Matt’s Personal Statement

Hey y’all!

I am not sure if this is the right place for this. Did we have a Google document going?

It is no secret that we are poised once again on the brink of a social, economic, political, and ecological crisis that has been growing for the past 1500 years as cultures have sunk more and more deeply into the patriarchal, authoritarian, dualistic, dogmatic, monotheistic, nationalist, and capitalist systems that dominate most of the world today.

Some of our class members expressed an observation that “interest in anarchy and anarchist collectives in particular is once again gaining steam.” I see this as part of an exit strategy that many of us are plotting towards an earlier model for living in an attempt to heal some of the damage that has been dealt our world. As we enter more fully into what astrologists term the Aquarian Age, we will be guided by our intuition, or our connection to Consciousness, and our need for authentic, voluntary connections with other people that can mend the extreme disconnections, inequalities, and imbalances that the ego-driven Piscean Age has wrought on humanity and the earth.

I have decided for my personal statement to make a list of what I see as some trends and practices, along with the resurgence of anarchy, that might be a part of the (new) world we are working to (re)create . . . Feel free to add things as you think of them! AND Making a list of places and groups that are doing these things would be a terrific resource for us all. I will continue to add to this as well.

• Horizontally-organized, voluntary associations: ex. Collectives and Cooperatives: professional, trades, food, social, housing, economic,  etc (we discussed a lot of these in class) . . . ;
• Consensus-based decision-making and direct democracy;
• Revival of neighborhood-based associations and community organizing, with access to social services on a neighborhood level;
• Massive, multi-level organizing and re-education towards transforming our social illnesses and deep disconnections in terms of race, class, ability, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, language, ability, religion, sex, and age.
• Universal health care;
• Gardening and permaculture, community- and house-based;
• Renewable energy;
• Public transportation and pedestrian-friendly communities;
• Skill-shares;
• Local currencies;
• Experience-based multicultural education centered equally on “the basics,” trades, arts and culture, and the environment/natural world ALONGSIDE Consciousness-based education (cultivating the alertness, awareness, or true intelligence within each of us) with a focus on mystical/esoteric spiritual practices, including reverence for the earth and all life and respect for other religious traditions and beliefs;
• Herbal and alternative medicines;
• Vegetarianism/veganism/microbiotic/organic – focusing on real, natural food that is as local as possible, and nurturing biodiversity;
• Move towards multi-lingualism: Sign-language, Spanish, Chinese, and other local languages for all in addition to English;

To be continued! I offer this list up in the spirit of discussion, so let me know what you think!

Some things worth checking out

So I was going to look into organizations that primarily serve and ideally are run by people of color in the Twin Cities. While I would have been better to do more than internet searching I haven’t really at present, so see the ungainly list attached.

Of particular note are:

Sabathani Community Center: http://www.sabathani.org/

The Minneapolis Urban League: http://www.mul.org/

Communities United Against Police Brutality:  http://www.cuapb.org/HomePage.asp

So yeah. Check it out and yeah.

Twin Cities legal activism

Hey folks,

I have attended a grand total of one class, but I’ve been keeping up with e-mails and interests, and I thought I’d throw out what I’ve been working on (instead of going to class).

One aspect of sharing knowledge and building solidarity in the radical community that I am passionate about is legal stuff. While we still live under a system of state repression, it is super important that we all have a basic knowledge of our rights and the legal system/process so that we can stand up for ourselves and our community when challenged. Knowing one’s rights and legal options can be super empowering, especially to communities of activists, persons of color, poor folks, immigrants, queer and transgender folks, and any other people who face state repression and rights violations. Such knowledge strengthens individuals and communities alike, as people are less likely to suffer from feelings of fear and terror when they know that they are part of a strong, supportive community that has the knowledge and the tools to fight back against state repression.

Recently, a few friends and I formed Coldsnap Legal Collective as a legal activist group to serve the radical community in the Twin Cities. We coordinate trainings on knowing your rights, the legal system and process (including options and consequences if you are arrested), and jail solidarity. We also have a jail support hotline for anyone who has been arrested, especially during large events or demonstrations such as the upcoming RNC. I added the link to our website under web resources on the right-hand side of this page so that people can access our contact information and jail support hotline number as needed, and also check out our upcoming training dates and events.

