Dear supporters of bottom-up organizing:

It is seldom that we ask our friends for financial help, but a community in
southwestern Colombia, South America, where ISBO has organizers, is under
attack as we write this letter. ISBO organizers (International School for
Bottom-up Organizing) from around the world are going to Colombia to stand
with the people and help them organize. Here is a first-hand statement made
yesterday by one of our organizers who lives and organizes in the town of
Villa Rica:

“Thursday morning we arrived in Villa Rica at 11:30 AM. The sirens that
usually sound at 12:00 noon were going off at unusual times. No one
understood why an hour later it sounded again. Then we heard the first
explosion thirty seconds later. We weren’t in the area of the blasts; those
that were near the area say that there was a truck parked in front of the
police station. Two guys left running with guns. As they ran, they screamed:
“run, there’s a bomb!” and as soon as they said it there was a bomb, double
impact, on the police station; another cylinder exploded on top of a house
destroying everything nearby, and another fell in the main road in Villa
Rica, instantly leaving five dead people. Two more died at the hospital. Two
of the dead were children, one was only three years old. Thirty five people
were injured. And all the community didn’t know what to think; this had
never happened before. This hurts us very much to see children and people
from our community die this way. It was very painful to see pieces of people
on the road. This is not just. Things at the moment are on lockdown. The
authorities have said that this was an attack from the Farc. One of the
reasons they suggest this is that the police in Villa Rica, a few months
ago, confiscated a ton of weed and then a mule loaded with cocaine. They say
these drugs belonged to the Farc, and in response they put the bomb. But
this is very suspicious, because 24 hours before, there was a similar bomb
attack in Tumaco, another Afro population town. At the moment there have
been talks about rebuilding the station. People are very angry, because
before they built the police station there was a school there, and the mayor
of Villa Rica knocked the school down and put the police station there in
the midst of people protesting. These are the consequences today, and they
are talking about reconstructing the police station in the same place.
People are not up to tolerating this.”

From another Colombian organizer by phone:
“We have to be a bit careful about what I’m going to say, because we are in
a public space and there can be spies everywhere. From the analysis that I
have been able to do about this incident, what I think is happening is the
fact that Piedad Cordoba, an Afro-descendent woman, was gaining too much
power by negotiating with the Farc thru her humanitarian group. There has
been talk of peace at recently through her: they were going to liberate
twelve soldiers and police they held captive for ten years, and this was
because of the negotiations of her group. A few days before this happened,
the government was announcing that groups outside the government couldn’t be
negotiating. Maybe the government wanted to sabotage this process. The big
question I asked myself when this happened was why was this attack on two
Afro-colombian communities and not in Cali or Bogota? I think what they are
trying to do is to discredit Piedad Cordoba and at the same time make a
racial attack against the Afro-colombian communities. And I think that’s
because they saw that she was getting too much support in those communities.
Villa Rica is in a very peaceful area. I think it’s a whole strategy to make
people scared and turn to the government to “defend” them, and at the same
time because  they don’t want to end this war. That’s just some initial
observations of the whole thing… . My wife and I personally commit
ourselves to go and be full-time organizers in Villa Rica for the next two
months, even though we are expecting a baby. We will leave tomorrow
morning.”


These and other Colombian organizers had just returned from an intense,
joyful, and very successful ISBO training session in Jamaica, along with
organizers from Jamaica and England. We learned to make ethanol and solar
panels as part of our goal of creating self-sustaining prototype communities
based on the principle of egalitarianism. We strategized about how to
develop a system of distributing our communal farm products based on the
idea of each putting in what they can and taking out what they need. We
searched our hearts and minds in the process of overcoming the obstacles of
internalized racism and sexism, and we put into practice our most important
organizing tools: visiting community members at their homes to invite their
knowledge and participation in the process, and learning to facilitate
meetings in which each person has equal voice and decisions are made by
consensus. Love and unity between organizers from different countries grew
as we became determined to build an international revolutionary movement to
create a new world led by those most oppressed: the poorest and darkest
among us, especially women.

WE ARE NOW FACING AN EMERGENCY SITUATION AND NEED YOUR HELP. Less than a
week after our comrades returned from the ISBO school they were confronted
by this racist attack on their town. (See below for background on Villa Rica
and what is happening to black people currently in Colombia.)

