Open letter from anarchists to the anarchist movement

[Communist]

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The Politics of Impatience:
An open letter from anarchists to the anarchist movement (http://libcom.org/news/politics-impatience-open-letter-anarchists-anarchist-movement-08042010)
_____

Dear friends,

As anarchists from a variety of different projects and political perspectives, mostly in the U.S., we are inspired by the courage of students fighting for access to public universities in New York, California, and everywhere. At a time when politicians take money out of schools and build prisons to fill with young people of color and poor people – while giving away trillions to the banks, health insurance companies, and war profiteers – any movement that takes back space and resources for public use wins our hearts.

Many of us are not students, but we will continue to demonstrate our solidarity in whatever ways we can when students are beaten and arrested, and colleges themselves start to look like jails because administrations are afraid of the power of student organizing.

We are shocked that on March 4th at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY), some anarchists harmfully disrupted a protest against tuition hikes, budget cuts, and childcare cuts. Some of the facts of what happened are in dispute. Some are not, including the following: A faculty member and longtime media activist was injured in the head, sectarian graffiti was spray-painted, and a parent from Defend Hunter Childcare was targeted with a sexist epithet that was heard by some as a rape threat.

Some of the individuals involved have apologized for their actions. But we still need to ask why this happened, how anarchists could be responsible for these things. And how to make sure it never happens again.

At the root of the incident was an impatience by some anarchists with a rally and walkout that they decided should have been an occupation. This letter will talk about the politics of impatience and offer some ideas for action.

A movement that stands for childcare, healthcare, and education for everyone means more to most people than slogans shouted by those who are “pushed by the violence of our desires” to act as individuals.

A statement with that phrase as its title, written by some folks involved in the altercation at Hunter, claims, “We do not need the ‘consent of the people.’” But militant direct action needs to take place within the context of a movement, not outside of it. To single-handedly declare that a protest is not radical enough without participating in the democratic processes of the movement is vanguardist.

It’s ironic--and tragic--when it comes from anarchists. When we want to occupy, let’s reach out to those who might want to occupy too, so there’s a chance they might occupy with us.

Peace to the villages, war to the palaces

We are deeply frustrated with the lack of militant resistance across the U.S. while the powers that be are murdering millions of people with impunity, transferring our wealth to the richest, and destroying the planet.

In many areas, the only options being offered are lobbying, actions pre-determined by media-savvy advocacy nonprofit staff, and grassroots campaigns that only demand what they believe to be immediately “winnable” from local, state, or federal governments.

We’ve all felt the transformation and possibility that resonates in the air at more spontaneous mass protests where, however briefly, the streets or the schools are truly ours. If that moment of freedom can also feed the bellies and minds of people’s children, people will do it again, and more will be inspired to try it on their own terms.

Learning our movements’ histories can give us a few ideas. CUNY, for example, has a tremendous militant history of student occupations, which were organized very carefully with massive popular support -- not just from the students, but from the Black and Latino neighborhoods most of them came from.

In 1969, when the police started arresting students occupying CUNY campuses across the city, community members brought food for the protesters, standing between them and police. This is because the students were part of those communities, and their tactics, strategy, and message were connected to so many people’s lives.

Those lengthy occupations, which involved the burning of an auditorium, won Open Admissions – meaning that by 1976, the student body was majority working-class people of color from New York City public high schools. Many of these students took the opportunity to spend years studying their communities’ revolutionary histories and putting those lessons into action. At CUNY, occupations as a winning tactic continued through the 70s and 80s.

These occupations’ strategic use of demands has been a defining feature of successful revolutionary movements, in this country and around the world, for centuries. It is no less vital in these days of crisis.

Picture the Homeless, a current New York City grassroots organization founded and led by homeless people, write collectively in the January/February 2009 issue of Left Turn magazine, “If we spend all of our time on a campaign to fix the shelter system, we’ll never get around to fighting the tyranny of the housing market. Reforms can be steps on the road to revolution when we use them that way. Also revolution is a process itself, which isn’t over when the smoke dies down.

In the best of all worlds, reform can help us figure out what the revolution will look like – if we use the process of winning reform to illuminate what it is that we want and what it is going to take to get it.” [Click here (http://suzy.defenestrator.org/reform%20&%20revolution.PDF) for a pdf of this article.]

For Sparks to Fly

Militancy and dramatic tactics require trust, and trust is built by humbly listening to people who have their own ideas and plans for their liberation.

It is now more than ever, exactly because of the urgency of the crisis created by capitalism, that we need to be careful that our actions are as respectful, strategic, and collectively discussed and agreed-on as possible.

“Confrontational approaches are bound to encounter opposition at some point, but if the opposition is coming from potential comrades, it’s a warning sign that one is on the wrong path,” CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective write in “Say You Want an Insurrection.” (http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/rollingthunder/)

We’ve heard about a few events in the past few years where anarchist groups have disrupted other groups’ events. There are times when the only way to get a vital message across is to do things that people will say are disruptive. We value a diversity of tactics and ideas, and we don’t want this statement to be used to stifle dissent.

But collective liberation is going to be a long struggle, and we will need to get along with people of different backgrounds and ideas. Hunter College in particular has a long history of anarchists, communists, socialists, Black and Puerto Rican nationalists and other radicals working together. This is never easy, but it is something to be proud of. The urgency of crisis will not make these challenges go away.

If we are serious about revolutionary social change, then we need to have more open conversations with those we disagree with, instead of blasting each other on the internet. Conflict is a part of life that we can often learn a lot from, but only when we are open to hearing criticism and learning from our mistakes.

A Vision that Beckons

As anarchist Ashanti Omowali Alston said in a speech at Hunter College in 2003 (http://www.anarchistpanther.net/node/17), “How can we nurture every act of freedom? Whether it is with people on the job or the folks that hang out on the corner, how can we plan and work together?”

Toni Cade Bambara, a Black feminist (and CUNY activist) said that “the job of the writer is to make revolution irresistible.” That’s our job too. Our movements need to offer what the system never can: dignity, solidarity, freedom, and honesty.

We sign this letter to say that as anarchists:

We want a free world.

We respect the human dignity of other people fighting for freedom, even when we disagree.

We take militant action rooted in collective, voluntary, democratic participation. We make time for open discussion and decision-making.

We respect the self-determination of oppressed groups and learn from these struggles.

We reject attacks by anarchists on movements they decide are not “militant” enough.

We imagine new ways to build the loving, liberatory communities we want to live in while we resist and attack the forms of domination we live under now.

In solidarity,

[Note: Projects and organizations are listed along with people’s names for identification only and don’t imply endorsement by that group. Groups that sign on collectively are marked with an asterisk.]

