Manifesto

Here and Now

We live amidst wars of aggression, initiated in our names against the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, and Pakistan. We are witnesses to genocides in Africa, occupation in Palestine and totalitarianism all over the world, from China to Saudi Arabia. Food, shelter, drinking water, sanitation, health care and education the most basic of human rights are turned into commodities to be bought and sold, and denied to millions of women, men and children. Working class Black people drowned in New Orleans, and Haitians starved for weeks without aid. We see violence all around us, from the television to the school, from wars to sexual assault, from ethnic cleansing to 9/11. We live in a world where 25,000 children die each day due to poverty, where there are individuals who have bank accounts larger than the GDPs of entire countries, where half of the worlds hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations. Economically displaced, the peoples of the global south migrate to the US and Europe in search of work, only to be further exploited and discriminated against as undocumented workers, hunted down by the very same forces that caused them to flee their homes to begin with. We see the abuse of people on the basis of their genders, sexualities, races, religions, and a multitude of other identities. We watch as the trees disappear, the skies gray with pollution, the glaciers melt, the oil vanishes, and the water is contaminated. We watch as the few profit from it, while the many face immediate suffering, and the prospect of worse to come. There seems to be no end to this in sight, unless someone does something about it. At school, where we should be learning about this world and how to change it, we learn to memorize and regurgitate, to defer to authority, to forget the history of the peoples of

the world, to stop playing, to become individualistic, to become selfish, to stop dreaming. Even the teachers who struggle to show us something different, who try to open our eyes, are bound by the school system. When we turn to our leaders even the ones who manage to captivate our imaginations as they parade around the country campaigning for our votes we find a political system based on lies, deceit, hypocrisy, and exploitation. The status quo remains intact, despite the audacious threats from fairweather reformers. Whats more, this did not begin today there was once Rome just as there is now the United States, and there was patriarchy before the Bible. The masses of people have been under the boot of the ruling economic classes since the day we began recording history, and the kings and pharaohs preceded the dictators, presidents, and CEOs. We are not the first civilization threatening to wipe itself out by destroying the environment in our own arrogance, denial, and the endless quest for profit carried out by the few in the name of the rest of us the Maya and Easter Islanders came and went before us as well. These forces of domination and exploitation could not exist and sustain themselves if they were not part of a complex system in which they produce and reproduce one another. While each of these systems may function in some way autonomously, they all overlap and coexist, strengthen each other, lean on one another. While different ones might be central in different contexts, they all reinforce and reproduce each other. No single oppression can be wiped away without confrontation of the others. We will never have fully liberated gender, sexuality, and family as long as there is capitalism. We will never overcome racism without confronting the hierarchy and authoritarianism of the state, nor solve the ecological crisis without ending imperialism. We will never destroy capitalism without confronting the race relations embedded in it, and we have no hope to end authoritarianism in government, without undoing it everywhere else from the family to the workplace. To truly liberate ourselves and those around us, we must see and address all forms of oppression together. Systems are much bigger than just people, but they can be undone when the many unite to present an alternative, and to struggle for it. We know the world doesnt change on its own, but it does change when people decide it must, and they build movements together. We know the tide is changing. After all, where there is oppression there is also resistance. The invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the largest worldwide anti-war mobilizations ever recorded. The ecology movement across the world represents perhaps the largest and fastest growing mass movement in history. Workers in Argentina are taking over their factories, students in the United States are taking over their universities, and indigenous movements in Bolivia are taking over their governments. From the citizens rising up in Greece, to the squats in Italy, to workers in Chicago taking back their workplaces, to the many who fight day in and day out in their communities for better housing, for better schools, for a better world people are coming together to organize, resist and present new alternatives. The free schools,

