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 ?
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.
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.
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.