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General News    H2'ed 3/14/13

Accompanying vs Organizing as a Mode of Activism and Change: Transcript of an interview with Staughton Lynd; Part 2

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This is the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, WNJC 1360 AM sponsored by Opednews.com.  I've been speaking with Staughton Lynd.  He's been an activist for fifty-some [50+] years.  He's the author of Accompanying: Pathways to Social change.  We've been speaking about his experience since the time when he was director of Freedom Schools in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. 

 

You have a quote, Staughton, in your book, that I think really nails some of the problems of current activists:  "Too often, Left intellectuals gather together and ask each other, 'Now, how can we attract workers?'  When workers show up, they're a minority.  The culture and vocabulary of the meeting have already been established by Middle Class Conveners, and the workers soon leave."  I have seen this!  I'm not just a radio host, I'm an activist, and I've seen this happen: where you've got a whole bunch of people who are making six figures talking about how to help all the people who are out of work, or out of health insurance -- that doesn't work.  I think it gets back to accompanying.  If you want to help people you have to go to them!  That's what you're saying at the core.

 

Staughton Lynd:   We had an entity in Youngstown that we called "The Workers' Solidarity Club," which functioned as a parallel Central Labor Union, and by that I mean this:  in every community there is a so-called Central Labor Body in which there are delegates from all over the union scene in that particular community.  But because the whole bureaucratic apparatus has got arterial sclerosis, that's also true of the central labor body, which is supposed to give strike support.  The strike starts in July, and by the time you get any help from the central labor body, snow is falling. 

 

So our idea was, "Well, we don't have a lot of money, we don't (initially at least) have a lot of people, but: we are going to create a time and a place where workers who are on strike, or an individual who feels that he or she has been unjustly discharged, can come and get help."  And we did that.  We had no bylaws, we had no officers, we had no dues, and we won some pretty big strikes in the Youngstown area, the Mahoning Valley of Northeast Ohio; so I don't think I'm just blowing smoke, or talking about something that I haven't experienced.  I think I'm talking about something people can do if they want to enough.

 

Rob Kall:    And yet!  You say near the end of your book, that people are going to question you, that "This is too little," and, oh, I've got to find where you have it, because it's a great line; and I have a website that I started a couple years ago, called Smallacts.org .  Because I believe that it doesn't take giant actions to do something, that some of the most important things that happen, happened with small steps, period.

 

Staughton Lynd:   We should know this is true from our own national experience in the last fifty, sixty [50-60] years.  Rosa Parks, all by herself, refused to go the back of the bus.  I think it's, what's is it, the anniversary of her birthday about now, and (laughs) she had the guts to do that as a single person.  Four young men sat down at the lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and you know, they got ketchup poured on them and all the rest of it, but, wow!  Before you knew it, similar groups were springing up all over the South.  And then they had a conference in Raleigh and put together the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee, and did wonders. 

 

Rob Kall:   There 's a number of great examples.  And I think it's really a part of the philosophy you have to enter into activism with, almost.  You're not going to go and attend a rally, and all of a sudden the sky is going to open up, and massive change is going to happen.  It seems to me that what I'm getting as a message from your book is, "You need to walk the talk; you've got to stay connected to the people who are going to benefit from the change in the Justice System, or in fairness, or whatever; and you're looking for small, steady changes, because one of those changes could be the lever that does open the door, and does open the sky, and it does make massive changes happen.

 

Staughton Lynd:   You and I are on the same page, brother, and I would just add to what you've said one other thing about the Worker's Solidarity Club, which is: somebody will say "Well, on my way over I saw that the such and such workers have a picket line, and I stopped and I asked them what help they needed.  They said they were running out of firewood, so I'm thinking of taking some in the morning."  Now, many organizations at that point would say "Well!  Do we want to pass a resolution or make a decision to the effect that we authorize so and so to carry wood to the picket line?"  We didn't do that in the Solidarity Club; instead, the guy would finish his remarks with, "Anyone want to come with me?" 

 

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Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

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He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

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Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness (more...)
 

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