Malcolm Archibald: 50 years of Black Cat PresS  

EDMONTON, ALBERTA

Nov

01

2024

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FELLOW ANARHIST COMRADE

I WAS HIS PRINTERS DEVIL 

From Freedom News by Sean Patterson

In this interview, the founder of Edmonton’s anarchist publishing house looks back on its legacy

For the past five decades, Black Cat Press (BCP) in Edmonton, Canada, has served as a local hub for the city’s radical community and as an important publisher of anarchist material. Over the years, BCP has produced many notable titles, including the first English translations of the collected works of the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno in five volumes. Other stand-out works from BCP include The Dossier of Subject No. 1218, the translated memoirs of Bulgarian anarchist Alexander Nakov; Lazar Lipotkin’s The Russian Anarchist Movement in North America, a previously unpublished manuscript held at Amsterdam’s International Institute of Social History; and Kronstadt Diary, a selection of Alexander Berkman’s original diary entries from 1921.

Amongst reprints of classic works by the likes of Kropotkin, Bakunin, and William Morris, BCP has also highlighted the work of anarchist researchers from around the globe, including Alexey Ivanov’s Kropotkin and Canada, Vadim Damier’s Anarcho-Syndicalism in the 20th Century, Ronald Tabor’s The Tyranny of Theory, and Archibald’s own work Atamansha: The Story of Maria Nikiforova, the Anarchist Joan of Arc.  

Sadly, Black Cat Press closed its doors in 2022, an economic victim of the Covid pandemic. Any future hopes to revive the press were subsequently shattered in the wake of a second tragedy. On June 26, 2024, an early morning house fire started by arsonists destroyed BCP’s remaining equipment and inventory. The loss of BCP is painful not only locally for Edmonton but nationally as one of Canada’s few anarchist publishers. Sharing BCP’s five-decade-long story will hopefully inspire others to follow in the steps of BCP’s legacy and the broader tradition of small anarchist publishing houses.

This month, BCP founder Malcolm Archibald sat down with Freedom News to reflect on a lifetime of publishing and his personal journey through anarchism over the years.

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You have been involved with the anarchist community for many years. Can you tell us a little about your background and how you first became interested in anarchism?

Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the Cold War, I certainly had no exposure to anarchism. Nor did my family have any predilection for left-wing politics. The only book on socialism in the public library was G. D. H. Cole’s History of Socialist Thought, which I devoured. In 1958, at age 15, I attended a provincial convention of the CCF (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation) as a youth delegate. The CCF in Nova Scotia was a proletarian party with a strong base in the coal mining districts. After that, I was hooked on left-wing politics.

I became interested in anarchism by reading books about the Spanish Civil War. The first real anarchist I met was Murray Bookchin at a conference in Ann Arbor in 1969. Bookchin understood that many student radicals were anarchists in practice, even if they called themselves Marxists, so he emphasised the libertarian elements of Marx in his propaganda.

What anarchist organisations/groups have you been involved with over the years?

As a graduate student at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, I was on the staff of underground newspapers, including an anarchist tabloid, The Walrus. Later, I helped start an anarchist magazine in Edmonton called News from Nowhere (printed by Black Cat Press). In Edmonton in the 1970s we had a branch of the Social-Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (SRAF), but most anarchist activity was centred around the IWW, Black Cat Press, and Erewhon Books. Anarchists were also involved in the newspapers Poundmaker (circulation 19,000!) and Prairie Star. In 1979, the North American Anarchist Communist Federation (NAACF, later simplified to ACF) started up, and I was active in two of their branches for a number of years but was unable to get much traction for the organisation in Edmonton.

When did you start Black Cat Press, and how did it evolve over time? What are some key moments in its history you’d like to share with our readers?

Black Cat Press started when I purchased an offset press and copy camera in 1972. The previous owner had tried to earn a living with this equipment and ended up in a mental institution, which was not auspicious. BCP became a “printer to the movement” in Edmonton, used by almost all the left groups and causes. In 1979 BCP became the unofficial printer of the ACF and printed a number of pamphlets for that organisation.

From 1989 to 2001, BCP shared space with the Boyle McCauley News, the monthly newspaper of Edmonton’s inner city, with an all-volunteer staff. The newspaper generally tried to print positive news about the community, but an exception was the issue of juvenile prostitution, a terrible blight until we started printing stories about it and the authorities finally took action.

In 1994, the government printing plant where I worked was shut down, and BCP began to operate full-time with three partners who had been laid off at the same time. Our customer base included social agencies close to our shop in Edmonton’s inner city plus various unions. In 2003, I purchased a perfect binding machine and was able to start printing books. Our first book was Kropotkin’s Anarchist Morality, a perennial favourite. Eventually, about 30 titles were printed, which were distributed by AK Press, independent bookstores, and literature tables at anarchist book fairs.

How did you come to translate Russian-language radical and anarchist texts?

