An Anarchist Collective: CrimeThInc.
Our discussion with anarchist collective CrimethInc. participant 'B' was full of lessons for how we can better organize our movements. How to form true collectives that value each and every voice, not just symbolically, but in how they make decisions. B describes how there is a way to find harmony without requiring complete unity.
This episode helps to better define anarchism as it is in these times; a collective project for self-determination. It is completely compatible with the work we are already doing, and may hold key answers to the questions that hive stagnated many movements.
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Transcript
Greetings, friends. My name is Jess McLean, and I'm here to provide you with some blueprints
Speaker:of disruption. This weekly podcast is dedicated to amplifying the work of activists, examining
Speaker:power structures, and sharing the success stories from the grassroots. Through these discussions,
Speaker:we hope to provide folks with the tools and the inspiration they need to start to dismantle
Speaker:capitalism, decolonize our spaces, and bring about the political revolution that we know
Speaker:we need. Welcome to the studio, B. Can you introduce yourself to the audience? Hi, I am a participant
Speaker:in the CrimeThink collective. I've been involved in it for many years. We were hoping to be
Speaker:able to put a couple people on the air with you all today, but unfortunately you just get
Speaker:me. So although I'll do my best to represent our collective, I want everyone to remember
Speaker:that I am just one of many people who work on this project. in other circumstances, you might
Speaker:be able to get a broader array of experiences or perspectives. But I'm very happy to get
Speaker:to speak with you. Before I get you to explain crime think to people, I want to make note
Speaker:that is the second time you've emphasized the want to bring on more voices. And at first,
Speaker:I thought perhaps it was just because I invited you to bring more people and you thought perhaps
Speaker:like that is how our show operates and that's what we expected. But I can tell by the way
Speaker:you've repeated it to you, it's, and you always correct me if I'm wrong about this, but it
Speaker:has that anti-authoritarian feel already. Like you don't want to be the spokesperson for a
Speaker:collective and a recognition verbally, the recognition of the value of a collective of voices. And
Speaker:I'll tell you, like that's hitting me. I'm hearing it and I'm feeling it and it has significance
Speaker:to me beyond. you kind of just apologizing for like, hey, it's just me. You know, like it's
Speaker:not that. Yeah, I feel like we're always most intelligent and most interesting when we're
Speaker:in dialogue with each other because between, even if it's just two people, any two people
Speaker:draw on a different range of experiences and a different positioning in the world order
Speaker:that we inhabit. And I think it's always better to... to hear from multiple people in any collective
Speaker:or any project, even if the project is vertical, if you didn't just hear from the media representative
Speaker:of Disney, but you also heard from the person who has to dress up as a cartoon character
Speaker:every day, you would learn more, right? So everything that we do, we try to be drawing on multiple
Speaker:experiences and drawing more people into dialogue, and at the same time, the way that our project
Speaker:is structured, there are bottlenecks, and there are some people who... who really want their
Speaker:voices out there, and some people who are more retiring. And the project of trying to distribute
Speaker:agency and leverage over what we do is one of the fundamental challenges, probably not just
Speaker:for our collective, but for humanity in general. We've kind of jumped ahead. Now we've got to
Speaker:go back. Explain your collective to the audience. Who is WE? Okay, WE in this case is Crime Think,
Speaker:which is a decentralized anarchist collective. active since the mid 1990s. The first crime
Speaker:think projects emerged out of the zine underground in the 1990s, you know, that involved some
Speaker:like punk and hardcore and riot girl and some other circles, but a bunch of different self-publishing
Speaker:projects and sort of a network emerged out of that of people doing provocative political
Speaker:and discursive interventions. Undertaking experiments, you know, people who, for example, were politicized
Speaker:by the sort of do-it-yourself counterculture underground, but came to the conclusion that
Speaker:just being able to self-manage the production of cultural arts, like music or literature,
Speaker:was not ambitious enough, that what we should really be trying to do is to get control over
Speaker:all of the different factors that determine what our lives will be like. And that's where
Speaker:the commitment to anarchism as a set of proposals about how agency and power should be distributed,
Speaker:how anarchism became important to us. So basically since the turn of the century, we have functioned
Speaker:as a network involving participants in different social struggles all around the world, you
Speaker:know, from here to... you know, Russia or Sudan. And we try to give a platform to participants
Speaker:in social struggles, social movements in different parts of the world, and create dialogues between
Speaker:people in different movements in different places. And in that regard to sort of function as an
Speaker:institutional memory for grassroots, horizontal social movements. You know, just to be able
Speaker:to pass on lessons, tactics, strategies, historical experiences, memories from one generation of
Speaker:movements to the next. But, you know, that's the ambitious way to describe it. You know,
Speaker:the other way to describe it is that, you know, we're a network of several dozen people who
Speaker:work together consistently to distribute books, maintain a website where people's reports from
Speaker:different parts of the world can appear. And we're in continuous dialogue about strategy,
Speaker:about what it is that we can do to help really everyone to get more leverage in their lives
Speaker:and reestablish their relationships on an egalitarian basis. You're our people, man. Aspiring to
Speaker:be. This is our jam. We're just all smiles sitting here listening to that. Now you talk about
Speaker:lessons, folks really should check out their list of books. I, you know, the show is called
Speaker:Blueprints of Disruption and that is, that is what they provide and then some. Now you say
Speaker:it's a couple dozen people, you guys are putting out a lot of work. That's, it's impressive.
