The Creation of the Providence General Assembly
A united front against fascism:
For the past couple of years those of us in CounterPower have been discussing the ongoing rising fascism in US society and the need to help assemble and organize those forces that might be interested in confronting it. While we do not dismiss the need for strategically confronting fascist street forces when necessary, street fighting alone will not stem this tide. The authoritarian tendencies of the state have become amplified and extended in ways that seek to constitute a fascist hegemony beyond the longstanding neoliberal/bourgeois order. We desire to build a united front – a broad coalition of revolutionary and radical organizations willing and able to mobilize broad popular resistance to fascism and to build towards a free society. We also recognize that the forces we would need to draw upon to construct a united front are extremely lacking. Union leaderships remain almost entirely wedded to the Democratic party. Revolutionary groups are small, often sectarian, usually unwilling or incapable of engaging in meaningful collaboration. The landscape is riddled with non-profits who, at best, seek to make marginal improvements to the existing order rather than directly challenge it. In part because of these tendencies, working-class communities are often fragmented and depoliticized compared to previous generations. In short, the forces out of which we would currently help cohere into a united front are small, atomized, inward-looking, and/or ultimately wedded to reformist strategies. All hope is not lost, but based on our analysis of history and the material conditions of the current moment it seems that the united front needs to be built towards, rather than assembled. Hopefully through consistent communication, solidarity, trust and collective resistance the groundwork for a feasible and meaningful united front might be born.
Why we chose the General Assembly structure:
With an orientation towards helping to build our collective capacity to resist in the present, we understood the need for both organization and action, and saw the general assembly as a model that maximized effective mobilization while also providing a groundwork for organizing specific sites of struggle in a way that was both open and durable. We proceeded with a mass line orientation towards trusting the people to voice direct concerns and to collectively create solutions. We recognized from the outset that we could not do the work that needed doing in this moment by ourselves. The PGA was built out of both that humility and ambition. We also knew we were creating something that we would certainly influence, but that was not in our control – something very few political groups do. Given the existing conditions and relations on the Left where we are, we knew that if we tried to simply cohere a revolutionary anti-fascist organization by ourselves or with those around us, it would not likely be more than a couple dozen people. We knew that with the General Assembly model there would be people (most of whom we had not even met before this was launched) that would become leaders within this space in different ways and with different capacities, and they have.
Understanding our lack of capacity to act effectively on our own and seeing no one else locally inclined or able to currently play that role, we sought to create a process through which radical social forces committed to revolutionary anti-fascism (broadly defined) could collaborate around concrete organizing projects. We also felt that this organizational body should have the capacity and orientation towards mass organizing. We think that revolution is a process, and while organization is key to that process, organizations that simply seek to build their own organizations without the active participation of others, or without building the vehicles through which the revolution is seriously advanced, will not accomplish very much.
History of General Assemblies:
Popular assemblies have arisen many times in revolutionary struggles, and in periods of revolt, to organize popular resistance in a way that also prefigures the type of direct democracy those rebels seek to create under a new social order. From the Russian soviets of 1917, to the Spanish Revolution two decades later, to the Hungarian rebels that stared down Stalin’s tanks twenty years after that, to the Zapatista assemblies and encuentros, to Tahrir Square and the occupy movement all over the world – popular assemblies, general assemblies, workers councils, soviets, and communes are all similar institutions of popular resistance constructed in the process of struggle as a means to make decisions and sustain activity.
There are good reasons why revolutionaries have adopted these types of models. It allows for mass participation alongside a clear revolutionary politic. It is a durable enough structure to coordinate protracted revolutionary activity, but also flexible enough to accommodate changing social and political circumstances. It is a functional way of engaging mass participation in the process of struggle, while also modeling the values and process of equality and participation the movement seeks to make permanent. We don’t see this as a model to be reified, but a process to be emulated.
