Modern industrial civilization is an astonishing testament to the power and capacity of organization.
The world that we inhabit today is the product of countless generations of planning, innovation
and collective human activity, harnessed and channelled towards the ceaseless pursuit of
productivity and growth.
Every day, the global economy structures and coordinates the labour of billions of people.
A dizzying array of commodities are engineered, manufactured, transported to regional distribution
centres and shipped out to retail outlets and people’s doorsteps all around the world.
International supply chains cut across borders and continents, connecting garment workers
in Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam to Wal-Mart shoppers in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Within this interconnected system, each metropolis forms a teeming hub of activity made up of dozens of
neighborhoods. These distinct regions are linked together by an intricately designed maze of
transportation and telecommunication
infrastructure, as well as the electrical, water and sewage grids that help ensure the
sanitation and daily survival of millions of people.
And yet despite all the meticulous planning and the vast quantities of human skill and
toil marshalled towards its execution, more than a billion people live in squalid, overcrowded
slums, favelas and makeshift refugee camps – many of which lack basic access to electricity
or running water. This growing population draws little benefit from the way society is organized.
And this is by design as their impoverishment and desperation is integral to the machine's
smooth functioning.To the architects of progress, they are the grease that keeps the gears moving.
The same could be said, to varying degrees, for the entirety of the global working class,
particularly migrant labourers and all those working in the informal, low-wage sectors
of the so-called “gig economy”. Because this world is not organized around the principle
of satisfying people’s needs, but around the endless accumulation of capital.
This organizational imperative is firmly rooted in ruling-class institutions and in the ideologies
and structural violence that underpin them. This dynamic means that sweeping social transformations
are contingent on political crises that can shake and ultimately uproot the entire social
order. Yet even when this sort of revolutionary change may seem far off, it’s always possible
to change our conditions for the better. This is where autonomous, grass-roots organizing comes in.
Over the next thirty minutes, we’ll take a closer look at what this sort of organizing
looks like for anarchists. Along the way, we’ll talk to a number of individuals as
they share their own experiences of bringing people together, coming up with strategies,
hitting the streets... and making a whole lot of trouble.
When we're talking about organzing, we're essentially talking about weaponizing human
relatonships. The relationships that you and I and people in our broader community that are
affected by things, that live together, that work together, that go to school together..
Weaponizing those relationships, and then using those relationships to go out and do
something and figuring out how people can physically put themselves together as material force.
With that in mind, it's important to understand
that this takes time, it takes a lot of trust, a lot of love, a lot of passion. It takes
time for folks to kind of come together and to start pinpointing what are the issues,
what are the struggles here within my neighborhood, within my community?
Organizing is, it's a process of building
up your collective strength and your collective power
The first step of organizing is to sort of
break through that social barrier and isolation that divides us and often this can be as simple
as getting a bunch of people into a room together and starting to talk about the things that
we have in common, the problems that we share, and from there through the course of talking
about these things we start to come to the realization that by working together we're
in a better position to change things. Organizing is a process that should be transformative.
During the process of organizing new bonds of solidarity are formed through
the course of struggle.
I think the first thing is to find a group of people,
a community,
or people in your area
that have a conflict in common.
And based on that conflict,
to agree to organize among these people to achieve an objective.
Organizing is more of an approach to engaging in struggle
People talk about organizing and being an organizer more related to building relationships with
people and focusing on specific groups of people, it could be tenants or students or workers.
But in this case the central focus is more on building those relationships
Rather than just on one singular issue and often working to like build power with those people
"After every anarchist attack, a wordy communique - Anarchist graffiti - A Greek anarchist group has attacked
- an anarchist group - anarchist community - these are anarchists!"
I think there are a variety of different characteristics that differentiate anarchist organizing from other
types of organizing. I think some of them entail the scope of the type of organizing
anarchists engage in. I think by default of being an increadibly diverse politics that has
a critique of domination and systems of power that is so total, means that anarchists focus
on a very broad range of different issues and organize amongst many different people.
What distinguishes anarchist organizing primarily is the goals of that organizing. So, it's
the type of world that anarchists are trying to bring about. Anarchists oppose states and
capitalism and all forms of illegitimate authority. So, the process of anarchist organizing is
one that builds opposition to the insitutions, groups and individuals that reproduce these
forms of hierarchy in society.
