The Cockroach vs The Dinosaur

By Willie Baptist, Education Director, Kensington Welfare Rights Union
Co-Coordinator of the University of the Poor

 The conditions of life today, particularly for the newly emerging class of poor folks, are creating new means of struggle which are necessitating new methods of using them.  Such means of struggle as housing takeovers, tent city struggles, cooperative survival projects, the poor and homeless use of newspapers and computer networks, etc are all considerations in the emerging new war to end poverty forever.  The art of leadership, that is the art of strategy and tactics in this war, is the art of adapting the newly arising means of struggle to the objectives of human survival and human happiness. Leaders must be educated and trained in this art. Comparing the ways and means of the cockroach to those of the dinosaur gives us some lessons in this regard.

The dinosaurs are extinct. They could not adapt. In other words, they could not take up and use other means of survival left or placed at their disposal by new conditions. The new conditions eliminated their old means of survival and they perished.

The mass extinction of the dinosaurs took place 65 million years ago. So far most theories agree that the extinction was not a slow evolutionary process but one that was "leap-like" concentrated in a relatively short period of time. Increasing fossil evidences seem to give more scientific credence to a leading theory on how and why the extinction happened. This theory says that a cataclysmic bombardment of the earth surface by a gigantic meteor took place. This created a huge dust that blocked out the sunlight for a period estimates of which range from many months to a thousand years. The dinosaurs-the dominant life forms- were destroyed in turn as death went up the food chain starting with the plant life immediately dependent on sunlight. The cockroaches lived through this period. Their make-up and capabilities enabled them to survive and adapt to the new environmental conditions created by the cataclysmic changes.

The cockroaches are one of the oldest species still in existence. They are 350 million years old. They are most noted for their adaptability to changing conditions of life. Contributing to this highly developed adaptability is their large scale reproductive capacity (one cockroach can give birth to 400,000 descendants in a year) and the size, structure, and chemical make-up of their bodies. Their antennae and other sensory organs give them extreme sensitivity to light and air movements which contribute to their speed and maneuverability. Their ability to keenly sense tiny food nutrients in extremely varied and scarce environmental situations make them resourceful and resilient.

These capabilities constitute their main strengths and limitations and therefore helped define their "strategic/tactical" methods of survival. They operate mainly at night while most other animal species are asleep. Their main method of defense is rapid retreat. The final point of retreat are "bases of operation" created out of hidden places most difficult to access and less frequented by predators or killer sprays. The "bases of operations" serve as temporary protection for especially the impregnated females (who are capable of giving birth to 16-32 roaches per egg carried). These females reside in the center of the "bases" and produce new "soldiers" in the struggle for survival. Another effective method of defense is the ability of an entire cockroach concentration to scatter and quickly retreat to a new and harder to reach "base of operation" when the old one is exposed to direct assaults.

Few animal creatures have exhibited such abilities for extended existence. Only human beings have exhibited comparable potential abilities. They lie in their unique mental capacities. This gives them the ability to study and predict generally the changing conditions and to adopt and adapt,  in the most advantageous strategic and tactical way, the means of survival and struggle provided by those conditions. Leadership is problem-solving involving the art of strategy and tactics. It is therefore necessary to human survival especially in social and political conflicts. However it's only source is the human mental process.

Let us do as the cockroach and not as the dinosaur. Let us develop, train, and use our strength of adaptability as expressed through our capacity to think and study the survival problems we face so as to solve them. The sensitive instincts of the cockroach must be matched by our mental capacity to attain scientific truth about our conditions and about the strengths and limitations of ourselves and our enemies. This is essential if we are to defend ourselves and defeat our enemies who benefit from and defend a profit-driven and human-murdering system.

The instincts of the dinosaur could not prevent it from becoming extinct. If we persist in only using short-sighted individual "instincts" in our day to day struggle for survival without thinking, without scientific knowledge that takes us beyond the surface to the substance of the matter, then those "instincts" will not add up to even those of the dinosaur. This to say nothing of the sophisticated intelligence of our enemy.

To out-fight our enemies we must out-smart them. Nowhere in world history can anyone find where a dumb force rose up and defeated a smart force. The source of smart strategy and tactics, and the most powerful and revolutionary weapon in the struggle for human survival, is the human thinking and feeling capacity. Political education and training in the skills of organizing are the keys to wielding this weapon, to acquiring and adapting the necessary means of carrying out a social struggle to eliminate poverty and to better our lives.

This is what the Annie Smart Leadership Development Institute is all about. It is an education and training institute created and run mostly by poor and homeless people. In the war to end poverty we can not allow our enemy to create and provide "leaders" for us. Daily the growing struggles for survival are producing new soldiers with the potential for leadership. The Institute is about the development of these soldiers into generals. To accomplish this, our approach includes not only popular education but also intermediate and advanced education. Smart leadership not only put forth solutions to problems but also organizes the carrying out of those solutions. Generals must be educated and trained to organize a mighty army to wipe out poverty and homelessness forever.