Shawn can be contacted at
communityfeast@yahoo.com, or visit www.communityfeast.org, he's a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern California Anarchist Federation
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Sheep Dreams and Kitten Memes
by Shawn McDougal
My goal in writing this is to help expand the movement for human liberation which many of us understand ourselves to be a part of. First I’ll explain a bit about the vision that drives me in my social change work. Next, I will offer one key practical idea for movement-building. I will follow the idea with a concrete example of how I and some comrades have put the idea into practice. Then, I will share some key concepts useful not only for explaining the practical idea, but also for developing and evaluating virtually any tactical plan for mass liberation that movement-builders might consider.
The ideas I present here are not new. I am a synthesizer; I like to take disparate ideas and fashion them into a synthesis that is my own. Feel free to take the pieces you desire and synthesize them in a way that makes sense for you.
The title of this piece was inspired partially by a leaflet I created a couple of years ago called “Mobilize like kittens, not sheep!”, and partially by the notion that culture is fundamentally about patterns of activity that we continually (re)create. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I hope the title makes sense by the time you finish reading this.
I. The Vision
What is my vision?
A world where everyone understands that they are creators of social reality, rather than spectators…a world where everyone feels worthy of the best in life, and no one feels subordinate or less worthy than anyone else…a world where our interactions bring out the best in us, rather than the worst…a world where our institutions are nurturing and life-affirming, rather than domineering and life-negating…a world where our hopes overcome our fears.
(Note that in describing my vision I do not mention the usual list of ‘isms’ that so many of us rightfully oppose: capitalism, racism, heterosexism, patriarchy, adultism, elitism, etc. I believe these dehumanizing social patterns are really symptoms of more fundamental problems: We are unconscious of our own power, and we are ruled by fear. To the extent we realize that we do not merely inherit the world but that we shape it, these destructive and fear-based patterns will be replaced by creative and hope-based patterns—at every level, and in every facet of our lives.)
What drives my vision?
Growing up in an underclass Black family in Los Angeles, I experienced the effects of racism and classism—external and internalized—around and within me. (I call my family underclass and not working-class, cuz most of the time nobody had a job—it was mostly welfare and petty hustles.) Seeing my older brother marginalized for being gay, and seeing my single-mom have to hustle and get money from her boyfriends for us to survive (‘Can you throw me down some change this month?’), taught me about heterosexism and patriarchy. Also, seeing people risk jail-time just so they could have something that looked nice taught me about the power of conformity and internalized oppression in people’s lives. Seeing (and much later, experiencing) drug addiction taught me about the often self-destructive power of escapism.
Success in school shaped me to be a young elitist—the kid who was gonna make it out of the ghetto. That same success got me a scholarship to an elite boarding school in New England where I began to see the levers of elite power close up. I realized that the people in power were no more deserving than anyone else. Eventually, time spent as an exchange student in Brazil helped me see the global nature of class society, patriarchy, white supremacy, and the other ‘isms’ I had come to despise, as well as the crucial role America plays in the global system. The people I met in Brazil also reminded me of the amazing power of the human spirit, and our capacity to create connections and joy even under miserable social conditions. It was in Brazil that I realized that I could not escape from or ignore the problems of the world, but that I had to live my life fighting them.
When I was in college I met people who called themselves anarchists. I saw that we had the same basic attitude on a lot of things—especially challenging authority and conformity—so I realized that I was an anarchist, too.
II. The Idea
Let’s do a thought experiment. Two actually. Ready?
First, imagine a mass action in your favorite city. It’s a march-rally. Five-hundred (or 5000) people gather in a park. You’re there with them. While people stand around waiting for the action to begin, organizers circulate around with extra signs, chant sheets, and whistles. You all line up and walk along a route—maybe a mile or two—where city officials make sure traffic is cleared. Or, maybe you couldn’t get a permit and you’re walking along the sidewalk. Along the way folk are chanting, singing, drumming, waving signs, a few even passing out leaflets to lookers-on. After an hour or two of marching, you reach the destination point. There is a rally. Great speakers, rousing performers, old acquaintances, drums and chants. You even spot a reporter or two from the local media. You and your friends go home, confident that you did your part for the movement for peace and justice today.
Now, change the channels.
