on fundraising and revolt
why we feel stuck (it's on purpose)
Members of our group recently saw this post from @gayatrisethi. They argue that the lack of revolt in the Global North is due to saviorism, which is causing people to focus on fundraising rather than militant forms of protest. It's worth sitting with. As a group focused on fundraising, we of course think what we're doing is important -- so this may come off a bit defensive -- but we think it's important to analyze this sentiment, its validity and where it's coming from, and what we can possibly do about it.
G Sethi rightfully critiques the pro-Palestine movement for being weak sauce, but we don't think it is weak sauce because of fundraising. If we want to understand why revolts happen (and why they don't), we have to look at history and the conditions of struggle in the past and present, make connections, and honestly examine where we're at right now.
When we do that, we notice that the forces working against revolt come from all sides: the State and its police, politicians and media apparatus (of course), but also opposition parties, labor unions, non-profits/NGOs, and authoritarian so-called "leftist" organizations. All of these entities have discouraged people from taking adversarial actions labeled as "violent": smashing banks or corporate stores, standing up to the police by disobeying their orders or de-arresting people they try to snatch. This happens in organizing meetings as well as on the streets.
Pressure valves
We have been in meetings of rank-and-file union members disgusted that their unions have a vested interest in the military-industrial complex and the genocidal Democratic Party. This piece by comrades from UAW Labor for Palestine sums it up (and their whole article is worth reading):
UAW leadership has chosen to take no immediate shop-floor action while being hailed as the leader of the international working class for simply advocating a ceasefire that it has no plan for actualizing—a task the left press has been all too eager to assist them in accomplishing, with reporters already starting to chronicle UAW leaders in the “great man” genre of coverage rather than focusing on the ceasefire organizing work happening in defiance of such leaders’ injunctions to do nothing.
As such, we've suggested treating them like the adversaries they are. What if we withheld dues? Threatened to disaffiliate or decertify the union? This is shocking to the liberal activist who sees labor unions as "on our side." Why would we withhold dues and harm the organization that's fighting for our rights? These pearl-clutching loyalists within the rank-and-file caucuses instead say that we should ask ("demand") that our union leadership take a stronger stance.
But the problem, which UAW Labor for Palestine experienced, was that the UAW President Shawn Fain did in fact "take a stance" in the form of public statements on social media "calling for a ceasefire," and even by making promises in late 2023 to explore "divestment." This "Divestment and Just Transition" committee would supposedly “think about what it would mean to actually have a just transition, what used to be called a ‘peace conversion,’ of folks who work in the weapons and defense industry into something else." Over a year and a half later, the "ceasefire" came and left, and this committee is still "thinking."
Fain took these steps as a result of unrelenting pressure from rank-and-file union members, but also in the mix were autonomous actions. Union members drove to weapons manufacturing plants represented by their same union in an attempt to speak to workers, and were driven out by union bosses who threatened to call the police. Independent groups organized pickets to make it known that the community knows what happens inside those factory walls. Anger was ramping as the genocide raged on and we knew that the bombs and guns were being built right down the street.
The above actions resulted in "statements" and "committees" from union leaders, which were not a victory but textbook counterinsurgency. The labor elite saw that anger was growing, and their longstanding collusion with the State was becoming more apparent -- and so, a pressure release valve was turned. And the factories are still churning out death.
Demanding a more adversarial relationship with the institutions we're a part of -- especially if we see them as usually "on our side" as with labor unions -- is seen as threatening and going too far. People react with fear and defensiveness, rather than support, solidarity, or curiosity about what alternative tactics might mean or look like. This plays directly into the hands of movement managers -- like trade union and party leaders -- whose role is to suppress adversarial dissent and redirect rage into the "proper" channels and forms. And this plays out in a more immediate and dangerous way on the streets.
Another march on washington
Activists across the country are gearing up for another "March on Washington" in support of the Palestinian people this weekend, organized primarily by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) through their front group the ANSWER Coalition. (A full discussion of the cult-like behaviors and abuses of PSL isn't the focus of this article, but these are documented here.)
ANSWER has taken a lead role in anti-war organizing going back to the Bush years; organizers claim that their D.C. rally against the war in Iraq drew over 300,000 people, which they hold up as a victory. Their recent protest statements proclaim that we need to "build momentum" for "mobilizations" "on a massive enough scale" so that "the rightwing has no choice but to back down." For them, more numbers is the point, but only if those numbers are behaving in the precise way they want.
