Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History

This is, of course, a caricature of the left: that socialists and communists spend more time in meetings and fighting with each other than changing the world. But in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential election, and then Joe Biden’s, it has become nearly all-consuming for some organizations, spreading beyond subcultures of the left and into major liberal institutions. “My last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife. Whereas [before] that would have been 25-30 percent tops,” the former executive director said. He added that the same portion of his deputies’ time was similarly spent on internal reckonings.

“Most people thought that their worst critics were their competitors, and they’re finding out that their worst critics are on their own payroll,” said Loretta Ross, an author and activist who has been prominent in the movement for decades, having founded the reproductive justice collective SisterSong.

https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/

For years, recruiting young people into the movement felt like a win-win, he said: new energy for the movement and the chance to give a person a lease on a newly liberated life, dedicated to the pursuit of justice. But that’s no longer the case. “I got to a point like three years ago where I had a crisis of faith, like, I don’t even know, most of these spaces on the left are just not — they’re not healthy. Like all these people are just not — they’re not doing well,” he said. “The dynamic, the toxic dynamic of whatever you want to call it — callout culture, cancel culture, whatever — is creating this really intense thing, and no one is able to acknowledge it, no one’s able to talk about it, no one’s able to say how bad it is.”

https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/

That’s driving the upheaval can’t be disentangled from the broader cultural debates about speech, power, race, sexuality, and gender that have shaken institutions in recent years. Netflix, for instance, made news recently by laying off 290 staffers — a move described by the tabloid press as targeting the “wokest” workers — in the midst of roiling tensions at the streaming company.

From NY Times article linked from Grim’s Intercept article:

In 2018, the Trump administration proposed revamping Obama-era regulations on Title IX, which sets guidelines for investigations of sexual harassment and assault on campuses. It strengthened protections for the accused.

The A.C.L.U. tweet in response to the news was scathing: This “promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused.”

Because the A.C.L.U. has championed the due process rights of the accused for 100 years, the tweet came as a surprise. It turned out a staff member at the A.C.L.U.’s women’s rights project had typed and clicked “send.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

From same NY Times article:

Less than two months after that terrible day in Charlottesville, Claire Gastanaga, then the executive director of the A.C.L.U. chapter in Virginia, drove to the College of William & Mary to talk about free speech. One of her board members had resigned after Charlottesville, tweeting, “When a free speech claim is the only thing standing in the way of Nazis killing people, maybe don’t take the case.”She walked onstage and dozens of students who proclaimed themselves allied with Black Lives Matter approached with signs.

“Good, I like this,” Ms. Gastanaga said. “This illustrates very well ——”

Those were the last of her words that could be heard.

A.C.L.U., you protect Hitler, too!” the students chanted, setting up a line that stretched the width of the stage.

They stood in front of the stage and Ms. Gastanaga and for half an hour blocked anyone in the audience from approaching and talking with her. She eventually left.

“The revolution,” the students chanted, “will not uphold the Constitution.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

You can see very clearly how the students needed to confront a Left elite in order to continue their battle against the right Hitlerite elite.

Back to The Intercept piece:

Brune came to the Sierra Club, the environmental group founded in 1892, from Greenpeace and the anarchist-influenced Rainforest Action Network in 2010. He was considered at the time a radical choice to run the staid organization. Brune didn’t last the summer.

https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/

No details on why Brune did not last. This proves that putting progressives at the top of a left organization will not save it. The division still remains within the culture.

“We used to want to make the world a better place,” said one leader of a progressive organization. “Now we just make our organizations more miserable to work at.”

This speaks to the war on privilege. Having attacked the real uprising of the people, they obtained a comfortable job at a non-profit office. The war, they soon found out, has not ended but continues to disturb them even at work.

In the next section, “Theorists Have Developed…”, the author relates the ideas of an organizer with Martin Luther King Jr. for public housing in Chicago, Bill Moyers, a Quaker pacifist. He claims to have created an 8 stage model for every campaign to aid in activism. This model obviously rejected the Russian Revolution, and the rise of the revolutionary party of the working class. It offers hope for those who believe that pressuring the capitalist government can produce results for the working class.

Congress passed the public housing act after Martin Luther King Jr.’s death in 1968, but the government statistics show 40 million Americans cannot afford a home and Millennials have only a 48% ownership rate. Another study shows only 1/2 of American workers can afford a one-bedroom rental. The public housing act, for which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life only offers less than 1 million public housing units and about 3.2 million low-income units offering tax credits. Compare this to the 142 million total housing units, and you will see what Moyers steps for a successful campaign really amount to: the death of prominent leaders and the failure to produce results. Every modern movement, from BLM and #MeToo to Climate Change activism to the Sanders campaign and the turn towards socialist policies, all of these must follow the same model of failure and the acceptance of failure by the activists involved in these campaigns.

He quotes Mike Rudd, who helped turn the SDS into the Weatherman’s Underground saying, “We don’t want power. We’re allergic to it. It’s not in our DNA. We don’t like coercion. We don’t like hegemony.” This prescription for self-defeat gets repeated back again as Moyers and as Rudd. The former student leader and longtime fugitive also claims that things like justice and the acknowledgement of suffering can really destroy organizations and help fascism! They attempt to attack colloquial things like “trashing” and “calling out” as the sources of the destruction of organizational bureaucracies. Their discontent is mainly with the discontent themselves, which they would like to throw out of their territory, their “activist spaces.” We should believe, they say, that “progressive insitutions,” meaning bourgeois liberalism should take the place of the movement of the working class, the oppressed and disorganized under capitalism, but nevertheless the revolutionary class. Bourgeois liberalism will give us institutions, structure, and leaders all to tell us to abandon the pursuit of justice!

