Rev Left Radio - Black Rose: Organizing Toward Revolution

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Roxana and Enrique from the Black Rose Anarchist Federation join Breht to discuss their new political program, the analysis and strategy contained therein, the importance of organization for revolutionaries, their orientation toward Marxists in their organizing, platformism and Especifismo, the importance of internationalism, and more! Then Breht and Enrique discuss modern american history and current politics together. Check out their political program and get a free pdf version of it, fully illustrated, here: https://blackrosefed.org/program-may-day-2023/   --- Rev Left Radio is 100% listener-funded! Please support the show and get access to our entire patreon backlog as well as hours and hours of bonus patreon exclusive content every single month: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have on Enrique and Roxanna from the Black Rose Anarchist Federation to talk about their recent political program in which they do a deep dive analysis on North American and U.S. society, and based on that analysis, they come up with objectives and strategies for pursuing their goals, et cetera. Black Rose is an organization on the anarchist left that Reve Left has always had a fondness for. We've had them on the first time back in February of 2018, so five years ago on Reve Left. They were on the show pretty much a year after the show even started.

So it's really cool to catch up with them to see what they've been doing in the years since then. And I think their political program is a really crucial thing. for organizations, whether anarchist or Marxist, to learn from and to try to implement in their own organizing circles. So in this discussion, we'll be talking about their political program. But as usual, we also go off into broader conversations about American society, American history, how the left has been doing over the last several years, mobilization and demobilization dynamics on the revolutionary left, and so much more.

Whether you're an anarchist, a Marxist, a Democratic socialist, or even a progressive liberal, there's lots here to learn and to think about. And as always, I really appreciate talking to the good folks from Black Rose anytime we get a chance to. I also want to remind people that our good friends over at leftwingbooks.net have collaborated with us here at RevLeft Radio to allow our listeners here at RevLeft to get 15% off any book over at leftwingbooks.net. Put in Rev. Left at checkout and get 15% off. And if you live in North America and spend over $50 at leftwingbooks.net, you get free shipping. So it's a really wonderful opportunity. I think it's a perfect collaboration. We've always enjoyed Left Wing Books and Kerspledeb and have had their authors on many times.

So we've had a longstanding relationship with them. And then when they reached out to offer our listeners 15% off, really important theory. radical works in the revolutionary socialist communist, communist, Marxist tradition, I jumped at the opportunity. So I'll link in the show notes for anybody listening who wants to go peruse their options. And again, if you put Rev Left, all caps in the box at checkout, you will get 15% off. All right. Without further ado, here's my wonderful discussion with Roxanna and Enriquez from Black Rose Anarchist Federation. Roxanne, unfortunately, mid-conversation, had something come up and had to leave, but we deeply thank her for her time and for her good work

with Black Rose. So you'll notice that she remains quiet for the second half of the show. But in any case, it's a really wonderful and interesting conversation. And here it is. My name is Roxana. I'm currently based out of Illinois. And I'm a teacher here. And I've been in Black Rose for, I think it's been about like five years, more or less, now. Nice. Enrique? Yeah, my name is Enrique Guerrero Lopez. I am a member of Black Rose in the Durham local in North Carolina, and I've been active in the organization for about six or seven years now.

I'm losing count. Well, it's wonderful to have members from Black Rose back on. I was looking in our catalog, and I realized that our first episode with Black Rose was in February of 2018, just a year after we started RevLeft. So it's very cool to check back in. Of course, Black Rose is an anarchist organization, but they stress the importance of organization. And so I've always had an infinity for their principled approach to organization and they're stressing on the need for community, for organization, for analysis, et cetera. I've always had a lot of respect. But for those that might not be familiar with Black Rose or are new to Rev. Left and might not have ever heard that first episode where we had Black Rose on, can you kind of introduce the organization and kind of tell people what it's all about?

I can maybe start out of soft. So Black Rose, Rosal Nagara, Anarchist Federation is a national, all-level anarchist political organization that got founded in 2013. 13, so we're a decade old now, and it emerged out of a handful of local or regional anarchist communist organizations or anarchist political organizations in the sort of dual organization tradition, some inspired by what's known as the platform, others by a current in South America known as a specifismo, and there was like a multi-year process of kind of bringing those various collectives from around the country under one roof. And out of that process, Black Rose was born and has been active since then in a number of cities across the country. So we operate as a

federation. We have locals from coast to coast. We also have at large members, like Roxana and others, and since then we've kind of been active in a number of struggles, including labor, tenant struggles, struggles around, students struggles, struggles around incarceration, are kind of the four areas, but more recently it's been primarily around workplace organizing and tenant unions. Wonderful, and incredibly crucial areas to organize, especially at this conjunction, in American history. But let's go ahead and get into what we're here to talk about, which is this political program that Black Rose released on May Day of this year, May 1st of 2023, in which they lay out really comprehensive analysis, objectives and strategies for their organization. And the thing

I love about this is that I think it's absolutely crucial for any organization on the socialist left to have a program like this, the amount of work that went into it over two years of research and discussion and debate. And the final product is something that I think is incredibly interesting, incredibly useful and incredibly principled. And so I wanted to have you on to discuss that. So the first question I have for you is about the process. I mentioned this was a two-year process of research and debate and discussion within the organization. But I'm also interested in why you decided to construct a political program. There are many organizations out there, most of which do not put this amount of work into a political program. So with regards to the

process, why did you decide to create this program? And then can you talk about how you went about doing so? Yeah. So it was like you said, a process that was basically, basically took like two years of internal discussion and debate and it's about 75 pages long it was really it's really responding kind of to the needs of the moment right and the need for organization and for coherence and clarity and we're really kind of just looking to build off of like historical traditions like platformism and like a specificism and um and uh looking to other historical presidents that prioritize an organized perspective. So it's kind of broken up into three different parts.

