[German original of this text: Anarchy2023 - Das “Internationale Antiautoritäre Treffen” plant den Superspreader
Here’s a Mastodon thread with some further discussion: toot!]
tl;dr: The pandemic has polarized political discourse – even within the radical left. Conspiracy narratives have penetrated deep into our circles. How this can manifest i had to observe in the organization of Anarchy 2023. The planned meeting in St. Imier is (as of today, please protest!) organized and planned without COVID-19-precautions. At least one of the main organizers was involved in the movement of anti-maskers and COVID-deniers.
“It is the conscience – be it only at the stage of an instinct – of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependency of every one’s happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to her own.” ~ Peter Kropotkin, 1902
The legacy of polarization among the radical left caused by the COVID pandemic could keep us busy for a long time
While the pandemic continues almost unchecked in many countries around the world, resulting in frightening numbers of deaths and sometimes long-term disabilities (for example i am “celebrating” my three-year anniversary with #LongCOVID these days, still without an official diagnosis, but come on), the world collectively seems to be deluding itself that the pandemic is over. It should be clear to everyone why this is happening – working, consuming, traveling and shopping have to be boosted again, because the economy, the GDP or whatever the fuck suffered under the pandemic. Even in late stage capitalism, despite a climate crisis running amok and during a global pandemic, the growth imperative cannot be stopped or even slowed down, least of all by a tiny, feisty virus.
Fewer and fewer people keep looking at the trajectory of the pandemic in any critical way, while at the same time less and less data is getting collected, which means we are increasingly flying blind. Positions, that for a long time were voiced only by corona deniers and those opposing safety precautions or in the unspeakable Greater Barrington Declaration, are by now getting expressed by centrists and even by government officials. Mandatory spread of the virus (“Durchseuchung”)? It’s on. Even though it was revealed that “herd immunity” very likely is to remain an illusion with this specific virus, while multiple infections increase the risk of complications.
Considering the official handling of the pandemic in most states many topics would actually deserve our critical, radical leftist scrutiny. Global vaccination inequity. Patent laws. Vaccination certificates. Outrageous profits for big pharma. The continuing trend of upward redistribution, that allowed the super-rich to get richer even during a fucking pandemic. Sexism in care work. Labor issues in regards to the so-called essential workers, at a high-risk for viral infection, yet still poorly paid. Or, last but not least, how the disease severely affects the already underprivileged classes and nations. All these are highly relevant topics that deserve our critical attention.
Sadly, very little input came from the radical left in these past three years. For me personally, it will remain the greatest disillusionment of this period in time that the radical left failed to get involved in a constructive way during this pandemic, be it through robust mutual aid projects or with a clear position against rampant ableism, eugenics, as well as, to put it in more positive terms, with a fight for intersectional solidarity with our disabled and chronically ill comrades.
“Some call that depression, set in motion by trauma and grief. And no doubt there’s much that’s accurate in that. Yet I call it trying to live with “the gap between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’” – a gap that these pandemic years has pried so far apart, it’s now (in winter three) nearly unbridgeable. And without a bridge, any sense of being able to wander forward toward horizons of possibilities gets blocked.” ~ Cindy Barukh Milstein
Not everything was bad. Especially in the so-called USA inspiring takes were published in the texts and podcasts of Cindy Milstein, Dean Spade, Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant, Kelly Hayes, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Margaret Killjoy, offering precise radical left-wing contextualizations and intersectional positions.
Meanwhile in Europe, certain sections of the anti-authoritarian left fell deep into the conspiracy theoretical rabid hole, think Agamben, Wu Ming [to a much lesser extent yet still disappointing] or the frightening “manifeste conspirationiste”, which is rumored to be written by someone close to the comitée invisible. But we don’t even need to search this far. Here in Bern a group called “Freie Linke” (= free lefties) emerged, that actively participated in the anti-covid, anti-mask demonstrations and doing so they made it possible that an actual “Querfront” could emerge.
