**Edit 4/25/13**

It has come to my attention that some people have interpreted this post to be saying that nothing was happening in Atlanta at all.  I sincerely apologize that this is the way it came off, and the fact that this interpretation was able to be reflected to the rest of the world via the internet.  I meant to make clear that this was a personal and subjective piece, with me mulling about my own failures to engage, even with the substantial amount of work that was being done within some of the groups with which I was involved.  Upon another reading I realize my wording could have been much more specific and the above interpretation is completely logical.  But it is wrong.  When this was written, as well as now, there has been lots happening in Atlanta.  If you would like a picture of some of the things happening or that have happened, please reference atlanta.indymedia.org, and also check out swarmatlanta.org.  Again, apologies for the poor wording and inaccurate representation.  I have left the original post intact and unedited for reference.

I feel like I see a lot of inactivity lately.  Maybe its mostly me, it surely is at least with me. By inactivity I mean, of course, political inactivity.  Various projects, organizing groupings, etc seem to be lulling at times.  Again, I know some of this is my perspective of not seeing things get done because I am not doing them, but I know in many circumstances it feels like others are in the same place, in one way or another.  Why?  Is it because it is getting nicer, or starting to, outside, and we don’t feel like pushing ourselves to do “political” work?  Or is it that there is too much happening, whether in our personal, work, or other parts of our political lives to do parts of projects or complete tasks we expected to?  Again, and last time for the disclaimer, this is a purely subjective piece, and I am pondering not only why this happens, but if it even is happening with others…

I think the above mentioned separation is one of the problems: work, personal, political. Aren’t all of our politics played out in the realms of the personal anyways, doesn’t that affect our work lives, which is a theft of our personal lives, or a perversion of it.  But work is also  where we live our lives in a lot of ways, good, bad, banal.  For better or worse, work is where we make a “living”, hopefully enough to eat at least… it is where a lot of our interactions with society happen, it is where we “contribute” to society, depending on the actual social worth of our jobs, and realize ourselves as economic subjects who while exploited also can act.  As silly as it is, there is a sense of accomplishment in suggesting a product to a customer, or prepping or producing one, even if you don’t think its objectively necessary.

Amongst much of the anarchist media, I would say particularly in, but not limited to, the post-left sort of dialogues, there is an anti-activism sentiment.  Not against taking action, but against that being a special sort of thing one does, both a specialization in our own lives, like I’m activist from 7-9, but not from 9-5, or vice versa, as well as in society, “I’m not really an activisty type”.  While I feel like this sentiment may be overemphasized at times, it is a really important critique to have present.  I feel like activism as a hobby or extracurricular activity is what contributes to a lot of unhealthy things including the professionalization of activism, the eventual burnout of activists in the long term, as well as the short term turning off and on of how seriously we take our activity.

I don’t have an easy solution to this problem.  I feel like one approach put forward is to make your everyday life the terrain in which you struggle, which seems common sense, but what does that mean?  Does it mean you don’t work a regular job so that your every day life is acting out the world you want to live in?  Or does it mean you only struggle at your workplace because that is where you spend and make most of your life?  Or does it mean you only work on projects that could directly benefit you?

For me personally, I know that once I give myself enough time, space, or just freedom of thought to think about NOT doing anything “political”, I remember why I need to one way or another.  It’s because things really are bad, and just trying to live my own life and not change anything isn’t even an option because I’m just gonna be depressed about how bad things are anyways.  But somehow, from there, to being in a meeting or supposed to do an action of some sort, sometimes the clarity is lost.  Sometimes up close and personal with any sort of action, or education, or planning, etc, it’s hard to see the larger point or larger possible impact it could have, then feels more like an obligation than an opportunity, then hobbyism and burnout commence.