And each part really builds off of the other parts that kind of form like a cohesive rule. Like we start basically with what is our ultimate objective, right, which is libertarian socialism and social revolution, our vision for a new world. And based off of that, we look at how we plan to get there, right? What is our general strategy, our limited term strategy in the short, medium, and long term to really achieve our end goal and what are the best means to do so? So in short, it's basically a roadmap to, given our current historical moment and the current balance of forces, how best can we respond to that, given the condition. today. Yeah, Enrique, anything to add to that? Yeah, just in terms of the why, I think like a lot of

political organizations across the left in the U.S., following the wake of the George Floyd uprising, I think there was a lot of us who were raising questions around our own strengths and weaknesses, how to move forward, and those were questions that were bubbling up in Black Rose as well. And I think for us, you know, in the past we've had various efforts at conjunctual analysis trying to analyze a moment that we're living through and had developed a sort of broad framework for a strategic approach,

but we realized that that wasn't enough and that we needed to carve out a more proactive path forward. And one of the ways that we sort of approach that to build off what Roxana was saying in terms of what that looked like internally. So we had a sort of series of topics that we discussed, debated, synthesized,

but we also collaborated with international comrades, particularly in Brazil, with the Brazilian anarchist coordinator. We were really inspired by a document that they wrote called for a theory of strategy, which is what the framework for our program is based on. and they, uh, we, we hosted them for an internal discussion presentation on that document. Um, and that was incredibly helpful for kind of thinking through those different pieces that Roxanna mentioned and how they fit together. Um, so in some ways we were pulling from existing documents that we had, historical traditions, um, looking at the current moment and

trying to piece those altogether, synthesize discussions that it had been having previously, but trying to find a way to, again, put those into a more cohesive whole. Yeah, I really love the internationalist aspect as well of having comrades from Brazil in particular, learning from them, engaging with them as you were making your own document. Of course, you know, Brazilian and American politics are different in some ways, but there's also lots of interesting similarities. and, you know, both countries over the past few years have gone through their own various forms of crises and upheaval, et cetera. So I really applaud that aspect of it. You know,

my audience is probably, you know, across the left for sure. We're open to everybody on the left, but I would say probably Marxist predominant. You've mentioned platformism as a core sort of strain of anarchism that Black Rose takes up. Could you maybe briefly kind of remind listeners what platformism is in the anarchist tradition? Yeah, so platformism really kind of just developed based on, like, lessons from the Russian revolution. Anarchists like Nestor Macknow and Ida met because of the way the Russian Revolution developed and anarchists kind of formed together to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution

to kind of think, okay, how could we have maybe more? effectively put forth ideas that could have led to a different outcome than what happened. So they kind of developed in Paris, I believe, after the revolution. They meet there and they make a program that's really meant to organize anarchists to more effectively, like I said, put forth their ideas so that in critical moments of struggle, were able to effectively intervene and not in a way that is meant to kind of take over organizations and institutions and all that to lead it in a way, but more like to put forth these ideas and struggle that if they make sense, they will be taken up by these mass movements. And so that was

kind of like how it developed. And I mean, like we mentioned Espresafizmo as well, which is how it developed also in the Latin American context, right? It's all kind of just learning the lessons of different historical struggles, class struggles at different parts of the world to kind of see how best can we effectively intervene in these struggles, especially in our current moment where these struggles are intensifying, right? And they're going to come and it will happen and it could happen very quickly. things can change very rapidly and it's so we're realistic right we're not we're a minority right

but in order to effectively support these ideas you know we recognize the importance of like organizing and having tactical and strategic unity so that these ideas can you know take hold materially i mean i think uh raxana laid out the historical context really well as far where it comes from. And I think for us, it's important to know, you know, the platform or espefizmo are

sort of reference points and not biblical texts that we look to. And that they're both, in many ways, part of a tradition of dual organization that can be traced all the way back to Bakunan and the First International.

That sort of highlights the need for both organization at the political level or an anarchist political organization as well as organization at the mass level and it sort of spells out the need for both those things as well as articulating the relationship between the two and specifically the the platform and and raksana alluded to this kind of highlighted for key areas for anarchist political organization and that was tactical unity uh theoretical unit of the collective responsibility and federalism. And these are aspects that the specific the tradition, which literally in English is like specifists, is basically calling for the need for

specifically anarchist political organization. Also in many ways revolves around some of those same principles. But again, I think it's worth noting that the sort of need and practice of political organization is something that has been a part of the anarchist tradition since day one. It's not a aberration or a minority current. It's part of the mass anarchist tradition dating back to, like I said, Bukhwin and the International. Yeah, absolutely. And just like in Marxism, there's a bunch of different, you know, sex and approaches to organizing and disagreements within the tradition. The same holds true for anarchism. I've always had a lot of sympathy and admiration for these more organizational and platformist approaches by anarchist organizations, which, again, are very much more social anarchism and organizational anarchism, as opposed, you know, in my personal opinion, to some more hyper-individualist or even nihilistic or post-left strains of anarchism, which I'm personally not too fond of. I know Roxanna mentioned the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and of course anarchists and Marxists will have different interpretations and different analysis of that revolution.

