Through the NonProfit Door

A  friend who works on Organizing Upgrade’s Fast Forum, which is an awesome online ‘plenary on the go’ where some of the movement’s sharpest minds chime in on pressing topics, asked me to co-author a short article on the limitations of the nonprofit structure for radical social change. So, along with Common Fire co-founder Kavitha Rao, I wrote a piece about how and why The Common Fire Foundation uses a nonprofit entity to work on radical community building projects. Below is what we came up with.

Common Fire and the NonProfit Structure: A Bridge to Tomorrow

Common Fire is a non-profit 501(c)3 corporation. It supports the creation of intentional communities that are geared toward the transformation of society, from the inside out and the ground up. We seek to build a world that is more loving, joyful, just and sustainable, one community at a time.

Common Fire West - The Bay Area Community

Like many of our colleagues working toward a more just and sustainable world, we too recognize, not only the shortcomings of the nonprofit structure as a long-term solution to the troubles of our time, but we also believe that the current social, environmental and cultural crises we now face cannot be remedied at the same level of thought that produced said crises. Given this, we are committed to personal transformation, nonviolent communication as the basis of sustainable relationships and alliances, and cooperative communities organized around resource sharing and consensus based decision-making. These features are the cornerstone of our work in the area of intentional community building; features that we envision will eventually supplant the “individual” of (neo)liberalism and its attendant “rights,” as well as capitalist notions of individual property ownership over land, food, and other vital resources.

At the same time, we are quite clear that community building at this scale – multi-acre cohousing facilities with organic farmland, retreat centers and other buildings – requires considerable amounts of funding and still occurs within the existing legal, economic and political cultures we seek to transform. So, we use the nonprofit structure to negotiate the dominant culture. For us, the non-profit is a tool we harness toward an end that was not originally intended for it: radical social change. Our board is comprised of people who hold the vision of the organization and who actively expand the capacity of Common Fire to carry out its mission. Thus, unlike traditional BODs, which tend to be comprised of big donors, lawyers and the like, our board is full of innovative change-makers.

In our hands, the non-profit structure enables us to support grassroots groups as they organize themselves into shared housing and cooperative economic communities that put the transformative values above into practice. Through the non-profit structure, we are able to provide community groups with training opportunities in areas like nonviolent communication, grassroots fundraising, sustainable building practices, and permaculture. The non-profit entity also enables us to provide concrete support like bank accounts and legal resources to the communities with which we partner. Most importantly, the non-profit helps us secure financing for land acquisition, which is a feat that would be fairly difficult for the groups we are currently partnered with in New York and California, where their individual economic realities keep them rooted in their current class position. In community people are able to experience relief from the economic and social burdens of living as nuclear families and single people. Our ultimate goal is to shift the underlying culture by creating communities that model what future societies can look like.

For more information about Common Fire, and how you might participate in our work, visit our website and watch our video.

Paradise Lost: Social Unrest in Guadeloupe & Martinique

Social Unrest in Guadeloupe, AFP images

My partner missed a call on Sunday from a dear friend of hers who lives in Guadeloupe, one of the Francophone islands southeast of Puerto Rico. Her friend left a voicemail describing the heightening political-economic crisis on the island, which we later learned was also happening in Martinique, another Francophone island south of Dominica. Folks on both islands have staged a general strike for the past four weeks protesting the rising cost of living, which outstrips the meager wages they are paid, and to denounce the ongoing racial stratification of wealth and resources between black Guadeloupians/Martiniquans, and the 1% of the population that controls the wealth, businesses and resources on the islands.

While there is nonstop media coverage of “the worst economic crisis” since the Great Depression from the perspective of people in the global north, it is rare that we hear about the impact of this economic meltdown on those situated on the margins of global capitalism. For instance, many news sources covered the social unrest in France proper, where somewhere between 1 million and 2.5 million people protested the deteriorating state of French infrastructure on January 29. Yet, little was said about the concurrent protests going on in the French territories, which are, by any sane account, infinitely worse off than people living in the industrialized center.

Martiniquans listen to Union leaders negotiate lower grocery prices. Fort-de-France, Martinique, Feb 10 2009

Life on the island is one of dependence: 80% of Guadeloupe’s food is imported, making the island deeply vulnerable to price fluctuations in the global market. When the French economy flutters, stutters, and then takes a nose dive, the French islands go along with it. Such is the nature of neocolonial entanglement.

But, one might ask, if neocolonial populations are so marginal to the global economy, why does France continue to hold on to the territories at all? What’s in it for them? Why not let the remaining territories go the way of Haiti, (but without the bloody revolution) if they are marginal and insignificant?