A second mass action. Same city. Five-hundred (or 5000) people gather in a park. You’re there with them. Organizers circulate around with handouts on how to approach strangers and talk politics in public, and suggested locations. People share leaflets, surveys, stickers, street-theater scripts, chalk. You all form teams of 2 to 5 people. The teams—hundreds (or thousands) of them—fan out to locations all throughout the city. (Supermarkets, gas stations, post offices, shopping centers, laundromats, bus stops, and movie lines are among the favored spots.) At these locations the teams talk to people about the issues, ask questions from a survey, hand out stickers and leaflets to those who are down with the cause. A few even perform theater or create chalkings on busy sidewalks. After an hour or two of connecting with people on the street, you all reconverge for a rally. Folk share stories about how it felt to engage with the public—the challenges and the breakthroughs. Great speakers, rousing performers, old acquaintances, drums and chants. You even spot a reporter or two from the local media. You and your friends go home, confident that you did your part for the movement for peace and justice today.
Questions for you to consider before moving on:
Which action has the greatest impact on public awareness?
Which action is more likely to empower people to stay active in between the mass actions?
Which action is more dependent on the corporate media to get its message out?
Which action spreads more of a practical understanding of what it takes to build a movement among the people who participate?
Which action creates a deeper sense of community among the participants?
Any other differences you think noteworthy?
The second mass action is the practical tool—a tactic—that I promised to offer in this essay. I call it the kittens action. I choose this term because of what it evokes. Kittens (cats) are different from sheep in that, because they are not herd animals, their movements are not easily controlled or constrained by those who would domesticate them. If you’ve ever lent an ear to a frustrated meeting facilitator, school teacher, or soccer mom—or if you’ve ever been one!—you will probably recognize the phrase “It’s like herding kittens!” .
The kittens action follows a very simple recipe:
Step 1. Converge.
Step 2. Form teams, share materials for outreach.
Step 3. Spread out.
Step 4. Engage the public.
Step 5. Reconverge.
Step 6. Share stories and celebrate.
The kittens action is similar to what some people call an organizing blitz, though blitzes usually have organization-specific goals (like signing up new members), and I’ve never seen this sort of tactic used at a mass action level involving people and groups with diverse interests. Also somebody told me once that in Mexico City they did something similar with teams called brigadas.
III. The Practice
There was a gathering of diverse organizers and activists in December 2003 to discuss community and autonomy in LA. The event was organized by folk who’d been inspired by their exposure to Zapatismo, such as the people at Casa del Pueblo. At the end of that meeting one of the requests was for a way for the diverse people and organizations present to continue to connect and work together. I suggested putting together a monthly kittens action, perhaps with a different theme each month, so that various forces around LA could come together on a more regular basis and do concrete work together.
Many were in agreement, so some of us organized the first event, called POP! the Revolution (POP= People Organizing & Partying), to happen in January. Here is the email announcement we sent out:
Ready to see LA-area activism taken to the next level?
Ready to connect with diverse activists working on various fronts in the struggle for social justice?
Ready to stop feeling angry and start celebrating and building the culture of resistance?
Then you are invited to:
P. O. P. ! t h e R e v o l u t i o n P a r t y
People Organizing & Partying
*People: because to win we don't need to convince those who stand against us--we simply need to activate those already on our side
*Organizing: because it's time to move from the margins and into the center
*Partying: because revolution needs to be fun!
Saturday, January 17th, 2004
2pm
Echo Park Methodist Church
1226 Alvarado, just north of Sunset
Sounds intriguing...In a nutshell, what is it?
Activists from all over LA coming together to join forces for a day of schmoozing and organizing in the community, to turn traditional protest into community engagement, and to have fun. A new way to help the LA left feel more connected.
agenda in brief:
2:00: PREPARE--welcome to the community, intros, brief training, form street teams
3:00: OUTREACH--street teams fan out to surrounding grocery stores, gas stations, connect with the public, ask critical questions, share resources
5:30: PARTY--food, music, open-mic, performance art, share experiences
This is the first of what will become a monthly event, held at different locations all throughout LA, highlighting our various struggles
If you are interested in teaming up with us, or to help make this and future events successful, then spread the word, and join our email list!
At that first event about 50 people showed up. Many of the people present were not regular activists; just progressive folk who were fed up with feeling powerless and wanted to do something.
After intros we did a training on how to talk to people, on how to approach strangers to get their attention, on what to expect in terms of people turning you down or ignoring you, on how to focus your efforts on people willing to dialogue and not waste time debating people who wanna be haters, etc. We gave everyone a list of questions to ask people about community issues, and a stack of informational leaflets with alternative media and community resources.
Next, people went out in teams of 2 to 5. Some went to supermarkets, others to gas stations, and others to bus stops nearby. People were out for about an hour. (From the agenda we put in the email you can see we’d planned for a longer time outreaching, but, shockingly, we were behind schedule.)
