Our discussion with anarchist collective CrimethInc. participant 'B' was full of lessons for how we can better organize our movements. How to form true collectives that value each and every voice, not just symbolically, but in how they make decisions. B describes how there is a way to find harmony without requiring complete unity.

This episode helps to better define anarchism as it is in these times; a collective project for self-determination. It is completely compatible with the work we are already doing, and may hold key answers to the questions that hive stagnated many movements.

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• CrimeThInc. Homepage

Greetings, friends. My name is Jess McLean, and I'm here to provide you with some blueprints

of disruption. This weekly podcast is dedicated to amplifying the work of activists, examining

power structures, and sharing the success stories from the grassroots. Through these discussions,

we hope to provide folks with the tools and the inspiration they need to start to dismantle

capitalism, decolonize our spaces, and bring about the political revolution that we know

we need. Welcome to the studio, B. Can you introduce yourself to the audience? Hi, I am a participant

in the CrimeThink collective. I've been involved in it for many years. We were hoping to be

able to put a couple people on the air with you all today, but unfortunately you just get

me. So although I'll do my best to represent our collective, I want everyone to remember

that I am just one of many people who work on this project. in other circumstances, you might

be able to get a broader array of experiences or perspectives. But I'm very happy to get

to speak with you. Before I get you to explain crime think to people, I want to make note

that is the second time you've emphasized the want to bring on more voices. And at first,

I thought perhaps it was just because I invited you to bring more people and you thought perhaps

like that is how our show operates and that's what we expected. But I can tell by the way

you've repeated it to you, it's, and you always correct me if I'm wrong about this, but it

has that anti-authoritarian feel already. Like you don't want to be the spokesperson for a

collective and a recognition verbally, the recognition of the value of a collective of voices. And

I'll tell you, like that's hitting me. I'm hearing it and I'm feeling it and it has significance

to me beyond. you kind of just apologizing for like, hey, it's just me. You know, like it's

not that. Yeah, I feel like we're always most intelligent and most interesting when we're

in dialogue with each other because between, even if it's just two people, any two people

draw on a different range of experiences and a different positioning in the world order

that we inhabit. And I think it's always better to... to hear from multiple people in any collective

or any project, even if the project is vertical, if you didn't just hear from the media representative

of Disney, but you also heard from the person who has to dress up as a cartoon character

every day, you would learn more, right? So everything that we do, we try to be drawing on multiple

experiences and drawing more people into dialogue, and at the same time, the way that our project

is structured, there are bottlenecks, and there are some people who... who really want their

voices out there, and some people who are more retiring. And the project of trying to distribute

agency and leverage over what we do is one of the fundamental challenges, probably not just

for our collective, but for humanity in general. We've kind of jumped ahead. Now we've got to

go back. Explain your collective to the audience. Who is WE? Okay, WE in this case is Crime Think,

which is a decentralized anarchist collective. active since the mid 1990s. The first crime

think projects emerged out of the zine underground in the 1990s, you know, that involved some

like punk and hardcore and riot girl and some other circles, but a bunch of different self-publishing

projects and sort of a network emerged out of that of people doing provocative political

and discursive interventions. Undertaking experiments, you know, people who, for example, were politicized

by the sort of do-it-yourself counterculture underground, but came to the conclusion that

just being able to self-manage the production of cultural arts, like music or literature,

was not ambitious enough, that what we should really be trying to do is to get control over

all of the different factors that determine what our lives will be like. And that's where

the commitment to anarchism as a set of proposals about how agency and power should be distributed,

how anarchism became important to us. So basically since the turn of the century, we have functioned

as a network involving participants in different social struggles all around the world, you

know, from here to... you know, Russia or Sudan. And we try to give a platform to participants

in social struggles, social movements in different parts of the world, and create dialogues between

people in different movements in different places. And in that regard to sort of function as an

institutional memory for grassroots, horizontal social movements. You know, just to be able

to pass on lessons, tactics, strategies, historical experiences, memories from one generation of

movements to the next. But, you know, that's the ambitious way to describe it. You know,

the other way to describe it is that, you know, we're a network of several dozen people who

work together consistently to distribute books, maintain a website where people's reports from

different parts of the world can appear. And we're in continuous dialogue about strategy,

about what it is that we can do to help really everyone to get more leverage in their lives

and reestablish their relationships on an egalitarian basis. You're our people, man. Aspiring to

be. This is our jam. We're just all smiles sitting here listening to that. Now you talk about

lessons, folks really should check out their list of books. I, you know, the show is called

Blueprints of Disruption and that is, that is what they provide and then some. Now you say

it's a couple dozen people, you guys are putting out a lot of work. That's, it's impressive.