But I think in the North American context in 2023, and this has always been my approach since we started Rev Left, is that there is no hyper antagonistic contradiction between Marxist and anarchist right now on most issues. Anarchist and Marxist can absolutely, you know, on most real world issues that actually affect our societies, anarchist and Marxists can absolutely work together. And where we can't, where we do have fundamental disagreements about approaches or organizational structuring. I think, you know, right now we can, those arguments can be like friendly competition with regards to our different approaches to organizing people and getting people's material needs met. It need not be antagonistic. I think if you're a socialist in the United States or in North America at all, the deck is already stacked against you. We already have plenty of enemies that would love to see us utterly crushed and eradicated. That I think it is harmful for us to over exaggerate the differences

between, you know, Marxist and anarchist or, you know, pick past situations where anarchist and Marxists really have materially been at life or death odds and somehow try to apply that in the current context, right? Well, Marxist will shit on anarchist or anarchist will say Marxists are coming to kill us. I think that is ultimately pretty unhelpful. So I don't know if you agree with that or not, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the anarchist-Marxist connection here in the North American context in 2023. Yeah, I mean, I have my own ideas about this, but

I don't know, like I feel at least personally, right? Like, I identify as an anarchist communist, but I pretty much take Marxist critique of capitalism pretty much adopting that. So, I mean, it's just

different, like, his economic analysis. Right. But I don't know. I'm not, at least in my context, I'm not super concerned with like, oh, let me get together with Marxists and organize like that. It's more of like, where am I like what in like in my industries? I'm more concerned. And the program does lay this out like three different levels of organizing. You have the social level, the political level, and the intermediate.

And I think that's like more of an effective way to think of like what should we be doing with their time. and resources given with how small we are and how we can intervene in these struggles where we're at, whether it's in our workplaces, our schools, our neighborhoods, different sectors in the current moment. I think the question should be more around, yeah, like, what can we be doing where we're at and to put forth their ideas that can challenge and lead to the kinds of things we want to see. I don't know if thinking of it in terms of like, oh, let me get together with other Marxists is necessarily like what we need to be doing.

But I mean, we can debate that. I was just stressing that the non-antagonistic approach, like we need not be antagonistic to each other, even if we have different ways of organizing. But yeah, I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah, I would, I mean, I think as far as the organized anarchist current is concerned, I think in a lot of cases where we're like two Marxists for the anarchists and two anarchists for the Marxists, which I think is kind of a sweet spot. But, you know, teach their own. And, you know,

you can go all the way back to Roxana's point. I mean, Bakunin also sung Marxist praises in terms of his critique of capital and made an attempt to translate capital into Russian, which I think like a lot of his text, he never finished. But yeah, I'm glad that, were asked the point that I experienced in my lifetime like 20 years ago of people hanging their hat on these hair splitting historical debates, which, you know, I'm a history teacher by trade and I have an appreciation for history. I think those debates and discussions are critical and important and so on. But I think to your point, in practice, there's often more overlap currently than not in a lot of cases. And, you know,

agree with with Roxanna that more of our emphasis is on thinking through how we're sort of intervening in the current moment and in our unions or neighborhood organizations or whatever we might be a part of we often find ourselves in space in organizing spaces with other marches and so on and also in my own personal experience we I often have more working relationships with folks from different Marxist tendencies, then anarchists I end up collaborating with in our mass work. And, you know, we're open to tactical collaboration with organizations that have a strategic alignment with us. And frankly, more often than not, that comes from, and we consider ourselves as part of the socialist tradition, but that comes from other socialist

groups typically and we find ourselves with a fair amount of disagreement with folks who claim the anarchist banner in the United States. So, you know, I would agree with a lot of what you laid out in terms of both the moment that we're in, the stakes that we're facing and where we should be placing priorities. So it's not to say that those differences aren't significant in certain instances and aren't worth debating, discussing. We should have those debates, but I think we should be in having them to your point in a more principal and generative way that's not just about creating straw man that we can knock out by the park for scoring points for our teams. I think that's a waste

of time. Yeah. Well, said. Completely agree. Well, let's get into the document itself. That is the core of this conversation, and I'm really excited to get into it. There's different ways we can go about it. I know Roxanna kind of laid out even some of the basic structure of the document, but maybe you can give a general introduction to the document itself and then just kind of take the question wherever you want in terms of the points of the document that you would like to highlight as particularly important. In terms of the overall structure, and I know Roxanna highlighted some of the content of it earlier, we kind of start off with a structural analysis, so looking at what we call the system of domination and its various.

overlapping expressions. And so we take a close look at capitalism, the state imperialism, settler colonialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and how these things are structured, what the sort of structural, relational elements of these are, what the mechanisms of these various expressions of domination look like, and how they are mutually enforced. seeing how they fit together. And we go from that point to look at what we call our ultimate objectives. So what is our revolutionary horizon? And for us, that is a libertarian socialist society, along with a social revolution, which we feel is needed in order to get us to that point. So one is kind of looking at what are the sort of structural barriers or structural elements

that gives shape to the world that we're living in, and what is the world, the new world that we're seeking to create down the road. From there, we sort of, and we detail on some level what are the sort of characteristic elements of the libertarian social society, what we mean by social revolution, some of these concepts, and then kind of take a step back to say, this is the socialist horizon that we're aiming for. These are the structural barriers that are in the way of us getting there. And we start to lay out what we call our general strategy. So what is the sort of orientation that we feel we need to have that's going to connect

us from where we are now to where we want to go? and sort of the crux of that strategy is rooted in what we call building popular power and that's largely centered around sort of building or supporting independent mass movements that are characterized by sort of defying forms of organization, modes of struggle. So I think historically, and we mentioned this in the document, a lot of anarchists have tended to view our in negative terms as something that needs to be destroyed. It's often associated with the state, whereas we see power more so in terms of a relationship between social forces in society. And so we're against power when it's expressed in domination.

