by Diana Digges

Discontent has moved to the mainstream. The world in 2007 was so dreadful that even notoriously distracted Americans looked up and started calling for fundamental change. The old wistful slogan - "Another World Is Possible" - has ramped up into "Another World Is Necessary." Or more specifically, as proclaimed at last year's first United States Social Form, "Another U.S. is Necessary."

The urgency that many people feel is based on critical issues: the failure of the brutal Iraq war. The subprime mortgage crisis and economic meltdown, with rising foreclosures, joblessness and a recession on the horizon. Threats of invading Iran.

And here, there and everywhere: very, very weird weather. Climate change, above all issues, seems to have captured the public's sense of vulnerability, perhaps because its apocalyptic message speaks to people's unease with the state of the world in general.

The biggest disappointment of 2007 was the failure of a Democratic-led Congress to cut off funding for the Iraq war or to initiate impeachment hearings. This failure - this miscarriage of responsibility to represent the people's will - clearly reminds progressive activists to remain wary of entrusting elected officials with social change at the exclusion of investing in grassroots activism. The latter is absolutely necessary to force the former to actually do something in the people's interest.

And yet, as bad as things appear, the situation was a lot worse in 1967, according to Noam Chomsky. At RESIST's 40th anniversary celebration (and in the pages of the November/December 2007 Resist Newsletter), Chomsky reminded us that resistance was weaker in the 1960s, and more scattered. He cited a readiness now - a hunger for justice - that even the political establishment acknowledges. For example, CNN, CBS and WorldPublicOpinion.org polls on a number of issues show the politicians lagging behind the people.
"Both political parties," Chomsky pointed out, "are way to the right of the population on all the crucial issues now - the war, health care, nuclear weapons, Iran. The population is there, ready to be organized."

And that's what RESIST continues to do: fund the folks on the front lines organizing against the war, against racism, for human rights and dignity, for fair wages and housing, for environmental justice. The best antidote to despair I know of is to read about the amazing work done by groups that RESIST funds. Some, like Sand Mountain Concerned Citizens, are doing the hard work of resisting illegitimate authority in places like Ider, Alabama with little history of the tradition. Others, such as the Amigos Multicultural Service Center in Eugene, Oregon, benefit from functioning in a seasoned activist environment and are building on the resistance that many have nurtured over the years. Still others, especially in the immigrant and transgender communities, inspire with their courage to speak out and organize despite considerable risk to themselves and their families.

As successful as RESIST has been, much more is still needed: more donors, more grant recipients, more networks, more successes. As a movement, we need to build a resistance mighty enough to shift this "culture awash in death," to quote author Chris Hedges, towards an affirmation of life and love. I take heart from the fact that RESIST has steadily expanded in 40 years to encompass a roster of issues, groups and locales that together amount to a culture of resistance.

The problem is that this culture is still atomized and largely invisible. The challenge for all of us is to cohere; we can start by making ourselves seen and heard by each other. We need to conjure ourselves up, as my granny would say, and step into the light. How can the discontented mainstream see us and make common cause with us if our resistance isn't visible and vocal?

Some suggestions for conjuring ourselves up:

Read your RESIST newsletters. But don't stop there! Go online and check out one or two of the grantees listed in that issue; drop them an email of encouragement and congratulations. Show them they're visible. Better yet, if there's a recent grantee in your area, drop in. Make yourself visible - whether you're a fellow grantee or donor.

Give the corporate media the short shrift it deserves. Films, especially documentaries, are increasingly the source of choice for understanding underreported stories on crucial issues like health care, terrorism and the war in Iraq. Keep those stories like "Sicko" and "Rendition" alive; check out the list of the best progressive films and documentaries of the year at www.progressive.org/mag_rampell122607. Show these films at house parties; use them as organizing tools. And watch and read alternative news instead of corporate news-tainment.

Practice hope. Author Rebecca Solnit has done us all a service with her annotated "secret political library of hope." Check out the reading list of Books That Will Change the World on Alternet, a progressive online news magazine (www.alternet.org). These books show, in a practical way, "that the power people possess matters; that change has been made by populist movements and dedicated individuals in the past and that it will be again."

Tell others why you give to or are supported by RESIST. Remind them that progressive philanthropy and think tanks have far, far to go to catch up with the right's well-oiled machine. Keep your pledges coming. Consider RESIST in your will. (The wonderful Molly Ivins, who died last year, urged progressives to make our influence felt beyond the grave in her typical don't-get-mad-get-even-while-laughing fashion. When "we all lie a-moldering," she said, "I can't think of anything I'd rather do with my worldly goods than fund folks who will be a pain in the ass to whatever powers come to be.")

Finally, answer the question "What is solidarity?" Solidarity was the animating impulse behind the founding of RESIST. Those who weren't forced personally to confront the draft joined together to help, in whatever way they could, those who were.

What does the term mean to us today? As Camilo Mejía, of Iraq Veterans Against the War, conjectured, a very small percentage of the U.S. population is directly affected by the current war. Is the answer, he asked, to fight for the re-introduction of the draft, then fight for 100% resistance to it? His irony goes to the heart of solidarity as a moral and practical question: How do I stand beside you? How do we accompany each other? What is it that we share?

