Rising Up in the Shadow of Death: Reflections on the 2002 Anarchist Black Cross conference
by Ernesto Aguilar Thursday, Aug. 01, 2002 at 5:49 PM
ernestomedia@yahoo.com

Addressing the recent Anarchist Black Cross conference, and issues therein...

king.jpg, image/jpeg, 400x139

Photo: Robert King Wilkerson of the Angola 3 addresses attendees from the auditorium stage.

On July 26-28, 2002, 150 people from an array of communities met in Austin, Texas to dialogue and educate about how to challenge the prison-industrial complex. The Anarchist Black Cross conference was perhaps the first event in recent memory where organizations and individuals consensed to build internal campaigns against private prisons, immigrant criminalization and the increase of women in prison. For some, the event was an affirmation of the belief that the movement for prison abolition is growing. In fact, the ABC conference is a sign of both progress and peril as revolutionaries chart a course toward freedom.

For most regular folks, the phrase "anarchist black cross" prompts head scratching. But listening to conference attendees and the issues they raised - from ways to beat prison administrators in their attempts to crush resistance to ways in being more effective as prisoner advocates to the impact of prisons on communities of color — the urgency of what the Anarchist Black Cross is organized around became clear. Since September 11's tragedy (an event that could be remembered by generations as America's Reichstag), we've seen a drive for more prisons, more border-lockdown madness, and a seemingly dumbfounding tolerance for totalitarianism. What I saw in Austin was a spark that revolutionaries see these trends must be fought. The desire to focus on issues, and how they can be addressed in a grassroots, anti-authoritarian fashion, seemed promising.

While its history is fuzzy, the Anarchist Black Cross has reportedly been around for close to a century.

The Anarchist Red Cross, as radical folklore goes, started in Tsarist Russia (in truth, a few years before that) to organize aid for political prisoners captured by the police, and to organize self-defense against political raids by the Cossack Army. During the Russian civil war, organizers changed the name to the Black Cross in order to avoid confusion with the Red Cross that organized relief in the country. After the Bolsheviks seized power, the ABC offices moved to Berlin and continued to aid prisoners of the new regime, as well as victims of fascism and others. The Black Cross fell apart during the 1930s, but experienced a resurgence in late 1960s' Britain. Now it has expanded and works in several areas, with contacts and other Black Cross groups in many countries around the world.

The North American history of the Anarchist Black Cross is uneven. Most credit Lorenzo Komboa Ervin and his original "A Draft Proposal for an Anarchist Black Cross Network" (1979) with reenergizing anarchist anti-prison agitators throughout the 1990s. However, the former Black Panther and political prisoner has also been outspoken about ABCs needing to be more open, and that most ABC collectives are all-white, subcultural (primarily punk music lifestyle) enclaves rather than community-based organizations. At the Austin conference, Komboa reiterated these concerns, and emphasized the importance of broad organizing. Komboa's opening presentation weaved aspects of his own organizing, ideas for the ABC and research around disproportionate rates of incarceration of people of color. He kept attendees interested in his thoughts, and came through with determination and compassion.

What I saw as a reporter/observer, participant and presenter was a hunger for this event from those who have so much to gain and so little to lose. The reality of the situation is that many of the people who spoke on incarceration, inmates and anarchy toil every day with virtually no resources and only their own passion to see justice done. They campaign against literature rejections made by administrators solely to keep prisoners misinformed; human rights abuses that would shame a dictator; and write the letters that keep prisoners company. And they do it with few dollars or people. Austin welcomed activists who defend the defenseless and the defiant. And, unlike the numerous contemporaries happy to state the obvious — that the criminal justice system is broken and must be dealt with — those who came to the conference spoke openly about the necessity to abolish the prisons, literal and figurative, that enslave us.

The ABC conference drew participants from New York City, Eugene, Ore., Portland, Chicago, cities from all over Texas (where a regional ABC network already exists), New Mexico and as far off as Australia. After an intense three-hour meeting on Sunday, attendees agreed to the creation of a network of ABC groups, creating a mission statement (reasoning this as a basis of unity around which to work) that explicitly spelled out a commitment to prison abolition and anti-capitalism; workgroups that took on such tasks as publishing a newsletter highlighting autonomous ABC groups' work as well as researching prison issues; and campaigns to address issues of concern, including immigrant criminalization and detention (an issue that has been of concern since the 1990s, but which rose sharply after Sept. 11); women in prison and more. These all should be considered positive happenings.

The conference hosted former prisoners, new and veteran activists and others who all expressed the need for a base of support, communications and networking. The underlying issue is that these desires were many of the same problems that plagued anarchist anti-prison activists in 1994, the year the last North American ABC conference was held. Today, communication and networking were offered up by many attendees in Austin as gaps a network could help address.

