Tom Kertes

The trip to DC as part of the�LPFM Leadership Days�organized by�Prometheus Radio Project�was an incredible experience for me. �It was especially great seeing Veronica and Carl as United Workers spokespersons speak so well on behalf of the organization at the White House. �I learned a lot about the power of transformative and organized love. �

Above: Just before heading to the White House.
Below: Signing an over-size letter to President Obama after meeting with White House staff to talk about the benefits of low power radio for the community.

As an added bonus, I got to take pictures of the march before lobbying with the House and Senate. �It was a great protest, and good way to start the day of lobbying!

A few blocks from the United Workers office at new buildings near the Bio Park.

Caught this as we wrapped up the Safety and Security Team’s walk through of the march route. �The ad is in a bus shelter just across the street from the Inner Harbor.

Kids on the Hill interviewed me at the City from Below Conference

Report from City from Below Conference:

I just got back from Baltimore for an incredible conference on urban issues, fair development, the right to the city and the work of community organizers fighting for economic justice and human rights for all. Usually when I’m in Baltimore it’s to work in advance for an event, or to staff the event itself, and there’s rarely time to sit back and enjoy the work of other community organizers. So it was it nice to not only witness such an incredible experience, and to take part in the experience as a participant, but also to have some time to sit back, attend workshops and socialize and learn from the work of other community organizers.

(Thanks to the organizers who worked for months to pull this all together! The work paid off and this was as great opportunity for Baltimore and other communities to share ideas, learn from each other and develop our networks with each other.)

Lessons Learned: Different Strategies, Common Purpose

I learned a lot this weekend at the City from Below Conference. One thing that I learned was that there are more and more community organizers who are thinking about and moving toward more strategic, more long-term, more comprehensive, more multi-dimensional, more community-focused and more effective organizing efforts. I also learned that there are some emerging differences between approaches to radical organizing, and that these differences may lead us in different directions but does not need to divide us as we share a common purpose.

One Approach: Unite Around Shared Values and Develop Leaders from the Ranks of the Poor

One approach is focused on strategies of long-term base building which is centred on building a multitude of institutions led by leaders from the ranks of the poor that together will address the overall system confronting the poor, the root cause of poverty and oppression. This approach builds capacity through leadership development of leaders from the ranks of the poor, which includes developing specific skills in things like strategic planning, coordinating events, building power, communications, coalition building and other community organizing essentials.

The base for this approach is intentionally multi-racial, multi-lingual and centred on the poor themselves. The day in and day out work of this approach starts now, but recognizes that there is a long road to identifying and then developing the number of leaders from the ranks of the poor required to end poverty. While understanding the realities stemming from the intersection of poverty, oppression, racism and history is key to this approach, there is a greater emphasis on analysis based on effective ways to create the power to change things.

Rather than spend our limited time, resources and attention on developing complex systems of ideas based on divisions between people, or in reaction to the current systems of oppression, this approach is focused on developing ideas that help build power, help build institutions and help create spaces that are equitable and based on the inherent worth of every person. Time is instead focused on understanding reality, knowing the what and the how of those in power, and then applying this understanding in order to change reality in accordance with our values and vision of a world free of oppression, including the oppression of poverty.

We learn how the powerful divide by race, divide by fear and divide by lies. We do this so that we can unite for common purpose and not be divided by those who seek to take away our power. We learn how cultures are destroyed by those in power to hold onto power. We do this in order to express our power through culture, to unite through the strengths found in our many cultures, to express ourselves and to be ourselves in the spaces we create, based on our cultural values and cultural experiences. We realize the fullness of our humanity, both as a shared experience and as an individual experience. We respect each other as we are, recognizing that respect and dignity is universal, but requires that individual cultural experiences be respected as part of our our shared and individual experience as a person and as human beings.

Another Approach: Take Advantage of the Moment and Focus on System of Ideas for How to Organize Society

Another approach focuses on taking advantage of the moment, building on the crisis of the day and using that to galvanize activists as a means to spread the word about the root causes of the crisis. This approach focuses on spreading key ideas about how to understand the ways in which politics and the economy intersect. This approach focuses on calls for action based on this analysis.

