Long before it was my privilege to know and work with Kerrie Dickson (former two time Georgia Green Party nominee for Labor Commissioner of Georgia) she purchased a farm in Oglethorpe County, where she raised three of her own children, two step children and at various times more foster children that I could ever hope to keep up with. She organized wolfers to build 7,000 linear feet of raised beds producing organic vegetables for home and market while paying off that mortgage applying a range of skills working in Athens, owning a restaurant, as a nurse and in and around town running the family's historical renovation contracting business.
She would tell the story of a dear anarchist friend, who (I suspect) lived in Athens. This old man was a veteran from his younger years of the Spanish Civil War where as our U.S. State Department would put, he was a premature anti-fascist. Kerrie would often visit him and bend her ear to his stories, learning our history at the knee of an elder. The man had dies before Kerrie and I would work together. But she took full advantage of the opportunity while he still drew breath. When she would speak of the state of 'the Movement', he would correct her, declaring, "There is no movement left in this country except the bowel movement."
Conspicuous in their absence were most of the traditional anti-war organizations from last week's Wage Against the War Machine rally in Washington DC. But the 'United' National Antiwar Coalition did manage to react, if not respond, to WAtWM's invitation by adapting the rally's demands to exclude one to abolish the CIA, military industrial complex and the deep state. The change led one formation fighting the corruption of the Green Party of the United States to ask: "Who is writing these demands? The CIA?"
A growing number of us have come to describe ourselves as politically homeless. Our own politics have not changed. We have never parted ways with the 'leftist' (liberal / progressive / socialist / anarchist) politics of our youth. But we wake up each day understanding that 'left' politics has left us, pushed us aside and left us with little more than cardboard boxes for shelter.
Identarian ideology has captured 'leftist' political formations, and in doing so has abandoned the class analysis which at one time bound us together as a part of those organizations. Many others have commented on this process. Be it the refugees from the Democrat and Green parties in our own country; the Liberals, NDP, and Greens in Canada; the Labour, Green and SNP in the UK; Michael Nayna's documentary on the Evergreen Affair; Benjamin Boyce's podcast and early journalism also about the Evergreen Affair; the Boghossian/Plunkett/Lindsey 'grievance paper scandal; or any of a growing number of organizers, activists, journalists and others who align politically left of center and have gone public in their opposition to the embrace of cancel culture and performative allyship which passes these days as left politics.
This two minute audio clip is taken from an interview last month with the Heterodorx podcast, where Stuart Parker calls this phenomenon, post politics. Parker served seven years as the Provincial Leader for the British Columbia Green Party. He can be heard on other programs discussing post politics, as a means for left-aligned political activists to substitute 'winnable' but trivial struggles for actual on-the-ground organizing intended to meaningfully change the material conditions for folks in our communities.
In our youth, in fact until perhaps a dozen years ago we campaigned for an end to wars, urgent action on the climate crisis, livable wages, health care for all, an end to predatory corporate products and services (including those of the finance, insurance and real estate sector), to reverse the mal distribution of wealth and income, for an end to violence in our homes, accountability by armed agents of the state to the communities they swear and oath to serve and protect, to address the corruption of our democratic institutions perverted by private money in our public elections. Far too many of our youth today are satisfied with cancelling comedians, or women who defend their private spaces, or those who would disagree with a heterodox group-think untested in the forge of vigorous debate and which have marginalized with the voting public these groups we built before their capture.
'Left' of center political formations which eschew internal debate or public alliance building across ideological differences have rendered themselves unfit-for-purpose. They are incapable of building the political power necessary to fight for the political victories which are worthy of the effort.
As CampaignFoundations.com, I work with community organizers and candidates for electoral office who remember that there are political goals larger than ourselves which are worthy of our life energies. I help clients with the mechanics of effective organizing, consulting on organizational structures and the strategic and tactical concerns central to their success.
Although my own politics list towards the mutual aid and self-organization of traditional anarchism, sometimes known as social libertarianism, although my own political affiliation is with our own state Green Party, not everyone I work with does or once did identify with the political left. I help green candidates plan, launch, conduct their first or next campaign for public office. I help social change organizations build effective campaigns to win public policy objectives.
If you'd like to learn more, check out this brief pamphlet intended to help folks explore a future in public service:
Getting your Head Straight: Public Service as an Antidote to Despair
If you'd like a conversation, schedule one please on my calendar here.