In the current tug-of-war going on about health care reform between those who are advocating for incrementalism and those pushing to "kill the bill," I have been reminded of something Pete Seeger said a while ago.
To give his words a little background, they came in a video produced by This Brave Nation. The link takes you to a series of conversations between young and veteran activists in this country. For example, you'll find the following twosomes in conversation about their experiences of the past and their hopes for the future.
Carl Pope and Van Jones
Bonnie Raitt and Delores Huerta
Anthony Romero and Ava Lowery
Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein
But it was the conversation between Pete Seeger and Majora Carter where this particular lesson was taught.
Here's a youtube version of those few minutes of the conversation.
Seeger talking about Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott:
Why did he start with a bus boycott? Why didn't he start with something like schools, or jobs, or voting? Couldn't a bus boycott come later? When you face an opponent over a broad front, you don't aim at the opponent's strong points. You aim for something a little off to the side. But you win it. And having won that bus boycott...13 months it took him to do it...then he moved on to other things.
This struck me as incredibly powerful when I heard it months ago. I began to imagine the kinds of things facing African Americans in 1955 in the South. It wasn't just segregation - it was the almost complete denial of voting rights, it was lynchings and bombings, etc. At what point does where someone sits on a bus become the priority place to begin?
As Pete Seeger said...it began as the place where the movement could likely win...and use that to build upon for the rest of the work.
The remainder of that short clip from the video goes on to tell the story of what led up to the very idea of a "win" with a bus boycott. Most of us know that Rosa Parks didn't simply decide one day to not move to the back of the bus. There were months and years of talking, planning, and organization that led up to that moment. And much of that conversation and planning happened at the Highlander Folk School (today, the Highlander Research and Education Center).
In 1932, Miles Horton, Don West, Jim Dombrowski and others founded the Highlander Folk School as a place to train union members, labor leaders, and the unemployed in Tennessee. In the 1950's that mission extended to training organizers in the Civil Rights Movement. As Seeger discusses in the video - people like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks participated in these sessions.
Rosa Parks on the far left and Martin Luther King on the far right.
Septima Clark and Rosa Parks in 1955, before the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Martin Luther King, Pete Seeger, Horton's daughter, Rosa Parks, and Ralph Abernathy
Last January Pam McMichael, current director of the Highlander Center, wrote these words reflecting on what those days mean for us today.
In 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. gave the keynote address at the 25th anniversary of the Highlander Center, a gathering focused on integration, and said: “The future is filled with vast and marvelous possibilities. This is a great time to be alive. Let us not despair. And let us go out and work with renewed vigor to make the unfolding work of destiny a reality in our generation.”<...>
Community organizers understand this call, and are, in fact, already heeding it. Whatever gains have been made toward fairness and justice in this country have always included community organizers pushing from the bottom up. The eight-hour work day. Minimum wage increases. Voting rights. Civil rights. The American Disabilities Act. Non-discrimination ordinances. Environmental protections. Just to name a few of the ways we have come so far. We are clear we have far still to go. We need each other to do so. Dr. King’s address also included special greetings from the 50,000 citizens of Montgomery, who, in boycotting the segregated buses, decided “to walk in dignity rather than ride in humiliation, substituting tired feet for tired souls.” Trading ‘tired feet for tired souls’ well describes community organizers who work to make the promise of democracy real. Being a community organizer means being able to hold conflicting sentiments at the same time: grief for the many lives our society has thrown away in the gap between the promise of America and the reality of America; hope for the vision of what our society could be if based on values of fairness, justice and inclusivity; and courage to make that vision real.
I can't help but wonder what we might accomplish if we used this new technology of the internet to try and replicate the planning and conversations that happened back in the 1950's at the Highlander School.