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Title: An Anarchist Organising Manual Author: Zabalaza Date: 2001 Language: en Topics: community organizing, organizing, organization, how to, manual Source: Zabalaza Books
This pamphlet is a collection of essays taken from various sources. The
first is taken from the War Resisters League and is available on the
Struggle (
) website. The following three are taken from the organising section of
the Workers Solidarity Movements website. And lastly, the fifth is taken
from a book called Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, pp. 126-140. The
person who posted the essay to the web had the following to say about it
“I'm somewhat ambivalent [unsure] about Alinsky, and if you read his
books, you'll see why I say that; but I can't deny that he was a
successful organiser, and thus think that anarchists can benefit from
some of his ideas.”
Zabalaza Books
5 May 2001
When organising, local group members should ask themselves: "Are we
reaching out to various groups in the community — minority groups, the
elderly, trade unions, churches, the campus? Are we seen by other parts
of the community as a resource and support group at moments of community
crisis?"
Here are some guidelines to consider in preparing to work for a just and
peaceful world:
broader concerns. A "scattershot" approach to organising will likely end
in frustration.
processes of your community.
persuaded than the establishment.
confidence in your cause it will soon show.
There are a couple of strategies for forming a local group. The first is
to start a group around broad political or social concerns; and then
develop specific campaigns and actions that reflect the concerns of your
group. A second strategy is to form a group around a specific campaign,
target, or injustice... thereby attracting people who are concerned with
that issue. They may not have broad political agreement with one
another, but many who get involved for the first time may wish to
continue working in the same vein with a broader group....
[Note: for anarchists, the first option is the way to go, as
single-issue politics scuttles the broader movement]
The most effective method to convince people to attend a meeting is
one-to- one contact. If people are asked directly to come to a meeting,
then they are more likely to attend than if they simply hear or read
about it without being put on the spot for a commitment. The next best
method is to mail a letter or postcard about a meeting, followed by a
phone call reminder.
The common "mass methods" of outreach are through leafleting or setting
up literature tables at speaking engagements, concerts, meetings, film
showings, shopping centres, demonstrations, and so forth. Registration
week on college campuses is often the best time for reaching people.
Having a petition or sign-up sheet is valuable for follow-up calls and
mailings. Placing an ad or announcement for a meeting in a newspaper, on
the radio or community billboard, or simply postering key locations can
be useful to draw people, but don't rely on these methods to act as more
than a reminder.
The key is to be creative and continue to reach out. No group, no matter
how stable at one time, will remain that way for long without
continually trying to gain new members. This is especially true in
communities that are in constant flux, e.g., high schools and colleges.
It is crucial that new people are made to feel welcome. When a stranger
comes to a meeting, introduce her or him around and involve the person
in regular meeting discussions and post-meeting activities. Also, give
the new person a real task to perform, such as making posters, handing
out some leaflets, reading a book for a study group, helping to organise
a demonstration, or putting to use any skills (s)he may have. You have
to gauge what a person can take, however, so that a new person does not
feel overburdened or get frightened off.
The key is to attract five to ten reliable workers, who are likely to
stay past the first few meetings. This is your core group, which will be
expected to know what is going on with the group at all levels.
The first meeting of a group can be crucial to the initial success of
that group, so plan carefully. Set a time and place before contacting
people. The place should be convenient, the time should be far enough
ahead so there are no conflicts and soon enough so people won't forget
(that means about a week or two ahead).
Before the meeting, make an agenda — what you want to do, why you want
to do it, how you'll go about it, and who will join in. Select a room a
bit too small and arrive at least a half-hour in advance. Try to have a
beverage and some sort of snack available. Also, display any appropriate
literature you might have. Make sure someone will take notes that can be
sent to all those who expressed interest but couldn't attend, as well as
those who did attend.
Start the meeting with introductions to each other, giving a little more
than one's name. Go over the agenda to see if there are any changes or
additions, then set a reasonable time limit for the meeting to end
(e.g., 2 hours) and stick to it. After there's been group acceptance of
the what, why and how, get firm commitments to do something like giving
money on a regular basis, giving time, attending a study group session,
leafleting, or just about anything. Without a commitment to do
something, people have no reason to relate to the local group. Before
the meeting breaks up be sure to set a time and place for another
meeting. Ask people to bring others who are interested to the next
meeting. You may want to set up task forces to meet between meetings.
Meetings are a drag if you don't get anything done. Every time you have
a meeting, decide beforehand what you want to accomplish...
First Meeting. Get friends and people politically close to you. Discuss
the need for a local group to act on specific issues. Work for common
agreement in identifying the issues, and get commitments to work on them
through the group.
Second Meeting. Get new people. Summarise previous decisions and
determine how the organisation will function.