I studied Russian at university and later took night courses in German, French, Ukrainian, and Polish. I first became aware of Nestor Makhno in the 1960s from a book by the British historian David Footman. Ending up in Edmonton, it turned out that the University of Alberta Library held four books by Nestor Makhno, bibliographical rarities.

I’m constantly amazed at the richness of the anarchist tradition in the Russian Empire and the USSR. For many years, The Russian Anarchists by Paul Avrich was the only survey work on the subject, but recently, two histories have appeared in Russia and one in Ukraine. It is a measure of the depth of the movement that these histories are practically independent of one another and pay hardly any attention to Avrich.

My first works of translation from Russian were physics articles, which don’t give much scope for originality. In translating historical texts, most of the effort goes not into the actual translation, but research on the names of places, persons, etc. and preparing annotations. I try to provide the reader with maps, graphics, and indexes, which make it easier to understand the text.

Although I generally do not work with literary texts, I did translate some poems by Nestor Makhno. He wrote a poem called “The Summons” while in prison in 1912. A search of his cell in 1914 discovered this poem, for which he was given one week in a punishment cell. While in this cell, he composed another poem, which he wrote down as soon as he was allowed back to his regular cell. But another search discovered the second poem (more bloodthirsty than the first one), and he ended up in the punishment cell again. So, it wasn’t easy being an anarchist poet!

Some of your major contributions to anarchist studies are the translations of Russian and Ukrainian primary sources. In particular, you translated and published the first English edition of Nestor Makhno’s three-volume memoirs. Can you describe this translation project?

The University of Alberta library holds copies of Makhno’s memoirs, including both the French and Russian versions of the first volume. I started translating these memoirs as early as 1979 when BCP published a pamphlet entitled My Visit to the Kremlin, a translation of two chapters in the second volume. This pamphlet was eventually published in many other languages.

Most of the work involved in preparing translations of Makhno’s works went into research about the people and places he mentions. An effort was made to provide enough material in the form of notes and maps to make the narrative intelligible to the reader.

Black Cat Press recently closed its doors after fifty years in business. The economic environment for publishing is increasingly difficult in general, and especially so for small anarchist presses. What are your thoughts on the current prospects for anarchist publishing, and what changes might have to be made to maintain its long-term viability?

Most anarchist publishers have to order a substantial press run up front and then hope to sell the books over a (hopefully) not-too-long period. BCP was ahead of its time in using a print-on-demand model where inventories were kept low so that capital wouldn’t be tied up in stock that wasn’t moving. The publishing arm of BCP was not much affected by the pandemic; rather, it was the job printing that suffered, forcing the business to close.

How have you seen anarchism (particularly in Canada) change over the decades? Canada has rarely seen an organized anarchist movement in the same way as some groups in Europe or the United States. Why do you think this is so, and do you see any hope for an organized Canadian movement in the future?

When I became active in the anarchist movement in Canada in the 1970s, the anarchists were all poverty-stricken, trying to survive in minimum-wage jobs. The next generation was much better off and had a lot of money to throw around. Now, the current generation is back to being dirt poor again, lacking the resources to make an impact. But I think the prospects for the future are good because (a) the old left (communists, Trotskyists, i.e., the alphabet soup brigade) are intellectually and morally bankrupt, and (b) the New Democratic Party (in Alberta, at least) is environmentally irresponsible. This leaves a lot of room on the left for anarchists to stake out their territory and attract young people into the movement.

Malcolm Archibald at the Edmonton Anarchist Bookfair, 2013.

Thanks to Kandis Friesen for sharing previously collected interview material.

 

Ostrom’s 8 Rules of the Commons for Anarchists

Oct

23

2024

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From Usufruct Collective

The commons are resources self-managed by communities who need and use them. Commons are managed through dialogue, deliberation, and collective-decision-making as well as through mutual aid to meet needs. Commoning refers to the process of developing commons. Commons can include land, water-ways, fields, factories, workshops, instruments/tools, dwellings, recreational facilities, general infrastructure, miscellaneous infrastructure, fruits of re/production, mixes of all of the above, and beyond. Flourishing commons provide communities and participants with shared means of existence, production, and politics as well as access to the fruits thereof in ways that meet the needs of all. 

The commons have been under attack by the last several thousand years of hierarchy and class society as well as the last several hundred years of capitalism. Capitalism developed through multiple factors including continuous privatization of the commons enforced through state violence (Federici, 2018). Despite such systemic violence, pockets of the commons continue to exist through people developing both new and enduring commons to meet their needs and the needs of others as well as through people resisting domination and exploitation (Federici, 2018). Commoning is not only under attack by multiple entangled forms of hierarchy (institutionalized domination) such as capitalism, statecraft, patriarchy, racism, imperialism, colonialism, and nationalism; commoning is also under ideological attack through widespread propaganda and belief systems that deem various hierarchies beneficial or inevitable. 

