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Title: No More Organizers Subtitle: The struggle has progressed past the need for organizers Date: September 2020 Source: Retrieved on 2020-09-28 from https://www.instagram.com/p/CFizGrEhz_w/ Authors: Anonymous Topics: Insurrectionary, organizing Published: 2020-09-28 03:57:01Z
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.
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DON’T WAIT FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO FIGHT FOR YOUR LIBERATION
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THE SECRET IS TO BEGIN
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