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Updated Daily!
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By Skip Spitzer
Building alliances between labor and other movements is particularly important. Human labor plays an essential role in production and therefore has the potential to disrupt it. This is a special form of resistance, but one that has been plagued by anti-labor policy, union cooptation, and undemocratic practices and narrow focuses by unions. Fortunately, there is a resurgence of the idea of "social movement unionism," in which the labor movement makes linkages between workplace, civil society issues and the larger structure of harm.
Solidarity and agenda broadening
Deep alliances require deep solidarity-acts of mutual support that extend beyond a group's specific mission or objectives. One way to achieve greater solidarity is to reexamine organizational agendas. Most groups with a particular focus are run and supported by people concerned about a wide range of issues. Reconsidering a group's work in light of the structure of harm can suggest useful restatements of mission that make deep solidarity a more explicit goal, without losing particular focus.
Reframing problems
Another way to integrate systemic change is to recast the problems a group seeks to remedy. Pesticide reform groups, for example, frequently make the case that pesticides are harmful and need to be banned or restricted, and that pesticide manufacturers undermine the regulatory process. A broader framing, however, might include that:
** Most of what happens in the food system is based on the decision- making of an increasingly small set of increasingly large corporations (such as DuPont, Conagra, Kraft Foods and Wal-Mart)-which, by design, pay little attention to externalities such as pesticide poisonings, genetic contamination, excessive energy use, abuse of farm labor and obesity;
** these companies have created an ecologically and socially devastating model of food production and continually develop new technologies which pose new risks or harms (such as biopiracy and contract farming); ** government fundamentally works to support the industrial food system, seeing its success as part of the national interest; and
** media, public relations, science, education and other institutions orient the public in support of the industrial food model through incomplete and tainted information, and the promotion of cultural traits (such as the desire for unblemished produce) that are typically antagonistic to campaigns for reform.
Systemic reframing places big picture issues in plain view, raising public consciousness, identifying connections and suggesting goals and requirements for long-term change.
Integrated campaigning
Campaigns are strategic programs of action designed to move targets and other social forces so that a specific set of goals is obtained. It is a highly focused path to specific victories, generally at the expense of issues outside of the campaign frame. Yet there are ways to integrate systemic transformation goals into campaigns.
In integrated campaigning, campaign goals are determined not simply by asking the question "What do we want our campaign to change?" The broader question is "What larger systemic changes do we want to achieve toward which our campaign will move us?" In this way, near- term, winnable goals can be developed that are important in their own right and serve as a foundation for or step to broader change. For example, if the broader systemic goal is to create a national regulatory system based the Precautionary Principle, campaign goals might include:
1. enacting such an approach around a specific local issue, and
2. taking concrete steps to position the movement for a national campaign (through building relationships with untraditional allies, creating an international network, developing popular language about the structure of harm, raising awareness about corporate power and the limits of contemporary regulatory systems, and the like). Developing alternative institutions Just as issue-based change often requires development of alternatives (such as benign methods of pest management), systemic change requires the development of alternative institutions and visions of how societies can be organized to maximize justice and sustainability. There are many intriguing contributions in this area, from alternative global institutions to participatory economics. Yet much more of this work needs to be done. What, for example, would a viable precautionary approach to regulation of production really look like? Developing concrete systemic alternatives helps answer legitimate questions about structural critiques, inspires mobilization for near- and long-term reform, helps activists and the public break out of mainstream ideological frameworks and offers real options when opportunities for deep change occur.
Springboarding
Many projects contribute on a local level to the development of alternative institutions. These include community gardens, local currency ventures, energy independent homesteads, community-run healthcare facilities, and green and worker-owned businesses. Yet much of this work reflects an incrementalist notion of change, with no or little engagement with movements for systemic change.
"Springboarding" entails using such points of public engagement to raise awareness and support action around the structure of harm. Some community gardens, for example, have displays providing information to participants and visitors not only about the merits of organic production or green space, but also about the problems with the industrial food system, corporate power and how to join campaigns. Springboarding helps integrate local alternatives with broader movements.
Hope
Systemic change, of course, can be overwhelming, requiring change- makers to communicate a sense of hope. Fortunately, there are in fact good reasons to be optimistic. Virtually all societies are highly contradictory and subject to relatively rapid change. Nominally democratic societies provide at least some avenues to influence the balance of political power. Harmful societies invariably generate resistance. Mechanisms of social control are imperfect. Thus, expansion of popular rights and other fundamental change has occurred over decades, sometimes just years. Arguably, there has never been a time of so much popular action worldwide around so many issues stemming from the structure of harm. The global progressive movement has people-power, rich capacities, moral positions and increasingly a structural awareness, common vision and organization with which to chart a new institutional order in which the earth and popular rights come before the free market.
Ultimately, however, hope is something independent of optimism- something we may therefore always hold and convey. As Vaclav Havel put it:
"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world.... Either we have hope or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.... Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed."
Positive systemic change may be daunting, but it is essential. Recognizing this need, understanding underlying structures of harm and creating an integrated activist practice are some key steps in raising the likelihood and pace of success.
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