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The National Conference on Organized Resistance
Microcosm of a Changing Movement

By Lelia Spears

t’s Tuesday already and we haven’t saved the world yet!

That quote was passed down from my mother, and it serves as a reminder that our efforts to better the world are part of a process, not an overnight miracle revolution. As a part of a collective that puts on the National Conference on Organized Resistance, I have seen that, like many other activist endeavors, hosting a conference in all its glory and frustration requires patience and adaptability.

The National Conference on Organized Resistance is a changing and growing entity reflective in many ways of the budding movement that has emerged in the United States since the 1999 protests in Seattle (NVA, Jan.-Feb. 2000). Obviously, this movement was not born out of thin air, and the possibility of its surfacing has been there all along. The call to action in Seattle was the spark for many people’s education on the atrocities of free trade and unbridled capitalism. Much has been written about this monumental event, which occurred only a little over a year and a half ago.

The battle of Seattle was a mass protest against the World Trade Organization, but it was also an empowering push for activists nationwide. People, young and old, radicals and reformists, met together to reach a higher goal. The event gave activists a new sense of commonality because it was so inclusive of many groups, from Teamsters to “turtles,” opposed to various byproducts of capitalism. I invoke the term “battle” not simply to be dramatic, but because the interactions I have seen between people that were on the streets two Novembers ago resemble those of war veterans. They swap war stories, show off war wounds, share the atrocities of the “other” (police, WTO delegates, the WTO itself) and take pride in the victory over the other side. Since this most recent surge in the activist community, the National Conference on Organized Resistance has seen a definite new vibe. The trends I have noticed have been a move toward more inclusion seriousness, and participation on behalf of its participants, as well as structural changes to the conference and collective themselves.

From ‘Civil Disobedience’ to ‘Organized Resistance’
The conference, held this past January 26-28 in Washington, was actually the fourth annual conference that some of you knew as the National Conference on Civil Disobedience. We changed the name in planning this year’s conference—one of the first indicators of the evolving movement’s effect on our particular endeavor.

The focus on civil disobedience was what gave this conference its uniqueness in its first three years. But coming out of the Republican and Democratic convention protests in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, the collective felt a need to validate more tactics, including but not limited to civil disobedience. The move away from the old title was in no way a move away from validating civil disobedience as a tactic. There are still unjust laws that deserve breaking, for instance, the devastating embargo that bans sending aspirin to Iraq. Whether a person is participating in a mass march down the streets of Los Angeles, or staging a die-in at a protest against the circus, s/he is committing acts of resistance that in most cases should be applauded.

Then why did we change the name? In part, because of a rise in class and race consciousness in our generation of activists. We were explicit about owning up to our privilege, the fact that we are an almost all-white, middle-class organization. These are aspects of ourselves that we are not forced to be consciously aware of in our culture. But the Seattle protest was criticized for its homogeneity, as were subsequent mass protests. One of the most widely read challenges, the February 2000 Colorlines article “Where Was the Color in Seattle?” by long-time Chicana activist Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez, influenced many young activists. The vast majority of conference attendees in years past have been white, which is something that we as a collective have tried to confront. African-Americans have been the U.S. leaders in the realm of civil disobedience, but in recent decades, my generation has seen the tactic dominated by white, upper- and middle-class people who can more easily afford the consequences of breaking the law. Being conscious of this, the name change was motivated by our desire to broaden the conference however possible.

Like many other activist endeavors, the conference is more than just a three-day event. We are held accountable for the decisions we make—such as which presenters are chosen and what activities are offered—because fellow activists look at events like the conference as possessing the power to affirm or dismiss certain aspects of our community. Even our own collective’s consensus process is put under public scrutiny.

In reality we are but six individuals—Nisha Anand, Tamra Gilbertson, Amanda Moeckel, Vanessa Sachs, Abigail Vaughn and myself—who were simply trying to get the radical community together to talk about theory and tactics in action, as well as to learn from case studies. The conference began with one woman, Nisha Anand, who has carried it through these past four years, despite trips to India and her new residence in New York. It has always been a collective effort, but recently the “collective” has become explicit in our organization.

The consensus process is still new to us. For like most people who have grown up in this culture, we have had hierarchy shoved down our throats so much that even once we’ve rejected it, we continue to struggle to maintain the balance of power. This change again is a trend that we saw come out of Seattle. It is a change that many people in the movement are recognizing as one of the ways that we can practice what we hope to achieve long-term. (We know, of course, that collectivism is not new to the past two years’ resurgence of activism. Most acknowledge this structure as a contribution of other movements including the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement of the ’30s, second-wave feminism and the antinuclear movement of the ’70s and ’80s.

