Collective Protocol to Deal with Interpersonal Violence in Anarchist Groups, Collectives, and Movements

Facilitated by the Anarchist Coordination Tejiendo Libertad (CATL) and La Pizarra Negra during the First Conspiracy of Anarchist Education and Autonomous Education and includes some additions by the APC.

This event took place in Jovel, Chiapas (territory occupied by the Mexican state) on 10 August 2024. For anyone who wishes to watch a recording of the session in full, videos can be accessed here.

The collective construction of this protocol was done in one of the sessions with organisers and participants in order to create a basic foundation for the prevention and intervention in cases of interpersonal violence within our spaces. The intention is to have a list of considerations so that each group, collective, and movement can develop according to their daily lives and needs. This protocol arises from collective and international needs to signal that internal violence will no longer be tolerated or accepted and that we demand continuous work to end it once and for all.

In this protocol, we ask for sensitivity to the fact that violence can be practiced by people of any gender. As this is a truth of the world we live in, this protocol should be a tool that is used where we take this fact into account. The considerations are divided into three blocks of activities and practices that work together. We have located several of the considerations in a specific part of the process, but they can be used in other parts in order to work on and confront violence depending on the collective. We remind you that this protocol is a guide that must be worked on and adapted within each collective, group, and movement; it is not one that can simply be dropped onto groups under the assumption that it is complete.

One of the issues that we identified when making this protocol is that we lack guides for intervention.1 In order to provide support in this section, we share a directory of collectives that work more specifically with this issue.

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Initial Questions Discussed as a Guide at the Beginning of the Session, Collecting Common Experiences in Our Spaces to be Developed in the Protocol

• Asking ourselves if isolating exclusively heterosexual cis men works for us or if we fall into being punitive;
• Learning about community justice or peace circles (from the proposal of communality);
• Identifying the types of violence and how to deal with it based on the severity of the same (e.g., psychological or economic abusers in contrast to batterers, femicides, and pederasts);
• Learning how we plan an escrache (a form of public shaming), how we organise ourselves to do it, and how we support people who've been abused;
• Deciding what can be done based on collective experiences;
• Learning how to avoid the organisation becoming divided as a result of sexist violence and recognising that complaints are not meant to cause demobilisation of a movement;
• Learning about how to protect groups, organisations, and spaces when situations of violence arise within them.

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Educational Proposals and Collective Reflections for the Protocol

1. Continuous training to raise awareness of violence
   • Listening, mutual care and understanding, any necessary support between members, and development of masculinity groups to work on self-criticism: It is important for these groups to recognise violence as a systemic issue. As well, it is necessary to identify the connection of capitalism with patriarchy, which is the power of capitalism against life itself. It is essential to question violence directly, and it is necessary to engage in all forms of criticism, including self-criticism. “If we want to change society, we have to change ourselves.” Members should have access to mutual aid groups that are designed for people, primarily cishet men, to unlearn toxic masculinity within the culture. For example, they should be self-organised by cis men for cis men.
   • Violence between members: Communication between members is an important first step. “It is difficult to resolve violence when we, ourselves, do not identify it. Communication channels between members are important to recognise patterns of violence that might have been normalised and affect us in our daily lives.” The best ally of violence is silence.
   • The importance of communication between members: The organisation between members makes it easier for them to think more about violence. Questioning the issue of how feminine people are expected to continue mothering cishet men well beyond their childhood, with the expectation that we should be able to set limits about what we are and are not willing to tolerate.
     • We should also continue talking about the experiences of the survivors so we can encourage everyone to question the violence that we endure.
   • Lifelong and constant learning related to the topic of capitalist and patriarchal violence in our spaces: We have to encourage collective self-critique at all times.
   • Listening among peers and making group members more cognizant of internalised patriarchal values: This includes the importance of awareness by cis men and for them to work in the expression of emotions and feelings in all possible spaces, the family, groups, work, etc.
   • Mutual support and care for children: There is a need for spaces where children can be heard and supported, enabling them to know that they have a support network and are not alone. How can we create spaces for reflection where they can talk safely and openly about violence? This is important so that all children can be able to identify different forms of violence that exist and how they are able to manage them (as in where to go to find support, who they can talk to, etc).
   • Identification of patriarchy and structural violence: Identifying the internalisation of patriarchal values, questioning the complexity of systemic violence and how it is expressed by individuals. To work against these internalised patriarchal patterns, we have to work across multiple spaces: the family, at school, and at a collective and organisational level. We also need to take preventative measures but also have direct and clear intervention actions.
     • It is necessary to understand that, while there needs to be differentiated actions taken, we understand the interconnected nature of abuse and violence in different spheres. Things that happen in the ’private’ sphere should not be considered ’private’ matters as they negatively impact upon ’public’ spaces and vice versa.