Third Meeting. Plan an action (picket line, leafleting, etc.) and/or set
up a study series. Fourth Meeting. Discuss the action and plan further
activities. Plan the involvement of more people.
If your meetings regularly exceed 20 to 30 people, you may want to split
into two or more groups. It has been found that the ideal sized group
for decision- making is on the order of a dozen or so.
The easy part is getting started. The hard part is keeping things going.
The single most important way to sustain a local group is to be active.
If you don't develop regular projects and actions that people can
involve themselves in, they will sense a purposelessness to the group
and drop out.
There are any number of actions that can be organised on a regular
basis. Leafleting... once a week [is one] example. This ongoing program
involves people in a leafleting schedule, and doing the leafleting
itself. Study programs are regular activities that will involve people
if you have a goal. Create study programs around issues, around
politics, around prospective actions.
A newsletter that comes out regularly fills several needs. It's an
ongoing activity that involves people. It disseminates information on
local activities and is an outlet for political education. It serves as
a forum for opinion. It helps tie the membership together.
Second to having a program and doing something, what keeps a group
together and helps it grow is a communitarian spirit. A sense of
togetherness is really important in this alienating society. If your
group is a place where people can feel wanted and part of something,
they'll stay and work.
Make your meetings enjoyable rather than dreary. For instance you can
have them at the same time as a potluck dinner and at a regular time and
place, so that going to them becomes a habit for members. Do some things
that are done just for fun. Have parties and picnics or retreats. Make
decisions co- operatively. That means really talk things out at your
regular potluck dinner meeting. People need to feel involved, and be
involved, at all levels of the group. There's a tendency to let one
person write the leaflets, one person to do the thinking, and another to
do the shit work. While it's true that some people are better at a given
task than others, an attempt should be made to rotate the tasks.
Endless meetings with little action. Do anything together, no matter how
small (e.g., taking some time during a regular meeting to write a
government official or setting up a leafleting event) can give an
important feeling of accomplishment while beginning the groundwork for a
more substantial project.
Failure to attract, integrate, and hold new members. Brainstorm ideas
for outreach and implement these ideas. Make every new person feel
welcome and immediately involved.
Leader or key organiser leaves. Though it is often more efficient (in
the short run) to have the "best" person do a particular task... it is
much better to encourage others to take initiative, responsibility, and
leadership in certain areas.
Responsibilities not adequately shared. A process of rotating
responsibility or leadership can be regularised to promote a
decentralisation of skills, thus strengthening the movement. Set a time
limit (e.g., every 3 months) to rotate convening and facilitating
meetings, etc. Schedule special workshops for certain skills (e.g.,
writing and designing leaflets, speaking, fund raising).
Lack of funding. Establish a pledge system for regular members (R2 a
week or R10 a month) just to meet basic operating expenses. Plan a
raffle, garage sale, film showing. Brainstorm other ways to get funding.
Group too large. Split the group up, either by geography, interests, or
meeting time. This will keep meetings from getting too cumbersome.
Division of interest/lack of unity. If your group is doing too much at
once, you may wish to split the group along the lines of the areas of
interest, instead of doing many things poorly.
Group changes from founding basis. Often, as new people join a group, it
begins to change from its original purpose or its politics may be
altered or diluted. Sometimes this is a good process, but sometimes this
happens by design (e.g., infiltration and take-over).
To avoid the latter, the group should be founded on an explicit basis.
Coalitions are more susceptible to manipulation than groups with clearly
identified politics.
Government infiltrators. The best way to deal with informers is to keep
everything you do "aboveboard" and honest; that way no exposure would
disrupt your activities. Often groups are more disrupted by suspicion of
"who's the agent," than by what an agent could do.
There are four simple requirements for an effective organisation:
People is pretty self-explanatory. To have a group you need more than
one person and really at least five before it becomes sustainable. In
most places anarchists are not very hard to come across, in most
countries at least 1 in a 1,000 to 1 in 10,000 people might consider
themselves an anarchist. So even in fairly small towns there are likely
to be at least a dozen or so 'anarchists'.
Unfortunately the next step most groups take is to try and set up a
group that includes just about everyone that adopts the label. This may
seem like the logical thing but problems arise when we look at the next
two requirements.
For a group to be effective it has to have a clear idea of what it is
fighting for, not simply what it is fighting against. And it must agree
what the best tactics are to use and that everyone in the group will use
follow the agreed tactics. This will be discussed at length later
In order to function an organisation needs a paper, leaflets, rooms to
meet in, money for mailouts and a dozen other items that require lots of
the green stuff. Ways of tackling this requirement include
Ignoring it. Which means things only take place if someone is willing to
fund them out of their own pocket. This is pretty common but if course
results in things not getting done. It also gives the funder undue
influence.
