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LIVING FOR CHANGE

Organizing Comes Before Mobilizing

By Grace Lee Boggs

Michigan Citizen, Dec. 25, 2007

Last week veteran Detroit activist and TV producer Ron Scott shared his thoughts on the recent massive demonstrations in support of the Jena 6. Emphasizing the distinction between organizing and mobilizing, he reminded us that the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began fifty-two years ago on December 1, 1955 and lasted more than a year, was the culmination of years of organizing by local activists like NAACP stalwarts E.D.Nixon and Rosa Parks.

“Had the people of Montgomery merely come out for one day and gone home, we would have nothing to write about today.” This distinction between organizing and mobilizing is especially important in this period when in Detroit and other parts of the country and the world, we are in the very early stages of building a 21st century movement to rebuild our communities and our cities, while also addressing the interconnected issues of planetary emergency, the imperial presidency and the calamity of the invasion of Iraq.

To help us think about the distinction with the seriousness it deserves, I recommend reading and discussing the chapter on “Slow and Respectful Work” in Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Struggle and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (University of California Press, 1995). Many Minds, One Heart, a recent book by Virginia State University Professor Wesley C. Hogan, also emphasizes the importance of patient one-on-one organizing, although, surprisingly, Ms. Hogan makes no reference to Payne’s groundbreaking book.

The civil rights movement had such an enormous impact on this country and the world because prior to mobilizing huge marches and demonstrations, members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (mostly black, mostly southern, mostly from working class backgrounds), not only had a vision of “beloved community” but were ready to spend a lot of time doing the spadework of building relationships with people in the black community.

Convinced that there are individuals in every community whom others look to because they have an unconquerable faith in their own humanity, refuse to see themselves only as victims and take pride in thinking for themselves, the members of SNCC set out to find these natural leaders.

The method they used was simple. They talked with people and got to know them by listening patiently, in conversations at the postoffice, the market, at meetings and church services. At the same time they gave people in the community daily opportunities to get to know them as individuals who were respectful to women and the elderly, who kept their word and lived up to values respected in the community.

It was only after the legitimacy of the “movement” had been established by this kind of “slow and respectful” organizing in the community that they began to mobilize large numbers in marches and demonstrations.

Today few people understand or appreciate the role of this patient, beneath the radar community organizing because we know the civil rights movement only in its later period when it had begun to attract the attention of the national media, So we think of the movement mainly as mobilization: as marches, demonstrations, violent events and personalities or charismatic leaders.

The Detroit City of Hope campaign is today in the community organizing stage.

In 2007 we hosted two events to commemorate the 40th anniversary of MLK’s anti-Vietnam war speech and the 1967 Detroit rebellion. Through these events, endorsed by 32 very diverse community organizations, we made the community aware of our intent to mount a campaign to rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit from the ground up.

Now our challenge is to help the individuals and groups already engaged in this work or eager to embark on it create ways and means to connect with, learn from and support one another.

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