To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle. - George OrwellBeing an effective organizer (which I aspire to be) requires consistent and dedicated critical self-reflection. I am always struggling to spend the time and energy necessary (by myself and with others) engaged in intentional critique of how the work we are doing meets our intended goals, how our experiences confirm or invalidate what we hold to be true and what we should change and how and why we must change it in order to accomplish whatever we set out to do.
Reflecting back on the build up to the "March to Support the Right to Housing" I am met with the jarring realization that in every intentional public conversation - whether on the radio, on Facebook, or in person - I had about housing in general and the struggle of the Westside in particular, I was fighting an uphill battle because I was fighting arguments whose assumptions were not my own and whose context and prejudices were hostile to my goals.
Almost every conversation focused with laser-like precision on this word "right". The concepts, history, reasoning, and habits of belief associated with the "right to housing" fell predictably within a few patterns:
- Discussions around the Constitution of the United States and the "original intentions" of the framers of the Constitution in using the word "rights" and what should be considered a legitimate extension of the word from the context it was written within in 1776 to the present.
- Metaphysical considerations about what constitutes a "right" and what kinds of persons and things "rights" are to be extended to.
- "Rights" were associated with concepts and words like "entitlements" and "handouts". The words "right to housing" very quickly provoked reactionary right wingers into vindictively spewing thinly-veiled racist and classist attacks against poor and working families for demanding more from the table of privilege than these hard-liners thought them deserving of.
- The word "rights" is passive and was consistently interpreted as an argument for expanding and entrenching "big government" (as in demanding that some third-party bureaucrat take from some and give to others) rather than an argument for pro-actively shaping human choices and consciousness around certain problems and issues in ways that aspire to the values of fairness, equality and self-determination that the majority of us hold.
Looking back, I am left with the feeling that the language of "rights" is dead - not because I do not like the concept, but because it does not do the "work" I need it to do. By using "rights language" for public housing, food access, police brutality, participation in decisions that directly affect us, or whatever the case might be, we are inevitably placing ourselves in a defensive position and are forced to both defend and advance our arguments and the principles that underlie these arguments against assumptions that stack the deck against us.
From the Particular to the Universal, From Solidarity to Demands
When we were arguing that the "right to housing" needs to be "recognized" by our city government we were beginning with an abstract idea (with a ton of loaded baggage that served only as a distraction) and then using it to make a particular demand, e.g. demanding that the city government create a zoning ordinance requiring all new housing developments of a certain type to have a certain percentage of units set aside for low-income folks. I now feel that it would have been a better choice, tactically, to use the concept of "solidarity" in place of "rights". Organizing is a process that begins with forming intentional relationships, over the course of developing and deepening these relationships we uncover the overlapping interests and needs that provide the motivational force and the shared context within which we chose to act together to remake the world. Solidarity is the act of recognizing our own needs within the needs of others. Solidarity is therefore a concept that describes the act of organizing. Building relationships with folks in low-income communities of color and working with them to show how their needs and their community and their struggles overlap with those of others is precisely what the work of organizing in the Westside has been. In this way, the story of COA and the stories of the individuals who have been working together to form an intentional community in the Westside is a story about solidarity. This story of solidarity is a natural and organic expression of ourselves.
The use of the word "rights" does nothing to express this story. It also does nothing to express the other side of our struggle - the intentional exclusion of the Westside in particular and poor and working-class communities in general from decisions made by our local government that have a direct affect on them.
For example, the decision by the Mayor's office to cancel the Bessie Smith Strut with no notice and to invite Purpose Built Communities to come and present a proposal for gentrifying a low-income community of color to the benefit of well-connected land developers are actions that prove how our government has intentionally excluded the broad public of poor and working people from having a proportionate say in decisions that will have a direct consequence on their lives. Through purposeful exclusion and active marginalization of poor and working people and people of color, our government has fostered a hierarchy of involvement in public decisions that directly benefits the private interests of the well-connected. The revolving door of access between our the government and corporations has created an incestuous social network of folks who have virtually identical interests and goals. Here are some examples of this grand conspiracy of interests:
- Volkswagon gets over half a billion dollars in handouts in return for jobs, but the bus line does not run out to their plant, so the ostensible benefit resulting from the cost we pay is only distributed to the privileged as opposed to those with the greatest need.
- The Chamber of Commerce receives almost a million dollars of tax payer money every year from the combined city and county budgets, this money is then used to advance the interests (and drive up the profits) of area businesses. No money is allotted to advance the interests of excluded workers or area unions.
- Purpose Built Communities, of Atlanta, is hosted at the Chattanooga City Council's Housing Committee, but organized residents who live in public and subsidized housing are denied any opportunity to have their concerns and vision for their community heard. Time and again we our local government provides clear concrete examples of why there is a direct need for solidarity between poor and working people in our city - and why folks who have a mortgage or are renting should support the efforts of folks who live in public and subsidized housing. At the heart of it all, what the residents in the Westside were essentially demanding was that our society and economy start working for the benefit of poor and working people rather than for the interests of corporate and political elites.
Even though I recognize that the claim to the "right to housing" is just short-hand for the demand that our communities be directly involved in the process of allocating our shared resources and deciding to what purposes those resources are put, I think that the hang ups are too great and the assumptions that guide the use of the term are too distracting to justify its continued use. Using the language of "rights" to make claims takes me away from having a conversation about the concrete realities of injustice in Chattanooga and instead puts me on the defensive, having to trade a conversation on tax abatements handed out to businesses for the "original intentions" of the framers of the Constitution or a conversation on the necessity of community control of community resources for the sleepy and passive demand that others simply "recognize" an inert "right".
I would recommend that, after reflection, the language of "rights" be instead replaced with the language of "solidarity". I am also left with the overwhelming suspicion that the world we are trying to build will not be possible through the use of conceptual tools like "rights" - and that if another world is made possible it will only be made so through the organic adoption of entirely new patterns of reasoning, habits of belief and modes of description.