Other parts of the radical left early on in the pandemic were briefly interested in issues of disability justice, but without delving deep enough into the underlying ableist or even eugenic frameworks, the topic was dropped completely later on. All these questions and omissions urgently need our critical scrutiny, like in Nate Holdren’s article, much too rare still.
“Knowing that the return to normal means even more dying and life-aging suffering is terrible. Knowing that many people seem not to realize this, that people in officially respected positions seem to find this acceptable, that fellow travelers on the left don’t treat this as a priority, that all feels isolating to a degree I find hard to overstate. What’s happening, I think, is that there’s no consensus on the reality we’re living in: ideologically, the pandemic continues for some of us and is over for others, while, of course, it hasn’t *actually* ended; it feels like living in a different world from other people, but still interacting. In some cases, this means old relationships feel different, and not for the better.” ~ Nate Holdren
What often gets forgotten, for many disabled, chronically ill, immunocompromised, neurodivergent people, or in short, for all the people who were often forced into social isolation already before the pandemic, or even for people who just prefer to avoid crowds for various reasons, there was a brief period at the beginning of the pandemic, when the virus pushed everyone into comparable situations, when everyone was condemned to stay home. And suddenly holding meetings via video stream, home office for everyone (except for the essential workers, that suddenly deserved our applause) became possible. For many of those mentioned above, this opened up new opportunities of social inclusion. While most of us may not exactly have been happy about this, the suffering caused by the pandemic was too great for that, it still awakened in us the hope, that an awareness for our situation could continue.
It was just as brutal when all these achievements were dropped as soon as the process of the sociological production of the end of the pandemic started. The “vulnerable” people, as we were suddenly called, again cut off from social participation as soon as the governments and much of the media converged to manufacture consent of “the end” of a never-ending pandemic, which far too quickly meant, work, cultural events and even much of consumption (restaurants, shopping etc.) became possible only while being physically present again.
One of the questions that interests me very much during this confusing time: How will the political polarization specific to the radical left take affect our discourse, our activism and more specifically the way we organize events, action groups and so forth. Which school of thought will prevail? The conspiratorial, hyper-individualistic one, that will stop at nothing, not even death or disability? Or the inclusive, cautious one, mindful of disability justice, that keeps trying not to fall (back) into ableism?
When the state pushes us back into consuming, traveling and working, while at the same time normalizing multiple infections with a dangerous virus – which increases our chances of dying or contracting Long COVID every time (there are now enough studies that prove this) – it should not actually be up for debate for us anarchists to take a stance against this, to find ways to counter this trend, to protect endangered comrades in our own ranks or, at the very least, to not exclude them from participation, in short, not to throw them under the bus like the state and media have already done.
But hey, that’s just me.
Because reality probably looks different, as I had to find out the hard way.
//CW This text gets anecdotal now
I recently had an experience how the polarization due to the pandemic can manifest in anarchist circles when i was trying to get involved in the organization of the so-called “international anti-authoritarian meeting” in St. Imier, a gathering planned to take place in July 2023. As you may well know, St. Imier, a small town in the Bernese “Jura” mountains, was where in 1872 a legendary meeting with Bakunin and many other anarchist workers took place. This meeting is considered the origin of the anarchist movement. 150+1 years later a kind of anniversary is to be celebrated. Originally planned for summer 2022, the event was postponed by one year due to the pandemic.
In October 2022 i read a “Call for Participation in Anarchy 2023” on Mastodon. During this time i was looking for a new project, so i immediately wrote an enthusiastic email to the organizers outlining my motivation. In this very first email i made it clear, that I would like to work to make sure the gathering will have outstanding accessibility, especially in regards to viral infections such as COVID. During this pandemic, since i myself had fallen chronically ill, i myself was pushed into a position, in which i hoped to avoid further infections. I explained this in the email on 7.10.2022, that i sent to the official email address of the organization info@anarchy2023.org. In it i formulated the following four concerns:
· It’s essential to enable virtual remote access (via zoom or similar) already during planning meetings.
