Reflections from the Working Families Academy delegation to Madrid
From October 4–8, 2017 ten members, leaders, and staff of Working Families attended a “summer school” of the European left as part of a delegation sponsored by the Working Families Academy. The school was organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, and Working Families people led two workshops, provided the keynote address on the second night, and had scores of conversations with social movement leaders from every corner of Europe — North, South, East and West.
Here are responses from members of the WFA delegation to the questions What is the biggest lesson you will take away from your time in Madrid? and What will you be bringing back to your work at Working Families after this delegation?
Marina Dimitrijevic
State Director, Wisconsin Working Families Party
“While our electoral and political structures differ, I learned a lot from conversations with the German Party Die Linke, Spain’s Podemos, and England’s Momentum. They all have governing power and growing party memberships. They all have a very clear set of principles that unite and guide them — essentially, a platform. We at Working Families could really use something similar.”
My experience in Madrid with the Working Families Academy provided me many valuable lessons. Perhaps the most important is what we all gain with international travel, and that is a new and different perspective. This new perspective was amplified by the focus on the political left hegemony. We don’t talk enough, or in an academically deliberate way, about this subject in the same way the European leftists did during this institute, so it was rejuvenating to participate in such a deep dialogue. My lessons learned range from a re-energizing and recommitting to my leftist principles to developing specific plans to improve the WFP.
While our electoral and political structures differ, I learned a lot from conversations with the German Party Die Linke, Spain’s Podemos, and England’s Momentum. They all have governing power and growing party memberships. They all have a very clear set of principles that unite and guide them — essentially, a platform. We at the WFP could really use something similar. While they were advanced in their party structures, we offered input on organizing and canvassing which was a newer tactic to most of them.
One of the strongest lessons I left with was that shared principles unite us internationally on the left, but our shared issues and work is more aligned than I had imagined. I was excited to see that so many were fighting for fair housing and higher wages, but mostly that we are all fighting the same right wing extremists. This is where we must be more diligent and explicit about our work. At the first plenary discussion, Die Linke stated that we can only beat the extreme right by building the left. This is true and it will take great effort and investment.
In addition , no group had a good plan on how to best support our immigrant communities. Since this is major fuel for the nationalistic right, we must develop a leftist, transnational plan to open our borders and hearts to immigrants. It was clear that there was a struggle to do this in Europe and the most progressive theory l heard was from Slovakia, citing a universal basic income for all in the EU.
Lastly, the European spirit for resistance and protest is clearly at a different level than where we are at. Hearing from the Irish who fought the private profit-making from their water system by occupying each water meter placed on homes they deemed unjust, or the Spanish who protested each eviction, made me reflect on our next steps in the resistance. We are living in a unique time and we have to be ready to take risks, and risk it all, against the daily injustices with our administration. We can carve out smaller but meaningful victories like the Irish did with each water meter rather than fill Times Square for a protest. If it’s not us, who? And it’s not now, when? I am keeping all of this in mind as we fight for our political future each day in Wisconsin.
Maricela Sanchez
Working Families Party Branch Member — Prosser WA
“…there is strength in decentralization of a movement. Giving many members the ‘keys’ to lead allows for greater creativity and a more rapid spread of information and inspiration.”
One of the main lessons that was emphasized over and over again at the RLS Summer School was the concept that large movements start small, and they start locally. We don’t have to wait for a certain political leader or for our preferred political party to side with our movement to create real change. We as activists, we as workers, we as students, we as caring citizens are the agents of change.
Also, there is strength in decentralization of a movement. Giving many members the “keys” to lead allows for greater creativity and a more rapid spread of information and inspiration. We heard of many examples where our comrades avoided a top-down approach and instead opted for an all-of-the-above strategy and crowdsourcing ideas from entire groups of people (i.e. Right2Water campaign in Ireland, The People for Bernie Sanders, Zagreb Je Nas). By giving people the go-ahead to lead and act, these movements spread rapidly, and caught the established political systems off guard. We need to trust each other and allow for creativity, risk-taking and failure. And we need to be resilient so that we can rebound from failures and start again without missing a beat.
Mat Hanson
State Director — D.C. Working Families
“I’d like to make sure we incorporate the Working Families Academy project into our long-term strategic planning. This is such a valuable concept but we need to explicitly tie it into our long-term plans for building power…”
It might be cliché to say this, but the Working Families Academy trip to Madrid affirmed that we need to think globally and act locally. Being surrounded by so many dedicated and talented organizers from across Europe was a fantastic learning experience. It was eye opening to see how so many people are struggling with the same issues, and to think about how we organize intersectional movements that challenge racism and xenophobia and win progressive political power at a moment when right-wing populism is ascendant.
It won’t be easy, but just as the right is organizing internationally, and winning, we need to deepen our commitment to this effort. Wins, even strategic advances, such through the Bernie and Corbyn campaigns, or new parties like Podemos, provide inspiration and lessons for how — and around what — we should organize.
I’d like to make sure we incorporate the Working Families Academy project into our long-term strategic planning. This is such a valuable concept but we need to explicitly tie it into our long-term plans for building power, especially in the Americas. We should talk more about how our campaigning at the national level can be coordinated with our allies in Canada, Mexico and elsewhere, and what a truly international progressive agenda would look like around issues like climate change, immigration, policing and war, trade, and more.
Marcelia Nicholson
Working Families Party endorsed elected official — Milwaukee, WI
“I learned that more than ever, we need to build a political infrastructure that will aide us internationally….By building a diverse progressive infrastructure, we can pool our talents, resources, and strategies to fight back against the right.”
I learned many valuable lessons during my time in Madrid and greatly appreciated the opportunity to learn new perspectives, and meet other activists and organizers around social issues. I felt as if we were truly connected morally, and understood the importance of social justice regardless of ethnic background, or how many seas divided us.
