to see what is negative as a potential positive; more from the USSF

Thursday 6/24

Today is the day for going to workshops I tell myself. Yesterday was great – nonviolence training, peace teams, and speaking on a panel, but today I want to be a participant.

First up, a conversation with Grace Lee Boggs and Emmanuel Wallerstein, two elders of the movement.

Grace Lee Boggs is an amazing organizer who celebrated her 95^th birthday this last week. She and her husband, Jimmie Boggs, who died in 1993, have been the center of much of the creative and inspiring work in Detroit for decades.

The room is packed with not a chair available. People sit on the floor, lie on the floor, lean against the walls …. Joy and anticipation in the air.

I love how easily they talk about love. They put their heart into their work. It seems to be what sustains them. So much I can say and write about this one workshop alone… here are some highlights (in no particular order):

* Ideas matter, We need to understand our place in history, and we need to understand between local and international struggles

* “Another world is possible, but not inevitable. The world of 2050 will be what we make it. We have the power within us to change it.”

* We need to resist the danger of becoming mindless activists acting as if only action matters. Ideas matter”

* The struggle is both long and immediate. We need to take care of the present and look toward the future. In the short run we need to minimize the pain, in the medium run we transform the world. What will win the struggle?

* “ (R )evolution is a new beginning. It is not to prove our analysis is right. ” (Grace Lee Boggs)

* “In uncertainty there is hope.” (Grace Lee Boggs)

* We don’t need to capture the state we need to change the paradigm. Those who capture the state become prisoners of the state.

* A real revolution is an advancement in the concept of what it means to be human.

* Anger is real and vital but you can’t sustain a life built on anger as its sole foundation.

After this workshop is over I head over to one on Accompaniment. Panelist from ISM, PBI, CPT and FOR will speak. After some confusion about room assignment it turns out there are only 2 of us there, so we move the workshop outside onto a grassy spot and turn it into an organizers meeting ; discussing ways our groups can support one another etc. It was wonderful and productive and good to be with others who are doing this work I love so much!

Another spontaneous, “on the fly” training, a check-in with the team at tent city and the day wraps up with a good (if late) dinner at a local Middle Eastern restaurant.