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Sorry for the extremely late posting of this but I was waiting for an editor to come look it over but in the end he just never found the time so I’m just gonna post it now. Hope you enjoy!

(As always Julia has posted her write-up before me but I, as always, recommend reading it of course!)

I know it’s been a while since I’ve last posted anything but I usually hold off until we either has some big announcement to make (and that the thing that’s being announced is pretty stable) or until we’ve gone to some sort of event. In this case it was of course the annual anarchist book fair that takes place every April. Though it’s unorthodox in comparison to other posts I do just want to briefly talk about the trip down only because it was interesting and related to anarchism. Conversely the ride back up wasn’t too eventful in regards to anarchist theory and practice so I shall not talk as much (if at all) about that.

The Ride Down

Thankfully we made okay time considering everything that was going on (constant changes in logistics, money concerns and so on) but the important part (at least for me) was a few practical problems Jack brought up that I just want to take the time to bring up and then talk about how we responded and elaborate on a response of my own.

They were:

1. Would it be better to take a corporate job than starve on the streets if those were your only optios?

2. What would you do (as an anarchist) if a foreign army invaded?

3.  What’s the next best tactic towards achieving freedom?

1. For the first answer the general consensus was that yes, it is better to take a corporate job over starving in the street (say, working for a company like Halliburton or something of that sort). You could still give the money that wasn’t going to yourself to the cause of freedom. I also made the (I think worthwhile) point that if you are in a situation like near-poverty or starving in the street I doubt you have such bargaining power that you’d be able to even get a job like that. So the whole situation seems unlikely in my eyes but even if it somehow did happen I definitely would say take it and not only take it but try to put that money that you make to yourself and other counter-powers that will weaken the corporations.

For example try to organize a fighting union or something to undermine the corporation within itself if you somehow can. If all else fails then just try to enjoy the job as much as you can until you can get one less…corporatized. Obviously it sucks that you’re helping a war-company or a corporation in general make profits when they’re a state-guaranteed (more or less) privileged entity over others but practicality comes with and sometimes before theory.

2. This one was a little bit less organized but more or less came down to us (“us” being those who are in the car and answering the question) saying we’d either organize our own defense networks or organizations that were independent of the state or getting there.

Personally I don’t mind either option. I think I’d prefer to high-tail it if things got too messy but if the independent organizations actually could be set up and linked together when needed then I’d support the cause for independence. I’m not a huge fan of war of course as an anarchist but such an emergency case would probably override such an idea anyways. And though running away might seem counter-productive it might be possible set up our own independent associations and so on away from the warfare while the state tries to deal with the foreign menace. I sincerely doubt it could deal with both at the same time. But that’s just a brief sketching of some answers so I’m not saying they’re air-tight or anything.

3. See here, here, here and here.

With the exception of the third question I think it becomes a little clearer that theory and practice are really intertwined and shouldn’t be tried to separate. Separating one from the other typically results in either the corporate job not being taken or it being taken but not being made the best of. Or in the second case one side actually chosen or ill-prepared tactics done out and so on.

Anyways Jack raised some important questions that, as he says, ALL ALLies should be able to answer.

NYC Anarchist Bookfair

The 6th Annual NYC Anarchist Bookfair (Day 1)

We got there around 1 PM effectively making Jack and I miss Occupation and Direct Action vs. Electoralism which is one of the talks we were especially interested in. But it didn’t matter too much as we soon got re-acquainted with the area and started searching around for good books and the ALL table of course. I quickly scoured the book fair area pretty fast and had caught up with Darian Worden of NJ-ALL but not before I got in a few situations that I’ll have to learn from.

The first was a recurring problem: Aren’t you guys just anarcho-capitalists? Are you guys anarcho-capitalists? Oh, yeah market anarchism…so anarcho-capitalism basically right?

To be fair this “recurring” problem only happened twice or so but each time it happened I couldn’t help but think that most people at the book fair probably thought the same. Just like at Liberty Forum where we might’ve been thought as “dirty socialists” by the libertarians who were there. But is this a problem of left-libertarianism and if so how do we deal with it?

Well it is a problem and it isn’t.

First off it’s an obvious “problem” how libertarianism could be seen as a justifiable framework to further leftist values or end goals. Especially due to the seemingly incompatible ideas and values that come out of the libertarian camp such as apologetics for corporations or the “wealth producers” and so on. Nevertheless I see left-libertarianism as an ideological and practice-driven concept that either will uproot the commonly believed framework libertarians have or drastically change it in ways that are more productive towards leftist values and goals. How it does this (briefly explained anyways) has been laid out (in my opinion) by Gary Chartier here and here and of course in a much bigger way in Markets Not Capitalism (the PDF can be found here) so I’m not gonna try to duplicate what has already been done elsewhere. Suffice it to say I think the knowledge is out there for people who truly want to understand left-libertarianism to at least some degree or another. But that just brings me to how it’s not exactly the fault of left-libertarians.

There are people who just don’t want to know any better. They want to live in their own preconceptions of what “left” and what “libertarianism” means and that fusing such “liberal” and “conservative” ideas is an oxymoronic at best and at worst a sort of entryism into one camp or another. These sorts of people are people who I don’t know if they can be reasoned with. It’s certainly worth a shot and we shouldn’t discredit them or anything solely based on this opinion but it certainly is a bit tougher to tell someone that what they’re thinking about simply isn’t relevant.

In this case the charge of “anarcho-capitalism” relies on a whole bunch of assumptions which may or may not be warranted depending on terms, context and so on. So for myself left-libertarianism is not anarcho-capitalism because left-lbiertarians have no love for the word capitalism (you can see this in MNC) and this is either etymologically speaking or in general (at least for me). Left-libertarians reject the fact that markets must somehow be intrinsically about capital or just one thing. Really the only thing freed markets have to be about is ensuring the free relations and exchange among individuals. Bosses needn’t necessarily apply.

The whole “what is capitalism?” debate is overplayed and I don’t dare rehash the whole thing but really the crux of this all is: What do ALLies tell people who walk up to their table or see our shirts and so on and say, “What are you an X?”

Because even if it’s not an anarcho-capitalist it might just as well be a “dirty socialist” or a “mutualist” or a “centrist” (because I said we’re “between” anarchist communism and capitalism…which is a false dichotomy anyways but I hadn’t thought of that at the time) so what do we say?

First off try to see where they’re coming from. Let’s take the anarchist communist and what they’re saying: “So what are you an anarcho-capitalist?”

So basically the whole fallacy they’re coming from is conflating capitalism and markets. This is actually the perfect mistake because there’s a whole book entitled to dispelling this conflation. So you can do the obvious thing and just recommend the book or (what’s more likely) you’ll have to just mention it as an aside (and probably mention there’s a free online version too) and get into some conversation with them. What do you do in the conversation then?

Try to be clear and concise. This’ll be difficult but it might be best to just say something like,

“No I’m not but I can see why you’d think that. I, as a left-libertarian think that markets are a perfectly reasonable way to have individuals self-manage themselves and freely and mutually beneficially cooperate with others if they choose to and that this is an inherently anti-capitalist way of doing things if done right. This is because historically systems that have been called capitalism and have acted in capital’s best interest as opposed to the consumer, the worker, the environment. But if we flip this on its head and have a market place with no state, less of an emphasis on thing-worship, carelessness of context and community organizing around the concepts of mutual-aid, direct action, dual power and other tactics and conceptual frameworks then the market just might have the chance to be the best anti-capitalist vehicle we can get.”

