CrimethInc. occupies an awkward position when it comes to debates about privilege and oppression. As a point of entry for many who are not previously familiar with anarchism, CrimethInc. brings together people with a wide range of critiques and levels of awareness. Since the turn of the century, CrimethInc. projects have increasingly engaged with the power dynamics associated with race and gender, although this has not necessarily carried over to those discovering anarchism through those projects. From one side, some reactionaries dismiss this engagement as mere “identity politics,” implying that it has nothing to do with revolutionary struggle. From the other side, critics who know little about CrimethInc. projects besides the cover of a book published in 2001 continue to attempt to conscript the collective to serve as a straw man representing everything wrong with anarchism. Being highly visible means that CrimethInc. projects are often associated with those who consume them more so than with those who produce them. It also means that many people use CrimethInc. as a projection screen on which to impose the images of whatever enemies they wish to contrast against themselves.
Over the past few years, CrimethInc. convergences have served as an introductory space for hundreds of people curious about anarchist struggle and ways of life. At best, they have offered an opportunity for aspiring radicals to challenge their conditioning and learn from each other. One inspiring example of this occurred at the 2008 convergence outside Milwaukee, when first-time attendees performed an ill-thought-out racist skit. Others approached them with constructive criticism, and the result was an important and beneficial learning experience. Documentation of this can be found in comments here and here. While too many attempts at calling out such behavior end with defensiveness and communication breakdowns, this was a rare success story.
There is a lot to be said for creating mixed spaces in which people can be exposed to new ideas and develop their own capabilities. Such spaces are crucial for new participants to become involved in the anarchist movement. Unlike most other anarchist conferences and events, the convergences have been emphatically self-organized, offering room for all attendees to put on their own workshops and try out their own ideas. On the principle that people learn more from doing than from watching, this makes a great deal of sense; on the other hand, it means that the atmosphere and organization of the convergence are determined in part by the least experienced or self-aware participants.
Like many events in this sector of the anarchist milieu, the convergences have attracted a predominantly younger, whiter crowd. At worst, this means that more privileged participants can remain insulated within their comfort zones, creating—however unconsciously—an environment that is uncomfortable for those who do not share their privilege. The preceding paragraphs make a pretty good argument for why aspiring radicals from privileged demographics can benefit from others’ participation, but they don’t explain why there would be any incentive for less privileged people to subject themselves to the same marginalization they already experience in much of society at large.
It may be quixotic to think that spaces in which the majority of people are white, male-bodied, or straight can ever be comfortable for everyone else—yet there must be ways to make them less alienating. Meanwhile, the participation of a wider variety of people in these spaces is vital not only for people with more social privilege who stand to learn from others’ perspectives, but also to the current participants with less social privilege who are already invested in them.
When it comes to things like tags and forums, there’s often a group of people who see themselves as “owning” the space. They might have particular standards that they expect people to meet in order to “own” the space along with them. Things like:
- belonging to a certain demographic
- sharing a specific difficulty
- having certain political beliefs
- liking the thing that the space is dedicated to celebrating
- knowing social skills that may be specific to the space. Like knowing how to use trigger warnings in a particular way, or interacting comfortably with a certain type of humor
This is tricky. It’s rare that everyone who “owns” a space agrees about exactly who owns it or what the etiquette is.
If one person seems to speak for all the inhabitants of a space, it’s hard to know who they really speak for, and who they don’t speak for. It’s extra hard when you really dislike what they’re saying.
Not knowing who speaks for whom can make hurtful actions feel like they come from a whole group instead of one, or two, or twenty people.
Just because one person is acting badly, it doesn’t mean the whole group would act the same way. It’s possible that the people you encounter are acting extra mean, or aren’t informing you correctly about what the space is for.
Here’s where it gets a little harder: It’s possible that someone you encounter is acting extra mean, and that they’re still correct about what the space is for. They may be trying to protect something everyone values about the space, but be protecting it in an overly aggressive way.
