Dec 10, 2008

Buffalo Solidarity Demonstration with UE Local 1110

Today there was a rally in front of the downtown Bank of America in solidarity with the workers of UE Local 1110, who are occupying their factory in protest of previously announced layoffs. The protest was attended by members of the Western New York Peace Center, Buffalo State Students for Peace, the International Action Center, and Buffalo Class Action. It was one event in a series of nationwide solidarity demonstrations outside of Bank of the Americas. Here are a few pictures from the event.





Dec 9, 2008

Victory to the Workers Occupying Republic Windows and Doors


“My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production.”

-Lucy Parsons

On December 5th, workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory – members of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) Local 1110 – were told by owners that the plant would be closing. In the midst of a global economic crisis, this isn’t an unfamiliar story. Despite the billions of dollars in bailout money that Bank of America had received it told Republic owners that they wouldn’t be giving them the loan needed to pay the 75 days severance pay legally required.

It’s at this point that the story departs from the familiar. Rather than accept the factory closure and enter what would undoubtedly be a prolonged legal battle for back wages, workers in UE 1110 defiantly began a sit-down strike, occupying the factory. Throughout the world people began to take notice as workers in the United States began to militantly and collectively resist the side-effects of the economic crisis, using tactics that haven’t been seen in the US labor movement in decades. Statements of solidarity from social movements and political organizations throughout the world are flooding into the Chicago factory that has now been constantly occupied for over five days.

We in the American working class have to recognize the urgency of these moments. This factory occupation has become the first collective defiant act to fight the layoffs and cutbacks that we are facing as the economic hard times get shifted onto the same people that always suffer when the economy contracts. A victory at this plant could serve as the inspirations to workers facing layoffs throughout the country. With this capacity to set the tone for the course of this recession, it is essential that these workers win their demands. And that will only happen with the active solidarity of other working people around the world.

However, to truly recognize the importance of this moment, we need to begin to think beyond it. We need to be there to spread the story of the Republic Windows and Doors workers and their courage. The inspiration granted to us by UE 1110 needs to be used to make this kind of militant resistance to layoffs and cutbacks the standard. Imagine the Big 3 auto companies facing similar sit-down strikes to those they faced in the 1930’s. Imagine that during one of those factory occupations, the workers decide to continue producing.

It’s amazing to me that only one year after returning from Argentina, I am already writing about a worker-occupied factory in the United States. What’s more amazing is how similar this story sounds to those told to me by workers at FaSinPat and other recuperated businesses. Just as in Chicago, workers there said that they were occupying the factory to guard against the selling of the machinery and products held within. They were watching this property because it was their only assurance that they would eventually get what was owed. In many cases, workers decided that rather than wait to salvage the left over products to help make their severance pay that they no longer wanted to lose their jobs in the first place. Instead, they decided that the factory itself was acceptable compensation for their lost wages and began to self-manage the factories and resume production.

They had taken the first steps toward a truly liberated society where bosses and exploitation are replaced with community and cooperation. Let’s begin to organize toward that same world. It starts with ensuring a victory at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, Illinois.



Oct 10, 2008

Housings Rights Movement Demands Community Control of Resources

Buffalo is a city with a shrinking population, a third of the city living in poverty, with 1 in 5 homes in the city vacant. We are consistently hearing about the reality facing Buffalo. Generally it’s told to us in a hopeless narrative, with no expectations of city or state leadership planning to help and no other alternatives available. However, in recent years a new narrative has begun that makes community control central.


People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH) has been organizing for the last three years on the west side of Buffalo, a neighborhood powerfully impacted by poverty and abandoned housing. Through the use of community assemblies and meetings they have developed an anti-poverty housing platform. This platform demands that the city begin to reinvest in its poorer neighborhoods using a variety of tools that can begin to address rampant and devastating poverty. The plan that the neighborhood developed includes:

  • The city should provide funding to rehabilitate 100 houses, identified by community organizations, each year.
  • The city should provide funding to weatherize 400 houses per year to help reduce often obscene heating costs and unsustainable energy use.
  • The city should demolish the worst 100 abandoned houses per year. Again, these properties should be identified by community organizations.
  • To help alleviate poverty in the city, at least 50% of the workforce on each project should live in the neighborhood they are helping to revitalize.

