Sam Smith – My suggestion that blacks, latinos and labor come together to form a national coalition hasn’t received a lot of enthusiasm. It doesn’t surprise me because we live in a time of atomized activism, unlike the 1960s and 1970s when there was far greater focus on the issues rather than the cultural identity of those supporting them. To even suggest that blacks, latinos and labor could effectively merge their efforts seems odd, but to this Alinsky-inspired activist it still seems not only possible but highly desirable.
Part of the trick is to concentrate on what you have in common with others, not what divides or separates you. Below is a report of a conference I helped organized 20 years ago that did just that and the surprising results that occurred.
But first a report on why multi-cultural alliances are not only possible but practical.
Jennifer Richeson & Shana Bernstein, American Prospect - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People celebrates its 106th anniversary this month…. Although we often think of this heralded civil rights organization as organized by and solely focused on issues relevant to African Americans, it is actually one of the oldest and most successful examples of a multiracial coalition forged to advocate for racial justice.
Indeed, white, Jewish, and African-American men and women came together to found the organization, primarily in response to pervasive incidents of racially-motivated violence faced by black Americans at the time.
Among many other incidents, recent campaigns of police violence toward black Americans, racial profiling of Latinos in border states, and the typecasting of Asian Americans as perpetually foreign, reveal the continuing reality of racial inequality in U.S. society.
Yet, one obstacle to eradicating these and other contemporary instances of racial injustice is the tendency to separate them into black issues, Latino issues and Asian issues. Consequently, many Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, Jews and other ethnic and racial minority groups aren’t as invested in each others’ struggles for equality as they could be.
Civil rights struggles have never been discrete, community-specific, racially isolated affairs. So, we should not isolate them now—not in how we commemorate them, how we write about them, nor in how we discuss or otherwise consider them…
To be sure, when the interests of different racial and ethnic minority communities do not align—or worse, are perceived to be in conflict—intergroup tension, not coalition, is the result.
In the 1970s, for instance, Chinese and Mexican Americans’ interest in bilingual education collided with African Americans’ interest in desegregation. This fissure among communities was revealed when Chinese and Mexican American communities in San Francisco publicly opposed a desegregation lawsuit filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
And cross-group coalitions have often been fleeting and difficult to maintain.
Still there are enough examples of diverse communities teaming up despite differences in order to pursue shared long-term goals that they might serve as models for contemporary activists seeking to bridge divides of race, class and short-term agenda.
There are reasons to be hopeful. Recently, blacks, Latinos, Arab Americans, and clergy from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, have teamed up to protest the shooting of unarmed black men and urge justice for those killed.
Why does appreciating such cross-racial collaboration matter? Why should we care about this history of collaboration among diverse racial and ethnic groups?
Because these instances of coalition—brief as they were at times—have created change.
Failure to remember these instances of multiracial coalitions undoubtedly results in missed opportunities to build support among a diverse array of potential allies. Greater awareness of our nation’s history of multiracial civil rights struggles might, therefore, propel members of different marginalized communities to forge new coalitions to combat contemporary forms of social injustice.
By separating—if not segregating—struggles for social justice, change is next to impossible. Until marginalized communities and their allies redefine self-interest, recognize common cause, and find ways to coordinate with one another, large-scale social change will likely remain elusive.
Sam Smith - In 1995, as an active member of the Green Politics Network, I joined a number of other Greens in hosting a conference of third party activists. Over a hundred showed up, ranging from one of the founders of the ancient American Labor Party to Greens, Libertarians, Perot backers, and Democratic Socialists of America. It was a recklessly dangerous idea for a Washington weekend, but Green activists John Rensenbrink, Linda Martin and Tony Affigne seemed to know what they were doing and I was happy to go along.
We established two basic rules:
- We would only discuss issues on which we might find some agreement.
- We would reach that agreement by consensus.
We broke the body into tables of ten or so, each dealing with a different topic. All policies that were proposed were written on newsprint posters. Then participants were given three color stick-on dots with their names on them. Everyone then went up to the board and placed their dots on their favorite issues (cumulative voting style, so that all three dots could, if desired, be placed on one issue). After the vote, those with only their dots on a particular issue were allowed to move them to their second choice (a la instant run-off voting) and so forth until a clear consensus of three issues emerged. This scheme not only produced a consensus, but one that was physical and visual as well as intellectual and fun to watch.
When the various groups produced their recommendations, they were turned over to what was known as a "fishbowl negotiation." Each small group selected a representative to negotiate for it with representatives of all the other tables. The representatives sat in a circle with those they represented behind them. Anyone could stop their representative and request a small group conference but only the representative could speak in the larger assembly. It worked remarkably well.
The small group that had the most difficulty with such techniques was comprised mainly of Marxists who had selected economics as their area of concern. We were, one suggested, guilty of what the Master had called "parliamentary cretinism," and the socialists resisted it firmly. One result, ironically, was that the weakest section of the final statement was that dealing with economics. On the other hand, the libertarians came to the organizers at one point and offered to leave the meeting so a full consensus could be maintained. We encouraged them to stick around, changing our own rules to accept several levels of consensus.
Despite the wide range of views present, despite the near total absence of Robert's Rules of Order, the final document, with full consensus, called for nothing less than a major transformation. The group unanimously agreed to support proportional representation, campaign finance reform "to provide a level playing field in elections;" initiative, referendum and recall; better ballot access; the end of corporate welfare; strong environmental policies; sexual and reproductive freedom; an end to the war on drugs and treatment of addiction as a health matter rather than as a crime; a dramatic cut in military expenditures; workplace democracy and the maximum empowerment of people in their communities "consistent with fairness, social responsibilities and human rights."
Not bad for a group ranging from one of the founders of the ancient American Labor Party to Greens, Libertarians, Perot backers and Democratic Socialists of America. It shouldn't have worked at all, but because the rules we had used felt fair to those present, it did. By ignoring topics of obvious disagreement, we even surprised ourselves with the level of consensus.
We had also discovered the possibility of a political transformation, of moving beyond left and right. We understood that these were different times -- not the thirties, not the sixties -- times that required different imaginations and different risks. We had reached out and had found that we were not alone.
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