Pessimism is a luxury we cannot afford.
Daniel Nane Alejandrez
Executive Director, Barrios Unidos

1A monster is stalking the United States. It is not a person, or a group of people. It is not African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Jews or immigrants. The monster is a devastating form of 21st century U.S. society now being shaped by powerful political/economic dites. Unless confronted now, our society will see an increasingly bitter and violent gap between «Haves» and «Havenots» marked by expanded conflict and the use of intensifying police force and prisons as a control mechanism to keep the lid on millions of people who have been essentially discarded by the dominant centers of power. This crisis, now already well underway, will corne to a head in the early 21st century. The basic essence of this crisis involves the severing of the connection between corporate profits and productivity on one hand, and the well-being of millions of American people on the other.

2In Empire or Republic: American Global Power and Domestic Decay, (p. 103) James Petras and Morris Morely warn that one major catastrophic resuit of the industrial transformation of the United States is the reduction of citizens into a «fragmented mass competing over scarce resources, isolated from the ossified and declining trade union bureaucracies, with neither a political perspective nor a capacity to generate a national political movement to challenge the layers of political structures blocking new initiatives». I certainly concur with the assessment of the serious consequences of economic transformation and of the social policies that are systematically unraveling the webbing of social/economic programs developed since the New Deal era. But today there are thousands of inner city activists engaged in a significant amount of grassroots organizing in the inner cities of the United States. Ronald Waters observes («The Imperative of Popular Black Struggle», Black Scholar, p. 32) that «popular struggle continues to constitute the real basis of our politics, especially in local communities». As Alain Minc notes, (Le Nouveau Moyen Age, p. 160), in the midst of breakdown one also sees, «a political recomposition outside of traditional norms with the appearance of new actors or new “rules of the game”».

3Among these new grassroots groups and activists in the barrios and ghettos is developing a mode of action and outlook that I call «Transcommunality». By «Transcommunality» I mean the constructive and developmental interaction occurring among members of distinct communities that cuts across race/ethnic and institutional Unes. Transcommunality involves dialogue across group lines. Such dialogue, as Tzvetan Todorov notes (On Human Diversity, p. 52) is «animated by the idea of a possible progression in the discussion; it does not consist in the juxtaposition of several voices but in their interaction». Through such interaction there is mutual learning and transformation so that groups engaged in Transcommunality do not remain static. By the same token this progressive interaction does not entail a melting-pot approach. Rather the mutual learning and transformation are only possible precisely because there really are different vantage points based on distinctive experiences. As Mikhail Bakhtin pointed out (Toward a Philosophy of the Act, p. 16), I cannot engage in such a pure empathy with another that I lose my own identity in the process. Bakhtin says, «If I actually lost myself in the other (instead of two participants there would be one») and this would be an «impoverishment of being». By contrast, Transcommunal interaction offers an enrichment of social being through its emphasis on distinctly autonomous, but constructively interacting participants is already occurring in a variety of grassroots organizations around the United States. The glue that holds Transcommunal ries together are interpersonal relationships of mutual trust built up through what I call «Shared Practical Action», in which people from different communities and settings work together around shared tasks and objectives. Transcommunality grows from a multiplicity of rooted group locations, involves direct personal action with others, and through these actions a widening scope of affiliations. In its practical and interpersonal relations Transcommunality does not negate the communities from which interacting participants emerge. But it does involve a mutual transformation of each of them as they all hear what others say, and to some degree change their own outlooks as a resuit. Transcommunality involves a process of what Martin J. Matustik (Postnational Identity, p. 149) calls «a self-transformation requirement of communication».

4In practice, Transcommunality creates a widening inclusionary interaction among diverse communities and organizations in which shared structure is constructed through negotiations among them, rather than being a priori and imposed from one source. Diversity, rather than being a barrier, is a bridge across which the different resources for this developing structure cross in order to meet. Transcommunality thus avoids both an imposed universalisai defined from one source, and avoids extreme chaotic relativistic compartmentalization toward which some advocates of diversity and multiculturalism descend. As Tzvetan Todorov points out, we must distinguish «end-point universalisai» that requires a map, drawn by one group of cartographers and which all others must follow on one hand, from «universalism of the itinerary» or journey in which commonality is worked out along the way by all the travelers involved. Transcommunality involves the creation of shared outlooks, values, and methods through the process of common voyaging by diverse participants. Unlike the pre-drawn map of elite direction which has an a priori completeness to it, the Transcommunal joumey is not closed and complete. Rather it involves what Todorov (p. 84) describes as constant «back and forth movement between others and oneself». Such universalism of the journey is not «set forth as dogma» from above, but rather is created by «comparison and compromise» among an ever expanding circle of diverse participants.

5Transcommunality is not new. The North American Native American Iroquois Confederacy, with its highly autonomous levels of household and tribal-nation all coordinated into the larger federated society, was essentially Transcommunal from its starting date sometime in the 14th century. The French underground resistance to the Nazi occupation had many Transcommunal elements, that like the Iroquois involved high degrees of autonomy for the participant groups along with shared structures and objectives. More to the point for our purposes in this essay, Transcommunal interaction is a major current running through the African-American/Korean American Alliance in Los Angeles, and it animated the historic 1993 National Urban Peace and Justice «Gang Truce Summit» that brought together several hundred Latino and African-American gang members and community activists around the issue of ending the violence on the streets. Transcommunality is a major feature of the multi-ethnic Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice that combines Native American, Chicano, Mexican, and African-American communities. Such Transcommunal moments and activists form bridges among various communities including those at odds with each other. Consequently, the Petras/Morely emphasis on «fragmentation» of the «masses», while useful as a general description is overemphasized, and misses important grassroots organizational strengths both in the U.S. and elsewhere. What appear to be fragmented «masses» are in some significant instances infused with organized structures, and so can no longer be included in the term «mass» that implies an inchoate jumble of people.

6The problem is not an absence of groups in the ghettos and barrios. Rather it is one of widening already existing coordination among them. Given the global sweep of big business and its government allies, and given the multi-dimensional nature of the problems effecting different communities from poverty and political subjugation to poor health and the poisoning of their environment, a more expansive structure of coordination among grassroots groups both in the U.S. and with parallel groups around the world is vital to enhance their ability to grapple with the very global capitalism and political structures that are so negatively impacting people in a variety of national settings. First and foremost new global grassroots cooperation, rooted in particular local conditions, while simultaneously coordinated with a wide range of groups through interpersonal relations and Shared Practical Action requires nothing less than «a new way of thinking, a paradigm-shift that will move beyond homogenizing, vanguard-focused, top-down notions of “solidarity”, “unity”, and “social blocks”». The necessary expansion coordination among multiple groups will require Transcommunal flexibility and receptivity to the high degrees of autonomy of participants, and the very different, sometimes conflicting, core objectives and issues that face people in a wide variety of settings. Simultaneously in its emphasis on coordination, Transcommunality overcomes the «post-modem» gnashing of teeth about aimless relativism supposedly arising from infinite diversity of communities and organizations. But the fundamental organizing question is how should and can such cooperation be developed.

