I find it ironic that upon coming to this page to read this discussion, I noticed that you are sponsored by Google. The ad that is running as I type is a “McCain for President” commerical.

Is it only others who should not accept support from power elite who would use their wealth to advance their agenda, or does that principle apply to you as well?

Eleanor

I join with Michael Barker in recognising your important contribution to social justice. I’m just asking if you would provide a more frank and academic response to some valid questions. I would very much like to hear your thoughtful opinion about Barker’s claims. Not so that it can be used in name calling exercises but rather so that my own developing attitude, towards what I see as a concern rather than a conspiracy, is fully informed. If you are not comfortable answering specifically would you outline more fully, in a general context, why you think there is no issue here of merit?

Could you please clarify something? You say:

[Barker] calls on progressive activists to think about what it means to seek and accept funds from foundations and groups with anti democratic objectives and connections. Anyone who has ever written a strategic plan or compiled a report to their funding body understands that compromises are made in order to keep the funders on side. The substantive message in Barker’s work is that some voices are funded and others are not and those given a voice should look critically at why they have been given an ear, whose ear it is and how a desire for continued access to it motivates their actions.

It sounds as though you are speaking about me, Stephen Zunes, and “other progressive activists” here- is that correct?

I ask for two reasons. One, my original Truthout article and Barker’s subsequent critique addressed the issue of funding nonviolent movements (specifically in Burma), not financial support of my (or Stephen’s or any other academics’) work.

Secondly, I do not “seek funds” from foundations and groups with “anti-democratic objectives and connections.” To the contrary, I generally turn down stipend offers even from groups and foundations whose principles closely match my own (and possibly yours) because 1) especially when it comes to writing, I prefer that my motive be pure, and 2) I can’t in good conscience take funds from a non-profit that has a limited amount of resources and is doing good work.

If I accept your assumptions and leaps in logic, one can only conclude that I am either astonishingly naive or spectacularly stupid.

Cynthia

It is distressing that both Boaz and Zunes read into what Barker is saying a direct and vicious personal criticism. I have not been able to locate such a criticism in anything that Barker has written. In fact I see again and again an outright acknowledgement that both Zunes and Boaz are progressive activists doing valuable work.

Barker makes a blunt examination of the context in which Boaz and Zunes and other progressive activists conduct their work. His criticism is simplistic and yet fundamental to the operation of the progressive left. He calls on progressive activists to think about what it means to seek and accept funds from foundations and groups with anti democratic objectives and connections. Anyone who has ever written a strategic plan or compiled a report to their funding body understands that compromises are made in order to keep the funders on side. The substantive message in Barker’s work is that some voices are funded and others are not and those given a voice should look critically at why they have been given an ear, whose ear it is and how a desire for continued access to it motivates their actions.

Barker asks Zunes and Boaz and other progressive activists to ask themselves whether they would be in their positions if they did not speak to the agenda set by the elites. Instead of palming this off as mere conspiracy shouldn’t activists of their calibre be concerned about this? Yes, these are uncomfortable questions and they go to the very heart of the motivations of the left and that is understandably personally confronting to any progressive activist who feels they have spent their working lives in the pursuit of social justice, but what Zunes and Boaz seem to be missing is that, by asking the left to look critically at itself, Barker is encouraging it to recognise its strengths and weaken the hold the ruling class has over it.

It is a pity that Boaz has not taken this opportunity to engage in a critical reflection and has instead chosen to retreat using ‘ridiculous conspiracy theory’ as a patent excuse to avoid addressing something that makes her uncomfortable.

My replies follow your questions, and should be in italics (if this blog accepts html.)

Cynthia

***

1. How did you first hear about the work of the ICNC, and what prompted you to join their academic advisory board?

I had heard about ICNC’s work through various venues – at conferences, through colleagues, and via my use of the “A Force More Powerful” documentary in the classroom. I gave a paper at a conference called “War, Peace, and Media” at Portland State University in the summer of 2005 and was introduced to Jack DuVall when I attended a dinner with some of the conference speakers afterwards. (Some other presenters and participants at this conference included Medea Benjamin, Michael Nagler, Stephen Zunes, Kathy Kelly, and Barry Gan, all of whom were appreciative and supportive of ICNC’s work. I am providing these names because the conference is a matter of public record. This was a conference comprised of some very prominent progressives working in the fields of nonviolence, nonviolent conflict, and development.)

I was very struck by the work of ICNC, and in particular, how their view of power—as a bottom-up, grassroots process – helps explain the entire phenomenon of nonviolent struggle. In my job over the years, I have made friends and colleagues on every continent who are involved in their own struggle against some type of oppression. My sense of solidarity with their struggles and my role as a teacher compelled me to learn more about how SNVC works, and at some point, in response to my earnestness and persistence, I was asked to join ICNC’s academic advisory board.

2. Who are the other members of the ICNC’s advisory board?

The answer to this question is not secret, but by the same token, I’m not comfortable disclosing it to you, given your track record with the two of us (Stephen Zunes and myself) who you already know. With all due respect, I’m not sure I want to subject my friends and colleagues to similar gratuitous personal attacks. Answering your charges— which are unfounded and even defamatory in part— takes time and energy from important work. I will say that the other members of the board come from a wide range of disciplines and countries of origin, and approached ICNC (as I did) because of the significance of the information about strategic nonviolent struggles that ICNC alone has harvested and disseminated.

