Reflections on the Radical King Workshop

This weekend I participated in an inspiring and informative workshop on “The Radical King: Nonviolent Work for Social Transformation” led by David Hartsought, Be Scofield, and Chris Moore-Backman at the Quaker Center in Ben Lomond.

The highlight of the weekend was a presentation on Gandhi’s holistic “Three-Fold Approach” by Moore-Blackman, who described that strategy with three overlapping circles: personal transformation, constructive program, and political action.

This summation hit the nail on the head in terms of what I’ve been looking for in recent years and the direction that the Occupy Be the Change Caucus is taking. So I found that presentation to be very affirming and reassuring.

One of the participants in the workshop was Kazu Haga, a Kingian Nonviolence Trainer, with whom I had recently been discussing the possibility of collaborating to develop a political campaign rooted in King’s principcles. During the workshop, we continued that discussion.

Sunday morning the workshop considered “The Relevance of the Radical King to the Occupy Movement.” At that session, I presented the following notes which I wrote before breakfast.

+++++

We need political organizations that are rooted in love and the holistic three-fold path that both Gandhi and King used.

Like King, we need to reconcile the tensions between liberals and radicals.

Doing so requires mutual respect and the avoidance of being judgmental.

We can make judgments without being judgmental.

Like King, we can criticize capitalism without being anti-capitalist and instead affirm a mixed economy that serves the common good as well as relies on the profit motive.

We can minimize the use of abstract labels like liberal and radical.

The founding documents of the Occupy movement did not use the word capitalism.

Others have tried to co-opt the movement by framing it as anti-capitalist.

Labels reduce reality to pre-formed ideological constructs.

The milennial generation is non-ideological and grounded in pragmatic idealism. We need to ride that wave.

It is impossible to not operate within the system.

We need to be prepared in case the system totally collapses.

To desire or try to help make the system totally collapse would be immoral due to the suffering and risk of fascism that would result.

With the three-fold path, we can build alternative institutions and help improve public and corporate policies at the same time.

We need both a long-term radical vision that includes structural change and short-term liberal tactics that improve living conditions. Like King, we can be both radical and  liberal.

Steady incremental reforms can lead to fundamental transformation.

To transform the sytem we need to transform ourselves as well as all of our major institutions and our culture.

Charismatic leadership as was common during the lives of Gandhi and King is outdated.

Problem-solving, collaborative leadership is taking its place.

We need to support each other in our efforts to undo our conditioning, such as arrogance, elitism, hyper-competition, being judgmental, and intellectualism.

One way we can do that is to set aside time to listen to each other report on our mistakes and our efforts to avoid them in the future.

We need to develop and encourage Occupy political campaigns based on Kingian principles, including a focus on winnable demands, a willingness to negotiate, a refusal to scapegoat and demonize, the quest for reconciliation not victory, and love rather than anger.

Kazu plans to invite those who have participated in one of his two-day Kingian Nonviolence workshops  to participate in a meeting to plan a Kingian political campaign.

I want to support that effort as best I can.

I encourage you to participate in his Feb. 18-19 workshop and help convene more workshops.

Kazu will soon be leaving one of his paid positions. One way we can support him is to pledge monthly donations to his primary organization, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CUYRJ).

After thinking about it for a while, I agree with his instinct that our Kingian campaign should focus on getting big money out of politics.

One way to do so would be to approach key decision-makers in both the corporate and governmental worlds and ask them:

Do you agree that we need to greatly reduce the role played in politics by large for-profit corporations and super-rich individuals? If so, how might we best do that? What about a Constitutional amendment? Will you participate in a series of conversations with a wide spectrum of stakeholders to develop answers to these questions?

Then one at a time we could target with public demonstrations and civil disobedience those who refuse to engage in dialogue and/or adopt and implement an acceptable plan for how they can help reduce the influence of ''Big Money'' in politics.