Learn - Listen - Provide Voice

We are of the philosophy that an ethical and effective approach to empowerment requires first listening to the experiences and desires of those we are attempting to empower. There are no real solutions to oppression independent of the oppressed.

Facilitate - Empower - Build Solidarity

CAN’s primary aim is to act as a facilitator enabling oppressed and marginalized groups to do two things:

1

Fight Oppression: Our objective is to develop and expand the capacity of the oppressed to either reject or take control of those institutions & social processes in which systemic oppression is embedded.

2

Re-imagining Community: Our objective is to develop and expand the capacity of the oppressed to rethink the possibilities of their communities and to embrace those possibilities which are empowering and anti-oppressive.

Educate - Advocate - Study

Educating About Oppression:

There are many forms of oppression, and each intersects and overlaps with the others. Yet how many even know what oppression is? In a society where racism, classism, ageism, abeism, and sexism are made to be invisible, and oftentimes at best recognized only on the level of incidences and not acknowledged as systemic and institutionally embedded problems, how can we empower people to fight oppression without needing to educate? You can’t fight what you can’t see! And even those subjected to one form of oppression might not be fully aware of (and may in fact be misinformed about) the struggles of another oppressed group---a blindness that squelches potential unity.

Think Tank for the Oppressed:

Once oppression is unveiled, people need starting points in order to come up with ways to fight oppression. It’s the big question of HOW does one (or actually many) realize the dream of a community without systemic oppression. Ultimately the choices are for the community to make, but we shouldn’t hesitate to play a role as a think tank for the oppressed. Ideas feed ideas.

Connect - Model - Unite

Connecting Activists:

Activists, activist projects, and activist groups and organizations are existing, but fragmentation is a chronic problem. People don’t know about each other’s work, and the potential for knowledge and resource sharing is far from fully realized.  CAN is a fast-growing network of activists committed to anti-oppression, social justice, and empowerment.

Modeling Community:

CAN is a community unto itself. CAN is a community among communities. We are a coming together of agents of radical positive change to support each other, and create physical and non-physical spaces for inspiration, activation, and learning.  We are a community not tied to any specific geographic location. Our only location is the social location of resistance to oppression, a resistance we hope to spread beyond all boundaries.

Solidarity Without Boundaries

Building alliances through a self-expanding coalition of organizations, groups, and people pledged to pursuing social justice, creating alternative institutions, and meeting need at the community and systemic level.

 

This coalition is designed to satisfy the needs of each participant by pooling and drawing upon the resources and knowledge of the collective. The coalition builds on and takes full advantage of CAN’s infrastructure that makes resource sharing, knowledge exchange, recruitment, marketing, training, etc. easier, quicker, and less expensive. All for free! This coalition also seeks to act as the facilitator allowing for more inclusion of the target populations in shaping the services provided.

Communal Assembly Project (CAP)

CAP is an extension of the Solidarity Without Boundaries project. It's aim is to establish alternative and parallel community government structures that first and foremost are inclusive of the marginalized. Imagine open assemblies of community residents made up of the voiceless and disempowered. Traditional local government structures, such as city counsels, are notoriously NOT representative of the populations they are suppose to serve. Communal assemblies are a direct response to community needs left unmet, marginalized groups left underrepresented, and a chronic need for direct action.

Communal assemblies are sites of building community power, community problem solving, empowerment, and political training. Where the traditional government structure fails, those who would otherwise suffer as a consequence will be united and empowered through their assemblies to solve the problem(s) themselves. Assemblies will be a direct challenge to local government and will through their voice and their direct action work raise the bar of accountability. CAP aims to shift the focus of legitimacy from "representatives" to the people.

The power of the assemblies will stem in part from the coalitions of community service and resource providers pledged to support them. These coalitions will allow for greater resource sharing, coordination, and inclusion of the target populations. Furthermore, the assemblies will have the economic power to initiate community projects on their own through self-sustaining monetary sources such as assembly-owned and worker-run community enterprises.


Community Mapping Project

This project aims to a) provide voice to the voiceless, b) identify the institutional locations of systemic oppression,  c) identify resources for the survival and wellbeing of the oppressed and marginalized, and d) identify barriers to resource access.

We approach the community with the belief that the oppressed have a right to tell their own stories and be heard. It is our approach that we assume their experiences to be inherently valuable and to be the best guides, at least initially, leading us to the institutional locations of systemic oppression. While the stories of oppressors and of outsiders can be useful in a variety of ways, we do not take them to be our primary guides. It is not our aim or duty to silence anyone, but maximizing the voice of the voiceful is not our aim either---the mission is to give voice to those who have been denied it. Note also, given that CAN is concerned with the entire nexus of oppression, our target groups will vary and overlap depending on the specific form(s) of oppression we take as our entrypoint.

The community mapping project will document the experiences of the oppressed through media empowerment, that is, giving the oppressed the tools and training necessary to put their stories to print media, radio, podcasts, blogs, community tv, videocasts, etc... Youth will be our primary initial target group and therefore our entrypoint into the community. Mapping will include resource access and quality (food, water, shelter, clothing, education, etc.), community services (where and under what conditions?), community organizations (which ones, what are they doing, and what's their impact?), and businesses (which ones and what is their impact on the community?).


Western Mass Indymedia Collective