Suzy Subways, SLAM Herstory Project, Prison Health News writing collective, Philadelphia

Joel Olson, Bring the Ruckus and Repeal Coalition
Zachary Hershman, Coalition for Essential Services Philadelphia, former SDS member
Jasper Conner, IWW, Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, Appalachia VA
Chris Dixon, Sudbury Against War and Occupation & Upping the Anti, Sudbury, Ontario
cindy, doris ’zine
Daniela Sea
Sara R. Galindo, Los Angeles (A) Bookfair Collective, UCLA Graduate Student
Jamie McCallum, the CUNY Graduate center
Mitchell Verter, author, Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores Magon Reader (AK Press)
Michelle O’Brien
laurel smith, POWER: Parents Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights. Olympia, WA
Samantha Sitrin, ACT UP Philadelphia
Corina Dross
Arthur J. Miller, Tacoma GMB-Industrial Workers of the World, Co-Editor: Bayou La Rose, anarchist for over 40 years, Tacoma, WA
Ruth Sheridan, Alaskans for Peace and Justice, Anchorage
dave onion
*Team Colors Collective
Nicole Davis, DC IWW, DC SDS
Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO), New Orleans, LA
Chris Borte, creating democracy, Portland, OR
Peter Bohmer
Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, Olympia WA
Steven Araujo, (Graduate) Student Organizing Committee at UC Santa Cruz, United Auto Workers local 2865 Santa Cruz
Alexis Shotwell, Sudbury Against War and Occupation
Paul Messersmith-Glavin, Institute for Anarchist Studies, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory journal collective, IWW-Portland, Parasol Climate Collective, Red and Black Cafe, Portland
Walter Hergt, Black Sheep Books
Luis Fernandez, Bring the Ruckus and Repeal Coalition
Colin Cascia, a member of the defenestrator collective
Andrew Willis Garcés
James Generic, part of the Wooden Shoe collective
Crescenzo Scipione, Rochester SDS, IWW
Marina Sitrin, San Francisco Bay Area, author of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina
Dan Berger, author of Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity, cofounder of Onward newspaper (2000-2003)
David Stein, Critical Resistance-Los Angeles
Jon Berger, College Park SDS & the Civilian-Soldier Alliance
Sara Skinner, DC
Alex Knight, endofcapitalism.com (http://endofcapitalism.com/)
Dana Barnett, Philadelphia PA
scott p, the defenestrator collective
Roy San Filippo, Editor, A New World in Our Hearts: 8 Years of Writings from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation
Joseph Lapp, IWW, Alaskans Together for Equalitity
Tara Lindsey, educator, Denver
Stephen Polk, student and community activist, Denver
Mary Witlacil, Denver Food Not Bombs
luce guillen-givins
Clare Bayard, Catalyst Project
Chris Crass, Catalyst Project
layne mullett
germ ross, Marginal Notes Collective and former member of Philly SDS
Sarah Small, Marginal Notes Collective, Coalition to Save the Libraries, political prisoner support work
Jade Gleaner, Co-director The Mill Creek Farm


For more information and views on what happened at Hunter:

• “Open Letter to the Student Movement,” (http://hunterword.com/articles/888) signed by a named list of Hunter student, faculty, and alumni activists. The many letters in solidarity with the Hunter activists’ Open Letter, including one by anarchists at Hunter who helped organize the walkout, are not publicly available, except for this one (http://hunterword.com/articles/891) by CUNY activist lawyer Ron McGuire.

• A blog called “Take the City” hosts several unsigned writings opposed to the Open Letter, including “A Response to the Lies of March 4th” (http://takethecity.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/a-response-to-the-lies-of-march-4th/) and “Pushed by the Violence of Our Desires” (http://takethecity.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/pushed-by-the-violence-of-our-desires/)
• Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiYtc7yO_PU&feature=related) from the rally (first posted by Take the City)

Some ideas and histories to check out:

• SLAM Herstory Project http://slamherstory.wordpress.com/
Some history of radical CUNY student organizing

• “Between Infoshops and Insurrection: U.S. Anarchism, Movement Building, and the Racial Order” by Joel Olson http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jo52/pubs/Anarchism and Race-public.pdf (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/%7Ejo52/pubs/Anarchism%20and%20Race-public.pdf)

• “Smack Bad Politics, Abolish the White Race” by Sam Emm
http://www.bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/91

• “Black Fighting Formations” by Russell Maroon Shoats
http://www.akpress.org/2005/items/blackfightingformations
A short history and analysis of armed Black groups, 1960–94, from the imprisoned Black Panther

• “Promissory Notes: from Crises to Commons” by Midnight Notes Collective and Friends http://www.midnightnotes.org/Promissory%20Notes.pdf
• Upping the Anti - a radical journal of theory and action http://www.uppingtheanti.org/

• Turbulence newspaper – ideas for movement http://turbulence.org.uk/

.

[Communist]

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I am not an anarchist, but I posted this because a good many RevLeft members are - and thus should find this document interesting.
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[ZombieGrits]

I can't believe any anarchists would do that... They were probably a bunch of nihilist anarcho-poseurs if you ask me

[28350]

The "pushed by the violence of our desires" link is really upsetting. These people seem to amount to impatient adventurists drenched in sectarianism.

[Wolf Larson]

dont waste your time talking about anarchism bro.its a dead movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myu74VAN92Q&feature=related

[x359594]

dont waste your time talking about anarchism bro.its a dead movement.

Alive and well where I live: Cop Watch L.A., Food Not Bombs, Revolutionary Autonomous Communities, Rise the Fist, Anarcha.

[Communist]

dont waste your time talking about anarchism bro.its a dead movement.

Don't waste your time posting ridiculous crap like that. Next time there will be a verbal warning, so please do not flame.
Trashed.

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[Tablo]

Sad to hear people identifying as Anarchists were behaving in such a way.

[syndicat]

this letter was sent to my organization, Workers Solidarity Alliance. we discussed it a bit. but I think we've declined from signing on to it. I'll explain why.

This letter is a factional document. It's a "he said, she said" kind of dispute about a particular event at Hunter College. Because we were not actually there and eye witnesses to the events, it's hard to know what the truth is. It appears to be an attack on certain insurrectos (insurrectionary anarchists).

If you've followed my various interventions on this board, you'll know I disagree with the insurrectos. Nonetheless, I don't believe this is the right way to deal with their mistakes.

Insurrectionary anarchism seems to have acquired an increasing following lately. I think the appropriate way to deal with the mistakes of the insurrectos is to engage in an honest and dispassionate evaluation and critique of their politics (acknowledging of course that they don't all agree). This letter doesn't do that.

[Jimmie Higgins]

This has been going around the bay area too where similar questions and problems have come up (not just anarchist but socialist groups too).

An open discussion about things like this is a good sign that the left is moving forward. Also the emphasis on building and reaching out to the not-yet radical students is very encouraging.

[Saorsa]

Insurrectionary anarchists have always struck me as the most 'vanguardist' group on the left. They go into situations where there are hundreds or even thousands of people with a limited political consciousness and no desire for violent confrontations, masses of people who just want to protest or attend a rally or whatever... and the insurrectionary anarchists offer them a choice of either participating in their macho window smashing games or being sworn at, made fun of, put down or even physically attacked. At the very least, other people become caught up in the police response.

Rather than attempting to build class consciousness through patient argument and debate with fellow workers and other people in the mass movements, and rather than trying to be where the masses of people are at and relate to them in a respectful way, insurrectionary anarchists seek to appoint themselves the real revolutionaries, the ones who are gonna march at the front and smash windows, throw rocks at the police and get people who want nothing to do with this shit tear gassed and arrested. Of course the police will happily attack a demonstration anyway, and resistance to them is totally justified and commendable. But insurrectionarys seem to see this as a big game, where protests allow them to get dressed up in their cool black outfits and go play brick tag with the cops.

