Tactics, Strategy and the Power of Goals

 

Ideology and goals differ from strategy and tactics. The first two are motivational and wired into your character[xvii]. The last two are neutral, defined by how you use them. Strategy leads to an over-all plan, while tactics are moment to moment specific individual actions for immediate specific result.

For example, our bylaws were defensive long-range strategy for the neighborhood, giving power to current residents. Another strategy was to use the common denominators in all our activities of Family, Pride, and Hands representing the strengths found in the neighborhood.

Tactics are using events, such as swimming in the public fountain to attract attention. In the use of tactics or strategies, accusation of racism is counterproductive and a path to failure. The only true path to success comes from strengthening the internal, not from placing the blame on outsiders. To use blame and protest as a tactic may be effective in isolated cases but beware of ongoing blame as a strategy. It leads only to extortion and negative corruption and manipulation. Avoid it like the plague.

To protest is like to use reverse gear in a car; when are you going to shift into forward? Ever? By using blame, you can enslave those you pretend to be helping in a never-ending envelope of negativity. Call them minorities present them as victims, patronizingly pat them on the head, pretend to lead them into ‘peaceful’ demonstrations without specific goals but with hollow slogans, instead of showing them how they can do great things, then, by infiltrating them, rally them up to riots and setting buildings on fire, keep them engaged in excitement and looking at the past where they were or are entangled without going outside their expertise,  with little improvement, and you have yourself some useful idiots, slaves, for gaining personal power and filling up your own pocket or gaining more votes. Notice the Black Power movement does that. If others talk you into spending your life going in reverse, staying behind, how will you fare compared to those who use all their gears moving forwards? Revolt from such condesending oppression! Minorities promoters are often minorities worst enemies.

Prevent corruption, half the good you can do is to prevent bad people from getting away with malevolent things. I mentioned that if others think you have 5,000 people behind you, not 50, you really have 5,000. But what is better? To get a mob and claim 5,000 as leverage to gain your purpose. Or to get 5,000 people to learn about the candidates, register, to cast a real educated vote by conscience, with knowledge on how to follow-up? One is a tactic, the other is a strategy or even an ideology. The first and easy leads to malevolence and corrupt manipulation[xviii]. Registering voters, steering them on how to vote with no education nor follow-up is a travesty, manipulation of the worst kind. The enemy will claim that at least it wins elections. It doesn’t pass the smell test.

Poisoning takes place by faking your goals. If you train your people to deceive, deception starts with you. Shame on you. Things must be called what they are.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” a truncated quote from Edmund Burke’s original. He is also credited with saying, “No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do little.” If you agree with that, not resentment, but mobilizing to action is the key to group health. My old argument with Ray. “Don’t just talk, do.”

Good long-term goals is the best answer. If you have a proud history; build on it. If you don’t have a proud history, start building one, be sure to base it on something positive. Anti-slavery is not a good one; you end up at where you are looking, where you started: slave to someone else’s dumb ideology.

Our real enemies in the Barrio was not the government undermining us, nor the newcomers competing to displace old-time residents, as we are all Americans, and can convey the individual type of social justice. Our real enemies are those with evil intent snarled in corruption, who divide us by sex, age, race, and income, and then pretend to rally us up but against each other and against a fake enemy no one can really see, such as the system, authority, black and whites, poor and rich, or another such cause. And we often fall for it. This is too intricate for most people to fathom, there are no easy answers, and it’s happening under our noses.

Tools or Strategies? In our battles, our bylaws was the most powerful basic tools we had; it served us very well. Revealing how it worked, as I’m about to, allows others to undo them. However, it is better to share the power: knowledge is power. Let everyone understand the source of their protection. It may be subtle, but your greatest strength can also be your greatest weakness[xix].

The strategy consisted on how the three areas of the Barrio were composed: 1) Barrio Libre, 2) El Hoyo, and 3) El Membrillo, forming Barrio Viejo or Barrio Histórico. In Barrio Libre, even if all seven out of sixteen elected board members were newcomers, it could not overpower the other two areas and control the association. To be able to control the Board, someone had to get nine elected members to agree. The strength remains with the existing population. Gentrification could only reach a voting majority if 75% of Barrio Viejo and 50% of El Hoyo and 35% of El Membrillo tipped over to new residents by displacement, but then, it would no longer be a Barrio. Was that fair? Would something else be more fair? And fair for whom?

The weakness in this model would be to divide and conquer it by “clothing it with moral garments.”  The opposition tried this strategy inside the Barrio without success, because the unity in the families was stronger. However, outside the Barrio it was successfully used with many of the City Council members.

