Affinity groups are small groups of people who already know each other. Typically eight to twelve people, but it really depends on the action. Those groups organize themselves—either independently, or together with other affinity groups—in order to achieve some sort of direct action. You work with people that you know and trust. Theoretically, that leads to less people being turned in to the cops. It also means that someone is there to try and un-arrest you.
During major actions, like shutting down Seattle (or San Francisco during the second Gulf War), there was this whole intricate system. Affinity groups would form, and they would send a representative to the “Spokescouncil,” where issues would be discussed, and the work would all be divvied-up. In the case of shutting down a city, groups would volunteer to “take” certain areas and control them. They’d be, like: “We can hold the corner Van Ness and Mission” –and then they would figure out a way to do that, and organize themselves. (“These people are willing to risk arrest, these people really don’t want to risk arrest, these people are going to be doing support, this person is going to be doing communications…”)
So, basically, that stuff doesn’t have to be organized by everybody else if this small group of people—who theoretically know each other really well—can all work together. I say “theoretically” because affinity groups should be people who already know each other –that’s why they have affinity. They have the same basic political line… they know what risks they’re willing to take. Now there’s often space within these things where people will get together and say: “OK, me and my friend will get together with you and your friend, and then we’ll be an affinity group.” And that often works out great, and then they’re friends forever. But other times it’s not so great…
Sometimes affinity groups will be an affinity group because they don’t have affinity with anybody else. And they’ll go out and do some independent action on their own.
Back in the Eighties, we even had names for some of our anarchist affinity groups –which is kind of silly. I lived on a street in Ithaca named Skyler, so the Ithaca anarchists were known as Skylerians. There’s also the Bolos, who were the Philly anarchists. And there’s a whole bunch of anarchists who are known as “Vermont.” The whole concept there was that sometime in 1999, there was supposed to have been a referendum as to whether-or-not the state of Vermont would stay in the union. So everybody was like: “Let’s move to Vermont and vote to secede!” It was sort of a joke, but then there was some demonstration where everyone who got arrested gave the last name “Vermont.”