The idea of forming a network of ABC groups is not new. A network's benefits, such as creating a communications, accountability and work base that affirms unity but respects differences and autonomy of affiliates, make it a natural choice for groups that traditionally work independently. However, several attempts have been made, and failed. In the vacuum, formations like the Anarchist Prisoners Legal Aid Network, South Chicago ABC, Break The Chains, Austin ABC and New York City ABC stepped in to do some of the most innovative revolutionary support for prisoners in the last six years. Not only have these groups been able to meld many messages, but they've managed to do work effectively. Spurred by the release and organizing efforts of former political prisoner Christopher Plummer, Austin ABC sponsored a conference to discuss creation of a new network, and the rest is history.

Back in 1994, issues of focus were things like control units and support for political prisoners. Today, as groups like the Jericho Movement have taken a leading role in political prisoner support and defense, ABC organizers seemed to have more license to address issues like criminalization and incarceration. Workshops on political prisoners in the Pacific Northwest (Jeff "Free" Luers, Craig "Critter" Marshall and Rob Thaxton, among others) and "The Importance of Supporting Social Prisoners" gave people an opportunity to learn why it's important to support political prisoners as well as those whose lives are so often "the struggle" the left talks about. The flaw in this juxtaposition between "social prisoners" (those jailed for non-movement-specific activity) and "political prisoners" (those affiliated with movements jailed for their activities) is that movements turn the focus onto individuals, and their merits based on subjective class orientations, rather than a system that necessitates uprisings (by movement-oriented means or by those who refuse to participate in its advancement). The inclusion of both social and political prisoner support was positive, but the event lacked tactical workshops on how those two tendencies of struggle could be fused together in the context of a community group's outreach and campaigns.

Unity — particularly unity between those who feel every battle for the human rights of prisoners must be fought and those who feel no reform is acceptable next to prison abolition — is a constant tension. At times, I felt a sense of isolation when I came out of a presentation where a speaker talked openly about the need for anarchists to work with, respect and learn agenda-free from non-anarchist communities, but the discussions among attendees were about how we 'just need to get rid of prisons' or gossip. Speakers and organizers talk about relating this movement to the streets — more specifically the places where Black, Chicano/Latino and working-class non-activist elements live — to mostly punk-rock palefaces, everyone nods and, six months later, nothing's changed. This problem is a critical one; in a world where the anarchist and radical milieu is privileged enough that being active and organized is a "question" and infantile rants against community involvement enjoy wide circulation, I wondered how successful the conference was in turning sympathizers into organizers or at least finding common ground from which various tendencies could work. Time will tell.

For the most part, ABCs have been ineffective for some time because people like to stay in their scenes and do not want to work with others who don't share their politics or don't look like them. Is that assessment inaccurate? Possibly. But the ABC movement would be more widespread today if there weren't a rebuilding process every decade because a few key ABCs folded, largely because groups' whole existence hinged on the commitment of one or two people. I could chalk that attitude up to lots of things, but suffice to say the life and death of the ABC movement hinges on working with people wherever they are at politically. The ABC movement would be better served by acknowledging collective limitations and finding a means to challenge as well as work around them.

As I gazed upon the faces of people watching ABC veteran Anthony Rayson make his plain-spoken, impassioned presentation, I wondered how many will take from the ABC conference the tools and energy to fight this genocide. Every person NEEDS to hear what a man like Robert King Wilkerson of the the Angola 3, a speaker at the conference, has to say about prisons, chattel slavery, and the need for creating a new society in which lives are valued and equal. But are people like Wilkerson reaching the folks who WANT these messages, because their lives (by virtue of their racial and class standing in the United States and elsewhere) depend on it?

The event was primarily dedicated to educational workshops, and it was clear that more time throughout the weekend should have been set up for formal organization-building talks. During the few hours on Sunday afternoon devoted to strategic discussion on a network, many people seemed unfamiliar enough with "A New Draft Proposal for an Anarchist Black Cross Network" (the document upon which the conference call was based) that its points could not be consensed on as a mission statement. Only a few people came with clear ideas of what they wanted to see and what tendencies they wanted to avoid. As a result, the early parts of the discussion alternated between less than one-quarter of the people in attendance to the meeting. Eventually, the discussion opened up more, but the tiny window of time for organization discussions and the reliance on educational (but not tactical or organizing) workshops could have been balanced better. After all, Critical Resistance has done an impressive job in the last decade putting together conferences that educate. Some attendees expected more of a focus on actual network building.

Race continues to be the 800-pound gorilla that the white-left movement needs to find a way to understand. The ABC conference had less than 10 percent participation from people of color (roughly six to nine people, including myself and Lorenzo Komboa Ervin). There are, in my opinion, many people of color doing wonderful criminal justice work around the United States and Canada, and they should have been actively solicited for their support and involvement.

