[ COVID-19, and before Covid everything else, has raised a
question that is now percolating, and even reverberating. And then
came a white knee crushing a Black neck. A dream so long deferred
suddenly exploded in city after city. Whats next?]
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TOMORROW'S WORLD, TODAY   [[link removed]]

 

Collective 20
June 25, 2020
Collective 20
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_ COVID-19, and before Covid everything else, has raised a question
that is now percolating, and even reverberating. And then came a white
knee crushing a Black neck. A dream so long deferred suddenly exploded
in city after city. What's next? _

Collective 20,

 

From the social distancing, what? From the fumes and flames, what?
From the bodies in morgues and the ashes littering streets in hundreds
of cities, what? Are we going back or are we going forward? Keeping
our distance and feeling incredible anger are both understandable,
both warranted. The former uniquely now. The latter since before
whenever. But how does either become sustainably constructive? 

A school burns. Its lunches for youngsters become unavailable. A call
goes out. In hours the school’s community generates truckloads of
food. Mutual aid is one way social distancing becomes constructive. 

A man is choked to death in a modern day lynching meant to scare and
subordinate. People in his community, and in all communities, feel
rage and lash out. Do lasting connections form? Do thousands of local
organizing efforts, mutual aid associations, and even grassroots
assemblies become new sinews of new movement growth? They can, but if
they don’t create lasting connections, one to the next, each upsurge
will wilt in splendid isolation. 

So what glue can network it all? Perhaps we need future-seeking anger.
Perhaps we need positive passion. Could vision of a better future be
our needed glue? Could vision of what we want, not just for survival
but for liberation, move us from disorganized disparate resistance to
highly organized coherent rebellion? 

Can post Covid lead us toward post racism, post sexism, post
authoritarianism, post capitalism, post global warming, post war,
rather than leading us back to the ugliness that preceded and provoked
our current crises? 

What can make this moment’s passion positive? What can make this
moment’s anger future-seeking? Fuck it all – what do we really
want?

Some people will say the only solution is more authority, more
surveillance, more domination. Call out the cops. Call out the
national guard. Call out the army. They will seek to parlay current
chaos into accelerated regimentation. They will play on fear to birth
more fear. Some who do that will ignorantly believe what they are
saying. Some who do that will despicably want no more than their own
safety and enrichment. 

Others will avoid the questions entirely. They are pained, and they
want no more pain. Their feeling is fair enough, but somehow they
think looking the other way is valid, moral, worthy, and for that
matter even a pain-diminishing approach. They will seek to laugh and
not feel the encroaching pandemonium. “I must go where it is
quiet.” It is an understandable sentiment, but they are the good
people who will do nothing and thereby, against their own better
natures, abet evil.

Some other people will curiously address these questions. Their
inquiring and all too abstract minds want to know. “I want to
understand.” They may gain knowledge. They may even share it. But
with only curiosity, will they move beyond words?

Some people will approach the questions desperate, their equanimity
shattered by their own oppressions. “Get me outta this place.”
They will seek relief and with good reason. But only desperate,
their’s will be a lonely pursuit. 

Finally, some people will approach the questions curious, desperate,
and also passionately angry. “I want safety and comfort for all.”
They will cultivate intent. They will seek collectivity. They will
want to know what’s next so they can can help make it happen.

Trying to embody that last most positive motivation, and feeling that
vision of a better world can help glue disparate energies into a
powerful sustained force, we in Collective 20 wonder what can all us
who want a better world already agree on regarding its features? What
can we agree we don’t want? What can we agree we do want? What
unresolved issues can we agree we need to all together further
investigate by thought, experiment, and construction if we are to
arrive at a shared perspective of how a better world can fulfill our
many and varied desires? Into the streets with vision. Into action
with destination. What can resistance advocate? What should activists
consider and even try out?

The ideas we offer below address aims, organization, and organizing.
They combine insights from many decades of diverse anti-racist
struggle, global climate activism, international immigration activism,
LGBTQ organizing, feminist activism, struggles for economic and social
justice, anti-fascist organizing, movements for electoral and judicial
innovation, labor organizing, anti-war organizing, anti-imperial
organizing, and much more.

Six overarching values inform and guide our offerings below, and we
hope you will find the chosen values as congenial and helpful as we
do.

•  Decisions ideally ought to be collectively self managed, not
authoritarian, not elitist.

