A NEW WORLD IN OUR HEARTS

I found Paul Avrich's book The Haymarket Tragedy in the library while I was a freshman in high school and read it every chance I could. In doing so, I was transported from my Southern California suburb to the working-class, largely European immigrant, communities of Chicago and followed the lives of leading anarchist labor organizers who fought to build unions while also creating a vibrant culture of socialist theatre groups, community dances, athletic clubs, newspapers, singing groups, and schools. They took on the bosses and the state; they built a highly successful national campaign that successfully utilized the general strike. Some of them lost their lives. Ultimately, they won concrete improvements while invigorating an international working-class radical movement whose visions, analysis, victories, defeats, and legacies are still with us today.

The values of solidarity and collective action clashed with the alienation and individualism I felt all around me. Thus, when friends and I started an activist group, we were influenced not only by the anarchism of political punk music, but also began studying the theory and history of anarchism to help us develop our politics and plan of action. The strategy of working for immediate gains such as the eight-hour work day, the weekend, and improved working conditions, while simultaneously agitating against capitalism and for a democratic socialist society, ignited hope and possibility for ways we could take on war, poverty, and the suffocating culture of consumer capitalism. The connection I felt to a historical tradition of struggle for liberation was like a balm to the wounds I didn't even know I had from growing up in the post-civil rights, Reagan-era right-wing backlash, assaults on historical memory, and the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" myth that marked life in white working- and middle-class America in the 1980s.

For more than two decades, anarchist politics and a connection to the anarchist tradition have been fundamental to my efforts to build powerful working class-based, feminist, multiracial movements. Anarchism for me, however, is not a strict orthodoxy of beliefs. We can draw a lot from the anarchist tradition to help guide us forward, but a good amount of what I think we can learn is from the failures and shortcomings of anarchist politics. I believe in a praxis-based organizing approach in which we develop our analysis and strategy through a process that combines education, practice, reflection, and synthesis, so that our ideas and practices are evolving. While I draw from the anarchist tradition outlined in this chapter, one of the goals of this book is to break down ideological barriers in anarchist and radical politics that limit our ability to have a praxis-based organizing practice that encourages us to evolve and grow. Far too often, maintaining a correct line of what is and isn't radical leads to political conformity in Left activist circles that stifles political and personal growth and leads to a culture of insecurity and infighting based on proving one's radical credentials. This culture of "more radical than thou" isn't welcoming, supportive, sustainable, healthy, or successful in achieving our goals.

One of the main lessons throughout this book is that we need a revitalized, dynamic, and visionary Left politics that draws from many traditions, not just anarchism, but also Marxism, socialism, feminism, revolutionary nationalism, and others. Additionally, I believe we need to draw insights, lessons, and examples from liberation struggles in communities of color, from working class-based struggles in the labor movement, from the struggle for queer liberation, and many other struggles and liberation movements in the United States and around the world. Furthermore, we need space to acknowledge and learn from the failures, mistakes, and shortcomings of all our traditions and struggles to draw lessons and insights and to help us stay humble and open. In order for us to develop the politics we need, we must also create the culture we need to support us.

We need Left culture that encourages growth and learning. We need culture that celebrates and nourishes the creativity, beauty, and joy of this world while we struggle against oppression and exploitation. We need culture that builds people up rather than tearing them down. We need culture that reminds us that there are many paths to the goals we seek, rather than one right answer. We need culture that nurtures, teaches, and encourages us to win and create the changes in society we need.

The goal of this essay is to provide a basic introduction to anarchist ideas and history as a window into an important set of politics and experiences critical for developing effective and visionary Left politics.

Anarchism and Contemporary Left Organizing

Anarchist organizations, strategies, methods and visions played a leading role in the economic justice upsurge of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 that ignited the imagination of millions of people who participated in the largest Left-based movement in a generation. From general assemblies for decision-making to the emphasis on direct action as both a tactic of protest and strategy to build people-powered democratic movements and society, the Occupy movement revitalized Left politics and action in mainstream society.

At the turn of the past century, anarchist organizations, strategies, methods, and visions also played a leading role in the mass action convergences of the global justice movement in Seattle and beyond, with tens of thousands using anarchist organizing structures like affinity groups, spokescouncils, and consensus decision-making to take direct action. Again, direct action served as both a tactical way to confront unjust institutions of the global ruling class, such as the World Trade Organization, and a strategy for everyday people to take action beyond the rules of capitalism, opening a window to the world we seek to create. In both the Occupy movement and the global justice movement, anarchist influence is expressed in understanding that the power to make systemic social change come from the bottom up and that we must create what we are for while we work against what we oppose,

At the grassroots level around the country, groups and projects that are either explicitly anarchist or anarchist influenced are working for economic, racial, gender, environmental, and social justice. Anarchism operates as a theoretical framework to understand the world and an ethical approach to revolutionary social change. Most anarchists are also socialists and analyze society and social change...