Chris Crass
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Chris Crass is an anarchist organizer and writer from San Francisco, California. He is an organizer with the Catalyst Project, which is a center for political education and movement building. The Catalyst Project grew out of the Challenging White Supremacy workshop. Crass worked with Challenging White Supremacy after the 1999 WTO mass actions in Seattle, Washington to help strengthen anti-racist politics and practice in the mostly white sections of the Global Justice Movement. He is involved with other anti-war and anti-racist work through the Heads Up Collective.
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[edit] Catalyst Project
Catalyst Project has two primary focuses: build the left and develop anti-racist analysis and practice in white communities. As a white anti-racist/anti-imperialist organization they prioritize working in mostly white sectors of the left to develop and strengthen white anti-racist leadership to move mostly white organizations to an anti-racist framework. For Catalyst Project, an anti-racist framework includes a historical analysis of white supremacy and capitalism in U.S. society and the legacies of resistance struggles coming from communities of color and working class communities. They believe that this history helps lay the foundation for a systemic approach to social change and an understanding of the leadership and power of oppressed peoples to advance social justice for everyone.
Catalyst Project believe that white anti-racist leadership, with women, queers and working class people at the center is crucial to building mass based, popular left organizations in white communities. They work with mostly white organizations to form principled and accountable multiracial alliances to advance an overall left agenda for justice for all people. They believe that multiracial organizing to end patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, heterosexism and imperialism is key to a rejuvenated and powerful left.
[edit] Essays
Crass has written a number of essays in recent years on anti-racism, men working against patriarchy, anti-authoritarian leadership and movement strategy. His writings have appeared in Left Turn, Clamor, Onward and HeartattaCk. He is a columnist at Infoshop.org, a popular anarchist website and many of his essays are on the Colours of Resistance website. In May 2000, Kersplebedeb Press published Collective Liberation on My Mind, a short collection of some of these writings. He has been published in the following anthologies: Globalize Liberation edited by David Solnit; Race, Ethnicity and Gender edited by Joseph Healey and Eileen O'Brien; and the Global Activist Manual edited by Laura Raymond and Mike Prokosch.
[edit] Activism
Throughout most of the 1990s he was an active member of Food Not Bombs in Whittier and San Francisco, California. Crass helped organize the 1995 Food Not Bombs International Gathering in San Francisco and the 1998 West Coast Regional Gathering. During this time, the San Francisco Food Not Bombs played a leading role in supporting the formation of new Food Not Bombs groups around the world. Working with others in the group to deepen its politics, he wrote "Towards a non-violent society: A position paper on anarchism, social change and Food Not Bombs" in 1995, which was widely distributed throughout the Food Not Bombs network.
Chris Crass was also a member of the United Anarchist Front in Whittier in the early 1990s, which was part of the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation and the Anarchist Youth Federation. The United Anarchist Front mobilized against the Gulf War in 1991 and played a leading role organizing other white people to stand for immigrant rights and Ethnic Studies in Orange County, California. They worked in alliance with Chicano students from MEChA and Crass worked with David Rojas on the underground student newspaper, the Molotov Cocktail.
Crass, with Catalyst Project members Clare Bayard, Ingrid Chapman, Josh Warren-White, Amie Fishman and Molly McClure have worked with the Unitarian Universalist youth movement, the Ruckus Society, United Students Against Sweatshops, the National Lawyers Guild, and the War Resisters League developing anti-racist strategy and leadership.
Crass is also a Unitarian Universalist.
[edit] References
- "Angry, exultant and determined, immigrants took to the streets of San Francisco to protest" by Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.com
[edit] External links
- Interview with Chris Crass
- Towards a Non-Violent Society: a Position Paper on Anarchism, Social Change and Food Not Bombs
- Interview with Catalyst Project organizers Chris Crass and Clare Bayard
- About Catalyst Project
- What If they Gave An Empire and Nobody Came by Matt Meyer and Sara Steele
- Combating Oppression Inside and Out by Elizabeth 'Betita' Martinez
- Catalyst Project website
- About the Challenging White Supremacy Workshops
- Essays by Chris Crass
- Going to Places that Scare Me: Challenging Male Supremacy
- But We Don't Have Leaders: Leadership Development and Anti-Authoritarian Organizing
- Beyond Voting: Anarchist Organizing, Electoral Politics and Strategy for Liberation
- For a Democratic Vision to Fight Empire
