Welcome and thank you for joining with LeftRoots to do an initial mapping of movement forces in different parts of the United States. The opportunities and challenges facing organizers and activists looking to make transformative, revolutionary change have never been greater. As a political project aiming to spark the emergence of a radical and relevant Left in the U.S., LeftRoots hopes this process will be a small step towards developing a more accurate assessment of our collective strengths and weaknesses.
We have two goals with this movement mapping process:
- We want to gain a deeper understanding of how social movement activists see the strengths, weaknesses and questions facing movements forces in different parts of the country. As the great strategist Sun Tzu once said, knowing oneself is a core task of any grouping trying to make change. This information will inform LeftRoots’ project to develop grounded strategies for socialist liberation. For more information about that project, click here.
- We hope to begin dialogue with social movement leftists in different local areas about the possibility of building strong LeftRoots branches in the coming period.
Our goal is to collect assessments from at least 5 – 7 local areas before December 15. Clearly, this will not give us a total and complete assessment of movement forces, but it will be a start that we can build from.
Your commitment to complete the Movement Assessment Tool (MAT) will be a huge contribution to our success, and we appreciate it.
Here is an example MAT from the Bay Area to give you a sense of what we’re looking for.