By Jonathan Michael Feldman, April 26, 2020

Overview

The Global Teach-In is a globally mediated event involving multiple countries and locations. The goal is to advance: a) knowledge and resource sharing among organizers and local communities; b) advancement of short-term solutions; c) promotion of long-term structural reform; d) creating organizing bridges through reconstructive institutions, e) testing of long-term and short-term proposals; f) integration of diverse issues, “connecting the dots”; g) creating a mass media and political focal point. These seven principles provide a way to #democratize the crisis.

Knowledge and resource sharing (a): Here are five examples. First, an organizer in one location has a design for clean water filtration system that she or he can share with activists in another location. Second, an activist knows principals of a large cooperative bank or another can make the case before aid agencies that could fund development projects. We link such activists to a local group in another elsewhere that wants to develop a cooperative to develop alternative energy but lacks funds. Third, an activist wants to promote the Green New Deal in Nigeria. Various activists work with that person to help develop ideas for advancing that plan. Fourth, local activists in a country want to ban the use, development and extraction of oil. We work with these activists to develop and help research a conversion policy plan that would seek out alternatives to oil development in that country. Fifth, activists want to stop arms exports and the damage caused by conventional weapons, not just a ban on nuclear weapons. We can help link activists in the arms exporting country to those in the country importing these weapons. The level of knowledge and resource sharing depends on time, interest and resources. Ultimately it can involve a “soft” variety of information exchange and the “hard” variety of pooling technical skills and capital.

Advancement of short-term solutions (b): If a local group does not develop short-term solutions to immediate needs, then critical and pressing problems will not be solved. Big solutions can simply amount to promises that don’t necessary yield results. Theories of community organizing suggest that local activists to win victories to gain momentum as well as public/media interest. Early wins can be the key to long-term success. Here are three examples of short-term solutions.

Example I: The corona virus crisis presents several such problems such as overcoming shortages in equipment for health and safety. A short-term solution would be the develop an information campaign about shortages and appeal to governments, voluntary organizations or cooperatives to assist in overcoming the shortage.

Example II: The government of a country provides misleading or inaccurate information about problems which activists can document. A short-term solution would be to figure out how to improve the quality of news reporting so that the public can make informed judgments. This solution could involve the development of a media accountability system. Such an accountability system depends on carefully documented bias in the sources of news, which ideas are emphasized and which are ignored, and illustrating substantive ideas of experts who are ignored.

Example III: A nominally democratic country exports weapons to a non-democratic or poverty-stricken country which wastes resources or harms democracy in the importing nation. A short-term solution to this problem would be to organize a global forum linking activists in the exporting country to activists in the importing country such that the brand of the exporting company is exposed on a global-basis.

Promotion of long-term structural reform (c): There have been various critics of the short-term approach to organizing. One argument is that this approach centers too much power in organizers themselves and bureaucratic organizations. This criticism suggests that we should instead utilize strikes and other disruptive techniques to gain leverage and leave initiative to local communities, not so-called “outside agitators.” The limitation to this argument is that in the global era certain kinds of disruptions merely lead businesses to close down and move elsewhere (depending on the region and industry). Another problem is that countries facing development problems can always align themselves with the ascendant super power, China, to organize markets, jobs and capital. This is the case from El Salvador to Sweden. Even as the Covid-19 pandemic fuels a backlash against globalization, Chinese investments are still the default for many regions. The problem, however, is dependency on foreign nations can represent an opportunity cost to local, indigenous development even if equitably managed fair trade can be desirable and beneficial. In another sphere, divestment of oil in itself will not replace the automotive dependency of hundreds of millions of persons who lack mass transit systems and sustainable means to get to access work (problems that we return to after societies “open up” again).

Even if strikes, other disruptions and fair trade are useful measures, they need to be complemented by efforts to support local and regional economies so that they are more self-reliant and resilient. The corona crisis has exposed the limits of such resiliency in both the developed and developing world. Communities need access to local production systems for food, health equipment, alternative energy systems, housing construction, and the like. A long-term project to promote these would include not just a comprehensive Green New Deal, but networks that pool to procurement power of localities as in the Preston model.

Creating organizing bridges through reconstructive institutions (d): How do we move from short-term campaigns to long-term structural reform? The key mechanisms are “organizing bridges.” This term refers to the mechanisms that relate individuals in social groups or movements to organizational levers that can influence the state and corporations (or the capacities normally bundled by governments and businesses). We need new institutions to advance our goals and a strategy to systematically leverage power.

