Tag: Feminism

“We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot!”: Anarcha-Feminism in Love and Rage (1989-98)

In the past two days, I successfully defended my dissertation (“Love and Rage: Revolutionary Anarchism in the Late Twentieth Century”) and had a new peer reviewed article published in the open access journal Coils of the Serpent: Journal for the Study of Contemporary Power. The article is titled “‘We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot!’: Anarcha-Feminism in Love and Rage (1989-98),” and it is part of a fantastic special issue called “Burning the Ballot: Feminism Meets Anarchy.”

Here is how the editors describe my article in their introduction to the special issue:

“As we draw towards the end of our special issue Spencer Beswick continues the discussion of anarcha-feminist contributions to struggles for abortion access, queer and trans liberation, and challenging all forms of oppression and domination within movement spaces themselves. Looking at the Love and Rage organization, and highlighting its contributions throughout the 1990s to keep the anarchist flame alive, Beswick shows the continued intersectional promise of anarcha-feminist politics against liberal forms of inclusion and continually furthering anti-racist and feminist concerns within broader anarchism. The wide ranging work of Love and Rage shows the necessity, but also the difficulties, in expanding intersectional work within movements that continues to resonate today.

In particular, Beswick details the efforts by Love and Rage to foreground and incorporate an explicit anti-racist feminist politics as the organization grew and developed by carefully considering the interventions of Women of Colour feminists and organizers. Importantly, the growing pains of the organization are highlighted, including a critical discussion of its own internal challenges with racism, patriarchy and male domination, and they serve as a reminder of the need for continued vigilance to confront systems of domination in all movement spaces. Externally, the militant contributions of Love and Rage to confronting anti-abortion reactionaries provide lessons and points of consideration for the movements of today. “Militant confrontation of Operation Rescue was a turning point in the development of a new anarchist feminism,” Beswick argues, “feminists went on the attack in order to defend women’s autonomy and build a new world. In their uncompromising struggle for reproductive freedom, anarchists helped build a fighting, revolutionary feminist movement.” By examining the contributions, complexities and contradictions within Love and Rage “‘We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot!’: Anarcha-Feminism in Love and Rage (1989-98)” charts the history of anarcha-feminist agitation and its enduring legacy, while revealing the continued work that needs to be done in the present.”

You can read the article for free here: “‘We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot!’: Anarcha-Feminism in Love and Rage (1989-98).” Let me know what you think!

A Year of Anarchist History

I published a lot this year!

My writing on anarcha-feminist abortion struggles was kicked off with my first piece in the Washington Post, “The model for mobilizing to protect abortion rights beyond voting” (May 17)

That same week, I published “‘We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot!’: How Anarcha-Feminists Built Dual Power in Struggles for Reproductive Freedom” (May 19) in It’s Going Down

I was then interviewed with Suzy Subways for the It’s Going Down podcast episode “Lessons From the Fight to Protect Abortion Clinics in the 1990s: A Discussion” (June 17)

My last piece on anarcha-feminist abortion struggle was “Abortion Struggles Beyond Voting: Women’s Liberation, Reproductive Care, and Dual Power” (August 30) for Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life’s excellent series on Reproductive Freedom. You can also find me reading this on Youtube here.

I also published a longer piece on the German Autonomen and the Invisible Committee, “Living Communism: Theory & Practice of Autonomy & Attack” (July 29) in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory

I published a short essay, first written in the early covid days, in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory’s Pandemics from the Bottom Up series, “The Quarantine Commune” (September 11). You can also find me reading this on Youtube here.

Finally, I published my first peer reviewed academic journal article “From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s),” in the Anarchist Studies journal (email me for a PDF of my article!)

I’m looking forward to writing and sharing more in the coming year! My new year’s resolution is to finish my dissertation, titled “Love and Rage: Revolutionary Anarchism in the Late Twentieth Century.”

Abortion Struggles Beyond Voting: Women’s Liberation, Reproductive Care, and Dual Power

This week I published a new piece on the history of abortion struggles in Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life.

“At recent pro-choice demonstrations, we have been told that the only way to protect abortion is to vote for Democrats in November. Yet the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade under a Democratic president, house, and senate. The Democrats appear more interested in fundraising off of Roe and attacking grassroots activists than they do fighting the right-wing assault on abortion. But reproductive rights were not won by electoral means, and that is not how we will defend them. The historical experiences of feminist abortion struggle between the 1960s and 1990s offer alternative strategies for building power and transforming society.”

Read the full piece here: Abortion Struggles Beyond Voting: Women’s Liberation, Reproductive Care, and Dual Power

I also recorded an audio version that I uploaded to YouTube, which you can listen to here: Abortion Struggles Beyond Voting.

Lessons From the Fight to Protect Abortion Clinics in the 1990s [IGD Podcast Interview]

Suzy Subways and I were interviewed about anarcha-feminist abortion struggle for the latest It’s Going Down podcast! Check it out here: Lessons From the Fight to Protect Abortion Clinics in the 1990s.

Description:

“On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we talk with both long-time anarchist organizer Suzy Subways and historian Spencer Beswick about how anarchists in the 1990s organized in the face of a deadly far-Right attack on abortion access across the so-called United States.

With the growth of both the above ground organization Operation Rescue, which mobilized thousands to shut down abortion clinics and the underground anti-abortion movement which targeted doctors and reproductive health offices with firebombings and assassinations, abortion access was under threat like never before. But while liberals stuck to legalistic attempts to sway the courts, anarchists, utilizing strategies and tactics from groups like Anti-Racist Action, brought a fresh perspective to the struggle and began to mobilize and build coalitions.

During our discussion we cover this history as well as what led to the passing of Roe v Wade; as Beswick argues that it was the creation of a mass, militant movement that centered bodily autonomy and freedom that forced the State to codify limited abortion rights into law. As the supreme court is poised to rule on striking down Roe v Wade, this history, and the lessons and questions that it raises, is needed now more than ever.”

More Info: We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot: How Anarcha-Feminists Built Dual Power in Struggles for Reproductive Freedom, Empty Hands History, and Claim No Easy Victories: An Anarchist Analysis of ARA and its Contributions to the Building of a Radical Anti-Racist Movement

Anarcha-Feminist Abortion Struggle: Reproductive Freedom and Dual Power

The Supreme Court’s plan to reverse Roe v. Wade means that abortion will likely soon become illegal for many people across the United States. As we search for effective responses, we can look to anarcha-feminist strategies to protect abortion by building mass movements and grassroots reproductive healthcare infrastructure. This week, I published two articles about this history; check out the excerpts below.

In the Washington Post, I contextualize our present moment and present The model for mobilizing to protect abortion rights beyond voting.

Beyond voting for candidates who support abortion rights at election time, what is to be done? The historical experiences of the feminist abortion struggle between the 1960s and 1990s offer alternative strategies. Feminists originally won reproductive rights through mass mobilization in the streets combined with widespread underground provision of abortion and other health care. These actions forced the Supreme Court to affirm a constitutional right to abortion in 1973.

[In the 1980s-90s] anarchists (anti-state socialists) within the feminist movement rejected voting and legal reforms in favor of radical grass-roots activism. Instead of the slogan “we’re pro-choice and we vote,” anarchists often marched behind a banner reading “we’re pro-choice and we riot!”

Following the example of second-wave feminists, anarchists framed abortion as a question of bodily autonomy and women’s liberation.

Heading into the 1990s, amid new right-wing attacks on abortion rights, anarcha-feminists in Love and Rage built grass-roots infrastructure to perform abortions and provide for reproductive health more broadly. They sought to build autonomy on their own terms by organizing self-help groups in which, San Francisco activist Sunshine Smith explained, “women learn the basics of self-cervical exams, do pelvics on each other, and learn how to do menstrual extraction.”

Anarchists believed this kind of infrastructure was key to bodily autonomy and helped lay the foundation for building revolutionary dual power: radical institutions that challenged the hegemony of the state. If women controlled their own bodies and institutions, they would no longer depend on the state to protect their rights.

The anarchist and feminist traditions of mass mobilization, autonomous health infrastructure and grass-roots struggle offer alternatives — or at least a radical complement — to voting. Reversing Roe v. Wade will not stop abortions; it will only make them more dangerous and less accessible. As anarcha-feminist Liz Highleyman argued in 1992, “the day when abortion is again made illegal may come sooner than we like to think. We must be ready to take our bodies and our lives into our own hands.”

In It’s Going Down, I explore the anarcha-feminist model for providing reproductive care and building dual power in “We’re Pro-Choice and We Riot!”: How Anarcha-Feminists Built Dual Power in Struggles for Reproductive Freedom

As the Supreme Court prepares to reverse Roe v. Wade under a Democratic president, house, and senate, it is clear that action at the ballot box is insufficient to protect abortion. Reproductive rights were not won by electoral means, and that is not how we will defend them.

