211.-political-logic-of-the-npic.pdf
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»bylan Rodnguez

the political logic of the non-profit industrial complex

PERHAPS NEVER BEFORE HAS THE STRUGGLE TO MOUNT VIABLE
movements of radical sucial transformation iu the United States deen more des-
perate. urgent, or difficult. In theaftermath of the 1960s mass-movement ea, the
edifices of state repression have themselves urdergone substantive transformé-
tion, even asclassical techniques of politically formed state violence—colonization
and protocolonial occupation, racist policing, assassination, political and mass-
based imprisonment—remain feirly constant in the US production of global
order. Here, I am specifical'y concerned with the emergence of the US prison
industrial complex (PIC) and its relationship to the non profit industrial com-
plex (NPIC), the industrialized incorporation cf pro-state liberal and progressive
‘campaigns and movements into a spectrum of government-froctored non profit
‘organizations. In my view, these overlapping developinents—the tise ofa racially
constituted prison regime unprecedented in scale, and the almost simultaneous
structural consolidation of anon-proit industrial complex—have exerted a form
and conteat to US-based resistance struggles which enmeshes them In thesocial
arrangement that political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal names an “industry of
fear” In a 1998 correspondence to the 3,000-plus participants in the conference
Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Incustrial Complex, he writes,







Americans live in a cavern of fear, a psychic, numbing force manufactured
by the so-called entertainment industry, reifed by the psychological indus-
try, and buttressed ty the coercion industry ‘i,, the courts, police, prisons,
‘nd the like). Tae social peychology of Amerca is being fed by a media that
threatens cll with an army of psychopathic, deviant, sadistic madmen bent on
ravishing a helpless, prone citizenry, The state's cosreive apparatus of “public
safety” is erected as < needed protective counter-peint?









| wish to pay special attention to Abu-Jamal’s illustration of the social fabri-
cation of fear as a necessary political and cultural condition for the rise of the US
non-profit industrial complex, which has, n turn, enabled and complemented the
massive institutional prnduction of the US prison industrial complex. As under-
standit, the NPIC is the set of symbictic relationships that link together political
HE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE FUNDED

and financial technologies of stats and owning-class proctorship and surveil-
larce over public political intercourse, including and especially emergent
progressiveand leftist social movements, since about the mid-1970s. Aba-Jamal’s
“cavern of fear” illurnina’es the repressive and popular broaély récist common
sense that both kaunts and constitutes the political imagiration of many con:em-
porary progressive, radical, and even self-professed “revolutionary” social change
activists. Why, in other words, does the political imagination of the US a0n-
profit and nongovernmental organization (NGO)~cnabled Left generally refuse
to emb:ace the urgent and incomplete historical work of a radical counter-state,
anti-white supremacist, prison/peral/slave abolitionist movement? Lam especially
concerned with how the political assimilation of the non-profit sector into the
progressive dreams of a “democratic” globil civil society (the broad premise of,
the liberal-progressive antiglobalization movement) already presumes (and
therefore fortfies) existing structures of social liquidation, including biological
and social death. Does Abu-Jamal’s “cavern of fear" also echo the durable his-
torical racial phobias of the US social order generally? Does the specter of an
authentic radical freedom no longer structured by the assumptions underlying
Ue historical “fizedons” invested in white American political identity—including
the perversions and mystifications of such concepts as “democracy, “civil rights,”
“the vote,” and even “equality’—logically suggest the end of white civil society,
‘which :s to say a collapsing of the very sociocultural foundations of the United
States iself? Perhapsit is*he fear of a radically transformed. feminist/queer/anti-
racist liberation of Black, Brown, ané Red bodies, no longer presumed 10 be
permanently subordinated to structures of criminalization, colonization, (state
and state-ordained) bodily violence, and domestic warfate, that logically threat-
ens the very existence of the sill white-dominast US Left: pechaps it is, in part,
the Left's fear of an unlesshed bodily proximity to currently criminalized, colo-
nized, and normatively violated peoples that compels it to retain the staunchly
anti-abolitionist political limits of the NPIC. ‘The persistence of such a racial
fear—in effect, the fear of a radical freedom that obliterates the cultural and
‘material ascendancy of “white freedom”—Is neither aew nor unusaal ia the his-
tory of the US Left. We are inveking, after all, the vision of a movement of
liberation taat abolishes (and transforms) the cultural, economic. and political
structures of a white civil society that continues to largely define the terms, lan-
‘guages, and limits of US-based progressive (and even “radical”) campaigns,
political discourses, and local’global movernents,

‘This polemical essay attempts ‘o dislodge some of the theoretical and opera~
ioual assumptions underlying the glut of foundation-funded “establishment
Left” organizations in the United States. The Left's investment in the essential
palitical logic of civil society—specifically, the inherent legitimacy of racist state








‘The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industral Complex

violence in upholding a white freedom, sccial “peace,” and “law and orde:” that
is fundamentally designed to maintain brutal inequalities in the putative free
world—is symbiotic with (and not oppositional to} the policing and incarcera-
tion of marginalized, racially pathologized communities, 2s well as the state’s
ongoing absorption of organized dissent through the non-profit structure. While
this alleged Left frequently considers ts array of incorporated, “legitimate” orgs-
rrizations and institutions as the fortified bulwark of a progressive “social justice”



crientation in civil society, I am concerned with the ways in which the broad
assimilation 0° such organizations into a non-profit industrial complex actually
‘enables more vicious forms of stte repression.

the velvet purse of state repression

Ik may be appropriate to initiate this discassieu with a critical reflecsion on the
accelerated incorporation of progressive socia: change strugglesinto a structure
of state accreditation and owning-class surveillance since the 1970s. Robert L.
Allen's classic book Black Awakening in Capitalist America was among the first
‘works to offer a sustained political analysis of how liberal white ph'lanthropic
“organizations—including the Rockefeller, Ford, and Mellon foundations—facil-
itated the violent state repression of radical and revolutionsry «lements with:n
the Black liberation movements of the late 1960s and early 70s, Allen argues
that it was precisely because of philanthropy’s overtures toward the movement's
more moderate and explicitly reformist elements—especially those acvocet-
ing versions of “Black capitalism” and ‘political selfdetetmination” through
participation in electoral politics—that radical Black liberationists and revol4:
tionaries were more easily criminalized and liquicated. Allen's acccunt, which
appears in this collection, proves instructive for a current critique of the state-
corporate alliance that keeps the lid on what is leftof Black liberationist politics,
along with the cohort of radical struggles encompassec by what was once called
the US “Third World” Left. Perhaps as important, Allen’s analysis may provide
8 critical analytical framework through which to understand the problem of
white ascendancy and liberal white supremacy within the dominant spheres of
the NPIC, which has become virtually synonymous with the broader political
category of a US Left

