It's exciting to think of the potential of solidarity networks working together, fight bosses and landlord from multiple cities. I'm eager to see how we begin to do so. I think these questions will best answered through our actual organizing and practice, but would like to hear peoples initial ideas.
- what are the pros of us working together in the future?
- what are the possible cons?
- what would effectively working together look like?
- what would be some barriers to working effectively together?
SeaSol has organized a handful of actions in support of fights in other cities - and in one at least instance have played a fairly important role. Overall I think it is a great development, and personally hope we do more so in the future. Winning specific fights is great - and so is the chance to bring new people in through every action and fight. We seem to have a general recognition that mobilizing for fights in other cities is a great way to keep our groups energy and momentum going. If we have a slow couple of weeks, it's always handy to know a few fights in other cities we can mobilize for. It can give new folks a chance to plan the actions, and it just keeps us sharp as a group to stay active.
The flipside to this is there is of course no substitute for winning fights in your own town and building up a solid base of local organizers. There is strength in us working together, but our individual groups should be able to hold their own as well.
Please share your thoughts!
random thoughts:
- Pros: solidarity. the whole point! i know in the SolFed Office Angels conflict, the threatened support of the IWA across Europe was decisive. SolNets can presumably exercise similar mutual aid.
- Possible con: less active SolNets could end up being de facto activist groups doing solidarity for others, rather than developing conflicts of their own. this may reproduce all the familiar problems with activism (specialists acting on behalf of others etc).
- What would it look like? A call-out, answered? libcom and this forum specifically could serve as a hub for this. each SolNet would only need one person delegated to keep an eye for solidarity appeals.
- barriers: lack of targets (for local capitalists); busyness with local struggles inhibiting solidarity actions; communication problems