I live on the other side of the world to the Hunter building, so I can't make any kind of definitive judgement on what happened. But I've read perspectives on it from both sides of the argument, spoken with people in that area who I know online, and a few things have become clear. The anarchists this piece is critiquing showed up and disrupted the rally outside with boomboxes, deliberately trying to drown out speakers. This shows a remarkable lack of respect for debate within the movement - if the people aren't responding to your arguments, try to cow them into submission with loud noise! These anarchists graffitid and damaged an office used by ISO and other student activist groups. There are also plenty of reports that these people swore at others and were generally rude and agressive, and one of them has been accused of telling a women she was going to be 'filled with herpes' or something like that.

Thousands of dollars worth of damage was done to a building where students study, work and hang out. It's going to be minimum wage workers cleaning up the mess. This is extremely arrogant.

It's funny that this kind of people attack Leninists for being authoritarian and vanguardist. While we tend to take the approach of working within the movement to try and win people over with force of argument and build something on that basis, the insurrectionary types don't care about whether they have a mandate for their actions. They know they possess the revolutionary truth, and that's enough for them. It doesn't matter if the hundreds of students at the protest deeply oppose you smashing windows on their campus, you do it anyway becoz anarky!!!!!11!!11!

To make up for the lack of a mass revolutionary movement (or lots of people rioting like in those awesome videos from Greece you jack off to) by putting on a mask and smashing windows whether the people you claim to fight for want you to or not... what could be more vanguardist than that?

EDIT: I'll add that while the NZ revolutionary scene is so small that luckily we don't tend to have many insurrecto types, this sort of thing has played out in NZ before too. And also in Australia. It's always the same thing, a small minority of ultra-cool anarchist machomen who substitute themselves for the movement.

[Jimmie Higgins]

this letter was sent to my organization, Workers Solidarity Alliance. we discussed it a bit. but I think we've declined from signing on to it. I'll explain why...

Interesting and I think it makes sense to try and stay out of the more schoolyard "he said/she said" stuff. However, I think for east cost comrades, there was a lot of angry back and forth and accusations and so in that case it may be good for the parties involved to explain their political differences as they palyed out in this event.

But in general, I agree: keep it on the political side, not the gossip side. It would do no good for west-cost anarchist comrades to drag this subject up if they are trying to talk about their disagreements with insurrectionist tactics - especially as the immediacy of this particular incident fades into the past.

[syndicat]

But in general, I agree: keep it on the political side, not the gossip side. It would do no good for west-cost anarchist comrades to drag this subject up if they are trying to talk about their disagreements with insurrectionist tactics - especially as the immediacy of this particular incident fades into the past.


yeah. the truth is, we don't have really much or hardly any contact with anarchos of that type. there tends to be a major gap between the mass organizing social anarchists and the insurrectos...as if they were on another planet.

on the other hand, there's been the recent upsurge of activism among students where this conflict took place. I'll have to wait to hear what my student and teacher comrades have to say.


An open discussion about things like this is a good sign that the left is moving forward. Also the emphasis on building and reaching out to the not-yet radical students is very encouraging.

yes you're right.

[black magick hustla]

Insurrectionary anarchists have always struck me as the most 'vanguardist' group on the left. They go into situations where there are hundreds or even thousands of people with a limited political consciousness and no desire for violent confrontations, masses of people who just want to protest or attend a rally or whatever... and the insurrectionary anarchists offer them a choice of either participating in their macho window smashing games or being sworn at, made fun of, put down or even physically attacked. At the very least, other people become caught up in the police response.


I am not an insurrecto by any means but I think this is a big ass straw man. It is true some insurrectionary anarchists have an anti-democratic bent, but I think that is most radicals. The maoists in India want to smash the state and engage in acts of violence against the army. I don't think the mayority of indians are for that.

[Devrim]

Insurrectionary anarchists have always struck me as the most 'vanguardist' group on the left. They go into situations where there are hundreds or even thousands of people with a limited political consciousness and no desire for violent confrontations, masses of people who just want to protest or attend a rally or whatever... and the insurrectionary anarchists offer them a choice of either participating in their macho window smashing games or being sworn at, made fun of, put down or even physically attacked. At the very least, other people become caught up in the police response.

Rather than attempting to build class consciousness through patient argument and debate with fellow workers and other people in the mass movements, and rather than trying to be where the masses of people are at and relate to them in a respectful way, insurrectionary anarchists seek to appoint themselves the real revolutionaries, the ones who are gonna march at the front and smash windows, throw rocks at the police and get people who want nothing to do with this shit tear gassed and arrested. Of course the police will happily attack a demonstration anyway, and resistance to them is totally justified and commendable. But insurrectionarys seem to see this as a big game, where protests allow them to get dressed up in their cool black outfits and go play brick tag with the cops.

Wow! It is not often that I completely agree with you, Alistair. Especially the bits I put in bold.

Maybe its a 'social role' though. In Turkey anarchism is a minuscule current, and the people who play the same role are generally Maoists, or groups from the Dev-Yol current, which is sort of Maoist. I have often been at demonstrations, and the police are really mob-handed at demonstration here, the last one I went to last week had less than a thousand demonstrators and 15,000 armed riot police, and then the Maoists have turned up. You are outnumber about ten to one, but you just know that they are going to start a fight anyway without regard for the fact that they are nearly all younger people, mostly men, and a workers' demonstration in Turkey often includes many middle-aged, or even old people.

Devrim

[revolution inaction]

thread on libcom about this http://libcom.org/news/politics-impatience-open-letter-anarchists-anarchist-movement-08042010
several people claim the letter is a distortion of what happened.

[Wanted Man]

A statement with that phrase as its title, written by some folks involved in the altercation at Hunter, claims, “We do not need the ‘consent of the people.’” But militant direct action needs to take place within the context of a movement, not outside of it. To single-handedly declare that a protest is not radical enough without participating in the democratic processes of the movement is vanguardist.

Surely, this is just the basic foundation of all activities of "insurrectionary anarchists"? I don't find this particularly surprising or shocking.

[Demogorgon]

Insurrectionary anarchists have always struck me as the most 'vanguardist' group on the left. They go into situations where there are hundreds or even thousands of people with a limited political consciousness and no desire for violent confrontations, masses of people who just want to protest or attend a rally or whatever... and the insurrectionary anarchists offer them a choice of either participating in their macho window smashing games or being sworn at, made fun of, put down or even physically attacked. At the very least, other people become caught up in the police response.

Rather than attempting to build class consciousness through patient argument and debate with fellow workers and other people in the mass movements, and rather than trying to be where the masses of people are at and relate to them in a respectful way, insurrectionary anarchists seek to appoint themselves the real revolutionaries, the ones who are gonna march at the front and smash windows, throw rocks at the police and get people who want nothing to do with this shit tear gassed and arrested. Of course the police will happily attack a demonstration anyway, and resistance to them is totally justified and commendable. But insurrectionarys seem to see this as a big game, where protests allow them to get dressed up in their cool black outfits and go play brick tag with the cops.