“The massive repression of the Black, Netive American, Puerto Rican, and other
US-based Third World liberation movements daring and beyend the 1960s and 70s
was founded cn a coalescence of official and ilicit/legal forms of sate ad state-
sanctioned violence: police-led racist violerce (including ‘alse imprisonment, home
invasions, assessinations, and political harassment), white civilian reaction ‘lynch-
ings, vigilante movements, new electoral blocs, and a complementary surge of


‘THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE FUNDED

white nationalist organizations), and the proliferation of racially formed (and
racially executed) juridical measutes to criminalize and imprison entire popula-
tions of poor and working class Black, Brown, and Indigenovs people has
bbeen—and continues to be—a fundamental legacy of thisera, Responding to the
liberation-movement era momentary disruption of a naturalized American
apartheid and taken-for-granted domestic colonialism, a new coalition of prom-
‘nent owning-class white philantaropists, lawmakers, state bureaucrats, focal
and federal police, and ordinary white civilians (from across the already delim-
ited US polirical spectrum of “liberal” to “conservative”) scrambled to restore the
coherence and stability of white civil scciety inthe midst ofa fundamental chal-
lenge from activists ard radical movernent intellectuals who cavisioned
substantive transformation in the very foundations of US “society” itself. One
‘outcome of this movement toward “White Reconstruction” was the invention,
development, and refinement of repressive policing technologies across the local
and feceral scales, a labor that encompassed a wide variety af organizing and
deployment strategies. The notoricus Counterintelligence Program (COINTEL-
PRO) of J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) remains the
‘mest historically prominent incident of the undeclared warlare waged by the
state against domestic populations, insurrections, and suspected revolutionaries.
But the spectacle of Hooverite repression cbscures the broader—and far more
Important—convergence of stale anc capitalist/philanthropie forces in the
absorption of progressive social change struggles that defined this era and its
currentlegacies.

During this era, US civil soctety—encompassing the private sector, non-profit
organizations and NGOs, faith commurities the mass media and itseansumers—
partnered with the law-aad-order state through the reactionery white populist
sentimental ty enlivened by the respective presidential campaigns of Republican
Party presidential nominees Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, ItwasGoldwa
ter’ eloquert articulation of the meaning of “freedom,” defined against a racially
coded (though nonetheless transparent) imagery of oncoming “mob” rule and
turban “jungle” savagery, poised to liquidate white social existence, that carsied
his message into popular -urrency. Goldwater’ political and cultural conviction
‘was to defend white civil society from its racial'y depicted aggressors—a white
supremacist discourse of self-defense that remains a central facet of the US state
and US political life generally. Thongh his hid for the presidency failed, Gold
‘water's message succeeded as the catalyst for the imraineat movement of White
Reconstruction in the aftermath of US apartheid’s nominal disestablishment, and
in the face of liberal reformist charges to US civil rignts law. Accepting the 1964
Republican >residential nomiration, Goldwater famously pronounced,
‘The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industral Cuanplex

‘Tonight there is violence in cur streets corruption in our highest offices,
aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our elders and there is a
‘ual despair among the many who look beyond material success forthe inner
meaning of their livs....Security ftom domestic violence, no less thar: from
foreign aggression, isthe most elementary and fundamental purpose of any
‘government, and a government thateansot fulfil that purposs is one that ean~
not long command the loyalty ofits citizens. History shows u:—demonstrates
that nothing—xothing prepares the way for tyranty more than the failure of
public officials to keep the streets from bulliesand marauders.”





On the one hand. the subsequent exponential growth of the US policing appara-
tas closely followed the white populist political schema of the Goldwater-Nixon
law-and-order bloc Law and order was essentially “he harbinger of White
Reconstruction, mobilizing an apparctus of state violence to protect and recuper-
ate the vindicated white national body from the allegedly imminent aggressions
and violations of its racial Others. White civil soc‘ety, accustomed to generally
Lnilaieraland exclusiveaccessto the cultural, conomic,and political capital nec
‘essary for individual and ccllectve self-determination, encountered reflections
cf its own undoing at this moment. The politics ef law and order thus signiti-
cantly encompassed white supremacist desire for survsiling, policing, caging,
and (oreemptively) socially liquidating those who embodied the gatheringstorm
of dissidence—organized and disarticulated, radical and pretopelitical

Inthishistorical cortext, COIN TELPRO s illegal and unconstitutional abuses
of state power, unabashed use of strategic and deadly vialence, and development
of invasive, terrorizing surveillance technclogies might be seen as paradigmatic of
the contemporary era's revivified white supremacist hegemony. Contrary to the
widespread assumptior, that COINTELPRO was somehow excessive, episodic,
and extraordinary in its deployment of (formally illegal ard unconstitutional)
state violence, J. Edgar Hoover's venerated racist-state strategy simply rellected
the Imperative of white civil suciety’s impulse toward self.preservation in this
moment. ' Elaborating the white populist vision of Goldwater and bis political
descendants, the consolidation of this white nationalis: bloc—which eventually
incorporated “liberals” as well as reactionaries and conservatives—was simply
the political consolidation of a white civil society that had momentarily strolled
‘with the specter ofits own incoherence.

Goldwater's epoch-shaping presidential campaign in 1964 set up the political
premises and popular racial vernacular for much of what followed in the resto-
ration of white civil society in the 1970s and later. In significant pert through
the reorganization of a US siate that strategically mobilized arouad an internally
‘complex, substantively dynemic white supremacist conception of “security from
domestic violence.” the “law and order” state has ma:erialized on :he ground