When the teams returned we had a debriefing session. The energy was palpable. Folk talked about how exhilarating it felt to approach total strangers in the streets and talk politics. Folk talked about some of the amazing and interesting people they’d met—for example, one guy who is not a typical ‘activist’ but who organizes his buddies every year to donate SUV-loads of food to homeless folk on Skid Row. Folk talked about how most of the people they met were actually pretty open to chatting and happy to receive info on alternative media. One guy mentioned how he realized how difficult it was to judge people by the way they look or dressed—an older guy who he’d assumed would be a Bush-lover was actually pretty critical of the war and complained about all the tax breaks going to the rich. One woman said how now she feels more confident, so that next time she’s in line at a grocery store she’ll be less afraid to talk to people in line next to her.
We did another POP! the Revolution event the following month, with similar experiences reported by a new set of participants. One complaint was that our leaflets didn’t have enough info on local resources to help people in need of specific help: How to move more from talking to action?
Although the POP! the Revolution event was more like a workshop than a mass action, it is essentially a mini kittens action. With more participants—hundreds or thousands instead of a few dozen—a mass kittens action would likely include many forms of outreach to engage the public, from various sorts of leaflets and surveys to street preaching to street theater and interactive art. My hope is efforts like POP! will help popularize the idea of the kittens action, so that more mass action organizers will think in terms of getting folk they mobilize to be organizers, outreaching in the community, not just warm bodies to fill the streets or hold one sign in a sea of signs. Imagine the impact of 5000 activists spending an hour or two throughout the city having conversations with 50,000 or 100,000 people!
IV. The Theory
One criticism often leveled at anarchists by certain segments of the left—in particular Marxists—is that we are all tactics and no theory. I vehemently disagree with this criticism. The reality is that anarchist practice usually has strong theoretical underpinnings. The problem comes with articulating those ideas in a way that non-anarchists can understand.
Before we continue, there is a term that I use that may be unfamiliar to many readers. It’s that weird term that appears in the title of this essay: meme. (It rhymes with seem.) It was coined by zoologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. It was taken from a Greek root meaning ‘imitate’. Memes are units of cultural information such as recipes, ideas, songs, social conventions, fashions, gestures, rituals, and sayings. Memes are to culture what genes are to biology. Like genes, memes replicate, mutate, spread, and die out. Just as genes powerfully shape the form and function of biological organisms, memes shape the form and function of cultures and societies.
In the rest of this section I will give you a sense of the theoretical basis for and the visionary implications of the kittens action. I will do this by explaining five key concepts—five powerful memes that, taken together, may serve as tools to shift how we think about and do social change work. In explaining these memes I will show that the kittens action is not merely a tactic as it’s commonly understood—a choice of action to be used or not as expedient. The kittens action carries within it both a strategy—a long-term plan of action, and a vision—a place we want our strategies to take us to. I also hope to show that whatever one thinks of this particular tactic, there is a sore need for anarchists in particular and progressives in general to create and promote tactics whose long-term effects are similar to those of the kittens action if our vision for a more liberated and just world is to be realized. What exactly the long-term effects of the kittens action are will be clearer as we proceed.
What’s the connection between tactics, strategy, and vision?
Meme 1: Feedback-everywhere
Maybe it’s because my first intellectual passions lay in the sciences and mathematics, but I often find useful metaphors for thinking about how people, social groups, and society work coming from fields like mathematics, biology, and complex systems theory. For example, I’ve found the biological cell with its semi-permeable boundary—selectively and flexibly allowing in some but not all outside influences—useful in thinking about how an evolving culture or social group interacts with other groups or cultures.
In thinking about how society as a whole functions, one useful metaphor is the human brain. Like society, the brain is made up of multitudes of specialized yet adaptable, highly-interconnected, dynamically developing yet historically shaped, semi-autonomous units. In the brain these units are neurons, while in society they are people.
In a complex system such as the brain (organisms and ecosystems are further examples of these sorts of systems), there are various levels at which one may examine the system’s dynamics. These levels fall along a spectrum from the micro—the realm of individual parts—to the macro—the realm of patterns and relationships among parts. For example, in the brain there are neurons (micro level) and there are concepts (macro level). Whereas small numbers of neurons may be involved in a processing a particular sense datum (for instance, recognizing the color green), large collections of neurons are involved with more emotional or conceptual work (for example, appropriately recognizing a green traffic light).
The standard view of the philosophy of reductionism is that a whole can be understood simply by understanding its parts. Classical physical science is the child of reductionism—for example, the search in physics for the smallest building blocks of matter. In reaction to the limitations of reductionism, holistic approaches to knowledge emphasize relationships and wholes—parts only can be understood in a particular context or environment.
Feedback-everywhere is the idea that reductionism and holism are both true, but only partially. Parts create the whole and the whole shapes the parts. There is mutual influence between the various levels in a complex system, a dialectical cascade between the micro and the macro.