Maybe something like that. But even that’s just off the top of my head and will only beg more questions but then I’m only trying to give my ALLies a strong lead-in rather than an entire conversation. The term “free market anti-capitalist” is also perhaps a pretty good title to give oneself and is (as Markets Not Capitalism as a title was intended to be) obviously provocative but with good reasons and intentions behind it.

Unfortunately the few times it was brought up I was unsure how to answer off the top of my head in a sufficient manner and Darian ended up taking the lead the first time around anyways and the second as it turned out. So I did’t get to stretch my ideological legs much in this department this time around. Still, communication is an important topic.

Before I left for the first talk that I was gonna see with Jack another libertarian actually came over to the table and struck up a conversation with me. It was more or less the same type conversation I was jut talking about except this time it was the opposite: an anarcho-capitalist trying to make the claim that there really wasn’t any real difference between the left-libertarian position and the anarcho-capitalist one. I won’t get into the conservation but I’ll just say that in cases like this we must first start by separating anarchism from capitalism and what either term might or should mean, etc. Why they’re incompatible in one sense or another and how we as LLs differ from popular anarcho-capitalist foundational beliefs and expectations for a better society.

Consensus Decision Making Workshop

On to the first talk which was: Consensus Decision-Making: A Workshop on Technique and Trouble-Shooting

Jack and I attended this event and I was pretty excited to learn about consensus decision making and how to put into practice. There was a formal introduction to everyone around the table that was there and then we began by talking about the basics of what consensus decision making was, how it operated, a few popular misconceptions and correct perceptions. This section was informative enough and I took some decent notes which has them saying that consensus decision making is about:

Dialogue between equals

A rapport

More about collaboration than compromise

If we want to achieve a more democratic society our means must reflect those ends and that’s where consensus decision making comes in

Getting the essence of the group out of a dialogue

Another big part of consensus is listening and really having similar interests to the people in the group and want to achieve something at least similar to what they want to get out of things. To do this a lot of listening is necessary to make sure we’re all on the same page in the group.

The certain roles of a given consensus based group are as follows:

Timekeeper (Self-explanatory)

Vibes-keeper (Makes sure everyone is doing alright and feels comfortable)

Scribe (Takes notes for the group)

Note-taker (Takes notes for themselves to be or not be shared with the group later on)

Facilitator (Moderator, keeps a “stack” or a list of the people who want to speak so to keep things more organized)

There are different signals as well:

The “twinkle” (silly name I know…) is waving your fingers upwards to show approval (disapproval is downwards waving of the fingers)

After doing some troubleshoot with a variety of different situations we came together again to determine why people do this to begin with, here’s the answers we came up with:

- Politically structured empathy

- Equal power, voices

- Most democratic

-Builds ownership, accountability

- Means reflect ends (as mentioned before)

-Everyone has a part of the truth

There were a few other parts of the process too that were brought up:

Openness and honesty

Having “check in”s and “check out”s with the people in the group.

A few things to keep in mind like WAIT and WATT (Why am I talking and Why are they talking)

There’s also a “non-stacked” way of doing things called a “popcorn” style in which everyone puts things in the conversation by just speaking up which is another way to organize such meetings.

Finally, an interesting thing to remember or emphasize is that breaks should be taken and that the process shouldn’t be dull or boring. Play games, divert yourselves from the conversation and make some jokes or something if the process gets too tedious. Or else you can merely break the process down into more manageable bits if that doesn’t help. There are many paths to take.

So that was a lot of what I got out of the talk, there’s a lot more to it than this and if you’re interested you can email the people who put it together at centerforwhatspossible@gmail.com for questions.

The Anarchist Roots of #OWS

I want to move on to the second (and last as it turned out) talk that Jack and I (and this time around the rest of the group too) attended Occupy Wall Street’s Anarchist Roots: How Nonhierarchical Values Became the Principles for a Mass Movement 

We got in it a bit late due to some of us wanting to take a break, meet back up and catch up and so on so we missed a little bit of it. And on top of that both Jack and I were so tired we may or may not have nodded off once or twice! But all was well in the end and one of the most interesting questions I thought the panel brought up was also probably the most obvious: Should we occupy again? Will it happen? Should it happen? Is it inevitable? And so on.

Most people on the panel didn’t think it’d happen. They reasoned that the protest of #OWS had already really happened and now that people had learned the dangers of centralizing movements in one place decentralization among networked and federalized autonomous groups was probably for the best. But each speaker made it clear that they were only speaking for themselves and that anything could happen. Some of them seemed like they’d be interested in participating and others seemed more indifferent or seemed to have a more “let’s wait and see” sort of approach if it did happen.

So while the panel seemed a bit mixed on it (this is based on my recollection from over a week ago with notes so take what I just said with a grain of salt…) I want to briefly talk about my view on this.

Some comrades of mine said it best very recently that the best thing about #OWS was the fact that there was no easy label to put on it or everything involved (or at least more than other protests anyways). It was a new sort of protest (at least in my lifetime and to my knowledge of the lifetime I’ve lived thus far…) that had never taken place before and was allowing all people to come in with their own favorite issues. Thus conversation had to happen and people wouldn’t just walk up (at least not as much) and say, “Hey aren’t you just a…”. I think that’s a great environment.

But sadly (and happily!) I must say that I think #OWS has (for the most part) fizzled out. I haven’t done any deep analysis, or talked to many people about this or even paid attention to what’s going on with #OWS these days but that’s pretty much why I’m saying this. Because if there was something to be paying attention to I’d have heard about it. The few times stuff has happened I’ve heard about it and paid a little attention to it but nothing major. And basically at the panel discussion my thoughts were more or less confirmed that it’s split up into several working groups and these groups all come together when necessary. So it seems like (to me anyways) #OWS has done it’s job in settling the stage for further activism in the future. And that’s a good thing in my opinion.

I took a few shots of the ALL table when we returned which you can see

Finally after this talk and getting a bit refreshed we spent about an hour coming up where to go (a group of 10 in total I believe) and we hung out for the remainder of the night with the groups splitting up into two different apartment buildings with ALLys in New Jersey. I fell asleep not long after watching the movie Office Space for the first time and being reminded how the workplace can seem just as authoritarian as states can be at times.

The next day wasn’t too eventful, just a fun day of some food, catching up some more, organizing, networking but no talks. David Graeber didn’t end up showing so Julia and I ended up hanging out in the park until we were picked up and ALL headed home.

Concluding Thoughts

One of the most important things for me this time around was definitely communication and how we can communicate things better. With Porcfest 2012 and consequently the next AltExpo coming up the lessons of Liberty Forum and now the NYC Anarchist Bookfair should be remembered and taken into consideration. How we want to display ourselves, engage with ours, how we represent ourselves, what literature we put out, what we say in defense of “left-libertarianism” and more ALL should be taken into consideration as much as possible.

In the coming months more events should be happening and when they do you can be sure I’ll try to get out some write-ups on them!

-Nick

ALL-oNE Logo

Wow! It was an exhausting week for Alties (people who like alternatives to the mainstream) and ALLies! I’m (once again) a little behind my friend and comrade Julia who has already written this great piece on the goings on. But I’ll be sure to give a bit of a different (and perhaps a little longer) perspective on things.

Before I start however I’d really like to thank anyone and everyone who showed up to  AltExpo X and at the ALL related-events (such as the left-libertarian introductory panel which had both members of ALL-oNE, NJ-ALL which should have video in the coming months!) and the ALL table. You guys really made it possible to keep going and keep our chins up through any of the nonsense that might’ve happened and the general stress of trying to set these things up and doing it right.

Thanks a lot!

