Pavlos spoke on many important issues and movement work in Greece. This also included a very relevant accounting of the 20th century history of occupation, dictatorship and repression in that country. We heard how these experiences have informed the Greek people’s attitudes toward the police and government, and what resistance looks like and is thought of there. He talked about how the police are remembered as collaborators with occupiers, and on the side of the dictatorship and against the people.

Pavlos clarified that what we refer to as ‘riots’ following the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in late 2008 are instead known in Greece as the December Uprising. This is an important distinction, Pavlos explained, because people weren’t simply running wild in the streets, but acting with a political compass and targeting banks, government offices, etc. That the uprising has come to be known as riots in the Western media, removing the political content of the actions. The December Uprising also impacted later movements in Greece that emerged in response to severe austerity measures.

We learned about the neo-fascist group Golden Dawn, its recent rise to political power (it is now the fifth most represented party in the Greek government), and the threat it poses. Pavlos spoke of how, within the last 10 years, Greece has seen a massive change in population demographics, with anti-immigrant sentiment appealing to some. In addition to this, the economic desperation of most Greeks has led to an equally desperate search for a cause and a solution, resulting in an increase in anti-immigrant sentiment.  While Greece has a majority politically left-leaning culture, there has been a smaller, but consistent current of fascism and the far right during the last century. And for just as long there has been a popular resistance to it.

Pavlos also spoke to the situation of a failing state and capital and its consequences. For example, suicide rates have skyrocketed. Pavlos anecdotally shared that nearly every person seems to know someone who has killed themselves, making it a common and unsurprising topic of conversation in Greece. The increase in cost of home heating has meant that many homes are using firewood, causing an increase in pollution, respiratory illnesses, and there have been several deaths from fires and carbon monoxide poisoning in Athens and other places. Huge wage cuts are the norm, some as high as 70%, and many public workers go for months at a time with no payment at all.

With this as the backdrop, popular assemblies have emerged in many locations. These began as mass occupations of City Halls somewhat like the U.S.’s Occupy in city parks. The occupations spread throughout Greece, and some have continued. They are often made up of working class Greeks and reflect their concerns and needs, in places running some local services by directly democratic process in the assemblies. We heard how these assemblies serve as an inspiring example of resistance to crisis and austerity. The biggest inspiration and lesson from the assemblies, for Pavlos and for us, is not to just get through the crisis, but to remake our relationships to each other and how we manage our lives day-in and day-out. This, Pavlos told us, is the most radical aspect of what is happening in Greece.

A short history of May Day

The first of May is a moment for us to remember the Chicago Haymarket Martyrs of 127 years ago. These Chicago anarchists helped to lead the major battle of the day, not only for the 8 Hour Day, but also for social liberation.

The origins of May Day go back to May 4, 1886, marking the Haymarket Massacre. This memorable day began as a rally of striking workers who were demanding an eight-hour work day, climaxing with a bomb produced by an unknown individual while the police dispersed the peaceful rally. The blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; scores of others were wounded.

Eight anarchists were convicted of conspiracy during the legal proceedings that followed. Although the evidence was scarce, and it could not be proven that any of the eight defendants had thrown the explosive projectile, seven were sentenced to death and one to 15 years in prison. The death sentences of two of the defendants were commuted to life in prison, and another committed suicide before his hanging. The other four were hanged on November 11, 1887. In 1893, Illinois’ new governor pardoned the remaining defendants and criticized the evidence that was used during trial.

Since this day, we honor those who have fought, sacrificed and died for the defense and advancement of the working class.

Present conditions

Since the events of Haymarket, we have wrestled much from the capitalist class and the state through struggle. During the past 30 years, these forces have attacked our small, yet hard-fought-for gains. Continued attacks on working conditions, increasingly precarious and low wage work, deindustrialization, and marginalization have become the new normal. Governments have imposed round after round of social austerity measures, where workers and families have been expected to swallow cuts to public funding of services so that the richest can continue to profit from the fruits of our labor.

Today’s struggles/Tomorrow’s struggles

Despite this grim situation, today we have much to celebrate and look forward to. Over the last year, we have seen in Québec the biggest social movements in Canadian history spearheaded by combative unions to fight against neoliberal cuts to education and for quality free education. The Chicago Teachers Union went on strike and joined with parents and community members to protect their bargaining rights and working conditions and fight school closures. Workers from various fast food chains, warehouses, car washes and superstores, which have historically been near impossible to organize into business unions, have been participating in strike actions and various direct action in the demand for better working conditions. Unionized longshore workers have been fighting to hold the line on additional concessions to the bosses in one of the last bastions of union density and shopfloor power. While we celebrate these efforts and whatever small victories gained thus far, working class victory can only come from struggles owned and controlled by the workers themselves, not from above but from below and built with their own self-activities.

These developments within the broader labor movement are a welcome sight in comparison to what is seen by some as a decade of relative inactivity. We see it as important that the workers and community partners involved in these campaigns recognize that they are confronting head-on the relationship between the ruling and working classes, and that successfully challenging this relationship will require more than one-day strikes and solidarity rallies. It will require nothing less than workers forcefully overcoming barriers of race, migration status, gender, sexuality, and gender identity to unite as one class, bound by continuous solidarity, and always pushing forward through escalations of action.

The need for a new workers’ movement

We hope this new, combative spirit by some workers invigorates a new and militant workers’ movement in North America—a workers’ movement that will no longer wait for politicians and bureaucrats to resolve the growing inequalities and oppressions. This spirit might bring a new wave of workers to replace the stale unionism with more democratic, combative and autonomous labor organizations which realize that laws and political institutions are put in place for the defense of the ruling class, and that only our own labor organizations, autonomous from the political institutions, can bring about the effective fighting force needed to replace the current, and build a new world.

This new workers’ movement should be allied with supportive movements, such as those against cuts to social services and education, and those movements against all forms of oppression and inequality. We see the interconnectedness of various forms of oppression as we wage these struggles, along with the fights against the expansion of and brutality of police forces and prisons, the criminalization of the poor and undocumented, and the continued attacks on reproductive freedoms. As these and many other forms of oppression work in conjunction with class exploitation, we must build movements which see common interest in these struggles and which actively and mutually oppose the assaults on one another.

A new world to build

By engaging in these struggles, we gain necessary experience, initiate needed debates, and confront the current austerity agenda of the elite outside of current labor laws. Through struggle, we lay the possible foundations of a future world. Through struggle, we can as a class start to imagine and organize for a classless society and one completely emancipated from all forms of oppression. This May Day, just like every other, is a call for workers to organize against the everyday exploitation of capitalism. In the spirit of those who fought for the eight hour day, let us continue the fight for the advancement of our class.

We need to look toward building a society without power, profit, and privilege, in which working people in workplaces and communities make the decisions about how our work is done and what we want from it. We need a movement that fights for real gains within the context of this society while using its own organizations as the basis for a new one.

