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.