Arguments claiming that commons inevitably lead to tragedies of overuse and collective ruin deny the history of the commons while also assuming that commons are rooted in crude competitive acquisition without the very collective rules, agreements, and practices that enable them to be functional. Such straw men of the commons reflect the norms of competitive and hierarchical societies rather than the kinds of organized cooperation to meet needs so crucial to any well-functioning-commons. Responding to sweeping critiques of the commons, Elinor Ostrom empirically and theoretically demonstrated that commons have been, are, and can be well-managed by participants when they utilize several good-enough rules and practices (Ostrom, 2021). Many communities and persons have in their own ways and words convergently evolved and articulated variations of such core-design-principles. 

Commons and related self-managed institutions have existed within foraging societies, agricultural societies, villages, towns, blocks, neighborhoods, cities, and mixed method non-state societies (Boehm, 2001, Kropotkin 1902, Bookchin, 2005a, Federici, 2018, Ostrom, 2021, Graeber and Wengrow, 2023). Such a rich history demonstrates that well-managed-commons are possible and that such well-managed-commons predictably contribute to social and ecological flourishing. 

While there are plenty of examples Ostrom looks at that are in harmony with her 8 rules for managing the commons as well as a non-hierarchical approach to social-organization (Ostrom, 2021), other instances of the commons she looks at utilize some methods that those from an anti-hierarchical perspective would disapprove of. Truly emancipatory commons are distinct from quasi-commons that produce commodities and/or are gated against commoners having mutual-access (Federici, 2018). Given the goals of the self-management of each and all, mutual non-domination, wellbeing for all, and ecological flourishing, Ostrom’s core-design-principles can become more coherent through being remixed with insights from anarchism. 

The following adaptation of Ostrom’s rules for managing the commons is informed by libertarian socialism/communism/communalism, organizations and revolutions influenced by libertarian socialism that utilize community assemblies related to common decisions and resources, various commons Ostrom looks at, as well as an expanded history of commoning in multiple modes of subsistence:

1. Participants know they are part of a group and what the group is about (Wilson, 2016).
2. Agreements for sharing and at times rotating labor/work and implementation of decisions as well as for sharing the fruits thereof (Kropotkin, 1906, Sixth Commission of the EZLN, 2016, Ostrom, 2021, Usufruct Collective, 2022). People can co-create a cornucopia where there is more than enough for all or otherwise agree to specific ways of distributing less abundant fruits of re/production according to needs.   
3. Direct collective decision making by participants through deliberation. For there to be self-management of each and all, there must also be mutual non-domination. By extension, community assemblies related to the commons should utilize direct, participatory, and non-hierarchical forms of democracy (Bookchin, 2005b).  
4. Organizational transparency that allows participants to mutually-monitor the commons (Atkins, Wilson, Hayes, 2019). This can happen through the process of co-managing and interacting with the commons, collective action, living in community with others, relevant accounting/calculation as needed, and availability of relevant information to participants. 
5. Graduated defense against domination and exploitation such as: informal social disapproval, self-defense and defense of others as needed, and recourse to expelling someone from a particular collective (through deliberation, assembly, and due process) in response to the most extreme violations of the commons and freedoms of persons (Boehm, 2001, Ostrom, 2021, Usufruct Collective, 2023).  
6. Good-enough conflict resolution such as: people talking directly to each other, mediation to find out how to move forward, dispute resolution to resolve disputes, restorative justice and transformative justice processes for people to repair harm and transform causes thereof, and organization-wide assembly when the conflict is in regards to organizational form and content. (Kaba, 2019, Usufruct Collective, 2023). 
7. Communities and participants need sufficient autonomy to organize. 
8. The use of co-federation and embedded councils. Community assemblies can co-manage inter-communal commons in a way where policy-making power is held by participants and assemblies directly (Bookchin, 1992, Ocalan, 2014). This enables self-management and mutual aid within and between communities as well as inter-communal management of the commons. Community assemblies can utilize mandated and recallable councils and rotating delegates to implement decisions within the bounds of policies made by community assemblies directly (Bookchin, 1992, 2007, 2018). 

The above should be further fleshed out, qualified, and wisely adapted to conditions, needs, and desires of communities and participants. When there are good-enough institutions and agreements for collective action, individuals benefit through the flourishing of the commons and mutually-contributing to the commons– blending self-interest with collective-interest. Although specifically related to common-economics, Ostrom’s core-design-principles and coherent adaptations thereof can be used to reflect upon and develop various self-managed collectives that have shared practices and goals (Wilson, 2016). 

The self-management of each and all on every scale requires the flourishing of the commons and related general assemblies. Developing the commons in the context of a hierarchical society requires both the reconstruction of the commons as well as opposition to domination and exploitation. Such functions can be done through self-managed community assemblies that utilize mutual aid and direct action to meet needs and solve social problems. That kind of community organizing can happen as a crucial part of a broader social movement ecosystem that includes workplace organizing, student organizing, and beyond. In addition to the commons and related general assemblies being needed for political economic freedom of each and all: developing the commons and sharing social re/production can meet needs of social movement organizations, participants thereof, and the non-ruling class while building the new world in the shell of the old and increasing capacity for people to solve social problems and oppose hierarchies.

