The following workshops will be presented during Finding Our Roots. We will also have space set aside during the conference for guerrilla workshops to come together. (If you have a guerrilla workshop in mind, feel free to post about it in the Comments section at the bottom of this page.)

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WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

Saturday

8:30 AM	Breakfast
9:30 AM	Anarchist Revolutionary Strategy
	Know Your Rights
	Beyond the Boardroom
10:45 AM	Break
11:00 AM	Tamms Supermax Prison
	Law and Organizing
	Animal Defense League
12:15 PM	Lunch
1:30 PM	Building a Popular Anarchism
	Bash Back!
2:45 PM	Break
3:00 PM	RNC Welcoming Committee
	Networking Chicago Social Movements with AREA Chicago
	Queer Liberation (Cancelled–perhaps a guerrilla workshop?)
4:15 PM	Break
4:30 PM	Anarchist Organizing Plenary
6:00 PM	Close
7:00 PM	Black Flag, Black Tie

Sunday

10:00 AM	Radical Health Care
	Precarity in the Midwest
	Anarchist Leadership
11:15 AM	Break
11:30 AM	Mutual Aid in Action
	Organizing for Environmental Justice and Public Transit
	Magonismo, Zapatismo, and Solidarity with Mexico
12:45 PM	Lunch
	Nonviolent Direct Action Slideshow
1:45 PM	Art as Activism –– 1967 to Today
	Anarchist Anti-War Organizing
3:00 PM	Break
3:15 PM	Forming a Chicago Anarcho-Communist Collective
	Growing the Revolution: Organizing a Collective Community Garden in the City
4:30 PM	Break
4:45 PM	“Looking Back, Organizing Forward” Plenary
6:00 PM	Close

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WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS
(in alphabetical order)

Anarchist Anti-War Organizing
Presented by: Brad T.

This workshop will address the importance of anarchists taking action against war and potential strategies for anti-war organizing outside of the electoral arena.

The workshop will begin by briefly discussing the ways in which the War in Iraq provides anarchists an opportunity to address the injustices of capitalism and the State. As a result, the anti-war movement is an excellent space for anarchists to expose progressives and radicals to this anti-State, anti-capitalist analysis.

Next, the workshop will deal with potential strategies for anarchists opposed to War and militarism. An anarchist anti-war strategy will be defined as a) acting outside of the electoral/”political” arena and b) taking steps to end the current U.S. Wars, but also working toward more radical social change.

The focus will be on two areas, opposition to war-profiteers and actions to limit enlistment numbers (counter-recruitment and GI reistance). We’ll discuss groups and actions in Chicago, as well as across the country. There will be plenty of time allowed for Q & A and group discussion, with the hope of discussing possible options for action in the Midwest.

Anarchist Leadership
Presented by: Chuck H.

1. Discussion on what is leadership?

2. Who are leaders?

3. How do we create and build our own leadership?

4. What is a Program for Working Class Anarchist Leadership: Training/Studying/Pushing

5. Studying the past and present

6. Training ourselves in the skill of organizing and leadership — Training others

7. Pushing Workers — Information, Agitation, Education, Push

8. Roleplays

9. Where can you get involved to do more?

Anarchist Revolutionary Strategy
Presented By: James Herod

The purpose of this workshop is to sketch an anarchist revolutionary strategy relevant to our times. I will be drawing on materials I have developed for previous versions of the workshop (which are available online). However, the main focus of this workshop will be to present the central themes of my recently published book: Getting Free. This presentation will nevertheless be embedded in a comparative survey of strategy proposals from various contemporary anarchist tendencies in the movement in the United States, as well as strategies recommended by other tendencies on the left.

There is an urgent need to rethink revolutionary strategy, and I hope this presentation will be a step in that direction. I will also provide a packet of materials for each attendee which will contain other relevant essays of mine, further bibliographical resources, short takes on other recent books on strategy from all tendencies, recommended research projects, recommended activist campaigns, and so forth. Copies of the book will also be available at cost.