Good question.

The first thing I’d say is that unlike our colloquial use of the word, “marginal,” in this context it doesn’t quite equal insignificance – more on this below. Secondly, there’s good reason for France to be in the (neo)colonial racket. Traditionally, colonies had two important functions: first, early colonies were overflowing with slave laborers, whose descendants became low wage laborers working the land to extract raw materials and crops that were exported to European countries. Secondly, the colonies provided much needed markets for the circulation of the processed and manufactured goods produced in the metropole from the raw materials harvested in the colony.

Sugar cane cultivators in Guadeloupe

So, the circular economic logic goes like this: the cost of production is kept low because labor and land are exploited. The profit margin is ridiculously high because the manufactured goods are sold in a consumer market that is virtually closed to other products, particularly products grown locally. Despite the “end of colonialism” such political-economic relations persist between France and its “territories” because it is economically advantageous for France. (Nevermind all that “civilizing mission” crap. The crass money incentive is clear to everyone by now.)  Given that colonial administration of the land meant the land was parceled out to French companies, little land was available for the cultivation of crops grown by black Guadeloupians, and meant to circulate in local markets. This continues to be the case. As such, the development of a market for local, fresh, hopefully non-GMO, whole foods that would nourish our friend and her family far better than any of the processed foods could, is highly unlikely without a radical redistribution of land and wealth on the island as well as the safeguarding of farmer’s rights, wages and the integrity of their seeds in the face of monster companies like Monsanto. (There’s a hyperlink there in case you want to know who/what Monsanto is.)

(By the way, the issue of sustainable farming also has implications for the preservation of local biodiversity, which impacts climate change. Furthermore, it has implications for the reduction of food-related chronic illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension, which are often outcomes of a diet high in processed foods and low in whole foods. Thus, in this ostensibly isolated issue of worker’s rights, we see environmental and health issues unfold as well. This is yet another lesson in the basic interconnectedness of our shared problems.)

So, returning to my use of the word “marginal,” I hope it is clear that Afro-diasporic peoples in the West, be they in Anglophone nations like my own, or Francophone territories like our friend, are not marginal to global-capitalism as such. Quite the contrary is true. Without the exploitation of low, or no-wage, black laborers, and the expropriation of Caribbean lands, its agriculture, and other natural resources, capitalism as we know it in the West would not exist. So in this sense, our friend and the people on her island are absolutely central to global capitalism. Yet, they are marginal insofar as they do not reap the benefits of the system. They work daily, typically under union loathing French business-owners, and are paid measly wages in return; wages that are insufficiently calibrated toward meeting the exorbitant costs of living in the contemporary world.

The idea of economic sovereignty, that is, cultivating local economies in Martinique and Guadeloupe that actually sustain the people living on the islands, and in the region more broadly, would send a big “Fuck You” message to the French government. France would be cut out of the equation, thereby losing a market for their goods, which would adversely impact its national economy. Seems like a good reason for the French to hold on to their territories, right? (I’m assuming it is the market incentive and the nasty habit of racist paternalism that renders relinquishing the territories unthinkable.)

Haitians wade through a flooded town in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, September 2008

Going the route of Haiti, that is, seeking independence from France, would require an enormous regional alliance between other Caribbean islands, Latin American countries, and friendly countries in the global north (if such a thing exists). We should remember that Haiti was the first black republic in the West, and continues to be one of a kind. Historical hindsight allows us to see that such an anomaly was not taken lightly, as the United States and Britain did everything they could, from the early nineteenth century onward, to cripple the new republic and effectively cut it off from the global economy. (Cuba’s situation is another example.) The longstanding effects of internaitonal isolation, foreign infiltration, weapons trafficking, and internal political instability has rendered Haiti the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, and led to unspeakable human suffering. We need only look to the food crisis in 2008 and the impact of Hurricane Ike to get a glimpse of Haiti’s struggle.

I typically try to tie up my posts with some insight into the possibility of cultivating loving-kindness and compassion in the face of such suffering. But today, I’m so in the pain that it’s difficult to say something hopeful. I pray that our friends in Guadeloupe fight for their right to exist and flourish, just as much as I pray, think, and argue for a way out of the international juggernaut of suffering wrought by our current way of life. By now it is painfully clear that the social order brought into being by the expansion of European capitalism into all areas of the world is woefully unsustainable. As I have said elsewhere, bailing out this system is not the answer. It may be a temporary pain reliever akin to popping an Advil for a headache born of dehydration, but the painkiller won’t hydrate the areas of the body that need water the most.