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PS:

Additional critique of Ostrom: 

Ostrom does want the commons to expand and increase. However, Ostrom sees the commons as a sector that should exist alongside capitalism and states. This is distinct from the anti-domination and anti-exploitation approach of libertarian socialism. While Ostrom does talk about the need to have sufficient autonomy to self-organize, Ostrom does not properly touch upon developing the commons through opposition against capitalism, statecraft, and hierarchy more broadly.   

Atkins, Paul W.B., David  Sloan Wilson, and Steven C. Hayes. Prosocial: Using evolutionary science to build productive, equitable, and collaborative groups. Context Press, 2019.

Boehm, Cristopher. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Harvard University, 2001.

Bookchin, Murray. Urbanization without cities: The rise and decline of citizenship. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1992.

Bookchin, Murray. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005a.

Bookchin, Murray. “Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy.” libcom.org. 2005b. https://libcom.org/article/municipalization-community-ownership-economy.

Bookchin, Murray. Social Ecology and Communalism. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007.

Bookchin, Murray. Post-Scarcity Anarchism. AK Press, 2018.

Federici, Silvia. Re-enchanting the World Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. PM Press, 2018.

Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Kaba, Mariame, and Shira Hassan. Fumbling towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators. Chicago: Project NIA, 2019.

Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. New York: McClure Phillips and Co., 1902.

Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. 1906.

Ocalan, Abdullah. Democratic Confederalism. Transmedia Publishing, 2014.

Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 

Sixth Commission of the EZLN. Critical Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra I. Durham, NC: PaperBoat Press, 2016.

Wilson, David Sloan. “The Tragedy of the Commons: How Elinor Ostrom Solved One of Life’s Greatest Dilemmas.” Evonomics, April 5, 2016. https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/.

Usufruct Collective. “The Conquest of Sandwiches.” Usufruct Collective, February 1, 2022. https://usufructcollective.wordpress.com/2022/02/01/the-conquest-of-sandwiches/.

Usufruct Collective. “Kick the Cops off Your Block.” Usufruct Collective, June 14, 2023. https://usufructcollective.wordpress.com/2023/06/04/kick-the-cops-off-your-block-2/.

 

Book Review: Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority

Oct

10

2024

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From Anarchist Studies Volume 32 (2024) Issue 2

Paul Dobraszczyk, Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority
London: Antepavilion in association with Paul Holberton Publishing, 2021; 248pp; ISBN 978913645175

Paul Dobraszczyk is a collector, and his recent Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority is another example of his research methods in the history of architecture. He lists, categorises, taxonomises, and contextualises. The book is thus structured into eight thematic chapter, each of which uses seven or eight case studies to detail a particular motivation and/or method for architectural invention. Such methods are useful for the way in which the categories and case studies might serve future research, and because they prompt the reader to identify omissions and other possible categories, frames for thinking, and contexts in which the examples or categories might be evaluated. Throughout my reading of Architecture and Anarchism I found myself wishing for further inclusions or, indeed, worrying that some examples should be excluded. This is both the blessing and the curse of Dobraszczyk’s methods.

Chapter 1, ‘Liberty’, emphasises self-governance and organisation and aptly insists upon anarchism as a theory of organisation, an art of living, and a model for thinking and acting: ‘a delicate balance between freedom and control’ (p27). The focus is on intentional communities: ephemeral, such as Rainbow Gatherings, or more permanent, such as Christiania. Here, the book’s tensions are already evident. Burning Man, which has come to represent a form of ‘tech bro’ libertarianism, is ill-placed in a collection that otherwise celebrates more mutualist or communitarian models. The inclusion of Vienna’s Hundertwasserhaus also poses the question of whether it is appropriate to include work which is anarchistic rather than explicitly anarchist, though Dobraszczyk does make a case for doing so.

Chapter 2, ‘Escape’, groups projects that seek to reimagine social relations in new landscapes – separatist or informal settlements and intentional communities. Drop City and the anti-airport ZAD near Nantes make the list, as do the Essex Plotlands and junk playgrounds. Chapter 3, ‘Necessity’, extends this to settlements brought together by shared need. This includes The Jungle in Calais and Kowloon Walled City. Again, some blurring of the categories happens. A squat might have equal measures of need, ideology, and social experimentation in evidence. Migrant camps are a more extreme category: there were sterling examples of mutual aid exhibited in The Jungle, but predation by gangs and organised crime poses the problem of differentiating between anarchism and lawlessness. Dobraszczyk’s inclusion of The Jungle is problematic, but usefully so: the tensions are food for thought

In Chapter 4, ‘Protest’, anarchist ideas and social and architectural experimentation are clearly aligned and expressed in protest camps such as Grow Heathrow or Occupy Wall Street. Here too there are fruitful tensions. Can the protests in Tahrir Square or Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement be seen as anarchist? They draw from a toolbox crammed full of anarchist actions and theories, but when the intention is limited to replacing or reforming the state, questions arise.