So in all the ways that I just mentioned through capitalist social relations, through heteropatriarchy and so on. But we are for, you know, what other currents may be called people's power or, in this case, we're calling popular power. And by that we mean, you know, mass organizations that are struggling around immediate reforms, but also kind of maintaining a more socialist horizon, those that practice direct democracy, direct action, class struggle, class independence, solidarity, internationalism, feminism. and that to the extent that movements are taking up these characteristics, they're expressing and building and strengthening popular power. And Roxanna mentioned earlier approaching building popular power through sort of three levels of organization, and this is a big part of what's distinct about the organized anarchist tradition

that sees the need for organization at the political level, and that's for organizations like Black Rose, Grossa Negra, but we also recognize there's going to be a plurality of political organizations and struggle. We don't see ourselves as the only one or the leading one or anything along those lines and that one of the primary roles of political organizations to be active

in social or mass organizations, so labor unions, tenant unions, student organizations, and so on. But then there's also room for and what we've seen in and outside of the United States or intermediate organizations and those are sort of organizations that are situated sort of in between social and political levels where you can think about, for example,

rank and file caucuses within existing unions that are not, you know, at the level of political unity as a political organization, but maybe share a certain strategic organization to how rank and file workers in that union should struggle. And that might be going back to our earlier conversation in those rank and fall caucuses, you might have, you know, various strands of Marxism, Marxists and anarchists, maybe some social Democrats, but we're all united on how to approach struggles within our union, for example.

And then the other kind of major component is a conjunctural analysis, and that's sort of snapshot of the balance of forces and the social, political, and economic conditions that are giving shape to that balance. And I think this is one of the areas that, not just anarchists, but I think across the left is often missing in laying out a strategy for intervening. So how do we assess the conditions that we're facing? How do we assess the balance of power and where we stand in relationships to it? And there's a number of of kind of arguments that we make about the current moment in there that we can talk about. And then lastly, a limited-term strategy. So whereas our general strategy is sort of

our just long-term strategic orientation that is more or less applicable regardless of time or place, limited-term strategy is kind of taking into account, particularly like the conjuncture that we're facing and our own capacity as an organization. elements of our general strategy to say, okay, how are we going to begin to strategically intervene in the current moment in the kind of short, mid to long term? And so we lay out some strategic objectives there that we're trying to prioritize. And the one thing that's not in the public document is a set of tactical plans that lay out some concrete steps that we're taking as an organization at a local and national level to kind of put those objectives

in the practice. Yeah, a quick follow-up to that before we get into the significance of the document overall. You mentioned in your conjunctual analysis, there is this analysis of the current balance of forces, which lead into the limited strategic objectives you have in the short to medium term. Can you talk a little bit more about the balance of forces and what those short-term strategic objectives of your organization are? Yeah, in terms of the balance of forces, you know, one of the things that we're seeing is that we're sort of in the midst of this ongoing crisis of legitimacy for the center politically. And we can see it as kind of a byproduct of the fracturing of the neoliberal order. And so we're seeing more and more people moving further

left or further right. And one of the assessments that we made in discussing that dynamic is that it seems as though the right has largely benefited from that polarization relative to left forces and particularly in the wake of the George Floyd uprising, I think we can see elements of the strength that the right has gained in recent years, in the kind of reactionary backlash that we're experiencing with the kind of, you know, boogeyman of critical race theory and the systematic attack on trans folks that we're seeing across the country. And so we see that while the center is beginning to kind of fracture and is losing a grip on the country politically, it's still resilience still holding on, but the right has grown in strength and has made pretty significant

institutional ties to the state along with international organization and coordination. I know we mentioned Brazil earlier. You know, you can think about the relationship between, say, Steve Bannon and the Bolsonaro regime in Brazil, who I know some people refer to as the Trump of the tropics. So you can sort of see expressions of that there. Whereas I think particularly in the wake of the George Floyd uprising, you know, a lot of the left, including Byrne, but a number of organizations experienced internal conflict. There's been some fracturing, a lot of demobilization.

And so we're, there's still elements of fight back. But much of the organized left seems to be someone on the backrope, so to speak. Yeah, I mean, I think we are in the end of the neoliberal era. I think it is decaying and crumbling. The old sort of boomers that are still in political power that were raised ideologically in the neoliberal era are sort of these ghosts that continue to haunt. What's interesting is as the right becomes more quote unquote populist or what I would call faux populist. The center, especially as articulated by the Democratic Party, is rushing to shore up and identify themselves with institutions that most Americans see as utterly failing. So as the right moves further to the right, the center-right Democratic Party tries to re-entrench the very institutions and the very center that is falling out, de-legitimizing themselves in the process.

