A Weekend in Hartford: The First NAASN Conference

Kate and I attended the first-ever conference of the North American Anarchist Studies Network (NAASN) in Hartford CT last November (and, yes, it’s taken us this long to write something about it). Kate made the long drive up from Baltimore—with John, who gets my major gratitude for helping person the AK Press table, and being an overall pleasant companion. I spent about 14 hours flying and busing my way from Oakland.

Hartford has changed a lot since my last visit 12 years ago. Back then, it struck me as a sort of hypertrophied version of a New Orleans cemetery, in which the mausoleums were replaced with gigantic insurance companies. This time around, I blearily wheeled my luggage thorough a late-night gauntlet of bars and restaurants and college students. Much livelier…though not necessarily an improvement.

The conference organizers, both the far-flung (Jesse Cohn, Luis Fernandez, and Nathan Jun) and the on-the-ground folks in Hartford making it happen (Deric Shannon and Abbey Willis), did a really good job. And Deric and Abbey put up with all my annoying questions. The event took place in the Charter Oak Cultural Center, Connecticut’s oldest synagogue, which was conveniently right next door to a liquor store. The space was well-suited: cozy but not too cramped.

I was surprised by the fact that I didn’t recognize most of the attendees. Since the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference in Vermont didn’t happen this year, I’d assumed that the NAASN event would be largely a relocated version of RAT. This was definitely not the case, which is nice. It’s always good to be reminded that there are lots of us.

Kate interjects: I agree with Charles on this. I was really expecting the conference to feel very similar to RAT, and to see the usual faces there. And while a lot of our favorite folks that we expect to see every year at RAT were definitely in attendance, the crowd was much more diverse than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise! One thing that helped with that was the fact that, unlike RAT, participants weren’t required to register, and there weren’t a limited amount of slots available for participants. So it ended up being a nice cross between a scholarly conference and an anarchist-bookfair type of event. I was also surprised at how many folks from the Hartford area turned out. Got the chance to meet lots of new folks who are doing interesting work in the area, as well as to meet folks who had traveled from all over the country to attend the event.

As always, there was the weirdness of wanting to go to many panels, while making sure one of us was behind the AK table. Luckily, one of the panel locations was within earshot of our table…but I still missed a lot. Here are a few of the highlights for me:

Barry Pateman gave the opening talk, “Anarchism and Anarchy: A Historical Perspective.” I’m always glad to hear Barry speak, since it usually means a nice mixture of historical info, spot-on analysis, and stand-up comedy. He put a little less comedy into the mix this time, but spoke to a topic dear to my heart. You’d be better off hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth by going here, but my half-assed synopsis would be that he took contemporary anarchists to task for losing sight of who we need to be trying to reach…and therefore how to go about it. In the good old days, anarchists created groups that were open and relevant to non-anarchists, with the intention of bringing more people into the fold. Today, it’s more about navel-gazing and infighting. Okay, Barry was much more nuanced and diplomatic than that. Click the link above and forget I said anything.

Kate interjects: Not living in the Bay Area, I don’t really get the opportunity to hear Barry Pateman speak very often. And this was the first chance I had to really chat with him in any sort of extended way, which was great. John & Barry completely geeked out about John’s new book on the Spokane Free Speech fight and the history of anarchist labor organizing, and we all chatted about kick-ass IWW organizer Agnes Thecla Fair, author of the Sourdough’s Bible, and one of the great figures in the history of hobo organizing, about whom a shockingly little amount is known! Barry was a regular fixture around the AK table throughout the weekend, along with our other favorite anarchist archivist Jerry Kaplan, the man behind the Anarchist Archives Project in Cambridge, and the two of them humored me by posing for the one cell-phone picture I did manage to take during the weekend before my phone completely died!