Because we just finished our school session, our finances have been
depleted. We need your help to IMMEDIATELY replenish our resources so that
we can provide necessary support to our Colombian comrades. We also need
help in bringing international attention to these events and to the fascist
conditions poor people face in Colombia, particularly if their skin is dark.

We are asking you to do two things:
1.      Please go to our website (www.peoplesorganizing.org) and make a
donation; no donation is too small!
2.      Post this letter or your own summary on your Facebook page, send
Tweets, send emails, and help us get the word out far and wide.

The struggle is international, and our comrades under attack need your help!

Background information:
Villa Rica is a town of about 15,000, nearly all of them
African-descendants. In the 1840’s, led by a maroon, the ancestors of
today’s residents rose up, killed the owner of the slave plantation on which
they labored, took the land and began subsistence farming. In the 1940’s,
agribusiness came in and forced them off their land (only a few still retain
their small fincas, or farms). Today the dusty town is surrounded by sugar
cane grown for ethanol production. There is very high unemployment.
Meanwhile, Colombia has one of the highest numbers of internally displaced
people: 5,000,000 people, the vast majority of them Afro-descendants, have
been forced off their ancestral, legally owned lands by paramilitaries who
are clearing the way for multinational corporations to exploit the
resources. People have crowded into the big cities after traumatic, violent
experiences and face massive unemployment there. Scores of labor organizers
have been assassinated in the past year or two. Colombia is described as
having the worst humanitarian crisis in the Americas.

According to official figures, about 40% of Colombians are considered
Afro-descendants. However, nearly all Colombians have ancestors who were
African slaves!

ISBO has been training organizers in Colombia for four years. We believe we
have a responsibility to stand in UNITY with our comrades and defend them
and all of our right to live without fear of bullets and bombs. Please
respond generously. Let the people of Colombia know that the world is
watching, and cares about what is happening to them!


Thank you,
International Collective of ISBO

International School of Bottom Up Organizing

Abridged January 15-16, 2012 Notes

Everyone arrived safe and sound. The Jamaican school participants met them and everyone enjoyed tea and a lovely meal together, and stayed around talking and joking and telling stories, then went to an ISBO organizer’s house to call home and watch some video of the Old Time Day and a few pictures of the farm in Colombia.

Cultural item: Swahili chant

Introductions: Round 1: Who we are, how we got involved in ISBO?

I’m from Villa Rica and am a full time organizer for ISBO and a singer.

I’m an invitee and new member of ISBO from Colombia.

I’m from Colombia and I’m a 100% member of ISBO.

I’m from Colombia and a full time organizer for ISBO.

I’m from Jamaica, I’m self-employed.

I’m from England, I’m from the entire universe, this planet is my home. I’ve known of ISBO for about 5 years, and now I’m trying to find ways of bringing ISBO into England.

I’m from the community here in Jamaica and a member of ISBO.

I’m a member of the People’s Uprising Committee in Jamaica for about 3 years now. I’m presently a student at the disabilities foundation in Kingston.

I’m born and grown in this community and lived in Port Antonio for 17 years. I got invited to a workday by my cousin, went there to cut the community centre lawn, met people from ISBO and the community group. I just baptized myself in ISBO and just working every day organizing for isbo.

I got involved in organizing because this world is not shared equally. One day I heard someone say that those who are most oppressed are the ones with the darkest skin. I pondered this and soon realized that this is not a hypothesis, it is the truth. I am oppressed because of the color of my skin.

People are born revolutionaries. I think I will learn a lot from you, and likewise if I have anything you can learn from me, I am available. I want to make the most of every day here because I am overwhelmed by everything. I have you here in my heart. Thank you so much.

Being in this organization teaches me a lot: how to share, how to love more, how to not discriminate because I am black and you are white.

I’ve been a member of this community from childhood, and I want to be free.

I come from a very poor community. I’m 15 years old. I’m in secondary school, but when I finished primary school, I was crying b/c there was it was too far to walk and we had no money for transportation or books. My main goal was education.

I was also born in a poor mountain community. Moved to the Misery Belt of the city as a child with my family. Started my first job at 9. At 12 stopped day school to work all day. Migrated to England at 15, lived w/ sister for 6 months and then moved out.  It opened my eyes. When you come out of your country, I don’t know why, but you are able to see what is going on in your country.

