For those who want to help build an anarchist youth group

yeah baa's smallish at the moment but we're having a meeting soon so we can deffaintly get it organised.

if people just stopped mouning and decided whether they wanted to be in a youth group or not it would make it a lot easier.

i'm in favour of an @ youth group/network and i think it's a shame that AYN has disintegrated - but i'm too old to be a 'youth' any more so i don't think i should stick my nose in too far

maybe its just important to build connections in our areas than try to get a few people to meet up which will inevitably be upsetting if only a few people show.

the problem with the AYN was it never really existed off the internet- therefore we need real connections.

im not sure if what im saying is we shouldnt resurect the AYN, or if im just a bit sceptical.

either way it would still be cool to meet people, and by far the best way to do that is to do actions together, or just go and stay for a bit.

eg if kickstart social centre (www.ravetz.btinternet.co.uk - darn i cant plug it enuf!) gets underway, then it would be extreemy cool for anyone to come and stay - we would build links through good 'action'.

and stuff like that - nawhattamean

I think a youth online network is a good idea but in reality it is a poor idea for a couple of reasons, for one i dont think we need to have a youth group wouldnt it more effective to organies out of local groups already where youths and adults can work together? Wouldnt that make sense and save money, which nobody has to throw away? Also what will an Anarchist youth network achieve that general networks can't. I think if tehre more time spent on the general anarchist networks and instead of creating a youth network then there would be alot more resources at hand for evryoen not just this network or that.

Well theres my rant,

yeah, we can be the vanguard . i think it would be a great idea, and would deffinitely be up for coming along. it helps to have a network of young people so new people can get involved and not be too intimidated, and also if you're isolated it can be more inspiring having someone around your age saying they set up a group in their area on their own rather than some bloke in a fed saying they'll help (which can be good too of course). also, it's nice to have places to stay around the country for actions and stuff which you can easily pass of as just normal friends to your parents if they're funny about anarchists...

Cheers 3rd season these thoughts were in the back of my head for some time and Im sick of the AYN is dead mantra...

Although Im nearly reaching the non-youth threshold the fact remains any prospective attempt to setup a youth section is needed and im fully supportive of, because anarchism is extremly weak if a)we dont offer a pole of attraction to those interested or new to anarchist ideas and b)we dont co-ordinate some of our activities outside of our own ghettoes. And a youth group helps with both.

And having a function nationally shouldnt detract from the fact that we see our politics as part of an attempt to de-centralise political power and bureaucracy, because it doesnt,

Instead we should try to build something from out of a social, but why do political things always have to be based down south? Either way hope we can get something going by the end of the year, if not for us then do it for the kids right.?

well, it might be possible to have a gathering like this in brum, which is more middle than south, but it would probably need to be earlier in the year, and numbers might be restricted. but at least it's bristol and not bloody london!

yeah i know its down south and everything always seems to be down south but like GT said least its not london this time

anyways i think round mid june sort of thing would be a cool time cause its exams and holidays before and after june then phaps?

as long as it doesn't clash with glastonbury.

Erm, can we refrain on a date for now coz I don't know when my exams finish and they might even spill into early July apparently!

Anyway, I'm supportive of building an @ youth group. However, I seem to be the only ex-LAY person here so how useful I would be is unclear at the moment.

Anyway, should we start maybe thinking about what we want to discuss. Here's mine (in no particular order):

- Problems with AYN. What went wrong, what didn't

- Structure of new group

- Aim of new group and how to reach those aims

- Theoretical Unity. We can discuss how united on the day but I think some should exist.

- New name. Do we want one? If yes, then what?

Anything else?

well, unless we call ourselves the edelweiss pirates which no one else will agree with, then i think that the ayn is a perfectly decent name because we already have the domain name, it's doesn't really require much explanation, people may have heard of it and only those who post on these website will have heard all the ayn is dead rubbish, and those people will see that we're not, it will annoy all those who thought it would die... i mean what else would it be called? your mum's network? young anarchists network? then we could make really sectarian remarks about the anarchist youth network, splitters! yeah...

but otherwise the agenda sounds good. hmm, on the subject of theoretical unity, which will probably get discussed to death on the day anyway, but i'm not sure how much we'd need beyond the basic principles of anarchism, but practical unity would be much more useful. i reckon maybe we should try and pick some fairly focused campaign and stick with it, so as to avoid rambling all over the place and not actually doing anything. dunno what it could be though. maybe something to do with school, or just maybe putting various types of gigs (not punk unless there really are no other groups in a particular area) on around the country to encourage some sort of counter (not sub!) culture, so something. well, we've got a few months to come up with ideas. i always thought the anti-exam idea was a good one, but like so much else it just disappeared. young prisoners would be a good one too, but it would be fucking hard to get going, that's all.

and ed, as an ex-lay person i'd have thought you'd be in a perfect position to tell the rest of us why lay sucked so much and how to avoid similar situations arising again in the future.

also, another reason to keep it as ayn is, we won't spend two hours debating the name, which has to be one of most boring things you can ever do at a gathering. amusing though it can be to compete to see who can find the silliest acronym, it really is a rather pointless waste of time when we could be fucking shit up, or more likely in the anarchist movement, drinking shit beer up.

