Sunday, February 10, 2008 / 5:00 p.m.
at the Brian MacKenzie Infoshop
1426 9th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001
(202) 986.0681 / http://www.dcinfoshop.org/

Nearly as early as Hillary or Obama, anarchists were hot on the campaign trail. Plans to resist the 2008 U.S. presidential elections were afoot in 2006. As German Jewish anarchist Gustav Landauer once observed in relation to "anarchist assassination politics" that they "proceed from the intentions of a small group... following the example of the big political parties. ...What they are trying to say is: 'We are also political.' ...[Yet] these anarchists are not anarchic enough." His comments apply to electoralism too: being political is the right impulse, but the tactic(s) and indeed the focus are wrong. Certainly, in the United States, presidential elections represent rare moments when many people "participate." But why the anarchist fascination with something that's far from anything we'd recognize as politics? And why, if we choose to engage, do anarchists frequently use strategies that mirror statist and/or liberal forms, or are simply unimaginative? Perhaps, in zeroing in on presidential elections, we aren't anarchic enough either.

Cindy is an anarchist activist and educator from Vermont. She has been involved with the Institute for Social Ecology, and is currently a board member with the Institute for Anarchist Studies and a co-organizer of the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference. She is also a collective member of the all-volunteer Black Sheep Books in Montpelier, Vermont.

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