Have you ever heard of the Streisand effect? It goes something along the lines of “the best way to find the right answer on the internet is to post the wrong answer so that people will swarm to correct you”. As we assess resolutions and bylaw amendments on the vibrant Slack discussion channel I think many of us have felt like both the naive poster and the internet swarm at different times. I see this as a sliver of how dialectics works. One person posits a thesis, another person disagrees with an antithesis, and then a synthesis is landed on, which itself becomes a new thesis that someone disagrees with, and that tension begets a new synthesis, and so on. I will resist the urge to write about how Marx turned this Hegelian framework of Dialectical Idealism “on its feet” in order to use his Dialectical Materialism philosophy to not only interpret the world but to change it. But I will digress to say that our work requires good-faith back-and-forth dialogue… and probably Pierce in Tech Ops!
Annual Convention season is an opportunity for our chapter to interpret our ideals and material conditions so that we can sharpen our shared political project and change the world. What is working well? What has slid off point? What direction are we headed? What persistent problems do we experience? And how do we draw on the rich history of leftist organizers for principled praxis? We carry a heavy burden as a big tent organization. We intentionally litigate and relitigate topics like how we relate to the DFL, what we do about the fact that this is a majority white organization, what are causes and solutions to burnout, how we get restorative justice in a grievance process, how we balance democratic transparency with operational security and cohesive chapter focus, what are the skills we value in leadership, and how do we properly place labor as the fulcrum upon which we gain and leverage working-class power?
These are no small questions. We are, after all, here to overcome the most powerful political-economic system of all time. It is a mental, physical, and emotional burden to continually connect academic theory and the struggles of our ancestors to current global, national, and local conditions in order to prescribe the right means for the proper ends. Sheesh, it can be a lot! And it has been life-changing for me to know that I don’t have to go through this alone. It has been transformative for me to understand that much of good political education can only happen through a struggle with a community of comradely interlocutors.
We know that united we have power. We also learn from leftist organizers before us that a consolidated and narrow ideology set in stone can turn us into a rigid vestige of an organization instead of a vehicle for liberation. So we try a statement or tactic that we think is best, we receive critical feedback, then we try something sharper, we receive more critical feedback, then we try something better, etc.
It can be really difficult to be passionate about a principled stance in earnest good faith, while also practicing a zen-like non-attachment to that stance as our comradely smiths hammer away at the blade we were so careful to make. I want to honor the burden that we, as comrades, carry. It can feel scary, immobilizing, grandiose, insufficient, isolating, and overwhelming. To paraphrase Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, “being scared is the only time you can be brave”. I have such admiration for the bravery you cultivate in the face of this unsettling sharpening process. This process that requires us to be both attached and unattached. This process that requires us to have both fiery passions and to move like water as we synthesize our path forward.
Such a duality is part of the human condition. Socialism, after all, is a project to allow us all to be more human. So let us let us shoot our shots with confidence and good will. And let us not objectify our thoughts, behaviors, resolutions, campaign platforms, and principled beliefs as immutable features that are inseparable from our personal identities. My favorite part of our Community Agreements is “Assume Full Humanity”. We do ourselves and each other a disservice to assume that our identities are reducible to the thesis or antithesis we place on the anvil. We are dynamic and brave organizers who are in this big tent in order to forge the better world that we all deserve. And it is a process.
At this Annual Convention ideas and tactics will be drawn, hammered, blunted, sheathed, and sharpened. Such is the honorable process of our political project, and I respect the heck out of you all (even, and maybe especially, those with whom I disagree) for doing this very human work with me. Let us move forward through this process feeling all the feelings we need to feel while not diminishing our ability to work comradely together for big wins this next year.
Solidarity Forever!
From Michael W