I want to quote someone I was talking with who refers to “us” (more broadly progressives, lefts, anarchists, communists, etc) as “people who want to change the world”.  Even though thats a longer term, and sometimes unwieldy, I think it is good.  It emphasizes what we want to do, not who we are, and implies we may be something else too.  As another writing put it “it isn’t in a vacuum that we are oppressed, and it isn’t in a vacuum that we fight”. Whatever our activities be, here’s to living our lives.

Four years ago, I had just arrived to the Basque country, in a city I called San Sebastian, but would later call Donostia.  I was there to study abroad, and particularly to learn Spanish. Palestine had just undergone the ravages of Operation Cast Lead.  The second week of classes we had a day off for the Festival de San Sebastian, or the Tamborrada.  The festival is a day long event that runs from midnight to midnight, so daytime before the night of opening festivities was technically the day before the festival.  It was the day before Obama’s inauguration.  It was also the first day I met my “intercambio”, or language partner, that wanted to practice their English and with whom I could practice my Spanish.  We met up for a short time before parting ways earlier in the afternoon, but made plans to get together later for the festivities downtown.  This was the beginning of a friendship that exposed me to much more than practicing my Spanish.

We met back up downtown in the Parte Vieja, Alde Zaharra in Euskara, or Old Part in English.  After going around the bars for the majority of the night, being present in the Plaza de la Constitucion at midnight for the beginning of the official festivities of the day, and meeting up with my German roommate who also stayed in my homestay, we went back out to drink and celebrate more.  After a bit more of this, and admittedly being fairly intoxicated, I found myself in the midst of a protest in a courtyard off one of the streets.  As I said, by this point I was pretty drunk and had just been following around my new friend and going to the bars that they led me to, meeting his other friends randomly in the process.  So when we turned a corner and walked into a crowd, I wasn’t quite sure how we had ended up there in the first place, but I was ok with it.  It started out with noise and applause, as someone wearing a keffiyeh over their face walked across an upper ledge of the courtyard waving the flag of Palestine.  This was accompanied and followed by chants:

Pa-le-stina, As-kat-u!  Pa-le-stina, As-ka-tu!

I didn’t yet know what “Askatu” meant literally, but I knew I had been horrified by the bombings in the news before I left the U.S., and took heart at the demonstrations I witnessed in Madrid in the Plaza del Sol before arriving to the Basque country, and I knew I knew what it meant.  I joined in.  Then the subject turned to Basque country, and their own political prisoners, and more chanting, this time for freedom for the Basque country.  I had seen pictures of prisoners briefly earlier at the bar.  There had been a procession of mothers carrying pictures of them at the opening festivities in the Plaza earlier (whether it was officially sanctioned or only tolerated was unclear), and someone had hung a banner from their terrace opening to the square, but this was my first exposure to real militant mass support for the Basque cause.

I still knew very little about the actual situation, what the Basque movement was or what it meant, where it came from.  But I knew about Palestine, I knew about the legacy of Franco, and I knew that there was something going on here that made sense.  Without knowing the language at all, it was clear that the strong connection of these people with the Palestinians, the linking of their causes, of two oppressed nations, in two separate continents, was stronger and more tangible than most of the political movements I had been involved with in my own life.  I was barely comprehending what was going on or how I had gotten there in my intoxicated state, but I knew it was right.  This demonstration was exactly what the school officials and state department warn you to stay away from when abroad anywhere, especially in places like Basque country, but it was really the only place to be.

I’m reposting this December 7th article from Rochester Red and Black in an attempt to engender conversation in Atlanta (and beyond) around the topics raised; the idea of a US-wide anarchist organization/network, the rural/urban divide, the need for anarchist organizations in general. This doesn’t denote an endorsement of the article or the positions it argues for by the Heat Index collective or myself, nor disagreement–but I feel that the  topics covered bear examination, and since this piece has been making the rounds a bit, it seemed a good opportunity to explore them.

Can a Fifty Year-Old Company Serve as a Model for Our Future?