I live on the other side of the world to the Hunter building, so I can't make any kind of definitive judgement on what happened. But I've read perspectives on it from both sides of the argument, spoken with people in that area who I know online, and a few things have become clear. The anarchists this piece is critiquing showed up and disrupted the rally outside with boomboxes, deliberately trying to drown out speakers. This shows a remarkable lack of respect for debate within the movement - if the people aren't responding to your arguments, try to cow them into submission with loud noise! These anarchists graffitid and damaged an office used by ISO and other student activist groups. There are also plenty of reports that these people swore at others and were generally rude and agressive, and one of them has been accused of telling a women she was going to be 'filled with herpes' or something like that.

Thousands of dollars worth of damage was done to a building where students study, work and hang out. It's going to be minimum wage workers cleaning up the mess. This is extremely arrogant.

It's funny that this kind of people attack Leninists for being authoritarian and vanguardist. While we tend to take the approach of working within the movement to try and win people over with force of argument and build something on that basis, the insurrectionary types don't care about whether they have a mandate for their actions. They know they possess the revolutionary truth, and that's enough for them. It doesn't matter if the hundreds of students at the protest deeply oppose you smashing windows on their campus, you do it anyway becoz anarky!!!!!11!!11!

To make up for the lack of a mass revolutionary movement (or lots of people rioting like in those awesome videos from Greece you jack off to) by putting on a mask and smashing windows whether the people you claim to fight for want you to or not... what could be more vanguardist than that?

EDIT: I'll add that while the NZ revolutionary scene is so small that luckily we don't tend to have many insurrecto types, this sort of thing has played out in NZ before too. And also in Australia. It's always the same thing, a small minority of ultra-cool anarchist machomen who substitute themselves for the movement.I agree with this, but the other thing that needs to be added is that when there are TV cameras there, what do you think is going to be shown on the evening news and what impression are people going to get of the protest and protests in general? I often talk to people who have a very negative view of protest and the reason is they see what is reported on the media and conclude that protesting is about acting like a hooligan.

To be sure, a large section of the media isn't going to give anything other than a negative report on a protest no matter what happens, but that is no excuse to make their life easier. I sometimes wonder if some of the idiots doing this are being put up to it by journalists.

[Saorsa]

Wow! It is not often that I completely agree with you, Alistair. Especially the bits I put in bold.

Haha, I must be getting a bit soft! I'll try to avoid it happening again ;-)


Maybe its a 'social role' though. In Turkey anarchism is a minuscule current, and the people who play the same role are generally Maoists, or groups from the Dev-Yol current, which is sort of Maoist. I have often been at demonstrations, and the police are really mob-handed at demonstration here, the last one I went to last week had less than a thousand demonstrators and 15,000 armed riot police, and then the Maoists have turned up. You are outnumber about ten to one, but you just know that they are going to start a fight anyway without regard for the fact that they are nearly all younger people, mostly men, and a workers' demonstration in Turkey often includes many middle-aged, or even old people.

I'd make the same criticisms of a group like that if they do this shit under a Mao banner. That seems to fly in the face of the entire concept of the mass line.


I agree with this, but the other thing that needs to be added is that when there are TV cameras there,

I think that's a major reason behind the existence of insurrectos. They just want to see themselves on TV, or read about what they did in the newspapers... it's the politics of the spectacle at it's most blatant and ridiculous. I don't think it's a coincidence that the only insurrectionary anarchists I've ever met in my country are young men without much in the way of political theory, who overwhelmingly tend to have loud voices and a strong desire for attention.

[Demogorgon]

I think that's a major reason behind the existence of insurrectos. They just want to see themselves on TV, or read about what they did in the newspapers... it's the politics of the spectacle at it's most blatant and ridiculous. I don't think it's a coincidence that the only insurrectionary anarchists I've ever met in my country are young men without much in the way of political theory, who overwhelmingly tend to have loud voices and a strong desire for attention.
Well yes, it is attention seeking more than anything else I think. I don't want to be sectarian and say it is just them though, because you get idiots in all tendencies, but it must be very frustrating for real anarchists above all. There is a popular perception here that an "anarchist" is just someone who disrupts protests for the fun of it.

It is very unfair but this sort of behaviour is what causes it.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Insurrectionary anarchists have always struck me as the most 'vanguardist' group on the left. They go into situations where there are hundreds or even thousands of people with a limited political consciousness and no desire for violent confrontations, masses of people who just want to protest or attend a rally or whatever... and the insurrectionary anarchists offer them a choice of either participating in their macho window smashing games or being sworn at, made fun of, put down or even physically attacked. At the very least, other people become caught up in the police response.

Definitely agree with you, and I have not had many encounters with insurrectionary types in the UK but I have seen videos of American insurrectionary anarchists (which seems to be the prevalent anarchist movement there, correct me if i'm wrong someone) and I have to say that they definitely do act like this and embarrass the workers movement. I think the article is right that it stems from a lack of patience but it's no excuse for such idiotic acts of violence which only serve to isolate themselves from the class struggle. However I think we must be clear that this is not true of the insurrectionary ideology as a whole. I think AFed are insurrectionary Anarchist and you would never see any of their members behaving like this.

[Madvillainy]

I think AFed are insurrectionary Anarchist

How?

[bricolage]

offer them a choice of either participating in their macho window smashing games or being sworn at, made fun of, put down or even physically attacked.

While I'm not defending these actions in any way I am surprised to see so many people talking about 'being sworn at, made fun of, put down or even physically attacked'. To be honest this thread here might well be the first case I've ever heard or seen of such things happening and I have been in situations with 'insurrectionaries' before. Maybe it's a geographical thing although I'd be interested to hear if people knew of such things happening in the UK.


At the very least, other people become caught up in the police response.

This is true but at the same time the police response probably would have happened anyway. I don't believe that, for example, demonstrations become violent just when the demonstrators act violently.

[fredbergen]

Here's what the Marxists had to say about March 4 in New York:

Students and Labor, Shut NYC Down -- Stop the Assault on Public Education! (http://www.internationalist.org/stopassaultpubliceducation1003.html) (4 March 2010)

Lockdown U.? No Police State at Hunter College! (http://www.internationalist.org/hunternopolicestate1003.html) (9 March 2010)

Letter to the Editor of the Hunter Envoy (http://www.internationalist.org/hunterenvoyltr1003.html) (12 March 2010)

As I wrote in response to an earlier version of this back and forth of clashing "open letters" and statements:

... The far greater threat on March 4 and today comes from the ruling class. In all the profunditized treatises on "tactics" circulating on various e-mail lists not only does the massive cop deployment get short shrift, there is no mention of who is behind the attacks on education: the Democratic Party. Why not? Because the official March 4 organizers are appealing to that capitalist party. They invited Democratic city councilman Charles Barron to speak at the citywide rally outside Governor Paterson's office. (Now it turns out that Barron helped broker a cordial private reception by the budget-slashing governor himself with various CUNY students and representatives, as the governor tries to patch up his tarnished reputation and snare the unwary.)

