Name
Parent Directory
All The Infighting
Anyone who wants to make the world a better place should read this article:
Throughout all of that, and all of the organizing and bridge building and planning, there had been some who did a lot more and some who did a lot less, and all coming to the meetings.
Dozens of people contributed to the effort, and work was not split remotely evenly between them. That would have been fine, if these differences in effort could have been addressed and acknowledged openly. But in those spaces, in that political context, no such recognition was possible.
There was no way to express it in many of the activist spaces I worked within. To assert that some were more responsible for organizing success than others would be seen as to assert ownership, and to assert ownership would be seen as to attempt to dominate and take authoritarian control.
Leadership, in so many of these contexts, was perceived as control, and control as the hand of reactionary power, hegemony, colonialism…
Meanwhile, all around me the antiwar movement seemed to atrophy and rot, precisely because it lacked leaders, because there was no accountability, because anyone could come to any meeting and start to preach, and no one knew what to say when they were disruptive, or undermining, or just useless.
©Andrew Swift · top · more · contact