The Importance of Support
Sunday 26 July 2009, 11am to 12:30pm
Smith Memorial Ballroom, Portland State University, Portland, OR
During the 2009 Portland Zine Symposium ~ 24-26 July 2009 
Benjamin Holtzman (Sick: A Compilation on Physical Illness), Kristyn Leach (Stonewall Youth, Olympia) & Kevin Van Meter (Team Colors)
This workshop will explore the importance of creating networks and communities based in support, and expanding such practices in zine, counter-cultural and activist communities. Benjamin Holtzman, editor of the recent zine collection “Sick: A Compilation on Physical Illness” (Microcosm, 2009) will read from and describe his zine on creating support and physical illness; writer and researcher Kevin Van Meter of the Team Colors Collective will discuss the new “care zine insurgency” and the potential of these to further systems of support; and organizer Kristyn Leach of Stonewall Youth (queer youth organization in Olympia, WA) will discuss creating direct services, engaging in direct action and building networks of support. We will explore how radical movements, zines and neighboring communities can respond to personal crises and how they can provide personal care. Moving beyond politics as a set of issues and positions, let’s consider what these communities can do to address issues such as physical illness and chronic pain, mental illness, intimate violence, trauma and grief, and other experiences and realities.
Event organized By: Team Colors Collective (www.warmachines.info) & Microcosm Publishing (www.microcosmpublishing.com)
So kids,
The zine Beth, Craig and I edited collecting writings about our friend, comrade, partner and constant companion Jodi Tilton titled “Jodi Tilton, One of the Womyn the World Requires: Collected Writings and Memories” has just been finished by Eberhardt Press here in Portland and I’ll be binding them this weekend. This zine has been produced to mark the second anniversary of Jodi’s passing into the unknown and to mourn the immeasurable loss this has caused in our lives.
We have produced 100 hand-numbered copies which we will be sending to the Tilton family, zine libraries, radical archives, Jodi’s hometown and college library — and of course you all. I have saved a few copies of the “Cooking with Old Ma’ Tilton” cookbook and these will accompany the zine to the public archives. Additionally, we have placed a copy of the zine online as a PDF.
At 80 pages, containing a number of tributes from friends in addition to the biography of Jodi written for The Big She-Bang 2008, “One of the Womyn” is meant as a keepsake for Jodi’s friends and family as well as an example of radical, engaged and collective mourning.
Feel free to drop Craig, Beth and I a line at oneofthewomyn@warmachines.info for copies and to forward this message to other friends.
Much love,
Kevin Van Meter
* * *
Update 3 December 2009:
“Jodi Tilton: One of the Womyn the World Requires” has been sent to a number of zine libraries and radical archives to be included in their collections.
Look for the title and “Cooking with Old Ma’ Tilton” at the Denver Zine Library (Denver, CO), Civic Media Center (Gainsville, FL), Papercut Zine Library (Cambridge, MA), ABC no Rio Zine Library (LES, NY), Barnard College Library Zine Collection (New York, NY), El Kilombo Intergalactico (Durham, NC), Independent Publishing Resource Center (Portland, OR), Zine Archives & Publishing Project (Seattle, WA), Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture – Zine Collection at Duke University (Durham, NC).
Workshop: What is Militant Research?
8 June 2009
What is Militant & Co-Research?
Kevin Van Meter | Team Colors
For the workshop:
Theory, Territory & Targeting: Research for Movements
Additional Presenters & Affiliations:
Paul Glavin | Institute for Anarchist Studies (www.anarchist-studies.org)
Dave Negation | Tarantula Publishing (www.socialwar.net)
6 June 2009 as part of the Portland Anarchist Book Fair
An audio recording from this talk will be available shortly.
Introduction
- Defining Inquiry, Militant & Co-Research
- A Genealogy of Militant & Co-Research
- What Does Militant & Co-Research Provide to Radical Movements
Defining Inquiry, Militant & Co-Research
“Militant research is that process of re-appropriation of our own capacity of worlds-making, which (…) questions, problematizes and pushes the real through a series of concrete procedures.”
