At the 2024-03-07 General Meeting, we voted to approve the formation of a WCU Reading Group, with readings being suggested by the Membership and approved by Members at the next Reading Group Meeting. We can use this thread to collect all recommendations.
When making suggestions, please keep in mind that reading material should be relevant to WCU’s activities. The goal of the Reading Group is to help WCU Members:
Gain a deeper understanding of the theories and practices that guide our work
Develop a shared knowledge base and vocabulary to enhance our discussions and decision-making
Apply insights from the readings to our current projects and initiatives
Identify new ideas and strategies to strengthen our impact and effectiveness
Foster a culture of continuous learning and growth within our organization
Please include a short description of why you’re recommending the reading. We will review all the recommendations at the next Reading Group Meeting and vote on our next reading. If your reading was not selected and you would like to recommend it again, please leave a comment on this thread so the person chairing the Reading Group can bring it up again.
If you have any questions, please message @HipGnosis.
Since WCU has been a bit more active on the liberation of Palestine affairs, I’ve been wanting to read A History of False Hope by Lori Allen. I don’t know much about the book other than that it allegedly “analyzes a century of Palestinian engagement with fact-finding missions, illuminating the endemic flaws of international law.” It piqued my interest and thought it might be of interest to the group.
I don’t know how involved with the reading group I can be given current circumstances, along with having a lot of reading for school, so feel free to take or leave my submission.
I disagree with parts of it, but it is a review of three books that go over the political activity of the past decade or so. It would serve as a good companion to our Death of the Left social event. It will give us an opportunity to discuss critiquing horizontalism and an overemphasis on anarchism; the media’s role in misrepresenting the left and the left being too represented by media; the limitations of both leaderless movements and being overly reliant on charismatic leadership; and putting some of the challenges the millennial left faced in broader political, economic, and social contexts.
-This book isn’t a step by step or a how-to on democracy, but I’m hoping it’ll gives us a framework for dealing with the tensions in democracy that make it so difficult to practice. It’s relevant to us because these tensions are showing up constantly: Inclusion/Exclusion (Who gets to have a say in what we cover in the reading group?), Coercion/Choice (Sentiments at the March 7, 2024 General Meeting: In a scenario under which we hold a vote to end the Tenant Union Focus Campaign, the members of the CalVilla Tenant Association should join WCU if they want to save it.), Spontaneity/Structure (Make it up as we go OR create a process for managing our public facing material), Conflict/Consensus, Local/Global, Present/Future, etc.
-The audiobook is free through the public library. A preview is available on YouTube.
-The author also made a film called “What Is Democracy?” We can screen it and hold a discussion afterwards. It’ll give members, who may not have the time or freedom to commit to reading an entire book, a chance to still be included. Plus, if we’re ever going to grow, we need more points of contact with local residents–a way for them to speak to our members and get to know us before they’re asked to join the organization or participate in an action.
Every political system has contradictions. There is no end goal, there are only means.
This is why the unity of means and ends of so important.
To create a better society we must use the means of that better society.
We must act out, or prefigured that future society.
Oof, boy after reading this I have so many notes.
It’s such a bad article, but also it does get at a key point that I think we can all agree is undeniable: we failed.
We discussed going through this series but got sidetracked.
As we transition from survey collection to making asks and encouraging larger actions in CalVilla, I think going through the 1-on-1 Organizing Conversation series would be really helpful. The author has a detailed breakdown of a model similar to the AHUY conversation model we talked about previously.
The series also includes pieces on how “organizing is not about getting people to agree with radical ideas” and argues against the notion that having the right ideas/arguments suffices to change people’s minds.
Both would serve well in our TU work and potential future Palestine work. While we have a few slides on AHUY, we need something more detailed and accessible than our current slides.
I have brought up this piece before but I think it is particularly relevant in the context of the “No Vote for Genocide” campaign and the broader political landscape, including Joe Biden’s recent policies. Biden has passed legislation similar to Trump’s on immigration (announcement tomorrow), escalated the conflict in Ukraine and Russia, continued Trump’s tariffs, etc. Additionally, he has done little to address the ongoing price gouging and inflation.
Draper’s article argues that voting for the lesser evil ultimately enables greater harm. Liberal politicians can pass pro-capitalist/right-wing legislation because they have the cover of tut-tutting the right, which allows the right to adopt even more extreme rhetoric. This cycle has been pushing politics to the right for nearly a century.
This article can help us frame our argument when we advocate against voting for Biden or the Democrats. It is concise and can be read within the first 15 minutes of our reading group meeting.
Even if we don’t select this article, I would recommend taking the five minutes to give it a read.
I suggest we read “Oppose and Propose!” Starting on page 140 the section titled “Organization Handbook”
I will purchase a PDF version of this book for us to share / turn into an audio book for ease of access if we decide to read this
This is the opposite of short but gives readers some important things to think about: gun control, building a culture of autonomy, and what it really means to defend political action.
Johnny Tran’s article explores the rise and fall of popular sovereignty in the United States, taking pains to outline how it has been systematically dismantled, weakening the Left today. Popular sovereignty is defined as the historical practice where citizens took up arms to defend their rights, even against the state, and that this tradition was key in our political culture, particularly in labor and left-wing movements, but it has been eroded by a long campaign of counterinsurgency.
Tran covers a lot of historical context, from the American Revolution, through various labor struggles, and social movements. He describes ordinary citizens using their right to bear arms to contest power and defend their communities - not only as self-defense but to assert political autonomy.
But there has been a long campaign of counterinsurgency: crackdowns on labor strikes, social movements, FBI’s COINTELPRO programs, anti-gun legislation (especially in California) designed to disarm groups like the Black Panthers, and now cultural and ideological co-optation where dissent is channeled into more manageable forms (petitioning electeds and the cops).
He has some takeaways at the end: the left needs to rebuild a culture of autonomy and popular sovereignty. Successful political action requires the willingness and ability to defend that action but to get it, we will need a cultural shift.