This platform has been in direct opposition to plan put forward by the mayor which puts funding towards demolishing over 5,000 properties in 5 years. This “5 in 5” plan had been the plan for redevelopment coming from city hall for over two years, until Wednesday October 8th, the same day as a planned march on City Hall demanding that the PUSH anti-poverty platform become city policy.

On that day, after two years of community organizing and struggle, the mayor gave in before the rally had even taken place. In the rain, 200 community members from the west side and throughout the city gathered to celebrate their victory against city hall and the mayor. At the last minute, the march plan changed to head to the state and federal buildings to announce the continuation of our community struggle. Community members spoke out against the $700 billion financial bailout and demanded that state and federal actors begin to address the needs of our neighborhoods rather than the needs of the rich.

As the rally came to a close, I left energized from a victory that helps to remind us of the power that an organized people can have. Victories like these are important not only for the positive nature of the gains won, but to help provide momentum for the much longer struggle for true social and economic justice.

This moment represents a critical point for anarchist ideals in the city as well. After months of organizational development and activity, Buffalo Class Action members acted as an important part of the rally planning and outreach. For the rally itself the group had committed to turning out a group of 25 and exceeded that number. Participation in this rally has provided an important step in showing the potential for specifically ideological and revolutionary organization as a part of building and strengthening our broader social movements.

I hope that we can continue to grow and gain legitimacy as a relevant and positive force in the social movements of our city. In doing so, the previous narratives of hopelessness can begin to be replaced by a radical narrative of using popular direct action to gain community control of the wealth that rightly belongs to all of us. Maybe then we can move from alleviating the impacts of poverty to destroying it all-together.

Sep 30, 2008

The Beginnings of Buffalo Class Action

During the beginnings of 2008, a couple of us in Buffalo, NY felt there was a need to begin building specifically anarchist organization in our city. With some experience in local social movements in the second poorest city in the nation, we felt there was a need to start having some explicit conversations about where the efforts of these movements were taking us in the long-run. In a city where capitalism has so spectacularly failed and over 1/3 of the population lives in poverty, a revolutionary perspective seemed essential. After about eight months of effort to build an organization, it seems like time to document the work that went into our emergence, the success we’ve had, and the challenges we’re facing.

Experiences with Ideological Organizations

Of course, the idea of a specific ideological organization isn’t new and in my time with local and national social movements there had been experiences with that style of organization. Those experiences were mostly negative and that context is important to understanding why so many people don’t participate in ideological organizations. So often ideological organizing comes from self-alienating subcultures or counter-productive dogmatists.

There were previous attempts to build an anarchist collective in Buffalo that exhibited both of these problems. These attempts were incredibly short lived. In each case, the only decisions made were about the name of the group. These groups had very little political agreement. Some members argued that we needed to work with different movements in the city. Others argued that those movements were reformist and not worth our time. Others argued that we shouldn’t even be an organization that makes decisions. In the end they only had about two months of debate at meetings and contributed nothing to the strength of movements in our city.

Despite identifying as an anarchist for years, these were the only types of ideological organizations that I felt existed. Myself and a number of other anarchists spent our time working in an individual capacity in a number of local groups, rarely talking about the ideas that brought us to participate in those movements.

Argentina, Social Insertion, and Inspiration

Throughout 2007 I was lucky enough to be able to spend the year in Buenos Aires, Argentina watching and learning from the social and political movements there. I had gone with the intention of understanding the strength and radical nature of the labor movement, which in some places had expropriated their workplaces and in others were running powerful and militant struggles against the bosses. It was quickly apparent that much of the movements’ radical nature had come from constant and direct participation on the part of a number of revolutionary ideological organizations. Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists all offered valuable solidarity to the struggles around them while also (usually) humbly offering potential directions for a group of workers in struggle.