– Precarias a la Deriva (Madrid, Spain)
“What does knowledge become when it renounces the comfort of “critical distance” with regards to the “object,” when it refuses each and every “evenly balanced evaluation” and adopts a point of view based in struggles? How is the ability to research experienced when it becomes part of the experience of life, when it becomes potential to create? What happens when the discussion is no longer about “who is who:” who is on the inside and who on the outside; who “thinks” and who “acts;” who has the right to speak and who is better off letting others speak on their behalf? When the question who is who is no longer policed, a new possibility emerges: that of producing together.”
– Situaciones – Colectivo de investigacion (Argentina)
Inquiry is simply the process of producing knowledge and addressing problems; and there is a long history of political inquiry in radical and revolutionary movements. Any substantive and engaged political campaign, organizing drive, and community processes utilizes methods of inquiry to understand the conditions of life, politics and to create initiatives. Within larger radical and community organizing traditions of inquiry, there is militant and co-research.
Militant research refers to “research carried out with the aim of producing knowledge useful for militant or activist ends” as well as “research that is carried out in a fashion that keeps with the aims and values of radical militants.”
Co-research “is a practice of intellectual production that does not accept a distinction between active researcher and passive research subjects. At its best co-research aims for a productive cooperation that transforms both into active participants in producing knowledge and in transforming themselves.”
Team Colors, the collective of which I am part, refers to this as inquiring into the encounter – inquiring into the in between.
Finally, practices of inquiry take place in radical movements and community organizing initiatives that don’t fall under these concepts, and there are complementary and counter-traditions of inquiry to these.
A Genealogy of Militant Research
While inquiry, militant and co-research have long and varied histories we can point to a few interesting examples of their development.
Workers Inquiry: Karl Marx in 1880 developed a list of 100 questions (101 in other translations) on the conditions of the working class in France, and his partner Friedrich Engels thirty-six years earlier produced “The Conditions of the Working Class in England”. These became points of reference for the Marxist and workers movements.
Situationist International: In looking to inquire into the conditions of everyday life, a group of French artists and revolutionaries developed techniques, such as mapping, dérive (drift) and détournment.
Operisti, Autonomia & Autonomist Marxism: During the factory struggles of the early 1960’s Italian Operisti (workerists) began to develop militant research techniques (surveys, interviews, discussions with factory workers) to understand the struggles taking place in factories and the university that were outside of the unions and political parties. These techniques carried on as the site of struggle changed from factory struggles to the social factory – that is the conditions of work and life in all of society – hence the development of the Autonomia movement in Italy. As these techniques, concepts and ideas spread beyond Italy they intersect with those of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and American radicals such as Harry Cleaver, who called this current of heterodox Marxism that “begins with existing struggles” and the autonomy of the working class (now broadly defined to include all those that “revolt against work”), Autonomist Marxism. In the United States initiatives such as Zerowork, the Wages for Housework Campaign, Midnight Notes Collective and Processed World carried on this current, often in concert with older radicals like C.L.R. James, Marty Glaberman and George Rawick.
Precarity: Carrying this tradition into the present – developing in the wake of the counter-globalization movement and the cycle of protest that marked it – struggles around precarity have emerged in Europe, South America and across the planet. Herein new research projects have developed and pushed militant research in more participatory and radical directions, hence seeking to break down the barrier between researcher and the subject of research. Additionally, these new projects have sough to “queer these concepts” and bring them into contact with feminist, queer, and anti-racist discourses.