Speaker:The website and the pieces that are being written on top of that are also... Quite impressive,
Speaker:but I love the idea of it kind of being a written history that's growing, ever growing. Yeah,
Speaker:that is important to us. Just keeping our website and all the articles we've published for 25
Speaker:years online itself is like, hopefully will serve as an archive for people in the future
Speaker:trying to study these events, because a lot of the websites that have been, you know, really
Speaker:important places for dialogue. you know, a place like infoshop.org 20 years ago, or some of
Speaker:the indie media pages are gone. And you can just barely use archive.org to see some of
Speaker:what was there. But for us, we are really trying to think on the scale of decades or aspirationally
Speaker:centuries that we should actually be able to pass on these lessons and keep them accessible
Speaker:to everybody. We had a guest recently who had a line that really hit, which was, the most
Speaker:valuable commodity that capitalism owns is history. And that just reminded me of that because,
Speaker:you know, having studied history, one term I never really learned about in history class
Speaker:or was anarchism itself. I think it conjures for many people images of the purge and- Chaos.
Speaker:Chaos and- lawlessness, you know, just, and it's not really, you know, as I've gone to
Speaker:learn about what anarchism is, it's not really at all what it is. And I think that a lot of
Speaker:people haven't had the opportunity to really learn about it because it's not exactly something
Speaker:that, you know, it's, it's been an intentional effort to not teach about it. So, you know,
Speaker:just the, I ask about this early, just to feed our conversation as this goes on, but What
Speaker:does anarchism mean to you? Well, you're right that it's a there are a lot of people who have
Speaker:an interest in Misrepresenting anarchism because basically everybody who desires to be able
Speaker:to rule over others Whatever ideological framework they're coming from if they desire to be able
Speaker:to rule over others They're going to be opposed to anarchism and they're going to have an interest
Speaker:in misrepresenting it Anarchism I mean basically it is a set of questions about how to make
Speaker:it possible for people to coexist as equals. And another way to frame that is that anarchism
Speaker:is the proposal that everyone should have the agency and the power to determine how they
Speaker:fulfill their potential, to determine how they will live on their own terms. And of course,
Speaker:this isn't something that we can do as isolated individuals. We're all part of. communities
Speaker:were all part of a society and a global biosphere also, right? So having self-determination has
Speaker:to be a collective project. Anarchism is the idea that everyone should have leverage over
Speaker:what their lives are and also that we have to find ways of working together to be able to
Speaker:establish this. It also involves defending ourselves from those who would like to dominate us and
Speaker:seeing others well-being as Essentially interconnected with our own, you know since we can't establish
Speaker:Self-determination, you know individual by individual that's something that communities have to do
Speaker:collectively and struggle That means that if we're if we're going to succeed in creating
Speaker:an egalitarian society that that's going to depend on solidarity, it's going to depend
Speaker:on us all seeing our freedom as being interconnected with everyone else's. And there are lots of
Speaker:different histories of anarchism we could spell out here. Like you say, history itself is a
Speaker:contested terrain. But for me, the most fundamental thing that we take from 150 years of self-declared
Speaker:anarchist movements is this idea that if we want If we ourselves as individuals want to
Speaker:have freedom, and we don't want that to come at the expense of someone else, that we have
Speaker:to develop an entire toolbox of skills and strategies, both for defending ourselves and for resolving
Speaker:conflicts without recourse to hierarchical powers or oppression. I have so much to unpack there.
Speaker:I could ask about a dozen questions from what you just said. I think it's important that
Speaker:you drove that point home of the collective. Because I think a lot of people have a view
Speaker:of anarchism as being very libertarian, because it emphasizes the agency and self-determination,
Speaker:which is not unlike Marxism, right? Owning the means of production and human emancipation.
Speaker:Because You know, one of the critiques that I often hear about anarchist systems moving
Speaker:forward, not so much the struggle, but as a form of kind of self-governance or systems
Speaker:of distribution and whatnot, is that the most vulnerable would be left behind. Because you
Speaker:can imagine in a libertarian approach, that's exactly everyone fends for themselves. But
Speaker:that point that your freedom... can't come at the expense of another, I think is very pivotal
Speaker:there. And I think it's what allows anarchism to really fit into all of the movements, because
Speaker:that is where everybody's going. They may not have articulated it from an anarchist perspective,
Speaker:but surely all these progressives that are working within movements don't feel good about authoritarianism.
Speaker:Generally that's what they're battling on a whole. They might not know that, you know,
Speaker:like they may be very focused on climate change or passing a very specific law or defunding
Speaker:the police. That's a little closer, right, to anti-authoritarian, but they don't articulate
Speaker:it that way. And then as such, they're replicating a lot of these systems a little bit maybe unknowingly,
Speaker:but I think more perhaps from a lack of the tools that you folks have, not that you've
Speaker:not distributed them well, but that... They can't see anything else. Like they know, okay,
Speaker:we've got a party here, just so our audience, the NDP. They're the most progressive choice
Speaker:that most folks think they have. And they operate the same as every other political party, very
Speaker:pyramid structure, very, they're almost fascist. Like they're just, it's an awful environment.
