A History of Black Rose/Rosa Negra
Introduction
As of 2024, Black Rose Anarchist Federation / Federación Anarquista Rosa Negra (BRRN) has been in existence for ten years. Many on the left are aware of who we are and what we stand for. But where did we come from? When, how, and why did anarchist militants create the first national, libertarian-socialist organization in the US since the 1990s?
BRRN was founded through a multi-year unification process of local and regional groups in the US who came together with the ultimate goal of libertarian socialism and with a strategic focus rooted in building popular power through mass movements. Then, as now, we felt that tackling the dangers and possibilities of this era can’t simply be left up to chance. The urgency of our moment not only demands a clear vision for revolutionary social transformation but a coherent and actionable strategy for achieving such an immense goal. This is why various groups of revolutionaries came together over a decade ago, seeing the necessity of long-term revolutionary strategy and recognizing political organization as the vehicle to carry us forward.
This piece aims to briefly present our history within the context of organized anarchism in the United States specifically, as well as to summarize our influences and provide an overview of our accomplishments. A Pre-History of Black Rose/Rosa Negra: The Rise and Rebirth of US Anarchism
From 1870s to the 1930s, anarchism was an influential current within the US socialist movement—from the era of the Haymarket Martyrs when anarchists ran daily newspapers, formed their own central labor union, and led the fight for the eight hour day; to the Magonistas of the PLM (Partido Liberal Mexicano) who organized clandestine networks from the US side of the border to spark the 1910 Mexican Revolution; to the anarchist-influenced IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) union that led pivotal strikes, which were multi-racial and inclusive of women, under the banner of revolutionary unionism. In this period, anarchism was largely rooted in various immigrant communities of German, Italian, Mexican, Cuban, Jewish, Spanish, Caribbean, and Russian workers.
By the post-war period, the influence of anarchism was marred by the successful assimilation of its immigrant base into an American way of life in the US and was largely eclipsed by Marxism. With few exceptions the political tendency of anarchism became an intellectual tendency, promoting moral and cultural ideals like pacifism and bohemianism with little connection to social movements. While a new generation of radicals in the 1960s picked up anarchist ideas, the adherents of this period continued to treat anarchist politics as a principally cultural project without a social base and defined more by anti-authoritarian individualism and rejection of the Marxist left than by a positive program or strategy.
In the 1970–80s anarchism remained mainly subcultural, though this period saw a reemergence of efforts by anarchists to form national organized networks to coordinate action and communication between local groups. Such efforts included the Social Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (SRAF), and the Anarchist Communist Federation of North America (ACF). Still, these efforts lacked cohesion, a common politics, and anything resembling a shared strategy. Another key point of reference during this period was work done to rebuild the influence of anarchism within the labor movement by groups such as the anarcho-syndicalist Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) and anarchist members within the re-invigorated IWW. During this period, a number of figures from the Black Power movement, mainly incarcerated former members of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, came to anarchism through criticisms of the top-down reformism of the Civil Rights movement and the Leninist vanguardism of the Black Panthers.
US anarchism in the 1990’s was largely marked by the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, often referred to simply by the name of their widely read publication Love and Rage. Founded in 1991 in Minneapolis, the group had an activist and street-protest-oriented politics with strong participation in anti-war, abortion rights, and anti-fascist movements. Importantly, Love and Rage was an international organization, maintaining a strong local presence in Mexico City which called itself Amor y Rabia. Politically, Love and Rage hosted wide-ranging debates on contemporary politics and theory, which stood in contrast to much of the radical left of the period. They were also highly influenced by the 1994 Zapatista rebellion, publishing news and translated materials on the uprising and making solidarity work one of their key pillars. As Love and Rage grew, it struggled to move beyond its network mode of organization. Two factions eventually emerged within Love and Rage: one that saw the need to develop a more deliberate structure and strategy, and another which wanted to maintain the existing looseness of the network. This impasse led Love and Rage to dissolve in 1998.
The 1998 disbanding of Love and Rage left a legacy and living memory that influenced subsequent groups including Bring the Ruckus (BTR, 2002–2012), the Northeastern Federation of Anarchist-Communists (NEFAC, 2000–2013), as well as BRRN. Its contributions towards anarchist political organization included a culture of lively internal debate, discussions around the structure of national organization, expectations and commitment of a group’s members, the nature of US white supremacy and need for multi-racial organization, as well as questions of contemporary revolutionary strategy.
