Next CRAAC! Meeting Focuses on Tactics

Hi all,

The Critical Research and Action Caucus (CRAAC!) will meet next on Tuesday, December 14th at 5:15pm in the Chapel at the University YMCA.

This reading circle session will focus on a discussion of tactics, an issue of critical important to the current student-labor movement on this campus and beyond. Careful deployment of innovative and well-organized tactical campaigns is critical to, amongst other things, securing a tuition freeze, ensuring tuition waiver security, and ensuring that the campus remains accessible to working people and people of color.

Collectively we will address some of the following questions:

• What are tactics?
  
• How can specific tactics assist us in reaching our larger goals?
  
• What tactics have we used in the past?
  
• Which tactics are best in the current climate?
  
• Do tactics need to be tied to demands?

To better facilitate our discussion, I have selected three brief readings for us to collectively read. Before performing these readings, I would suggest that you also (re-)read Roberta Garner’s brief section on “Tactics” in Contemporary Social Movements available for download on the CRAAC website (http://craac.wordpress.com/). Garner’s definition of tactics will provide us with a common language with which to approach the other three readings.

Selected Readings:

1. Doug McAdam, “Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency” in American Sociological Review (Dec. 1983)v Available for download here: McAdam_Tactical Innovation

2. Joe Burn’s, “Secondary Strikes are Primary to Labor’s Revival” in Labor Notes (Nov. 4, 2010). Available online at: http://labornotes.org/2010/10/secondary-strikes-are-primary-labor-revival.

3. “The New School Occupation: Perspectives on the Takeover of a Building or, Why Do Student Organizers Bother to Get Out of Bed in the Morning?” (2009) Available online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/11562065/The-New-School-Occupation-Perspectives-on-the-Takeover-of-a-Building. Pay particular attention to the final section entitled “Seven Points on Occupation”.

If anyone has additional readings that they think would be useful, please post them on the website or send them out to the list via email.

Peace–