[Peace-discuss] Incremental Change

[Janine Giordano]

Bob Illyes said,  "The powerful rarely give away any power unless they see 
that they have no other options, and then they give away as little as they 
can get away with."

Is power ever "given away," or do the oppressed just TAKE IT?

It's been a while since I've looked at Zinn's book, but I've more recently 
done lots of reading on the Civil Rights Movement. I study US history. Kwame 
Ture (Stokely Carmichael) made some really important arguments at the height 
of the Black Power movement and after about how nobody can give you your 
freedom, but you just have to TAKE it. In his (over 800 page) autobiography 
and history of the movement, Ture discusses this tension throughout the 
movement between believing in incremental change and believing in radical 
democracy--and the correspondingly different ways leaders sought to build 
the movement to reflect the kinds of changes they desired and thought 
possible. The NAACP campaigned for legal changes, for example, but chapter 
membership usually meant little more than paying dues, and legal changes did 
not get Southern schools desegregated, black people the opportunity to buy 
property in white neighborhoods, the KKK to stop burning crosses on lawns, 
public transportation desegregated, or any other social practices changed in 
the South. The Civil Rights Movement that we know of--that actually aimed at 
changing the radical relationships among human beings and not just making 
"incremental change---was based in organizing and fluid leadership, with 
voter registration and freedom schools as mere means for an end of human 
equality. It is because I am so inspired and convinced by the writings of 
leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on 
organizing social movements that I am so mistrustful of the need for 
changing laws, and making "incremental change" in the legal system. I think 
that one might say SNCC worked to get the laws that were already in place to 
be enforced. But I think they did so so so so much more than this. There was 
no law in Mississipi saying that black sharecroppers ought not to be raped 
and deprived of schooling and voting rights. There was no law saying that 
blacks ought to be able to shop in white-owned commercial establishments, be 
addressed as Sir and Ma'am or Mr. and Mrs. (or Mr. and Ms. or anything)---  
the black freedom struggle was not just about "civil rights" as codified in 
legal precepts. It was about human rights that exist outside the law. It was 
about awakening, in the space providied by the movement, a black nationalism 
of human rights for African Americans.

In his book, Kwame Ture provides excellent analysis of a debate between 
Bayard Rustin and Malcom X, at Howard University, in around 1961, wherein 
they offer counter-positions on the best method of gaining freedom for black 
people. Rustin is much more of an incremental change/ institutional change 
kind of guy. He went on to organize the March on Washington (without 
cellphones!), was a labor leader, worked with Martin Luther King, and was 
very good at organizing marches and mobilizing large groups of people to 
assemble. Malcom X, as you probably know, had a much more 
immediate/deliberate/direct sense of what blacks needed to do to demand 
power and equality in teh country. I suppose the debate will go on and one 
may think it semantic on the practical level, but I think the difference is 
very important. I don't think real change happens in institutions or laws, 
but in the reformatted social relationships that are built that can then 
change the institutions. Otherwise, from what I gather from history, those 
with the most "structural" privilege and power in the movement codify laws 
that reflect their own interests, rather than the interests of the most 
oppressed in the movement. We see this in how the civil rights movement has 
flattened to Affirmative Action, and how the Women's Liberation Movement, 
which was "born" in SNCC in Mississippi Voting Registration Project of 1964 
(called Freedom Summer by many white volunteers), flattened into a white 
women's crusade for "equal opportunity" in the workplace, "childcare" for 
career women, and abortion rights.... These claims for "women's rights" are 
all primarily white middle class women's issues. (Many black women working 
as "domestics" in white families in the South only dreamed of the 
opportunity to "stay at home" with their kids...)

When black feminist leaders had to choose between their devotion to women's 
lib or black power after 1964, many black women stayed in the black freedom/ 
black nationalism/ black power movement. In my opinion, the reason the Black 
Power movement was not nearly as codified in the white power structure as 
the Women's Lib movement was not because our "American people" wanted this 
incremental change before freedom for blacks. It is not because the 
"American people" somehow "spoke," and they said that white middle-upper 
class women have more important issues than by that time, Native Americans 
and gays and lesbians and those with disabilities, as well as issues raised 
by environmental activists, student activists, labor and antiwar 
activists... No, the "American People" did not speak out---but racist 
legislators, judges and executive department leaders in Washington violently 
oppressed the freedom movements through the FBI, restrictions in voting 
rights, and all kinds of violence. To me, this difference is important. I 
don't see incremental legal change as the best way to change this country, 
for the dominant white power structure will resist every need to change 
until it has absolutely no other choice in the world.

Finally, I raised the question of "who" you are talking about when you 
mention the fact that people have changed this country. Of course I agree 
with Zinn that people have made change in this country. But, it seems to me 
that "the American people" is not good enough in describing how this has 
happened (and continues to happen), because those who take the biggest risks 
in a lot of social movements are those who are least respected as fellow 
Americans. They become "the American people" after the fact, if and when 
change has been institutionally codified. Martin Luther King, whose life was 
threatened for years on end, has become part of the "American people" in his 
death and the death of many other movement activists. In the case of many 
movements that have not had as much institutionally sanctioned "success" 
(for those who define success in that way), the activists pushing for change 
are not even given the respect of being called "the American people." I'm 
thinking here of many Native Americans in the American Indian Movement and 
other movements for indigenous peoples to North America, as well as 
movements for the rights of central american and south american workers and 
immigrants (and MANY more, including political refugees...). Furthermore, 
most of us in this country did not come over on the Mayflower. My blood 
ancestors, for one, did not even get to this country until less than 100 
years ago. They had nothing to do with this country when the Constitution 
was written and signed... And yet, they were allowed to naturalize as 
citizens before the Chinese, even when the Chinese were here first. They 
were usually considered "white" for military segregation and access to 
public schools in the North, when most Blacks had been in this country for 
hundreds of years longer. Citizenship has been constructed to keep this 
country aligned with the white power structure, and newcomers "assimilated" 
into the ways of the institutional white power structure. I think that if we 
call movement activists in history "the American people," it lets 
conservatives off the hook and lets us forget what sacrifices so many made 
who were not even considered "American people." I think Zinn would agree 
with me here. 
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