Speaker:And it's obviously not built towards our goals. But still some people come out of there trying
Speaker:to do something different, but looking the same. So can you give us some practical tools of
Speaker:the conflict resolution that you're talking about or ways that people can move away from
Speaker:authoritarian structures? Do you guys have a chair for your meeting? I don't know how detailed
Speaker:we can go, but is there a few things that you guys would do that would really kind of blow
Speaker:our minds that are a different way of operating, of creating discourse and coming out of it
Speaker:with... a solution. Well, gosh, I appreciate the invitation to blow your minds. I mean,
Speaker:I'm not sure how unfamiliar the proposals that we have to offer will be to the people who
Speaker:are listening. And that's partly because anarchist proposals and strategies have become more and
Speaker:more familiar over the last 25 years. You know, 25 years ago, when I was sort of cutting my
Speaker:teeth. some of the proposals that were That only anarchists and a few other people were
Speaker:making you know, whether we're talking about like new ideas about gender or About you know,
Speaker:it's sort of rejecting dogmatic non-violence politics those were those were very marginal
Speaker:proposals and now you know after the 2020 the George Floyd uprising in the United States
Speaker:and a series of other movements around the world, the proposals that we have are much more familiar
Speaker:to people. The one thing that hasn't necessarily taken off, you know, is the idea that we should
Speaker:pursue anti-authoritarian relationships systematically, right? Like many more people now are familiar
Speaker:with the critique not only of gender roles, but of fixed... gender identity in a biological
Speaker:sense. Many more people are familiar with the idea that perhaps it is more destructive not
Speaker:to intervene in the forces that are causing climate change than it is to break a window
Speaker:or shut down a pipeline or something. Many more people are familiar with those ideas at this
Speaker:point. But the idea that... we should systematically approach all of our efforts towards political
Speaker:change as efforts to deconstruct hierarchies and redistribute power. That's still a radical
Speaker:proposal. And part of this is because anarchists are often in the front lines of struggles and
Speaker:consequently are often the first people who are facing repression, you know. And so if
Speaker:you're an
Speaker:high level political charges or getting supplies to people who are in bad situations, supporting
Speaker:people who are doing prison terms, rather than just having your hands free to communicate
Speaker:with other people. That's among the many challenges that we face. So in terms of strategies, which
Speaker:is the question that you asked, if I could summarize a basic proposal, a basic way to understand
Speaker:what's common to all of our proposals, it would be that in our movements, as well as in the
Speaker:world that we seek to build, access to power should itself be decentralized. Not just, it
Speaker:should be egalitarian, but it should also be decentralized, because if everybody has to
Speaker:go through a single process to get their voices heard. or to have leverage over what a group
Speaker:does, or to have access to the resources that they need to live, that still will create a
Speaker:sort of a lowest common denominator control over what can happen and over whose voices
Speaker:are heard and whose are not, right? What I'm describing will probably be familiar to you
Speaker:from some of your experiences. So this is one of the reasons that we critique, we critique
Speaker:vertical forms of power, like domination, we don't. think that a government like, you know,
Speaker:like the one that Vladimir Putin heads in Russia, we don't think that's a good thing. We also
Speaker:see the ways that self-declared representative democracies, like the one that functions in
Speaker:the United States, also shut out and silence a large part of the population. And neither
Speaker:of those are useful models to base our activist organizing on. You know, in both cases, we
Speaker:want to... What we want to do with our collective, with Crime Think, what we want to do is put
Speaker:resources and skills at people's disposal that people can replicate and use themselves. We
Speaker:want to show ways of accessing resources that understand resources in terms of abundance
Speaker:rather than scarcity. We want to put tactics at others' disposal so that we can make sure
Speaker:that, rather than depending on the decisions of an organizing council, that may be unaccountable
Speaker:to everybody else in a movement, that people can immediately take action according to their
Speaker:own priorities and their own vision of the world. And the reason that we think this is important
Speaker:is because we think that intelligence arises when you have the input of everybody who is
Speaker:affected by an issue, rather than... rather than just the input or the decision-making
Speaker:of one person or one group. We think that if a group or a movement, if a movement or a network
Speaker:is responsive to the information that is coming into all of the different participants in the
Speaker:movement, that movement will act in more strategic and intelligent ways than a movement that is
Speaker:limited by what a specific group within the architecture. the movement is able to recognize
Speaker:or see from their particular vantage point. That's why we focus on tactics that can be
Speaker:replicated or taken up by anybody, wherever they are, and why we try to share information
Speaker:from groups that are employing those tactics experimentally, in particular social movements,
Speaker:so that people in other social movements can learn from their experiences and immediately
Speaker:put those lessons into practice. You comment about the lowest common denominator made me
Speaker:think about, you know, when we approach things for example from, you know, you hear a lot
Speaker:of people talk about the working class, right, as kind of one of those common denominators.
Speaker:And then, you know, one thing we talk about is how that could exclude people who are not
Speaker:able to work, disabled folks, as an example, right? And you know, there's... a lot of situations
Speaker:where movements leave people like disabled folks behind and are not properly advocating for
Speaker:them. How does that fit in, I guess, into what you're talking about to make sure that people
Speaker:like them are not left behind? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, for me, class consciousness
Speaker:is one of the ways that we can describe what we're trying to do. Class is not the only vector
Speaker:of oppression, right? Oppression plays out according to many different vectors. So if we only were
Speaker:thinking in terms of class, then you have a framework where you say, okay, what we're trying
Speaker:to do is liberate the working class, which is true, but I would say it's necessary, but not
Speaker:sufficient, right? Because for the better part of the last... 200 years during which class
Speaker:politics had developed, a large part of the labor that, for example, women do, has not
Speaker:been visible through the framework of class. And it's also true what you say about disabled
Speaker:people and also the precariously employed, you know? The class politics that were useful anarchist,
Speaker:syndicalist, Marxist movements, a hundred some years ago, when the majority of the population,
Speaker:at least of some countries, was engaged in industrial production, those are antiquated in a time
Speaker:in which more and more people are working in what's called the tertiary sector. They're
Speaker:working in supplying goods and services rather than the raw production of industrial goods.
