Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy
Chris Crass
Language: English
Pages: 300
ISBN: 1604866543
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Organized into four sections, this collection of essays is geared toward activists engaging with the dynamic questions of how to create and support effective movements for visionary systemic change. These essays and interviews present powerful lessons for transformative organizing. It offers a firsthand look at the challenges and the opportunities of antiracist work in white communities, feminist work with men, and bringing women of color feminism into the heart of social movements. Drawing on two decades of personal activist experience and case studies within these areas, Crass’s essays insightfully explore ways of transforming divisions of race, class, and gender into catalysts for powerful vision, strategy, and building movements in the United States today. This collection will inspire and empower anyone who is interested in implementing change through organizing.
that have feminist goals. While support for your development as a feminist will often come from women and genderqueer people, and it is important to show gratitude for that support, it is critical to build bonds of mutual support with other men as we work to grow individually and also to develop a culture of feminist activism among men. Learn about current struggles in your community that further feminist goals and have a gender analysis. Look for opportunities to get involved and support these
Martínez in preparation for writing this essay. 2 Food Not Bombs was twenty-three years old when this essay was written in 2003. Food Not Bombs, founded in 1980, continues to exist, with hundreds of chapters around the world, and it continues to be an important point of entry for thousands of people. Section IV “Love in Our Hearts and Eyes on the Prize”: Lessons from Anti-Racist Organizing for Collective Liberation WHAT WE MEAN BY WHITE ANTI-RACIST ORGANIZING Catalyst Project’s Strategy
of color were verbally and physically attacked in a local gay owned bar. It took being called out on this for the organization to mobilize as it should have done immediately. When it did, Fairness coordinated a press conference highlighting institutional racism, and leafleted the bar’s neighborhood about racism. This was followed by collaborating in a Theatre of the Oppressed event led by activists in the economic justice group, Women in Transition. Finally, community pressure forced the bar
“do something.” Yet this urgency to act undermined most efforts to develop a plan that could accomplish anything. In our desperation, we substituted slogans for analysis and tactics for strategy. We had a reaction to what we opposed, not a vision of what we wanted. Cutting out the majority of our lunches significantly reduced the visibility of FNB servings as a protest against city hall and diminished our engagement with the broader public. In retrospect, I believe that not maintaining the
resolution, and Religious Witness put forward a citywide ballot initiative, Proposition L.34 SF FNB regularly participated in these actions, and we made housing for homeless people in the Presidio one of our key demands. At the height of the campaign, HNJ did a large-scale takeover with over thirty people arrested. SF FNB members formed two of the six affinity groups risking arrest, in addition to providing food and turning out dozens of people to the rally. In the end, the Presidio housing