· During Anarchy21023 remote access (video conference) has to be on offer for as many events (talks, workshops, concerts) as possible
· There should be plan B in place, should the pandemic not be over by the summer of 2023, which we all hope it will be, but it’s not certain at all (looking at how mitigations were dropped). It’s not compatible with the anarchist idea to get people infected, at risk to develop a disabling disease like Long COVID, while at the same time the so-called “vulnerable” (a terrible word) are excluded from participation (inclusion)
· The topics disability/ableism/eugenics must be prominently featured at the conference to analyze this pandemic and our response to it.
After I heard … nothing.
A week later on 14.10. I bumped the email for a first time. On 17.10.22 i sent the same email from a different address, because i wondered if the first one had landed in a spam filter. On 28.10.22 again i bumped it. Only after this 4. email did I receive a rather irritated reply, this time from the private email-address of A.S., one of the organizers and, to my knowledge, main initiators of the planned gathering:
Hello X,
You must show a bit more patience. The organizational group has not met since you wrote this email. You will get an answer in the first half of November.
Cheers, A.
So I patiently waited for an answer. The first half of November came. And passed. I waited for one month. Two months.
On January 9th, 2023 i asked if my concerns and my involvement had been discussed, again i did not receive an answer. On 30.01 and 6.02. i followed up, with the same result, no response. Finally on 13.02. and only after i had written a critique on Mastodon i finally received a response explaining to me, that their trust in me was broken now and that no one wanted to work with me anymore?! Hmm…
So wait. I had written eight emails, waited four months for an answer, and now suddenly i should be the problem?
A few alarm bells had gone off early on. Why of all things should my critical concern for COVID-safety and protection and inclusion of endangered comrades, go unanswered for such a long time? A terrible suspicion started to grow in me.
But i insisted. I explained the situation from my point of view, how I hadn’t received an answer to various emails for four months during which i had heard nothing from the organizational group. And i repeated that I was still interested in fighting for my concerns. As a result, the organizers made a few concessions. Eventually I got access to one of the working groups.
At the same time, a good friend of mine also contacted the organizers to offer her help. Very quickly, practically on the same day, she received an invitation to a “General Meeting” on March 5, 2023 in Bern. A meeting was planned at 13:00 for the “onboarding” of those interested in joining, the general meeting was scheduled at 14:00. The corresponding flyer showed that a pot luck was to take place in the same room beforehand. So far, pretty unspecific and relatively risky from a COVID-safety perspective. Since it was not visible on the flyer, my friend asked whether there would be a mask requirement for the session, no, and later whether there would be a possibility to join via video stream, to which there was an evasive answer.
I, on the other hand, had neither received an invitation nor the flyer, had never been informed about this “General Meeting”.
Strange!?
Another colleague then sent me the following statement by an organizer from a Telegram chat regarding the question of hybrid meetings (screenshot exists):
Most don’t like having an online option for security reason and also because hybrid meetings tend to be frustrating for many. From time to time we have a hybrid session and since there is no general agreement it is always re-discussed.
So let me get this straight?! Video chats are not trustworthy, for security reasons, but at the same time work groups are using Telegram, which, as we all know, cannot be encrypted? Logic much?! But sure, hybrid meetings are so “frustrating”.
FFS, at this point only sarcasm helps. No they are not frustrating, they allow people to participate, who otherwise could not.
I was already quite disillusioned, but I still wrote an email in which I made it clear that exactly such organizational meetings without safety precautions would make it impossible for people like me to take part in the organization and were therefore ableist. Here is an excerpt from this mail, which you can read in full in attachment 1:
So, i found out that the next general assembly (next Sunday) will happen in a closed room (instead of outdoors), with neither a mask mandate nor is it a hybrid meeting, allowing remote access.
The meeting happens after a pot luck in the same room.
A friend of mine was interested to get involved in organizing, and got sent this information for the general assembly.
I was never sent the information about this meeting. Which is hilarious (of course i would find out), since one of my declared interests (that i had communicated in my email from early October 2022) had always been that all major planning meetings should be covid-safe (either with mask
mandate or allowing remote access).
[…]
Planning meetings, where certain people are excluded is ableist. It really is as simple as that.
Needless to say, both of us cannot attend a general assembly in this form.
So here i go:
Please make this general assembly covid-safe.
Which means, the pot luck has to happen after the meeting (people take off the masks for food and drink) or outdoors.
The meeting is held with a mask mandate.
Even better if it is a hybrid meeting, which allows people
(disabled/immuno-compromised/chronically ill/with partners in such a situation/and/or/still cautious) to attend.
It took a few days to receive an answer, here i quote just the first paragraph:
It is true that we are going a path where we generally organize the event in a way that is mandate free. This is mainly a result of having postponed the event to 2023 for the reason of not wanting to subject people to mandates, in regards to travel restrictions that they might have still had in 2022, but also locally during the event. So, the general line of thought regarding accessibility is to look for ways that integrate alternative ways of participating without restricting those that don’t want these limitations.
Finally some form of transparency. My growing suspicion was confirmed, COVID-safety would not be an issue at the “International Anti-Authoritarian Meeting” (which should be renamed into the International Ableist Meeting).
Bakunin would turn in his grave.
Wrong, Bakunin did turn in his grave, i recently visited his grave in the Bremgartenfriedhof.
Anyone who thinks all rules or mandates need to be avoided has understood relatively little about anarchy. Anarchy is not about not having any rules, but about who and how they were determined, ideally in a grassroots-democratic manner, often by consensus decision-making. Let me name just one example, many anarchist groups ban mobile phones at their meetings, whether for OpSec or paranoid reasons. Such a ban, however, is never a fundamental problem as long as it has been decided by consensus. Consensus is what enables us to abolish, even avoid policing.
Furthermore, anyone who talks about masks as a “limitation” is either ignorant or reckless. It should be clear by now, that masks primarily protect other people we meet from ourselves. We can never know for sure, if we are currently carrying the virus (we are also most contagious a few days before the first symptoms!), nor what the health status of out counterpart is, maybe he or she is immunocompromised. So wearing a mask should never ever be considered a burden. It’s a form of mutual protection.
To be clear, the state and much of the media have misinformed us on these topics. But where’s the critical, anarchistic questioning of authority? Mask mandates at indoor gatherings should be a no-brainer for anarchists.
For me as an anarchist, I never had a problem with mask requirements, because I didn’t actually wait for the government mandates, but started wearing them all the way back in March 2020. To protect others and myself made sense to me from both an ethical and a political standpoint. Luckily, as anarchists, we dispose of a corresponding tool called “social responsibility”, which by the way can be clearly distinguished from the personal responsibility (Eigenverantwortung) mantra, that has been abused so shamelessly by neoliberal governments trying to deflect responsibility to the individual citizen. Wearing a mask during a pandemic is a small act of lived solidarity and communal care, should never ever been seen as a restriction.
My suspicions, which i had already expressed on Mastodon, had turned out to be true. There was already a consensus in the organizational group that Anarchy2023 will not be organized in a COVID-safe manner. All this time, i had been trying to get involved to try and fight for exactly this, since October, already in my very first email I had tried to suggest that both the organizational meetings and the meeting itself should be made accessible to everyone. Accessible to everyone means even for people like myself, who continue to be forced into being extra careful and social isolation due to illness or disability, and especially now, in a world that no longer cares for our health.
It is pure speculation, even doubtful, whether i as an individual could have succeeded in convincing the group to make the gathering a COVID-safe event. But I would certainly have tried, with all my might, if i hadn’t been sidelined for four fucking months. It seems clear, this consensus, to ignore COVID-safety at the gathering, could only come about through exclusion (of me and other critical voices, who hold a different view).
Consensus by exclusion of critical voices, the laziest trick in the book.
In yet another email I expressed my objections and almost begged, to make the early march general meeting COVID-safe, see attachment 2 bellow. Again unanswered.
#COVID1984: From COVID-denier to initiator and (co-)organizer of Anarchy2023
How could such a thing happen? At this point i can only guess.
The Twitter timeline of A.S. (you remember, he’s the (main) organizer, who sent me the irritated email, cited above), can maybe offer some insights. In this timeline one finds not only appreciative retweets of right-wing libertarians like Elon Musk, Kim Dotcom and Glenn Greenwald, or of the conspiracy theorist and anti-abortionist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he even praises James O’Keefe of Project Veritas (how?). Most revealing, the timeline shows that A.S. was involved in at least one anti-mask, COVID denier demonstration opposing the protective measures. On 20.10.2021 from his twitter-account he mobilized for a demonstration called “Nein zu den COVID-19 Verschärfung” (No to the intensification of COVID-19 protective measures) to be held on October 23. in Bern. According to the wording of his tweet he even helped to organize this demonstration (“We have the permit!”)? A demonstration, by the way, where several conspiracy theory and/or anti-Semitic banners as well as participants from the hipster neo-nazi group “Junge Tat” to the “Freiheitstrychlern” (an ultraconservative folklore group) were spotted. Meanwhile near the autonomous cultural center Reitschule, there were skirmishes between the police and an anarchist counter-demonstration with the title: “Solidarität mit den Corona-Betroffenen” (Solidarity with those affected by Corona).
Why do i have such a problem with someone who participated in these COVID-denialist demonstrations? Basically because these demonstrators want me, or people like me, dead. Members of these demonstrations have randomly ripped masks off of people’s faces or have entered hospitals without masks, as a form of protest?! During their protests crude anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, neo-nazis, white supremacist lingo, brown esoteric brown ideology and eco-fascism were tolerated. For A.S. all this must run under “free speech”. At least in his public Twitter timeline no form of distancing from these aspects of the COVID denialist demos can be found.
To sum up, here’s an “anarchist”, who fought on the wrong side, alongside the wrong people (making a “Querfront” possible) against any protective measure during a global pandemic, which has to be seen as the worst health crisis in the last 100 years, a pandemic, under which the already underprivileged groups suffer the most?! An “anarchist” who demonstrates alongside people, who do not see the disabled, the chronically ill, the immunocompromised etc. as having lives worthy of protection?! How can someone like this call himself an anarchist? I have no clue. To me he sounds more like an anarcho-trashtalker?!
So someone like this is now organizing an international! anarchist meeting without any COVID-safety precautions, after excluding critical voices like mine (on Mastodon i heard from others, who have been ignored, but that is hearsay).
A scoundrel, who suspects a wicked intention here or thinks that someone is trying to bend the anarchist movement in his, the ableist way.
This cannot be tolerated.
Conclusion
What was my motivation to publish this text? First I wanted to distance myself, then to highlight polarized positions and differences within the radical left and finally to warn others about this meeting. Admittedly, warning is a joke. Who will find this small blog or my corresponding toots and read a much too lengthy blog post (so sorry about that).
Nonetheless, it had to be done, because we, the radical left, find ourselves in confusing times, especially as anarchists. Consider the anarchist spectrum alone, where we witness confusing developments, from anarcho-capitalists (a bad joke) to apparently since the pandemic anarcho-conspiracy-nutcases (a very frightening mix). From both these interpretations of anarchy we must distance ourselves.
Such ideological rifts are not all that new, though. When reading the biographies of historical anarchists it is clear that already around the 1900s there were important differences and debates between individualistic and communal strands of anarchy. In addition, groups with an affinity for conspiracy theories, such as We Are Change or Zeitgeist, have actively tried to infiltrate anarchist circles as early as 2011 during the Occupy movement.
In any case, I am convinced that such differences must be named, worked through, hashed out, whatever, if some form of cooperation is to be possible again, even if only by distancing ourselves. The signs can often be subtle, even when there are fundamental differences, because people rarely speak in a blunt way these days. It took me almost 5 months to finally fully understand what’s going on here.
I don’t want to discourage anyone, but anyone who plans to get involved in the organizing efforts for Anarchy2023 should know with whom/what they are getting involved. Ditto for those attending the July meeting.