One of the groups that seemed to be active was the Red Libertaria (Libertarian Network) of Buenos Aires. They were an especifista, anarchist-communist organization and had coherent politics that clearly spoke to people struggling throughout the city. They engaged in frequent political education work, holding discussion series relevant to both anarchism as a theory and a path for effective struggle. They were often seen around town engaged in propaganda work, setting up regular literature tables throughout the city and distributing their paper, Hijos del Pueblo. And, most importantly to me, they were actively engaged in productive organizing with neighborhood assemblies, worker struggles, student organizing, and recuperated businesses.

It was witnessing the strength of both social and political movements and how they effectively strengthened each other through effective social insertion that inspired my interest in building specifically revolutionary anarchist organization back home.

Buffalo Anarchist Discussion Series

From past experience in Buffalo organizing, it was clear that in building an anarchist organization would require some serious political education. Social movement organizers would need help seeing the possibilities of how a serious ideological organization could benefit their work and local anarchists would need to develop a stronger sense of what anarchism meant and how anarchists should organize. To begin to develop this understanding and try to find a base of people to build an organization, myself and a couple of other anarchist organizers in the city decided to organize a discussion series based on the model I had seen in Buenos Aires.

The discussion would be seven weeks long. The first week, we would introduce the discussion series and its purpose to develop concrete organization with a stronger level or political education, hand out the 75 page readers, and watch an inspirational movie. The next week would be the first of 5 weeks of thematic discussions. Participants would be expected to come having read about 10 pages of articles on that weeks theme and discuss. The themed discussions each week were: Anarchism What Is it and What Isn’t It, Why Anarchist Specific Organization, Anarchism and Class Struggle, Anarchism and Systems of Social Oppression, and Platformist vs. Synthesis organization.

The first week had over 60 people come through and pick up the readers and by the first week of discussion attendance dropped to about 20 and stayed more or less stable for the rest of the series. The space reserved for the discussion only allowed us two hours of discussion and each week a number of participants would head to a bar together and continue discussion for another hour or two. It was clear there was some energy and excitement to discuss these ideas. After the 5 weeks of energetic discussion it was evident that the average level of political analysis in the room had clearly gone up and some basis for anarchist organization was emerging.

The last week of the series was for participants to bring in proposals for the next step of the anarchist movement in Buffalo. One of those proposals was to form a platformist, anarchist-communist organization that would actively engage in social insertion with local movements. This has been the proposal that was the most actively accepted.

Building Buffalo Class Action

After the discussion series a group of just over 10 of us came together to begin building our organization. Six weeks were spent developing Aims and Principles, a structure, and a plan of action. We read the politics of NEFAC, Common Cause, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front, Red Libertaria de Buenos Aires, and the Worker Solidarity Movement to help us develop our own Aims and Principles. We developed a local constitution putting power in the hands of a monthly general assembly. We elected officers (a general secretary, a treasurer, and organizers for each of the three committees).

It was felt that for the organization to be valuable to strengthening local struggles that we would need to act toward three different goals. We needed to continue our efforts at both internal and community-wide educational efforts. An education committee was organized to take on this task. It was made clear that education should include discussion of theory, historical and current movements, and developing organizing skills. We developed a propaganda committee that would focus on development of literature distribution as well as helping to reform Buffalo Indymedia. It was also essential that we had some coordinated effort in local movements. We decided that the place we could most effectively engage in local class struggle was to participate in the struggle for housing happening on the west side of the city and a housing rights committee was organized to determine how best to participate.

In the beginning of July, we felt we had enough of a basis for our organization to hold a public general interest meeting. Posters were put up throughout the city to announce our presence. In the back room of a local radical book store, we gathered with food and presented the basis of our organization and the membership requirements.

Successes and Challenges

Since our public meeting we have grown to just over 15 members. We are actively engaging in a local housing rights organization. A literature table with a number of pamphlets has been developed and printed. Tabling around town is just now beginning and a website is developing as we go. Our general assemblies now include internal educational components and we have held important internal conversations about systems of social oppression.