Next up, for me, was “Challenging Anarchist Perspectives on Environmental Justice.” The premise of this panel was pretty interesting: “To examine the ways in which people of color are centrally affected by climate change; to link environmental movements to struggles against racism, public health, homophobia, colonialism, sexism, among other issues; and discuss the relationship between democratic, decentralized politics and environmental justice.” To be honest, such a litany of issues and oppressions worried me a bit—I couldn’t imagine anything more than a superficial treatment of any of them—but the presenters did a good job. None of them bit off more than they could chew, and each provided some angle from which to view environmental justice that I hadn’t quite appreciated before. Two young folk from Toxic Soil Busters and Youth in Charge gave great overviews of their organizations, which use direct action to remove contamination by lead, other heavy metals, and hydrocarbons from the soil of low income neighborhoods in Worcester, MA. And Stina Soderling gave a really engaging talk about her research into the queer rural movement that grew out of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s: queer communities that provided zones of recovery and empowerment for urban activists, but also contributed to new forms of rural gentrification in Tennessee, Oregon, and Northern California. A solid talk that didn’t shy away from uncomfortable contradictions.

I was only able to hear snippets of the “What is Anarchist Studies?” panel from my spot at the AK table, but here are some brief lines I scribbled when I caught something that fired a few of my neurons (these are not necessarily direct quotes, though I suspect some are):

Deric Shannon: Why do people obey? It’s not just capitalism and the state that need to be destroyed, but an entire conceptual order.

Luis Fernandez: Highlights the useful contradiction between two quotations: “Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right” (Ani Difranco) and “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Audrey Lorde). It’s between these that “anarchist studies” happens.

Cindy Milstein: Let’s do a thought experiment. How would we approach critical thinking for social transformation if the university didn’t exists? What would we be doing? The danger of the university: anarchists might occasionally use the state to help achieve certain goals, but would never define themselves or their work in terms of the state. However, the university does become the way some anarchists define themselves and their work.

Nathan Jun: “Studies” implies passive observation. What we are doing is creating possibilities, using whatever resources we have at hand.

David Porter, author of AK’s Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution, gave a really good talk entitled “French Anarchism and the National Liberation Struggle in Algeria.” I was especially interested in this one because David is writing a book on the subject for AK. His talk focused on the distinctly different positions French anarchists in the 1950s and 1960s took toward Algeria. To quote the description of his talk, these differences “concerned immediate tactical and substantive concerns, generic substantive issues such as revolution, violence, stages of liberation, political collaboration, nationalism, civil liberties, religion, anarchist organization, and broader assumptions about anarchism itself.” These issues are obviously relevant to today’s anarchist “solidarity” movements and the complex ways we relate to movements for national liberation. One thing that I found particularly interesting was the split between the Libertarian Communist Federation and the Anarchist Federation around the question of the “multi-stage revolution.” The FCL had an almost Marxist line in the sense that they saw an evolutionary progression from colonialism to the creation of a nationalist state to anarchism (much as the Marxists envision a path from capitalism to state socialism to stateless communism). It all made me jones even harder for David’s book…and this talk didn’t even touch much on the stuff going on in Algeria itself (workers’ councils, etc).

Speaking of David, who I met for the first time in Hartford and found to be a wonderful guy, makes me want to mention Howard Ehrlich (Kate, John, and I had dinner with the two of them on Saturday night). If you don’t know Howard, you should. He edits the journal Social Anarchism and edited the Reinventing Anarchy, Again anthology. Social Anarchism has been continually publishing since 1981 (with a new issue just out) and, from 1972 to 1992, Howard co-produced the nationally syndicated radio show, The Great Atlantic Radio Conspiracy, which featured many anarchists and other radicals.



Kate interjects: I’m fortunate, because living in Baltimore, I get to talk to Howard quite frequently, and work with him on various projects from time to time. He’s really a veritable fount of information, and a fascinating person to sit down and chat with about all things anarchist. I managed to sneak away from the table on Sunday long enough to attend the paper presentations in the Anarchist Method and Practice segment, which featured a talk by Eric Buck on “The State as Social Practice and How to Do Something Else Instead,” a talk by Howard on “Anarchist Malpractice,” and a talk by Brianna Johnson on “Challenging the Metanarrative of War through the Photography of Veterans.” This was my favorite of all of the panels I attended throughout the weekend. I appreciated the quality of the presentations—they were all well-thought-out and well-delivered, but I was also pleased by the way that the three papers dealt with incredibly different subjects, yet seemed to work well together as different sides of the same methodological coin.

