International School of Bottom Up Organizing

Abridged Notes from Jan. 15-16, 2012

Everyone arrived safe and sound. The Jamaican school participants met them and everyone enjoyed tea and a lovely meal together, and stayed around talking and joking and telling stories, then went to an ISBO organizer’s house to call home and watch some video of the Old Time Day and a few pictures of the farm in Colombia.

Cultural item: Swahili chant

Introductions: Round 1: Who we are, how we got involved in ISBO?

I’m from Villa Rica and am a full time organizer for ISBO and a singer.

I’m an invitee and new member of ISBO from Colombia.

I’m from Colombia and I’m a 100% member of ISBO.

I’m from Colombia and a full time organizer for ISBO.

I’m from Jamaica, I’m self-employed.

I’m from England, I’m from the entire universe, this planet is my home. I’ve known of ISBO for about 5 years, and now I’m trying to find ways of bringing ISBO into England.

I’m from the community here in Jamaica and a member of ISBO.

I’m a member of the People’s Uprising Committee in Jamaica for about 3 years now. I’m presently a student at the disabilities foundation in Kingston.

I’m born and grown in this community and lived in Port Antonio for 17 years. I got invited to a workday by my cousin, went there to cut the community centre lawn, met people from ISBO and the community group. I just baptized myself in ISBO and just working every day organizing for isbo.

I got involved in organizing because this world is not shared equally. One day I heard someone say that those who are most oppressed are the ones with the darkest skin. I pondered this and soon realized that this is not a hypothesis, it is the truth. I am oppressed because of the color of my skin.

People are born revolutionaries. I think I will learn a lot from you, and likewise if I have anything you can learn from me, I am available. I want to make the most of every day here because I am overwhelmed by everything. I have you here in my heart. Thank you so much.

Being in this organization teaches me a lot: how to share, how to love more, how to not discriminate because I am black and you are white.

I’ve been a member of this community from childhood, and I want to be free.

I come from a very poor community. I’m 15 years old. I’m in secondary school, but when I finished primary school, I was crying b/c there was it was too far to walk and we had no money for transportation or books. My main goal was education.

I was also born in a poor mountain community. Moved to the Misery Belt of the city as a child with my family. Started my first job at 9. At 12 stopped day school to work all day. Migrated to England at 15, lived w/ sister for 6 months and then moved out. It opened my eyes. When you come out of your country, I don’t know why, but you are able to see what is going on in your country.

I was a very arrogant young person, because I didn’t like elders, didn’t grow up with elders and elders were always oppressing me. I think it has been through the elders in ISBO that I came to respect elders’ knowledge. It even helped me to respect my parents – for a while I thought I knew more than them because I had more education. Now I realize they know much more than me.

There are two important things we have to solve now that we have heard one another. Our first objective is the people with the darkest skin at the bottom. Our priority is to solve the communication with THEM first. We have to think of ways of communication to get to the people where there is no internet. This is a good starting point for our next round.

If we build a house and don’t build columns, the house will fall down quickly.

What is ISBO?

ISBO is the International School of Bottom-up Organizing. This is a collective of people who try to bring unity for black people, especially women, how to organize ourselves and bring unity to our community. In most of the governments around the world, it is the 2% that control the whole world. Since we have in our mind that majority carries, the 98% is at the bottom and have been oppressed over the years, we have to bring ourselves together and organize ourselves and not let the governments divide us. In a sense, we are the smartest. The 2% take our ideas and use it to their advantage. We have to take back our ideas and our strength and elevate ourselves. Since we are an international school, we have a small group of people in several countries. As I said before, we have to strengthen our home base and in that way become stronger. Remember that we, the bottom people are the most powerful people in the world. We need to recognize that and don’t let anyone else fool us, so we can unite and achieve our goals.

ISBO’s main objective is to find people at the bottom, especially dark-skinned people, especially women to start creating a new world, on the principle that these people have been the most oppressed in the world. We have the belief that these people can build a new world b/c we are the 98% of the world . it is more of us that have been oppressed by the 2% and the work of isbo under the principles already defined and those that will come up is to go into the communities, the grassroots, the bottom up, and with these bases try to help organize, awakening the genius that lives in each one of us and collectively start thinking about what world we want to create.