And the intrepid "insurrectionists"? At the Hunter rally, they heckled revolutionary speakers (from the Internationalist Clubs and Class Struggle Education Workers) who called to unite students and labor against the capitalist parties to shut the city down. But we didn't hear a peep from the "anarchists" against Barron. Their manifestos rant about "authoritarians" but don't have a word about the ruling capitalist war party, the Democrats. In fact, after the Internet flame war dies down, it wouldn't surprise us to see the liberal/reformists and "anarchists" make nice with each other again in the name of "uniting the people." But we will have no part of such "unity" with bourgeois politicians.

We put forward a program for a working-class mobilization against the bipartisan capitalist attacks on public education which are victimizing CUNY students. The CUNY Internationalist Clubs and CSEW predicted that the demo organizers would seek to get Democrats on the platform, which was one of the reasons we didn't endorse their call, even while building for the day of action and walkout at CUNY, distributing more than 1,700 leaflets at Hunter alone. We also leafleted at Hostos and at Lehman College, where our supporters along with other students led a march through the college.

The capitalist attacks on public education can only be defeated by mobilizing the power of the working class on the road to socialist revolution. Any such mobilization, from its very first steps, will have to effectively handle the threat of police repression, along with the political obstacle of the labor misleaders who chain the workers to the very same capitalist class that is oppressing us.

Anyone who is seriously interested in what it takes to carry out a successful campus occupation should check out the Internationalist Group pamphlet on the 1999-2000 strike of a quarter million students of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) who occupied their campus for ten months (see Mexico: The UNAM Strike and the Fight for Workers Revolution (http://www.internationalist.org/mexsuptoc.html)). Our comrades of the Grupo Internacionalista took the lead in organizing worker-student defense guards involving hundreds of electrical workers that thwarted a military-police attack on the campus. And although over 1,000 students were arrested at the end, they managed to block the imposition of tuition and fees. ...

[Stranger Than Paradise]

How?

This post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1563821&postcount=101) from an AFed member. I am not using insurrectionary as a derogatory term either, just to clarify.

[revolution inaction]

This post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1563821&postcount=101) from an AFed member. I am not using insurrectionary as a derogatory term either, just to clarify.

afed are not insurrectionist, and i think that member may have left, although i am not certain, there have been some member who left because they became insurrectionists.

[Wolf Larson]

This has been going around the bay area too where similar questions and problems have come up (not just anarchist but socialist groups too).

An open discussion about things like this is a good sign that the left is moving forward. Also the emphasis on building and reaching out to the not-yet radical students is very encouraging.
Anarchists are socialists :)

[Stranger Than Paradise]

afed are not insurrectionist, and i think that member may have left, although i am not certain, there have been some member who left because they became insurrectionists.

Ok, they aren't insurrectionist, I just remember that poster defending insurrectionism and talking about being in AFed, must've been just them or a group of members who were insurrectionary. May I ask, what made these members leave, what strategy does AFed have they disagreed with?

[revolution inaction]

Ok, they aren't insurrectionist, I just remember that poster defending insurrectionism and talking about being in AFed, must've been just them or a group of members who were insurrectionary. May I ask, what made these members leave, what strategy does AFed have they disagreed with?
cant remember right now, i think because they where insurrectionist, and didn't feel they where vary involved in the organization nationally, just doing local stuff.

[Proletarian Ultra]

I agree with this, but the other thing that needs to be added is that when there are TV cameras there, what do you think is going to be shown on the evening news and what impression are people going to get of the protest and protests in general?

Much as I hate to defend the insurrectos, better smashing windows than those big f***ing puppets. Who thought of that?

But anyway: Insurrectionist anarchists disrupt ISO protest because it's too non-confrontational and accomodationist:


Walter: "Am I wrong?"
Dude: "No, you're not wrong."
Walter: "Am I wrong?"
The Dude: "You're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole!"

Dialectics!

[bcbm]

a response (http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11033)


Insurrectionary anarchists have always struck me as the most 'vanguardist' group on the left. They go into situations where there are hundreds or even thousands of people with a limited political consciousness and no desire for violent confrontations, masses of people who just want to protest or attend a rally or whatever... and the insurrectionary anarchists offer them a choice of either participating in their macho window smashing games or being sworn at, made fun of, put down or even physically attacked. At the very least, other people become caught up in the police response.

for the past three years, at the least, there has been a fairly conscious effort on the part of north american "insurrectionary" anarchists to separate their actions from the actions of those who may not want to fight the police. during the rnc in 2008, there were actions spread far away from the peaceful march. in pittsburgh and recently vancouver we saw the same thing. in vancouver on the first major demo there were "insurrectionaries" present and they weren't smashing anything, though they were asked to help defend the march from the police. fancy that. their action was on a later day and openly billed as such.

i also disagree with the characterization of their activites as "macho."


Rather than attempting to build class consciousness through patient argument and debate with fellow workers and other people in the mass movements, and rather than trying to be where the masses of people are at and relate to them in a respectful way, insurrectionary anarchists seek to appoint themselves the real revolutionaries, the ones who are gonna march at the front and smash windows, throw rocks at the police and get people who want nothing to do with this shit tear gassed and arrested. Of course the police will happily attack a demonstration anyway, and resistance to them is totally justified and commendable. But insurrectionarys seem to see this as a big game, where protests allow them to get dressed up in their cool black outfits and go play brick tag with the cops.there are certainly problems with some insurrectionary practice and for some it is a "game" as you describe, but this is not the end all, be all of their politics. if anything, its just the most visible. in my experience with insurrectionary anarchists, they are much more interested in projects that don't involve smashing shit- communisation and other communal undertakings.


I live on the other side of the world to the Hunter building, so I can't make any kind of definitive judgement on what happened.well that didn't seem to stop most of the people who signed the statement.

certainly something unfortunate went down at hunter, but i think the rush to blame one group of anarchists for something that seems to have involved a lot of people being assholes is stupid and is being used to further an agenda.


t's always the same thing, a small minority of ultra-cool anarchist machomen who substitute themselves for the movement.

i know a lot of women and trans individuals who might have a problem being labeled "ultra-cool anarchist machomen."

[black magick hustla]

a response (http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11033)

that response was dumb as hell

*blah blah blah we are uncotrollable blahy blah blah social capital blah blah blah i am black blah blah did i mention i am black?*

regards

-*drop some street lingo, reminds everyone of being black*

[Prairie Fire]

(From the initial article)


"...To single-handedly declare that a protest is not radical enough without participating in the democratic processes of the movement is vanguardist. "


Oh, this ought to be good.

Anyone care to field this, in absence of the original authors?


Anyways, my preliminary thoughts on this event...

The first thing that came into my mind is that these people were police provocateurs.

Now, I have no solid evidence to back this up, but I assure that I am not saying this out of any sort of bias (If anything, I have disdain for anarchism in general, and "insurectionary" anarchism in particular, ). My initial thoughts are based on the experience of Canadian protesters at Montebello, where a police provocateur was outed in the crowd posing as a demonstrator, and this made the national news.http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/08/23/police-montebello.html?ref=rss

I'm also drawing on my persynal experience where so often unknown people that no one recognizes will occasionally show up at things, and these are always the first people to start demanding that we break shit, or they are the first people to actually go ahead and break something. Now, that doesn't necessarilly make them a pig, but it does make them an unknown persyn (completely un-involved in the long-term work of the particular struggle) coming out of nowhere, demanding violence, and then dissapearing back into nowhere afterwards.