cooperatives, communal living arrangements, community gardens, eco-villages, independent bookstores, and countless others are busy building the alternative institutions that will one day replace this decaying social order. Radical eyes are opening all over the world, from under the sheet metal of shanty-towns, from the windows of workplaces, from behind book shelves at universities all over the world. People are ready to rise up. They are looking to the Left, and many of them seem to have come to the same conclusions we have that a movement must be built. We come from a long line of revolutionaries. They have made it possible for us to struggle, they have moved us forward, and they have laid the foundations for the enormous struggle ahead. From Gorz to Gramsci, Emma Goldman to Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X to Huey Newton, Buber to Marcuse, Marx to Kropotkin. From the Industrial Workers of the World to the Spanish anarchists, from SNCC to the Black Panthers, the Cuban revolution to the Vietnamese resistance, from Gandhi to King, from the kibbutzim to the Movement for a New Society, from the Paris Commune to the Bolivarian Revolution. They all inform our struggle to day, in their successes and their failures. We are honored to join them, to learn from their mistakes, to continue where they left off. We as a generation are faced with the tremendous task and collective responsibility of struggling for a different society a free society a society that will not only guarantee the preservation of human life, but one that will provide the conditions for the realization of full human potential. What We Imagine Without vision, there can be no movement. Without a vision of what we want the world to look like, how could we be expected to know which path to take to get there? How will we know what issues to tackle, and in what ways to tackle them? How will we know what structures to build such that we begin to create, even as we fight, the world we want to live in? How could we unite with the many people fighting for many causes in many places if not by agreeing on a shared vision of what the world should be? How could we ever ask each other and you to fight without an idea of what we are fighting for? We wont get anywhere if we dont know where we are going. Of course, in revolution there are no blueprints. We have no illusions that the world will look exactly the way we envision it, and we dont claim to be speaking for everyone. We will learn more as we talk to each other, as we study what took place before us, and as we struggle together. We will build our vision with our partners in struggle, and from the experience of many thinkers and revolutionaries before us. We will remain dynamic, flexible and understanding, because it is clear to us that revolution is meaningful only when it exists both in content and in form. We reject orthodoxy in all of its shapes and sizes. And still, we must dream ahead; as revolutionaries, we cant help it.

We envision a world where people can participate in decision-making in the degree to which they are affected by the outcomes. We imagine councils democratic assemblies in communities, from homes, to blocks, to cities, to entire regions. We imagine councils being the most important vehicles for a participatory democracy to truly flourish, and our imagination is informed not only by reason, but by the history of councils as collectives that emerged at every revolutionary period in history. We have come to the conclusion that only a participatory democracy in which each person is part of a circle of thinking and talking and deciding on a local level, and in which these circles are linked and federated expanding outwards can afford us the type of democracy we deserve. We envision a society that places importance on this democratic process, such that provisions are made in everyones work, family, community, and individual life to allow them to participate whether that means organized childcare at meetings, shorter workdays that make time for democratic participation, or any other provision a community deems necessary. We imagine an economy in which people are empowered to manage their own affairs, there are no classes, the means of production of social wealth are owned by everyone together, we function in solidaristic communities, and peoples needs and desires are accounted for. Ultimately, we envision an economy that allows people to fulfill their human potential, that allows us live and work in dignity and respect, and empowers us to express our true, human creativity. We consider the economy to be an essential part of the way society functions as a whole, and think it should be as democratic as any other realm of public life. We imagine a classless society, in which we own together those things that produce the means of our existence. We imagine an economy guided by values of solidarity, equity, self-management, and diversity in which our priorities in production are not based on the decisions of a class of owners and coordinators, but a thoughtful process of assessing social needs (such as the environment), community needs (such as more work here or a new park there), individual needs, and what it takes on the part of workers, communities, the environment, and all other agents to produce those things. We imagine an economy that is efficient, where efficiency means producing and living well, but not at the expense of other values such as equity. We reject the market economy, which sees efficiency in terms of profit for a minority at the expense of the social good, and squanders the vast majority of human potential. We believe that people should directly control their workplaces through work councils. These councils, which will represent workers in all workplaces and all industries, will also establish a way of working together in a participatory planning process. We imagine a society where the social needs of different communities are weighed in coordination with the needs and abilities of workplaces, and where those groups (of all of us), will propose back and forth a plan that, in the end, we choose together. We imagine workplaces where we all have a say, and work lives where we all have diverse experiences that leave no one with a monopoly over the empowering work while the rest are subjected to menial and rote tasks. Instead, we imagine a thoughtful process where we each have a balanced package of tasks that divides the disempowering and

