which need is the organizing principle instead of greed. We foresee a world in which the genius and creativity of humanity is unleashed, in which all humans share and share alike, whether in starvation or in plenty: in which we are free to love and truly take care of one another.

While initially, the NOSC formed during trauma to respond to urgent needs, and it continues to do so, through the process of developing the work, people began to think in broader terms about the meaning of their work. Developing unity between homeowners, renters and public housing residents, for example, broke down previous barriers. Meeting with, supporting, and being supported by immigrant guest workers broke down further barriers, and people began to see the struggle as unity against a broader system of slavery. They began to see that many of the problems of the “bottom” in New Orleans are shared by poor people all over the world.

This process eventually led to a trip to Venezuela, to meet with the Communal Councils there. The Venezuelan government, just after Katrina, had offered to send resources to help the recovery, but this move was blocked by the US government. So in early 2007, a delegation of organizers and members of the NOSC and ROPH went to Venezuela to appeal directly for those resources. They met with the Communal Councils and saw the work those groups are doing in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas and elsewhere. With members of the Councils, they met with government officials to make their requests for support. They decided to try to build a sister-city relationship between the NOSC and the Caracas Communal Councils. The process of developing international unity between those on the bottom in both countries was begun. A POC ORGANIZER IS PRESENTLY SPENDING SIX MONTHS IN VENEZUELA.

Conclusion: Moving Toward Developing an International Organizing School

What we have learned from putting one foot in front of the other in New Orleans is that a mass, collective, consensus-based organizing process built on a foundation of egalitarian principle has shown great potential as a beacon for the future. By defending an active space where people could begin to see themselves as the legitimate governance of their own lives and future. We’ve seen the collective take the high ground on each issue that came before it. We are convinced that the folk on the “bottom” have collectively, the genius needed to figure out how to run society that those of us who have had the opportunity to learn about history and to develop various skills, have the responsibility to put that knowledge, and those skills at the service of the people, and help them learn to lead the decision making process. In this way, through practice, experience in the struggle, trial and error, we will work towards understanding how to build a future egalitarian society and begin building it.

Although there is much more still to learn than what we have learned so far, we feel that we have a precious embryo in our hands. We want help in nurturing and developing it. We are planning to begin a school for organizers in the hopes of learning from the struggles in New Orleans and around the world – landless struggles in South America, the Communal Council movement in Venezuela, the campesinos in Oaxaca, and other struggles on other continents – and in the hopes of creating connections between those struggles so we can begin to move together to create the future.

This vision will not happen by itself. The goal of the International School for Bottom-up Organizing is to create organizers who are visionaries and scientific thinkers, organizers who are catalysts for bottom-up organizing, and to connect and create communication between the groups they help set in motion. If the brief ideas set out in this document strike a chord in your heart, and you are ready for a life-long commitment, we hope you will respond to this call and help craft a new liberation movement. We invite you to help in this process, if you find yourself in fundamental agreement with the idea of “bottom-up” please join us.

International School for Bottom-Up Organizing

History: Our roots are deep in past and current struggles, and we pay homage to the radicals and revolutionaries whose shoulders we stand on. The urgency for the creation of the School, however, came out of the struggles in New Orleans after Katrina, and the desertion of poor black people by virtually all existing radical or revolutionary organizations. A year ago, we had a day-long workshop with a small group of organizers from two countries. Currently, a twelve-week online course is in session composed mainly of young folk in the USA committed to continue organizing for the New Orleans Survivor Council. A formal course in organizing for a collective of grass-roots people in another country in the Americas will begin in the next few weeks as part of ongoing practical work by School organizers.

When the current online course finishes, we will be ready to go again, hopefully with more class coordinators. We also expect to have another on-site international workshop in the near future. If you are interested in being a participant in the school, and are ready to work for our people, please send us an application essay that answers the following questions: