Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy by Chris Crass

Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy Reviews

• 
  Justin

  To put it succinctly: this book is invaluable, and you should read it.
  
  Chris Crass has been involved in anti-authoritarian activism and organizing work for something on the order of two decades, and his experiences are brought to bear with startling clarity and context in this book. The book begins with a history of anarchist & anti-authoritarian organizing--when I interviewed Chris I asked him why he chose to open such a modern book with a history lesson. He pointed out that knowing the successes and failures of those who have come before us is crucial in developing our movements beyond the mistakes of the past.
  
  The book continues with a lengthy section on coming of age with San Fransisco Food Not Bombs in the 1990s. It's full of terrific stories *and* useful advice on participating in and helping to lead a non-hierarchical organization facing state repression. He critically examines the processes FNB used to deal with problems of sexism and racism, and provides pointers on how to avoid the pitfalls FNB fell victim to from time to time. There's also a great discussion of the importance of men's involvement in anti-sexist work, and the necessity of white organizers & activists to make anti-racist practice part of the core of their work. The book closes with a series of interviews with organizations actively engaged in building a better world, and Chris presses these leaders from around the world to find out how they won, dealt with setbacks, or navigated the waters of nonhierarchical teamwork and positive leadership.
  
  If you do organizing or activist work, you ought to read this. It's that simple. Chris has done us all a service by bringing his critical mind to the history of his own work, and what emerges is a book anyone can learn from.
• 
  Bree Ervin

  I had a hard time rating this book - I'd like to give it a 4 because I think that the information in it is really powerful, but in the end I had to give it a 3 because for me, accessing the information was more arduous than I had space for.
  
  We can start with little things like the font size - this might be the only book I ever recommend someone get as an ebook if only so that you can zoom in and make the font a readable size.
  There is also the density of the information - there is a lot going on in this book which made it sometimes feel like a slog to get to the pieces that were really useful/pertinent.
  There is a TON of name dropping in this book which is a personal pet peeve of mine - on one hand, I get it, it's a book about creating an anti-racist, feminist world written by a straight white guy, so to get around the "Man mansplains radical activism to radical activists" label he takes the time to establish his credibility in this space, to acknowledge the many women and POC who educated him and helped him not be That Guy - all the same, what that really made me want was to read THEIR books.
  
  I think that this book had some really powerful history, and ideas and lessons in it, but I felt like they all got a bit jumbled up.
  
  If I read (skimmed) the intros and prologues correctly this book is more a collection of essays that sort of build on each other rather than a cohesive book that lays out a true plan of action.
  
  If I had a magic wand, I would go back in time and offer to edit these essays to make them into a single, solid book. I think a lot of the repetition could have been cut and the book could have been shaped so that each chapter really built off the previous one and really helped a lay-person understand radical activism and perhaps even find their own space within that framework.
  
  As it was, I felt like I was sitting down to a college dissertation and I admit there were times that I struggled to stay engaged. I wanted to jump ahead and get to the point already.
  
  This book reminded me of a few other books I have read about non-profit work and activism that got rather bogged down in the minutia and lost the forest for the trees.
  
  I look forward to a condensed, Cliffs Notes type version of this book being released - I think it would have better luck reaching a fresh, open minded audience if it were tightened up a bit.
• 
  Katie

  If you are an organizer, especially if you are a dude, you should read this. Creating spaces where women and people of color can feel comfortable and empowered to step up requires work. It doesn't just happen on its own.
• 
  Hannah

  Please read this book!
  
  A few quotes that mattered to me:
  - ...she helped me begin to locate myself within a complex power analysis of society in which I had material and psychological privilege as a man. I recognized this as a profoundly important moment in my growth. And it still felt like shit.
  - doing anti-racist work as a white person doesn't mean not making mistakes, but rather that we are committed to doing this work, even though we will make mistakes.
  - remember that social change is a process, and that our individual transformation and individual liberation are intimately interconnected with social transformation and social liberation.
  - "organizers had to be morale boosters, teachers, welfare agents, transportation coordinators, canvassers, public speakers, negotiators, lawyers, all while communicating with people who range from illiterate sharecroppers to well-off professionals and while enduring harassment from agents of the law and listening with one ear for threats of violence. Exciting days and major victories are rare."
  - many of us, myself included, want to be the "perfect" ally, a good white person. What we have to understand is that being the best ally that you can be usually means working with other white folks.
  - so we are faced with a choice. Do we write these folks off? Do we challenge them in a self-righteous way that blames them for not getting it - and then more often than not means that they are going to get defensive and not get it? Or is there a way that we can challenge and support them at the same time to see their issues as connected?
  - we can tap into the ways that people within the broad category of "white" experience marginalization, and understand that addressing those experiences of marginalization don't have to be a distraction from addressing racism and other forms of privilege, but can be a way of identifying and acting from our collective stake in liberation.
  - having compassion and love for yourself is an important part of becoming a leader and organizer for liberation.
  - "don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
• 
  T.Kay Browning