So definitely things are being shooken up. Things are changing. We are at like this 40 to 50 year old shift away from, yeah, Reagan and Thatcher era neoliberalism. What comes next? Who knows? I think it's largely going to be determined by these balance of forces and which elements can sort of outorganize and, you know, outwin one another. But the problem with the far right is, as you said, they have these deep institutional ties with, you know, apparatuses like the Republican Party. whereas the far left is completely cut off and always has been in this country from any real institutional power.

I mean, the Democrats really are this bulwark against the left to prevent anything to the left of, I mean, I would say to the left of Bernie Sanders, but they weren't even okay with Bernie Sanders, like to the left of Hillary Clinton is unacceptable. So, yeah, it's a very interesting time to be on the left and to be analyzing and organizing for sure. Yeah, and I think, you know, that dynamic that you mentioned as far as the sort of center around Biden and even some of the social democratic forces acting within that orbit seem to be desperately trying to breathe new life into institutions that are just widely discredited. it was incredible watching Biden try and take to the airwaves when inflation started spiking to the kind of columnation to tighten their belts as if this was some post-World War II period where you have a figure like FDR who could maybe rally the public toward a common good but there is no faith in the White House, there is no faith in the Supreme Court, there's no faith in Congress. There's no goodwill to be mobilized right now. I think particularly after the

pandemic, I think the veil was was lifted and day-to-day folks are not particularly lining up for what either party is offering and especially not the Democratic Party. Yeah, absolutely. Instead of actually trying to reform those institutions to make them legitimate in the eyes of Americans, they're just doubling down on the institutions themselves and like using nostalgia and like as you said post-World War II sort of like fuzzy feelings about these institutions as if that holds any weight in contemporary America. So yeah, very interesting stuff for sure. But yeah, I really I really love that document. I love the way that you weave in the structural and conjunctual analyses. You have like an ultimate objective and a strategy that

goes along with it as well as like these limited term strategies and objectives. I think it's really an important template for others on the socialist organizing. left, whether anarchist, Marxist or whatever, to learn from and to try to replicate because I think an organization that can engage in this sort of deep analysis and come up with these strategies rooted in an analysis of this sort are going to be much more effective than any other organization that doesn't engage in such analysis and program building. So it's a really laudable thing you've accomplished. I do kind of want to talk about the significance of it. What do you think, I just said a few of my thoughts on its significance, but in your own thoughts, what is its significance and what

can others on the broadly conceived socialist left in North America learn from the document itself, as well as perhaps the organizational process that occurred around it? Yeah, I think in terms of the significance of the document, first and foremost, this is the first systematic program to come out of the anarchist tradition in the United States in decades. certainly in my lifetime, you know, there's organizations that predate us that we definitely draw inspiration from, like love and rage anarchist federation that add one to unity and things that we've looked to. But I think this is really the most cohesive program to come out of the organized anarchist tradition in a long time. It's not the first in the United States. Like I said,

that there's a long tradition of pro-organizational tendency within anarchism in and outside the United States and one that does place a lot of emphasis on the need for a program. But that in and of itself is part of what makes it important. But I'd say beyond that, it's also an effort to begin to put ourselves on a more proactive footing, I think, for much of the left, and this is not limited to anarchists, by any means, we're often stuck in this cycle of reactive actions responding to events as they occur. And so we're just sort of in this never-ending cycle of things popping up and us figuring out a way, to respond.

And I think what we've seen, especially since the 2008 Great Recession, the financial crisis, we've seen, and we mentioned this in the program, a kind of cycle of mass mobilization and mass protest and demobilization. And there hasn't been as much of an emphasis on proactive organizations. building that can last beyond those moments and I think and and we definitely had a long had long conversations about the significance of of these moments of mass mobilization and uprisings that we're seeing all around the globe in response to the you know horrors of 40 plus years of neoliberalism and we need to relate to those moments and think through how to do that strategic

strategically and effectively, but, you know, one of the ways that we need to relate and think through is, again, to put ourselves on a more proactive, forward-looking pad that takes an honest stock of the situation, the conditions we're facing, along with our own capacities, and take seriously building toward a revolutionary horizon, I think. Given going back to the balance of forces question, given that the sort of politics of democratic socialism and this sort of social democratic current in many ways is is dominant on the left in the United States, much of the left has sort of abandoned a revolutionary horizon. And it seems to us that given the kind of overlapping cascading crises that we're facing, revolution is, you know, as they say, the solution. So if we're serious about that, then we need to be serious about laying out a path to get there. And for us, it's putting forward a program like this, which as we mentioned in the document,

we don't view as the last word on these questions. It's a living document and it's a reflection of the sort of theorizing and practice that we've developed in the last 10 years and we'll continue to revisit it as a sort of yardstick for how to move forward in the coming period. But again, I think moving us past these sort of cycles of reactive struggles and putting us on a more aggressive, assertive, proactive, pat, we feel like this is where a program comes in. Yeah. Well, said, and I couldn't agree more. You mentioned social democratic impulses on the U.S. left. And one lesson that I've taken away over the last century of American history is,