•  Material benefits and social circumstances ought to be equitably
distributed, not grotesquely unequal, not at all unjust.

•  Mutual aid and empathy ought to be institutionally nurtured and
defended, not competitive greed, not anti-social brutishness.

•  Diverse cultural and social community preferences ought to be
celebrated and protected, not denigrated and denied, not choked to
submission.

•  Natural habitats and environments ought to be societally
respected and protected to ensure sustainability and ecological
diversity, not to exploit and violate to extinction.

•  Worthy values should apply not only to each society, but
internationally to the community of all societies so all societies
prosper in internationalist peace, not dissolve in internecine war.

We tentatively write what’s below because we believe attaining a
much better world will require considerable mutual aid and shared
priorities including self consciously proposing, discussing,
augmenting, refining, and finally collectively advocating and
implementing a shared path forward. 

Our words therefore provisionally seek discussion, addition, deletion,
and refinement. We hope only to provide grist for a wide ranging
conversation about winning a better future. The elements we offer here
may have merit, or they may not. They are not so much answers as
questions and entreaties. Either way, whether our views prove helpful
or dismissible, the point is to embark on conceiving and then
employing worthy vision.

WHO DECIDES WHAT?

What of governance, the polity? Most broadly, can we agree we want to
fully liberate political life from elitist domination. Can we agree we
want no more bought and sold officials. No more rampant corruption and
coercion? And can we agree that these gains require new participatory
political institutions that take account of and benefit all citizens
equally?

If so, can we agree that to eliminate political elitism, we will need
transparent mechanisms to carry out and evaluate political decisions
and to convey to all citizens information, confidence, and self
managing say as much as possible proportionate to effects on them?

And wouldn’t that in turn entail establishing grassroots venues for
popular participation, augmented by frequent direct participation or,
when needed, recallable and accountable representation and delegation
that utilizes voting options such as majority rule, other voting
rules, or consensus, each as needed to best approximate self
management – all facilitated by advanced public education?

Likewise, to benefit all citizens equally won’t new political
institutions also need to guarantee maximum civil liberties to all,
including freedom to speak, write, worship, assemble, and organize
political parties. Won’t new political institutions need to welcome,
facilitate, and protect dissent and diversity and to guarantee
individuals and groups information and means to pursue their own goals
consistent with not interfering with the same rights for others?
Won’t new political institutions need to foster solidarity even
while they also provide inclusive means to fairly, peacefully, and
constructively adjudicate disputes and violations of agreed norms to
preserve justice while promoting rehabilitation?

If many can agree on even roughly the above elements of political
vision including adding whatever refinements, additions, and deletions
they desire for improvement, wouldn’t we then be in position to
develop, explore, and test proposals for using councils, assemblies,
communes, and nested networks of these for legislative functions? And
in position to develop, explore, and test proposals for means of
adjudication and enforcement when needed, and for structuring
executive institutions so that all together compose a political vision
for a new, better, society? What kind of neighborhood assemblies and
networks and layers of such assemblies would fulfill our emerging
aims? What kind of judicial bodies? What kind of executive rights and
responsibilities? These are matters to consider, explore, and resolve.

In short, if activists from diverse constituencies and movements could
arrive at broad shared agreement about various creatively refined and
augmented political aims, couldn’t we then use our shared agreements
to assess how best to actively participate in public political life to
attain our desired ends? What structures would facilitate success?
What structures should be avoided? What then, should we demand and
build to lead where we wish to arrive in the future? What should we
oppose and reject? Not only for society but also in our own
organizing? 

And if across a wide spectrum of movement activism and constituencies
we were able to collectively start to achieve such shared views,
couldn’t we then develop coordinated campaigns designed to win
immediate beneficial electoral, legislative, and adjudicative gains
that would benefit diverse constituencies now but also move society
toward our ultimate aims? Immediate gains like eliminating the
electoral college, enacting ranked choice voting, eliminating voter
discrimination based on ID requirements or former jailing, enacting an
Election Day holiday, enacting mail ballot voting, imposing
accountability and term limits on legislators, defunding and
redefining police mandates, enacting community control of police,
eliminating military weaponry for police and even for much of the
military, eliminating jail terms for victimless crimes, releasing all
political prisoners, and much more. And couldn’t we discuss and
organize these immediate efforts in ways that explicitly explain
longer term aims and link to them thereby arousing desires to seek
more while developing means to do so until success?

