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If there has ever been a time that Real Social Justice Organizing -- not just "jawsmith" talk -- is needed, it's now: 2010. Occasionally, I've passed around some of our website pieces on organizing techniques and related dimensions. Here is one that hasn't been that widely circulated at all. Among other things, it has some Cactus Spines therein -- as well as very good words for some very good people. [H] MORE ON ORGANIZING [HUNTER BEAR JANUARY 10 2006] UPDATED WITH, MONSTER SLAYER [HUNTER BEAR 1/29/06] ___________________________________________________________________________ I still marvel at the great teachers and warriors who funnel a bundle of lessons for the new beginner and the weary who would tackle imperialism. You are the among the great ones. Colia L [Colia Liddell Lafayette Clark] [Jackson Movement veteran and life-long activist] ___________________________________________________________________________ I so enjoyed your discussion on Navajo life, i.e. the birth of the twins, particularly the monster slayer and the remaining monsters , etc. The language is so clear and colorful. Your son, Beba, seems to be following in your footsteps the way he writes and descibes things. Love and regards to Mrs. Salter and the rest of the clan . Mary Ann [Mary Ann Hall Winters] [From the Jackson Movement days] __________________________________________________________________________________ FROM HUNTER BEAR: [The legendry of the Navajo, as with any tribal nation, is rich and enduring. It was in that context -- that of the Dine' [Dineh] -- that I was privileged to largely grow up and our ties with that vast Nation remain extremely close to this very moment. It was Changing Woman who, impregnated by the Sun and a waterfall, gave birth to the Hero Twins: Monster Slayer and Child of the Water. In due course, the Twins traveled the Rainbow to their Father the Sun -- killing many mortal adversaries along the trail. But several monsters still remain: Hunger, Poverty, Dirt and Old Age -- and the Battle, with the Hero Twins much to the fore, continues.] ____________________________________________________________________________ Time runs away [it often seems to me] like a jackrabbit -- leaping and bounding across my native Northern Arizona sage, faster often than the sometimes pursuing relay teams of young Hopi runners. Early this morning I received this note from Buddy [Joseph] Tieger whose address I had finally retrieved a day or so ago and to whom I had written regarding the untimely death of our old colleague-in-arms: J.V. Henry. Buddy, J.V. and I had initially met each other right at the end of 1963. We met in a jail cell -- a Southern jail -- always a proper place for real and aspiring Organizers. And Buddy wrote today: "Hi John [Hunter], Thank you, John, for posting this sad and shocking news. As it happens, I came across your [Hunterbear] post, seemingly quite by chance, a few evenings ago, when I was googling people from the movement years, more or less at random, and thought I'd try to see what J.V. was up to these days. I still picture him, of course, at age 23, in blue jeans, and denim jacket with a SNCC button. My love to you and Eldri, Joseph [always Buddy to us] ___________________________________________________________ As I am known to say, Real Organizing is the most challenging and toughest work of all. My oldest son, John [Beba], born in North Carolina, wrote in part a couple of years ago in the very kind and generous Tribute to me from a throng of friends over many decades: "Except for his refusal to be walked on by any boss, my father was never like Abner Snopes, but like that peculiar family in Faulkner's "Barn Burning," we were always loading up the wagon with our battered furniture and moving, moving, moving. We lived in North Carolina, we lived in Vermont; we lived in Chicago, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Seattle, and Rochester, New York. We lived on the Navajo Nation, we lived in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Our houses were never too grand, never too squalid. Not much survived the moves but our family, and, of course, the steady parade of visitors, people in rags and suits, people coming to see Hunter, people in need-in need of money, advice, food, sanctuary from the feds, respite from self-destruction; people with plans, problems, with energy that could benefit from focus." http://hunterbear.org/special_tribute_page_for_hunter.htm Beba also recalls, and often, that he and the other children were consistently warned not to be the ones to answer our home phones -- given the frequency of hate calls spread over many, many years