“Playful, irreverent, and deadly serious, Black Flags and Windmills is . a moving testimony of love, solidarity, betrayal, and the collective struggle for the freedom that so many of us yearn for.” —David Naguib Pellow, author of Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice “It is a brilliant, detailed, and humble book written with total frankness and at the same time a revolutionary poet’s passion. It makes the reader feel that we too, with our emergency heart as our guide, can do anything; we only need to begin.” —Marina Sitrin, author of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina “This is a compelling tale for our times.” —Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days “This book is a key document in that real and a remarkable story of an activ- ist’s personal and philosophical evolution.” —Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster “ . crow is a puppetmaster involved in direct action” —FBI (Joint Terrorism Task Force internal memo) “Black Flags and Windmills introduced me to countless contemporary free- thinkers and rule-breakers whose very lives are emblematic of what it means to be liberated.” —Diana Welch, coauthor of The Kids Are All Right “A frenetic account of how grassroots power, block-to-block outreach, and radically visionary approaches to sustainability can rattle the ruling class and transform people is positively searing.” —Ernesto Aguilar, cofounder of People of Color Organize “This book is an example that should be studied by activists of all stripes, to learn the lessons of wisdom inside. This is Anarchism-in-Action in a real world setting, and it is an example of mutual aid at its best.” —Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, former Black Panther and political prisoner, and author of Anarchism and the Black Revolution “For decades scott crow has approached his political organizing with humility, resilience, and honesty, and he continues to do so in Black Flags and Windmills.” —Will Potter, author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege “This is an excellent manual on community organizing. It’s a beautifully written, raw story that does not try to downplay the diffi culties, betrayals, and mistakes that are inevitable in authentic collective work.” —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 “crow’s testimony following in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina further indicts a fl awed political and economic system that was bankrupt long before Hurricane Katrina. The reader will fi nd within the pages a life built on principles that have propelled crow to fi ght injustice in a story well told!” —Robert Hillary King, former Black Panther, former U.S. political prisoner, and author of From the Bottom of the Heap “crow is part of Austin activists that devote much of their lives working to fi nd grassroots solutions to community problems.” —Steven Kreytak, Austin American-Statesman “crow is a prominent anarchist community organizer behind a host of organizations . ” —Diana Welch, Austin Chronicle Black Flags and Windmills Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective scott crow Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective scott crow © 2011 PM Press All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 978-1-60486-077-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2009912423 Cover: John Yates / www.stealworks.com Interior design by briandesign 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org Printed in the USA on recycled paper, by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com Dedication This book is dedicated to those whose emergency hearts refuse to give up hope in creating just and sustainable worlds for us all. Contents Glossary viii People and Organizations xi Foreword by Kathleen Cleaver xiii “Even before the thoughts occurred . ” INTRODUCTION Waking up from Oblivion 3 PROLOGUE It Takes a Spark to Start a Prairie Fire 6 Against Forgetting 18 Black Flags and Windmills 35 A Battle in Algiers 43 Barbed-Wire Hopes 56 Of Anarchists, Panthers, and Zapatistas 68 “Like concrete . ” Like Flowers in Concrete 87 With Thunder in Our Hearts 122 Raising Common Ground 142 POSTSCRIPT An Ending and a Beginning 163 “Dream the future . ” APPENDIX I Common Ground Communiqués (2005–2009) 172 APPENDIX II Common Ground Documents 198 APPENDIX III Outline of Common Ground Activities and Programs 201 Notes 208 Acknowledgments 213 Further Reading 218 About the Author 222 Glossary For quick reference in the context of this book, I want to point out that these words are part of the jargon of radicals and anarchists. Accountability Affi nity groups Alternative/Anti-Globalization movement Black Bloc Civil society Consensus decision-making Guidelines Leadership Privilege The State There are exhaustive defi nitions, sometimes volumes, written on these words. I encour- age readers to seek out multiple defi nitions of each term to understand how they are used. These terms are defi ned on page 73: Autonomy Cooperation or Mutual Aid Direct Action Horizontality Liberation Civil society is a term I adopted from Zapatismo. I use it here to refer to individuals, organizations, and even institutions as opposed to the state apparatus or even the multinational corporations that use force to rein- GLOSSARY ix force their power. Civil society is you and I and everyone else who associ- ates without coercion. Leadership (for lack of a better term) represents for me guidance by indi- viduals or groups within communities. This guidance is based in the rec- ognition that there are power relations even within horizontal organizing, based on social, cultural, experiential, or political factors. Individuals or groups in guidance roles may have more power (or be perceived to have more power). The practice of leadership seeks to subvert the familiar fi gure of the authoritarian leader who delegates tasks, makes unilateral decisions, and takes actions without discussion or accountability to those involved. The practice of leadership seeks to create and reinforce power-sharing rather than power over others. Marginalized or Neglected Communities I use these terms instead of, or sometimes interchangeably with, typical sociopolitical language (like working-class, queer, poor, etc.) that have been used to qualify people or communities pushed to the margins in civil society. Traditional political language takes many of the complex relation- ships within civil society that make up people and communities, making them one-dimensional. This leaves out the complex humanity of those involved. People and communities are often marginalized for more than one reason. These phrases address the fact that there are multiple issues at stake, instead of running a laundry list to illustrate the marginalization or neglect. Power I use the term “power” in three ways: 1. power (with a little ‘p’): power that is exercised directly by communities, as part of civil society, working together to make changes in the world. It is what grassroots democracy is based on. This kind of power is derived from recognizing that we do have the abilities, creativity, and strength to make the world better. It is the collective power of everyone, from the middle class to the marginalized. 2. Power (with a capital ‘P’): concentrations of authority and privilege in economic, political, or cultural institutions that exercise undue infl uence on the world. In this sense, Power is identical with the state, multinational corporations, or the rich, who are not accountable to civil society. This x GLOSSARY Power operates through bureaucracies, executive boards, the military, and transnational corporations. It is exercised through brute force, neglect, and manipulation or corruption of economies, for example. It results in control over resources as well as social and cultural norms. 3. I sometimes use the phrase those who assume to have Power. It is my way of recognizing that such forms of Power do not have legitimate claims of authority over civil society. It is also a reminder not to automatically give legitimacy to those institutions or people who don’t deserve it. My underlying philosophy is that once we see past this illegitimacy, we begin to recognize that we have the collective capacities to directly make changes and infl uence the world ourselves rather than appealing to these coercive hierarchies and bureaucracies that claim this Power over us. People and Organizations Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN): U.S. community-based organization that advocated for low- and moderate-income families from the 1970s until 2010. Reggie: Reginald Bell, Algiers resident who helped with many tasks and outreach in the early weeks of Common Ground. Black Panther Party (BPP, Panthers, or the Party): Infl uential revolution- ary black political organization that existed from the 1960s to the ’80s in cities across the U.S. They instituted programs that advocated for community control, empowerment, and self-defense within black communities. Their models of organization infl uenced numerous other revolutionary groups. Pastor Brown: Headed St. Mary’s Baptist in Algiers. Collaborated with Common Ground in the early months after Katrina on many initiatives. Continental Direct Action Network (CDAN): Network of anarchist affi n- ity groups, collectives, and organizations formed to coordinate direct action at mass mobilizations across the U.S. in the early 2000s. Dirty South Earth First!: Militant anarchist, direct-action environmental organization that operated in Texas from 2002 to 2004. People’s Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF): Coalition of mostly New Orleans people of color-led political and grassroots organizations from New Orleans. Founded in 2005 after Katrina. It began with about twenty groups and eventually grew to over a hundred local and national organizations.