Love and Rage
La Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation a été formée en 1993 à partir des groupes restant du Love and Rage Network.
Le Love and Rage Network a été créé dans une conférence au mois de novembre 1989 pour lancer un journal anarchiste révolutionnaire nord-américain. Le "newspaper project" a grandit dans une série de North American Anarchist Gatherings ; en 1986 à Chicago, en 1987 à Minneapolis, en 1988 à Toronto et en 1989 à San Francisco. Au rassemblement de 1986, un réseau de groupes a commencé à cohérer. Au rassemblement de 1987 le Mayday Network a été établie and l’année suivante, les discussions sur un journal anarchiste nord-américain ont mené à la production de deux journaux à une seule parution Rage et Writing on the Wall, qui furent les prédecesseurs de « Love and Rage/Amor y Rabia ».
L’initiative de base est cependant venue d’un groupe basé à Minneapolis, le Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League (RABL).La, à sa création, trotkyste, Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) (who disbanded immédiatement avant qu’une fraction de leurs membres aient participé à la fondation du nouveau projet, and gave them their 501(c)3, the Aspect Foundation) fut aussi l’une des principales forces du projet. Les supporteurs initiaux incluent des collectifs anarchistes de Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Atlanta, Toronto et Knoxville. Une autre forte influence sur l’organisation a été le collectif "Free Society" qui était influencé par les théories d’Écologie sociale de Murray Bookchin. Ils commencèrent à publier leur journeau bilingue Love and Rage/Amor y Rabia en janvier 1990. Some anarchists were wary of the network and their federation, wondering if they were truly anarchist, some anarchists even wondered if the RSL was a Trotskyist group performing some kind of entryist tactic. More lifestyle-oriented anarchists, particularly those at "Fifth Estate" had accused Love and Rage of being a secretly Leninist sect from its very beginnings. While some members of the New York City local did eventually become Leninists, this accusation did not make sense to most members of the group, who defined themselves as anarchists and rejected Leninism. Subsequent developments revealed the former RSL members to be among the most orthodox anarchists in the organization. For members of Love and Rage, the "Trotskyist" influence on the group never made much sense, as the ex-RSL group tended to be a generation older than the 20-30 something base of the rest of the group, and not directly involved in the ongoing activist work that occupied the time and energy of most members.
Dans ses incarnations variées (comme journal, réseau et fédération), Love and Rage avait une orientation activiste forte and ses membres participèrent aux luttes sur de différentes questions. La première "grosse action" avec le support de Love and Rage a été la 1990 Earth Day Wall Street Action, une journée d'action directe ciblant les conséquences écologiques du capitalisme. Love and Rage called the first national black bloc in the United States as a breakaway from the main body of a January 1991 March on Washington DC against the first Persian Gulf War which attacked the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund.
From the beginning Love and Rage members showed little regard for anarchist orthodoxies, and adopted positions heavily influenced by several varieties of Marxism, most notably support for national liberation struggles and embracing a white skin privilege analysis of racism in the U.S. that argued that the material and psychological benefits received by white workers at the expense of non-white (especially African American) workers undermined the basis of multi-racial working class unity and therefore had to be confronted directly if such unity was desired. These ideas came into the organization especially because of the role of prison-solidarity work, which forged personal relationships between Love and Rage members and former members of groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, the Weather Underground Organization, and the George Jackson Brigade. The theory has complex roots in Black nationalist and American communist thinking and became influential in the New Left through the writings of Noel Ignatiev, and Ted Allen. In the late 1950s and early 60s Ignatiev and Allen were both members of the Provisional Organizing Committee, a proto-Maoist breakaway from the CPUSA. Ignatiev became active in Students for a Democratic Society and was later a leading figure in the Sojourner Truth Organization, an organization influenced by Maoism and Italian Autonomist Marxism. He briefly joined Love and Rage but denounced the group as "incapable of building dual power" at its 1994 conference, and left after less than a year. Some members of Love and Rage also echoed Lenin in arguing for the need for disciplined forms of revolutionary organization. The two most clearly opposed positions: one calling for a cadre type organization and the other for a more federated and localized group were based roughly in New York, where members involved in organizing within the multi-national and largely working class student movement at the City University of New York(CUNY) came to question some central tenets of anarchism, and Minneapolis, where the political environment was more focused on community organizing projects. The emergence of two opposed trends was one of the factors that led the group to split.