For example, it turns out that in the brain not only do the things we sense, perceive, or experience inform our concepts, and shape our moods, but that our concepts and moods in turn shape what we perceive. Have you ever misinterpreted a friend’s innocent remark? Then you know what I mean.
In the social realm these contending perspectives—reductionism and holism—play out in debates between rugged individualist ‘conservatives’, and social constructionist ‘liberals’. (A lot of contentiousness in our society actually seems to arise from these same clashing views on the relationship of individuals to groups.) Feedback-everywhere allows us to transcend this duality: not only do individuals create society, but society creates individuals.
As I mentioned before, a common criticism of anarchists is that we are all action without theory, tactics without strategy. A corollary of the feedback-everywhere principle provides adequate response to this criticism: the unity of tactics, strategy, and vision. Although it is axiomatic among folk who wanna be smart planners that vision determines strategy determines tactics, it is rarely recognized that the chain of effect runs in reverse as well: what we do today (a tactical choice) shapes our path for tomorrow (strategic possibilities), and the unfolding of that path shapes our evolving vision. This corollary of feedback-everywhere—the unity of tactics, strategy, and vision—is embodied in the classic anarchist understanding that our means (tactics/strategy) must harmonize with our ends (vision).
Thus, the kittens action is not only a tactic for mobilization—to be used or not as expedient—but it also implies a class of compatible strategies for transformation, and a class of compatible visions of the society it’s practitioners would like to create. Again, the kind of strategy and vision implicit in the kittens action will be made more clear as we look at the five other memes.
How do we fight the/for power?
Meme 2: Power as a relationship (rather than a commodity)
Power exists only in the interaction between people. Although the power relationship may imply different roles—the ‘powerful’ and the ‘disempowered’—that relationship only has reality because of the participation and the acquiescence of each participant.
This principle has been recognized by generations of diverse social theorists and social actionists (e.g. Hume, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Foucault, and Biko, to name just a few) who have long argued that the power of an oppressive regime rests on the people’s obedience to that regime. In the words of Steven Biko, “The most powerful tool in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”.
Despite this long tradition of nuanced and dialectical thinking about power, many people, including many on the left, still tend to think in absolute and static terms when they ponder the nature of power: the elite or the privileged are ‘powerful’ while the oppressed and the marginalized are ‘powerless’. Power for them becomes like a scarce commodity: some people have it while others don’t.
Why is this way of thinking so pervasive? There at least three reasons for the popularity of this idea of power: 1) It provides a kind of rationalization for resignation—‘We have good reason to feel hopeless! We’re powerless for chrissakes!’; 2) It results from internalized oppression—resistance becomes inconceivable when we see ourselves as powerless; 3) Our concepts work metaphorically. The commodity concept of power arises via metaphorical extension: Power is something we desire and that we negotiate in social transactions, and thus it is like a commodity.
The problem with this scarce commodity concept of power is that it can lead people to make bad strategic choices in their social change work, and it can lead to perceived and therefore manifest powerlessness. For example, radical social actionists often criticize liberal reformists for solving social problems in a way that reinforces the power of the oppressive social forces that cause the problems to begin with. By begging the master to throw you a bone, you affirm the master’s power over your life. To the extent this criticism is true, it is the liberal reformists’ assumptions about the ‘powerlessness’ of the people they want to save that is to blame.
A thought experiment I like to give people when it seems like their understanding of power is too absolute or commodity-like is this:
Imagine you could get rid of the top 1,000,000 power people in the world—you know, the CEOs, the high-level officials, the presidents, the generals, the corporate boards of directors, the biotech wizards, the movie moguls, etc. Imagine you could just snap your fingers and boom! they would all disappear without a trace.
After their twinkling eyes tell me they’ve gotten the picture, I then ask:
Ok. So the rulers of society are gone. Now what happens next? Social liberation? The struggle’s over? We won?
After some moments of consideration, they usually will say something like, “Naw, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Other people—the middle managers, the staffers, the lieutenants, the assistants, etc.—would all just move up to take their places. What would need to change is the system, the consciousness.”
To fight the power (and win), it is not enough to get rid of the people who are privileged. We must change the consciousness that the current power relations reflect. I’m reminded of the marvelous title of an anarchist pamphlet I’ve had on my shelf for the longest but that I’ve never gotten around to reading: You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship.
A characteristically anarchist approach to taking action to challenge power relations is direct action. Direct action means taking action to directly address a problem or get your needs met, without asking the powers that be to do it for you. Direct action means fighting power by asserting your own power, as opposed to asking that others with power treat you kinder or gentler. Although many activists don’t emphasize this, direct action isn’t just about fighting power: it’s also about changing consciousness. People who take direct action to improve their lives end up by having a greater sense of control over their own lives. By taking action they change the world, and by changing the world they change themselves. (This is another example of feedback-everywhere. Also, see Meme 5 for more on the role of action in shaping our sense of self.)
