Why is it important to talk about affinity groups?
Well the whole point of life is to enjoy it with the people that make up our lives. When it comes to fighting for our liberation and self-determination, we can accomplish revolutionary change by working together in our affinity groups. The affinity group is just another way of saying your crew or squad. All it takes is rounding up your homies and loved ones, cause everyone has a role to play within the radical change we are trying to create. We only exist as people embedded within communities, not as lone individuals in the world: every person on earth has contact with others. Contact with another body is, then— at the same time— contact with our own selves. Affinity is the foundation of autonomy.
What is autonomy and autonomous organizing?
Autonomy is based on the love for and mutual respect of individuals that does not seek to gain power-over their lives or trajectories. Autonomy is synonymous with horizontal (i.e. on equal grounds/power-with), and can be contrasted to other forms of life that are vertical (i.e. top-down/power-over) such as the authoritarian, capitalist, gendered, and racial hierarchies that we see in the world. Consequently, autonomous organizing is based on the collection of desires, friendships, and projects that seek to disrupt those forms of oppression. This form of organizing is different from and opposed to other models of organizing that are based on leadership or bureaucracy. Instead, autonomous organizing is based on consensus, mutual aid, and affinity. It is based on the affinity group model, and it has historically been the organizational basis that have popped off the wildest revolts, insurrections, and uprisings for the last few centuries.
What is an affinity group?
An affinity group is a small group of 5 to 15 people who conspire together autonomously on direct actions or other projects. Your life is already filled with many people that you have affinity with, and that’s the point: these groups are ultimately based on closeness and trust. Affinity groups challenge top-down decision-making and organizing, and empower those involved to take creative direct action. Affinity groups allow people to “be” the action they want to see by giving complete freedom and decision-making power to the affinity group. Affinity groups by nature are decentralized and non-hierarchical. Affinity groups can exist for a long time or form temporarily to accomplish one task, it all depends on everyone checking on each other’s intentions. The label “affinity group” makes it seem more formal than it actually is: a more fitting name would be “crew” or squad. An affinity group doesn’t even have to be political: reading groups and art circles are other examples of everyday affinity groups.
What can an affinity group do?
Literally anything! They can be used for mass or smaller scale actions. Affinity groups can be used to blockade a road, do street theater, organize local food kitchens, confront the police, strategic property destruction, legal aid support, create community art spaces and events, change the message on a massive billboard, etc. There can even be affinity groups who take on certain tasks in an action or project. For instance, there could be a roving affinity group made up of street medics, or an affinity group who brings food and water to people on the streets. What makes affinity groups so effective for actions is that they can remain creative and independent and plan out their own action without an organization or person dictating to them what can and can’t be done. Thus, there are an endless amount of possibilities for what affinity groups can do.
How do you start an affinity group?
It all starts off like anything else in your life that you’re involved in: find each other and get to know each other well. An affinity group could be a relationship among people that lasts for years among a group of friends and organizers, or it could be a week-long relationship based around a single action. It could be about hitting old friends, new friends, family, neighbors, or people you’ve met at school or the gym. Either way, it is important to form an affinity group that is best suited to you and your interests. If you are forming an affinity group in your area, find interested friends or other organizers who have similar issue interests, and thus would want to go to collaborate on similar projects or actions. When you find each other, ask yourselves: what are our common interests or skills that everyone can bring to the table in the fight for liberation?
Friendships are inherently political even we do not always realize it. Friendship is not neutral, like the systems of patriarchy and individualism mislead us to believe. Affinity is held together by common truths and values. By putting on display your own truths, you will never know who around you in your routine life is ready to conspire by your side, wherever and however possible. Friendship does and will carry more of a material impact as struggles continue to unfold and escalate everywhere. Look around you, and start there—every aspect of our social lives is a potential field of accomplices. When you find each other, decide on a common path. The strength of the internal ties of affinity groups are the key driver of their activities—make the time to go for hikes, talk about your histories and personal struggles, get to know each other well and kick it tough.
With the COVID-19 pandemic and surveillance, finding like-minded people to form affinity groups may be difficult, and this requires us to flexibly and creatively solve this issue. It is important to converse with the people all around us in our regular lives: you do not know who may be down or have a creative idea for addressing community issues. Take advantage of meetings, hang-outs, socials, and events where like-minded political people may be at, but it won’t always be other “leftists” who may be people you want to form affinity groups with. That’s because there is an overemphasis on organizing other politically involved and leftist-minded people, when we should be including everyone into our projects and community spaces, regardless of their labels or political identifiers. Sometimes, the best projects come out of very unlikely encounters and friendships: affinity is sometimes found in the most unexpected places.
What is autonomous initiative?
As opposed to following the direction and desires of leaders or hierarchical organizations, autonomous initiative stems from the mutual meanings and intentions put forth by affinity groups. You and your crew decide on what projects or actions that you would like to begin or become a part of. We all know that the IE faces so many problems, and thus there are so many community solutions that autonomous affinity groups can address, such as: hunger, COVID-19 issues, homelessness, lack of transportation, poverty, etc. Honing in on what drives us, and meeting others half-way in what drives them allows us to mutually build common projects through consensus. From initiative, we find autonomy in the capacity to act for ourselves and with community, and no politician or cop can ever take that away from us.
What is a cluster?
Once you have your own affinity group and help facilitate the creation of other groupings, we can start to group the scale of autonomous organizing and initiatives through the creation of other autonomous structures, such as: networks/hubs, clusters, and spokes-councils/assemblies. A cluster is a grouping of affinity groups that come together to work on a certain task, initiative, or part of a larger action. Thus, a cluster might be responsible for blockading an area, organizing one day of a multi-day action, or putting together and performing a mass street theater performance. Clusters could be organized around where affinity groups are from (example: Inland Empire cluster), an issue or identity (examples: immigrant issues cluster or anti-warehouse cluster), or action interest (i.e. street theater or black bloc).
What is a spokes-council?
A spokes-council is the larger organizing structure used in the affinity group model to coordinate with others in the community. Each affinity group (or cluster) empowers a spoke (representative) to go to a spokes-council meeting to decide on important issues for the action. For instance, affinity groups need to decide on a legal/jail strategy, possible tactical issues, meeting places, and many other logistics. A spokes-council does not take away an individual affinity group’s autonomy within an action; affinity groups make their own decisions about what they want to do on the streets. These assemblies allow for people and groups to meet each other, build common interests, and share vital information useful for folks/groups to further form new autonomous initiatives (not necessarily to make big decisions/plan actions).
Find each other, build affinity, link up, coordinate, and multiply our power!
All power to the affinity groups!