empowering work in an equitable way, leaving each of us feeling fulfilled, productive, creative appreciated, and essentially human. We imagine a society in which people can identify with their cultural, communal, religious, ethnic, or other lines as they please a society where the boundaries between communities are open and fluid, such that people can freely associate and choose what parts of their identities to emphasize. We imagine a world where groups have the right to self-determination and cultural autonomy, where they are given the space and tools to express their cultures from time and resources, to respect and physical space. We envision a world where communities, peoples, nations, and groups of all kinds, are free to govern themselves and create a true sense of community, where those groupings are liberating and equitable, demo7 cratic and accountable, and solidaristic across boundaries. We support intercommunalism, and we imagine a world where the relations between nations and peoples are based on solidarity and mutual assistance, not imperialism and aggression. We envision a world where individuals can define their genders and sexualities however they like, where gender is not fixed but a matter of choice, where people have the opportunity to be and grow into or out of whatever they want. We imagine a society where people are free to develop and define their sexual orientations without oppression, without constraint, without inhibition. We imagine a world where people are empowered and respected, and where the needs of people of different genders or sexualities are taken into account. We imagine a world where women and men treat one another with respect and equality, where gender oppression has been wiped out of existence, where there are a variety of different genders expressed and no one has to pick any at all, and where gender has nothing to do with power. We imagine a world where people can choose to express their sexual desires freely, partnering in whatever ways make sense to them. We imagine a society that is educated, informed, supportive, open, honest, and critical enough for choice to be meaningful. We envision a society where sex is something to embrace rather than be ashamed of, to be open and honest about rather than to hide and repress. We imagine a society where our bodies and different forms of sensuousness are things to be explored and discovered, where we are liberated to truly feel and experience what is around us, where this is seen as a creative process. We envision a sexuality where consent and respect are valued above everything else, where sexual aggression and violence are not tolerated or permitted against anyone anywhere. We imagine a world where people can raise children to be empowered, free-thinking, self-managing youth. We imagine a society where families are provided for by communities and society at large, where needs of parents are taken into account, where people are supported in providing a safe, open home for a child to develop in. We envision a world where people live and grow in a wide array of different arrangements, from family homes, to individual units, to communes, to any other system that provides

institutional frameworks for the diverse needs people have, from privacy to communal intimacy. We imagine a society that creates the conditions necessary for people to live the way they want. We imagine a human society in harmony with the planets natural environment. We imagine an economic system that accounts for the environment we all live in, not as a side note or externality, but as an essential factor to be considered in decision-making. We imagine a society that takes care of populations suffering under natural catastrophe regardless of their nation or skin color, that does not accept class as a dividing line on who has the privilege to survive the systematic destruction of the environment. We imagine a society that does not tolerate that destruction to begin with, that values life, and understands that this planet is not exchangeable. The society we imagine is always mindful of the future of the natural environment and strives for a sustainable life ahead for human society. We envision a society where people are able to freely express themselves, their thoughts, opinions, sensibilities, and dreams without fear of repression and without needing to be part of a privileged class to do so. We imagine a society where freedom of speech is not attached to buying power, where we all get to speak, and where we create ways to make that happen. We imagine books, movies, magazines and an endless variety of other forms of media that make us laugh without oppressing specific groups, that tell us whats going on in the world without screening out the events that sponsors dont want us to know about, that teach us what we need to know in order to be active participants in the creation of society. We imagine media that are free and democratically controlled, available to us as tools to enhance our lives from entertainment that liberates, educates, and builds community, to news and analysis that presents a variety of perspectives. We imagine schools that build community, helping us to develop as we wish, and teaching us the values we wish to see expressed in the world solidarity, equity, diversity, self-management, democracy, dialogue, freedom, and more. We imagine hospitals that care about treating people and taking care of them in the long-term, but more than that we imagine a system that focuses on prevention through healthy lifestyles and access to information. We imagine a justice system based on reconciliation rather than punishment. We imagine parks without fences, public spaces that are actually for all of us, and museums that record the histories, stories, and cultural narratives of all peoples. We want a world where people experience equity in all aspects of their lives, where people are free to manage their lives as much as they want, and where people have the opportunity to participate in the institutions and communities that they are a part of and that affect them. We want a world of solidarity, equity, diversity, and self-management. We want a world that will enhance the ability of all people on earth to live out their full

