Harry Targ
Cliff
DuRand Presente! | Grassroots Economic Organizing (geo.coop)
Many
activists among us worked to end the system of Jim Crow in the South and the
Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s with some success. However, we often
questioned whether our work was impactful. We did not recognize that
“impactfulness” was not just about “revolution”: it was about educating people,
developing friendships, building communities of activism, and planting the
seeds for bigger and bigger changes to come. Central to impactfulness was
networking; that is building a community of shared values, a common language,
and similar political work in a variety of spaces and places.
Cliff DuRand created networks of progressives far and wide. He was a co-founder of the Radical Philosophy Association. He and his comrades began a conversation with Cuban scholars in the 1980s that led to the first Radical Philosophy Association academic conference in Cuba in 1990. Every year thereafter 20 to 50 academics and other activists met in Havana to share knowledge and comradeship with each other and our Cuban hosts. Participants in these conferences became friends, invited each other to work together, and generally developed a national and cross-national group of scholar/activists.
In addition, many of us developed deep friendships with our colleagues and comrades from Cuba. Often, before the imposition of new draconian US policies, Cuban scholars attended conferences in the United States, visited some of our universities, helped establish study abroad programs for US students, and collaborated to oppose United States policy toward Cuba. And the networking about Cuba was replicated in a variety of activities that Cliff and his friends initiated at the Center for Global Justice in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: conferences, webinars, and tours.
On hearing of Cliff’s death I reflected on what Cliff Durand’s “networking” meant to me. If I had not attended that first and subsequent conferences in Cuba I would not have begun serious study of US/Cuban relations, would not have taught a course on the subject, and would not have taken a group of students to a study abroad in Cuba. I would not have made lasting friendships with Cuban scholars or have published articles with them. I would not have attended conferences of the Radical Philosophy Association or attended conferences on globalization at the Center of Global Justice. Finally, I would not have developed deep friendships with people I met in Cuba, Mexico, and at RPA conferences.
When one thinks in this way about networking, comrades like Cliff Durand have had an enormous effect, not only on me but on hundreds, maybe thousands of others. And therefore we owe Cliff a debt of gratitude for his impact on our lives.
He will be missed.