Use 'criminal' means to raise money. This sometimes happens but is
generally not a good move as sooner or later people get caught and end
up in prison or worse. What's more if you come under any sort of police
investigation it will rapidly become apparent that your getting funds
from some dodgy source that will in itself attract further
investigation. It also gives the state a good excuse for a
'non-political' clamp down.
Organise fundraisers. Although I think this can work well for special
purchases, like say a printing press if its used for regular bills
(printing, rent etc.) it soon turns into a massive drag and waste of
resources. You can spend half of the time was discussing jumble sales
and disco's which is off-putting.
Membership levy/subs. This is what the WSM uses; members contribute 5%
of their gross income on a weekly or monthly basis. A percentage system
is fairer then a flat rate as an unemployed member (on 100 dollars a
week, the state welfare) pays 5 dollars where as someone working and
earning 500 Con dollars a week pays at least 25 dollars. This gives us
an income to pay for our paper, magazine, leaflets, and rooms and even
to subsidise travel to demos for unemployed members. Of course it also
has a negative effect on the first requirement, people, as some people
may be unwilling to loose the equivalent of a couple of beers a week.
Which brings me to the fourth requirement, commitment.
The amount of work you do and the amount of money you’re willing to put
in depends on you feeling good about the organisation. It is adversely
affected if you feel you are being used, or that other people are not
willing to contribute their share. That much is obvious. However its
also true that your commitment will be dependant on how much you agree
with what the group is doing/saying and whether the groups seems to be
going somewhere or just treading water. It's easy to keep people around
when lots of stuff is happening; the difficult thing is the periods in
between bursts of activity.
I favour a high commitment oriented group over a 'as many people as
possible' one. With time I think the high commitment one can come to
involve a lot of people where as I don't think the reverse can be true.
Enough background, here's some concrete ideas.
Find another four or five people that are willing to do something
serious. You may know this many already if not get an address you can
put on leaflets and start leafleting demo's etc. with anarchist stuff.
Get a flag or a banner together. Maybe call a public meeting on
anarchism and see who turns up.
Once you get your four or five people be prepared to spend a couple of
years getting your act together before you start to expand. Agree on a
membership levy and conditions of membership. Write down agreed
perspectives and strategy for promoting anarchism and getting involved
in activity. Start publishing a regular paper arguing these ideas. Sell
it through bookshops, campaign meetings and demos. Get involved around
struggles and develop respect for your group as good activists and
people with good ideas. Don't concentrate on talking to anarchists,
concentrate on talking to activists. Find out about the national groups
and travel to nearby demos/ conferences. Make a banner you can bring on
marches. I know all of this is possible with as few as five people
because I spent the period from 1989-91 doing just that here.
Above all you need to be patient. A big problem is the 'revolution next
year' syndrome where you hype yourself up to expecting a lot and then
get disappointed when it does not materialise. Work out where you are
going but be prepared to go there slowly, as I said above its likely to
be two years before you get any serious return on your work.
Now that you’re a member of an anarchist group it's time to start
thinking about what sort of contribution you can make to the group.
Don't allow yourself to sit back and blindly follow what others suggest,
respect the experience of other activists but recognise that you have a
contribution to make in all aspects of the group and also a unique
perspective on its functioning.
Is there a theoretical area the group is weak on? If this is the case
then perhaps you could research this and explain it to the others
through internal educational talks or articles. It's generally
impossible for everyone to know everything so its a good idea for people
to specialise a little providing they also explain what they discover to
everyone.
Is there a practical skill (e.g. Desk Top Publishing) the group is
lacking that you could learn or already know? Can you teach this to
others?
Is there a struggle you can get involved in that no one else is
currently involved in? Perhaps help is needed in particular struggles
the group is already involved in. Perhaps you should get involved in a
particular area of struggle to confront you own prejudices or just to
find out how things function.
You should start slowly, volunteer for simple stuff first and as you
understand how things work (and how much you can sustain) take more
things on.
These are practical contributions you can make to build the group and
really you should be looking for ways to do one of each. A lot of them
are things you can do right from the start.
One thing central to any functional anarchist group is regular internal
meetings. In a healthy organisation almost all decisions will be made at
these meetings and there will be a sufficient level of discussion to
ensure all those attending have a good idea of the activity and
arguments in the different struggles the organisation is involved in.
Internal meetings should also have some time given over to education.
A new group or one engaged in a lot of activity should meet at least
once a week, at the same time and day. As soon as possible you should
try and find a regular venue for meeting that is not someone's home.