We are definitely facing challenges, but working to collectively take them on. We are still working on understanding the nuanced world of social insertion and how exactly we should be participating in a community organization while simultaneously belonging to an organized anarchist group. So much of the building of the group took part through mostly theoretical discussions, and now that we are actively organizing we’re finding that much of the group has little organizing experience. There will definitely be a need to train some of our members in how to effectively organize. At the same time, we are a relatively small organization that is split into three different committees. This means that each of those committees is very small at the moment and this has made accomplishing some of the goals we’ve set for ourselves difficult. The propaganda committee has already had to table rebuilding Buffalo Indymedia until we have the capacity to do that well. With most of our activity going towards supporting a housing rights group, we have done little in the way of specific outreach and events for Buffalo Class Action itself.

These challenges are faced by organizations all the time, and some of us have experience in effectively responding to them. We are confident that we can address these challenges within our group, begin to offer an example of positive ideological organizing, and offer increasingly credible revolutionary ideas and directions to the movements in our city.

May 23, 2008

Fundraising Campaign for the Red Libertaria of Buenos Aires

I am hoping to help raise some money for the Red Libertaria, and Anarchist-Communist organization in Buenos Aires that I was close to during my time there. They helped to inform a lot of my organizing since returning to the US and I would like in whatever way possible to help repay that and to begin building closer relationship between anarchists in the US and those in Argentina. The PayPal account below is my personal one, at the end of the month, I'll then pass on everything in there to them through the channels they are establishing.


From Javier:

"Well, let me introduce this quickly. We are one of the anarkismo.net groups, we have been working in buenos aires argentina for 5 years now and have managed to reach a nice development. We are currently organized in three groups in different zones coordinating our overall politics and activities. We concentrate currently mostly in propaganda efforts and solidarity with popular struggles and social insertion (that is, to participate from the inside you have to be there) but we also do work in workers (mostly inside andother libertarian syndicalist grouping called CoSiBa), neighbours (mostly in one group called MTD Ezeiza in the Dario Santillan Popular Front) and students (this is our more developed area of work due to many comrades who are young and studying, we work inside wider libertarian groups in some faculties and colleges) unions. We have supported many struggles both form the inside and the outside (railway workers, tire manufacturing, subway, textile, autoparts, for a students bus fare, political prisioners, for the univerity democratization, and a long etc). We have hosted many cycles of workshops on anarchist ideas (self-management, anarchism, spanish revolution, anarchism in the seventies, etc). We have edited 12 numbers of our newsheet (8 sheets most of the time, a thousand or more papers per edition, it varies) called Sons of the People. We have participated in marches with a column with banners and a basic security, etc. You can look at our website if you understand spanish or ask if you want. We are currently trying to gather money to build infraesctructure to potentiate our forces (photocopier, computer, etc). If you can give us a hand please contact us.

From May 1st to May 31st of 2008
First Funding Campaign of the Red Libertaria of Buenos Aires

It will be all throughout May 2008 * It will consist in the sale of bonds and funding activities * It is an opportunity for every comrade to collaborate with the construction of an anarchism insert in social struggles

Buenos Aires, 01/05/08 – The comrades grouped in the Red Libertaria announce with great enthusiasm the imminent launch of the first Funding Campaign of our Group.

It will extend all throughout May this year, being an excellent chance for close comrades, that due to various reasons cannot actively participate of this construction, to give their share in the struggle to revitalize an anarchism insert in class struggle, objective that guides our militancy.

Concretely: Turing this month, the Red Libertaria will resort to your compromise with the construction of an anarchist movement oriented towards social change. Your contribution comrade, big or small, adds up to the total. And most importantly, reaffirms us in the road of class independence, of self-management and coherence that gives not accepting a cent of our enemies.

Comrade, the advance of anarchism requires the support of all ¡Don't lose this chance to collaborate with this campaign!


http://inventati.org/rlba - redlibertaria@riseup.net "







Mar 25, 2008

Lessons from Argentina: Education


While I’ve often tended towards an anti-academic stance within my organizing work, there can be no doubt that educational efforts are an essential part of our organizing activities – both internally and externally. What I found in Argentina was a movement that wasn’t afraid of being intellectual. However, they were intellectual in a way that was empowering rather than alienating. Participatory methods of education were used to simultaneously empower people to discuss and learn while ensuring that the discussions would have a real connection to people’s lives. It was clear, even in vaguely themed discussions, that the collective education process was having an impact on organizing work. The consensus seemed to be that action without reflection is pointless activism while reflection without action is purely alienating intellectualism.