Saturday night, there was a performance of Howard Zinn’s play Emma, put on by local actors, both professional and not. I’m generally not a fan of live theater…my own fear of public speaking seems to preclude watching others take such a daring plunge. But I found myself quickly drawn in and really enjoyed it. I was especially tickled by Deric Shannon’s portrayal of Johann Most—a prefect mixture of smarm and charm…and he took his horsewhipping like a champ.

Kate interjects: Being the co-founder of a bookstore that’s named after Emma Goldman, I know this play really well already, and wasn’t feeling like sitting through it again. I elected to hang around in the back by the table, and was able to listen in on the performance, but also sit & read by candlelight (since the house lights were down for the performance). And this led me to two conclusions: I have to start listening to old radio plays again, because being able to listen to a theatrical performance without watching it is a really enjoyable experience, and lets you multi-task in ways that watching a movie—or a play—doesn’t; and, it is really hard to read by candlelight, if enjoyable in a perversely old-fashioned sort of way!

On Sunday, Andy Cornell gave an exciting talk entitled “‘Daily Acts of Life’: Pacifism, Poetry, and the New Anarchism, 1940–1954.” Andy’s been doing some really interesting research lately into periods of American anarchism that tend to get overlooked, or are seen as black holes in which no anarchist activity existed at all. He’s doing the important work of filling in the blanks between the Spanish Revolution and Seattle 1999, showing us that the “new” anarchism is only new to people unwilling to connect the dots of an ongoing historical tradition. He has a great piece on the Institute for Anarchist Studies website that focuses on a particular thread in the 1970s and 1980s (i.e. just after that other historical milestone, 1968), but this talk was about the period during and after WWII. Relying mainly on periodicals of the era (with photocopied handouts even!), he made clear, and fascinating, connections among various groups, individuals, artists, revolutionaries, and publications, taking us from the war into the Civil Rights Movement, showing the concrete (and largely unacknowledged) anarchist influences on that political/historical watershed.

Finally, I also really enjoyed James Birmingham’s talk, “Potsherds, Paving Stones, and Puppets: Toward an Anarchist Archeology.” This is one of those talks one goes to because one really has no idea about the topic (well, in this case, it was also because I think James is a sharp and lovely guy). Anarchist anthropology I can understand, but I draw, or drew, a blank when it came to archeology. James’s talk was less an overview of the field than a call for creating it. A rousing call, at that. I came away with a much clearer understanding, especially when he specifically discussed what an anarchist archeology might achieve. For example, there are plenty of written accounts of how rural collectives in revolutionary Spain went about redistributing wealth, but archeology can help us distinguish politically motivated hopes and best-case scenarios from what actually went on…by, for instance, doing digs that reveal exactly how grain was distributed (and how much) to various households. Okay, I may be something of a geek, but I really look forward to more work in this area.

As a reformed academic and a frequent attendee at anarchist conferences, the categories I find most talks fall into are: it sucked; it was okay, but I didn’t care; it was pretty good; it was pretty good and sparked a bunch of interesting ideas in my skull; it was great. At the NAASN conference, almost everything fell into the last two slots, which is a damn good batting average.

Oh, also: in addition to the video of Barry Pateman linked above, here are some audio files from the conference:

Jim Scott “The Art of Not Being Governed”

Panel: “Anarchist Notions of Environmental Justice”

Panel: “Anarchist Method and Practice”

Panel: “Anarchism and Philosophy”

Panel: “Postanarchism”

And the conference organizers just posted their own assessment of the event on the NAASN blog here.

(The photos, other than Kate’s snap of Jerry and Barry, are courtesy of Libor Koznar with www.artandstruggle.com. Gracias!)