  Almost thou convinces me to be an anarchist. Actually there seemed to an assumption of the logic of anarchy, and this book spent most of its time on working through how anarchists can best organize in order to combat sexism, racism and classism. Really interesting stuff. Prejudice remains so firmly entrenched in society that having a bunch of people personally committed to equality won't be enough to get it done. Also, what he had to say about what role very privileged people can play in social movements really struck me. For me, it was the first thorough and convincing structure for what I can do as a white, educated, probable middle class, male. Learn all you can, accept criticism and organize your fellow privileged, pretty much, resisting the urge to spend all your time trying to be the "good white guy" in minority organizations. It's a book I would come back to again.
• 
  Alissa

  I'm not sure I'll come back to this one -- my complaints are similar to other readers: that tiny fucking typeface! the dry dry dry language! and not to be reductive, but I don't feel a great pressing need to read a book about social justice by a straight white dude, however well-intentioned and connected. I gave up while reading the granular history of Food Not Bombs and tired of Crass' overuse of the word "analysis". I feel like this was ultimately the kind of inaccessible writing (and printing!) that turns people off of movement work.
• 
  Brittany Anne

  This book is so useful to me as an activist and grad student. I see so many of the barriers to collective liberation that Chrass identifies in the organizations he has known replicated in the organizations I am involved in myself. I appreciate the wealth of strategies that he explains, with concrete examples. I would recommend to any of my fellow anti-racist, social justice activists.
• 
  kripsoo

  Towards Collective Liberation is a book of many parts These pieces of history, memoir, interviews, and lessons can be read separately but they all gain from being read up against each other Some have been published previously and can be found on his website, chriscrass org, along with additional essays and interviews that extend the book and Chris Crass explains that he set out to share his understanding "that people with privilege need to go through a process of developing identity politics based on their privileged identities The goal of this would be to develop analysis for people with privilege to understand themselves in relationship to both historical systems of oppression and systemic social change These politics would be rooted in a commitment to collective action for revolutionary change He does this based on a life of activism from his high school discovery of anarchism (in Orange County in the late 1980s) through numerous other collectives and campaigns, including struggles for Ethnic Studies, Food Not Bombs, the Battle of Seattle, Challenging White Supremacy, Catalyst Project and others and Anarchism is a consistent thread throughout the book The detailed narrative of the anarchist movement in the contemporary U.S. laid out by Chris Dixon in the introduction and by the author in his chapter on Food Not Bombs will be very helpful to those not already immersed in those politics as it has been to me And for those who have traveled through that history Crass provides a probing reexamination and Crass version is a generous, warm-spirited, eclectic anarchism that is non-sectarian - or rather, anti-sectarian. This was a revelation to this old New Lefty so completely different from the bitter ideological struggles of the 60s and 70s Since I was drawn to the book from bumping up against Chris and comrades in street actions, political education and solidarity work, it was not surprising to find such an embracing view As he spells it out in the first chapter: I believe that ideas, insights and leadership from different Left traditions such as anarchism, Marxism, feminism, revolutionary nationalism, queer liberation and revolutionary non-violence are needed as we create a political movement that draws the best from the past and opens space for new visions, ideas and strategies This is quite a mash-up but most of the time it is fertile compost Certainly better than our New Left practice of never letting the boiled peas touch the white bread or the mystery meat on our plates and Some readers may wonder who the book is written for In his opening chapter, Crass explains: "throughout the process of writing and conducting interviews, I thought often of my teenage activist self and so many others going through similar journeys of becoming activists I share my own experiences and lessons as well as those of some of the most outstanding white anti-racist organizers in the country with the hope that they help you in your own process of developing as an effective, healthy and visionary long-haul activist, organizer and leader " Some passages have a more specific audience. Crass writes in his history of San Francisco Food Not Bombs that this is are Left/anarchist organizers with privilege struggling to build movements for collective liberation It is written for men in the movement who have been challenged on their sexism and male privilege and are looking for support and That is of course not the only audience. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz points to a wider readership in her foreword, emphasizing the connections across generations and movements that Crass advocates. Indeed, reading her own memoirs (Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie, Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years 1960-1975, Blood on the Border A Memoir of the Contra War) juxtaposed to that of Crass (and others) makes for a much deeper grasp of left history than any social science tome Again an important contrast to the experience of my generation when we returned the scorn heaped upon us by the Old Left with our slogan of never trusting anyone over thirty and The last section of the book consists of interviews with Catalyst Project in the Bay Area, San Francisco's Heads Up Collective, the Rural Organizing Project in Oregon, Louisville's Fairness Campaign, and Groundwork in Madison. These interviews are valuable extensions of the white anarchist anti-racist politics laid out in the first chapters However Crass earlier piece on Food Not Bombs is a better model of critical reflection making the reader wish for sharper analyses of these efforts and Some of the lessons learned may seem a bit didactic However many activists of Crass' generation have welcomed these and god knows we could have benefitted from something like this in 1968 And 1969 And 19 Taken in context with personal stories and combined with a Freirean pedagogy (as in Catalyst Project workshops)they can be quite useful and Some key political issues are treated so lightly they are effectively submerged: there is little international perspective beyond acknowledgement of the example set by the Zapatistas While war is mentioned throughout the book, it is as often in the phrase "war against the poor (or immigrants, or working class)" rather than the actuality of missiles, bombs and torture. Anti-war activism is mostly treated as a pacifist opposition to all war rather than work to end the here-and-now devastation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Mali, Chiapas and beyond and Perhaps underlying this weakness is the avoidance of settler colonialism in U.S. society with the one telling exception of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's foreword Anti-racist practice no matter how passionate, is incomplete without it and One part of the book that would be extremely helpful is missing: images Photos, posters and other graphics would have added much. Similarly, reproductions of flyers, news articles, pamphlets and other pieces of material history would lend a deeper dimension to the story It is high time that movement authors and publishers take advantage of present opportunities to do this - as modeled, for example, by Nancy Kurshan's history of the struggle against super-max prisons, Out of Control: A Fifteen-Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons which offers a rich web archive of PDFs, images and video linked to the text PM Press does provide an e-book version of Towards Collective Liberation as well as the paperback; beyond improving accessibility this helps offset the lack of an index Overall in its many parts the book is a valuable tool for activists in a variety of social justice movements to reflect on recent history and current practice moving on our various paths Towards Collective Liberation
• 
  Tim Collingwood

