LET'S GET ORGANIZED! Dear Friends and comrades: Recently I completed a coast-to-coast speaking tour to promote my newly reprinted book Anarchism and the Black Revolution, and also to raise funds for the legal defense in the Chattanooga 8 racist frame-up case. I spoke in 25 different cities to thousands of persons, and gave over 90 separate presentations. The tour not only allowed me to go to new places and meet many friends and comrades, it also allowed me to size upthe North American Anarchist (and anti-authoritarian) movement, the struggle around political prisoners, and the state of the Black movement today. I would like to give you my assessment of where we are, and what I think can be done to make changes. The Anarchist and other anti-authoritarian forces are currently in "ghettos" which are almost all-white, all youth-oriented, all middle-class, and generally disconnected from the surrounding communities (many of which are majority African or Hispanic). This cannot be allowed to go on if anti-authoritarian politics are to become a real force in North American social life. We must become more ethnically diverse, more action-oriented, and more community based--if we are serious about a struggle for a social revolution on this continent. My idea is for the creation of an Anti-Authoritarian Network of Community Organizers (AANCO), a "united front" of all those Anarchist forces who think we must build a broader, more militant movement, which includes "ordinary" people and deals with the revolution of everyday life. We need a movement of more than "punks", college youth, or even like-minded Anarcho-activist types in another narrow "federation". AANCO is a worker/student/youth alliance; a direct action community based organization to fight the crippling of capitalism: economic exploitation, unemployment, homelessness, poverty, police brutality, racism and other ills of a system in decline. We want to build a movement of thousands--and ultimately millions--of persons to resist this corrupt system and fight for a better life, which can only come with a new society. We believe the old radical Left and syndicalist ideals of the "industrial working class" grouped into large work sites serving as a revolutionary class vanguard is outdated, and that the structure of capitalism has produced a new class of "super-poor" persons who are marginalized and divorced from any hope of gainful employment under this system. AANCO believes that because of structural unemployment, caused by automation, corporate downsizing, de-industrialization and a host of other factors, the primary site of struggle has now shifted from the workplace to the community. In fact, we believe that it is in the cities themselves where we can build a movement to overthrow capital. But while we fight back against the capitalist state, we must build a new counter-culture and new community institutions. We also believe poverty has become "racial-ized" in this country, with millions of Black and other people of color bearing the brunt of the current capitalist depression, and now constituting the majority of the new poor and homeless. Because we recognize that this poverty is no "accident" and does not hit everyone equally, but is rather a class and race phenomenon, we realize that we need a Poor Peoples' Survival Movement which unites the poor of all races, but especially the non-white communities in a fightback movement. In that sense this movement would "fight racism", while understanding that fighting racism is more than counter-mobilizations against the Klan or Nazis, because white supremacy is more than a fascist vanguard. All the institutions of capitalism are racist, and white supremacy is an intrinsic part of the ideological and socio-economic foundations of this system. So we have to fight to destroy the system itself in order to truly destroy racism. White people must help fight for the rights of people of color--on the job, on the campuses, and in the community, and not passively allow the "white power" state to destroy them with government "anti-crime" programs, "weed and seed", "commmunity policing" and other repressive initiatives. The state has always depended on the white population to be accomplices to its criminal activities, AANCO says NO! The Poor People's Survival Movement would be a program started by AANCO, (which is primarily a group of Anarchists and anti-racist activists), and supported by the Federation of Black Community Partisans, Roots of Resistance, and a number of local groups in the communities, on college campuses, in prisons, in workplaces and other institutions all over N. America. PPSM is a direct action movement of the poor, which will take over abandoned housing for homeless persons, engage in mass urban squatting, sit-ins at welfare offices and government buildings, and other acts of civil disobedience. However, although all of these examples are non-violent, this is not a pacifist organization; we expect to see food riots, street fighting, general strikes and ultimately social revolution break out. We support all of this as leading to our freedom. The most important objective of our work now is designed to build revolutionary dual power institutions in the community to counter capitalist state power and begin to constitute an infrastructure for Anarchism and freedom. Whether we call it a "workers council", "peoples' assembly", "community-economic workshop or other neighborhood self-governing structure, these local institutions could unite into national and international federations to destroy capitalism and the institution of the nation-state. The local groups would be autonomous, but united in free association on a larger scale. This idea of the self sufficient "eco-city" and the bioregional federation is no pipe dream of mine; many are starting to realize that it can be built under today's conditions. In fact, I believe that we must start building a commune now which exists in the belly of the living capitalist beast, that covers the U.S., Northern and Latin America, and stretches to fit the rest of the world. This intercommunalism is the way forward. So, where do we start? I think we should begin now in a realistic way in our own communities to break out of the Anarchist ghetto, and establish a social revolutionary movement which cannot be ignored and cannot be resisted. A movement which can become a real force in people's lives. Let us make it happen. Please join the Anti-Authoritarian Network of Community Organizers, and help us build the Poor Peoples' Survival Network. If you or your organization would be interested in working with us, please send $10 for an individual membership or $20 for an organization to the address listed below. I think it is important that I maintain as high a profile as possible in order to push the more militant politics, and to serve as a pole of attraction for those who want to engage in a more serious effort than the Anarchist youth counter-cultural "Punk" scene. So I also intend to continue my speaking tour in 1994-95, in order to make new contacts with those Anarchists/anti-authoritarians that I have not met and also to spread the ideas of a federation of community organizers. I will be conducting a number of workshops on anti-racist politics and community organizing, for booking information please call the voice mail # below. In solidarity, Lorenzo Komboa Ervin AANCO 145 Park Drive Decatur, GA 30030 (404) 717-4074 (voice mail)