*UPDATE

As of February 19, the French government has conceded to demands that they increase wages 200 euros a month. See the BBC article, “France Meets Guadeloupe Demands” for a few more details.

Obama’s Strange Bedfellows

Obama is – ostensibly – a friend of gay folks in the U.S. Yet, gay folks from San Francisco to Burlington, Vermont are wondering what the hell is going on. “How could he,” the lament goes, “choose such a bible-thumping, right-wing hate-monger to deliver the invocation at his Inauguration? Isn’t the Obama Inauguration supposed to mark the beginning of a new era in American politics?”

Well, Obama’s inauguration – and the presence of Rev. Warren – does signal a new beginning, or at least the ascendancy of a kind of liberal multicultural hegemony that is, perhaps, more effective than the kind of liberal multiculturalism characteristic of the Bush Administration.

Here’s why:

Obama is a consensus builder. While he doesn’t shy away from alienating some Americans with very clear policy objectives that often lean left-of-center, he is symbolically invested in uniting the civic sphere through what he calls “disagreeing without being disagreeable.” One way of interpreting that phrase goes like this: Don’t be a jerk to people you don’t agree with, even if you really think their views are poopie and don’t make sense. Underneath our differences, there is something that we all share.” For Obama that “shared something” is our commitment to basic American values, values we all tacitly consent to by virtue of being born here and not going awol once we get the change. (Anyone feel the ex-patriot itch when you were studying abroad?)

Another way of reading Obama’s golden rule relies on the extremely relevant insights of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist who bequeathed to us one of the most powerful theoretical tools for understanding our present: hegemony.

As a consensus builder, Obama’s objective is to be the leader of all Americans, not just the blue-few who pounded the pavement for his campaign. That means reaching out to folks he may chide in the privacy of his own home, and inviting them to see themselves as active participants in the public sphere, a place we can call, “The America Obama Built.” Rather than alienate and infuriate the socially conservative block of the electoriate by openly dismissing them, his approach (at least symbolically) includes them, even if such inclusion does not mean he will pursue policy objectives they may find favorable.  To be clear, there is typically some kind of advantage to being a part of the hegemonic block. It seems to me that the advantage in this case is that social conservatives gain a modicum of legitimacy in mainstream politics, which, as we all know, has pretty much eroded and was made a laughing stock thanks to the idiocy of the McPalin campaign.

This, my friends, is how hegemony works. The hegemonic political block is an assemblage. It is based on a principle of association and linkage, or articulation. It rules by inclusion rather than exclusion. It compels people to accept their subordination because it plays to, or maybe plays on, their feelings of relevance and a sense that they are not fully disinvested of influence. Whether or not such perceived relevance and influence plays out at the legislative register is yet to be seen.

While I am certainly not a proponent of Christianity-based politics and all of the myopic, antiquated, and unfriendly ways in which these faith-based claims enter the political arena, I am also not surprised, nor am I outraged by Obama’s move to include Rev. Warren. If my analysis about Obama’s political style is right, then this is just the beginning of a series of strange bedfellows rolling around together into the civic bed.

We lefties would do well to pay attention to legislation, judicial arguments and executive level policy, rather than fussing about these symbolic attempts to bridge ideological divides. Obama will continue to do this. We better make sure he continues to (or starts to) carry out the left-ish policy platform on which he campaigned.

(Ah, and for the Queer Alphabet Soupers – GLBT, etc. – Obama wasn’t very clear on gay marriage from the start. Yes to civil unions; No to gay marriage; States should decide marriage issues; Dignity for all; Ideological cliché, blah, blah, blah. All of this shit means I’m still getting screwed on federal taxes. Thanks, it feels great.)

Oh yeah, I was just reminded by Phil Brontein’s article in the Huffington Post of this disappointing bit political maneuvering: Janet Napolitano running Homeland Security. If you don’t know who she is, ask someone vaguely familiar with immigration issues in Arizona. She’s aweful. Might as well be on CNN with Lou Dobbs. Obama’s selection of Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary counteracts the Janet Napolitano pick. The labor folks love it. That is, labor folks with US passports. It seems the only workers worth protecting are those who are “one of us.” Meanwhile, globalization consistently sends capital on a cross-border errand that can’t help but push workers from outside the U.S., toward the U.S.

All in the Family , 2

2. Change You Can’t Believe In

I was drawn to Barack just as much as the next hopeful, anti-war, down with poverty, eco-chic, anti-Bushite.

But in many ways, I was drawn to Michelle even more.

