Tag: organizing

The Lewis Lemon Committee for Revolutionary Abolition Zine

The Lewis Lemon Committee for Revolutionary Abolition is an informal crew based in Rockford and the surrounding areas. They are anarchists, communists, and abolitionists developing political analysis about history, conditions, tactics and strategy in the region. They ground their work in anti-oppression politics and organic intellectualism emerging out of class struggle.

To reach out or submit analysis, email them at
lewislemonrevcom@protonmail.com

Presenting Towards Communism and Anarchy in Rockford

A Reportback from Anarchy in the Burbs: The Spirit of Rebellion Takes the Streets of the California Inland Empire

The rebellions have arrived in the occupied Native lands now known as the Inland Empire, a largely forgotten region that encompasses San Bernardino and Riverside counties in Southern California. This text is a report-back from autonomous individuals who were on the ground during summer 2020. This report-back remained in our drafts since June 2020, and so it is a combination of our initial reactions to the uprisings, as well as our reflections on the mobilizations (as we complete this writing in January 2021).

 

Reports of manifestations had been found in almost all cities of the region, a phenomenon without precedent in this area’s history. Documentation of demonstrations in the IE occurred in the following places: San Bernardino, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Rialto, Yucaipa, Redlands, Riverside, Moreno Valley, Highland, Upland, Chino, Chino Hills, Montclair, and others.

The legibility of these manifestations had yet to become clear to both people within and outside of the Inland Empire. For many, this was the first time they had taken the streets. Some of us had yet to find the language to describe the days and nights of uprisings in the IE as we processed our experiences, feelings, and thoughts. For those of us that joyfully participated in the uprisings, common feelings and affinities had become clear between strangers in the streets. Drawn together by a passion for Black liberation and abolition, new communities were taking hold in the Inland Empire.

Even so, we want to push back on the tendency to come up with some grand narrative or final word on the events of summer 2020, with respect to the IE. We tell only one story — among many others’ stories — and do not believe ours is the most “legitimate” narrative or assessment of the uprisings. It is a white supremacist, colonial tendency to cut up historical moments into objective “periods” or to pretend to provide the “official account” without paying attention to power dynamics or erasure. We tell only a partial, unfinished story of the revolutionary possibilities of the place known as the Inland Empire, and hope that you find some of what we have to share as inspiring as we feel about it.

Setting the Stage: On the Significance of the IE Uprisings

Speaking truthfully, some of us thought that the scale of IE mobilizations during summer 2020 would take years of work on the ground to cultivate. Instead, it began to organically self-organize almost overnight, beginning in the last days of May. We are not arguing that there was no “leftist” activity or base-building occurring before June 2020, but a considerable amount of autonomous activity began to sprout in unforeseen, visible ways. We are also not arguing that we should always depend on spontaneous self-organization, mostly because spontaneity “versus” organization is a false dichotomy. We are merely pointing out that living conditions are fucked up out here: there is a considerable weight of oppression on the lives of people in the IE, and we have all had enough of living in complacent silence.

Inland Empire residents live with the burden of unique problems, such as the emergence of the racial-logistics sector and its ensuing warehouse gentrification, among many other issues. With a working-class burdened by debt, the high costs of living, low-paid labor, and racist state violence, the boiling point has arrived and we aren’t taking this system’s shit anymore. The more fucked over that people are, the more we will be seeing of emergent, rebellious self-activity against this shitty system. In our opinion, the Inland Empire is one of the most strategic areas for resistance against racial capitalism because of the system’s hyper-dependence on this region for cheap labor and the movement of goods to the rest of the country. Our resistance has and will look like hundreds of burnt down warehouses (such as the one from Redlands, June 2020) and the proliferation of hundreds of gardens from the ashes.

The uprisings in the California Inland Empire were connected to the greater national upheavals that occurred in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. We will say, however, that in most cases, there were no riots or large-scale revolts in our region. Nevertheless, we want to propose that insurrection did in fact occur in the IE, although it is not the mainstream image of an “insurrection” that most people are familiar with. What took place in the IE after the initial George Floyd demonstrations was the eruption of unprecedented activity, abolitionist initiatives, autonomous direct actions, and newly cultivated affinities. We want to counter the grain of mobilization culture by expanding the notion of the insurrection: imagining insurrection as the event that catalyzes routine proliferation of new affinities and projects that are able to then create the wide-scale movement base from which future uprisings can form from.

The manifestation of anarchy from the (predominantly working-class and BIPOC) suburbs is dynamically different from the mainstream image of anarchy that many are acquainted with. Anarchic activity in the Inland Empire must grapple with unique formations of oppression, such as warehouse gentrification, alienation and individualism in working class suburbs, the hyper-invisibility of the racist state and patriarchal violence, and so on. Modern day revolt in the belly of empire, then, has been taking place in unpredictable places, such as here in the IE. The explosion of affinities that emerged from the 2020 protests are what we understand as the true nature of our insurrectional summer. What we took away from the 2020 uprisings is that relationship-building might be a key point of emphasis for abolitionist, autonomous movements, with a particular focus on having the capacity to move in coalition and handle conflicts. If affinity is the glue to any insurrection, then we are well on our way as people in the IE continue to find each other and build connections in the community. We must nourish emergent communities and the feeling of co-ownership in the formation of our power so that everyone can participate and stoke the flames with us. Building in the community now can serve as the catalyst for the future insurrections to come in the IE.