  An amazing piece of liberation literature. I learned so much, grew so much, and had so many questions about things. I think it's made me a better activist, but I won't know until the effect is measured.
• 
  Tate Williams

  I almost didn't make it through the lengthy Food Not Bombs history but I'm glad I did. The interviews in the last third or so are particularly loaded with great insights and the conclusion is strong as well.
• 
  Mariana

  En general no la mejor narrativa (un poco pesado y repetitivo), pero supongo que tampoco es la idea del libro. Sí aborda temas y conceptos sumamente importantes e interesantes, y algunos de los ensayos son magníficos.
• 
  Leah

  I found sections four and five, along with reading recommendations, particularly useful.
• 
  Gabrielle

  Required class reading!
• 
  Yutaka Dirks

  Towards Collective Liberation is a powerful and honest book of essays that underscore the importance of confronting racism and sexism and nurturing the leadership skills of new organizers to reach their full potential as a force that can radically transform society. Of particular value for white organizers and/or those working in places (like Canada)with large rural and white populations. I wrote a longer review of the book for Briarpatch Magazine, which you can find here:
  
  
  http://briarpatchmagazine.com/article...
• 
  Katherine

  I think book is so relevant to anyone working on any issue related to improving our society--whether it's climate change or public health or affordable housing or education--especially folks who identify as white and are working to bring a collective liberation approach to their work. I especially liked the interviews at the end with a wide range of people on the ground bringing the theoretical perspective into their day-to-day work. They are able to provide concrete examples of what anti-racist & feminist work looks like on the ground.
• 
  Allee

  This book had a ton of good lessons and good thinking for those who want to incorporate practical and radical praxis into their organizing. It was a little long though. The book probably could have just been the last chapter, where he summed up his 8 or so guidelines for effective mass movement building.
• 
  Ed

  invaluable to people that speak the language of anti-racist feminist self-analysis in service of long haul social justice movement building. for others maybe not so relevant. really a series of separate essays published together looking at a handful of current projects.
• 
  Scott Neigh

  Reviewed
  here
• 
  Aleisha

  This book is dangerous! It's one of the most exciting things I've ever read.
• 
  Jaime

  Loved it. Great resource for anti-racist and feminist organizers!
• 
  Melissa

  Essential for understanding the pitfalls of leftist movement building and what kind of work it takes to keep the effort going.