Some people confuse direct action with civil disobedience, especially after the dramatic protests involving mass arrests that we’ve seen in the global justice movement since Seattle. Though direct action and civil disobedience can overlap, they are not the same. Civil disobedience means breaking a law in order to get justice—either directly in the moment or indirectly through a moral appeal to other people. Direct action means doing what it takes to get immediate justice—whether the action is legal or not. Consider the issue of police brutality. An example of a civil disobedience response would blocking the streets in order to highlight the issue for the public. An example of direct action would be forming a copwatch group to show up and closely observe whenever folk get stopped by the police.
Since any tactic has implications for strategy and vision (cf. feedback-everywhere), when evaluating a tactic we should ask ourselves: Does the tactic (or its related strategy) work to change power relations and consciousness in a fundamental way? If the answer is yes, great. If the answer is no, time to rethink our tactics.
How does the kittens action work to change power relations and consciousness? In some ways the kittens action is closer to direct action than the typical march-rally.
At a march, most participants do not directly engage the public; they are merely part of a crowd passing by waving their signs. The immediate target of a typical march-rally is actually the media, and only indirectly the public. Organizers draw media attention in the hopes that the media will then communicate their message to the public. In contrast, at a kittens action, the participants interact with the public directly; they become the media themselves and take their message directly to the people.
Also, participants at a kittens action (kittens for short) must think and make decisions on the spot—where to go? who to engage? what to say? how to respond?—whereas few such decisions need to be made by marchers following the crowds on a pre-planned route. And these interactions happen involving many, many more members of the public than the relative few who happen to see a march go by. Their autonomy combined with the widespread nature of their action means kittens pose a greater challenge than marchers to the taboos about how to behave in public.
Finally, kittens interact with lots of people who may not automatically agree with or be as passionate about the issues as them. Thus they work more than marchers in challenging their own fears of rejection. They become stronger organizers.
One visionary implication of the kittens action is thus revealed: building a society where everyone sees themselves as creators of social reality, with lead—not just supporting—roles to play.
There are other ways I believe the kittens action fits within a larger vision of consciousness change. I’ll explain more below.
What needs to change in our culture?
Meme 3: Transformation as Culture Shift
Political structures and economic structures not only shape culture, but they arise out of culture (cf. feedback-everywhere). Social transformation of the kind people like us wanna see will require more than a changing of the guard—it will require a shift in our culture, a shift in our everyday habits of thinking and acting.
In what ways does our culture need to shift? There are many, many ways I can think of, and I’m sure you can, too. I’ll list a few here that are of particular relevance to the kittens action.
First, mainstream US culture has a bizarre taboo against talking politics in public. Our media primarily focus on personalities, trivia, and tragedies. Social reality is mainly a show—one with us as spectators, and whose key events seem beyond our control.
How can people see themselves as creators of social reality?
Second, we have a dominant culture that squashes dialogue on deeper levels. For most people in our society, it is not cool to seem ignorant or confused, so asking questions is uncool. It is not cool to show a need for help or a reliance on other humans. We strive to be independent, so we tend to repress—not express—many of the feelings that arise from our basic needs. Hence, for these reasons and others, instead of communication, dialogue, and understanding, we have advertisements, announcements, and arguments.
How can we create dialogue that deepens our understanding of ourselves and each other?
Furthermore, our economic system actually depends on people feeling disconnected and unable to rely on others: individually wrapped lifestyles make us bigger consumers and more fearful workers. Ways of relating that are about mutual aid and interpersonal connection outside scripted roles—insofar as they are not marketable or commodifiable, and insofar as they interfere with workplace discipline—get deemphasized in our corporate-mediated culture. (The historical loss of the commons has been well-documented, and continues to play out in contemporary struggles over privatization.) The acceptable roles—consumers, workers, sports fans, et al.—get scripted for us. As we spend our time wearing masks not of our own creation, we feel less in control of our own lives, and a sense of powerlessness (or alienation) becomes pervasive. The alienation leads to greed and fear: Greed to beat out our competition (i.e., fellow humans), and fear that the competition will beat us out. The business and the government elites use greed and fear to increase the power they wield in our lives. And the alienation grows…
How can we stop this cycle of alienation, fear, and greed?
Finally, most forms of collectivity in our society—teams, companies, public agencies, etc.—are organized as clear hierarchies, with bosses, managers, and followers. Very rarely do we have opportunities to work in groups that are organized in an egalitarian way, where the experiences of each participant are equally important. Thus, we get used to seeing collectivity as requiring a weakening of our individuality. We come to see individuality and collectivity as locked in a zero-sum competition. To be a ‘strong individual’ means to ignore the collective, and to be a ‘good team-player’ means to efface one’s own needs.
