Uses of A Whirlwind: Movement, Movements and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States [review]

Chris Carlsson writes eloquently about the necessity of radical patience, or the idea that organizers must exercise self-care among a variety of strategies to cope with a protracted struggle. Like him, many others in Uses of A Whirlwind: Movement, Movements and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States (AK Press, 2010) explore methods for functioning in the world. Some are politically sharp. Others are more organic. However, answers to the greatest questions remain elusive.

Stories of fascinating pockets of activism abound. From transgendered activists to domestic workers, the challenges faced and victories won by organizers are many. And while the preoccupation with as well as underlying themes — we are organizing in new ways, we’re in the grassroots and we’re young — can be grating, the issues they indirectly present make for the most puzzling, unwritten part of Uses of A Whirlwind.

How do movements grow from streets as fetish, and thus a pressure-campaign ideology, into endeavors that can seize power? It is telling that, in a radical context, virtually everything in this collection completely misses the emergence of the Tea Party movement. In this blindspot, one ignores a truism in American politics and power: civil rights and abolitionism notwithstanding, most U.S. mass movements historically have been reactionary in nature. Pressure politics can work for a time, but eventually mass movements — and in the U.S., they’ll likely be conservative — will stir, and then dash every advance of years of pressure campaigns. How does one then go from the comfort zone of subcultures created in such a vacuum into a world where alliances are made, allegiances are tested and millions of people depend on a movement? It can’t be the ultraright-soft left partnership always leading, to which organizers constantly exert pressure. How do we change it?

In Nepal, many on the U.S. radical left have written off the once revolutionary Maobadi tendency, which launched an armed revolt a decade ago and then led a massive largely peaceful upsurge of citizens years later to the halls of power. Its myriad internal debates and compromises are showing this generation how hard it is to remain genuinely radical while holding power among hostile rivals.

Several authors conjure imagery of Third World radical struggles, without ever critically addressing why the First World, with all its people, resources and diversity, has failed for over 200 years to replicate their successes. From Mexico to South Africa, South Asia to South America, Uses of A Whirlwind is populated with many examples of inspiring liberation work. Yet, although First World privilege and affluence are often discussed, few are willing to point out that these matters, endemic to North American society, also shape the worst tendencies, be they class- or gender-biased messaging or dominance by any metric (e.g. whites, one political ideology or another) to the point of stifling creativity.

This collection takes revolutionary change as possible — but what if it’s not? Is such a wealthy country going to support radical change en masse or will vanguards by other names be the only ones to push the envelope? While one can triumphantly talk up Indymedia, its on-the-ground failures (as echo chamber and bully pulpit, or comment home for abuse and prejudice) and how internal problems are fixed are seldom explored. Talking about not just what captures the imagination, but what hobbles these initiatives from building into mass movements, is also needed.

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