An agenda and the name is fine but dont we need to to actually reflect on the chicken and the egg method of building something from scratch?

As somebody else reflected should it be built from local regional individuals?

Is it a propaganda group or a campaigning body?

I have my own view on this but I have no idea how the AYN functioned, or didnt, and we should have a full assesment of how the AYN died....

3rd: propaganda group - group whose primary function is spreading anarchist ideas through propaganda (like Freedom)

Campaigning group - group which organises a sustained campaign against a particular ill, like No Sweat.

I've put my thoughts on what happened to the AYN and what to do about them here on the ayn forum:

http://enrager.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=5355#5355

i think its a really good idea to have an anarchist youth group/network/thing.

One thing I was wondering was is it practicly possible and would there be any objections to have a meeting/gathering in the easter holidays? As this would be before exams start most people would be free and we could have a follow up meeting reasonably soon after in june/july.

Another issue which i think is important and should be added to the agenda is how we are going to prevent the 'group' from becoming (remaining) entirley web based.

heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey! wassup (ex)ayn bunnies?!

wow i haven't been here in ages - as usual i got nothing relevant, or even of any importance to add, just a hi!

actually i do wanna agree with beanis, we never saw each other enough out of the virtual/text world. i think we should have a gathering/re-union (preferably in the summer) and see what happens - although it'll probably be like the last 2, and consist solely of crazy drunkeness...

oh and by the way THE EMOTICONS ARE STILL SHIT

Clarity:

Im in agreement that the AYN should continue esp with having a)an exisiting profile (however obscure that is, and b) we have a website. Of course we will have to endure the revo types who want to tell us that the AYN died a death, but masses of people still dont know diddly shit about @ or the AYN for that matter, so we'll leave the trot fodder with there prejudices...

On the issue of structure there are different roads we can go down, but firstly we need to know HOW people want to it work, then what best accomodates that outlook. Thats certainly my assessment,

I cant represent all the views expressed on here but there is a general conflict between those who want a loose association which shares a common outlook and people like myself who would like to see us more organised across the UK, co-ordinating activity with each other and possibly in a position to work around common campaigns...

I think it'll be easier to build the group from the position we're in now coz we have contacts across the country. When the AYN first started it was almost entirely London based with odd members in Surrey or Swindon. Now we have people in London, Manc, Bristol, West Midlands, North East and Worthing (plus individuals and student groups in other places). If we get people from all these places to come along then it is a much more solid base to start building from (IMO).

One thing I reckon is VITAL is to spread network responsibilities as far as possible.

In terms of structure, I think it should be a network of local groups who agree with the aims & principles of the group (not OTT AF style A&P's but some theoretical unity is needed IMO). Groups should be allowed full autonomy (within the A&P's) but there needs to be a way of keeping everyone in the network collaborating with each other such as a newsletter or a campaign. Failing that we at least need to be able to know what different groups are doing.

Also, maybe stuff like issue-based groups within the network would be good i.e. I was talking at the last gathering about starting an AYN anti-fascist group. Other people could set up environmental or young workers or animal lib groups.

Revolt, agree 100% that we should discuss how to stop the group becoming entirely web-based. As for holding a meet in easter, I dunno how good that is for people coz people might be preparing for exams and if not they prolly will be afterwards so we couldn't get straight to work. If we hold it in summer we can (theoretically) get straight down to business.

Ooh, I'd also like to raise the issue of official membership and membership lists to the agenda.

Hey

glad to see people are starting to pick up the peices. I'd deffinatly be interested in carrying on.

I think somethink we need to focus on are deffinatly issues tho.

Like the focus groups were a good idea, cos theres no point in 3rd season having to do class struggle stuff, or wateva.

I think maybe we should draw up a membership list.

And i think something we should really get into , is producing easy distributable prop.

xxx

the whole membership thing i like the sound of,but i'm wandering what exactly that would entail like you wouldn't have to pay or anything cause membership prices etc puts a lot of people off but i'd be interested as to what peoples thoughts are on this are.

also yeah, easter i'll be too busy with revision and the like, i think summers a good time.

I think the groups for different things (anti-fa, animal lib etc) is a good idea as well as other groups for internal things such as web team, email checking person, etc and should actually change and should not contain the same person in more thean one group unless they want to or its impossible any other way.

