black
anarchism

by ashanti alston
Introduction

Many classical anarchists regarded anarchism as a body of el
omental truths that merely needed to be revealed to the world
and believed people would become anarchists once exposed to
the irvesistible logic of the idea. This is one of the reasons they
tended to be didactic.

Fortunately the lived practice of the anarchist movement
is much richer than that, Few "convert” in such a way: it is much
‘more common for people to embrace anarchism slowly, as they
discover that it is relevant to their lived experience and amenable
to thelr own insights and concerns.

The richness of the anarchist tradition lay precisely in
the long history of encounters between non-anarchist dissidents
and the anarchist framework that we inherited from the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. Anarchism has grown through such en-
counters and now confronts sacial contradictions that were pre-
viously marginal to the movement. For example, a century ago
the struggle against patriarchy was a relatively minor concern
for most anarchists and yet it is now widely acoepted as an inte-
gral part of our struggle against domination.

It is only within the last 10 or 15 years that anarchists in
North America have begun to seriously explore what it means
to develop an anarchism that can both fight white supremacy
and artioulate a positive vision of oultural diversity and cultural
exchange. Comrades are working hard to identily the historical
referents of such a task, how our movement must change to em-
brace it, and what a truly antiracist anarchism might look like.

‘The following piece by IAS (Institute for Anarchist Stud-
ies) board member Ashanti Alston explores some of these ques:
tions. Alston, who was a member of the Black Panther Party and
the Black Liberation Army, describes his encounter(s) with an-
archism (which began while he was incarcerated for activities
related to the Black Liberation Army). He touches upon some of
the limitations of older visions of anarchism, the contemporary
relevance of anarchism to black people, and some of the prin-
ciples necessary to build a new revolutionary movement.

‘This is an edited transeript of a talk given by Alston on
October 24th, 2003 at Hunter College in New York City. This
ovent was organized by the Institute for Anarchist Studies and
cosponsored by the Student Liberation Action Movement of the

city

University of New York
~Chuck Morse
Black Anarchism

by Ashanti Alston
Black Anarchism
by Ashanti Alston

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Surprised 1o ind anaiyecs of peoples Sratsios peoples
Ciures tnd. peoples exganiatonl Tormalions - that
Thess anaisacs nelped me seo important things
loar e tore For cxkiuplo. Foulized that there was s
Droblom with my Tove fo peopls ik Huoy .Newion. Bob
B Sedt and Eldrdge Clouror nd o fact har 1 na put
e on pedostal Ator ol whar docs i soy about you i
you allow someone to set themselves up as your leader and
‘make all your decisions for you? What anarchism helped
me see was that you, as an individual, should be respect-
ed and that no one is important enough to do your think-
ing for you. Even if we thought of Huey P. Newton or El-
dridge Cleaver as the baddest revolutionaries in the world,
Ishould see myself as the baddest revolutionary, just like
them. Even if I am young, I have a brain. I can think. I can
‘make decisions.

I thought about all this while in prison and found
myself saying, “Man, we really set ourselves up in a way
that was bound to create problems and produce schisms.
We were bound to follow programs without thinking."
The history of the Black Panther Party, as great as it is,
has those skeletons. The smallest person on the totem
pole was supposed to be a worker and the one on the top
was the one with the brains. But in prison I learned that I
could have made some of these decisions myself, and that
people around me could have made these decisions them-
selves. Although I appreciated everything that the leaders
of the Black Panther Party did, I began to see that we can
do things differently and thus draw more fully on our own
potentials and move even further towards real self-deter-
mination. Although it wasn't easy at first, I stuck with the
anarchist material and found that I couldn’t put it down
once it started giving me insights. I wrote to people in De-
troit and Canada who had been sending me literature and
asked them to send more.

However, none of what I received dealt with Black
folks or Latinos. Maybe there were occasional discussions
of the Mexican revolution, but nothing dealt with us, here,
in the United States. There was an overwhelming empha-
sis on those who became the anarchist founding fathers
- Bakunin, Kropotkin, and some others - but these Euro-
pean figures, who were addressing European struggles,
didn't really speak to me.

I tried to figure out how this applies to me. I began
to look at Black history again, at Alfrican history, and at
the histories and struggles of other people of color. I found
‘many examples of anarchist practices in non-European so-
cieties, from the most ancient times to the present. This
was very important to me: I needed to know that it is not
just European people who can function in an anti-authori-
tarian way, but that we all can.