The way PSL moves is to try to control the protest environment as much as possible, so they can get snapshots and sound bytes, appear relevant through media coverage, grow their following, and increase their dues-paying membership. They reportedly insist that their own protests must have "no vandalism" and "no violence." But this spells serious danger for anyone with different ideas about how to protest. Miguel Louis shares their experience of how PSL co-opted protests and endangered people in the pacific northwest in 2023:
...the police had ordered a dispersal and arrested a few people. When the police presence arrived, the PSL co-opted the protest and policed the crowd into a circle. They commanded everyone there to come over and sit down, and “show the cops we’re peaceful”, meanwhile abandoning the several people being arrested near the stairs. Witnesses watched as their strange suggestion made it easier for the police to move in and arrest activists.
PSL was also the group to put out a public call for a picket at the Boeing facility, east of Portland. While this idea had been shared, and the event discussed in back channels, they were the first to organize the rally. After an hour, as protesters continued to show up with their hand-made signs in the morning hours, PSL took a hold of the megaphone. They told everyone to go ahead and pack up, that they had demonstrated their dissent and they could rest well.
Activists expressed their anger at their announcement. They explained over and over how a picket line works, and that the entire point is to shut down a job site, until the demands are met. Because Boeing built the bombs and drones used on neighborhoods in Gaza, they had a duty to shut down production, if at least for a day.
However, the PSL pulled their support and sent their supporters home, abandoning the activists at the facility. They got on their story and announced the action was over. All the while those on the ground waited and called for numbers. But this critical lack of a crowd due to the call from the cult, culminated in multiple car attacks.
PSL is just one of many organizations (like labor unions and NGOs/nonprofits like Jewish Voice for Peace) that channel on-the-ground rage and energy into peace policed marches, placing emphasis on "mobilizing numbers" above all else. The role of movement managers is to marginalize their critics (by labeling them as "divisive" or "demobilizing") and to discourage confrontational or combative tactics.
As this orientation towards protest has grown ubiquitous, protesters also self-police and police one another even without the guiding hand of these larger organizations. In a recent action we were at, for example, some comrades who hurled righteous anger and vitriol at the pigs (e.g., “kill yourself, pig!”) were chastised because it “could be construed as a threat.” And as pigs moved in to disperse protesters, almost everyone stood on and watched and/or filmed everything.
We want to reiterate again that the problem is not in mass marches per se — it's the active policing of combative tendencies in the marches, the need to control and impose some kind of uniformity, to "keep things peaceful" when peace is not what is needed right now, when any communist, socialist or anarchist knows that nonviolent protest has never been the key to overthrowing these systems. The reason movement managers and leaders are so afraid of things "getting out of hand" or "getting out of control" at these demonstrations is because it would tarnish their image as an organization, threaten their funding sources or reputation. What would happen if we did let it get out of hand? Who would really be harmed? They claim that they are "keeping people safe"... but from who?
Beyond simply rejecting movement managers like NGOs and cult-like political parties, all of us have work to do in unlearning the conditioning of the State. We agree with
that only movements rooted in a diversity of tactics and mutual respect can move us forward. We have to learn how to overcome passivity, put down our phones, learn self-defense and situational awareness skills to keep us cool in the moment. We have to learn how to do plenty of other things that need not be written about on this public platform. And, maybe most importantly of all, we have to develop our autonomous networks of mutual aid and care to carry us through it all.The mutual aid vs. charity debate
Which brings us to our next point: not all "fundraising" is equal. Just as the average Westerner is conditioned to look to and follow the lead of large organizations and NGOs for what to do (march, vote, or call your reps) they are also conditioned to see large NGOs as the most trustworthy places to donate to, seeing them as "representatives" of the people they claim to help.
Hala Sabbah of the Sameer Project, a Palestinian mutual aid group, explains how NGOs who claim to help Palestinians are in reality functioning as another more sinister arm of the occupation:
The goal of these NGOs is not the liberation of Palestine or to end colonization. The goal is to numb people and to control people by hanging the food [in front of them] and then making them do whatever they want to get that food...
