FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: press@macc.nyc
NEW YORK CITY’S ANARCHISTS UNITE TO RESIST FASCISM, PLAN D.C. INAUGURATION DISRUPTION
NEW YORK – Members of New York’s anarchist community, drawn from multiple different collectives from across the city, have come together to announce the formation of the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council (MACC), an umbrella group aimed at building a culture of resistance. With the present atmosphere of xenophobia, racism and misogyny—as well as the deep sense of dissatisfaction surrounding the current state of representational politics in America—we are making diverse anarchist projects visible to the world at large and seeding resistance to now-emboldened right-wing forces through an alternative, radical form of participatory politics.
Although we thoroughly reject the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency - as well as the so-called movement that worked to put him in power - we believe that Trump’s rise is merely a symptom of a political pathology hostile to any real notion of social and economic justice. Trump is the symptom, but capitalism is the disease. We reject not just the nascent fascism represented by the incoming Trump regime, but also any attempts to funnel resistance into electoral politics, which time and time again has shown itself to be wholly inadequate in addressing the current system’s fundamentally oppressive nature.
For its first major project, MACC will send a contingent of its members to join in efforts to disrupt the upcoming inauguration. Its goal in this action is to present the argument that true progress is impossible under the current political system. The real conflict is not between Democrats and Republicans, but rather between two competing visions of democracy. One believes that representatives should make decisions about our lives and bodies, a vision that has proven to be bigoted, oppressive and dominated by wealthy elites regardless of which party is in power. The other - the version to which the members of MACC subscribe - holds that the people can represent themselves, speak for themselves, and directly shape their own world and political reality. We hope to build on the horizontal models that have been developed in Rojava, in Chiapas, in the Movement of the Squares and Occupy and during anti-globe mobilizations.
It is our hope that the upcoming action in DC can provide the foundation for a 21stcentury abolitionist movement through allowing participants to find each other and begin working together. This is a movement that seeks to end all of the unjust social, political and economic hierarchies on which the current system is premised, such as those based on race, sex, class, religion, immigration status, gender identity, and ability, and all their myriad manifestations.
We seek a seismic shift in political perspective and practices, one that dispenses with the idea of the nation state, and of the capitalist economic system altogether.