| 1 | | Documents |
| | 1 | We are planning a May First/People Link sponsored Social Forum Movement School on September 13-14. We urge LC members and all members of Working Groups to attend. |
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| | 3 | Movement Schools are a fairly new Social Forum function. They are one or two day gatherings with select groups of people to explore the objective and subjective situation we are facing as a movement and possible responses our movement (and, in this case, our organization) might have. |
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| | 5 | There is no "outcome" and no "decision". The school has no official status. The idea behind the school is that all of us learn from each other: we are all teachers and we are all learners. The school's structure allows for exchanges that support and take advantage of that reality. |
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| | 7 | The School would probably be led by Jerome Scott (LC member), Maritza Arrastía (LC member), Walda Katz-Fishman (an MF/PL member). We are proposing the weekend of September 13 and 14 of this year. |
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| | 9 | - What happens? - |
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| | 11 | In movement schools, we decide on topics for exploration and then read some text (selected by the leaders) preliminarily and then have conversations about it facilitated by the "discussion leader". The school concept seeks to user popular education concepts to allow us to understand each other's perspectives about the current moment and what is required to address it. |
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| | 13 | We pose some questions that allow us to do that and then read and converse about them. It's all part of the Social Forum's process which is aimed at starting to talk about a unified revolutionary strategy in this country. |
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| | 15 | This school precedes the membership meeting and its purpose is to address critical issues that are facing us, significant divisions within MF/Pl that hamper our organizing and the patterns of approach and behavior that separate us from the movement in this country, seriously hamper recruitment and cause profound divisions with our leadership. |
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| | 17 | - Why should we do it now? - |
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| | 19 | The Social Forum's answer to that question answers it for MF/PL as well. |
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| | 21 | While there are vigorous differences among us (and in our movement) about why and how we got to this place, there seems to be very little difference about where we are: capitalist society has either ended or reached its very final days. It is no longer capable of leading our world and has no ability to address the world's real problems. Its demise is going to destroy the human race and that destruction is now imminent. |
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| | 23 | Technology has made easier these "end-game" transformations and, in the hands of the ruling class, now facilitates this destruction. |
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| | 25 | There are several indicators of this crisis. |
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| | 27 | -- The traditional cohesion between production and wealth accumulation which has been the motor force of the entire society (producing products, work and the ability to survive) during capitalism is no longer real. Wealth continues to grow while labor becomes more concentrated. The simplest expression of the problem is: as fewer people work, who is going to buy the goods that make rich people wealthy? |
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| | 29 | -- The traditional role of democratic government -- adjudicating disputes between members of the ruling class and between that class and the larger society -- is no longer driving government. It is, at this point, nothing more that a chamber for maneuvering by various ruling class sectors. What's more, government seems intent on developing forms of repression to stem popular reaction, completing abandoning the reformist or coopting tendencies sometimes visible in the past. |
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| | 31 | -- The traditional relationship between the human species and our mother Earth has degenerated into an antagonistic and mutually destructive contest which promises to wipe our species out in two to three generations. |
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| | 33 | There is an obvious urgency in figuring out what to do and we can expect a vicious contest of perspectives between our movement and ruling class factions on where to go from here. Essentially, our movement is at war with the most murderous military machine in human history. |
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| | 35 | Most important for us at MF/PL, all of this has been facilitated (and in some cases made possible) by technology. We are the major technology organization of the Left in the United States, one of the most important in Mexico and among the most important in the world. The burden is on us to explore this situation and continously pose alternatives to this destructive use of technology and it is clear for many of us that, as a leadership and organization, we are not prepared for that. |
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| | 37 | Here are some examples of questions we would be addressing. |