The website and the pieces that are being written on top of that are also... Quite impressive,

but I love the idea of it kind of being a written history that's growing, ever growing. Yeah,

that is important to us. Just keeping our website and all the articles we've published for 25

years online itself is like, hopefully will serve as an archive for people in the future

trying to study these events, because a lot of the websites that have been, you know, really

important places for dialogue. you know, a place like infoshop.org 20 years ago, or some of

the indie media pages are gone. And you can just barely use archive.org to see some of

what was there. But for us, we are really trying to think on the scale of decades or aspirationally

centuries that we should actually be able to pass on these lessons and keep them accessible

to everybody. We had a guest recently who had a line that really hit, which was, the most

valuable commodity that capitalism owns is history. And that just reminded me of that because,

you know, having studied history, one term I never really learned about in history class

or was anarchism itself. I think it conjures for many people images of the purge and- Chaos.

Chaos and- lawlessness, you know, just, and it's not really, you know, as I've gone to

learn about what anarchism is, it's not really at all what it is. And I think that a lot of

people haven't had the opportunity to really learn about it because it's not exactly something

that, you know, it's, it's been an intentional effort to not teach about it. So, you know,

just the, I ask about this early, just to feed our conversation as this goes on, but What

does anarchism mean to you? Well, you're right that it's a there are a lot of people who have

an interest in Misrepresenting anarchism because basically everybody who desires to be able

to rule over others Whatever ideological framework they're coming from if they desire to be able

to rule over others They're going to be opposed to anarchism and they're going to have an interest

in misrepresenting it Anarchism I mean basically it is a set of questions about how to make

it possible for people to coexist as equals. And another way to frame that is that anarchism

is the proposal that everyone should have the agency and the power to determine how they

fulfill their potential, to determine how they will live on their own terms. And of course,

this isn't something that we can do as isolated individuals. We're all part of. communities

were all part of a society and a global biosphere also, right? So having self-determination has

to be a collective project. Anarchism is the idea that everyone should have leverage over

what their lives are and also that we have to find ways of working together to be able to

establish this. It also involves defending ourselves from those who would like to dominate us and

seeing others well-being as Essentially interconnected with our own, you know since we can't establish

Self-determination, you know individual by individual that's something that communities have to do

collectively and struggle That means that if we're if we're going to succeed in creating

an egalitarian society that that's going to depend on solidarity, it's going to depend

on us all seeing our freedom as being interconnected with everyone else's. And there are lots of

different histories of anarchism we could spell out here. Like you say, history itself is a

contested terrain. But for me, the most fundamental thing that we take from 150 years of self-declared

anarchist movements is this idea that if we want If we ourselves as individuals want to

have freedom, and we don't want that to come at the expense of someone else, that we have

to develop an entire toolbox of skills and strategies, both for defending ourselves and for resolving

conflicts without recourse to hierarchical powers or oppression. I have so much to unpack there.

I could ask about a dozen questions from what you just said. I think it's important that

you drove that point home of the collective. Because I think a lot of people have a view

of anarchism as being very libertarian, because it emphasizes the agency and self-determination,

which is not unlike Marxism, right? Owning the means of production and human emancipation.

Because You know, one of the critiques that I often hear about anarchist systems moving

forward, not so much the struggle, but as a form of kind of self-governance or systems

of distribution and whatnot, is that the most vulnerable would be left behind. Because you

can imagine in a libertarian approach, that's exactly everyone fends for themselves. But

that point that your freedom... can't come at the expense of another, I think is very pivotal

there. And I think it's what allows anarchism to really fit into all of the movements, because

that is where everybody's going. They may not have articulated it from an anarchist perspective,

but surely all these progressives that are working within movements don't feel good about authoritarianism.

Generally that's what they're battling on a whole. They might not know that, you know,

like they may be very focused on climate change or passing a very specific law or defunding

the police. That's a little closer, right, to anti-authoritarian, but they don't articulate

it that way. And then as such, they're replicating a lot of these systems a little bit maybe unknowingly,

but I think more perhaps from a lack of the tools that you folks have, not that you've

not distributed them well, but that... They can't see anything else. Like they know, okay,

we've got a party here, just so our audience, the NDP. They're the most progressive choice

that most folks think they have. And they operate the same as every other political party, very

pyramid structure, very, they're almost fascist. Like they're just, it's an awful environment.