That would put collectively developed and shared political vision for
the long-term to work to inspire and guide political struggle in the
present. A good thing, no?

WHO PRODUCES AND WHO CONSUMES WHAT?

Beyond polity, what of production, allocation, and consumption – the
economy? Can people who reject current capitalist inequality,
alienation, and class division broadly agree that attaining better
economics requires implementing new workplace and allocation
institutions that ensure that no individuals or classes are privileged
and that all workers and consumers are able to participate fully in
determining their own lives?

If so, can we then also agree that new economic institutions will need
to preclude owning productive assets such as natural resources and
factories, thereby ensuring that ownership plays no role in decision
making influence or in people’s share of income? No more 1% above,
perverted by greed and domination. No more 99% below, subordinated and
subjugated by lack of property.

But to attain even more comprehensive classlessness, can we further
agree that new economic institutions will also need to ensure that all
workers have a say in decisions to the extent possible proportionate
to effects on them, sometimes best attained by majority rule,
sometimes best attained by consensus or other arrangements, all to
avoid some people, empowered, dominating other people, disempowered? 

And if we can agree on some variant of that, can we also agree that
accomplishing such extensive classlessness will entail eliminating
corporate divisions of labor that typically give about a fifth of
workers predominantly empowering tasks while consigning to four fifths
mainly rote, repetitive, and obedient tasks to ensure not only
fairness of circumstances but also that 20% no longer dominate 80%?

And could we then even also agree that to that end it follows that new
institutions will need to ensure that each worker enjoys a socially
average share of empowering tasks via new designs of work that convey
to all sufficient confidence, skills, information, and access to
participate effectively in decision making? Not only would people then
have a formal right to economic decision making influence, they would
also have the personal means and inclination to employ their right.
With these additional commitments getting rid of the old capitalist
owner would not elevate a new coordinator boss. Classlessness.

At the same time, to attain equity, can we also agree that new
economic institutions will need to ensure that workers who work longer
or harder or at more onerous conditions doing socially valued labor
should equitably earn proportionately more for doing so, but that no
one should earn payment according to property, bargaining power, or
even the value of their personal output, while of course all who are
unable to work should receive full income nonetheless? And can we
agree on all that to avoid some having not solely gargantuan
profit-based income and wealth while others endure barely any income
and near total impoverishment, but also to avoid unwarranted and vast
income differentials for power or for output due to equipment, genetic
endowment, or anything other than personal effort and sacrifice?
Citizens would in that case get more of society’s product because
they work longer or harder or under worse conditions to contribute to
that product, but not for owning property, for bargaining power, or
even for output due to lucky genetic or technical factors beyond their
control.

And finally, if we are to achieve all our economic desires noted
above, however dramatically augmented and creatively refined by
collective assessment and experience, can we agree that new economic
relations will need to avoid both market competition and top-down
planning, since both competition and top-down planning, in any and all
combinations, produce class rule, alienation, and various other
ecological, social, and material violations? And can we agree that we
will instead need to find ways to determine what is produced and
consumed by whom in ways that get the job of allocation done not only
viably and without undue waste or strain, but also consistently with
all our other values and aspirations?

And if we can agree on any semblance of such economic aims, creatively
refined and augmented by research and experimentation, couldn’t we
then conceive and test new work arrangements, new norms of
remuneration, and new means to negotiate economic inputs and outputs
by examining the potential roles of workers and consumers councils and
federations of councils, new divisions of labor, and new methods of
accounting and assessing economic options with whatever additional
facilitating structures we find necessary?

And if across a wide spectrum of movement activism and constituencies
we were able to collectively start to achieve such collectively
developed, refined, and shared long term aims, couldn’t we then
develop coordinated campaigns designed to win immediate beneficial
economic gains that also move society toward our ultimate aims? Gains
like free medical care for all, free education for all, cancelling
student debt, higher wages for all below some cutoff and lower wages
for all above it, vastly greater high-end wealth and property taxes,
strengthened health and safety requirements, legal limits on banks,
pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and fossil fuel
companies with violations punished by transfer to public ownership,
extensive unemployment insurance and social security gains, and new
laws benefiting union and workplace organizing, corporate
accountability, workers control, and much more. And couldn’t we
discuss and organize for all these immediate aims in ways that
explicitly explain longer term aims and that link to them thereby
arousing desires to seek more while developing means to do so until
success?

