Welcome to Dispatch #21! In this issue we want to discuss how to create more resilient organizations while also maintaining democratic principles. We’ll learn from the work of radical feminist Jo Freeman, as well as the experiences of the Free Fare Movement and anarchist artists in Brazil. Fun stuff - let’s get into it!
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Easy Actions to Take
Why: United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese released a report exposing how technology companies have fueled Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid regime, and its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, including big tech corporations like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, HP, IBM and Palantir. The United Nations must heed calls from workers and its own legal experts to stop platforming AI and the big tech companies that are enabling and systemizing Israel’s genocide. Organized by No Tech for Apartheid
Why: The population of Gaza have reached Stage 5 of famine which is the final and worst stage, causing lasting permanent damage even if food is allowed in. Currently there is plenty of aid available in UNRWA warehouses but no aid is being allowed in. Instead, Palestinians are being massacred at Israeli aid distribution sites on a daily basis. Organized by Slow Factory
Use this template below:
Email to: sgcentral@un.org
Body: Dear Secretary-General Guterres, Gaza is being starved. Over 1 in 4 children under 5 in northern Gaza are acutely malnourished. There is no access to formulas. Hundreds of aid trucks are blocked at the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem crossings. This is not a natural disaster-it is a deliberate famine. We call on the United Nations to:
- Launch a humanitarian airlift into Gaza
- Condemn the blockade of food, water, and medical aid
- Demand full access for humanitarian organizations
Time is running out. We urge you to act.
With Urgency,
[Name]
Why: Clearview AI is a facial recognition company that has stolen over 50 billion images from social media and websites without consent, creating one of the largest facial recognition databases in the world. Recent reporting from Mother Jones has exposed how Clearview AI's founders developed these products to advance a far-right, neo-segregationist agenda. Their software is sold to law enforcement agencies, allowing them to match faces against this massive database scraped from the internet without permission. State Attorneys General have the power to investigate and stop these violations of our privacy rights — but they need to hear from us now. Organized by Color of Change
⏱~3min | (US Only) Demand Congress investigate, expose, and stop ICE’s human trafficking and indefinite detention of immigrants in foreign prisons now.
Why: From El Salvador and South Sudan to Angola, Uzbekistan, and at least 16 other countries, ICE is creating a global pipeline of American-sponsored gulags in countries often notorious for violence and human rights violation. Congressional pressure has already resulted in the release of one person from CECOT. But that’s not enough: Congress must use every tool at its disposal to put an end to the administration’s illegal deportation. Organized by The Intercept
The Cautionary Tale of Brazil's Free Fare Movement
Revealing History
The Movimento Passe Livre (MPL, or Free Fare Movement) in Brazil was a horizontal, autonomous, independent, anarchist movement that was formed to fight for free, high quality public transportation. Since it began in 2005, every time a city government has tried to increase fares, the MPL has responded with mass mobilization to oppose the increases and push for free fares. In 2013, this eventually snowballed into mass uprisings across Brazil, in what became known to many as the Brazilian Spring, that not only successfully stopped fare hikes across Brazil but also awakened a generation of young activists.
The Free Fare Movement demonstrated that effective and sustained mass pressure was possible without a small group of leaders calling the shots. But this is also a cautionary tale. In 2013, Brazil saw mass protests in over 100 cities will over 2 million people participating. Though started and led by the Free Fare Movement, the protests had grown to include a whole host of demands from the ruling Worker’s Party outside of just free public transportation including complaints about corruption, anti-LGBTQ laws, women’s rights, inflation, and more. Dilma Rousseff, the left-wing president at the time, was mostly receptive to the protests and conceded to many demands, but not everyone was satisfied.
The next year in 2014, a new group emerged to take advantage of the dissatisfaction - the Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL, or Free Brazil Movement). This was a right-wing group founded by businessmen and financed by right-wing think tanks who wanted to push against the social government of the Worker’s Party. They intentionally styled themselves after the Free Fare Movement and used similar language to cause confusion and co-opt their reputation (in Brazilian Portuguese, “MBL” sounds nearly identical to “MPL”). Without designated spokespeople and already fatigued by months of protesting, the original Free Fare Movement was unable to resist the co-option of the movement on the streets. Eventually the Free Brazil Movement was able to break support for Dilma Rousseff, and helped lay the foundation for the election of the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Free Fare Movement is a lesson in both the great strengths and weaknesses of mass leaderless organizing. A lot can be accomplished and change on a national level is possible, but it can be difficult to scale and maintain focus and discipline across the movement, and there are vulnerabilities to reactionary co-optation.
📗 Learn More
- For more information about this story (and others like it around the world), please read If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade an the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins (a reporter who was based in Brazil at the time).