I think that some kind of formal membership should exist too and with this should come something that shows you are a member that comes reguarly to remind you incase you forgot you were a member, even if its just something as simple as a monthly email detailing what other people in the network have done.

Hmmm but then you have the problem of how to raise funds. Paying a little bit regularly might put some people off, but then maybe they don't care that much?

Otherwise what's the alternative - a tiny number of people raise all the cash.

Of course this wouldn't mean that someone had to pay subs or fuck off, cos people can still do stuff with the group while getting to know them etc., and if they later decide to join then they can vote on decision etc. etc.

Ah balls I think i might put my post from the ayn forum here...

CLandestina hey!

I think an AYN re-union piss-up this summer would be ace (shame we couldn't go back to the dairy...)

here's what i posted in the ayn forum:

Alright all,

I think I was pretty active in AYN and the London group in particular, cos I really believed in the project and really wanted to make the Network work. So I went to all the Gatherings, almost all of the London meets, did little AYN tags all over the place, was London email sec for a bit and learnt how to help maintain websites to do the AYN one.

Thinking back I think a lot of it was over-ambitious. From small bits like wanting to have the website with loads of news n information n stuff to trying to ... I dunno.

And to be honest I think that was a big problem - I don't think we knew what we were trying to do. At none of the gatherings did we sit and discuss: right, what are the problems with the world, what the fuck are we gonna do about them, and how the fuck are we gonna do it.

I felt there was a big culture against "dead men with beards" and “books", which basically was a way people avoided actually making any half-decent plans. We tried to come up with campaigns n stuff but never got anywhere cos we had no shared ideas of how to change the world.

When I saw nothing was happening in a long-term respect I kinda put my energies into just trying to keep the group going - checking and replying to emails, posting stuff to IMC as the AYN, writing action reports and trying to make sure that people came to meetings, and that meetings happened.

In London we started getting 30-odd people a fortnight at one point. BUT this didn't mean anything cos we had no idea where we were going. As such the meetings were one long in-joke which nothing came out of. If I remember right all AYNetwork prop was written by 2 people, and LAY stuff by about 3. This may have been cos we weren't good enough at encouraging new people to get involved... but there was also the feeling that a good few people didn't really give much of a shit. Also all the fundraising was done by a tiny number of people too in sporadic bursts. I think that any future group has to make sure this doesn’t happen again – I’d suggest funding the group in a democratic way by having membership dues and a regular income (and maybe registering with the Workers Beer Co), so it doesn’t mean that a few people will slave away while others do sweet FA, and will also probably get rid of people who don’t give a shit about politics anyway and just want to consume some kind of “radical” lifestyle.

When we did have leaflets hardly anyone gave them out, even on demos... and with that kind of attitude how were we supposed to grow?

Right now I feel a bit old for a youth group (cos we don’t wanna be like Revo!), but I do think it's a good idea, cos young people are the most susceptible to anarchist ideas, and are natural anarchists in many ways. So if people want to get ayn goin again I think that’s a very good thing, and if I can help out I will.

However there is no point re-starting it if we’re gonna make the same mistakes again. One problem I think was trying to declare a national network with no basis in local groups. Also, are there enough anarchists (particularly in areas outside London) to have youth-only groups? At the moment I don’t think so. However it is also true that the existing national federations (like the AF and SolFed) do need re-juvenating, and I think maybe creating some kinda young people’s caucus (i.e. a section with its own discussions and structures) within one of the feds could be a viable option. Of course ultimately in Britain with the movement generally I think what we need is a large libertarian organisation which can incorporate the nat feds, as well as local groups like Hereford, WMA, HSG, WAG, BAG etc. etc. and collectives like Freedom, enrager etc., and I think a young people’s section should be part of that… but we’re in a sectarian movement so who knows.

I think one problem with AYN and why we had no direction was lack of class struggle politics. Without recognising that the class struggle holds the best potential for human liberation we’re basically left with perpetual “activism”. Hopping from one action and one issue to the next, without ever building up any kind of basis anywhere, like a shit version of the SWP. Any group like this can only get weaker, as people burn out, get nicked too many times and get no-where politically.

Hmmmm well that’s all I can think of for now as to why has stuff got this bad, and hopefully it’ll be of some use to those of you who want to get going again. And I really hope you do, cos I think it’s really really important to have a libertarian pole to attract people who might otherwise be sucked into dead-end Leninist politics.

Good luck!!

Love&rage

G’s b

having a membership and membership fees (with unofficial exceptions might be a good idea - some folks really can't afford stuff) sounds good. I think it would do a lot to make sure that the AYN (or subgroups thereof)was to some degree more democratic and the members themselves could be held accountable and asked if they're going to get off their arses (like myself) if they're just there for mayday and the next big anti-war demo.

Phoebe