What Does Militant & Co-Research Provide to Radical Movements
Militant and co-research provides a set of tools – that is concepts, techniques and mechanisms – that contribute to existing frameworks in radical movements by adding research components and by taking a direct role in producing knowledge and strategies that resonate with movement campaigns, organizations, and initiatives. Here militant and co-research provides “a focus on struggle from the perspective of struggle”. Hence in seeking to identify the development of new subjectivities and new emergences, as well as understand current class and movement composition – these research tools produce strategies and insights for strategic thinking. Additionally, militant and co-research provides opportunities for communication, a widening of the field of struggle, and dialog around important struggles in everyday life. Radical initiatives when they resonate with militant and co-research practices and discourses begin to address the important project of documenting movements and developing movement strategy.
Here in regards to research practices and intellectual practice, militant and co-researchers seek to delink research and knowledge production from the power relationships that define the academy, capital and the state-apparatus. The purpose of this research is to be engaging as well as useful, and create a feedback loop for movements so that strategies can be strengthened and the limited resources we have for organizing can be used strategically. Additionally, it is vitally important that movement organizers and participants document their own activities so that we may amplify, grow, and at times replicate our efforts. Finally, militant and co-research provides mechanisms to participate in radical movements and tools for those outside of said movements to examine the flows and contours of their everyday lives and resonate with others experiences and realities.
Such participatory mechanisms include, and are certainly not limited to: community dialogs and listening sessions; social and engaged mapping, dérive (drift), and community inventories; surveys and interviews; the production of fanzines and the myriad of forms independent media can take; and the development of community mandates from which to launch future activities and initiatives.
The forms of research I am describing seek to challenge the assumptions about what we know and how we think; and it is this challenge that needs to move to the fore of our community organizing and other radical initiatives.
Additional information on these militant and co-research is available on the Team Colors website / Resources page.
Theory, Territory & Targeting: Research for Movements
Paul Glavin, Kevin Van Meter & Dave Negation
6 June 2009, 5pm @ the Portland Anarchist Book Fair
“Theory, Territory & Targeting: Research for Movements” will explore three approaches to movement research, and seeks to provide perspectives and techniques to strengthen radical movements and struggles. Paul Glavin of the Institute for Anarchist Studies, in describing the work of the institute, will begin our session by exploring the importance of theory and historical research to current movements. Kevin Van Meter of the Team Colors Collective continues on these themes as he explores militant / co-research techniques, mapping, community dialogs and other methods of knowledge production for radical currents. Following these theoretical and strategic focused presentations, Dave Negation of Tarantula Publishing will provide insight into research tactics that are useful for immediate on the ground campaigns and radical organizing. These three ten minute presentations will be followed by ample time for discussion.
Co-sponsors: Institute for Anarchist Studies (www.anarchist-studies.org), Team Colors (www.warmachines.info) & Tarantula Publishing (www.socialwar.net)
The 1st Annual Portland Anarchist Book Fair!
Saturday, June 6, 10am – 6pm
Sunday, June 7, 10am – 4pm
Liberty Hall – 311 N Ivy | Portland, OR 97227
503-516-9220 | axiom.infoshop@gmail.com
Author Bruno Galli of the incredible “Labor of Fire” has commented on our ‘use-value’ thesis, thought we would share. Here.
Listen to Craig Hughes (Team Colors), Malav Kanuga & Silvia Federici speak on “Urban Self-Reproducing Movements and Everyday Life” at the City From Below Conference.
New Midnight Notes Pamphlet on the Crisis
30 April 2009
Promissory Notes: From Crisis to Commons
Midnight Notes Collective and Friends
“Crisis: What it is, What it is not: After five hundred years of existence, capitalists are once again announcing to us that their system is in crisis. They are urging everyone to make sacrifices to save its life. We are told that if we do not make these sacrifices, we together face the prospect of a mutual shipwreck. Such threats should be taken seriously. Already in every part of the planet, workers are paying the price of the crisis in retrenchment, mass unemployment, lost pensions, foreclosures, and death.”
