PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Report from NEFAC Congress
by Rebel Worker Friday, Apr. 16, 2004 at 8:33 PM

A group of Yinzers travelled to Baltimore to observe and participate in the recent Northeast Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC) Congress, as well as the anarchist revelry. What follows is a report from NEFAC about the event.

Report From NEFAC's Ninth General Congress

Marking four years since the federation first officially formed, NEFAC held its ninth general congress in Baltimore, MD, over the weekend of April 10-11th, 2004. Over 40 members and supporters were in attendance,representing groups from Montreal, Vermont, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Baltimore. A number of observers were also on hand, including a comrade from FRAC (Federation of Anarchist Collectives-Great Lakes) and individuals from New Jersey, Pittsburgh, and Richmond, VA.

The congress began with introductions, followed by reports from NEFAC collectives and federal working groups (general secretaries, publication groups, treasury, warchest, tech group, etc.). It was exciting to hear of all the activity taken on by various NEFAC groups in the region -- struggles around housing and tenants rights; against poverty and neo-liberal attacks on the poor; labor organizing and solidarity; anti-fascism; defense of immigrants and prisoner support; anti-war activism; abortion clinic defense; etc. -- and througout the weekend there was discussion of how we can better coordinate this work into a more comprehensive regional class struggle strategy for the federation.

As with past congresses, we also expanded our membership with the formal adhesion of two collectives who were previously supporter groups (Sargassum of Somerville, MA; Mobarezah of Boston, MA), and also individuals from Philadelphia and New Jersey.

Perhaps the most important thing to come out of this conference was the adoption, pending ratification by our French-speaking members, of a collectively written Workplace Position Paper, which took up the bulk of the weekend with a point by point discussion. This paper outlines both a theoretical vision for the role we see workplace struggles playing in alarger revolutionary context (and in any would-be libertarian communist future), and also a strategic framework for anarchist-communists in the workplace struggles of the present.

Another important item was the adoption of a series of proposals from NEFAC's 'Women's Caucus'. We agreed to include an 'anti-patriarchy watch' in our federal structure to keep the federation informed of class-based feminist struggles and how we can better participate in anti-patriarchy work in the region. There were also proposals adopted that will better help us confront internal sexism in the federation, and apply more feminist analysis in our written propaganda and agitation.

Other itmes of business included the rotation of various federal tasks (treasury, warchest); a new collective to help with the production of 'Strike!', our forth-coming English agitational newspaper; and a committment to participating in the upcoming protests against the Republican National Convention this summer in NYC. (Comrades are also encouraged to attend the protests against the Democratic National Convention in Boston!)

We informally discussed the possibility of combining efforts with other like-mided regional groups (FRAC, FNAC, BAAC) in order to form, some time in the future, a continental anarchist-communist federation. We also discussed a joint publishing project with AK Press to release a NEFAC 'best of' book in Spring 2005.

Overall, it was a very productive conference, and comrades seemed to leave with a renewed sense of enthusiasm and committment. It's been a tough four years as NEFAC has seen its way through ideological battles, internal challenges, financial hardship, some hard-fought struggles, and occasional legal repression. But we continue to grow as a federation. Despite the odds, we look forward to the future and will continue to fight for a pro-organizational, class struggle anarchist-communism, both among the general anarchist milieu and within the broader working class in our region.

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