Anarchists engage in a really wide spectrum
of different types of activities. From things that are illegal to things that are very legal,
things that are very like non-violent to sometimes things that could potentially be violent.
Constructive, destructive, that sort of thing. I think, part of what makes anarchism unique
is there's no assumption that legality equals morality.
Any party based organization
from the most left-leaning to the furthest right-wing
utilizes a hierarchical structure in its form of organizing.
They also form part of the political circus,
the spectacle.
There's just a lot of people that are fed up with politics as usual. They're fed up
with the economic system that really just is ringing them out to dry. They're fed up
with elections.
In the face of capitalist catastrophe, in the face of the capitalist devastation,
it is necessary to have this energy.
There are those of us who can't
- there are many people who can't stay calm and continue life
in this "normality"
when it is evident that they are exterminating our future.
In popular discourse, the word anarchy is commonly used to describe the absence of organization.
It’s the spectre of chaos that fills the vacuum formed by a sudden breakdown of order.
A violent free-for-all, where the strong take advantage of the absence of rules to prey
upon the weak. This vision of anarchy has long been a useful projection for the ruling
classes, and every paranoid authoritarian unwilling to distinguish between order and
submission. But it’s a far cry from what anarchists actually believe in, and the world
that we’re fighting for.
The reality is that anarchists take many different approaches and hold a multiplicity of views
when it comes to the role of organization and its relationship to struggle. This lack
of orthodoxy has historically set anarchism apart from other revolutionary traditions,
such as Marxist-Leninism, whose multiple competing schools of thought generally agree on the
need for a centrally-organized party... just disagree about who should lead it.
For more than 150 years, anarchists have experimented with a wide range of different organizational
forms – from syndicalist trade unions with over a million dues-paying members, to informal
networks of small affinity groups; from federations, committees and assemblies, to tightly knit
cells and loosely-structured associations of autonomous individuals. This process of
experimentation continues to this day.
One of the beautiful things about Anarchism is that there's not one set blueprint. It's
a tension and it's striving towards freedom.
Anarchists hold a lot of different views on
organization and the role that organizations play in struggle. I think this relates to
different positions people hold and things around thinking things happen more spontaneously
to folks who want a higher level of coordination.
The main split within anarchism over this
question is between individualist anarchists or egoists and collectivists. Individualist
anarchists oppose most forms of organization, their focus is on building up the autonomy
of the individual. and they basically see organizations as a hinderance on individual
autonomy. And then collectivists basically believe in organizing collectively and organizations
are often a big component of that.
This also goes hand in hand with different
opinions on the basis of how people are organizing and interacting with each other with some
anarchists being in favor of more formal organizing and organizations that sort of have a clear
and defined membership usually specific sort of bylaws or different things that like govern
them. Other anarchists can be quite critical of organizations and prefer more informal
organizing methods sometimes this can entail still having organizations or groups but having
them form for only one specific purpose or one specific type of activity then having
them dissolve.
There are obviously pluses and minuses with
both formal, so for instance federations or labor unions and informal things like affinity
groups and cells and stuff like that. But I think that there are also really key questions
for anarchists in the 21st century, how we interact with the public and how people come
into anarchism beyond this supposed dynamic of formal vs informal.
There are different positions.
So from more anti-social tendencies,
more insurrectionary,
there isn't really much of a call or direct invitation
for people to join up or to start believing in anarchist ideas.
More than being convinced,
those groups have participants because of their own ideas and feelings.
But there are comrades whose political work is more social,
more based in people-power, who believe in organizing from below
and neighborhood organizing.
During the insurrectionary period in the United States from like 2008 and 2009 on, a lot of
us kind of glommed on to this idea that quality is better than quantity, which I would fundamentally
agree with, but at the same time, we need to find a way to actually meet people where
they're at, engage them and bring them into our projects and our movements so we actually
can grow. You know in the past couple decades, people were coming into anarchism through
things like punk rock or other subcultures or from different movements such as like animal
rights and things like that. And in the post anti-globalization era, anarchists have also
- at least in the United States, have really depended on kind of new cycles of struggle
to bring people in. So there's the anti-war movement, you get a new generation of anarchists,
there's "Occupy" there's the Ferguson rebellion, you get a new generation coming in. We can't
always depend on something popping off and then benefiting from that wave of new people.