Getting Free is a study of anarchist revolutionary strategy. Since it is obvious that we cannot discuss strategy without first deciding what it is that we are trying to achieve, I begin (after a short critique of capitalism) with a two-page sketch of the basic structure of an anarchist society (a free society, one based on direct democracy). It’s beautifully simple and elegant, in my humble opinion. Next I consider obstacles to be overcome, and then review strategies that have failed so far. Then I map out an anarchist revolutionary strategy, first abstractly and then in concrete detail. Finally, I discuss some of the issues in more detail and bounce the whole thing off relevant literature. I try to completely reconceptualize the fight against capitalists, by shifting the focus away from seizing the state or the means of production, to seizing decision making.

Animal Defense League
Presented by: J

This workshop will seek to show how the tactics of the animal liberation movement have been effective in the struggle for animal liberation and how those tactics can easily be applied to other social justice movements and campaigns here in the midwest. This workshop will highlight both aboveground campaigns such as the campaign to close HLS and the breeder campaigns that preceded it as well as anonymous, illegal direct action by activists in the Animal Liberation Front and how those two elements have been able to effectively fight animal exploitation.

The workshop will seek to show how the animal liberation movement has achieved victories not just here in the midwest, but around the world. It is the hope that by highlighting how these campaigns were run and how they have been effective, activists involved with other social justice movements might be able to use the tactics employed by our movement and apply them to their own struggles.

Questions to be posed/answered in the workshop:
–How can we as activists run campaigns that have an impact for our cause?
– Can the grassroots actually achieve victories against multi-national corporations and if so how?
– What legal risks do we as activists run when engaged in effective campaigning and how can we protect ourselves?

More info:

ADL Chicago

Art as Activism - 1967 to Today
Presented by: Sue B.

A visual history of activism - a slideshow of my artwork as part of movements of the past 40 years, and discussion of the relationship of the art to organizing.

It began with the work made for the for the radical and underground press, anti-Vietnam War, Panther Defense, 2nd Wave Feminism, and continued with Street Theatre in the 80s against US Wars in Central America, then performance, installation and storyboard comix as part of community organizing against corporate developers, and against the destruction of the environment by multinational mining corporations.

Bash Back!
Presenter: Tristyn

The goal of the workshop would be to educate the broader radical community on the current Trans and Queer Anarchist movement surrounding the RNC that is growing larger by the month. In addition to a presentation about the RNC we hope to facilitate a discussion about the strategy for trans people and queermos to crash the convention. We hope the presentation will encourage people to help the Trans/Queer blockade by taking on different support roles and/or joining us in the streets of St. Paul.

Beyond the Boardroom
Presented by: POG

Today 51 of world’s largest 100 economies are multinational corporations. These corporations are playing an increasing role in our everyday lives. They sell us the water we drink and the food we eat; they operate many of the hospitals we go to when we’re sick and and the schools our children attend; prisons, police and the military are not even insulated from this increasing trend toward privatization and corporatization.

Despite their rapid rise in influence and power, information on these mammoth institutions is kept strikingly out of the popular dialogue. Who runs them? How are they connected? And perhaps most importantly: how can all of us have a say in how these corporations operate?

We’ll take a look at several publicly available (but well hidden) sources for information on companies including annual reports, SEC filings (primarily 10K and Proxy statements), IRS 990, and other FEC and IRS documents. Additionally we’ll talk about how to analyze all of this information to zero in on the company’s decision-making processes, profit centers, growth plans, and key relationships. And finally we’ll look at how NGO’s, labor unions, and community organizations have turned this research into strategy to confront corporate power and demand accountability.

Building a Popular Anarchism
Presented by: Andrew Flood

A decade ago, the active anarchist movement in Ireland consisted of
little more than a dozen people in two small organizations. Today hundreds of people are active and one banned libertarian demonstration in 2004 saw 5,000 people take part. Anarchists are increasingly replacing Irish republicans as the bogeyman of the mainstream media.

This talk explains how this breakthrough happened and details the various struggles anarchists have been involved in.

