Accompanying

Staughton Lynd

Description

In Accompanying, Staughton Lynd distinguishes two strategies of social change. The first, characteristic of the 1960s Movement in the United States, is “organizing.” The second, articulated by Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, is “accompaniment.” The critical difference is that in accompanying one another the promoter of social change and his or her oppressed colleague view themselves as two experts, each bringing indispensable experience to a shared project. Together, as equals, they seek to create what the Zapatistas call “another world.”

Staughton Lynd applies the distinction between organizing and accompaniment to five social movements in which he has taken part: the labor and civil rights movements, the antiwar movement, prisoner insurgencies, and the movement sparked by Occupy Wall Street. His wife Alice Lynd, a partner in these efforts, contributes her experience as a draft counselor and advocate for prisoners in maximum-security confinement.

Sujets

• Organizing
• Social change
• Liberation theology
• Civil and political rights
• Activism
• Labor
• Justice

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 26 novembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604868135
• Langue: English

Extrait

PRAISE
"In this moving and provocative book, Staughton (and Alice) Lynd lay out a unique way of looking at and making social change. Not some people going out and trying to tell others what to do, but what he calls ‘accompaniment’: people finding each other and working together on the basis of equality, listening, consensus-seeking, and taking exemplary action. It may sound like a fairy tale, but the stunning stories he tells from his own and others’ experience show it can come true."
Jeremy Brecher, author of Strike!
"Accompanying, or ‘taking the same risks’ as others, is a powerful concept which turns upside down the traditional and failed style of organizing hierarchically. Be forewarned, Accompanying is only for those who are ready to engage themselves. There are no ready-made answers here, only rich experiences to build on so as to persevere in maintaining our common humanity."
Sam Bahour, coeditor with Alice and Staughton Lynd of Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians
"Here is an activist life profoundly distilled: the wisdom and experience of half a century of movements from below, offered by one of the great radical thinkers and doers of our time. Staughton Lynd is a treasure and so is this precious book."
Marcus Rediker, coauthor of The Many-Headed Hydra and author of The Slave Ship and The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom
"Since our dreams for a more just world came crashing down around us in the late 1980s and early 1990s, those of us involved in social activism have spent much of the time since trying to assess what went wrong and what we might learn from our mistakes. In this highly readable book, Lynd explores the difference between organizing and accompanying. This book is a must read for anyone who believes a better world is possible."
Margaret Randall, author of Sandino’s Daughters Revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua and Gathering Rage: The Failure of 20th Century Revolutions to Develop a Feminist Agenda
"I like this book very much. The fact that it is based on Alice and Staughton’s own experiences of accompanying makes it a very valuable tool for understanding and promoting the notion."
Father Joe Mulligan, SJ
" Accompanying is inspiring and humbling to all who think we know and have a strategy to craft a better society. This stirring work shows us that solidarity is not an abstract strategy requiring a professional party leading the way to consolidate working class power."
Immanuel Ness, editor of Working USA and coeditor of Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present
" Accompanying is a concept, a way of living, central to some of the best radical work the world over, one that opens up new possibilities for human liberation. Lynd’s delineation of accompanying is one that activists will do well to examine. It will benefit anyone wishing to live a life of meaning for the benefit of the underprivileged who strive always for a better world, and for the ongoing efforts to create that world."
Andy Piascik, former staff member of the League for Industrial Democracy
" Accompanying is arguably the most thoughtful examination of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s concept of accompaniment insofar as it helps us to understand how liberation theology matured from taking a ‘preferential option for the poor’ to companionship with the poor as they organize themselves. This legacy flows into the Occupy Movement today when it reclaims foreclosed homes, and occupies banks and spaces collectively and spontaneously. This book would be important at any moment in history, but is indispensable today as we accompany one another in the quest to free ourselves from the shackles of the world the 1 percent has inflicted on us."
Carl Mirra, author of The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945 1970
"Everything that Staughton Lynd writes is original and provocative. This little book is no exception. Among his greatest contributions on display here is the transformation of the ‘organizer’ and ‘organized’ into a collaboration of different people with different skills, each making a decisive contribution."
Paul Buhle, author of Robin Hood: People’s Outlaw and Forest Hero
"Staughton and Alice Lynd’s theory and practice of accompaniment as set forth in this book represents a major contribution to understanding how activists should work for social change."
Jules Lobel, president, Center for Constitutional Rights and author of Success Without Victory: The Long Road to Justice in America

