An Oppressed Group Must Move in Two Directions
To be successful, any oppressed group seeking liberation must move in two directions:
1. It must strive for unity within its own group around a clear-cut program of goals and action. There are actually two points here. A: We must quit hurting each other within each group. We must find brotherhood-sisterhood and unity. We must not go on letting the internalized oppression manipulate us to bloody each other’s heads. B: The unity has to be reached through working out a clear-cut, united plan of goals and actions. Each group has to have a program as well as a desire for unity. Unity gets achieved in practice only around a program. A program alone isn’t enough—you have to do the other, too. You have to fight for unity, for brotherhood, for sisterhood, but around a program.
2. The group must consistently seek unity and mutual support with every other oppressed group, no matter how difficult this task may seem at first. . . . What is essential is . . . a correct program for your group and the winning of allies, the winning of allies, the winning of allies. Lack of this was the great emptiness of all the struggles of the 1960s. The activists programmed like crazy [did a lot of programming] and did lots of running around and initiated all kinds of militant actions, and no one ever thought in terms of winning allies and support. So a lot of good people got hurt and ruined.
(Present Time 188, July 2017)