Situating the Uprisings: On the Importance of Centering the IE’s Ungovernability

The uprisings in 2020 have shown social movements the importance of learning from the antagonistic methods created and cultivated from revolts in overlooked and forgotten regions. In particular, organizers could benefit from learning about the methods of self-organization and self-activity initiated by working-class/ proletarian BIPOC predominant communities, especially from areas in the outskirts that rarely ever make it onto the map of visible resistance in the US. When we shift our attention to the creative modes of resistance and militancy in these overlooked communities, our tactical and strategic repertoire will continue to grow and expand our collective ability to foment revolutionary situations. As we saw in the Inland Empire, all of the established leftists and non-profits were left in the dust as primarily Black and Latinx insurgents took the streets. While the old Left is caught up in attempts to hold officials accountable, spending energy on social democratic laws, and wasting their time with petitions, IE proletarians led the insurrectionary initiative. The insights from comrades Shemon and Arturo on the 2020 uprisings also ring true for our context:

“In the United States, black proletarians are constantly refining and sharpening forms, tactics, and strategies of struggle… The fact of the matter is that leftist organizations are simply not prepared to deal with the illegal nature of the revolutionary struggles and politics that are taking place in the present moment. The black proletariat continues to show a practical commitment to fighting the police, setting fire to carceral infrastructure, and looting the commodities of this dying capitalist system.”

We can learn a lot from BIPOC-centered struggles emerging from otherwise overlooked non-urban places:

“Organizational, tactical, and strategic clarity is emerging for the first time since the 1960s, but it is not coming from the left – it is coming from the practical initiatives and strategies of the black proletariat. Leftists [and Marxists] run their mouths about organizational questions in abstract and antiquated terms, regurgitating a played out formula modeled on Russia or China that has been repeated ad nauseam for many decades now, but which has produced little more than sects and cults. They ignore the concrete forms of revolutionary organization that are already taking place in the uprising.”

Shemon and Arturo elaborate further on the significance of this autonomous BIPOC self-activity in the United States context:

“Revolutionary organizations are not built in the abstract, but are expressions of the real tactical and strategic challenges raised by the proletariat in the class struggle. The fundamental organizational question that revolutionaries face is how to contribute and relate to the uprising, specifically in terms of street fighting, looting, and other riot tactics. Those who are truly committed to revolution will have to push past the stale organizational forms of the past and begin to account for the diverse, illegal, and creative organizational forms that the black proletariat is developing in the present, the use of cars being one of the most innovative and effective tools in this emerging tactical repertoire.”

By shifting our attention to creative modes of resistance and militancy within new sites of struggle, we can see new horizons and points of intervention that radicals and communities can begin to tap into. For example, a common tactical innovation that sprung up from uprisings in the outskirts – and that we also observed in the IE – is the strategic use of cars in reclaiming space and the streets. In Shemon and Arturo’s words:

“What we see from Ferguson to Philadelphia is the growing use of the car as a weapon of mass struggle. In Ferguson cars were used for defensive purposes, while in Chicago, Louisville, Philadelphia and elsewhere cars were used for offensive purposes: for looting, for attacking police, and for spreading the geography of the uprising. We should expect cars to continue to play an important role as riots continue to unfold and the uprising potentially mutates into other forms of mass struggle: blockades, strikes, and occupations. Undoubtedly, the state will respond with new forms of surveillance and repression, but how it will do that is unclear. In the meantime, black proletarians will probably take advantage of the state’s lack of capacity to deal with widespread car-looting.”

By honing in on new forms of self-organization from places such as the IE, we can better strategize ways to fuel the fires next time.

Notes on Insurrectional Possibilities in the IE

What follows is a loose collection of our experiences and observations in a few of the many uprisings that have occurred since late May. In sum, the conditions in the Inland Empire allow for the emergence of extremely effective autonomous movements, but the lack of experience, infrastructure, and its overall nascent organizing are currently hurdles that hold back autonomous potential and must be intentionally overcome. The following are our preliminary notes on the IE uprisings.

The invisibility of state, economic, and police violence in the Inland Empire:

  • The IE leads in cases of police violence statistics for the state of California, yet police violence in the IE is not really discussed or documented.
  • The staggering poverty rates and forms of exploitation in the IE are almost unheard of, especially given the high relevance of warehouse and logistics sector labor in this region.
  • The IE is on average predominantly BIPOC, working-class, first and second generation, and younger. The millennial discontent and frustration are especially prevalent here with the suburban structure of the area and enclosure, creating conditions for a potentially unruly and fed-up population of young people.

The character of the police in the IE uprisings:

  • San Bernardino police was almost nonexistent vs Fontana or Riverside Police.
  • The magnitude of police presence and force was contingent on the size of the city budget.
  • Helicopter and other aerial surveillance were greatly prevalent.
  • Police encouraged white supremacist vigilantism in predominantly white places like Yucaipa and Redlands.
  • It’s clear that in places like San Bernardino, the police force has never seen these types of gatherings before. How could this inexperience possibly affect future protests? What about in cities with more seasoned officers, like Riverside?