Speaker:And so in this... in the situation where more and more people are precariously employed,
Speaker:a lot of the old strategies like focusing on organizing labor unions that act in factories,
Speaker:for example, are producing diminishing returns. So, you know, one of the proposals that we've
Speaker:explored over the last couple decades is that we need to understand the protagonist of these
Speaker:struggles as something that is as a population that is broader than just those who are in
Speaker:stationary stable employment in Industrial unions for example, does it does that make sense as
Speaker:an answer to oh, yes Yes, we've we had a whole episode on The need you know for labor to include
Speaker:social movements and how that can happen because of the certain demographic that they represent
Speaker:and that focus that they tend to have around collective bargaining, and that's it. Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, the problem is that if we only understand labor movements as efforts to bargain for a
Speaker:better deal for those who are in formal and powerful unions, we're leaving out a tremendous
Speaker:portion of those who have to work in other contexts to make money, or those who are engaged only
Speaker:in... what is sometimes called reproductive labor, the unpaid work in the household. So
Speaker:this question came to the fore, for example, during the Occupy movement in 2011 when participants
Speaker:in the movement, anarchists, people who were involved with our projects, also participated
Speaker:in shutting down the port of Oakland at the high point of the Occupy struggle. And that
Speaker:was an example of this where The people who actually work in the port, they're in a union,
Speaker:they're in a pretty strong union, but a union in which their agreement forbids them from
Speaker:striking, right? The general strike in Oakland, the way that it worked to have a general strike,
Speaker:it wasn't just the formal unionized employees that went on strike, it was all of the excluded,
Speaker:all of the precarious workers. that shut down workplaces, in some cases just from outside,
Speaker:not from their position within the workplace, but from outside of them, and that marched
Speaker:to the port and blockaded the port and compelled the port to shut down. I think that we have
Speaker:to understand labor struggles much more broadly if we want to be able to wield power in a time
Speaker:when the, because of neoliberal globalization. workers in Canada and the United States are
Speaker:outflanked by global capital in a lot of ways. Yeah, and the confines that exist within the
Speaker:labor unions tend to sometimes hold us back. So I want to go back to one of your previous
Speaker:statements because I'm just frantically taking notes and I'm definitely not going to get to
Speaker:digest everything. But Santiago and I... We're having a discussion earlier today on a statement
Speaker:someone made online. They were really not frustrated, but talking about the need to shut things down.
Speaker:Um, and Santiago and I, we, we often talk about this, the need to escalate, but also balancing
Speaker:by not leaving anybody behind. And one of the proposals that you speak of is allowing for
Speaker:a rainbow of tactics. so that people are being utilized and heard. And you talked about that
Speaker:the collective intelligence and there's no arguing that, but it's also on the individual level,
Speaker:right? When you give everybody that space to be heard or to apply their energies in the
Speaker:way that they want to, right? Like if that's destructively or that's in dialogue. And when
Speaker:you don't allow that, you start to really create problems within the individual too. And I'd
Speaker:like to kind of maybe have that kind of shut it down discussion because I'll give you some
Speaker:context. It was a group of people trying to disrupt a meeting, but it's also can be replicated
Speaker:in a march that's going down the street, but only taking up half the street and chanting
Speaker:shut it down, but not actually shutting anything down. So within these movements, you can tell
Speaker:that there is the appetite for it. And it's always trying to find, I guess, the lowest
Speaker:common denominator here. I'm using that same language in a different sense. Like, so if
Speaker:the most uncomfortable person isn't comfortable with pushing police out of the way, then it's
Speaker:not going to happen. Or if people don't want to look bad and shut down an event that might
Speaker:have other political implications. whatever, then it's just not done because not everyone's
Speaker:ready and we don't want to alienate anybody. And I think in the end you actually end up
Speaker:alienating those people that are ready to do more, but are being held back. And then at
Speaker:the same time as being held back, we're purposely not giving them the tools. We feel like that's
Speaker:a way of holding them back. Like just don't teach them how to fight then or how to stop
Speaker:police violence or whatever we want to talk about. Because if we do them, we're encouraging
Speaker:it. Like Santiago, we have this battle here internally because we do want to provide tools
Speaker:of disruption, but we don't want to put, we don't want to light a fire we can't control,
Speaker:but I think sometimes, I don't know. Can you help us through that, be from an anarchist
Speaker:perspective maybe? Well, I mean- Fix it. It's a good question. You spoke about a fire that
Speaker:we can't control. And the fact is that the world that we live in, is already being destroyed
Speaker:by a fire that no one can control. Just about everyone acknowledges that climate change is
Speaker:going to produce incredible suffering, especially for people in the global south, but all around
Speaker:the world, and disruption for many people's lives. And yet, neither the economy, the free
Speaker:market economy, nor the democratic process, nor any of the dictatorships that exist around
Speaker:the world. are able to take action that is commensurate with our responsibilities to try to stave off
Speaker:the catastrophe that is ahead if we aren't able to change course. So I think first of all,
Speaker:we have to keep that in mind when we are talking about these questions. As the question is,
Speaker:is there another way of making decisions that our movements can utilize and demonstrate?