While the analysis and need to act in this approach are clear and useful, what’s missing from this approach is an infrastructure on which to act. What’s also missing is a craft to carry the message in ways that are not distorted by the communications capacity of our opposition. Missing too is a multitude of leaders, capable of building a multitude of institutions that will exercise power on behalf of the ideas and values embodied within the analysis of the root causes of the problem.

Embedded within each of these two approaches are different ideas for how to organize people within our movement. One approach seeks to organize by our differences and to motivate participation on the basis of material needs. The other approach seeks to organize according to principles of unity, and to motivate participation according to transformative moral values. We should be very clear in our thinking about how different these two approaches really are, to not confuse the different approaches as doing the same thing.

Just as we should be clear in our thinking about how our approaches differ, we should also be clear in that having different strategies and ideas for how to best carry out our shared visions and values should not be a basis for division. We should not want to, nor do we need to all do the same things in order to realize the same values and visions. While our approaches may be very different, there’s no need to convert each other to each other’s strategic analysis for how to build the power required to realize our vision of a just society for all. We should listen to each other, learn from each other, work with each other when possible and when it makes sense, and always remember that differences do not require disunity in purpose.

I left the conference more inspired by the amazing level of commitment by so many to the values of respect, dignity and sanctity of life for all. While we may not all use the same words to define our work, or to describe our values, it’s clear that at the root of our reasons for fighting together the values we share are stronger than any differences in the ways we plan to carry out our shared vision for a just society for everyone.

Later that same day:

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Today’s Toronto Star has a column on the sorry state of the Canadian tech market. Who to blame for slow-to-market release of things like the iPhone, TiVo and Kindle 2?� According to Ken Coates the blame goes to consumers, too passive to demand more and better stuff.

Putting aside that more likley reasons might include regulations that limit competition (perhaps to the better of the Canadian economy by allowing Canadian companies and Canadian values to survive in a world dominated by American corporate values), fewer super rich consumers to support the latest gadgets because the spread between the rich and poor reflects a more robust middle class than in America, and different social values as reflected by the economic choices (so nobody’s really to blame).

But Coates assigns blame and calls for a more consumption-oriented society to right the wrong of� fewer techno gadgets for Canada.

In truth, the most serious problem rests with uncritical and undemanding consumers. Save for a tiny number of tech fanatics, few Canadians have even an inkling about what is going on with the digital media in other countries. When news hits of a Kindle-type innovation, Canadians accept the inevitable delays with quiet resignation. There is no groundswell of protest, no demands that companies provide Canadians with goods and services widely available outside the country, and no pressure on retailers, producers and governments to remove technology logjams. source

The statement that stands out, from a Dean of the University of Waterloo, is that the problem is “uncritical and undemanding consumers”.

As if it is only the critical consumer who demands more and more crap, wants more and more production of “wants” from clever marketers creating demands through perception management.� I don’t think that if Canadians were more critical that we’d be demanding more stuff.� In fact I venture to guess that critical analysis of the true costs – social, ecological, political and cultural – would lead to an end of these kinds of markets not raging made consumer-base demanding more stuff, faster, sooner and move of it. Perhaps critical consumers would lead to a rich and caring society without Kindles, iPhones or TiVos.

I’ll be presenting at The City from Below conference in Baltimore.� The conference is running March 27-29.� For more information visit http://cityfrombelow.org.

Here’s the presentation information:

Politics is driven by power, including the power to communicate. Effective communication moves people to act in ways intended by the messenger.

The election of Barack Obama was driven in large part by a communications team that understands marketing in a post-television era, including how to use branding, social marketing and the Internet to shape culture. Obama constructs culture in part by using the power of myth and epic narrative. This presents a dilemma and an opportunity for grassroots community organizers whose politics may differ from what Obama can deliver, but whose stories and aspirations sound identical to his.

Just as with Reagan’s racist use of the word “Welfare Queen,” the branding of “urban” for partisan purposes intersects with the work of grassroots organizers at many levels and cannot be ignored. This workshop is a reflection on what we can learn from Obama’s communication strategies and tactics, and how we should respond.

We’ll look into how cognitive psychology, social movement, cultural construction, politics, power and technology intersect at the level of grassroots urban organizing.