rules for grassroots postmodernists

I'm taking classes right now at a wonderful school called SIT Graduate Institute. It is located in the great, wet, green state of Vermont. Tomorrow, I plan to check out a class called "Leadership, Community and Coalition Building." Readings at this school so far have arrived much like romantic gifts from loved ones: just the right surprise at just the right time. As I left Los Angeles, I was aching to learn more about what was happening in terms of shifting the paradigm of this strange experiment we call THE United States of America. Each time I read, I receive more pieces to the puzzle of different players around the "two-thirds" of the world who are every day trying hard to maintain their identity and to maintain control of their own ability to provide for themselves with the food they make and their own creations.

My reading for the class tonight brought me to an old book that many have read before me: Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky. What a gem of a book! So many of the problems it touches on from its era of the 1970s still exist today! But, it's so sad that the book speaks to a whole generation whose flame has died out, who have given in to the idea that they need loads of money to survive in their old age instead of their surrounding community. The book in the first chapter seeks to remind "radicals" that they should not fall prey to pointless statements or simply swearing at the people at which they are angry, because that gets them nowhere. True engagement comes with genuine talks that reach to the heart of people.

Coupled with Rules for Radicals, we are reading Grassroots Postmodernism, which focuses on more current examples of people around the world trying to survive beneath the forces of something strangely called the "free market." What is this "free" market and where can I find it? This book really deconstructs even idea I learned last semester like the need for "progress," the idea of "human rights" (i.e. are we just using the idea to say-- oh look, your human rights are taken care of basically, so we've done our duty), and "minorities." Because, does progress mean that all peoples will continue to consume materials that we don't recycle until the earth is devastated? Do human rights mean that as long as a person has AN education that everything is ok? What if their educations shuffle them back into living situations where their health is in jeopardy? We need to elaborate and say what is the end of the means called "human rights." Why are minorities called that when they are actually in the majority around the world and when they will soon no longer be a minority in the USofA? These are questions we need to be discussing face to face and not just in bloglandia. But I hope this writing will cause you to talk.

I'm happy to get this blog going. I hope to post here and there. Especially about what I am learning and news related to the above themes.