April's CR Diary

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December 1, 2007

Stay and Fight

I have been called upon, upon occasion, actually rather frequent occasion, to teach classes in how to organize.

Unions, that is. Movements of people fighting for a better world. Not closets. If you want someone to organize your closets, you're best off calling someone else. Though I actually think I could organize other people's closets. There's something about having absolutely no attachment to the articles therein that brings me to crisp, clear resolution. But this is not about closets, and if it's not then why are we still talking about it?

One of the funnier teaching moments I replay over and over again is my riff on what I call "Work/worker avoidance behavior."

Work avoidance behavior is pretty obvious. But worker avoidance behavior comes down to this: it's the time when you should be calling workers, and you're not. Maybe you're updating your notes in the database, maybe you're planning a community support rally, maybe you're on your third drink and have decided it would be better not to call workers (fyi, the time to call workers tends to be in the evening.) In any event, you're doing something other than calling workers. It might be talking to politicians or community leaders (hello... the community does not vote in the union election. But that is a lesson for a later day.)

Today's organizing lesson: basically, the only thing that will build the movement is talking to workers. Not the community, not your database, not the legal strategy, no... talking to workers. At the exact hour when I know I would rather be chilling out with my boyfriend and not working.

It is my contention that the entire labor movement is engaged in worker avoidance behavior. Negotiating deals with bosses, where the "worker piece" is just a sideline, is a prime example. Funny how the workers eventually get annoyed and want their voices to be heard. Maybe you should have talked to them in the first place?

No one is more frustrated than I at the current state of the movement. But what do we do about it? Do we just give up on organizing, that fine art of moving people into effective action to achieve their stated goals? Yeah, it's hard. Twelve years, tiny lines on my face that I can't see without my glasses, scars on my heart buried so deep that I am surprised they start to bleed again every time I train a new organizer who shows real promise... yeah, this all really sucks. But what else are we going to do? Totally sell out? Give up?

Worker avoidance takes many forms. For example, Thursday night I really should have made a ton of calls. But I didn't. One of my staff was having a meltdown, so I went out with her and another of my organizers, and didn't make calls at all. Nobody can do their calls every night. We all flake out here and there. We move on.

Anyhow... the more advanced forms of worker avoidance involve ways that people get out of organizing all together. Some common ones: having children, going to law school, being "promoted" to levels of the labor movement where you no longer talk to workers (can those people just go away?) and my perpetual favorite: death.

When I was a twenty-one year old organizer driving around rural North Carolina getting doors slammed in my face by white racist workers who associated the union with Northern black people, I used to think, "If I drove my car off this bridge, at least I wouldn't have to knock on one more door." Of course I wasn't really suicidal. I was just taking the desperate desire to avoid workers to it's logical extreme.

So this last month has been full of surprises.

First, there was the appearance on the April-world stage of Danny California, whose real initials are CR. The irony, which may have escaped my notice for a good forty-five minutes, was eventually discovered.

Then there was the call from the absolutely most strategic hospital that we could possibly hope to organize.

Then yesterday I met a goddess. Yes, I did. I met a Yale '84 friend of my lawyer friend Jim, and I discovered that she was one of the leaders of the pro-labor and divestment in South Africa movements at Yale in the eighties. Yes, the ones with the shantytowns built on campus center. The people us nineties activists modeled ourselves after. It was like meeting my older sister. And of course she is now a super successful labor lawyer and a beautiful grown up goddess and still looks like a ballerina. Wow. Jim and I went out to lunch with her, then we all went to the art museum. She and I couldn't stop comparing notes about our experiences as Yale activists. Then we beat Jim with our art museum programs because it took him this long to introduce us. He deserved it. I really feel like I've met a long lost friend.

Which leads me to the next "baby what a big surprise" moment of my month of November.

We saw the Renoir landscapes exhibition at the Philly art museum, and then we were funnelled out to the American art section, and I just about ran into one of my favorite paintings of all time, Winslow Homer's Lifeline.

I ran into Lifeline and about fell on the floor. I love this painting. I wrote about it here. It's such a powerful painting, full of words I can't quite make come out on the page. Margo the goddess and I looked at it for ages. Then she walked on with Jim, but I called her back.

"Margo," I asked, "Is she (the woman in the painting) really unconscious? Cause it looks to me like that's her hand, holding the rope."

"No, she's not unconscious. Her eyes are closed, but she's holding onto the rope. She's awake." That was Margo's take on it.