Without adding our names to this list of historical examples of inspiration, we feel drawn to the general assembly for these reasons – through historical observation and personal experiences. One of us was in Oakland for the Justice for Oscar Grant movement in Oakland 2009-10. In that movement the Oakland General Assembly for Justice for Oscar Grant, was inspired by the assemblies some participants had seen a few years earlier in Mexico – the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). The Oakland General Assembly was constructed to guard against the ongoing cooptation and repression the Justice for Oscar Grant movement had been experiencing, and also to cohere radical forces to continue to engage in militant disruption in a coordinated way. In terms of collective militance, personal relationships/bonds, and the recognition of the need to establish an overt revolutionary politic to ward off and defend against a variety of destructive forces – these lessons were carried over in Oakland into the Occupy movement a year later.
Several of us who helped formulate the Providence General Assembly are veterans of the Occupy movement (in Oakland, New York, and Providence). We were part of the global process of occupations and general assemblies that started in Tunisia and spread to every corner of the world. In the locations where we were, we saw different iterations of the strengths and the weaknesses of the Occupy general assemblies in 2011 and 2012. Occupy was defined most simply by tent encampments in prominent public places, as well as general assemblies, where movement decisions were made openly and democratically. Most US Occupy sites had problems maintaining camps, managing camp conflicts, dealing with the perpetual risk of police repression endemic to encampments, eventually withstanding the winter weather in many locations, and a range of other problems. While the general assembly model in the Occupy movement was far from perfect, it is worth noting that most of the problems the movement had related to the encampments (which were also the central feature of the movement). On the more positive side was an open political space providing room for people to become leaders and for the development of synergy between different facets of the movement. This structure provided a platform for people who had been to protests but never really organized, to step up, find myriad ways to contribute, maintain their efforts, and lead through action. By establishing an open horizontal space, the participation of large numbers of people in a way that was (honestly only somewhat) coordinated, provided a spark and a somewhat durable energy that would never have emerged by calling for a protest or announcing an organizing meeting.
We are not seeking to recreate Occupy, nor are we comparing ourselves to the soviets of the Russian Revolution. We see the general assembly as a useful political framework that can expand when possible, to meet the revolutionary needs of the moment when it can be fostered. We have had some recent experience in the strengths and weaknesses of this model when applied. Organizationally, there are no schematics for the perfect mass organization, and no easy-bake recipe for revolution. But, from our vantage point and given our local conditions and the gravity of the political moment, we felt this was the best way forward.
What is the Providence General Assembly?
The Providence General Assembly is a popular mass assembly that meets bi-weekly with functioning (semi-autonomous) working groups that engage in a variety of organizing projects – immigrant solidarity, class struggle, mutual aid, unhoused solidarity, anti-imperialism, community defense, political education as well as groups that manage the facilitation of meetings and safety for general assembly meetings. While some of these efforts have sunk deeper roots than others, all of these efforts meet regularly and have ongoing collective organizing work.
Each working group is semi-autonomous. They all are a part of the general assembly – they report back at every General Assembly and get major decisions approved there. They also meet with new people who would like to join at every GA. But, generally, the working groups meet separately from the general assembly and develop what they want to do and how as a working group. The GA provides an anchor as well as a safety net for these working groups. No political organization or charismatic leader can easily enter a working group, coopt it, and spin it off as their own organization. If a working group is slow to get going or is having whatever issue, the fact that it is part of this bigger general assembly is a source of support for that working group. Beyond that, the general assembly can also make shifts and adjustments, if necessary, to make sure the organizing around that issue gets done. If the working group was just an initiative around a single issue, comprised mostly of people who don’t know each other, it would be far easier for that project to fizzle out. It is more difficult for a working group to just call it quits (if that’s where it was at) because the project is an arm of a bigger body. Likewise, if you called a mass meeting without any explicit focus of what organizing needs to happen, the lack of focus is more likely to produce disinterest, conflict and a first impression of a lack of process and structure rather than a stable platform for vision and action.