For me personally, it is clear, that I cannot work with people who took part in COVID denier demonstrations against the protective measures. I need to set a boundary towards people, who want me dead. Just as anarchy today rightfully takes a stance against racism, sexism, queer- and transphobia, it should position itself strongly against ableism (and ageism). Anarchist groups, that do not protect their disabled and chronically ill comrades, or even exclude them from participation, are not actual anarchists, but ableists.
Everyone hopes that the pandemic will be over soon. And at this point in time, at least in the absurd nation state called Switzerland, the numbers are looking pretty good, even if they are going up again. But viruses do not respect borders, organizing an international gathering represents a serious risk and a safety protocol needs to be in place. In addition, things could start to surge here any time, so we need to be prepared for such scenarios. The more people or groups that remain cautious by their own volition, the better our perspective. For many of us, the risk of death or further disability simply remains too great.
So this is why, unfortunately, i had to write this text, as a warning, so that people know what they are getting themselves into.
Once again: As of today, both the gathering itself and the organizational structure are not planned with COVID-safety in mind. Which excludes all the people, who still need or want to protect themselves against COVID-19. This, by its very definition, is ableism. If, like me, you disagree with this strategy, please contact info@anarchy.org. Please help. Anarchy can not be reinterpreted in such an immature fashion (no restrictions or we throw a tantrum) nor fall down the conspiratorial rabid hole. If all else fails, warn your international contacts, who plan to attend this gathering.
Please spread the word.
It is true. I dream of an anarchist meeting for everyone. But anarcho-conspiracy-nutcases want a meeting without people like me, because we would restrict their individual “freedom” by having to wear a mask indoors, lol. Unfortunately, this (tolerance) paradox cannot be resolved.
Anarchy2023 – Free of conspiracy-nutcases!
PS 1: I hesitated, how to name A.S. here. I decided to anonymize his name. Granted, it will be very easy to find him as he goes by his real name everywhere, was recently portrayed as an anarchist from St. Imier in the media and also had a relatively high profile court case.
Concerning the question of confidentiality: All A.S. tweets are publicly accessible, the short quotes from emails were sent without a confidentiality notice. Their email address is communicated on the website.
PS 2: I try to avoid the term anarchism because when something becomes -ism, it usually means that it becomes a problem fast. Mostly I use anarchy.
PS 3: Feel free to also check out this planned event at the gathering. This is the worst kind of conspiracy gibberish.
Attachment 1: Mailed 26.02.2023:
Hey there
So, i found out that the next general assembly (next Sunday) will happen in a closed room (instead of outdoors), with neither a mask mandate nor is it a hybrid meeting, allowing remote access.
The meeting happens after a pot luck in the same room.
A friend of mine was interested to get involved in organising, and got sent this information for the general assembly.
I was never sent the information about this meeting. Which is hilarious (of course i would find out), since one of my declared interests (that i had communicated in my email from early October 2022) had always been that all major planning meetings should be covid-safe (either with mask mandate or allowing remote access).
Quote my email from October 7 2022: “Bereits bei den Planungsitzungen unbedingt einen virtuellen remote access (Zoom oder ähnlich) ermöglichen.”
I am being sarcastic of course.
This is not at all hilarious, in fact i am extremely disappointed, angry even. And it breaks my heart. I cried when my friend told me. I still do.
Especially after all the information that you sent me, how much was being done to make the various events inclusive, to be non-ableist.
Especially after telling me, trust was broken because i raised these topics on Mastodon.
Planning meetings, where certain people are excluded is ableist. It really is as simple as that.
Needless to say, both of us cannot attend a general assembly in this form.
So here i go:
Please make this general assembly covid-safe.
Which means, the pot luck has to happen after the meeting (people take off the masks for food and drink) or outdoors.
The meeting is held with a mask mandate.
Even better if it is a hybrid meeting, which allows people (disabled/immuno-compromised/chronically ill/with partners in such a situation/and/or/still cautious) to attend.