Thursday 2/23/11 (TekArts Open House, AltExpo X)

The event for that night was a presentation by David Rosco on the viability of a peer-to-peer alternative to the internet itself! The alternative to the internet is called the Infogora and relies on P2P networkings and open-source software to keep things new, creative and of course free. You can just watch the presentation if you want to hear Dave give his own descriptions of it so I’ll just leave it at that. The event was well attended with well over 10 or so people if memory serves. Discussion continued for a few hours after the event stretching into the late night based on the talk and other common interests. Music was playing, discussions and clarifications were held and made, it was a great time for all who went and AltExpo X was off to a great start!

Friday 2/24/12 (AltExpo X in Manchester, Liberty Forum 2012 in Nashua)

AltExpo X in Manchester

AltExpo X: Feb. 23-26th 2012

Due to some logistical errors and mistakes (such as staying up too late the night before!) AltExpo X was off to a bit of a rocky start. We managed to get to the Quill in Manchester around 10 (instead of 9) but those who had arrived were relieved to see that most people hadn’t arrived yet. I then began my own talk on Voltairine de Cleyre (and I’ll do my own two hour full-length on Youtube or maybe make it an event and do it somewhere else like a live-streaming site such as justin.tv!) which ended up going past an hour before I even knew it! I meant to hand out this before/after the talk was over and throughout the talk I had to ask a friend to scroll down…so it was a bit disorganized. By the time I started talking we had a little over a handful in attendence and throughout the day the numbers of AltExpo X would fluctuate between 15-20 people in attendance. Even though all of that was the case however I was well received and a few people were even pretty impressed with both my knowledge and passion so that definitely boosted my morale.

Next up we had Darian Worden of C4SS.org as well as NJ-ALL who was speaking on left-libertarianism and its aims and ends. He did a fantastic job summing up what left-libertarianism was all about. Something that particularly stood out to me was Darian’s elaboration on the principles of power and how left-libertarians see it. They see power as not something that’s bad in of itself but only when such power is unequal among others. Unequal power among people means that people can more easily exploit and dominate others and since libertarians are against that we should support equality of authority among all people.

This goes back to some of Darian’s articles on C4SS most of ALL might be this article on building counter-power to create authority vacuums. Darian continued on to list some basic principles and demands that a left-libertarian may give (he stressed that this was a elaboration on possible left-libertarian values and not the defining presentation for it) and listed such things as removal of police brutality, foreign bases and more. Darian finished up with plenty of time to spare so a heart discussion over certain situations and which class (capital or labor) holds the most power or who would be our first target if we wanted to radically change the way we live. Darian summed up the left-libertarian position succulency on this matter as wanting to build up from below and wanting to cut down from the top. I think that position myself (naturally) has some credibility to it. If Darian ends up releasing his talk in text form or doing another video of it in the meantime then hopefully we can give access to it sooner rather than later.

Jack gave a talk on “New Libertarians” and summed them up as people who follow the New Libertarian Manifesto and want to help build the counter-economy and so on. I was running back and forth checking on the ALL-oNE table (of which, that’s only one side, I might add) and trying to get some lunch. So I ended up coming in and out of the talk but luckily hanging out with Jack for quite a while now I had heard a lot of what he was saying before. But it was important for him to get this message out even if he’s done it before and I’m of course glad that he did.

By the time it was Jack’s talk (which I forgot to get some pictures of due to my hunger and running around) the audience had gotten around to its peak of nearly 20 people in attendance (as in sitting in the talk area, this isn’t counting the other people hanging out in general). Considering the venue that the Quill was and the amount of people that the room could hold this was actually a decent amount of people. Especially considering that AltExpo had so much organizing to do and not enough time to really advertise it as much as possible we got a good crowd all things considered.

Up next we had Rocco Fama from the NYC Division of the Vote For Nobody Campaign who talked about how Nobody won the general election in NH and beyond. We also had Davi Barker and Matthew Cropp talk about their experiences in #OccupyWallSt. which led to a fascinating mix of a call for less electoral politics and more alliances with the people who come from the left. It was also a nice break from the Ron Paul fest that things usually are at these events so to see Rocco talk specifically against the Ron Paul campaign was a refreshing thing in of itself.

Moving on we had Teresa from Fr33 Aid (who wrote her own short summary of the events at LF 2012 and AltExpo X here) talk about non-profits and Fr33 Aid and their relation to the libertarian movement. Unfortunately once again due to my running around and trying to get the plans in order to head over to the Crown Plaza Hotel for Liberty Forum 2012 led me to miss good portions of Teresa’s presentation. Nevertheless Davi Barker (who I just mentioned) managed to get video not only of Teresa’s talk but also of Rocco’s talk. I know Teresa’s talk can be found on that short summary and hopefully Rocco’s talk will be uploaded soon because I know it was recorded as well.

Finally Kevin Innes did a talk on “Fearless Yoga”. I was off and on with this event as well, still trying to get some odds and ends organized but this was the summary of the event posted on the AltExpo X event:

“The Revolution begins within. So, is it possible to increase our courage, confidence and inner poise to be an effective and joyful activist for positive change? Meditation and yoga have been an acknowledged form of self-development that have been used for thousands of years to create a revolution in personal life. Kevin Innes has designed a series of exercises that are specifically designed to create a powerful synergistic effect to propel your life forward, and inward, thereby creating the Revolution within you, and around you, that you have come to this planet to experience. Are you ready?

He received advanced training in Sweden in 1979 and in India in 1981 and has taught in Germany, Austria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Nepal and Canada. These techniques he also incorporates into his teaching of music. His practices served him well during the two years he recently spent in jail as a political prisoner.”

If you’re interested in that then hopefully the video of that will be released soon!

Liberty Forum 2012 in Nashua 

After some hectic last-minute organizing Jack managed to make it for a panel he’d be on about the agora in NH at Liberty Forum in the ampitheater. Unfortunately due to the time it took to get there I missed Jack but the video should be up soon with decent quality both in sound and video. For now there’s this short clip of Jack speaking in so-so quality (both video and audio wise).

Once I got there it was time to check out the ALL table and what a table it was! See some of the things we sold here, here and here. The table would be later re-organized but this was the way it stayed for a while. When I got there it was early in the evening, around 5 PM and I rushed around to copy and print handouts for AltExpo, my presentation on Voltairine and of course ALL-oNE. I managed to handout quite a few copies of the ALL-oNE fliers (with a little over or less than half of what I originally had which was 25) and a few Voltairine handouts as well! I managed to meet up with ALL of my ALLies including Bile and Tennyson from NJ-ALL, Patrick Coleman of statistsanyonymous.com, supporters of ALL like Steven J. Howard and others! It was a great time and there was hardly anyone who had negative things to say. Most importantly plenty of things were sold including multiple copies of Markets Not Capitalism. On the subject of that book, ALL-oNE’s own copies of MNC didn’t arrive until the next day and so we decided to save it for future events. I’ll talk more about future events a bit later though.

Once all of the catching up to do was done, dinner among ALLies was held at the nearby bar and restaurant t that was in the hotel itself. Mid-way through Jack and I had to see what we could do for the remaining AltExpo X speakers in the Free For All that was taking place downstairs in the ampitheater. We managed to not only get in all of the speakers we wanted but also an ALL introductory panel. More on that later but in summation the day portion (and early evening portion) was a big success overall!