That would put economic vision for the long-term to work to inspire
and guide economic struggle in the present. A good thing, no?

WHO PROCREATES, BIRTHS, NURTURES, LOVES AND LIVES?

Beyond polity and economics, what of procreation, nurturance, and
family? Can we agree that liberating gender and sexuality requires
implementing new kinship institutions that ensure that no individuals
or groups – by gender, sexual preference, or age – are privileged
above or dominate others?

And if so, can we also agree that to attain that participatory goal
new gender and kinship institutions will have to not privilege certain
types of family formation over others, but instead actively support
all types of families consistent with society’s other broad norms
and practices? And can we agree that new relations will need to
promote children’s well-being and affirm society’s responsibility
for all its children, including affirming the right of diverse types
of families to have children and to provide them with love and a sense
of rootedness and belonging? And can we agree on the need to minimize
or eliminate age-based permissions, preferring non-arbitrary means for
determining when an individual is too old (or too young) to receive
benefits or to shoulder responsibilities?

Can we agree that new gender and kin institutions will need to respect
marriage and other lasting relations among adults as religious,
cultural, or social practices, but also to reject such ties as ways
for sectors of the population to gain financial benefits or social
status others lack? And can we agree on the need to respect
care-giving as a central function of society including making
care-giving a part of every citizen’s social responsibilities not
least to ensure equitable burdens and benefits among men and women for
all household, child raising, and elder aiding practices, but also for
the enrichment of personality and affirmation that sincere care-giving
conveys?

And can we also agree that new gender and kinship institutions will
need to centrally affirm diverse expressions of sexual pleasure,
personal identity, and mutual intimacy while ensuring that each person
honors the autonomy, humanity, and rights of others including
providing diverse, empowering sex education and legal prohibition
against all non-consensual sex?

And if we can agree on some such array of kinship aims, creatively
refined and augmented by collective assessment, research, and
experimentation, couldn’t we then better conceive and test new
family arrangements, new norms and structures of parenting, and new
arrangements of loving and living, nurturing and schooling?

And if across a wide spectrum of movement activism and constituencies
we were able to collectively start to achieve anything like the above
shared views, couldn’t our emerging and evolving levels of agreement
and our unfolding explorations of what we want for a better home life
and procreating, living, loving, schooling, and caring then inform how
we address immediate issues of feminist change, of laws and structures
bearing on gender relations, and of age and sexual relations, thereby
bringing feminist and LGBTQ and age-related activism into touch with
our long term kinship goals and vice versa?

And couldn’t we then develop coordinated campaigns designed to win
immediate beneficial kinship gains that also move society toward our
ultimate aims? Gains like full abortion rights, advanced parental paid
leave for men and women, extensive excellent free day care, extensive
non gender discrimination laws, free public schooling at all levels
with vastly expanded resources in underserved communities and
neighborhoods, revamped vastly improved free care for the elderly, and
much more?

That would put kinship vision for the long-term to work to inspire and
guide kinship struggle in the present. A very good thing, no?

WHO CONVERSES, CELEBRATES, DANCES, DINES, SINGS, COMMUNES, AND
WORSHIPS?

Beyond polity, economics, and kinship, what of race, religion,
ethnicity, and community relations of all kinds? Can we agree that
eliminating systemic racism and liberating culture and community
requires implementing new participatory cultural/community
institutions that ensure that no individuals or groups – by race,
ethnicity, nationality, or other cultural/community identification –
are privileged above or dominate others and thus that none are denied
or dominated by others?

And if so, can we agree that as a means to that participatory end new
cultural and community institutions will need to ensure that people
can have multiple cultural and social identities by providing space
and resources for people to positively express their identities
however they choose, while simultaneously recognizing that which
identity is most important to any particular person at any particular
time depends on that person’s own personal situation and
assessments?

And can we agree that new cultural and community relations will also
need to explicitly recognize that many rights and values exist
regardless of cultural identity, so that all people deserve self
management, equity, solidarity, and liberty, even while society also
protects all people’s right to affiliate freely and enjoy diversity?

And in turn can we agree that new cultural and community relations
will also have to guarantee free entry and exit to and from all
cultural communities including affirming that communities that
guarantee free entry and exit can be under the complete self
determination of their members so long as their policies and actions
don’t conflict with society’s broader arrangements and liberties?