For further context people can listen to the following podcasts:
Disability Justice Organizers Dream Big and Resist a Culture of Disposability
In solidarity, X
Attachment 2: Mailed 01.03.2023:
Hi A.
Thank you for the real talk.
I see several fundamental problems with your argument though.
1. Not mandates are what is problematic, but who imposes or decides them. Were they imposed by the state, employer or another top-down entity? Or were they decided in a consensus process, bottom up? I know of several anarchist and radical leftist organizations, who have a mask mandate in their action or group consensus, in so-called Europe or the
US. Ende Gelände had it until recently even for their outdoor demonstrations. Many anarchist groups impose a no-phone rule for meetings for opsec reasons. Why is this a valid mandate but masks should somehow be a problem? Masks are a minor inconvenience that allows the space to be accessible to more people.
Anarchy is not having no rules, it is deciding them horizontally. You even had a similar sentence on the website until recently, but i don’t see it now.
2. Calling masks a limitation, however, is the problem. In my understanding of mutual aid and communal care, which i hope you agree are core beliefs for anarchists, it is never ever a limitation if i can do something to protect the “vulnerable” people around me. In fact any other attitude is ableist and excludes people from participation. So here is my suggestion, please propose this in my name at the next general meeting not general assembly (it even says general meeting on the flyer):
It was clear to me, that at this stage of the pandemic, with the state! imposing a normalization of continuous infections, deaths and disability, it would have been a huge task to make the entire RIA Anarchy2023 a covid-safe, mask-wearing etc event. My idea was to give every organizer the option to make their event, discussion, panel or whatever covid-safe (with masks and/or remote access via video streaming). Then these events who chose this option could have been bundled in one or two locations.
I believe, it would have been easy to find consensus to make certain locations of the gathering covid-safe and therefore accessible to the so-called “vulnerable”, the immunocompromised, the chroncially ill, people like me with LongCOVID, or the disabled. We also do not know how the infection numbers will be in summer here. As one anarchist suffering from LongCOVID and therefore experiencing how debilitating this disease really is, i simply have to try to protect my comrades from potentially having to go through the same ordeal. The state has given up on us, thrown us under the bus, it is up to us now to protect each other.
Everything else is ableism (and in that even following state rules!) and has nothing to do in an anarchist organisation.
Cheerz, X
Edit: It has been a while, but you may well have seen the response by the orga team of the RIA to this article and the one originally published on renverse.co. Sorry for only updating things here now, but i was simply too upset and devastated by their response to even bother.
But in the spirit of completion, in an attempt to paint the full picture, here it goes.
In regards to my person and this article they wrote:
“As for the statement of the person called Pieceofplastic, the reality from our point of view is different. We have considered this person and invited them to several meetings. They came to a radio group meeting where they were asked to present all their needs. Yet they disappeared saying that they could not work under these conditions, without explaining what these conditions were and what we should have done differently.”
That’s it.
Not only is this a completely incorrect account of what happened (what everyone who actually read this article is aware of), but the orga team has yet to acknowledge that i raised some valid concerns, they have yet to express some self-critique in regards to how i and my (valid!) concerns were handled.
Instead they threw me under the bus. They even think it fair to spread lies about me.
They abuse their platform to spread these lies, trying to make me look like a lunatic, like a difficult person that they tried their best to “consider”. Meanwhile in actual reality i have been simply pointing out that the organization of the RIA had (and keeps having!) an ableism problem. I did this as a disabled and chronically ill person, yet they made it look like i was the problem. Victim blaming. Shooting the messenger.
And that is yet again ableist.
One person from the care team did write to me and apologized regarding issues with communication, but only after several mails back and forth and after heavy accusations from her side.
I reacted to their statement on one of my Mastodon accounts, but who reads that, right?