Her story was my story, just written about fifteen, to twenty years earlier. She was, like me, a child of American slavery. Her folks were from the South Side of Chicago. My folks were from Tennessee. She went from the colorful comfort of an insulated black community to the often toxic quarters of the Northeast’s most prestigious centers of higher learning. Michelle toiled at Princeton, and then Harvard, all the while wondering how much she’d really have to pay, in psychic and emotional currency, to these institutions.

I traveled from Oakland, California to Brunswick, Maine. I could count all the black folks in my graduating class at Bowdoin on my left hand, plus two fingers from my right. It wasn’t until graduate school that I’d encounter this beautiful thing called “women of color,” in academe. But by then, the “damage” had been done and the sense of isolation already imposed. I was no longer “at home” when I went back to East Oakland. And I certainly wasn’t “at home” in the white-male run history, politics and philosophy departments that intrigued me so much. So when I saw Michelle, when I read about Michelle, when I experienced this regal, beautifully brown, compassionate and intelligent black woman who lived in the very interstices I feared would swallow me whole, I thought, yes, she must be my First Lady.

How seductive a reprieve from invisibility can be, no?

Like my friends, all of whom considered themselves so left of the left as to not really be party to American political discourse, I was secretly ambivalent about the Obama campaign but didn’t dare say so in public. I made a quick trip to Borders and bought The Audacity of Hope, just to make sure I was frowning at Obama for all the right reasons. Sure enough, his basic acceptance of American ideology and the essential legitimacy of capitalism were red flags – harbingers of more shitiness to come.

But, he was handsome as hell, with a beautiful smile and a wife I thought I could talk to, and kids I wouldn’t mind babysitting. For the first time my desire for a personal relationship with a political family interrupted the neatness of my political critique. They felt like folks I knew: Michelle and Barack were my aunt and uncle from Chicago, Sasha and Malia my little cousins. Ambivalence was the best I could do. Well, that and a clear rejection of the idiocy and self-righteous mediocrity of the McPalin’s.

With that I stood in a long, jubilant line at the Alameda County Courthouse to cast my ballot for Barack, Michelle, Sasha and Malia a day before the election. I was excited, proud and worried all at once. How would colored folks respond when they began to see that the game Barack was playing didn’t have liberation in the playbook? When would they understand that the middle class for whome he sought relief didn’t include them? And when would we figure out that Dr. King and Barack Obama are not really one and the same? The MLK I admire was anti-war in contrast to Barack’s increasing pro-force position. The MLK I love saw capitalism, and its necessary motor: rampant poverty, as the overarching problem, within which racism was a crucial organizing princple. The Barry O we’ve come to know doesn’t have much of a problem with capitalism as such, he just dislikes golden parachutes and excessive rewards for the wealthy. He gets that racism is a problem at the structural level, but his very presence in Washington is fodder for the multicultural machine.

Much to my dismay, the First Family – our Cliff and Claire Huxtable for the 21st century – is the apotheosis of the new liberal multiculturalism. Where the Bush II Administration left off, fudging the lines of race and gender to such an extent that some believed the glass ceilings were breaking, the forthcoming Obama Administration will complete the job, with glass shards in toe.

But why be dismayed?

Simple: from my perspective getting beyond the proverbial “glass ceiling” means gaining entrance to the coveted “Family of Man,” (qua human) a family heretofore characterized by whiteness, heterosexuality and maleness. The mere presence of people of color and women within that space doesn’t reconfigure what it means to human as such, it simply means more people can be “human” on narrowly conceived terms. Such conditions ought to compel us to ask: “Where’s the Change We’re Supposed to Believe In?”

Say When

Unfinished and Under-researched Musings on the Economy & Politics

Small businesses seem to be at the heart of economic growth. According to the US census, small businesses outpace large companies in job generation and they employ over 40% of the workforce. Yet, the recent toppling of Wall Street financiers, the tightening credit market, and subsequent political maneuvering meant to “fix” the financial problem, all seem more concerned with returning the money gamblers to their stead, rather than helping small businesses maintain their vitality. Are small businesses supposed to wait until their big brothers are healthy again and are able to can kick down a few dollars? What are small businesses to do in the meantime while growing anemic? Should they shorten their hours and downsize their workforce? Should they seek funding from other sources with outrageously high interest rates?

