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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.

Specialization and Spectatorship

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.

Hierarchy, Personality, and Abuse

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.

Leadership and Dehumanization

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.

Who Claims What

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

</center>

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THE SECRET IS TO BEGIN

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