The Human Removal Project and Social Crisis

7In previous decades, U.S. domestic economic patterns showed a basic relationship in which expanded profits and productivity went hand in hand with increased wages and overall benefits to many. This connection had been largely won through intensive labor struggle that fought for improved work conditions, especially beginning in the 1930’s with the organizing efforts of the C.I.O. Those millions of African-Americans, Latinos and others who were excluded from that equation later would mount major fights such as the Civil Rights Movement that were essentially premised on the equation of broadening the inclusivity of the economic System in ways that had some degree of positive social consequence to working people. Ironically, the very success of various inclusionary movements made the saying «What’s good for General Motors is good for America», an accurate reflection not just of raw corporate power, but also of the way in which a significant portion of the population had beneficially woven itself and been absorbed into the economic fabric of U.S. society. Consequently, a major underlying premise of the pivotai social/political movements from the 1930’s on, was that of broadening the scope of who was included in the economic benefits of capitalist productivity. And of course, this inclusion along with the anti-communist movement symbolized by the «McCarthy Era» also incorporated a large portion of this working class population into a staunch anti-red patriotism that would foreclose any possibilities of major movement toward even the moderate western European social-democratic forms of society, such as those found in Scandinavia. Nonetheless despite (and alongside) all its jingoism, its continued racist core of bigotry that required the use of militant action by excluded groups to be included, and its anti-socialist tendencies the New Deal, and its policy descendants did at least offer a basic framework within which the essential idea of civil society in which government plays a major role was accepted.

8But today the situation is radically different. Even as corporate profits climb, the old System that employed millions in manufacturing, that provided a fairly certain upward mobility to several generations of immigrants and their children, and that offered college education through the G.I. Bill, and programs such as Head Start, so that those with less education still had a strong chance at doing well, is unraveling. The acclaimed contemporary «leaner and meaner» company whose stocks climb because of its «efficiency» and because it has moved its operations to other countries where labor is kept more suppressed, is also the company that is depriving thousands of workers of their jobs in the U.S. What’s good for today’s «High Tech Inc». is only good for «High Tech Inc», and its investors while millions in the inner cities and across the nation slip ever more deeply into the swamp of despair. And despite the daims about its positive contribution to social well-being, the expanding «service sector» is thin ice that can support only a few with any security. Many service jobs are essentially dead-end, with no upward mobility possible and no equivalent opportunities that can match that of the factory in which the children of workers following their parents’footsteps, gaining greater skills, having decent salaries, and some degree of job security.

9Whereas the 19th century ended with the U.S. on the way to becoming a nation of heavy industry in need of millions of people to work its machines, the 20th century is ending with the removal of millions of people from the economic mainstream into the economic backwaters of the ghettos and barrios in an overall social environment that says their minds and muscles are no longer needed by society. The signs of this crisis are everywhere. The number of manufacturing jobs is diminishing, continuing a trend that began, by many estimates in the 1970’s. Even when factories operate, or open in the U.S., often through foreign investment, automation reduces the number of workers needed. Meanwhile chronic unemployment becomes the norm for many with some families living essentially outside the mainstream economic System from generation to generation. Prison construction goes up, while along with the imprisoned population while the number of people employed in policing, corrections, the judicial System, and private security — the guard sector of the economy is increasing — one of the few areas of expansion. In short, as more people are forced out of the mainstream or onto its shallow margins, the social instruments of control are being put into full gear. More prisons are being built as social programs are being cut back. In the United States, 1.4 million people are in prison every year so becoming the equivalent of «long term unemployed» as Marie-France Toinet points out («Démanteler le New Deal, Faire payer les pauvres», Le Monde, p. 12). Meanwhile in California, $21,000 is spent per prison inmate each year and only $4,200 is spent on students in the public schools. The relationship is obvious. Marginalizing people, rather than including them in societal growth, cutting back on meaningful concessions that provide social well-being, requires increased repression in order to keep that population under control. And this dire situation is not simply a «natural» or «structural» development caused automatically by powerful economic forces of high-tech automation and the organizational ability of companies to move and run their operations around the world. These factors are of course important. But equally significant are the conscious decisions being made at the highest levels of political and corporate America to tear down the historic triangular New Deal Compromise, fashioned initially by F.D.R. in the depths of the 1930’s Depression. This New Deal Compromise made tangible government-led concessions to workers, such as the right to strike, and job security, while offering expanding labor peace to business in the process so laying the groundwork for a more or less amicable and mutually beneficial relationship among labor, government, and business that transformed the U.S. from struggle between bosses and workers to a more regularized «Labor-Management Relations». This Compromise grew out of concerns among some in elite circles about social turmoil during the Depression and about the success of militant organizing by the Congress of Industrial Organizations along with a resurgent Left. The New Deal Compromise represented the triumph of a concessionary oriented wing of thought, within the power-elite, that believed real concessions were essential in order to maintain the status quo even while altering it to some degree. Despite the hostility of the other power-elite circles, the New Deal Social Compromise mode of thought, while quite willing to employ direct repression, favored concessions is an inclusionary way to gain the allegiance of millions of working people. As Robert S. McElvaine notes, (The Great Depression, p. 252):

Many sophisticated business leaders, particularly some key figures in New York and leaders of relalively new businesses saw the New Deal as Roosevelt did as capitalism's savior, not its executioner.

10Simultaneously, the benefits to wide parts of the population, heretofore excluded from social services were of great significance. Bruce Seely («The Saga of American Infrastructure», The Wilson Quarterly, p. 32) observes that:

New Deal public works reached into every nook and cranny of the country. The PWA [Public Works Administration] alone sprinkled 35,000 projects across the landscape... Towns that had never seen a federal dollar profited from the New Deal largess. Wilton, Alabama, for example, received $30,909 from the WPW [Works Progress Administration] to build its first water supply System. The impact of these expenditures was enormous. For example: driven by the need to put people to work, the federal government now found itself engaged in fields where it never before had been involved. A listing of PWA projects includes many buildings (7,488 schools, 822 hospitals, and 4,287 other public buildings); 2,582 water Systems; 1,850 sewer Systems; 375 electric power projects, and 470flood control projects (p. 32).

