Care, Discipline, & Responsibility in Organizing
Angela Zachary
10/17/2024
Anytime I am asked to participate in organizing, I consider it an honor. This is because the work of organizing involves a level of trust that has been offered to me—both from my fellow organizers and from the people who we are organizing. This is a responsibility I do not take lightly and would caution anyone against treating our work in the Movement carelessly.
The Brigade and our publication, The Class Struggle Chronicle, began the month of October with an introductory article about the importance of scientific organizing: organizing which incorporates both theory and praxis (study/analysis and action). This article did a fine job in outlining the “how’s” of scientific organizing and, in furtherance of this theme, I’d like to delve into the “why’s” of scientific organizing—why taking this approach is so crucial to our work.
Here are my personal “why’s”:
I embraced leftist ideology (Marxism-Leninism, to be precise) because I witnessed the immense suffering of this world and felt, as I still do, that token reformism is insufficient to address the dire problems facing working and oppressed people. As a worker, I have experienced the demoralization of exploitation and all of the accompanying sickness that arise from our capitalist system: alienation, depression, crippling anxiety, exhaustion, despair, and isolation. I have experienced oppressions because of my identity as a woman, as a Queer person, as a person of color. I have had to choose between picking up a prescription or eating dinner. I have pawned treasured personal items to make rent. I have seen friends and family crushed under the weight of these injustices, finally giving up and succumbing to substance overdose or taking their own life; I have attended too many funerals, sat at too many deathbeds. I have seen young, decent people lose the light of optimism in their eyes within only a short time of working in the soul-crushing corporate dictatorship of the owning class. I have seen families and partnerships destroyed, lives torn asunder, by this system. I have seen the bodies and minds of human beings transformed into an instrument of wealth production by their capitalist masters, relegating them to a subhuman classification unworthy of basic human decency.
These are the “why’s” that drive me to take organizing so seriously. These are the “why’s” that compel me to take a thoughtful, meticulous, and conscientious approach to my work in the Movement. To me, organizing is not some abstract idea, beautiful in its iconography and vision; no, for me, organizing is a real life struggle against those who would enslave the rest of humanity for their own personal gain.
The Louisville Workers Brigade identifies three primary categories of organizing, though we recognize their dialectical interrelation with one another: political organizing, labor organizing, and community organizing. No matter which classification occupies an organizer’s primary scope of attention, certain universals are consistent. Organizing involves collective work among the working and oppressed masses. Organizing is a people-driven, people-focused endeavor. In undertaking this work, organizers are entrusted with the hopes, frustrations, dreams, and grievances of others; in some instances, the very livelihoods and lives of those we are working with are held in the balance. The difference between serious organizing and ill-prepared, juvenile adventurism/larping is more than just success or failure: it can mean the difference between success or serious harm to those who have entrusted their hopes with us as organizers.
I and a few other Brigade organizers were participants in the Black Lives Matter Uprisings of 2020. At the time, I was living in Chicago where I witnessed, firsthand, what a lack of care, discipline, and responsibility can do to the Movement and to human lives. The anecdotal evidence I have from my experiences in Chicago during the summer of 2020 match with the experiences of countless other organizers across the country, including in Louisville, Kentucky. While much good was accomplished due to the efforts of the uprising, many people—good, kind-hearted people—were needlessly hurt and some killed because of ungrounded, irresponsible organizers.
The reasons for the existence of reckless organizers are numerous. Some activists are young and, drawn into the excitement of praxis, fail to properly analyze the conditions of a given situation and rush headfirst into action without due consideration of risks and responsibilities. For others, usually of a more privileged and affluent background, organizing represents more a paternalistic pastime than a struggle for liberation, limiting their commitment and seriousness around the Movement. Still others may be driven by an individualistic desire for recognition, praise, and accolades, tainting all of their work with a selfishness that is antithetical to leftist organizing. There are many other causes for irresponsible organizing that abound, but these three, in my experience of decades of organizing, seem to be the most common.
Analyzing and correcting these errors on a case-by-case basis is of paramount importance for progressive groups, organizations, and collectives. Regardless of the specific cause of irresponsibility, however, the result is nearly always the same: an erosion of progressive gains due to a lack of discipline, follow through, care, and dependability. This translates into a weak collective, broken promises which diminish the reputation of the progressive group (and leftist causes in general), and actions riddled with unnecessary risks and needless harm to participants.
On multiple occasions, I have borne witness to actions where the sponsoring groups self-congratulated themselves ad nauseum over their airtight OPSEC measures in maintaining communications through encrypted channels, but can’t show up when they say they will and won’t fulfill tasks they’ve committed themselves to. Their hyper-fixation on the optics of operating like some federally-surveilled clandestine organization of revolution is, in reality, the worst type of larping and a cover for childish irresponsibility. They will move heaven and hell to evade the feds that don’t even care about their pathetic parody of revolutionary organizing, but they give little thought or consideration to the actual people they are supposedly attempting to educate, empower, and liberate.
Care, discipline, and responsibility are essential attributes of an effective organizer. Such an organizer must always remember the end goal—liberation for all working and oppressed people—while simultaneously remaining conscious of the people involved in the collective work towards that aim. Instead of being quick to jump at any suggestion of action, organizers should analyze conditions and weight options, never promising what cannot be fulfilled and never acting without reasonable analysis. This is proper, not only to ensure effectiveness, but also to maintain safety and accountability.
The work of organizing is much more than protests, facing off with police, and screaming into a megaphone. The majority of organizing work may, in fact, appear quite humdrum to an outside observer. But these operational, organizational, educational, and analytical tasks are just as important (if not more so) as the final direct action that is formulated from these steps. These responsibilities ensure effective actions. They are not glamorous nor are they flashy, but they are essential.
The level of diligence and patience that goes into organizing will, inevitably, determine the effectiveness of a given action and the ultimate trajectory of the organization. Keeping commitments, fulfilling responsibilities, putting in the necessary study and analysis, maintaining open and frequent lines of communication, remaining steadfast in discipline, keeping people first—always with our eyes upon the goal of liberation—these are the essential components to effective organizing. With them, organizers can make a real material impact on the lives of those they work with. Unbreakable connections of solidarity can be built. Conditions can be radically altered. A new society can be born. These are the aims of all revolutionaries and a scientific approach is needed to achieve them.
The lives and welfare of human beings hang in the balance. Climate catastrophe, imperialist wars, widespread human suffering, and the unrelenting brutality of exploitation and oppression necessitate immediate and radical engagement in the class war. For ourselves, for our community, and for the generations to come after us, we, as organizers, must develop care, discipline, and responsibility in our organizing work. In doing so, we bring the hope of liberation to the suffering masses of working and oppressed people everywhere.