indeed. To his apt account, I add only that we have all found the satisfactions of this "Outlaw Trail" to be enormous. And to be a Real Organizer is to be an Outlaw. No other way to cut the pie than that. The Universe -- cyber and otherwise -- is full of pretenders [who may or may not be aware that they are]: fussy and precious ideologues, big talkers and pie-in-the-skyers, prissy hair-splitters, sometimes folks who make our three pet rabbits look like a herd of Grizzlies. And for those of that ilk who write voluminously about organizing with little or no hard and tedious grassroots experience and thus no savvy, my disdain for these Effetes is as massive as my literal [and truly wonderful] Sycamore Canyon southwest of Flagstaff. And for those writers who seek ostensibly to produce books about dramatic movements but wind up merely with things politically sanitized and "safe," I have feelings bordering on -- if not embracing -- contempt. If you want to know about Organizing, then go to the Organizers. Stay away from Arm Chairs -- and climb The Mountain. When you top out, you will know a lot -- and you will also see and then tackle the next great range beyond. Two years ago, I put my Organizing experiences into a couple of guide-line posts. Not a gospel man by any means, I am pleased that they have now been reprinted many times -- in print and web -- and much passed about. It's one of our huge Hunterbear website's most heavily visited pages: http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm And, for J.V. Henry -- and another fine fighting soul who preceded him into the Spirit World by only a few days, Clinton Jencks, we have this page: CLINTON JENCKS [1918-2005]: REMEMBRANCE [HUNTER BEAR 12/16/05] AND THEN, J.V. HENRY [HUNTER BEAR 1/05/06] http://hunterbear.org/CLINTON%20JENCKS%201918%202005.htm I should add that, Deep in our Website, where much of our somewhat older civil rights material is clustered, we have several pages of photos taken in March 1965 in Bertie [Burr-Tee] County at our historic North Carolina Black Belt Conference -- attended by over a thousand people from 14 counties and some other locations in the region. The photos were among many taken by J.V. [who also conducted a workshop] -- though, regrettably, none were taken there of him. In one of those on our site, you can see Buddy and Ginny Tieger visiting with our keynote speaker, Ms. Ella J. Baker. You can also see Clyde Appleton, now of Tucson and on two of our discussion lists, leading the singing; we have tough and hardy local leaders, such as Ms. Willa Johnson [Cofield] and the late Rev. W.M. Steele; we have Nigel Hampton [with whom I am still in touch] who came from International Chemical Workers Union to speak on Labor. And other brave troopers. Still on the Rainbow, still following the Trail of the Twins to the Sun -- and there are many of us, many indeed, and always many more. The Monsters remain and the choice for us all is, Serving our communities -- or Serving ourselves: the Sun, or the Darkness. As Ever, Hunter [Hunter Bear] Dear Mr. Bear, I came across your site while doing a little nostalgia research. I was a student at the U of Dayton (Ohio) and I have a vague memory of meeting Jesse Jackson at a speech by Saul Alinsky sometime in the late 60's or early 70's. My question is, Do you know if Jackson and Alinsky ever actually worked together or had a speaking tour together or is my memory playing tricks on me again? I am aware you don't know me from Adam but if you have any insight I would appreciate it if you could email a short reply. Kindest Regards M. Minneapolis _______________________ Dear M: Good to hear from you and you have asked a good question. [Of course, when you ask a sometime prof a good question, you may get a 45 minute response!] The short answer is that their relationship was not close in any sense. Since Alinsky was primarily based at Chicago and did his initial organizing in that context, it is safe to say that he influenced Jesse Jackson -- but only to the extent that he, Alinsky, influenced in one way or another a good many people over many years. By the time I got to Chicago in 1969 -- we were there in the "organizing business" for several years -- there was certainly no close relationship at all between the two. Jackson's organizing style was pretty well developed before he arrived, well after Alinsky's basic work in the city, has always been centered around himself, top down in nature, very media oriented, and he has consistently played close to the Cook County Democratic party [e.g., the Daley Machine] -- frequently if not consistently on its terms. The Jackson organizations [Breadbasket, Push] have been loose and mercurial -- in some