Themes


Much of my time in Argentina was spent participating in the events of the Red Libertaria, a Buenos Aires anarchist organization. So it’s no surprise that a good deal of the educational work was ideological in theme. However, what was surprising to me was that I actually felt the conversations were worthwhile to long-term movement building. In the United States, I had often felt that ideological movements spoke in theoretical circles and built dogmatic organizations that didn’t really do anything. But ideology wasn’t discussed as lines in the sand to identify ourselves as one brand or the other. Ideology was discussed as a history of struggle and with the potential of being an example playbook in our own struggles.

I participated in two discussions that did this: Anarchism in the Spanish Revolution, and the thoughts of Malatesta. While both could have been purely intellectual discussions, they both were used as examples to consider the building of local movements. Anarchism in the Spanish revolution spoke about the needs and possibilities of organizing rural movements and the successes of self-management (a much less theoretical discussion in Argentina right now). While discussion the thought of Malatesta, much of the discussion revolved around working with unions and working class organizations as an explicit anarchist and how that should happen.

While these discussions of history and ideology generally were related to current issue and debates, it was often important for those discussions to be explicit. With the Red Libertaria this meant adding a discussion about the upcoming elections – and their anti-electoral campaign – to the end of the thoughts of Malatesta series. There was also considerable discussion about the current workplace recuperation movement in Argentina in regards to more theoretical conversations about self-management.

Much of the discussion revolved around this reflection of our direction and the larger plan for our movements, but there was also some discussion that explicitly focused on how to go about organizing and the skills necessary to do so. An especially exciting series that I had participated in was called “Experiences in Horizontal Organization: Challenges and Possibilities”. The discussion spoke of organizing student movements, workers, media, and more. There were participants from the unemployed workers movements and the militant media movement of Buenos Aires. This very tangible discussion of movement organization used historical, ideological, and current articles and movements to discuss the on-going movement building within Argentina.

Method


My experiences, which I believe are common, in the US have shown a largely lacking system of education around ideas, issues, and skills that are essential knowledge if we hope for our movements to grow. Educational efforts around a particular theme are often organized into a onetime teach-in. In one night a teach-in would be organized around a subject that is usually incredibly broad (ie. international labor exploitation, corporate globalization, etc.). In two hours, there is the hope that we can explain the history, current analysis, and what people can do to fight the problem. Of course, that generally means two hours absolutely packed with information. It becomes difficult to find any way to present the overload of information in any format other than a lecture, which in the end bores half of the people in attendance and overrides any hopes of real participatory discussion. While, these are often used to inspire people to take action around a particular cause, they rarely engage the audience to activate themselves rather than remain passive observers.

The educational series’ in Argentina were designed to give important topics the time they required to adequately address their depth. Each series was one night every week (for one, every other week) for five to six weeks. To break down the broader topics, each week came with a specific theme to pull out of the issue at hand. The organizers developed a series of relevant readings to go along with each week’s discussion so that the participants were all on a more even level to really discuss the topics as a collective group.

The readers that came along with the discussion series helped to create a powerful blending of participatory and informational styles of education. The basis of the actual series was discussion, but it was expected that people had at least a minor understanding of the topics they were to discuss. They were also useful as simple pamphlets that could be distributed in the future to those that may have missed the discussion series. Or, they could be used to organize the same series again with new participants.

In terms of organizational development, the series helped to educate both internally and externally. Veteran organizers would learn side by side with new or potential members. In their efforts to activate and educate the new members, core members of the organization also found a better understanding of their views, contributing greatly to a real sense of ideological and tactical unity.