A second strategy we used to stop the downward spiral was to deal with it simultaneously from the top, from the middle and from the bottom[xx]. One tactic alone, no matter how good, will not get the job done. Winning a battle for a stop sign on a corner, or a new swimming pool, is a good start, but will not save the neighborhood. You need accomplishments at different levels, impacting the resident, the City Mayor, the county mayor, the state governor, and the people at large. You’ll need their support. 

It can be a double-edged sword, since their political agenda is not the same as yours, and they may try to snare you into their fold. Part of the advancements we made were due to the neighborhood being unimportant to many. We slipped under the radar. The greedy politician ignored what they considered unimportant. We didn’t want to attract too much attention too soon. We got results without being too obvious. Sooner or later, the cat would be out of the bag.

Impact different levels economically, educationally, socially.

A third and a critical strategy, becoming a goal, was to get people to return to the Barrio. To do so, we had to make it attractive to them before it became attractive to others. You must respect the outsiders already living in the Barrio or you commit the same sin you’re trying to suppress. I agree to share power, especially with returning residents, but there is a balance, and respecting newcomers does not mean letting them take control.

However, they gave an outsider, me, relative control, since I could be steering them in the wrong direction. At least, I always gave them back the decision-making power at every juncture[xxi].

“Those newcomers you are respecting, will not respect you,” Ray prophetically counseled me several times. “When time comes, they will pull in the direction of their own best interest, liberals will backstab you,” which they did, going for the source of funding, and when they couldn’t get it, they trying to prevent us from getting it, or cause us to lose it.

A fourth strategy in management is to keep on guard against the same weaknesses that made the Barrio deteriorate. Identifying the cause for decline is key to neutralizing negativity, or better still is to turn it into an assets. People often avoid looking at their weaknesses or their self-inflicted errors, not realizing that rather than criticizing it, recognize it, and then rather than dwelling on weaknesses, nourish strengths. What were the Barrio’s strengths?

Goals. The incredible power of a truly worthy goal is in the plurality of events which one goal can generate. All your actions, tactics and strategies have one direction, and even if small or scattered they become a productive move since they all go the same way. Your goal must be shaped from the highest ideals. Shoot high, maintain impartiality, equality, equity, and respect humanity. Welcome competition, but reject supremacy over others. Likewise, welcome self-sufficiency for everyone, avoid favoritism. Share the power.  Accidents are often the result of a series of unrelated actions lining up for the accident to happen. The same, but for the best, can take place with goals, several unrelated events can lead in the direction of a goal. You just need to best use them. The invisible mystery of goals is the phenomenon of alignments of apparent unrelated events. Other people’s actions not related to you can also help you get closer to your goal. Moreover, if your goal incorporates the use of qualities already there, more power to you. Our goal was to develop by free choice the economy in the Barrio, with competition, and using Family, Pride, and Hands.

Why is this sequence so important? Because it can also be used against you in more ways than one, by the enemy from within and from without. I will give you some examples. 

1) America’s enemies, such as Russia, China, and others like communism, Islam’s Sharia Law, ACORN, etc., utilize our groups and institutions that have goals they can ride for a while as strategy in a direction they can utilize. For them that is a strategy, since ideology and goals are separate from strategy and tactics. For example, they claim the value of freedom of speech and use it, then control it, and then eliminate it. When they say, “You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments,” and “goals must be phrased in general terms like Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, of the Common Welfare, Pursuit of Happiness, or Bread and Peace,” (Alinsky, Saul. Ethics of Means and Ends. Rule #10 and # 11), what they are doing is riding on someone else’s goals with deceit and for a different final objective.

2) Sublimation of goals. A strategy used over the years to metamorphose the meaning of certain words into something often diametrically the opposite. Concepts, such as social justice, globalization, civilian armament, equality and equity, which may have had lofty origins, are now often used intentionally to deceive. The enemy from within gains support by tricking those they call the useful idiots. It is hard to tell when it is intentional and when it is naiveté.

3) More on goals. A good driving instructor will alert you if you are driving in hazardous conditions, such as a wet slippery road, and your car gets into a skid, to “be aware of the ditch or the poles in your surroundings but do not stare at them, because you will unintentionally steer your car in the direction you’re looking at. It’s erroneous intuition to look at what you want to avoid, as you may end there.” Once you experience this occurrence, especially on a motorcycle, you’ll know exactly the power of knowing what to look at and not to look at. It is the same for goals: focus on where you want to go. Don’t blame others, as looking at their faults will steer you in that direction. Look at your goal. By implication be careful with how you view your enemies so as not to become like them. Another example, if you write a book on racism, no matter how much you talk about how bad it is, guess where you are going to end up at.

The enemy from within will manipulate each of the above, to throw a monkey-wrench in your goals. Done more often than we are aware of. A parallel truism to this phenomenon is “make the lie big enough, repeat it often enough, and people will get to believe it,” because you got them looking at it. The goal of this book is to build up, not to tear down. Never give up.