[p2p-research] Fwd: ZNet Daily Commentary: Principles, Program, Strategy, Tactics By Ted Glick

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <no-reply at zcommunications.org>
Date: Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 12:19 PM
Subject: ZNet Daily Commentary: Principles, Program, Strategy, Tactics By
Ted Glick
To: michelsub2004 at gmail.com


 [image: zspace] <http://ruby.zcommunications.org/>

Print <http://www.zcommunications.org/contents/167594/print>
Principles, Program, Strategy, Tactics

March 2, 2010 By *Ted Glick*

Ted Glick's ZSpace Page <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/tedglick> /
ZSpace <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/>

"Political leadership is a matter of program, strategy and tactics, and not
the color of those who lead it, their oneness of origin with their people,
nor the services they have rendered."     CLR James, The Black Jacobins

I have discovered, over the course of my years as an organizer for positive
social change, that it is important that members of an organization or
movement learn to distinguish between principles, program, strategy and
tactics. An inability to do so often leads to internal division and, sooner
or later, a falling away of support and energy.

Within the activist global justice movement of the late 90's and early 00's,
for example, and sporadically since, there are those who have taken the
position that their right to throw rocks and bottles at police or break the
windows of banks and corporations was a principle that others needed to
accept. But these kinds of actions are not a principle; they're a specific
tactic. The fact that they were put forward as a principle, under the guise
of allowing a "diversity of tactics," doesn't change what they really are.

In my opinion, they're a counter-productive tactic. In the words of singer
and activist David Rovics in a recent column, "whatever tactics you're using
to organize resistance groups of any kind, the tactics need to be ones that
don't completely alienate the general public (very much including the
"liberals"). And the general public tends to be freaked out by groups of
people committing acts of violence (or forms of property destruction that
seem violent to them)."

I began thinking about these issues over the last week as a result of
criticism by South African activist Patrick Bond of one part of my
mid-February Future Hope column, "Climate and Political Tipping Points."
Bond criticized my support for a specific piece of climate legislation, the
CLEAR Act, introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins, as
inconsistent with what I had written about in the first part of the column.
In that earlier part I wrote about the continuing need for "strong action
toward a desperately-needed, clean energy economy."

Based upon what Patrick has written over the years, I think we're probably
pretty close as far as principles and program. I think we both support the
need for revolutionary changes in our energy systems and in society as a
whole toward governments and economies that are about justice, respect for
the Earth and human freedom. I think we both prioritize the building of
grassroots-based organizations that empower people as they fight for their
survival and justice needs. I think that we want to see the emergence of
societies which move past the corporations-are-dominant model to a new model
which is truly democratic and liberating, a "power to the people" model, in
terms of both how we get our energy and how we do our politics.

But we seem to have some disagreements about strategy, and I know that he is
representative of a sector of the climate movement that I consider to be an
absolutely essential sector. It's the one which pushes the more radical
solutions ("radical" as in getting at the root or foundation of the problem)
and which supports the tactics of civil disobedience and direct action.

I'm not opposed to any of these approaches; indeed, as far as direct action,
I've played a leading role over the last five years in organizing, and have
been arrested at, some such actions: my ledge-sit in 2006 at the
headquarters of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration; a
blockade of the State Department in 2007 during a meeting of the world's
leading carbon polluters; the No War, No Warming civil disobedience actions
in 2007 and 2008; and the mass shutdown of the Capitol Coal Plant in 2009. I
go to trial on May 11th for a "Green Jobs Now; Get to Work"  banner hang
inside the Hart Senate Office Building last fall.

There are other, more moderate sectors of the climate movement who don't
support these more aggressive tactics. I am working with many people in
these sectors in efforts to get the best possible climate legislation passed
by the Congress and the White House this year-which I consider to be the
CLEAR Act, hopefully strengthened through an amendment process-believing
that this is strategically key if we are to have any hope of avoiding
climate catastrophe.

I don't believe that it is enough to advocate for the more radical climate
solutions and engage in direct action in support of these solutions.
Unfortunately, this wing of the climate movement is nowhere near strong
enough to have the kind of political impact we need right now.

More to the point, if we are talking about a broadly-based mass movement of
millions of people working and acting for a clean energy revolution in the
USA and tens of millions worldwide-which is what we need, given the power of
the fossil fuel interests-we need a process whereby, over time, more and
more people see that relatively moderate measures aren't enough. People need
to learn, through their own experiences, through interaction with others who
see the need for more fundamental changes, and, regrettably, through the
impacts of more and more destructive floods, droughts and storms, that
stronger steps need to be taken.

In order for that broadly-based movement to maintain momentum and keep
building, victories need to be won. And our heating-up atmosphere and oceans
also need victories, even if they are not the ultimate victories that can
get the human race off fossil fuels and back in balance with our Mother
Earth.

Immanuel Wallerstein has written about the need for "movements to
internalize the sense that the social transformation they are seeking will
not occur in a single apocalyptic moment, but as a continuous process, one
continually hard-fought. . . In such a context, intramovement diplomacy
becomes a very useful expenditure of energy. It will make possible the
combination of daring leaps and structural consolidation which could make
plausible a progressive transformation of the world-system."*

Those of us in the climate movement who are motivated not by what Obama and
the Democratic Party leadership want but by the needs of our peoples and the
earth would do well to heed these words and interact with each other
accordingly.

*from "Antisystemic Movements," in the book Transfoming the Revolution

Ted Glick is the Policy Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network
whose recently-written book manuscript, "Love Refuses to Quit: Climate
Change and Social Change in the 21st Century," is available at
http://www.tedglick.com
------------------------------

*From:* Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives<http://www.zcommunications.org/>
*URL:*
http://www.zcommunications.org/principles-program-strategy-tactics-by-ted-glick

The tool to turn commentary mailings off or on can be found in "My Account"
-> "Preferences/Edit My Details" option (Receives commentaries).
To view commentaries online go here:
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/
Comment on this commentary:
http://www.zcommunications.org/principles-program-strategy-tactics-by-ted-glick

Print <http://www.zcommunications.org/contents/167594/print>

Temporarily toggle off commentary and other Sustainer
mailings.<http://www.zcommunications.org/my_account/remove_mailing_commentary/>
(You can turn them back on from your account page at any time. You will not
lose permissions or other Sustainer benefits nor will this interrupt your
donations.)

Visit your account page and make changes of any sort you may
desire.<http://www.zcommunications.org/my_details>
(You will have to enter your password in the field that appears.)

If you would like to stop receive ZNet mailings, please follow the
unsubscribe link below

http://www.zcommunications.org/unsubscribe/778ba74fdef58614f085e9516cc95712cf3f4e55



-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100304/d2923e84/attachment-0001.html>