More important than any particular topics we could educate one another about however, is one idea that needs to permeate our work and discussions: the world is not static. By organizing discussions in a way that encourage people to step up and participate we can help to show our communities that we are capable of self-educating around topics that are truly of importance to us, while pushing people to prove that they themselves aren’t static. As people recognize their own capacity to continually change they’ll begin to realize the same about the world around them and will find some hope to begin building the world they want to see.

Feb 27, 2008

Lessons from Argentina: Cultural Resistance


Revolutionary politics had a nearly constant presence throughout Buenos Aires. In great part this had to do with the active building of revolutionary culture and art. The arts were considered as important a part of revolutionary struggle as development of theory or organizing of actions. Music, theatre, film, visual arts, etc. were all a consistent part of organizing working class struggles. This had a great number of positive impacts beyond the obvious – making our movements a lot less boring.

Cultural movements helped to build the more concrete organizing of expropriated workplaces, community groups, and political organizations. In my time in Argentina, this was most clearly seen in our organizing in defense of the Hotel BAUEN; one of the many worker owned and controlled businesses of Argentina. Numerous musicians came out to play concerts as fundraisers for the campaign to stop the eviction of the cooperative. A street concert and barbeque was held outside of an expropriated print shop as both a fundraiser and informational session about how to help out in the fight. The play Maquinando was put on in the spaces of a number of community assemblies. This play tells the story of a group of workers going through the process of taking over their workplace. On the last day of the threatened eviction, workers and community supporters had said they would surround the building in an attempt to resist. Popular folk musician Leon Gieco offered to headline a concert along with a number of other musicians to help bring in more people. This event helped to mix the concrete need for the action along with a vibrant and cultural atmosphere.

The inspirational impact can’t be overshadowed by the purely concrete assistance offered by these artistic movements. Plays, music, and films are capable of inspiring people on a much different level than speeches or rallies. Maquinando shows the truly dramatic nature of taking over one’s workplace, in a way that is very difficult to express through simple speeches. There is an incredible radical film movement in Argentina, and almost constant militant film festivals happening in some part of the city. (An excellent book on the Argentine film movement has recently been released called “El Companero que Lleva La Camara: cine militante argentine” by Maximiliano de la Puente and Pablo Russo).

Each of these movie screenings, plays, literary presentations, or art showings helped to bring a revolutionary voice to communities that may not have otherwise heard such a message. A play would be performed in a community hall or a musician’s new song would be released talking about the unemployed movements and entirely new communities would suddenly be interested in revolutionary politics.

The relationship between artists and movements isn’t a one-way street. There are plenty of ways that artists benefit from such a relationship as well. Having revolutionary movements participate in the arts can free artists in the same way that revolutionaries hope to free other people. With the creation of spaces where artists can freely come out against the power structure, organizations ensure that artists are capable of surviving without needing to pander to the political and profit motives of the business elite. A culture of resistance will have new audiences ready to help popularize the art of revolutionaries. Those artists that don’t follow the corporate line will not be left to obscurity, but can become popular in entirely new contexts and communities.

More than just helping to expose an artist’s work, movements can help to inform and inspire artists in an intellectual and participatory way. Through direct participation, artists will become exposed to new ideas and realities, informing their art and activism. With the development of clearly revolutionary cultural outlets we could begin to create a counterbalance to the naïve, liberal, and patronizing politics of celebrity artists.

Building this new culture of resistance within our organizations, movements, and artistic communities means more than having a few “progressive” or political artists. It means having an explicit connection between the arts and organization. Rather than artists attacking Bush at a concert, we need artists promoting particular organizations and paths to victory. We need artists that are members of these organizations and aside from their art work also do some of the day to day organizing. It also means that organizations create clear spaces for artistic endeavors whether through media and culture committees, publicity in their literature and website, or in organizing actions.

Without building this connection we condemn our movements to remain boring and our artists to remain ineffectual. If we ever intend to have movements that go beyond a handful of area radicals, we need to begin participating in building a new, revolutionary artistic culture.

