Just some oak and some pine and a handful of... good social policies
April 28, 2020 9:36 AM Subscribe
George Lakey is an American Quaker activist and educator who helped create the Global Nonviolent Action Database. He also co-founded the Earth Quaker Action Team to work on issues of environmental justice. Lakey's two most recent books, Viking Economics and How We Win, seek to map out a realistic and nonviolent path for moving the US toward a Nordic-style social welfare economy.
What needs to change: “In 2010, Max Chafkin did a survey of Norwegian entrepreneurs for Inc. Magazine, where he was a senior writer. While in Norway he noted the liveliness of the start-up scene. When he returned home he consulted Zoltan J. Acs, the chief economist for the US Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy. … Acs said, ‘The three things we as Americans worry about - education, retirement, and medical expenses - are things that Norwegians don’t worry about.”
The safety net came before the oil money: “At the turn of the twentieth century, most Norwegians lived in economic hardship. It would have been even worse if hundreds of thousands weren’t emigrating, leaving the few jobs and farms to their other family members. … Yet only seven decades later, Norway had achieved full employment, dramatically curbed poverty, built an efficient and modern infrastructure, and provided good free health care, retirement benefits, and free education for all of its citizens. That Norway achieved this before oil in the North Sea came online is remarkable, as is the fact that Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland all did the same - all of them without oil.”
The central importance of the working class: “In Nordic as in other industrial economies, people in middle-class jobs mostly perform the functions of managing, teaching, designing the work of, and supporting the health of the working class. Working-class jobs produce most of the goods and services that keep the economy humming.”
Why the “well, actually” middle class makes organizing hard: “When interacting with one another, people do one of two things: join or differentiate. … In my experience professional, middle-class, highly schooled people are the most vulnerable to compulsive differentiation because of the function of their class and the nature of their schooling. Professional, middle-class training has a predictable result I’ve seen hundreds of times: even easy decisions take enormous amounts of differentiating discussion. Another predictable result: people brought up working class find such groups a turn-off.”
The importance of revealing the truth in protests: “Behind each myth [of an unjust status quo] is a secret that power holders don’t want revealed. The best actions are those that reveal the truth. It’s not always easy to create an action that reveals the truth. Protestors often substitute for ‘reveal’ the word ‘assert’, as in standing in a line holding posters that state their point of view. … ‘Reveal’, however, is something else. Most white southerners believed in the 1950s that they lived in a humane racial system; their myth was that they treated black people well. They also believed that black people accepted segregation, except for a few malcontents.
“It was shocking for them to see nicely dressed black college students reading their textbooks while sitting at a lunch counter waiting for coffee, when they could get takeout coffee at the back door. Doubly shocking to see white men beating them up. Two secrets were exposed at once: black people want freedom, and segregation requires violence.”
MeFi loves to talk about the Nordics already, but in late of Things Right Now, Lakey's work feels newly relevant.
This is my first FPP - aaaaah! Shout out to LeLiLo for their prior mention of Viking Economics on here.
What needs to change: “In 2010, Max Chafkin did a survey of Norwegian entrepreneurs for Inc. Magazine, where he was a senior writer. While in Norway he noted the liveliness of the start-up scene. When he returned home he consulted Zoltan J. Acs, the chief economist for the US Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy. … Acs said, ‘The three things we as Americans worry about - education, retirement, and medical expenses - are things that Norwegians don’t worry about.”
The safety net came before the oil money: “At the turn of the twentieth century, most Norwegians lived in economic hardship. It would have been even worse if hundreds of thousands weren’t emigrating, leaving the few jobs and farms to their other family members. … Yet only seven decades later, Norway had achieved full employment, dramatically curbed poverty, built an efficient and modern infrastructure, and provided good free health care, retirement benefits, and free education for all of its citizens. That Norway achieved this before oil in the North Sea came online is remarkable, as is the fact that Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland all did the same - all of them without oil.”
The central importance of the working class: “In Nordic as in other industrial economies, people in middle-class jobs mostly perform the functions of managing, teaching, designing the work of, and supporting the health of the working class. Working-class jobs produce most of the goods and services that keep the economy humming.”