The ‘Building a popular anarchism’ talk itself is pretty much all about successful anarchist organizing within larger social movements. In terms of concerns that might be raised its not particularly focused on the WSM, but more of an account of the growth of anarchism in Ireland because of successful involvement in a string of social movements over a 10 year period. You can mention that one of the community examples saw 60,000 households as paid up members which is around 20-25% of every housing unit in Dublin and another was only crushed after 30 people had been jailed for a month or more and the entire city refuse collection brought to a halt for a couple of weeks.

More Info:

Andrew’s speaking tour blog

The official list of tour dates, plus some articles he’s written

Andrew’s somewhat out of date website

Forming a Chicago Anarcho-Communist Collective

Anarchist Communism has evolved over 150 years as a fighting working class tradition of revolutionary warfare against all forms of exploitation. With revolutions and mass movements in France, Ukraine, Mexico, Korea, Chile, Spain, and Italy, anarchist communism has been a proven method for anarchist revolution. Now, all around the world, anarchist communist collectives and federations, with re-newed energy are spreading like wild fire. What does that renewed energy mean for Chicagoans? Chicago was once considered the militant labor capital of the U.S. Today, as continual social services are cut (CTA, hospitals, schools, state benefits) worker strength is continually diminished (8% of total population organized, people are working longer hours for less pay) living conditions deteriorating (land speculation, gentrification, urban sprawl) and immigration reform necessitates an organization committed to social revolution working within and creating anarchist organizations that have the intent of one day collectivizing our resources.

This is a workshop and discussion for the creation of an Anarchist Communist collective in the Chicago-land area. The discussion is intended for those who are specifically interested in working class struggle centered on the communist tradition of Anarchism. The collective is NOT a synthesis organization; meaning that the members hope to work with people have similar methods, goals, and theoretical ideals. This means developing an effective accountable organization and working with different communities in the class struggle.

Defining Anarchist Communist: Anarchist communism is a form of anarchism that advocates the abolition of the State and capitalism in favour of a horizontal network of voluntary associations through which everyone will be free to satisfy his or her needs. Anarchist communism is also known as anarcho-communism, communist anarchism, or, sometimes, libertarian communism.

Anarchist communism stresses egalitarianism and the abolition of social hierarchy and class distinctions that arise from unequal wealth distribution, the abolition of capitalism and money, and the collective production and distribution of wealth by means of voluntary associations.

Further Readings:

A Short Introduction to Libertarian Communism

What is Communism: Paul Bowman

The Abc’s of Anarchism: Alexander Berkman

Anarchist Communism: It’s Basic Principals: Peter Kropotkin

Manifesto of Libertarian Communist: George Fontenis

5 waves: A brief global history of revolutionary anarchist communist mass organizational theory and practice

The organizational platform of Libertarian Communists

Platformism without Illusions

North East Federation of Anarchist Communist (NEFAC)

Linchpin: home of Common Cause Anarchist Collective

International Anarchist Federation

Defunct yet worth reading about: Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives

Growing the Revolution: Organic Community Gardening in the City
Presented By: Rachel

Connecting the Grid — What are we doing and how are we doing it will be the main focus of the workshop.

Food and its production is a topic many anarchists and their allies are interested in. We are well aware of the evils of Monsanto to McDonalds. Removing ourselves from their grip on our lives is a task some of us take very seriously.

There is a movement of urban anarchists who in our microcosmic grids of city dirt are playing our own part in overthrowing the cycle of dependence on GMO’s and foods with little to no nutritional value. (Whose end result is an epidemic of obesity. In what ways do we organize around this?

One front of the urban anarchist gardener is where they locate themselves. Often times we are on the fronts of gentrification. Though this could be a good place to act in the world, often we serve as the forefront of what could accurately be described as ethnic cleansing. What actions are we taking to avoid this pitfall of becoming a white ghetto within the ghetto. In what ways do we effectively reaching out to low-income communities and communities of color?

The main objective is in sharing strategies; tactics and goals for spreading knowledge to folks who have no idea of how trans-national conglomerates control the world’s food supply and sometimes much less know what a tomato plant looks like.

