Another thing that impressed Miriam and Mike is how the rest of the world is out there rooting for US activists. The US government and it’s giant corporate sponsors are responsible for a lot of the environmental, social and economic damage in the world today.
“Activists all over the world are waiting for us to organize,” Miriam said. She believes we, here in the US, are on the front lines of this struggle against globalized destruction that is coming out of corporate board rooms and political back rooms of the United States.
Miriam has had one small meeting at the Wrench to begin the process of sharing the vision. That is part of the first step. She hopes it will lead to the coming together of many different groups of people, each of whom is working on some issue or groups of issues. The goal, according to Miriam, is to find the common ground or “shared vision” for all the groups.
Once that is accomplished, Miriam says, “We can change the world!”
Willimantic, Now and Then:
A Vision to Change the World
By Mark Svetz
Mark Svetz and Sarah Winter own Clothworks, a shop on Church Street in Downtown Willimantic, where they make and sell clothing and bags. They have a shared vision to be part of a vibrant local economy that will sustain the people of Eastern Connecticut.
Miriam Kurland is on an Action Vision Quest. It’s happening right here in Downtown Willimantic, but it didn’t start here.
Miriam and her husband Mike Kurland, went to Atlanta, GA, recently along with activists, environmentalists, labor organizers, and even a few politicians. They came from all over the country, even the world, attending the first US Social Forum. They went to workshops all over Atlanta, listened to speakers, talked and shared experiences.
“We are all working to make our culture more sustainable and I wanted to find out what everybody else is up to,” Miriam said of their reason for going to Atlanta in the middle of the summer. “When we got there, everybody was looking for the same thing.”
Now, Miriam thinks of herself as a “seed who has been scattered.”
The US Social Forum (USSF) is organized by the same group that organized the older World Social Forum. The WSF began in 2001.
The WSF web site describes the event as an “open platform to discuss alternatives to the economic plans created by multinational corporations and the governments at the World Economic Forum. These plans often result in strategies that suppress workers and human rights, and undermine national and Indigenous sovereignty. The Forum (WSF) has since become an annual event, hosting up to 100,000 people each year.”
This year was the first USSF. According to its web site, “The USSF will provide a process to build a powerful movement in this country based on the organized voices and experiences of those from the grassroots most affected by US and global injustices.”
And now for the Main Event. The thousands who attended the forum in Atlanta returned to their homes ready to spread the word. For Mike and Miriam, home is Mansfield, and they hope to start spreading the word at the Wrench in the Works Collective in Willimantic.
The Wrench in the Works Collective is an information center, radical lending library, coffee house and performance space at 861 Main Street in Willimantic. It was organized earlier this year by a collective of area residents who wanted to provide space and support for a more radical approach to politics, art, culture and life in Northeastern Connecticut.
I was part of a small group of people who sat around the Wrench one afternoon recently, talking about Mike and Miriam’s experience in Atlanta, and their plans for the future.
Her mission is clear. “We have to sit down with people here (at the Wrench) and try to verbalize the vision. Then we make Willimantic a Center for Unity, where we all help each other with our issues. Then we start making Connecticut a Center for Unity... then the whole country.”
The unity Miriam is talking about refers to the shared understanding of people, who might be working toward disparate goals, who have taken the time to find the common points in their individual views of the world. Mike’s example is when the Christian Right can make common cause with the left around the protection of the environment.
Listening to Miriam and Mike reminded me of an experience I had years ago. Sarah and I were on a bicycle trip, and talking to people in the northwestern US and British Columbia about how people in the environmental movement had begun to talk to leaders of the union that represented loggers and other workers in the lumber industry. It turned out these two groups of people, long considered natural enemies, had recently found some common ground in their opposition to certain practices in the lumber industry.
We talked to an unemployed lumber mill worker who was angry about the practice of sending whole logs to Japan, where they were made into picnic tables. The tables were shipped back to the US where the unemployed workers couldn’t afford to buy them. This man said he used to blame the environmentalists for his plight, but now he was talking about how the industry has to “add value” to the trees by milling and manufacturing them into tables and other products right there in British Columbia. This man saw a way, thanks to what Miriam might call a “shared vision,” to cut fewer trees and still have more jobs.
One issue that was talked about at the US Social Forum is health care.
“We went to a workshop,” Mike said. “and we expected to talk about some kind of health insurance, a single payer plan, you know. But they were taking about the sustainability of our culture as a health issue. Jobs, education, community, the way people interact.” These things, Mike said, were all talked about as a part of the health care system.
“Health is more than health care,” Mike said. “You know how people talk about the GNP (Gross National Product) or the GDP (Gross Domestic Product)? Well they were talking about Gross National Happiness.”
WILLIMANTIC –August, 2007