The presence of white supremacists at protests:

  • Guns were pulled out in Upland.
  • Man threatened to run protestors over in Redlands.
  • Trump supporters and white supremacist vigilantes brutally attacked outnumbered protestors in Yucaipa.
  • Violent men in Highland aggressively tore down Black Lives Matter banners and posters in front of protesters.
  • (CW: anti-Black violence/ lynching) A young Black male was hung from a tree in Victorville and although the perpetrators have not been caught, there was speculation that supremacists might have done this. Assumptions stem from the high number of white supremacists and conservatives living in areas bordering outer regions of the Inland Empire, such as the High Desert where this took place.

Unique sightings and tactics discovered at the uprisings:

  • In the initial days following the Minneapolis uprising in late May, spontaneous actions emerged in places like Fontana and Rancho Cucamonga, which have never experienced protests before.
  • Most of these initial uprisings were youth-led and composed mostly of hood Black and brown youth/ young adults.
  • There were hella smaller scale marches coordinated and organized by local high schoolers and youth.
  • As the weeks passed, a few reformist/ liberal minded protesters tried to monopolize the momentum, with varying results across cities and contexts. For the most part, none of these self-appointed leaders co-opted most of the power.
  • Actions were still relatively autonomous and self-organized, and as time had passed, the momentum had surprisingly not ended just yet (as of June 20th, 2020).
  • The lack of non-profit and leftist specialists truly created a unique protest context.
  • Lack of leadership/ organization is both good and bad: the movement is harder to contain when there are no organizations or leaders as the “face” of it, but there is also a lot of inexperience in the streets and a vacuum in the organizing scene that can be filled with anything (another double-edged sword).
  • Car caravans in San Bernardino followed the demonstration in support and also served as a barrier between cop cruisers and protestors.
  • Respectability for protestors in the San Bernardino area: There was a big concern with being perceived as “ghetto” and a strong attempt to prove wrong the classist (and racist) stereotypes of the Inland Empire. People here are very conscious that we already have very little resources, leading to folks guilting rioters and looters with calls for respectability and “morality.”

We want to end off on a few words by James Baldwin from “The Fire Next Time”:

“Neither civilized reason nor Christian love would cause any of those people to treat you as they presumably wanted to be treated; only the fear of your power to retaliate would cause them to do that, or seem to do it, which was (and is) good enough.”

See y’all in the streets again next time.

 

Moving at the Speed of Trust: Autonomous Community Agreements

We all want to live lives outside of the hardships imposed upon us by oppressive, violent systems of power. However, as we seek to break away from these violent systems, we must be careful in not reproducing the dynamics of systems of power — such as those of patriarchy, ableism, and so on — within the spaces we navigate and the new realities that we create. In order to do so, we must pay attention to the means that we use in our abolitionist movements and not just towards to goals we aspire to.

What we propose is that, as we build our power and capacities to liberate ourselves, we must move at the speed of trust; what this means is that our movements are only as strong as the relationships that constitute them. We cannot assume that individuals are immediately trustworthy when they claim to be against the police, capitalism and so on, if they replicate oppressive behaviors. In addition, working in coalition or with other organizations must also move at the speed of trust: we cannot know every detail of the internal politics or agendas of other groups or organizations, so we must coordinate together on the basis of autonomous community agreements. By assembling and linking up together in community, we can actively achieve specific goals through temporary formations that emphasize material concerns and affinity, instead of abstraction and ideology.

The practice of autonomous community agreements must not be confused with points of unity, party line, or political program. Community agreements are a contextual, flexible, and “formal” informality of practices that individuals and groups consent to in their collective organizing, with special care for process and means. We must embody today the new realities that we aspire to and wish to see actualized. What we have here is a rough set of boundaries and agreements that others can model off of. They are not rules nor are they principles; they are meant to be community truths and modes of conduct that are never to be set in stone or policed. They can be subject to change given the dynamic situations and community needs that folks can face at any given time. Those who cannot abide by the agreements must create their own spaces on their own preferred terms. Ideally, there should not be harm nor personal beef that stems from this because of reference to the dynamic collection of agreements. Conflict can be generative and can help proliferate multiplicity and autonomy when certain alliances are no longer useful. Autonomous community agreements are meant to facilitate the growth of power and groups that can eventually create self-determining communities that move at their own terms and set their own priorities in their fight for self-liberation. In the end, proactive trust and attunement to each other’s needs and conflicts is the foundation for autonomy and abolitionist praxis.