After a bit of riding to pick up Julia (who made the blog post that I referenced in the beginning of this post) we returned to TekArts to listen to Matthew Cropp give a presentation on Credit Unions and their appeals to anti-statists. It was chock full of useful information and even sparked a few ideas in my head as well as the last of my reserve energy. By then most people were exhausted but amazingly most people managed stay awake and not only then but pay attention rather intently. Afterwards there were some questions and comments from me, Julia, Jack and more. Once the talk was through discussions lasted a few more hours before most people started turning in.

Saturday 2/25/12 (AltExpo X in Nashua, Liberty Forum 2012 in Nashua)

Saturday was hectic but a bit more under control. First off, although most people slept in a bit more AltExpo X talks didn’t start until 10:30 AM (or around that time) so we ended up making it to Liberty Forum by around 12 PM. The day before during the planning process of the Free for All in the ampitheater  we decided to have an ALL based panel to help introduce the people who were attending about the ideas of left-libertarianism from 4-5 PM. We also had Sharon Presley talk about how to stand up to authority which is a talk you can also find here, here and here.

Meanwhile Julia joined, Darian, myself, Tennyson, Bile, Patrick Coleman and others at the ALL table switching off and on. Eventually we switched up the organization of pamphlets to accomadate for some books from Liberty Books like these, these, these and these in a better location then the back. So we ended up doing this, this (which was Darian’s awesome idea!), this and finally this. The ALL/C4SS table ended up making probably over $100 while ALL-oNE didn’t make that much due to having to share space, poor logistics and so on. Nevertheless a few copies of NLM were sold (which is pretty important of itself) and ALL-oNE overall learned how to organize a lot better for future events. So it was very much a useful learning experience for ALL-oNE members.

The crowd at the Liberty Forum was surprisingly mostly receptive of us but we of course had a few people that were pretty hostile. One person who in particular who was fiery about the concept of “left-libertarianism” is described by Julia. I’ll quote her at length:

“”I don’t understand this,” he said. I could feel the contention just waiting to come out. “What’s up with all this ‘class struggle’, anti-bosses stuff? It sounds like marxism. Are you marxists?”

I thought to myself, no, words like “exploitation” and “struggle” are not just the words of marxism; they’re the words of our current reality.

Darian, Nick, and I tried reasoning with this guy. We explained how, as anarchists, we are against economic authority like bosses and landlords for the same reason we’re against the state. The propertarian, of course, tried to argue that bosses and landlords have every right to have power over others because those dominated by them have the ability to leave, which, apparently, can’t be said of the state.

I told him, “Being able to leave your boss doesn’t legitimize the boss’s power. If we lived in a society where there were stateless territories people could escape to, would that legitimize the state?”

He used the same old arguments we’re heard propertarians use to legitimize capitalism and delegitimize libertarian socialism. He asked us again to explain left-libertarianism to him in the same condescending manner he had when he first approached us. We handed him a copy of the introduction to Markets Not Capitalism (which we had been giving out for free), but he quickly put it back on the table. Nick explained that left-libertarian is an umbrella term. He pointed out that my views on private property are very much the mutualist and social anarchist notion of occupancy and use. He instantly became fired up. Once again, I told him that the reason for my views rests on anti-authoritarian principles, that private property and absentee landlordism create extremely authoritarian relationships and systems which I seek to abolish. Again, he used the whole, “it’s not really authoritarian because you can leave,” excuse, and again I told him that being able to leave does not legitimize anything. I decided to ask him how he would maintain his ownership of any land he didn’t actively use if we lived in a stateless society. He made some remarks about “mob justice” and then openly admitted that he’d shoot squatters on-sight. Not surprising. He also admitted that he’s a “minarchist” who doesn’t support a stateless society for a few reasons.

I decided to take a different approach. “As an anarchist, I don’t see why anyone would want to own more than they use,” I said. “I know we live in a society where who we are as a person is based on what we own instead of what we do, and of course, we’re always going to own stuff – possession is just a fact of life – but we should focus more on what we do and our relations with others instead of what we own. I know I wouldn’t care about owning that much stuff if I knew I was valued for who I am as a person.”

He didn’t seem to understand me, and soon enough he left.”

 

Aside from that however, most of our interactions were pleasant. This includes the ALL panel in the ampitheater. Darian, Tennyson, myself, Jack and Rocco all tried to do our best to introduce people to the ideas of left-libertarianism. We started off talking about what LLism meant to us and then what essays and books we recommend in relation to LLism and then took some questions. We ended up starting at 4:20 due to someone else wanting to talk and going on till a little bit over 5:20. It was a productive sessions that resulted in a bit of clarification in my own ideas as well as others and hopefully gave the crowd that we had at the time some things to think about.

To sum up ALL’s success I quote Julia again. This time it was a post she made on the Mutualism group on Facebook:

“Three hour sitting at the ALL table at LF and only one right-libertarian has tried to strawman us so far. I feel that’s a huge success”

Well said.

The stragglers by this point for AltExpo X took off to TeArts for Julia’s talk which can be found here and was a very small but informative and informal session between friends and comrades. The ride up to TekArts was an…interesting one, but I won’t get into that and besides Julia’s post says more than I could possibly want to waste on it so check her blog out on the subject if you so desire.

There’s not much to say about Sunday, it was mostly filled with packing and getting organized for future events.

Concluding Remarks and Future Events!

Well, it was quite a wild ride for AltExpo X and ALL-oNE! Lots of excitement and a few more networks were extended via the events as well as hopefully some new alternatives brought to attention for some people. Overall AltExpo X and ALL-oNE definitely did a great job despite the snags here and there. We’ll make sure next time around we’re more organized and prepared for what’s to come.

Speaking of that there’s an anti-war conference in late March that ALL-oNE is already gearing up to make if possible. So we hope to see you there if we make it! Plans are being made for an ALL contingency in Chicago for the G8 and NATO protests as well as to make the NYC Anarchist BookFair in mid-April! Lots of events coming up and soon we’ll start using the calender more as well as creating an archives page so people can access tons of left-libertarian related sites, essays, books, videos and more!

Catch ya later!

AltExpo X: Feb. 23-26th 2012

We at ALL-oNE are proud to let everyone know that we will have a presence at AltExpo X this coming week! We should’ve announced this much earlier on but formulating plans on the event itself as well as a various other assortment of other projects left me little time to think about doing such a thing.

Our presence at AltExpo X will not be limited to one location this year! We’re gonna be on Manchester on Friday in The Quill which is located on 131 Amory St.  We’ll be there set up from 10 AM to 3 PM and we’ll our usual huge list of zines, booklets and more!

We’re also proud to say that we’ll be partnering with Liberty Books who have generously provided us numerous left-libertarian and left-libertarian related material for our tabling efforts on a consignment basis..As of now the plan is to have these additions  generously given to us by Liberty books only for Friday! So if you’re going and want to see some extra material then come on Friday. It’ll be a bit more pricey than our other works but also in short supply and well worth your time so I hope you can check them out.

Also, via James Tuttle of the Tulsa ALL and editor of ALLiance Journal has given us quite a few new pamphlets to our list with all of the proceeds going to C4SS!

ALL-oNE will also be sharing a table with some C4SS members who shall be coming to Liberty Forum and predominately be showing on Friday and Saturday. While we’re there we’ll return to just promoting our own literature and the C4SS specific literature.We’ll also be partnering with those from NJ-ALL as well in hopes of bolstering activity for ALL in general.

Due to a recent inventory check ALL-oNE also has almost all of its pamphlets numbered and properly priced. So if you have any troubles with our pamphlets we have a reference point to help you out with how many we have of something that you may be looking for or the actual price of the pamphlet.

