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decisions Anarchy Works attack in Oaxaca City and to decide what to do in their own town. More meetings and actions followed: Men, women, children, and city council members joined together to take over the municipal building. A lot of the building was locked and we only used the hallways and the offices that were open. We stayed in the municipal building night and day, taking care of everything. And that's how the neighborhood assemblies were born. We'd say, "It's the neighborhood of La Soledad's turn and tomorrow it's up to San]acinto." That's how the neighborhood assemblies were first used, and then later they turned into decision-making bodies, which is where we are now. The seizing of the municipal building was totally spontaneous. The activists from before played a role and initially directed things, but the popular assembly structure was developed little by little ... Neighborhood assemblies, comprised of a rotating body of five people, were also formed in each section of town and together they would form the permanent popular assembly, the People's Council of zaachila. The people from neighborhood assemblies may not be activists at all, but little by little, as they follow their obligation to bring information back and forth from the Council, they develop their capacity for leadership. All the agreements made in the Council are studied by these five people and then brought back to the neighborhoods for review. These assemblies are completely open; anyone can attend and have their voice heard. Decisions always go to a general vote, and all the adults present can vote. For example, if some people think a bridge needs to be built, and others think we need to focus on improving electricity, we vote on what the priority should be. The simple majority wins, fifty percent plus one.26 The townsfolk kicked out the mayor while maintaining public services, and also established a community radio station. Dozens of other municipalities throughout the state soon proclaimed their autonomy, and used Zaachila as a model. Years before these events in Zaachila, another group was organizing autonomous villages in the state of Oaxaca. As many as twenty-six rural communities affiliated with the CIPO-RFM (Council ofIndigenous Peoples of Oaxaca-Ricardo Flores Magon), an organization that identifies with southern Mexico's tradition of indigenous and anarchist resistance; the name references an indigenous anarchist influential in the Mexican Revolution. Insofar as they can, living under an oppressive regime, the CIPO communities assert their autonomy and help one another to meet their needs, ending private property and working the land communally. Typically, when a village expressed interest in joining the group, someone from the CIPO would come and explain how they worked, and let the villagers decide whether or not they wanted to join. The government frequently denied resources to CIPO villages, hoping to starve them out, but it is no surprise that many people thought they could live more richly as masters of their own lives, even if it meant greater material poverty. How will decisions be enforced? People are capable of implementing their own decisions. The state has so thoroughly obscured this fact that those raised in this society are hard-pressed to imagine how it might be possible. On 26 Ditto, interview with AdM. 64 65
decisions Anarchy Works the contrary, the power to enforce decisions should be every bit as universal and decentralized as the power to make those decisions. There have been stateless societies on every continent that used diffuse sanctions rather than specialized enforcers. Only through a long and violent process do states steal this ability from people and monopolize it as their own. This is how diffuse sanctions work: in an ongoing process, a society decides how it wants to organize and what behaviors it considers unacceptable. This may occur over time or in formal, immediate settings. The participation of everybody in making these decisions is complemented by the participation of everybody in upholding them. If somebody breaks these common standards, everyone is accustomed to reacting. They don't call the polke, file a grievance, or wait for someone else to do something; they approach the person they think is in the wrong and tell him, or take other appropriate action. For example, the people in a neighborhood may decide that each different household will take turns cleaning the street. If one household fails to uphold this decision, everybody else on the block has the ability to ask them to fulfill their responsibility. Depending on how serious the transgression is, other people in the neighborhood might react with criticism, ridkule, or ostracism. If the household has a good excuse for being slack, perhaps someone living there is very sick and the others are busy taking care of her, the neighbors can choose to have sympathy and forgive the lapse. This level of flexibility and sensitivity is typically lacking in a lawbased system. On the other hand, if the negligent household has no excuse, and display a more general lack of engagement (they throw their trash in the street, etc), their neighbors might hold a general meeting demanding a change in their behavior, or they might take some action like piling all the trash in front of their door. Meanwhile, in their day-to-day interactions individual neighbors might share their criticisms with members of the offending household, or ridicule them, not invite them to joint activities, or glare at them in the streets. If someone is incorrigibly antisocial, always blocking or contradicting the desires of the rest of the group and refusing to respond to