respects structural disasters. Alinsky, a product of Chicago, was always top-down -- but he and his staff carefully put together complex coalitions. They often used creative strategies and were usually effective bargainers. In another, but related context: When C.T. Vivian, an old friend who I knew very well indeed via the Southern Movement, came to town in the late '60s and began to push the construction trades hard on the critical matter of minority hiring, his approach was essentially mass nonviolent demonstrations, with shrewd and hard successful bargaining at other levels. C.T. and his associates, such as Archie Hargreaves, developed the Urban Training Center, at Chicago, designed to bring many activists, including clergy, into good causes -- and provide systematic training. That went pretty well. Neither Jackson nor Alinsky were involved in that effort. During our period in Chicago, I directed large scale organizing [mostly Blacks and many Puerto Ricans and some Chicanos] on the sanguinary South/Southwest side -- had a great staff of always at least two dozen, some "professionally" trained and others community people. Our approach, and this has always been mine, was grassroots: steady and systematic block-by-block grassroots organizing and the eventual emergence of bottom-up multi-block club umbrella organizations. We, and our allied groups [including the very protective-of-us Disciples Youth "gang"], were always politically independent. We were able to organize about 300 block clubs in two large embracive organizations. [With broad people- organization and mobilization, we won successes on a number of critical fronts.] During my period on the South/Southwest Side, 1969-73, Jackson was never involved at all -- save in one case of a well publicized high school crisis which our effort had well in hand -- and, in that, a couple of Jackson aides attempted without success to take things over. By that time, Saul Alinsky was moving into his late afternoon, maybe twilight, and was no factor for us pro or con. One of his very early efforts, the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, had become nothing more than a Daley appendage [under its boss, Joe Meegan], and was an adversary of ours. In fairness to Alinsky, he had long before denounced the BYNC as a "Frankenstein." Alinsky and I would have agreed certainly on one key point at least: A good "professional" organizer works himself/herself out of a job and should never, in the interests of community organizational self-determination, pitch camp on a permanent basis. We never trusted Jackson and still do not. On the other hand, substantial differences with the Alinsky approach [grassroots-up as contrasted with top-down] notwithstanding, there was never any question in our minds of his sincerity, independence, and courage. It's worth mentioning that, years later, I was interviewed for two radio hours by Duke McNeil on organizing approaches. McNeil headed The Woodlawn Organization, an Alinsky ghetto-oriented project. We spoke of Alinsky many times but neither of us, as I recall, even bothered to mention Jackson. Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation has trained many fine people who, using their own specific and pragmatic organizing techniques, have done much good work in many parts of the country. If I have one major regret on the Chicago scene, it is that we all were never able to connect with the excellent Midwest [Organizing] Academy, spear-headed by the vigorously committed and still most active, Heather Booth. That very effective grassroots-oriented training program was initiated, if I recall correctly, about 1973 -- the same year we concluded our basic work on the South/Southwest side. It is still quite vital. [I did continue some Chicago involvements for several years, including our Native American Community Organizational Training Center -- based in the Uptown section of Chicago -- commuting from the University of Iowa.] Heather and I became acquainted a few years ago and I consider her a fine friend and stalwart colleague in the Save the World Business. Hope this has been of some help. Again, good to hear from you and, if more questions arise, please don't hesitate to get back to me. In Solidarity, Hunter Bear [Hunter Gray] HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm For Black History Month, four of our many Southern civil rights history links: [Each page has several pieces] http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm http://hunterbear.org/most_sweeping_anti.htm http://hunterbear.org/first.htm http://hunterbear.org/NORTH%20CAROLINA_OUR%20SUCCESSFUL%20BLACK%20BELT%20MOVEMENT.htm ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