Even anarchist literature that I have read is very clear that generally the most violent persyn in the group, trying to agitate others towards violence, is generally a provocateur. My first instinct when I read the details about these people, especially in the way that they are acting, is that they were provocateurs.

Now, maybe I'm wrong; it is easilly just as plausible that these were anarchists/pseudo-anarchists . For example:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/03/14/18577254.php?show_comments=1)

My point is that,whoever they were, they were acting like provocateurs. It is not unheard of for pigs to send people into a crowd to act violent/disrespectful to either justify police retaliation or to discredit all of those assembled.

The problem with the anarchists (or any trend that relies more on "movements" than organizations), is that it is much easier for provocateurs to walk among them , when there is no formal membership, no collective responsibility, no organizational discipline, etc.

For this reason, I suspect that police provocateurs will generally continue to disorient, disrupt and discredit events under the cover of a black flag more than any other.

[Saorsa]

From the insurrecto response: (http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11033)


The younger generation, we don't care about your... expensive-ass books about people struggling in some hot-ass country somewhere

That is quite possibly the most stupid-ass thing I have ever read, anywhere.

[Jimmie Higgins]

From the insurrecto response: (http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11033)



That is quite possibly the most stupid-ass thing I have ever read, anywhere.

Why stop there?

Social capital, of course, exemplified in all the name-dropping of anarcho-nobodies and their 40 years of activism, but also capital in a more real sense: the power one gains through the mass production of their writings, of their name being seen on bookshelves in the comfortable living rooms of homes across America.Yes all those anarchist writers living high on the hog from independent and small-press books they they have written:rolleyes:. But who needs books or boring coalition meetings when you only want to act and then have the working class follow you. Workers don't think or read, they just are waiting for someone to act and lead them.

Or this:


Someone needs to educate these ISO motherfuckers with a bat.Why would they give credit to the ISO for this event that the ISO was not central to? Maybe if they had come to some of the "boring" organizing and coalition meetings, they would have seen that it was a coalition of different radicals as well as non-radicals.

[bcbm]

The first thing that came into my mind is that these people were police provocateurs.

Now, I have no solid evidence to back this up

then stop badjacketing.


that response was dumb as hell

i think its some decent trolling (http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11038#comment-102323) of an event (see responses in this thread) that doesn't need or deserve the attention it is getting.

[black magick hustla]

i think its some decent trolling (http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11038#comment-102323) of an event (see responses in this thread) that doesn't need or deserve the attention it is getting.

i enjoy a decent troll as anybody else but honestly??? i mean there was a serious inquiry and this was the response. obviously people are going to give attention to it because the letter was sent in a serious manner.

[bcbm]

i enjoy a decent troll as anybody else but honestly??? i mean there was a serious inquiry and this was the response. obviously people are going to give attention to it because the letter was sent in a serious manner.

i think that "the movement" is in such a state that a letter like that could be written seriously (a month late), signed off on seriously by a bunch of people from all over the country and then given this much attention is more problematic than anything in the letter itself and way more deserving of a serious inquiry than one group of fringe politicos getting into a fight with another group of the same. even if what happened at hunter merits some attention, i don't think it deserves the national attention of the left, let alone anarchists, let alone insurrectionary anarchists. not that i think the open letter has much of anything to do with what happened at hunter- the incident in question is just an opportunity for one wing of nobodies to launch an attack (or at least a lecture from the older and wiser) against another, and i think alfonso and nostalgia's response nails this pretty well.

[elf]

I don't know much about the story mentioned in the first post. But from what I've read, it seems blown all out of proportion. A group of "anarchists" were apparently involved in a disagreement at a demo with some other people at the demo.

A faculty member and longtime media activist was injured in the head, sectarian graffiti was spray-painted, and a parent from Defend Hunter Childcare was targeted with a sexist epithet that was heard by some as a rape threat.
I would need to know more about the first example, I assume the second case was against the ISO in which case it is hardly sectarian, and sexism is never welcome.


At the root of the incident was an impatience by some anarchists with a rally and walkout that they decided should have been an occupation. This letter will talk about the politics of impatience and offer some ideas for action.
An occupation is more radical than a walkout. All leftists should be supporting the more radical option. If certain folk want to stage a sit-in, it hardly needs the "democratic consent" of those not involved.


If we are serious about revolutionary social change, then we need to have more open conversations with those we disagree with, instead of blasting each other on the internet. Conflict is a part of life that we can often learn a lot from, but only when we are open to hearing criticism and learning from our mistakes.
Yes, perhaps not signing this letter would be a start, seeing as it could easily be interpreted as "blasting each other on the internet".

In conclusion, I've seen worse "disruption" and rejecting of "democracy" at an event by organised "socialist groups". Yet it hardly got such widespread coverage. Indeed, I've seen far worse "sectarianism" directed at anarchists for no other reason than they were willing to confront the police, away from other protesters (and thus not directly endangering those other protesters). You're all wrong on the Internet.

[Bitter Ashes]

Okay, this seems to be the question in there.

Some of the individuals involved have apologized for their actions. But we still need to ask why this happened, how anarchists could be responsible for these things. And how to make sure it never happens again.
Now, it'd be very easy for somebody who wasnt there, to just instantly dismiss it all as either exagerrated, or committed by nilhilists, but we shouldnt take anything for granted right now. I won't assume either, but equaly, I won't be assuming that everything happened exactly like it says in the letter either.

Right now my biggest feeling is that anarchism is suffering from the consequences of the media smear against us. There is and always will be a place for direct action, but sometimes there's been mistakes been made, which have been blown out of proportion in the past, to the point now where when your average Joe off the street thinks that Anarchism is about luddism and primitivism, instead of the good works that anarchists do in organising communities and workplaces so that people have better control over thier own lives, with practical results that work now.

What this has surely led to is that the people intrested in actualy moving the world towards a happier place don't automaticly think of anarchism and equaly, when somebody thinks that it's going to be a good idea to go around firebombing the place they call themselves an anarchist.

I believe it's time to reclaim Anarchism from the media and to publisise our good deeds that inspire us and those we meet more and more. We will never have the media on our side, so it's an uphill battle and frankly, I think we might need a hand from our other comrades on the left to do this.

So, in summary; propaganda caused this problem and propaganda can fix it again.

[Jimmie Higgins]

An occupation is more radical than a walkout. All leftists should be supporting the more radical option. If certain folk want to stage a sit-in, it hardly needs the "democratic consent" of those not involved.
A single building occupation isn't as radical as a general strike. It's not as radical as overthrowing the government and workers taking over their workplaces.

Of course all leftists should support an occupation, and the ISO does and has participated in them at other schools, and I bet all the other anarchists involved also want this and have done radical actions in the past.

So I think it's a false argument to say that these radicals support a less radical tactic at that point because they are "less radical" themselves. The article in the OP spells it out pretty well: they are trying to reach out to students who are radicalizing due to the cuts. If you want to see mass campus occupations, you have to organize for it and that's exactly what these Marxist and anarchist comrades were trying to do.