people's concerns, the ultimate response is to kick that person out of the group. This method is much more flexible, and more liberating, than legalitarian, coercive approaches. Rather than being bound to the blind letter of the law-which cannot take into account specific circumstances or people's needs-and depending on a powerful minority for enforcement, the method of diffuse sanctions allows everyone to weigh for herself how serious the transgression is. It also allows transgressors the opportunity to convince others that their actions were justified, thus providing constant challenges to the dominant morality. By contrast, in a statist system, the authorities don't have to show that something is right or wrong before condemning someone's home or confiscating a drug deemed illegal. All they have to do is cite a statute in a law book that their victims had no hand in writing. In a horizontal society, people enforce decisions according to how enthusiastic they are about those decisions. If almost everybody strongly supports a decision, it will be upheld vigorously, whereas if a decision leaves most people feeling neutral or unenthusiastic, it will only be partially enforced, leaving open more room for creative transgression and exploring other solutions. On the other hand a lack of enthusiasm in implementing decisions might mean that in practice organization falls on the shoulders of informal powerholders-people who are delegated an unofficial position ofleadership by the rest of the group, whether they want it or not. This means that members of horizontal groups, from collective houses to entire societies, must confront the problem of self-discipline. They must hold themselves accountable to the standards they have agreed upon and the criticism of their peers, and risk being unpopular or confronting conflict by criticizing those 66 67
Page 1 and 2: Anarchism is the boldest of revolut
Page 3 and 4: There are hidden stories all around
Page 6 and 7: Introduction Anarchy would never wo
Page 8 and 9: introducr.ion Anarchy Works system
Page 10 and 11: introduction Anarchy Works due to u
Page 12 and 13: human nature Anarchy Works the rest
Page 14 and 15: human nature Anarchy Works for them
Page 16 and 17: human nature Anarchy Works the nigh
Page 18 and 19: human nature Anarchy Works quantiti
Page 20 and 21: human nature Anarchy Works warlike
Page 22 and 23: human nature Anarchy Works accorded
Page 24 and 25: human nature Anarchy Works developi
Page 26 and 27: human nature Anarchy Works and a mo
Page 28 and 29: human ncrture Anarchy Works the val
Page 30 and 31: Anarchy Works 2. Decisions Anarchy
Page 32 and 33: decisions Anarchy Works villages jo
Page 34 and 35: decisions Anarchy Works huge portio
Page 36 and 37: decisions Anarchy Works made the de
Page 40 and 41: decisions Anarchy Works who do not
Page 42 and 43: decisions Anarchy Works still exist
Page 44 and 45: Anarchy Works 3. Economy Anarchism
Page 46 and 47: economy Anarchy Works possible will
Page 48 and 49: economy Anorchy Works meeting of re
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Page 52 and 53: economy Anarchy Works Who will take
Page 54 and 55: economy Anarchy Works Ground clinic
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Page 58 and 59: ecanomy Anarchy Works ing to what i
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crime Anarchy Works worth paying th
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crime Anarchy Works What's to stop
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crime Anarchy Works The current par
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crime Anarchy Warks first, philly's
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crime Anarchy Works conditions or s
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Anarchy Works 6. Revolution To put
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evolution Anarchy Works anarchism t
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evolution Anarchy Works of North Da
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evolution Anarchy Works The governm
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evolution Anarchy Works stations th
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evolution Anorchy Works institution
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makes less than 50% of the minimum
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evolution Anarchy Works contest wit
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evolution Anarchy Works low people
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evolution Anarchy Works they saw th
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evolution Anarchy Works garbage dum
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evolution Anarchy Works Borkenau re
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evolution Anarchy Works We didn't l
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evolution Anarchy Works talk, and,
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evolution Anarchy Works from one ge
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neighboring societies Anarchy Works
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Anarchy Works 8. The Future We are
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the future Anarchy Works dependent
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it works when we make it work Anarc
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Bibliography Emily Achtenberg, "Com
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DerrickJensen, A Language Older Tha
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William Foote Whyte and Kathleen Ki
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