Building power from below: Dispatches and lessons from movement building in a postindustrial city in Northern New Jersey in the United States

Abstract

Known locally as Silk City, the city of Paterson, New Jersey, has been deeply impacted by neoliberalism and global capitalism. Interlocking systems of globalization have impacted housing conditions and increased the criminalization of the poor, all of which have ultimately driven down living standards. As the city began its revitalization efforts at the turn of the twenty-first century, community members soon began to debate the costs and benefits of these new programs. One of the organisations helping to facilitate consciousness raising is Black Lives Matter Paterson and various autonomous sub-committees including the Political Education committee. Part auto-ethnographic and part analytical, this article describes the process of building a movement at the same time it confronts activist-intellectual identities that are often held in tension. Written as an auto-ethnography, this article synthesizes the lessons drawn from a ‘turn back’ to community and grassroot organising. Rather than foreground theory in community organising efforts, this article centres praxis as it reflects on the coordination of two peoples’ assemblies in a post-industrial city in Northern New Jersey in the United States. Inverting the conventional pathways of organising by starting with questions rather than answers, the article relies on an inductive and grounded approach. The second part speaks of the praxis taken up to build up a peoples’ assembly. Altogether, an organic process of community organising is made visible through the lessons learned from community engagements.