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Title: No More Organizers Author: Anonymous Date: September 2020 Language: en Topics: organizing, Insurrectionary Source: Retrieved on 2020-09-28 from https://www.instagram.com/p/CFizGrEhz_w/
From abusers, clout chasers, careerists, and grifters to people getting
thrust into a dangerous visibility, dehumanized, and overworked, the
role of ‘organizer’ is detrimental both to the people who claim it/it’s
thrust upon as well as the movement for liberation as a whole.
Freedom doesn’t need organizers, it needs everyone to take an active
role in the fight and to refuse to put eachother on dehumanizing
pedestals in the process.
We can’t wait for others to fight for our freedom. As always, the secret
is to begin.
The role of ‘organizer’ is a specialized position, that is it is never
something someone can just do but only a certain kind of person can do.
Even in an ‘informal movement, it is a position that separates a
‘leadership’ from the struggle. Like all specialized roles, it creates a
dynamic of spectatorship — rather than encouraging people to just do the
damn thing and be active participants in the struggle for their
liberation, it tells them to wait for the organizers to do everything
for them, all they have to do is show up.
Even the best intentioned and most aware organizers perpetrate this
because the issue is with the very position of the organizer — always
separated from everyone and everything else. For the organizer to exist
there must be people to be organized, not active participants making
shit happen themselves.
More intentionally, organizers will hoard access to resources — money,
tools, social connections — that they simply will not share. If they are
a part of particular organizations, they will make the barrier to access
entry into said organization where you will most likely continue to
remain a spectator. To protect their position of power they will create
a hostile environment around organizing, or lie about needing to be a
particular kind of person or have particular kinds of skills to do it.
The truth is, anything organizers can do everyone can do, and for the
sake of us and our freedom, as well as the well being of the organizers,
we must do it and in the process knock them off their pedestals and make
the irrelevant.
Organizers and leaders have a tendency to create both formal and
informal hierarchies. No one person is so critically important to the
struggle that without them it would all fall apart, but the culture
built around organizers and organizing that puts them on a pedestal
creates that illusion.
This creates a perfect set up for abuse of power (which is a constant
when power is involved.) We’re sure most people have heard something
similar to this before — Yeah what they did isn’t okay but they do such
good work? When people are conflated with the struggle they are apart of
accountability is nearly impossible.
The excuses are endless, ‘there’s too much going on right now, can we
discuss this another time?/You’re just trying to delegitimize my
work/this is COINTELPRO/ You’re an infiltrator.’ On top of that, the
tendency to deify organizers creates a blind following that will defend
them no matter what — it’s these dynamics that contribute to an
entrenchment of racism and its apologism, of abuse and its apologism.
These positions are also a magnet for clout chasers, grifters, and
wanna-be politicians building their resume on out backs. These sorts of
people will put people in physical and legal danger to get that good
instagram shot, or get donations to their fund, or they’ll disarm a
situation so 5 years later when they are running for city council they
can bring that point up.
Who gets to be an organizer? Much like ‘leadership, when the only way
people know how to engage in struggle is by following, they will follow
whoever steps up, politics or analysis be damned. This is seen most
evidently whenever some random person shows up to a demo with a
megaphone many people will instantly look to them because the megaphone
(or the reflective vests, or the loudest voice) confers a level of
legitimacy and before you know it you’re standing there being told well
not all cops and that you need to go home and go vote.
The other side of this is people get thrust into organizer roles simply
because they are doing something and with it comes a level of
visibility, deification, overwork, looking to for answers and general
dehumanization that is not asked for and people quickly burn out and
disappear and people desperately search for a new sacrifice.
Those who ‘organize’ never coordinate and make everything happen, but
they’ll take the credit for it. This falls strongly along class, racial,
and gendered lines. Where there’s a well off organizer, you can bet it
was poorer people doing the grunt work. Where there is a seemingly down
ass man, there’s 10 women and gender variant/non-conforming people doing
the grunt work and a lot more doing the informal emotional and care
work. Where there is a white organizer, there is the backs of multiple
black people running themselves ragged that they are standing on.
Even outside of this, it takes a whole community to ‘organize’ anything.
The friends you bounce your ideas off of the people that throw in for
supplies, who coordinate their various crews to show up, everyone who
spreads the word and shows up. That one person can take credit for the
actions of so many people is both arrogant and an active hindrance to
building a sense of collective power.
DON’T WAIT FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO FIGHT FOR YOUR LIBERATION
THE SECRET IS TO BEGIN