Self-Organization, Self-Attainment, and Self-Improvement
Benjamin Marshall leads his children in a homeschooling session. Image courtesy of SFGate Newspaper.
In a couple of previous posts, I mentioned three key elements of the Flying University Project: self-organization, self-attainment, and self-improvement. As an African-American man, when I think of how our people and other oppressed peoples can respond to a nation which has chosen evil and which is in the midst of a revanchist fit, it seems to me that the most effective responses to the challenges of the present day must contain these three elements.
As for where these three elements came from, I'd like to point interested readers to a book edited by Dr. Maciej Bartkowski titled, Recovering Nonviolent History. In that book, Dr. Bartkowski mentions how oppressed people have used nonviolent, yet powerful means to neutralize the oppression of the dominant oppressive societies which ruled them. To paraphrase a few quotes,
"[Oppressed] societies [came to see themselves] as a social organism that could grow, defy [oppressors], and defend themselves via their own self-organization, self-attainment, and self-improvement. Such nonviolent resistance was forceful, but gradual and protracted...The guilt of falling into predatory hands [lies] in the oppressed society, and, thus, the solution and liberation need to come from that society transformed through its work, education, and civility. Victims and the seemingly disempowered are thus their own liberators as long as they pursue self-organization, self-attainment, and the development of their communities."
The role of those who lead these efforts of self-organization, self-attainment, and self-improvement can be summed up in a quote by another source, Dr. Marshall Ganz, who said that "Organizing is leadership that enables people to turn the resources they have into the power they need to make the change they want."
As far as the Flying University Project, what do these three elements mean? The answer is as follows:
- Self-Organization – we organize ourselves to provide for ourselves those necessary things (like a decent education that actually educates!) which the rulers and owners of the dominant society refuse to provide or which they will provide only by charging a price that ordinary people can’t afford.
- Self-Attainment – we educate ourselves so that we are equipped to meet the pressing needs of our communities by means of our own beautifully good work.
- Self-Improvement – so that as we continue to educate ourselves, we continue to grow in our ability to strengthen our communities so that they can resist oppression and so that we can fulfill our purpose.
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