Ruin and reuse tie together Chapters 5, ‘Ecology’, and 6, ‘Art’. In the former, Dobrasczyk returns to more recognisably permanent architectural forms, presenting buildings which fit Murray Bookchin’s model of social ecology. What stands out is the fully anarchist Ruin Academy in Taipei, which employs ruination as an ecological tool. As the building disintegrates it becomes host to ever more species. At the intersection of art and architecture is Gordon Matta-Clark, whose methods were clearly anarchist (‘anarchitecture’). His 1975 ‘Conical Intersect’ carved an entirely new architectural order out of a condemned building in Paris’s Marais. Its titular cone-shaped voids penetrate the walls and floors, providing a neat metaphor for how anarchism concerns itself with both order and disorder.

Many of the projects here arise from the detritus of capitalism and consumerism as adaptive reuse and creative reinvention, a continued theme in Chapter 7, ‘Speculation’. This chapter presents speculative or utopian projects. My favourite amongst these is Clifford Harper’s 1976 drawings for the ‘Autonomous Terrace’. It re-envisions a British terrace as a communal dwelling with shared facilities. Adaptive reuse of existing architecture as an anarchist practice could form the theoretical basis for further work, tying together histories of squatting, protest, and urban, social, and architectural invention that take place with minimal means but an abundance of shared effort.

The book finishes by foregrounding mutual endeavour in Chapter 8, ‘Participation’. Dobraszczyk perceptively identifies a key quality of anarchist architecture: ‘there is no such thing as building without a community; and there is no freedom for oneself without, at the same time, there equally being freedom for others’ (p209). Buildings (both edifices and landscapes) are here processes rather than products, which is immensely fruitful as the most cherished social goods – freedom, equality, democracy – are practiced and mutually assured in (architectural) space.

This sensibility is the backbone of Dobraszczyk’s Architecture and Anarchism. Following Colin Ward, he shows the potential of bottom-up power and mutual aid, seeing ‘revolution as an emergent process that is already evident in the world, observable in practices of all kinds’ (pp16-17). These practices are forms of citizenship in which people are participants, not recipients. If this book is also seen as an open-ended practice, in which it is up to readers and future researchers to chase down the gaps and omissions and pregnant possibilities, then it will have justified its collector’s methods admirably.

Tim Waterman, University College London

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Anarchist Studies 32:2 (2024) is out now!
The latest issue of AS features 4 original articles, 2 review essays, and 6 book reviews.

Contents

About this Issue’s Cover: Ben Benn’s Portrait of Hippolyte Havel, pages 5‑6
Allan Antliff Free to download

Colin Ward: An Ambiguous Legacy , pages 7‑14
Matthew Wilson Free to download

The Story of Czech Anarchism: Ideas and Practices of Czech Libertarians, 1883-1930, pages 15‑43
Ondřej Slačálek, Michael Polák

Politics Walking The Tightrope Of The Law: The New York Criminal Anarchy Act Of 1902, pages 44‑74
Claire Aniel-Buchheit

Insurrectionary Anarchism in Poland: The Case of the People’s Liberation Front, pages 75‑102
Grzegorz Piotrowski
Review Articles

Three Recent Introductions to Anarchism, pages 103‑108
Robert Graham

The Spanish Revolution, Revisited, pages 109‑113
Morris Brodie

Reviews, pages 114‑127
Kathy E. Ferguson, Letterpress Revolution; The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture Reviewed by Constance Bantman
Benjamin Franks, Anarchisms, Postanarchisms and Ethics Reviewed by Iwona Janicka
Paul Dobraszczyk, Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority Reviewed by Tim Waterman
Tom Wetzel, Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century Reviewed by Nathan Jun
Tim Waterman, The Landscape of Utopia: Writings on Everyday Life, Taste, Democracy, and Design Reviewed by Rhiannon Firth
Richard Gilman Opalsky, The Communism of Love: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Exchange Value Reviewed by Koshka Duff and Chris Rossdale

Radical Municipalism Is Paving The Way For Direct Democracy In LA

Researcher and organizer Yvonne Yen Liu discusses efforts to build direct democracy and grassroots power in Los Angeles.

By Yvonne Yen Liu, Justin A. Davis 

August 24, 2024
Source: Waging Nonviolence

The launch of Los Angeles for All at Robinson Space in Historic Filipinotown in Los Angeles on May Day 2022. (Los Angeles People’s Movement Assembly)

Home to almost 10 million residents in 2022, Los Angeles County can sometimes seem like a vast political paradox. Known as a quintessential example of urban sprawl, it is also the most overcrowded county in America. Over the past 20 years, robust grassroots organizing built multiracial movements for organized labor, immigrant rights and housing justice while electing multiple self-identified leftists to L.A. City Council. At the same time, brutal overpolicing, ethics scandals and rising gentrification have been constant challenges for organizers and activists there.

