There are times in social struggle when we should be focused on the external world--the wars, the crashing economy, and the violence of the systems that oppress us. But in order to be truly effective, we must model the values we aspire to promote and in the case of organizations, we must demonstrate that the values and actions we encourage others to take are indeed what we believe in. Our actions must model the outcomes we crave. Organizations that seek to create democracy and participation have an obligation to self-structure democratically. The Left has been plagued by individuals who fail to believe that people should truly determine the conditions of their own lives outside of oppressive hierarchies. As a result, millions have been murdered in cold blood to defend hypocritical tyrants. To avoid such bloodshed, to truly win, we must work on ourselves--a daunting task indeed!
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