Book Review of Collective Liberation On My Mind
by Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez
this review is from the Dec./Jan 2003 issue
of Left Turn magazine
This tight little book makes very clear why Chris
Crass has become widely respected for his passionate patience and total
yet humble commitment to making another world possible. A San Francisco
writer and organizer originally from a middle-class suburb in ultra-conservative
Orange County, he seeks to bridge anarchist theory and practice with race,
class and gender analysis of power. He spent 8 years with Food Not Bombs
and more recentlywith Colours of Resistance and the Challenging White Supremacy
(CWS) Workshop.
The goal of his book, Crass says, is to advance
debate and discussion about some of the challenges facing the contemporary
anarchist/social justice movements. He draws on personal experience in helping
to shut down the WTO in 2000 and demonstrating at the Democratic National
Convention in Los Angeles later that year as he explores several challenges.
Among them, he gives special emphasis to anti-racist organizing, based on
his belief that racism/White Supremacy is a system of power that keeps our
movements from achieving the unity needed.
Crass takes on those big questions that have confronted
organizers of "how can we speak radical politics in a way that will be both
understood and appealing to the people most negatively affected by global
capital?" "How to develop an anti-racist, multi-racial movement against
global capitalism? His approach is practical. In response to the question
of why the successful Seattle action was so white, for example, Crass and
Sharon Martinas (CWS founder and leader for 10 years) launched a new
workshop on Challenging White Suprmacy in the Movements against Global Capitalism.
Crass’s perspective does not focus on recipes for
involving more people of color: "multiracial doesn’t automatically mean anti-racist,"
he says. He also
understands that "organizers of color have enough work already" not
to make schooling white organizers about racism a priority. In a similar
way, he draws on his Food Not Bombs experience to assert that "men cannot
expect women to educate them about sexism and heteros cannot expect queers
to give them the homophobia 101 class."
The author emphasizes far-reaching questions like
the need for more movement-wide discussion about strategy, vision and goals.
The need to think more deeply about our goals, to get beyond "how many people
came to the demo?" or how much media coverage. From goals flow strategies
that see past immediate actions or campaigns. The one serious void in such
discussion, as somewhat reflected in this book, is grappling with the role
of class, while avoiding the bad habit of opposing race (or gender) to class
in developing any strategy.
In setting forth models or useful analyses, Crass
prioritizes the work of women of color. He cites Helen Luu, an anti-global
capitalism organizer, on how white privilege operates in the movement; Barbara
Lee as a black lesbian pioneer with an inspiring anti-racist, radical vision
of feminism; Chicana lesbian author Gloria Anzaldua on the need of whites
to understand "the images in their heads," how they have internalized racism;
and my own anti-racist, anti-capitalist work over the years that led to
a focus on alliance-building between peoples of color.
Not surprisingly, Crass finds Ella Baker at the
top of any list of organizing models. In all her work and especially
with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), she continues
to inspire organizers with her insistence on developing a sense of power
in the people directly involved that can enable them to build a sustainable
movement with vision. She stands not only for anti-authoritarian leadership
but also defines the alternative: group-centered leadership and generating
change from the bottom up. Can we do any better than that today?
In speaking as an anarchist, Crass takes on many
issues. For example, recognizing that anarchism is one of the most
white, male-dominanted movements today, he calls for it to oppose not only
capitalism and the state but also white supremcy, patriarchy and heterosexism.
On the issue of property destruction, he is critical of how that debate
has often been conducted, with those in favor calling those opposed "reformist"
and, in reverse, those opposed denouncing such destruction as violent and
morally questionable.
Whatever the subject, Chris Crass addresses it in a thoughtful, generous,
undogmatic spirit. At a time when sectarian squabbles, backbiting, defensiveness
and a host of other ailments plague our movements, here is a writer/activist
who keeps his eye on the prize: to work for collective liberation, remembering
that mine is interdependent with yours. And "have a damn good time."