You'll want a space that's private enough for you to have strong
disagreements in and where only the members of the group will be while
you are using it. In Ireland this means most groups use private rooms in
quiet pubs that are glad for the additional customers on quiet nights!
Arguments about how best to reach decisions are fundamental to
anarchism. What I have found works best is to allow plenty of time for
discussion in the hope of being able to reach a consensus. Only when it
becomes obvious that this is not possible should you move to a vote. If
time permits it may make sense to postpone making a contentious decision
to the next meeting to give people a chance to think things over (and
calm down!).
Even with a small group it’s normally a very good idea to have someone
to chair the meeting. Being able to chair a meeting well is quite
difficult, in particular you need to be very careful not to abuse your
position in a strong argument. But it’s also important that the same
person does not chair every meeting. Perhaps the best way is to have a
list of everyone willing to chair and each week take the next person on
the list.
Basically a chair should
sure you are seated where you can see everyone
getting everyone to say their name
then stick to that agenda. If people start speaking on topics rather
then the one under discussion interrupt them politely and tell them you
are adding that item to the agenda
they want to speak and then to take a list of people waiting. In most
situations its a very good idea to put people who have not yet spoken to
the top of this que.
particular if it is just between two it is often a good idea to suggest
going around the circle and giving everyone a chance to speak
often indicate that they want to speak in minor way (eg briefly half put
up their hand). A good chair will spot this and encourage them to speak
and speak the least and always put yourself at the end of the queue.
There is nothing worse then a chair who feels they are entitled to
comment after every single speaker. Be very strict with yourself
they do interrupt and make it clear that this is not acceptable
making the same points again and again you should point this out and ask
if people want to continue the discussion or
there is any disagreement on what to do you should call an immediate
hand vote on whether or not to continue the discussion and then on what
to do with the discussion.
then write down what you think the decision is then read this back to
the meeting.
be voted on is written down and then read this question back to the
meeting before taking the vote. This is very important in case there is
later disagreement over what exactly was decided.
If its know who is chairing the meeting in advance it may be a good idea
for that person to start the meeting with a suggested agenda. In any
case the agenda should almost always include
have 'just remembered'
If there is any disagreement over the order of the agenda then this
should be quickly discussed and voted on at the start of the meeting. If
the chair thinks there is a lot to get through it may make sense to set
a maximum amount of time that can be spent discussing particular topics
right at the start of the meeting.
Someone should be responsible every week for keeping minutes of the
meeting and preparing these to be read at or distributed before the next
meeting. Minutes need not be very detailed (you don't need to write down
what everyone says). They should include
what the chair reads out
It is important that meetings start on time and end before or at the
time they are advertised to end at. Certainly they should end once they
have reached the advertised time and somebody needs to leave.
Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have. Tactics are those
conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and
deal with the world around them. In the world of give and take, tactics
is the art of how to take and how to give. Here our concern is with the
tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves.
For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as
the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose. First the
eyes; if you have organised a vast, mass-based people's organisation,
you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power.
Second the ears; if your organisation is small in numbers, then...
conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamour that will
make the listener believe that your organisation numbers many more than
it does. Third, the nose; if your organisation is too tiny even for
noise, stink up the place.
Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what
you have but also what the enemy thinks you have.
The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When
an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is
confusion, fear, and retreat.
The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the
enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules
than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most
potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also
it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.
The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your
people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong
with the tactic.
The seventh rule is: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. man
can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time,
after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment...
The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and
actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing
itself.
The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of
operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it
will break through into its counter side; this is based on the principle
that every positive has its negative...
The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive
alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden
agreement with your demand and saying "You're right--we don't know what
to do about this issue. Now you tell us."
The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalise it, and
polarise it.
In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organiser should
always regard as universalities. One is that the opposition must be
singled out as the target and "frozen." By this I mean that in a
complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult
to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a
constant, and somewhat legitimate, passing of the buck....
It should be borne in mind that the target is always trying to shift
responsibility to get out of being the target....
One of the criteria in picking your target is the target's
vulnerability - where do you have the power to start? Furthermore, the
target can always say, "Why do you centre on me when there are others to
blame as well?" When you "freeze the target," you disregard these
arguments and, for the moment, all others to blame.
Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack,
all of the "others" come out of the woodwork very soon. They become
visible by their support of the target.
The other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be
a personification, not something general and abstract such as a
community's segregated practices or a major corporation or City Hall. It
is not possible to develop the necessary hostility against, say, City
Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical, inanimate structure, or
against a corporation, which has no soul or identity, or a public school
administration, which again is an inanimate system.
[He says your target should be a person in the organisation you are
opposing; a face within the opposition for you to focus on; it must be
someone with power within the organisation, like the CEO, school
superintendent, governor, or something like that.]