When I first discovered prefigurative politics, or as many of us Wobblies and anarchists say, “Building a new world in the shell of the old,” something clicked inside my head. It instantly made sense and resolved many of my misconceptions and contradictions I saw in anarchist theory. Until then, I’d been only half-hearted about my life as an anarchist, but now it seemed clear that a better world really is possible. So yeah, it would be great to live in a world without rulers and without bosses, and it would be great to start building that world now, but where exactly do we begin?

This whole idea of prefigurative politics and dual power sounds great in theory, but as I’ve involved myself in organized anarchism and radical politics, two issues stand out. First, trying to actually put this idea into practice typically causes all manner of ideological debates, arguments, personal conflicts and insults, and if you’re unlucky enough to be discussing it online, mindless trolling and endless flame wars.

For purists, working within the existing system at all is tantamount to selling out our values as anarchists and freedom fighters. Even for the not-so-purists, it’s hard to decide when we’ve crossed the the line from pushing forward into that new world to simply helping the old system chug along, embedding ourselves deeper and deeper into the status quo of capitalist and statist exploitation. Second, if anyone actually moves beyond this initial dilemma, making any sort of meaningful progress seems like an agonizingly slow and fruitless process. While it’s easy to be excited and dedicated to building this new world now, sooner or later we discover it’s not going to be here tomorrow. With that, and the usual series of roadblocks, internal division, and constant disappointments, most efforts to move forward to this new world stall out or fail altogether before they make much real progress. Such is the life of an American anarchist. I resigned myself to being perpetually frustrated, but resolved to push forward when and where I find an opening. Maybe if I stick with it, I imagined, one day we’d stumble upon the ‘silver bullet’ that finally puts an end to capitalism and the state.

Then I heard about Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (MCC). At first, I didn’t believe what I was reading. Mondragon is the seventh largest company in Spain (the largest in the

The Mondragon-Arrasate village in the Basque country

Basque region) with €14.8 million in revenue in 2011. It provides employment for close to 100,000 people, many of them worker-owners, across 120 coops in the fields of Finance, Industry, Research & Knowledge. Heck, their web site even looks like something a Fortune 500 firm would produce. The more I read, the harder it was to believe that something like this could actually exist., I thought to myself there’s simply no way a company that large can actually be run by workers and exist, let alone compete, in a capitalist system.
Carl Davidson, a scholar and activist (though not an anarchist) who recently had the opportunity to travel to the Basque region and take part in an fairly extensive tour of the Mondragon coops (the workshop he conducted at the 2012 SOA Watch weekend actually serves as the mental spark for this thing you’re reading right now). He compares the company to the discovery of the platypus. When the platypus was first discovered, most folks thought it was just a hoax. Something like that isn’t supposed to exist – it defies the laws of nature! Such is the creature that is Mondragon. It’s a strange new species, a patchwork of well-run coops, that seems to be not only surviving, but thriving, in a world that’s not supposed to be able to support that sort of life.

So, after doing some research and digging into its history, not only have I come to believe that such a creature can actually exist in a world dominated by capitalism, I think that just maybe the Mondragon model can serve as a bridge to this new world we’re hoping to build.

Of course, I’ve not gone completely silly. From an anarchist or even just a general socialist perspective, Modragon in its present form has its share of problems. Neither is it the ‘silver bullet’ that’s going to dump capitalism into an early grave. I do believe though, that if we can find the means to establish more coops in the mold of Mondragon here in North America, rather than continue serving as cogs in an unforgiving capitalist machine, we can make some meaningful advances in the right direction. Rather than continue fighting for concessions in the workplace (or the political arena), sometimes winning, but usually failing and falling farther behind, we will find ourselves in a much better position. We may even find ourselves with a roadmap toward managing our own workplaces and slowly transitioning away from the oppressive system we’ve always known into a place where capitalism and the state exert less and less influence in all of our lives.

