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« As it kills even more, Israel proclaims its innocence | Main | Divestment update »

June 16, 2006

Ode to Anarchist Organizing

Technically it's not an ode, but that's ok.  I was at an anarchist event recently that inspired the below poem/rant.  While I tried to critique anarchist organizing efforts more eloquently in my thesis, sometimes you can't help but get pissed off.  I'm not identifying the function by name because it's not about the event but the larger issue, and out of respect for the organizers and attendees who put a lot of sincere effort into it. 
-----------------------

Mountain of madness proliferated by people in black not making sense,
Fuck your "community."
Theoretical ether is not a place to hang my hat and hug and hold hands.
I am not a member of your "community."

Anarchists are just everyone else dressed in fashionable revolt.
Feel good all-stars sitting in a room,
rhetoric, rhetoric, clothing, clothing, food and attitude.

Months of organizing for hours of confusion,
Self-appointed designates of the anarchist vanguard,
Idealizing situations forced to failure from faulty origins.

your cliquish, stand-offish, look-down-your-nose.
- you're not better than me because of your clothes
- or your militant proclamations or where you've been 
your proclaimed politics do not match your actual behavior,
and your bullshit hypocrisy sickens me.
I am not a part of your "community."

Action, action, no past exists,
No need for reflection - glorify your spectacular failures.

stubbornly wearing blinders over you black mask the wall will meet your forehead and crash around you right into a heap of rubble ruins of another anarchist "community" effort.

Notice the obscene plethora of busted shit?
Notice the empty, vapid, unceasing, structureless horizon?
Notice your busted "community"?
How can you ignore what is right in front, back, and to the sides of you?

50 people - 80% white, 70% male, 100% under 30, mostly middle class.
Your "community" is a predefined recipe for failure. 
No space to talk about race, class or gender? 
No wonder.

Barrel instead with you gear and attitude headlong into the oblivious horizon dragging anarchism and us through the dirt and brush.

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Comments

*standing ovation*

Kos conference call?


What are your suggestions to change this bleak reality?

Thank you, vegankid.

cooper, I don't follow.

Just wondering, I've written about it more in my thesis, which I can send you. But briefly, I think what needs to happen is for people to take an honest and rigorously critical look at how they organize now and in the past and who makes up the movement and why. They need to not dismiss or ignore concerns, but engage them.

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