In Struggle & Solidarity,

Prairie Struggle Organization
Wild Rose Collective
Four Star Anarchist Organization
Common Struggle/Lucha Común
Workers Solidarity Alliance
Free Association of Anarchists
Miami Autonomy & Solidarity

Wild Rose Collective of eastern Iowa joins others in declaring our solidarity with the striking canvass workers of Sisters’ Camelot in Minneapolis. As many of us have been workers in non-profit organizations, we know well that wage labor under some other name than profit enterprise is wage labor nonetheless. Further, the socially positive mission and work of an organization does not exempt it from its need to also treat its workers with respect and provide decent wages and working conditions.

We reject the attempts by Sisters’ Camelot managing collective, and others, to attack these workers’ efforts by firing a workplace organizer, reducing grievances and demands to petty personal grudges, declaring that said workers have “independent contractor” status, and citing the non-profit status of the organization and collective nature of the management to discredit the demands of the canvass workers who have chosen to organize with the IWW. These are well known tactics used to break workplace organizing efforts, and we reject them as fully and completely as if they came from the largest multi-national corporation, or their union-busting lawyers.

We admire the resolve of the workers who have chosen to go on strike rather than negotiate with the managing collective who has fired their fellow worker. We call on Sisters’ Camelot to reinstate this worker and respect the collective demands of their canvass workers through mutual negotiations.

Solidarity with the canvass workers of Sisters’ Camelot!
Solidarity with all workers striving for a better life!

Wild Rose Collective

People go where their needs can be satisfied, or they hope to anyway, where there are jobs and culture. Many of the most committed organizers find their needs and interests taking them to the major metropolitan areas. This is understandable because the ability to find politically like-minded people, and to act in accordance with those politics, seems much easier in a place with hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. A recent piece here talks about the ongoing tendency of radicals to move out of places like the Midwest for hotbeds like the Bay Area, a sentiment which I sympathize with if the projects described less so.

Still a number of people either remain in the places they are from or close to them, or in places similar to them, or perhaps move from larger areas or other regions. This may be because of family situations, fear or anxiety of new places, economic prospects, personal preference or any number of factors. There is also a tendency for people from even smaller, rural areas to move to more middle-sized places near to them, in a somewhat similar desire for jobs and culture lacking in the areas from which they come.[1]

The differences and challenges of organizing in smaller areas might also have similarities with other areas, bigger than my own lived experiential examples, but maybe still non-politicized areas of low to non-existent organized leftist activity. Thus, those of us organizing outside of the coasts or major metro areas may have more in common with each other than the next biggest city closest to us. There are a few pieces I have come across that discuss organizing in smaller areas, but in general I have found very little on this subject. Since what has been documented so far is geared toward a different type of project, I would like to lay out what some of the more specific class struggle projects and dynamics look like in these areas.

Being here and not there

…our experience showed us the difficulty and slowness of the task of fostering revolutionary consciousness and popular alternative culture among ourselves and working people. It showed how much time, energy, and resources were necessary and the deep level of personal commitment required for the task in any community.

 - Toronto Liberation School Collective, from Organizing in a small town
Published in Volume 1, Number 1 of The Red Menace, February 1976.

The piece cited above details two individuals who worked at building a “revolutionary project” in a small Ontario town, who spent one year there and in that time built a workers center, which housed a child daycare collective and reading groups. This is impressive, as I have seen groups not accomplish as much over several years. I find it interesting that the difficulties described ring true all these years later and in different places, especially in terms of reaching people and in available resources, like physical space, money, time, and energy to keep going, in the end proving next to impossible to maintain.

There is something different going on in big cities, something in the way of an aggregate population with greater numbers of militants, radicals and the like-minded who can push already existing organizations, or build new ones more radically. Some form of leftist framework may be in place, such as a living history of political organizing from past struggles, community centers with a social justice purpose, sympathetic religious congregations, and so forth. These are potential spaces and resources where many come together in the form of liberal or radical community organizations or groups, and often it seems combinations thereof, even within one grouping or organization. As marginal and problematic as such spaces and projects may be, the degree to which they act as staging grounds and support networks for militants is perhaps overlooked. In my experiences in smaller areas, the severe lack of such a framework changes what is possible with a given project model, a model which may implicitly presuppose such supports.

But those in larger metro areas also generate and reinforce a certain kind of subculture, (probably good and bad for different reasons), that does not exist in smaller areas. That subculture is the complex web of friends and acquaintances, social coteries and cliques, bars, coffee shops and bookstores that people may frequent, and the different organizations, coalitions and projects people may be a part of on some level – that intangible network of relationships which holds together as a kind of subculture. For an organizational culture within this, one may find greater or lesser degrees of unity but it seems an overall higher degree of participation and greater numbers of supporters. Some drawbacks of this may be an alienating specificity to a milieu which becomes cliquish or inordinately subdivided. Although all of these are broad descriptions which I am sure break down differently depending on the particular metro area and organizational or informal groups in question, as far as a generalization goes these factors seem more or less apparent to me.

By contrast, those in smaller areas, do not have larger organizational, pre-existing politicized presences nor a militant subculture from those presences.  With smaller groups, I include both less active supporters and more active organizers, possibly around 3-10 persons — you can do some things with these numbers, like putting on small events, organizing for attending bigger protests, conferences and the like, or setting up study groups. An active campaign of a bigger section of the community, one that speaks to and acts on institutional or economic issues, the kind of things that a class struggle project is predicated on, simply requires more people. This means working with those outside of an anti-capitalist militancy, which sets up difficulties of a myriad nature. For example, having a mixture of tendencies, from liberal progressives to anarcho-punks in the same room trying to talk about the same project, campaign or action can make for some strange meetings. This can result in talking past one another and spending more time trying to convince the other of some basic presupposed position than determining any clear line of action, and almost inevitably the project ends up dead in the water.

This also means that the above described militant subculture is practically non-existent. In my opinion, this is both good and bad in a sort of direct inversion to the metro area. That is, no relatively large pool of people to draw from who know each other or who have worked together or may know of one another; but because there are fewer highly specified ideological subdivision going on, one often has to go outside political and personal comfort zones to be active in local struggles.

However, because the first and more important element is lacking, that of some manner of organized community presence, there are additional difficulties, namely the building of a fight-back, class struggle project itself. Identifying where local capitalist power lies, who is affected, and where the avenues for action are is no small feat. For another example, in the workplace organizing campaign, owing to the small numbers of supporters and the relative geographic isolation one is in, the ability to acquire the needed training, and build a campaign with others’ involvement and support runs into serious difficulties.