Loose Blueprints for and Example of Autonomous Community Agreements in action:

  1. First and foremost, we acknowledge that we are on occupied native lands and must keep that in mind in all of our organizing. – We could inadvertently recreate settler-colonialism in our organizing if we don’t prioritize native people’s plight and acknowledge that this land is stolen in the first place. For example, autonomous land projects — such as the purchase of land to build a commune — must be considered through this lens to prevent said projects from recreating colonialism. This can happen when we continue to ignore native people’s ancestral ties to the land being “purchased” and reinstate smaller scale settler-colonial relationships to land and natives.
  2. This space is run horizontally, meaning that: everyone will have a voice at the table, there is no one single leader or shot caller, we proactively delegate tasks and rotate roles, and we ask for each person to actively contribute to the best of their ability and capacity. – Vertical or top-down organizing means that orders come from the person in charge and trickle down to bottom ranks; this happens in any group or organization with a hierarchical leadership structure, such as CEO to manager or manager to laborer. Instead of enforcing hierarchical relationships, horizontal organizing is a practical way to encourage autonomy and self-representation in our spaces. Furthermore, it’s safer to be a leaderless organization or group because you can be incognito from and untraceable to the state and state collaborators.
  3. This is a space that is actively building power outside of the state and its institutions: if you are a fed, cop, snitch, abuser/abuse apologist, non-profit, mainstream media, or state collaborator (i.e. reformist or politician) you will be asked to immediately leave the space. – The purpose of autonomous organizing is to build power beyond the state, its institutions, and its style of relationships. To do that, we must push back against and remove those who collude with the state directly and indirectly. This includes removing literal agents of the state (feds and cops), state collaborators (snitches, mainstream media outlets, and reformists/ politicians), and those who recreate oppressive interpersonal behavior (abusers/ apologists, nonprofits, and reformists). There is no way to work with these kinds of people without risking state repression or liberalization of our movements and spaces, and attempting to change their minds is a waste of resources.
  4. This is an autonomous space, meaning that we are trying to empower ourselves and our communities to liberate themselves: this is not a space for recruiting, centering ideological debates, or for cliquey behaviors. We should not be concerned about trying to persuade people to follow one ideology over another or argue with each other: we are more concerned about working towards a material change in our lives, not necessarily in abstract ideas. – In continuation to the above point, we should be cognizant of our limited resources and energy. If we focus on working together to create material changes in our communities, we will naturally be less concerned with people’s exact placement on the political compass and why ours is “better,” recruiting people for some other organization or event, canceling and shunning people who haven’t exhibited harmful behavior just because we don’t “like” them, and other inane issues that just waste time, take up space, and create further unnecessary divisions.
  5. Please respect the privacy and security of others in the space: what is said in Vegas stays in Vegas, and do not record participants of this space without their consent. – For the sake of security culture, it is imperative to make sure the information said in any anti-state organizing space stays within that space and the folks in communion. Otherwise, sensitive and even incriminating information can fall into the wrong ears. Dry-snitching is also a very real threat, and a recording of people at a secret meeting or even at a protest can help the feds build a case against someone. Don’t be that person who accidentally collaborates with the state.
  6. As we continue to work in community together, we do not want to reproduce cycles of harm to ourselves or each other while building power. No anti-Blackness/transphobia/queerphobia/sexism/classism/racism/fatphobia/ableism/will ever be tolerated in the space. – Similar to other points regarding the need to build power outside of hierarchical, colonial, and state relations/ institutions, we need to also make it a priority to prevent all oppressive and harmful behavior in our interpersonal relationships. If we are to be intentional about our liberation, we must treat one another with respect and be mindful of the way we may recreate harmful dynamics in our personal spaces. After all, the micro scale is just a reflection of what already exists at a macro scale, meaning that the way we socialize at a small, personal level will be influenced by the systems and dynamics at play in greater society.
  7. Although this is a BIPOC-centered space, we still have to acknowledge the privileges between certain identities and proactively work to center the most oppressed voices, such as Black, indigenous, and trans voices. – Just because we work together does not mean everyone has the same experiences, and we shouldn’t reduce people’s identities and experiences to such just because they are BIPOC. In fact, it’s damaging to treat all BIPOC as static or identical because that can recreate harmful dynamics and ignore important intersections within already marginalized identities. It’s important to listen to the most affected voices and center them when organizing.
  8. On Democrats and Liberals: Being a democrat is not radical since liberals play respectability politics and prioritize capitalism over BIPOC communities. Any person that comes to the space with these kinds of views will be removed. – It’s a waste of time and energy to argue with Democrats and liberals, and people with shared values should be prioritized for the sake of conserving resources and maintaining the integrity of our spaces. Point 3 stated that collaborating with reformists posed a risk by liberalizing our goals and our spaces; working with Democrats and liberals functions similarly. Ultimately, although many “nice” people may be Democrats or self-proclaimed liberals, they are ultimately moderates who in reality, seek to reform instead of radicalize the world. The DSA and nonprofits already exist.
  9. We all agree to keep these agreements open to adding and editing as we continue to share space. – In the spirit of horizontal organizing and collaboration, it’s necessary to listen to our comrades’ input when making decisions and setting agreements to make sure that we aren’t merely imposing our will against others’. Similarly, people and life itself are fluid, and the adaptability of our community agreements should reflect that.