‘THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE FUNDED

and has gencrated a popular consensus around ils odes of dominance: puni-
tive racist criminal justice, paramilitary policing, and straiegically deployed
domestic warfare regimes have become an American way of life. This popalar-
‘zed and institutionalized “law and order” state has built this popular consensus
in part through a symbiosis with the non-proit liberal foundation structure,
which, in tarn, has helped collapse various sites of potentia. political radical-
ism into nonantagonistic social service and pro-state reformist initiatives. Vast
expenditures of state capacity, from police expansion te school militarization,
and the multiplication of state-formed popular cultural procuctions (from the
virtual universalization of the “tough on crime” eectoral campaign message
to the explesion of pro-palice discourses in Hollywood film, ‘elevision dramas,
and popular “reality” shows) have conveyed several overlapping political mes-
‘sages, which have accomplished several mutually reinforcing tasks of the White
Reconstruc:ionist agenda thatare relevant to ous discussion here: I) the staunch
<criminalization of perticular political practices embodied by radical and other-
wise critically “disseating” activists, intellectuals, and ordinary people of calor;
this iso say, when racially pethologized bodies take on political activities criti-
cal of US state violence (say, normalized police brutality/homicide, militarized
misogyny, or colonialist occupation) cr attemp: to dislodge the presumed sta-
bility and “peace” of white civil society (through militant antiracist organizing
or progressive anti-(state) racial violerice campaigns), they are subjected to the
enormous weight ofastateandeulturalapparatusthatdefines them as “criminals”
(eg, terrorists, rioters, gang members) and, therefore, as essentially opportunis-
tic, misled, apolitical, or even amoral social acto:s: (2) the fundamental political
constriction— through everything from restrictive tax laws on community-based
organizations tc the arbitrary enforcement of repressive laws banning certain
forms of public congregetion (for example, the California “antigang” statutes
‘thet have effectively ciiminzalized Black and Brown public exisience on a massive
scale)—of the appropriate avenues and protocols of agitation for social change.
which drastically delimits the form and substance that socially transformative
and liberationist activisms can assume in doth the short and lorg te-ms; and
(G) the state-facilitated and fondamentally puritive bureavcratization of social
change and dissent, which tends to create an institutionalized inside/outside to
aspiring social movements by funneling activists into the hierarchical rituals
and restrictive professionalism of discrete campaigns, think tanks, and orga
zations, outside of which itis usuelly profoundly difficult to organize a critical
‘mass of political movement (due in significant part to the two aforementioned
developments).

In this context, the structural and political I mitations of current grassroots,
and progressive organizing in the United Stateshas decome stunningly evident










The Peltical Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

in light of the veritable explesion of private foundations as primary institutions
through which to harness and restrict the potentials of US-based progressive
activisms. Heavily dependent on the funding of such os:ensialy liberal and pro-
gressive financial budies a> the Mellon, Ford, and Sores foundations, the very
existence of many social justice organizations has often come to rest more on the
effectiveness of professional ‘and amateur) grant writers than on skilledé—much
less “radical”—political educatorsand organizers. A 1997 Atlantic Monthlysrticle
entitled “Citizen 501(6)(2)” states, for example, that the net worth of such foands-
tions was over $200 billion as of 1996, a growta of more thaa 40) percent since
1981. The articie’s author, Nicholas Lemann, goes on to write that in the United
States, the raw size of private foundations, “along with thetr desire to affect the
course of events in the United States and the world, has made feundations one
of the handful of major [political] actors in our society—bat they are the one
‘that draws the least public attention.”” As the fourslation lifeline lias sustained
the NPIC’s emergerce into a primary component of US politica life, the assimi

lation of political resistance projects into quasi-entrepreneurial, corporate-style
ventures cccurs under the threat of anruliness and antisocial “deviance” thet
rules Abu Jamal’s US “eavern of fear”: arguably, forms of sastained grassroots
social movement that do nct rely on the material assets and irstitvtionalized
legitimacy of the NPIC have become largely unimaginable within the pditical
allure of the Lutrent US Left. If anything, th's culture is generally disciplined
and ruled by tke fundamental imperative to preserve the integrity and coherence
‘of US white civil society, and the “ruling class” of philanthropic organizations
and foundations may, a times, almost unilaterally determine whether certain
are appropriate to their consensus vision of











vist commitments and practi:
‘American “democracy”

‘The self narrative of moltibillionaire philanthropist George Soros—iwhom
the P2S program NOW described as “the only American etizen with his own
foreign policy” brings cancor and darity to the societal mission of one well
known liberal philanthropic funder-patro:

‘Wher I had made more moneythan | needed, I decided to set up a foundation.
Treflected on what itwas I really cared about. Having lived through both Nazi
persecution and Communist cppression. I came to the conclusion that what
Was paraniount for me was an open society. So T called the foundation the
Open Society Fund, and I defined its objectives as opening up closed societies,
making ofen societies more viable, and promoting a critical mode of think
ing. That was in 1973,...Ey now I have established a network of foundations
that extends across more than twenty-five countries (not inclucing Chima,
where we chut down in 1989)!


‘THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE FUNDED

Soras’sconceptinn ofthe “Open Societys” fueled hy his avowed disdain for laissez-
faire capitalism, commuism, and Nazism, privileges political dissent that works
firmly within the constraints of bourgeois liberal democracy. Tae imperative
to protect—and, in Soros's case, to selectively enable with funding—disseating
political projects emerges from the presumption that existing sccial, cultural,
political, and economic institutions are in some way perfectible, and that such
dissenting projects must not deviate from the unnamed “values” which serve as
the ideological glue of civil society. Pethaps mast important, the Open Society
is premised on the idea that clashing political projects can and must be brought
(forced?) into a vague state of reconciliation with one another.

Instead of there being a dichotomy tetween open and clased, I see the open
society as occupying 2 middle ground, where twe rights of the individusl are
safeguarded but where there are some shared velues that hold society together
[emphasis added]. I envisage the open society as a society open to improve
ment. We start with the recognition of ou own fallibility, which extends not
only to our mental constructs bat also to our institutions. What isimperfect
ccan be improved, by a prozess of tril and error. "The open society not only
allows this process but actually encourages it, by insisting on freedom of
expression end protecting dissent. The open society offers a vista of limitless
progress

‘The Open Society merely provides a framework within which different
views about social and political issues can be reconciled: it does not offer a
firm view on social goals. It did, it would not be an open society.”





Crucially, the formulaic, naive vision of Soros’s Open Society finds its condition
of possibility in untied foundation purse strings, as “dissent” flowers into viability
on the strength of @ generous grant or -wo. The essential conservatism of Soros's
manifesto obtains “common-sense” status within the liberal/progressive foun-
ation industry by virtue of financial force, as his patronage reigns hegemonic
among numerous organizations and emergent social movemnerts

Most impor-ant, the Open Society’s narrative of reconciliation and societal
perfection marginalizes cadical forms of dissent which voice an irreconcilable
antagonism to white supremacist patriarchy, neoliberalism, racialized state vio-
Jerce, and other structures of domination, Antorio Gramsci’ prescient reflection
on the formation of the hegemonic state as simultaneously an organizational,
repressive, and pedagogical apparatus is instructive: “The State coes have and
request consent, but it also ‘ecucates’ this consent, by meins of the political and
syndical associations; these, however, are private organist let to the private ini-
tiative of the ruling class.”

