Feminist and anarchist, Anna Kruzynski no longer believes in the “big night” when capitalism will fall. More “pragmatic”, after 20 years of struggle and direct action on the ground and teaching at Concordia University, she believes that the “shift” towards a more just world takes place on a daily basis, in her community, with his neighbors. And in his case, it’s in Pointe-Saint-Charles that it’s happening.
In the middle of the condo buildings growing on either side of the former CN land stands an immense red brick building, surrounded by a large vacant lot. Building 7: a former abandoned factory that anarchist and community groups managed to extract from a real estate developer after years of fierce struggle to turn it into a self-managed social center. A place where local, supportive and alternative initiatives abound. A highly symbolic place of the struggles that were waged in this working-class neighborhood.
“The struggle around Building 7, which lasted seven years, was at the heart of my life,” says activist Anna Kruzynski, who feels at home here. That the capitalist developer gave us Building 7 with a million dollars to develop it is unheard of! »
The 52-year-old activist also recalls the neighborhood’s struggle to oppose the installation of the casino in the early 2000s. “There was a huge struggle, lots of people galvanized around it. And we managed to stop the project. »
Pointe-Saint-Charles, this “urban village” of nearly 15,000 inhabitants that she has lived in for 27 years, is unique because of the infrastructure — the commons — that the groups have developed over the years and the strength of the community. , she explains.
“There is the popular health clinic, there is the popular legal clinic, there is the popular education hub for adults. And after that, there is the solidarity grocery network. There are networks of collective gardens. There is the Action-Gardien group, which is an incredible autonomous political institution that brings together all the groups. It creates an economic, political and cultural breeding ground that is alternative to the mainstream. […] It doesn’t really happen in the same way in other neighborhoods. »
Theories of anarchy
Anna Kruzynski talks about these battles and the particularity of her neighborhood in her new essay Neighborhood in struggle, published by Remue-Ménage. This collection, which brings together several texts already published throughout his career, traces the portrait of his activist and intellectual journey.
She returns in particular to different anarchist theories which have shaped her way of seeing things. She cites Murray Bookchin, who advocated the abolition of capitalism and the nation-state through social ecology. “For more than ten years, I believed in it too. Not only did I believe in it, but I campaigned body and soul, in Pointe-Saint-Charles and elsewhere, following Bookchin’s proposals,” she wrote.
“My experience leads me to conclude that if, in Pointe-Saint-Charles – this urban, dynamic, protest village, organized from the left to the extreme left – we have not, after ten years of efforts, succeeded to expand La Pointe libertaire, or even to constitute an embryonic political institution, we have erred. What if we took as a starting point not the political field, but the social-economic field? »
She has since advocated this approach which she considers to be more pragmatic, the cornerstone of the Community Economies Collective based on the writings of JK Gibson-Graham.
“There is therefore no model to refine, no revolutionary moment or big evening to anticipate, no rupture, no abolition of system, no single vision,” writes Kruzynski. Rather a broadening of the spectrum of emancipatory economic activities in a process of creating community economies, these political spaces of ethical deliberation, of open, sensitive and adaptable approaches, which allow different communities to build ways of being, of thinking and to do, to experience interdependence. »
These theories, around the diversified economy, arouse a lot of enthusiasm among the students who take the course Beyond capitalism for a better world, she explains in an interview. “It gives them hope, because when we say: “We are going to fight against capitalism”, it looks like a big hegemonic machine, a monster. Then we wonder how to do it. But there, we dissect the economy, we talk about work, organizations, ownership of the commons, about how we can act on each of these pillars, in our communities, in our families and even in our lives personal. And there, we see that we have a catch. »
Life after the field
In this book, Anna Kruzynski also returns to the feminist struggles within anarchist organizations and gives voice to the working class women of the neighborhood, who were heard very little at the time and who, however, were “the backbone” of the community movement.
She also evokes the activist fatigue which forced her to take a step back in recent years. ” I had a job full time. I had a young child and was an activist full time. I had like three jobs, it was not human, she explains in an interview. Like many women, [j’ai] started making burnouts from the age of forty. But it took ten years before my body told me: OK, it’s over. »
She is delighted to see that today, in organizations, we no longer value “supermilitantism” as much, but on a personal level, she has difficulty conceiving of the way in which she can continue the struggle without being active on field.
“It’s really a big loss because I carry the identity of an activist. This is my primary identity. Yes, I am a university professor, but I have always used my position inside academia to support social movements, community struggles, marginalized voices, and teach critical thinking. The fact that I was, I think, effective in this regard is because I had one foot on the ground. But how can we continue to do this work inside the university if we are less directly involved in the field? That’s what I don’t really know. »