potentials. We know it can be this way, and we dont see any excuse for the world to be otherwise. From Here to There Revolution is not an event but a process. The transformation of society only happens through struggle through raising consciousness, challenging the ideological hegemony of the status quo, building a consensus, developing an alternative, creating mass movements, and ultimately, confronting the powerful forces that keep the social order the way it is. The only way this will ever happen is through the emergence of a mass movement composed of a diverse range of tendencies, organizations, and individuals that share a vision of a new society. Together, revolutionaries must unlearn oppressive behaviors, live according to new values, create institutions to meet material needs, and reveal the viability of new forms of social organization. At the same time, we must take control of existing social institutions, and transform them to liberating, democratic, solidaristic and equitable ones. Only a movement can do this. As enraged as people might be, as willing to fight as we often are, as explosive as some political moments seem, movements do not emerge out of thin air. The idea that people rise up spontaneously in sustained struggle is fiction the masses of people who rose up time after time throughout human history had been preparing themselves long beforehand. They had been learning, raising consciousness, building organizations, living within newly created institutions, and waging reform struggles. It was only the overcoming of history by myth and our tendency to fantasize about instant gratification that ever made it seem otherwise. Revolutions require revolutionary organization, with revolutionary analysis, vision, and strategy. We see the need for the creation of alternative institutions, from free schools to selfmanaged workplaces, from communes to eco-villages, from food coops to community centers. These institutions lay the foundation for the society that will replace the status quo, provide us the experience we need as we grow, and puncture the myth that the status quo fulfills our needs. These institutions are being built and have been built throughout history. We need more and more of them, and we need them to answer the many needs we have those unrecognized and unmet by the current social order. We need these alternative institutions to connect to one another, and we need them to become part of a mass movement ready to struggle against the forces that govern our society today. At the same time, we must work to create counter institutions, those groupings that actively fight to create the space for the alternatives to exist in. We need mass movements that represent diverse groups of people fight11 ing for social change in a variety of spheres from housing to ecology, from workers rights to student struggles, from feminist causes to community control, and so on. Those