Background of the Mondragon Model

Mondragon was started over 50 years ago by a Spanish priest, Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta (Father Arizmendi for short). It was by no means an overnight process. Father Arizmendi arrived in Arrasate-Mondragon region of the Basque country in 1941. There he spent years educating young people about Catholic social teaching, the importance of solidarity, mutual aid, and participation in the local community. While doing this, he founded a technical school and a small credit union to fund his venture. A few years later, he selected the five top students and, with donations and funds borrowed from the credit union,

Father Jose Maria Arizmendi

created a cooperative workshop that developed a small personal stove that sold extremely well. That cooperative workshop went on to become FAGOR, a company which still exists today as one of about 120 Mondragon coops.

One of the most important ideas to come from Father Arizmendi’s project was the combination of the technical school, credit union, and a company with a solid product. These three factors have been crucial to Mondragon’s continue success. Considering that a majority of small business in the United States fail every year due to lack of capital, this is no surprise. In fact, Mondragon is so committed to the credit union-student-solid product paradigm, the company has its own coops dedicated to each of those areas. It has its own credit union, its own technical college (Mondragon University), and its own research and development coop.

I won’t go into an exhaustive list of the Mondragon coops, what they all do, or how they are organized (this information is available at Mondragon’s web site or in Carl Davidson’s book New Paths to Socialism) here. It can’t be stressed enough, though, that the combination mentioned above, along with secondary coops that provide human resource management, health care and insurance, pension and retirement funds, benefits management, and credit and finance services for the coops and worker-owners, provide Mondragon the leverage to be extremely competitive in the capitalist marketplace. These ingredients have been missing in most cooperatives in North America, which may explain why we have had such limited success with them here.

Father Arizmendi’s Ten Principles of Cooperatives

In addition to all this, Father Arizmendi laid out Ten Principles that served as a guideline for his initial parrafin-burning stove project and which still serve as the model for all the Mondragon cooperatives today.

1. Open Admission – Anyone can join the coops, provided they are willing (and able) to work, regardless of gender, sexual preference, religious belief, nationality, age, political affiliation, or, most importantly, class and social status. This guarantees the opportunity afforded by these coops is accessible to anyone, rich, poor, middle class, provides for greater social mobility, and raises the possibility of actually reducing wealth disparity, rather than the enormous chasms between rich and poor to which we’ve grown accustomed under capitalism. New workers are generally brought on as waged employees with an option to later buy into the coop. New workers can even borrow this ‘buy-in’ money from Mondragon’s own credit union at low interest and have payments gradually deducted from their pay.

2. Democratic Operation – Workers in North America rarely, if ever, have a say in the operation of their workplaces. Decisions are generally made by professional managers who often openly disregard, and only occasionally feign appreciation for, the opinions of those actually doing the work or dealing with customers. While a management hierarchy does exist at Mondragon, the coops are run democratically using a ‘one worker, one vote’ model. This doesn’t mean workers have a say in every aspect of day-to-day operations. They are able to participate in and vote at annual or semi-annual general assemblies of workers at which, not only are major business decisions made, but workers actually select which members will lead the company. Not only that, but on the shop floor, there is a noticeable absence of managers or foremen, not because they don’t exist, but because there are far fewer than in similar shops. Workers, for the most part, manage daily operations themselves with little interruption from management, which seems to work quite well and reduces overhead costs.

3. Sovereignty of Labor – This is perhaps one of the most important principles, especially from the perspective of those of us coming from a union or syndicalist background. Rather than viewing labor as an ‘expense’ or a ‘cost of doing business’ as most capitalist firms do, this model views labor as the dominant force. The workers and the work they perform is central to everything that goes on in the coops. Labor has the final say in all matters, which drastically alters the power relationship and workplace dynamics and gives workers not only a sense of control, responsibility, and creates a true feeling of investment, importance, and belonging.

4. Capital as an Instrument – This ties in closely with sovereignty of labor. It’s important to remember that, while Mondragon incorporates many aspects of socialism and worker-control into its model, the company still competes in capitalist markets, and so capital does come into play. However, capital is viewed as a tool to be used, not the dominant force around which all else is arranged. Capital is an instrument to be used and managed by the labor force. The dynamic between labor and capital is one of the most interesting difference and a critical factor that sets the Mondragon model apart from capitalism.

