Anarchist! Get Organized! A discussion of A16, the blackblock, and beyond!
Tens of thousands of people mobilized in Washington D.C. on April 16th to protest against the meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB). Among these protests were about 1500 anarchists loosely organized in the Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Block, which was called by the NorthEastern Federation of Anarchist Communists(NEFAC). This article is not meant to be an overview of A16, but a critical look at how the anarchist movement can move forward.
The Black Block was an incredible force in DC. It was a roving force of over a thousand people dressed in black, with gas masks, etc. On Sunday the Black Block moved around the area cordoned off by the police alternating between helping defend civil disobedience activists from police attack, to trying to break through police barricades, to building our own barricades and trying to draw police outside their perimeter to weaken it. The following day (Monday) very few of the civil disobedience folks showed up because of a decision by the spokescouncil (civil disobedience consensus decision making body) to come down later. The anarchists who organized separately got downtown and got beat down. Many of us were beaten, and a lot of us took arrests.
What follows is not an attempt to discredit our efforts. It was a powerful and inspiring couple of days. I feel it is important to always analyze our actions and be self-critical, and try to move forward, advancing our movement. The State has used Seattle as an excuse to beef up police forces all over the country. In many ways Seattle caught us off-guard, and we will pay the price for it if we don't become better organized.
The main weakness of the Black Block in DC was that clear goals were not elaborated in a strategic way and tactical leadership was not developed to coordinate our actions. By leadership I don't mean any sort of authority, but some coordination beside the call of the mob. We were being led around DC by any and everybody. All someone would do is make a call loud enough, and the Black Block would be in motion. We were often lead around by Direct Action Network (DAN - organizers of the civil disobedience) tactical people, for lack of our own. We were therefore used to assist in their strategy, which was doomed from the get go, because we had none of our own.
The DAN strategy was the same as it was in Seattle, which the DC police learned how to police. Our only chance at disrupting the IMF/WB meetings was with drawing the police out of their security perimeter, therefore weakening it and allowing civil disobedience people to break through the barriers. This needs to be kept in mind as we approach the party conventions this summer. Philadelphia is especially ripe for this new strategy, since the convention is not happening in the business center. Demonstrations should be planned all over the city to draw police all over the place.
On Monday the event culminated in the ultimate anti-climax, an arranged civil disobedience. The civil disobedience folks arranged with police to allow a few people to protest for a couple minutes closer to where the meetings were happening, where they would then be arrested. The CD strategy needed arrests. Our movement should try to avoid this kind of stuff as often as possible. While this is pretty critical of the DAN/CD strategy, it is so in hindsight. This is the same strategy that succeeded in shutting down the WTO ministerial in Seattle. And, while we didn't shut down the IMF/WB meetings, we did shut down 90 blocks of the American government on tax day - so we should be empowered by their fear of us!
The root of the lack of strategy problem is a general problem within the North American anarchist movement. We get caught up in tactical thinking without establishing clear goals. We need to elaborate how our actions today fit into a plan that leads to the destruction of the state and capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy. Moving away from strictly tactical thinking toward political goals and long term strategy needs to be a priority for the anarchist movement. No longer can we justify a moralistic approach to the latest outrage - running around like chickens with their heads cut off. We need to prioritize developing the political unity of our affinity groups and collectives, as well as developing regional federations and starting the process of developing the political principles that they will be based around (which will be easier if we have made some headway in our local groups).
The NorthEastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC) is a good example of doing this. They have prioritized developing the political principles they are federated around. The strategies that we develop in our collectives and networks will never be blueprints set in stone. They will be documents in motion, constantly being challenged and adapted. But without a specific elaboration of what we are working toward and how we plan to get there, we will always end up making bad decisions. If we just assume everyone is on the same page, we will find out otherwise really quick when shit gets critical.
Developing regional anarchist federations and networks is a great step for our movement. We should start getting these things going all over the continent. We should also prioritize developing these across national borders, which NEFAC has also done with northeastern Canada. Some of the errors of Love and Rage were that it tried to cover too much space too soon, and that it was based too much on individual membership, instead of collective membership. We need to keep these in mind as we start to develop these projects. One of the benefits of Love and Rage was that it provided a forum among a lot of people to have a lot of political discussion and try to develop strategy in a collective way. This, along with mutual aid and security, could be the priorities of the regional anarchist federations.
These regional federations could also form the basis for tactical leadership at demonstrations. Let me first give one example why we need tactical teams at large demos. In DC the Black Block amorphously made the decision to try to drive a dumpster through one of the police lines. The people in front with the dumpster ended up getting abandoned by the other half of the Black Block who were persuaded by the voice of the moment to move elsewhere. The people up front were in a critical confrontation with police when they were abandoned. This could be avoided if the Black Block had a decision making system that slowed down decision making long enough for the block to stay together. With this in mind we must remember that the chaotic, decentralized nature of our organization is what makes us hard to police. We must maximize the benefits of decentralized leadership, without establishing permanent leaders and targets.
Here is a proposal to consider for developing tactical teams for demos. Delegates from each collective in the regional federation where the action is happening would form the tactical team. Delegates from other regional federations could also be a part of the tactical team. Communications between the tactical team and collectives, affinity groups, runners, etc. could be established via radio. The delegates would be recallable by their collectives if problems arose, and as long as clear goals are elaborated ahead of time with broader participation, the tactical team should be able to make informed decisions. An effort should be made to rotate delegates so that everyone develops the ability. People with less experience should be given the chance to represent their collectives in less critical situations, where they can become more comfortable with it.
The reality is that liberal politics will not lead to an end to economic exploitation, racism, and sexism. Anarchism offers a truly radical alternative. Only a radical critique that links the oppressive nature of global capitalism to the police state at home has a chance of diversifying the movement against global capitalism. In order for the most oppressed people here to get involved the movement must offer the possibility of changing their lives for the better. A vision of what "winning" would look like must be elaborated if people are going to take the risk with tremendous social upheaval, which is what we are calling for.
We cannot afford to give the old anarchist excuse that "the people will decide after the revolution" how this or that will work. We must have plans and ideas for things as diverse as transportation, schooling, crime prevention, and criminal justice. People don't want to hear simple solutions to complex questions, that only enforces people's opinions of us as naive. We need practical examples of what we are fighting for. People can respond to examples better than unusual theory. While we understand that we will not determine the shape of things to come, when the system critically fails someone needs to be there with anti-authoritarian suggestions for how to run all sorts of things. If we are not prepared for that we can assume others will be prepared to build up the state or a new state.
-Steve
Active Transformation
PO Box 6746
East Lansing, MI 48826