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Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Out of chaos, Opportunity


By Duane Clinker in Rhode Island’s Future


There are no more smoke filled rooms at the RI State House. Smoking has been outlawed long ago. But the games that used to be played out in those older rooms have never stopped.


Perhaps that’s why two strong reform bills, one restricting guns in the hands of those involved in charges of domestic violence, and one giving a few days sick leave to workers, each of which had already won majorities in both the Senate and House, suddenly disappeared last week. 


Under orders of the House and Senate leadership the General Assembly of the state of R.I. simply shut down, before a final reconciliation vote on these bills, or for that matter the state budget itself, could be passed.


The leaders, Sen. Dominic Ruggerio and Rep. Nicholas Mattiello, accomplished this feat through a complex maneuver at the last minute that left those community folks already celebrating their legislative reform victories stunned. 


The two power-brokers accomplished this betrayal in an orchestrated, complex, way, but one mostly irrelevant in its details here. Suffice it to say that it had little to do with the practice of genuine democracy.


The Speaker of the House claimed he adjourned “his” legislative house without final votes because the leader of the Senate had betrayed a handshake. 


Was stopping the reform bills the reason for this play? Or were the death of these bills simply an unexpected positive in a cat-fight between two ego-laden legislative leaders? 


Either way the deed was done, and the powerful moneyed lobbies of the Chamber of Commerce and the National Rifle Association must be pleased with their politicians for the goal of stopping this legislation seems, for the moment, accomplished.


It is all the worse because the reform bills received support among the majority of the legislators themselves. 
 

They were fought for by thousands of Rhode Islanders, many new to political activity since the motivating election of Trump. 


Hundreds made phone calls, and knocked on tens of thousands of doors. They attended hearings, and many for the first time in their lives, raised their voices and spoke in the rooms of the powerful. And they won. Or, at least they had the votes to win, until they were played by the legislative leadership who suddenly adjourned the General Assembly for the season. For the people, defeat seemed snatched out of the jaws of victory by a cynical power-mad leadership that gamed us.


Some will see this just as one more heartbreaking, demoralizing loss after hard fought campaigns. But, it could be something else. It could be taken, not as a defeat, but as the start of a larger, more aggressive, and even winning stage of the organizing struggle, right now.


This should be the time to escalate the campaign. The legislative leaders have in fact, just given those who want change a kind of gift in the struggle to ultimately win.



Remember, the majorities of both legislative houses voted yes on these basic legislative proposals before the leaders of the House and Senate pulled the plug on the entire session. 


Remember too, that thousands of Rhode Islanders are already involved in the campaigns favoring these legislative pieces. 


Furthermore, the House leadership just made the issue even bigger and more public by also cancelling the vote on the entire state budget, wreaking potential confusion and delays throughout state government.


There is an old-school organizing truism that in struggles like these “the action is in the reaction.” What does this mean? 


It means that the opponent here, (the House & Senate leadership in particular), reacted to the imminent success of these popular reform bills by changing the game. They realized they had the power to simply adjourn the Assembly rather than take those last final votes.


There was an action: the active public won the votes they needed for victory. And there was a reaction: the powers adjourned, imagining perhaps that their message would be received as: “We have the power. Case closed. You lose. Go home.”


But in organizing each “reaction” has the potential to be merely prelude to the next “action,” until victory can be won. It’s a kind of dialectic. 


Mattiello and Ruggerio slammed the door, but they exposed themselves and expanded the issue. Their reaction can give the campaign new energy if we can see it and seize it, and move it to the next level.


The powers-that-be have just given to the activists, if they choose to grab it, one of the most important gifts any organization can have in a seemingly impossible fight: a bigger handle!

Anything can be lifted with enough people and a good handle.


So far, however, the response, such as it is, among the leaders of multiple RI collaborations and networks of “the resistance” seems timid at best. 


Perhaps the largest of the newly formed networks and collaborations is Resist Hate. In an unsigned email, they suggest supporters call or email state legislative leaders, and urge them to return. 


That’s not much of a campaign, acknowledging as they do in the letter that success in getting them to return is unlikely, and essentially acknowledging defeat. 


They promise to turn to summer “house parties” to build their contacts, and to resume the campaigns whenever the state legislative leaders permit a do-over in the Assembly in which case they will likely have to start again from the beginning of the long process. In other words: this campaign is over for now.


Other groups have yet to be heard from, except the Progressive Democrats who have called for the replacement of Ruggerio and Mattiello – a certainly deserved fate – but who have announced no path or organizational initiative to that end.


These responses from the RI resistance networks so far is sad because in truth, these are not normal times locally, nationally, or globally. 


And, as of this writing, there seems no way to convene the regular people, who have been involved in one place to discuss their real options and to decide what to do. Shall we stop now, or instead move this thing into unexpected statewide actions at every fair and festival over Rhode Island’s summer?


Perhaps to do this, especially to let the hundreds of people who have actually worked on these campaigns, have a place where they can discuss, debate, and decide the ways forward themselves, we need more than “networks” and “collaborations.” 


Perhaps we need organizations – democratic places where ordinary people, in times like these, even at the most local of levels in the smallest state in the union, can learn in their numbers how to contend for real power, and how to see the internal dynamic that reveals weakness in the presumed powers of the arrogant.


We, the people, can’t win if we relegate ourselves to the rules of engagement which the powerful have given us, especially when the powerful can decide to simply cancel the process when they are at the point of losing. We have to move beyond their permission giving. And to do so we need organizations that we can control and direct for ourselves.


If we don’t build these things, we risk a sure slide back to apathy and fear among the majority. We will soon find ourselves in a new “normal time,” left with mostly symbolic fights that unite dozens instead of thousands and tens of thousands.


Oppression demands resistance. It always has and it always will. If not, greater bondage comes.


Effective organizing campaigns are multi-dimensional fights that go outside the box. They shouldn’t be over, until the people in the campaign say they’re over. House meetings and parties are critical to organizing. But this is precisely not the time to accept defeat and start over.


This is the time to haunt them. This is the time to understand the handle they have given us. They have made the fight about even more than these two important bills. 


They have made it also about the “honorables” Rep. Mattiello and Sen. Ruggerio, and their sabotage of reform and the democratic process in the service of egos and money.


But, to win we have to build organizations where ordinary people can see and discuss and decide for themselves.


I am admittedly an old school radical. Perhaps the days of democratic organizational process and flexible tactics, in multidimensional responses to arrogant power are over.


But I don’t think so. I have seen astonishing things, sometimes breaking loose beyond expectations.

I think change can come.


And, with respect to what has just happened at the RI State House, I know an organizing gift and handle when I see one. 


To see it too, you have to look at it from the angle of justice, not accepting the opponents presumed power, but instead using what he has exposed to you to throw him off his feet. 


Your goal must be, not just the winning this or that specific and small need, but the building of humane power among ordinary people for real change.


That might be the most effective form of Resistance of all.