struggles are being waged as we speak and have been throughout human history. We need more and more of them, and we need to fight with a sense of urgency that reflects the condition of the world today. We need these counter institutions to support each other and link to the alternative institutions on whose behalf they are ultimately fighting. Together, these institutions create a dual power movement. As we dream ahead and create alternatives, we defend ourselves and struggle to dismantle the brutal, inhumane structures that oppress us. Throughout history, whenever oppressed people have organized to take control over their own lives and challenge illegitimate authority, they have constructed some form of a participatory council system as both a means and an end in the revolutionary process. From African-Americans forming neighborhood councils to expand community control over education and police, to factory workers forming councils to self-manage production and take power away from the capitalist and coordinator classes, participatory councils have proven time and time again to be a vital part of the revolutionary process. These councils are a form of dual power, in which the old authoritarian institutions are broken down, while new ones take their place, and a new society emerges within the shell of the old. As we dream ahead and attempt to address the fundamental values and institutions of our society, we must do everything we can to improve our day-to-day surroundings. We do not reject reform struggles. We do not subscribe to the idea that we will only have a revolution when the world is at its worst; we do not have the right to suffer and let others suffer in the hope that it will lead to greatness in another era. We are prepared to struggle for concrete reforms, but instead of building reform movements that see a particular change within the system as an end-in-itself, we should always understand the reform struggle within the larger revolutionary process. We support fighting for revolutionary, non-reformist reforms struggles that improve our material lives while providing us with the education and consciousness we need to continue onwards, and employing the forms that prefigure the society we wish to build. The struggle for improvements today must be seen within the context of the struggle for an entirely different type of life tomorrow. We understand revolution is a fluid and dynamic process that demands an organization and a movement that is ready to adapt to changing circumstances. This means we must be prepared to draw on a wide variety of tactics within a flexible approach to revolution. We know we must be involved in raising consciousness, carrying out education, connecting struggles to a holistic analysis of the way the world works, and developing others and ourselves as revolutionaries. We know we must be busy establishing the infrastructure of the new society within the shell of the old, fighting for reforms in a nonreformist way, and decentralizing power currently monopolized by elites. We know we must use everything we have, from marches and protests, to pamphlets and elections, to sit-ins and occupations, to general strikes and insurrections. We understand that power does not disappear just because we wish it away. It must be confronted, taken, and redirected towards the expansion of democratic control over social institutions. We must embody the seeds of the future in the present, and as we do it, usher that very future into existence.

This struggle will not be an easy one. Building of revolutionary movement means facing elites who will not hesitate to use all the tools at their disposal to maintain the status quo. Still, history reveals our tremendous capacity to resist oppression, defeat authoritarian rule and exploitative minorities, and take control of our own lives. We have faith in the passion, the dedication, fearlessness, hope, and enormous power we hold together. The challenge is great, but we are not afraid; the potential is far greater. Our Mission The Organization for a Free Society is committed to building a movement for social liberation. We aim to transform the governing values and institutions in all spheres of social life. Through study and struggle, we have come to understand that systems of oppression condition our lives by mutually defining and reproducing our social relationships. We work to break down all systems of inequality and injustice and to create a participatory, democratic, and egalitarian society. Our members are dedicated organizers from diverse backgrounds who work within grassroots movements to build, take and decentralize power. We believe in raising consciousness and awareness through education. We seek to build alternative institutions that challenge and undermine exploitation and domination and that embody in the present the values of the future. We envision a world characterized by solidarity, equity, self-management, diversity and ecological balance. Our aim is to live and organize as close to our vision as possible and to transform ourselves as part of the struggle for a free society. How We Organize We envision and aspire to create a society built upon the idea that people should have a say in the decisions that affect their lives, proportionate to the degree that they are affected. In this same vein, we want this to be realized to the greatest degree possible within our organization. We strive to provide one another with the tools to effectively participate in the decision-making process. We do this by learning together, spending a concerted amount of time and effort educating new members, being open and transparent about all leadership structures and work groups that exist in the organization, and by taking time to intentionally develop a community of trust, respect, and affection inside the organization. We are passionately democratic. We believe that leadership exists, and should exist, and that those organizations that have no structure for this are ironically the most tyrannical ones, dominated by their most privileged members. We elect representatives by clearly defining their roles, by discussing with them and without them, by voting, and by recalling them if necessary. Leaders expect the trust of the rest of the group, and the community expects the accountability of its representatives. We make a conscious effort to have diversity and balance at all levels of leadership with regard to gender, sexuality,