It may seem simplistic, but to help visualize the relationship between Labor and Capital in the two models, here’s a chart comparing them:

5. Worker Self-Management/Participatory Management – Again, while the Mondragon coops do have a hierarchy, their organization is not only more horizontal than the average Fortune 500 company (where there may be 8 or more levels of management between the CEO and the lowest worker on the ladder), it is also democratic on a scope unseen in capitalist organizations. Workers not only manage their own workspaces and shop floors, the company actually encourages worker-owners to be be trained in how to manage the company so that, should they be elected to positions of management, they have the necessary educational background to effectively guide the company. This fosters an environment where, much as anarchists and syndicalists in North America would say, everyone is a leader.

6. Pay Solidarity (Salary Spread) – Recent studies by groups like the Institute for Policy Studies put the pay ratio of CEO’s to low-level waged workers of American companies at between 250:1 to 400:1. That means if I make minimum wage ($7.25/hour in Georgia), the CEO of my company may well be pulling in $2000 to $3000 every hour! At Mondragon, the ratio between the highest- and lowest-paid worker averages around 4.5:1. That’s still a meaningful disparity, and many of us would rightly view this as unfair, especially given that the highest-paid worker is likely not doing 4 times as much work as anyone else. Still, that they are able to retain qualified managers in a competitive labor market at such a low pay ratio is no minor accomplishment. In addition, it’s possible that if we saw a large growth of coops using this model, we could see these ratios creep closer and closer to 1:1.

7. Inter-Cooperation Between Cooperatives– Given the poor state of the Spanish economy recently, cooperation between coops has been critical to Mondragon’s continued success. If one coop is performing well and needs labor, members can be transferred from another coop that is not performing as well or whose goods and services are in lower demand. This diversification has allowed the coops as a whole to remain competitive without the need to reduce the workforce at all. While waged employees who have not bought in can be let go,

Mondragon’s 10 Principles of Cooperatives

Mondragon worker-owners can not be fired or laid off.

8. Social Transformation – Being founded by a Catholic priest, Mondragon has a solid background in social justice and Catholic social teaching, which stresses the importance of concern not just with our own good, but with the good and well-being of our communities and society as a whole. Mondragon has set a new standard of care not just for its members, but also of giving back to the community, social responsibility, and being good stewards of the environment.

9. Universal Solidarity – This feature should be familiar and should certainly appeal to anarchists and syndicalists. It’s essentially an expression of the Wobbly maxim, “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.” Not only are worker-owners expected to express solidarity with their fellow workers, but they should show and practice solidarity with workers in the rest of Spain, Europe, and the entire world. How well this is actually executed is open to question. There is some criticism of a half-hearted support of and detachment from the traditional labor movement among Mondragon members. Going forward, whether we are in a union or members of members of a cooperative, solidarity with and an undying commitment to the welfare of all workers is critical to our success and should be central to everything we do.

10. Education – One of the most distinctive features of the Mondragon coops is their adamant focus on education. This goes back to Father Arizmendi’s original vision. Mondragon would likely not have been possible, and certainly not in its current form, had Father Arizmendi not spent so much effort educating young people in his community about Catholic social teaching and, of course, had he not founded the technical school. Mondragon University functions as a worker-run educational facility with approx. 3600 students. Tuition is comparable to similar in Europe and the university provides the Mondragon coops with a steady stream of well-educated and well-rounded future worker-owners. Not only that, it provides existing members the chance to continue their education to promote personal growth and create a stronger, better-run cooperative,. In the end, this benefits not only the nearly 100,000 Mondragon workers, but the Arrassasate-Mondragon region and everywhere Mondragon operates.

A Better World IS Possible…How Will We Build It?