Jan 28, 2008

Lessons from Argentina: Resources and Production

Upon arriving in Buenos Aires, I was immediately struck by the strength of their movements. That strength was marked primarily through the constant presence of social movements felt in the city. In part that presence came from the large and nearly constant demonstrations in the streets. But more than that, it was seeing the cultural centers, radical libraries, widely distributed revolutionary and rank and file newspapers, musicians singing about current causes, and of course, the presence of the worker expropriated businesses.

Originally I assumed that the presence of these available resources were the natural result of having broad support for the various movements. I’ve since come to understand that these movements don’t simply have these resources because they are larger, but that the resources are why they are larger. By giving people things to do other than simply show up to demonstrations, movements begin to build strong activists, volunteer bases, their own power, and a real reason to need more people actively involved in our movements. As we begin to build our capacity for growth, as well as our need for it, these resources can strengthen our ability to recruit new members. Those new members build our capacity to develop new projects and power within our movements. This seems like a cycle that movements in the US could use.

What kinds of resources?

Some of the different resources that I’ve seen used effectively in Buenos Aires are very basic things that movements of any size should be able to produce and use. Others are hopes that would require considerable investments of time, volunteers, and money. But, they aren’t impossible and should be goals to grow towards.

• Diffusion Tables: It‘s incredibly common to see tables of various organizations set up in public spaces around the city. Using a basic banner and a couple of flags they are able to look like serious organizations and attract more people. To set up they only require a couple of volunteers and the development of some basic materials that any group should have – a description of who the group is and what they do and some flyers for upcoming events. Good books or documentaries about the organization’s issues are great to put out as well.

• Physical and Public Space: Historically in Argentina, the beginnings of movements are recognized with the opening of ‘cultural centers’. A location that belongs to the movement is important in demonstrating the organization’s capacity to have an impact, even if that impact starts at one store-front. There are a number of spaces like this throughout Buenos Aires – the café and revolutionary university of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, various anarchist, socialist or communist libraries, theatres, and spaces within recuperated businesses. These spaces create genuine ties to the neighborhoods in which they reside while allowing a space to hold teach-ins, discussions, movie screenings, concerts, parties, and any other event an organization may want to hold.

• Political Artists: Plenty of artists exist that claim some sort of radical politics, but how many have any real connection with particular movements? This connection is vital for both – as artists can express the passion and inspiration that movements need and organizations can provide the exposure that artists may want. When this connection isn’t built we only invite the growth of an apathetic public.

• Media: I have been absolutely amazed by the production of media by organizers and activists in Buenos Aires. There are dozens of radical newspapers and magazines, groups producing documentaries, left wing radio programs, websites, and so much more. How can anyone be surprised by the strength of their movements when they have such constant media production and distribution? These sorts of means of production should be one of the goals of any serious movement. Shouldn’t we consistently ask ourselves how we are communicating our message with the public at large?

• Technology: Nearly all of the above resources will require access to and skill with some amount of tech. Computers, cameras, printing press, sound equipment, etc. will often be necessary tools in the building of truly popular movements. Developing these skills within ourselves and our communities is a valuable resource.

• Funding: Whether gained by membership dues, grants, fundraising events, or some other more creative ideas money is going to needed at some point. Good luck on this front!

A focus on developing these resources while building campaigns to win specific demands can help to build our groups from flashes in the pan that create some marginal change into sustainable and productive organizations. It’s precisely this sort of production in our work that can begin to present our ability to organize a more just and free world.

Jan 24, 2008

Visiting a Factory without Bosses -- FaSinPat.



Anyone arriving in Argentina with an interest in the workers movements here will be pointed in the direction of Zanon, if the story about Zanon wasn't already the reason they came to Argentina. The ceramics factory of nearly 500 workers in the western province of Neuquen is one of the shining stars of the factory expropriation movement that swept Argentina in recent years.

A couple friends and I arrived at the factory with barely any advance warning. But, the workers were incredibly open and eager for visitors. We were sent to the press office where we met some of the administrative people. They brought us to a room within the factory that had 4 beds and tile walls covered in posters of their rallies and events. The room was set aside for visitors, and rarely empty. We then spent the next three days at the factory talking to, and eating with, the workers there.