In that situation, you could lash out at one person, only to find that others get caught in the crossfire.
What feels like an equal and opposite reaction doesn’t have an equal impact when an individual and a group argue. Words get separated from their context. People lose track of distinctions quickly as they unconsciously alternate between thinking about what the group believes and thinking about what one group member believes.
And in the middle of all that, online groups tend to have a trickle of new visitors coming in, trying to figure out what’s expected of them.
This is messy and hard. Prepare for people to act poorly from a place of hurt and confusion sometimes. Try not to take it out on innocent bystanders when you’re hurt and confused.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
In the discussions on Saturday night, one white person said something to the effect that he initially supported the disruption because, as an aspiring white ally, he unconsciously assumed that he should support whatever people of color seemed to be taking the most “radical” position. This is a telling indicator of how simplistic many white radicals’ conceptions still are of what it means to be a “white ally.”
Being a white ally—or, one might say less ostentatiously, a good comrade—to people of color is not a simple matter. In a specific personal relationship, such as with a friend or neighbor, it involves becoming aware of one’s advantages, checking one’s tendencies to utilize them, and above all being approachable and open to criticism. This is a lifelong project, but with healthy communication it is possible to measure one’s success according to concrete feedback.
Aspiring to be a “white ally” beyond specific relationships is more complex and potentially problematic. One can aspire to contest systems of white supremacy in general, but “white ally” is not a role or identity that one can earn with any amount of effort. Endless questions open before any white person who sets out to be an ally to “people of color” in the abstract. Whose lead do you follow? In conflicts between people of color, how do you decide which side to take, or how to stand aside? Is it possible to make this decision without simply identifying with those who seem less threatening to your white privilege, or who offer more opportunity to appease your white guilt?
Too many white people approach the issue of white supremacy as if it is simply a bill they can pay and move on. It is not a matter of individual guilt that can be absolved, but of engaging honestly and critically with one’s position in an unjust system. We are going to be struggling with power dynamics around race and gender for the rest of our lives, even if there is a capital-R Revolution. Rather than setting out to persuade themselves that they are doing enough, white people need to understand that nothing they can ever do will be “enough,” and yet that they have everything to gain by trying.
This year’s CrimethInc. convergence departs from past experiments through our decision to host it in an urban setting. Along with this choice of locations comes a host of new dynamics, relationships, and histories that are important for all of us to be aware of as we choose our actions for the week. Being in the city, this year’s convergence space is also situated on the battlefield of a struggle raging in Pittsburgh and most other cities in the U.S. There are many different names to describe this conflict—gentrification, “urban renewal,” community development, etc.—but at the heart of it is essentially the struggle over who has power to make decisions about the composition of a neighborhood, and how that power is structured. Similarly, who benefits from decisions made about a community, and whose interests are being heard? And how do the actions of folks from different racial, class, and cultural backgrounds participating in those neighborhoods affect the outcome of these struggles?
This year’s convergence is taking place at the intersection of four major neighborhoods in Pittsburgh: Bloomfield. Garfield, Friendship, and East Liberty. For us to understand our relationships to these communities and how other folks in this city might feel about our presence here, it is important for us to be aware of the history and character of these neighborhoods. Bloomfield is a traditionally white, working class neighborhood know as Pittsburgh’s “Little Italy.” Garfield has traditionally been a working-class neighborhood, changing as new waves of immigrants arrived in Pittsburgh and currently inhabited mostly by African-Americans. East Liberty, following a disastrous redevelopment plan and white flight in the 1960s, has become a working-class, African-American neighborhood and home to refugees from the destruction of the Hill District to build the Civic Arena. Friendship was invented as a neighborhood in the early 1990s by white, self-described “urban homesteaders” who sought to disassociate themselves from the “blighted” neighborhoods of Garfield and East Liberty. At the moment, there is an attempt to further split part of East Liberty into a new neighborhood called “East Side,” the new home of a Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, a Trek bike shop, and other businesses appealing to the affluent.