Certainly, the historical record demonstrates that Soros and other founda-
tion grants have enabled a breathtaking number of “left-of-center” campaigns
and projects in the last 20 years. The question I wish to introduce here, how-




‘The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

ever, is whether this enabling also exerte a disciplinary or repressive force on
contemporary social movement organizations while nurturing a particular
ideological and stractural allegiance to state authority that preempts political
radicalism.

Social movement theorists Ichn McCarthy, David Britt, and Mark Wolfson.
argue that the “channeling mechanisms” embodied by the non-proft industry
“may now far outweigh the effect of cirect social contrel by states in explaining
the structural isomorphism, orthodox tactics, and moderate goals of much coi-
lective action in modern America." hat is, the overall bureaucratic formality
and hierarchical (frequently elitist) structuring of the NPIC kas institutionalized
tore that just a series of hoops through which aspiring social change activis:s
must jump—these institutional characteristics, in fact, dictate the political vistas
of NPIC organizaticns themselves. The forma of the US Left is inseparable from its
political content. The most obvious element of this kinder, gentler, industrislized
repression is its bureancratic incorperation of social change organizatiors into
“tangle of incentives”—such as postal privileges, tax-exempt status, and quick
access to philanthropic funding apparatuses—made possible by state bestowal
of “not-for-profit” status. Increasingly, avewedly progressive, radical, leftist, and
even some self-declared “revolutionary” groups have found assimilation into this
state-sanctioned organizational paradigm a practical route to institutionaliza-
tion. Incorporation facilitates theestablishment of arelatively stable financial and
operational infrastructure while avoiding the transience, messiness, and possible
legal complications of working under decentralized, informal, or “underground”
auspices. The emergence of this state-proctored social movenient industry “sug-
zgests an historical movemen: away frem direct.cruder forms fof state repressior),
toward more subtle forms of stat> social control of social movernents."”

Indeed, the US state earned irom its encounters with the crest of radical and
revolutionary liberationist movements of the 1960s and early 7iks that endless,
spectacular exercises of military and police repression against activists of color
on the domest frant could poteatially provoke broader local and global support
{or such struggles—it was in part because they were so dramaticclly subjected to
‘violent and racist US stete repression that Black, Native American, Puerto Rican,
and other domestic liberationists were seen by significant sectors of the US ard
international public as legitimate freedom fighters, whose survival uf Uhe racist
state pivated on the mobilization of a global political solidarity. On the other
hand, the US state has found in its coalition with the NPIC a far less spectacular,
‘generally demilitarized, and still highly eflective apparatus of political discipline
and repression that (to this poin’) has not provoked a significant critical mass of
opposition or political outrage.


‘THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE FUNDED

Central to this sublimated state discipline and surveillance are the myriad
regulatory mechanisms that serve to both accredit and disqualify non-profit social
change groups. The Internal Revenue Service, tax laws of individual states, the US
Postal Service, and independent auditors help heep bureaucratic order witii-—and
the politica lid on—what many theorists refer to as the post-1960s emergence of
“new social movements.” McCarthy, Britt, and Wolfsen conclude that ths histori-
cal development has rather sweepirg coasequences for theentirety of civil society:

‘Another consequence of the growth cf this system is blurring ofthe bosnd-

aries between the stat and society, between the civil and the policcal. Our

analysis suggests that a decreasing proportion af local groups remain unpen-

trated by the laus and regulations of the central state...Some analysts see

civil space declining asthe esult of afusion ofthe private and political bythe

ac:vists of the “rew” soctal movements who politcize more and more civil

structures in the pursuit of more comprchensve moral and political goals.

Our analysis views the construction as more theconsequence o state penstra-

tion ofthe civil, and the consequencesin more traditional terms—a rarrowing

and taming of the potential for broad dissent.

‘The NPIC thus serves as the medium through which the state continues to exert
4 fundamental dominance over the politicel intercourse of the US Left, as well
as US civil society more generally. Even and especiclly as organizations linked
to the NPIC assert their relative autonomy from, and independence of, state
influence, they remain fundamentally tethered to the state through extended
structures of firancial and political accountability. Jennifer Wolch’s notion of
a “shadow state” crystallizes this symbiosis between the state and social change
organizations, gesturing toward a broader conception of the state’ disciplinary
power and surveillance capacities. According to Wolch, the structural and polit!-
calinteraction between the state ard the non-prefitirdustrial complex manifests
as more than a relation of patronage, ideological repression, or institutional sub-
ordination, in excess of the expected organizational deference to state rules and
regulations, social change groups are constituted by the operational parzdigms of
conventional state institutions, generating a reflection of state power in the same
“organizations that originally emerged to resist the very same state,

In the United States, volurtary groups have gained resources and politcal

clout by becoming a stadow state apparatus, but are increasingly subject to

state-imposed regulation oF their behavior. the extent that the shadow

state is emerging in particular places, shereare implicatiors forhow volustary

organizations operate. The increasing importance o state funding for many

‘voluntary organizations has been accompenied by deepening penetration by

the stat into voluntary group organization. management. and goals. We argue

thatthe transformation of the voluntary sector into a shadow state apparatus

could ultimately shackle its potential t create progressive social change."




‘The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. +

the npic as political “epistenology’: the coopiation of political
imagination

Mowe insidious than the raw structural constraints exerted by dhe Sounidatien/state/
non-profit nexus is the way in which this new industry grounds an epistemology—
literally, a way of knowing social change and resistance praxis—that is dificult to
escape or rupture. lo revisit Abu-Jamal’ conception of the US “cavern of feat,”
the non-profit industrial complex has facilitated a >ureaucratized management of
{fear that mitigates against the radical break with owning-class capital (read:
foundation sappert) and hegemonic common sense (read: law ané order) that
‘might otherwise be positedas the necessary precondition fer genevating evuntes~
hegemonic struggles. The racial and white supremacist fears of American civil
society, in other words, fend to be respected und institutionally assimilated by a
Leftthat fundamentally operates through the bureaucratic structure of the NAIC.
As the distance between state authority and civil society collapses, the civic
spaces for resistance and radical political experimentation disappear and dis-
pperse into places unheard, unseen, and untouche¢ by the presumed audiences of
the non-proft industry arguably, the most vibrant sites of radical and proto
activity and organizing against racist US state violence and white
civil society ate condensing among populations that the NPIC can-
not casily or fully incorporate. Organized, underorganized, end ad hoc
‘movements of imprisoned, homeless, and uncocumented people. as well zs activ-
ists committed to working beneath and relatively autonomous of the NPIC’s
pobtical apperatus, may well embody the beginnings of an alternative US-based
praxis that displaces the NPIC’s apparent domination of political

possibility. Such a revitalization of radical political vision isboth urgent and nec-
essary in the current moment, especially waen the US srate’s constan: global
displays of violence and impunity seem ‘o imply that authentically radical ckal
lenges to its realms of domination are all but doomed.