And it's obviously not built towards our goals. But still some people come out of there trying

to do something different, but looking the same. So can you give us some practical tools of

the conflict resolution that you're talking about or ways that people can move away from

authoritarian structures? Do you guys have a chair for your meeting? I don't know how detailed

we can go, but is there a few things that you guys would do that would really kind of blow

our minds that are a different way of operating, of creating discourse and coming out of it

with... a solution. Well, gosh, I appreciate the invitation to blow your minds. I mean,

I'm not sure how unfamiliar the proposals that we have to offer will be to the people who

are listening. And that's partly because anarchist proposals and strategies have become more and

more familiar over the last 25 years. You know, 25 years ago, when I was sort of cutting my

teeth. some of the proposals that were That only anarchists and a few other people were

making you know, whether we're talking about like new ideas about gender or About you know,

it's sort of rejecting dogmatic non-violence politics those were those were very marginal

proposals and now you know after the 2020 the George Floyd uprising in the United States

and a series of other movements around the world, the proposals that we have are much more familiar

to people. The one thing that hasn't necessarily taken off, you know, is the idea that we should

pursue anti-authoritarian relationships systematically, right? Like many more people now are familiar

with the critique not only of gender roles, but of fixed... gender identity in a biological

sense. Many more people are familiar with the idea that perhaps it is more destructive not

to intervene in the forces that are causing climate change than it is to break a window

or shut down a pipeline or something. Many more people are familiar with those ideas at this

point. But the idea that... we should systematically approach all of our efforts towards political

change as efforts to deconstruct hierarchies and redistribute power. That's still a radical

proposal. And part of this is because anarchists are often in the front lines of struggles and

consequently are often the first people who are facing repression, you know. And so if

you're an

high level political charges or getting supplies to people who are in bad situations, supporting

people who are doing prison terms, rather than just having your hands free to communicate

with other people. That's among the many challenges that we face. So in terms of strategies, which

is the question that you asked, if I could summarize a basic proposal, a basic way to understand

what's common to all of our proposals, it would be that in our movements, as well as in the

world that we seek to build, access to power should itself be decentralized. Not just, it

should be egalitarian, but it should also be decentralized, because if everybody has to

go through a single process to get their voices heard. or to have leverage over what a group

does, or to have access to the resources that they need to live, that still will create a

sort of a lowest common denominator control over what can happen and over whose voices

are heard and whose are not, right? What I'm describing will probably be familiar to you

from some of your experiences. So this is one of the reasons that we critique, we critique

vertical forms of power, like domination, we don't. think that a government like, you know,

like the one that Vladimir Putin heads in Russia, we don't think that's a good thing. We also

see the ways that self-declared representative democracies, like the one that functions in

the United States, also shut out and silence a large part of the population. And neither

of those are useful models to base our activist organizing on. You know, in both cases, we

want to... What we want to do with our collective, with Crime Think, what we want to do is put

resources and skills at people's disposal that people can replicate and use themselves. We

want to show ways of accessing resources that understand resources in terms of abundance

rather than scarcity. We want to put tactics at others' disposal so that we can make sure

that, rather than depending on the decisions of an organizing council, that may be unaccountable

to everybody else in a movement, that people can immediately take action according to their

own priorities and their own vision of the world. And the reason that we think this is important

is because we think that intelligence arises when you have the input of everybody who is

affected by an issue, rather than... rather than just the input or the decision-making

of one person or one group. We think that if a group or a movement, if a movement or a network

is responsive to the information that is coming into all of the different participants in the

movement, that movement will act in more strategic and intelligent ways than a movement that is

limited by what a specific group within the architecture. the movement is able to recognize

or see from their particular vantage point. That's why we focus on tactics that can be

replicated or taken up by anybody, wherever they are, and why we try to share information

from groups that are employing those tactics experimentally, in particular social movements,

so that people in other social movements can learn from their experiences and immediately

put those lessons into practice. You comment about the lowest common denominator made me

think about, you know, when we approach things for example from, you know, you hear a lot

of people talk about the working class, right, as kind of one of those common denominators.

And then, you know, one thing we talk about is how that could exclude people who are not

able to work, disabled folks, as an example, right? And you know, there's... a lot of situations

where movements leave people like disabled folks behind and are not properly advocating for

them. How does that fit in, I guess, into what you're talking about to make sure that people

like them are not left behind? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, for me, class consciousness

is one of the ways that we can describe what we're trying to do. Class is not the only vector

of oppression, right? Oppression plays out according to many different vectors. So if we only were

thinking in terms of class, then you have a framework where you say, okay, what we're trying

to do is liberate the working class, which is true, but I would say it's necessary, but not

sufficient, right? Because for the better part of the last... 200 years during which class

politics had developed, a large part of the labor that, for example, women do, has not

been visible through the framework of class. And it's also true what you say about disabled

people and also the precariously employed, you know? The class politics that were useful anarchist,

syndicalist, Marxist movements, a hundred some years ago, when the majority of the population,

at least of some countries, was engaged in industrial production, those are antiquated in a time

in which more and more people are working in what's called the tertiary sector. They're

working in supplying goods and services rather than the raw production of industrial goods.