Not that any of these things are ever easy. I wouldn’t want to suggest that those organizing on the coasts or in major metro areas have an easy time of it. What I seek to explore is the degree to which the less apparent, less tangible elements of projects may make them work in ways they don’t in smaller and/or less politicized places, if indeed they work at all. It seems that the “glue” of a social, subcultural, but relatively militant network of support can be the necessary bolster to the always uphill battle of your given campaign or effort.

The models from the coasts

To start this next section with some context, my experiences of recent years have been drawn from what is often known as the class struggle anarchist or libertarian communist milieu. The examples provided below have some amount of specificity to that current, and websites such as libcom.org and the writings of these organizations, among others, are good resources for more information and background.

One of my attractions to class struggle anarchist politics was the thoughtful and strategic approaches to organizing, and taking up such approaches was hugely beneficial to developing my politics and experiences. To go a step farther and reflect on this modest level of experience, I will posit that some of the shortcomings that arise in a given model of organizing when applied in various locations and conditions might reveal weaknesses of the model or strategy itself. This is not to say that these are not still valuable models and strategies, but to view them with a critical eye based on local examples.

For instance, especifismo is a Latin American tradition of anarchism that heavily stresses working within already existing social movement formations as a specifically anarchist organization, this has been an influential current in the last couple of years in class struggle anarchist and libertarian communist politics especially.[2] In Iowa, some of us read the texts and followed North American discussions around them, but found a lot of difficulty as we looked around us and saw little to no actual social movement activity. What did exist was quite problematic politically, e.g. a group concentrating on electoral initiatives, or on further examination finding that the activity represented practically as small and marginal a group as our own. It is no great leap to then notice how social movements in the US are so few and far between as to be practically non-existent. We see a change in this somewhat beginning in 2008 and the various student mobilizations, especially in California, and following up through 2011 with the Occupy movement, and as described below we had an active role in the local expression of this. But I would maintain these are a far cry from the type of broad-based, popular movements that especificismo was developed from, certainly among other differences in conditions and political culture between South and North America.

Another project taken on in our area was the solidarity network. This is a method of direct action fights built around workplace and housing grievances, in large part inspired by the Seattle Solidarity Network, or Seasol for short. In November 2010 we began to flyer around town with our email and a phone number to leave a message, and in January we held a public meeting announcing the solidarity network which was attended by about 25 people.

This project went for about 12 months, and in that time we probably averaged 2-3 calls per month. The overwhelming majority of them were housing related, very few were related to the workplace and only one of these resulted in an initial follow up meeting (and ended up being resolved independently by the worker). The model itself is specifically geared in a lot of ways towards stolen rental deposits, unmade repairs in a rental unit, or stolen wages. The issues of eviction for non-payment of rent, refusal to renew a lease on the part of landlords, rent hikes and so forth were not things we were prepared for. Adding more difficulty, the people we were contacted by often were not able or willing to take a confrontational stance with their landlord. Sometimes it seemed people were expecting an approach often referred to as the service model, where a problem experienced by individuals is taken to an NPO or governmental agency who then acts on behalf of that person. And in some ways the solidarity network model does resemble this, as mostly individual grievances are to be taken on by the group. It is worth noting that the model does stress putting the individual with the grievance at the forefront of the fight, and having the network work with them on determining a course of action; ideally then that person would stick around and be part of the network for the next fight. In practice, our experiences were that this approach never actually panned out even at the level of the individual taking a key role in their grievance.

One major aspect of the solidarity network model is that it is built around individual fights, which does not allow for greater numbers of people in the same situation, say fellow tenants being screwed over by an apartment complex’s landlord or property management company, to build a meaningful fight together and change the conditions for all there. In theory it could be implemented differently, and it may be worth noting that one of Seasol’s earliest fights was with a large group of tenants at a local motel. However, I will hazard that in large part this would be a different project and more along the lines of a tenants union, with longer term organizing not possible for a network hopping from one call to the next. While our experience was practically solely with tenants, I think the same applies to workplace fights.

Most people we followed up with would either not return the call back, were looking for financial assistance, or often those with the most “winnable” fights would simply find a lawyer or end up working it out themselves. We did our best to familiarize ourselves with local housing law, but a lot of what we did was to simply give people the numbers to various agencies in town like a legal aid clinic or housing authority or a local crisis center. In many ways we did not have the adequate understanding of local conditions and needs, preparations to help nor an organizing skill-set to build democratic, direct action fights.

Is this different than the experiences of other solidarity networks that emerged around the same time? I could not say, as very little has been written about these difficulties to date. I do wonder if in a locale with some amount of housing organizing, say Take Back the Land or already existing tenants union, as reformist and service oriented as they might be, would tend to allow for a few things: people locally with some amount of experience in this organizing, other approaches for those experiencing economic exploitation, and perhaps a sense of being fed up with the service model and/or undemocratic approaches to taking action.

Occupy Iowa

Occupy Iowa City was to my knowledge the first “Occupy x” place in the state, soon to be followed by several others. The first General Assembly, commonly called “GA,” took place on Thursday, October 5, and determined that the next day a local, centrally located park would be the occupation spot. That evening somewhere around 130 people came out for the first GA in the park. As the weeks went on the numbers were more around 30 of active participants for the first couple of months, with a larger number of more passive supporters and occasional campers. As everywhere else, it was predictably messy and complicated, the confused politics and consensus process that accompanied our local Occupy would be familiar to those who participated elsewhere.

There was a lot to be excited about it, as well, especially the general refusal to participate in or be recuperated by party politics, notably even by those ascribing to liberalism or progressivism. Of course, this did not translate to a refusal of reform-oriented ideology, and taking cues from the early Occupy Wall Street, actions in the form of marching on banks and calling for more financial regulatory oversight took center stage here like in OWS.

Those of us inspired by especifismo, coming from the solidarity network experience, most of us having been involved in local organizing going back 4-5 years, and a few longer than that, took an immediately active role in this developing movement. Taking our inspiration from comrades elsewhere in the US and around the world, we sought to involve ourselves in a positive, radicalizing dimension of the struggle then emerging.

Some things became evident early on which perhaps set us apart from what was being described elsewhere. With the above-described paucity of an organized left presence, being a fairly politically developed and committed group of militants gave us several key advantages. However, it also at times made us look premeditating or potentially controlling in ways that we had not intended. Within the first week of the occupation, we met and set out some goals and best practices which certainly aided us, but by no means prevented those difficulties. Some of the most important which I recall were to be upfront about our politics, but meet people where they were instead of preaching, to be active in all areas of the encampment that we could, and to use social mapping to understand people’s relationships and where the larger group stood.

Our Occupy also featured common difficulties, e.g. divergences over working with city officials and police, the question of non-violence and pacifism, and the role of spokespeople in relationship to the media could not help but ignite a certain amount of ideological disagreement, sometimes even heatedly so. This group of us with conscious involvement wanted to pick our battles, but put forward challenges in the unique movement-level space of Occupy for class struggle positions. Without ever trying to turn a bunch of people into militant anti-capitalists, we did seek to push an understanding of class and oppression in capitalist society and how the state figures into that, even or maybe especially in terms of how local expressions of this power manifested.

