Grange Forms Salem's First Common Security Club

The Macleay Grange is hosting and leading a new project. This project is the forming of Salem's first Common Security Club. The first club meeting was held this past Thursday, February 11. Club meetings will continue for the next four Thursdays at the Macleay Grange (8312 Macleay Rd, Salem). Meetings begin at 6:30pm with a potluck meal included on the agenda.

"OK, so what's a Common Security Club", you might ask?

First and foremost, Common Security Clubs are a way to bring people together who are otherwise lost, isolated and alone as they attempt to weather the current economic depression. Within a context of shared conversation, members can begin to share their experiences and thoughts, and out of this sharing, begin mutual support efforts finally engage in wider actions aimed at social, economic and political change.

Unlike many of the current liberal "change" organizations, Security Clubs are meant to develop our own sense of what's going on, and out of this, develop our own positions and actions, whatever these might be. This is unlike organizations such as Move On or Healthcare for All, which relay on electronic media to mobilize recipients behind an already "canned" agenda. The Common Security Clubs thus involves a novel set of assumptions. These assumptions are:

1. The lower down the food chain you are, the more you are paying the price for the economic depression. As is usually the case, the rich aren't suffering at all. The working middle class (managerial/professional) is hurting but surviving, the working class is getting blasted and if you are African-American or Latino you're distress is doubled. Along these lines, see the attached column by Bob Herbert of the The New York Times (Feb 8, 2010).

2. The economic and political "experts" have it all wrong. All of these experts are tied to frames of reference that have little to do with what most people are facing in this economic collapse. These "experts" are lost in an institutional "autism" where the causes and remedies to the economic collapse are framed in terms of big money and political legislative agendas that have little to do with what real people are experiencing. This is why the human cost of this collapse is ignored and the roots of this collapse systematically avoided; a dirty little secret to be avoided.

3. That Club members, in face to face dialogue can come up with a far more truthful analysis than the "experts" as to what is going on. That out of this analysis can come a capacity for mutual support (as to mutual support, a very successful example would be the Unemployed Councils of the 1930's), and shared political action.

So, I missed the first meeting, but I'll make the next four. I'm hoping that others will come along as well. If you'd like to join the experiment, please do. No guarantees, but big picture? There's a world to gain.

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