How can we create social groups that both enhance and feed off of the power of the individual members? How can we create liberated forms of collectivity?
In reaction to the pervasive hierarchy that informs our social groups, and because they cannot think of alternative structures, some anarchists espouse doing away with complex forms of social organization altogether. Some pine for an idyllic past where everyone lived in small egalitarian bands and complex divisions of labor did not exist. However, the majority of thoughtful anarchists make a distinction between the legitimate authority of experts who we choose to listen to for advice or situational leadership, and the imposed authority of bosses, rulers, and elites.
But knowing in theory that legitimate and non-coercive leadership is possible doesn’t mean that it’s always clear how to make it work in practice. A huge stumbling block for efforts to create egalitarian social arrangements is that the vast majority of people’s socialization has occurred primarily through hierarchical groups and institutions. One of the powerful and far-reaching impacts of the global justice movement’s mass mobilization efforts has been the exposure of many, many people to effective egalitarian forms of decision-making (e.g. affinity groups). These people certainly take their experiences into other aspects of their lives and their social change work.
A question to ask about any tactics (or strategies) for social change is this: to what extent do those tactics (or strategies) help prefigure or bring about a desirable and necessary change in the way we live our lives, a desirable and necessary shift in our culture?
The kittens action promotes a culture-shift on all the fronts I’ve just mentioned.
First, it gets folk to transgress the taboo about talking politics in public. The demise of this taboo would have deep and far-reaching consequences in our society. No longer would the American public be content to limit its sophisticated analyses and passionate debates to sports, pop stars, and movies. No longer would our roles as consumers or workers eclipse our roles as community members, as citizens (documented or not). When social reality ceases to be a trivial show, when social reality is something that we have important things to say about, then we can move from being spectators to being creators.
Second, by breaking through not only the taboo against politics but the taboo against purposefully engaging strangers in dialogue, kittens renew their sense of interdependence and connection with the real people who make up the real society around them. Conversing about heartfelt stuff with people outside our normal circles makes it hard to reduce people to tokens in a theory, it expands our sense of our own humanity, and it moves us out of alienation.
Third, the kittens action—just like other anti-authoritarian forms of mass action (e.g. affinity group convergences)—engages participants in a form of collectivity where every individual is a key actor and decision-maker, and where the power of the group is directly dependent on the power of the individuals, and where the power of the individuals is directly connected with the power of their team and indirectly (especially at the final reconvergence/sharing stories step) connected with the power of the overall action. We learn to create liberated forms of collectivity through practical experience.
How do we move from the margins into the center?
Meme 4: Organization vs. Marginalization
Anarchists who are into organizing are often critical of those who represent anarchism largely as a subculture or lifestyle. Anarchist organizers argue that lifestylist anarchists marginalize themselves in their safe subculture-niches and thus become invisible and irrelevant in the wider movement.
The marginalization anarchist organizers worry about is not just a problem for anarchists—it’s a problem for the left as a whole. (N.B. I know some of y’all don’t like the word ‘left’. Sorry for any semantic inconvenience. What I mean by ‘left’ is very broad: the people who believe we need more social equality, more sustainability, less hatred, and more liberation in the world.) For most of us on the left, the longer we see ourselves as part of the left, the more we feel estranged and distant from regions of culture that used to be familiar to us. We spend more and more time with other progressives and activists, and less and less time with that ‘conservative brother-in-law who just doesn’t get it’. We shift our sense of community as we shift our sense of self. This is quite normal.
However, if we on the left are going to win the public to our side of the struggle, we gotta do more than complain about the people who don’t know what we know, or the people who aren’t activated like us. We gotta figure out how to teach people what we know, and we gotta figure out how to activate people. In short, we gotta organize.
A lotta people assume that organizing means organization-building. Perhaps this comes from the (correct) notion that systemic change requires institutional change, and the (incorrect) notion that institutional change requires mass organizations. Or perhaps it comes from Marxist-Leninist party-fetishism. Who knows?
When I talk about organizing I don’t mean getting people to join an organization, although that can be a part of it. By organizing I simply mean doing what organizers do—getting people to do something, getting people to take action. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if someone joins a particular organization, as long as that person is doing work to expand human liberation, and as long as they understand that their work is part of a larger tapestry of transformation, a tapestry that includes the work I and people like me are doing.