Speaker:that will enable us to rise to our historic responsibilities. And of course, I don't think
Speaker:that we should be careless with each other. I don't think we should put people at risk
Speaker:who don't wish to be taking those risks. And that's for ethical reasons. It's also for strategic
Speaker:reasons. If we continuously create situations in which people have bad experiences next to
Speaker:us in the street, it will be harder for us to get together. it will be harder for us to build
Speaker:the kind of movements that we want to. So each of us has an interest in figuring out how to
Speaker:make the ways that we act and act autonomously, take into account the needs of the others around
Speaker:us. Now, all of that said, at the same time,
Speaker:I think there is a tendency for everyone, wherever they're situated, to think that if they could
Speaker:just tell everybody how to do things and have everyone adopt their preferred tactics and
Speaker:their preferred approach that everything would work out. I think this is probably incorrect
Speaker:for a number of reasons. First of all, because wherever you're situated, you can't see the
Speaker:whole world, you can't see other people's needs or the problems that they're suffering. But
Speaker:it's also a problem, this way of thinking is also a problem, because we will never be able
Speaker:to impose a single way of doing things on everyone. And to desire the kind of structures that could
Speaker:impose a single strategy on everyone is to desire authoritarianism. So I would propose a different
Speaker:general strategic orientation, which would be how can each of us act autonomously according
Speaker:to the dictates of our conscience, but in such a way as to maximize the synergy of our actions
Speaker:and those who want to take a different approach. So what we should be doing is we should be
Speaker:thinking about how to make our own efforts integrate well into a diverse ecosystem of different
Speaker:strategies, different tactics. And that's not something to be imposed from the top down.
Speaker:That's something that we collectively from the bottom up should be trying to arrange. Because
Speaker:it's true, if decisions are being made from the top down or according to a lowest common
Speaker:denominator logic, it's never going to be the right time for everyone to escalate. It's never
Speaker:going to be the right time to shut anything down. It's never going to be the right time
Speaker:to act. And that's because... Not only because there are some people who don't feel ready.
Speaker:It's also because there will be people in the conversations who have an interest in Preserving
Speaker:things the way that they are at least for the time being it'll be you know for the same reason
Speaker:that Exxon is like yeah, I'd like to live in a world without global climate change But it's
Speaker:just not in our best interest right now to make that shift you know if we're and this was a
Speaker:discussion I mentioned the Occupy movement in 2011 before but it's It's an issue that came
Speaker:up then when we were trying to establish what a sort of democratic process might be. And
Speaker:you know, people said, well, maybe instead of majority rule, we should use consensus decision
Speaker:making for our spokes councils. But that creates a situation in which the a spokes council can
Speaker:be prevented from arriving at a strategy for taking action by a single representative of
Speaker:the police. You know? So my argument. would be that instead we need ways of approaching
Speaker:decentralized decision-making in which people are concerned for each other's well-being,
Speaker:are thinking, are strategizing about how to take action in a way that is likely to benefit
Speaker:the movement as a whole and yet at the same time can make those decisions autonomously.
Speaker:And so we need to structure our movements such that some elements of the movement can escalate,
Speaker:can shut things down, can... take action. This is something that anarchists often are the
Speaker:ones who... are most likely to be trying to push the envelope, to do things that are- We
Speaker:know the type. We've seen them in our circles. Yeah. We appreciate them. And pushing the envelope
Speaker:can take many different forms. You know, it may mean identifying something as a problem
Speaker:that nobody else wants to talk about, like sexism or sexual assault or something within the movement
Speaker:culture. It may be pushing, you know, using tactics or strategies that are, that seem outre
Speaker:to other participants in the movement. You know, they're like, well, I'm ready to lock myself
Speaker:to something, but I'm not ready to sabotage something, for example. And again, we will
Speaker:never know the benefit or the drawbacks of a strategy unless somebody is able to... that
Speaker:strategy, right? Yeah. Go ahead. I see you, Santiago. Well, because here I want to pull
Speaker:from my own experience for a second, because this is giving me flashbacks to some of my
Speaker:first days in organizing. When I was part of an organization where, an organization that
Speaker:I helped start at the time, too, and I even got myself. elected in this organization to
Speaker:chairman position, out of kind of a belief that if I was to occupy that position of power at
Speaker:the time, that I could then not use the power of it and kind of try and decentralize it by
Speaker:preventing somebody who would use the, you know, it didn't work out that way, obviously. But
Speaker:that was my thinking at the time. And I remember the conversations that we had in this organization
Speaker:about stuff like sexism, about the fact that the majority of the organization was white
Speaker:men. And why is it that this organization is not appealing to a diverse set of people? I
Speaker:mean, this is Toronto, where we're coming from, where it's one of the most diverse cities on
Speaker:earth. Right. And there was also a lot of talk about you know, people, myself included, wanted
Speaker:to start actually doing things, you know, actually getting out in the streets and meeting people's
Speaker:needs where they might be as action. And people who disagreed with us, the points that were
Speaker:made were like, oh, well, that's a waste of resources. And we need to have a united goal.
Speaker:And what we need to do is we need to bring people in and we need to take over the NDP, which
Speaker:is our fake progressive party. And everybody has to agree that we are working to take over
Speaker:the NDP and everybody has to do that. And there can be no multiple objectives. There can only
Speaker:be the one objective and that is what we're doing. And I tried to make the case at the
Speaker:time. I mean, I was very young at the time, I was 20. and still learning how to do all
Speaker:of these things. But I was trying to make the case of like, no, like we go and we actually
Speaker:show, we prove that we're not just talking, but we prove that we can do something for people,
Speaker:that we have something to offer for people. That's not going to cost us resources that
Speaker:brings more people into the movement. And I lost that battle at the time and I left the
Speaker:organization because I got very disenfranchised with. kind of the authoritarian nature that
Speaker:it was taking. But I feel like that is, I tell my story because I felt like that from all
Speaker:the things that you were saying, and I think it's a very common story in many ways of the
Speaker:traditional ways that we organize and the traditional organizations, right? That is a common issue.
