Aug 22, 2013

St. Louis

Today begins my rapid fire end of the tour. The next few days will be right on top of each other! Today I'm in St. Louis, tomorrow Iowa City, the next day Milwaukee, the next Chicago. I'm getting ready to pass out in my bed though.

In St. Louis the stop was coordinated by another comrade from the Worker Solidarity Alliance, who had actually attended the stop in El Paso as well. The talk was in a space called the World Community Center that seemed like a catch-all space for various social justice organizations in the city. 

There were just under 20 people at this talk. The talk went very smoothly, and didn't really get much push back. It seemed like a few people there were looking for more of an introduction to anarchism than to especifismo. 

There was a brief question about "especifismo's critique of industrial civilization". This was confusing to me for a couple of reasons. First, the language sounded like it was coming from a primitivist perspective, but when I said that was told that I was misunderstanding. Second, I think the question seems to come from the notion that especifismo is like a new suffix to anarcho-. It's as if we are advocating for an anarcho-especifismo rather than especifismo as it's own theory of the role of revolutionary anarchist organizing, which is definitely not the intention. 

I'm not actually sure if there are especifista groups that would call themselves anything other than anarchist communists. But, if there are, I've never seen them. 

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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.