History of the Swarm and Nest

A little while ago I set off to discover the history of an organizing tactic called the Swarm and Nest. Below I've pasted together in roughly chronological order all of the communications I had wrt my investigation of the history of the swarm and nest. I'm posting it here for no good reason.

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Hey Sanjay & Rob

I have a question from le olde GEO history.  Where did the swarm and
nest come from? Some say it came from Wisconsin, but I thought Rob
took it there.

In curiousity,

dr

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i don't know where it came from, but we were doing it at UIUC when i came on in 1999. It seemed like we had been doing it for a while at that point.

good luck on gathering the history!

sanjay

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Yep, I explicitly stole it from our habits at Illinois. Not sure who's idea it was there, or indeed if it was original to Illinois at all. Some Wisconsin person might have represented it to others as a Wisconsin idea, unaware of its history. Then again, perhaps someone at Illinois in the late '90s stole it from some earlier incarnation of Wisconsin that all of us don't know about...

History = rumor.

Rob

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I talked to Jon Curtiss about it.  His impression was that it was a
UIUC invented thing...

dr

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Hi all,

On a lark, I'm trying to figure out where the Swarm & Nest came from. It's something we used to do at UIUC, which Rob took to TAA and I brought to Michigan, and which other grad locals -- UIC, and the Florida schools for example -- have started to adopt.

The consensus seems to be that UIUC introduced it into the grad labor movement. Did we invent it, or lift the technique from someone else?

Send me a message if you've got the info!

dr

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I think we invented them name and lifted the technique. But from whom I have no idea. Probably TAA, but that's just a guess.

Andrew Cantrell

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I don't know if GEO invented it but I seem to recall it arising as a tactic during the card drive. I believe it was adopted as a tactic in an attempt to make the most efficient use of the active members as well as challenge the perception, at the time, of the dominance of humanities in the organizing effort. I think I have some e-mails from the stewards list archived at home that might be relevant. I'll take a look.

Tom Pulhamus

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Hi David--to my recollection, swarm and nest is a UIUC GEO original. I remember being at a meeting where the strategy was named, to much general hilarity, in the 1995-1996 card drive era.

In solidarity , Loretta Gaffney
Editor of the Organizer, 1997-1999

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During my time at GEO, we first began doing Swarm and Nest in the fall of 1999, after Uma, Mike, someone else and I picked up the idea at CGEU that summer. However, Toby and Loretta both said it had been done before by GEO, and I think Toby and Loretta supplied the name "Swarm and Nest"

Dave Kamper

- - -
OK. This is the full text of an e-mail sent by Steve Jahn to the GEO-Stewards list on January 17, 1997. The important bit is the second paragraph:

GEO Spring Organizing Plan for the Election

Welcome back everyone. In December, after reviewing the results 
of our fall organizing (2800 people contacted), and after talking to Iowa 
and Kansas people about their elections, the staff and coordinating 
committee members have been developing a new organizing plan for the 
spring. Many of you know it by now because staff members have been 
talking face to face with those stewards who have been in town.
Basically the plan (modeled after the COGs plan at Iowa) divides
the campus into four sections with one team of a dozen volunteers and one
staff member assigned to each section. Team members will have short (5
min) contacts will all of the 3s, 2s, and 1s we contacted last semester
(hence we are contacting "friendly" people only). The contact will be to
give them election info and to urge them to vote, etc. Phone banking will
continue every week to generate new contacts and make appointments for the
team members. We have continued to modify the plan as we get people's
feedback, but this is where it presently stands.
Stewards will continue to act as representatives of their
departments. But for organizing purposes, we are inviting all stewards to
join a team for 10 weeks so we can get 3800 people out to vote for us on
April 15-16th. It's a 2-3 hour committment. We hope to organize in a 
more communal, social way this semester with less meetings and more 
intensity. Many stewards have already signed up to be on a team, but we 
still need more. So please join us--it will be fun.
Stewards also need to discuss what they want to do with the
stewards' council. We have set up a tentative meeting date of Mon
Jan. 27th 5pm at the YMCA to have this discussion. That date will be 
confirmed at the coordinating committee meeting this Tuesday night.
So please mark your calendar--MON JAN 27th 5 PM YMCA. See you there!