11Moreover, 20 percent of PWA funds and at least a third of WPA funds went for wages; that is, directly into the pockets of the unemployed (p. 32). Those Concessionary advocates in elite circles such as Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins, who pushed such programs would undoubtedly have agreed with the Machiavelli of The Discourses who wrote, «he who has the public as a whole for his enemy can never make himself secure» (p. 155).

12This Concessionary wing of elite thought was consequently fully cognizant of what Antonio Gramsci called the difference between «domination» with its emphasis on repression, and exclusion of the marginal and «leadership» with its emphasis on significant compromise and concession that creates a more inclusionary society. The elite that aspires to lead, rather than dominate, says Gramsci, makes congruent its «interests and aspirations with the interests and aspirations of other groups» (Prison Notebooks, pp. 104-105). Of course the central aim of any such concessions is that of maintaining the basic status quo. Nor were concessions generally given altruistically or independent of wider political struggles. But under pressure from popular organizations, (e.g., the labor unions, the civil rights struggle, Chicano and Puerto Rican activism, the womens’movement) the Concessionary wing of elite thought responded from the 1930’s to the 1970’s, with New Deal descended compromises such as the Great Society «War on Poverty», that actually addressed at least some of the needs and demands of those who are pounding on the doors. Just to be safe, such concessions are always mixed with the potential for repression that could be, and was usually called on when militant responses appeared to threaten the status quo. Nonetheless, the Concessionary approach, and its particularly American New Deal formulation, is a basic strategy that is markedly different from that which depends on the primary use of brutal police power to make society work. Within the context of his analysis of Concessionary or «hegemonic» leadership, Gramsci also argued that the unique imperative of the power-elite in the U.S. involved, «the need to fuse together in a single national crucible...the different forms of culture imported by immigrants of differing national origins» (Prison Notebooks, p. 20). In this vein, McElvane (The Great Depression, pp. 279-280) notes that the New Deal Compromise was very alert to the need for concessions to be relatively broad and embracing of a range of people if it was to be successful. Consequently, it was built on a mobilization of sectors of «blacks, Jews, Catholics, women, intellectuals, and independent and Republican progressives», who joined with «labor and the traditional Democratic strength in city machines and the south» in precisely the form that Gramsci envisioned (Ibid, pp. 279-280). Of course this coalition was primarily achieved in the northern cities. F.D.R. and his advisors chose not to antagonize the powerful Southern white voting bloc and so acquiesced in the suppression of voting rights and political power among the majority of U.S. African-Americans who lived in that part of the country. This exclusion, and that of major sectors of the Mexican-American/Latino populations among others was to be the basis for later political struggles in the «sixties». Nonetheless, the working framework of a multi-ethnic/racial bloc that emphasized some degree of social planning, and a key role of government in progressive development, continued to be the dominant paradigm within which all politics including protest politics and radical action took place for several decades after World War II. Those who were excluded from its original formulation used the New Deal Compromise as a framework for demanding entry into the mainstream. Even those who derided this coalition as merely «reformist» and incapable of creating major structural change had to confront the New Deal framework and its heterogeneous bloc of advocates, as the political landscape on which they operated. Consequently, from the 1930’s well into the 1980’s, political strategies, whether reform oriented, Marxists, radical, black nationalist, or conservative revolved around the creating of positions vis-a-vis the New Deal.

13But from 1970 on, those in the power-elite (along with their willing anti-communist, anti-civil rights allies in the general public) who always considered the New Deal Compromise concessions as too much, and too dangerous; who held that to give «them an inch is to give them a mile», and that social programs were the road to communism, have ridden to ascendancy. These anti-New Deal Compromise political developments are the deliberate political face to the far-reaching techno-economic changes that are thrusting people out of the mainstream. They are basically designing the overt systemic structures for a vast Human Removal Project that is ejecting millions of people form the mainstream of U.S. society. This Human Removal Project is fundamentally anti-Concessionary in spirit and coercive in practice. The programmatic objectives of those involved in the design of this Human Removal System (e.g., reducing welfare, cutting job benefits, reducing job security, reducing job safety, gutting environmental regulation, eliminating protection from discrimination, undermining public education, increase the number of prisons, police, judges, etc.) are precisely to work in tandem with, rather than buffering citizens from the social consequences of a high-tech, global capitalist operation.

14Overall we can note three major aspects of the Human Removal Project.

151) Increasing high-tech automation means that even if manufacturing moved back to the U.S. and more plants were open there would still be no need for millions of workers. As Sidney Wilhelm noted in his significant 1970 work, Who Needs the Negro? «The Negro becomes useless to an emerging economy of automation. With the onset of automation the Negro moves out his historical State of oppression into one of uselessness [and] transforms from an exploited labor force into an outcast [one]» (p. 162).

16And later, Fusfield and Bates would note in 1984 (The Economics of the Ghetto, p. 125): «Industrial cities like Cleveland, Chicago, and Pittsburgh no longer provide the route to upward mobility via manufacturing employment for less-skilled workers. The massive losses of blue-collar manufacturing jobs in the 1970’s and 1980’s, interacting with local government fiscal difficulties are effectively reversing many of the employment gains captured by lacks in the 1960’s».

17Today, Wilhelm’s observations are even more salient, not only for a majority of Afro-Americans but for large numbers of other people, both in the U.S. and around the world. If we broaden this observation to the thousands of U.S. workers of all «races» who have been and are being impacted by these forces then we could easily retitle Wilhelm’s book to, Who Needs the Workers? For example, while the U.S. Steel industry has rebounded economically the number of workers it employs has dropped from almost 250,000 in 1983 to about 130,000 in 1992. As former Steel executive and Carnegie Mellon University professor Harry W. Paxton says, «the Steel industry is in pretty good shape for at least the next 5 to 10 years. They cut back on manpower, put in new equipment and did a whole bunch of things to improve on quality» (quoted in John Holusha, «Why American Steel is Big Again», New York Times, p. 10, July 20, 1994). As Paul Krugmand and Robert Z. Lawrence («Trade, Jobs, and Wages», Scientific American, pp. 44-45) note, «the fraction of U.S. workers employed in manufacturing has been declining steadily since 1950» while «only highly educated workers have seen their compensation rise the real earnings of blue-collar workers have fallen in most years since 1973». In simple but salient terms industrial/economic vitality of big business, as in the case of the Steel industry, is taking place at the expense of workers who are being cast aside, and at the expense of new generations who will never even have the opportunity for this type of work. So striking is this pattern that even the New York Times had to note on its front page that, «More and more, blue collar workers are facing the harsh truth that though the economy will no doubt corne back, their lost jobs are probably gone for good», (Steve Lohr, «Accepting the Harsh Truth of a Blue-Collar Recession», 25 December 1991).