Why the “well, actually” middle class makes organizing hard: “When interacting with one another, people do one of two things: join or differentiate. … In my experience professional, middle-class, highly schooled people are the most vulnerable to compulsive differentiation because of the function of their class and the nature of their schooling. Professional, middle-class training has a predictable result I’ve seen hundreds of times: even easy decisions take enormous amounts of differentiating discussion. Another predictable result: people brought up working class find such groups a turn-off.”
The importance of revealing the truth in protests: “Behind each myth [of an unjust status quo] is a secret that power holders don’t want revealed. The best actions are those that reveal the truth. It’s not always easy to create an action that reveals the truth. Protestors often substitute for ‘reveal’ the word ‘assert’, as in standing in a line holding posters that state their point of view. … ‘Reveal’, however, is something else. Most white southerners believed in the 1950s that they lived in a humane racial system; their myth was that they treated black people well. They also believed that black people accepted segregation, except for a few malcontents.
“It was shocking for them to see nicely dressed black college students reading their textbooks while sitting at a lunch counter waiting for coffee, when they could get takeout coffee at the back door. Doubly shocking to see white men beating them up. Two secrets were exposed at once: black people want freedom, and segregation requires violence.”
MeFi loves to talk about the Nordics already, but in late of Things Right Now, Lakey's work feels newly relevant.
This is my first FPP - aaaaah! Shout out to LeLiLo for their prior mention of Viking Economics on here.
I'm just starting through this excellent post, and I'm finding the interview with Lakey to be really interesting! Thanks!
posted by dbx at 4:55 PM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by dbx at 4:55 PM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
full disclaimer, I'm a Quaker so I'm low key biased towards this post, thanks for putting it together. My favorite thing about EQAT is their record of protesting PNC Bank's (which has some Quaker origins) funding of mountaintop removal by holding a silent meeting for worship occupation of bank lobbies:
On 21 October, 2013 EQAT held the biggest bank branch action in U.S. history. Activists staged sixteen actions at PNC bank branches, mostly in Pittsburgh. In response, managers at several of the banks shut their branches down. In many of the banks, protesters held Silent Occupation, where groups of three to eleven went into PNC banks and practiced silent Quaker worship
posted by mostly vowels at 5:54 PM on April 28, 2020 [6 favorites]
On 21 October, 2013 EQAT held the biggest bank branch action in U.S. history. Activists staged sixteen actions at PNC bank branches, mostly in Pittsburgh. In response, managers at several of the banks shut their branches down. In many of the banks, protesters held Silent Occupation, where groups of three to eleven went into PNC banks and practiced silent Quaker worship
posted by mostly vowels at 5:54 PM on April 28, 2020 [6 favorites]
Congrats on your first post!
posted by not_the_water at 7:33 PM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by not_the_water at 7:33 PM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
How We Win is available at the Internet Archive.
posted by progosk at 8:25 AM on April 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by progosk at 8:25 AM on April 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
Well this is all super interesting stuff.
Lakey sounds like he has a lot of fascinating, well-honed ideas. He's clearly thought about these things a lot, for a long time.
I hope I can give Viking Economics a read before too long.
I love the idea of protect actions taking the form of silent Quaker worship. (Also from that link: "Police arrested five members of EQAT for building model windmills on 6 December 2011 in the regional PNC bank (downtown Philadelphia) to highlight wind as an alternative energy source." Yay!)
This is a terrific post, sockshaveholes - you did a great job putting it together, and I thank you for taking the time to do it!
(And thanks, too, to the 34 people who favorited it, so it showed up on the Popular page; otherwise I might have missed it.)
Thanks!
posted by kristi at 9:31 PM on April 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
Lakey sounds like he has a lot of fascinating, well-honed ideas. He's clearly thought about these things a lot, for a long time.
I hope I can give Viking Economics a read before too long.
I love the idea of protect actions taking the form of silent Quaker worship. (Also from that link: "Police arrested five members of EQAT for building model windmills on 6 December 2011 in the regional PNC bank (downtown Philadelphia) to highlight wind as an alternative energy source." Yay!)
This is a terrific post, sockshaveholes - you did a great job putting it together, and I thank you for taking the time to do it!
(And thanks, too, to the 34 people who favorited it, so it showed up on the Popular page; otherwise I might have missed it.)
Thanks!
posted by kristi at 9:31 PM on April 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
Thank you all for your encouragement! I'm glad this was useful.
posted by sockshaveholes at 8:12 PM on May 1, 2020
posted by sockshaveholes at 8:12 PM on May 1, 2020
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