Finding Our Roots-2009

By A. Joseph Iwasa

This year I attended the third annual Anarchist Finding Our Roots Conference in Chicago, Illinois.

Saturday, at Roosevelt University I attended two different workshops.  The first was "Let's Organize the Hood:  Organizing in Poor Communities of Color and Among Impoverished Populations" with ex-Black Panther Party cadre Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, author of "Anarchism and the Black Revolution."  The talk was remarkable, though I left when it got to questions and answers.  I've done community organizing in the past, but now I'm primarily involved in agricultural work.  He's a prolific writer on grass roots organizing, and I would highly recommend that those interested look into his work.

Later I attended two, one hour and fifteen minute sessions on collective living spaces, which had been attended by about forty people, half of which were also living in collective houses around town.  The Lower Case Collective, Weiser House, the Cunt Collective, Grandpa Whipple, the St, Francis Catholic Worker House, Throop Junction, Mt. Happy and a number of other various collective houses were represented. 

There were many new community members, and people interested in the topic who put forward a number of questions that were replied to with a wide range of responses from people's experiences with current and older community living situations.

Sunday I attended a workshop on the Zapatistas and public space. Unfortunately everyone there seemed to have only read about them, as opposed to working with them like many of my comrades have, but it was still a lively and worth while discussion.  It was presented by the author of "Unbounded Publics:  Transgressive Public Spheres, Zapatismo, and Political Theory," Richard Gilman-Opalsky.

At lunch the people of color caucused, and about a dozen of us made plans to meet back up later for networking.

My workshop, "A Return to the Land" was attended by about 30 people. Only six of us had experience living off the land, so it was a great chance to talk extensively with people who are interested in the topic, though not active with it. Avram and Ben who I've worked with a a job skills and readiness program, for homeless and low-income people in organic farming and gardening, Growing Home, were both there, some sort of primitivist who got pissed and left because we were talking about farming, a person with experience with World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), someone with Camphill experience, and Andrew from Jesus People USA talked about working on a Mennonite farm, and staying with some Amish folks.

We went fifteen minutes over, though retained most of the crowd for the whole workshop. The discussion was wide ranging from local food systems, to third world struggles for land, with just about everything in between. Upper Midwest Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training (CRAFT), the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (FEC) farm communes, the Catholic Worker Movement farms, Camphills-biodynamics, and small family farms in the first world, and Campesina a Campesina, the Landless Workers Movement, Cuba, Russia, China, Zimbabwe, the Zapatistas and the Sandanistas in the the third world were all discussed.

For more information please check out www.findingourroots.org and www.illvox.org.