Setting Off

Last day in the Needmor office. Getting packed, getting Nedmor work done - just signed $750,000 in grant checks! Thoughts as I set off:

First, what do I want to learn this time? Certainly I want to test my training skills further - I loved that part last year, and this year's main task is training trainers, so that's even more intense. Next, the whole question of adapting organizing to local political and cultural contexts. We'll have teams from nine countries at this event: Bosnia, France, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine (plus me from the US). Each has its own political context - in some, the legacy of postwar parliamentary democracy and labor-based leftist politics and Green Party activism puts community organizing in a set of boxes that they'll have to deal very carefully with. In others, the legacy of Soviet domination and regimented public life means the skills of participation are almost non-existent - the very idea of participation is a strange one. How much flexibility in "our way" of doing organizing is right; how much are the bones, the core principles, the basic steps immutably and fundadmentally important? We'll see.

This year will be different in some key ways. First, I'm by myself - Lindsay traveled so well with me last time - at the end of a training day she'd join us for dinner, we'd recount the highs and lows, she'd tell of her travels to museums and galleries and various sites. She's traveling to warmer US climes with her sister this time, so that'll be different.

On the other hand, I know the Europeans so much better. Many folks at this meeting will have been through the workshops last year. I've stayed in touch with the leadership of ECON, talked and schemed and tried to help them buld awareness here of what they've got. Paul Cromwell and Kajo Zboril visited, along with Nicoleta Chirita last year to attend the Mott gathering and visit NY and DC and I went along. Chuck Hirt and Mate Varga from Hungary visited just last month, and we met up with Cris Doby, they stayed with us in Toledo and we got lots of scheming time. So these aren't all strangers to me, like last year. And the places will be a bit familiar. I've visited the three main venues already - Szczecin, Katowice and Warsaw. I've got favorite restaurants, favorite walking spots and places I wabnted to see but didn't get to, so that will be a different feeling.

So I'll take pictures, try to reflect here on the blog and mostly I'll try to raise some hell and deepen these wonderful relationships and have fun while I learn. Let me know your reactions, ideas and questions. We'll have fun together!

(I'm asttaching a couple of pictures of the ECON visits to the US this year.)