Suggested reading: City Bountiful: A Century Of community Gardening In America by Laura J. Lawson

Know Your Rights
Presenter: Julia A.

The goal of this workshop is to provide some concrete information so people can learn more and fill in the blanks to any existing knowledge they may have. I want to clarify myths and untruths, provide information on where to get more advanced know your rights information, and to stress the importance for each individual to take responsibility for seeking and internalizing this information. I want people to become more confident acting under pressure and in real life situations, and to understand potential consequences and how to best prepare for them, whether intentional or not. Ignorance of the system is submitting to it. Asserting our rights is one of the most effective and significant ways to resist state oppression, as well as achieving our organizing goals–whatever they may be.

Specifically, this workshop will cover:
-street rights
-arrest scenarios
-jail, court, post-arrest
-searches
-police tactics
-dealing with police
-dealing with FBI and grand juries
-warrants (arrest and search)
-security culture
-safety at demonstrations (do’s and don’ts)
-jail and court solidarity

Law and Organizing
Presenter: William I.

Part I: Right to Organize
1) Free speech and permits
a. What limits on permits
b. Limit on persecution for just taking about a revolution
2) Going door to door
3) Right to organize an union
4) Right to organize at work without a union

Part II: The limits of winning rights with the law
1) 14thamendment and Jim Crow
2) NLRA
3) Segregation post brown v board
4) Internment camps
a. Japanese
b. Guantanamo

Looking Back, Organizing Forward (Plenary)
Panelists: Susan Simensky Bietila, Bill Burns, Darrell Gordon, and James Herod

What lessons can we draw from the past few decades regarding which general approaches do and do not seem to contribute to building/organizing of anarchist networks, visibility and infrastructures?

Magonismo, Zapatismo and Solidarity with Mexico
Presenter: James Daria

With the growth and seemingly success of various social movements throughout Latin America, North Americans are not only looking to these movements for inspiration and hope but are also attempting to carryout projects of solidarity and support. The Zapatista inspired Other Campaign is one such movement which not only is trying to transform Mexico from below and to the left but also the world. What role can North Americans play in the movement? What forms of solidarity can we demonstrate? What can we do here at home? What are the dangers to avoid when trying to carry out projects of solidarity across borders, nations, languages and cultures? What role do Mexican migrants play in shaping the political destiny of Mexico, the United States and Canada? What role should anarchists play in a movement that is not specifically anarchist?

While these questions have no definitive answer and will have to be solved through critical reflection and active participation, there is something to be learned from the past. There was one anarchist movement, however, that although now largely forgotten and erased from our collective history, can teach us much about the promises and problems facing attempts at international solidarity. This movement, commonly known as Magonismo, was the most consistently revolutionary movement that gave rise to and participated in the Mexican Revolution. While led by Mexicans who wanted to over throw the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and create a society free of authority and private property based on the indigenous way of life, this movement was centered in the United States and involved the participation of a broad coalition of radicals from various countries, of various races and ethnicities and who spoke various languages. This presentation will also highlight the successes and failures of the internationals who participated in the movement and attempt to put this within a much more conscious analysis of the intersections of race, class, ethnicity and power that is available to us today. A critical remembering and reconstruction of this movement and its international scope can teach us much about international solidarity.

This presentation will cover the most important aspects of Magonista history as a way to struggle against forgetting and to try and recuperate what must arguably be one of the most important revolutionary movements in North America. It will also serve as a basis to create a discussion on what role should we play today in solidarity with the people of Mexico and the Other Campaign in particular. While the presentation will take up the majority of time, it is hoped that a fruitful discussion will evolve from the points presented. This presentation will be done as a lecture and be aided by a Power Point presentation in order to show pictures of the key figures of the Magonista movement.

Mutual Aid in Action
Presented by: Kathy R.

At last year’s Finding Our Roots, I facilitated a workshop on Kropotkin’s theory of Mutual Aid.