If any of y’all are interested in getting involved in our collective or for more information, please e-mail us at coldsnap (at) riseup (dot) net. We will be having an info meeting this Sunday, March 9th at 2pm (EXCO class time, sorry!) at Seward Cafe, and will post future meeting times on our website for interested persons. We are looking for people to help out with trainings, staff our jail support hotline, and offer any skills that they may have (tech, publicity, legal research, etc.).

I won’t be at class this Sunday either, but I enjoy getting updates on what we are all working on! Let’s keep working together to build the world we all envision!

Love and solidarity,

Becky

EDIT:  The correct date for the Coldsnap info meeting is Sunday, March 9th, NOT the 11th.  I edited the info above as well.  Hope to see you all there!

Gardens, Coops, + Consensus

Hey everybody!

My task for the week was to find more information on community gardens. My brother made a great set of maps and info with all of the MPLS gardens last year using GIS, so I will try to get me paws on that.

In the meantime, GardenWorks has a great list of gardens and gardeny orgs: http://www.gardenworksmn.org/

- Also, I thought I would share a page that I found on Starhawk’s site about using consensus in decision-making. It’s been useful to me in the past. http://www.starhawk.org/activism/consensus.html

- Lastly, I did find a list also of some TC housing coops that I wanted to share at a site called Intentional Communities. http://directory.ic.org/records/?action=search_results&locations%5Bstate_prov%5D=Minnesota

See you on Sunday . . .
Matt

Radical Project Twin Cities

So, my project for this week was going to be to research projects already up and running in the Cities that could become key projects within Herod’s plan of action to gut capitalism and could also be seen as the basis for the projects of a post-capitalist society. Unfortunately, except for the usual suspects, most of the orgs I looked up don’t have anything written on their websites that’s suggestive of potential anti-capitalist sympathies. In fact, many of them focus on enterprise and entrepreneurship as the keys for community-building within economically impoverished communities. However, here’s a short list of the projects I know at this point which I hope will be expanded by everyone, to provide a small sketch of future possibilities for organizing.

Food

Farm in the City   www.farminthecity.org

Youth Farm   http://www.youthfarm.net/

Sister’s Camelot  http://www.sisterscamelot.org/ Anti-authoritarians; anarchist bent

Others who are looking into community gardening, add stuff here!!

Media

KFAI Radio Without Boundaries  http://www.kfai.org/ Radically-minded programming

Alley Newspaper (Phillips Neighborhood) I just started reading this paper, but they seem to have an autonomously-oriented edge

Daybreak Collective Newspaper  http://www.daybreaknewspaper.org/ Anarchist newspaper. Inconsistently publishes; I’m not sure if the collective exists unless they’re working on a paper. Undernourished project–any takers?

Space

The Jack Pine Community Center  http://www.thejackpine.org/ Is apparently closing at the end of March, which is a tragedy. Should we be thinking about buying cooperatively to keep places like the Jack Pine open?

The Belfry  http://belfrycenter.wetpaint.com/?t=anon  Radical Community Center. Could be described as anarchist.

The Medusa  Show space, art space, educational space, also some folks’ living quarters. Underground. Many of us can connect you if you need a space.

Arise!  http://www.arisebookstore.org/  Radical bookstore collective and community meeting space.

MORE TO COME!

Class 3! Notes + Interests/Tasks

Below are a few quick notes and the  things people committed to looking into for next week (and bringing to class!) also feel free to put up neat discoveries on the blog as you have them!

Analyzing unfreedom from concrete situations of unfreedom: a student and working, a person who is unemployed with little/no education, a person with many dependents, an elderly person with little money or connections.

Themes/Common Ideas:

1) The importance of getting breathing space so as to even be able to function

2) The difficulties of working across difference and the importance of acknowledging and working on issues regarding white supremacy, racism, classism, sexism, etc that are inherent to the position(s) of unfreedom, as well as class differences between any give racial group (whites, etc)  

3) The model of churchs as a community based on mutual aid and common purpose…radacalize! (perhaps without the religion part)

4) The importance of setting up situations where care and security is taken care of (like in affinity groups), and the importance of this as a place to move to making action

5) Concrete ideas included: funds for emergencies (of many different types), volunteer organized child care, classes on preventative medicine, etc, community gardens, targeting landlords to try to get them to sell so as to create more stable neighborhoods, cooperative housing, working to create job opportunities, etc

A note on specifics:

While we are going to get more into all the different things Herod proposes next time, many people found his critiques of both environmentalism and religion as both potentially important (don’t spend all your energy doing extra stuff for the capitalists, religion can and continues to be a reactionary and dangerous force) but also as oversimplified, and frankly, grumpy old man material.