182) As Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello show so well in Global Village vs. Global Pillage, that «world-leaping capitalist enterprises, while maintaining their national bases through headquarters operations (and so still being somewhat “American”) can and do with great efficiency move their production facilities to locations in which wages are kept low». As Brecher and Costello note, (p. 31) «Global cooperations have become the world’s most powerful economic actors» accompanied by «a loss of national economic control» over their activities. In the process they deprive U.S. workers of jobs. If they stay, they do so while hanging the threat of moving over the heads of workers and so are able to drive down wages here («shut up or we leave», is the approach).

193) Finally, but no less significantly, «in the domain of social policy and political decision-making, the old New Deal Compromise that provided a framework within which millions of people were increasingly included in economic growth and social development is systematically being dismantled through continuous attack». The strategy of the now dominant anti-New Deal part of the political class of the U.S. is to create policies that help industry to discard workers while shredding the social/economic security for millions. Whole communities of people in the inner cities are being written off as superfluous and expendable. Having written them off a major policy concern of many in government is how to keep these communities under control through more direct use of force and imprisonment. The role of «social policy» is especially significant when one compares the U.S. to other «western» nations such as the Scandinavian countries, France, Germany, and Canada to name but some. Whatever their weaknesses, these nations, confronted by the same issues of automation and capitalists mobility still provide an albeit decreasing cushion of support for their citizens (although debating who should be considered a citizen) that at least recognizes a New Deal-like sense of government responsibility to its citizenry, including those who lose their jobs because of major shifts in economic Systems. Even the New York Times («The Rich Get Richer», 18 April 1995, p. A16), felt compelled to editorialize that while changes «in the Canadian economy during the 1980’s also hit hard at lower wage workers» there, «the government stepped in to keep poverty rates on a downward path», while «in the United States, poverty rose». The policy aspect of the current situation is illuminated by figures showing the decline in Federal contributions to budgets of key cities as racial composition changed due to «white flight» from 1977 to 1985. For example in New York City, the white population dropped from 75.2% in 1970 to 38.4% in 1990. During this same time period Federal contributions to the city budget were reduced from 19% to 9%. In Los Angeles the population of which went from 78.3% white to 37.2% between 1970 and 1990 Federal contributions dropped from 18% to 2%. Similar radical cuts in tandem with the increasingly non-white population of the cities can be found in Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Boston, Cleveland, and Minneapolis. (U.S. census, Preston Niblack and Pet Stan «Financing Public Services in L.A.» in James Sternberg, et. al. Urban America). These patterns clearly show the role of conscious systematic policy decisions, made by political power dites, that are accelerating the impact of global capitalism at the local level.

20It is within this overall dismal context that inner city and rural communities often find themselves in a State of disintegration and despair. Youth are engaged in ever more lethal conflict, some of it related to the retail drug trade, much of it part of a culture of gang identity, loyalty, and a «code of the streets» that calls for revenge if one’s comrades are harmed by another group. The number of youth between the ages of 14 to 17 arrested increased from 4.1 thousand in 1950 to 131.8 thousand in 1990. The homicide rate for nonwhite males has more than doubled from 56 per 100,000 in 1985 to 109 per 100,000 in 1990 (Youth Indicators, 1993). Significantly, increased police Controls are in many cases aimed more at protecting other parts of society than of effectively reducing violence. Internally these communities are engaged in a kind of self-destruction as Latino youth kill Latino youth, African-American youth kill African-American youth, Asian youth kill Asian youth, and native youth kill native youth. Even as the Human Removal Project cuts back on social services and education, drugs, alcohol, and disease erode the physical and spiritual capacities of thousands. Those not killed on the Street begin the cycle of imprisonment that effectively removes them from whatever stable opportunities remain in their home areas. Meanwhile in the midst of fratricidal and sororocidal combat in the barrios and ghettos, there are signais of increasing conflict among racial/ethnic populations within these marginalized zones are increasing. Conflict between Asians, Latinos, and African-Americans in schools, prisons, and in the inner cities, while still relatively low intensity can potentially expand and explode. For youth growing up in families whose parents and grandparents have been outside the formai economy or the «economic mainstream» for decades, for whom schools are being let decay, this daily nightmare of despair, violence, and death is nothing less than what Orlando Patterson, referring to slavery, calls «social death». And yet the response of «more prisons» indicates that repressive reaction rather than proactive constructive developments are now in the forefront.

21So many in the U.S. face a dismal present and bleaker future. Even those who do not live in these settings will be negatively impacted by the decreasing quality of life and increased insecurity (no matter how many police, security guards, and guns under their beds). In the year 2000, hundreds of thousands of people in the inner cities and impoverished rural areas will never have had steady well-paying work with job security, and they will corne from families in which the parents, and grandparents never had such jobs. They will be inundated by and attracted to drug trade and drug use, by gang membership and violence as ways to deal with an alienating environment in a society that doesn’t give a damn about them other than to be scared of them. The tearing of the social fabric of these communities undcr external economic pressure and internai disarray; the violence of youth against each other; and increased conflict between racial groups will undermine efforts at forming alliances and organizations to grapple with these problems. Moreover, progressive political groups seem unable to comprehend that the New Deal Compromise is finished. Tactics and maneuvers that worked on the landscape of that Compromise, notably mass protests that produced positive conciliatory response, are no longer effective. For the anti-Concessionary «conservative» power-elites now in the ascendancy the response to such protests will at best be simply one of ignoring them, and at most one of more repression as writers such as Luis Rodriguez (Always Running, La Vida Loca) and Mike Davis (Urban Control and the Ecology of Fear) point out. One has only to contrast the lack of social programmatic response to the 1993 Los Angeles upheavals with the societal soul searching and program formation in response to the urban riots of the sixties. Consequently, new forms of strategy and action are needed. Strategies, such as that which Piven and Cloward had called for in Poor People's Movements, such as massive disruptions by «the poor» in order to put pressure on the power-elites will not have the hoped-for effect in a political environment that is quite ready to repress rather than be socially responsive. Consequently, we need greater emphasis on increasing structures of community self-sufficiency and autonomy in an era that sees the power-elites willing to throw millions on the wayside. Simultaneously, we must recognize that complete community is impossible. In this highly interdependent world with border-hoping economic elites amassing ever greater power, there is no possibility for even powerful nations to survive completely alone, let alone smaller communities inside nations. Clearly we need higher degrees of community economic and social self-defense that can armor people against some of the more brutal aspects of the new global economic order, along with greater numbers of alliances, partnerships, and coalitions among those communities both within the U.S. and across national borders.