Anarcha-feminists were on the front lines of the struggle for abortion throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. They were convinced that Roe v. Wade would not last forever and that they could not depend on the state and the legal system to protect reproductive freedom. Anarcha-feminists took a three-pronged approach to abortion struggle: defense of abortion clinics, construction of grassroots reproductive health infrastructure, and an anti-state approach to building feminist dual power.

Anarcha-feminists physically protected abortion clinics from the likes of Operation Rescue, which was formed in 1986 to act as anti-abortion shock troops.

Anarcha-feminists established autonomous infrastructure and self-help groups in which people learned to take care of their own bodies and induce abortions on their own terms. As one anarchist put it in a 1991 article, “medicine is something we must take into our own hands. Because how can you smash the state if you’re still walking funny from a visit to the gynecologist’s?”

Anarchists advocated expanding grassroots infrastructure and self-organization to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to perform their own reproductive care. They argued that this would produce true reproductive freedom and autonomy that was independent of the state and its laws.

Anarcha-feminists did not appeal to the state to maintain abortion rights. They believed that the state was inherently patriarchal and was ultimately the enemy of reproductive justice. Thus, the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (1989-98) argued in its draft political statement that “our freedom will not come through the passage of yet more laws but through the building of communities strong enough to defend themselves against anti-choice and anti-queer terror, rape, battery, child abuse and police harassment.”

Establishing reproductive healthcare infrastructure is a key component of feminist dual power that challenges the hegemony of the state and capitalism. This kind of infrastructure prefigures—and concretely establishes—a world defined by mutual aid, solidarity, and autonomy.

The model for mobilizing to protect abortion rights beyond voting

I published a new article in the Washington Post’s Made By History section today, check it out here!

The model for mobilizing to protect abortion rights beyond voting: ‘We’re pro-choice and we riot!’ How anarchists reframed the fight for abortion

The argument:
The anarchist and feminist traditions of mass mobilization, autonomous health infrastructure and grass-roots struggle offer alternatives — or at least a radical complement — to voting. Reversing Roe v. Wade will not stop abortions; it will only make them more dangerous and less accessible. As anarcha-feminist Liz Highleyman argued in 1992, “the day when abortion is again made illegal may come sooner than we like to think. We must be ready to take our bodies and our lives into our own hands.”

From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-90s)

My article on the transformation and revitalization of anarchism in the late 20th century was recently accepted for publication in the Spring 2023 edition of the Anarchist Studies journal. Here is a sneak peak at the introduction:

Anarchism exploded into public view in the 1999 Battle of Seattle. While the media focused on the spectacle of the black bloc smashing windows, they largely overlooked the role of anarchism behind the scenes where activists organized themselves in affinity groups and made decisions by consensus. Although self-identified anarchists remained a minority within it, the anti-globalization movement became known for its embrace of “common sense” anarchist values and practices. Large segments of the movement operated along anarchist principles: decentralization, horizontal organizational structures, militant street demonstrations, rejection of the state and capitalism, and advocacy of both individual freedom and worker control of production. After almost a century of Marxist predominance, how did anarchism develop from a marginal phenomenon into a force at the center of the anti-globalization movement?

This article explores the subterranean development of American anarchism in the late twentieth century. As a reactionary counterrevolution remade society, the New Left was decimated by violent repression, and the Soviet Union collapsed, many on the radical left reevaluated the politics of the 1960s-70s. A new generation of radicals—together with many ‘60s veterans—critiqued the failures of Marxism-Leninism and grappled with the fundamental changes in social, political, and economic life. As the ruling class embraced neoliberalism and repressive law and order politics, much of the left turned away from both party building and an orientation towards capturing state power. Their analysis of social changes and the failures of state socialism led many militants to reject the state, and the late twentieth century was marked by a spread of anarchist politics throughout the radical left.

Part one of this article analyzes the right-wing counterrevolution that defeated the radical currents of the “long 1960s.” Drawing on Corey Robin and Paulo Virno’s theories of conservatism and counterrevolution, I argue that we cannot see the New Right counterrevolution as a simple return to the past, but rather as the creation of a new social order that recuperated warped elements of the radicalism to which it reacted. In the United States, this took the form of neoliberal economics, masculine individualism articulated alongside a moral defense of the nuclear family, recuperation of elements of the feminist and civil rights movements, and a repressive law and order politics that embraced mass incarceration as a “fix” for both the radical left and the economic crisis.

