Multiplicity — Initiative — Affinity — Conflictuality
As more and more people take to the streets in the Inland Empire, we want to break down a few frameworks to inform action and strengthen our movements. Given that the IE has experienced few social movements in the past, and with revolutionary lessons learned from other historical contexts, we feel that these frameworks can facilitate the transformations we wish to see in our communities. In particular, anti-police brutality uprisings and Black revolt in the 21st century have taught us that social movements cannot ever compromise with any kind of authority: we cannot settle for petty reforms, defunding of the police, or crumbs of justice. Our movements must exist in constant struggle against the entire system until we are completely liberated from all forms of authority and hierarchy, or else they are doomed to be crushed. These four frameworks are meant to orient folks new to grassroots street movements in order to foster long-term and sustainable autonomous movements for abolition.
- Multiplicity
Definition: the state of existing as or with multiples; the characteristics of diversity, range, and variety
Unity has historically suppressed real differences within movements — such those of class, race, gender, ability, etc. — and has itself become a form of oppression. The dream of unity is, in reality, a nightmare of compromise and suppressed desires: it is only a dream for those who wish to impose their experiences and desires at others’ expense. Intentions, beliefs, and motives will always be different; this is out of anyone’s control and not anyone’s fault, nor is it anyone’s responsibility to contain. This should be acknowledged as a matter of fact before you ever hit the streets.
As opposed to the illusion of unity, multiplicity is a closer approximation to the real experiences encountered in the streets and at actions. The reality of multiplicity translates into a diversity of tactics and strategies, given the diversity of people and their motivations. The temptation of unity must be resisted at all times because it lends itself to burnt-out authoritarianism: people are not a monolith, and so the diverse reasons and desires for which they fight in the street must be conserved and not channeled for the ends of any so-called “leadership.”
Multiplicity in Action:
The late May protests in San Bernardino are a good example of multiplicity in action. People of all backgrounds showed up in the streets with very different goals. This manifested itself in the different actions that took place, ranging from the mask/water distribution, graffiti tagging, looting, and peaceful marching that took place interdependently.
All these things are just a matter-of-fact and they took place independent of anyone’s control or idealized images of protest. Multiplicity as a strategy allows for movements to become harder to be attacked by the state or repressed by the police. It also prevents state collaborators from taking over our movements: a diversity of methods and intentions for direct struggle will be too difficult to completely co-opt for their ends.
- Initiative
Definition: the quality of displaying self-motivation and capacity at one’s own discretion; acting out of one’s individual will or collective volition
Initiative — as opposed to following others’ orders — is how true uprisings begin: they are usually spontaneous and self-organized. Uncritically waiting for the right conditions is a constant deferral of action when it matters most: now, instead of tomorrow. This self-activity also functions as a balance of power to other formal organizations, vanguards, and self-appointed movement leaders.
For uprisings to become irreversible, anti-authoritarian initiative must be fought for and kept alive, free from the constraints of elitist leaders and other power-hungry actors that otherwise kill any movement’s diversity and spontaneity. Instead of following the commands and peer pressure of “recognized” or “legitimate” leaders, initiative is derived from within a community’s own impulses for self-determination. Initiative begins from trusting in one’s own truths and propensities. Our active powers are the key to our self-liberation. The secret is simple and it is to just begin from wherever we may find ourselves. From initiative, we find autonomy in the capacity to act for ourselves and with community who hold common truths, such as those of Black liberation and decolonization.
Initiative in Action:
After the first night of the Minneapolis uprisings, there were spontaneous protests happening in Downtown Fontana. The people present were primarily Black and brown youth, and reports show that they were mostly young people who lived around the block. Most of them learned about the gathering by word-of-mouth and through their friends’ Instagram stories.
The unruly, self-organized gathering happened organically and without direction, and its autonomous qualities were so surprising to everyone that Fontana PD brutally attacked the protestors that night. Autonomous initiative revealed the police’s fear of power so vividly. It takes the creativity of movement participants to keep the initiative to attack authority. Strategizing for the longevity of anti-authoritarian initiative brings community closer together, creating unforgettable moments and bonds between each other.
