NCOR - a report of 3 workshops
The National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) is back at American University this weekend where I attended three of the workshops. The annual conference brings together a large number of anarchists (along with other left-leaning activists) for education workshops and networking to the small university in upper Northwest Washington, D.C.
I've posted the full essay to Beltway Indymedia. The site is starting to look better all the time, and I want to encourage people to post any news they have there, especially about DC and its metro area, but also any news whatsoever (that's not simply a re-hashing of news somewhere else on the net) from a radical perspective.
Go here to read the full article.
To give you a flavor of one of the workshops I attended (the others being on "Parenting and Social Change" and the other on "Indigenous Struggles and Resistance in Canada), let me share the paragraph I wrote on that. This was related to resistance to the Interstate 69 project in Indiana by some Earth First!ers.
Switching gears from the first workshop and after meeting and networking with people during lunch, I attended a workshop given by Roadblock Earth First! from southwestern Indiana, who are working with farmers in that rural area to stop the continuing work on Interstate 69, which has been dubbed part of the NAFTA Superhighway. I-69 is being built from Port Huron, Michigan, to Texas, connecting with a highway project there, and ultimately to the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) project. These highways are being built with commerce in mind, in places 12 lanes wide, four of which dedicated only to trucks. In southwestern Indiana in particular, I-69, which has thus far been built to Indianapolis, many farmers risk losing their land to eminent domain. The activists have worked with farmers, many of whom are planning on taking direct action to protect their farms. Much of the workshop was spent drawing the local connection with the global connection of the PPP, which has had a disastrous effect on local and indigenous communities throughout Central America. Since the highway system is the tangible expression of capitalism, it also represents a vulnerability for activists in the United States and in Central America, and an opportunity for direct action. For years, mainstream groups have opposed this project and poll after poll shows over 90% of Indianans oppose the project, and yet it is slated to be built next year with evictions starting this summer. The Earth First! participants do not believe that democracy or lobbying has worked and believe a direct action approach will pay dividends (to speak capitalistically), and they cited the success of activists in the UK who successfully stopped road building in the 1990s. However, they did not talk at all about their own tactics for security reasons. The workshop had about 50 participants, and most in the room had never heard of the PPP. So, there was a lot of new information for people about a project where the local and global connection was very clear, touching also on issues related to privatization (especially of the transportation system) and multinational corporations working in collusion with the World Bank. What wasn't mentioned but was beneath the surface was the issue of immigration, which is directly related to the projects which are displacing so many people.
For more and for some general comments on NCOR, read my full article.
posted by Jim Macdonald @ 7:10 PM
3 Comments:
Here is the article from Beltway Indymedia that I wrote back then:
Saturday at NCOR - Parenting and Social Change, Resistance to I-69, Indigenous Resistance in Canada
March 10, 2007 - 10:09pm
AuthorJim Macdonald
The National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) is back at American University this weekend where I attended three of the workshops. The annual conference brings together a large number of anarchists (along with other left-leaning activists) for education workshops and networking to the small university in upper Northwest Washington, D.C.
While the conference was in D.C., because of the nature of the workshops I attended, I am posting this as global news because the topics of the workshops I attended were global in nature and most of the participants in the conference are from outside the District of Columbia in a remote part of town not representative of the larger population. In fact, the vast majority of the workshops at NCOR deal with national and global issues, and there is generally little connection of this conference with the local community. While there were workshops on the schedule today related to day laborers in the metro region and women of color organizing, those were the exceptions to the rule.
With that in mind, NCOR had many hundreds (perhaps between 1 - 2000) of participants in crowded, standing room only workshops. There was a young and festive atmosphere under the most pleasant weather we have had here in some time. The workshops I attended were all very informative and interesting.