In examining this history, what are the intentions behind terms such as blighted neighborhoods, urban renewal and urban homesteading. Who has the power to make these definitions, and for what purposes are these labels used?
Urban blight is a term generally used to describe the neighborhoods of poor people, immigrants, and people of color in order to justify holding power over these neighborhoods and making decisions about their future. Urban blight says that no one should care about these places and they have no value.
Urban renewal in Pittsburgh is a history of highways expansions, new stadiums, and other publicly funded development that displace marginalized communities for the benefit of the elite. This term was used as justification for demolishing the heart of Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1961, the center of the black community at the time, to make way for an opera house serving Pittsburgh’s white elite.
The term homesteading, meanwhile, is rooted in the time of westward expansion of white Amerika, when the government offered incentives for settlers to move out from the original colonies. This movement was directly tied to displacement of Native Americans from their land, to the great detriment of the environment and for the enrichment of corporations. Might the modern application of the word reflect a similar process of white migration into traditional communities of color?
In planning and carrying out the CrimethInc. convergence this year, we need to be aware of our relationship to these historical injustices and the current struggles over defining the communities in our city. Our initial hope in organizing an urban convergence was to use the strength in numbers of hosting this event to create permanent infrastructure that could empower radical activities in Pittsburgh. We planned to buy a building that would host the convergence, use the momentum of the convergence to renovate it, and then have the building remain as a long-term anarchist resource for Pittsburgh. This would have been a major departure from convergences of years past, which actually strive to leave nothing behind.
It sounds like synergy, but the size, logistical, and geographical needs of a convergence space and a long-term anarchist social center are actually pretty divergent. After months and months of looking, we weren’t able to find something that would suit both projects perfectly. Rather than buy a building for a one week event or get a building that we could use long term but that would make this event impossible, we decided not to rush it and to make other plans for the convergence.
Our revised plan was to rent a building for the convergence space. In searching for a space to hold the convergence, we confronted the realities of being (mostly) white anarchists in a world shaped by the historical developments outlined above. Whether it was through the art-world, ‘hip’ politicians, absentee landlords, or any other avenue we knew of other folks getting space, we were thwarted. At the heart of it, hosting the CrimethInc. convergence (like most anarchist activities) is not in the self-interest of people who generally try to appeal to the world of corporate funding, “community development” grants, yuppie consumers, and the police. On the other hand, we were too poor for almost all of the property in the city available for a traditional rental agreement, regardless of the political leanings of the owners. The only neighborhoods where we could afford a space were either completely isolated from the local anarchist communities, or in neighborhoods targeted for gentrification.
In the end, we didn’t make much of a choice at all: we are hosting the convergence in the only legal space we could afford. And it is situated (to varying degrees, like most of Pittsburgh at this moment) in a place where there is serious tension about competing visions for the future of a neighborhood.
One of the most difficult decisions we had to make this year was the decision to get a ‘legal’ space. While we dreamed of other plans, all of them carried with them the more immediate threat of arrest. We felt it would be irresponsible to thrust all of you into that situation without your consent, and we worried that not enough of us would be willing to face those risks for these wilder plans to reach fruition. On the other hand, we felt a responsibility to all of you to make the convergence happen, and our only other real option we could see was a complete cancellation. So, we’re still trying the urban experiment, on what are the best terms we felt able to achieve, and we are still excited about what we can accomplish together.
The purpose of our analysis is not to feel guilt about the situation we are in, because we didn’t create this system, but rather to figure out how we can fight against it better, how we can be smarter and resist and overcome the way this world is to the best of our abilities. This situation leads to a lot of difficult questions for all of us to think about: Can white people exist in neighborhoods such as this without being a gentrifying force in the community, and how do we go about it? Is there an alternative to being outsiders in communities of color for white anarchists with little money, and what does that alternative look like? And finally, what are the possibilities for radical communities to exist of mixed race & class without becoming co-opted by the dominant trends of gentrification and capitalist development?