- Affinity
Definition: a relationship existing by chosen kinship or natural connection; the fundamental basis for all inter-personal bonds and relations
Given the reality of people’s diverse desires and the existence of many autonomous initiatives, it is impossible to impose only one method or approach of achieving liberation. In contrast, affinity groups decide for themselves what they wish to do; they manifest the diversity of community truths. The bond and connection you feel to the people closest to you — and your collective desires — already hold the key to how you wish to collectively make your dreams of freedom into reality.
The common truths that we hold with those around us carry the meaning of our lives and are the basis of actualizing our own worlds. The affinity group allows for an unbreakable cohesion that has historically created the basis for powerful movements and revolutions. Because the affinity group acts of its own initiative and decides for itself how it wishes to make real their liberation, the creation of your affinity group — and coordination with other autonomous affinity groups — is foundational for social movements. Affinity resolves the problem of “how liberation must be done,” leaving behind the outdated question of “what is to be done.” The former emphasizes that the means of achieving liberation are already in our midst, while the latter emphasizes a pre-determined formula for struggling against oppression and a pre-determined outcome for such a struggle. We must pay attention to process and to our interpersonal dynamics and relationships as we fight for self-determination to ensure that we do not replicate oppressive habits and structures.
Affinity in Action:
Almost every action and demonstration in the Inland Empire was visibly composed of small crews of homies, siblings, neighbors, couples, and childhood friends that decided to roll up to the street together. Each crew had their own reasons for being in the streets and their own goals for the night. These things are discussed prior to and decided upon through affinity, whether or not folks are aware of it.
The IE has never seen so many people in the streets until now. This is because we all secretly had an affinity in common the whole time that we have only now begun to actualize: our desires for freeing our loved ones and communities. The affinities and community that we build right now are the entire reason for why we struggle against oppression in the streets at all. For this reason alone, we must be intentional and as communicative with each other as possible, especially if there is conflict between our truths or experiences. Our ability to uproot hierarchy and authority is only as good as the relationships that make such struggles possible in the first place.
- Conflictuality
Definition: an ongoing state of conflict or opposition between opposing forces; an irreconcilable and permanently antagonistic situation
Affinity groups’ active initiative and the ensuing autonomous measures they circulate could instigate permanent conflictuality, or permanent revolution. Struggles should never turn to mediation, bargaining, or compromise with authorities. Our liberation must constantly be regained by taking initiative and maintaining momentum. This perpetual conflict means that our movements must be prepared to make quick decisions and not get tied up by rigid structures. The self-organization, then, has to take on an informal character because it can’t be determined by recognized organizations or pre-determined answers. Waiting for others to represent you ensures that initiative gets lost.
The concept of the affinity group is the basis of this initiative-based, flexible, and informal association of determined communities. Permanent conflictuality means that self-determining communities should not wait for orders from leaders or organizations who — by nature of their role — aim to control our rebellion and thus, alienate or extract our active powers for other ends that we may not consent to. Affinity groups and networks must spread the initiative and methods for self-liberation instead of trying to lead communities themselves. The ability for everyone to attack the system and achieve true liberation is contingent on the autonomy of all of the most oppressed groups. Thus, conflictuality is a constant and effective struggle towards cooperative aims mutually decided upon by autonomous networks and clusters of coordinated affinities.
As social movements in the Inland Empire remain at a nascent phase, we have yet to see if or when this cycle of uprisings will transform into an irreversible, sustainable conflict with the powers that be. Right now is the time to create affinity groups and link up with other crews in the area who are interested in keeping the momentum alive.
By going to the protests and getting to know other autonomous groups who are present — as well as by organizing more actions, creating long-term projects and community infrastructure — we can establish the networks needed to keep the fight going. By refusing to vote for crumbs or bargain with politicians, we can eventually realize strong autonomous movements that will accomplish our wildest dreams.
Postscript 1: The Politics of the Streets — August 2020
We had a hard time trying to come up with a title for the original post. Alternative titles were considered beforehand, such as ‘4 helpful tips for new IE actions’ or ‘4 things to know before protesting,’ etc. However, we must argue that these are not necessarily “frameworks,” rather dispositions and mentalities. This means that they function as ways to get your head in the game for the reality of the streets. In other words, we were suggesting alternative ways of moving in the street.