I think here in Chile, we've had a chance to experience
a broad range of anarchist and anti-authoritarian practices and tactics.
Between territorial assemblies, between affinity groups,
between liberated spaces and squats,
between labor unions, between independant workers,
among professionals and among people who live on the streets.
Anarchism happens in subtle ways all the time. And we may not think of it that way because
like it's not the concept that we're used to thinking, but it's still anarchism. When
people think of anarchism they have this Eurocentric idea of what it is, the word itself, it hasn't
been around for that long but if you go by the textbook definition of what anarchism
is, indigenous people have been practicing anarchism and mutual aid for fuckin thousands
of years.
In these territories we are fortunate that many, many of us have Mapuche ancestry.
We also have that duality,
or that ability to position ourselves politically like this.
From the point of view of anarchists
- but at the same time not forgetting that we have our own history.
That we have our own individuality.
That we are from this territory.
That we come from a colonized territory.
That our history and our practices and our visions of anarchism
aren't going to be 100% the same as the anarchist comrades
from Palestine, Rojava, or Europe,
or from other parts of Latin America.
You know when people are faced with really horrible things in their everyday life, whether
it's eviction, watching people be deported, stuff that's happening on their job, a pipeline
going through their land... We really want to have people know that there's a community
of people in revolt that they can turn to, that they can then organize with to fight
back and to really hurt their enemies to the point at least where they're not able to do
what they're trying to do.
A good organizer has many tools in their toolbox. The trick is to know which tool to use when,
and to replace them when they stop working. This applies just as much to anarchists as
it does any other type of organizer. The main difference is what we’re trying to build.
Anarchism is based on the principle of self-organization. This is directly connected to the type of
world that anarchists seek to create. A world in which people can come
to collective decisions and take action autonomously, without waiting for orders or permission from above.
Anarchist organizing begins with the fostering of self-directed struggle. It involves agitating
and encouraging people to to take action directly to solve their problems. Without appealing to those
higher up the social ladder. From this starting
point, there are many different paths that you can take. Wherever you decide to go, the
most important step is your first.
Strategy and tactics are intimately connected, yet separate things.
You start off with a specific goal or a vision. Something that you want to accomplish, or
achieve, or want to challenge. And then your strategy is your plan of how you want to achieve
that goal. And then the tactics would be all the specific actions, activities and approaches
that would sort of come together to help you in meeting that goal.
The strategy that you choose will determine the type of activity that you engage in. When
your tactics are successful, or if they repeatedly fail, go back and make adjustments to your
strategy. Once you’ve made those adjustments to your strategy, you will then try to come
up with different tactics.
These things have to reinforce each other, and we have to also constantly be evaluating
back and forth.
You have to just do it. You gotta do it. You gotta kind of be there on the front lines,
putting in that work.
On the one hand, we visualize, theorize, develop our politics,
basically thinking on what it is we want - what we're seeking.
On the other hand, we start taking action
and we see how specifically we can make those ideas real.
We're all individuals. But everyone has their role.
In Chile we're lucky,
somewhat ironically,
that we have a history full of conflict.
A history of political persecution
and of riots.
So conflicts and objectives have always been present.
The strategies and tactics that have been used in general
have been pretty broad.
The tactics that are winning these days can be inspired by other struggles.
For example the tactics inspired by the conflict in Hong Kong.
The idea of using lasers
and of using water jugs to put out tear gas cannisters.
These are internationally used resistance and street fighting practices.
Then there's blocking the street.
There are barricades - different kinds too.
There's barricades of fire, or barricades of stones.
There are comrades who rescue and help those who are injured.
The world that we live in, how we engage with things, even how we come to think about things
is going to necessarily be influenced by the material conditions that we exist in.
The kind of classic Marxist quote: “People change history, but not in the conditions of their
own choosing.” That it is these conditions, these material realities, that impact not
only people’s lives, but also their consciousness. And that you can’t just think your way outside
of those things–or that there is no outside of it.
Capitalism is constantly changing the face of work, of social life, of the way people
are alienated from each other. So we need to be constantly kind of reevaluating, y’know...
‘what is life like?’ And what are the possibilities for revolt against the kind
of lives that we’re forced to lead?
How can we really get to the nitty gritty of, like, alright... what’s going on here?
How are we gonna fix it?
