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 ?
idk, i’m probably one of those classified as “hard to work with” occasionally!
example: someone in a group i was involved with wanted us to collab with a non-anarchist group. i wasn’t ok with it because that group was transphobic. they argued that it shouldn’t matter, as our groups agreed on the one issue the collab would be on, just not much else, and people should be capable of understanding that. i argued that it would likely make any trans people who are in our group or who might want to join us in the future feel alienated, unsafe, & unsupported, like we would not have their back and can’t be trusted to stand against transphobia. we were perfectly capable of doing this work without hitching our wagon to a group of bigots, and ultimately we did just fine without them. was i being hard to work with? on this matter, yes! to me, “left unity” does not mean excusing or enabling bigotry or other hurtful behaviours.
i think generally there are different degrees of compromise that we all have to juggle in the current system, but it’s really down to individuals (and groups of individuals) as to what they’re ok compromising on and what wouldn’t be ok for them personally. we can all make up our own minds about who we’re comfortable getting into bed with. i don’t think that’s something specific to anarchists though, pretty sure almost everyone does this in their daily lives.
from the sounds of it, with your buddy, the issue is trying to make anarchists do things how his org does things. these ones don’t want to compromise, which is fine actually, they’re holding to principles they feel are very important. if i were in his shoes i’d be trying to find a way to work alongside them, horizontally, rather than in a “we don’t want your input, just do some labour for us” way. is there a specific project that would complement the work your buddy does, but could operate independently of that org, that they can structure in a way that aligns with their values? something that he could reach out to them and say “hey, people in our community really need [thing], would you want to set up & run a project of your own to tackle this? what kind of support can we offer?” and if they’re still not interested then leave the door open & wish them well.
I don’t understand why you are asking this question of anarchists. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but it seems to me you are asking why anarchists would be difficult to recruit into a small organization that doesn’t share their ideals. It seems self evident to me. Why would such an org focus on that? Surely their time would be better spent elsewhere. There are plenty of organizations and organizing efforts that work on immigrant issues that are anarchist. There are plenty that are not anarchist. Some anarchists work on non-anarchist organization projects depending on what they are. Some non-anarchists work on anarchist organizing projects depending on what they are. It happens all the time.
An ideology or a value system doesn’t make someone universally “hard to work with”. It seems about as logical as walking into a room of people who bake cakes and asking “I know a small organization that is baking pies, but the organizer says that their values are too far away from cake ideals. Why are cake bakers so hard to work with, and how do you deal with them?”
Why worry about it? Just work on your org, and anarchists will work on theirs. When the goals of orgs align with the goals of individuals with other ideologies maybe they’ll come help out.
This is the community I am most active in this site, I am an anarchist, and I work with anarchists and non anarchists, hence I seek advice here from fellow anarchists around the world. I also reckon that the biggest anarchist local organization for immigrants rights is a predominantly white space. And when they refuse to work with a predominantly non white org, on the basis that they are not anarchists, its to put their ideals ahead of the needs of the people who they are supposed to help. And when white upper class interests are put ahead the minority interests it’s a major red flag for me. Maybe we should we talk about racism and classism inside our own movements ?
Hope this gives you more context to understand. I see that it can be difficult to have people criticize anarchists organizations, but take it from someone who is doing ground work and is an anarchist, my goal is not to invalidate anarchism by no means.
I understand a little better now.
I still don’t think that anarchists are inherently hard to deal with. Criticism should be taken, considered, and acted upon. Sometimes after consideration the action is just noting the criticism and moving on.
Part of anarchism is the ideal of free association. We should organizer with people and groups that align with us. It’s totally OK if all left organizing doesn’t align 100% with each other.
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.
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that person who will shove up your face how they are more anarchist than you are hehehe…
thankfully i haven’t been the target of such actions, yet
This probably isn’t useful, and I’m not an anarchist. But when I was one of the leaders of a local leftist party, we had to start an Anarchist wing, just to get the Anarchists to stop being antagonistic towards the ‘authoritarian’ members. Ultimately all the antagonizing did was keep the party from fulfilling goals and made us have to let go of opportunities.
I very strongly believe that Anarchists who’re looking to get involved in local efforts need to be aware of ‘lifestylists’ and actively oppose them in activist circles. Hell, Communists should be aware of them too. Because all lifestylists ever do is bicker about ‘authority’ and keep the organization from being capable of doing good. Infighting is far more of a detriment to the broader leftist movement than any other attack on our ideals and our character, if you’re experiencing a lot of infighting from certain groups, identify whether or not they’re actually informed on what they’re talking about, and figure out if it’s worth letting them drive wedges into your activist efforts. If they actually care to help, they’ll shut up and help. If they don’t, then just don’t bother with them.
Thank you for your answer.
identify whether or not they’re actually informed on what they’re talking about, and figure out if it’s worth letting them drive wedges into your activist efforts. If they actually care to help, they’ll shut up and help. If they don’t, then just don’t bother with them.
We are not a single organization, but many orgs, so for now it would be time to build brides between orgs so we can actually cooperate when we agree, and agree to not work together when we don’t.