So to me it's a question of how do you get there. I'd imagine that the ideas coming from non-radical students at this campus was to work with the campus administration and student government maybe because that's what I've heard coming from other campuses. If that was the case, then radicals winning students to a walkout (something that liberal student groups in California say is unproductive since we are trying to save education and - gasp, here you are walking out) is a more radical next step and if it's successful then people will gain confidence in taking more direct action and it will be easier to win many many more students to participate in or be part of the outside support for a mass campus occupation. If the debate in the student coalition was "should we walkout or should we occupy" then I doubt that the radicals would have argued for a walkout - and if they did for some reason, then it should have been no problem for the insurrectionsts to walk into the coalition and propose the more radical option and win support for it.

So If the insurrectionists think this isn't radical enough then they should join the coalition and make that case. If they think they'll loose this argument but really want to occupy a building they should go do it themselves without hijacking the plans made collectively by a student coalition. Of course if they wanted to do this on their own, then they'll have to do things like make sure they have student support outside, allies, boring organizing meetings, debates with other people and so on otherwise their tactic will fail... hmm catch-22.

So when it comes down to it, really they want to use other people's organizing efforts as their personal playground to play revolutionary. It come across in their arguments - if they have that much disdain for fellow anarchists and bottom-up marxists because they are not as holy and radical as they are, they must really look down on all those yet to be radicalized workers.

[elf]

So If the insurrectionists think this isn't radical enough then they should join the coalition and make that case. If they think they'll loose this argument but really want to occupy a building they should go do it themselves without hijacking the plans made collectively by a student coalition. Of course if they wanted to do this on their own, then they'll have to do things like make sure they have student support outside, allies, boring organizing meetings, debates with other people and so on otherwise their tactic will fail... hmm catch-22.
Where you there? How do you know that this isn't what happened? I don't know if it happened or not, or what happened.

I sort of assumed that the "anarchists" that are being complained about tried to get others involved in a sit-in. Others didn't want to join in, and so didn't. I didn't see whether the anarchists went ahead and did it or not though. I also didn't see any reference to plans being "hijacked" (I may have just missed it though).

[Jimmie Higgins]

Where you there? How do you know that this isn't what happened? I don't know if it happened or not, or what happened.

I sort of assumed that the "anarchists" that are being complained about tried to get others involved in a sit-in. Others didn't want to join in, and so didn't. I didn't see whether the anarchists went ahead and did it or not though. I also didn't see any reference to plans being "hijacked" (I may have just missed it though).True, I shouldn't assume because I don't know the details - I'm just going off some of the back and forth that I read.

[bcbm]

So If the insurrectionists think this isn't radical enough then they should join the coalition and make that case. If they think they'll loose this argument but really want to occupy a building they should go do it themselves without hijacking the plans made collectively by a student coalition. Of course if they wanted to do this on their own, then they'll have to do things like make sure they have student support outside, allies, boring organizing meetings, debates with other people and so on otherwise their tactic will fail... hmm catch-22.

well the other side says it was the people pushing for an indoor demo that had been involved in organizing for weeks while those who tried to move that outside and talked about students coming from other schools to "riot," and drew police attention to those students hadn't been at all.


So when it comes down to it, really they want to use other people's organizing efforts as their personal playground to play revolutionary. It come across in their arguments - if they have that much disdain for fellow anarchists and bottom-up marxists because they are not as holy and radical as they are, they must really look down on all those yet to be radicalized workers.

i love when people extrapolate the attitudes and politics of entire groups from a small little fight full of he said, she said bullshit. nevermind the "insurrectionaries" (who decided they were, anyway) involved in other actions on march 4th and other days that were successful- they're all just a bunch of rich kids playing revolutionary at other people's events.


True, I shouldn't assume because I don't know the details - I'm just going off some of the back and forth that I read.

and here's exactly what we should all be saying. this is a matter for a couple hunter students and some other nyc folks to resolve, not for everyone and their mother across the country to be taking sides, signing statements and other stupid bullshit. when people do start doing shit like this publicly, they should be shamed and ignored.

[Jimmie Higgins]

i love when people extrapolate the attitudes and politics of entire groups from a small little fight full of he said, she said bullshit. nevermind the "insurrectionaries" (who decided they were, anyway) involved in other actions on march 4th and other days that were successful- they're all just a bunch of rich kids playing revolutionary at other people's events.Well it can't be both ways - either I have to talk generally about what I think the political thought behind certain kinds of tactics and stances are or I have to talk specifically about this incident and the individuals involved.

Personally I don't really have an interest in the in-fighting stuff, particularly when it's in another part of the country and I don't have first-hand knowledge.

The third option is not to talk about this at all.

But I think it is important to talk about this in an open and political way (and hopefully avoid the personal stuff) because similar things have happened in other places too - particularly since the emergence of what could become a new student radical movement.

I haven't been very clear - I have used "insurrectionists" both meaning these particular people making the statements but then I have also used it to mean the tactics they used in general. It's the tactics as represented by the statements of these particular insurrectionists that I think does need to be discussed (and similar things have been done by people of other political tendencies too) because it has an impact on building movements and radicalizing people in the current political climate.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Why do some assholes (I'm assuming that the writers of this are correct) disrupting a rally warrant such a lengthy condemnation and deep introspection? Assholes disrupt shit all the time. I don't see it as a statement on insurrectionary anarchism (which is an actual theory with history behind it, not simply a practice of throwing bricks through windows or swearing at cops or what have you).

[bcbm]

I haven't been very clear - I have used "insurrectionists" both meaning these particular people making the statements but then I have also used it to mean the tactics they used in general.

how can you look at the tactics they used in general without looking at what actually happened? it seems like these conservations basically always devolve into attacking imagined positions that "insurrectionists" hold and ultimately accomplish nothing. they also seem to conveniently leave out all sorts of other despicable behavior from other sections of the movement like organizers collaborating with cops, trying to shut down occupations, etc.

don't get me wrong. i am completely open to discussing tactics, strategy, etc but i think people who start airing this sort of "dirty laundry" publicly should be politely told to shut the fuck up. what happened at hunter should have been resolved by the parties involved. hopefully they would learn something useful and then put out that perspective as a tactical/strategic analysis, not use it as fodder for an internecine gossip war.

[chegitz guevara]

Personally, I support anarchists doing this type of thing. It makes the revolutionary socialists much more attractive to radicalizing people. :thumbup1:

[kasama-rl]

I wrote this today after reading in this thread, and posted it first on http://kasamaproject.org:

Identifying Strategic Roads: The Tactics of Occupation & the Charge of “Outsider” (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/04/15/strategic-thinking-outsiders-our-school-occupation-only-ultra-left/)



http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/binoculars.jpg?w=275&h=275 (http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/binoculars.jpg)


This is part of our ongoing discussion (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/04/10/open-letter-after-the-march-4-cuny-incident-the-politics-of-impatience/#comment-22865)of the March 4 incident at CUNY, and the emerging critiques of an “occupation only” strain among some anarchist students.

by Mike Ely


TNL sought to establish some of the core issues in the March 4 conflict:

While the competing narratives may make it difficult to sort out the exact series of events at Hunter on March 4, some investigation can produce a clear enough picture to undertake an analysis. I know people who were on both sides of this and am a former Hunter student. I feel quite confident that I am not just siding with my own friends, who in fact I think made some mistakes. Who pushed whom first, the exact wording of the epithet with the word “****” in it and so on are not the central political issues involved here.
What is beyond dispute is that members of the ultraleft:


Spraypainted anti-ISO graffitti on the doors to the offices the ISO shares with several other campus groups.
Sought to disrupt the outdoor rally in a manner that resulted in a melee.
Hurled a vile sexist epithet at a woman with revolutionary politics who was the leader of a successful fight to preserve childcare on the campus.
After the fact accused people of snitching to the police without any evidence.