Funny how in all these years that I had worshipped this painting, I had always been quite convinced that she was unconscious, and I even believe that several written commentaries on the work imply or even state the same. But no, she's holding on the rope. That's definitely her hand... it's too small to be the man's, and he's clearly clasping her firmly with both arms around her waist. That must be nice. One fantasizes that he is quite cute, and that once they get back to the ship and change into something a bit less sea-soaked, something interesting occurs. If one must be rescued from a sinking ship, one may well be rescued by someone cute. The point reminds: you'd better hold onto the rope.

This week has not been great for my CR. I've been so focused on work and out so much with my work friends that I haven't weighed and measured everything, and I haven't worked out. While I have eaten fairly healthy food when out (the good old salad with grilled chicken, and even when we had sushi I had a California roll which is excellent except for the rice) and I haven't overeaten... I've eaten out twice at nice places this week, both Jim events, but I've compensated by eating basically one meal a day. Still, not proper CR. Not monitoring my nutrition, often neglecting my nutrient-filled quotidian staples. MR has been very anxious, but is being quite good about not nagging me. I've just felt like I had to focus on other things this week. It's also easy to lose focus on CR when the excitement of what's going on at work is so overwhelming and I'm hanging out with people who definitely don't do CR.

The tension between being involved in a movement where the work is right here, crashing down on us, metaphorical bullets flying all the time, and simultaneously trying to maintain a lifestyle that requires a lot of discipline for even those with the most flexible of jobs has made me a bit nutty on numerous occasions. It's not that it can't be done... I've done it. It's just that it's hard.

And my perspective has been doing a fair amount of spinning around in the air this week. To say that Danny California has led an interesting life would be an understatement along the lines of telling Ingrid Bergman she was the most beautiful woman ever to come to Casablanca. I am glued to his stories... which are not as easy to get out of him as one would think, since he is a great listener and spends tons of time getting the people around him to talk. But once I finally got him talking it was hard for me to tear myself away. Thousands of workers organized, but I feel occasionally like my life has been a bit boring. Ironic that just as Danny is trading in activist rockstar life (mixed in with a whole bunch of crappy jobs, to be sure, but still) for business suits and talking to workers and memorizing contracts, I am having escapist fantasies of taking over abandoned buildings. I guess it's no worse than my former escapist fantasy of starting a diet and nutrition consulting business. I wonder if there's some way to combine the two. Anyhow... it's not like I'd do it. I can't even get away from my work for a proper vacation, and I'm committed, long term, married to my job, forever, or at least till the state is organized. And I love it. I'm happier in my work that I have ever been, in large part due to the amazing people I work with. I was so happy with my co-workers before Danny walked in, and now it's even better. He makes me think about things I hadn't thought about in a long time, and I suspect that's good for me. I know it's a lot of fun.

Besides, I wouldn't have the first clue as to how to build a barricade, he'd have to teach me, and he's way too busy figuring out the finer details of how overtime shifts work at our second largest hospital to do that.

Living as though there might not even be a tomorrow has never been my style. I've always had the long view, and seen CR as a means to the end of being here to see the change I've... we've... fought so hard for.

Yesterday when he was telling me about a particularly interesting action he took part in, I said, "I'm sticking with you. You have useful skills."

No doubt remembering the conversation we had a few weeks ago when I asked if he had a plan to get out of the country if they outlaw unions, he said, "Just as long as you understand that I'm planning to stay and fight."

"So am I," I answered. Then I pointed out that if you're going to stay and fight, it might be helpful to know how to do some of the things he can do. I am really quite jealous of some of his skills. And I suspect that I'm just too little to be particularly effective at some of the things he can do anyhow. But I'm very good at getting *other people* to lift heavy things. Hey, that's organizing!

I've been distracted by the swirling smoke and the hope of a new campaign and the vertigo inducing experience of teaching the thing I love most in the world (organizing) and the feeling of being back in the bubble with my staff and the hope that all of this work is actually going to turn out to be worth something, long term, not just incremental change but dare I say it some kind of eventual no I won't say it you can't make me but you know what I mean.

But that's going to take a long, long time.

And I really want to a) be alive b) look good c) be able to walk when it finally happens.

So that's why I'm doing CR, Calorie Restriction, the ostensible topic of this blog. Not to be skinny, not just because my boyfriend wants me to, not to become Kate Moss. Not even... though this is a major contributing factor, because I so desperately need the short term side-effects of mental focus and calm and invincibility in the face of winter colds.

That's all good, all but the Kate Moss part. But that's not why I'm doing CR.

I'm doing CR because I'm going to stay and fight.

Posted by april at December 1, 2007 2:11 AM

Comments

Posted by: Holly at December 4, 2007 10:46 AM

Posted by: april at December 4, 2007 3:03 PM

Posted by: Judith at December 4, 2007 4:22 PM

Posted by: april at December 4, 2007 8:31 PM

Posted by: Andrea at January 9, 2008 2:40 PM

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