you know, with the Great Depression in World War II, it was a real crisis moment in the United States. FDR rose, not in a vacuum, but in the context of, I mean, revolutions around the world. This is, you know, a couple, what, 15, 20 years after the Bolshevik revolution. There are communists and anarchists in the United States, agitating. You know, we're leaving the Gilded Age. Gilded Age preceded the Great Depression and FDR's rise. So FDR was simultaneously a liberal figure saving capitalism by introducing social democratic reforms that were desperately needed, but was only made possible by even more radical elements in the American society. at large. But one thing we learn from that process is that any gains made within this rotten system can always, and are always subject to recall. And what is the Reagan era and neoliberal era, if not, the ruling class, the capitalist class, deconstructing all of the working class gains made under the New Deal. So insofar as you're going to, you know, hit your wagon to the mechanisms of the current United States and its power apparatus,

you have to understand that any and all gains you make are always subject to recall, not only in theory, but are immediately opposed by the ruling class and are immediately attacked by the ruling class. Maybe you have a little bit of goodwill after an extended crisis, but not even that. I mean, during FDR's term, they were called, like, the right in this country, we're calling him Stalin, Delano Roosevelt. There was a fascist coup attempted against him. You know, they constantly called him a communist, and he would always fight back.

He's like, you know, these economic royalists hate me. Well, I welcome their hate. So he's a conflicted figure in my head, because on some level, you know, he was absolutely essential. And the New Deal period in the United States, despite its racial inequalities, of course, was certainly probably the best quality of life for the average working American for a time. he was also this this this liberal figure as well and so I'm always suspicious of the social democratic movement although you know obviously we all support stuff like universal health care you know accessible universal housing etc but it's just something to think about if you're on the social democratic side of things but I do want to talk about this mobilization and demobilization um sort of dynamic that's happened I certainly relate to it completely agree and understand that that is what's happening and it's like this roller coaster ride like you know I remember I'm being actually in Occupy and then the period of time that came after Occupy. And then we had, you know, Bernie Sanders and, you know, that passed. And there's the Black Lives Matter movement, this incredible time for the left in the United States, the, you know, historically large protest during Black Lives Matter summer. And then, of course, what comes after it is this wave of reaction and this quelling and, you know, people are demobilized. And I wonder what causes this demobilization. Is it just a mixture of like co-option from the Democratic Party as well as a lack of organizations that can continue the fight or what do you make of these these demobilization

periods of course there is an ebb and flow to everything so there's an element of it that's that's more or less natural but i wonder how we can how we can prevent these like pretty steep demobilizations after an after an uprising do you have any thoughts at all on that yeah this is definitely a conversation that took place in the process of putting together the program um and i think you know Parts of that conversation revolve around the idea that when you look at these periods of upheaval, whether it's Occupy, Black Lives Matter, what we tend to see a lot of times is simultaneously the strengths and weaknesses of the left and social movements. And so, for example, I was in Texas when Occupy popped off, and where I was, it went up very quickly and down just as quickly. Whereas in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, it had a much deeper trajectory in terms of its upswing and a much longer lasting presence in those. areas. Why? Because those areas historically have deep roots in the left and labor and social

movements. And so there's a, there are organized forces on the ground that can take advantage of those cracks when they open up and widen them and channel them toward more lasting organizations. That exists unevenly in the United States. And outside those usual suspect cities that we can all probably name, that's not the case. There's very little infrastructure. There's very little historical memory, even if there is a left tradition or labor or social movement tradition in those areas. I've grown up most of my life in the South. And while there are very rich traditions of struggle, particularly civil rights.

and black power, there's very little connection a lot of times between those veterans of those struggles and folks on the ground today. And so part of it is that we sort of see this simultaneous snapshot of strengths and weaknesses. And then I also think it's, you know, related to that is about of forces question. And oftentimes, I think, you know, because the left was sort of systematically attacked and assaulted by the state and other forces in the 60s and 70s, we have a lot of work to do to rebuild and get ourselves to the point where when those moments pop off and they're often impossible to predict that will be better positioned to, as a I said before, widen those cracks when they open up.

So I think part of our task in between those moments is to really focus on, as we mentioned in the document, building popular power, building political organization, and these things to where when they do pop off, we're better prepared. And with that comes a recognition that when those windows open, we do need to pivot. need to have a flexible strategy. We need to relate to those moments, but we can't lose sight of our general strategy, general orientation, and also just recognize that those windows open and they closed. And you can't predict how long it's going to last. No one could have said at the beginning of the George Floyd uprising that, oh, it's going to, we predict X number of months or

whatever. No one knew that it would reach this sort of scale and intensity. that it did, but you can say without a doubt that it wasn't going to last because we don't have the strength in numbers, in organization, and so on, to make it last longer than it did. And so our task is to, again, open up, hold that window open as long as possible, build our forces during that time period, seize as much ground as we can from forces of reaction, and strengthen ourselves for the next fight. But I think, I don't know if that addresses fully the question, but, you know, part of it is a balance of power question,

but I think it's also important to have a historical perspective on the dynamics around uprisings and their character, what they look like. You know, I think there were, I remember us having conversations around the time of the George Floyd uprising with some of us saying similar things around this is, you know, and many of us were involved in different aspects of the uprising, but there were also those of us saying we also really need to think about and be prepared for this post uprising period. And I think it's hard to step back in the heat of

a battle like that and have those kind of conversations. because there's so much happening at once and people are preoccupied with the struggle that's right in front of them. But I think part of the role of political organization is to have a place where you can have those discussions where we can kind of step back and lick our wounds and say, okay, what did we learn? What could we do better next time? So on and so forth. So yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's incredibly important. And as you said, Like, there's no way of knowing when something's going to pop off or how long that door is going to be open, that door of opportunity. But one thing is absolutely for sure, especially in this moment or this period of a protracted crisis, is that things will continue popping off.