In 1991 the groups putting out the newspaper formed the Love and Rage Network. That same year an anarchist gathering in Cuernavaca, Mexico led to the creation of the first Amor y Rabia group in Mexico City. In 1993 the Mexico City group, with the support of others in Mexico, began publishing their own newspaper, Amor y Rabia. The U.S. based newspaper became mono-lingual at this point and the Mexican paper was distributed to Spanish readers in the U.S..
In 1993, the core New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Mexico City groups and others expressed the desire for a tighter federal structure, which caused some other groups to leave and new people to join. This is when the Love and Rage Network was renamed the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation. At this time Love and Rage members were very active in doing anti-Klan and anti-Nazi work and in building up Anti-Racist Action (ARA). Others were active in defending abortion clinics and doing prisoner solidarity activism.
The 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico focused much of the attention of the organization on Zapatista solidarity work. Members of Amor y Rabia made quick contact with the Zapatistas and Love and Rage members in the United States were early participants in setting up Zapatista solidarity groups and in disseminating English translations of their communiques. At the 1994 convention of Love and Rage, "Mexico Solidarity," "Prison Abolition" and "Anti-Fascism" (including anti-police brutality, anti-KKK, and abortion/gay rights) were decided as the three main areas of work for the organization.
Love and Rage members also participated in a variety of fights against neo-liberal measures in the U.S.. These included the fight against budget cuts and tuition hikes at the City University of New York (CUNY), a Living Wage campaign in Vermont, and connections with Welfare Rights organizers in Minneapolis.
By 1996 major divisions began to appear in the organization. One or two of the most active members were moving away from anarchism. Another trend made up mainly of older former members of the RSL who argued for an anarchist politics focused on the working class, in opposition to two other factions, both which focused on race: one which wanted to make "white skin privilege" the central concern; the other of which focused more broadly on what some would call a Third World Marxist program which included an endorsement of nationalism by non-white racial groups, combined with a focus on gender and sexuality. The regional division in the organization, related to differing priorities in the locals based in New York City and Minneapolis also played a role. The Minneapolis local focused primarily on building relationships with local organizations, building a large and regular Cop watch project, playing a significant role in local efforts around Mumia Abu Jamal's case, police brutality, Zapatista solidarity, and abortion rights. As the fight over Marxism took off between ex-RSL, many in Minneapolis found the debate to be irrelevant to organizing work, and began to leave the organization. The Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation formally dissolved in 1998. The Marxist-influenced trend based in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area formed the Fire by Night Organizing Committee, a non-anarchist cadre group which had chapters in San Francisco and New York. Two other New York members (one of whom had been a Maoist before joining Love and Rage) entered the Marxist organization Freedom Road Socialist Organization. A second group - those who endorsed the idea of 'white privilege' and were grouped around Joel Olson - formed the Bring the Ruckus! federation, who described themselves as between Leninist party and an anarchist network. Another group, made up of former members of the RSL began publishing The Utopian, and some of them later entered the platformist anarchist federation NEFAC. And many other individuals went on to be active in anarchist and non-anarchist forms of activism.
While the formal membership of Love and Rage never exceeded 150 at any one time (and fewer than 40 attended the final conference), several times that many people passed through the organization and it enjoyed an even larger circle of sympathizers and readers of its newspaper. (The print run of the last issue was 9,000.) Love and Rage had a very lively culture of internal debate that -- for most of its life -- successfully avoided sectarian bickering. While they largely rejected its emphasis on building a disciplined revolutionary organization, Love and Rage influenced the political perspectives of a fraction of the young activists who would go on to play major roles in the anti-globalization movement, in particular their understanding of the distinct role of racism in the workings of U.S. society.
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