03

WHAT WE WANT NOW!

COMMUNITY DEFENSE AND SECURITY IN MUTUAL AID AND SOLIDARITY

Recorded on Thursday, September 24.

Since Memorial Day weekend in Minneapolis, communities have faced a complicated tension between an influx of white supremacists, agitators, and passionate protesters. As fires burned, gas cans were hidden in alleys, and trucks with out-of-state plates and armed individuals, the social infrastructure that we had been taught to trust and rely on -- namely fire, EMS, and police -- failed us in a way too obvious to dismiss. This wasn’t due to rioting, but a crisis of governance decades in the making. Neighborhoods -- aware that no one keeps us safe but ourselves -- formed fire brigades, neighborhood watch, and information sharing groups. They prepared and secured themselves with mutual understanding and networks of solidarity.

While this is the most recent moment in which community defense networks have appeared in the U.S., it’s certainly not the first. The Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, and Brown Berets provide earlier models of autonomous domestic community defense organizing. The autonomous community defense groups in Michoacan and Chiapas, Mexico, Rojava, and Kerala provide us inspiration for our activities as well. The uniqueness of this moment is the confluence of explicitly political community defense movements and neighborhood and community organizations that have often been a feature of cities.

Key topics and questions:

• A discussion with key activists involved in Minneapolis community defense in conversation with defense activists from other cities.

• How is community defense a response to the US government’s failures to respond to today’s social catastrophes?

• Why was community defense necessary during and after the unrest? Where does community defense come from?

• How is community defense an expression of mutual aid and solidarity and a new model and mode of self-governance and political autonomy?

• What is the future of community defense in the months to come?

Zosha (UMN, host and facilitator)

Jae (Workers Defense Alliance, facilitator)

Background in labor, technology, and security. I've been affiliated with several networks in the past, but now I'm a member of the Workers Defense Alliance.

Emmett (Workers Defense Alliance)

Background in environmental science, labor, and history. Member of the Workers Defense Alliance. Construction worker.

Marcia (George Floyd Square)

Educator with a background in sociolinguistics, history, and trades. Member of the Workers Defense Alliance. Full time black person.

Marc Holley (Atlas Defense MN)

is a Colombian born transracially adopted Marine veteran who has stayed active in the community by offering violence prevention training. Realizing that training and empowerment happens best when carried out by locals, he and others facilitate that ownership with a practical application-heavy approach to helping others feel safe on their own terms.

Natalie (Workers Defense Alliance and Whittier CopWatch)

is a Twin Cities based transgender musician and activist. Member of the Workers Defense Alliance and Whittier CopWatch. Currently proving CopWatch and Know Your Rights trainings throughout Mpls.

02

A Culture of Accountability

Recorded on Wednesday, September 2.

What does a cultural shift towards a daily practice of abolition feel like? What are people learning this summer from lived experiences protecting neighbors new and old, the land and people we love, and everyone else we coexist with despite our differences? How do we show up for the work? What role do artists play in all of this?

Organized by Quito Ziegler and Ryan Stopera.

01

Mutual Aid and Solidarity in Context: from Katrina to the Twin Cities

Recorded on Thursday, August 27

Monique Verdin (Another Gulf is Possible)

Co-founder of Another Gulf is Possible, a collaborative that centers cultural organizing, arts-based healing, direct action, advocacy, transformative justice, education, and locally-led capacity-building training as core areas of its work.

Antonio Roman-Alcala (North American Agroecology Organizing Project)

An educator, researcher, writer, and organizer based in Berkeley, California who has worked for just sustainable food systems for the past 15 years. Antonio co-founded San Francisco’s Alemany Farm, the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance, and the California Food Policy Council. Recently wrote "We Can Build a Better Food System through Mutual Aid" on BIPOC food sovereignty movements on CivilEats.

Duaba Unenra (Confluence Studio - he/they)

Co-founder of Confluence Studio; a survivor of Hurricane Katrina from Louisiana who researches Black and Indigenous peoples' practices of radical carework and resistance to systemic oppression, neoliberal development, social disaster, and emergency mis-management.

John Kim (facilitator)

Topics:

• How is mutual aid and solidarity a response to the US government's failures to respond to today’s social and environmental catastrophes?

• How does mutual aid and solidarity offer new models and modes of self-governance and political autonomy?

• What else can the Twin Cities learn from mutual aid, especially in conversation with organizers from other cities who have also experienced it?