Listen to thisIn these strange and dark times, the question of how we support each other and the young people, families and communities we serve is paramount in my mind. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to mount an effective alternative to the emerging system of cyber-fascism and oligarchical rule, if those of us committed to caring for others are isolated, alienated, and dispirited. Projects such as the CYC without borders, proposed by Kiaras Gharabaghi in his column last month, will have a very difficult time getting traction, if we are so fragmented and cynical that that such an idea seems like a pipe dream (for the record, it is one of the most exciting ideas I have heard in a long time). The capacity to dream a new future for our field and its response to the brutal attacks, both physical and ideological, on all the humanistic foundations of our field require that we have the ability to dream together. As a field, we need to have enough of a sense of joint enterprise so that we can begin to think collectively about the world that is coming and the world we hope to build for all of us.
I have to say that I don’t see that happening yet. I see individual voices, but little or no collective response. Indeed, in the reporting I see about our gatherings, I see more nostalgia for our collective past than visioning that is truly responsive to the savagery being visited on young people worldwide. For a field that started with radical vision, we have become a bit skittish about controversy. We seem to prefer a smooth narrative about how well we are progressing and how admirable our ideals have been. In my experience we are more than a little conflict avoidant. It is a family narrative complete with those troublesome family members who don’t get invited to Sunday dinner for fear of what they might say.
I guess there is no real harm in that kind of insularity in times when all is going well and the work we do is respected and effective. If there ever was such a time though, this is not it. These are the times that require a much broader sense of inclusion and support of everyone working for the benefit of young people, their families, and communities, including young people themselves. We might well want to consider working towards a kind of solidarity of purpose or what has been termed a “transformative solidarity” that confers dignity to all as opposed to a “reactionary solidarity” that is premised in exclusion.
This is the kind of solidarity my colleagues and I were imagining when we tried to imagine what radical youthwork would look like if youth and adults were to work together for a common political purpose. We suggest that our work is implicated in the history of capitalist histories of struggle and that young people, their families and communities were deeply entangled in those struggles. Our response to those dynamics as a field of practice had profound implications as to the kinds of choice, risks, and acts of resistance/liberation could be engaged within the socio-cultural-economic effects of the world of global capitalist empire. The question posed by the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, of what are we willing to risk when we “make other people our business and our bond” is central to how we shape the world of Child and Youth Care.
For those of us who have been engaged in this work for a long time, it is obvious that to do this work well entails a certain kind of intimacy, in which we share in the details of another person’s life. I think sometimes we tend to recoil from the full implications of this and want to make the work be about results and techniques or even diagnostics. We want it to a little more sterile—a little less messy and intimate. We want to protect ourselves from the full impact of the lived experience of children and youth in horrific situations that at times we feel helpless to address in any real way. Instead, we work to shore young people up so they can tolerate the horror with resilience. We too often work as agents of palliative care rather than agents of change who might be able to influence the root conditions of social and cultural trauma.
I would argue, that to be agents of that kind of change we would need to be courageous enough to share in the struggle and make common cause to eliminate its source. In another word that would require a kind of solidarity that would promote what Modibo Kadalie refers to as intimate direct democracy. Kadalie draws the concept of intimate direct democracy from his work on the communities of self-emancipated enslaved peoples in the United States who fled into the swamps in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. These “maroons” lived deep within these almost inaccessible swamplands for over 300 years without being detected by settler colonists or enslavers. Kadalie makes the case that these autonomous and ethnically diverse communities of resistance functioned within a social organization that was what he terms intimately democratic. He traces the practice of democratic intimacy to Indigenous political practices operative in in both Africa and throughout the Americas. He argues that this form of intimate direct democracy functioned as a repudiation of European capitalist values in favor of what he terms social-ecological forms of social organization.
The concept of intimate direct democracy implies the capacity to have a relationship built on a sense of closeness and trust. This capacity for relational closeness and trust should be familiar to those in CYC as a core value. To take that relationship as the foundation of collective decision making implies the ability to work on the basis of consensus rather than representational dictate. It means taking the time to find a commonality of purpose upon which collective decisions can be made. It also requires a direct democratic impetus in which the political is founded on each person’s perspective having a key role in determining how things are to be done.