Being from Buffalo, NY I'm not unaccustomed to being around factories. It took me some time to think of what was so different about this factory than those I had wandered in Buffalo. Wait. This factory is moving! As the workers took us through the factory they explained the production process of the tiles. While we walked, I couldn't help but compare to the empty factories of Buffalo -- symbols of decline, joblessness, poverty, and defeat. This factory was moving. This factory was producing.

We were told though that tiles aren't the only think being produced in this factory. They are also maintaining the image and possibility of worker self-management. This is why they produce under the new name FaSinPat (Fabrica Sin Patron or Factory without a Boss). As we went, I became generally interested in the process of tile production and I felt proud to see the cases of tile stacked outside. For even an outsider, the work began to have that sense of pride that capitalist bosses so often demand. But this wasn't pride for making a profit for someone we didn't know. This was a pride of seeing obvious proof that the working class is perfectly capable of running it all ourselves. A pride of knowing that our freedom was possible and that our chains were unnecessary.

How Did They Get Here?

Less than 10 years ago, Zanon was like any other exploitative business. Wages were low, workers had no say in their work lives, production was pushed beyond its maximum -- causing frequent injuries. There was a business friendly union that would inform the company of worker complaints so that those workers could be fired.

There was also the beginning of a radical presence. Social insertion, primarily through the Socialist Workers Party (PTS) had brought socialist ideas to the factory. This early process of radicalizing a small pocket within the factory was essential, but took a long time. However, once there was a militant and class-conscious core, they immediately set to taking back the union from the bureaucrats.

With delegates from Zanon and 3 other ceramics factories in the same area, they voted in a new, combative union leadership. Everyone regarded this as an important first step in their self-organizing. The taking of the union saw a rapid growth in class-consciousness among the workers. They began inddependently organizing a number of internal commissions (solidarity, women's, press, etc.) and having worker assemblies. This experience of self-organization would be incredibly useful in their expropriating of the factory.

In the months before the Argentine economic crisis, a union conflict was intensifying and calling for renewed investment in the factory -- as the management hadn't fixed broken equipment in years, despite consistent state subsidies. They also demanded back wages (some had gone months without pay) and increased safety measures after the death of one worker.

La Toma

This labor conflict quickly turned into a lockout as the boss fought back against the union, hoping to hire a more complacent work force. With the economic collapse in December 2001, management saw their opportunity to announce the temporary closure of the factory. Unfortunately for them the workers also saw this as their opportunity to take the factory. An assembly was called and workers decided to sell the inventory. They then used half of the profits to pay themselves a portion of back wages owed and used the other half to buy raw materials. With the deceivingly simple decision worker self-management began.

Self-Management

Today the factory runs democratically. Once a month one shift is dedicated to an all-factory assembly where important decisions are made by a vote of all members. The factory is divided into 12 sections (production, planning, sales, press, etc.). that each elect a delegate. Each day these 12 delegates meet to decide how to proceed with the necessary tasks of the day. Delegates rotate frequently and every few years administrators are chosen again, with the old administrators returning to the production line.

Has this model of self-management been successful for them? When they took the factory, there were 266 workers involved. Today despite the fact that the government has given them zero subsidies, there are around 470 workers -- many hired from the area unemployed workers movement.

Not only has FaSinPat become a stable source of work during a chaotic economic period, they have used their position to organize in defense of worker self-management throughout the country and in solidarity with a number of other movements. They buy their raw materials from the indigenous Mapuche whose land the previous owners were trying to steal. When the provincial government ignored years of community demands for a hospital, FaSinPat helped to build it in three months. Their workers can be speaking at conferences, at rallies in support of other struggles, or at meetings helping organize further actions. With any luck, we will begin to see more successes in this style of workplace struggle and organization.

Why Am I Writing?

After an inspiring year following the social and political movements of Argentina, I returned to my hometown of Buffalo, NY intent on beginning the process of actively building local movements with the lessons I had learned in Argentina.

One of those lessons was the importance of participants in our movements telling their own stories and actively analyzing their organizations. That's exactly what I plan to do here, and I hope that some people find it relevant and interesting.