People change the world around them through their actions. And so we can have an effect
on our material conditions, and we can change them—through struggle. The flip-side to
that is that the state can change conditions in order to remove the fuel for struggles.
I think it’s important to understand how power is organized, and the specifics of how
it operates.
The kind of world that we want doesn’t exist yet. It can only be built on the ashes of
this one. But at the same time, we’re trying to create new ways of relating to each other.
New ways of solving problems, new ways of engaging in action, new ways of carrying out
things like work that look towards the possibilities of new forms of life that don’t exist yet.
If you want a future society that is free form hierarchy and domination, if you want
a future society where people have autonomy and are treated equally, how you’re engaging
today has to reflect these values.
Sometimes we kinda have to take these chances and these risks, and try these alternative
ways of doing things.
Follow conflicts around the world that can also serve as inspiration.
So that we can have new experiences. New ways of attacking.
New forms of resistance within the territories in conflict.
To the extent possible, revolutionary movements should be creating a counter-society and removing
themselves from state and capitalist institutions as much as possible.
Basically what we can do is orient our efforts towards building competing centres of legitimacy
that are communal. That exist in opposition to the state, to the police and to capital.
We wanna prefigure the world that we wanna see and the relationships that we’re building.
Both in terms either of, y’know, building some sort of dual power or autonomous power
from the ground-up to meet our everyday needs, but also in terms of the struggles that we’re
engaging in. You know, those relationships should prefigure a different kind of mode
of life. And also, y’know, bring people into new ways of engaging with each other,
new ways of talking, new ways of solving problems. Insurrection and dual power of course need
each other. As the saying goes, ‘the force of insurrection is social, not military.’
And to create a social force requires, y’know, real infrastructure and space that we can
call our own. And the ability to use that space in order to fight back.
On December 1st, 2019, a 55 year old resident of Hubei province walked into a hospital in
Wuhan with an apparent case of pneumonia. This was the first documented instance of
COVID-19, a novel strain of Corona Virus that has since swept across the globe and turned
daily life upside-down for billions of people.
At the time these words are being written,
we appear to be at the precipice of a mass social and economic breakdown on a scale not
seen in the past century. If nothing else, this pandemic has exposed the myth of capitalism’s
infallibility and laid its weaknesses bare. It has also demonstrated the need to be able
to quickly adapt our strategies and tactics to confront rapidly changing realities. Slowly
at first, and then all of a sudden, our mobility and ability to associate have been curtailed,
and time-honoured tactics such as rallies, marches, door-knocking and even handing out
flyers have been taken away.
But as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. In times of social and political
upheaval, hold fast to your principles. Rid yourself of dogmatism. Keep your eyes on the
prize. And brace yourself to meet whatever challenges come your way.
Anarchism is a beautiful, amazing thing and has done a lot of great things historically.
Also, it's often something that fails. And, I think failure is okay, and there is often
a lot of value in things that I’ve come to take away even in times there has been
big failures or struggles. Saying you’re anarchist, and you’re getting involved in
anarchist organizing and struggle, whatever that looks like, you are declaring yourself
to be very openly against many of the things that currently exist, like the state, the
police and capitalism. And, you should just realize from the beginning that that sometimes
has consequences.
Take yourself seriously. Once you declare yourself an enemy of the state, the state
will take that very seriously as a threat. Jail sucks and once you have a criminal record
it makes things more difficult for you in the future, so you should take adequate steps
to try to protect yourself and avoid unnecessary arrests.
What are the major things going around that you could actually impact with people that
you're close to, that you have a relationship with. And whether that’s at your workplace
or that’s at your school, whether that’s in the neighbourhood, you know something going
with the police, something going on with massive amounts of gentrification, whether there’s
a resource extraction project happening on the land base that you’re on. From that
understanding that analysis, then going about how would you begin to organize and bring
people together and begin to act and begin to engage in such a way that begins to push
back that, you know, puts your own interest forward and starts to attack those of the
dominant class.
The Police
The Judges
The State
The President
The oppressive state is the rapist
The rapist is you
Certain groups want to assert their power and ownership over you, and over your body,
what you have to say. This is not about ownership, this is not about who owns the revolution,
or who owns the struggle, like were all in this shit together. And if somebody is not
willing to struggle it out, like let’s say you’re calling them out on patriarchy or
whatever the fuck it is, if they’re not willing to struggle it out with you than that
shows that obviously that individual or that entity or whatever… like, they don’t give
a fuck. If people are truly invested in the struggle than when shit comes about you’re
going to be able to struggle it out. Even if it takes time, even if you have to stop
organizing for a bit until you work shit out.