I learned that more than ever, we need to build a political infrastructure that will aide us internationally. The idea of “Cut and Paste” politics was introduced during a key note address, and I learned by listening about right politics in other European countries, that our current Presidential administration is emulating strategies used by other Right leaders around the world to oppress people and further capitalize on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.
By building a diverse progressive infrastructure, we can pool our talents, resources, and strategies to fight back against the right. We need to improve and universalize our message and values, engage and retain the engagement of community members, and be more on the OFFENSE than on DEFENSE by using radical strategies to push for change.
The idea of being on the offense and using more radical strategies stemmed from listening about the Right2Change campaign in Ireland, where they occupied water meters to fight privatization. It seems small, but it seems to have been much more effective then some of the strategies we employ — like marches or protests. I would like to see us occupying evictions, racial profiling (traffic stops or frisks with counsel) or wrongful terminations of employment.
I plan to use these lessons and strategies here in Milwaukee, starting with proposing legislation, and planning with WI Working Families Party to possibly use occupation as a mode to pushing back against evictions and racial profiling.
There is a vast wealth of knowledge that I absorbed from the Academy and hope to continue being active with Working Families and its international delegations.
Joe Dinkin
National Communications and Campaign Director — Brooklyn, NY
“My biggest lesson to take home is that we perhaps do need more ideology at the WFP — if not simply for its own sake, to help us carve out what exactly we mean when we say things like ‘yank Democrats to the left’ or ‘transform the Democrats’ or a million other imprecise formulations.”
The biggest similarity I see between the United States and Europe is the macro political patterns we’re experiencing. The neoliberal center is collapsing. Center-left political parties are flailing. And that’s destabilizing, and creating energy on both the scary ethno-nationalist right and also the populist progressive left, which is building on the energy of young people. There are of course differences and variations between nations in terms of how this manifests, but this macro phenomenon seems very broadly shared. It’s actually remarkable how many of the young leftists share this analysis. (Separately, I found the range of views present on the question of Catalonian independence pretty interesting, and it reminded me that issues of national identity don’t fit quite so neatly into comfortable left-right boxes. But it does leave me wondering what that pattern means for the US, or if there is something “exceptional” about the USA that means that it’ll never show up here the same way.)
The biggest difference between the US and other nations is the level of comfort talking about ideology. In America, we mainly talk about issues, not about worldview. I’m not sure if the fact of being at a conference about the left exaggerated this effect, but the Europeans are comfortable talking about neoliberalism, capitalism, socialism, left hegemony and other further abstractions. We don’t do that much in the US, even when we’re meeting internally among ourselves, except occasionally as kind of self-conscious joke.
I think one other valuable experience, beyond what I learned from the European delegates, was getting to connect with some of our own local branch leaders. It seems silly that it took going to Spain to make that connection, but sometimes being removed from home is valuable.
My biggest lesson to take home is that we perhaps do need more ideology at the WFP— if not simply for its own sake, to help us carve out what exactly we mean when we say things like “yank Democrats to the left” or “transform the Democrats” or a million other imprecise formulations. I’m not sure if it’s an external message but at least it might help ground us in something rigorous so that not every political decision is purely circumstantial or tactical.
Alwiyah Shariff
National Membership Coordinator — Columbus, OH
“After participating in the in the delegation to Spain I have brought a broader language and perspective in connecting local work. I found it really refreshing that the Europeans use theoretical terms as a part of their organizing language and don’t shy from political debate. It gave me a new starting point for how we approach organizing through political ideology and connecting it to electoral politics here in the states.”
There were many lessons and experiences that I took away from the Madrid summer school and getting to know our European comrades. The major thing I took away is the confirmation that the strategy of the right is centralized, aligned and globalized. I heard from our German, Italian, English, Polish etc. counterparts about the way development, gentrification, the use of law enforcement as a tool of the state, and austerity politics are resulting in the same narratives against immigrants, marginalized communities, and lack of community with neighbors to some extent. What I saw was ALEC globalized. Meaning, the same tactics used [against us] in my city of Columbus, Ohio, and other cities in the state of Ohio, are used in European cities as well.
After participating in the in the delegation to Spain I have brought a broader language and perspective in connecting local work. I found it really refreshing that the Europeans use theoretical terms as a part of their organizing language and don’t shy from political debate. It gave me a new starting point for how we approach organizing through political ideology and connecting it to electoral politics here in the states.
I already have a sense of what’s doable and possible in our work forming Working Families’ Nevada political education program. Lastly I brought back a sense of urgency to win for our people, because who wants to be a part of a losing team?
Rafael Shimunov
National Creative Director — Brooklyn, NY
“I come back with pride at how advanced our local dialog on race is and how rapidly it is evolving. It is impressive that in such a short American experience our social movements have sacrificed so much to make that a reality. At the same time, dialog with the European left showed me we are functionally and ideologically lacking in movement education and the historic underpinnings of our struggles.”
Our hope for change and all of our collective work to challenge business as usual is under enormous threat by a global right wing. When I first learned, face to face, stories from our allies overseas I immediately felt hopeless, being reminded that our already daunting task at home doesn’t end or begin at home. Yet as the days continued I realized it is not only our advesaries that span borders, it is a large force of progressive allies they will have to reckon with.
I come back with pride at how advanced our local dialog on race is and how rapidly it is evolving. It is impressive that in such a short American experience our social movements have sacrificed so much to make that a reality. At the same time, dialog with the European left showed me we are functionally and ideologically lacking in movement education and the historic underpinnings of our struggles. Our myopia as Americans can be challenged to empower our movements. Together, our own experiences with race would empower the international left.