The «Transcommunal Alternative» to Disaster

22«Transcommunal» interaction among diverse self-directed communities and organizations is absolutely vital in this dangerous political anti-Concessionary environment with its emphasis on Human Removal and repression. Transcommunality, with its dialogic emphasis on mutually respectful coordinated interaction across race, ethnic, and institutional Unes aimed at resolving common problems offers an important living framework that can be continually expanded to reach wider numbers of people.

23For example, despite the ascendency of anti-Concessionary conservatives, there is still an undercurrent of concern within some «liberal» i.e., Concessionary-oriented power-elite circles of society. Within these circles there remains evidence of the old New Deal concern that cutting off concessions, and emphasizing repressive measures is counter-productive to the maintenance of society. Some of those who hold these beliefs are potential connection points for grassroots groups pursuing social/economic justice agendas. Among those in the decision-making centers of power we can note Robert Reich, Clinton’s Secretary of Labor who in his book The Work of Nations warns of increasing income inequality. Similarly, Felix Rohytan, the influential financial guru of the New York City stock market, writes («What Became of My Democrats?» New York Times, p. A15, 31 May 1995) that he is a Democrat, a liberal, a believer in the New Deal and in government’s ability and duty to improve the well-being of its people. But he adds: we are about to see the most profound attempt to change the structure of our Government since the Confederacy. The push to send programs such as welfare and Medicaid back to the States is likely to be the start of the dismantling of a social safety net that had evolved since the Depression... By refusing to focus more heavily on public education, public investing, and public jobs, we are perpetuating an urban underclass that will combine with an educational proletariat, neither of which will have a real place in our society.

24And the generally conservative New York Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal criticized Republican ideology by writing, («American Class Struggle», New York Times, 21 March, 1995, p. A15), that «in 1932 President Roosevelt understood the danger of economic class struggle and moved to overcome it and save capitalisai. Left unrecognized or ignored, class struggle creates divisions that can undermine society, any society». And Louis Uchitelle writing in the New York Times («Recovery? Not in Your Paycheck», p. 6) advised that «Something is wrong with America’s economic boom. After nearly four years of ever-stronger growth people’s wages should be going up faster than their expenses. For most people they’re not». Such sentiments in a mainstream pro-business publication, as Phillipe Labarde points out, («Le capitalisme nu», Le Monde, 29 Déc. 1994, p. 8), indicate a major and disastrous gap between «economic growth» and the millions of workers being «left along the roadside» are worrying some in the economic dites in the United States as well as in other Western industrialized nations. While the Anti-concessionary wing of thought in the political classes is now clearly dominant, there are those who continue to assert the need to reach out to, and include people now being tossed aside. These fissures in decision-making dite junction-points can potentially be of use to grassroots organizations.

25There is also increasing evidence of Transcommunal activity within the labor movement that has the potential of linking up with other inner-city counterparts despite the battering that unions have faced in recent years. There are now innovative efforts to bridge the gap between grassroots community groups and unions are being attempted. As Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello point out in Building Bridges: The Community-Labor Coalition (p. 339), the multi-dimensional complexity of alliances between communities and organized labor in the United States are rarely located within a single social realm. They cut across the boundaries of workplace, economy, politics, and culture. Indeed, this is one of the reasons that the phenomenon of labor-community alignment as a whole has received so little attention. Consequently U.S. unions have become increasingly isolated from potential allies and increasingly limited to representing the work place (p. 11) interests of their own members. In contrast to this general tendency in many mainstream unions, Steve Early and Larry Cohn («Jobs With Justice: Building a Broad-Based Movement for Worker’s Rights», Social Policy, p.8) point to the nationwide Jobs With Justice (JWJ) network that brings together «labor and community activists engaged in coordinated campaigns for worker’s rights». They continue: «JWJ has developed a grassroots orientation and direct-action approach very different from that of so many “letterhead” organizations sponsored by unions in the past. The JWJ model of decentralized, bottom-up organizing represents an exciting alternative to traditional forms of cross-union activity».

26Similarly, the Southwest and Southeast Networks for Environmental and Economie Justice link a broad range of labor groups and communities around issues that span diverse settings from the work-place to the environment. Often these two networks find themselves the only means of labor organizing in Southeast and Southwestern localities in which unions no longer exist and strong pressures against labor dominate.

27Peter Kwong (Chinese Staff and Workers’Association [CSWA]: «A Model for Organizing in the Changing Economy», Social Policy), describes the successful CSWA in New York as «a community-based organization» that is «better able to deal with» the situation of low-paid immigrant garment workers who have no union protection. As Kwong points out, the immigrant and ethnic/racial status of these workers makes them particularly vulnerable. When workers at the Wai Chang Fashions, Inc company demonstrated against their harsh conditions of work, «the owners threatened to report their undocumented status to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The bosses even invoked the name of Chinatown underworld figures to intimidate the workers» (p. 30). When the workers «nudged the New York State Labor Department and the ILGWU (International Lady Garment Workers Union) local to get on with the case», the investigations went slowly and then no further. As Kwong notes, «Under the present casualized labor conditions, a community-based organization like the Chinese Staff and Workers Association, with bilingual skills and community ties, is better able to deal with this kind of situation than a traditional bureaucratized union» (pp. 31-32). «Such small, flexible organizations... that are close to the people, culturally sensitive, and internationally connected may present one model for revitalizing labor movement in the U.S.» (p. 37).

28Meanwhile on the mean streets of the Barrios and Inner Cities important efforts are being made to address the violence and the economic crisis. One of the most important and growing examples of inner city Transcommunality is the community revitalization organization Barrios Unidos, (United Neighborhoods) which has 20 chapters in California, Texas, and Washington, D.C. and is still growing. Barrios Unidos has the central task of ending the spiraling violence among youth in the barrios. At one level, Barrios Unidos is primarily a Chicano organization with deep roots in the culture of Mexican-Americans. As a member of the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz chapter of Barrios Unidos I have had considerable opportunity to learn from my participation with this Transcommunal organization.

29The «madness of violence» which Barrios Unidos faces among youth organized into different «nations» or «gangs» entails the source of fear, despair, and disruption of the social fabric of thousands. As a direct resuit of violence, thousands of young people, most of them males are now, have been, and will be imprisoned. The loss to the communities of these young lives both through death and imprisonment is profound. Combined with the increasing availability of ever more lethal weapons, and lure of the drug trade, the violence associated with organized groups is expanding at exponential rates. The ages of youth involved gets increasingly lower. As more children under the age of 15 become involved in cycles of violence the prospect for the future is as one young man with whom I talked on the Street, said will resuit in «a blood bath». And of course, all of this is occurring in the overall political-economic environment, already described, in which huge areas of the country are essentially being written off and out of the «American Dream».