IE Initiatives and Projects

Inland Empire, CA based projects and their Instagram handles:

Black Lives Matter IE                            @blacklivesmatterie

Feed the Block – Ontario                            @feedtheblock_ie

Liberate the IE                                                           @ltie846

More Hope Project                                     @morehopeproject

Take Action IE – Moreno Valley                      @takeactionie

Inland Empire Right Watch                                   @we.see.ie

IE Collective                                                       @iecollective

High Desert Mutual Aid                     @highdesertmutualaid

Eastern Coachella Valley No Se Vende!       @ecvnosevende

Wielding Active Power                                  @wapcollective

IE Migrant Abolitionists                  @iemigrantabolitionists

Desert Communities United                             @d.c.u

IE Brown Berets                                            @iebrownberets

The Spoonie Uni Project                          @spoonieuniproject

Four Directions Mutual Aid IE                      @ie4directions

Inland Empire Mutualistas                             @iemutualistas

OG Foods So Cal                                            @ogfoods_so_cal

Liberate Ontario                                           @liberate_ontario

Mountain Mutual Aid Network @mtnmutualaid

Other social media handles to keep up with:

Instagram:

i.e.uprising

roar_ara

abolish_time

frontlinemedics

blackpowderpress

possumkratom69

decolonialatlas

projectunsettlement

abolition.memes

thecomradecloset

anarchipelago.ko

copwatch_santaana

blackrose_rosanegra

 

twitter

909time

black_autonomy

AbolishtheUC

AbolitionF_ists

IAF__FAI

confrontacion_s

media_action

bbyanarchists

IGD_News

Abolish_Time

AshAgony

NOT_INTO_IT

anarchogoth

ztsamudzi

mutualaid815

RP_PLWC

1.1. Ferguson and More: Lessons for IE Organizing from Uprisings in the Outskirts

Key Take-Aways: 
  • White suburbia is an outdated concept. Inland Empire cities have become Southern California‘s suburban outskirts, although they aren’t predominantly white or middle class like history and mass media have typically described them.
  • The Inland Empire’s suburbs have a striking material resemblance to Ferguson’s. An analysis of the 2014 Ferguson uprisings shows us what resistance could potentially look like in the IE.
Autonomous Organizing in the Inland Empire Suburbs

The native lands currently known as the Inland Empire have a rich but overlooked history. Even the people who currently occupy the Inland Empire have little to no knowledge about its significance. This comes as no surprise, as this region is largely overshadowed by its neighbors with longer and more recognized histories: the Los Angeles and Orange Counties. However, we want to challenge the IE’s “forgotten” nature and ultimately shed light on possible resistance through autonomous organizing that centers BIPOC liberation. The crisis of racial capitalism, the worsening effects of climate change, and the horrific COVID-19 pandemic warrant immediate and effective methods of halting the gears of this oppressive machine. We have no time to lose, and we invite our fellow IE communities to rise with us.

We pose this question: how can autonomous organizing and practices be expanded into overlooked areas such as the IE, and how might these practices be transformed by modifying them on grounds unique to the IE?

Because Black and indigenous liberation must be central to any social movement, autonomous organizing must be situated within a discussion of disregarded racialized geographies, regions which have been historically neglected by the majority of social movements. Typically, autonomous organizing has occurred in urban environments, and (at times) predominantly white spaces. By contrast – as well as by surprise – one of the largest and most intense attempts at liberation spontaneously happened in Ferguson, Missouri: a predominantly Black and POC, working-class, suburban area. Every region has its own unique function within the capitalist world-system and has differing territorial relationships to systems of oppression. Autonomous strategies and decentralized coordination among struggles within these regions can be a potential method of decolonial BIPOC liberation in the United States. Let us elaborate.

The Neglected Resistance: An Analysis of the Ferguson Uprisings

By grounding these insights within the struggles for Black and indigenous liberation, we can reconnect the uprisings that occurred in Ferguson in late 2014. We argue that these uprisings exemplify the eventual fiery fate of the newest reconfigurations of capital within overlooked geographies and the racialized populations that inhabit them. In other words, Ferguson is an image from the future because of the many characteristics that Ferguson shares with other racialized working-class regions. We believe that it is in regions like these – such as the IE – that the potential for overcoming racial capitalism and the state already exists.

We want to encourage people to study the uprising in Ferguson and compare it with their particular regions. We should read up on how and why the uprisings were so effective and militant, but not overlook the reasons why Ferguson has not been analyzed and talked about enough. In particular, this points to the dynamics of urban-centric, white dominant narratives of resistance. For example, there is a tendency by some (white) organizers who over-intellectualize the conditions of the oppressed and come up with grand narratives that claim to explain all of the particularities of our histories. One similar thing to note: why is it that the moment in Seattle 1999 against the WTO meeting counts as the “beginning” of the autonomous movements in North America, while moments like Watts or LA ‘92 are not considered a comparable rupture?

Ferguson was full of spectacular forms of resistance never before seen in the US, such as: shooting back at pigs, widespread use of Molotovs, massive and quickly set fires, ease of escape from authorities, new tactics of suburban warfare, the centrality of cars to movement for the protests, the lack of surveillance, the decentralization of the physical environment, and so on. In fact, Ferguson was not an inner city; it was a suburb. The suburbs were never designed for riot prevention or optimal state repression. All of this points back to why we should learn from and grow with Black uprisings like Ferguson: the state never saw it coming, and they did not expect it to go so hard.