I’ll post it here, just in case someone wants to read up on it:
Okay, @anarchy2023, maybe it would be a good idea NOT TO SPREAD LIES when you make a statement:
https://anarchy2023.org/fr/info/media/response-renverse
You write: “As for the statement of the person called Pieceofplastic, the reality from our point of view is different. We have considered this person and invited them to several meetings. They came to a radio group meeting where they were asked to present all their needs. Yet they disappeared saying that they could not work under these conditions, without explaining what these conditions were and what we should have done differently.”
Everything is wrong in this paragraph, or it is framed in a way that intents to shift the blame onto me. And to throw me under the bus.
1. The name of the blog is pieceoplastic.com, that is not my name.
2. You “considered” me (what a horrible word in this context), after four months of an ordeal during which i was trying to get involved, with a great number of my emails left without a response.
3. You “placed” (i could also say “forced me” here, it would be more correct) me into the group radio, when my expressed interest from the start had been to be in the care team.
4. I did explain why i left the radio group, in detail, i will quote that statement bellow. I then contacted the care team, to a.) try to get involved in the care team and b.) appeal to them that they fight against the ableist structure of the gathering. I did not receive an answer to my various emails o care@anarchy2023.org for weeks to then be told that they had not checked the email “for a long time”. After that i heard nothing from them to my follow up question. So that is another lie: “La Team Care des RIA en profite pour signaler que contrairement à ce qui a été écrit, nous répondons aux mails et nous nous mettons en quatre pour trouver des solutions qui prennent en compte les besoins de touxtes. N’hésitez surtout pas à nous écrire si nous pouvons vous aider !”
5. My issue, from the start has been ableism in the very structure of the organizational team (and in the plans for the RIA). My expressed interest had been that the orga meetings should be covid-safe, so that chronically ill or immunocompromised people, like myself, could participate OR that hybrid meetings are organzied which would allow them remote access.
6. I explained all this in great detail in my blog post here: https://pieceoplastic.com/2023/03/25/anarchy2023-the-international-anti-authoritarian-meeting-is-planning-a-covid-superspreader/. What you did here is not only a disingenuous summary but actually an outrageous twisting of the issues at hand. An attempt to throw me under the bus. My concerns are valid. The RIA still does not have a covid-safe structure. I (and others) still cannot participate because of that.
7. Chris Zumbrunn’s statement is vague and rubbery and does not make things clearer to the least. Meanwhile @zumbrunn on Twitter RTs Elon Musk, RFKjr (see bellow, in the video RFKjr compares Fauci to Dr. Mengele), Kim Dotcom and other right wing libertarians. He was involved in the ableist, antisemitic and fascist Anti-Mask Anti-Vaxx protests in Bern. And incidentally it was him who was the one that side lined me for four months by not responding to my emails where i was trying to fight for masks at the organizational meetings and the RIA. Coincidence? Plus Chris he often sounds like a conspiracy theorist. He cannot be involved in an anarchist gathering.
8. I can prove all my claims with emails and screen shots.
9. You throwing me under the bus in such a manner, that IS #Ablesim. I have expressed valid concerns. I am chronically ill, neurodivergent, depressed and #notjustsad. And you KNOW all this. You are playing with fire here. You have my email, i better here from you.
10. I am pleased that you will cancel some of the workshops mentioned at renverse.co.So following is the statement i made when i left the radio group:
“Hey guys. I realise that, as it stands, i cannot in good conscience be involved in planning this gathering in St. Imier. Since it will not be planned with COVID-Safety in mind, which for me, who is chronically ill, and many others will mean we cannot participate. During, or so short after (if you buy the sociological production of the end of the pandemic bullshit), a global pandemic you simply can’t plan an international meeting without a pandemic safety concept. People will travel here from other countries, this could easily turn into a super spreader event. We all hope it wont’t of course. But as anarchists, we have to consider such scenarios.
I will therefore leave this group. My contact at the CCC never answered, anyway, and i doubt decent video streaming will be possible. A solid internet connection should have been organised months ago, these things take planning.” [sic]
#Anarchy #Anarchy2023 #StImier
Needless to say, i never heard from there.
Be careful if you go to St-Imier. And please report back to me if you witness any ableism. I aim to keep track of it. This battle has only just begun.
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