This summer, L.A.’s controversial efforts to reduce homelessness have reentered the national spotlight. “Home to 7.1 percent of the nation’s unhoused,” state and local governments have increasingly relied on criminalization to push houseless people out of the public eye. Arrests, tickets and the destruction of “homeless encampments” have become a common sight. A Supreme Court decision in June (passed along ideological lines) made it easier for cities to “ban people from sleeping and camping in public places,” increasing the pressure on local officials to clear remaining encampments. On August 8, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom was spotted clearing out homeless encampments himself in L.A. County, a publicity stunt meant to highlight the urgency of removing them.

Issues like these have pushed organizers to consider new frameworks for building political power in the region, including the Solidarity Research Center, or SRC. Founded in 2014 as the “research arm” of the Industrial Workers of the World, SRC has since evolved into a “worker self-directed nonprofit” that supports movements for direct democracy and cooperative economics. In recent years, SRC has been blending research with capacity-building for social movements as part of an ongoing experiment with radical municipalism. Radical municipalism draws from a variety of frameworks that place cities at the center of social transformation, looking beyond capitalism and the nation-state for new forms of community-building. In the 1970s, for example, Huey Newton theorized about “revolutionary intercommunalism,” arguing that national liberation struggles were better understood as “a dispersed collection of communities” vying for self-determination on a smaller scale. Social theorist Murray Bookchin (best known as the father of “social ecology”) used “municipalism” to describe a decentralized system of direct democracy, where citizens make decisions collectively through local assemblies.

In July, SRC released “Building Power in Place: A Municipalist Organizing Toolkit.” The toolkit functions as a “snapshot” of radical municipalism in theory and practice, aimed at organizers and activists interested in exploring municipalist tactics within their own local contexts. Shortly after the toolkit’s release, I spoke with Yvonne Yen Liu, co-founder and executive director of the Solidarity Research Center. We talked about the advantages and challenges of building a radical municipalist movement in L.A. — as well as what lessons organizers can learn by studying local campaigns for direct democracy.

For those who aren’t familiar, what are some key principles of municipalism? What makes it distinct from other frameworks for organizing locally?

I’ll start with a story. During the pandemic, I got very involved in organizing in my neighborhood — a mostly working-class, Latine community in Los Angeles. Like many other people, I was fortunate in that I was not an “essential worker” and I was able to quarantine at home. With my neighbors, I started a mutual aid network. I think the experience of organizing in a hyperlocal way made me realize the importance of building an activated community. When you know [your neighbors] and the daily struggles that each other have, [you] can support each other but also demand something better for all of us. We need to build power starting at this level and then we can scale up from there.

Specifically, we [at SRC] are inspired by radical municipalism. There’s a lot of progressive policies that get enacted by cities, which is great, but [they’re] not about building a counter-hegemony, which is what we are trying to do. We’re trying to build dual power. We are trying to create an alternative polity and a solidarity economy that will replace the nation-state, or city-state, or power elite — an economy that is not based on extraction and exploitation resulting in alienation. This has happened in other places. When I started to organize in L.A., I found examples in Barcelona, Spain, in Rojava, but very few in North America (save Cooperation Jackson). So we started the Municipalism Learning Series to learn from other examples globally and historically and then apply that to North America — and also to expose broader audiences to radical municipalism.

We have an organizing project on the ground, Los Angeles for All, which has been convening a peoples’ movement assembly for the last three years. Last year, we started a fellowship. We have 26 fellows across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico — they are also involved in municipalist campaigns and social movements in their places as well. The curriculum that we developed over the course of a 12-week program for our fellows, the Municipalism Cohort Fellowship, is encapsulated in the Municipalism Organizing Toolkit.

What made L.A. such a compelling place to try building a municipalist movement on the ground?

There’s nothing about Los Angeles that makes it a fertile ground for municipalism, which is exactly why we need to start it here. We have a river that’s layered over with concrete, we have freeways that divide our neighborhoods, there’s climate apartheid. Our built environment is not conducive to gathering and building community.

There was a specific crisis that catalyzed our peoples’ movement assemblies. In October of 2022, there was a leaked audiotape of a secret meeting between three city council members and a labor leader talking about redistricting — and it was extremely racist. It was about consolidating their own power, and drawing the lines of political boundaries in this city that would help them do that. I think it was an example to many Angelenos of how our city is structured so that politicians can amass a lot of power and not be scrutinized or accountable. We have an Ethics Commission which is essentially powerless to hold anyone accountable. We have 15 city council people for a city of four million — that’s ridiculous. Even within the scale of representative democracy, that’s not representative.Our city is also unable to care for people that are unhoused. We have over 70,000 neighbors that live in the streets, or live in their cars or RVs, or sleep on someone’s sofa. We don’t even understand the scale of it. And yet our city has been pursuing this municipal ordinance called 41.18 which essentially criminalizes people for sleeping on the streets. Thousands of people have been swept from their homes and communities as a result. The city just released a report looking at the impact of enforcing 41.18: They found that $3 million was spent by the city and only two people were housed permanently out of all who were impacted. So there’s a crisis in our city, especially around our ability to have our basic needs taken care of. Los Angeles, in that sense, is the most appropriate place to start this movement.