On each of these nights Jack and I (Nick) shall be helping out ALLies (and others) by giving them free/donation based space at TekArts hackerspace which is located in Milford NH. If you’re an ALLy and in need please message me or Jack on Facebook. We may be able to work something out but keep in mind that TekArts, while it may be a fairly large place, can only hold so many people. So you should RSVP with us ASAP.

So if you have alternatives to our alternatives we encourage you to stick with them so other more needing people can take up the space in your stead. However, we welcome anyone who wants to drop by at night for one of our nightly talks which will usually be focused on left-libertarian ideas.

Speaking of talks here are some of the planned talks (as of now) that will be going on that include left-libertarianism:

- I’ll be doing a talk on Friday in Manchester at 10 AM about Voltairine de Cleyre, who, while she wasn’t a left-libertarian herself per se’ has had a great influence on myself and a lot of other ALLies in their lives.

-After that at 11 AM Darian will be giving a talk on a left-libertarian world and what we want to see in a truly freed society, how to get there and so on.

-At 12 PM Jack will be giving a talk on the New Libertarian.

-At 1-2 Rocco Fama will be giving a talk on the Vote for Nobody campaign and how Nobody “won” the election.

That’ll be the main ALL-type topics and speakers but we’ll also have at 9 PM-10 PM Thursday-Saturday three other talks that are related to left-libertarianism. They are:

- On Thursday we’ll have Dave Roscoe speaking about the alternative to the internet itself in the form of an open source peer to peer networking system called the “Infogora”. (This talk will be given at 7:30 due to the kickoff day also being a TekArts hackerspace open house day)

- On Friday we’ll have Matthew Cropp speaking about Credit Unions, their viability and possible relation to libertarianism.

- On Saturday we’ll have Julia Riber Pitt talking about solidarity vs. charity, the benefits of instilling solidarity into communities and culture instead of relying on private top-down charitable organizations and so on.

In addition we may have more talks and of course at TekArts we’ll probably have discussions as well. The last thing to announce about talks is that we’ll have a roundtable ALL-oNE discussion from 10-11 PM Thursday-Saturday. It’ll be a pretty informal chat but hopefully we can ALL decide on some topics as we get there. We’ll try to set up a justin.tv as well so we can broadcast these talks.

One of the biggest things we’ll be trying to do at these events is not only introduce the left-libertarian ideas but also ALLy with social-anarchists before in light of our pleasant recent trip to Lucy Parson’s Center and the older trip to the Boston Anarchist Bookfair that happened late last year. So in that spirit do we have people like Julia and Matt speaking and have gone out of our way to invite other social-anarchists as well.

Finally, and this may be the biggest news and so I’ve saved it for last, ALL-oNE will be selling copies of Charles Johnson and Gary Chartier’s new book: Markets Not Capitalism for $25 at the events it is at which includes all of the events from Friday-Saturday. We only have a limited amounts and there’s already a pre-requested order that we have so make sure you get them before they run out!

That’s about it for now, if there’s anything else to announce or you want any other info, etc. etc. then we’ll try to let you know on our Facebook page, hopefully we’ll ALL see you soon!

(The ALL-oNE email is my own at voyagingman2010@yahoo.com for any questions you’d rather not post her or on Facebook, etc.)

As usual guys, sorry for not posting lately. I haven’t been too busy with ALL-oNE as of late and I’m hoping that’s gonna change with Liberty Forum coming up next month as well as a tour of the new hackerspace TekArts.  Not only that but there’s been talk of having an ALL-oNE office space at TekArts for distributing zines, storing them and generally coming up with ideas to further the left-libertarian movement! So these are both exciting things but I’d like to get to the blog post now, but stay tuned!

So full disclosure: My friend Julia has already done her blog post so our blog posts may mirror each other at times (and in fact I’ll be reading her blog post at times just so I can remember some of the specifics just in case I forget!) but I hope to give a different perspective then what Julia gave (though I think she covered it well enough of course). With that in mind I certainly recommend reading her blog post as well!

The Talk

Now I wasn’t sure what to expect or get when I got to the Lucy Parson’s Center but I was pleasantly surprised that although I felt a little out of place (as I typically do among the more social/communist-anarchist crowd) it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. Especially being with Julia and knowing that she had respect for my a lot of my opinions and that she was usually welcome among the same crowd put me at ease a bit. Not only that but my girlfriend Lauren was with me as well for some moral support and general interest since she’s an anarchist herself. Overall then although I was unclear on what was going to be said or the general demeanor of the crowd I was pleasantly surprised. The talk was titled “Occupy Anarchism” and was going to be delivered by (thankfully) one of the few contemporary anarcho-communists that I’m more familiar: Cindy Mlstein. Her talk was part of a speaking tour she’s been doing lately. I was especially interested to see a different take on the Occupy Movement then the typical right-libertarian glib about how it’s just a bunch of economic illiterate state-socialists for the most part.

Cindy’s take was better: It was more that most people were apolitical or at best liberals (she didn’t clarify what this meant to her but I’m guessing the sort of standard liberal today?) but either way my expectations were that she’d discuss in a different and refreshing way and she did.not disappoint. The idea that most people at #OWS were for the most part apolitical and just didn’t know much in general about what they’re doing makes quite a bit of sense to me. Basically a lot of the people went there because they’re upset at something and to a lot of libertarian’s credit they usually say that at least being angry at the system and showing it is better than nothing. With that I agree but of course Occupy was so much more than that and that was one of Cindy’s main points throughout the talk. She was trying to make the point that if it were not for the anarchists a lot of the so to speak “soul” of #OWS would not be there. This of course includes consensus decision making/direct democracy, direct action, lack of permits, lack of political involvement with the democrats and government-backed labor unions, selling out to one big leader and so on. If all of these things had not been in place then I doubt #OWS would’ve lasted as long as it did and indeed doubt Cindy would’ve either.

Her first impressions of the #OWS people were that they were “crazy”, “disorganized”, “lacking basic knowledge” and other related impressions. But she was also fascinated by them. She couldn’t get enough of the protest and told us she spent more than a week in New York when she had just accidentally showed up there to stay with some friends for a bit. She also accidentally went back to Philadelphia a bit before the Occupy Movement started there and immediately started getting interested in the ways that they operated there and tried to see what she could do in a more decentralized “organization”. What she found was that it was a generally pleasant experience even if a lot of people were just angry and didn’t know what to do about it. It didn’t seem like these people even had strict agendas and perhaps while they may support state policies and stuff like that it seemed from what Cindy was saying that they’d only do so because they lacked a direction. It was Cindy’s contention (and a good one at that) throughout the talk that the anarchists gave them some of this direction.

None of this about anarchists being one of the best parts of the #OWS movement is to say that anarchists were always welcome. I vaguely recall Cindy telling anecdotes (a lot of her talk was anecdotal which is fine with me) about how some anarchists were sometimes not welcome in some events or were greeted with hostility because people thought they’d break stuff or whatever. Either way even if what I remember is untrue it’s not hard to believe that anarchism and the occupy movement overall probably had a love-hate sort of binary relationship.

Cindy also recalled some “Ron Paul type people” (and some person in the audience didn’t know who Ron Paul was which was…surprising to me given the sort of libertarians I usually hang out with and know on Facebook) who carried guns and typically kept to themselves at the Philly occupy movement. And then she talked about when they actually did something of their own accord they asked Cindy and her other comrades for help even though they never did anything themselves to help them before according to Cindy. Nevertheless Cindy and her other comrades took it upon themselves to help them deal with the situation when they needed help. As Julia said it was…”amusing”.