I was a very arrogant young person, because I didn’t like elders, didn’t grow up with elders and elders were always oppressing me. I think it has been through the elders in ISBO that I came to respect elders’ knowledge. It even helped me to respect my parents – for a while I thought I knew more than them because I had more education. Now I realize they know much more than me.

There are two important things we have to solve now that we have heard one another. Our first objective is the people with the darkest skin at the bottom. Our priority is to solve the communication with THEM first. We have to think of ways of communication to get to the people where there is no internet. This is a good starting point for our next round.

If we build a house and don’t build columns, the house will fall down quickly.

What is ISBO?

ISBO is the International School of Bottom-up Organizing. This is a collective of people who try to bring unity for black people, especially women, how to organize ourselves and bring unity to our community. In most of the governments around the world, it is the 2% that control the whole world. Since we have in our mind that majority carries, the 98% is at the bottom and have been oppressed over the years, we have to bring ourselves together and organize ourselves and not let the governments divide us. In a sense, we are the smartest. The 2% take our ideas and use it to their advantage. We have to take back our ideas and our strength and elevate ourselves. Since we are an international school, we have a small group of people in several countries. As I said before, we have to strengthen our home base and in that way become stronger. Remember that we, the bottom people are the most powerful people in the world. We need to recognize that and don’t let anyone else fool us, so we can unite and achieve our goals.

ISBO’s main objective is to find people at the bottom, especially dark-skinned people, especially women to start creating a new world, on the principle that these people have been the most oppressed in the world. We have the belief that these people can build a new world b/c we are the 98% of the world . it is more of us that have been oppressed by the 2% and the work of isbo under the principles already defined and those that will come up is to go into the communities, the grassroots, the bottom up, and with these bases try to help organize, awakening the genius that lives in each one of us and collectively start thinking about what world we want to create.

Discussion about when to go cut and crush the cane to start the fermentation process, which is a 7 day process.

ISBO is about being able to create the institutions within our communities that we need for a human being to live in a dignified way. This morning we heard a lot about the principles, that it is based on the most oppressed w/ the darkest skin, among them women, so we have to create the institutions bearing that in mind. That women need to be involved in creating those institutions because they are the ones who have been involved in caring for the community. ISBO is also about analyzing and reflecting on all those things given to us by the government, whether they are good or not, and how we change them. And my answer to that is, they’re not very good, because they have created lots of discrimination – a few people have become very rich, and most of us are very poor. We have to do research on creating electricity, growing food, fuel, etc.

We are trying to share and share alike in the sense that we will farm together, we was thinking about like building a space where we could all live as one. Just to think about it and to live the life makes you feel free, happy.

It teaches us about nature, teaches grassroots people, people from the bottom of darker hue, women among others, how to be self-sustainable. How to use the little that we have and create it into something bigger, so as a people we can live together as one, promote equality and share, love and accept each other as we are.

ISBO is like a teacher, it is a school. It’s not that we couldn’t find and know those things on our own, but the school helps us more when everybody learns all these things, come together and then go out and teach the people.

This is the first I’m sitting down in a class like this, and I’ll keep sitting and listening that I can learn a lot from it.

I’m looking forward for the day when the whole community and others outside will see how we’re living, becoming a loving and sharing community. I’m looking forward for that day.

It’s like a foundation, a foundation for poor, black people to learn how to be independent. We don’t have to depend on the rich people, but we the poor class can do it ourselves. And even do better than the rich people. So all we need to do right now is to get more knowledge how to develop our community and ourselves. So we can achieve our goals without the government, the rich or the higher class.

How do we communicate with the bottom?

Who will communicate with the bottom worldwide? Who are “our: troops” that will carry this message to the dark poor? In order to answer the question of communicating with the dark poor worldwide who do not have internet to get our message, we must have troops who are on internet who will carry the message and some resources to the dark poor. The “dark poor” sitting in the ISBO circle are there because someone committed their time, energy, gifts, skills, talents and resources to make it happen. Now your revolutionary historical mandate is to take everything you have and pass it on. To do less would be counter revolutionary.

 One of the solutions is to take the internet to the people who don’t have it.

We know that technology is widely published. If we don’t have laptop, we have phone, we have radio. If we have a phone that uses the internet, we can get the same as on the laptop. The thing we need to do now is to figure out how to get it on the radio station so who don’t have internet service can get it on the radio. If we cover all those – the phone, the computer, the radio station – then I think we have it all at once there.

