Primer on Solidarity Networks, Dual Power, and Community Self-Defense

Solidarity Networks

• Building a Solidarity Network Guide, by SeaSol
  • SeaSol’s definition of a solidarity network:
    • a small but growing workers’ and tenants’ mutual support organization that fights for specific demands using collective direct action.
• Key characteristics of a SolNet:
  • Structure
    • directly democratic
    • Volunteer / member-run
    • Decentralized / no central authority
    • no regular source of funding except small individual donations
  • Scope
    • Any worker or tenant in the Seattle area can join and can bring their fight to SeaSol.
    • building a sense of broad working class solidarity.
• 6 Practices to Build Community Power: An Intro to Solidarity Networks, by members of the Portland SolNet and Black Rose Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation
  • Portland SolNet Model / Key Aspects of a SolNet:
    • Direct democracy – Everyone involved in the fight has voice and vote
      • Some decisions are deferred to the campaign subject (person / group that brought the organizing lead / issue to the SolNet)
• Volunteer driven - Volunteers are the driving force behind the organization. They make the decisions and do the work.
• Direct action – Campaigns are based around the community taking a direct stand against an oppressor. Lawyers and politicians are not relied on to fight our battles for us.
• Attainable demands – A campaign’s winnability is carefully evaluated before it’s taken on. Resources are not spent on organizing for the sake of organizing.
• Escalating tactics – Throughout the campaign pressure is constantly on the target.
  • Tactics are carefully spaced at the beginning of the campaign to take into account the organization’s capacity and the constant building of pressure on the target.
• Personal involvement of the campaign subject – SolNets are not a social service. It is expected that the campaign subjects take an active part in organizing of their campaign.
  • It is also expected that they join the SolNet and help out with other fights in the future.

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• Twin Cities Solidarity Network: Notes from About page
  • Intro Mission Statement
    • “Twin Cities Solidarity Network (TC SolNet) is mutual defense group of workers and tenants. We deal with problems with landlords and bosses, and also help people organize and strengthen unions and tenant associations. We are affiliated with the Twin Cities Worker Defense Alliance, a network of groups aiding one another in anti-authoritarian, abolitionist, working class organizing.”
• Overview of TC SolNet’s Work
  • Aim is to help workers organize together for our mutual defense- and in doing so, grow a militant and democratic current in the labor movement.
• Industrial Councils, Tenant Councils:
  • Main way TC SolNet organizes is by forming these councils of workers to take on fights in their industry or neighborhood- either organizing and building a committee in their own workplace or apartment, or helping other workers take on fights when those fights arise.
    • Tenant Councils → Unclear, but seem to be synonymous with “neighborhood councils,” composed of multiple tenants’ unions.
    • Industrial Councils → open to workers across their given industry, regardless of union membership.
• TC SolNet’s Direct Action Strategies
  • Worker and Tenant Defense
    • Back up workers, in any industry, who are fighting to reclaim stolen wages, enforce workplace safety, fight harrassment and discrimination, or any other conflict with their boss
• Help help tenants who are facing unfair evictions, rent hikes, unrepaired utilities, or other housing problems.
  • Mostly achieved through collective direct action in Tenants’ & Industrial Councils, but sometimes TC SolNet does case work for groups of workers or tenants who come to them directly.
• Strike Support
  • Intervene in strikes and support rank and file workers.
• Provide range of support, including direct actions, copwatch & legal support on picket lines, and raising funds and supplies to help workers endure and win.

The Angry Workers’ West London Solidarity Network – MASSolidarity.org

Intro to “Dual Power”, Counter Power, and Prefigurative Politics

• Dual Power: A Strategy To Build Socialism In Our Time, by DSA Libertarian Socialist Caucus (now defunct as a caucus, but still worth reading / researching / learning from)
• LSC’s definition of “Dual Power”
• a strategy that builds liberated spaces and creates institutions grounded in direct democracy.
  • Together these spaces and institutions expand into the ever widening formation of a new world “in the shell of the old.”
  • As the movement grows more powerful, it can engage in ever larger confrontations with the ruling class—and ultimately a contest for legitimacy against the institutions of capitalist society.
• 2 Key Parts of Dual Power:
  • (1.) building counter-institutions that serve as alternatives to the institutions currently governing production, investment, and social life under capitalism
  • (2.) organizing through and confederating these institutions to build up a base of grassroots counter-power which can eventually challenge the existing power of capitalists and the State head-on.

Towards a Revolutionary Union Movement, Part 2: Dual Power

Intro to Community Self-Defense

• Community Self Defense: What We Mean, by Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee (now defunct, but members formed later networks like Workers Defense Alliance)
• Twin Cities Workers Defense Alliance - About page
  • Mission statement
    • The Workers’ Defense Alliance is a network of working class people and autonomous councils organized on the job and in the streets to practice militant rank and file labor struggle and community self defense.
• We are an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian organization committed to building and maintaining autonomous worker and tenant councils, defense bodies, and mutual aid projects.
• We are an anti-racist and anti-sexist network that recognizes that an injury to one is an injury to all, and that the liberation of each is bound up in the liberation of all. We set out to unmake this nightmare world we’re inheriting, and make a new one in the ashes of the old.
• Political Orientation
  • [Editor’s Note: This page is an essay-long document, so I’m only posting what principles & practices stand out after skimming it. I encourage everyone to read the doc in full, as it lays out a pretty expansive political platform for the Twin Cities WDA.]
• Core Principles
  • Working Class Struggle:
    • We provide mutual defense as working class people in our work and in our community, through our solidarity network, worker and tenant councils, and community self defense working groups.
• We are an anti-capitalist, anti-state network, and we are fighting for worker control over our workplaces, federative and democratic community control over our communities, and personal autonomy.
• Liberation from Oppression:
  • We recognize white supremacy, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression as integral parts of the capitalist system, and actively opposing them as central to our mutual defense as a class.
• Militancy:
  • We reject the state, will exercise our right to build power by any means necessary, and do not ask for the state’s recognition.
• We rely on our own power through organization and direct action.
• We build the tools of community self defense and mutual aid required to carry out militant class struggle and resist repression by the state, fascists, and bosses.

We do not seek labor peace; we practice class warfare.

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