Re: [BearwWthoutBorders] FACTIONALISM AND GERONIMO AND ORGANIZERS AND TODAY

I kept in some intermittent contact with the young man for several years.  Haven't heard from him for awhile -- but could at any point.  I'd be quite surprised if he dropped out.  But people do take breathers now and then.  Based on my sense of his strong commitment over time, I certainly think he's a long distance runner.

Glad you -- and David McReynolds -- like the Laguna family painting. You might remember it from when you were here in 2005. After Dad's passing, Northern Arizona University, where he had taught art for a great many years, swept in and got much of his work that was at his and Mother's house and have it in a collection at NAU.  But not before I got the pieces special to our family here.

A lot of his fine works are scattered all over the world.  

All best, H

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

A Piece of the Scrapbook: 
(Three web pages with Jackson Movement stuff):
http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm

And see the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded and with more photos in June, 2012.)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
1962-63. (This page expanded 9/12):  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

Witch Hunt: SCEF, FBI stuff, etc (with links):
http://www.hunterbear.org/witch_hunt_continuesthe_southern.htm


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: [email protected] 
  To: [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] 
  Cc: [email protected] ; [email protected] 
  Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 12:52 PM
  Subject: Re: [BearwWthoutBorders] FACTIONALISM AND GERONIMO AND ORGANIZERS AND TODAY


  This is a lovely photo and an interesting post in general.  As you know, I have some friendly and perhaps a little inchoate unease with your focusing on the organizer role to quite the extent you do, but that is a nuantial kind of thing.

  What I am curious about, on re-reading this piece which I think you have sent before, is the young radical who sent you that letter.  Have you remained in touch? Has he stayed with it?

  best
  sam







  -----Original Message-----
  From: Hunter Gray <[email protected]>
  To: Redbadbear <[email protected]>
  Cc: SycamoreCanyon <[email protected]>; Bear Without Borders <[email protected]>; marxist <[email protected]>
  Sent: Fri, Sep 14, 2012 12:07 pm
  Subject: [BearwWthoutBorders] FACTIONALISM AND GERONIMO AND ORGANIZERS AND TODAY


  I've attached herewith my father's painting. " Seama Village Family, Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, 1940s".
  NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:  2/27/06
  This has been published in print journals every now and then.  I think it's
  always timely.  As an aside, a direct nephew of Geronimo was an old friend
  of our family when I was growing up.  Juan Carillo, from the Mescalero
  country in southern New Mexico, who married into the Laguna Nation [west
  central N.M.], was a genuinely great hunter.  Always a traditionalist, he
  consistently used a Winchester Model 1873 [lever action] 44/40
  with black-powder cartridges.  My father painted his portrait in the
  1940s as he did that of Eli Beardsley -- traditional Laguna leader,
  whose wife was Seneca, at the village of Seama.  Those oil paintings
  are still in the appropriate homes at Laguna Pueblo. [A painting
  of traditional Lagunas from that specific family hangs today in
  our Idaho home.]    In the Old Time, the Lagunas and the Apaches
  were adversaries -- Mr. Beardley's  father had fought them --
  but by 1900 almost all Native people were standing pretty much
  together.  Juan Carillo was a very special hunter for the people
  of Laguna.  And he always admired his uncle.

  [Published in Fall 2002 antithesis -- journal of Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group [Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.]
  This is about Factionalism and Organizing and Challenges.

  Geronimo [Goyathlay] knew how to do it.

  The enduring Apache fighter, whose tactical abilities were equaled only by
  his tremendous commitment to his people, never gave up.  Traveling, often
  with his cohesive band encompassing only a few dozen warriors and their
  women and children, frequently crossing vast stretches of formidable
  desert -- sucking a small rock or chewing twigs to keep throats moist --
  they fought on and on and on against thousands of U.S. Army troops.
  Winchesters were as easily incorporated into their culture as computers are
  by the Natives of today.

  Even when captured, many -- including Geronimo --  eventually
  escaped and continued the Resistance.  Finally, conclusively  in chains in
  1886, he never capitulated.  While some members of his band escaped into the
  Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico -- their descendants to return briefly
  into Arizona [about the time I was born ] and there to destroy three
  towns -- Geronimo, exiled into a Florida prison and then another at Fort
  Sill, Oklahoma, remained an unyielding "recalcitrant" until his death in
  1909. His eyes --- as with other Natives, go back into the Gobi and
  environs and whose kin, under the Great Chief Jenghiz  [Temuchin, 1162-1227]
  and his successors, carried their culture and genes from the Yalu to the Danube --
  stare back coldly at the Anglo photographers and then via the History pages
  at the other curious over the many generations that have flowed beyond.