Three years into Los Angeles for All, what lessons have you learned so far?

Maybe I’m biased because I’m a researcher, but I think any good organizing campaign should be conducted like an experiment. We had a hypothesis that L.A. is ready for its municipalist moment or movement. And we’ve learned in the past three years that people are really hungry for this. It’s also been really hard to organize. Like I said, the built environment is working against us, there’s so much that is not conducive to trying to build community and share decision-making. We’ve convened maybe over 10 people’s movement assemblies and we’re at a point where we are reflecting. Like, have we built a movement? Have we built a base? Have we actually built power?

What we have built is a different type of culture for our movement in the city. It’s very easy to keep us separated and to not have us in solidarity with each other. The fact that we’re meeting each other, eating together, talking with each other, getting to know each other [and] our stories — that in and of itself is powerful. But we can’t just rest there: we need to come together and make decisions together and take action together. I feel like that’s the inflection point that we’re currently at.

We’re in a moment where we’re studying our housing and land crisis. How can you organize if you don’t have a place to live or if you can’t even stay in your city? In May 2024, the median home price in L.A. was $1 million. When you look at other municipalist movements like Barcelona, for instance (which started in 2015), it came out of a housing crisis. People were being evicted, and there was a group called PAH that organized to stop evictions through direct action and civil disobedience. And it was an anti-eviction organizer, Ada Colau, that became elected as the mayor on this municipalist platform, Barcelona En Comú. So there’s something very central about housing. [We’re] trying to move more intentionally in that space in partnership with our tenants unions and mutual aid groups that work with unhoused people.

[We’re] also focusing on the need to build more on the hyperlocal level. We called for a citywide assembly before we had a neighborhood base. We had a pretty strong base in East Los Angeles, but there are parts of L.A. where we’re not as strong. We can link up with groups that already have a base in [some] places, but there are also places that are not very well organized. We can’t just start at the scale of the city and go down, we need to start from the ground up. This was a big lesson for us, because how do you know unless you try it? If I look at the example of Barcelona, they called for a citywide assembly before they had neighborhood assemblies. But they were also fortunate that they have the cultural tradition of neighborhood assemblies. We don’t have that here. So I would say that the next phase of what we’re doing is about supporting the agency of different neighborhoods to congregate and gather.

I’d imagine the organizing landscape in L.A. might be very fragmented. What’s it like trying to make new interventions when you might have a lot of different people and groups talking around the same issue?

L.A. is big, sprawling [and] absolutely fragmented. Every place has complicated personalities, people who feel like they have ownership over a sector, a neighborhood, an issue area. We’re all working in these little silos: we accept the fragmentation and we internalize it, to the extent that we don’t think of ourselves as this cohesive movement.

We’ve definitely gotten questions asked of us like, “Who are you? What gives you the right to do this?” And my response is, “Anyone can do this: anyone can step up and call for a people’s movement assembly.” In fact, other groups have. The more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. There’s also a level of humility that I’ve cultivated personally in saying that I don’t have the answers — this is just my best effort. I’m not the chosen one, neither is anyone else, but we’re trying. This is an experiment, and we’re gonna evaluate what we find.

I will say that we have intentionally courted the autonomous actors in social movements in Los Angeles. We’re very clear that we are interested in building an autonomous social movement that will empower outside of the electoral pathway. Although we’re not excluding it altogether, we’ve seen that it hasn’t always helped. How do we enter into a strategy like that and have other irons in the fire as well? Ideally, if we do elect people into office, it’s so that they can break open the institution to allow social movements in — not that they monopolize and become gatekeepers of power.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen a shift in the word “democracy” in American popular consciousness. We’re seeing elected officials and movement workers talk about the idea of democracy being “under threat.” Can movements for direct democracy on the local level inform those broader conversations?

I think people are genuinely concerned on the left and the center about rising authoritarianism. There was that Supreme Court decision [about presidential immunity], and I think that ALEC has been working on getting a constitutional convention together. We’re potentially going to see it in our lifetime.

There’s always been a tradition of direct democracy [in America]. In New England, they have direct democracy written in their state and local charters — there are town halls where people make decisions. Here in Los Angeles, we have people who are fighting for charter reform, for civic assemblies, for democracy vouchers, all these kinds of liberal interventions which are better than what we have now.

We had a conversation internally: “What’s our relationship to civic assemblies? They’re not a people’s movement assembly, but they’re better than a group of 15 people making decisions for a city of 4 million.” So we support them — they bring us closer to our vision of what democracy should look like. But they’re not our vision exactly. They’re like “non-reformist reforms.” They don’t hurt our desires for something better, but they’re not that, either.

