Don’t fight the riptide. It’ll wear you down. A riptide occurs when water at high tide gets pooled behind reefs or sand bars so when the sea goes out again, the trapped water has to find a channel through which to escape the pool. It empties through that opening with such force that it can sweep a swimmer out to sea. Our instinct is to start swimming toward shore as hard as we can. The better strategy is to swim parallel to the coast until you are out of the riptide, then ride the regular waves to shore. Left activists know the feeling of being caught in a riptide without knowing the way out. When the political tide runs against us it takes all our effort just to stay in place. Our standards slide until a “victory” just means that we didn’t get screwed as badly as we could have been. Our gains are swept away the moment we turn away.

When conservative activists faced this problem, back in the mid-1960s, they tried something different. Instead of swimming faster they looked into what it would take to turn the tide around. They pulled it off. With the tide behind you, you can achieve all kinds of success even with less that brilliant leadership. It’s a lot easier to slash local school budgets when half the population already believes that government is incompetent, teachers are lazy, taxes are evil and the private sector can do it better. That’s the tide.

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Graphic: "Emotion Wall" Copyright 2005 by Cassendre Xavier. Ink on paper.

On Wednesday, May 19th Buffalo Class Action held a workshop to discuss the history, modern uses, and ideology behind the concept of Direct Action. A group of about 30 students, activists, and community members attended the conversation at the Grant Street Neighborhood Center and the responses to the dialogue were overwhelmingly positive.

The purpose of the discussion was to break down misunderstanding and misinformation about the ideas of direct action and what they mean to building popular movements that can fight for genuine change in our society. There were two types of actions that are often labeled direct actions that were discarded by the presenter as valid direct actions – rioting at militant protests and confrontational protests to those in power.

As it was presented, Direct Action is a concept that goes beyond the idea of militancy in protesting for needed changes in society. Instead, it’s an idea for a completely different way of fighting for social justice through our activism. Direct Action teaches us to bring our attention to the on-the-ground effects of policy rather than arguing in the abstract world of policy-making, where politicians and businessmen have considerably more power than the average citizen.

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From: Egalitarian Culture (bottomuporganizer@gmail.com)
TO: Young radicals everywhere (and older ones too!)
FR: The organizing trainers’ collective of the International School for Bottom Up Organizing
REF: 50th Anniversary meeting of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

This is a letter to the young radicals who are trying to find direction for rebuilding a movement in the US to create a just and equal world, and who respect, admire and want to learn from the experience of the 1960s radicals in SNCC who set out to eradicate racism and change the world. We encourage you to attend the SNCC 50th anniversary commemorative meeting in North Carolina this April.

Right now, as you read this letter, there is a determined campaign to distort the true story of what SNCC did and stood for and how it changed history. You need to know this so you are not misled. You need to know this because the true story of SNCC contains lessons for present-day organizing we cannot do without.

Early SNCC organizers in places like Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas were guided by elders in the community who had been struggling against racism in the previous decades. This tradition of bottom-up struggle against racism had unbroken roots going back to the days of slavery and slave rebellions, the Underground Railroad and maroon communities of escaped slaves. It moved through the amazing experiences of free, collective living led by former slaves during the Reconstruction after the Civil War. It remained alive in ongoing resistance to Jim Crow and various strategies for self-sustenance that kept black folk strong, united and proud against all the vicious physical and psychic oppression surrounding them.

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