Revolutionaries Must Be Community Organizers

Zombietime has published excerpts from Osawatomie, a publication of the Weather Underground in 1975:

There are serious antiracist organizers building a revolutionary base in working class communities — in neighborhoods, shops, mills, mines, social institutions. There are those who are working among women, GI’s, vets, prisoners, among youth, students and the unemployed in every part of the country. There are some who have been at it for years and some who have just begun. Thousands more are needed; and each particular piece of work will have to be linked up into a whole. We need to out-organize the sophisticated and well-financed forces of George Meany, Louise Day Hicks, Ronald Reagan, George Wallace and Albert Shanker. Organizers need to crush this reactionary leadership with a revolutionized torrent of people.

There are more photo-captures and transcriptions at the link. I especially like this passage:

DON’T MOURN, ORGANIZE!

Now comes a time of decision for the left. Can we overcome the small points that divide us? Can we come together to confront the enemy? Can we build a revolutionary practice firmly rooted among masses of people? Can we transform our lives in order to play our part in the developing storm?

These are the questions that press in on the left today. These are the questions because of this contradiction: millions of people are suffering from the crisis and conflicts generated by the imperialist system, and yet the left is small, dispersed and divided, not a visible force in the lives of the people. Revolutionary politics do not have a strong voice. The left is not situated to fulfill its historic mission — to focus and lead and make sense of mass discontent — to carry the present situation to its furthest limits.

...the system itself is inhuman, and socialism is a real alternative; the energy crisis is the fault of Rockefeller and the oil companies, not the Arab people; unemployment is caused by capitalism not “illegal aliens” stealing jobs; war in Indochina or the Mideast is part of the problem, not the solution; political and social action can change things.

Zombietime notes that this edition of Osawatomie was written just as Weathermen like William Ayers were making the transition from terrorism to “working from the inside” for revolution.

Meanwhile, there's no word yet on whether Ayers will be getting an assistant secretary post in an Obama Department of Education.