(1) Where were you born, where do you now live, what has been your main, schooling, employment, family life, etc.? In short, introduce yourself personally.
I was born in Washington DC, in the US, and was raised in various towns outside major cities. Both of my parents were anti-capitalist activists, my mother being involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements, and my father a GI organizer against the war in Vietnam and a socialist. I was a red diaper baby. I come from a large and diverse family, including three interracial siblings. Between radical parents and experiencing racism as a family, I was radicalized from as far back as I can remember. This radicalization was deeply personal and experiential. Fighting against racism was something I was actively a part of from as long as I can remember. My parents are both wholly supportive of my revolutionary politics. My mother now lives and works in Cuba.
New York City has been my base for the last 15 years. I became active in Central America solidarity, anti-Apartheid and various labor struggles in high school. I have continued to be active in many groups and movements ever since. I currently teach part-time at the Gallatin School at NYU on topics such as justice, law, social movements and anarchist theories. It is difficult to separate this question from the second one, since I have tried to organize my life in such a way that my personal, work, and schooling lives are all intertwined with my politics.
(2) What have been your main political involvements in the past? Are you involved with particular movements, projects, or organizations now? If so, which? What features would an International Political Organization have to embody to attract you? What features would repel you? In short, introduce yourself politically.
I was politically active from early High School. I was rapidly disillusioned with reformist politics and joined a centrist socialist group. I feel I learned a great deal in those years in the "Party", including that dropping out of college and working in a factory does not bring enlightenment to workers. After being forced out of more than one such "Party," for, among other things, "anarchist tendencies," I got involved in various movements and groups, from welfare advocacy, immigrant rights defense, anti-war organizing, and queer direct action. I have also worked as a union organizer for seven years in various unions, eventually being forced out of one such union for helping facilitate the organization of a union outside the AFL-CIO.
One of the more recent projects about which I feel particularly good is some of the activist legal work I did during and after law school, helping to facilitate the organizing of legal collectives, generally comprised of non-lawyers, so that groups and communities could break down the law, confront it when necessary, and know their various options before coming up against the system. I was also involved in the early organization of the Direct Action Network in New York, which helped facilitate the participation of many hundreds of people in experiences that were generally prefigurative.
In the last few years I have spent a great deal of time in Argentina with the autonomous social movements. I have compiled an oral history that has been published in a recuperated factory in Argentina, and distributed in Latin America by people in the movements, and is now published in English with AK Press. I end on Argentina because it is where I have spent a lot of time lately, but I also believe that some of the experiences there encapsulate much of my political vision. So, an international organization for me would need to respect the autonomy of the various participants, while simultaneously thinking about mutual accountability. It would need to be directly democratic, horizontal, meaning without hierarchy, and prefigurative, meaning that our social and personal relationships now are the future, rather than an organization working now for freedom at some distant time.
(3) Imagine you are giving a public talk The question and answer period arrives. Someone says, "I know you are against capitalism, anti-racist, and anti-sexist. I know you believe in participation, want solidarity, require sustainability, and seek justice. Me too. But in a real world society, what institutions do you seek so as to fulfill those aims? What are your structural goals?" How do you answer? In short, stretch a bit in the directions ZSVS seeks to emphasize.
I could go in many directions with this question. My first response, and maybe the most simple, is that I believe we have and are creating groups, collectives and various types of structures all over that embody the desires listed. What I think we need to imagine is how we begin to link our various movements, groups, and collectives in a way that is respectful, non-hierarchical, and can create effective decision making structures, while always prefiguring what we want the future to look like. I envision a network structure for this, one that is about discussion our various movements and projects, but that also can develop into a space of mutual support and then mutual accountability.
(4) What do you hope to get out of ZSVS, personally, for your self and for your work? For us all, what do you think will most likely come out of ZSVS? Also, what do you hope, in your most optimistic moment, will come out of it? In short, affect what we all plan and undertake and the tone we do it with.
I hope to learn, share, and be inspired. We critique so much, that moments of inspiration and vision are more than necessary. I have not been to Z spaces before so it is a little difficult to imagine what will come out of it. What I hope can come out of it is not just shared imagining, but the beginnings of concrete imaginings. What these concrete imaginings will look like will really depend on what people participating bring into the conversation from experiences.