30In addition to the «madness of the violence» Barrios Unidos confronts a difficult and complex array of compartmentalized allegiances that both tie people together, and pull them apart through hostility. Within the California Chicano population major divisions between Nortenos (Northerners) and Surenos (Southerners) ramify out into a constantly changing and intricate array of sub-groups, alliances, and battles. This is complex enough. But added to this picture are different ethnic racial groups including Central American, African-American, Samoan, Southeast Asian. Some hostilities occur along these lines, so that violence is both an inter and intra-group dilemma that impacts a wide range of communities in California (and elsewhere in the country and around the world). Even small, predominantly Chicano California communities such as Salinas and Watsonville are facing conflict among their youth who split along South vs. North lines as well as other more complicated and fluid forms of identity. Clearly the problems are not confined to large cities but range across a wide diversity of communities. In other areas such as Long Beach, California conflict between Latino and Southeast Asian youth left 30 youth dead in one year (some of them innocent bystanders, all of them children). Meanwhile, at the time of this writing, African-American vs. Chicano hostilities are escalating in some parts of Southern California.

31A major problem facing Barrios Unidos then is how to grapple with the dynamic multi-ethnic/racial complexity of the «madness». As a largely Chicano organization, and given that Chicanos make up the largest ethnie group in California, Barrios Unidos focuses its attention on the unity of the group, «La Raza», and works to actualize racial-cultural unity among youth that will undercut and overcome the hostile divisions of differing «colors» and allegiances. In emphasizing the unity of La Raza, Barrios Unidos calls upon powerful historic and cultural dimensions such as their indigenous roots in the native peoples of California, the Southwest, and Mexico as well as the social movement inspiration of the United Farm Workers. In this sense, Barrios Unidos celebrates its distinctive rootedness in Chicano culture and history as a positive unifying counterweight to the divisions slashing across so many communities.

32But this emphasis on Chicano identity is not a closed-system approach in which Barrios Unidos cuts itself off from other groups in California and the United States. To the contrary, Barrios Unidos espouses a Transcommunal openness to a range of allies that is both pragmatic, task-focused, and visionary. These Transcommuai aspects constitute some of the many distinctively constructive features of this organization that consistently reaches out to other racial/ethnic communities even while it emphasizes its Chicano identity. Barrios Unidos works very closely with African-American anti-violence activists such as Los Angeles based Fred Williams and the Rev. James Lawson, and with the Black Community Awareness Development Organization along with other African-American religious leaders such as the Rev. Mac Charles Jones of St. Stephen Baptist Church in Kansas City, and Garylord Thomas of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and white church leaders such as the Rev. Sam Mann from Kansas City, and Rev. Jim Wallis of the progressive evangelical Protestant group, Sojourners, all of whom play key positive roles in struggle for community and against violence.

33In 1993 Barrios Unidos was one of the key organizations in the creation of the National Urban Peace and Justice («Gang Truce») Summit held in Kansas City. I attended this meeting and witnessed a range of «gang» members, community activists, and spiritual leaders from Latino, African-American, and Indigenous backgrounds charting new ground as they crossed over gang, ethnic, and racial lines aroung the common goal of creating peace on the Street (for a discussion of this Summit see, J.B. Childs, «Identity Politics and the Kansas City “Gang Truce” Summit», Z Magazine). The Summit brought together representatives of some of the largest urban nations or «gangs» including the Black Disciples, Black Souls, Bloods, Crips, Cobras, Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings, El Rukhyns, Stones, and Conservative Vice Lords as well as Nortenos and Surenos who worked in concert with each other, and with community activists. Without their positive involvement the Summit, dedicated to the memory of the non-violence advocate, United Farm Worker President Cesar Chavez, and aimed at creating peace, would have been meaningless. As Sharif Willis, Minister of Justice for the Conservative Vice Lords noted, «Anytime you bring together those whom society has defined as incorrigible you have accomplished something». The final call of the Summit was for an activist peace that stops the violence while improving conditions. Participants from different, sometimes historically hostile organizations, enhance developed positive relations around the shared goals of urban peace, justice, and opportunity. «Racism», said one gang member, «has pulled us apart». As Fred Willliams noted, «this country has never had young African-Americans and Hispanics come together on the premise that we are not here to shoot each other. Our destinies are tied together». And Marion Stampes, of the pro-peace Tranquillity-Marksman Community Organization in the tough Chicago Cabrini-Green housing project later remarked in an interview with Sojourners Magazine that, «the summit signified the reunification of the black poor and oppressed communities». Daniel Nane Alejandrez, a key founder and Executive Director of Barrios Unidos, noted that the Summit was producing an enhanced «network of individuals and relationships that will take the message back to the ghettos and barrios». The Summit was a major step contributing to the nationwide expansion of Transcommunal action aimed al urban peace and justice. But this gathering was made possible by activating Transcommunal networks and inclinations from communities to prisons and from churches to grassroots groups in a variety of African-American and Latino areas. In this activation, Barrios Unidos, already being tied to a wide range of groups, played a key role.

34Barrios Unidos learned a great deal from the Summit and continues to expand its networks with a range of other grassroots community groups, and with allies in a variety of mainstream institutions. There are several significant points to the involvement of Barrios Unidos in the Kansas City Summit and in the Chicano gatherings of similar purpose. The Kansas City Summit was but one concrete expression of the way in which Barrios Unidos reaches out in tangible ways to work with African-American and other racial/ethnic populations. This reaching out is connected to both the vision and the pragmatic task-oriented focus on Barrios Unidos. The vision of the organization is that of massive cultural re-orientation and community revitalization in which the barrios will be places of economic opportunity, social justice, and well-being. The ending violence is crucial to such revitalization. But it is the revitalization that is fundamental. In this sense, Barrios Unidos, although it has a prominent focus on the ending of corrosive youth violence, is not a single-issue organization. Violence is seen as arising from the broader social/economic conditions of unemployment, economic marginalization, and racial oppression. Consequently, given the multifaceted sources of youth violence it is vital that a range of methods be employed. So, Barrios Unidos, in addition to its direct intervention with youth on the Street, also offers programs that relate to economic development, community self-sufficiency, technology, and culture. The «gangs» (or «tribes» «cliques», «sets», and «nations» as the youth call them) are not denigrated by Barrios Unidos. Rather they are recognized as expressions of the hopelessness and pain that those cast off by the social/economic Systems feel. Hence the importance for Barrios Unidos of providing a multi-dimensional community approach to youth that will provide a kind of buffered zone within which development of the human spirit of cast-off youth can proceed. The «gangs» are «the more negative expressions» of grassroots struggles of people confronting social/economic disaster. Barrios Unidos clearly recognizes these fundamental features and this recognition in turn leads to a pragmatic willingness to work across race, ethnie, and class lines with those who are moving on parallel tracks in the same general direction. For Barrios Unidos it is clear that violence is not simply a Chicano problem but rather is eroding a wide variety of communities among other populations. By the same token violence is not simply an African-American or Southeast Asian problem. All of these populations groups face the common crisis of violence which in turn is linked to the systemic features of the post-industrial period we are now in. Consequently, from the perspective of Barrios Unidos the internai development of strong viable Chicano communities is directly tied to the necessity of developing constructive relationships with those fighting the same problems in other, often nearby communities.