Doors will continue opening and shutting probably at a faster rate than we're more or less used to. You know, with the Black Lives Matter uprising, we sort of like, on one level it was traumatizing for people. on another level we quickly moved on other things were happening but i remember in the depths of that uprising there was a period of time where like in minneapolis police were being chased out of headquarters and there was a crucial moment in washington dc when um the the barbarians our barbarians were at the gate as it were of the white house long and trump turned trump and his administration turned all the lights off in the white house and trump had to go down in a bunker and the people were at the gates shaking it and i remember

thinking like oh god could could this be it could could could those fences fall and what happens you know it's it's a very interesting time we of course we all move on we have to there's like a there's like a way that we're all swept forward but we sometimes forget at these peak moments how much was possible but of course that did come with not only a demobilization which is inevitable but a wave of reaction that I think in a lot of ways we're still living through another thing you said is is being from Texas. And of course, these big cities like LA, Chicago, New York City, you know, they'll have a lot more infrastructure. They'll have a lot more history. In part, it's a numbers game, right? You have millions and millions and millions of people concentrated in

these cities. There's more continuity between organizations. There's more organizations, you know, et cetera. And I'm living my entire life up here in Omaha, Nebraska, probably similar to a lot of places in Texas. And one of the things that you mentioned is like this lack of memory we have in a lot of these other cities and like Omaha is surprisingly has this rich history of like back in the day like labor strikes around street cars. You know we have the rise of the people's party and Williams Brian Jenning which is not anarchist or Marxist but was like a left populist egalitarian sort of you know movement. That's where the term populism comes from and it was originally a left wing movement and it was sort of based among farmers in the Midwest and their

first ever political program came out of Omaha called the Omaha platform, which I think is interesting. We have a history of IWW. Malcolm X was born in Omaha, Harry Haywood. We had Black Panther Party chapters after MLK was assassinated like many cities in the United States. Omaha had its own riots and burning down of, you know, property, et cetera, in reaction to that tragedy. So there's a way in which organizations, wherever you are, part of your responsibility, I think, is resurrecting these histories and these narratives and these traditions and these memories that have been either deliberately or just with the passage of time, completely ignored. Of course, the ruling class is not going to keep the flame of these memories alive.

And so, you know, a lot of times they get completely forgotten. But there's a sort of excavation obligation on our part to find these traditions and connect with them and see ourselves as operating, not in a vacuum, but in a deep tradition with, with, you know, brave figures and noble people and historic events that we can rightfully claim as ours. You know, I think that's really important. Absolutely. And I think it speaks to the role that political organizations can play in that process as a kind of, you know, storage facility for historical memory and shining a light on those struggles that predate us and that we're standing on the shoulders of. And I did, I did want to circle back to one thing you mentioned

in terms of, how do we relate to these moments of uprising? Because you did mention forces of, you know, what some folks call it, counterinsurgency forces, right? And these include, in many instances, the Democratic Party, agents of the state. It includes, in many ways, nonprofit industrial complex. And I think we saw, you know, beautiful moments during the George Floyd uprising where people sort of just outright rejecting these appeals from these forces and seeing them on the back foot trying to catch up with us was incredible. But I think, you know, one of the sources of counterinsurgency that we tend to see in these moments. And again, we can point to Occupy or George Floyd

uprising and so on is electoral politics and it's a major force for demobilization in these moments and you know we saw it in my lifetime too was the anti-war movement getting sucked up by Obama's campaign Occupy being channeled toward electoral politics you know the

priority of ceding Trump and getting Biden in office, taking center stage, so on and so forth. We see that time and time again. And, you know, to your point earlier about the new deal, I mean, you can really see the new deal as a ruling class compromise in the face of a credible threat from the left. And I think our task is to become a credible threat. That forces concessions from the ruling class. And, you know, we're not quite there yet on a national scale, although I do think we saw the potential that we had during the George Floyd uprising. And, you know, we saw that in burning police stations, occupied police station, tearing down statues, you name it. And I think, you know, we need to kind of harness that

potential that we saw for the long term. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have one more question for you before we wrap up here, and it's sort of, well, it has to do with everything we've been discussing. There's a new element on the historical scene, as it were, that our comrades in the past in both anarchist and Marxist traditions haven't had to face, and we will absolutely have to center it in our struggle, which is climate change. Right now, we're living through the hottest month of July. We'll now it's turned over to August, but the last month has been the hottest on planet Earth in 120,000 years. People in Phoenix were just tripping and falling on the sidewalk, burning the skin off

their bodies, having to go to burn units. We've seen the wildfires. We've seen the floods. This is not going away. Even if we stopped all fossil fuel production tomorrow, the momentum of the system itself is still going to make the rest of our lives incredibly precarious with regards to climate destabilization. and we all know we're not stopping tomorrow, not even close. So what does that mean for our future?