And if we can agree on something like such cultural/community aims,
properly refined and augmented by research and experimentation,
couldn’t we then conceive and test new cultural arrangements in and
between our racial, religious, and ethnic communities, new norms and
structures of celebrating and of interrelating?

And if so, couldn’t our emerging and evolving levels of agreement
and our unfolding explorations of what we want for better
intercommunity and community relations then inform how we address
immediate issues of racial justice, religious freedom, police
violence, migration, reparations, borders, and more general race and
ethnicity related policy and structure, thereby bringing anti-racist
and intercommunalist activism into touch with our long term community
goals and vice versa?

That would put community vision for the future to work to inspire and
guide community struggle in the present. A very good thing, no?

WHOSE WORLD?

Beyond national borders what of international relations? Can we agree
that attaining desirable international relations requires implementing
new international institutions that ensure that no nations or
geographic regions are privileged above others?

If so, can we agree that new international relations will need to end
imperialism in all its forms including colonialism, neo colonialism,
and neo liberalism which will in turn entail diminishing economic
disparities in country’s relative wealth, protecting cultural and
social patterns interior to each country from external violation, and
facilitating international entwinement and ties as people desire?

But if we can agree on something like that, then can we agree that new
policy and structures will need to foster equitable internationalist
globalization in place of exploitative corporate globalization and in
turn discover and establish means for localities and regions to
maintain autonomy and avoid external violations, while also enjoying
international mutuality and solidarity, and for security without
militarism, dispute resolution without war and coercion?

If so, couldn’t our emerging and evolving levels of agreement and
our unfolding explorations of what we want for international relations
then inform how we address immediate issues of trade, immigration,
borders, international aid, international law, and war and peace,
thereby bringing internationalist activism into touch with
internationalist vision and vice versa?

That would put internationalist vision for the future to work to
inspire and guide international struggle in the present. A very good
thing, no?

WHOSE PLANET?

Beyond the social, around the social, overarching the social, allowing
or disallowing the social – what of ecological relations? Can we
agree future worthy ecological relations will require new
participatory ecological norms and practices that reverse resource
depletion, environmental degradation, global warming, and other
ecosystem disrupting or civilization threatening trends, not only for
humanity to thrive, but even to just survive?

And can we agree that to become sane much less wise, new ecological
relations will need to facilitate ecologically sound reconstruction of
society that accounts for the full ecological as well as
social/personal costs and benefits of both short and long term
economic and social choices, so that future populations can sensibly
decide levels of production and consumption, duration of work, degrees
of self reliance, levels of energy use and harvesting, pollution
norms, climate policies, conservation practices, consumption choices,
and other aims and activities bearing on planetary stewardship in
light of ecological implications and as part of their freely made
economic, political, and social decisions about future policy?

And if so, can we also agree that new ecological norms and practices
will also need to foster a consciousness of ecological connection and
responsibility, so that future citizens understand and respect the
ecological precautionary principle and are well prepared to decide
policies regarding related matters that transcend sustainability such
as animal rights or vegetarianism consistently with broader agendas
for other social and economic functions?

And if so, couldn’t our emerging and evolving levels of agreement
and our unfolding explorations of what we want for ecological
relations then inform how we address immediate issues of land use,
pollution control, resource depletion, and global warming thereby
bringing immediate ecological activism into touch with long-term
ecological vision and vice versa?

At a time when ecological deterioration threatens to obstruct and
literally swamp into extinction all our other concerns, all our other
agendas, mustn’t we put sound ecological vision for the future to
work to inspire and guide sound ecological struggle in the present.
And wouldn’t that be a very good thing?

WHO/WHAT WINS A WORTHY FUTURE?

If activists and all who desire change can arrive at a desirable
vision even roughly of the sort broadly suggested above, but of course
adapted, refined, and continually updated in light of new insights
gained from new experiences, while that would be good and promising,
it would certainly not itself constitute a new world. 

A desirable vision can help inspire and inform fighting to win a new
world as well as help guide building a new world, but the fighting and
the building has to happen for emotional and mental desires to
translate to real world outcomes. And such fighting for change and
building its attributes isn’t a matter of each individual acting as
an isolated atom, divorced from the rest, as is so common in our
contemporary condition. Instead, collectivity is a prerequisite of
success. Human atoms ricocheting here and there won’t achieve a new
world. Such a magnificent accomplishment will require coherent
movements with cohesion arising from shared methods and organization.
And so can we agree that effective and worthy organizations are needed
for groups to work collectively together with shared intentions while
learning, retaining, and collectively applying lessons from their own
past as well as from their newly unfolding experiences?