Even a brief historical assessment of the social movement history reveals the
devastating impact of tate violence on the political imagivation aud organizing
Practices of progressive and radical >olitical workers in the United States, Noam
Chomsky, for example, argues that the watershed year of 1968 signifieé a turn
1n the institutional and discursive trajectory of state violence and repression,







iscourse and





departing from the spectacular, peculiar imagery of more traditionally hrutal
repressive techniques. Framing the state’s partial movement away from technolo-
gies of violent public spectacle (assassinations, militarized police raids aad “riot
control,” and go forth) toa more comples, surreptitious, multidimensional ap>a-
ratus of coercion, Chomsky’s elaboration of @ new “culture of terrorism’ echoes
Abu-Jamal’s “cavern of fear.” While Chomsky’s critique focuses on an analysis
THE REVOLUION WILL NOT BE FUNDED



of the Lran-contra scandal in the mid-1980s, one also finds resonance with the
state’ attempts to preemptively contain and liquidate political disorder through
the white supremecist criminalization ard mass-based incerceration fostered by
the Reagan administration’ simultaneous initiation ofa “War on Drugs.” As the
prison and policing apparstuses began to flower at the pinnacle of the Reagen-
Bush bloc, so the culture of terrorism provided a context for their reproduction
and expansion:

‘As tae Vietnara war escalated through the stages of subversion, state terrorism,
and outright US aggresion, disaffection and protest among the pablicbecame
a significant force, preventing the government from declaring the national
‘motilization iat would bavebeen seguited t9 wie what wasbecominga major
war,..The general dissidence. particula-ly among the routh, was perceived in
clite circles asa serious problem by itself in 1968, whie within the Pentagon,
there was concern that suffident military force be held in reserve to control
domesticdisorder ithe US aggression visibly increased, Thekey phrase is

ily’ it yas feat of Cie public that led tothe expansion ofelandestine operations
in those years, on the usual principle thet in cur form of democracy, if the pub-
lic escapes fram passivity, it must be deceived—for its own good."







‘The key terms here are clandestinity and decepticn: the lessons ot 1968 demon-
strared that state and owning class elites needed to maintain a delicate balance
between two parallel, nterdependent projects. On the one hand, repressive state
violence had to be sustained under shrouds of secrecy to prevent the potensial
‘coagulation end ctisis of a domestic dissent bloc. On the other hend, the state also
acknowledged thet within the discursive structure ofa bourgeois liberal democ-
racy, people had :0 be convinced that a “free” way of life pivoted cn the state’s
ability to violently enjorce it: that is, the state reyuised « pedagogy of “common
sense” that cculd effectively “teach” people to consent to its profoundly expansive
and historicelly unprecedented methodologies of domestic and global warfare/
militarization. The subtle change in the production of a hegemonic state—tts
absorption of social change movements and simultaneous construction of new
strategies for the production of a popular conseat—now manifests deeply and
widely ia the terrains of civil society. Civil institutions that once housed what
Aldon Morris calls the “indigenous cen‘era” of social movement and resistance
organizing (¢., schools, churches, families, friendship networks)” are now far
‘more likely to exhibit the penetration of the state through a popular epstemol-
ogy that considers the viclent policing of order to be @ necessary concition of
social life generally.

‘The cearticulation of state coercion into the massive institutional and discur-
sive formation of the post-ioldwater “law and order” society goes kand in hand
with the elow, steady, and voluntary entry of es-ablishment Left organizations




The Political Logic of the Non-Profit industrial Complex

into a dependent relation (albelt uneasy and at times conflicted) with the neo-
liberal state and philenthropic foundations. This is not ta suggest that a “pare”
autonomy from state authority and discipline is attainable, but rather to argue
thar resistance and counter hegemonic organizations dismantle the possibility
of radical artagonism as they move into cleser proximity to—and dependence
on—the centers of state power and (philanthropic) capital. Wolch suggests sev-
eral critical dimensions to this“ dynamic of reduced autonomy’:



1. The state will force voluntary groups to plan reactively, in response to new
Hate policies nd practices. Thie is in contrast to enabling groups to
plan proactively, to decide on their own goals and objectives, and how
to acieve them.

2, Contracis and grants will increasingly come with requirements for stringent,
-igid, and quantitatively oriented aaproaches to planning, evaluation, and
-ponitoring

5. Those organizations unable to meet the expanding denands for planaing will
become increasingly marginalized and may not be <ble to secure state fund.
‘ng. Such standards for organizational practie will have structural effects,
controlling the rise o”antiestablishment social movements and pushing mar-
sinal groupe to produce direct services instead of advocacy outputs

4 Newly formed groups may be jeopardized by new geverament funding programs.

5. There may belittle room for volustary sector development and new initiatives.
‘As more statutory agencics seck to use voluntary groups to provide basic
community services, the ability ofthe voluntary sector to develop innovative
approaches to social problems may be severely inhibited. Group activities
‘may become aligned to funding agency needs and expectations for types of
services to be delivered. In the process, the type of group output is ikely to
change toward direct services edministerd by profeesionale and away from
advocacy and participation."