This is a critical point so let me take time to be clear here. The impact and legacy of left social movements (e.g. the civil rights movement, the anti-nuke movement) cannot be measured simply by the policies that are passed or by the organizations that get created. After all, policies can be subverted and organizations can ossify. The main value of left social movements comes from the transformative actions they inspire from millions of unnamed and unaffiliated people, people whose lives are changed by something they are a part of, people who take what they learn into the rest of their lives. The main value of social movements comes from the way they deepen our consciousness and shift our culture.
Any tactic or strategy connected with a vision for liberation must say yes to the following question: Does this tactic or strategy lead to transformative action? Does this tactic or strategy organize?
It is clear that the kittens action—like any mass action—does organize people, at least its participants. Participants step outside their normal scripts of silence and anonymity in the face of the culture of complicity, and they do something about the ills they perceive. Further, by directly engaging the public, kittens can organize many, many others as well. More on this to come.
How do people learn? What makes people change?
Meme 5: experience over symbolism
What makes people change? This is the fundamental question facing all organizers (and teachers). This question should be on the mental front burners of anyone who cares about changing the world.
There are essentially two views on the problem of getting people to learn or change. One view is that learning happens primarily through symbols—words, texts, stories, images, etc. The other view is that learning happens primarily through experience—things that happen to us and things that we do. (These two views are really part of a more complex continuum. For instance, consider role-models, people in our lives that serve as examples for us to follow. Are they experiences? Are they symbols? Both? Neither?)
Organizers (and teachers) who take the symbolic approach focus on making convincing arguments, telling compelling stories, showing people evocative images. Symbolic learning is the dominant approach taken in traditional schooling, and it serves important functions—the memorization of facts, the communication of the experiences of others. Also, within organizing symbolic work serves a vital function—background knowledge, raising critical questions, .
The experiential approach to learning focuses on hands-on projects, field trips, apprenticeships, experiments, student-centered learning. (One example of student-centered learning is Paulo Freire’s liberation pedagogy: it is all about privileging the ‘subjective’ experience of the learner over the ‘objective’ official knowledge of the teacher.) In organizing, the experiential approach focuses on helping people reflect on their own experiences, and pushing people to have new experiences—to expand their understanding of an issue and their relationship to the issue.
Although formal schooling is dominated by symbolic learning, experiential learning is almost universally recognized among educators to be the most powerful approach.
Pause for a moment to think about your most powerful and memorable learning experience. Did it happen because someone made an especially convincing argument to you, or told you a particularly compelling story? If you’re like most people, chances are your most powerful learning experience was precisely that—an experience, something that happened that you were a part of.
In the realm of social change as well, the symbolic approach has limitations.
One weakness of the symbolic approach to social change can be seen in the diluted and in some cases reversed policy victories of the civil rights movement. For instance, although Brown v. Board of Education (and following rulings and legislation) ended de jure segregation in schooling, de facto segregation continues. Fifty years after Brown the racial gaps in education persist, mainly because the racist attitudes of whites in America have not changed that much.
Another weakness with symbolic approaches to change as compared to experiential approaches has to do with long-term vision. Is our vision to continue a culture where politics is a spectacle, a parade of rhetoric and images, controlled by an elite minority of privileged and highly-trained image-makers, story-tellers, and symbolic analysts (be they from the left, center, or right)? Or do we want to create a culture where politics is not seen primarily as something you watch, read about, or listen to, but rather as something you do, something you experience?
This is a really difficult thing to imagine. It is perhaps a universal of human culture that the leaders and chiefs tend to be the ones who are the most verbally astute. Throughout human history—and evidence suggests even in the days when we were all hunters and gatherers living in small nomadic bands—political life has been disproportionately influenced if not dominated by those who were the most adept at words and images. Is it even possible to have a political culture that doesn’t have this sort of built-in status hierarchy?
(Additionally, personality typologies such as the Myers-Briggs and learning theories that look at multiple intelligences and learning styles suggest that symbolic-oriented learners—as opposed to concrete-experientially-oriented learners—form a privileged minority within our schooling system, especially at the secondary and post-secondary levels.)
Recognizing the problematics with this kind of power is difficult—especially as many of us—including me—have found a kind of power to fight oppression through our facility with language and symbols.
Yet there is a paradox. On the one hand, we want people to take action and take charge of their own lives, and not be lead by whatever images they’re fed by the elites, or whatever myths they’re told by charismatic people around them. On the other hand, the most ready tool for social change many of us have is our own influential voice (be it spoken or written or performed or illustrated). (Eugene Debs, socialist presidential candidate in the early 1900s, illustrated this paradox when he said, “I don't want you to follow me or anyone else. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, somebody else would lead you out.” )
It is essentially the question of how to promote revolution without promoting oneself. This question must be recognized and grappled with those of us who envision a society without elites of any kind.