In part two, I explore the evolution of the radical left in this period in order to understand the growing shift from Marxist to anarchist common sense. After analyzing the defeat of the Marxist-Leninist and national liberation movements of the long 1960s, I discuss five examples of the revitalization of anarchism and its underground development in a variety of movement spaces: the birth of Black/New Afrikan Anarchism from imprisoned ex-Black Panthers; the rise of anarcha-feminism in the women’s liberation movement; the growth of eco-anarchism; the role of punk in popularizing anarchism; and the foundation of nation-wide revolutionary social anarchist organizations like Love and Rage. Through these five cases—which each warrant an extended treatment beyond this article’s scope—I analyze a shift in the radical left towards an anarchistic politics which decenters and disavows the state in favor of grassroots dual power, direct self-determination, mutual aid, and non-hierarchical organization. This reorientation can only be understood by situating it in the context of the broad historical transformations of the post-1960s counterrevolution. I ultimately argue that anarchism was revitalized in the late twentieth century because it provided compelling, non-state-oriented answers to the new problems posed by the counterrevolution and the crisis of state socialism.

Writing Movement History: Fall 2021 Posts

I was based at the Brooklyn Interference Archive for Fall 2021 conducting dissertation research and interviews with support from Cornell’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. During this time, I wrote sixteen new blog posts, which I am collecting here:

Sept 12: ‘To Repulse The State From Our Uteri’: Anarcha-Feminist Abortion Struggle

Sept 14: ‘We’re Here, We’re Queer, and We Hate the Government!’: Queer Anarchism in Love and Rage

Sept 16: Neither East Nor West: Anarchism and the Soviet Dissolution

Sept 20: On Writing: Identity vs. Practice

Sept 21: Living Communism: Theory and Practice of Autonomy and Attack

Sept 26: Creating ‘New Porn’: Anarcha-Feminism vs. Onlyfans

Sept 29: Reading Amyl and the Sniffers’ ‘Capital’ Politically

Oct 2: Anarchist Oral History Project: Seeking Interviews

Oct 13: ‘Anarcho-Beef People’: Against All Domination at Anarchist Gatherings (1986-89)

Oct 17: Building the Movement: The Rebirth of Anarchism, 1986-89

Oct 19: A Roving Band of Anarcho-Punks: The Vermont Family’s Revitalization of American Anarchism

Oct 28: Analyzing Biden’s Spending Bill: A Debate Between Sectors of Capital

Nov 6: White Workers and Race Treason in Revolutionary Struggle

Nov 23: ‘Feminism Practices What Anarchism Preaches’: Anarcha-Feminism in the 20th Century (Panel Recording)

Dec 8: Learning from Ithaca’s Socialist Mayor: Electoralism and Movement Building

Dec 12: Red and Black Unite: The Paris Commune and Socialist Democracy

“We’re Here, We’re Queer, and We Hate the Government!”: Queer Anarchism in Love and Rage

Anarchists in Love and Rage (1989-98) pushed the struggle for queer liberation in radical directions. Members actively participated in gay and lesbian marches, developed an anarchist approach to queer politics, and joined ACT UP in fighting for people with AIDS.

Anarchists often had a visible presence at queer demonstrations and pushed radical action at them. For instance, Jan Kraker from the NYC Autonomous Anarchist Action describes how AAA brought a militant edge to queer organizing at a 1990 rally commemorating the Stonewall uprising. They dressed in Black Bloc and brought a banner to the rally that provided direction for the otherwise inchoate crowd. Kraker describes how “what had been a [sic] unorganized mass of people outside a bar had turned into a spirited march behind a ‘Queer Without Fear—Autonomous Anarchist Action’ banner.”[1]

This exemplifies how Love and Rage encouraged broader movements to take a more radical, confrontational approach. It was not necessarily about convincing them to become anarchists or join the organization, but rather spreading new tactics and values that had been developed within the anarchist movement of the 1980s. In this vein, Liz A. Highleyman advocated collective participation in the queer march on Washington in 1993, arguing that “it is important that anarchists have a presence in the march to let people know that we cannot rely on laws and the government to guarantee queer liberation.”[2] Anarchist chants included “We’re fucking anarchists, we’ll fuck whoever we want!” and “We’re here, we’re Queer, and we hate the government!”[3] A group of Red & Anarchist Skinheads marched with a banner reading “Anti-Racist Skinheads and Punx Against Homophobia” and chanted “Oi! Oi! Oi! We fuck boys!”[4]