And so in this... in the situation where more and more people are precariously employed,

a lot of the old strategies like focusing on organizing labor unions that act in factories,

for example, are producing diminishing returns. So, you know, one of the proposals that we've

explored over the last couple decades is that we need to understand the protagonist of these

struggles as something that is as a population that is broader than just those who are in

stationary stable employment in Industrial unions for example, does it does that make sense as

an answer to oh, yes Yes, we've we had a whole episode on The need you know for labor to include

social movements and how that can happen because of the certain demographic that they represent

and that focus that they tend to have around collective bargaining, and that's it. Yeah.

I mean, the problem is that if we only understand labor movements as efforts to bargain for a

better deal for those who are in formal and powerful unions, we're leaving out a tremendous

portion of those who have to work in other contexts to make money, or those who are engaged only

in... what is sometimes called reproductive labor, the unpaid work in the household. So

this question came to the fore, for example, during the Occupy movement in 2011 when participants

in the movement, anarchists, people who were involved with our projects, also participated

in shutting down the port of Oakland at the high point of the Occupy struggle. And that

was an example of this where The people who actually work in the port, they're in a union,

they're in a pretty strong union, but a union in which their agreement forbids them from

striking, right? The general strike in Oakland, the way that it worked to have a general strike,

it wasn't just the formal unionized employees that went on strike, it was all of the excluded,

all of the precarious workers. that shut down workplaces, in some cases just from outside,

not from their position within the workplace, but from outside of them, and that marched

to the port and blockaded the port and compelled the port to shut down. I think that we have

to understand labor struggles much more broadly if we want to be able to wield power in a time

when the, because of neoliberal globalization. workers in Canada and the United States are

outflanked by global capital in a lot of ways. Yeah, and the confines that exist within the

labor unions tend to sometimes hold us back. So I want to go back to one of your previous

statements because I'm just frantically taking notes and I'm definitely not going to get to

digest everything. But Santiago and I... We're having a discussion earlier today on a statement

someone made online. They were really not frustrated, but talking about the need to shut things down.

Um, and Santiago and I, we, we often talk about this, the need to escalate, but also balancing

by not leaving anybody behind. And one of the proposals that you speak of is allowing for

a rainbow of tactics. so that people are being utilized and heard. And you talked about that

the collective intelligence and there's no arguing that, but it's also on the individual level,

right? When you give everybody that space to be heard or to apply their energies in the

way that they want to, right? Like if that's destructively or that's in dialogue. And when

you don't allow that, you start to really create problems within the individual too. And I'd

like to kind of maybe have that kind of shut it down discussion because I'll give you some

context. It was a group of people trying to disrupt a meeting, but it's also can be replicated

in a march that's going down the street, but only taking up half the street and chanting

shut it down, but not actually shutting anything down. So within these movements, you can tell

that there is the appetite for it. And it's always trying to find, I guess, the lowest

common denominator here. I'm using that same language in a different sense. Like, so if

the most uncomfortable person isn't comfortable with pushing police out of the way, then it's

not going to happen. Or if people don't want to look bad and shut down an event that might

have other political implications. whatever, then it's just not done because not everyone's

ready and we don't want to alienate anybody. And I think in the end you actually end up

alienating those people that are ready to do more, but are being held back. And then at

the same time as being held back, we're purposely not giving them the tools. We feel like that's

a way of holding them back. Like just don't teach them how to fight then or how to stop

police violence or whatever we want to talk about. Because if we do them, we're encouraging

it. Like Santiago, we have this battle here internally because we do want to provide tools

of disruption, but we don't want to put, we don't want to light a fire we can't control,

but I think sometimes, I don't know. Can you help us through that, be from an anarchist

perspective maybe? Well, I mean- Fix it. It's a good question. You spoke about a fire that

we can't control. And the fact is that the world that we live in, is already being destroyed

by a fire that no one can control. Just about everyone acknowledges that climate change is

going to produce incredible suffering, especially for people in the global south, but all around

the world, and disruption for many people's lives. And yet, neither the economy, the free

market economy, nor the democratic process, nor any of the dictatorships that exist around

the world. are able to take action that is commensurate with our responsibilities to try to stave off

the catastrophe that is ahead if we aren't able to change course. So I think first of all,

we have to keep that in mind when we are talking about these questions. As the question is,

is there another way of making decisions that our movements can utilize and demonstrate?