To get it on the radio station, TV because right now most people don’t have the internet service, so we have to try to get to them to find out how we can get the wire or wifi to them. Like I don’t have access to internet. I don’t have a phone to get it either.

Go around and spread the word face to face, that ISBO is an international school, so that means its not just in Jamaica it’s in other countries, so we ourselves, not just internet, not just technology, we can spread the word ourselves. Just like we go out and do house calls for the meetings, we can spread the word.

I think the main thing should be radio, because everyone no matter how poor has radio.

I suggest when we go to Jeffery town on Friday, we find out exactly how they set up their radio station. If the frequency is low, you don’t need a license. It will not reach far, but will reach the community. We can have a vision of spreading our organizing to other communities and teaching them how to make a radio station that will overlap, and we will be able to unite and reach everyone. But that is not to take the place of how we communicate with the world.

I think that the best way of an organizing group to communicate is not about making too much publicity about oneself. We have to do. It always happens as if there was a very beautiful woman who came to this area, and we all start looking at her and talking about her with each other. And the whole community knows about this beautiful woman b/c she is new. That’s how we have to do it. If we have money to go to radio station or to buy internet antennas, let’s use that money to do some work w/in the community so that the whole community sees it and that way everyone will start coming to be a part of the process. So like a pretty woman, everyone will like it and they will be the ones asking to be a part of it. So we have to do more work and less words.

Comrades, fellow freedom fighters and friends,

Please help us build a new world; Please don’t use this global consensus for justice for the purpose of “fixing the old world; Plugging bleeding holes; trying to stop a major global melt down”. 

We are teaching ourselves and the world how to build a new world, and we need the following instructors:  

• those who know how to build windmills
• those who know how to build solar panels
• how to build batteries (preferably lithium batteries)
• those who know how to make methane gas
• those who know how to make ethanol
• how to build new cars and refurbish old ones
• how to do indoor and outdoor fish farming
• how to do indoor and outdoor organic farming
• know how to translate from english to any other language
• how to do satellite communications without interfacing with the corporate world
• any other skills or talents that the poor may need to be self sustaining.

Please contact me through my ask box if you know how to do any of these things, and please watch the above video.

We are teaching ourselves and the world how to build a new world, and we need the following instructors:  

• those who know how to build windmills
• those who know how to build solar panels
• how to build batteries (preferably lithium batteries)
• those who know how to make methane gas
• those who know how to make ethanol
• how to build new cars and refurbish old ones
• how to do indoor and outdoor fish farming
• how to do indoor and outdoor organic farming
• know how to translate from english to any other language
• how to do satellite communications without interfacing with the corporate world
• any other skills or talents that the poor may need to be self sustaining.

organize-bottomup:

THE DARK AND POOR MUST JOIN OWS!

 

The International School for Bottom Up Organizing (ISBO) wishes to thank all who have stood with and in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS). We also wish to thank the Council of Elders and all veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. We embrace and stand in solidarity with everyone who stands up against capitalism, corporate greed, racism, sexism, classism, and all other isms that oppress and divide people and that take away the humanity of anyone in this world. 

 

ISBO held its first international meeting in October 2008, in Venezuela, then met in Jamaica in 2009, and most recently gathered in Colombia in March 2011. We focus on creating and supporting organizing projects in the Americas. Our style of organizing embraces the teachings of Miss Ella Baker, which were used by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s to end segregation and to win the right for black folk in seven states to vote and to access public accommodations, education, and housing in the fight for equality. Our projects aim at building self-sufficient, egalitarian prototypes in communities of the most oppressed. Ours is an international struggle led by the poorest and darkest among us, especially women.

ISBO is an intergenerational collective of organizers from different parts of the world. We include:

-      A young man and young woman from Colombia in South America who have established a Highlander style institution in the mountains above Cali

-      A Colombian organizer who lives and works in a town of Maroon descendants

-      A young man and young woman, living and working in New Orleans, LA, USA, who began working with ISBO as organizers during the Katrina crisis

-      A woman who started her organizing work with Chicago High School SNCC in 1963 and lives and organizes in Jamaica

-      A farmer, a shopkeeper, and several young people from the ground in Jamaica

-      A young man and a young woman who are establishing a training center in England to produce the technology needed for the self sustaining communities ISBO organizers are developing

-      A veteran of SNCC and Ella Baker organizing, who is a full time volunteer organizing trainer for all sites

There are another 15 to 20 students of organizing from the sites above who also have access to this collective.