As Mondragon expands into new territories and increases its market share, the company faces new and unique challenges. Some have criticized Mondragon and similar cooperatives as capitalistic. And they are. But the reality is, while these businesses are competing in a capitalist marketplace, they are not necessarily capitalist. In their present form, these cooperatives are not “the answer” to capitalism and exploitation, but they are a critical step on the path to a society in which we all have a say in our own destiny. And while many anti-business critics speak from theory and have no practical examples to point to for their perspective, Mondragon and upstart coops in the US are actually putting these practices into action – and succeeding.

Some leftists have criticized Mondragon and similar cooperatives for being capitalistic. And they are. It’s important to remember that Mondragon operates in a capitalist market. This is not a socialist utopia by any stretch. But while anti-business and anti-market critics speak from theory, with little or no practical examples of success to fall back on, Mondragon is competing against traditional capitalism – and succeding.

Still, the various coops, Mondragon’s bottom line, and its business decisions are subject to market forces, just like any traditional capitalist company. But, going back to the platypus metaphor, Mondragon is a strange new hybrid or capitalism, worker self-management, and bits of socialism thrown about here and there. And while it competes in a capitalist market, the company has demonstrated that the market need not dominate its values and its basic strategy.

Capitalists, while boasting about the wonders of free markets on one hand, seem perpetually fond of blaming all their shortcomings on ‘the market.’ They can’t pay a living wage because the market won’t allow it. They can’t let workers unionize because the market favors non-union labor. They have to ship jobs to China or Bangladesh and use what amounts to slave labor because that’s what the market demands. If we don’t listen to the market we’ll be left behind, and not only will shareholders be affected, but think about all the good ‘middle-class’ jobs we’ll lose! As if the market absolves capitalist firms of any social responsibility.

Mondragon has proven that this is not necessarily the case. While their track record is not spotless, their social, economic, and environmental record far outshine those of their capitalist competitors, all while competing effectively in the same markets. If a company is well-organized and dedicated to a core culture that values producing top quality products and services in a responsible manner, all while giving back to their community, it can succeed in any market. In fact, in Spain at least, it appears that such a company can even dominate its capitalist competition and succeed even in an economic downturn. All this while not letting go of a single one of its worker-owners. This is perhaps one of the most exciting prospects offered by the Mondragon model.

As anarchists, but not only that, as people with a genuine concern for our neighbors, our brothers and sisters from all lands, and for the generations that will inherit the world we’ve created, it’s up to us to begin building the new world we hope for, the world the lives in our heart. Mondragon serves as one example of how we might begin doing that, but it’s certainly not the only one. In the second part of this article we’ll explore the effect Mondragon’s model is having on coops and other businesses in North America and how we might take these best practices and set about building this new world.

Capitalism, at least capitalism as we know it, is in crisis. This is something we can use to our advantage to increase libertarian-socialist awareness. We need to stop fighting with each other and join together, to make a change and, in the words of Ghandi, “be the change we want to see in the world.” If we don’t, then the capitalists and the statists will build the world they want to see, and that’s not a pretty sight at all.

Many thanks to Carl Davidson, his workshop at the SOA Watch weekend, and his book “New Paths to Socialism” for much of the background on Mondragon. Several of his presentations on Mondragon are available at The Online University of the Left (http://ouleft.org).

For anarchists in the South, fighting white supremacy has to be one of the most important things we do, and there are a lot of questions on how we do it.  I don’t feel that there needs to be much explanation on this point, but briefly, white supremacy is one of the strongest, most deeply entrenched forms of oppression in this country, and it arguably holds the capitalist class system together in the U.S, and the South is a uniquely strategic place to attack it.  As anarchists who are against all oppression and exploitation, we have to fight white supremacy alongside anything else we do, or we will fail.

