Cindy Milstein - Side by Side: A Critical Reader for Accomplices

The idea for Taking Sides arose from polarizing screaming matches that my friends and I had with self-identified peaceful protesters and white allies during Bay Area solidarity actions for Ferguson in 2014. My patience narrowed as the long nights of exhilarating, illegal marches continued. Our disruptions were working, both as public education and political rebellion. The police and politicians were at their wits end to control the streets, which were ours. Yet suddenly, I and other radicals were increasingly drawn intoor one could argue, distracted byverbal battles with those inside our own ranks who, wittingly or not, seemed intent on quelling revolution, especially by policing us.

Yelling may be cathartic, but its rarely convincing. So in hopes of both regaining my equanimity and expanding the possibilities opened by this uprising, I decided to hand out thousands of the zine-essay Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex, by Indigenous Action Media, including hundreds in Oakland to people who were streaming out of the sort of so-called allies antiracism workshop that the essay condemned. Then I edited and gave away a compilation zine, Revolutionary Solidarity: A Critical Reader for Accomplices , which included that piece and six others. Those seven essays, in some cases dramatically rewritten, now sit side by side with another half dozen to constitute Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism .

All these iterations have been political interventions: as provocation, as direct action to discomfort, as challenge to what I consider nonliberatory praxis. They are also an invitation to constructively debate the many thorny questions for which none of us have the answers, to hone our strategies and tactics within social struggles while tangibly looking out for each other. They serve, too, as an ethical compass, supplying directionality to walk fiercely, militantly, and collectively toward our many dreams of egalitarian social transformation.

The pieces in Taking Sides do not agree with each other. That isnt accidental. There are no easy or singular responses or resolutions to white supremacy, to name one brutal adversary, nor uncomplicated ones. These essays each wrestle in their own way with the dilemma of how to thwart murderous forms of social control while retaining our humanity. In doing so, they form a dialogue that models how we might intelligently converse and act in comradely concert with each other outside the pages of this book.

What the contributions in this anthology do agree on is the need to concentrate our organizing efforts squarely on questions of power. They assert that we must unearth, contest, and aim to dismantle all manifestations and structures of hierarchical power, wherever we find them, including when they appear in our movements. They pick a side: freedom versus domination, in the most expansive sense. And they see this commitment as a lived practice, inherently filled with generative tensions. The word accomplice, used throughout this work, tries to capture this shared perspective, which could better be described as a sensibility and way to engage this minefield of a worlda way that I trust youll embrace after reflecting on these essays.

Indeed, I edited this anthology to encourage deep reflection, which I understand to be crucial ground for serious resistance. I come back often to social philosopher Theodor W. Adornos notion that as long as thinking is not interrupted, it has a firm grasp upon possibility. Open thinking points beyond itself [and] is more closely related to a praxis truly involved in change than [is] a position of mere obedience. (Im fond of adding that an open heart points beyond itselfan inseparable traveling companion to critical theory.) So I want you to read and contemplate the intertwining arguments laid out in Taking Sides with a critical eye and tender heart, and think for yourself, on your own and with others. Then carry that habit back into the streets, along with what you glean from this compilation.

These works were written by, for, and within contemporary moments of insurrection and social struggle on Turtle Island by people who Id characterize, to borrow a term shared with me by feminist activist-writer Silvia Federici, as street intellectuals, all immersed in anticapitalist and anticolonial politics. They all speak from the front lines.

This book is meant to have use value as both a sharp, subversive tool and generous gift. Use it as the basis for self-study, study groups, workshops, and book events, and online and especially off-line discussions. Im hoping that youll find it useful enough to spread the wordtable with it, get it into libraries, pass it on. And while you should definitely support AK Press, an anarchist publishing house scraping by against all the odds, with your dollars, its cool to borrow freely from this anthology as long as its not for financial or personal gain.

As I put the finishing touches on this collection, Im reminded that a book is never a solo project, even if my name ends up on the cover. It necessitates collaboration, and collaboration turns months of work into pure joy, making for a smarter, more nuanced creation. So many helping hands go into publishing, including those unknown ones that make the paper and ink or pack the finished books into shipping boxes. I want to acknowledge all such invisible labor, the social relations that capitalism disappears as part of its inherent logic of trying to divide us. And of course, if theres anyone I forget to acknowledge by name in what follows, know that my faux pas doesnt diminish my appreciation.