Further, I recognize white anarchists have a long way to go on issues of race, and believe it's up to white folks to deal with internalized racism rather than for me, as a person of color, or other people of color to keep pointing it out. I coordinated a workshop with Komboa on outreach to communities of color, and said something that I felt would be unpopular but knew had to be said: white activists wanting to build a diverse movement and reaching out to communities of color need to understand that they're swimming against the current of history, in which the white left has a sorry record of manipulative relationships with Black and Chicano/Latino people. As a consequence of history, white activists, no matter how sincere they may feel they are, may be viewed with skepticism and/or criticized (sometimes in a backwards way) by others, so thick skin is a must. Unsaid at that point was that people of color are socialized to have thick skin virtually from birth as a coping mechanism for living in an inherently racist society, and this isn't a desirable situation but it's reality. A white woman soon spoke up to say she resented having to have thick skin and that she basically wanted to know how long history was going to be an issue. Observing the faces of some in attendance, I felt that she spoke what several white folks were uncomfortable to say out loud, but with which they agreed. Komboa made the point that the issue was not how long white activists had to endure history, but the challenges the freedom movement faces.

Despite this, the ABC conference took an engaging step on the issue of race in forming a people of color workgroup, comprised of both people of color and white supporters, to help shape ideas for ABCs on questions of disproportionate incarceration, outreach to communities of color, etc. I left that part of the agenda with questions — whether a national workgroup on such issues absolved local ABC groups of exposing racism and prisons on their own, and the effectiveness of asking white supporters to help shape policy on issues of people of color, among those questions — but was impressed by the broad support for such a workgroup enough to be patient and see what happens. This step is the first time I am aware that such a wide range of anarchists came together and said the issue of race and imprisonment was something we all needed to deal with, and this should be viewed as a major victory for all people. Since the conference, a statement by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin concerning the newly formed Anarchist Black Cross Network raised many constructive comments about this evolution, and frame several issues related to race and organizing.

Gender dynamics are a major problem in the anarchist movement, and the ABC conference was no exception. Most of the presenters were men, and men dominated many discussions and question and answer sessions. Some women in attendance privately criticized domineering behavior exhibited by a few men. Sadly, this issue is not new. Concerns about gender issues of late have come to the fore in the anarchist anti-prison movement with allegations against a well-known anarchist prisoner going public and complaints of sexism being leveled last year against a particular ABC formation. It should be no secret that male dominance is a question the ABC movement must deal with upfront.

If we are to be successful in creating change, men need to look hard at themselves and their actions; accept responsibility for their behavior; and be open and confident enough in themselves and their comrades to refrain from speaking first and, as warranted, take themselves out of spaces when they begin to dominate meetings; to recognize their own self-righteous tendencies, and so on. As with race, the initiative for this is on those who've been socialized to buy into their dominance — in this case, men. As with race, patriarchy isn't a guilt thing or a defensive thing, but a history thing, and we need to be honest with ourselves when we acknowledge that. People point out sexism in hopes of remedying the situation, and we need to take concerns seriously. I can't say more clearly how critical this issue is for the movement for change.

A conflict resolution or criticism/self-criticism period needs to be incorporated in future events, preferably at the beginning and end of each day. Such a session could perhaps be held in a side room during breakfast or dinner, and rotating facilitators with experience in conflict resolution selected to help deal with problems as they come up. While there weren't scores of complaints, I ran into ABC conference attendees who would occasionally voice a concern with something that was said, the tenor of a certain presentation or person, or just general frustration. Most conferences don't have a model for attendee feedback and issue resolution, and, as a result, there is the potential for people to walk away feeling dissatisfied or that they had no process for making their views known. And, put fairly, sometimes there's a need to call out particular issues at an event. A morning and evening session gives people the space to do that.

So what was accomplished as people caught their planes, buses and cars out of Austin? Was anything really changed? Despite faults in some segments of organizing, the fact that this event — a national conference of anarchist prison abolitionists — and the resulting network came together is alone significant. In the United States, the prison-industrial complex has grown (and education funding has bled) exponentially, police are being built as a neighborhood military, and the plethora of issues makes criminal justice the most sinister specter facing communities today. For anarchists, who traditionally agree with each other on very little, to look beyond their individual or collective work, to see the value in a network and to make that a reality in the United States is unusual. ABCs across Europe are already networked and working together, so stepping that direction in North America seems like a natural progression. Make no mistake that the ABC movement faces hurdles, including the aforementioned problems. However, as one conference participant put it, "this network has to happen." The conditions people live under are getting more harsh, the police are becoming more brutal, and the sentences are getting longer. The outcome is uncertain, but the future may be even moreso uncertain without organized resistance.

Interviews from the Conference

Thanks to the A-Infos Radio Project for hosting.

www.anarchistblackcross.org

add your comments

Former political prisoner Lorenzo Komboa Ervin
by Ernesto Aguilar Thursday, Aug. 01, 2002 at 5:49 PM
ernestomedia@yahoo.com

komboa.jpg, image/jpeg, 131x155

www.anarchistblackcross.org

add your comments