Being in Atlanta, which is still for the time being a majority black city, members of the heavily white populated and mostly east side Left, have a lot to grapple with when it comes to tackling white supremacy, both externally in fighting efforts like gentrification and school closure, policing, etc, but also internally, in building organizations that do their best to keep from perpetuating white supremacy in their own activity. There are multiple approaches to this. One approach from history has been to recognize that whites need to organize themselves against racism and capitalism, and build organizations that are rooted in and aim to organize “our own” communities.  This has had great successes and many drawbacks, and although I think it might be a viable strategy for some community organizations, there are reasons I am not in favor of starting down this path.  1)Although heavily whitely populated, our left is not white only, and it would be wrong to artificially separate it by ethnicity. 2) I would specifically like to see the IWW do a better job of dealing with race in its organization, and by its nature as a revolutionary economic organization open to all workers, this sort of nationalist separation cannot be an option.

Then what?

In the IWW this conversation has come up before.  As one fellow worker put it, there are two general responses to the lack of diversity in the IWW.  One is to call for an explicit means of addressing it within the organization, and the other is to call for “more organizing”.  The former usually comes from FWs of color that are already in the organization and want to expand the diversity, and the latter usually comes from white FWs.

Another fact is that white dominated organizations don’t easily tend to change themselves into inclusive ones, often regardless of the hopes and goals of the current members.  The reasons for this are many, and should be discussed, but I won’t get into those here.  However, it is possible.  And I think there are some aspects of organization that can make reorganization and chipping away at internal white supremacy a bigger possibility.  To start, a truly democratic structure is one.  The IWW, for all it has yet to realize or regain, has a truly democratic structure and culture. Another is a culture of debate and critical reasoning regarding the path the organization is taking.  This should come along with the former, and in the IWW it definitely does.  We are a growing union/movement, and for this reason I think everyone invested in the organization takes what it is doing seriously and is willing to critically engage in that conversation.  The last and maybe most important point is that because the IWW combines organizing for immediate gains in material conditions, with a revolutionary vision for the future, it is accessible to people of all different walks of life, but inspiring enough to hold peoples attention and commit to the fight. This is what gives me hope that the IWW can become the fully inclusive one big union for ALL workers that we strive to be.  The accessibility and vision for the future are what can allow us to do the initial organizing to bring wider swaths of people in, and the democratic structures and critical culture can allow us to make the changes in the organization itself required to create a more inclusive union.

So with those things in our favor, what are some possibilities for moving forward now? When this conversation came up at the Food and Retail Workers founding convention, one FW explained how he was a member of two organizations, the IWW and the National Lawyers Guild. Both are white dominated, but one, the NLG, has been making advances in changing this much more than the IWW has.  He said that the difference in his mind is the NLG has a People of Color caucus that can recommend changes to the way organization works, to address the issues the caucus recognizes within the organization.  I think that this sounds like a great idea for our international structure.  We have a Gender Equity committee already, there is really no reason not to have a more or less analogous committee regarding race.  I think in the coming year we should encourage other branches to join us in drafting a proposal for such a committee, to be voted on at next year’s convention, and along with it, branches will be encouraged to tackle this issue in their own local branches in intentional and democratic ways.

Point of clarification:  The Industrial Workers of the World is not and has not ever been an anarchist organization, it is a radically democratic revolutionary labor union.  As such, many of us who maintain this blog, who may believe in separate, specific anarchist organizations, see it as a good place to put our efforts for social and economic organizing.  But it is a union, open to all who agree with the preamble.  See IWW, Political Parties, and Anarchism.

That being the case, it is precisely anarchists who should be leading the struggle against white supremacy in the organization because as noted above, it should be one of our highest priorities.  This struggle will be in the organization as a whole but also with other anarchists that disagree with the importance of it.

Bringing it back out to anarchist movement in Atlanta, I think that this will mean, aside from addressing the internal operations of an organization, doing the sort of external work on conditions that affect the whole class or the most exploited sections, not just the white working class.  This may mean working in new struggles that we initiate, or it may mean linking up with and supporting those already engaged in these sorts of struggles, or allying with other people and organizations just beginning to go in the directions that we wish to.  This is a conversation that we should continue having across the board, but I hope this piece helps provide some ideas to start with.