But, then there’s this question about the credit markets. If the lenders lent too much to too many people and businesses (including those ‘risky’ types like myself), and then compensated themselves for their “altruistic” risk taking, then who should shoulder the blame for the credit collapse, payback defaults and general fiscal catastrophe? Are the borrowers who defaulted on their loans at fault? No one told them to ask for money, right? Or, are the lenders who created onerous terms at fault for hooking “risky” lendees into loan terms that are not favorable in the least? Or, is it a bigger problem of ideological proportions, where desire for wealth, comfort or, in some cases, basic necessities, lead people to seek out funding from institutions with the resources to meet their (er, my) needs? And, what conditions made paying off those loans impossible anyhow? Why were people suddenly unable to meet their mortgage and credit card payments? One way to proceed through this financial, social and cultural quagmire is to disentangle personal debt issues from those of businesses. Granted, businesses are run by people, but the legal and tax identities of people are not the same as those of corporations. (The particulars of business entity formation notwithstanding – we could talk about the pass-trough taxation models of S-corps and sole props, but for brevity’s sake, let’s not.)

Who is this bailout going to help in the immediate future? Let’s not talk trickle-down models. People need cash now. Who has a cash-flow problem? Everyone from Lehman to myself. Should the government favor the big company over the individual person? Would helping the financial sector amount to protecting the national economy while helping me would be social welfare? God forbid we slide into socialism, or worst, blazing red communism! Oh, no! Surely, rampant poverty and unchecked wealth accumulation is better.

And what is the role of the legislator vis a vis the free market anyway? Has not the role of Washington been to regulate capitalism? Or, has government made doing business easier? But easier for whom? Easier for those who deliver goods and services, rather than those who buy? And if so, what’s wrong with that? On it’s face, nothing really. As a service provider, I’d like to work in a market environment that encourages the distribution of my service. Yet, as a consumer, I also want to be protected from predatory lending, and abuses of power and information that enables companies to sell higher volumes of goods. For instance, if I can tell my clients that we use green cleaning products, but there’s no oversight of my industry or individual business operations, such that we could theoretically use whatever the hell we want and simply advertise as green to increase sales, we’d be acting unethically. (Or, better yet, we could buy “green/natural” products from our vendors, but if there is no regulation regarding what gets to count as “green,” then our dependence on the manufacturing sector means we may pass on toxicity to our clients unwittingly.) But as we’ve seen, there is regulation here and there, but not everywhere, and sometimes not where we need it most. It should be the role of legislators to prevent this kind of abuse of the consumer from happening. So why does it happen?

Well, some might say the incompetence and dizzy bureaucracy of Washington that’s too blame. Others may say its the corruption of government officials by lobbying bodies that is at fault. But these are epiphenomenal problems. I say it happens because we are taught to lie prone before the almighty bottom line. As I sail through my entrepreneurship for dummies class, I’m learning that improving my bottom line is the goal, with a dash of social responsibility thrown in for good measure. But keeping the profit coming in is what really matters. So, perhaps we need to adjust the profit-accumulation model that leads people and businesses to desire ever-expanding coffers. Can we learn to have a wealth accumulation cap? You know, like when a friend pours you a glass of wine and says, “tell me when,” and you wait, watch the glass fill up with your favorite vino, all the while knowing that filling up to the brim is in bad form because others wanna taste too, so at the half way mark you say, “when!” Can the wealthy (and upwardly mobile) learn to say “when” before buying that second house, before buying that third car, before the mind-boggling vacation in the Maldives Islands? Can the wealthy learn to associate bling-bling excess with “bad form”? Surely it’s in bad taste to dine out for 200 bucks while Haitians and Zimbabweans starve to death and the family down the block is kicked out of their foreclosed on house, and hurricane survivors try to find a new place to live, right? Or, would asking people to cultivate such “frugality” constitute an assault on their individual freedom? I guess the real question is this: is unbridled, wanton and ongoing accumulation a real right? Should people have the right, under the auspices of individual liberty, to accumulate at the expense of others, at the expense of the common good?

I suppose this is my assumption: that such accumulation does happen at the expense of everyone else, or at least such has been the case for a few centuries now; ever since modern capitalism leaked out of Europe and infested the rest of the world. While there may not be total scarcity of all things on the planet, I surely accumulate all of my junk at the expense of others, because after all, we do live with some finitude, some scarcity, and some things that are not renewable, at least not in our lifetimes.

It seems that our worldview is upside down, inside out, a bit backwards, as it were. Why compete for the things we need, and then hoard the things we get, when we could share, with some deference for equity, and all survive? (Maybe because that model presumes we have some responsibility for the livelihood of others??) But it seems just “surviving” isn’t the objective. At least, not where I live. People want to flourish, but they understand that desire, or at least they see it through commodity lenses. Things are the metric for flourishing, not peace of mind, not the health of the public, not the well being of the planet. Ain’t that awesome! And for those of us who question this thing-based abacus, we sit in this weird interstice, theorizing a different world but being compelled to act in this one. It’s as if our thinking is building a bridge to nowhere. I wonder which politician would vote to fund it…

-unfinished-