Through past experiences of working in coalitions with the modest level of left presence in Iowa, and experience facilitating consensus meetings, putting on events, making and distributing fliers, and so forth, we also gained a lot of goodwill and credibility, and this while being known as the radicals or the anarchists. Besides this assistance, we also held an anarchist reading group, although not solely limited to anarchist texts, which went for several months.

As much as there was a positive element to these experiences, it was never in question that the vast majority of participants in Occupy in our area were not being won over to class struggle positions, and the radicalizing push that was sought was not really ever achieved. The numbers of people at GAs, actions and events wound down over the winter, the encampment was effectively given up on while GAs continued, although the city had granted a permit until mid-February. This last part meant that in addition to such efforts as anti-party politics protests around the Iowa Caucuses, and calls to “support local business” (each of which were waste of effort and time in my view), there were calls to “take back the park,” which of course never materialized. The essentially liberal notion of speaking truth to power and holding a symbolic space, even while contradicting the actual capacity and interest of the most committed supporters, was never really shaken.

While I would say we did succeed in challenging certain narratives, such as “police are the 99%” and problems in general with the “99%” idea, we never achieved the goal of turning Occupy Iowa City’s attention to local instances of economic and political power. Without a doubt, this would have been difficult given the extremely broad and often unchallenged political contradictions among us in the local Occupy group. At the same time, in hindsight the opportunities were there to consciously put forward a more militant vision of action instead of being subsumed within the spirit of going along with activity which carried obvious limitations and failings.

Occupy May 1^st

Occupy May 1^st, Build Power/Show Power and General Strike, were all terms used for May Day this year, and our own local rally was planned in conjunction with this widespread effort.

With May Day, Occupy Iowa City had its final expression. This was the culmination in several weeks of effort, and although it was passed in GA as a plan as early as January, the gradual diffusion of participation, interest and direction meant a very small, and frankly poorly organized May Day rally in our downtown.

Fairly early in the planning, it was apparent that the rhetoric surrounding this day was loaded with some presupposed militancy that was difficult to make work in our area. The calls for general strike loom largest among them, but various memes, slogans and fliers and other eye-grabbing symbolism and slogans were hard to make use of in our context. The attempts to involve area labor activists, University students and student groups and to reach out to the formerly broad base of Occupy sympathizers unfortunately fell far short of the desired outcome.

Given the local decline in activity it may be doubtful that had everyone who took on tasks followed through on them, and had a more nuanced effort at building a broader base of support existed at a bigger level, we would have had any different outcome. There were several instances of inspiring and impressive actions and demonstrations on this day around the country, and many groups and individuals put a lot of effort into these plans. I think it is also fair to say that these still came up short in reigniting what emerged last fall, and certainly in attaining even the inkling of the European style “social strike” of a one-day general strike call, goals that were in part an inspiration for this call.

If we build it, will they come?

I have only briefly sketched out some of the conditional differences in organizing work and some local instances of larger movement models, each of which merit their own more in-depth analyses.

In terms of differences in local conditions, I have sought to explore the unexamined, or maybe under-appreciated, elements which in many ways have a large impact on these projects and models. Aspects of these elements would appear utterly necessary, such as a broader base of supporters and larger movements in motion. Others may be a hindrance or even give a certain illusion to a meaningful response to the wider class conflict, as in the highly specified sub-milieus that create an insular political culture. By comparing our different organizing conditions in some amount of detail we can hopefully appreciate respective strengths and weaknesses and plan our activity accordingly.

In reflecting on the organizing models of recent years I have noticed at times an over-estimation in the potential for militant action on the part of individuals or groups of working class people. In the solidarity network this was an expected willingness to fight back against the boss or landlord, in Occupy and May Day it was taking a mostly marginal and diffuse mass level grouping to a more combative level of activity against capital. This is not to say that emergent movements will not or cannot become combative, but rather to temper our own approaches as militants with an understanding for how willing and able people are to fight back. Increasing this willingness and ability certainly ought to be our goal, and the best ways to do so are probably going to look different in different places. At the same time that imminent and widespread proletarian revolt is far from assured, neither is the lack of it already determined.

As detailed above, I think our local activity has vacillated somewhat between running ahead of where actual possibilities for action lay, or in the case of Occupy at times falling behind those possibilities. This is a paradox which I see at the heart of anarchist, communist and even general anti-capitalist left organizing in this time. Clearly, no ready-made set of solutions will spring from any amount of strategizing and theorizing, and to be sure we learn by doing and failing. By looking honestly at these failures, and comparing experiences with others engaged in similar projects, we can move forward class struggle projects which build a fight back worthy of today’s onslaught against the working class.

Here in Iowa City, like many other places across the world, we too have seen murmurings of white supremacist activity. First was a Ku Klux Klan flyer in a nearby town and more recently the infamous Holocaust denier, neo-Nazi sympathizer and revisionist historian David Irving visited the Iowa City area to give a lecture and meet with local white supremacists. With others, we helped to organize a protest to disrupt his lecture and to make it known that Nazis were not welcome in our town. We had a strong anti-fascist turn out, and made it clear to Irvring’s camp, the hotel (Baymont Inn, both locally and nationally), and to local passersby that we would not tolerate this despicable message in our community. We must actively oppose fascists and racists at every turn, and halt their efforts to spread their ideology of white supremacy and hateful violence in our communities.

We also stand in support of the Tinley Park 5 and are donating $50 to their legal defense fund. We hope Cody, Dylan and Jason Sutherlin, Alex Stuck and John Tucker are soon freed from Cook County Jail and reunited with their families and friends. For more information on their status, see http://tinleyparkfive.wordpress.org.  We encourage others to also donate money or literature to the Tinley Park 5 if able to do so.

It is in precisely this sense that we join so many others in voicing our solidarity and admiration to the students, and increasingly workers, of Montreal and Quebec who are committed and relentlessly resisting the attack on the poor and working-class. Similar to the US Midwest, Quebec students face the limiting of access to university in the turn toward neoliberal education policies with continued tuition hikes. These too are the struggles of working people around the world.

In Quebec many of the most militant involved — the explicitly anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, and feminist student coalition CLASSE — are not only opposed to the rising cost of education, but instead recognize this trend of austerity in the name of putting a band-aid on the global catastrophes of finance capitalism. While the structure of student unions is largely foreign and in many ways unimaginable to those of us in the US, we still recognize common ground with our comrades in Quebec as they resist the broader trends of neoliberalism. Here we share most affinity with those in struggle and find examples of resistance to bring into our own experiences and analyses of US struggles, especially in a town whose largest political and financial actor is the University.
For more on struggles in Montreal see:
Report from our friends at Recomposition
Stopthehike.ca

For news feed you can follow “News from the 2012 Quebec Student General Strike” on Facebook

On May 1^st, 1886, workers across the US went on strike for the 8 hour day. In Haymarket Square in Chicago, a massacre took place. In the years that followed, May 1^st became known as International Workers Day in commemoration of these events, and most nations of the world now celebrate their Labor Day on or around May Day.