race, and class. Our organization should represent the constituency it claims to represent, and we work to make it so. We function according to the principles of deliberative democracy and unity in action. We see the importance of taking united action towards our vision, without creating a rigid and unquestionable discipline. Rather, we seek concerted action by critical thinkers. This means that we all participate actively in deliberation until we make decisions, and once they are, we carry them out together, defend one another, and fight in solidarity. We are a membership organization, and people either request to join or are sponsored by another member. Members are expected to agree with the principles of OFS, pay dues to the extent that they are capable, and participate in mass organizing outside the organization. Organizers are expected to participate in the life of the organization by joining work groups, attending meetings, and creating a culture and community together. Initially, organizers go through a trial period that allows them to engage in political education, begin to function in the life of the organization, and gain a better understanding of OFS itself. This ultimately leads to a more informed decision on the parts of the trial member and the rest of the organization as to whether or not the person wants to and should continue in the group. We also have a supporter status, which allows people to be in solidarity with us and help provide resources for our work, but does not require them to commit themselves to the work of the organization. We provide our membership with the training and experience necessary to increase growth and unity, and, if necessary, rebuild it at every level from the bottom up. We have an equitable division of labor, which fosters solidarity, as well as empowers everyone to make decisions on equal footing. Through this sharing, every member has knowledge of what is happening at all levels and an understanding of analysis, vision, and strategy, as well as the ability to execute a variety of organizing tasks. We recognize that this is a process, that people are different, and that although we are struggling to share our skills and develop one another people should use the talents and experiences they have and be proud of them. We believe the collective should not conflict with our individuality; rather, it should help it flourish. We attempt to prefigure the society we wish to create. To this end, we strive to make OFS function according to our values, as well as provide its membership with the tools it needs to create other experiments in equitable cooperation from communal living arrangements, to cooperative working arrangements, to a vibrant and creative cultural life. In this same vein, we also struggle against internal oppression. We constantly educate ourselves, not only to understand theory and strategy, but to grow more and more capable of living in the type of world we want to create. We also strive to maintain an open and honest environment, and create intentional channels whereby we can challenge ourselves and others to continue to grow. We believe we can do it, and that we have a responsibility to practice as we struggle. We create these structures in order to gain experience in alternative ways to live and provide for our real, material needs. We do it to attract people to our cause and reflect our sincerity. We do it so as to create

the forms of organization that will replace the ones we are fighting against, and because we truly believe they make our lives better. The End and Beyond We wrote this document in order to join the many voices around the globe today and throughout history in declaring that the world is not what it should be, and we can change it. We wrote it to join the ranks of those who have struggled before us, and the many who struggle today alongside us. We wrote it to call out that we are searching for partners, that we have much to learn and experience, and that we are part of a generation in struggle. We wrote it to say openly and honestly that we know the challenges ahead of us, and we know we can win. We wrote it to say that we have no right to do anything but fight and fight until the world we wish to see is the world of here and now. There is cause for fear and apprehension: The strength of the Right, the fragmentation of the Left, the ecological mayhem on the horizon, the authoritarianism growing in our midst, the edges of capitalism and imperialism growing harsher day by day. These truly are serious threats to humanity. But at the same time, we have great cause to be inspired: People are rising up. The workers strikes and occupations from Chicago to Greece, the student uprisings from New York to Paris, the grass-roots political movements from Venezuela to Nepal, the indigenous movements from Kenya to Bolivia they and countless other examples prove that people all over the world know that our planet is not as it should be, and that we must take responsibility for changing it. We know that revolution is not an event, but a lifelong process. We know that many suffer needlessly, that others profit from it inexcusably, and that none of us have reached our full potential as human beings. We know that history is marked by millions of wasted lives and broken dreams. We know it does not have to be this way; there is another way, and there is no excuse not to fight for that. We know it will take movements to shape our vision into reality. We know that we have to actively build the institutions we see replacing the ones that rule us now, make material differences in the lives of people today, and simultaneously fight an enormous battle to break apart the status quo. We know this will demand the vision, imagination, compassion, and patience of the many people around the globe working to build another world. We know it will demand the sense of purpose, commitment, fearlessness, and creativity of those equally many who are fighting day in and day out for that new and better world to have the space in which to grow. We know that failure is not an option. We know we are prepared for the struggle ahead.

OFS | Organization for a Free Society