Aug 23, 2013

Iowa City

My stop in Iowa City was organized by the good folks over at the Wild Rose Collective. It was great to reconnect with a sister organization in the project of developing a nationwide organization. The Wild Rose Collective have been instrumental in helping to coordinate much of the national dialogue between groups. So, being able to spend a little time with some of their members talking about the process of regroupment has been very helpful.

I was surprised immediately at how small Iowa City really is. I had thought I was headed to a city about the size of Rochester. But it's actually a small fraction of that size, which the local college making up much of the local population.

The talk however, had just over 20 people at it, making it larger than some others. There was local media there from the Daily Iowan. It was generally well organized and went really smoothly. It was good to be able to direct people to join the local organization if they agreed with the perspectives being shared, rather than advocating the creation of something totally new. And, in a great surprise the audience included by half-brother and his sister who both work with Ajax, a long-time anarchist internet personality that I've known via MYSPACE! (yea, I'm that old!)

Of course an O'Malley family reunion meant staying out late and up until around 5am partying. This didn't mean good things for the drive to Milwaukee the next day!

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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.