Decisions are, no doubt, harder to come to in the consensus process, and are more time-consuming because of the discussion and consulting involved. Also, it must be noted that this last year the collective faced more difficult decisions than ever before—the result of holding functions such as ours accountable to the standards of alternative institutions.

Most remarkable of the changes was the overall spirit of the weekend. Here we had spent five months planning an event, yet the night before, once the loose ends were tied, there was nothing left to do but pray to the spirit of activism. By Saturday morning, I realized that the conference was no longer in the hands of the collective of six women, but had become the collaboration of the 1,000 participants, the 20 volunteers, the 50-odd tablers and all the workshop presenters. It was a beautiful thing to see the increased level of participation on the part of the attendees. People no longer expect to go to an event and be entertained for a couple days and leave, nor do most people want to. Attendees were more willing to act, listen and even help in cleaning up.

The structure of the conference lent itself to this anarchy. For example, we kept rooms open at night for ad hoc/ impromptu meetings and discussion groups, so that if people felt the workshops did not address an issue that they saw as vital to the understanding of our movement, they could themselves host any such discussion. It also left room for people to mingle and network, which is a very capitalist-sounding word—but the reality is that it makes our activism more effective.

And the discussion groups were only a small part of the change in dynamic. The community, beyond the conference collective was responsible for many of the events that added to the conference experience, such as a benefit concert for a new radical bookstore in Washington and a performance by the New York street theater troupe Crimethinc. Housing was primarily coordinated through individual volunteers in the area and housing seekers, and facilitated by the Web. Free food and childcare were provided by gracious volunteers, which was yet another step to being more inclusive of all kinds of people. It also involved more community support, which took much of the pressure off the collective.

This decentralization created a wonderful change in dynamic between those attending the conference and the organizers. The collective puts this conference on, not only for the benefit of others, but also in the hopes that we will be able to attend some of the workshops we’ve chosen. From my perspective, I feel the conference this year was proof that I can trust non-hierarchal organizing to be more radical, more productive and more true to our root goals. Decentralization results in more thorough and challenging discourse. As at Seattle, each participant played an integral role in the success of the conference and this in and of itself was radicalizing and empowering.

“Case studies,” (e.g., workshops on the organization of Homes Not Jails or the plight of the Palestinians) and “strategies,” (e.g., the Art of Nonviolence workshop) are still very central to our conference. However, I think because we anticipated a participatory body of attendees, we felt comfortable introducing issues that pertain to improving our movement. Trusting that a random group of people can handle the more difficult and extremely pressing issues of racism and sexual assault in our own circles indicates a new maturity in our movement. Those workshops required more from us; after attending Racism in the Left and Sexual Assault in our Community, no one could think of the conference as just a party. Provoking thought on such a personal note demands a new seriousness about staying true to our overall vision. This in turn challenges us to think in terms of a longterm overall vision and self- evaluation.

Nonviolence: Philosophy or Tool?
In its first years, the conference was dominated by people ascribing to nonviolence as an end-all and be-all. But there has been somewhat of a backlash against the “nonviolence push” from people who do not want to commit to it exclusively. In the movement, as well as at the conference, there is now a move towards acceptance of nonviolence as a tactic among other tactics. Although many see this as a positive move, people new to the movement may be not be getting a background in nonviolence, which most agree is useful at least as a tool, a tactic and a strategy. This year’s conference incorporated attempts to foster dialogue on the subject, with a workshop on “Pacifism as Pathology” by pacifism critic Ward Churchill, one on “Nonviolence as Strategy vs. Nonviolence as a Philosophy” by WRL Disarmament Coordinator Chris Ney, and two on different perspectives on what a nonviolence training should include.

It has been exciting to see these new or recurring developments in our movement as of late. The increased participation and the challenge of staying on the cutting edge are both great signs for the movement’s growing maturity. The National Conference on Organized Resistance is not the only microcosm by any means. Across the country, other such events have been just as inspiring and radicalizing. In the words of another inspiring proverb, “If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito.”

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For more information, see the conference website, www.organizedresistance. org. or write WRL for its pamphlet, “If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito.”

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Lelia Spears is a student-activist at American University in Washington. She works with campus groups including AU Queers and Allies, AU Animal Rights Effort and the Movement, a social justice group.