Language is a limiting way to understand reality and we all know that. For example, how hard is it to describe things like love and joy? Precisely because they are more than language; they are felt and lived in moments and events. Likewise, getting a feel for moving at protests and tapping into the collective power of the streets requires that you be there, present, and active in the disruption of power. You can only get a sense of what these posts are about when you are on the ground, by witnessing and participating.
In that post, we suggested 4 different things that can help people tap into the realities of the politics of the street. These 4 “frameworks” were: multiplicity, affinity, initiative, and conflictuality. To summarize it, we were suggesting to folks who were showing up to the streets to respect and participate in diverse ways of being together in the streets. After seeing the influx of actions labeled as “peaceful” and the enforcement of such standards by protestors themselves, we opted to encourage folks to respect and defend each other against the common enemy and not shoot each other down for acting in ways they might not agree with (except for said people acting like the cops they were “protesting”).
After the initial uprisings in the IE in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we have since then reflected and want to give a few clarifying points on the 4 frameworks:
– We must recognize the difference between autonomous street insurgents, and the Left/leftists: we must recognize the different dynamics that these two groupings bring into the streets, and how they tend to conflict and contradict with each other.
– The post itself was more about an approach to moving within protests and street actions rather than our view of the ultimate method for organizing (i.e. multiplicity, affinity, initiative, conflictuality).
– No modes of organizing are universal, which means that organizing methods can look differently across different places, contexts, and timing.
– The frameworks themselves are just ways of orienting new folks to the streets and it sought to push for a non-organization-centric mode of organizing (because a lot of people still think they need to “join” an organization to participate in social change, and that is just not true!)
– Non-organizational movements are inherently organic and street-made. As we saw in the IE, almost none of the professional and recognized activists were out in the streets, or if they were, were extremely outnumbered.
– The framework we proposed can be reduced down to this one statement: Trust the streets! The streets always fight back, and their people (youth, hood folks, everyday peoples, etc.) will ALWAYS be there independent of political movements or the presence of organizations.
– A lot of the times, these same political cliques and “leftist” organizations usually become ends in themselves as opposed to doing the actual work of cultivating the conditions for organic and spontaneous street uprisings to emerge. (As an example, look up the history of Germany’s Spartacist uprising to see what social democratic organizations always end up doing in revolutionary moments: co-opting and betraying)
– Multiplicity is real, and we just have to learn to coordinate across our differences and desires. What this means is that we should creatively build bridges with people who face different struggles and set common boundaries and expectations as we move in coalition.
– Affinity and autonomous initiative allow us to find our place within the streets or in the community. We need to continue to link up with others in our area not as an organization, but as people with similar material needs, common oppressors, and through bonds that are stronger than rigid ideological lines.
– As we have seen recently through the brutal repression of BLM protestors in San Bernardino and Yucaipa, we must learn methods of self-defense to protect our growing power against the reactionary forces that wish to keep us down. This is because conflictuality will always be a fact of the streets, both against state actors and non-state enablers of oppression (i.e. the Nazis and fascists in Norco, San Jacinto, Hemet, etc.)
– To that end, we need more folks in the streets and more folks doing the work of affinity-group building in order to create a community safety net against repression so that our people do not get lost in the system. The more folks we bring into the fold of our community-organizing, the more we can weaken their ability to repress us and the harder we can struggle against the state knowing that we have community that has our back through the thick and thin.
In the end, revolutions are made by the people in the streets who usually do not belong to organizations, formal groups, or informal minorities. The revolutionary communities are always already in existence, not as some “mass” waiting to be organized by leaders; they are just there, and we need to be present with them. We know now from movement in the IE and across the so-called United States that the power of the revolts has primarily stemmed from affinity-group based action, suggesting the power of small crews with lots of initiative.
Because the momentum is dying down slowly, and street actions have limits, we must think about steps for sustaining a movement for liberation in the IE based on the realities of street politics as well as our relationship-building and presence in our everyday communities.