The General Assembly is a permanent political center that allows the working groups to take their own shape and grow at their own pace, but also durably roots those working groups. The working groups are incubators of new projects and actions around key points of social struggle. Over time, as they become more cohesive and have had time to discuss and plan, they become centers of their own. Subgroups can spawn out of the working groups, sometimes having more vibrancy than the working group out of which they grew. Our Immigrant Solidarity group is a subgroup of Community Defense. Immigrant Solidarity probably has the clearest mission, tightest group collaboration (mostly around ICE Watch and know your rights education), and has the most developed praxis of any formation in the PGA.
The GA serves as a stable springboard for acts of resistance. It also serves as a model of radical direct democracy. If it can sustain itself and grow, more actions and organizing can take place in a way that is hopefully durable. Maybe more importantly is the collective experience of building horizontal political power – with people who were mostly strangers to each other a short time ago, many of whom are relating to radical organizing for the first time. It is a tall task, but we feel that we need to build the directly democratic structures of the world we want to see; to use that general assembly to direct the work that can expand and fill that structure so it can confront the systems we have to destroy; and use our various mistakes and successes as the foundation to build something new. We are far from that destination. Quite far. But that is where we are going.
Why use this structure rather than form an organization, or form a coalition or spokes-council among existing groups?
Radical political organizations – whether anarchist collectives or communist organizations, or loose affinity groups of friends – often remain small, struggle for long periods to grow their numbers and compete with other organizations for membership, visibility on the left, and legitimacy within communities or in city politics (for the groups that are oriented that way). Local coalitions often fall apart before they even get off the ground, due to local drama, conflicts between groups or their members, or organizations spending more time jockeying for control or arguing about (usually) petty political differences than actually planning – let alone doing any substantive organizing beyond a few months. If they can work through that stage, coalitions then usually argue over structure, a singular political line and how specific it should be, how decisions get made, mid-term strategy, long-term vision, etc. They often lack (or lose) a radical political grounding because their politics are based on a lowest common denominator – one group is worried about losing their funding, and this or that charismatic leader is planning to run for city council. On top of this, the single-issue nature of most coalitions makes them flat-footed if crises emerge that necessitate a significant strategy pivot, or they get tripped up when material conditions dictate that they “walk and chew gum.” If the coalition has more than one focus of struggle, tensions often arise as to which is most strategic and therefore deserving of limited time, energy and resources. The General Assembly is not a cure-all for all that plagues the left, but it is functional detour for some of the traffic jams we’ve all spent years sitting in.
What about base-building? What about mobilizing the masses? What is your strategy?
Many of us have seen or been in debates going back decades as to whether to a) focus on base-building organizational efforts or b) to prioritize fostering mass mobilization. The organizational focus basically follows a strategy of organizing to mobilize. Intentional grassroots efforts (tenant unions, workplace organizing, public education organizing, struggles against acts of police violence) are designed to build a base in order to mobilize masses of people around an issue or set of issues. However, it rarely expands to the level of mass struggle. They also often remain bounded by the timelines of their specific efforts – rent control campaigns, union contract negotiations, city budgets, trials of killer cops if we’re lucky enough to get them tried. On the other hand, the mass mobilization focus follows a strategy of mobilizing to organize (or quite often mobilizing in the hopes of more mobilizing). Time is mostly spent with other leftists planning actions, while also arranging speakers, flyering, social media outreach and logistics (hopefully not including getting protest permits). Whether the protest is successful or not, organizers wake up the day after the event exhausted – having gained some attention, maybe developing more contacts with other leftists, maybe getting some emails and phone numbers to use for the outreach for the next demonstration.
Both the organize-to-mobilize and the mobilize-to-organize models usually fail to establish the combination of deep community roots and protracted mass mobilization that are necessary for radical movements to make significant change. Base-building organizations rarely get to the point where they are mobilizing masses of people through their efforts. Mass mobilizers rarely get to the point where they are organizing people, communities, or workplaces in a meaningful and lasting way – if they do any of that at all. Is it possible to develop a political structure/model/strategy based in a commitment to grassroots organizing and mass mobilization that is neither rooted in singular organizations or in a coalition formed out of the practical necessity that the work is too big for any of those organizations to effectively take on themselves?