35As a Transcommunal organization, Barrios Unidos is rooted in and proud of its historic and cultural roots, identities while simultaneously it is dedicated to broad principles of social justice, peace, and equality. And these principles in turn are related to ways in which Barrios Unidos develops actual working relationships with African-American, and other non-Chicano organizations who are fighting within the same setting for many of the same issues. In classic Transcommunal fashion, developing these cross-group relationships depends on establishment of interpersonal relationships of trust and mutual respect with a variety of people. The activists of Barrios Unidos form relationships and friendships based on what people do, not just what they say. Mutual respect across group lines develops through increasing trust and people «corne through in the crunch», and demonstrate their reliability and dedication through personal integrity. The broad Transcommunal networking in which Barrios Unidos engages is infused with the living relations of trust and friendship. Concomitantly, these interpersonal aspects are also tied to the overriding principles of ending violence and creating a just and viable society.

36Structurally Barrios Unidos emphasizes a Transcommunally horizontal rather than a steeply inclined authoritarian style of organization. The Santa Cruz chapter is the flagship group, acting as clearing-house and resource center for the other chapters, but it is not a headquarters that issues «orders» to other chapters. Rather the task is one more of sowing the Barrios Unidos seeds in a variety of different settings. It is recognized that different environments will produce different results. So, each chapter is independent, developing in response to the particular needs of its own location. But no chapter is isolated. Through the overall organization of Barrios Unidos, resources, encouragement, support, and advice can flow from one chapter to another. So there is both a high degree of autonomy and coordination among the different units. And always the emphasis is on leading by example rather than by dictate or decree. As Barrios Unidos works across group lines, both those of the «gangs» and those of «ethnic/racial» populations, it offers a positive and successful example of Transcommunality in action. Barrios Unidos does not demand that all in the Chicano population follow this approach. Simultaneously, Barrios Unidos by working Transcommunaly with African-American and other activists offers a tangible point of reference for people in those communities to point to a constructive example of cross-group cooperation. Barrios Unidos is a crucial grassroots development and an essential positive force that can both emphasize the significance of distinctive cultural identity and broadly encompassing unity among diverse peoples in a time of profound national social crisis.

37In sum, the problem is not a lack of Transcommunal organization in the inner cities and elsewhere. Rather it is the necessity of expanding constructive relationships among these many diverse community rooted, organizational efforts with each other, and with allies in other social/institutional settings. Such interaction must involve mutual respect of their distinctive objectives, while encouraging coordination that provides an overall strengthening of all these efforts. In short, the issue is one of creating Transcommunal «coordination between different communities and organizations with diverse objectives, drawing from past and on-going examples. In many instances members of groups focused on particular objectives have overlapping secondary relations with other groups in other zones. Consequently, we must recognize the existence of these multi-faceted Transcommunal links that already exist. We are not dealing here with a Utopian necessity of creating Transcommunal links from scratch. Rather we are in position to learn from and work with those who already engage in such interaction. A general lack of awareness of this Transcommunality makes many of us miss their significance and implications for progressive political development. To learn from what grassroots activists have accomplished will require paying attention to their work, something which most academic researchers and journalists are not yet doing. The substantial issue is one of expanding the already extant Transcommunality at the grassroots. While the level of cross-organizational interaction is impressive, even larger networks can potentially be created in which the Transcommunal features of interpersonal relations, autonomy, coordination, Shared Practical Action occur in ever widening circles of mutual awareness and respect.

Sketch for a 21st Century Transcommunal Social Compact Barrios Unidos, Steel Valley Authority

38The Transcommunal tendencies that I see in Barrios Unidos among other organizations represent, at least in embryonic form, what could become a grassroots based Social Compact in the United States, and with links to parallel developments elsewhere. Barrios Unidos in particular offers an important positive example of an intermediary level of what I would like to call the 21st Century Transcommunal New Deal. This Transcommunal New Deal contains certain key elements of the «Old New Deal» fashioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his advisors to meet the social/economic stress of the 1930’s Depression. In particular the emphasis on meaningful employaient that has mutual benefit to the wider society (e.g., Civilian Conservation Corps), a focus on cultural development with support for the arts, and the belief that government does have a significant role to play in problems of national and global scope. Simultaneously the Transcommunal New Deal, the sketch of which I see in Barrios Unidos is quite different from F.D.R.’s blueprint. First and foremost, Barrios Unidos is a grassroots organization with its own clear community-based agenda. Its development of approaches that emphasize dimensions such as economic development, meaningful work, and cultural creativity corne from its location in inner city communities, not from the Federal Government. The Old New Deal was obviously a top-down structure, fashioned by liberal or «concession oriented» elites (see Commentary One) for the primary purpose of maintaining the status quo by changing the status quo. By contrast, the complex weaving of various elements into an overall strategic approach by Barrios Unidos cornes from within this Barrios-based organization and is designed to radically alter the inner city status quo of violence, despair, and economic harshness.

39Of particular importance is this weaving of different social/institutional elements by Barrios Unidos. Using their own self-created agenda, grounded in their actual community experience and knowledge, Barrios Unidos, with its Transcommunally pragmatic and open-systems approach reaches out to a wide variety of allies. These various degrees and levels of interpersonal relationships, mutual trust and respect, and actual organizational ties pull together an impressively wide range of different racial/ethnic, and institutional settings and activists. In this sense, Barrios Unidos is creating a type of social clustering somewhat similar to the New Deal, which pulled people from different races and regions together in a common effort, albeit with real and important limitations. The fact that Barrios Unidos has been able to weave together these different strands is all the more impressive when one considers that the President of the United States in the 1930’s had tremendous institutional power and resources at his disposai, and the capacity to reward people with real benefits. Barrios Unidos does not have access to those degree of resources, but it has nonetheless fashioned a wide-ranging social compact that links people, many of whom would not otherwise by working in concert. If one imagines the Barrios Unidos outline expanded on a national scale we can see such an expanded format as precisely the type of Transcommunal New Deal with which I am concerned here. However, even with all its breadth and diversity Barrios Unidos cannot and should not have to cover all the bases of all the social issues in the country. It does have its own distinctive agenda that must serve as a center of gravity for clustering diverse domains together and this agenda cannot be watered down by trying to do too many different core issues. Consequently, any enhancement of activities such as that of Barrios Unidos will, I believe, require expanded coordination across ethnic/racial and zonal Unes in order to link already growing, locally rooted, intermediary level Transcommunal forms of organization with each other.

