Organize and Die

Welcome, friends and fellow travelers. I am a community organizer, DJ, researcher and writer living in the Northwest US. This website is an attempt to wrangle my writing, music and social commentary. It will focus on the intersections of organizing, solidarity, love and getting down. I hope this first post inspires you to keep reading and the site instills even a small feeling of hope and energy.

My biggest motivation to act now is a sense of the collective, growing desire for mass action and shared joy in the face of a rapidly closing window of opportunity. The global pandemic and uprisings for racial justice have inspired millions to reflect, organize, and find solidarity however we can, even while physically distant and facing state and climate violence. This isn’t as unique a moment as many historically comfortable people think, but it is a crucial one that requires analysis and organizing. So I’m sharing thoughts for friends and comrades.

Why did the Movement for Black Lives spawn a globalized revolution after the murder of George Floyd, instead of in response to the countless incidents of police brutality over the years? Why is there a resurgence of militant labor and a growing socialist movement now, after decades of union atrophy and a Century of red baiting? How did recently ridiculed ideas like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal become palpable in popular consciousness almost overnight? I don’t have much to add, but I think it important to explore contributing factors.

The current routine shocks are so staggering that people easily forget they are what some leftists call “overdetermined”. Late stage Capitalism is unstable but enduring. It is filled with inherent, horrific crises. And the market machinations and political tricks used to reschedule crises actually compound them. Neoliberalism, carceral warehousing of the poor and men of color, collapsing labor power, dismantling of the “welfare” state, endless war and straight up imperialism ripped at our social fabric for half a century. And this is before the 2008 financial collapse brought a decade of yawning inequality and worldwide police paramilitarization.

I know this is pithy yet pedantic, but the point is to situate now within the arc of history. These crises and contradictions pushed whole generations to the brink, but also created opportunities for revolutionary change. They birthed movements such as the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Syriza, Podemos, the Sanders/Corbyn phenomena and many others. They may feel like ancient history, and most failed in their central goals, but they are very recent responses to core contradictions, they reflect massive shifts in consciousness and they laid the groundwork for today. They’ve sewed seeds that can blossom into meaningful, productive movement work. And all were before a global pandemic.

It’s hard to overstate the opportunities this time creates for genuine change. COVID-19 fractured normally aligned elites, both between and within factions everywhere. Freefalling markets led the US Fed to inject trillions of dollars into global corporations rather than people’s pockets, only for it to evaporate immediately. A psychotic, failing US President fomented a terrifying movement of White, racist health deniers, forcing us to reckon with White Supremacy and impending fascism and finally take sides. Many went hard right, but many more went left. They realized, as Howard Zinn says, “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” And the last few months under the Biden presidency have demonstrated -regardless of what we think of his own terrible history of racism and imperialism- that mass movement pressure can force elites to spend trillions on social programs.

But the most important factor was the disruption of daily life for hundreds of millions in the US and billions worldwide. We’ve been isolated but seeking connection, glued to the news, witnessing it unfold in real time. Everyone has an inkling that the most “expendable” workers are actually saving society… and they always have. And, while the first US stimulus was woefully inadequate, there was a period where millions of us had tons of free time, reasonable unemployment insurance (thanks, Bernie Sanders), and a recognition that we’re all in this together. We were primed for something to pull us out of our stupors.

Then we saw the horrific, racist, nine-minute police murder of George Floyd, followed closely by Breonna Taylor. We saw that state complicity, corporate media platitudes and horrific police violence couldn’t stop an eruption in the streets. Millions wanted to join. Hundreds of thousands did. The constant struggle against White Supremacy, institutional racism and the police state exploded from its traditional space of Black Lives Matter, Black churches and segments of the radical left into mainstream (largely White) consciousness. This is despite the pandemic, Trumpism, constant repression and a vocal, increasingly murderous right wing.

There has been a profound beauty in the street protests, where Black youth expressing equal parts jubilance and righteous indignation led inter-racial, inter-generational movements of what felt like basically everyone. Things may have slowed down from their 2020 Summer peak. That’s the nature of uprisings, and now the real work of organizing, base building and process begins. But there’s an energized, growing consciousness that the underlying conditions have always existed and -most crucially- that struggle is an active process. Moments like these are rare, but if channeled right, they can transform generations to come. And in this case, we have to create transformation, for the sake of organized society.

I think the coming climate collapse adds urgency for those who hadn’t previously felt it. White folks everywhere are getting a glimpse of the existential threat Black and Brown communities always faced, although in a general environmental sense, rather than the daily grind and intermittent horror of White Supremacy. This is causing many more on the White left to realize you can’t be a radical environmentalist or an anti-Capitalist without being truly anti-Racist. Young folks of all backgrounds are recognizing that multi-racial, multi-generational organizing against racism and for economic democracy are the only things that will save us.

All of these realizations are what’s different, and it’s hard to imagine them going away soon. Even with ebbs and flows in action. Even with the 24-hour news cycle and social media addiction. Even with the liberal party’s pyrrhic victory in the recent US election. Even with… whatever. Class consciousness, environmental consciousness, and inter-racial solidarity are at new heights. It’s undetermined whether this will hold, leading to a wave of mass organizing and “revolutionary” change, or be just another blip in the horrifically unbalanced but remarkably stable train of late stage Capitalism. But we can try to do something about it.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had a motto in the 1990s, “Organize or Die.” It acknowledged the atrophy of labor from the 1950s-80s and the gradual shift from organizing models to “business unionism.” The idea didn’t reverse the decades-long decline, but it did spread through much of the labor movement and highlighted the crisis. It also resonates with and partially set the stage for the recent re-awakening in union organizing, striking and rank-and-file militancy. It situated organizing where it belongs, as part of the struggle for life.

I’ve recently come to embrace the concept of “Organize and Die,” at least for myself. Not as a creepy boss ultimatum to workers or a critique of labor or any other movement’s failures. But as an acceptance that the struggle is a process much bigger than any one person, organization, movement, or time. It is a recognition of the countless unknown people who have moved in solidarity with each other, in their workplaces, in the streets, in elections, and ever so briefly in the halls of power. The struggle is ongoing. It outlasts all of us. But we must participate.

By participation, I mean active engagement in the process of movement building and organizing, not just talking the talk. This goes beyond armchair activism, memes, class reductionaism or ultra leftism, (or, in social media terms, intellectual circle jerks leading to “Facebook Faptivism” -and, yes, you can use that). It means discussions on the intersection of theory and action, the painstaking work of organizing via one-on-one conversations, spreadsheets and escalation plans, you name it. And while we certainly must know our history and the ideas informing our work, we can’t let any of that get in the way of the work.

So what do we do? We organize, of course! We use tried and true strategies, while being open to new ones (particularly coming from youth). We fight for reforms, but only those in service of revolutionary goals. And we do so knowing it may be for nought, that the social experiment of modern humanity may fail through our own machinations… Or, even if we do succeed in real transformation, it is unlikely to take place in our lifetimes. And we must do so together, across generations, across ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and certainly across national boundaries.

So, yeah, welcome to my website. It will sometimes be ranty (first one had to be, right). It will sometimes be pithy. It will certainly be inconsistent (this post was written over weeks). It will help me understand my own thoughts on love and struggle. And I hope beyond hope that it will help a few folks feel more connected to each other and the world as we engage in this calling until the last of us are standing… knowing that it may not succeed, but unable to imagine anything else. We will either right this ship or go down together. Love and solidarity to all.