I would invite fellow anarchist comrades
to realize that we have the potential to organize ourselves,
to hold positions and politics that are intersectional
with people who may not necessarily be anarchists.
To those who embrace anti-speciesist ideas.
To those who embrace anti-patriarchal ideas.
To those who embrace ideas and spirituality.
To those who rescue some of the ancestry lost to these centuries of colonization
that European, western, white hetero-patriarchy has imposed on us
- has snatched.
You’re saying you’re against all these things, and you’re going to be fighting
against all these things. Obviously, sometimes, there’s pushback, and there’s difficulties
and stuff in your life that you’re going to have to push through.
After you do an action, you know, take some time with your comrades and sit down and reflect
critically on what you did well, and what you could have done better. And then, try
to incorporate the lessons you’ve learned through your own experiences into your future
organizing.
And we really got to think about, like, “okay, when we do this, how do we actually win?
Like, we wanna actually be able to do damage against people that are hurting us, we wanna be able
hit back in such a way that expands our influence, our confidence, you know, the spaces that
we hold. We need to actually find ways of intersecting with people that are interested
and then bringing them on board, involve them in struggle, and have them be forced to pick
a side that literally supports illegal, anti-capitalist modes of action, and gets people thinking
about the possibilities of what they could do if there was a movement behind them to
better their own lives and conditions.
We live in a time when despair comes easily. A steady flow of bad news keeps us constantly
on edge. Massive fires ravage Australia for months on end. Police departments outfit their
body cameras with AI-driven facial recognition software. A family in Idlib freezes to death
after their makeshift refugee camp is bombed. Emergency ordinances outlaw all public gatherings
of three or more people. Confronted with all this, there’s no shortage of reasons why
any rational person might feel viscerally discouraged and utterly depressed. And that
is especially true for revolutionaries who consistently find our hopeful idealism swallowed
up by feelings of bitter resignation and defeat.
But when this despair comes, it is important to remember that we are not alone. That there
are many other people who share our sense of grief, anxiety... and most importantly,
outrage. That we are part of a long and proud lineage of struggle. And that victories are
still possible. Armed with this knowledge, and conscious of our own capabilities, opportunities
and limitations, we can turn our attention back to the task at hand, which is, as always,
to build our collective power, and increase our shared capacity to resist.
So at this point, we’d like to remind you that Trouble is intended to be to be used
as a resource to promote discussion and collective organizing. Are you interested in stepping
up your organizing game? Looking to launch a new initiative, but not quite sure where
to begin? Consider connecting with some comrades, organizing an online viewing party of this
film, and discussing where to get started.
Interested in running regular screenings of Trouble at your campus, infoshop, community
centre, or even just at home with friends? Well don’t! We appreciate the support, but
that’s probably not a great idea right now. Instead, why not set up a discussion group
with some friends, each watch the episode on your own screens at home, and then go through
the online screening kit on our website for links to additional resources, and some questions
to help frame your conversation.
Also just a reminder that here at subMedia, we depend entirely on donations from our viewers
to keep things going... so if you’re able to pitch in to help support us, please do
so at sub.media/donate. If you can’t afford to support us financially, no worries! You
can stream and/or download all our content for free off our website: sub.media/trouble.
This episode would not have been possible without the generous support of Josh, Murph,
Sam, Tal, La Conxa, and the good folks at IGD.
Lastly, we’re sad to announce that this will be the last episode of Trouble for the
foreseeable future. It’s been an awesome run, but the subMedia crew has decided that
it’s time to move onto new projects. And to make that possible, we’ve decided to
pull the plug on Trouble. Given that we can’t meet up in person for the foreseeable future,
it seems like the perfect time to make this change. We want to assure all you Troublemakers
out there that we have some exciting new plans in the works that we think you’re going
to love... so stay tuned! And to everyone who has organized screenings, sent us ideas
for show topics, constructive criticism or positive feedback about the show... thank
you from the bottom of our hearts! Your support has been truly humbling, and we hope that
the 24 episodes that we’ve cranked out will continue to serve as useful organizing tools
for years to come.
Now get out there…. and make some trouble!