It's been a month since I viewed the final episode of "The Anarchists" on HBO. I continue to recommend this doc to anyone who loves the doc genre, and anyone who wants to understand the rise and fall of this specific event.
Fall it did. This final episode brought the wild churn of the previous five episodes to a place of balance in the lives of the subjects affected by the events surrounding Anarchapulco. Lily found the support systems in Mexico and the US to put her up on a new life path. And thanks to the top organizer's snap misjudgements, a person who gave their livlihood to a movement (as he saw it) was kicked to the curb, with tragic results.
The saga of Nathan Freeman has stayed with me, and the anger I felt over seeing how he was treated hasn't faded.
My mind, oddly enough, is drawn back to the 2008 political conventions, and a room full of Republicans laughing at Obama's resume entry "Community Organizer." They belittled it as being akin to a childrens T-ball coach or something, and Obama went on to beat them at election time like a red-headed stepchild. A Community Organizer is the true power, and the true conduit of energy and progress in a social movement.
Freeman proved to be a community organizer in the best sense of the term, in his capacity at the top of Anarchapulco. He provided a coherent vision at every level, and worked to create a safe and productive space for people to really work on what "anarchy" as a social movement would mean to them. He gave his family, his material resources and his life to this movement by his work in this event.
The year round work of movement building, and the growth of the annual event itself, presented new problems, and it fell to Jeff Berwick to be part of the solution. From what we see in the documentary, it's not clear at all that Berwick took time to understand the layers of the community that existed, and ways to contribute to the ongoing effort of building the movement. He hired an expert in corporate event planning, from the world that is antithetical to the movement, and this expert did her job. She created a strong corporate event, and the event shut out the man who was trying to build the infrastructure of the movement the event was meant to serve.
Berwick's apparent lack of support for the movement building done by Freeman was breathtaking, and his momentary on-screen regret over not understanding what he should feel about Freeman seems to bely the heart of the problem itself - a superficiality at the very top of what some thought was a movement, but maybe not a movement.
I see online that this event. And a second event, are set for early February 2023. Before you buy the tickets, take a moment to think of Nathan Freeman, and maybe think about ways to make use of some of his vision, right where you live today.
Fall it did. This final episode brought the wild churn of the previous five episodes to a place of balance in the lives of the subjects affected by the events surrounding Anarchapulco. Lily found the support systems in Mexico and the US to put her up on a new life path. And thanks to the top organizer's snap misjudgements, a person who gave their livlihood to a movement (as he saw it) was kicked to the curb, with tragic results.
The saga of Nathan Freeman has stayed with me, and the anger I felt over seeing how he was treated hasn't faded.
My mind, oddly enough, is drawn back to the 2008 political conventions, and a room full of Republicans laughing at Obama's resume entry "Community Organizer." They belittled it as being akin to a childrens T-ball coach or something, and Obama went on to beat them at election time like a red-headed stepchild. A Community Organizer is the true power, and the true conduit of energy and progress in a social movement.
Freeman proved to be a community organizer in the best sense of the term, in his capacity at the top of Anarchapulco. He provided a coherent vision at every level, and worked to create a safe and productive space for people to really work on what "anarchy" as a social movement would mean to them. He gave his family, his material resources and his life to this movement by his work in this event.
The year round work of movement building, and the growth of the annual event itself, presented new problems, and it fell to Jeff Berwick to be part of the solution. From what we see in the documentary, it's not clear at all that Berwick took time to understand the layers of the community that existed, and ways to contribute to the ongoing effort of building the movement. He hired an expert in corporate event planning, from the world that is antithetical to the movement, and this expert did her job. She created a strong corporate event, and the event shut out the man who was trying to build the infrastructure of the movement the event was meant to serve.
Berwick's apparent lack of support for the movement building done by Freeman was breathtaking, and his momentary on-screen regret over not understanding what he should feel about Freeman seems to bely the heart of the problem itself - a superficiality at the very top of what some thought was a movement, but maybe not a movement.
I see online that this event. And a second event, are set for early February 2023. Before you buy the tickets, take a moment to think of Nathan Freeman, and maybe think about ways to make use of some of his vision, right where you live today.