 You
Only Get What You're Organized to Take |
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From
our experience, we've learned this key principle - "You
only get what you're organized to take." This is more and
more true with the kind of dislocation we're seeing, with the
jobs lost to automation. The economy is a money economy and
if you don't have money, you can't get what you need. And yet
the only way you can get money, especially with the dismantling
of the welfare state, is to get a job, a job paying decent wages.
You have McJobs, and jobs on every level that are being eliminated.
Just recently, McDonald's unfurled this whole new plan for their
production process where they're going to have McJobs eliminated
and replaced by McRobots. They've already applied some of this
stuff in Japan, and they're estimating something like half of
their workforce is going to be cut. In other words, you get
your hamburger without human hands touching it. That's certainly
beneficial in some respects, but families used to depend on
those jobs. When you have a money economy, where the only way
to get what you need is to get money, and the only way to get
money is to get hired by those that own the places of employment,
then if they lay you off there are serious implications. Levis-Strauss
just announced that they're going to lay off about 6,000 people,
and Eastman-Kodak just announced a similar figure, around 9,000.
Even the retail jobs that we see out there - largely in the
suburbs, which are undergirded by a segment of the population
that has income - those jobs are going to be undermined by the
downsizing process and similar factors. Companies are having
to downsize their productive process in order to compete on
an international level, and this is a trend that has continued,
unabated, with no sight of a turnaround. It's certainly gripping
the inner cities. But it looms to grip the suburbs where some
jobs are, retail jobs that are predicated on people having stable
job-income situations; those situations are being threatened
by this continuing job-restructuring process of downsizing.
This is a situation that is taking away people's only means
to provide for their needs. So under these circumstances, you
have increasing segments of the population struggling to survive,
people like myself, people that have been to college, people
that have had training and education. Don't believe the stereotypes;
you get into tent cities and you'll see people like yourself
who have been through college, had an education. Through people
working with the students we're learning about recent grads
going to unemployment offices. The class of '96 is meeting the
class of '94 in the unemployment lines. Their are cracks and
crevasses, and people are getting jobs, but on an overall scale
we're seeing the downsizing of the economy and the consequences
of families with no money. So under these circumstances, to
say you only get what you're organized to take is an appreciation
of the fact that an increasing segment of the population doesn't
have the wherewithal to buy what they need to buy.
We don't advocate
going around taking things all the time, but when it comes
to families who are being displaced with no other recourse,
when there's empty buildings just sitting there complete with
plumbing, or an empty church with plumbing and heating, and
there's people sitting there with families and kids, who have
no other options but to die or go into the church, we go into
the church. We pray to the same God of the people who closed
the church down - we were not awed by the priests who tell
us to leave after we took over the church, who told us, "We
don't want to remove you yet, but you have 48 hours."
They returned, and we had even more people, and our response
was that we talked to God, and God told us that we shouldn't
let the families die on the streets. The point was that the
basic position of the poor is a position where we have to
take our destiny into our hands and put ourselves into relationship
with others who see their self-interest tied to us, whether
social workers, labor leaders, students, or people in the
religious community, and win the bulk of the American people
to a program that affects their lives as well as ours. Unless
we do, poverty is not going to be ended, we're not going to
get off the Titanic, and we're going to find ourselves on
a treadmill running faster and faster, with more people dying
from house fires, and all that other kind of stuff. This basic
principle "you only get what you're organized to take"
distinguishes us from other movements that have happened before.
Those other movements were made up of people that were employed,
and so had dues structures and things; collective bargaining
and such was the basis of that approach. Our approached is
premised on a whole different basis because of the new situation
we face.
"You Only
Get What You're Organized to Take" also refers to the
importance of organizing. Power and fundamental change grows
from organization. It is only through organization that people
under attack will be able to gain any kind of leverage and
strength. It's sadly ironic that the part of the country which
most needs organization is actually the least organized. By
organization, we don't mean the capacity to turn people out
for a rally. Sure, that's one piece of it, but how many of
those people are really conscious, are really going to stick
and stay, are really going to be able to build and expand
organization. We've had too many experiences pouring all our
energy into a single issue, and then when the issue is resolved
- whether we win or lose - we lose the people who were involved.
And then, after a period of time your opponent is able to
take back any gains you had. So it's not enough just to put
people into motion, you need real organization! It's our experience
that the question of leadership is critical to organization.
Conscious, capable leaders are the foundation of building
organization. Our strength is in those advanced leaders, who
are able to influence those around them, building new and
intermediate leaders, and who in turn can affect mass numbers
of people.
[Part 3 of 6]
Tomorrow - The Five Main Ingredients of Organizing
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-
On
the Poor Organizing the Poor
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By
Willie Baptist, Education Director of the Kensington
Welfare Rights Union
[Part 1
2 3 4
5 6]
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About
the Campaign 
