Monthly gatherings centering anti-authoritarian politics and values, rather than ditching them in favor of ‘left unity’. A place for anti-authoritarians to meet each other, build relationship beyond their immediate circles, and cross-pollinate.
If you know how to throw a party, you know how to host a full moon anarchist gathering!
A few of us have been doing this over the summer, and we think people in other areas might like to try it for themselves. We wanted to socialize with all our anarchist friends, we lack a space in our area that explicitly centers anti-authoritarian values rather than an impulsive “left unity”, and we wanted to encourage more anarchist connection and activity. Lots of anarchists here work on their own projects or in affinity groups and don’t often meet each other or know what others are up to. A full moon gathering is social and enjoyable, rather than a meeting or narrowly-focused project, and it helps us meet and share ideas outside our immediate circles. It’s even a chance for friends from nearby towns to visit and connect!
How?
It’s just a regular potluck! Everyone brings food so that cooking labor is shared and doesn’t fall on only a few people. Labeling food for allergies & dietary needs is a MUST for this. We’ve been hosting in backyards and encourage people to bring chairs and firewood, help with setup and cleanup, and generally help the event happen and make it what they want it to be. We individually invite people with a forwardable invite with all the event info, saying they can feel free to share with their anti-authoritarian friends. This spreads along existing relationships rather than being fully open, which is helpful for hosting these at our homes. Being on the full moon makes it a memorable regular date that naturally moves so people aren’t always shut out by their work schedule.
We started with a small crew of 2-4 people putting it on and took a few months to find our footing with the event. Once we thought it was established enough and needed more people to keep it going, we invited some friends who we knew were interested in hosting future gatherings to meet. We talked about how the gatherings had gone so far, what our shared understanding of the events was, and loosely committed to helping run them in the future.
Simple Guide
The gatherings have wound up at a loose structure: have some food & drink ready on time for people that can’t stay long. It typically takes at least 30 minutes for most people to arrive, but once there’s enough we try to quickly get through the only formal part we have: intros, needs & offers, and announcements. This tries to be more of an icebreaker than a meeting.
Intros are easy, but if there’s enough people you may want to just do intros as someone speaks up. Needs & Offers is most important. There’s time for people to announce needs they currently have like help with moving, or always needing access to a chair at the party. Offers can be things people bring to the space (zines, free clothes) or generally available skills like bicycle repair. This has worked great for helping people directly connect and help each other (easy mutual aid win!). After that, there’s some time for announcements. Upcoming protests or actions, new projects, generally anything people think anarchists would like to know about. To keep things moving you can put a time cap on it, and have something set aside like a notepad for people to jot down their needs, offers and announcements throughout the party. Then back to the fun! It’s free-form until a designated end time (when the host wants to go to bed).
Manually sending forwardable invites has worked, but people can accidentally be missed. It might make sense to have an announcements signal thread that only admins can message that people are added to at a gathering. Announcing the next event is easier and it’s less likely for someone to miss an invite.
Make it your own!
This is just our own idea of something to help our local anarchist community build stronger relationships internally, and maybe spur new projects and action. It’s been good so far! We’re excited to see other people take the idea, try it out and do their own thing with it. Maybe a different timing works better for your area, or maybe a more public version at a park or infoshop is what you need. Besides food ours have featured roughhousing games, a mini zine distro, and a small clothing swap! Encourage people to be participants and contribute something to the party! Give it a try and share what works!
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.