Speaker:And you hear all the time about organizations who cover up sexual assault within the organization.
Speaker:You hear that multiple times here. You hear all kinds of things and we don't always like,
Speaker:it feels like there that we don't have good tools to talk about these things and to deal
Speaker:with these things often. Um, yeah, I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore, but
Speaker:that's my spiel. Well, the, I mean, the, the situation that you're describing is familiar,
Speaker:probably familiar to every organizer who's listening to this, because if you have a a logic of centralization
Speaker:and unity rather than harmony that defines how your organization is trying to work. You will
Speaker:inevitably end up in situations where you have to choose between what seems to you to be the
Speaker:benefit of the organization and then the needs of the human beings who comprise it. And for
Speaker:me, that's an argument against that way of thinking. right, that the benefit of the people within
Speaker:the organization and who are affected immediately by it should not be something that we can ever
Speaker:understand as being distinct from the goals of the organization. First of all, addressing
Speaker:power dynamics inside of a community, inside of a project, there's never a good reason not
Speaker:to do that if what we're trying to address is power imbalances in the world. And at the same
Speaker:time, the other problem with that strategy from my perspective is that, you know, if you're
Speaker:like, we'll get control of the NDP or the Democratic Party or whatever, and then we'll fix everything.
Speaker:As you said, you got into a position of authority within the organization, but you discovered
Speaker:that you could only use that authority according to its own internal logic, right? Not according
Speaker:to the logic that you brought, not according to the good intentions that that you brought,
Speaker:and that's a structural problem with this way of organizing. In my experience, even when
Speaker:I've been trying, even when I've been participating in a movement that is trying to change official
Speaker:policy or government policy, the times that we've been most effective in doing that were
Speaker:the times that we demonstrated that people could make the change without the government, could
Speaker:make the change contrary to the wishes of the government. You know, if you're talking about
Speaker:feeding people, if you're talking about housing people. You know, if you show that you can
Speaker:open up buildings and enable people who are homeless to live in those buildings, then the
Speaker:government will be like, well, okay, maybe we could open up some buildings, you know, but
Speaker:if we don't have the power to do that, they will not have an incentive. There will always
Speaker:be something better to do first, you know? Makes me think of the Black Panther Party, not an
Speaker:anarchist organization, but the breakfast program. Exactly. Which is... one that I really admire
Speaker:their community programs. It's something that inspires me quite a bit that forced the government's
Speaker:hand into having a breakfast program for kids. Something that here in Canada, we still don't
Speaker:have. Yeah. And we have lots of hungry kids because of it. That demonstrates the value
Speaker:of direct action and it demonstrates the importance of addressing people's needs directly. And
Speaker:in that regard, the Panthers example is very important and still has relevance today. If
Speaker:you don't mind, I feel like I keep going back, but. Please. When we're talking about decentralized
Speaker:power, but also decentralized access and application of tactics, right? I wanna go back to that
Speaker:consensus. I guess most people are in meetings where it's majority rules still. Then there
Speaker:are people who may generally try to build consensus and from my experience, there were mechanisms
Speaker:where people in certain organizations could object. I think you were talking about that,
Speaker:like a veto and it could be an infiltrator, a cop saying, oh no, I'm really uncomfortable
Speaker:with this. We couldn't possibly do that. And out of respect for that one participant, quite
Speaker:often like that idea would then be shelved. And I just for applicable purposes for people
Speaker:in those meetings, the idea... goes back to the unity versus harmony statement that you
Speaker:made that let little committees be formed, let actions be decentralized in ways that they
Speaker:don't mess up the whole song. You know, they will be different. That's the idea, right?
Speaker:Unity is the same, or at least we sell it that way. But harmony, if you... or in a choir,
Speaker:or you understand that there are different notes being sung by different people with different
Speaker:capacities in their range, right? But it still makes a beautiful sound as a whole, right?
Speaker:So it might even be more beautiful, yeah. Yes. And I think as individuals, we have to go into
Speaker:those meetings to thinking about what you reminded us of earlier, although we think we have the
Speaker:best ideas. They are not the only ideas. And so we may feel like if that meeting didn't
Speaker:go as we wanted, you know, I really wanted a petition started. And you know, there's three
Speaker:guys in the back, they wanna burn it down, you know? Like, let's just use really drastic,
Speaker:you get the idea. Is there a way where we can allow those people that are eager to go beyond
Speaker:a petition to do something with that energy, with those tactics that doesn't malign everything
Speaker:else? Um, but also make the person who thinks that their particular idea can work. Like I
Speaker:know sometimes resources aren't, are limited. So we can't use every tactic that comes up
Speaker:in a meeting, right? Not everybody's idea can always be applied just from a logistical perspective,
Speaker:but it's the idea of coming out of that meeting with not needing to have controlled the outcome,
Speaker:not needing to approve of every idea that will be developed on. And I think sometimes it comes
Speaker:from the individual. We go in with really egalitarian views, but in the end, we want our ideas because
Speaker:they're ours. And of course, we think they're the best one because we sat and we digested
Speaker:them and we came to that conclusion. And it's sometimes hard to think the way that you're
Speaker:describing that it actually is the collective of ideas that makes the most intelligent choice.
Speaker:But it doesn't have to make one choice. It can make many and still be moving forward. Because
Speaker:I think I'm at a point, a lot of us are, we're really frustrated that there is not more escalation
Speaker:in tactics. Also, I just want to give a 20 second anecdote to build on the harmony metaphor.