Under current circumstances, organized dissent movements and organizations
in the United States are often compellec to replicate the bureaucratic structures
of the small busiress, arge corporation, and state—creating centralized naticnal
offices, gathering political (and, at times, Hollywood) celebrities and luminaries
onto boerdsof directors, and hiring “proiessional activists” whose salaries depend
largely on the effectivenessof professional grant writers. Itis worth repezting the
tacit though no less far-reaching political implication of this historical develop-
‘ment, insofaras socialcharge campaigns, orginizations, and aspiring movements
Increasingly articulate their reason for existence through the imperatives of
obtaining the finencial support and civil sanction of liberal philanthropy and the
statz, While is beyond my intent to adequately address the multiple pragmatic
and theoretical problems accompanying this political development, it is worth
asking several interrelated questions that reflect on our current condition as






THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BEFUNDED



activists, schclars, writers, and intellectuals who are enmeshed in the discipl
ary restrictions imposed by the NPIC: What are the inherent limits to the vistas
of “social change” or transformation mandaied by the US Lefts incorporation
into the NPIC and its emphasis on career/organizational security? Shoald the
NPIC itself be conceptualized as a fundamental target of radical social transfor-
imation (wheter itis to be seized, abolished, or some combination of both)? Can
people struggling tor survival, radical transformation, and liberation (including
and beyond those who identify shemselves as “activists”) outside the tentacles of
the NPIC generate new grassroots, community-tased, or even “underground”
structures and institutions capable cf sustaining movements against the US rac-
ist state and white supremacist civil society?





beyond the npic: the lessons of anti-colonialism and “decolonization”

As this anthclogy attempts a critical and material intervention on the political
stasis generated by the nor-profit irdustrial complex, we can and should recall
the cecent history of socially disenfranchised and oppressed lack and ‘th:rd
World peoples whose demands for liberation and radical freedom (which I am
istinguishing from the white bourgeois freedom that is hegemonic in the United
States) have represented, for white civil society, the specter of its own undoing.
1 want t emphasize the importance: of this contemporary liberaticnist lineage
because I have observed a peculiar dynamic in the current political landscape
thatmales political fodder ofthis liberationis: legacy. With increasing frequency,
‘we are party (or participant) to a white liberal and “mubticultural’/“people of
coloe” liberal imagination that venerates and even fetishizes the iconograghy
and rhetoric of contemporary Black and Third World liberation movements, and
then proceeds to incorporate these images and vernaculars into the putlic pre-
entation of foundation-fauaded liberal oe progressive organizations I have also
observed and experienced how these organizations, in order to protect their non-
profit status and marketability o literal foundations, actively self police against
‘members’ deviations from their essentially reformist agendas, while continuing
to appropriate the language ard imagery of historical revolutionaries. Having
lived in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1995 to 2001, which is in many ways she
national hub of the progressive “wing” of the NPIC, I would inane some of those
organizations (many of which are defunct) here, but the list would be too long.
Suffice itto say that these non-profit groaps often exhibit(ed) a political practice
thats, to appropriate and corrupt a phrase from fellow contributor Ruth Wilson
Gilmore, radical in form, lt liberal in content

In this vein, Rober: Allen surmises that the emergence ofa white liberal hege-
mony over the non-profit industry éurirg the 1970s was an explicit attempt—in






The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

fact, an authentic corspiracy of collaboration among philanthropists and state
officials, including Iccal police and federal administrators—to dissipate the
incisive and radical critique of US white supremacist capitalism, the white suprem-
acist state, and white civil society that was spreading in the wake of comestic
Black and Third World liberation movements. What Allen does not explicitly
stats, although he does imply, is that the rise of the white liberal philanthropic
establishment had las:ing political effects that ultimately equaled (and in some
ways surpassed) the most immediate repressive outcomes of CON ELERO and
its offspring. It isthe raradigm-shaging political influence of the post1970s waite
philanthropi: renaissance that remains the darable and generally underanalyzed
legacy of late 20th-century White Reconstruction.

My point, at she rick ef stating the historically obvious, is that the produc-
tion of the white liberal—and now ostensibly “multicaltural” though still white
liberal kegersoniz—non-profit industrial complex hes actually facilitated, and
continues to facilitate, the violent state-oiganized repression of radical and revo-
lutionary elemen:s within the Black and Third World liberation movements of
the late 196Cs and ea-ly 79s, as well as what remains of such liberation strug-
gles today. Ir. other words, the symbiosis between the racist staze and white civil
society that * disenss ahave is not simply a relationship of corvenience—itis a
creative relation of power that fermsa restricted institutional space in which “dis-
sent” movements may take place, under penalty of militcrized state repression
{@ political violence that has, through the pedagogical work of the state, won a
broad approval from US civil society more generally). I should be clear in what/
whom Iam implicating here: I am not speaking nerrowly othe openly conserva~
tive and right-wing foandetions, such as Ue Heritage Foundation, that so many
on the establishment Left unanimously agree are fundamentally reactionary or
politically re:rograde. Rather, [ am speaking to the putatively kind, benevolent,
humanist and humanitarian liberal-progressve founcations that this very same
establishment Le% relies on, that is, the same fonndations that often fund this
Lefts political work, scholarship, and activism—like Ford, Soros, and Mellon, for
‘example. It seems that when one attempts to engage a critical discussion regard-
ing the political problems of working with these and other foundations, and
especially when one is interested in naming them as the gently repressive “evil”
‘cousins of the moze prototypically evil right-wing foundations, the establishment
Leftbecomes profoundly defensive cits inaneial patrons. 1 would argue that this
is a liberal-progressive vision that marginalizes the radical, revolutionary. and
proto-revolutionary forms of activism, insurrection, and resis‘ance that refuse
to participate in the Soros charade of “shared values” and are uninterested in
trying to “improve the imperfect.” The social truth of the existing society is that
it is based on the procuction of massive, unequal, and hierarchically organized














TIIE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BEFUNDED

disenfranchisement, suffering, and death of those populations who are targeted
for containment and political/sccial liquidation—a violent social order produced
under the dictates of“cemocracy.” “peace,” “security,” and “justice” that form the
hnistorieai and political foundations uf the vety sane white civil society on which
the NPIC Leff is based,

Ifwe take sericusly, for the sake of argument, the pdlitical analysis articulated
by Palestinians strugg ing against the Israel occupation, or that of imprisoned
radical irtellectuals/activistsand their free-world allies desperately fighting to dis-
‘mantle and abolish the prison industrial complex, or that of Indigenous peoples
‘worklwide who, to paraphrase Haunani-Kay Trask, are literally fighting against
Uneir uwin planned obsolescence,» chen it should become clear that the Soros
philosophy of the Open Society, along with otter liberal foundation social imagi-
naries, are at best philanthropic vanities. At worst, we can accuse the Sores, Ford,
‘Mellon, and Rockefeller foundacions, ane their ilk of NGOs anid non-proiit orga
nizations, of accompanying and facilitating these massive structures of human
dominat‘on, whic’ simply canrot be reformed or “reconciled” in a manner that
legitimates anything approaching a vision of iberation or radical freedom.