Coalescing in the wake of the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” anti-globalization protest, NEFAC was founded in 2000, incorporating local groups across the northeastern US as well as French speaking groups in Quebéc and Toronto, Canada. Drawing on the global anarchist tradition of platformism, the group channeled the energies of anarchists coming out of the “summit hopping” protests of the anti-globalization era to reorient radicals towards rooted labor and working-class community organizing. Perhaps most notably, NEFAC was a force for developing pro-organizational and class-struggle politics within North American anarchism.
Another point of influence on the formation of BRRN was the 2007–2008 North American tour, in forty-four US and Canadian cities, by Andrew Flood, a member of the Irish Workers Solidarity Movement (1984–2021). Founded by former Irish anti-colonial (or republican) movement activists, WSM was exceptionally prolific in its campaign activity, publications, and in promoting platformism internationally as a tendency. The tour presentation, “Building a Popular Anarchism in Ireland,” outlined the growth of the Irish anarchist movement from the late 1990s to the late 2000s, making an argument for an outward looking and organized movement. Andrew also scheduled additional meet ups with local anarchist activists.
The Founding of BRRN
The process of BRRN’s founding emerged from a series of invitational conferences that brought together groups and individuals from across the country with panels, discussions, and speakers. These Class Struggle Anarchist Conferences (CSAC) were initiated by the New York WSA with support from other groups and held in New York City in 2008, Detroit in 2009, Seattle in 2010, and Buffalo, NY in 2012. By the end of the Seattle conference a formal network of participating organizations emerged and agreed to a process of rapprochement whereby delegates from each group would participate in structured discussions and debates with the formal goal of building political unity towards the founding of a national organization.
These efforts culminated in a February 2013 conference in Rochester, NY wherein participants focused on developing a points of unity document and planning for what would become BRRN’s November 2013 founding convention in Chicago—though the formal public announcement of the new organization would not be made until January 2014. Core decisions taken at the convention included commitments towards building a shared strategic orientation, merging together localized groups and collectives into a unified national organization, and striving to be a bilingual English/Spanish organization.
The groups involved in this process were locals of Common Struggle / Lucha Común (the new name adopted by NEFAC in 2011) in the northeast, Rochester Red and Black, Miami Autonomy and Struggle (MAS), Four Star Anarchist Organization in Chicago, Wild Rose Collective in Iowa City, and individual members of Workers Solidarity Alliance. Groups that participated in the process but disbanded prior to the founding of BRRN included Amanecer: For a Popular Anarchism in California, Common Action in the Pacific Northwest, and Prairie Struggle Organization in the Canadian prairies. WSA and First of May Anarchist Alliance (M1AA) chose not to join but continued comradely relations. Soon after the formal announcement of BRRN’s formation, members of the Austin, TX based collective Desde Abajo began the process of integration.
**Influences and Activities **
A key influence on the politics of BRRN at its founding was the politics of especifismo, the Latin American current of anarchism that first took shape in 1950’s Uruguay and which inspired and was elaborated further in subsequent decades by anarchists in Brazil, Chile and Argentina. Core concepts drawn from especifismo were the need to organize on the political, intermediate, and social levels; the importance of conjunctural analysis of the contemporary political moment and forces which shapes a shared strategic orientation; and the role of popular power as the lever for revolutionary rupture and transformation. We see popular power as the long-term process of building independent, durable, and combative social movements that can not only wrest reforms from the dominant classes in the present, but function to accumulate the necessary capacity and force to carry out a revolutionary social transformation.
At its founding, BRRN prioritized developing international relations and highlighting the inspiring work of anarchists especially in Latin America, publishing numerous translated documents and interviews, organizing speaking tours such as Struggling to Win: Anarchists Building Popular Power in Chile in 2014 which included nearly fifty events in twenty-two cities across the US. Since then, BRRN has continued prioritizing internationalism through numerous solidarity campaigns, delegations to international gatherings, and our ongoing relationships with anarchist political organizations around the globe, particularly in South America. In 2023, BRRN became a formal member of the International Anarchist Coordination, a network of over a dozen platformist and especifista groups across the globe.