Resisting Neglect: When the Inland Empire Borrows from Ferguson

On the one hand, moments like the 2009 murder of Oscar Grant in Oakland or the 1991 rupture in Los Angeles point to the importance of spiritual conditions (such as the bodily, psychic and inter-generational trauma triggered by the histories of police violence and racial violence), but we must also look at material conditions (such as the economic geography and political economy). We want to argue that such overlooked, racialized, poor regions – suburbs like Ferguson or the IE – are not simply the new sites of struggle, but that they will also play a key role in the coming destabilizations of the various systems at play. It will no longer be urban centers that set the stage for rioting and replaying the spectacles of resistance, or for practicing the rituals of marches and demonstrations.

By examining the material context of Ferguson and its significance, similarities arise between Ferguson and certain regions in California, especially when looking at three factors: deindustrialization, demographic inversions, and suburban poverty. A side-by-side comparison of Ferguson and the IE displays the following resemblances:

[Edit for typo: Ferguson, MI should be Ferguson, MO]

There are a few striking observations to make. The old, white, postwar, middle class suburbs are now the diverse, POC, proletarian neighborhoods. Correspondingly, the inner cities have now become gentrified (white) while the suburbs have become further impoverished (BIPOC). New forms of racialization and circuits of capital have drawn similar economic geographies and political-economies across North America. Capitalism is not what it once was in Karl Marx’s writings, and it is definitely not experienced the same way racially, genderedly, or spatially. So, we must always pay attention to material context: in this case, the Black revolt in Ferguson can reveal connections between comparable material environments that may foreshadow revolts and organizing to come here in California and the Inland Empire.

Our next blog post in this series will continue to investigate the stakes of organizing in the outskirts and learning from Black and POC uprisings like those in Ferguson.

Four Fundamental Frameworks for Organizing in the IE

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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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!

A Critique of Performative Politics & Symbolic Protest

A call to action for shifting movement actions away from symbolism and towards material disruption & abolition.

We believe in healthy, constructive critique, and we think that movements and the individuals that make them should be self-critical in order to improve practice and thought. But too many times, our community actions try to replicate the most visible or publicized forms of actions, and try to follow models of organizing that carry the most social capital. Most of the time (there are some exceptions), this ends up reproducing ineffective political positions and actions. In particular, we want to point out the issues of performative politics and symbolic protest.

Performative politics are exactly what they sound like: taking action through superficial performances. One of the definitions of performance is “a musical, dramatic, or other entertainment presented before an audience.” Similarly, performative politics are a politic rooted in recycled scripts and uncritically repeating prescribed roles. By the nature of performance, people tend to not think for themselves and let others dictate their moves. This politic detracts from the autonomous potential that lies outside of pre-ordained or “acceptable” political and protest norms. By “symbolic protest,” we mean the ways certain types of actions mostly (not always) implement a performance that does not materially disrupt systems of oppression. These include but are not limited to: taking a knee, yelling at cops, hashtags or Instagram “Blackout” posts, letters of opposition, taunting officials, parades, voting booths, etc. All of these things are about symbolism and are more about “making a point” than actual disruption.

We want to center our main argument here: we should be gauging our power in terms of our material capacity to shut down material systems of oppression. We want to say, Keep the actions and momentum going! This is NOT a diss to organizers who are new or folks who have just started taking the streets; everyone is still learning, and this is a lifelong experience. We also do not want to diss previous protest actions that were peaceful or youth-led initiatives for voting, etc. In fact, to qualify what we are saying about what causes changes, we’d like to mention that we will never know what effect these actions truly have because inspiration is not something tangible that can be calculated. However, we do know, based on decades of performative actions and symbolic protests, that those methods do not and have never dismantled systems of oppression. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

We acknowledge that certain actions can be labeled performative or symbolic AND may still have been inspiring for some folks, and that’s perfectly fine. That is all valid, and we appreciate the bonds and connections made through past actions because that is what liberation is all about. HOWEVER, we do want to be clear that we must abandon performative and symbolic action when we feel ready to take part in direct action or be a part of autonomous initiatives.

Imagine how many more people could be inspired if ALL of our protests and actions materially disrupted capitalism and state violence; how many more people could be inspired by a MATERIAL shift in their lives. Our main point is that symbolic action will never accomplish that material shift, even when it feels better than doing nothing; that’s the difference. We want to push for folks to get involved in projects that really disrupt oppression. Dismantling power materially is not just inspiring, but also directly affects our lives and disentangles our communities from the material strongholds of capitalism and white supremacy. We can only get rid of these systems once and for all when we shift away from symbolism and performance and instead, towards material disruption and abolition.

A few other points that we want to reiterate:

