The Green Anticapitalist Front does Lockdown – Livestream: Tactics against Repression and Co-optation of Mutual Aid

GAF is reacting to the Covid-19 lockdown and enforced social distancing, by moving online. We will be doing a series of lifestreams about a variety of subjects that we hope will provide food for constructive discussion.

Episode 7: Tactics against Repression and Co-optation of Mutual Aid

In the livestream our guest speaker will draw on 5 years’ research into Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, including interviews with activists involved with Occupy Sandy in New York, and COVID-19 Mutual Aid groups in London. The talk will introduce some of the political theories underlying state policies which have both explicitly and implicitly attempted to repress, deradicalize and co-opt mutual aid movements. It will consider some of the ways in which movements and activists have been co-opted, for example through becoming regulated and bureaucratized as official NGOs, and will also consider ways in which they have successfully resisted co-optation and de-radicalization. The talk will hopefully form the basis of a participatory discussion on whether some of these points resonate with the personal experiences of people present on the call, any experiences they may have had that weren’t covered, and how they might be able to take some of these ideas forward in their own actions.

Link to video-conference to participate in discussion and ask questions:

• Discussion internet link:
  • Big Blue Button
  • (We have changed digital conference platform and are no longer using zoom, clicking on the link above will take you to our new platform. Please make sure you click the mic button when joining the conference.)
• Internet link to just listen to audio:
  • http://www.twitch.com/gaf_london

Notice: These lifestreams will be recorded so they can be shared on our website for everyone who missed them. Please beware of this when following in video-conference link.

Event times are set at BST (British Summer Time), the time zone being UTC+1.