Another early focus of BRRN was the building of a robust external media infrastructure which aimed at presenting a diverse and movement-focused public face for anarchism. This has included strong social media presence, the creation of the From Below Podcast and the publishing of a reader and a series of articles on Black Anarchism, debates on electoralism, anarchism in Latin America, and feminist theory.
In the realm of social movements, BRRN has worked to rebuild the tradition of mass anarchism rooted in contemporary popular and working-class struggles. From rank and file labor organizing among teachers and building new unions with fast food workers; to solidarity networks, popular assemblies, and tenant struggles with ATUN (Autonomous Tenant Union Network); feminist organizing and struggles around bodily autonomy; to fighting back fascists in our cities, organizing students on our campuses, and struggling against the violence of the carceral state. We’ve also participated and played roles in many of the large moments of street protest and rebellion that have occurred in rapid succession since our founding. From the Ferguson Uprising and NYC People’s Climate March in 2014; Standing Rock in 2016; revolutionary feminist interventions in the Women’s March and anti-fascist organizing before, during and after the Charlottesville events in 2017; and the George Floyd Rebellion of 2020.
Most prominent has been BRRN’s focus on labor and workplace struggles. Our members have played key roles in starting new unions in healthcare and higher education, participated in major strikes in K-12 and higher education, helped formed rank-and-file caucuses in the building trades, put forward healthcare worker demands during COVID, organized Palestine and BLM solidarity campaigns in our workplaces, built an organized presence at Labor Notes conferences, and released a 2019 analysis on the state of unions and worker struggles. In contrast to recurring cycles of single-issue, activist-oriented mobilization, our orientation highlights the construction of rooted movement building and sustained bases of working-class power where we live, work, and study.
The Trump Era and Beyond
With the election of Trump in 2016, the US underwent a period of deep politicization and polarization. This moment saw BRRN turn our focus to better understanding the developing conjuncture, with a focus on identifying the threats and opportunities before us. Pushing forward on organizing efforts and undergoing substantial membership growth, we released a series of strategy documents in this period, including 2017’s “Below and Beyond Trump”, a 2018 follow-up piece “Building Popular Power in a Time of Reaction” and, also in 2018, the statement “Kavanaugh and a Feminist Movement Fighting to End Capitalism”. The pieces discussed the growing political crisis of the US ruling class and subsequent social and political polarization that the US was undergoing. Key observations included the rise of the far-right and growth of left and socialist politics, including the rising emphasis by some quarters of the left on electoralism; the fractured and disorganized nature of social movements dominated by the institutional left of nonprofits/NGOs, and bureaucratic labor unions; and the need to rebuild offensive movements from below guided by a clear libertarian socialist program.
In the wake of the pandemic and George Floyd Rebellion in 2020, BRRN wrestled with a period of internal conflict that resulted in a substantial number of members exiting the organization. Rather than simply continue a course that had led to such dire circumstances, BRRN members resolved to take a two-year hiatus from public activity in order to reflect, restructure, and reorient the organization. Coming out of this period of self-examination, we held a year-long process of collective debate and analysis with the intention of developing a more concise and deliberate national strategy for the organization. This long and sometimes arduous process produced our organization’s first ever political program, “Turning the Tide: An Anarchist Program for Popular Power” released on May Day 2023. Bringing new political and practical clarity to our efforts, the document outlines our understanding of the social, political, and economic structures of domination we face, an analysis of the ways that these enduring structures shape the present conjuncture, and offers a clear vision of the world we are fighting for while also laying out the strategic and tactical means to reach our aims. Conclusion
A decade on from our founding, Black Rose / Rosa Negra continues to grow in every facet of organizational life. We are committed to the ongoing practice of discussing, debating, and developing ourselves politically and believe that the introduction of our program represents a significant step forward in this regard. Our membership is growing, with new Locals and contacts in nearly every major city in the United States. Members of Black Rose / Rosa Negra are sinking ever deeper roots in their sites of social insertion, whether in the labor, tenant, student, or neighborhood organizing sectors. We are strengthening our relationships internationally by coordinating with existing sibling organizations and offering support to the fledgling organizations of our current.
Each step we take is informed by the work of those who have come before us. From the earliest examples of organized anarchism in the United States, exemplified by groups like the International Working People’s Association, up to the organizations which directly preceded our own. Their history is our history and we walk the same path. This is why we believe that the retention and transmission of a shared historical memory is necessary for any effective revolutionary organization.
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