We are committed to exploring these questions and many more with all of you during the CrimethInc. convergence this year. In the meantime, as the local organizers, and with the input of other folks in our community, we ask you to please be aware of the following things to minimize our negative impact in this neighborhood.
One of the main tactics of gentrification is to maximize the visibility of white people in a neighborhood (through art walks, special events, festivals, etc.), thereby monopolizing public space and marginalizing people of color. If you are white, please be aware of how much public space you and your friends are taking in the community, and try to hang out in places like Friendship Park versus Penn Avenue.
The police are major agents of gentrification, befriending and “protecting” white people while harassing and terrorizing people of color. Do not befriend the police. It is best not to talk to any police officers, and if you see police doing fucked up things while you are here, do your best to hold them accountable while keeping your own safety in mind. Easy things to do are write down badge numbers, ask the folks being harassed if they need anything, and document the situation if possible.
Please don’t support the yuppie businesses in the area. Please do not go to the fancy coffee shops, art galleries, and hip clothing boutiques. Most of these business owners wouldn’t have dared to walk the streets of this neighborhood five years ago. Don’t reward them now that they’re trying to cash in.
[1] Participants in the mediation team report that its effectiveness was limited by the lack of a culture of communication and mediation generally in the anarchist community, most of which focus only on sexual assault and abuse.
[2] In fact, the APOC caucus was originally scheduled for the second day of this convergence. One of the people who planned and carried out the disruption asked that it be moved back to Friday, the day of the disruption.
[3] It would be a waste of time to address all of these, so we’ll note only one example: “Many knew full well that there were at least two perpetrators of sexual assault present at the convergence (which went against the convergence’s own policy), yet nobody said or did anything.” It is true that the mediation team spent quite a bit of time and energy following up on the accountability processes of two individuals at the convergence, in communication with the survivors in question. The policy stated that the wishes of survivors would be respected, and that policy was implemented to the fullest extent possible. The statement by the disrupters indicates one of two things: either they are maliciously misrepresenting that situation to their own gain—disrespecting the efforts of the mediation team (which included people of color), the wishes of the survivors, and the seriousness of the issues of sexual assault and accountability in general—or else they knew of the presence of two unaccountable perpetrators and did not say anything about them to the mediation team, an equally unconscionable action.
The various ways white people responded to the disruption show how far we have to go in developing a comprehensive anti-oppression politic that can protect against all forms of internal oppression and domination. The way the disruption itself played out, becoming a conflict between people of color as well as between people of color and white people, shows that issues of identity and privilege cannot be simplified into one-dimensional imperatives; we can’t just draw lines between black and white or right and wrong and fight it out, knowing ourselves to be on the side of the angels.
Though this has been emotionally exhausting all around, it’s only one learning experience in a lifelong process; we can’t let it discourage us. We’re in a long-term struggle; we’ll be organizing events for many years yet, along with other forms of activity. This year, we’ll discuss how to improve on the convergence models of the past, how to engage more with privilege and gentrification, and where to go from here. Here’s hoping this text can prompt more constructive discussions around all these issues.
Whatever can be said against participants in the convergence, throughout the entire incident no one threw a punch or called the police. It would be very difficult to find another mixed space of hundreds of people who would react to such a provocation without resorting to violence, whether their own or via the authorities.
But was the organizers’ reaction appropriate? Under the circumstances, considering that there was no template for handling such situations, it may not have been the worst response; if nothing else, it prevented anything from complicating the discussions that have taken place since. But upon a great deal of reflection, we can’t endorse the way people handled the disruption as an appropriate model for responding to similar events in the future.
By choosing to stay out of the conflict, white organizers essentially accepted the terms of the disrupters, collaborating in forcing them on everyone else and forcing the people of color who opposed the disruption to do so alone.
This is an example of how a muddle-headed desire to be an ally can sometimes cause people to countenance abusive behavior. White privilege is not the only kind of privilege, white-inflicted oppression is not the only kind of oppression; in standing aside, white organizers essentially joined the disrupters in prioritizing one form of oppression over others. This is neither responsible nor anarchist.