that will enable us to rise to our historic responsibilities. And of course, I don't think

that we should be careless with each other. I don't think we should put people at risk

who don't wish to be taking those risks. And that's for ethical reasons. It's also for strategic

reasons. If we continuously create situations in which people have bad experiences next to

us in the street, it will be harder for us to get together. it will be harder for us to build

the kind of movements that we want to. So each of us has an interest in figuring out how to

make the ways that we act and act autonomously, take into account the needs of the others around

us. Now, all of that said, at the same time,

I think there is a tendency for everyone, wherever they're situated, to think that if they could

just tell everybody how to do things and have everyone adopt their preferred tactics and

their preferred approach that everything would work out. I think this is probably incorrect

for a number of reasons. First of all, because wherever you're situated, you can't see the

whole world, you can't see other people's needs or the problems that they're suffering. But

it's also a problem, this way of thinking is also a problem, because we will never be able

to impose a single way of doing things on everyone. And to desire the kind of structures that could

impose a single strategy on everyone is to desire authoritarianism. So I would propose a different

general strategic orientation, which would be how can each of us act autonomously according

to the dictates of our conscience, but in such a way as to maximize the synergy of our actions

and those who want to take a different approach. So what we should be doing is we should be

thinking about how to make our own efforts integrate well into a diverse ecosystem of different

strategies, different tactics. And that's not something to be imposed from the top down.

That's something that we collectively from the bottom up should be trying to arrange. Because

it's true, if decisions are being made from the top down or according to a lowest common

denominator logic, it's never going to be the right time for everyone to escalate. It's never

going to be the right time to shut anything down. It's never going to be the right time

to act. And that's because... Not only because there are some people who don't feel ready.

It's also because there will be people in the conversations who have an interest in Preserving

things the way that they are at least for the time being it'll be you know for the same reason

that Exxon is like yeah, I'd like to live in a world without global climate change But it's

just not in our best interest right now to make that shift you know if we're and this was a

discussion I mentioned the Occupy movement in 2011 before but it's It's an issue that came

up then when we were trying to establish what a sort of democratic process might be. And

you know, people said, well, maybe instead of majority rule, we should use consensus decision

making for our spokes councils. But that creates a situation in which the a spokes council can

be prevented from arriving at a strategy for taking action by a single representative of

the police. You know? So my argument. would be that instead we need ways of approaching

decentralized decision-making in which people are concerned for each other's well-being,

are thinking, are strategizing about how to take action in a way that is likely to benefit

the movement as a whole and yet at the same time can make those decisions autonomously.

And so we need to structure our movements such that some elements of the movement can escalate,

can shut things down, can... take action. This is something that anarchists often are the

ones who... are most likely to be trying to push the envelope, to do things that are- We

know the type. We've seen them in our circles. Yeah. We appreciate them. And pushing the envelope

can take many different forms. You know, it may mean identifying something as a problem

that nobody else wants to talk about, like sexism or sexual assault or something within the movement

culture. It may be pushing, you know, using tactics or strategies that are, that seem outre

to other participants in the movement. You know, they're like, well, I'm ready to lock myself

to something, but I'm not ready to sabotage something, for example. And again, we will

never know the benefit or the drawbacks of a strategy unless somebody is able to... that

strategy, right? Yeah. Go ahead. I see you, Santiago. Well, because here I want to pull

from my own experience for a second, because this is giving me flashbacks to some of my

first days in organizing. When I was part of an organization where, an organization that

I helped start at the time, too, and I even got myself. elected in this organization to

chairman position, out of kind of a belief that if I was to occupy that position of power at

the time, that I could then not use the power of it and kind of try and decentralize it by

preventing somebody who would use the, you know, it didn't work out that way, obviously. But

that was my thinking at the time. And I remember the conversations that we had in this organization

about stuff like sexism, about the fact that the majority of the organization was white

men. And why is it that this organization is not appealing to a diverse set of people? I

mean, this is Toronto, where we're coming from, where it's one of the most diverse cities on

earth. Right. And there was also a lot of talk about you know, people, myself included, wanted

to start actually doing things, you know, actually getting out in the streets and meeting people's

needs where they might be as action. And people who disagreed with us, the points that were

made were like, oh, well, that's a waste of resources. And we need to have a united goal.

And what we need to do is we need to bring people in and we need to take over the NDP, which

is our fake progressive party. And everybody has to agree that we are working to take over

the NDP and everybody has to do that. And there can be no multiple objectives. There can only

be the one objective and that is what we're doing. And I tried to make the case at the

time. I mean, I was very young at the time, I was 20. and still learning how to do all

of these things. But I was trying to make the case of like, no, like we go and we actually

show, we prove that we're not just talking, but we prove that we can do something for people,

that we have something to offer for people. That's not going to cost us resources that

brings more people into the movement. And I lost that battle at the time and I left the

organization because I got very disenfranchised with. kind of the authoritarian nature that

it was taking. But I feel like that is, I tell my story because I felt like that from all

the things that you were saying, and I think it's a very common story in many ways of the

traditional ways that we organize and the traditional organizations, right? That is a common issue.