The first workshop I attended was about parenting and social change, though was mostly about parents and their interactions with children. Facilitated by a man named Ryan from Georgetown University in a room crowded past the point of capacity, about 90 people enthusiastically shared experiences about what they liked and didn't like about being children and about the challenges of parenting children. Since the vast majority of people were radical, there was an emphasis on the challenges of raising children as radicals both in the larger social environment, which is not radical, and in situations which seem to call for a more authoritarian response. When is it okay to say "No" to your child? How does one communicate and balance one's needs with the child's needs? How does one increase the ability of children to make their own choices? How do parents deal with disagreements with each other, and what process is helpful? How do stepparents handle situations with their children? There was not much discussion on how activists as organizers can manage to continue on with organizing while raising a child or the larger external issues of social change, and a couple afterwards expressed frustration with that. There was a wealth of experience in the room, and most in the room shared something.
Switching gears from the first workshop and after meeting and networking with people during lunch, I attended a workshop given by Roadblock Earth First! from southwestern Indiana, who are working with farmers in that rural area to stop the continuing work on Interstate 69, which has been dubbed part of the NAFTA Superhighway. I-69 is being built from Port Huron, Michigan, to Texas, connecting with a highway project there, and ultimately to the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) project. These highways are being built with commerce in mind, in places 12 lanes wide, four of which dedicated only to trucks. In southwestern Indiana in particular, I-69, which has thus far been built to Indianapolis, many farmers risk losing their land to eminent domain. The activists have worked with farmers, many of whom are planning on taking direct action to protect their farms. Much of the workshop was spent drawing the local connection with the global connection of the PPP, which has had a disastrous effect on local and indigenous communities throughout Central America. Since the highway system is the tangible expression of capitalism, it also represents a vulnerability for activists in the United States and in Central America, and an opportunity for direct action. For years, mainstream groups have opposed this project and poll after poll shows over 90% of Indianans oppose the project, and yet it is slated to be built next year with evictions starting this summer. The Earth First! participants do not believe that democracy or lobbying has worked and believe a direct action approach will pay dividends (to speak capitalistically), and they cited the success of activists in the UK who successfully stopped road building in the 1990s. However, they did not talk at all about their own tactics for security reasons. The workshop had about 50 participants, and most in the room had never heard of the PPP. So, there was a lot of new information for people about a project where the local and global connection was very clear, touching also on issues related to privatization (especially of the transportation system) and multinational corporations working in collusion with the World Bank. What wasn't mentioned but was beneath the surface was the issue of immigration, which is directly related to the projects which are displacing so many people.
Finally, I attended a workshop related to the struggles of indigenous people in Canada, especially the 1-year strong land reclamation by members of the Six Nations, especially Mohawks, in Ontario. The workshop was given by people not directly involved with that particular struggle, but the facilitators believed the topic needed to be shared; the tribe also was aware of the presentation. Much of the workshop focused on educating people about the history of genocidal indigenous policies in Canada, a land that basks in the myth that it is strong on human rights. Buttressed by the 1867 Indian Act, which divided Indians into status and non-status Indians while creating a racist and assimilationist posture towards native peoples, Canada has in some ways a more authoritarian posture toward its native population than the United States. A higher percentage of Canadian indigenous people are in prisons than in any country in the world, even more than Australia and the United States, which also have high percentages. The Canadian government also outlawed the traditional councils of the past in favor of the band council system, where the Canadian government appoints some of the members of the council. In Ontario, however, members of the Six Nations have been more successful in resisting this system than any that have come before them, occupying land for now more than a year, despite arrests. The band council there has even taken the shocking and unprecedented step of renouncing their own authority and recognizing the confederation council, which has had to govern underground. Solidarity actions, including a number of successful blockades, broke out around Canada. The workshop looked at the repression, the responses to repression, and briefly touched on some other direct actions by indigenous peoples in parts of Canada (as well as the United States). About 50 people attended the workshop, and participants talked about indigenous issues and what they are doing about them, as well as suggesting solidarity actions that might be taken in Washington, DC (the Canadian Embassy was suggested).
All of these workshops (and presumably the many more I could not attend) had so much rich information that it was hard to do them justice. For all the flaws with NCOR, one cannot deny the educational value of the workshops, at least the ones I attended. One only wished there was more awareness of the town of Washington where all of these fascinating discussions were taking place. It was hard to get that sense in the distant environs of American University.
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