This model of intimate direct democracy is also delineated in the dialogues of the of Indigenous Wendat philosopher and statesman Kandiaronk in the late 17th century (The Wendat was a confederation of Iroquoian speaking peoples in North America). It should be noted that Kandiaronk’s critiques of European ways of life had a profound impact on philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Rousseau, which has largely been erased.
We know something of Kandiaronk’s dialogues because they were recorded and published in France by a French soldier and colonist named Lahontan. They were widely read in France and across Europe and sparked considerable controversy because of their critique of French society and the emerging economic system of capitalism. Kandiaronk’s critiques were extensive and included commentary on Christianity (which he opposed), European sexual morays (which he thought were unnecessarily restrictive), private property (which he thought was corrosive), unequal distributions of wealth (which he thought was absurd), the French system of justice and punishment (which he thought was unnecessary) and autocratic rule (which he opposed).
His articulation of the Wendat alternate Indigenous social order was radically different in every respect. Governance was collective and shared, sexual relations were far more relaxed with women having far more say, justice was not based in physical constraint or punishment, spirituality was ecologically founded, and the idea of people living in poverty was simply an impossibility. Graeber and Wendrow interpret Kandiaronk’s description of Indigenous society as a form of baseline communism in which “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” is the operative principle. At the end of the day Kandiaronk proposed that Europe would benefit considerably if the entire European social system was abandoned,
If you abandoned questions of mine and thine, yes, such distinctions between men would dissolve; a feeling of equality would then take its place among you as it does among the Wendat. And yes, for the first thirty years after the banishment of self-interest, no doubt you would see a certain desolation as those who are only qualified to eat, drink, sleep, and take pleasure would languish and die. But their progeny would be fit for our way of living. Over and over, I have set forth the qualities that we Wendat believe ought to define humanity-wisdom, reason, equity etc.–and demonstrated that the existence of separate material interests knocks all those on the head. A man motivated by interest cannot be a man of reason.
The idea of Indigenous thought as a foundation for the use of reason and the critique of capitalism as a system that cannot be reasonable is a powerful statement even today. It is no wonder that Kandiaronk’s Indigenous philosophy has been erased in favor of White European Enlightenment philosophy which never posed any real threat to capitalism or even colonialism.
I do have to wonder though, when we talk about decolonization in the field of CYC, do we really mean the integration of Indigenous philosophy and sociality or do we mean to do exactly what the philosophers of the Enlightenment did; to only pay attention to those aspects that don’t imply the absolute dissolution of the logics and ways of life associated with ongoing modes of colonization and colonialism.
I raise this point, because I believe that decolonization, transformative solidarity, and direct intimate democracy are profoundly radical political propositions that require us to put aside our allegiance to the existing system of rule in favor of a revolutionary social reset. This is not a project to be taken up lightly, but it is necessary if we are to seriously engage in the world that is savaging our children, our families, and our communities daily.
Such a movement would entail a kind of solidarity that is not for the weak of heart. Schulman has noted, that solidarity is often based on the idea that when we work together towards a common goal there will be a “combination of motive, clean action, predictably victorious outcome … Part of the fantasy is that we will do everything right and give up nothing, and the afflicted will love us, as we will love each other and ourselves … Well, it is not that way.”
Solidarity is a messy, intimate, and very human set of activities that requires a high tolerance for ambiguity and conflict within the movement in question. Schulman uses the example of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) which was a grassroots movement that fought to end the AIDS pandemic. She describes the movement as being organized in such a way that everyone could do what they needed to do even if others disagreed. I would argue that this is the very definition of direct democracy. As Parul Sehgal put it
Solidarity does not require unblemished souls or flawless political analysis; it must be understood as a form of awareness that is native to us, that sees the health of the individual and the collective as bound and yearns to respond in kind, just as sunflowers in a field angle their heads just so, to best share the light. Nature is full of such examples, as new research shows — not always competitive but collaborative.
For those of us in CYC working with those people who are inordinately affected by the brutality that is marking the world of the 21st century, such imperfect collaborations are avenues for action if we are to take our mandate to care seriously. In this way, solidarity and intimate direct democracy allow us to see each other as intimately tied together in the production of the world we live in. We are every bit as ecologically entangled as the sunflowers who share the light. Our experiences are very real and must be taken into account in any movement forward towards justice and equity in our field and the world in which it is embedded. Our experiences and our desires may at times come into conflict, but how we manage that conflict with openness and compassion will in many respects shape the future we will share together.
