Draft Organizing Proposal
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The following is what I would like to propose to guide some of the core dimensions of the work of Old and New. First, I want to build on the strength of Old and New, which is its diversity. Old and New has assembled some principled forces from perhaps the broadest ideological and political range of any radical formation in the United States. This is a unique strength that we have to capitalize and build upon. The question is how? And to what end? Basic Proposal Outline The answer to the latter questions that I want to propose is that Old and New serve as a formation focusing on a) providing a radical summation of the struggles of the multinational working class and the oppressed and colonized peoples held captive by the United States government over the last 50 years (with 1968 being an intentional point of demarcation for us all to agree and or debate at this point in time), and b) building on this summation work on producing a radical synthesis for left in the United States geared towards building a revolutionary program for the 21st century. The aim of our summation and synthesis work is to produce an ongoing set of tools for practical use by revolutionary forces in the months, years, and decades to come. These tools include: videos, podcasts, position papers, news articles, editorials, books, manuals for “popular education.” Practical Means of Implementation I want to propose that we start by holding two “summation and synthesis” retreat sessions per year. The first one would be in the beginning of spring, and the second one would in the fall. The purposes of these sessions would be to produce a series of tools that we would publicly disseminate throughout the year, addressing various historic questions, ongoing strategic questions, and pressing tactical issues. We would disseminate these “tools” through various strategic partnerships with left leaning media outlets, like Deep Dish TV and the Real News Network (by way of examples), and through explicitly left oriented annual conferences and convergences like Labor Notes, the Left Forum, the Allied Media Conference, etc. We would also look to hold our own public forums throughout the country and at least 1 strategic movement retreat every other year with forces outside of Old and New to share with, learn from, and build with. Needed Infrastructure In order to move this proposal forward we would need, at bare minimum, the following: 1) a coordinator to plan our internal retreats, 2) a facilitating body to plan out our ongoing discussions and deliberations, 3) a web designer to build us a comprehensive, multi-media layered website, 4) a fundraising team to garner up enough resources to support our travel needs, 5) a media production team to do the digital recordings and edits we need for the vides and podcasts There is more that could and needs to be said and outlined in order to fully develop this proposal. But, I wanted to get this basic skeleton out without delay to advance the work of building the proposal collectively. Please receive it in the collective spirit and let’s rip it shreds and piece it back together again until we have something we are able and willing to execute.
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