  Geronimo was one of those, along with the Yaquis and the resistance fighters
   of other Native nations, who were so frequently referred to in Mexico as
  "la raza de bronce que sabe morir."  Indeed, they knew how to die --
  honorably -- and they fought, in one effective way or another, right
   to the very moment of their passage into the Spirit World.

  Those in the radical movement of today [organizers, leaders, rank-and-file]
   could learn something from all of this. Indeed, many have -- or at least
  many emulate the example of the Great Apache.  But many do not
   -- and the reasons are myriad.

  I started out in earnest in the Save the World Business in 1955.
  With my characteristic lack of false modesty, I can certainly
  say that I've been a reasonably successful social justice organizer for
  almost half a century.  There really weren't very many of us in the Open
  Left of the U.S. at that time.  I saw more radical kin in those days in Mexico and
  even in Canada. Eventually, as the '60s progressed, there were many more of us.  And
  then  there were fewer -- over a very long stretch of desert. By the time of that
  Great Trek -- much of the '70s through the rest of the Century -- there were some
  who died and many who fell away.

  And now there are more of us, and more.

  But it isn't easy to be a radical in the United States. Lots of clubs in the
  gauntlet, many slick fish-hooks as well.  Sometimes repression, overtly or
  subtly cruel;  always social disapproval from the respectables -- including
  the so-called liberals;  occasionally co-optation in some cases. And
  sometimes there's withdrawal into "identity groups" -- all well and
  good within reason but, too often,  simply becoming  closed and insular
  retreats that never end.

  And sometimes [sometimes indeed!]  there's factionalism.

  Early this morning, I received a long message from a guy who, age-wise, is
  half a century younger than I.  But that's about the only difference.  We
  agree on much and certainly the critical importance of genuine socialism --
  socialist democracy -- and the need to keep fighting.  But he did write
  this:  " Can you help me understand why there is so much fighting and
  bickering on the left? It's all like chicken scratching, there's nothing
  there. Why argue about every little point or idea? So many splits based on some
  old-fashioned ideology. I don't get it. That's driven me away somewhat."

  I -- and many of us indeed -- certainly know whereof he speaks.

  As an organizer, and as a teacher/organizer,  I've worked with people from
  many Native tribal nations, a great many ethnicities, and from all of the
  major, so-termed racial groups save the Aborigines of Australia. [And, based
  on some long, long-distance phone conversations that I've had with several
  of  those fellow tribespeople, we'd get along fine indeed.]

  But I have never worked with a tribe or an ethnicity or a "race" which, at
  some point, didn't ask me:  "Are there other people who get into as much
  factionalism as we do?" And my answer, of course, both reassuring and sad,
  is an honest affirmative. Factionalism, in some degree or another, seems to
  be a human universal.

  However academically self-unfrocked I may seem at times, I still do remain,
   I guess, very much a sociologist -- but this is not an intricate discussion
  of the social dynamics of factionalism. I do have, however, a few basic thoughts on that
  sometimes sanguinary and always painful turf where, figuratively and
  literally, many bodies are buried  -- and a myriad of bones as well bleach
  under the sun and the very frequently dark clouds.

  And I have a fair number of  closely related thoughts on my own Calling --
  Organizer.

  Some factionalism, of course, is inevitable.  Some can be healthy and a
  positive reflection of democracy -- IF it remains in the Circle of Unity.
  And, obviously, some -- breaching unity -- is dangerous as hell:  e.g., deep
  political differences.  Schism may be inevitable -- but never as genuinely
  inevitable as its often sad emergent reality.

  An organizer -- or an organizational/movement activist -- confronted with
  factionalism, would do well to ask:  "What are the real reasons for this?"

  Sometimes the internal discord might stem from outside manipulation.  A
  case in point would be the massive Jackson [Mississippi] Movement of 1962
  and 1963, in which some frightened elements in the National Office of NAACP, joined by
  comparable entities from the Kennedy administration, did their best to split
  and retard the militancy and radicalism of that great and ultimately
  successful grassroots struggle.  [See my own book:  Jackson Mississippi: An
  American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism, 1979 and 1987.]

  And then, of course, there's that eternal manifestation of secular "original
  sin" which boils down to a few individuals who simply don't want peace or
  unity -- no matter how intricately they may rationalize all of this.

  And sometimes -- very often, in fact -- the really basic tap roots of
  factionalism lie in  the fact that the organization/movement
   has lost its way.

  To digress, for just a moment, into the related matter of The Organizer --
  the person who ideally gets people together, and keeps them
  together,  for action great and good.

  A good organizer -- and a good leader generally -- has to have
   a number of positive qualities:
  He/she should be reasonably intelligent; pure [but not sanctimoniously
  so]; ethical and honorable; practice an unpretentious life-style;
  should not "put on airs" [should simply be
  oneself];  should communicate well [teach -- but not really appear to
  do so]; and should  for sure practice the oft-difficult "art of listening."
   