NYC Event: French Precarity Struggles in the Crisis
24 April 2009
“French Precarity Struggles in the Crisis”
May 2nd, 7pm Bluestockings Books (172 Allen St in Manhattan)
Part of the’ This is Forever’ series (www.thisisforever.org)
Emmanuelle Cosse, former president of Paris ACT UP, will address how French struggles against precarity have been affected by, and responded to, the global capitalist crises. Cosse will emphasize movement tactics, strategies and composition in France, and the implications for precarity struggles elsewhere in Europe. Discussion to follow presentation.
You can read Emmanuelle’s essay, “The Precarious Go Marching,” at: http://inthemiddleofthewhirlwind.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/the-precarious-go-marching/
Organized by Team Colors Collective (www.warmachines.info)
An Atlas of Radical Cartography Book Reading & Discussion
with editor Lize Mogel, radical artist Cara Baldwin & others
Monday May 4th 2009 @ 7pm
Red & Black Cafe – 400 SE 12th avenue (at Oak) www.redandblackcafe.com
Join Lize Mogel, Tad Hirsch and Cara Baldwin for a discussion on the intersection between radical artistic practice, cartography and activism. How can we map existing power relations and our political realities — and hence our struggles within, around and against them? How can the map be utilized as a political tool in our struggles and connect with members of our communities? How can radical cartography and artistic practices inform and supplement activist practices? These are just some of the questions to be explored.
Event organized by: Team Colors Collective (www.warmachines.info) & An Atlas (www.an-atlas.com)
About the book: An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration. The map is inherently political– and the contributions to this book wear their politics on their sleeves. An Atlas of Radical Cartography provides a critical foundation for an area of work that bridges art/design, cartography/geography, and activism. The maps and essays in this book provoke new understandings of networks and representations of power and its effects on people and places. These new perceptions of the world are the prerequisites of social change.
An Atlas of Radical Cartography is published by The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press (www.joaap.org)
Team Colors & Midnight Notes at The City From Below Conference: 27-29 March 2009 in Baltimore, MD!
Workshop: Urban Self-Reproducing Movements and Everyday Life
We are becoming increasingly aware to what extent this economic
crisis is meant to also become a crisis of the working class itself.
This crisis will be first and foremost experienced at the level of
social reproduction, in our ability to reproduce our lives. Will
increased hierarchies further individuate us and fragment our power?
Will we develop ways of living in common that refuse this capitalist
crisis? Does organizing refusal help us determine where we go from
here, how we might find an ?exit? to capitalist command? How do
?self-reproducing movements? relate to organizing revolution in this
context? Whatever the scenario, one thing seems clear: it will
either be the capitalists reconstituting everyday life or it will be us.
In the turbulent moments to come, the structures of everyday life may
continue to crumble and in many ways it seems that the dominos are
already falling: relations are breaking down; there is a generalized
collapse of the wage; and issues of housing, work, and reproduction
are intensifying.
It is with this urgency that we ask about forms of support and
collectively produced forms of reproduction that exist in our
movements. By focusing on collective reproduction we aim to raise
questions about the current conditions affecting people’s power to
reproduce their lives in ways that resist market discipline. How can
our movements refuse the coda of entrenching working people in their
own series of crises?
We develop the theoretical frame of ‘self-reproducing movements’ in
order to identify the myriad ways our organizing exposes and develops
the (re)production of life that is not productive for capitalism,
that is not an expansion of capitalist accumulation. In order to
situate these concerns in the context of everyday life, we will
investigate the composition and history of recent struggles to ask
what lessons can be drawn from current organizing. By inquiring
about the ramifications of these movements and the kinds of political
solidarity and power they have generated, we also raise tensions
between how things could be by drawing on historical experiences of
previous movements. Thus, the panel aims to raise a discussion of our
internal movement relations and the ability to grow and utilize
political organization and power.
Start: 03/29/2009 – 14:00
End: 03/29/2009 – 15:00
Participants:
Location:
Team Colors Collective: News & Events 