Doing the Spadework" is an ongoing conversation with organizers about organizing hosted by Mark Rudd, www.markrudd.com.
July 12, 2010 An interview with Randy Jiron of Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico, former Isleta lieutenant governor. Mr. Jiron talks about the bonds that have allowed the Pueblo people to survive for thousands of years, including after Spanish and American conquest, especially the mutual respect and ties to the land.
June 7, 2010 An interview with David Solnit, co-author of Globalize Liberation, The Battle for the Story of the Battle of Seattle, and An Army of None. David is a long-time nonviolent direct action organizer and a student and teacher of organizing. On the question of effective strategy, David outlines three tools: power analysis to identify a spectrum of allies; planning multiple stages of a struggle; and the battle to develop a winning narrative or story of the conflict.
June 2, 2010 An interview with Richard Brandt, Director of the Dragon Farm at the South Valley Academy, Albuquerque. Richard talks the Dragon Farm and his life work--community murals--as educational and community organizing.
May 24, 2010 Interview with Alan Canfora, Director of the May 4th Center. Alan and I discuss the original shootings at Kent State University in May, 1970, and the forty years of organizing that followed. Perseverance furthers.
May 10, 2010 Mark talks with Beverly Bell of Other Worlds about the ways that millions of people are organizing themselves for survival against the onslaughts of global capital in New Orleans, Haiti, Brazil, and Mali. Beverly's news is like a social atom bomb in countering the TINA propaganda ("There is no alternative"). For more info, check out www.otherworldsarepossible.org.
April 13, 2010 Interview with smartMeme organizers Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough, authors of new strategy manual Re:Imagining Change. They talk about their experience helping grassroots groups devise Story-based strategy--power analysis, points of intervention, "The Battle of the Story." Find out what it means to be a 'meme," ie., a self-replicating unit of cultural knowledge. For more info on Re:Imagining Change and on smartMeme, go to http://www.smartmeme.com/
April 6, 2010 Interview with Tomas Garduno, (can you put an ~ over n and an accent over the a in Tomas?) Director of Mass Organizing for Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) of Albuquerque, NM. Tomas talks about youth anti-militarist organizing and about the decision to move community organizing toward electoral power. His model stresses analysis, common action, and personal transformation toward leadership.
March 30, 2010 Interview with Dana Millen, outreach and education coordinator of Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign. Topics include the campaign's organizing strategies that have produced growth over 18 years, plus Dana's PhD research on why individuals become activists and what strategies they employ to stay active over years.
March 24, 2010 A conversation with Maria Santelli, organizer with progressive Jerry Ortiz y Pino's electoral campaign for New Mexico Lieutenant Governor. Mark and Maria consider the intersection of community organizing and electoral politics, including historical struggles around Native American land rights and stopping uranium mining, weapons development, and waste dumping.
March 17, 2010
Interview with Tracy Chacon of Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) in Albuquerque, NM, about her work organizing youth for the US Social Forum in Detroit. Tracy also discusses the youth program of SWOP, especially demilitarizing the schools.
March 10, 2010 A conversation with Adrienne Maree Brown, one of the national coordinators of the US Social Forum, to be held in June in Detroit. Adrienne talks about the forum as process occurring on the local, national, and global levels, and about the vast number of opportunities for learning about organizing available in Detroit this coming June. For more info, check out http://ussf2010.org/. A second interview on the USSF will be next week, Mar. 16, with a local organizer from Albuquerque, NM.
March 3, 2010 The second interview with Aaron Hughes, Lead Organizer of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), joined by Lily Hughes of the Soldier-Citizen Alliance, who has been working with IVAW. They talk about IVAW's strategy, its campaigns, and aspects of the organizing model they're using, especially leadership development. Lily also describes her path to becoming an organizer.
February 24, 2010
An interview with Aaron Hughes, Lead Organizer of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Aaron talks about the program and work of IVAW, how he came to become an organizer, including his experience in Iraq, and the leadership development model of organizing IVAW has come to embrace. First of a two part interview.
February 23, 2010
Conversation with Staughton Lynd, lifelong historian, organizer, and attorney, about his work with SNCC as director of the Freedom Schools in 1964, his labor-solidarity work, and his current anti-death penalty and prisoner support work. The recent author of a memoir with his wife, Alice, Stepping Stones, Staughton explains their organizing practice known as "accompaniment".
February 23, 2010
An interview with Sierra Club New Mexico organizer Shrayas Jatkar on successful environmental and green jobs organizing.
February 23, 2010
Today will feature a discussion with poet, architect, teacher and researcher Levi Romero, of New Mexico, on "Sacred Public and Private Spaces." It will be a dedication and benediction of sorts to the show as a public space to discuss one of our society's greatest needs--organizing for survival, economic, political, social.