Generally in the US on May Day, it is common for unions, pro-labor and workers groups to hold rallies, picnics and similar events. More recently, May Day has been significant for undocumented immigrant organizing, notably in 2006 with the Great American Boycott.

This year we gather for this rally in unity with others around the country to demonstrate in support of workplace and community rights. The past year has seen a tremendous amount of organizing the world over. From the Arab Spring to the pro-union demonstrations in Madison, WI; from European anti-austerity demonstrations to Occupy Wall St and the global Occupy movement, people have been on the move in response to the recession and its budget cuts brought on by capitalism.

And Occupy tapped into something that resonated with people the world over, but especially in the US, in many ways long dormant for broad-based social movements. Unlike the Tea Party formations of right-wingers, which it has often been likened to, Occupy encampments spread like wildfire across the country and were, and still are, supported by a broad cross-section of the population. Without cable news sponsorship to prop it up, and corporate dollars to Astroturf it, in a matter of weeks Occupy far eclipsed the mishmash of socially conservative and economically Darwinian politics known as the tea party.

In many places, like Chicago and Oakland, the local Occupy went above and beyond the calls for corporate tax increases and better financial regulatory oversight, and fought housing evictions and budget cuts with direct action. In a challenge to the rote and stale methods of top-down, non-profit organization led movement work of recent decades, Occupy’s insistence on direct democracy in decision making and action outside of electoral politics has invigorated and reinvigorated new and old activists alike.

But has it been enough? What have we won? Recent political debates and legislative machinations on both national and state levels seem to show that on the contrary, we are losing ground. A century’s worth of socially progressive labor, reproductive and racial justice reforms are being rolled back at an unprecedented rate. The American poor and working classes are losing what was won through generations of struggle.

Some numbers: In 2011 a record amount of anti-abortion legislation was introduced, resulting in 92 provisions restricting access to abortions in 24 states.[1] Last year also saw an attempt to completely defund Title X, which allows poor and working class women to have free or reduced cost access to reproductive health services. All of these efforts aim to severely restrict women’s access to health services and safe, legal medical procedures. These also disproportionately affect women of color and poor white women, clearly making this a race and class issue as well.

But 2011 was also a record year for anti-immigrant legislation. Five states (Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah) passed anti-immigrant bills modeled after Arizona’s 2010 law, SB 1070. In all, 164 anti-immigration laws were passed by state legislatures in 2010 and 2011.[2] Additionally, the Obama administration has already deported more immigrants than any previous administration in history, tearing families and communities apart and criminalizing whole populations.

Anti-union legislation is also on a runaway train of right-wing, corporate, oligarchic interests. 2011 saw the weakening or banning of public sector unions in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana. This year, Indiana became the 23^rd “Right-to-Work” state, and Georgia only weeks ago passed an anti-protest/anti-union bill, and the AZ state legislature is currently considering one. These efforts are aimed at reducing wages and benefits for all workers in the race to the bottom for bigger profits on the backs of workers.

At the same time, the defunding of state departments of labor has weakened already paltry recourse for workers who are unemployed, laid off, or abused by employers. Huge layoffs of public sector workers have been implemented in most states and many localities, all while corporate tax breaks and subsidies are left in place or even increased. These layoffs at state and local levels have been shown to disproportionately affect African-American and Latino workers.[3]

More and more people are working multiple jobs, sometimes up to 60-80 hrs a week, with no overtime and benefits, just to make ends meet, and those are some of us lucky enough to have jobs. For others, direly needed food and rental assistance, mental health services, domestic abuse services, disability funding, college tuition aid, and on and on, are all being reduced severely or even eliminated, all while more and more people require them.

In our own state, despite a more than $500 million surplus for this fiscal year, the reinstalled governor-for-life Terry Branstad[4] has continued the deep budget cuts initially introduced by Democratic governor Chet Culver in 2009.[5] In many cases, like higher education, eldercare oversight and disability services, making even further cuts. Huge tax breaks and subsidies for Iowa’s largest corporations continue, and both sides of the aisle are agreeing to cuts in commercial and industrial property taxes which further erode the state’s income, another way of depriving public funds from needed services to line the coffers of the wealthiest.[6]

As of 2009, the poorest families in the state paid the greatest portion of their income toward state and local taxes, at 11 percent, after federal offsets. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of Iowa income-earners, who make an average of $989,200, paid just 6 percent.[7]

While the profits of the wealthy continue to increase, our wages continue to stagnate or even fall and the cost of living grows ever higher. The needs of rural communities and the urban poor, college students, the disabled, the unemployed and retirees are all on the chopping block with talk of ”balanced budgets,” never mind the 48% of the total federal budget going to military spending.

On the social front, despite the talk of a “post-racial America,” police and vigilante murders of young African-American men and teens are an all too common experience. Likewise, intimidation, violence against and murder of trans and queer people have also increased in recent years.

Much of the country was mobilized for the Million Hoodie Marches over the tragic murder of Trayvon Martin. But how many people know of the other 20 young, unarmed African-Americans killed by police so far this year?[8] Names like Ervin Jefferson, Ramarley Graham, and Wendell Allen are much less known, and to date no charges have been filed against officers in these instances. Locally, some of us might remember the killing of John Deng in 2009, a Sudanese man killed by a plainclothes sheriff’s deputy in highly suspicious circumstances with a closed investigation and likewise, no charges against the murderer.[9]

These atrocious murders are not inconsistent with our courts and prison system, which incarcerates more people than anywhere else in the world, and includes 1 in 3 black males being imprisoned at some point in their life, resulting in the life-long status of a felony record. Additionally, there is ample documentation of heavy policing of black and Latino communities, discrimination in hiring, housing and loans across the country, defunded school systems exacerbated by privatization schemes like charter schools and no child left behind policies – all of this indicates an undeniable picture of systemic and systematic racial oppression in our society.

While there have been certain gains around discrimination and same-sex marriage in some states, people of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender and Queer identities continue to be recipients of hate-based violence and murder. Reports of anti-GLBT hate violence increased by 13% from 2009 to 2010. Anti-GLBT murders increased 23% from 2009 to 2010, the second highest amount in a decade. GLBT people of color and transgender women are disproportionately murdered: in 2010, people of color comprised 70% of all GLBT murder victims, and 44% of GLBT murder victims were transgender women. [10]

Bullying in schools and colleges in recent years has given rise to the prevalence of suicides of several young people of GLBT identities, and only days ago gay teenager Kenneth Weishuhn of Primghar, IA took his life.

