Andy Cornell speaks on “Oppose and Propose” – Olympia, WA
Please join author Andy Cornell and former members of Movement for New Society for a talk and lively discussion about the new book, Oppose and Propose: Lessons from Movement For A New Society (AK Press and Institute for Anarchist Studies, 2011)
Where do the strategies, tactics, and lifestyles of contemporary activists come from? Movement for a New Society, a Philadelphia-based radical pacifist organization active in the 1970s and… 1980s, pioneered forms of consensus decision making, communal living, direct action, and self-education now central to anti-authoritarian movements. Brimming with analysis, interviews, and archival documents, Oppose and Propose! recovers a missing link in recent radical history, while drawing out crucial lessons on leadership, movement building, counterculture, and prefigurative politics.
MNS served as a crucial organizational link between the movements of the 1960s and the post-Seattle global justice movement. Yet the group’s political innovations created tensions of their own. Members found their commitments to “live the revolution now” often alienated potential allies and distracted them from confronting their opponents, while their distrust of leadership and rigid commitment to cumbersome group processes made it difficult to keep their analysis and strategy cutting-edge.
In this talk, the author and former members will place Movement for a New Society in the broader history of post-1960s radicalism, while offering an assessment of the strategies and conceptual tools it left to current movements.