Accompanying: Pathways to Social Change © 2012 Staughton Lynd This edition © 2012 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-666-7 LCCN: 2012913636
Cover design by John Yates/stealworks.com Interior design by Jonathan Rowland
PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed on recycled paper by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com
Contents
Introduction
I. O RGANIZING
The Labor Movement
The Civil Rights Movement
II. A CCOMPANIMENT
Against the War
Oscar Romero: An Unlikely Saint
Accompanying Prisoners
Occupying the Future
Conclusion
Index
Introduction
T HIS L ITTLE B OOK O FFERS A S INGLE S IMPLE T HESIS.
I believe that most (not all) of the movements of the 1960s suffered from a mistaken and superficial conception of social change that we called "organizing."
In what follows, I will discuss many aspects of this organizing model. For the moment, think of it as a process whereby person A decides what it would be desirable for person B to think and do, and then seeks to bring about that predetermined result.
Why do I call this idea of organizing mistaken and superficial? Because, as I shall seek to show, the result is either (as in the labor movement) a complex and restrictive institutional environment that stands in the way of creative and spontaneous action from below, or (in the heartbreaking case of the civil rights movement) a situation such that when the organizer leaves, some of the worst aspects of the way things were before reassert themselves.
Is there an alternative, a different practice, a new vision toward which young people who wish to change the world in fundamental ways might turn? I believe that there is. It is called "accompaniment."
Dr. Paul Farmer on "Accompaniment"
The idea of accompaniment has lately begun to attract attention in the United States.
On May 25, 2011, for example, Dr. Paul Farmer delivered a commencement address at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government called "Accompaniment as Policy." In the course of his address, reproduced by the Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, by my count Farmer used the French noun "accompagnateur " (one who accompanies) seven times, the verb "accompany" eight times, and the noun "accompaniment" thirty-seven times.
What did Dr. Farmer mean by these fifty-two words?
In 2003, a biography of Dr. Farmer had appeared with the title Mountains Beyond Mountains . 1 This much-acclaimed book had some-what the aspect of a victory lap for Farmer and the organization he cofounded, Partners In Health. Then, of course, came the Haitian earthquake, validating the proverb that author Tracy Kidder chose for the title: beyond each mountain range there is another; or, stated differently, as you solve one problem, another presents itself.
Dr. Farmer makes clear in the first paragraph of his Harvard talk that the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake was for him an object lesson about the arena he thought he knew most about. In discussing the things he learned and relearned during these difficult years, he states that "[a]ll of them turn about the notion of accompaniment." The word "accompaniment" is an elastic one: "it means just what you’d imagine, and more. To accompany someone is to go somewhere with him or her, to break bread together, to be present on a journey with a beginning and an end." Farmer indicates that we’re almost never sure about the end.
There’s an element of mystery, of openness, in accompaniment. I’ll go with you and support you on your journey wherever it leads. I’ll keep you company and share your fate for a while. And by "a while," I don’t mean a little while. Accompaniment is much more about sticking with a task until it’s deemed completed by the person or people being accompanied, rather than by the accompagnateur 2 .
The rest of this remarkable paper consists of illustrations of "accompaniment" from Dr. Farmer’s rich and varied experience. One such illustration has to do with a certain windswept plain north of Port-au-Prince that had been identified as a possible resettlement location for earthquake victims. Scores of architects and urban planners set to work on plans for the site. Nobody bothered to go there. Had they done so, they would have learned that the location was in the middle of a floodplain and anything built there would have sunk into the mud during the rainy season. The lesson, according to Farmer, is "the necessity of physical proximity to accompaniment." He reminds us that the Latin roots of "accompaniment" refer to being together ("com") in eating bread ("panis"), face to face.
Occupy Wall Street and Accompaniment
Occupy Wall Street, itself inspired partly by initiatives on