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No Justice and No Peace: A Critique of Current Social Change Politics (7 of 8)
Maybe there is still a question in your mind as to how do we address those needs. You might say that at least these marches or national campaigns produce a dialogue between the aggrieved and the public at large. At least the organizations place a light on many issues of injustice. Our thought is that a lot of the people that comprise these organizations and/or go to these marches (that may include you) are our enemies because of the barriers they present to new kinds of change – the limitations they create to what is possible. Because they define it, the dialogue is nonexistent. Marches, lobbying, voting have their role, but groups get very caught up on these stale methodologies – from the Human Rights Campaign to the Mobilization for Global Justice to the March for Women's Lives. When you're relying on just one or two large-scale ways of making change or being active, rather than encouraging a multitude, there is a problem.
For us, new change-making strategies center on education and empowerment. By saying education and empowerment, we mean not only teaching people media skills, but building understanding of the history of their communities relationship to self-representation; not only having people test their own water and air samples for pollution, but also demystifying how the chemical industry works; not only building coalitions to stop a publicly funded baseball stadium, but also connecting that fight to larger struggles against gentrification and bad government spending priorities.
Speaking to our neighbors, harnessing the momentum of everyday life, working for community empowerment. Our vision includes an ultimate redistribution of resources, and in the short term we want people to share their skills. By education, we don't mean just giving out information.
If it's done in that way, it won't matter as much. We all can learn from some amazing projects that are doing this work all the time. The DC Radio Coop (that we are both a part of) and Third World Majority (in Oakland, California) both teach media skills to members of marginalized communities while also fostering a greater analysis about media justice. This form of media activism promotes leadership of the most effected as it promotes engagement with issues and access to knowledge and power. Just telling someone that so-called “radical news” is more relevant than the Washington Post isn't effective, but being involved in their daily lives will be. Empowerment means actually giving someone power over something in their own life, as opposed to some “feel good” activism that assuages a privileged person's guilt.
Next > Change from below: It's not just about selling ideas to the "public"
