Organizing For Change - Part I

BIMBO CABIDOG

The process of the people's empowerment

Organizing is a complex task. It involves the application of several disciplines: philosophy, psychology, sociology, humanities, political science, economics and even natural sciences. 

In the present, any part of man’s world is presumably under an organization. So what is there to organize yet, and for what? There is no simple answer.

Organizations now either reinforce the larger organization of society, the socio-cultural and political superstructures, or challenge them. But the need to bolster the status quo diminishes as society is more and more brought under control by the ruling order. The greater need to organize is for the opposite purpose, that is, of challenging the dominant political and economic relationships.

Hence, to organize is to break up the system in place and install new institutional arrangements. The purpose of organizing becomes that of dismantling the existing superstructures, and engineering another one. It is to implant the embryo of the new order in the womb of the old order. 

This is directed in the long run towards overhauling the prevailing organization of forces and resources, the distribution of power and wealth. Thus, to organize is to disorganize.

Disorganizing starts the course of structural change where the powerless gain the capability to improve life in the world in which they live. This capability is the fresh organ of power of the marginalized/disenfranchised in decision making and action, the seed of the new future order. 

As the seed grows, it breaks ground and ruptures the superstructure, driving and hastening developments towards total social transformation. Organizing as disorganizing is revoltionary. It is socially transformative.

Social transformation doesn’t happen by accident. It is a product of conscious direction. Organizing for deep-rooted structural change requires a grasp of the historical development of society and the bases and motivations of the people for transforming it. Such also proceeds from a high level of political consciousness illumined by education on the general crisis that stamps masses in misery.

Understanding of the contradictions in society and the dynamics of political-economy therein – at least in simple layman’s terms, is necessary. The folks who are getting organized, more so their facilitators, must not only know what the problem is, but why. 

And not only must they see through the problem, but crystallize aspiration. This is the only way to light up the road of fundamental change, and direct organizing to it.

The premises and conclusion about fundamental social change, thus, must already be laid out at the beginning of organizational development. Not to be guided by such comprehension will lead nowhere. Only an advanced mind can set the course of advance. 

Only a higher thinking can aim higher than the order that perpetuates the ill-being of the people.

The poor and oppressed cannot just wish for liberation to happen and then see choices in life fall from heaven. They must wage strife, “dare to struggle and dare to win,” as an Asian revolutionary leader once said.  First, they must hurdle the poverty of intellect to which their oppressors have bound them. They must shatter the myth that intelligence is only for the rich, and intellectuality only for those who can afford college education. 

Doing so enables them to discover with clarity and confidence the codes of their liberation that have been kept away by conventional learning, or by ruling class education.

Second, they must overcome the poverty of options that has confined them to applying repetitively the same futile formulas at solving problems by professionals and so-called authorities. They must finally be able to surmount the culture of silence and subservience, and of believing the mantra that they never have been born with the genes or the right to score big time.

Organizing for change is a product of change. There is no other way about it. New knowledge must arise to debunk old knowledge. New spirit needs a new container, for it will burst the old wine skin. 

Exhilarating ideas about living should gush out of the containment of old thought, like a river that had hibernated too long underground. The internalization of the new builds confidence. It makes small folks gain the heart of champions to “fight the unbeatable foe.” 

Such is how they finally get organized. Such is how they make the difference between plunging at windmills and winning real battles. Those who once toss wherever fate blows them now stand their ground in defiance of fate. Being organized has made them sure of where they're going.

Organizing for change is change itself.