Another divide that Julia talks about in her own blog post that I should repeat and stress since I thought it was so important was the divide between people who thought the cops were their friends and others who knew they weren’t. For instance Cindy mentioned at one point that some of the white people were saying things that indicated they sympathized with the police while the blacks and other minorities who were there (they were outnumbered in the Occupy Philly gathering  but still present) weren’t so sure. And so as time went on though a lot of the people who thought the police were their friends eventually found out the hard way that they were not. This was a good divide to talk about because it really spoke to a lot of what had to happen at Occupy at times so people would recognize that the larger point that the state is not their friend. But of course when the state is largely trampling on black people and other minorities and poor people in general it’s hard to see that when you’re white and middle class I suppose. That’s not to say there’s something wrong with being that but that your blinders are probably on to some degree or another because of who you are.

That leads me into one of the last things I want to talk about in Cindy’s talk: privilege and power. She did discuss the ideas of white, male and other sorts of privilege that exist in society. And I being a bit of an oddball libertarian tend to agree that whites, males and straight people all have certain privileges over other people. These things would later cause some problems in the audience for one reason or another but I eventually spoke up and addressed the thought that the idea that talking about this stuff has to be condescending and so on (thanks to Julia for having such a good memory and quoting me near-exactly):

“When you address white privilege, you don’t have to be condescending. It’s not supposed to be about making people feel guilty because they’re white. It’s supposed to be about pointing out the fact that the culture and the system put you in a certain role because of who you are.”

 

I stand by this statement, but that leads us more into the discussion then the talk itself which I don’t want to get into here. So to wrap up here I thought the talk was overall well presented and the highlights for me personally were certainly talking about privilege and power (though I should note Cindy says she prefers power than to say privilege but doesn’t deny either exist), the discussion of anarchism in relation to occupy (so basically most of the talk) and the dividing sides about police and how they learned was particularly interesting. And of course Cindy’s view on the Occupy movement was refreshing for me too. So overall I certainly had a good time listening to her…of course there were disagreements and I’d be lying if I didn’t talk about them so let’s talk about it for a little bit but I’ll try not to doddle on it.

Problems with the Talk

Although they weren’t many since as I told Julia after the talk it was a pretty general talk that I think even people who weren’t anarcho-communists could get into they were obviously striking and reminiscent of the anarchist movement in general. I am (of course) not an anarcho-communist even though we may both support similar tactics like direct action and dual power as well as my view for labor to be fully compensated and preference for collectives and cooperatives as opposed to the traditionally top-down hierarchies that are in the big corporations of the day. Nonetheless I have nothing really against any interest, rent or whatever. Now I know that anarcho-communists (and mutualists as well such as Julia) wouldn’t force people who decide to do rent or go into those sorts of relationships would forcibly prevent them from doing it (and if they would I’d say their anarchist credentials should be heavily under suspicion) as long as the choices are not made (as they largely are in the current society) because of desperation and the way things like structural poverty, wage-slavery (also see here) and more that keep people limited in their choices to say the least.

Another big contention I have with Cindy but more appropriately is her (and the anarcho-communist idea in general) idea that property in general is theft. I tend to be of the position that a plurality of ownership systems would work out and compete between different neighborhoods insofar as they can  still cooperate in mutually beneficial ways. As long as a culture of solidarity is crafted between people in the sense of people wanting to generally help others and trade with others in mutually beneficial and consensual trades then I think in general people can live together without too many huge disputes. That doesn’t mean I think there’d be no conflicts, suffering, struggles or whatever in a truly freed society but that putting in the principles of liberty for the individual and subsequently associations that form from that premise, equality of authority in decisions that directly affect all involved and (again) a culture of solidarity I can see anarcho-capitalists living side by side with the anarcho-communists to one degree or another anyways.

Finally, I’d like to point out that Cindy seemed to just treat anarchism as anarcho-communism and then that’s it. I mean, even though I’m a left-libertarian I don’t say that anarcho-capitalists aren’t anarchists (though sometimes I wonder…) I just say them and other right-libertarians are inconsistent anarchists. I don’t think they’re not anarchists at all (and I know that’s a contentious issue) because I’m not interested in that sort of discussion either way. My thing is le’ts talk about our premises and conclusions and where we get them from and why we believe them and see what we can work out. There’s no reason to dismiss (what I think) could at least be some useful single issue alliances or whatever even if we do want to write off the anarcho-capitalists (though I won’t and try not to)  and I believe at one point Cindy actually said something along those lines.

Nonetheless I told Julia that I’m not an anarcho-communist but this talk wasn’t about this exactly but how anarchism (as Cindy saw it) and it’s relation to the Occupy movement and in that sense and most others I enjoyed it. But of course I figured it’d help to point out some disagreements before I get to the second hour of the talk which was the discussion.

The Discussion

The first person who talked was…well…let Julia tell you,

“The first person in the audience to speak started by throwing her finger up at Cindy. She ranted, “First of all, before people can be educated in all this philosophy, they need food on the table and a roof over their head. Grub before philosophy.” She went on and on for well over five minutes. “And another thing, enough with this ‘you know the movement is getting somewhere when the white cis males are getting involved’.” She ended with a nasty, “So all white cis-men in this movement need to shut – the – HELL – up.”‘

 

So yeah…I was twiddling my thumbs so to speak for most of her five minute rant but wow was it uncomfortable. Julia whispered to me as she started that, “It’s about to get really sectarian.” and man was she right with this lady! But either way I didn’t know what to think of her message. I mean it sounded like a familiar sort of argument (the “grub before philosophy” sort of thing) but Cindy just gave a calm reply that Occupy was a great example how we can do all of this and even have it be sustainable. And as Cindy said at one point in the speech, “If there’s anything anarchists know how to do right it’s Food Not Bombs!” and I think she was spot on with that. So the woman’s bad presentation and Cindy’s great response basically made me not want to take the woman very seriously even if she took herself…more than a bit too seriously.

Either way the conversation moved on to discussion of privilege and my girlfriend tried to talk about how we shouldn’t just discount people who are “privileged” just on that basis as irrelevant or not actually existing which was a great point. But again Cindy had a great response, she talked about how the guy who she didn’t have much respect for who she called “privileged” wasn’t because he was privileged but because what he did with his privilege and he was a known a-hole. So once again Cindy dealt with questions calmly and effectively, kudos to her for that.

I then spoke myself about slut shaming  and how the talk of privilege might be better presented if we talk about the way it affects human lives in a negative way (and hopefully a direct way too to further the link between the two things). I was surprised to see that a girl in the front didn’t know what slut-shaming was since I figured most people in the room would. It didn’t seem like many people did so I explained it something like this, “When a woman’s sexuality is trivialized once she sleeps with more than one man regardless of the way she does it or how or why and so on.” I don’t think this is fair and you can see a  long debate about it on the ALL Facebook page and why I think as much. Just do ctrl + f and look up the word slut shaming and you’ll find it. But my point seemed to be well received enough nonetheless.

A few other people talked about their experiences with the Occupy movement and I don’t think anything in particular stood out to me (and such seems to be the case for Julia as well on her blog post since she doesn’t mention anything either) but it basically revolved around other people’s experiences with the Occupy movement and where it’s heading and if it’ll be somewhere good. Cindy at that point just started lettinga bunch of people talk and  I think as I remember it handled them all pretty well.

I was the last person to speak as the talk came to a close which is where I talked about the privilege discussion we had had and some more tips on how to perhaps talk about it better. Now I’m of course no expert on privilege or how to talk about it (though no one is probably but many are probably are better than me) it hasn’t taken me long to make these suggestions. Julia said I was being “friendly but blunt” on her blog when I was talking and I suppose that’s fair. That’s usually how I like to come across, I’m being friendly about suggestions or disagreements but I want people to know I’m disagreeing or what my position is so I’m as honest as I feel practical in the scenario.