And truly, these brief examples only begin to describe the injustices we live under today.

What does this litany of social ills and oppression, all these seemingly single-issue causes have in common? Why bring all this out on May Day? Because these myriad forms of oppression and exploitation are in fact connected – they intersect with and reinforce one another. Racial divisions and religious beliefs have long been used by the ruling class to divide the working class, and these divisions persist and continue to be exploited to mask our commonalities. In order for us to move forward and effect meaningful social change, in our workplaces, schools and neighborhoods, and to defend the gains made by those who came before us, we need feminist and anti-racist movements, we need movements challenging economic and class divisions, and challenging environmental degradation and environmental racism. We need these social movements which see the commonalities between these struggles and which actively and mutually oppose attacks on organized labor, communities of color, undocumented workers, LGBT communities and individuals, indigenous communities, reproductive freedoms, on the environment, and so much more.

The way is pointed forward with groups like Anti-eviction Campaigns in Chicago, Detroit and Boston, and other places; solidarity networks and workers centers challenging stolen wages and similar abuses through direct action; tenants’ organizations in apartments; Copwatch groups that document policing in neighborhoods; and closer to home, the ongoing fight against cuts at University of Northern Iowa by students and teachers there.

There is a myth in our country, that through the benevolence of politicians and policy-makers who saw the plight of hard-working Americans, we were granted the social benefits we have, such as unemployment insurance, the 40-hour work week and the minimum wage, or indeed, the end to segregation and the winning of women’s right to choose. This myth would seek to erase from our history the generations of struggle by American workers and the oppressed which wrought these victories from the wealthy and powerful, and the worldwide movements that threatened the capitalist system itself which won reforms and changes. Nothing less than this same struggle will bring about the change needed today.

1. http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2012/01/05/endofyear.html
2. http://newamericamedia.org/2012/04/a-trend-toward-anti-immigrant-anti-choice-laws.php
3. http://urbanhabitat.org/18-1/ali
4. Republican Terry Brandstad was governor of Iowa from 1983 – 1999, serving four consecutive terms. He was elected in 2010 to a fifth term. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Brandstad
5. http://www.radioiowa.com/2009/10/08/governor-orders-10-percent-cut-in-state-budget/
6. http://thegazette.com/2012/04/09/branstad-hopeful-for-iowa-property-tax-relief-this-year/
7. http://cciaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Cost-of-Cuts-Iowa-FINAL.pdf
8. http://www.ushrnetwork.org/trayvonracialjusticepetition
9. http://blackagendareport.com/content/true-crime-white-privilege-and-police-killing-obama-mad-college-town or http://thegazette.com/tag/john-deng/ for differing takes
10. http://www.avp.org/publications.htm

We know what, and a lot of time we even know who this “1%” is, although for some reason no one seems to be talking about it. Instead, we tend to speak to the inverse—the “99%”. It is a created concept really, an imagined unity that says somewhat clearly: “those who have been fucked by the 1%.”

We might do well to call the 1% what they are—the ruling class. Today’s ruling class are capitalists gone wild, heralding capitalism to its logical neo-liberal conclusion. Yes, the 1% has all of the money, they also have all control of the supposedly democratic system which we are all, whether we like it or not, a part.

We might also do well to call the division what it is—a class war.

We say war for a reason. It implies that there is a battle, necessary confrontation. It also implies that one must choose sides. One of the things the 99% as a concept has done is draw the symbolic and newspaper worthy battle-lines. On their side they have pretty much the entire media-stream, a shit-ton of money, various laws, politicians, and bureaucrats to protect them. When that isn’t enough, they have gated communities, private security teams (in some cases whole armies), municipal police forces, and if the shit really hits the fan, the US military to protect them. Despite losing our homes, our rents rising, our longer hours, our unemployment, our minimum wage, our non-existent futures, our depression and anxieties, and our melting planet—we still have our anger, our minds, our bodies, our collectivity.

But let’s take a step back. When we draw lines in the sand, between the ruling class and the “99%,” what else do we imply by lumping so many people together? We know that the 99% is a constructed concept of unity, imagined, seemingly out of thin air, around September 2011 to articulate the fragile alliance between those on the losing side of the escalating global financial crisis.

But in practice this alliance or stated unity seems to only pertain to those who self-identify with, or are involved in, the Occupy movement. It is a mistake to include everyone who is not a millionaire into such a concept—the 99%. In short, with the uncritical proliferation of the 99% as a vague unifier of massive quantities of people—differing in gender, race, class, etc, as well as political affiliations or sensibilities—we need to look closer at the implications of such terminology, but more importantly what it creates in reality.

Concepts can constitute reality and call it into being. They have the power to communicate a basis for felt, but not yet described, experiences when they resonate with our everyday lives. This can be a powerful force—consider the words spoken by Stokely Carmichael in the wake of the shooting of civil rights activist James Meredith in June, 1966: “This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested and I ain’t going to jail no more! The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin’ us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin’ now is Black Power!” In one breath, years of struggle and articulation of experience—from MLK and SNCC to the term’s more immediate inspiration, the militancy of Malcolm X—are spoken in clear, precise, and slogan-worthy words. Suddenly a growing tendency of black militancy is translated in two simple words, and makes immediate sense regardless of whether or not one had ever heard Malcolm X speak, but felt his message in their every day experience. In that moment “Black Power” created a possibility, a space, for the emergence of a fiery mass consciousness that rejected the white supremacy and racist ideologies that proliferated everywhere. One need not be a scholar of African American history or political science, one didn’t need to have read MLK, Marcus Garvey, or Malcolm X to understand the words, it was self-evident, felt, and entirely clear.

The concept “the 99%” functions similarly, but resonates with quite a different group of people and its antagonisms are much more vague. Millions of people who are in debt, have lost their jobs, houses, and life savings understand the 99% perfectly well with little or no need for an explanation of the inner workings of financial capitalism (e.g. “Wall St.”). Both the symbolic and pragmatic function of the term makes sense—if 1% of people have all the money, 99% of people are getting fucked. Like the abstraction of Wall Street as a stand-in for the immaterial accumulation of capital, as well as the would-be residence of the 1%, the 99% stands in symbolically for all those subject to the whims of Wall St. The vulgarity and violence of the ruling class is articulated in clear, slogan-friendly dialectical terms—1% v. 99%

But on the ground (that is, outside of the spectacular battles of the media) another question becomes pressing: When we say 99%, whom do we mean, exactly? Looking closer reveals rather quickly it doesn’t work especially well to simply lump everyone together, at least, as it has been used so far within Occupy.