Beyond participating in queer activism, anarcha-feminists argued that there was something inherently queer about the anarchist rejection of all structures of social domination. For instance, Highleyman notes about the anarchist contingent at the 1993 march that “Gay, Lesbian, Bi, hetero or undefined, all the anarchists were queer in their own way.”[5] Lin L. Elliot goes further, arguing in a powerful article linking queer and indigenous resistance that the “new activism of the 80s and 90s has already shown us the way. ACT UP and, more recently, Queer Nation, embody an unmistakably Queer perspective; non-hierarchical, even anarchical, they combine seriousness with humor, politics with play.”[6] Queer and anarchist politics both embodied this non-hierarchical, fluid approach to the world.

This perspective prefigured later developments in queer anarchist theory. The Mary Nardini Gang argues in “Toward the Queerest Insurrection” in 2014 that queer is not simply a sexual identity but rather “the qualitative position of opposition to presentations of stability […] Queer is the cohesion of everything in conflict with the heterosexual capitalist world. […] By ‘queer’, we mean ‘social war.’ And when we speak of queer as a conflict with all domination, we mean it.”[7] In this view, anarchism is inherently queer because it rejects the “normalcy” of capitalist patriarchy and struggles against all forms of hierarchy and oppression.

Anarchists also participated in AIDS activism, although they critiqued the state-centric elements of the movement. ACT UP drew upon many anarchistic values and practices: it was decentralized, grassroots, and direct-action oriented, and it operated outside of the state in many ways. Members formed alternative health networks, squatted buildings for people with AIDS to live in, provided safer-sex education, volunteer service organizations, and more.[8] Despite this, ACT UP focused largely on spectacular actions meant to pressure the government to act on AIDS. Anarchists generally rejected this strategy on principle.

Liz Highleyman critiques ACT UP from an anarchist perspective in her article “Anarchism and AIDS Activism.” She argues that “the government does not represent our best interests [so] it would be foolish to rely on it as a source of solutions […] we would be better off putting the time, money (including taxes), and effort that we currently devote to petitioning, supporting, and evading the government into alternative activities that meet our needs directly.”[9]

It is unclear from Highleyman’s piece, however, what she sees as the alternative: despite her call to “develop solutions that do not rely on the state,” would it really have been possible or practical to quickly develop effective treatments for AIDS without state intervention?[10] Indeed, Highleyman’s critique of ACT UP did not go unchallenged. In the next issue of the newspaper, a letter from Eric L. Sambach pushed back against her conclusion that ACT UP did not live up to the “anarchist ideal.” Sambach says that

ACT UP was not set up as an anarchist ideal, but to develop an effective response to the AIDS crisis. ACT UP members see a situation where rapidly growing numbers of people are dying as an emergency. In an emergency we do whatever works to enhance and save lives. Whether that action fits an anarchist or other model of social organization is another, and in these terms, theoretical question.[11]

Whether or not ACT UP strictly conformed to anarchist theory and practice was beside the point; AIDS activists took whatever opportunity they could to respond to an existential crisis. It may be useful to lay out an anarchist critique of state-centered AIDS activism, but to apply a “pure” anarchist standard to ACT UP verged on a dogmatic prioritization of anarchist politics over the lives of people with AIDS.

[1] Jan Kraker, “Faeries, Anarchists and Others Commemorate Stonewall,” Love and Rage, Vol. 1 No. 5 (August 1990), 4-5.

[2] Liz A. Highleyman, “Queer March in April,” Love and Rage, Vol. 4, No. 1 (February/March 1993), 3.

[3] Liz A. Highleyman, “Anarchists Join Queer March,” Love and Rage, Vol. 4 No. 3 (June/July 1993), 1. I personally witnessed a similar chant at the NATO summit protests in Chicago in 2012: “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re anarchists we’ll fuck you up!”

[4] Ibid., 6.

[5] Ibid., 6.

[6] Lin L. Elliot, “500 Queers of Resistance,” Love and Rage, Vol. 3, No. 5 (June 1992), 2.

[7] Mary Nardini Gang, “Toward the Queerest Insurrection,” (2014).

[8] Liz Highleyman, “Anarchism and AIDS Activism,” Love and Rage, Vol 2. No. 6 (June/July 1991), 10.

[9] Ibid., 11.

[10] Ibid., 11.

[11] Eric L. Sambach, letter titled “Purpose Pragmatism and Privilege,” Love and Rage, Vol. 2 No. 7 (August 1991), 2.