This year, I’d like to follow that up with a survey and discussion of how contemporary anarchists do and can enact Mutual Aid as an everyday revolutionary practice.

What is Mutual Aid, and how does it function in our lived practices of anarchy?

What are some prominent Mutual Aid-based projects spearheaded and carried out by contemporary anarchists? How do these projects serve ourselves and our communities (anarchist and otherwise), and act as “living propaganda” for anarchy?

How does Mutual Aid constitute organizing? What does Mutual Aid-based organizing look like? How can this form of organizing and “anarchy-in-action” build bridges between anarchists and the communities in which we live and work, as well as between anarchists and other activist communities?

The workshop will survey the work of several Midwestern anarchist, anarchistic, and/or anarchist-initiated Mutual Aid projects, including Food Not Bombs, Kansas Mutual Aid, the Chicago Free School, and the community bike project movement. I hope to have representatives of these and other Mutual Aid groups present as co-presenters of the workshop.

The workshop will conclude with an open discussion of the praxis of Mutual Aid, and a brainstorming session about how anarchists in the Midwest can continue to organize and expand Mutual Aid projects in our communities.

Networking Chicago Social Movements with AREA Chicago
Presenter: Daniel Tucker

For the last three years AREA Chicago has been producing publications and events that attempt to survey the terrain of the actually/currently existing left in Chicago. By looking at a wide range of practices that approach different challenging questions that social movements in the city are facing, we have mapped a diverse and interrelated spectrum of local left groups and organizations. Questions asked by our publications are listed below:

• What kind of infrastructure of services and resources do we need when our welfare state is in disrepair and being increasingly privatized? (AREA #1)

• What kind of food policy can we create to make sure that people of the city are healthy enough to pursue organization? (AREA#2)

• What are the things we mean and want when we say we? What are critical approaches to the commonplace political concept of solidarity? (AREA #3)

• In contexts where more and more Chicagoans are entrapped in the expanding industry of mass incarceration, how can meaningful, visionary and practical changes to the criminal justice system occur? (AREA #4)

• What is the role of education and pedagogy in strengthening social movements? (AREA #5)

• How do experimental policies turn the city into a social and economic laboratory? (AREA #6)

• What kinds of logics and strategies do contemporary social movements inherit from their predecessors, especially the New Left and Counter-Culture Left of the late 1960s/early 1970s? (AREA #7)

Questions to be posed/answered in the workshop:

–What roles are anarchists playing in reform struggles in the Chicago area?

–Are anarchists losing opportunities to share their ideas with others because of impatience and lack of understanding of their political ideas?

Main workshop goals:

To share insights into the state of the local left found through AREA Chicago; to propose openings in campaigns and organizing efforts that could/should be filled specifically by Anarchists; to offer up a proposal for a broad-based pan-leftist approach that can help avoid sectarianism.

Organizing for Environmental Justice and Public Transit
Presented by: Mackel

Environmental Justice typically focuses on “the right for people to live in a clean and healthy environment where they live, work, and play. Environmental Racism is the deliberate siting of toxic facilities in communities of color or the lack of enforcement in those same communities.” EJ also extends to food issues, and access to open space, transportation, and other basic needs. This workshop will present a case study of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization – Illinois’s only predominately Latin@ EJ organization.

I will draw comparisons between anarchist theory and praxis and LVEJO’s philosophy and organizing methods. I will highlight revolutionary potential, potential for anarchist/EJ collaboration, as well as contradictions and pitfalls in this area.

Special attention will be given to LVEJO’s public transit campaign and its involvement in the citywide Rider Driver Alliance and Sustainable Chicago 2016.

Questions to be posed/answered in the workshop:

How does EJ challenge root causes of environmental injustice in the forms of the State, Capitalism, White Supremacy, Neoliberalism, Imperialism, Global Warming, etc? Where does it limit itself to solutions that fall within the State and Capitalism?

How can anarchists support or participate in EJ struggles in respectful ways that build solidarity and that do not coopt the struggles of people of color, indigenous, and poor whites?

Will EJ become a victim of its own successes?