 

ISBO recognizes that those fighting for justice today are the legacy of those who fought for justice in the 1960s. These young folk all over the world who are standing against capitalism are our movement. On November 16, 2011, “The Rachel Maddow Show” on the MSNBC news network highlighted the connection between OWS and the “Free Speech Movement” that sprung from the University of California at Berkeley. The show talked about how Occupy Movement participants that had been dispersed forcefully and violently the day before had reassembled with ten times more folks on the spot where Mario Savio spoke in 1964 when he called for folks to place their bodies on the line to demand FREE SPEECH. What they did not say was that Mario Savio spent three months training with SNCC under the leadership of a SNCC organizer (Curtis (Hayes) Muhammad) in McComb, Mississippi before he gave the powerful speech that sparked the massive national movement for free speech and the right to assembly. They did not describe the violence the SNCC staff and volunteers endured in McComb when their Freedom House and every church used to hold meetings were bombed, nor how they overcame that violence and held organizing trainings and mass meetings in the yard of the bombed out Freedom House.

 

Since our experiences as SNCC organizers in the ’60s, we have studied revolution around the world and have come to understand the importance of engaging the folk on the bottom of society to create a new world based on equality and humanity. We believe that this historical moment dictates that the poor should and must rise and lead us all to freedom. History mandates us to place ourselves on the agenda of OWS, to walk onto this stage with our vision, our hopes, our work towards building a new world and inspire others to work together to create prototypes of the new world that is possible in their communities all over the globe. A global movement to create an egalitarian and just world needs the leadership of the 70%, those so severely oppressed and excluded from the current system that we don’t feel like citizens of our countries.  We recognize we are 21st century slaves, the discriminated against, the colonized, the poor who live on $2 or less a day.

 

At this time, we do not see the presence of the voices and vision of the poor nor the suggestions of the poor in OWS. We see this as our work, to bring this forward. We have developed technology to engage the poor, to harvest their genius about the enemy (oppression, inequality, injustice, etc) from their intimate, daily struggle with the enemy.

 

ISBO is working inside poor communities and empowering the dark poor as the primary teachers and practitioners. We are now beginning a class of theory and practice on HOW TO BUILD A NEW WORLD, a world based on egalitarianism, freedom, and justice. We ask the world to watch as we begin creating our own self-sustaining communities.

 

To be self-sustaining, communities must learn how to build, nurture, and maintain at least these nine institutions: 

(1) Food production, distribution and storage

(2) The making of clothes, shoes, and developing agricultural support for the raw material

(3) Building homes and other structures for shelter, furniture, and the agriculture support for this 

(4) Transportation, refurbishing and building new cars, trucks, buses and bikes 

(5) Communication: telephone, radio, television, newspapers and social media developed and run by us 

(6) Education: we must build our own schools from preschool to doctoral programs. 

(7) Health Care 

(8) Child care 

(9) Energy: solar, water, wind and decaying waste 

 

All of these institutions will be developed and run collectively with consensus decision-making. We will teach the method of how to engage the poor and how to facilitate discussions where all participants have equal voice.

 

ISBO believes that each of us participating in OWS can learn the technology of how to build a new world and take care of ourselves. We will start small: each organizer will be responsible for organizing 9 to 15 folks who will build a prototype of a self-sustaining, egalitarian new world. We will help you learn how to make sure your collective is at least 70% poor and dark. And then, step by step, together we will discover and harvest the knowledge that we need from the worldwide OWS movement and teach it to everyone at the same time. We (ISBO) commit to sharing the building of each prototype as we learn it “brick by brick” right before your eyes through our website www.peoplesorganizing.org.

 

Developing these structural fundamentals at the level of and from the most oppressed is critical for the OWS movement to succeed and reach its full potential. History has taught us that lasting social revolution requires it.

 

Thank you very much for reading this and we hope to see you in class soon.

 

The Bottom Will Rise and Create A New World!

The ISBO Collective

 www.peoplesorganizing.org

bottomuporganizer@gmail.com