Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective

278 Pages·2011·1.67 MB·English

by  Scott Crow

“Playful, irreverent, and deadly serious, Black Flags and Windmills is … a
moving testimony of love, solidarity, betrayal, and the collective struggle for the
freedom that so many of us yearn for.”
—David Naguib Pellow, author of Resisting Global Toxics:
Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice
“It is a brilliant, detailed, and humble book written with total frankness and at
the same time a revolutionary poet’s passion. It makes the reader feel that we too,
with our emergency heart as our guide, can do anything; we only need to begin”
—Marina Sitrin, author of Horizontalism:
Voices of Popular Power in Argentina
“This is a compelling tale for our times”
—Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days
“This book is a key document in that real and a remarkable story of an activist’s
personal and philosophical evolution.”
—Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell:
The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
“ … crow is a puppetmaster involved in direct action”
—FBI (Joint Terrorism Task Force internal memo)
“Black Flags and Windmills introduced me to countless contemporary
freethinkers and rule-breakers whose very lives are emblematic of what it means
to be liberated.”
—Diana Welch, coauthor of The Kids Are All Right
“A frenetic account of how grassroots power, block-to-block outreach, and
radically visionary approaches to sustainability can rattle the ruling class and
transform people is positively searing”
—Ernesto Aguilar, cofounder of People of Color Organize
“This book is an example that should be studied by activists of all stripes, to learn
the lessons of wisdom inside. This is Anarchism-in-Action in a real world
setting, and it is an example of mutual aid at its best.”
—Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, former Black Panther and political
prisoner, and author of Anarchism and the Black Revolution
“For decades scott crow has approached his political organizing with humility,
resilience, and honesty, and he continues to do so in Black Flags and Windmills’.’
—Will Potter, author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s
Account of a Social Movement Under Siege
“This is an excellent manual on community organizing. It’s a beautifully written,
raw story that does not try to downplay the difficulties, betrayals, and mistakes
that are inevitable in authentic collective work.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman:
A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975
“crow’s testimony following in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina further
indicts a flawed political and economic system that was bankrupt long before
Hurricane Katrina. The reader will find within the pages a life built on principles
that have propelled crow to fight injustice in a story well told!”
—Robert Hillary King, former Black Panther, former U.S.
political prisoner, and author of From the Bottom of the Heap
“crow is part of Austin activists that devote much of their lives working to find
grassroots solutions to community problems”
—Steven Kreytak, Austin American-Statesman
“crow is a prominent anarchist community organizer behind a host of
organizations … “
—Diana Welch, Austin Chronicle

Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective scott crow © 2011 PM
Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing
from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-077-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009912423
Cover: John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA on recycled paper, by the Employee Owners of ThomsonShore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
Dedication
This book is dedicated to those whose emergency hearts refuse
to give up hope in creating just and sustainable worlds for us all.
Contents
Glossary
People and Organizations
Foreword by Kathleen Cleaver
“Even before the thoughts occurred…”
INTRODUCTION Waking up from Oblivion
PROLOGUE It Takes a Spark to Start a Prairie Fire
Against Forgetting
Black Flags and Windmills
A Battle in Algiers
Barbed-Wire Hopes
Of Anarchists, Panthers, and Zapatistas
“Like concrete…”
Like Flowers in Concrete
With Thunder in Our Hearts
Raising Common Ground
POSTSCRIPT An Ending and a Beginning
“Dream the future…”
APPENDIX I Common Ground Communiqués (2005-2009)
APPENDIX II Common Ground Documents
APPENDIX III Outline of Common Ground Activities and Programs
Notes
Acknowledgments
Further Reading
About the Author
Glossary
For quick reference in the context of this book, I want to point out that these words
are part of the jargon of radicals and anarchists.
Accountability
Affinity groups
Alternative/Anti-Globalization movement Black Bloc
Civil society
Consensus decision-making Guidelines
Leadership
Privilege
The State
There are exhaustive definitions, sometimes volumes, written on these words. I
encourage readers to seek out multiple definitions of each term to understand how
they are used.
These terms are defined on page 73:
Autonomy
Cooperation or Mutual Aid Direct Action
Horizontality
Liberation
Civil society is a term I adopted from Zapatismo. I use it here to refer to
individuals, organizations, and even institutions as opposed to the state
apparatus or even the multinational corporations that use force to reinforce their
power. Civil society is you and I and everyone else who associates without
coercion.
Leadership (for lack of a better term) represents for me guidance by individuals
or groups within communities. This guidance is based in the recognition that
there are power relations even within horizontal organizing, based on social,
cultural, experiential, or political factors. Individuals or groups in guidance roles
may have more power (or be perceived to have more power). The practice of
leadership seeks to subvert the familiar figure of the authoritarian leader who
delegates tasks, makes unilateral decisions, and takes actions without discussion
or accountability to those involved. The practice of leadership seeks to create and
reinforce power-sharing rather than power over others.
Marginalized or Neglected Communities
I use these terms instead of, or sometimes interchangeably with, typical
sociopolitical language (like working-class, queer, poor, etc.) that have been used
to qualify people or communities pushed to the margins in civil society.
Traditional political language takes many of the complex relationships within
civil society that make up people and communities, making them one-
dimensional. This leaves out the complex humanity of those involved. People
and communities are often marginalized for more than one reason. These
phrases address the fact that there are multiple issues at stake, instead of running
a laundry list to illustrate the marginalization or neglect.
Power
I use the term “power” in three ways:
1. power (with a little ‘p’) : power that is exercised directly by communities, as
part of civil society, working together to make changes in the world. It is what
grassroots democracy is based on. This kind of power is derived from
recognizing that we do have the abilities, creativity, and strength to make the
world better. It is the collective power of everyone, from the middle class to the
marginalized.
2. Power (with a capital ‘P’) : concentrations of authority and privilege in
economic, political, or cultural institutions that exercise undue influence on the
world. In this sense, Power is identical with the state, multinational corporations,
or the rich, who are not accountable to civil society. This Power operates through
bureaucracies, executive boards, the military, and transnational corporations. It
is exercised through brute force, neglect, and manipulation or corruption of
economies, for example. It results in control over resources as well as social and
cultural norms.
3. I sometimes use the phrase those who assume to have Power. It is my way of
recognizing that such forms of Power do not have legitimate claims of authority