Another world is necessary? Absolutely. And there are hundreds of individuals and groups who are organizing it into being. Let's look at RESIST's grantees for this last year.

In 2007, RESIST awarded more than $308,000 to 126 groups across the country. These grants can be broken down into 14 categories. These categories are rather arbitrary, given that most of these groups see their work as connected to a larger organizing cause and often work across our designated categories. But they are still somewhat useful to discern trends. As in the previous four years, the lion's share of grants fell into the broad Community Organizing and Anti-Racism category, which included 30 grantees in 2007. Grantees ranged from first-time recipients working on immigration issues (Coalition for the Rights and Dignity of Immigrants in Cincinnati) to established groups working on racism and homophobia in Central Oregon (Human Dignity Coalition). Other grantees included African-Americans working for empowerment in rural or small-town America (Activist with a Purpose, Grenada, Mississippi) and cultural workers like the Center for Artistic Revolution in North Little Rock, Arkansas, which builds bridges between diverse communities.

The next largest category was Peace and Anti-Militarism. From California to Kansas to Tennessee and up to Maine, there are 19 groups that received RESIST grants in 2007. They are organizing for peace and justice in a number of ways: training and direct action (Chico Peace and Justice Center, Chico, California); mounting counter-recruitment campaigns in high schools (Alternatives to the Military, Lincoln, Nebraska); fighting nuclear weapons production (Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Oak Ridge, Tennessee); and educating for a just resolution in the Middle East's oldest conflict (Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine, Oak Park, Illinois).

Youth is the next largest category, with 17 grant recipients - up six from last year. Youthful energy rocks! They're organizing their fellow high school students to oppose the war in Iraq and school-based military recruitment (Youth Against War and Racism, Minneapolis, Minnesota). In Knoxville, Tennessee, they're organizing GLBTQ youth to confront homophobia.

Economic Justice and Labor were the next largest categories, with 11 and 10 grant recipients respectively. Anti-sweatshop and labor rights are the focus of groups like Peace through Interamerican Community Action (Bangor, Maine), which is making the connections between sweatshops off-shore and labor issues at home. Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action - Providence (Rhode Island) similarly looks at labor and capital through an international lens; folks there are organizing against the powerful remittance industry (one of the largest sources of revenue in many developing countries) that routinely gouges immigrant workers who send money to families abroad.

Given the disastrous rate of foreclosures in 2007 - and continuing to rise this year - RESIST fully expects to see more applications from groups organizing around economic justice in the coming year.

As the U.S. incarceration rate continues to soar above that of every other country in the world, RESIST funded 14 groups in the Prisoners Rights category, up from 10 the previous year, including the Human Rights Coalition (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), an organization run predominantly by prisoners, former prisoners and their families who work to transform the prison system. Women received 11 grants. Three groups (in Boston; Moorhead, Minnesota; and Little Rock, Arkansas) received leadership development grants. The multi-ethnic Appalachian Women's Alliance, in Floyd, Virginia received a multi-year grant for organizing, as did 9 to 5 Atlanta. There were only two groups whose primary work is for reproductive access that received RESIST support, which prompted Board discussion of the growing taboo of abortion among young people.

Tribute and Memorial Grants are an excellent way to further the make ourselves visible. Named for activists and passionate lovers of justice, they keep alive personal legacies while nurturing organizations to carry the work on.

Last year's recipient of the Mike Riegle Tribute Grant, given in memory of a Boston activist, went to Ex-Prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement (EPOCA), a group organizing to reform the criminal justice system and to oppose the misuse of Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) information by employers and housing authorities.

The Ken Hale Tribute Grant is given in memory of the life and work of one of the world's foremost linguists, a passionate activist for justice, a founding member of RESIST and a member of its board for 30 years. The grant is given to support organizations that ensure that the voices of those most affected are given primacy in the struggle to protect and expand civil, cultural and political rights, with a high priority given to the efforts of indigenous peoples. This year, RESIST awarded the grant to UNETE, Center for Farm Worker Advocacy in Medford, Oregon. UNETE is a Latino-led organization that empowers farm workers and immigrants to advocate for their rights.

Finally, the Freda Friedman Salzman Memorial Grant was given this year to the Providence Youth-Student Movement (PrYSM) in Providence, Rhode Island. This grant is "dedicated to the purpose of supporting organized resistance to the institutions and practices that rob people of their dignity as full human beings.(giving) a high priority to the efforts of Native American peoples to resist cultural as well as actual genocide." PrYSM is a dynamic group of Southeast Asian young people, coming together to fight for racial and economic justice.

The extraordinary interest around the world in the U.S. presidential elections should be read as yet another expression of the urgently felt global need for fundamental change - among the mainstream as well as at the margins. And while it is an historic contest, with more drama than usual, there is a limit to the structural change any president or political party can bring about. We must continue to strengthen the grassroots, putting our dollars, our time, our energy and our hearts into movements that will bring about the change that is so desperately needed. Like the red-robed monks of Myanmar, we need to step up and step out. Their simple but courageous gesture for change was made at terrible cost, but they made themselves visible and we are strengthened by it. Pass it on.

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Diana Digges, a member of RESIST's Board of Directors, is a teacher and a journalist.