Hello, the other day I was talking with a local activist who told me about the challenges they had when trying to have anarchists work with other organizations, they is currently working on minority rights, and he told me how their organization is too far away from anarchist ideals and it’s hard to make cooperation happen.
For instance he works with immigrants, and this org is small and has leaders. While the anarchists think it’s no good. But in the end this means less strength to help people who are struggling.
I work with many anarchists who can work with people who aren’t anarchists, but I am aware that problems may arise. What challenges have you faced, and how do you deal with it ?
A concern anarchists have is that their efforts will be redirected towards either reformist liberalism or authoritarian socialism, instead of towards a specifically anarchist direction. Of course we are in support of the rights of immigrants, racial minorities, etc. but if the demands of these minority rights organizations are unrelated to the demands of anarchists, it’s not obvious how anarchists should approach them. It may be true that anarchists are disproportionately white, but the answer is not necessarily to work with non-anarchists but to find ways to bring non-white people into anarchism. There are other perspectives but the answer is not obvious, and it’s easy to get sucked into non-anarchist directions.