If this response sets the precedent for such situations, it will be impossible to defend anarchist events against disrupters of all stripes. Unfortunately, there are incentives for people of all walks of life to dominate and abuse others, and it’s not out of the question that worse enemies than these particular disrupters might attempt to take advantage of what they see as a weakness among anarchists. If there is a next time, we urge people to draw on this example and take action to prevent people from coercing others and breaking up events.
This is not the first time that anarchists have clashed over issues of oppression, entitlement, and coercion. History has shown repeatedly that apparently minor disagreements often foreshadow major divisions—in 1917, for example. We must stick to our principles even when others call on us to suspend them; let us not forget what became of anarchists who suspended them in the past.
There is also much to critique about the response after Friday night. It’s interesting to note that both the disruption Friday night and the discussion Saturday night targeted the attendees as a whole, diffusing responsibility, when most of the grievances in question could be traced to specific individuals. Anyone could have taken the initiative to approach the responsible parties personally, but few did. The discussion Saturday night was good for helping participants hone their understanding of oppression and white supremacy, but many of those who most needed to hear it were not in the room. At worst, this makes such discussions appear to be a sort of litany people recite to assure themselves of their good intentions, rather than a concrete way to change. Granted, people were exhausted—but most of the important growth in consciousness around these issues results from personal conversations, not open discussions.
A few people have dared to be honest and vulnerable, such as the white people in the discussion Saturday night who owned up to the oppressive things they had said Friday, and the people who participated in or were forewarned of the disruption who have come forward to express their regrets and explain why they did what they did. This humility sets a good example for everyone else.
Though many people have rejected the disrupters’ demands that white people “Go back to Europe” and so on as absurd, perhaps it is insulting not to engage with them. This is a coherent position—even if white people can’t be forced to return to Europe, one could argue that the only way for people of color to maintain their dignity is to refuse to legitimize their presence in North America.4 Indeed, white radicals consistently give people of color reason to doubt that they can ever be good comrades. White anarchists who don’t want to see more debacles like this in the future should make a real effort not to give people of color reason to give up on them.
Ultimately, though it is tempting for most white people to focus on the disruption, the roots of the issue and the power to address them lie within white anarchists. The disruption was not only a publicity stunt or a power grab within APOC; the fact that even a single person chose to participate in it out of personal frustration indicates that we all have a tremendous amount of work to do.
Feelings are always legitimate. It is a crushing tragedy that anyone felt excluded or silenced at the convergence.
When one feels excluded and silenced, there is something to be said for striking out, even when it is not in order to create the possibility of dialogue but simply to create space for oneself. Calls for dialogue are cheap coming from those whose comfort excludes and silences others. It’s easy to be sympathetic to the person who accepted the last-minute invitation to participate in the disruption out of frustration with the atmosphere of the convergence.
All that said, not all actions are legitimate. Many who experienced the disruption have identified it as dominating, abusive behavior. The white people in the building were targeted on account of their identities rather than their actions, and everyone in the building was subjected to an extremely traumatic situation. This was justified on the grounds that people of color have been subjected to much worse—which is true but beside the point.
Let no one say the action was not violent. When the police evict a family from their home, they need not hit anyone for the eviction to be violent; the threat of violence is enough. Likewise, by screaming that they were not pacifists and physically seizing and damaging people’s belongings (including, incidentally, the belongings of people of color), the disrupters made their intentions clear. Justifications after the fact about “property damage” not being violence are beside the point, not to mention a disingenuous misrepresentation of the anarchist case for anti-corporate vandalism.
Gentrification has been cited as one of the justifications for the disruption, along with the allegation that the organizers had not consulted the residents of the neighborhood where the convergence took place. Of course, some of the organizers and participants were residents of the neighborhood, while none of the disrupters were even from Pittsburgh. The disruption was supported by at least one local who was not present, but it’s unlikely that the disrupters themselves consulted the residents of the neighborhood before acting supposedly in their interests. By forcing hundreds of people out onto the street in the middle of the night and attracting the police, the disruption posed great risk not only to convergence participants, but also potentially to local residents; if anything, it increased the negative effects of the convergence on the neighborhood.