Resources:

http://www.lvejo.org

http://www.ejnet.org/ej/

http://www.popednews.org/

http://www.rachel.org/

http://www.highlandercenter.org/

http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue69/grassroots_environmentalism_ecopopulism.html

http://clamormagazine.org/issues/36/politics.php

http://www.scorecard.org/community/ej-index.tcl

Myles Horton and Paulo Freire. We Make the Road by Walking – Conversations on Education and Social Change. Brenda Bell, John Gaventa and John Peters, eds. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.

Precarity in the Midwest
Presented by: Tim S.

This workshop will cover an overall outlook on organizing that can be applied to any aspects of organizing. It covers all intersections of society without backing itself into an ideological corner. It will be a fluid exploration of how anarchist theory intersects with everyday life.

This workshop will attempt to bring the theoretical idea of precarity to a broader audience in the United States. Coming out of the European anarchist/communist movements, precarity attempts to explain the overall status of our society while at the same time giving flexibility in viewing the web of struggles in that same society. With a focus on local organizing at the individual, community, and regional level, this workshop will attempt to create an ongoing conversation about precarity and the intersection of struggle and success within the Midwest.

What is precarity as a theory? How does precarity apply to you, if at all? How can precarity be applied to the unique nature of United States social/political history and culture? How can precarity be applied to the unique nature of Midwestern history and culture? What are pragmatic and immediately useful applications of a precarity organizational lens?

The absolute main goal is to introduce the idea of precarity as an immediately useful and effective organizational lens. The second goal is to be able to connect the theory to the individual participants in their own unique way, where each participant understands precarity as something that directly affects them. The third and equally important goal is to create an ongoing conversation about precarity, with possible creation of a militant research group organized around precarity.

Reading list:

Dorothy Day – Poverty and Precarity

Harry Cleaver – Reading Capital Politically

Mario Tronti – The Strategy of Refusal

Nick Dyyer-Weatherford – Cyber-Marx

Antonio Negri – Marx Beyond Marx

Mariossa Dalla Costa and Selma James – The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community

Howard Zinn – A People’s History of the United States “Chapter 11: Robber Barons and Rebels”

Tamms Supermax Prison
Presented by: Julia A.

This workshop will be somewhat multifaceted. In content it overlaps with prison issues, race, class, and community-concerned work, and the use of radical grassroots organizing within legislative strategy. Tamms Supermax prison is located in the midwest, and the midwest has many groups dedicated to prison abolition and reform. The paradox exists between anarchists and the ideological conflict of working closely with non-anarchist organizations, lobbying, dealing with legislators, and when and where we make these distinctions. The issue is also raised of working with explicitly faith-based groups, and how to best reach and collaborate with communities, especially communities of color, without excluding religious communities.

I want this workshop to start by addressing Tamms Supermax Prison and the specific conditions and campaign around this facility. We will use the example of Tamms to extrapolate to discuss prisons in the midwest and nationwide. TammsYearTen, the group working on this campaign to close Tamms needs to be introduced, with discussion on the strategy of this campaign, especially as it related to media, legislation, and networking with other groups. Anarchist and grassroots involvement within this campaign will be discussed, especially the connection between non-hierarchical and grassroots organizing and making legal legislative change. This will open the discussion of two major questions:

1) How anarchist might engage in changing legislation, and what the implications of this work is. Why haven’t anarchists participated in the past, and how might this change for the future?

2) In terms of prison abolition, how is this a different strategy than prisoner support? What tactics can anarchists use to achieve abolition? To achieve abolition we much change laws, outreach to poor and marginalized communities that we are not a part of, and how can we do this within anarchism? How might we network with other groups who do not share the same philosophical or ideological principles as us, but who have shared end goals? Why is this important, particularly in terms of the prison industrial complex?

The goals of this workshop are to increase awareness Tamms Supermax Prison in Southern IL, the Tamms YearTen Campaign and how anarchists might get involved, and to pose the question and discuss anarchists engaging in struggles that cross boundaries into above ground and mainstream politics.