Well, one thing it means is that whatever left tendency you're coming out of, whatever organization you're in, whatever vision for the future you have, you're going to have to wrestle with the elephant in the room, which is climate change. And as with every crisis and every terrible thing, it presents both daunting challenges as well as an array of opportunities for those of us on the left interested in building an egalitarian and just world. So what role does climate change sort of play in your personal analysis or in Black Rose's collective analysis or just have an open discussion about the importance of addressing

climate change and taking advantage of the opportunities that are going to arise from it while also trying to, through mutual aid or organizational structures that take care of people, trying to meet the material needs of people who are going to be increasingly attacked by, you know, these chaotic weather patterns and these climate shifts. So, yeah, what are your thoughts on climate change and the importance of climate change to all of this? Yeah, you know, this is a central aspect of our conjunctural analysis, obviously of all the sort of overlapping crises that we're facing the ecological crises is the most existential. that we face, and it's something that we're looking at closely and experiencing personally. And, you know, if you look at our short-term strategy or general strategy, I think some people might say, well, this doesn't necessarily center explicitly

interventions around ecological crises, but I think one of the important insights of of the late Murray Bookchin, who I know a lot of people have been revisiting in recent years, particularly because of his work on sort of shining a light on the ecological crisis as well before a lot of the left did in the 60s of the 70s. You know, one of the key insights that I think he put forward around the concept of social ecology is to say that the ecological crises that we're facing is rooted in social problems, essentially, and that you can't neatly disentangle those things. And so I think it's important to highlight that to the extent that we are fighting white supremacy

or settler colonialism, we are fighting the ecological crises to the extent that we are waging class struggle in our workplaces and our neighborhoods against land. landlords against bosses. We are fighting against ecological crises. And so there is a sort of, I think, indirect relationship there that's not always appreciated or understood when it comes to how to respond to the ecological crisis. And I think there's a sort of similar point to be made around, say, you know, feminist struggle, for example, where I think when people, think about feminist struggle, they think about these kind of marquee feminist fights around bodily autonomy, around domestic violence, all of which are critical, all of which are central. But then you can't somehow see that nurses going on strike is part of feminist struggle, a significant part of feminist struggle in the United States, or that the strike wave that myself and other,

public school teachers were part of in 2018, 2019 as a feminist struggle, for example, and also an ecological struggle. And so I think a kind of social ecology framework is useful to think about how we start to approach this really deeply entangled problem that is a global one that we're all facing. And I think, related to that is, I think, strengthening our bonds internationally. And that's something that I've always appreciated about Black Rose, Rosaneda, since I came in, that we've always had very strong international ties. And we're part of an international anarchist coordination of organized anarchist groups around the world, includes over a dozen. if not more organizations globally. This is a global problem,

and it's going to require a global coordination to think through and address. We don't pretend to have all the answers, but I do think that there's going to be aspects of the struggle that include more legible interventions around the ecological crisis that we've seen, it's the, you know, fights around the Dakota Access pipeline and other struggles.

And indigenous folks have definitely been on the front lines of these battles. And then there's a way in which I think we can see the broader class struggle that we're seeing various expressions of in this moment as also part of an ecological struggle. Because to the extent they were able to get the balance of forces in our favor, then we're going to be better positioned to really chopping at the roots of the ecological crisis, which are rooted in capitalism and so on, and not just these sort of surface level manifestations or these kind of liberal interventions around dealing with our consumption patterns and so on and so forth, right? We've got to get enough electric cars on the road or things like that. It's a major lift that I think we're all going to have to struggle around together. But, yeah, it's by far one of the most central and critical struggles that we're facing. Yeah, definitely. And I really appreciate how you showed how all these seemingly disparate struggles

are actually profoundly and inexorably interconnected. I think that is like the starting point for any coherent analysis has to be the understanding of that all of these struggles are not separate entities or separate events happening, but they all are intertwined with one another and bolster one another. I think it's incredibly important. So the document is turning the tide and anarchist program

for popular power put out by the wonderful Black Rose Anarchist Federation. Thank you so much. Ricay and Roxanna, who had to leave us a little bit earlier, but I really appreciate her time as well and all the folks over at Black Rose doing really important and crucial work. Even if you are not an anarchist or not an anarchist organization, there's so much to learn from this. And as a Marxist myself, I would love to see Marxist organizations, you know, continue to do stuff like this, to do this sort of deep analysis and this political programming within organizations. I think. think is crucial, and Black Rose is really giving us a wonderful example and template of just

how to do that. Before I let you go, though, Enrique, can you please let us know where listeners can find support or even join Black Rose Anarchist Federation online? Yeah, so you can find us at blackrose.org. We're also on Instagram and Twitter and all that good stuff. There is a join tab that's on the website, if you're interested in joining. I'm actually the integration secretary, so I'll probably be someone fielding the calls. But I really wanted to thank you, Brett, and Rev. Left for giving us the opportunity. And hopefully, it won't be another five years until we talk again. Always appreciate conversations with y'all.

Yeah, thank you so much. I was just going to say that. Let's talk again before five years. But, yeah, it's very cool to see Black Rose continue. to put in the work as many organizations rise and fall. Black Rose has stayed steady and it's really admirable, laudable, and I love to see it. So yeah, you have a home here at RevLeft anytime. I would love to keep, you know, a connection going and see how Black Rose continues to evolve in the years to come. But whatever happens, please keep up the good work and know that you always have Rev. Left as a platform to come on and keep people in the loop as to what's happening.

Thanks. We appreciate it. This is no exaggeration, we're living in a death machine. If no, it's not just your imagination, you've been living in a death machine. Some of us are passengers, some of us are driving, and almost everybody's getting fled to death to keep the motor running. I'm not being hyperbolic This place is a death machine Literally and symbolic

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