Lessons on Working Together from Tobocman’s “War in the Neighborhood”

Ad Astra Comix have written an exclusive blog for SQUASH, as they gear up to re-release Seth Tobocman’s classic ‘War in the Neighborhood‘, a graphic novel about anti-gentrification resistance in New York’s Lower East Side, in the late 80s/early 90s. The article highlights one the comic’s key themes, the challenge of living together under the intense pressure of radical occupation, relevant today as ever (cheers for this @AdAstraComics):

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The lived reality of squatting is not always romantic. Looking at the sentimental stencils and heroic propaganda, we might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. We are asked to believe that it is all moments of noble defiance and communal connectivity. From the outside looking in, you would never know that there are arguments about whose turn it is to do the dishes, or muck out the drain.

Yes, contesting space is always a political act. Sometimes we are presented with a dichotomy between taking public space, like the occupation of public squares and parks, and private space, like residential or commercial buildings. But it’s a false dichotomy. Public or private, spaces are policed by the same bullies, regulated by the same crooked politicians, administered for the benefit of the same rich bastards. Public or private, when we hold their space we are bringing the fight to them.

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But no sooner is the space taken than the nature of that struggle changes. Occupying a space begins to turn it into a home and it’s incredible how quickly our homes fill up with our baggage. An unending process of negotiation, both with the authorities and within the community, begins to drag down the politics of holding space.

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We take space knowing we may well lose it. Still, we see it as ours, and conflicts break out about what we should be allowed to do in our own homes. But even if a squat or a public park is becoming our home, it is still a political project. Holding that space is a political act. Whatever understanding we negotiate between ourselves, we can’t lose sight of that fact. If the way we accommodate ourselves in these homes doesn’t reflect our politics, we are weakening our struggle. People will leave. New people will stop coming. So what can we do to keep it all together?

#1: Everyone needs to do their fair share of work associated with the space.

There is a reason for the popularity of the old canard ‘everyone wants to a revolution but nobody wants to do the dishes?’ Domestic work is often invisible work, with all the glory going to the people who get their face on the television, their voice in a megaphone, or their noses busted by the cops. But hard, practical work is foundational to holding space. Whether it’s meeting your share of your squat’s ‘work days’ or being the one to make sure there’s vegan chili on the table, it is important to remember that while political work is essential it is not the whole enchilada.

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This is particularly critical because a lot of this kind of work is heavily gendered. Responsibilities like minute-taking in meetings, doing dishes, cooking meals and other practical tasks tend to fall disproportionately on women. This has been a problem as far back as the 60s, where conflicts over sharing responsibilities helped to fuel the growth of feminism. It can also break down along racial lines, where white women can subconsciously expect women of colour to pick up after them.

The best way to make sure everyone’s ‘doing their fair share’ is to keep track of it. Keeping a work log means never sitting through an argument about how much work people ‘feel’ like they’re doing. It might seem like an authoritarian measure, but by ensuring everyone is playing by the same rules, it helps to democratize your community.

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#2: People can’t be punished for speaking out about issues with the space.

Holding space means building community. People get a positive sense of belonging from participating in squats and occupations. This sense of identity can help us all hang together against the bullshit. Unfortunately, it can also contribute to a kind of groupthink. When people outside the space raise criticisms, they are sometimes dismissed as outsiders with an agenda. Even if these criticisms come from inside the group, the person who speaks up can end up being attacked.

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They are accused of seeking attention, or wanting to create drama, or blowing things out of proportion. Other people will try to reassure or appease them without really hearing their concerns. Maybe they are concerned that some people are working too hard, or that the group isn’t doing enough outreach, or that there was some problematic language in the last communiqué. In a way, it doesn’t really matter, people are often treated the same for speaking out.

If people’s concerns do not get heard, sooner or later they will leave. You might open up social media to find they’ve penned an essay of all the reasons you suck. Someone else will need to take their turn scrubbing the toilets or, heaven forbid, emptying the piss buckets. It’s a bad time all round. So how to avoid this?

Give people a fair hearing. Obviously there are some arseholes out there who make trouble for the hell of it but most of the time people have good intentions. Make sure that you make space in your organizing to hear criticism and do something about it. If you are worried about people wasting your time with idle criticism then consider inviting them to head up the effort to make things better. Be mindful that if someone is already pissed off they might not feel up to fixing the problem they’ve pointed out. This doesn’t mean it isn’t valid criticism. Be patient and be humble.

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#3: If the collective makes a decision, everyone needs to respect it whether they like it or not

The example we’ve put up from ‘War in the Neighborhood’ is an extreme example and it’s one that I have seen repeatedly unfold at collective houses and occupations in real life, here in North America. Abusers are rarely complete anti-social monsters. They will have friends. Their friends will not like it when you kick their arses to the curb. They will more than likely try to sneak their abuser friend back in when you’re not paying attention.

