Rule Number 1. An Organizer has no power. Zilch. All we have is words.

Our opponents are tightly organized with no internal opposition. The leaders of modern corporate, NGO and political power structures do not have to persuade their minions of the wisdom of their orders – they fire anybody who disobeys. They also have access to the kind of money that buys off a human conscience. And, if all else fails, they have control over the instruments of state violence – and just plain old violence.

All we have is words. An organizer makes suggestions to people to change reality by working together toward specific ends. Nobody has to do what we suggest, and almost never do. Only when enough people are seriously disturbed by something will you get anybody to listen at all, and that is just the first tiny step in the process of organizing.
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Rule Number 2 Never get mad at people for being people.

If you have not figured it out by now, human beings are only sometimes rational, and almost all of us rarely think coherently. Life would be a real drag if everybody was Mister Spock from Star Trek – we’ll never know of course, but is would probably be a perpetual nightmare to live on Planet Vulcan.

The Advertising Industry exists to exploit human irrationality. I cite this not with approval, but for its obvious but very uncomfortable truth about life in the current version of civilization. There is a very complex and profitable discipline of mass mental manipulation – and it does not bother with critical thinking. Instead Madison Avenue exploits human irrationality with a rational strategy of manipulation.

I notice that talk of religion has all but disappeared from “public” discourse as the Religious Right disappeared from national pollical “reporting” with the bizarre success of Donald Trump. Religion, however, has not disappeared altogether – the extra-rational manifestation of “faith” in higher power. You cannot get anywhere trying to talk somebody out of believing in their conception of Deity.

It is easy to get mad at such friends or relatives, especially when they fall in with some creepy cult. But if you do get angry there are two results – you are wasting energy and you will fail to persuade the True Believer that he or she is incorrect about metaphysics.

As an Organizer, I have to look at people’s overall irrationality the same way. People have a right to believe whatever they believe and you are just being an asshole if you berate them for their lack of “critical thinking skills.” I hope everybody on this board is smart enough to realize that if you tell somebody that they do not have “critical thinking skills,” what they hear is “You are stupid and I am smart, so believe what I tell you to believe.”

Keep in mind, nobody has to be an Organizer and if this first rule is a deal breaker, thanks for your interest. But this is not for you.
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Rule Number 3 -- Count From Zero Up

If you want to change reality -- if you want to get better pay for yourself or if you want to overthrow capitalism, or anything in between -- where you are right now is Ground Zero. Unfortunately, most people do not think that way, especially progressives. We like to imagine the way the world "should" be, and we get pissy when we fail to get things that we "should" have.

This makes sense when you are talking about voting or writing your Congressperson. But that is not changing reality -- voting is an individual act with no prayer of changing reality. So, why vote for the lesser of two evils? I sure don't. I just make the distinction between organizing to change reality from expressing your opinion within the current reality.

In the union context, the majority of the members I have represented in white collar jobs assume that they are entitled to things like a salary that keeps up with inflation. They correctly calculate that their lifestyle is going backwards over a decade of losing a percentage point or two in buying power each year. But there is nothing in the labor laws that say a company has to keep up with the Consumer Price Index. If we get offered one percent and then raise some hell and get the company to offer two percent, that is not a defeat.

And thinking that it is a defeat is counterproductive, because it draws an erroneous conclusion from what you accomplish with your hell raising -- doubling the offer from the company. If you want to get 3% instead of 2%, you have to persuade your colleagues to fight for more. AND you have to come up with a realistic strategy for squeezing that third point out of the company.

Unless you are honest with yourself, and with the people you hope to persuade to engage in the struggle, you will fail. We have less power than the Bosses and we can either take what they give or take power from them. That requires unity, courage and persistence.

More rules to come in later installments

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rhet·o·ric
/ˈredərik/
noun

1. the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.

"he is using a common figure of rhetoric, hyperbole"

2. language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content.
"all we have from the Opposition is empty rhetoric"

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I am a professional at rhetoric. I’ve worked at three distinct gigs since graduation from law school in 1977: union representative, lawyer and comedian. I never made much money at comedy, like really not much money -- and I went back to being a union representative in 1998 after five years of scratching a few thousand bucks a year from teaching “comedy” defensive driving.

In all three of my “careers,” all I ever had to offer was words.

Even in those years that were a lot of fun, the only thing of value that I have ever had to offer is words.

I know nothing about science other than the smattering of education I got in the public schools of Dallas, Texas and from reading some of the non-fiction pop science books by Isaac Asimov. Most of that is probably worse than worthless in the 21st Century and my message board voice is very careful not to make scientific pronouncements of any kind.

But I do know a lot about bullshit. I was a courtroom lawyer for a few years, and I have dealt with lawyers and litigation at all of my union jobs. I have been the advocate in arbitration and administrative law hearings for well over 100 cases.

Within the various unions that employed me as a lawyer or business agent, I dealt with democracy every day of my working life. On paper the “bosses” of a union today can do whatever they want with dues money for the most part – and keeping things that way is the highest priority for most labor organizations. I hope people are not too shocked to hear that water is also wet.

I got kicked out of the institution of organized labor in 1985 for starting an independent union, outside the AFL-CIO structure. I certainly understood why that pissed off my former colleagues and where they were coming from. In 1985 I went into Union Exile by hanging out a shingle and trying to practice the law. Fate never takes a night off and my first significant client was the Fraternal Order of Police which was then and remains now an unaffiliated association, and the guys who retained me did not give a shit about my heretical brand of unionism.

I tried to turn that into a union job mainly because I am that way. For example I organized successful campaigns in Texas outback towns called Big Spring and Midland. My job in both cases was to come up with strategy and to advise the members on how to do execute it. We stopped a layoff of cops in Big Spring and we got a raise in Midland after I organized a ticket strike.

Words can defeat power some times.

Being a police union lawyer could have worked as a career for me except for the fact that cops sometimes fuck citizens up and then perjure themselves to cover it up. I did not run into much of that, but one case was more than I ever wanted, and after five years I had enough and decided to try to tell jokes.

More words.

For no money.

So I crawled back into the bosom of Organized Labor in 1998. I hopped through eight jobs, always hoping to return to the “executive” level status I had in the early 80s. Never happened, but I could always find work as a field agent because I am an expert at rhetoric – that is, I can represent working people on the job by organizing them. I make suggestions on how to build unity. Then I make more suggestions on what to do with that unity.

Meanwhile, I conduct constant “diplomacy” with the management drones assigned to handle “union matters” for the employer. The goal is to persuade the employer to agree to what the employees want. This involves telling a single story at least two different ways.

On another thread I related the story of organizing the San Francisco Broadcast Industry Safety Summit. With no power at all as an IATSE Business Agent, I used words to suggest to the leaders of the other TV unions, management at all the stations in the Bay Area and the public information officers of several police departments in the Bay that it would be in the mutual interests of all concerned.

By the way, I thought up that scheme as a way to make trouble for the Fox owned station based in Oakland. But the idea caught fire on its own and the benefit of the Summit was too good to waste on Fox's union contract policy.

Six years later, the Summit is an ongoing institution while its organizer is out of work because of vaccination policy.

Irony never sleeps.

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