But if so, can we agree that to be effective and worthy, an
organization must not only galvanize and apply people’s energies
coherently, but also plant the seeds of the future that we desire in
our present to inspire, learn, and lead where we wish to go? 

And can we then also agree that an organization’s structure and
policies, while of course regularly updated and adapted, nonetheless
should always strive to implement the self management norm that
“each member has decision making say proportional to the degree they
are affected”? 

And to that end, to be effective and worthy can we also agree an
organization needs to be internally anti-racist, feminist,
participatory, and classless including being structured so that any
minority that is initially disproportionately equipped with needed
skills, information, and confidence does not form a formal or informal
decision-making hierarchy, leaving less prepared members to only
follow orders and perform rote tasks?

Likewise, over time, can we agree that to be effective and worthy an
organization should apportion empowering and disempowering
organizational tasks to ensure that no individuals control the
organization by having a relative monopoly on information or position,
and that no subset of members has disproportionate say whether due to
race, gender, class, or other attributes?

If so, can we agree an effective and worthy organization should
monitor and work to correct instances of sexism, racism, classism, and
homophobia as they may manifest internally, including having diverse
roles suitable to people with different backgrounds, personal
priorities, lifestyles, and personal situations?

And can we agree that an effective and worthy organization should
celebrate internal debate and dissent as positive, making room, as
possible, for dissident views to exist and be tested alongside
preferred views? And that it should guarantee members’ rights to
organize “currents” or “caucuses” and guarantee “currents”
and “caucuses” full onus-free rights of democratic debate?

Likewise, can we agree that an effective and worthy organization
should ensure that national, regional, city, and local chapters as
well as sectors of the organization can respond to their own
circumstances and implement their own programs as they choose so long
as their choices do not interfere with the shared goals and principles
of the whole organization or with other groups addressing their own
situations?

If we can agree on even some variant of the above, refined and amended
based on emerging experiences and new insights, can we also agree an
effective and worthy  organization should provide extensive
opportunities for all members to participate in organizational
decision making, including engaging in deliberation with others so as
to arrive at the most well-considered decisions while implementing
mechanisms for carrying out collective decisions and monitoring that
such decisions have been carried out correctly? And that a liberating
organization should expect members to actively participate in the life
of the organization, including taking collective responsibility for
decisions and presenting a unified voice in action?

If so, then can we also agree that an effective and worthy
organization should establish internal structures that facilitate
everyone’s participation including, when possible, offering
childcare at meetings and events, finding ways to reach out to those
who might be immersed in kinship duties, and aiding those with busy
work schedules due to grueling work conditions, long hours, and even
multiple jobs?

And, finally, as it discovers and implements structure and policies
suited to its vision and priorities, can we agree an effective and
worthy organization should also provide transparency regarding all
actions by elected or delegated leaders including placing a high
burden of proof on secreting any agenda whether to avoid repression or
for any other reason, and to provide a mechanism to recall leaders or
representatives who members believe are not adequately representing
them while also providing means for fairly, peacefully, and
constructively resolving internal disputes?

BY WAY OF WHAT ORGANIZING

Even if and when, activists with diverse backgrounds and personal
priorities arrive at collectively determined and continually updated
shared vision and organization, can we agree that to win their sought
aims will require always incorporating seeds of the future in the
present, always growing membership and commitment among the class,
racial, and sexual/gender constituencies served and leading the
efforts, and also always winning reforms without becoming reformist?

And can we agree that to incorporate seeds of the future in its
present class, race, gender, sexual, age, and power relations,
effective and worthy organizing needs to not only constructively
address the ways it’s members act but also actively establish
internal norms and support including building exemplary workplace,
campus, and community institutions that represent and refine the
values of the movement and which the organization can point to as
liberating alternatives to the status quo it combats? Seeds that
enhance hope, test and refine ideas, and learn experiential lessons
that can inform strategy and vision.