I think the team organization was the germ from which it all sprang. So maybe Iowa is the ur-form? I could probably suss out something more from what I've got (1996 - ????) about how it developed. Maybe another time. Too tired now. Let me know if there's anything else I can do.

Tom Pulhamus

How to talk to a wingnut about healthcare

1. Get in the door. You've got to engage, to get the conversation going. Don't take this too literally. Getting in the door can just mean chatting up the the middle-aged woman with the "No to any Obama Plan!" sign at the health-care rally.

2. Get their story. Accept that they are where they are at. Focus on narrative rather than argument. Get the bad stuff and the good. Listen to their fears about healthcare reform, but also push them to tell you about their own health care experiences. Be open and honest about disagreement, but consistently express sincere interest in understanding their point of view. If it feels fake, try being sincere.

3. Find their reasons for supporting reform. Usually, these are easier to see once you've listened long enough to have found genuine common ground. Think about their story, about the kinds of things that matter to them. Use the part of your brain that comes in handy when shopping for a gift. Articulate and seek agreement.

4. Assess and ask. Figure out a step that will get them a little closer to the reform agenda. Link the step to the reasons they've given. Don't be afraid to ask for something they won't do, but be prepared to ratchet down to something they will do. The important thing is that they take a step, even if it is a small one. A good ask at a healthcare rally might be, "since you agree that we need to provide healthcare to everyone who really needs it, will you take one of our signs and stand with us?" You might settle for them agreeing to support a plank of the reform agenda (though something more concrete would be better).

5. Inoculate. Talk about the things they'll be hearing that push against the step they've agreed to take. Make a space to listen to their reservations. Remind them of the reasons for supporting health care, and of the link to the step they've taken.

Reminds me of something

D.T. Max:

The problem for Wallace, as he reflected after its publication, was that “Broom” offered an analysis but derided even the idea of a solution. In a 1989 letter to the novelist Jonathan Franzen, a friend, Wallace said that “Broom” felt as if it had been written by “a very smart fourteen-year-old.”

Quite a compliment

Time:

The White House was prepared for the ruling, in part because after six years in Washington, Bush had finally found himself a White House counsel who was up to the job. Fred Fielding, a genial, white-haired, slightly stooped figure in his late 60s, had cut his teeth as an assistant to John Dean in Richard Nixon's counsel's office and served as Ronald Reagan's top lawyer as well. He had unrivaled experience managing allegations of White House misconduct.

Obviously

There's nothing to see here. As you know, prominent white academics are arrested in their own homes all the time. After showing ID. By cops responding to reports of a possible burglary. Why wouldn't the cops arrest a prominent white member of the community in such circumstances? They'd practically have to!

And let's be clear. Gates wasn't arrested for burglary. It was for disorderly conduct. If Gates had been able to control himself, he wouldn't be in any trouble at all! And what did he have to be upset about? Nothing. Of course the cops assumed he was robbing his own house. Gates would have assumed the same thing if he'd only taken the time to look in the mirror.

Frankly, I resent Gates for taking umbrage. The cops were there to protect him. They're on his side. How could he not know that?

Oversensitivity, that's the story here. If there is one, I mean. Which there isn't. Nothing to see here. Nothing at all.

Good turn update

Contrary to expectations, TCF Bank fixed the problem in about a day, and even refunded the overdraft fees without making me go through the process that they outlined yesterday. So, good work TCF.

There is one problem. They credited too much money back to my account. This time I've learned my lesson, and will keep my mouth shut.

Read the whole thing

The coda of an excellent post from Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Perhaps if you are white, Barack Obama represents the end of the idea that your next door neighbor could be president. But you should consider that just because Barack Obama isn't your next door neighbor, doesn't mean he isn't mine.