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This shit cannot happen. And the best way to keep it from happening is to make sure that everyone respects collective decision-making in general. If you develop a good democratic culture, people will feel ownership over collective decisions – even the ones they didn’t personally disagree with. It works like this: you propose something, there are some disagreements, but it passes. If the people who opposed it can still choose to pull together as a team by carrying out whatever that decision happens to be.

Sometimes you will feel like decisions are complete bullshit. I’m not saying you should support an asinine decision in the name of unity. But save your criticism and opposition for meetings. Keep the grumbling and backbiting to a minimum. The more people try to do an end-run around democratic decision making, the less it feels like a team. The less it feels like a team, the more cliques will develop. The more cliquey shit gets, the faster things will fall apart.

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I had a favourite joke at Occupy: “This is the first time in my life that ‘solidarity’ means ‘solidarity’ instead of ‘backstabbing and cliques’. It took about two weeks for that joke to stop being funny because it was no longer true. Don’t let it happen to you.

#4: People who consistently engage in harmful behaviour have to go

This is a tough one. The toughest one, honestly. We are all of us imperfect. We fuck up. We say and do harmful things. We carry the trauma of the outside world into our organizing and despite our best intentions we reproduce the violence of society in our movements. Some of this is inevitable.

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But there has to be a line. Sometimes it can be hard to know where that line is. For example, how do you reconcile a survivor-centred approach to domestic and sexual violence with larger concerns of community protection? This is one of the hardest questions in radical organizing and it is especially critical when people are living together. We have less privacy and more vulnerability.

I’m not going to pretend to have an easy answer. Personally, I believe in a zero tolerance policy around physical violence against people living in radical spaces. But I have heard very good criticisms of this position. Sometimes people have violent outbursts because they are unwell. Punching a wall doesn’t always mean you’d punch a person. Sometimes your two fucked up mates who keep putting holes in the wall and bruises on each other won’t accept care from anyone else. Some people don’t want to draw the line where I would, and I can understand why.

Regardless, the line is not always blurry. Sometimes a survivor is clear that they want someone gone. Sometimes a dude is clearly a serial sexual predator. Sometimes a person is a toxic, conflict-seeking train wreck. People like that will poison the well. Your group will bleed supporters. Your community will collapse and you will be left with nothing.

Take a hard line about harmful behaviour. That hard line can include accountability processes, supervision, conditional participation and restorative justice. But sometimes even all the tools at our disposal are not enough to make things right. When that happens, don’t be afraid to draw the line.

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#5: Don’t negotiate with landlords, cops or politicians

It is good to think that everyone in your group will be a black star anarchist who has never voted and has only paid rent when they went to see it in the West End. The reality, unfortunately, is usually more complex. People will be tempted to make deals with the cops. They will want to have meetings with politicians, even if they claim it is just to sneer in their faces. People will suggest taking steps to make your squat or occupation ‘more acceptable’.

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Don’t bother. You are in a confrontation with capitalism. Consider the case of New York City’s Lower East Side. Jimmy Carter allowed urban homesteading, and after squatters poured in, Reagan canceled the program and cracked down. In the 90s, squatters engaged in a court battle with the city and won some victories – only to be evicted anyway. Squats that were supposedly being ‘legitimized’ if they could be brought up to code were subject to aggressive, harassing inspections designed to evict them.

Holding space is political, and class struggle is at the centre of those politics. Negotiating with the state amounts to asking permission from people who only begrudgingly allow you the permission to live – and are indifferent to the prospect that you might starve, freeze to death or otherwise expire from their negligence.

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Hopefully no one needs to be told that cops, landlords and politicians lie. They may allow you to make repairs to the building under the pretense of letting you stay, only to evict you and enjoy the benefits of your free labour once it suits their purposes. Holding space means bringing yourself into conflict with capital and you should be ready for that conflict.

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Prepare phone trees. Build barricades. If you can find a sympathetic reporter you should be ready to call them down. Keep your cameras handy. Have someone serve as a lookout. Be strategic in the way that you prepare yourself for the possibility of eviction. Don’t waste your time negotiating with an enemy who considers your presence to be an existential threat to the order of things. Squatting undermines private property; a fundamental premise of capitalism. Occupations contest the right of the state to regulate the use of space. Either way, taking that space is a declaration of war. Don’t kid yourself, and be ready to fight for your homes.

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Ad Astra Comix is run as a non-hierarchical collective that produces graphic novels and comics that help amplify the voices of the unheard: “women, racialized and/or colonized people, queer and trans people and others who experience structural oppression.”

Pre-order a copy of Seth Tobocman’s ‘War in the Neighborhood’ at Ad Astra Comix, and help them with their crowdfunder to re-release this radical classic

Also see:

  • “Book Review: War in the Neighborhood” [Tenant.net, 2000]
  • Eight pages from ‘War in the Neighborhood’, and its radical story-telling [No-art.info]