‘While many professional intellectuals (academics, lawyers, teachers, progres-
sive policy think tank members, journalists), community-based social change
‘organizations, non-profit progressive groups, student activists, ard others in
the establisiunent Lef. pay some attention to the unmediated violence waged
by state formations (whether official agents of state military power or its unof-
ficial liaisons) on targeted individuels and communities, the implict theoretical
assumptions guiding much of this political-Intellectual work have tended to
pathologize state violence. rendering it as the scary ‘Ilegitimate offspring of a
right-wing hegemony. The ‘gical extension ofthis political analysis is the notion
that the periodic, spectacular materialization of direct relations of force are the
eymptomatic and extreme evidence of some deeper set of societal faws. In fact,
the treatment of state violence as a nonessential facet of the US social formation
is the discursive requirement for the establishment Lefts strained attempts at
political dialogue with its more hegemonic political antagonists: whether they
are police, wardens, judges, legislators, or foundations. In this way, a principled
and radical opposition to both the material ectuality and political legitimacy of,
racist US state violence—which is inescapably a principled and radical opposi-
tion to the existence and legitimacy of the US state itself—is constantly deferred
in favor of more “practical” or “winnable” campaigns and demands.

There is thus a particular historical urgeacy m the current struggle for new
vvernaculars that disarticulate the multilayered, taken-for-granted state practices
of punishment, repression, and retribution from common notions of justice,
peace, and the good socie:y. Arguably, tis this difficult and dangerous task of






The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

disarticulaton, specifically the displacement of « powertul, socially determinant
“law and ander” common sense, that remains the most underthecrized dinien
sion of contemporary struggles for social transformation. A generalized climate
of (moral) defensiveness, political -etreat, and pragmatic antiradicalism perme-
ates the current critical discourse, such tha! the political and historical ground
ceded to the punitive state and its defender-advocates mitigates against the fow-
ering of new and creative knowledge procuctions, Antagonistic, radical, and
proto-radical political practices—spurted by the desire to resist and abolish the
normalized violence and undeclared domestic warfare of the American state—
remain politically latent and deeply criminalized in tke current social formation.

‘While the establishment Left conceptualizes ts array of incorporated, entre
preneurial,non profit501(c)(3)organizationsandNGOsasthe fortifedcomu:and
‘certer of progressive social justice movements within civil society, remain con-
stantly disturbed by the manner in which this political apparates, the NPIC,
perversely reproduces a dialectic of death. ‘That is, the NPICs (and by extension
the estzblishment Left's) commitment to maintaining the essential social and
political structures ofcivil society (meaning institutions, as well as ways of think-
ng) reproduces and enables the most vicious and insidious forms of state and
state-sanctioned oppression and repression—by way of my previous examples,
Israeli occupation, mass-based imprisonment, and the ongoing genocide of
indigenous peoples. I will conclude this essay with a historical allegory of sorts.

Albert Memmi, in hisanticolonialist meditation The Colonizer und the Colo
nized (1965), centrally addressed the problem of presence that marked the
typological white supremacist domination of the colony. The colonizer—histori-
aly antl prototypically the categorical white man to whom many such theorists
refer—ultimately found the Native indispensable, and not just because he could
siphon and steal the Native’s bor and other “natural” resources. The Native’s
indispensability was ‘ound, rather, in his/her bodily presence, which was noth-
ingless than the affirmation of life’ materiality for the setler. Memmi contends
that it was through this very presence that whiteness found its form of articula-
tion, its passage from the realm of the imaginary to the grit:iness of material
reletion, Of he settler white man, Memmi writes,











Heknew, of course, that the zolory was not peopled exclusively by colonists or
‘colonizers. He even hac some idea ofthe colonized from his childhocd books;
he as seen adocumentary movie on some oftheir customs, preferably chosen
to show theirpeculiarty. But the fact remained that those men belonged to the
realms of theimagination... He had been alittle worried avout ‘hem when he
towhad Aecided tomave ta acolony, but no more so than he was about the cli
mate, which might be unfavorable, or the water, which was sid to coatain too
rch Limestone. Suddenly these men sic] were ro lorger asimgle component
of geographical or historical décer. Thay assumed a place in hislife


THE REVOLUTION WILL NO! BE FUNDED

“He cunnvt even resulve bo avoid them. He must constantly lve in relation
to them, for itis this very alliance which enables him tc lead the if wiich he
decided to ook for inthe colonies: itis this relationship whichis lucrative, which
sreates privilege emshasis added)



“The white colonizer was ccnsistently unsettled by the movement between the
two primary requirements of tke white colony and its underlying processes of
‘conquest: the extermination of indigenous human societies, and the political
cultural naturalizetion of that very same (deeply unnatural) process. Memmi
expounds on the dynamic and durable relationship between these forms of
domination, ultimately argaing that the containment and strategic (oc'al and
physical) elimination of targeted populations is insepaiable from the global ide-
ology of Euro-American colonial domination that posts its sites of conquest as
infinitely, “naturally” available for white settlement. Here, we might think about
the connectedness between Memmi’s defnition of the colonial power relation
and the current conditions of possibility for white civil society in the alleged
aftermath of the colonial epoch.

“The forced proximity between settlers and natives, or waite civil society and
4s resident aliens, entails « historically persistent engagement between categories
of humans generally defined by the colonizer as existential opposites. This inti-
‘macy defines the core antisociality of colonial conquest and the living aistory
sthas constructed: that is, contrary to more vulger theorizations, tLe colonizer
is not simply interested in ridding of the colonized, breakiag them from indig-
snous attachments (to land, culture, community), or explotting their bodies for
industrial, domestic, or sexaal labor. Memmi colonizer (and liberation theorist
Frantz Fanon’ “seitler”) also desires an antisoial “human” relation. a structured
dialogue with the colonized that performs a kind of auto:rotic drama for the
coloaizer, a production of sleasure that both draws upon and maixtains a dis-
tinct power structure,

‘uch is the partial premise for Fanor’s contemporaneoas meditation on the
‘war of social truths that rages beneath the normalized violence of any such condi-
tion of domesticated domination ard structured political dialogue. For Fanon,
it is the Manichaean relation detween colonized and colonizer, “native” and
“settler.” that conditions the subaltern truths of both imminent and manifest
insurgencies. Speaking to tne anticolontalist nationalism of the Algerian revolu-
tion, Fanon writes,

“The problem of truth ought als tobe considered. In every age, among the peo-
ple truth s the property af the national cause. No absolute verity; no discourse
tn the porityof the soulcan shekethispocition. Tae native eepies tothe living
lie ofthe colonial ssation byan equal falsehood. His dealings wih his fellew-
nationals ate epen; they are s:rained and incomprehensible with regard to che
‘The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.

settlers. Truth is that which hurries on the break-up ofthe colonialist regimes
is that which promotes the emergence ofthe nation, it ieall that protects the

natives, and ruins he foreigners. {n this colonialst context there is no truthful

behavior: andthe goods quite simply that whichis evil for “thea.”