2. Preventive strategies for violence
   • Prevention and co-responsibility: Establish spaces free of violence towards women, gender-queer and disabled, children, the elderly, etc. through co-existence agreements. Establish what is tolerated and what is not in relation to the different types of violence. What would be the parameter by which violent members stop belonging to the collectives according to the regulations? Communication between different collectives about these agreements is important.
   • Accusation and usefulness of escrache: It is useful to prevent violence from being replicated in other collectives. The importance of the presence male members of the group in issues of sexist violence, listening to each other. In some cases this point can be preventive and information has been shared from another collective when this has been an intervention.
   • Identification of violent situations: The importance of identifying intersectionality due to the complexity of social problems, also accepting that violence exists between members. The relevance of history recovery to identify situations we have faced before and take old experiences as a reference so as not to repeat them. Honoring the cases that each person brings from their experiences. The importance of building agency in subjects.
   • Re-learning: Differentiating between mothering and accompanying re-learning processes, it is also important to address the micro (Microracism, micromachismo, etc.) on a day-to-day basis, taking these questions to the political sphere of the group/collective/movement.
   • Collectives must manage therapeutic and/or emotional support for those who need it, regardless of whether their needs arise from having exercised or suffered violence within the collective. We are all fragile and need care. Caring for mental and emotional well-being is also caring for our collective health.

3. Intervention strategies in cases of violence(2)
   
   • Mutual care and support for victims: We believe that it is important to talk with members to provide necessary emotional, psychological and practical support on everyday basis to the victims and assaulted people, communicate among ourselves and then present the problem in the assembly.
   • Expulsions of aggressors from organisational spaces: As members of the groups that compile this report, we believe that it is important to continue reflecting on the issue of the expulsions of aggressors from organizational spaces because we believe that there are situations that merit expulsion in order to support the victims and for the aggressor to start therapeutic processes and unlearning/relearning in order to build safe spaces that follow the development of intervention protocols in the spaces. Expulsions must be a strategy that is part of the restorative proposal.
   • Mediation for conflict resolution: Mediation from like-minded groups is important, particularly through people outside the collective that are aligned with similar values. We should start with direct action towards reparation with the support of members who have experience in conflict resolution.
   • Restorative proposal: In the restorative process with violent members in the group, it is important to work with those who do not recognise their own patterns of violence. It is important to identify the privileges that masculine members have in comparison to feminine members, such as when masculine members presume that their time and work are more important than those of feminine members. Within our collectives, we have to understand that the psychological and economic responsibility depends on the situation, and we should identify the restorative justice processes so as not to involve state mediation. Aggressors must take accountability and make their own proposal for how they are going to change their behaviours and attitudes, presenting it to the assembly of the collective. It must include doing care work within the work tasks in the collectives, regardless of gender.

Footnotes (to be fixed):

1 One of the issues that was identified in the international gathering that happened in Chiapas is that the Mexican members said that they experienced a lack of guides for intervention regarding interpersonal violence within their own contexts.

2 This English version reorganises these points to reflect common understandings in many Anglosphere spaces, but the Spanish version was written in the order of the discussion.