And you hear all the time about organizations who cover up sexual assault within the organization.

You hear that multiple times here. You hear all kinds of things and we don't always like,

it feels like there that we don't have good tools to talk about these things and to deal

with these things often. Um, yeah, I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore, but

that's my spiel. Well, the, I mean, the, the situation that you're describing is familiar,

probably familiar to every organizer who's listening to this, because if you have a a logic of centralization

and unity rather than harmony that defines how your organization is trying to work. You will

inevitably end up in situations where you have to choose between what seems to you to be the

benefit of the organization and then the needs of the human beings who comprise it. And for

me, that's an argument against that way of thinking. right, that the benefit of the people within

the organization and who are affected immediately by it should not be something that we can ever

understand as being distinct from the goals of the organization. First of all, addressing

power dynamics inside of a community, inside of a project, there's never a good reason not

to do that if what we're trying to address is power imbalances in the world. And at the same

time, the other problem with that strategy from my perspective is that, you know, if you're

like, we'll get control of the NDP or the Democratic Party or whatever, and then we'll fix everything.

As you said, you got into a position of authority within the organization, but you discovered

that you could only use that authority according to its own internal logic, right? Not according

to the logic that you brought, not according to the good intentions that that you brought,

and that's a structural problem with this way of organizing. In my experience, even when

I've been trying, even when I've been participating in a movement that is trying to change official

policy or government policy, the times that we've been most effective in doing that were

the times that we demonstrated that people could make the change without the government, could

make the change contrary to the wishes of the government. You know, if you're talking about

feeding people, if you're talking about housing people. You know, if you show that you can

open up buildings and enable people who are homeless to live in those buildings, then the

government will be like, well, okay, maybe we could open up some buildings, you know, but

if we don't have the power to do that, they will not have an incentive. There will always

be something better to do first, you know? Makes me think of the Black Panther Party, not an

anarchist organization, but the breakfast program. Exactly. Which is... one that I really admire

their community programs. It's something that inspires me quite a bit that forced the government's

hand into having a breakfast program for kids. Something that here in Canada, we still don't

have. Yeah. And we have lots of hungry kids because of it. That demonstrates the value

of direct action and it demonstrates the importance of addressing people's needs directly. And

in that regard, the Panthers example is very important and still has relevance today. If

you don't mind, I feel like I keep going back, but. Please. When we're talking about decentralized

power, but also decentralized access and application of tactics, right? I wanna go back to that

consensus. I guess most people are in meetings where it's majority rules still. Then there

are people who may generally try to build consensus and from my experience, there were mechanisms

where people in certain organizations could object. I think you were talking about that,

like a veto and it could be an infiltrator, a cop saying, oh no, I'm really uncomfortable

with this. We couldn't possibly do that. And out of respect for that one participant, quite

often like that idea would then be shelved. And I just for applicable purposes for people

in those meetings, the idea... goes back to the unity versus harmony statement that you

made that let little committees be formed, let actions be decentralized in ways that they

don't mess up the whole song. You know, they will be different. That's the idea, right?

Unity is the same, or at least we sell it that way. But harmony, if you... or in a choir,

or you understand that there are different notes being sung by different people with different

capacities in their range, right? But it still makes a beautiful sound as a whole, right?

So it might even be more beautiful, yeah. Yes. And I think as individuals, we have to go into

those meetings to thinking about what you reminded us of earlier, although we think we have the

best ideas. They are not the only ideas. And so we may feel like if that meeting didn't

go as we wanted, you know, I really wanted a petition started. And you know, there's three

guys in the back, they wanna burn it down, you know? Like, let's just use really drastic,

you get the idea. Is there a way where we can allow those people that are eager to go beyond

a petition to do something with that energy, with those tactics that doesn't malign everything

else? Um, but also make the person who thinks that their particular idea can work. Like I

know sometimes resources aren't, are limited. So we can't use every tactic that comes up

in a meeting, right? Not everybody's idea can always be applied just from a logistical perspective,

but it's the idea of coming out of that meeting with not needing to have controlled the outcome,

not needing to approve of every idea that will be developed on. And I think sometimes it comes

from the individual. We go in with really egalitarian views, but in the end, we want our ideas because

they're ours. And of course, we think they're the best one because we sat and we digested

them and we came to that conclusion. And it's sometimes hard to think the way that you're

describing that it actually is the collective of ideas that makes the most intelligent choice.

But it doesn't have to make one choice. It can make many and still be moving forward. Because

I think I'm at a point, a lot of us are, we're really frustrated that there is not more escalation

in tactics. Also, I just want to give a 20 second anecdote to build on the harmony metaphor.