Twas encouraged by things I found in Africa - not
so much by the ancient forms that we call tribes ~ but by
‘modern struggles that occurred in Zimbabwe, Angola, Mo-
zambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Even though they were led
by vanguardist organizations, I saw that people were build-
ing radical, democratic communities on the ground. For
the first time, in these colonial situations, African peoples
where creating what was the Angolans called “popular
power.” This popular power took a very anti-authoritarian
form: people were not only conducting their lives, but also
transforming them while fighting whatever foreign power
was oppressing them.

However, in every one of these liberation struggles
new repressive structures were imposed as soon as people
got close to liberation: the leadership was obsessed with
ideas of government, of raising a standing army, of con-
trolling the people when the oppressors were expelled.
Once the so-called victory was accomplished, the people
~who had fought for years against their Oppressors - were
disarmed and instead of having real popular power, a new
party was installed at the helm of the state. So, there were
no real revolutions or true liberation in Angola, Guinea-
Bissau, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe because they simply
replaced a foreign oppressor with an indigenous oppres-

So, here I am, in the United States fighting for
Black liberation, and wondering: how can we avoid situa-
tions like that? Anarchism gave me a way to respond to this
question by insisting that we put into place, as we struggle
now, structures of decision-making and doing things that
continually bring more people into the process, and not
just let the most “enlightened” folks make decisions for
everyone else. The people themselves have to create struc-
tures in which they articulate their own voice and make
their own decisions. I didn't get that from other ideologies:
Igot that from anarchism.

I also began to see, in practice, that anarchistic
structures of decision-making are possible. For example,
at the protests against the Republican National Conven-
tion in August 2000 I saw normally excluded groups - peo-
ple of color, women, and queers - participate actively in
every aspect of the mobilization. We did not allow small
groups to make decisions for others and although people
had differences, they were seen as good and beneficial. It
was new for me, after my experience in the Panthers, to
be in a situation where people are not trying to be on the
same page and truly embraced the attempt to work out our
sometimes conflicting interests. This gave me some ideas
about how anarchism can be applied.

It also made me wonder: if it can be applied to the
diverse groups at the convention protest, could I, as a
Black activist, apply these things in the Black community?
Some of our ideas about who we are as a people hamper
our struggles. For example, the Black community is often
considered a monolithic group, but it is actually a commu-
nity of communities with many different interests. I think
of being Black not so much as an ethnic category but as an
oppositional force or touchstone for looking at situations
differently. Black culture has always been oppositional
and is all about finding ways to creatively resist oppres-
sion here, in the most racist country in the world. So, when
I spealk of a Black anarchism, it is not so tied to the color
of my skin but who I am as a person, as someone who can
resist, who can see differently when I am stuck, and thus
live differently.

‘What is important to me about anarchism is its in-
sistence that you should never be stuck in old, obsolete
approaches and always try to find new ways of looking at
things, feeling, and organizing. In my case, I first applied
anarchism in the early 1990s in a collective we created to
put out the Black Panther newspaper again. I was still a
closet anarchist at this point. I wasn't ready yet to come
out and declare myself an anarchist, because I already
knew what folks were going to say and how they were go-
ing to look at me. Who would they see when I say anar-
chist? They would see the white anarchists, with all the
funny hair ete, and say, “how the heck are you going to
hook up with that?”

There was a divide in this collective: on the one
side there were older comrades who were trying to rein-
vent the wheel and, on the other, myself and a few others
who were saying, “Let's see what we can learn from the
Panther experience and build upon and improve it. We
can't do things the same way.” We emphasized the impor-
tance of an antisexist perspective - an old issue within
the Panthers - but the other side was like, “I don’t want to
hear all that feminist stuff.” And we said, “That's fine if you
don’t want to hear it, but we want the young folks to hear
it, 50 they know about some of the things that did not work
in the Panthers, so they know that we had some internal
contradictions that we could not overcome.” We tried to
press the issue, but it became a battle and the discussions
got so difficult that a split occurred. As this point, I left the
collective and began working with anarchist and antiau-
thoritarian groups, who have really been the only ones to
consistently try to deal with these dynamics thus far.

One of the most important lessons I also learned
from anarchism is that you need to look for the radical
things that we already do and try to encourage them. This
is why I think there is so much potential for anarchism
in the Black community: so much of what we already do
is anarchistic and doesn't involve the state, the police, or
the politicians. We look out for each other, we care for
each other’s kids, we go to the store for each other, we find
ways to protect our communities. Even churches still do
things in a very communal way to some extent. I learned
that there are ways to be radical without always passing
out literature and telling people, “Here is the picture, if
you read this you will automatically follow our organiza-
tion and join the revolution.” For example, participation
is a very important theme for anarchism and it is also very
important in the Black community. Consider jazz it is one
of the best illustrations of an existing radical practice be-
cause it assumes a participatory connection between the
individual and the collective and allows for the expression
of who you are, within a collective setting, based on the
enjoyment and pleasure of the music itself. Our communi-
ties can be the same way. We can bring together all kinds
of diverse perspectives to make music, to make revolution.