  1. We want to push back on the predictability of protests and marches. If there is no element of surprise or an assessment of local power relations to act upon, these actions become easy to repress by cops and fascists. Instead, how can we intentionally channel these demonstrations to attack material targets of oppression (i.e. condos, warehouses, police precincts, frat houses)?
  2. What does actual material subversion look like? We suggest looking up and learning these methods (look them up using DuckDuckGo search engine, on a Tor Browser, or on CrimethInc.’s website): sabotage, blockades, squatting, black blocs, monkey-wrenching, occupations, tree-sitting, expropriations, and other direct actions and autonomous projects.
  3. We should stop over-directing community resources on bail funds for non-impactful “intentional arrest” actions. Let’s save that for Black/queer/trans funds, where they are really needed.
  4. If there’s no foreseeable direct, material change as a result of the work being done, we should question its effectiveness. A good rule of thumb to gauge performativity is to ask yourself who the action is for and whether it directly benefits them. For example, posting a black square in honor of #BLM but not doing any other work for Black lives does not benefit the Black community. (We are NOT equating relevant, behind-the-scenes work to useless, performative work. Keep educating yourself when no one is looking, joining reading groups, having low-key meet-ups with comrades, etc. even if the effects of these aren’t immediate.)
  5. Keyboard warriors would benefit from putting their phones down more often and meeting real people. Tweets and statements are valuable only when accompanied by action and change, and when they’re written by people who are actually doing the work. The oversaturation of commentary online based on theory and opinion detracts from relevant anecdotal evidence and analysis provided by people who are actually on the ground. Practice is the best teacher.
  6. Asking celebrities and people with accolades (i.e. doctors, lawyers, legislators) to co-sign your action literally does nothing except display an attempt to be palatable to the public. We don’t need “distinguishable” acceptance for our demands to be valid and, instead, need to reject respectability in all forms.
  7. Petitions do NOT guarantee anything because they appeal to legislators and politicians who already don’t empathize with our struggles. Like statements, petitions are only useful when they’re accompanied by other actions to legitimize them. In fact, online petitions (such as those Change.org petitions that have been circulating) can instead document/publicize your information (name, zip code) if you forget to sign anonymously.
  8. As mentioned previously, things like sit-ins, group-chaining, op-eds, etc. are purely performative. We’d also like to reiterate the problem with labeling protest actions as “peaceful” and the effects of the enforcement of peace at these actions. Demonstrators will lose interest if they see a call to action that does not result in material change. When an action is just a street performance that asks for political leaders to empathize, we should question who we’re doing this for and why. (People who aren’t ready to get rowdy should not feel forced to, but a protest should be a place that allows rowdy protestors AND peaceful ones. The absolutism and enforcement of the “peaceful” label is the problem here; P.L.U.R. is cool for music festivals, but not for shutting down the system.)
  9. Create a power-map of your area and/or conduct a tactical terrain analysis with your squad, and share it with others in an assembly or discussion. These two methods of outlining local power relations allows communities to identify key material targets, suitable for subversive actions that lead to material disruption. Look for the openings where you can attain maximum rewards with minimal consequences.

Towards abolition and nothing less!

Affinity Groups 101: Build Your Own Autonomous Initiatives and Groups

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!

For further reading, please check out How to Form an Affinity Group by Crimethinc.

Activism™ Must Be Abolished: Abandon Old Activist Models

This is a short guide on abandoning outdated (but popular) activist models for folks new to organizing in the Inland Empire. Take the time for this important read. It is a breakdown of what so-called “activism” is, how it stifles true community building, and what can be done in place of that model. Note that this is a critique of Activism™ as a particular brand that people take up and the dynamic it creates, and NOT criticism of organizing against oppression itself. We are all for the proliferation of autonomous activities, but not for using movement organizing for clout-chasing or celebrity culture. Abolish Activism™!

Have you ever had these fears before entering new organizing spaces?:

– Concerns about not being radical enough in others’ eyes?

– Being shut off by others, or having your ideas rejected and dismissed?

– Feeling like you constantly have to prove your self-worth and commitment?

– Fears about not having the “right” politics or the “best” analysis?

– Hyper-awareness of oneself and of others that constantly looks for errors?

You are not alone if you have ever felt these feelings and all of those feelings are valid. Not only is engaging in a new environment anxiety-inducing on its own, many of these feelings and fears come from the ways a particular model of “activism” has taken over community and organizing spaces. This model approaches organizing as though it has all the answers, which is rooted in an ideology that believes liberation can only be engaged in one particular type of way, which then invalidates all the other ways that groups and individuals engage with organizing and community-building. Much of the more popular, self-proclaimed, and highly visible “activism/ activists” model behaviors and ideas that, in reality, do more harm than good in organizing spaces, creating a model for newcomers to follow who then perpetuate that same dynamic.

We encourage folks to do the work without worrying so much about labeling themselves or their work as “activists” and “activism,” respectively. After all, whether you’re anonymous or simply unlabeled, your work will show for itself if it’s good work.

What else does the model of activism consist of?

– The activism model needs people who are deemed “activists,” and these people who call themselves “activists” usually try to set the terms and agenda for all the right and wrong ways that other people (“non-activists”) can engage with social change.

– Usually, these activists are people with a lot of social capital, visibility, and popularity, and they self-appoint themselves as representatives of a particular struggle, usually seeking to profit off of it (see: DeRay Mckesson).

– Activism then tends to consolidate itself into scenes and cliques, which are exclusive in-groups that exclude people who are deemed not “worthy” or “smart” enough to engage with the political struggle that they are trying to control.

Where does the model of activism originate from?

Fundamentally, the problem with activism (and activists) is that it tries to tell you what is right and wrong, robbing you of the ability to think and act for yourself.

Historically, activist mentality can be tied to the histories of institutional religion and its morality. The building blocks of activism can be traced to a Christian current of moralism and the way it instilled fear and hostility towards a sinful world. Through practices like confession, Christianity taught its subjects   to internalize their own sinfulness and guilt (for more on this point, check out the book titled Joyful Militancy”). Another historical building block that leads to the emergence of activist mentality is the institution of schooling. The educational system crushes the openness to new ways of doing things. For example, traditional schooling replaces curiosity with instruction, memorization, and hierarchical evaluation, so you do not get to think for yourself.