What is that beautiful quote by Ursula K. LeGuin? “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings.” This is all up to us. If we want a more humane form of collective governance that values people as human beings — and we see each other and meet each other’s needs — we can decide that. I think that’s how it will enter into the liberal discourse right now.

Building Power in Place: A Municipalist Organizing Toolkit is available now. You can read and download the toolkit here.

Yvonne Yen Liu
Yvonne Yen Liu (she/her) is a board member of the Institute for Social Ecology. She is the co-founder and research director of Solidarity Research Center, a worker self-directed nonprofit dedicated to building solidarity economy ecosystems. Yvonne is based in Los Angeles, California, where the sun smiles on her every day. Although a native of NYC, she and the city have broken up and went their separate ways. She is a practitioner of research justice with over 20 years of being a nerd for racial and social justice organizations. Yvonne also serves on the boards of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and Policy Advocates for Sustainable Economies. She teaches in the gender studies department at California State University, Los Angeles. Yvonne has a BA in cultural anthropology from Columbia University and a MA in sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she pursued a PhD.

 

New’ herbicides in blackberry production could soon be an option for growers

Long-used herbicides proven safe for weed control in blackberry

University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture

 

image: 

BLACKBERRY PRODUCTION - Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station scientist Matt Bertucci discusses his research during a field day. (UA System Division of Agriculture photo by Fred Miller)

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Credit: (UA System Division of Agriculture photo by Fred Miller)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Two “new” herbicide options could soon be available for blackberry growers during the 2025 growing season.

Recent research by weed scientist Matt Bertucci, assistant professor of horticulture for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, shows that the herbicides 2,4-D choline and glufosinate are safe and effective in blackberry production. That research is now in the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awaiting final approval before recommendations can be released to growers.
While these herbicides are not new to agriculture, their use in blackberry cultivation is a novel approach.

“We’re excited about these results because they offer growers new tools for better weed control,” said Bertucci, who discussed this research in an episode of the Food, Farms and Forests podcast. Food, Farms and Forests is produced by the experiment station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

Blackberry growers face some challenges in weed control due to the crop's sensitivity to many commonly used herbicides. Additionally, the financial incentives for developing new herbicides specifically for blackberries are low compared to major row crops. This is where the USDA’s IR-4 Project comes into play, supporting the registration of pesticides for specialty crops like blackberries and ensuring that smaller but economically valuable crops receive resources needed for continued research.

“This support is crucial because it helps growers without the chemical companies bearing the full cost and logistical challenges of registration,” Bertucci said.

The research team conducted trials over two years to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of 2,4-D choline and glufosinate on blackberries. These chemicals are commonly used in crops such as rice, corn and soybeans, but this was the first study to test them extensively in blackberry fields.

Bertucci and his team found that established blackberry plants showed minimal, temporary damage symptoms from 2,4-D choline, while glufosinate, when carefully applied, managed to control weeds without harming young blackberry plants.

2,4-D choline, a synthetic herbicide known for its broadleaf weed control, was tested on established blackberry plants. The trials involved applications before the plants broke dormancy, during active growth, and post-harvest. Results showed comparable yields and only minor, short-lived damage to the plants, indicating that 2,4-D choline can be a safe option for established blackberries, Bertucci said.

Glufosinate, a non-selective herbicide, was tested on newly planted blackberry plugs. The researchers used wax cartons to shield the young plants during herbicide application to avoid direct contact, which could harm the plants. While glufosinate did cause some minor leaf burning, it was restricted to the lower parts of the plants and did not affect overall plant health, Bertucci said. It also helped control new blackberry shoots, reducing the need for manual pruning, he added.

“Currently registered products for post-emergence application in blackberries only control grassy weeds,” Bertucci said. “2,4-D choline and glufosinate will give us some broader activity and let us go after a different set of species that really can cause fits for our growers.”

EPA approval pending

EPA approval is required before growers can legally use the herbicides on blackberries, Bertucci said. While the registration process can be lengthy, he remains hopeful that growers will be able to use these herbicides by the 2025 growing season.

“I’m very excited to do this type of work that growers are excited about implementing and using on their farms,” Bertucci said. “It’s very promising because I know that I have good news to deliver. I had a good discovery, and I’m just waiting to tell people, ‘Go forth and spray.’”

This research was supported by the IR-4 Project under the direction of principal biologist and weed scientist Roger Batts. Collaborators included Wayne Mitchem, Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium coordinator at North Carolina State University, and Marcelo Moretti, associate professor at Oregon State University. Moretti investigated the herbicides on raspberries.

To learn more about the Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website. Follow on X at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit uada.edu. Follow us on X at @AgInArk. To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.

About the Division of Agriculture

The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.

The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.

The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs and services without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.

RACHEL CARSON WAS RIGHT

Our Synthetic Environment

Libcom.org

https://files.libcom.org › files › Bookchin M. Our ...

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by M Bookchin · Cited by 317 — Illness may occur under "favorable" as well as "unfavorable" environmental conditions. Heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and diabetes-the most important.

101 pages