User:Nthmost/On Anarchism

Primary source writings by Naomi Most on anarchism as theory and practice at Noisebridge, drawn from the noisebridge-discuss mailing list (2010–2015). Preserved verbatim.

The through-line: anarchism as culture and practice, not as an absence of accountability.

2010: Culture, Not Mandates

Date: July 17, 2010 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, July 2010 — "Charging for classes at Noisebridge"

This being quite the lively group discussion, I'm going to quickly respond to some points from various people all in one email. It's brisk and snappy.

To summarize my own position: I'm pro for-pay classes as a means of attracting and keeping nifty people at Noisebridge, and I don't see any downsides to allowing it.

The realistic/boring fact about anarchy: people are still free to do things the boring way too. Especially if they work and they don't step on anybody else's toes.

But there's no way at Noisebridge to "force" the paying of a fee anyway!

Nobody's talking about "setting" any kind of policy. Except for a few people on this list who seem to ALWAYS reach for rule-setting despite it being totally unreasonable in the context of Noisebridge and having no effect whatsoever.

What's happening in this discussion is a fleshing out of our culture, not a movement towards mandates.

Members already pay for the space with their dues. What they do with the space while they're there is a matter of informal consensus as to whether it's acceptable or not.

And, added bonus: it's the only model that actually WORKS at Noisebridge. Holding for-pay classes at Noisebridge, where there are no actual space restrictions, means we end up with good teachers who feel valued, students who feel they're truly invested in being there, and the knowledge in actuality still being free.

--Naomi

ps. Leif, your Kickstarter model idea is pretty brilliant.

2013: A Tribe Running on Clan Rules

Date: March 23, 2013 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, March 2013 — "member" culture, not policy"

Your criticisms are fair. I hope you will consider, though, that what you observe at present wasn't always the case.

The idea that members should have some sense of privilege or separateness from non-members, creating the class structure that you are observing, was exactly what the NB founding philosophy was hoping to avoid.

I believe (as one might deduce from other of my emails to the list) that Noisebridge is attempting to operate a Tribe with the same cultural "rule" set that worked (sort of) for a small clan. And that's the big problem.

--Naomi

2014: Openly Biased Towards Anarchism

Date: March 13, 2014 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, March 2014 — "why would hackers come to noisebridge?"

I am openly biased towards anarchism and lack of top-down control. But we can't keep shouting down the idea of "oversight" to address problems that Noisebridge has had for YEEAAARRRSSS when we've certainly given the Noisebridge traditional methods that long to fix things.

For the record, I don't agree with the idea of direct people-management or in changing the way we arrive at decisions at Noisebridge. My idea of a positive change would be to have the board managing facilities and facilitating participation -- e.g. forming working groups. I believe these improvements will make a lot of the other crap die down naturally.

And as it turns out, that's what we're going to do first.

--Naomi

2015: Different Forms of Anarchism

Date: February 22, 2015 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, February 2015 — "Fantastic article about Noisebridge"

Responding to Mitch Altman sharing a New Worker article titled "Anatomy of an Anarchist Hackerspace."

Pretty amazing, especially the part where it discusses different forms of anarchism.

Definitely worth the read.

--Naomi

2015: Anarchy ≠ No Control, Man

Date: February 23, 2015 Thread: Noisebridge-discuss, February 2015 — "Unfairly removed, banned without consensus, and given no warning"

A person had been asked to leave Noisebridge and was appealing publicly, invoking "this is an anarchist public space" to assert that community concerns didn't apply to her.

OK, this has gone on long enough and is a waste of everyone's time.

First of all, Jeanine is not a "regular" and I don't care how long she says she's been at Noisebridge. No one knew her at the meeting she showed up to 2 weeks ago, where we welcomed the transgender violence mapping project she mentioned. That was pretty much everyone's first knowledge of Jeanine.

Then we have Jeanine writing well-written letters to the community basically characterizing everyone as being super mean to her and just being a reasonable person and trying to do the right thing. Right.

This "propaganda" she's hyping -- notice how she's not mentioning any of what it actually says in her emails. Because she knows that if she did, she'd be laughed at.

"Die techie scum" in a horror font is not propaganda, it's artless schlock. Particularly when placed at Noisebridge, a place created to lower the barrier of entry of tech education and resources to the wider community.

But that's totally besides the point. We're annoyed at Jeanine because she's using cheap shots to try and wedge herself into the community, such as characterizing Torrie as just a big meany out to get her.

When we interacted with her the other night -- when she came to Noisebridge looking for brushes she could borrow so she could wheatpaste the Mission -- her response to our concerns about the flyers being simply mean and lacking in any useful outcomes was to say, "I'm not having this argument right now" (shutting down the conversation) and then to follow with, "This is an anarchist public space" (asserting that the concerns of the community don't matter, she can do whatever she wants, because you know anarchy == no control man!).

So here we have someone who's playing all the boring regular cards we've seen so many times in an effort to get attention and win unintelligent friends to her side, so that she can continue to not spend the $10 it costs to poster the Mission.

Whatever.

--Naomi