NOTE: We always recommend supporting authors directly, but if you are unable to purchase a copy, search for it on Anna's Archive to find a free downloadable version.
Anti-Politics
The People's Dictionary
Anti-politics is a term used to describe a feeling of distrust toward traditional politics and government that usually extends beyond simple apathy and into direct opposition to “politics as usual.” This feeling has risen sharply since the 2000s among liberal democratic countries with a 2014 survey of 60 countries around the world found a majority didn’t have confidence in their government or political system. Political scientists have linked the rise in anti-political sentiment with the inequities caused by neoliberal economic policies across the world.
This distrust generates support for the extremes of both left and right wing ideologies. However after decades of anti-left campaigns, there are no viable left-wing channels to vent this frustration. As a result, far-right politicians can easily capitalize on the feeling of anti-politics and position themselves as the ones who will “drain the swamp”, leading to events like Brexit, the election of Jair Bolsonaro, or the election of Donald Trump.
7 Principles for More Democratic Organizing
Connecting the Dots
We’ve created a Study Guide based on a fantastic and foundational article by political scientist & feminist organizer Jo Freeman, an early organizer in the Women's Liberation Movement, who outlines the limitations of unstrctured "leaderless" organizations and argues that actively creating structure creates more democratic groups. In this Study Guide, we summarize the key points of each section of Freeman’s essay for easy digestion. At the end, she shares 7 principles for democratic organizing that we believe are key for anyone interested in working to empower their communities.
During the 60s is when we began to see the rise of the "New Left” which took root in the anti-war, Black Power, radical student, and feminist movements in the USA as a reaction to the formal hierarchies typically present in classical Marxist organizations. Rather than have a “revolutionary vanguard” comprised of a small set of individuals directing a movement, the focus was instead on having a horizontal or “leader-less” approach to organizing. The idea was that this would prove to be more democratic, less authoritarian, and allow the diffusion of leadership and responsibility would create more resilient movements.
Since then this type of organizing has become the norm (at least in leftist spaces). While we believe that the more horizontal approaches to organizing of the New Left are a step in the right direction, we also think it’s critical we analyze the potential shortcomings, especially as we try to organize resistance today. Jo Freeman wrote this essay in the 1970s but the lessons she shares are still incredibly relevant. Too often horizontal approaches to organizing are equated to unstructured organizing. Too often mass, leaderless movements run out of steam or are co-opted by bad actors. And too often leadership confused with hierarchy. We can create more equal, democratic, and transparent organizations and groups but that is created with structure, not without.
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Artists Confronting Inequalities: Andreza and Josimas
Various photos from events held at the Semente Negra & No Gods No Masters festivals
Andreza and Josimas are two long-time Brazilian anarcho-punk activists and organizers using their skills to build more expansive solidarity by finding creative ways to raise awareness about the reality of the social struggles in Brazil and the situation that Indigenous people face. Through issue-based projects they continually find creative ways to build connections between urban and Indiegenous communities. Their actions have utilized a combination of mutual support networks, assemblies, music, education, and consensus-based decision making, and demonstrate the importance of building bridges between communities. Projects include:
- Semente Negra (Black Seed) - an ecological project in the Atlantic rainforest that’s also a social center, silkscreen studio, recording studio, printing house
- No Gods No Masters - distribution house with an annual festival, Cultive Resistência, that hosts anarchists, punks, and Indigenous people from all over the world to promote do-it-yourself culture.
- Vivência na Aldeia - Indigenous community solidarity project helping achieve food sovereignty for 11 Indigenous communities.
To learn more, read this interview with them from Crimthinc.
Resources & Tools
Please share these links with anyone that might find them helpful:
- 🤝 Mutual Aid Toolkit | A detailed step-by-step guide on how to set up a mutual aid network in your community.
- 🤝 How to: Build Your Own Care Pod | Learn about pod-mapping, a care framework created by Mia Mingus to help people build networks of care, interdependence, accountability, and mutual aid, and download your own pod-mapping worksheet.
- 🧩 Blueprints for Revolution | A practical study guide of Srdja Popovic’s 2015 book of the same name with additional insights & resources from us to help you better understand the core advice, strategies, and actions needed for revolution.
- 🧩 How to: Make Your Activism More Accessible | A helpful guide compiled with grassroots knowledge for grassroots activists.
- 🖥️ Simple Login | A handy digital tool that helps you create anonymous email aliases to better protect your identity, while still allowing you to sign up for what you need to.
- 🌍 Appropedia | A sustainability Wikipedia for anyone looking to add more sustainable practices into their life.
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Till next time, do what you can. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up. And remember, you're not alone. We always have each other.
Onward to the World We Deserve,
Elisa & Ray
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