40For example, I can imagine a possible connection between Barrios Unidos and ils constellation of allies with what at first glance seems a very different type of organization, «the Steel Valley Authority». The Steel Valley Authority was organized by and on behalf of dismissed Steel workers who lost their jobs due to plant shutdowns and company «restructuring» in a variety of locations including Pittsburgh. Its primary objective is that of putting workers back to work and in taking community control of the point-of-production through ownership of their own factories. This goal is quite distinct from that of ending violence in the streets. Nonetheless, there are some important potential links between these two thematic zones. First, albeit with differing degrees of emphasis, both organizations are concerned with issues of providing meaningful work to people now excluded from the «economic mainstream». And both organizations tend toward forms of community control over employment generating structures. Barrios Unidos emphasizes a silk-screening product line that provides skills to youth while providing income to the organization thus contributing to its autonomy. On a larger scale the Steel Valley Authority works to develop worker-owned Steel mills that also provide skills, while pumping money back into the community. And both organizations have a constellation of allies who operate in different institutional settings. Both work with churches, including African-American churches. Both reach out to local (rather than global capitalist) social structures, such as chambers of commerce, local elected officiais, and to sympathetic figures in the appointed and elected domains of national government. And both organizations emphasize a pragmatic focus that brings people together around specific task-focused issues thus creating senses of identity through Shared Practical Action. Although the Steel Valley Authority is not directly concerned with ending Street violence, its focus on creating meaningful community-based work, does coincide with that of Barrios Unidos’interests in community economic self-development for the making of meaningful employment for youth. So, thematically there is actually some not insignificant overlap in certain aspects of both organizations’agendas, no matter how different they might be in other ways.

41What is lacking is any direct contact. The lack of contact is not surprising since, as we have seen, cross-zonal interaction (e.g. violence-reduction and steel-mill worker ownership) is uncommon. The problem is not an absolute gap of difference. Rather it is one of lacking any direct dialogue among these two groups. Given their parallel concerns in some areas, an exchange program that brought members together for a significant period of time might prove an important first-step toward more tangible forms of mutual support. Such mutual support, in the true Transcommunal sense, would have the capacity for being both engaged and disengaged at different moments. That is, this dialogue would not require constant interaction. But, the lessons learned from both groups could on occasion lead to growing interpersonal relationships that would cross racial/ethnic and zonal Unes. It is precisely this type of growing interaction that is necessary if the locally rooted Transcommunal networks are to expand from their roots while holding onto the strengths that their own particular agendas and situations give to them. Something as simple as a grassroots community organization exchange program, may seem like a small step. But such efforts will be an important, and to date, largely unused method of drawing from the rooted strengths of different groups while enhancing interaction. Importantly, organizations such as Barrios Unidos and the Steel Valley Authority have woven together their constellation of allies. Consequently, any dialogue between these two groups would also entail a myriad of other individuals and groups throughout the institutional landscape of U.S. society and world-wide. The overall effect of such cross-zonal Transcommunal interaction would thus go beyond that of simply a new relationship between two organizations. It would also interweave a diverse range of other activists as well. It is such «constellational interweaving», which once set in motion, will create a growing Transcommunal grassroots Social Compact, negotiated from a wide range of vantage points in increasing dialogue with one another as we move into the 21st century. This Transcommunal Social Compact, grounded in the realities and agendas of grassroots groups, yet expansive and ever more open to cooperation with a wide range of people, is, I believe, an important foundation for a new upsurge of social justice activism in the first two decades of the 21st century.

Conclusion

42The organizational bases now in operation allow us to be poised for the creation of a 21 st Century «Transcommunal Social Compact» that will replace the weakened New Deal arrangements that held sway for some forty years. The Transcommunal Social Compact will contain key elements of the New Deal arrangement that provided for nation-wide programmatic approaches to unemployment, education, and development. But it does, and will, differ from the New Deal because it originales from the grassroots and is being fundamentally shaped by the concerns, the knowledge, and the outlook of those who are struggling on the «front-lines» of poverty, despair, and violence. The Transcommunal Social Compact will be democracy from below, rather than programs from above, even while it works in partnership with those allies inside mainstream institutions and the Concessionary wing of the power-elite, as well as with labor allies. In this Transcommunal Social Compact, grassroots organizations are maintaining and will maintain their autonomy and community-based objectives and outlooks, but will avoid isolation into a compartmentalized form of «self-help» insofar as they develop overall strategies of expanding political power through constructive interaction with diverse sectors of society. As James Jennings notes, (Race, Politics, and Economic Development, p. 3) «Black self-help economic and social initiatives» are directly related to «level of [their] political power». And, from a Transcommunhal perspective such political power requires everexpanding networks of alliances across a multitude of community and institutional lines.

43The building of this complex respectful partnership involving Transcommunal dialogue between among diverse community groups, and a variety of allies in the mainstream institutions is a fondamental departure from the notion that the barrios and ghettoes are disorganized and need to be guided every step of the way by external leaders and government. But at the same time, this partnership model recognizes that the problems are immense and that they are not confined to any one community. Cocaine and heroin are not produced in the South Bronx and South Central L.A. any more than guns are manufactured in South Side Chicago or Roxbury Boston. Nor are the political/economic decisions that so devastatingly impact many communities being made in them. So self-determination by grassroots groups in the 21st century is vital but it cannot be carried out in isolation from partnerships with those sectors of the society that are willing to work with strong highly autonomous operations emerging out of the streets, the fields, the hills, and the reservations. The ancient Chinese character for crisis contains two words, «danger» and «opportunity». We are already being swept up in the crisis erupting from the undermining of the New Deal Compromise. But this crisis is producing a wide range of significant positive and pragmatic community organizational developments. The race against disaster is now underway. It is, as Barrios Unidos director Daniel «Nane» Alejandrez says, «a long distance run» that is, and will be filled with many setbacks, twists, and turns. And Alejandrez adds, «pessimism is a luxury we cannot afford». There is no choice but to push forward together, drawing strength from the organization advances being made by a wide range of diverse grassroots groups, as we run in this high-stakes race against disaster, and toward the goals of justice, equality, and peace.