El Paso

In El Paso the talk was set up by Sarah, a comrade that I know from the Worker Solidarity Alliance, one of the other organizations involved in the formation of a nationwide anarchist organization. The talk was scheduled to be held at Maternidad de Luz, a midwifery school in El Paso where Sarah is working.

The first thing that was pretty apparent on arriving in El Paso was that this talk would certainly be better there if done in Spanish. From most of the places that I went, it seemed as though Spanish was the language people assumed you knew, and maybe you'd also speak English. While I have ok Spanish, I don't think that it's strong enough to give this presentation in Spanish.

The group that attended the talk was also a really great group of some people that had a strong understanding of anarchism and others that were there to learn more about the idea. From the talks I had with Sarah leading up to the presentation, it seemed like there was a pretty light presence of an organized radical left in El Paso. There were a couple of folks that showed up who had been involved in Occupy El Paso. There was also a couple that had been engaged in indigenous community organizing in Minnesota that were present, which led to some great conversation. Another member of the WSA was also there from St. Louis, which gave him an opportunity to see how the talk goes before we do the same thing in St. Louis later this month.

Maternidad de Luz was a great place for the presentation and really was the perfect size. A couple of new, and really valuable conversations came up at this presentation that weren't raised previously. First was really a question of the efficacy of consensus-based organizing. And, the further west I go, the more I expect this to be a major point of contention. So, I'm glad to start practicing how to talk more effectively about this now.

Second, and this conversation actually happened a lot more after the presentation than it did during the presentation, was about the importance of nationalism or anti-nationalism in anti-colonial and anti-occupation struggles. It was particularly relevant as it came to the question of indigenous autonomy struggles in North America.

To me, this presented much the same situation as working with other organizations of marginalized and oppressed folks in the United States and really points to the strength and flexibility of especifismo. When anarchists have their own organized group connected to struggles it helps us to engage in imminently important struggles that are far from perfect (from our perspectives) while still maintaining our own positions and not giving into a watered down revolutionary outlook. So, in the midst of anti-colonial struggles, it seems apparent to me that anarchists should certainly organize against the aspects of domination -- cultural, political, economic -- that all impose themselves on colonized people both as an immediate part of the anti-colonial struggle. But the key is to be in the position to point out the weaknesses of simple nationalism -- a propensity to empower an elite class within the previously dominated people, to enact many of the same styles of economic and political organization as the previous colonizers, and to avoid acknowledging important power differentials internal to the colonized peoples.

While I don't have a ton of information and understanding about anti-colonial struggles, I do have a pretty comfortable working knowledge of the Irish nationalist and republican movements. And, that history, I think very clearly points to the weaknesses of a purely nationalist strategy or even of a two-stage revolutionary process (nationalist then communist for instance). And to ignore the potentials for an anarcho-communist revolution during an anti-colonial struggle seems to me very similar to saying something like "We'll deal with patriarchy after the revolution."

Again though, I'll admit my own weakness on these questions and hope that this can help to spawn a conversation in discussion that we can further develop our analysis on this question.