Together, morality and schooling (as well as many other social institutions) affect the way we think that organizing must be done. They impact and create the image of activism that restricts other ways of thinking and doing.

What are the problems with the model of activism?

– It puts you in a box and closes off all kinds of other potential ways of doing things.

– It becomes the only legitimate way to engage, so it becomes condescending toward new organizers who do not fit into the activists’ ideals and protocols.

– It has made toxic in-groups and out-groups, each with their own specialized languages and habits.

– It is dismissive towards non-activists and discourages autonomy.

– Its ways of doing things become very cookie-cutter and performative, with preset ideas of how to act properly at all times (as opposed to what may be needed in a particular moment or setting).

How can we move beyond the model of activism?

Ultimately, the activist mentality is full of tendencies that seek to fix, govern, discipline, and control other people. Activist practices are based on suspicion and distrust towards the capabilities of others, constantly pitting people and groups in competition with each other. Activism prevents us from thinking about our liberation in deeper ways; it entrenches us in only one way of doing things as opposed to living dynamically.

Instead of trying to control others, we should learn to remain curious and open to newness. Instead of dismissing our community members, we should embrace and work across our differences and open the possibilities of invention, experimentation, and creativity. Instead of creating a cliquey and unwelcoming social scene, we should find ways to build trust and community because liberation will always be a collective effort.

A few suggestions for organizing instead of using the activist model:

  1. Abolish that “activist” mentality. We should be centering people and communities first, not activist cliques and their desires to control others.
  2. Push for a proliferation of different kinds of activity, and not conform into just one type of activism. (Again, we are critiquing the label instead of the work.)
  3. Measure action by its local effectiveness (in terms of materially dismantling oppression), not by how it measures up to the ideals and standards of activist cliques.
  4. Proactively create warm and inviting social and community spaces so that no one feels like they are unable to contribute to the struggles for our freedom.

In conclusion… Activism must be abolished.

An F.A.Q. on Local Protest for IE Folks

This post addresses common concerns and responses for the growing movement for abolition in the Inland Empire. Since we are trying to promote unrest and social change in the IE, we get a lot of questions about protests and actions. We put together this post for folks who are new to protesting and commonly asked the following questions. These perspectives can give us a sense of how to orient ourselves in our growing social movements. It is still only the beginning!

Who are the organizers?

95% of the time, this does NOT matter. We all know the stories of well-known and prolific organizers whose names were publicized and became targets of white supremacist, police, and FBI harassment. Knowing names and faces of those who organize actions not only puts them at risk, but has nothing to do with the REASONS people should be turning out to actions in the first place. If you agree with the need for social change, you don’t need to know who the organizers are because you are showing up for the what you believe in and not showing up for some social media celebrity with clout. In the almost non-existent cases where the protests may be organized by cops or sus people, still show up. Be cognizant of your surrounds and simply stay on the outskirts of the demonstration or in the back of the march if you are wary of who is there or who organized it.

Will it be peaceful?

This question also misses the point of actions and demonstrations, mostly due to the fact that this is impossible to guarantee. The only people who guarantee this are the police themselves which, in this case, are the very institution that people are protesting against. All other people who attempt to guarantee peace at actions are known as “peace police” because they replicate the actions of police themselves. They tend to be annoying people with vests and megaphones and should be ignored. Most importantly, the only way to guarantee your safety is for you and the homies you’re with to have each other’s backs because only we keep us safe. If you disagree with the abolitionist actions of property destruction, simply move out the way, but don’t act like the same police that you claim to protest – DON’T SNITCH.

Is this a permitted march?

This is also a question that misses the point: we roll out to the streets with the intention of shutting down this white supremacist system and all means are needed to accomplish that. Sometimes this means that actions transform and change moods, and actions are reflections of that. If the protest has the appearance of illegality – such as if people march without permits or begin to walk on the streets instead of sidewalks – these are only superficial appearances. Police act in illegal ways all the time and even following all of the “rules” at protests does not guarantee that the police won’t turn violent. The safety of those around you depends on your own boundaries, limits, preparation, and flexibility to respond to changing situations. Freedom is always risky and only your homies will ever have your back, not protest “leaders” or cops. The protest is ultimately about getting in touch with our own autonomy.

I don’t like how others are doing it, can I just organize one myself?

Yes! The more actions the better. There is a role for everybody in our movements. Accessibility is key to freeing our communities and so, invention is also needed to figure out ways to fully involve everyone. The more people who organize projects and actions, the more people who will be pulled into the inspiring work of liberation and abolition. It is within everyone’s autonomy to take action for themselves and their loved ones, and you don’t need to be a celebrity or experienced activist to do so. The point is to begin anywhere with those around you; all we need to free ourselves is already in our midst.

Further Reading:

“Revolutionary Solidarity: A Critical Reader for Accomplices”

“Who Is Oakland: Anti-Oppression Activism, the Politics of Safety, and State Co-optation”

“Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation” by Jesse Cohn