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First, I have to ask the question: Why would the police want to harass a conference based around “anarchist studies”? Sound dangerous to you? To most of my friends, it sounds distinctly boring!

Nevertheless, at the first NAASN conference in Hartford back in 2009, a couple of plain clothes cops entered the conference and poked around a bit. They stuck out like sore thumbs and when folks questioned them, they said they were looking for a runaway. A local anarchist asked them to leave. Oddly enough (and a bit hilariously), they were later spotted trying to hide in the bushes at Bushnell Park spying on the local Food Not Bombs collective as they served a meal. Things like that remind me that the state isn’t omnipotent (and sometimes not really competent).

It seems they came back around for Toronto’s conference, this time with a shotgun in tow! Apparently, things like anarchist economics, anarchism’s connection to the arts, or strategies for anarchist writing are Very Dangerous Things! Well, if we’re doing them right, then I suppose they are.

Anyway, on Friday me and my friends, Chris and Abbey, packed up a car and made the 10 hour drive from Hartford to Toronto. We arrived too late on Friday to make it to the film-fest and then proceeded to sleep so little that we were late to the opening plenary. I did catch some historical analysis and some feeling forward in the dark within the anarchist tradition from Irina Ceric and AK Thompson—both of whom were impressive. Denis Rancourt suggested that hierarchy is “inevitable” and “spontaneous”, certainly not words I’d use to describe things like capitalism, white supremacy, heteronormativity, the state, etc., but it was difficult challenging him during the discussion since the speakers got to respond to critics, but they did not allow what the moderator called “a back-and-forth.” It’s one of the problems with the speakers-as-experts formats for presentations and panels, but as I’ve noted before, it can be difficult to organize conferences in different ways and I did appreciate the time the presenters were given to develop arguments at this conference.

Next, me, Abbey Volcano, Chris Spannos, and Wayne Price presented on anarchist economics. The room for the panel was so full that people were sitting beside us, behind us, and standing up in the back. It was a little nerve-wracking. I gave a broad overview of mutualism, collectivism, and (libertarian) communism and also noted that some anarchists have general objections to visionary arguments (deciding an economy for the future—particularly with a high degree of detail—is seen as an authoritarian exercise to many anarchists, effectively outlining the way a future society will function without the input of the people living in that society). Chris talked about anarchist history and how it might inform our visions of a post-capitalist future. Abbey gave some insights into how anarchists might analyze capitalism post-1999. Wayne argued for an approach to visionary positions on economics steeped in humility and experimentation, noting Malatesta’s “anarchist method” of anti-dogmatism and flexibility (of course, within post-capitalist limits). Folks asked some very difficult questions during the discussion, particularly Nathan Jun (about anarchism’s relationship to the Left) and one person who asked about whether we might need to scale back mass society in order to avoid the alienation, ecocide, and hierarchies that seem part and parcel of mass industrialism. From what I could gather, I largely agreed with him (I can’t remember if it was me or him that suggested Uri Gordon’s piece on technology). Given our environmental crisis especially, some new things are necessary for anarchists to consider that couldn’t have possibly been anticipated by our forebears—like Proudhon, Bakunin, or Kropotkin.

The next panel I attended was on gender and disability. It was an interesting discussion, with people trying to find nuanced ways to look at the projects of destabilizing identities (e.g. queer theory) and organizing around identities (i.e. identity politics). Are these two projects opposed? Is that a false way of putting the problem? These discussions are difficult and it was especially nice to see people try to develop some ways of looking at these strategies that are flexible and don’t see single answers and (T)ruths when confronted with complexity. I especially liked Liat Ben-Moshe’s presentation on disability.

The last panel I attended the first day was on “Greening Anarchy.” Michael Loadenthal talked about a quantitative study he did of ALF and ELF economic disruption campaigns and argued that these groups are being targeted because they are challenging the state and capital. Karl Hardy and Usman Mushtaq gave some insights into how we might develop effective anarchist responses to climate change. But my favorite part of this panel was Andrea Palichuck’s presentation on what she called “food lifestyle politics.” Basically, she argued that sometimes our dietary preferences, when they are prescriptive, can be exclusionary (and just not really all that necessary). Perhaps the ways that we organize against and attack hierarchies of all kinds matter more than whether or not we eat cheese,  organic quinoa, or otherwise try to consume better under these monstrous institutional arrangements.

We left shortly after this panel since we slept so little the night before (how the fuck do you folks get up at 9am after drinking until 4am?) and I got to sleep, sleep, and sleep….and still got there late for the first Sunday panel—which sucked, because I wanted to hear Dana Williams present on “anarchist sociology”. I remember reading a few years ago in a pamphlet called “Second Wave Anarchy” an argument for the abolition of sociology, so I was interested in hearing the juxtaposition. Is the sociologist's task, like the working class, to abolish herself? I showed up just as Dana was finishing up. Shit.

After this, I more or less gave up and missed two discussions I really wanted to see. The first was by Crimethinc on their newest piece “Fighting in the New Terrain”. I thought the piece was interesting, as well as Gabriel Kuhn’s response to it, so I hated missing this. It has also been interesting watching Crimethinc’s politics change as the years roll by. I get a lot more out of talks than online reading (and face-to-face discussions as opposed to internet arguments—seems there’s something to this critique of techno-mass society after all!), so I really do regret missing this one.

I also wish I could have attended the panel on militant methodologies and the question of authority. Hell, I wish I could have attended all of them, but that would have been impossible.

All in all, there were probably around three or four hundred people in and out throughout the weekend (possibly even more) and the conference organizers obviously did a good job of getting the word out. Likewise, it’s difficult to feed that many people, make sure that things run on time, deal with conflicts, etc. The organizers deserve a lot of thanks for putting this together, so thanks to Jasmin, Tammy, Ryan, and anyone else I’m missing here.

Although the panelists weren’t limited to academics, they tended to mostly be professional scholars. I would have liked to see more scholars involved that weren’t professional “experts” and this seems like a continuing task for the NAASN folks. It was cool having the conference in the Steelworkers Hall instead of on a university campus, but we obviously need to figure out new ways to word and distribute our “calls”, etc. if we want to continue to be a network that tries to bridge the divide between independent scholars and professional academics.

The numbers of people there does demonstrate a need for spaces like this (and the others like it), however, where anarchists can come together to discuss theory, research, and practice in productive ways. Like I said before, I find these face to face discussions much more productive than what I encounter when I brave internet discussions between anarchists. But we still have major problems with gatherings like these.

For example, one woman was sent abusive mails at the conference and told to “get off Turtle Island”. There was also an assault on a woman at the Saturday social, apparently, though I wasn’t there and don’t know the details. The organizers re-directed the final plenary to talk about patriarchy and assault. It’s disgusting that this is a problem in society at large and in anarchist spaces too.

No doubt, the greatest thing about the weekend for me personally was seeing old friends face to face. I read peoples' blogs, books, chapters, articles, emails, etc., but I don’t get to often see them. This is one of the most edifying experiences at these events. It might sound silly, but that in itself was worth the drive.

And with the good and bad that came with attendance, the panels, the informal discussions, and the seeing (and hugging) of friends, we packed the car again and drove the ten hours back. I’m uncomfortable with the events surrounding Saturday night and am anxious to see what the organizers, or others, have to say about it. Likewise, I wonder what can be learned from the (attempted) police presence. And, of course, I hope to learn about the events that I never got to attend over the weekend. But I was generally impressed by what I personally experienced at the conference, despite my disagreements with some of the ideas put forward here and there, though there were large areas of agreement as well—and not a single person was pied!