Because as a musician, good harmony is actually built on tension and resolution, right? Yeah,

there you go. So you'll have chords. that are full of tension, you know, the notes are actually

disagreeing with each other. But then those notes resolve to a balanced harmony and that

gives music the movement that we good that that's what creates good music. Sorry, just had to

throw that in there. That's so important. We try to avoid tension at all costs, especially

in some of these meetings, right? Like we'll shelve ideas, we'll do like and that's to like

take your time. You don't have to rush through everything. But it avoiding conflict is a big.

part of how we teach people to chair meetings as well, right? And how a lot of these organizations

are structured where, you know, you have two minutes to speak and you know, I don't know,

it just, it's really sanitized. And sometimes you got to get it out, right? In a way that

doesn't implode and where you don't walk away as enemies. But I think the more we work those

kinds of... values into the way we organize, the easier it becomes, right? The easier it

is to have those tension and we know how to resolve them. And we know there will be a resolve

because when you know it's a zero-sum game, it's either your idea or their idea. We're

coming out with only one tactic and everybody's supposed to agree with it. You do feel like

you lost. Yeah. And you're less likely to stick around if you feel like you keep losing, right?

I mean, I've left like that, like just like Santiago for sure. And it's stupid stuff. It

was like, we need a database. You know, we need I can build you one. It's nothing. And they're

well, we're not ready for that yet. And I was like, forget it, man. You're going to hold

me back on everything. I know you won't even let me build a database. So I'm out. You're

still working off an Excel spreadsheet, probably to this day. And that's a that's an especially.

tragic example that you're giving because it was a situation which you were ready to autonomously

do work for the group that they would probably, if they hadn't had you at their disposal and

needed that work done, it would have been hard to find somebody who was ready to build a database,

you know? I mean, and we have to think about all the different capacities that people who

have caused to seek social change are not getting to use in our movements. You know, we should

not understand those who are in activist groups right now as the protagonists of change. The

protagonists of change, it has to be everybody in our society. And there are so many capacities

that people out there have that are not plugged into things. And again, if all that can happen

is going to be determined by those who have chairman or chairwoman or chairperson positions

within today's existing organizations, the things that we... change, that will not be all the

things that need to change in the society, right? We need to be much more ambitious. We need

to be thinking on a much more ambitious scale. Now Santiago, I thought your metaphor about

tension and resolution is really beautiful. There are even some beautiful musical compositions.

famous one by Samuel Butler that ends without the tensions resolved, but that's part of the

art also, right? I mean, for sure, if we have organizing models that don't offer us the opportunity

to explore our tensions, the tensions between us, the tensions within us, then we will not

be there as complete people, and we will not derive the benefit of our complete relationships.

We will be there as, you know... as sort of partial or as performances rather than as our

whole selves. And we will not be able to contribute everything that we want to. And there's, I

mean, one of the common anarchist models for organizing is the affinity group, the group

of people who agree about something. You form a group of people who agree to try something

and they all do it together. But I want to say that is not the only model because another

thing that can be really beneficial is to have... Like a person that whose intelligence you really

regard highly but who disagrees with you You know a lot of the most interesting crime think

projects have come out of the collaboration of people who did not agree about something

but who valued each other's opinions and said we'll embark on a discussion about this and

the results will You know may not be lowest common denominator, right? they may be like

the different points of departure that we can offer to to the reader or the user as a consequence

of the tensions that the different participants bring. I think that is actually a more useful

and fruitful approach to our relationships, to our projects, because the fundamental question

that we're talking about here is how do we coexist and collaborate across lines of difference?

Whether those differences are in our identities and the power structures created by the society,

or... or the differences of ethics or strategy, we actually have to think about collaborating

and coexisting across lines of differences as the fundamental thing that we're trying to

do actually, because those differences exist between all of us and within us. If you take

an approach just to yourself, which involves eradicating difference, you will be destroying

parts of yourself even. You know, the thing that we should be doing is making space for

everything that is, everything that can be mutually beneficial to thrive and prosper, you know?

So how that relates to organizing, to bring this back to the very beginning of your question,

Jessa. I've given a bunch of examples from 2011. I can give examples from other years, from

other decades, but I'll give one more from that, which is that I remember in the little town

that I live in when we had the first meeting for people who were interested in participating

in the Occupy movement. There were a hundred people in the meeting, maybe 120, and somebody

was like, let's establish an occupation in the center of the town. It was a minority position.