Postscript 2 – Beyond the Protest: Cultivating Movement Infrastructure
Protests or marches are not ends in themselves and we tend to forget that in our organizing; this is especially the case when spectacular forms of resistance are the most idealized or publicized. As we have seen with the final wave of the summer’s George Floyd uprisings, we cannot always depend on mobilizations to sustain beyond a certain period of time. Building the basis for the liberation of our communities requires a lot more than just the ability to mobilize or attack. As necessary as these capacities are, they are only sustained and made possible by the work that we do outside of and beyond the protest or march. This is what we mean by cultivating movement infrastructure: our ability to disrupt the system and escalate conflictuality is only possible when we have strong material bases that can sustain the capacity to mobilize. We should devote as much time, if not more, to the construction of new realities as we do to the destruction of this reality. In fact, we argue that the ability to mobilize and attack structures of oppression is inseparable from the building of community infrastructure and affinities. We’d like to open up a discussion on moving beyond the hyper-emphasis and fetishization of mobilization culture.
It is true: there will never be a “right time” or “sufficient numbers” to attack the system and so, we must act now regardless of existing conditions. But we must not confuse strategic patience with the constant deferral of acting. There is a difference between these two things and we must move accordingly: if we cannot realistically attack or mobilize right now (without getting killed or repressed), then maybe we should not act right away. Confidence is not the same thing as courage. We can act and mobilize with more confidence when we have created strong community bases and cultivated movement infrastructure, such that we can consistently attack and have a movement to hide within. We can attack viciously knowing that we have dependable material support and a large community that has our backs. Courage would imply that action is taken without a larger movement infrastructure so that only the “fearless” or “brave” are able to attack or participate in conflictuality, but that just creates other hierarchies (i.e. between militant and “non-militant”). In contrast, confidence-based action against this system would signify a larger social backing and material backbone from which many actors can participate in and feel included.
Courage-based attacks and responses are not necessarily the same thing as collective confidence because they are not always embedded within a larger movement context (although it is not always necessary or possible). In addition, overreliance on courage-based responses can sometimes be easier for the state to repress without proper planning, hence why confidence is a key factor in struggle. This is why, for example, many people are not attending protests locally: there is an overreliance on “getting numbers” based on “liking” an Instagram image of a protest flyer (whether it’s posted by CrimethInc. or some other local org) rather than on the ability to mobilize with offline communities and networks. We can mobilize and attack on our own terms – because it is within everyone’s autonomy to do so – but we can get many more people mobilizing if we build the collective confidence that can come with patiently building strong bases and movement infrastructure. Examples of movement infrastructure can include: community defense trainings, people’s mental health/healing hubs, land projects, political education initiatives, food sovereignty networks, free medical clinics, legal support/anti-repression committees, and so on.
It is a public secret that the militant uprisings of the last few decades have all been doomed in part to the fact that social movements have not created bases and autonomous power outside of the state. Even recent abolitionist movements are not able to fully escalate conflictuality because of this unspoken dependence on the state for the means of survival. For example, we are all still dependent on the state’s infrastructure, such as its agriculture, its medicines, its educational systems, etc. Thus, in addition to finding ways to mobilize and outmaneuver the state’s attempts at total control, we must also devote time and energy to being able to autonomously self-reproduce and sustain ourselves. We must reclaim practical skills and the ability to heal, to grow, to build, and so on. We can begin this by taking an inventory of our collective skills, capacities, and connections, and by pooling our resources together. Fleshing out our material autonomy will be urgently necessary when the time comes not only to provide for ourselves outside of the system, but also sustain community self-defense against the state and fascists.
Toward that end, material autonomy will only come by when we continue to devote time to building strong relationships with each other and the communities that we belong to. We do not need to recruit people into organizations or build new social contracts: we need to spread concrete practices, knowledge and resources to take self-determination into our own hands. We have talked about affinity previously before, but the point stands that almost all the relationships that we encounter in our day-to-day have the potential to become political accomplices. However, the logical next step once we find our community is to live and struggle together; some have called this the “commune.” The uprisings create the space in which diverse communities and affinities come into contact, but we must maintain the initiative and continue building our collective power even after the events of struggle. If we are all over-worked by capitalism, we will never be able to sustain mobilizations or attack the system on our own terms. We must become intentional about meeting each other’s material needs or else we are doomed to default to getting our needs met by the current hellscape we live in. We must put our minds together and really scheme it up: what are ways we can pull in community together to provide for each other so that we do not become hyper-dependent on working a job or become over-reliant on money at all?