And can we agree that to constantly grow membership among the class,
cultural, and gender constituencies it aims to aid, effective and
worthy organizing should always learn from and seek unity with
audiences far wider than its own membership? And that it should
emphasize attracting and affirmatively empowering young people and,
most difficult but also most essential, it needs to organize people
currently critical and even hostile, not least by participating in,
supporting, building, and aiding diverse social movements and
struggles beyond its own immediate agendas, but also by explicitly
addressing critical and even hostile constituencies in communities, on
campuses, and at work?

And can we agree that effective and worthy organizing should seek
changes in society both for citizens to enjoy immediately, and also to
establish by the terms of its victories and by the means used in its
organizing, a likelihood that citizens will pursue and win more change
in the future. That it should seek to connect efforts, resources, and
lessons across continents and from country to country, even as it also
recognizes that strategies suitable to different places and times will
differ. That it should seek short term changes by its own actions and
programs and by support of other movements and projects, both
internationally, by country, and also locally, including addressing
such issues as global warming, arms control, policing, war and peace,
the level and composition of economic output, agricultural relations,
education, health care, income distribution, duration of work, gender
roles, racial relations, media, law, legislation, etc., all as
involved activists choose?

And that it should seek to develop mechanisms that provide financial,
legal, employment, and emotional support to its members so that its
members can be in a better position to participate as fully as they
wish and navigate the various challenges and sometimes negative
effects of taking part in radical actions. And that it should work to
substantially improve the life situations of its members, including
aiding their feelings of self worth, their knowledge, skills, and
confidence, their mental, physical, sexual, and spiritual health, and
even their social ties and engagements and leisure enjoyments?

And that it should seek means to develop, debate, disseminate, and
advocate truthful news, analysis, vision, and strategy among its
members and to the wider society, including developing and sustaining
needed media and means of face to face communication? And that it
should use diverse methods of agitation and struggle from educational
efforts to rallies and marches, to demonstrations, boycotts, strikes,
and direct actions, to win gains and build movements, while placing a
very high burden of proof on utilizing violence, including cultivating
a decidedly non violent attitude, while engaging in electoral politics
case by case, including cultivating a very cautious electoral attitude
– all in pursuit of winning its constantly evolving vision of a
better society and world?

THIS MOMENT

A virus rampages. Weather warps. Seas rise. Governments stiffen. Arms
proliferate. Lies upon lies scream infantile idiocy. Some, sadly,
bystand. Some, worse, applaud. Ostriches and celebrants on a global
Titanic. 

But many many other people are distraught, angry, outraged. We ask, we
answer, we call, we aid, we support, we march, we coalesce, we demand,
we strike, we occupy, we construct.

Looking backward confronts looking forward. What will emerge? Will the
backward flow start to drift, slide, and then finally advance our way?
Or will we tire, tumble, turn, and then morbidly gravitate their way
or just lose momentum?

Will we wind up with yesterday, re-entrenched, regimented, and even
worsened? Or will we attain tomorrow, diversifying, enlightened, and
even liberated?

This is not academic. This is not TV. It is not movies. It is not
games. This is life and life only. Or it is death and death only. 

Without shared, continually refined vision of a worthy future and
without shared, continually updated strategic means to pursue it, no
matter our anger, passion, and drive, we will get yesterday, only much
worse. 

But with vision and with informed continually updated strategy, our
anger, passion, and drive can take us to tomorrow, only much better. 

And that would be a good thing, no?

_[Collective 20 is a group of writers located in different  places
throughout the globe. Some young, some older; some long-time
organizers and writers, others just getting started, but all equally
dedicated to offering analysis, vision, and strategy useful for
winning a vastly better society than we currently endure. The members
of Collective 20 hope their contributions concerning social,
political, economic, and environmental issues will generate more
useful content and better outreach through a collective publication
effort as opposed to individuals doing so on their own. Collective
20’s cumulative work can be found at collective20.org
[[link removed]], where you can learn more about the group,
see an archive of its publications, and comment on its work.]_

_In our weekly articles, we provide information, analysis, vision, and
strategy for fundamental social change._

_We emerged from the crisis of the Coronavirus lock down to show that,
despite feelings of physical isolation and despair, we have much to
hope for._

_The members of Collective No. 20 hope their contributions concerning
social, political, economic, and ecological issues will generate more
useful content and better outreach through a collective publication
effort as opposed to individuals doing so on their own._

_Collective No. 20's current members, with more to come, are listed
here [[link removed]]. _

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