Take for example the way the concept of the 99% is often used within the movement to validate fairly specific liberal middle-class politics taken as a priori, which in turn ironically cancels out other politics within the 99% in the name of fear of scaring any potential occupiers, or worse, the elusive “community” or “public” with voices of anger, antagonism, or radical politics.

“Be nice to the police, they are part of the 99%, too.”

“Police need a raise! Police need a raise! Police need a raise!”
[Chanting protestors are hauled off in handcuffs.]

Of course, this generous form of unity contradicts others’ inclusion in the supposedly blanket 99%—people of color, prisoners, undocumented immigrants, queer and transfolk come to mind, as people who face or fear police violence on a daily basis. It is not just about the cops though, and I don’t want to over-emphasize a hatred toward the police that we anarchists can slip into (there are plenty of legitimate critiques of the police, but that isn’t the point I’m trying to make here). The point is that this example of “be nice to the police” is indicative of a larger tendency within the movement of the way that the 99% concept / term is used as propaganda externally, as well as internally to suggest directions for the movement to go and what tactics we should use to get there. It condescendingly and often ignorantly assumes an affinity between white middle-class folks who, perhaps, have lost their moderate to high paying jobs, or students who are crippled by debt, with poor and oppressed peoples who have struggled and fought for generations against a systemic racism and classism. Scroll through the “we are the 99%” tumblr, and you’ll see a hell of a lot more “I played by all of the rules,” implying “why did I get screwed?” than you’ll see “half of my family is in prison,” “my boss frequently steals wages from workers,” or “as an undocumented immigrant I work sub-minimum wage.” There is a sea of difference between “I tried to pull myself up by my bootstraps and the straps broke,” compared to “I never got a pair of fucking shoes!”

We shouldn’t fetishize the “most oppressed” though either. The point is that we need to have a better understanding of the rhetoric we use, and its relationship to real world effects in terms of who participates, but as importantly, how we as ‘Occupiers’ understand ourselves as a unified group, a would-be class, at the very least related group in common struggle. Like the middle-class folks who neglect to recognize how their liberalism and political assumptions can affect particular oppressed peoples as participants in Occupy, a militant and narrow-minded commitment to only the “most oppressed” (often times excluding oneself, flirting with a kind of awkwardly vanguardist role) can similarly result in a failure to recognize certain groups of people (students, for example, as a legitimate part of the working class who are enslaved by debt) and the pervasive and diverse ways in which capitalism has affected various peoples.

I not only think it is possible but that it is essential to begin to understand contemporary class politics as they emerge in all of their messy complexities within a grassroots movement that identifies the ruling class as the enemy. Some Marxist theorists call it ‘class-composition,’ referring to a complicated ever changing structuring of class both as it relates to political affinities and labor realities, but also and equally as important—their potentials in assembling or conjoining in struggle. As I understand it, class-composition works toward a re-conceptualization of class such that the social and the political spheres that were formerly thought to be necessarily distinct can be reconciled. But more importantly, to compose implies to create—that is, to articulate our similarities as well as our differences, without a need to refer to representative politics, and to understand how those affinities between different types of people, as well as singularities specific to the individual, offer potential to struggle on multiple terrains. When we build sincere affinities, which will require much more listening than has happened thus far, that are based on deep understandings of the various ways capitalism and oppression affect and manipulate different people, we more deeply understand how our actions have consequences on others within the supposed 99%, and we better understand how to struggle collectively while maintaining our respective politics, identities, etc. We will also see in the processes of composing our affinities toward one another—understanding and embracing our differences, rejecting our internalized oppressive behavior—a deepening of our bonds and an intensified commitment to each other as well as to our respective struggles. In this sense, quality over quantity might prove important, and might again reveal that not all of the 99% are our friends.

This, it seems to me, is what Occupy is all about in its attempt to pull a thread between so many differing types of people that make up the 99% while also resisting, so far at least, representative politics. But, generally speaking, it seems Occupy has neglected to do any work to articulate the both subtle and great differences as well as fragile alliances, instead conveniently harkening back on the reductive 99% unifier, muddling and canceling out many people. There are ways in which students, for example, can be militant about being exploited as workers, and having a critique of debt, without throwing out a nuanced understanding of our other racial, intellectual, geographic, hetero, gendered or other kinds of privileges. But this requires a re-imagining of what it means to be a part of the oppressed, it requires checking one’s privilege without relinquishing individual agency, and finally it requires a persistent linkage between various groups balanced with an understanding that capitalism distributes violence, economic inequality, and other forms of oppression unevenly and thus not everyone’s experiences (or politics) are the same.

This, in my estimation has been the primary problem with the [lack of] class analysis within Occupy, and of the concept of the 99%. Thus far it has not gotten us closer to understanding our differences in relationship to our shared forms of exploitation, either as workers or the subjects to the violence of financial capitalism. There are several stories of transphobic, racist, classist, patriarchal activities within GAs and various encampments. These stories signal that Occupy has so far struggled to listen, to be self-critical, but most importantly to deepen an understanding of all of the lingering -isms amongst ourselves. It also signals a realistic difficulty of learning again how to speak to one another, how to reject our own internalized systems of oppression, how to relate, how to join one another in the streets and re-learn how to speak, and perhaps most importantly how to listen. But if we are going to insist upon generalized language of inclusivity we must also ask in an honest way: Who gets to be part of such a group? Or better, who isn’t showing up, and why?

_____
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In the spirit of this essay I should note that I am definitely not the first to bring up these problems or analyses; I’ve learned from many brilliant people. Below are a few links that have made an impression on me and helped to sharpen my politics; surely there are many other great voices to be heard.

Colorlines continually posts good articles putting race on the table in relationship to Occupy. See their posts here.

W.I.T.C.H. (Women and Trans* Conspiracy from Hell) produced a scathing and productive critique of Occupy coming from a queer / anarchist perspective. It was here that I first read a good critique of “99%.” Can be downloaded here.

Transgendered artist / activist Micha Cardenas describes her frustration to find that OccupyLA has kept sexual assault that has occurred at camp from public discussion, and thus not adequately dealt with, for fear of ‘damaging the movement.’ Can be read here.

Til Always,
H. Schultze
January 2012

It was a bitter joke.  My friend had just finished venting about one of her two jobs.  She was typing to me just after getting bossed around on the smallest details of her job at a small nonprofit.  After that, she had an evening as a temp to look forward to, grading middle-school standardized tests.  She had said that working so much was starting to mess with her head.  She hadn’t played music in too long.  Too much of her life went to satisfying somebody else.

I had to laugh at the idea there was something wrong with her.  I typed back, “Yeah, me neither.”  I work at a low-level healthcare job.  In some ways it’s worse than my friend’s jobs, and in some ways it’s better.  She sits at a desk.  I scrub disgusting things off the floor.  Her jobs require a degree.  I dropped out of college.  She gets paid more.  I haven’t always been paid on time.  On the other hand, I get to see positive results of the work I do.  The work itself is more rewarding.  That counts for a lot more than you might think.