All the Rest

After the talk Julia asked me what I thought of it and I told her basically what I’ve said here…well ok I shortened it to the much less verbose, ” It was a good talk. I’m in no way an an-com but I liked a lot of what she said. You have to find a common ground. Voltairine knew that.” (something like that…I’m using Julia for a reference here for something I said just to give you a sort of insight into how bad my memory with these sorts of things can be).

Julia then talked to Cindy and I gave her my thanks for the great talk. Lauren, Julia and I headed back to the train station (and along the way got in a small discussion of privilege again but Julia dealt with that well enough so just check out her post!) and soon after got back home.

…But what really really really mattered was that I got “The Haymarket Speeches 1895-1910″ written by Voltairine de Cleyre for $1! Yeah, I was pretty stoked and I’m going to finish it as I wrap up here so thanks for keeping up with us and we’ll ALL be back together soon!

Hey guys! I know it’s been a while but this update has been on my mind since I got an invitation to “What is the Occupy Movement? A Roundtable” sometime last week I think. Unfortunately due to a scheduling conflict (on both my part and Jack’s), we will be unable to make it. But we encourage ALL who can go to check it out and let us know how it was!

I made it a point to stay in contact with the organizers so chances are we’ll be invited to other events too if we’re lucky!

Besides that, not much has been happening. An ALL-oNE office or place of operations is being considered and a book signing with Charles Johnson (editor of “Markets Not Capitalism”) around the time of the 2012 Liberty Fourm which will hopefully start get worked on as soon as possible.

I hope fellow ALLies are enjoying this holiday season and trying not to let the mass consumerism get them done too much. I’ll try to keep this blog updated as more and more things come to pass in regards to the things I’ve already mentioned and more. No promises about when though of course.

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I’m of course coming at this from a generally left-libertarian perspective so that should be noted throughout this  hopefully substantial enough reflection and analysis of what happened at the Boston Anarchist Bookfair.

The Kickoff Show! (Friday, November 11th)

First off the kickoff show definitely set the tone of what was to come at the bookfair itself. Lots of punk looking people (which is to mean in the musically cultural sense not the derogatory term) and plenty of people who certainly respected the DIY ethic which was shown through the handmade tapes and CDs being offered as well as the low prices. I thought that was pretty cool. One problem however was (and I’m unsure how my girlfriend faired in feeling in or out of place or Jack for that matter) but culturally I wasn’t sure how much I fit even wearing my Rage Against the Machine shirt and regular jeans. I clearly was not involved in whatever “scene” that goes on around these anarchists groups. Nevertheless when you get past the identity politics most people were just that…people. The people who did talk to seemed nice enough and no large conversations were really had. It was mostly a place to listen to some good music and enjoy the company of each other.

One thing I thought was funny was that there was a potluck and a lot of these people love to go on about community but the only people who brought food were me, Jack and my girlfriend. However, I will say that I don’t think the potluck was very well advertised and this become a running theme in the Bookfair as you’ll see as we go along. I did have an idea to read a short essay by Voltairine de Cleyre who wrote about the Haymarket Martyrs but the preparation was troublesome and I dropped it not long after we got there since I figured it was a place more for hanging out then hearing essays. Either way though I very much enjoyed my time (though it was often hard to hear the singer over the instruments it was fine either way) and I certainly would do it again if given the chance.

So that was the kickoffshow (more or less), what of the bookfair itself?

The Anarchist Bookfair (Day 1, Saturday, November 12)

Getting there was a problem in of itself. The directions (that I hand-wrote) proved troublesome to follow en route but we got there. We were (thankfully) greeted by warm and kind people who were helping organize the bookfair (if I recall correctly that is…) who asked us if we wanted help with our pamphlets. By 11 AM we were all set up with our pamphlets and were ready to go.

By around 12 PM people started filling in to the main hall of Simmons College and checking the tables out. Jack and I were concerned at first about sales but we got a few even before the first talk which was “Seattle & Boston Solidarity Networks: Direct Action and Mutual Aid for the Win!” (I’m unaware of any videos being put up so this is all I can do for now)  which was a very much interesting talk on how to build counter-power to the current corrupt institutions of our time. SeaSol and organizations like it tend to focus more on corrupt landlords, bosses and so on instead of the state. Still, it’s encouraging to see that small victories that are possible and the possibilities of building counter-power to the ends of creating a more free society. So I very much liked this talk and soon signed up for the Boston Solidarity Network as well as signed up for updates which you can probably do on their website.

Up next was the Anarchism 101 talk which was good. I suppose the fact that there was a 20 minute discussion after the talk made up for the fact that there were some schools of thought (such as the individualist and mutualist) that they left out but I wasn’t too surprised I suppose. I did ask them if they considered these schools of thought legitimate and the speaker who first answered (there was two of them) said he didn’t think there was some strict requirements for being considered a legitimate anarchist school of thought past a lot of recognition (slightly paraphrasing here if memory serves). Which of course begs the question of how then is anarcho-capitalism not legitimate? I won’t get into whether I do or do not think it’s legitimate here but I didn’t want to cause too much trouble an was more interested in good ol’ intellectual discussion. The other speaker said he liked Voltairine de Cleyre and her anarchism without adjectives she held and I was happy to hear that.  I was then asked about my shirt and what being a “left-libertarian” meant. I was not of course prepared for the question (though to his credit he did say he wasn’t trying to put me on the spot but I said it was alright and knew it was a chance to at least try to spread the LL message) so I gave the lackluster answer that it held elements of many different strains of thoughts including mutualism and individualism which was why I asked why they were not included to begin with. A few more questions and small discussions were started but I was probably one of the most vocal people there which was good. Overall the talk was good though I think their should have been a more mutualist/individualist stance represented but oh well.

For the remainder of the day I remained at the table with Jack selling books and also trying to sell the idea of left-libertarianism to people. Jack and I came in with approximately $32 and that same day left with over $100 so as far as selling pamphlets it was a successful venture. On that same day I had a few discussions here and there though the real credit for going out there and talking to the other organizations especially belongs to Jack who, from time to time, would leave the “booth” (really just a table as you saw earlier) to go talk to other groups and see what we could do to reach mutually agreeable agreements that would help both sides. I’ve yet to really make big strides to reaching out but hopefully as I continue to meet people and go to events like this I can continue to reach out.

One of the best things of the night was seeing some Facebook freinds and hanging out with them and talking about the scene in Boston, the Bookfair, catching up and whatnot. I was very happy to see some familiar faces and I think it’s safe to say that we ALL had a successful first day at the bookfair!

(Day 2, Sunday, November 13th)

After quickly falling asleep the previous night and thankfully getting refilled on energy via the kind people who gave both Jack and I housing. When we got there we were relieved to see that all of our pamphlets had remained where they were. I say this because we had actually left all of our pamphlets (save for maybe some in my bag I had on me) there on the table. I suppose anarcho-communists aren’t just a bunch of thieves eh?

Regardless the day continued without me going to any talks (though there were a few I was interested in but I put them off to man the booth while Jack either kept talking to other organizations or went to a talk himself). Jack ended up going to the talk on worker-run cooperatives. However from what I understand it was a bit of a mess and the talk was actually not so much on mechanics of how to run it but theorizing about what it could be. And to add to that one-half of these two speakers who did it had never even been involved in a worker-cooperative himself (though perhaps I shouldn’t judge since I helped organize a talk on polyamory at the last Porcfest with my friend Justin and neither one of us had been strictly involved in a polyamorous relationship with anyone). Nevertheless Jack took some notes but said he was disappointed with how it was handled.