Discussion about when to go cut and crush the cane to start the fermentation process, which is a 7 day process.

ISBO is about being able to create the institutions within our communities that we need for a human being to live in a dignified way. This morning we heard a lot about the principles, that it is based on the most oppressed w/ the darkest skin, among them women, so we have to create the institutions bearing that in mind. That women need to be involved in creating those institutions because they are the ones who have been involved in caring for the community. ISBO is also about analyzing and reflecting on all those things given to us by the government, whether they are good or not, and how we change them. And my answer to that is, they’re not very good, because they have created lots of discrimination – a few people have become very rich, and most of us are very poor. We have to do research on creating electricity, growing food, fuel, etc.

We are trying to share and share alike in the sense that we will farm together, we was thinking about like building a space where we could all live as one. Just to think about it and to live the life makes you feel free, happy.

It teaches us about nature, teaches grassroots people, people from the bottom of darker hue, women among others, how to be self-sustainable. How to use the little that we have and create it into something bigger, so as a people we can live together as one, promote equality and share, love and accept each other as we are.

ISBO is like a teacher, it is a school. It’s not that we couldn’t find and know those things on our own, but the school helps us more when everybody learns all these things, come together and then go out and teach the people.

This is the first I’m sitting down in a class like this, and I’ll keep sitting and listening that I can learn a lot from it.

I’m looking forward for the day when the whole community and others outside will see how we’re living, becoming a loving and sharing community. I’m looking forward for that day.

It’s like a foundation, a foundation for poor, black people to learn how to be independent. We don’t have to depend on the rich people, but we the poor class can do it ourselves. And even do better than the rich people. So all we need to do right now is to get more knowledge how to develop our community and ourselves. So we can achieve our goals without the government, the rich or the higher class.

How do we communicate with the bottom?

Who will communicate with the bottom worldwide? Who are "our: troops" that will carry this message to the dark poor? In order to answer the question of communicating with the dark poor worldwide who do not have internet to get our message, we must have troops who are on internet who will carry the message and some resources to the dark poor. The "dark poor" sitting in the ISBO circle are there because someone committed their time, energy, gifts, skills, talents and resources to make it happen. Now your revolutionary historical mandate is to take everything you have and pass it on. To do less would be counter revolutionary.

One of the solutions is to take the internet to the people who don’t have it.

We know that technology is widely published. If we don’t have laptop, we have phone, we have radio. If we have a phone that uses the internet, we can get the same as on the laptop. The thing we need to do now is to figure out how to get it on the radio station so who don’t have internet service can get it on the radio. If we cover all those – the phone, the computer, the radio station – then I think we have it all at once there.

To get it on the radio station, TV because right now most people don’t have the internet service, so we have to try to get to them to find out how we can get the wire or wifi to them. Like I don’t have access to internet. I don’t have a phone to get it either.

Go around and spread the word face to face, that ISBO is an international school, so that means its not just in Jamaica it’s in other countries, so we ourselves, not just internet, not just technology, we can spread the word ourselves. Just like we go out and do house calls for the meetings, we can spread the word.

I think the main thing should be radio, because everyone no matter how poor has radio.

I suggest when we go to Jeffery town on Friday, we find out exactly how they set up their radio station. If the frequency is low, you don’t need a license. It will not reach far, but will reach the community. We can have a vision of spreading our organizing to other communities and teaching them how to make a radio station that will overlap, and we will be able to unite and reach everyone. But that is not to take the place of how we communicate with the world.

I think that the best way of an organizing group to communicate is not about making too much publicity about oneself. We have to do. It always happens as if there was a very beautiful woman who came to this area, and we all start looking at her and talking about her with each other. And the whole community knows about this beautiful woman b/c she is new. That’s how we have to do it. If we have money to go to radio station or to buy internet antennas, let’s use that money to do some work w/in the community so that the whole community sees it and that way everyone will start coming to be a part of the process. So like a pretty woman, everyone will like it and they will be the ones asking to be a part of it. So we have to do more work and less words.