People’s Interests/What They’re Going to Bring for Next Week!

David–Important organizations run by or connected to large numbers of people of color in the Twin Cities

Jude–Movements throughout the world that create spreadable models via autonomous chapters, bring a list of examples, how it works (earthfirst, critical mass, etc)

Sweet and
Emily–Read more/create a reading list of radical action/theory by people of color, how strategy is considered from a different perspective/theoretical point of view, also interested in co-ops

Brendan–go to the vault and to the anarchist tradition for ways that this type of stuff has been done in the past

Heith–look into other traditions how they’ve done it, also how to work less (check out the Black Panther’s 10 Point Program: http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm)

Karen–timebanks! do research on how they work (contact Victoria Patschke vpatschke@gmail.com, check out: www.hourdollars.org, www.timebanks.org)

Paper–how would you go about explicitly creating these types of autonomous decision-making bodies, look into the functions of current neighborhood groups as well as histories of non-issue specific neighborhood organizing (maybe contact laila davis about this lailalailad@yahoo.com)

Kristen–a lot of stuff is happening that would be essential to this type of model, will make a list of such things (community gardens, etc) and check them out to see what their investments/approaches are…if they’d be into this type of anti-capitalist project

Chris–not sure, will do something regardless

Taylor–look into non-American models for making this type of change, and non-American anarchist movements, perhaps look into Autonomia from Italy and Germany, the Zapitistas, Horizontaldad, and Peoples’ Global Action

Matt–interested in setting up a garden in relation to his work at YouthLink, want to think more about gardens

Kristi–interested in what is tangible and happening today (and probably in the Twin Cities)

Eli–interested in larning more about different forms of direct democratic process, perhaps look at the Zapitistas, the Direct Action Network, American Indian practices, Quaker meeting practices, etc

Common Groupings:

-Other models/ways of organizing, histories and present: Jude, Taylor, Emily, Heith, Brendan, Paper, Eli

-Existing Twin Cities institutions: David, Kristen, Paper, Matt, Kristi

Basic Outline of Getting Free

 What Herod Wants…Summary of the Strategy/Values of Getting Free1)      Building not protesting: figure out what we want and create it, as opposed to symbolic attacks on the powers that be2)      Anti-elitism: Herod sees everyone as being capable of taking part in this strategy3)      Meeting halls: the power of association, face to face decision making, direct democracy4)      Culture of resistance: all the ways to disengage and devalue that which keeps us from building our own power and running our own lives  5)      Eliminating the division between work and housework, production and reproduction, work and leisure 6)      End game: having built the new world, and defended it from destruction by capitalists, the capitalist world is so drained of support as to fall away like a dead shell, a snake shedding its skin, the associations take full control over all the land, workplaces, etc   Outlining the enemy:

• Wage slavery—the fact that we have to find a job or die
• Capitalist invasion/enforced dependence—the reason why we have to work within the system or starve, all autonomous means of reproduction, commons, have been eliminated
• Capitalism—the system that creates enforced dependence and is based in wage slavery; in conditions of wage slavery people produce more wealth then they are paid, hence and that is stolen by capitalists and reinvested to produce more money, rinse, repeat

 Herod’s central critiques of other strategies:

• Failing to focus energy on building the world we want
• Putting too much trust in figuring things out in times of crisis
• Over-estimating the effectiveness of non-total strategies
• Spending too much energy on symbolic protest

 Blueprint of the New Society: Creating an Association of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods He sees the new society as resting on three areas of life and three types of associations:

• Autonomous neighborhood associations (1000-2000 people)—the key decision-making bodies and the ones that make treaties  
• Workplace associations (by workplace size)—self-run workplaces
• Housing associations (250 or so)— including health care, schooling, birthing rooms, some recreation activities, etc

 Each person takes part in

• One project groups (30 or so people) which can either be located in households or workplaces or neighborhoods
• One neighborhood association

 All associations and project groups are run according to:

• Voluntary association
• Direct democracy
• Face to face decision making