But the work and the job are two different things.  The other day I had to stay late after an overnight shift, correcting paperwork.  I spent more than two hours signing and dating every little error.  Every time I wrote in the wrong pen color.  Every time I crossed out a word with an “X” instead of a single horizontal line.  I felt like one of those middle school students, jumping through a hoop for a stranger very far away.  Then I went home, took a short nap, and went right back to work that afternoon.

You might say that we’re wrong to object to boring or demeaning jobs.  That these are just “first world problems.”  In a way you’d be right.  I have enough food to eat, and a place to live.  I’m better off than workers in most of the world.  Hell, I’m better off than a lot of people in Iowa City.  Why complain about working too much, if we’re lucky to have work at all?

But I think that’s the wrong question to ask.  It’s right to be angry about inequalities between workers.  While I was dealing with red tape, a lot of people in Iowa were being denied basic rights like bathroom breaks.  Still, I don’t think setting larger and smaller injustices against each other is the right way forward.  Some better questions to ask are:  How did things get this way?  And what can we do about it?

Our jobs didn’t end up like this by accident.  The more simple and repetitive a grader’s job gets, the more money an “education” company saves on training and wages.  Then there’s that much more money left over for the owners.  The less nursing education a healthcare job needs, the less the “nonprofit” needs to spend on training and wages.  Then they have that much more money to spend on the director’s company car.  Children should be taught, and people with medical needs should be taken care of.  But those real needs aren’t what make our jobs boring, isolating, or pointless.

Our work is like this because it’s good for business.  We didn’t end up with a school system where the students don’t even meet the graders because it was good for them.  We didn’t end up with a healthcare system where so much money and time is put into paperwork because it’s good for the people getting care.  It just keeps the funding coming.  No matter who you work for, or what work you do, it’s going to be set up based on what’s good for business, on what keeps the money flowing around.  Not based on what’s good for people.

So I don’t think we should put these different injustices against each other.  The boredom that a worker entering data faces and the abuse that a worker processing turkeys faces both come from the same place.  We all should face the injustices in our own lives.  By learning to fight for ourselves, we’ll be getting ready to fight alongside others.

When we get bossed around, we’re right to be angry.  When we’re made to do the same boring task over and over again, we’re right to be unsatisfied.  Our lives don’t have to be like this.

Nobody is cut out to be an employee.

What is a specific anarchist group?
The term ‘specific anarchist group’ could be defined as a formal anarchist organization that seeks unity in their theory, outlook, tactics and action. It strives to be heavily involved in larger social movements, pushing their militancy and advocating their independence from co-opting forces, such as the state, capital and the authoritarian/reformist left.

How is it different from other contemporary anarchist groups?
Differing from many contemporary North American anarchist groups, it sees clearly defined, explained and agreed upon structure as necessary for effective action and equitable power distribution.

Rather than individuals within the group having little shared outlook, working on separate, smaller projects and making efforts without coordination, the ‘specific anarchist group’ attempts to bring together militants that have a strong level of agreement and direct their activity in a concerted fashion.

It does this to maximize the potential for effective action and to prevent burnout.  The whole or majority of the group carries out activity, instead of relying on a few individuals, as is somewhat common in looser, more informal groupings.

How is it similar to other contemporary anarchist groups?
Throughout the history of anarchism, there have been many examples of groups that followed these principles of organization. More recently though, the platformist, especifista, and some anarcho-syndicalist currents come the closest to our conception.

Platformism gets its name from the The Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists, a pamphlet written in 1926 by a group of Russian and Ukrainian anarchists in exile. It attempted to address the failure of anarchists during the Russian Revolution, which they chalked up to disorganization.

Some of the platform’s key points include

• Tactical Unity – “A common tactical line in the movement is of decisive importance for the existence of the organisation and the whole movement: it avoids the disastrous effect of several tactics opposing each other; it concentrates the forces of the movement; and gives them a common direction leading to a fixed objective.”

• Theoretical Unity – “Theory represents the force which directs the activity of persons and organisations along a defined path towards a determined goal. Naturally it should be common to all the persons and organisations adhering to the General Union. All activity by the General Union, both overall and in its details, should be in perfect concord with the theoretical principles professed by the union.”

• Collective Responsibility – “The practice of acting on one’s personal responsibility should be decisively condemned and rejected in the ranks of the anarchist movement. The areas of revolutionary life, social and political, are above all profoundly collective by nature. Social revolutionary activity in these areas cannot be based on the personal responsibility of individual militants.”

• Federalism – “Against centralism, anarchism has always professed and defended the principle of federalism, which reconciles the independence and initiative of individuals and the organisation with service to the common cause.”

It’s effects were not felt for many years after its publishing. Outside of a few French groups in the 1950s, there weren’t any organizations who directly identified with the document. This changed in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the emergence of NEFAC and others around the world. Today it is a significant current in the North American and European anarchist movements.

Especifismo emerged in South America separate from the influence of platformism. In the 1950s, the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) was the first to promote the concept, which has been summarized as:

• The need for specifically anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas and praxis.
• The use of the specifically anarchist organization to theorize and develop strategic political and organizing work.
• Active involvement in and building of autonomous and popular social movements (which is sometimes is called ‘social insertion’)

Today there are a number of organizations in South America which identify with this current, such as the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha and Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro. As these groups establish ties with each other, others have popped up in a variety of South American and Central American countries.

Anarcho-Syndicalists have also often found the need for their own political organizations. In the past this sentiment has expressed itself in what has been called ‘dual-organization syndicalist’ groups such as the Turin Libertarian Group of 1920s Italy or the Friends of Durruti of 1930s Spain. Both saw their involvement in the unions to battle more moderate elements and the bureaucracy.

Today, the Workers Solidarity Alliance and numerous International Workers Association affiliated groups follow in this tradition, although their scope has expanded from mainly concentrating their efforts within the unions.

How does this look in practice?
Ideally, the specific anarchist group would be made up those who share agreement on a number of key issues on organization, tactics and politics. The group should serve as a space and structure for members to strategize, discuss, plan and educate themselves.

If not already involved in wider movements, this should be done in a concerted effort. This effort will not be to seize positions of decision making power, such is the strategy of much of the authoritarian left. Instead, this effort should be to create an anarchist pole within the movements, to advocate widening and intensifying struggles that come up and to fight co-opting forces that try and steer things in a reformist or reactionary manner.

Further Reading
Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1000

Manifesto of Libertarian Communism by Georges Fontenis
http://libcom.org/library/manifesto-of-libertarian-communism-georges-fontenis

Our Conception of Anarchist Organisation by Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro
http://anarchistplatform.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/our-conception-of-anarchist-organisation/

Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization in South America by Adam Weaver
http://nefac.net/node/2081