3. Are you concerned about the funding issues that I raised for consideration in my previous articles? Why/Why not?

I made my position on this pretty clear in the piece you attempted to deconstruct. I understand your concern (and would share it, if I thought your claims were valid). The fact is that nonviolent struggles do not succeed if they are not indigenous.

4. Would you consider writing about some of the problems I have raised in my articles in a public forum? Perhaps you might be able to persuade Truthout to host such a discussion?

Your question assumes that you and I share the same perspective at to what constitute the major challenges to indigenous nonviolent struggles. While I share some of your concerns about U.S. “democracy promotion,” you are looking for (and finding) it in the wrong place when you sling charges at ICNC and those of us who work to actively promote knowledge about how SNVC works. If I undertook this endeavor, it would assume that I believe your charges have merit, which I do not. I hope you can understand why I don’t want to use a public forum like Truthout to give (borrowing from your own words) an air of legitimacy to what I believe are ridiculous conspiracy theories.

On March 4, 2008, in response to my critique of your truthout article you wrote: “If you wish to know more about me and/or my motivations for working with ICNC [International Center on Nonviolent Conflict], please feel free to email me directly.”

I would like to take you up on this valuable offer. (I am also posting this online, as I feel it would be most appropriate to have such an exchange in public.)

Could I point out one more time that I do not question what personally motivates the work you do. My questions refer to why you are unwilling to look critically at the motives of the people you do that work for.

I would be grateful if you could please answer the following questions:

1. How did you first hear about the work of the ICNC, and what prompted you to join their academic advisory board?

2. Who are the other members of the ICNC’s advisory board?

3. Are you concerned about the funding issues that I raised for consideration in my previous articles? Why/Why not?

4. Would you consider writing about some of the problems I have raised in my articles in a public forum? Perhaps you might be able to persuade truthout to host such a discussion?

Yours sincerely

Michael Barker

I have only recently been made aware of your obsession with the work of ICNC and its principals and advisors. I have to admit that I was both surprised and a bit flattered at the amount of time you obviously put into this deconstruction of me, my motivations, and my connections. However, you have it all wrong. I am not part of any shady neo-con (or other) attempt to pull states and people under the influence of U.S. imperialism under the guise of “democracy promotion.” I do the work I do because I believe in empowerment and genuine democracy (not “exported”, “transposed”, or “created” democracy, or some other oxymoronic version of the concept that you would ascribe to me.) I would ask you to look into my progressive credentials on this, but it seems that you would ignore what was inconvenient and highlight what could possibly be suspect (e.g. I was asked by the provost at the beginning of my 2nd year at SUNY Brockport to serve as coordinator for the American Democracy Project, which as I soon learned, is a multicampus initiative intended to promote civic engagement amongst undergraduates in American universities. That sounded good to me. Never once did I consult the organization’s board of advisors list to explore those peoples’ real or possible links to neoconservative policy or think tanks. I had never even heard of Harry C. Boyte until I read this essay.)

I have read Stephen Zunes’ responses to you, and I think, given Steve’s usual comprehensive and contextualized approach to everything he says, he has covered it all. But I am curious, have you spent any time with any of us whose work you are so disdainful of? I wonder if you could spend a day in the company of Steve Zunes or Jack DuVall and continue to imagine that the conspiracies you’ve dreamed up still have a shred of merit.

With all due respect sir, this crusade that you have undertaken is not only a collosal misuse of time and energy, but it is totally misguided, libelous, and quite possibly, dangerous. Ironically, I sense that it comes out of an authentic commitment to the same principles that Steve Zunes, Jack DuVall, the rest of the ICNC staff, and I, would also consider ourselves adherents to- namely, human rights, self-determination, social and economic justice, solidarity with those struggling for their freedom and dignity, and a belief that all of those things can be best acquired by accessing the better angels of our natures.

If you wish to know more about me and/or my motivations for working with ICNC, please feel free to email me directly. I am fairly easy to track down.

Sincerely,
Cynthia Boaz

The argument goes , that to help the little guy we , in the west, must interfere.This then starts a snowball process in which the neo-cons (if it suits their agenda)join in and then we get the irreligious hymn singing from the same sheet by left/right together to force a “positive” change in another countries domestic agenda.

The most pathetic case was when the progressive left were standing shoulder to shoulder with Rumsfeld and Powell in supporting the Iranian student demonstrations.(AS if Powell and Rumsfeld get up first thing in the morning worrying about the plight of an Iranian student).

What everyone failed to realise was the protests in Iran were about the pace of change and not the first rumblings of Regime Change.

A lot of the fault for this lies also with Exiles that ally with the “policy” of these regime-change agenda whether it be a Bhutto for the rightists or the raft of Iranian leftists that seem to give the armageddonists a run for their money by wanting a final battle between the Mullahs and the neo-cons in which they wipe each other out leaving a few People left who then embrace atheism and live happily ever under the guardianship of a few western educated exiles.

The unedifying laocoan of mixed-metaphor ideologies that both left and right ( the left because they have not thought it out , the right because it suits them) fell most be imposed on the non-european experience world in a we-know-best paternalistic manner is what is causing the most damage to bona-fide indeginious social justice movements in the world whether they are in South America;Africa;Mid-East or in this case Burma.

Where the left can really make a clean-break from being the Human Face of the right agenda is to offer genuine SOLIDARITY with the local social justice movements whether we agree with them 100% or not , rather than find spurious reasons not to back them because they do not tally with the european template of nation-statehood or templates that simply do not replicate in the non-european world because the History has moved at a different pace.

It is time for the Left to get themselves a true Justice based agenda rather than be imperialists with less money than their corporate cousins.