  If the organizer has an ideology -- and most organizers have Something --
  then it certainly should be one open to sensible and flexible pragmatism.
  That boils down to conveying a general ideological perspective --
  but one which people can take or not take in total.  "The people" may very
  well have a "loosening up" effect on the organizer -- but the good organizer also
  brings to the people some very special gifts -- including verve and élan.

  And a good organizer has bona fide commitment to living people --
   not simply an abstract generalization -- but a commitment based on
  the very real belief that any person is important by dint of the fact that
  he or she is an individual; that their active participation in the
  organization/movement is needed and welcomed; that, right from the beginning, they can make
  their voice and presence felt; and that, as the
  Endeavor advances, winning victories, their power and ability to
  affect those forces out in their world and beyond -- which have been
  affecting their lives -- will be steadily and proportionately increased.

  An  organizer needs to have a healthy ego -- even a sense of Destiny -- but
  it should damn well be a controllable ego! And an organizer, of course, has
  to have a tough hide and thick skull.  And he or she has to have courage --
  courage not only against the official enemies -- but sometimes the courage
  to say things among his/her constituents that, however
  unpopular, must be said.

  And, very importantly, a good organizer must have a two-dimensional Vision:
  One eye going Over the Mountains Yonder -- and the other  on the Day-to-Day needs
  of the people.  Each is absolutely critical.  Vision is the Dream -- the
  Shiny Ideal -- that makes people part of a great crusade, gives deep
  meaning to their lives, and may even be something for which one would die.
  The other piece -- effectively addressing the practical day-to-day realities
  and the immediate needs of the people -- creates a dynamic where, by seeking
  and accomplishing these things, people help themselves, build confidence,
  and contribute to the Vision Stream.

  Each of these fundamental dimensions -- Vision and Day-to-Day -- stimulates
  and contributes to the Other.  And any successful organizer has to show this
  interconnection again and again -- and again.

  A healthy organization/movement, democratic in ethos with the broadest
  possible people participation, adding new dimensions -- often
  with deliberate speed and sometimes quickly by necessity --
  confronting new challenges,  and always with fresh and ongoing
  leadership development, will live on:  enduringly, effectively.

  And when factionalism develops in this healthy context, it can be
  constructively addressed by a wide variety of methodologies
  ranging from on-the-spot dialogue to talking-it-all-out in a
  retreat -- or at a leisurely dinner [an old Native
  American unity approach], or arbitration. In a basically positive setting, a
  good organizer can often help protagonists save face and bury the hatchet.

  But when an Endeavor has lost its way -- really lost it -- then
  factionalism, lots of it and virulently so, becomes inevitable.  At that
  point,  things either become a small, ingrown sect [with ossified
  Vision], or a tired, service type shadow [a few day-to-day crumbs] -- or ,
  simply and mercifully, dies. [And an old Mississippi proverb comes to mind:
  "A rabbit can't fight nothing but a rabbit."]

  Geronimo kept fighting -- in the context of unyielding solidarity and
  against great odds -- and the Apache world, and those of Natives generally,  are
   all the better for it.

  And the guy who wrote me the question this morning is obviously "with it"
  over the long, long pull.  He, BTW, is someone who, asked to write
  letters -- say, with regard to the [still unsolved] murders of Native men at
  Grand Forks, ND and with respect to death penalty cases -- will often do
  those in the early morning hours before he hits the sack.

  That's how I operate and I've kept going.  And so have many of us -- right
  into this bitter and extraordinarily challenging and hideously crucial
  blood-dimmed epoch.  When one horse has gone down, we've found
  another -- and kept right on going -- full and directly ahead.

  There are many of us now -- and there will be many more.  We may not chew
  twigs and suck small stones, but, if we stick with this
  fight, then we are all Geronimo's kin.

  And together -- all of us -- we shall Win.

  Fraternally/In Solidarity -
  HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR]   Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
  Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
  www.hunterbear.org
  Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
   and Ohkwari'

  See http://www.hunterbear.org/GRAY%20LANDS%20AND%20GRAY%20GHOSTS.htm

  In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
  game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
  high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
  inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
  on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
  it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
  remembering way. [Hunter Bear]

  HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
  Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
  Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
  and Ohkwari' 
  Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
  www.hunterbear.org 
  (much social justice material)

  A Piece of the Scrapbook: 
  (Three web pages with Jackson Movement stuff):
  http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm

  And see the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
  http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
  (Expanded and with more photos in June, 2012.)
   
  For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
  edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
  with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
  the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
  1962-63. (This page expanded 9/12):  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

  Witch Hunt: SCEF, FBI stuff, etc (with links):
  http://www.hunterbear.org/witch_hunt_continuesthe_southern.htm


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