In the political sphere, the organizing bridge is the collective town-meeting or teach-in in which numerous localities meet, deliberate and create a focal point (or point of focus) for politicians and the media. We also need visionary leaders who believe in national economic planning, even if that is promoted by a consortium of local regions and cities.

In the media sphere, a radio, television or web-based video conferencing system can be a valuable bridge if it gains sufficient attention and sustains a large and growing audience. Activists often use demonstrations and on-line protests to achieve such attention, but progressive forces need an alternative to CNN, BBC, and other established media platforms.

In the economic sphere, the bridge is represented by networks of consumption and production that interact. One network of consumption is the previously mentioned Preston model which illustrates how procurement (or government purchasing power) can be mobilized. In addition, networks of individual consumers or members of a social movement organization can organize demand (or consumption) to promote products. These consumer networks can take the form of “consumer cooperatives,” “buying clubs,” or “strategic alliances” among local governments. The supplier should take the form of cooperatives, municipally-owned businesses or multi-product companies which have the flexibility to make diverse products corresponding to social needs, e.g. bicycles, alternative energy systems. In addition, a reformed foreign aid system would link networks of technical, engineering capacities in the Global North and South, such that there is joint training and capacities development, i.e. we need a global skills bank. Most generally, we need to expand cooperative and local government run-banks that help organize innovations and jobs corresponding to social needs.

Testing of long-term and short-term proposals (e): Academics, activists and policy makers who have various ideas for reform, social change or proposals to reconstruct society must test such ideas against actual local conditions. The philosopher Thomas Dewey argued that democracies require such a testing system. One way to organize such tests is to link those formulating proposals to audiences which give feedback based on what they think would work or what tests they have engaged in when trying to make a proposal work. This testing system requires a communicative feedback loop.

Integration of diverse issues, “connecting the dots” (f): Many issues are interconnected particularly the concerns of labor, environmental, peace and civil rights groups. Progressive communities across the globe have slowly developed a language which sees the connections among such social movements. Many now understand that a nuclear war would devastate the environment. Many realize that pollution and global warming often hurts the poorest and most socially marginalized. Some understand that cutting back if not eliminating the oil and defense industries would hurt workers and communities dependent upon such industries, unless an alternative form of work and income was developed, e.g. through green jobs and conversion of industries. Yet, while we must connect these diverse issues rhetorically, we still need to figure out how to effect these connections (or bring them about) in a meaningful way. This requires that we study the concrete details of what promotes or limits the conversion of industries. We must analyze the portfolio of power behind the various complexes (in the auto, oil, real estate, finance, military industrial) which sustain the status quo. As Paul Goodman argued, we must diagram power structures and expose the chain of decision-makers through power structure research.

Creating a mass media and political focal point (g): In order to break to legitimate structural reform and leverage resources, social movements and networks of alternative institutions must break through the media sphere and enter the consciousness of a critical number of groups.

There are many reasons why critical ideas cannot easily reach a mass audience. First, progressive forces are in trouble because they innovate far too slowly, coming up with or promoting ideas that have been in circulation for many decades. In contrast, if social change innovators have a direct access to a mass audience, then they don’t have to wait around for gatekeepers in established groups to ratify their ideas. A lot of social change is mediated by groups that are based on long-established social movements tied to ideas that are decades old and out of date. Ironically, some very old ideas which would be highly useful are systematically ignored.

Second, there is a separation blocking the linkage of the worlds of academics, intellectuals, organizers and activists. Academics and intellectuals often are trained to speak in a language that is not readily accessible, specialized and incoherent or not easily understood by larger public audiences of non-specialists. This means that new or more critical ideas often circulate among a narrow group of persons who speak only to themselves. This separation can be designed by created a space where diverse groups can exchange ideas and learn how to speak each other’s language.

Third, various established actors in the funding community, media or political sphere filter out ideas that threaten their grasp on power. The distinct and separated issue is often all that funders, journalists or politicians can understand. In other cases, more systemic change that connects issues is simply not of interest because some assume established experts, politicians or even non-government organizations have all the established routines necessary to define if not solve problems. They are wrong. If a media network reaches a big enough audience, even a virtual one, they can use that audience to generate their own funding.

Fourth, many social movements often are based on a model which makes the audience passive absorption systems of information developed by a small group. Social movement participants often drop out because they find the experience of being a passive witness boring and ineffective. While this division between formulators and receivers of ideas is often inevitable, a long-term process should be to use media to decrease the gap between those developing ideas/plans and those implementing and receiving them. This requires the creation of a process on ongoing pedagogy, teaching and study and media events that simply broadcast information. The study circle is one such mechanism to reduce gaps.