"(AG: you have said you can’t confront the American state spontaneously.) SJ: You always spontaneously react against the American state. You know, it is one of the most brutal ever in history. But on the other hand, you must organize against it. Spontaneity is not enough. Spontaneity is the basis on which you organize. And the question that C. L. R. James posed all those years ago is still our question: how do you organize in a way that does not prevent the spontaneity and the experience and the outpouring of all that you feel and think? You know, organization has tended to be a kind of repression, in spite of the fact that you’re going for liberation. And how do you form an organization that is not a repression, that is a discipline that demands accountability, but does not repress either your experience or your ideas or your spontaneous responses? That’s what we’ve been addressing for 40 years. This month is the 40th anniversary of the Wages for Housework Campaign, so I’ve spent 40 years of my life doing this. I’ve learned an enormous amount from others and with others."
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Non-fiction authors from the United StatesJournalists from the United StatesColumnists from the United StatesFeminists from the United StatesWomen activists from the United States
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Selma James
Selma James (born Selma Deitch; formerly Weinstein; August 15, 1930) is a writer, feminist, and social activist who co-founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign and was a coordinator of the Global Women's Strike. She is Jewish, and the historian and writer C. L. R. James was a long-term partner of hers.
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