Speaker:Because as a musician, good harmony is actually built on tension and resolution, right? Yeah,
Speaker:there you go. So you'll have chords. that are full of tension, you know, the notes are actually
Speaker:disagreeing with each other. But then those notes resolve to a balanced harmony and that
Speaker:gives music the movement that we good that that's what creates good music. Sorry, just had to
Speaker:throw that in there. That's so important. We try to avoid tension at all costs, especially
Speaker:in some of these meetings, right? Like we'll shelve ideas, we'll do like and that's to like
Speaker:take your time. You don't have to rush through everything. But it avoiding conflict is a big.
Speaker:part of how we teach people to chair meetings as well, right? And how a lot of these organizations
Speaker:are structured where, you know, you have two minutes to speak and you know, I don't know,
Speaker:it just, it's really sanitized. And sometimes you got to get it out, right? In a way that
Speaker:doesn't implode and where you don't walk away as enemies. But I think the more we work those
Speaker:kinds of... values into the way we organize, the easier it becomes, right? The easier it
Speaker:is to have those tension and we know how to resolve them. And we know there will be a resolve
Speaker:because when you know it's a zero-sum game, it's either your idea or their idea. We're
Speaker:coming out with only one tactic and everybody's supposed to agree with it. You do feel like
Speaker:you lost. Yeah. And you're less likely to stick around if you feel like you keep losing, right?
Speaker:I mean, I've left like that, like just like Santiago for sure. And it's stupid stuff. It
Speaker:was like, we need a database. You know, we need I can build you one. It's nothing. And they're
Speaker:well, we're not ready for that yet. And I was like, forget it, man. You're going to hold
Speaker:me back on everything. I know you won't even let me build a database. So I'm out. You're
Speaker:still working off an Excel spreadsheet, probably to this day. And that's a that's an especially.
Speaker:tragic example that you're giving because it was a situation which you were ready to autonomously
Speaker:do work for the group that they would probably, if they hadn't had you at their disposal and
Speaker:needed that work done, it would have been hard to find somebody who was ready to build a database,
Speaker:you know? I mean, and we have to think about all the different capacities that people who
Speaker:have caused to seek social change are not getting to use in our movements. You know, we should
Speaker:not understand those who are in activist groups right now as the protagonists of change. The
Speaker:protagonists of change, it has to be everybody in our society. And there are so many capacities
Speaker:that people out there have that are not plugged into things. And again, if all that can happen
Speaker:is going to be determined by those who have chairman or chairwoman or chairperson positions
Speaker:within today's existing organizations, the things that we... change, that will not be all the
Speaker:things that need to change in the society, right? We need to be much more ambitious. We need
Speaker:to be thinking on a much more ambitious scale. Now Santiago, I thought your metaphor about
Speaker:tension and resolution is really beautiful. There are even some beautiful musical compositions.
Speaker:famous one by Samuel Butler that ends without the tensions resolved, but that's part of the
Speaker:art also, right? I mean, for sure, if we have organizing models that don't offer us the opportunity
Speaker:to explore our tensions, the tensions between us, the tensions within us, then we will not
Speaker:be there as complete people, and we will not derive the benefit of our complete relationships.
Speaker:We will be there as, you know... as sort of partial or as performances rather than as our
Speaker:whole selves. And we will not be able to contribute everything that we want to. And there's, I
Speaker:mean, one of the common anarchist models for organizing is the affinity group, the group
Speaker:of people who agree about something. You form a group of people who agree to try something
Speaker:and they all do it together. But I want to say that is not the only model because another
Speaker:thing that can be really beneficial is to have... Like a person that whose intelligence you really
Speaker:regard highly but who disagrees with you You know a lot of the most interesting crime think
Speaker:projects have come out of the collaboration of people who did not agree about something
Speaker:but who valued each other's opinions and said we'll embark on a discussion about this and
Speaker:the results will You know may not be lowest common denominator, right? they may be like
Speaker:the different points of departure that we can offer to to the reader or the user as a consequence
Speaker:of the tensions that the different participants bring. I think that is actually a more useful
Speaker:and fruitful approach to our relationships, to our projects, because the fundamental question
Speaker:that we're talking about here is how do we coexist and collaborate across lines of difference?
Speaker:Whether those differences are in our identities and the power structures created by the society,
Speaker:or... or the differences of ethics or strategy, we actually have to think about collaborating
Speaker:and coexisting across lines of differences as the fundamental thing that we're trying to
Speaker:do actually, because those differences exist between all of us and within us. If you take
Speaker:an approach just to yourself, which involves eradicating difference, you will be destroying
Speaker:parts of yourself even. You know, the thing that we should be doing is making space for
Speaker:everything that is, everything that can be mutually beneficial to thrive and prosper, you know?
Speaker:So how that relates to organizing, to bring this back to the very beginning of your question,
Speaker:Jessa. I've given a bunch of examples from 2011. I can give examples from other years, from
Speaker:other decades, but I'll give one more from that, which is that I remember in the little town
Speaker:that I live in when we had the first meeting for people who were interested in participating
Speaker:in the Occupy movement. There were a hundred people in the meeting, maybe 120, and somebody
Speaker:was like, let's establish an occupation in the center of the town. It was a minority position.