‘How can we nurture every act of freedom? Whether
it is with people on the job or the folks that hang out on
the corner, how can we plan and work together? We need
to learn from the different struggles around the world that
are not based on vanguards. There are examples in Boliv-
ia. There are the Zapatistas. There are groups in Senegal
building social centers. You really have to look at people
who are trying to live and not necessarily trying to come
up with the most advanced ideas. We need to de-emphasize
the abstract and focus what is happening on the ground.

How can we bring all these different strands togeth-
er? How can we bring in the Rastas? How can we bring
in the people on the west coast who are still fighting the
government strip-mining of indigenous land? How can we
bring together all of these peoples to begin to create a vi-
sion of America that is for all of us?

Oppositional thinking and oppositional risks are
necessary. I think that is very important right now and one
of the reasons why I think anarchism has so much poten-
tial to help us move forward. It is not asking of us to dog-
matically adhere to the founders of the tradition, but to be
open to whatever increases our democratic participation,
our creativity, and our happiness.

We just had an Anarchist People of Color confer-
ence in Detroit on October 3rd to the 5th. One hundred
thirty people came from all over the country. It was greatto
just see ourselves and the interest of people of color from
around the United States in finding ways of thinking out-
side of the norm. We saw that we could become that voice
in our communities that says, “Wait, maybe we don’t need
to organize like that. Wait, the way that you are treating
people within the organization is oppressive. Wait, what is
your vision? Would you like to hear mine?” There is a need
Tor those kinds of voices within our different communities.
Not just our communities of color, but in every community
there is & need to stop advancing ready-made plans and to
trust that people can collectively figure out what to do with
this world. I think we have the opportunity to put aside
what we thought would be the answer and fight together
to explore different visions of the future. We can work on
that. And there is no one answer: we've got to work it out
as we go.

‘Although we want to struggle, it is going to be very
difficult because of the problems that we have inherited
from this empire. For example, I saw some very hard, emo-
tional struggles at the protests against the Republican
National Convention. But people stuck to it, even if they
broke down erying in the process. We are not going to get
through some of our internal dynamics that have kept us
divided unless we are willing to go through some really
tough struggles. This is one of the other reasons why I say
there is no answer: we've just got to go through this.

Ourstruggles here in the United States affect every-
body in the world. People on the bottom are going to play
a key role and the way we relate to people on the bottom
is going to be very important. Many of us are privileged
enough to be able to avoid some of the most difficult chal-
lenges and we will need to give up some of this privilege in
order to build a new movement. The potential is there. We
can still win - and redefine what it means to win - but we
have the opportunity to advance a richer vision of freedom
than we have ever had before. We have to be willing to try.

As a Panther, and as someone who went under-
ground as an urban guerrilla, I have put my life on the
line. I have watched my comrades die and spent most of
‘my adult life in prison. But I still believe that we can win.
Struggle is very tough and when you cross that line, you
risk going to jail, getting seriously hurt, killed, and watch-
ing your comrades getting seriously hurt and killed. That
is not a pretty picture, but that is what happens when you
fight an entrenched oppressor. We are struggling and will
make it rough for them, but struggle is also going to be
rough for us too.

This is why we have to find ways to love and sup-
port each other through tough times. It is more than just
believing that we can win: we need to have structures in
place that can carry us through when we feel like we can-
not go another step. I think we can move again if we can
figure out some of those things. This system has got to
come down. It hurts us every day and we can’t give up. We
have to get there. We have to find new ways,

Anarchism, if it means anything, means being open
to whatever it takes in thinking, living, and in our relation-
ships - to live fully and win. In some ways, I think they are
both the same: living to the fullest is to win. Of course we
will and must clash with our oppressors and we need to
find good ways of doing it. Remember those on the bottom
who are most impacted by this. They might have different
perspectives on how this fight is supposed to go. If we can’t
find ways for meeting face-to-face to work that stuff out, old
ghosts will re-appear and we will be back in the same old
situation that we have been in before.

You all can do this. You have the vision. You have
the creativity. Do not allow anyone to lock that down.
(11

I think of being Black not so
much as an ethnic category
but as an oppositional force or
touchstone for looking at situ-
ations differentl; Black
culture has always been oppo-
sitional and is a bout find-
ing ways to creatively resist
oppression here, in the most
racist country in the world. So,
when I speak of a Black anar-
chism, it is not so tied to the
color 6f my skin but who I am
as a person, as someone who
can resist, who can see differ-
ently when I am stuck, and
thus live differently.