In the statement the disrupters released several days after the convergence, they acknowledged, amid various fabrications,[3] that the disruption had been discussed long before the convergence, when the organizers were still considering purchasing a building. Rather than a response to any specific grievance, it seems that the disruption was an opportunistic attack on a target calculated to create the maximum notoriety while occasioning the minimum risk. If this is so, it is particularly unscrupulous that those who planned it invited others to participate on the basis of their personal frustrations.
One might hope that an action like this might at least give rise to dialogue, and one person who joined in at the last minute has said that he did so hoping to achieve that goal; but the disruption itself seems intended to bring out the worst in people and make dialogue impossible. Forcing people out of the space, demanding that they not only leave the building but also Pittsburgh and North America, clearly created structural obstacles to any sort of collective processing of the event; it was only by defying the disrupters’ demands that attendees were able to address the inappropriate ways white people had responded. Some of the disrupters have made it clear that they do not regard white anarchists as comrades; it’s not out of the question that they may have deliberately set out to create a situation intended to corroborate that perspective.
In any case, those who planned the disruption in advance have made it very difficult not to interpret their entire participation in the convergence as a malicious series of deeds carried out in bad faith.
In the subsequent statement, the disruption was called “Smack a White Boy,” but the only people who ended up in physical confrontations were people of color. This was not an accident, but a structural result of the disrupters’ approach. What did they expect other people of color in the space would do? The disrupters imposed a situation on everyone in the building in which any white people who defended themselves or their belongings would be framed as racists; the only ones who were immune to this setup were the other people of color, who were then forced to personally take on the disrupters, regardless of whether they were emotionally prepared for this.
As of this writing, most of those who knew about the disruption in advance have expressed regrets of one kind or another, but the core group of disrupters has continued to justify it in the strongest terms. In our view, they are perpetrators of abuse who cannot be considered comrades unless they are willing to be accountable for their actions.
The disruptors imposed a framework for identity and legitimacy that has dominated dialogue about the events, even among many who oppose their politics as well as the action. At worst, this has resulted in people pitting various identities against each other in a contest for legitimacy: “Queer and trans folks were forced out onto the street in the middle of the night!” “People of color have been displaced from land for hundreds of years!”
It is important to avoid shallow critiques of identity politics that obscure the ways our various experiences of race, gender, class, and other factors shape our lives. But we can’t simply use identities to confer automatic legitimacy on anyone’s suffering, ideas, or actions. We have to create frameworks that acknowledge the uniqueness of everyone’s experiences rather than presenting individuals as mere collections of identities, and emphasize what everyone has to gain in dismantling oppression along all axes.
This is especially relevant in reference to justifications of the disrupters’ behavior. We all agree that violence is legitimate in self-defense. Can this be extrapolated to mean that violence is always legitimate when a person lower in the social hierarchy attacks someone higher in it? If so, how do we establish exactly where people stand in relation to each other? Is race more determinant than class or gender? Are there complex equations by which we can work out who is entitled to evict whom from a space?
Or is this the wrong line of questioning altogether? As anarchists, we might instead posit that violence is only legitimate to the extent that it creates or defends horizontal power dynamics. Self-defense can be an instance of this, as can attacks on the repressive apparatus of the state.
It is not anarchist to prioritize any one form of oppression over others. White people can’t understand or judge the experiences of people of color, but by this same principle no one can fully understand or judge another person’s experience, and that increases exponentially according to all sorts of differences. The point is not to rank oppressions, but to offset their effects while fighting them. Forms of political shorthand such as “all white people benefit from white privilege” and “there is no such thing as reverse racism” are useful for this, but they cannot justify turning a blind eye when people of oppressed demographics victimize others on the basis of presumed privilege.