Lruth, for Fanor, is precisely that which generates and multiplies the histocical
possibility of disruptive, subversive movement against colonial oppression. The
evident rhetoric of oppositionality ofthe subaltern “good” that necessarily mate
rializes"evil” (orcrimina) in the eves of domination, offers a stunning departure
from the language of negotiation, dialogue, progress, moderation, and peace that
hhas become hegemonic in discourses of social change and social justice, inside
and outside the United States. Perhaps most important, the political language
Of opposition 1s premised on its open-endedness and contingency, a particular
refasal to soothe the anxiety generated in the attempt to displace « conditicn of
violent peace for the sake of someting else, world beyond agendas, piatforms,
funding structures, and practical proposals. There are no guarantees, or arrogant
‘expectations, ofan ultimate state of liberation awaiting an the other side of the
politically immediate struggle against the settler colany.

‘We might, for a feeting moment, conceptualize the emergence of the NPIC
4s an institutionalization and industrialization of a banel, literal polizical dia~
logue that constantly disciplines us into conceding the urgent challenges of a
political radicalism that fundamentally challenges the existence cf the US as @
‘white settler society. The NPIC is not wholly unlike the institutional apparatus
of neocolonialism, in which former and potential anticolonial revolutionaries
are “professionalized” and granted opportanities within a labyrinthine siate-
proctored bureaucracy that ulimately repreduces the essential coherence o! the
neocolenial relation of power itself The NPIC’s well-funded litany of "social jus-
tice” agendas, platforms, mission statemen:s, and campaigns offers a veritable
smorgasbord of political guarantees that feeds on ourcynicism and encourages a
‘misled political faith that stridently bypasses the fundamental relations of domi-
nance that structure our everyday existence in the United States: pertaps it is
time that we formulate critica’ strategies that fully comprehend the NPIC as the
instttutonaitzation of a relatien of dominance and attempt to disrupt and trans-
form the fundamental structures and principles of a white supremacist US civil
society, as well as the US racist state,



notes

| Mumia Abu-Jamal, “Ihe industy of Ken.” open corcespondence to Critial Kesistance: Beyond
‘thePrisonIndastcal Complex, ‘uly 1998

2Raber:L. Allen, lack Awakening in Capitalist America: An Aneytic fistory (1969; repe, Trenton,
1NiAliea Wonld Pres, 1990). An excerpt from Black Awakeningisrep-inted in this volume,
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE FUNDED

23 Barry Goldwater, acceptance speech, 28th Republican Naticnal Convention, San Francisco, CA,
Ialy 16,1968

44 Some useful background texts include: Je Silliman and Anannya Bhattacharjee, eds, Polic-
Ing the National Body: Race, Gender and Criminazation im the United States (Carbridge,
MA: South End Press, 2002);Cheistian 2areni, Lockdown America: Police and Prisons inthe
Age of Gris (New York: Verso rene, 2000) Ted Gest, Crime and Foliti: Big Governments
Erratic Campaign for Law and Order (New Yerk: Oxford Univesity Press, 200); ill Nelsen,
fa, Paice Brusaliy: An Anthology (New York: W. W. Notion, 2000}; Stasi Hal, et aly Poi
fg the Crsie: Mugging the Site, nd Lew and Order (New York: Holmes & Meter, 198)

5 See Ward Churchill and jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The PBs Secret Wars Agunst the
‘lack Panther Party ana the American Indian Moverent (Boston: South End Pres, 1988), 1-2.

6 See generally Cart Centey J Edgar Hoover: Te Man and te Secrets (New York: W. W. Norten,
1992)

7 Nicholas Lemann, “Citizen 5010(3)" The Atlantic Monthly 279, no. 2 (Feb-uary 1997}, http!
‘wwwethatlontie con/ienes A 7FeNS01 4/5019 her

{8 George Soros, interview by David Brancaccio, Now, P3S, eptemoer 1
‘ovvizbs orginowitrenicripvtranseript_eoras ht

9 George Soros, “The Capitalist Threat” The Atlantic Monthy 279, no, 2 (February 1997, htt!
‘ww weteatlantic comy/suesi>7Teveapiallcapital

word

11 Antonio Gramsci, Selections Fram the Prison Notebooks, 8. Quintin Hoare and Geotiey Nowell
Smith (New York Intemational Publishers, 995), 258,

12 John McCarthy, David Brit, and Mark Wolfson “The instiutional Channeling ofSocil Move
‘mentsby th State inthe United Sates? Research fa Social Movements, Conf’ ana Charge
1 (99th 4b.

1 tid

ibid

1 Jennifer. Welch, Tne Shadow State: Governmert and Valuvtony Sortorin Transit (New Vor:
"The Foundation Center, 1990) 15.

16 Noam Chomsky The Culture of Tertrdan (Boston: South End Prise 1568), 6

17 See Aldon Mortis, Te Origins ofthe Civil Rights Mosement: Black Communities Orgavizing for
‘Chunge (ew Yor: Face Poesy 1960)

1 Welch, The Shadow State, 206-207

1 Ruth Wilson GrImore hasoften spoken of te gererallyunderexplored and uncer theurizl polit
‘cal possibilities in engaging organizing strategies that are "conservative: form, But radical
in content.”She speaksof such strategies manifesting in histor cally conservatie spaces, such
és thechurch or mosgue, while articulating politi: crtiqueand praxisthat envisions radi-
tal socal transformation

20 Set Haunani-Cay Trask, “The New World Orde” in Froma Native Daughter: Celomatism and
“oversigntyin Hawaii (Londlulu:Jniversiy of Havaii Press, 1999) 58-63

11 My use of the torm common cence derives from Antena Grams’scenception of the assures
tions, truths, and general fh that predominate ina given social fermation or hegemony.

22 Allert Nema, The Calonizer and the Colsized (New York: Orion Dress, 1965). 7-8

13 Frante Fanon, The Wretched ofthe Earth (New York: Grove Weidenfelé, 1962), 50.







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