The challenge that comes with these NGOs is that they have hundreds of millions of dollars, but their work is super bureaucratic, they normalize the occupation... They don't care about Gazans... they are doing this because it's part of their colonial narrative: look at us, we are the heroes who are feeding these poor little brown children.
This is the exact saviorist impulse that was called out at the start of this piece. But Hala's critique doesn't relate only to the unearned "good feelings" of those who are donating to these NGOs. It is also about the entire NGO-industrial complex operating in Palestine, and how they play a bueaucratic (management) role in normalizing the zionist entity. These organizations' ultimate goal is to control the on-the-ground situation while manufacturing and presenting a certain image of itself (sound familiar?).
Hala intervenes in the long-standing debate about how we define "mutual aid" versus "charity," another frequent point of contention in leftist spaces. Ultimately, charity is about control. It is about large organizations claiming to do something beneficial for a group of people, but with strings attached. Other types of "fundraising" — what we would call mutual aid — are more adversarial to the State because it is concerned with drawing from and building on our autonomous capacities outside of the State.
This idea comes across as scary to many who would like to maintain some sort of certainty or control over how money gets spent. It's no coincidence that large activist organizations, when they have done any fundraising for people in Palestine at all throughout the last year and a half, have thrown extravagant galas and dinners to raise millions for just the sort of charities and non-profits that Hala is critiquing.
We've noticed some hesitancy to donate to mutual aid groups. We think what is behind this is a conditioned trust of supposedly "legitimate" entities, and a conditioned suspicion of people taking action on their own, outside of the ideas of what movement leaders or established organizations have decided is best. But Hala shows that Palestinians have long had their own models of helping and supporting one another, which can be traced back to before the First Intifada, before the Nakba, before British colonization, and that these systems of barter and association have helped them survive successive waves of brutal colonization and dispossession.
If reading this article was helpful or thought-provoking to you in any way, please consider making a donation to the Sameer Project! Also, check out this resource from Workers in Palestine: a helpful map of every major weapons manufacturer producing the bombs being dropped on Gaza.
Sources and inspirations
A diversity of methods is necessary in our struggle because none of us have the answer regarding the one true strategy for revolution; because there is no one size that fits all and each of us must develop a unique form of struggle for our respective situation; and because in fact our movements are harder to repress when we replace a party-line unity with a broad solidarity, when we attack as a swarm and not as an opposing army. Whether that army is pacifist or combative, the discipline required to coerce or intimidate everyone into following one set of pre-approved tactics, and to exclude those who fall out of line, is authoritarian. In such a contest, whichever army won—the army of the government or the army of the movement—the State would triumph.
A lack of unity does not mean a lack of communication. We learn from difference, and we are stronger when we communicate across this difference, criticizing one another but also helping one another, and all the while respecting our fundamental difference. There are many totally erroneous or backstabbing forms of struggle, and these should be criticized vehemently, not protected behind a polite relativism. But the goal of our criticism should be solidarity, not homogeneity. There are a thousand different roles to play within this struggle, if we can learn to support one another in our differences. There is a place for healers, for fighters, for storytellers, for those who resolve conflicts and those who seek conflicts.
All of us can do a better job at seeking this more robust struggle.
—
, The Failure of Nonviolence
- ’s a critical analysis of PSL’s strategy:
Milliennials are Killing Capitalism’s interview with Hala Sabbah: https://millennialsarekillingcapitalism.libsyn.com/a-form-of-resistance-towards-liberation-hala-sabbah-on-the-sameer-project
- on the Death Panel podcast talking about mutual aid:
Critique and self-critique of protest tactics in Tacoma: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-reportback-from-the-port-blockade-in-tacoma-the-boat-that-wasn-t-blocked
On-the-ground account of PSL endangering protesters: https://allegedlymiguel.medium.com/on-parties-socialism-and-liberation-calling-out-psl-and-controlled-opposition-95ee3744124c
Black Rose/Rosa Negra on organizing versus mobilizations and burnout: https://www.blackrosefed.org/deep-organizing-palestine/
“Peace Police are Police” zine: https://trueleappress.wordpress.com/2024/03/05/peace-police-are-police/
Consolidated list of resources about PSL’s cult-like behavior, abuse cover-ups, peace policing, and strategic errors: https://linktr.ee/PSLflags
Donate to the Sameer Project: https://linktr.ee/thesameerproject
excellent piece
This should be required reading for anyone identifying as an activist