The growth of large popular movements has made bureaucratic control increasingly difficult and has led to a decline in the availability of executives to oversee the movements. They see this shortage as a “right-wing” plot or something resembling one. Someone they name as a long-time head of an organization says, “…you couldn’t conceive of a better right-wing plot to paralyze progressive leaders by catalyzing the existing culture where internal turmoil and microcampaigns are mistaken for strategic advancement of social impact for the millions of people depending on these organizations to stave off the crushing injustices coming our way.” This argument seems to stem directly from Stalinism, which accused Trotskyism and in fact much of the October Revolution’s leadership of right-wing or counter-revolutionary activity. In fact, the “microcampaigns” they seek to crush form a model, a ruling class laboratory for the crushing of the movements of millions. By attacking individuals within their organization, they attack the policies they represent and seek to implement through their influence on the work of the organization. Their concerns must take a higher priority since they participate in determining the course of the movement through their labor, their risking themselves personally, and other contributions.

 “Progressive leaders cannot do anything but fight inside the orgs, thereby rendering the orgs completely toothless for the external battles in play,” they claim. They cannot do anything but give in to the demands of the working class in essentially bourgeois institutions. Such a change would naturally bring reaction in its many forms, which would then lead to the re-groupment of the revolutionary side to redress the wrongs committed against each new “problematic” “figure.”

In a moment of honesty, the article states, “Critics of this article will claim that its intention is to tell workers to sit down and shut up and suck up whatever indignities are doled out in the name of progress.” We cannot assume, like the Stalinist bureaucracy did, that “staff reactionaries” really represent a right-wing plot. The unceasing nature of the insurrection has more to do with the objective economic forces that drive people into the political struggle. In replacing the revolutionary working class with progressive institutions as the driving force for political change, the article sets up the conflict in clear terms.

Again arriving at a point where the argument of the bosses can push no more, the article describes a solution. The solution is, [an executive director] said: “I buy them to leave, I just pay them to leave.” Of course the next question will be, what is a fair payment? A small amount to buy lunch? Or a real payment for their honesty, commitment, and personal courage? Such a payment would suffice to start a new political non-profit or fund many new groups each with their own structures, the beginnings of a growing democracy, something these old, oppressive institutions cannot countenance. At the same time, it could recruit the troublemakers out of their institutions where they do not belong into revolutionary struggle.

Bribes cannot replace the full amounts the capitalists must transfer to workers’ democracy in its many forms. They seek to offer kickbacks for sell-outs rather than fully fund the free expression of the ideas of political discontent. Old organizations will only serve as prison walls limiting the natural expansion of the collective spirit through the population. Instead, both a just legality and an end to debilitating conflict depend on creating outlets where discontent can turn into motivation to participate in factional leadership activity. This could lead to splits and fusions determined by rational debate rather than secretive, careerist tactics.

The same defenders of careerism, of adherence to the policies of superiors, will also fight back any independent action by majorities. Campaign workers may go on strike and demand strike pay, other may want to rescind endorsements of politically unpopular candidates, and the list can go on. Each time a vote takes place, supposedly, we need to trace this back to the work of a Russian conspiracy to foment insurrection. The article also attempts to blame grants and large foundations for providing funds independently of membership donations. Trade unions, business lobbies, and church groups, they argue, respond better to their membership for fear of losing donations, dues, or customers. The tasks of a majority that can control its own association should revolve around making whatever capital they receive submit to their own mission, their own decision-making. Whatever grants, subscriptions, or other forms of income, whether in large amounts from specific sources or small amounts from numerous participants, all must enter into the treasury through an established process to maintain independence and standards. Furthermore, giving the majority the power as customers, as free agents who can leave at will, denies them the chance to debate and vote, forcing each to make decisions as isolated individuals. A central committee can then preside over this divided mass to defend special interests and the ruling class. This will never empower the powerless majority. Large sums, furthermore, may arrive in many forms, not all harmful to the organization’s purpose or with excess strings attached. These, by expanding the budget, clearly give more force to the progressive goals they claim to defend, so why attempt to cast aside these large sums in favor smaller, more unreliable piecemeal accrual?

Another claim in this section bears scrutiny. “Foundations generally exacerbate the internal turmoil by reflexively siding with staff uprisings and encouraging endless concessions.”

CONTINUE HERE> REVISE… LESS ACCUSATION… (ALSO LOOK UP BRANDY BROOKS CAMPAIGN + DSA ENDORSEMENTS) We do not see this siding with staff uprising as reflexive but determined by necessity. The independent interests of the bureaucracy as a smaller group cannot compare to the greater interests of the staff and the clients, to which they give in. To the extent that this happens more with large sums, it comes from then treating the money as if it is stolen, encouraging concessions based on a system of redivision of spoils. They conquer an organization, then buy loyalty using a generous sum obtained with fraudelent promises.