Redthreadbris replies (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/04/10/open-letter-after-the-march-4-cuny-incident-the-politics-of-impatience/#comment-22865):

“Fine, those four acts sound like errors and are at least a bit crap. They do not however nullify the political stance of the ultraleft nor the attempt/desire to try to move towards occupying the building. I might be mangling Maoist terms but they are mistakes of tactics not strategy.”
What road are we on?

I think it might be valuable to ask: what precisely IS their strategy? What strategy are their tactics emerging out of?


If these are “errors of tactics” — what errors of STRATEGY do they serve?
And, i also think that is a fair question for their critics, when criticizing this approach and method (the spraypainting of opponents, the abuse of women political opponents, etc.) what strategy are those criticisms coming out of? What is the strategy of ISO? What is the strategy of people critiquing the “occupationists”?



I say this because far far too little discussion links tactics with long range goals.


People often run on tactical autopilot — without regularly (and self-criticially) asking whether their activity will help get us from here to there (and without making explicit what “their there” actually is).
We don’t want a treadmill. We don’t want tactics that just serve the short-term chops of events. We don’t want to be stuck in ruts, and unable to grasp that times require leaps and escalations in tactics. And the only way to be creative and flexible like that is to start with larger strategy (at the highest level: how do we help prepare for a seizure of power and transformation of society) and look at tactics in that light, in light of our longer-range strategy.

Some thoughts on this:


I am always wary when someone has one tactical fixation — i.e. as if only occupation suits this moment or campus work, and anything else betrays a determination to capitulate to the system. As important as student occupations have been, occupation is not a universal good — applicable everywhere and at all times. It is true that a mechanical fixation on occupation departs from the mass line. Such a fixation can be oblivious to whether there is a mass basis for an action, and it can ignore “conditions, time, and place.” These are important tactical criticisms of an inappropriate tactic.
But (interestingly enough) the take the city (http://takethecity.wordpress.com/) blog make “occupy everything” into a slogan — which is a very revealing connection between tactical monomania for occupation and a strategic view of how people get free (by “occupying everything“).
There has long been an approach that believes liberation came from creating “free spaces” and “autonomous zones” — and growing them, and maturing them — until (in aggregate) humanity itself is free. A kind of inkblot effect. And (in that strategic view) merely “protesting” conditions without “occupying” anything (any specific space) is the essence of reformism.
THAT is (i suspect) a link between this tactic of occupation and a larger political strategy. And if we want to critique the mechanical insistence on “occupation” we should excavate and address such links.
When Did “Outsider” Become a Negative?
I was watching a video about Hunter and noticed that the chant was “Our School…” And it struck me how ambiguous that is.
Students need day care facilities and need to oppose tuition hikes. And it is just to fight for them. But if we narrow the struggle, if it is militantly about “us and our needs” — and if other people are pushed to the side (the larger community of poor people? students from other schools who are “outsiders”? more middle class people in NYC? Other sections of the university’s community like professors, staff workers, etc.)?
If it is not THEIR school, but is insistently “our school” — where does that lead (strategically!) ?
Isn’t our point that “the schools belong to the people” – in a much bigger sense than just serving the immediate students and their immediate need for education (which, again, is real and very important)?
Who are we fighting for? Isn’t that a key question of strategic outlook — what are we trying to accomplish here? What are our goals? How does each struggle serve our preparations for a revolutionary movement and future revolutionary movements?
We should not be about a narrow movement for “student power.” Nor should we view each campus as a bubble that just serves “its” students — and views others as “outsiders.” (Again what would the strategic implications of THAT be?) This is sometimes done in the name of “self-determination” — i.e. we have a right to decide for ourselves, what do you know about us and our conditions?
But again, what are the strategic implications of viewing society as a hive of small mini-insitutions, each of which has its own mini-process of self-determination?
And similarly, we should be wary of respectability, or too close a fixation with the “practical politics” of one institution. that too has a strategic component (which comes up when people speak about the “NGO outlook” that is often mentioned — where a question of how our struggles are “confined” and who confines them, in order to serve what?).
My question: Aren’t we about schools serving the people (the larger community? the oppressed generally? the struggle for liberation? the world?)
And if that is our orientation, who are “outsiders” here? And isn’t that orientation very different from seeing student movements as a question of “student power” and “we have come to get ours” etc.?
It may be that the particular people “coming from the outside” don’t know what the fuck they are doing — and should shut up and listen. They may be arrogant, ignorant, infantile…. ok. It happens.
But other times in life, people”coming in from the outside” bring important things to the struggle. And “outside agitator” should be a title of honor in our world.
The problem with the mechanical and rude intervention on March 4 was not that the folks were “outsiders” (or “downtown white kids from privileged schools) — it was that their politics were mechanical and divisive. It is not helpful to respond to divisive politics with another narrowing strain of divisive politics.
* I’m always against using the label “ultra-left” — perhaps because (like “outside agitator”) i have seen it so often used against positive and quite revolutionary forces.
(I’m tempted to paraphrase Eugene Debs and say “As long as there is an ultra-left I’m in it!”)
Why not be more descriptive in how we characterize people’s views?
Politics is not a spectrum where the extremes are wrong and the golden mean is good. Mao rose from the right wing of his party (opposing the left lines of Li Lisan and Wang Ming), and then went on to oppose those rightists who opposed seizing power and oppose those who opposed continuing the revolution. You can’t judge him as wrong in the beginning because he was so clearly “on the right,” or dismiss him later for being (obviously) on the far far left fringe.
I’m also not that happy with calling these folks “insurrectionists” — since it taints that great word insurrection. In fact, insurrection is a great uprising of the people for seizing power — it is an artform and a culmination. And the anarchist current we are discussing actually has little (strategic!) conception of insurrection — they really are into tactical militancy divorced from the people and from any strategic approach of preparing insurrection.
* Finally, I think we should not let all this seem so antagonistic. There was a dispute over tactics. There were competing plans. There were some thoughtless tactical moves. And some interpersonal antagonisms that were very wrong (one person calling another a “****” etc.) And there was a strategic approach of treating other left groups (ISO etc.) as enemies. Fine. Let’s discuss and expose the problems here.
But mixing all these things up indiscriminately, and carving deep lines in the sand, and pumping in a lot of worked up hatred…. none of that solves what we are trying to accomplish.
Instead we should tease things apart (rather than lump them all together)…. and (as I have been arguing for) we should carefully look at various parts of this strategically — does this action, tactic, plan, approach, outlook, behavior get us (i.e. get the oppressed in the largest sense) where we want to go? What road do different sets of tactics serve? Not approaching this from “the asshole hit one of my friends” but from a high plane of strategic debate.