As for the rest of the day? Most of the same. We got the more compact version of Peter Kropotkin’s  “The Conquest of Bread” from Black Cat Press all sold out as well as a few copies of “A Critique of Anarchist Communism” by Ken Knudsonwhich was good to see people wanting to (I presume) question their own assumptions and judgement. In total however we left the Bookfair with over $150 and got our shirts I mentioned earlier as a donation from a  generous guy who is good friends with me and Jack! The trip ended up being very economical with hardly much gas being used due to free housing and not many trips made outside of the Bookfair which was good for both Jack and I.

One thing that’s perhaps worth finishing on is one of the biggest questions we got that Jack and I had to deal with is of course, “What is a left-libertarian anyways? And what’s the ALL?”. At first I wasn’t sure how to answer the former and had to be selective about the latter so as to not include things like agorists, radical minarchists, voluntaryists, etc. or those who may see it as the more “right side” of the ALL. I tended to care more about how the message was conveyed to people who asked while Jack went with a more direct approach and let the cards fall where they may. Both approaches have their own merits and faults but I’m glad we both had our own way of dealing with it. On the left-libertarian question however I came to solve while I was finally getting around to read Gary Chartier’s “Socialist Ends, Market Means”. While they were all great essays, one thing at the very beginning pages especially caught my eye in regards to this question:

 ”LL is authentically  libertarian both because it is anti-statist (the LLs who come readily to mind are all anarchists; I take it as a given here that the LL is an anarchist or something close enough for the difference to be irrelevant) and because it affirms the value of markets and property rights. At the same time, LL is authentically leftist because it seeks to challenge privilege, hierarchy, exclusion, deprivation, and domination—both ideologically and practically—and because  it can exhibit a genuine commitment to inclusion, empowerment, and mutual respect.”

 

Concluding Remarks

There’s not too much to say. In short? The Boston Anarchist Bookfair was a huge success socially, economically, organization wise in learning lessons of how to better get ourselves together and more. If there’s another year in store for us I not only look forward to it but already can’t wait for it.

By the way, if you haven’t already and you went to the event please fill out this evaluation form so that the organizers can do even better next year!

I know I’ve been really slacking on the posts here but I just wanted to let everyone know that we’re at the Boston Anarchist Bookfair and you can find how to get there here. Hope to see you here!

Greetings ALLies! I know it’s been a few weeks since I’ve updated and this is coming on an odd day but I figured I should catch anyone who’s wanting to know the updates with ALL-oNE.

First up the talk of a new logo in addition to an advertisement at ALLiance Journal proceeding still and designs are now being worked out. I do want to say that the particular pamphlet for the logo (if it’s chosen) has already been chosen. The logo may or may not become more public as times goes on. If nothing is decided by the end of the week then I’ll try to create a link and see if I can make it more public so other people can decide whether it’d be a good fit or not.

Second, work still needs to be done on the coordinating with other anarchist collectives and groups in the New England area so ALL-oNE can not only have it’s own special flavor of left-libertarianism unique in of itself but can also establish itself in the area. The idea of how to do that is to contribute zines to zine libraries in hopes of trading for others that we find meet our criteria of what’s useful. At the very least we may trade some zines for others to have a better variety of pamphlets so that the left-libertarian message can be heard better.

Third, speaking of left-libertarianism my talk on left-libertarianism and polyamory can be found here. The response seemed to be ok for the most part and it’s certainly gotten a good deal of attention. Check out other left-libertarians like Gary Chartier, Darian Worden, a pre-recorded talk with Kevin Carson and more at George Donnelly’s Youtube channel. You can also go to justin.tv and find George’s channel for all of the videos already recorded.

Finally talks of a plan for ALL (which includes ALL-oNE of course) working with Pete Eyre of Liberty on Tour and Brad Spangler of C4SS for doing an outreach to the protesters on Occupy Wall ST. are underway. The plan will be worked on and become more explicitly known and developed in the coming days.

So work still needs to be done but things are coming more and more underway as time goes on. In other news the HQ of ALL-oNE is going to become the general area around Nashua NH for quite a few months which means I’ll have the inventory back in my hands as well as organizing more and more for the Boston Anarchist Bookfair! I hope to see my fellow ALLies there!

I’ll be updating the email list this Sunday and if you want to be added to it please email me at voyagingman2010@yahoo.com

A few things to report on for last week and this one (and we’re only on Monday!):

First off talks are being made with ALLiance Journal about receiving some advertisements in the zines that ALLiance Journal posts. Payments, choice of zine and where the money will go is ALL pending but expect this to be developing in the coming months. If we can get more advertisers and collaborators then the hope is we can get more official members or people interested and hopefully more chapters of ALL can eventually spring up.

I’d also like to say for sure now that ALL-oNE will be at the  Boston Anarchist Bookfair which will be including (but not limited to) providing radical pamphlets, pins, conversations and two talks by of its two co-creators Nick Ford and Jack Shimek.

If you need any housing for the Boston Anarchist Bookfair I recommend using this document.

Plans of reaching out to the other collectives and anarchist groups in Boston are underway as well and I plan on trying to get in contact with many of them to see if there’s some way both of the organizations can benefit from sharing and trading zines and other things. More details to be coming soon.

Lastly the Left Libertarian Youtube Collective is going to be having a reading of chapter one of Kevin Carson’s Studies in a Mutualist Political Economy all week long! Here is part one.

If you want to be added to the email list, as always contact me at voyagingman2010@yahoo.com and ask!

Just in case you wanted to know more about ALL-oNE I encourage watching this video!

ALL-oNE had a presence at the Live Free or Die Rally making some money there and getting the word out about the organization among the almost 100 people who went there. To further these two things and especially getting the word out about the organization, plans are underway to have a presence at the Boston Anarchist Bookfair and have talks from both me and Jack Shimek, the co-founders of ALL-oNe. ALL-ONE shall also be tabling there, selling many radical pamphlets, pins, larger readings and more!

Things are very much in their preliminary stages for these talks but the plan is to tackle two different but important topics:

I will be planning on talking about ALL-oNE and spreading the message of the ALL in general. It’s my hope that my message will be well received by social-anarchists and that we can bridge gaps between left-libertarians and social-anarchists. From this talk I hope to get many more participants from the activist centers that are located in Boston already such as the Food Not Bombs and other collectives that are already there!

Jack Shimek is currently planning on discussing the advantages of using cooperatives as a business model for anarchists of all stripes.

I also apologize for the lack of updates since my first post. I now aim to update this blog at least once a week if that’s possible.

I intend to keep this post as a notice to those who want to learn more about endeavours that ALL-oNE supports, updates on where ALL-oNE will be and more.

For full transparency: Jack currently has most of the pamphlets in his possession and the possession of ALL-oNE’s money is still in my hands.

If you have any questions or if you would like to help us table at future events or receive pamphlets, etc. please email: voyagingman2010@yahoo.com

Alternatively can also ask to be added to the mailing list which will now be updated most likely every other week at most and monthly at worst.

Thanks a lot everyone.

Edit: Thanks to Mimi for helping me clean up this mess from last night. I was pretty tired last night and in my rush just to get something out I sacrificed style, grammar and more in the name of an update. Thanks to Mimi for bringing that to my attention. I’ll make sure to try to keep my posts more fluent than last night’s post.