In grappling with the contradiction outlined above, combined with our own critiques of both our base building work and our mass mobilization / coalition efforts – as well as an acute appreciation of the historical moment in which we are living – we sought to refashion the general assembly model. The GA is riddled with its own contradictions, shortcomings and problems. Nonethless, we feel like we have found a structure that can help us better navigate this tension between grassroots base-building and the necessary mobilization to effectively fight fascism. In this historical moment we don’t have sufficient time to slowly build bases; we also shouldn’t just abandon base-building just because this moment makes mobilization relatively easy. Again, humbly, we feel like this model harnesses the energy of a mobilization strategy while allowing the time, space, focus and organization necessary to engage in meaningful base building and durable, specific campaigns/projects.
How did you go about starting this?
With the exception of a few existing personal relationships and a couple of prior organizing projects between small groups and individuals, there were few existing relationships, prior overlapping organizing histories, or existing political projects or campaigns that got folded into or related to the Providence General Assembly when it started. This lack of connections and organization was a strength and a weakness. With an exception or two (but just an exception or two), there was no significant bad prior history, no overt conflict, and fairly little political tension. There was also no significant sectarianism or efforts by different sectarian political groups or left cliques to dominate the space or coopt subgroups. This was largely because those types of groups were not in attendance, but is also due to the General Assembly model being defined by a horizontalism of power that is also strongly structured which helps ward off or frustrate sectarian groups that want to argue, dominate, or poach participants.
There were three planning meetings in October/November 2024, called for and facilitated by the Providence branch of CounterPower Communist Organization. People were invited and encouraged to bring small numbers of their own vouched-for attendees. There were about fifty people at these meetings, we brainstormed what needed to be done in this moment and how to best organize peoples’ fear/anger into strategic action. There was understandable confusion as to what a general assembly model would be: was it just an extension of these planning meetings, but open to the public? Was this just a series of meetings, or a new organization? (The fact that the GA is neither an organization nor simply a public meeting, while being somewhat comprised of both, did not help clarify things). Do the benefits of this model outweigh the costs of visibility, potential cooptation, political infighting? Amidst some of this confusion and debate, more individualist anarchist “anti-leadership” tendencies emerged in that planning space. At the second planning meeting, in a discussion about informal leadership and concerns about the General Assembly being or becoming a front group, a call was made for CounterPower members to identify themselves and take an oath to never hold any formal or informal positions of power in the general assembly. When the hands were raised CounterPower members made up small fraction of the room. The reiterated call for us to denounce any form of leadership in the GA was met with a loud ‘no.’ We were neither interested in dominating and manipulating, nor adopting a volunteerist liberalism to placate critique.
The leadership we have tried to embody, was in making those planning meetings happen, and making the GAs happen after that. We drafted the mission statement, and made it open to the alterations through open participation and democratic process. We have played an outsized role in making sure working groups meet, that new groups get started, and events happen with as few hitches as possible. We are also writing this pamphlet in the hopes of advancing discussions elsewhere. We don’t say this to brag, or to claim the work of the General Assembly as our own, but to be transparent about the type of direction and leadership necessary to get a project like this off the ground, and the concerted effort it might take to keep it in the air. As with the question of base-building or mobilizing, leadership needs to mean something more than overcoming the tyranny of structurelessness and something better than commandism. We need to garner the strength of inclusivity while being flexible enough to navigate terrain we don’t control, and let the best political ideas lead. We need to have the humility to understand that we don’t know everything, but the confidence to fight for our vision and ideas within a political space premised on revolutionary politics and active struggle against fascism. As the Zapatistas taught us, “We build the road by walking it.”
