The Five Main Ingredients

In dealing with this, in carrying out this basic principle, we've learned that organizing among the poor and building a broad movement against poverty has to entail certain basic considerations. We call them the Five Main Ingredients and the Six Panther P's. The Five Ingredients are more critical because they're about the strategic aspect of the struggle, about the unity of the poor and the building of a movement.

The first ingredient is teams of indigenous organizers among the poor. These teams of organizers are people who are indigenous to the process - that is, poor. This is very critical because to be in such a situation places you in a position to distinguish between those problems which are issues, and those problems which are not issues. If a problem is an issue, it is an issue by virtue of the fact that it is urgent, and is something people are prepared to move around, and something people are prepared to be educated around. Those are issues that people are dealing with. People that are in those situations are better able to identify those problems and distinguish between issues and problems generally, which is essential to organizing. Having a team of organizers that are indigenous to the situation is absolutely critical to organizing. When we were organizing the homeless union, we sat down to talk about the organizing situation in one city with homeless people. People from the Coalition for the Homeless participated in the discussion. They were well meaning people - social workers, many of them. They were involved in a lobbying campaign in the state legislature for a housing bill, and they wanted the participation of the homeless people to help them to carry through the lobbying effort - coming to their protests and so forth to put pressure to bear on the legislators. What happened in the discussion was that it became very plain that even though the homeless people understood that they didn't have a house, and needed a house, what was most urgent to them took a totally different form that what the advocates from the Coalition were trying focus on. It turned out that homeless people imostly were concerned that every day they had to line up at city shelters and suffer the indignity of having to get, on a rationed basis, five pieces of toilet paper. They got in a long line, to use the restroom, to get five sheets of toilet paper. That infuriated them. It took them beneath any level of dignity they might have. They wanted to move on that, they wanted that issue dealt with. Of course they knew that that was a consequence of them being in a shelter, and they were in the shelter as a result of being homeless, but in terms of the issue that they were prepared to move around, it was the indignity of standing in line to get five sheets of toilet paper to wipe their ass with. The people who weren't in that situation did not understand that, they took it for granted, but the people that were in the situation were prepared to move and be organized around that issue. So the idea of a team of indigenous organizers is crucial to the process. And this is not only true among the homeless, but also among the students or the labor unions or any other group. People in different fronts of activity should be organized by a team that can help figure out what's going to move people in that situation, what are they prepared to be educated and organized around in this struggle. Teams, that's ingredient number one.

Ingredient number two is a base of operations. This is where people come together to deal at least partially with their needs, and to work cooperatively to meet those needs, and also to be educated, to exchange experiences. In the organizing in the civil rights movement that process took place in the churches. During the union organizing in the 30's it was in the factory. But there's no such place with regard to poor people today, and what we see as absolutely critical is using whatever we can to establish bases of operation, whether it's like this, the human rights house [where this conference is being held], where people come and get food, or the human rights center where we have different projects of survival, like free legal help, GED courses, etc. We're also going to have movies, theater, and all these things you can't do because you're poor; you're going to have an opportunity to do them at this center, and we're going to have a base to come in contact with people on a regular basis. Bases of operation take all kinds of forms, sometimes they're long-standing and sometimes they're short-standing. We had Ridgeville, where we set up a tent city for over 50 families. We had free medical care in a medical tent, we had interaction with the community, and so on. That was our base of operation. We used it to educate, we used it to mobilize, we used that to organize, we used that to put people into alignment with other segments of the population who are trying to get in touch with people who are trying to do something about their situation instead of just accept it. So base of operations are very critical element.

The third ingredient is lines of communication. You gotta have a voice. You gotta be able to talk to each other, and you gotta be able to talk to everybody else. You gotta establish those lines of communication, which take various forms. One of the things we found on the march [to the United Nations], anticipating the blackout of our efforts by the mainstream media, was that we would have to rely on the newsletters, of trade unions that were supporting us, on meetings and conferences, but also on the computer and the internet. We set that up, and were able to enjoy tremendous support in response. We are now in the middle of discussions with people throughout the whole world, like these Swedish filmmakers who were just here, and they are spreading our message - they found out about us through the internet. We have set up a relationship with people in Canada, in Latin America, New Zealand, and more and more as our activity continues and becomes a rallying point for those looking to find us. Lines of communication are important.

The forth ingredient is mutual support networks. Organizing efforts throughout the city, state and nation, and even internationally, are happening among the poor, among students, and other elements aligned with that process. Those efforts need to support each other. So on a campus, if students are fighting around their issues, there should be the possibility of that network coming to support them. Support networks throughout the city, state and country is critical in terms of building a movement. Here in Philadelphia we got what we call the "Underground Railroad Project" that consists of people from different walks of life, in different struggles, in different areas who support KWRU; we have labor unions we are aligned with, we have the student group Empty the Shelters which supports us, and so on; building a movement is essentially building a network of people that are fighting on different fronts in different areas, and different issues.

The fifth ingredient, which is like the sun around which these other ingredients are planets, is this question of a core of people who are committed, who have an understanding of strategy, who have a political education and are committed to the struggle. They come from different strata, especially from leaders among the poor, and constitute a core of people who are committed to understanding the ins and outs of the struggle, and the estimate of the situation, and discern what are the counter-strategies out there which we are trying to confront with regard to those players and forces that are organizing against us, who benefit at our expense. A committed core is the essential basis to project organizing efforts outward to draw in more people, who in turn can influence even more.

So you have five ingredients: Teams, teams of indigenous organizers; Base, bases of operation; Voice, lines of communication, Networks, networks of mutual support; and Cores, committed cores of leaders.

[Part 4of 6] Tomorrow - Power Not Pity

On the Poor Organizing the Poor