Speaker:If we had a vote... whether by consensus or by majority rule, we never would have agreed
Speaker:to establish an occupation. But instead, the facilitator said, okay, everybody who wants
Speaker:to establish an occupation, go over here and discuss that. And everybody else can discuss
Speaker:whatever else you want to do. And at first it was like five people, you can imagine just
Speaker:five. scary people in black sweatshirts, you know, went over and we're standing there just
Speaker:like, a bolt of lightning may strike us down now, but I'm going to say we should have an
Speaker:occupation, you know? And not everybody is going to be the first person, you know, to be like,
Speaker:yes, you know, take me now, Lord, you know, but. But once there were five of them, then
Speaker:there were six, and then there were 10, and then there were 20. And that night, 30 people
Speaker:established an occupation, and by two days later, all 120 people who had been in that discussion
Speaker:were part of the occupation, right? You know? Which, it shows the importance of people being
Speaker:willing to experiment, and all of us creating containers for experimentation. and not trying
Speaker:to suppress experiments that don't immediately line up with our own proposals. Because it's
Speaker:much better for people to try out tactics, see what they do, and yeah, if there's problems,
Speaker:if they have negative effects for some people, be capable of discussing those, create processes
Speaker:through which people can come to understand each other better, but never think that the...
Speaker:the process of establishing the ways that we relate to each other is completed or that all
Speaker:of the institutions that we need to resolve conflict already exist. Because whatever we
Speaker:establish, it will include some people and exclude other people, or it will include some aspects
Speaker:of ourselves and exclude other aspects of ourselves. And again, the anarchist proposal for decentralization
Speaker:is that we should always be taking an expansive approach. to the process of decision-making
Speaker:and the process of deciding how to look out for each other also, you know? Because we can
Speaker:imagine a spokes council that would take everyone's needs into account in some context, but eventually
Speaker:there would be problems that were just invisible to the spokes council, right? And that it was
Speaker:necessary to go through the whole process of thinking all over again what institutions or
Speaker:what processes would be necessary address everyone's needs. That's, again, one of the fundamental
Speaker:aspects of anarchism is the idea that we are never finished building the political structures
Speaker:that we need, that we always need to be ready to call them into question, to go back and
Speaker:ask new questions, to hear everybody whose voices are not heard in the existing structures or
Speaker:processes, and begin again when we need to. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I... I'm probably just gonna
Speaker:end the episode there to be honest, because I think the example that you gave, I'm probably
Speaker:gonna unpack for a while after this, but of the facilitator, you know, allowing the five
Speaker:or six scary folks and how eventually everyone came along and my mind is just going to all
Speaker:the things that happened. You know, those five or six people started off as scary, but they
Speaker:actually made it safe for more people to do something. more and I imagine solidarity played
Speaker:into it and it's like you didn't want to occupy but you're not going to let your friends do
Speaker:it without you like you're not going to leave them to do it by themselves you came in this
Speaker:together and so like it just made space for movement for steps forward it allowed people
Speaker:to step out of their comfort zone too because I do want to operate where everyone has like
Speaker:their own comfort zone but at some point we do have to slightly encourage people to expand
Speaker:that comfort zone. when they're ready and like finding ways to do that beautifully, right?
Speaker:Not without tension, but not without alienation either. And I need us all to get there. I need.
Speaker:Yes, I am not feeling very articulate about that at the moment, but just like a whole bunch
Speaker:of yeses. We need to get you folks in front of more people. I can completely understand
Speaker:the need to collect all of this information and the ways you describe them as proposals.
Speaker:It doesn't feel like theory. When you talk about other ways of doing things, it comes across
Speaker:as really theoretical. But this is all very practical stuff, very applicable. And I love,
Speaker:I think we've probably broken down the... not stigma of anarchism, but the mystique of it,
Speaker:perhaps, you know? And I think a lot of more people are going to start identifying themselves
Speaker:as anarchists. You know, maybe not with balaclavas, but... We need a bunch of different kinds of
Speaker:anarchism, you know? The balaclavas are important for some people, but shouldn't be necessary
Speaker:for everybody. No, we do talk about masking up and, you know, taking it safe. I feel like
Speaker:there's just this image that a lot of people have that will melt away. And so I will stop
Speaker:using that reference because it's not helping. Thank you so much. I feel like you're a really
Speaker:good resource to come back to. I don't know if you'd be willing or your other comrades
Speaker:would be willing, but... There's so much, even the piece that you folks did on the human rights
Speaker:discourse around Gaza. I mean, that could be a whole discussion in itself. And I think we've
Speaker:kind of gotten there where the power comes from the people and not from the institutions. But
Speaker:again, thank you so much for coming on the show. And it has been a wealth, I think, of knowledge
Speaker:for our audience, particularly anybody that is doing organizing or can relate to Santiago's
Speaker:story. and the examples that you've given. Thank you, Beat. Oh yeah, you're being very generous.
Speaker:You deserve probably the more like, a more articulate version of this, but you know, if you in the
Speaker:future want to like, to bring people like, Jonathan Palak was the person who wrote the text about
Speaker:human rights discourse and what's taking place in Gaza. an Israeli anarchist. I don't know
Speaker:if he identifies as Israeli at this point, but you know I could probably put you in touch
Speaker:with other people who've participated in our projects who you might be able to speak to
Speaker:about more specific questions. And it's just really nice for me to get to talk with anybody
Speaker:who's considering these things. So if I can direct you to other resources at some point
Speaker:in the future I'd gladly would. Well, we will take you up on that offer. We will also, if
Speaker:folks, you're still here, check the show notes. It'll link you back to Crime Think, some of
Speaker:the pieces that we've talked about, and you can check them out for yourself. Okay, thank
Speaker:you very much. That is a wrap on another.