While not everyone in these planning meetings knew each other and there was a mix of radical politics in the room, the fact that everyone defined themselves as a revolutionary and was broadly-oriented towards mass organizing allowed for the relatively quick development of statements of who we were and what we wanted. A mission statement, points of unity, the structure of the general assembly, and its decision-making process were drafted and redrafted through these pre-planning meetings and voted in as a single proposal at the first official general assembly.
Once the GA started meeting there were downsides to the lack of previous connections or histories working with each other. The lack of prior relationships made getting the working groups into action noticeably slower than it might have been otherwise – the time needed to get a sense of each other, get to know each other, and then start to build trust. Not having a general assembly full of obscure sects, non-profit organizations and an alphabet soup of revolutionary parties that have three members each is in many ways a blessing. The absence of that set of limitations is that we are trying to engage a collection of protracted radical projects with a large number of people who have no (or very little) organizing experience. This is fine (and 100% necessary if we are going to build our capacity to win), but more veteran people have to have patience when they want to get right to how we’re going to do this-or-that when most people in the room are still grappling with the why we doing things this way, or maybe even what is any of this. Each meeting, as new people come in, there are more people to orientate them to the PGA and also integrate them into the work, which is mostly in process or in formation. It is easier to integrate people into political organizing projects, at whatever degree of development, than it is to ask a large, somewhat amorphous, group of people to hash out structure, decision-making or mission statements.
The Early Stages of the GA:
Once the initial structure is established, linked to a clear mission statement, structure and basic decision-making process from the onset, the viability of the project is pretty well set – the boat is in the water. Having a radical but inclusive mission, an explicitly revolutionary points of unity, a decision-making process, and an agreed upon structure for the General Assembly – and just voting this foundation into existence in the first formal meeting is absolutely necessary. Whether a proposal needs 2/3rd support (or 51% or 90% or 100%), or whether to us the language of opposition to “racial capitalism” or “capitalist-imperialism” – or 2 dozen other valid things – it is better for a relatively small group of capable people to create those documents, get them laid as a foundation and move directly on to the organizing in that first meeting. These documents can be changed – we’ve had additions and alterations. By circumventing the likely navel gazing and squabbling over small points that can be changed later, we started the GA with an immediate sense of accomplishment and positive energy going into our first working group break-outs at our first meeting. Having everything set up before the first general assembly provided us solid deck boards to stand on, a foundation we used to get our little ship out of harbor.
Experiences will vary from place to place, but once the general assembly is formed and starting to function – working groups are forming, meeting, comparing notes on past experiences, what is already going on in the area, inviting new people in, starting to brainstorm actions and how they might get started – the question quickly shifts from creation to building momentum, finding regular working group meeting times outside of GAs, finding people from working groups to help play small-L leadership roles in helping to cohere the working groups, etc.
Stable Foundation, Consistent Collective Engagement and Patience
We have met consistently every other Saturday for 2 hours since November. Attendance has fluctuated from as many as 150 people and as few as 40, with the average being around 60. Of the 50 or so people who were involved in the initial planning meetings, about half were no longer involved by the 2nd GA meeting in the fall. We didn’t conduct a survey, but many of these folks were interested in the idea but didn’t like the GA form or understand why we’d want to organize that way. Some thought it was too bureaucratic, some thought it was a political front group, others suggested that a public meeting trying to do serious community defense work in this moment lacked sufficient security.
Two key factors for people looking to create a general assembly is to have a clear structure and mission ahead of time as well as enough people to secure a meeting space and invite people into it. Those of us who came up with this vision had debates around whether we were biting off more than we could chew. We started with half as many working groups as we have now, but even with that it was an open question as to whether we could get people to come to PGA meetings every other week and would there be enough people to make these working groups function and go to meetings every week or two with organizing in-between (factoring in conflict, fuck-ups, people staking tasks that they abandon a week later, rumor mongering, personal attacks of the “secret leadership” that started this, debates about whether we should use the signal app, walkie-talkies or tin-cans and a maze of string, etc.). Some working groups have clearer issues they are struggling against, easier targets, more organic interest, greater energy or sense of urgency, better group cohesion, easier community connections, etc. and that’s fine. The larger body of the GA itself serves as a nursery for projects that need a minute to formulate themselves for whatever reason. Whereas a class struggle group or mutual aid effort might crumble and dissipate after 6-8 weeks of nothing but brainstormy signal calls – the GA helps in at least a couple of ways. Each working group is a tentacle of a bigger octopus. While working groups can dissolve (or be dissolved) the political space of that working group is occupied, the expectation of that working group (whatever it is that it ends up actually doing) is partly determined by the whole general assembly.
