This August, OS traveled to New Haven, Connecticut to talk with folks at the People’s Art Collective about organizing at the intermediate level as a response to the low level of political consciousness in the U.S., and as a tool to build organization at all levels – mass, intermediate, and revolutionary. 
Several CT folks said that organizing explicitly at defined levels with corresponding levels of unity was a new concept and found it very useful and practical towards building effective organization. At the intermediate level, the objective is to construct a mass movement. One Struggle, an intermediate level org., unifies around anti-capitalism and its objective is to construct a combative, anti-capitalist mass movement.  We agree that capitalism is the glue that binds all forms of oppression, ecocide, imperialism, and imperialist wars.  If we don’t address capital within these struggles, we’re destined for reformism.

However, beyond this level of unity, many of us diverge. We don’t all see eye to eye on what the future will look like, nor how exactly we’ll get there.  This is a level of unity for a revolutionary organization.  Understanding our unity allows anarchists, communists, socialists, as well as newly politicized people to organize and work effectively together without spending valuable time arguing about a future that realistically we are quite far from at this moment.

Events are moving rapidly.  We need to be out there, everywhere, collectively sparking and fanning the mass struggles necessary to end the nightmare of global capitalism. We need as many people as possible to be prepared and able to quickly respond when mass struggle does erupt (which will likely be sudden and surprising). We need to forge strong, competent organizations and movements that cannot be shaken, derailed or pacified. We can contribute to this process now by building organizations at the intermediate level.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the New Haven discussion! Here is what one attendee said about the event:

I was at the One Struggle presentation at PAC the other night. I just wanted to let you know that I was really impressed by the presentation. Most political groups I’ve encountered have seemed kind of pointless or kind of cultish and creepy. One struggle dose not seem to either of those things, and I am hoping to get involved. Thanks, again

-Ethan from New Haven, CT

To top it all off, enough folks at the presentation found unity with One Struggle that they decided to form a New Haven chapter. Big ups to y’all for joining in the work of building a combative, anti-capitalist mass movement! Can’t wait to see what comes from One Struggle, New Haven!