The history of revolutions for social equality creating new elites and ruling castes shows the difficulty of overcoming this conundrum. Clearly, in these instances, symbolic revolution, articulated by revolutionary elites, won out over experiential revolution grounded in the unique perspectives of all members of society. Top-down won out over bottom-up.
Perhaps the conundrum can be cancelled by an approach that combines actions with symbols in some sort of dialectic or transformation? To the extent both the actions and the symbols are controlled by each individual, elitist divisions of labor between those who instruct and those who follow instructions could be overcome. (I once chatted with a woman who was a self-made life-planning counselor. She told me a bit about neurolinguistic programming—a self-improvement approach that uses individually chosen gestures to symbolize moods or mindsets that we want to reinforce in ourselves. Something for further study…)
So we’ve considered some weaknesses with symbolic approaches to social change. What about experiential approaches?
An example of the power of action and experience in personal transformation comes from the field of social psychology.
There was study conducted by a team of social psychologists in a suburban neighborhood. They posed as ‘community workers’ and asked the residents whether they would be willing to place a billboard in their front lawns as a public service. The billboards would say ‘Please Drive Carefully’. Of course, the vast majority of them said ‘hell no!’ to the request—85% of the people in the study’s control group in fact refused to do this public service. In the test group, however, in the same neighborhood, with demographics exactly the same, 83% said ‘yes’ to the ‘community workers’ strange request.
One group was 85% ‘no’ while the other group just the reverse, 83% ‘yes’. Why such a dramatic reversal in response between the two groups of residents? The only difference between the two groups was that, two weeks previously, another set of ‘community workers’ had visited the test group, with a smaller and much easier request: Would they be willing to place a 3-by-3 inch card in their front window with the words ‘Please Drive Carefully’? When given this token request, the almost all of the people said ‘yes’.
Because the people in the test group had already done a token action supporting the cause (placing the card in their window), they were much more likely to do a bigger action (putting up a billboard in their yard) for the cause later on. By taking a small action people’s sense of themselves had changed, and they were much more likely to do other and bigger actions in the future, consistent with their changed sense of self. (This study and similarly interesting results from social psychology can be found in Robert Cialdini’s Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion, and Eliot Aaronson’s The Social Animal.)
This notion of getting people to do small things in order to make them more likely to do bigger things later on is known as baby-steps by organizers (and foot-in-the-door by sales people). It is a powerful example of the power of action in transformation.
The kittens action applies this notion of baby-steps on two levels, at the level of the wider public and at the level of the kittens themselves.
Firstly, in a kittens action, because the kittens are engaging the public—and not just holding signs or chanting in a crowd—they can get the people they meet to do things like write letters, sign petitions, put stickers on their cars, wear buttons, swear oaths, and a host of other token actions that will get the people who are not activists to move one baby-step in the direction of becoming activists.
Thus, the movement becomes bigger.
Secondly, by helping kittens have a baby-step experience as organizers directly and personally engaging the public to promote their cause, the kittens action helps the participants to see themselves as organizers. Thus the kittens action help create more organizers, more people who will be active and effective over the long-term at expanding the movement. These individuals will not only interact with the people they meet that particular day; they will go on to be more likely to interact with others they meet in the future—in their workplaces, in their neighborhoods, in the supermarkets. In this way, not only does the kittens action do like any mass action and organize the people who participate—the kittens action spreads the meme of organizing to create more organizers!
Thus, the movement becomes deeper.
With the help of baby-steps, we can see how the kittens action provides a powerful application of the meme of experience over symbolism, and a powerful tactic in helping us build a bigger and deeper movement.
Conclusion: Spreading Revolution
For me, as an organizer and as a teacher, the biggest question I face everyday is: What can I do to get people to have experiences that transform and enrichen their sense of possibilities? One of the things I’ve learned (and relearned many times!) is that this question is equivalent to the question: What can I do to transform and enrichen my own sense of possibilities? As a religion teacher I had in college named Thandeka once told me, The inner and the outer are one.
On some days or at some moments I see the light and feel inspired, at other times it’s enough just to get through the day without seriously wanting to hurt somebody or myself. Such is life.
Besides self-care, like walking or playing or staring at stars or fun personal stuff like that, one thing that renews my hope in a heartbeat, that allows me to smile and say things like “George Bush is good for America” to my friends and not feel like I’m telling a sick joke is this: remembering that I am just but a single thread in a huge and unfolding tapestry of liberation. Every single person on this planet has a role in weaving that tapestry. And everybody’s got a unique thread to weave. The best and only thing I can do is weave my thread and get out of the way of people trying to weave theirs.
The revolution is now. The revolution is all the time. Welcome to the revolution.