As we saw in the summer of 2020, decentralization is one of the strongest features of any social movement. The state has a much harder time repressing a multiplicity than it does one large mass; this also applies to a strategy for building communes. The decentralized construction of communes and hubs can help us defeat the curse of surviving the horrors of capitalism on our own: collectivizing with others will help insurrections endure past the first stages of riot and revolt. We all know the importance of having the capacity to address our material/emotional/mental/spiritual needs so that we can all sustainably remain active in the struggles against oppression. Collective care is a prerequisite for any revolutionary activity. Communes can eventually displace our material dependence on the institutions of this society, too (such as the family, employment, citizenship etc.). However, we should not become insulated in our comfortable commune communities, cut ourselves off from locals, or become complacent with mere lifestyle politics. The point is to become materially autonomous enough to sustain an offensive, abolitionist attack on this system and spread the capacities for communities to self-determine. Devoting time and intention to building material complementarity between diverse communes and hubs can give our movements strength in the long-term coordination of struggles.
We have a few other last suggestions on building movement infrastructure that provides for a long-term fight against the state and capital:
– As we fight off the settler-colonial state, the ultimate goal is decolonization and pushing police control off of stolen native lands. The colonial state tries to control the territory and map it out in order to keep it under control. Beyond the riot or protest, we must contend with not reproducing settler-colonialism in our organizing. In addition to the protest, we must spend time and be intentional about cultivating meaningful relationships and affinity with native people, increasing their own capacity and power to liberate the land.
– Local self-organization allows space to be used outside of its designated or official use, such as when barbershops or strip malls or empty properties are used outside of their economic function; it is a matter of spreading the complicities between existing relationships in a given area or place. We must subvert the imposed and given environment. We must remain opaque and invisible to the state as much as we can, using space and places as cover to hide in and cultivate our bases (i.e. by building squats, occupying buildings, liberating public parks, constructing the underground). Avoiding visibility will allow us to gather force in the shadows, and when we become visible we will be stronger and ready.
– We should all get to know comrades from other struggles: reach out, link up with folks, and make the efforts to travel and communicate consistently with them. Learning from others experience and techniques they’ve learned is great for our movement beyond what only enclosed self-criticism could offer. Social media has been great for this but must be done with security culture procedures in mind. Although social media has been helping people link up, it is ultimately the oppressor’s tool and we must use it with that in mind. We can start the conversation online and use encrypted communications tools to keep the conversation going and the affinity growing.
– Speaking of the social, interpersonal skills and conflict resolution are absolute prerequisites for any movement for abolition of the state and negation of all oppressions. We all come into movements with a lot of personal traumas and baggage: how can we learn to tune in to our own desires, needs, and personal struggles and have them inform – while not negatively impacting – our participation in collective spaces? This is an important issue because when we fail to be accountable to our community, our movement is weakened. We would make a call for everyone to continually check in with themselves, a trusted homie, your affinity group, and the spaces that you are a part of to make sure that conflict, harm, and traumas are not perpetuated in liberatory organizing. We should devote as much time to our relationships, engage in our own healing, and build our interpersonal skills as we do to any other kind of self-education or movement infrastructure.
– Community self-defense is extremely taken for granted and we must continually have it in our sights. We must treat self-defense as an obligation of social life (i.e. through consistent self-defense trainings and community mobilization responses to abuse by individuals or the state). We cannot reconstruct our movements each and every time we encounter police violence and state repression. Instead of becoming outraged after some offense from capitalist relations or police murders, we must stop this culture of denouncing-then-mobilizing ritual when we may not even be physically prepared for such fights. Confrontation will be an inevitable aspect of our attempts to build power outside of the system. We must be prepared for counter-attacks from the state and non-state agents. If we do take the streets, there must be a means, an intention, and a goal to the action. If we train and take defense seriously, the police will not be as efficient to respond. As decentralization has shown, pigs cannot act rapidly enough to a moving multiplicity that can strike a number of targets at once and that tries to always keep the initiative. The spread of our autonomous initiative must be both militant and social. We are, after all, ultimately embedded in a social war. We must make authority’s attempts at repression ubiquitous so that they are ultimately effective nowhere through multi-frontal conflictuality.
Let’s continue to expand our bases of power so that we can continue to escalate conflictuality, to end oppression once and for all!