Politicians and rallies won’t save us: We need direct action, disruptions to systems of power, and we need community care – Part III

Editor’s note: This is Part III of a three part series on movement work, strategies and tactics for the current political climate in the US.  

Last week, I began a three part series on why we shouldn’t rely on politicians, the political system or over-reliance on specific tactics in order to create change and work to build the kind of world that we want to see. 

In Part I, I addressed why politicians won’t save us, why rallies won’t save us, and why we need to develop goals, strategies and tactics to fight against systems of power and oppression. I primarily used examples from the Civil Rights Movement/Black Freedom Struggle, so I want to expand on that today by talking about Direct Action, disrupting systems of power and oppression, and why it is important if we want to achieve our goals.

In Part II, I talked about the importance of using disruptive tactics, especially if we really want to have an effect on systems of power and oppression, along with the power of Direct Action. Direct action means that we take collective action to change our circumstances, without handing our power to a middle person – bosses, politicians and or any other authority. Direct Action means we take matters into our own hands and not expect those in power to do what we want. Direct Action means forcing systems of power and oppression to do what we want.

In Part III, I want to talk about what we can do with each other, which is to practice Mutual Aid, Community Care and develop forms of self-governance that do not rely on the existing systems of power and oppression. However, before I talk about Mutual Aid and Community Care, I want to address some things about the so-called democracy we live in.

Over the past few months, especially at the large rallies – those rallies that will not save us – I have seen signs that say things like, “defend our democracy” or “protect the constitution.” As someone who identifies as an anarchist, I in no way want to defend democracy or protect the constitution, especially since the Constitution and the so-called democracy in the US has been built on genocide, slavery, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy and ecological devastation. I don’t want to fight, to struggle, or to take risks, all for some 6th grade notion of what democracy is. I don’t want to pledge allegiance to some flag or give away my power to a government structure that was designed to benefit the wealthiest people in this country. As John Jay, a Founding Father and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, famously stated, “Those who own the country ought to govern it”. Our so-called democracy was designed the way that John Jay and the founders intended.

While we are engaged in developing strategies to dismantle systems of power and use disruptive tactics and Direct Action, we need to simultaneously develop our own systems of governance and practice what Stephen D’Arcy calls a Transition Phase. D’Arcy lays out for us in his essay, Environmentalism as if Winning Mattered: A Self-Organization Strategy, what a Resistance Phase and a Transition Phase look like. Much of the Transition Phase should reflect the principles and practice of Mutual Aid and Community Care.

We take care of each other

The immigrant-led group Movimiento Cosecha GR often says, “what we need is already right here in our community.” What Cosecha organizers mean by this statement is not just material needs, but ideas, vision and radical imagination. Radical Imagination – imagining that another world is possible, that we don’t have to settle for what systems of power and oppression give us. As the great Puerto Rican poet, Martin Espada once said, “No change for the good ever happens without it being imagined first, even if that change seems hopeless or impossible in the present.”

Mutual Aid has been a practice in many communities and culture for a very long time. Mutual Aid project are essentially a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on representative, but by actually building social relationships that are more survivable. Check out this video, which provides a wonderful popular education framework for what Mutual Aid is.

I would also recommend that people read the book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this crisis (and the next), by Dean Spade. Spade, who is a long time activist/organizer, proposes four criteria for evaluating the success of a mutual aid effort:

• Does it provide material relief?
• Does it leave out an especially marginalized part of the affected group (i.e., people with criminal records, people without immigration status?)
• Does it legitimize or expand a system resistant left movements are trying to dismantle?
• Does it mobilize people, especially those most directly impacted, for ongoing struggle?

There are several groups that have been involved in Mutual Aid work in Grand Rapids over the years. The Bloom Collective hosted several of the first Really, Really Free Market events around 2007-2008. Really Really Free Markets are where people bring items they no longer need and then people take what they need, which means no one is buying or selling. 

In 2017, GR Rapid Response to ICE started practicing Mutual Aid, by providing material support to immigrants that were impacted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violence. GR Rapid Response to ICE continues to practice Mutual Aid in the present. There are other groups, like the the West Michigan Care Collective and Grand Rapids Pullover Prevention.  The Grand Rapids Area Mutual Aid Network, which was create at the beginning of COVID in March or 2020, also does amazing work in this community and has provided lots of material aid, including raising several hundred thousand in dollars of Mutual Aid for primarily BIPOC, queer, trans, those with disabilities and immigrant neighbors in the greater Grand Rapids area.

There have also been amazing Mutual Aid Projects that have been created to respond to a particular crisis over the last decade or so. Some inspiring examples are how quickly grassroots mutual aid groups responded to Hurricane Sandy and those that formed with the fires in Los Angeles last year.

Throughout history there have also been fabulous examples of communities practicing Mutual Aid. One of the most overlooked is the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). The BPP is inaccurately represented by systems of power and oppression as simply being gun-wielding thugs, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The BPP was part of the lager Black Freedom Struggle and began in 1966 with their Ten-Point Program, which provided a framework for what they wanted. It is true that the BPP engaged in armed self-defense, but they saw that as only one of their Survival Programs. The BPP’s Survival Programs were Mutual Aid Projects and they developed over 60 of them during their short history. People are somewhat familiar with the Children’s Breakfast Program, but most people don’t know that they had their own ambulance service, free commissary for prisoners program, free clinics, their own newspaper and Liberation Schools. Click here to see the entire list.

These kinds of autonomous Mutual Aid Projects need to be explored and practiced if we want to develop real people power. The history of social service programs that make up the larger US government safety net, particularly the programs that began after the Great Depression did not come out of no where. In fact, there were two primary factors that determined much of what we often call the New Deal programs. First, the New Deal programs that provided material support to families deeply impacted by the Great Depression were modeled after the people-created projects that came directly out of those most impacted. (See Dana Franks book, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression?: Stories of Ordinary People & Collective Action in Hard Times) 

Second, the New Deal policies that the FDR Administration put in place was a direct response to the massive public pressure from working class people and organized labor. In the early 1930s there were over 1,000 labor strikes happening on an annual basis across the US (See Jeremy Brecher’s book, Strike!). The US government was forced to create New Deal programs because of the massive resistance to economic conditions that were brought about by the Capitalist Class. If the FDR Administration not passed New Deal policies, the public would have been in open rebellion against the government. And just to be clear, the New Deal policies did not benefit everyone, especially the poorest, Black communities, Mexicans and other groups that were hit the hardest from the Great Depression. 

What I have been attempting to communicate in this three part series is that if we just want to get rid of Trump and Musk then we will continue to perpetuate systems of power and oppression. We have to come to terms with the fact that the current political system, the Neoliberal economic system, which is also driven by US imperialism abroad, a system which is bi-partisan, is the very system that produced the likes of Donald Trump. 

I don’t want to go back to normal. Normal in the US leaves us with mass incarceration, the climate crisis, a housing system that is rooted in profits, police brutalizing Black, Latinx, immigrant and trans people, plus a political system that is antithetical to anything resembling real democracy. The system ain’t working for most of us, so instead of just hoping for mild reforms and lesser of evils politics, why don’t we practice solidarity, mutual aid and fight like hell for collective liberation.