If we had a vote... whether by consensus or by majority rule, we never would have agreed

to establish an occupation. But instead, the facilitator said, okay, everybody who wants

to establish an occupation, go over here and discuss that. And everybody else can discuss

whatever else you want to do. And at first it was like five people, you can imagine just

five. scary people in black sweatshirts, you know, went over and we're standing there just

like, a bolt of lightning may strike us down now, but I'm going to say we should have an

occupation, you know? And not everybody is going to be the first person, you know, to be like,

yes, you know, take me now, Lord, you know, but. But once there were five of them, then

there were six, and then there were 10, and then there were 20. And that night, 30 people

established an occupation, and by two days later, all 120 people who had been in that discussion

were part of the occupation, right? You know? Which, it shows the importance of people being

willing to experiment, and all of us creating containers for experimentation. and not trying

to suppress experiments that don't immediately line up with our own proposals. Because it's

much better for people to try out tactics, see what they do, and yeah, if there's problems,

if they have negative effects for some people, be capable of discussing those, create processes

through which people can come to understand each other better, but never think that the...

the process of establishing the ways that we relate to each other is completed or that all

of the institutions that we need to resolve conflict already exist. Because whatever we

establish, it will include some people and exclude other people, or it will include some aspects

of ourselves and exclude other aspects of ourselves. And again, the anarchist proposal for decentralization

is that we should always be taking an expansive approach. to the process of decision-making

and the process of deciding how to look out for each other also, you know? Because we can

imagine a spokes council that would take everyone's needs into account in some context, but eventually

there would be problems that were just invisible to the spokes council, right? And that it was

necessary to go through the whole process of thinking all over again what institutions or

what processes would be necessary address everyone's needs. That's, again, one of the fundamental

aspects of anarchism is the idea that we are never finished building the political structures

that we need, that we always need to be ready to call them into question, to go back and

ask new questions, to hear everybody whose voices are not heard in the existing structures or

processes, and begin again when we need to. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I... I'm probably just gonna

end the episode there to be honest, because I think the example that you gave, I'm probably

gonna unpack for a while after this, but of the facilitator, you know, allowing the five

or six scary folks and how eventually everyone came along and my mind is just going to all

the things that happened. You know, those five or six people started off as scary, but they

actually made it safe for more people to do something. more and I imagine solidarity played

into it and it's like you didn't want to occupy but you're not going to let your friends do

it without you like you're not going to leave them to do it by themselves you came in this

together and so like it just made space for movement for steps forward it allowed people

to step out of their comfort zone too because I do want to operate where everyone has like

their own comfort zone but at some point we do have to slightly encourage people to expand

that comfort zone. when they're ready and like finding ways to do that beautifully, right?

Not without tension, but not without alienation either. And I need us all to get there. I need.

Yes, I am not feeling very articulate about that at the moment, but just like a whole bunch

of yeses. We need to get you folks in front of more people. I can completely understand

the need to collect all of this information and the ways you describe them as proposals.

It doesn't feel like theory. When you talk about other ways of doing things, it comes across

as really theoretical. But this is all very practical stuff, very applicable. And I love,

I think we've probably broken down the... not stigma of anarchism, but the mystique of it,

perhaps, you know? And I think a lot of more people are going to start identifying themselves

as anarchists. You know, maybe not with balaclavas, but... We need a bunch of different kinds of

anarchism, you know? The balaclavas are important for some people, but shouldn't be necessary

for everybody. No, we do talk about masking up and, you know, taking it safe. I feel like

there's just this image that a lot of people have that will melt away. And so I will stop

using that reference because it's not helping. Thank you so much. I feel like you're a really

good resource to come back to. I don't know if you'd be willing or your other comrades

would be willing, but... There's so much, even the piece that you folks did on the human rights

discourse around Gaza. I mean, that could be a whole discussion in itself. And I think we've

kind of gotten there where the power comes from the people and not from the institutions. But

again, thank you so much for coming on the show. And it has been a wealth, I think, of knowledge

for our audience, particularly anybody that is doing organizing or can relate to Santiago's

story. and the examples that you've given. Thank you, Beat. Oh yeah, you're being very generous.

You deserve probably the more like, a more articulate version of this, but you know, if you in the

future want to like, to bring people like, Jonathan Palak was the person who wrote the text about

human rights discourse and what's taking place in Gaza. an Israeli anarchist. I don't know

if he identifies as Israeli at this point, but you know I could probably put you in touch

with other people who've participated in our projects who you might be able to speak to

about more specific questions. And it's just really nice for me to get to talk with anybody

who's considering these things. So if I can direct you to other resources at some point

in the future I'd gladly would. Well, we will take you up on that offer. We will also, if

folks, you're still here, check the show notes. It'll link you back to Crime Think, some of

the pieces that we've talked about, and you can check them out for yourself. Okay, thank

you very much. That is a wrap on another.