Thanks for posting this as I did not that much about Ella Baker. There is a
very active community organization The Ella Baker Center in Oakland that is
active in juvenile delinquency prevention working with families of
incarcerated and educational equality. It seems to follow her methods of
organizing in its outreach to communities of color in the Bay area.
Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: S. Kashdan
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2016 6:40 AM
To: Blind Democracy List
Subject: [blind-democracy] Who is more relevant to us today? Marx or Ella
Baker?
Roger,
I am sorry, but assuming that people are less knowledgeable than you on any
subject if they disagree with you is not rigorous thinking, and certainly
not rigorous scientific thinking. It just may be that others are as familiar
with Marx and even modern Marxist scholars, and still disagree with the
conclusions you and your socialist faction have drawn from reading Marx's
various writings. After all, even Marxists of different tendencies disagree
about how to interpret Marx, and which parts of his writings are relevant
today, and which are not relevant any longer...
As far as I am concerned, the really important questions are related to how
to create better social relationships and more social solidarity, in order
to make some positive changes in the world today for all of us. And, that
needs to involve criticizing the Marxist ideologists who have contributed to
the mess in the world today along with the non-marxist ideologists. And it
means learning how to support each other in all sorts of social ways, and
learning to help each other figure out things together rather than turning
to authorities above us. As Ella Baker used to say: Strong people don't need
strong leaders. For a little more about this woman who deserves all of our
admiration, see an article below my name.
For justice and peace,
Sylvie
ELLA J. BAKER
Remember a life well lived
BY BARBARA RANSBY
http://www.progressive.org/mediaproject03/mprf503.html
Today marks the 100th anniversary of Ella Josephine Baker's birth. Although
her name may be unknown to many, this remarkable woman was one of the most
influential people in the crusade for racial justice in America.
An untiring voice for the dispossessed, a democrat and an egalitarian in
word and deed, Baker was a true American hero.
For more than 50 years, she traveled the breadth of this country organizing,
protesting and advocating for social justice. Her main concern was the
plight of blacks, whose rights, she argued, were the litmus test for
American democracy. But she was also concerned with the cause of labor, the
poor, Latinos and women.
Over the course of her life, she worked alongside some of the most
well-known civil-rights leaders of the 20th century. They included W.E.B.
DuBois, Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr.
But celebrity did not impress Baker. Instead, she placed emphasis on
grass-roots organizing and local leadership. Her own humble style is part of
the reason why her contributions and accomplishments are less known than
those of many of her male counterparts.
In the 1930s, while living in Harlem, Baker was a leader of the cooperative
movement and participated in demonstrations against lynching, colonialism
and fascism.
In the 1940s, she blazed a trail through Ku Klux Klan territory, recruiting
members for the NAACP and putting her own life at risk in the process.
In the 1950s, she divided her time between Atlanta and New York, struggling
against police brutality and school segregation in the North, and for basic
civil and human rights in the South. She was the first director of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In the 1960s she was mentor to a new generation of young freedom fighters.
Her political proteges included Julian Bond, current leader of the NAACP;
educator and author Bob Moses; Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of the
musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock; Marian Wright Edelman of the
Children's Defense Fund; and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C. All of these
individuals began their political careers in the ranks of an organization
that Baker helped found in the spring of 1960, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee.
Instrumental organization
SNCC grew out of the 1960 lunch-counter desegregation sit-ins and was
instrumental in the 1961 freedom rides that broke the color bar on
interstate trains and buses. It was the organizational force behind Freedom
Summer in 1964, which shuttled hundreds of Northern college students into
the South to work on voter registration and education.
SNCC engaged in bold and daring confrontations with racism. Many of its
members were jailed and beaten, and some lost their lives. But they helped
change the racial landscape of the nation. Baker was officially an adult
advisor to SNCC, but she was much more. She garnered resources, mended
wounds (physical and emotional) and offered strategic insights. She also put
the inexperienced young organizers in touch with local activists throughout
the region who advised, nurtured and supported them.
Her work with SNCC was the most fulfilling phase of Baker's long political
life. But after the organization began to unravel in the late 1960s, Baker
continued her work on other fronts.
Tireless activist
She opposed the war in Vietnam, supported the campaign for Puerto Rican
independence and lobbied against South African apartheid. She was a
relentless fighter on the side of the oppressed and downtrodden for more
than a half century. The large and diverse crowd of notables and unknowns
who attended her funeral in 1986 was testimony to this fact.
Baker never thought of herself as old, even as her hair grayed and her
once-flawless brown skin relented to the pull of time and gravity.
"Being young is a state of mind," she once told a friend, "and young people
are the people who want change."
Baker wanted to change injustice, and she spent her life doing just that. It
kept her young. Her youthful life is one well worth remembering.
Barbara Ransby, author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, won the
Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the Association of American Historians for
the best women's history book in 2003.