We have used a set structure for the general assembly meetings, the order of agenda points has shifted and then shifted back, but the substance has been stable. We have had two facilitators for each meeting who have met ahead of time and are part of a loosely-trained rotation of facilitators. A copy of the booklet we distribute to new attendees is at the end of this essay for reference and desired use. We start each meeting with an overview of our points of unity and community standards. Representatives from working groups report back on what has been happening in their organizing in the past two weeks, and what is coming up in terms of events and meetings. A cornerstone of the general assembly, borrowed from Occupy, is the Open Forum, a sizeable chunk of time where anyone can raise a point or line of conversation. We take a ten-minute break and then come back to hear proposals – some meetings there have been three, other times none. There is room for people to make announcements and then we break into working groups where new people can meet with people from those working groups and get plugged into ongoing work if they want.
While the attendance has been good, there has been a consistent rotation of new faces. New people come and go. While some minor efforts have been made to connect with new people to better plug them into working groups, if only to check them out more – these efforts have been small and likely ineffective. We also have signal chats of 100+ people for working groups that have a fraction of that many people going to working group meetings or even relating to the organizing in any meaningful way. Given the demographics of the city, the PGA is too white, too college educated and is mostly made up of people who considered themselves leftists – of whatever stripe or level of experience. We have outlined some of the reasons why this is, the demographics of the original planning meeting and their own social circles, where we have done most of our outreach, and a lack of community visibility thus far being only some of the reasons. We are taking steps to address these shortcomings through our work – what we are doing, where we are doing it and how.
Concluding a Beginning:
We offer this as our honest assessment of the creation and first few months of the Providence General Assembly – it’s strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures. This model will obviously look different in different places and contexts. Our hope is that this document has distilled what a general assembly is, how it works and why you might want to create one. It is worth stating that any similar projects will need a committed core of people to get the project off the ground, take care of logistics, and launch and help sustain working group projects. Such a core is not a given in every location, but it also would not take an insurmountable amount of effort and coordination to create one. The cornerstone of maintaining momentum is a stable foundation through which you are trying to move. Not without its shortcomings, the general assembly provides that stability through a structure that is rooted but open to new people, working group projects that are connected to a center but not bound by its dictates. We need to do more in this moment than simply try to contest or manage the crisis of capitalism or to prop up a declining bourgeois state. Our task, whether we’re ready for it or not, is to defeat the rising fascism, and wage a social revolution to create a free and equitable society. This is written for all of those engaged in this struggle, and in solidarity with all of those also trying to devise strategies towards such a victory.
References / Further Reading:
Akuno, Kali. “People’s Assembly’s Overview: The Jackson People’s Assembly Model.” https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kali-akuno-people-s-assembly-s-overview
Black Rose Anarchist Federation. “How To: Organize a Neighborhood Popular Assembly.” https://www.blackrosefed.org/how-to-organize-a-neighborhood-popular-assembly/
Esteva, Gustavo. “New Forms of Revolution (Part 2): The Oaxaca Commune
Morpheus. “A Brief History of Popular Assemblies and Worker Councils.”
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/morpheus-a-brief-history-of-popular-assemblies-and-worker-councils#toc12
Raider Nation Collective. “From the January Rebellions to Lovelle Mixon and Beyond.” https://www.southchicagoabc.org/tlp/154.-rainder-nation-og-rebellion-reader/154.-rainder-nation-og-rebellion-reader.pdf