By Duane
Clinker in Rhode Island’s Future
There are no more
smoke filled rooms at the RI State House. Smoking has been outlawed long ago.
But the games that used to be played out in those older rooms have never
stopped.
Perhaps that’s why two
strong reform bills, one restricting guns in the hands of those involved in
charges of domestic violence, and one giving a few days sick leave to workers,
each of which had already won majorities in both the Senate and House, suddenly
disappeared last week.
Under orders of the
House and Senate leadership the General Assembly of the state of R.I. simply
shut down, before a final reconciliation vote on these bills, or for that
matter the state budget itself, could be passed.
The leaders, Sen.
Dominic Ruggerio and Rep. Nicholas Mattiello, accomplished this feat through a
complex maneuver at the last minute that left those community folks already
celebrating their legislative reform victories stunned.
The two power-brokers
accomplished this betrayal in an orchestrated, complex, way, but one mostly
irrelevant in its details here. Suffice it to say that it had little to do with
the practice of genuine democracy.
The Speaker of the
House claimed he adjourned “his” legislative house without final votes because
the leader of the Senate had betrayed a handshake.
Was stopping the
reform bills the reason for this play? Or were the death of these bills simply
an unexpected positive in a cat-fight between two ego-laden legislative
leaders?
Either way the deed
was done, and the powerful moneyed lobbies of the Chamber of Commerce and the
National Rifle Association must be pleased with their politicians for the goal
of stopping this legislation seems, for the moment, accomplished.
It is all the worse
because the reform bills received support among the majority of the legislators
themselves.
They were fought for
by thousands of Rhode Islanders, many new to political activity since the
motivating election of Trump.
Hundreds made phone
calls, and knocked on tens of thousands of doors. They attended hearings, and
many for the first time in their lives, raised their voices and spoke in the
rooms of the powerful. And they won. Or, at least they had the votes to win,
until they were played by the legislative leadership who suddenly adjourned the
General Assembly for the season. For the people, defeat seemed snatched out of
the jaws of victory by a cynical power-mad leadership that gamed us.
Some will see this
just as one more heartbreaking, demoralizing loss after hard fought campaigns.
But, it could be something else. It could be taken, not as a defeat, but as the
start of a larger, more aggressive, and even winning stage of the organizing
struggle, right now.
Remember, the
majorities of both legislative houses voted yes on these basic legislative
proposals before the leaders of the House and Senate pulled the plug on the
entire session.
Remember too, that
thousands of Rhode Islanders are already involved in the campaigns favoring
these legislative pieces.
Furthermore, the House
leadership just made the issue even bigger and more public by also cancelling
the vote on the entire state budget, wreaking potential confusion and delays
throughout state government.
There is an old-school
organizing truism that in struggles like these “the action is in the reaction.”
What does this mean?
It means that the
opponent here, (the House & Senate leadership in particular), reacted to
the imminent success of these popular reform bills by changing the game. They
realized they had the power to simply adjourn the Assembly rather than take
those last final votes.
There was an action:
the active public won the votes they needed for victory. And there was a reaction:
the powers adjourned, imagining perhaps that their message would be received
as: “We have the power. Case closed. You lose. Go home.”
But in organizing each
“reaction” has the potential to be merely prelude to the next “action,” until
victory can be won. It’s a kind of dialectic.
Mattiello and Ruggerio
slammed the door, but they exposed themselves and expanded the issue. Their
reaction can give the campaign new energy if we can see it and seize it, and
move it to the next level.
The powers-that-be have
just given to the activists, if they choose to grab it, one of the most
important gifts any organization can have in a seemingly impossible fight: a
bigger handle!
Anything can be lifted
with enough people and a good handle.
So far, however, the
response, such as it is, among the leaders of multiple RI collaborations and
networks of “the resistance” seems timid at best.
Perhaps the largest of
the newly formed networks and collaborations is Resist Hate. In an unsigned
email, they suggest supporters call or email state legislative leaders, and
urge them to return.
That’s not much of a
campaign, acknowledging as they do in the letter that success in getting them
to return is unlikely, and essentially acknowledging defeat.
They promise to turn
to summer “house parties” to build their contacts, and to resume the campaigns
whenever the state legislative leaders permit a do-over in the Assembly in
which case they will likely have to start again from the beginning of the long
process. In other words: this campaign is over for now.
Other groups have yet
to be heard from, except the Progressive Democrats who have called for the
replacement of Ruggerio and Mattiello – a certainly deserved fate – but who
have announced no path or organizational initiative to that end.
These responses from
the RI resistance networks so far is sad because in truth, these are not normal
times locally, nationally, or globally.
And, as of this
writing, there seems no way to convene the regular people, who have been
involved in one place to discuss their real options and to decide what to do.
Shall we stop now, or instead move this thing into unexpected statewide actions
at every fair and festival over Rhode Island’s summer?
Perhaps to do this,
especially to let the hundreds of people who have actually worked on these
campaigns, have a place where they can discuss, debate, and decide the ways
forward themselves, we need more than “networks” and “collaborations.”
Perhaps we need
organizations – democratic places where ordinary people, in times like these,
even at the most local of levels in the smallest state in the union, can learn
in their numbers how to contend for real power, and how to see the internal
dynamic that reveals weakness in the presumed powers of the arrogant.
We, the people, can’t
win if we relegate ourselves to the rules of engagement which the powerful have
given us, especially when the powerful can decide to simply cancel the process
when they are at the point of losing. We have to move beyond their permission
giving. And to do so we need organizations that we can control and direct for
ourselves.
If we don’t build
these things, we risk a sure slide back to apathy and fear among the majority.
We will soon find ourselves in a new “normal time,” left with mostly symbolic
fights that unite dozens instead of thousands and tens of thousands.
Oppression demands
resistance. It always has and it always will. If not, greater bondage comes.
Effective organizing
campaigns are multi-dimensional fights that go outside the box. They shouldn’t
be over, until the people in the campaign say they’re over. House meetings and
parties are critical to organizing. But this is precisely not the time to
accept defeat and start over.
This is the time to
haunt them. This is the time to understand the handle they have given us. They
have made the fight about even more than these two important bills.
They have made it also
about the “honorables” Rep. Mattiello and Sen. Ruggerio, and their sabotage of
reform and the democratic process in the service of egos and money.
But, to win we have to
build organizations where ordinary people can see and discuss and decide for
themselves.
I am admittedly an old
school radical. Perhaps the days of democratic organizational process and
flexible tactics, in multidimensional responses to arrogant power are over.
But I don’t think so.
I have seen astonishing things, sometimes breaking loose beyond expectations.
I think change can
come.
And, with respect to
what has just happened at the RI State House, I know an organizing gift and
handle when I see one.
To see it too, you
have to look at it from the angle of justice, not accepting the opponents
presumed power, but instead using what he has exposed to you to throw him off
his feet.
Your goal must be, not
just the winning this or that specific and small need, but the building of
humane power among ordinary people for real change.
That might be the most
effective form of Resistance of all.