Mobilization on Whose Margins? Anti-Racist Action in the US and Canada

• In Event: Political Ethnography and Fieldwork in the Study of Contemporary Populism

Abstract

This paper probes the intersectionality of growth, change, and development in the Anti-Racist Action (ARA) network in the United States and Canada. This uniquely American contribution to the global anti-fascist (antifa) social movement industry has undergone marked growth in the last decade, particularly in light of the history and dramatic resurgence of right-wing populism in both countries. However, very little scholarly attention has been paid to this movement’s history, its trajectory, or more importantly, the contributions of individual members’ perceptions and experiences of opportunities/barriers to participation to either. In this paper I explore the contributions and experiences of women and men from historically-marginalized communities to the development of collective infrastructure for attracting, mobilizing, and retaining new members to ARA specifically, and to the Antifa movement in general. I combine data from participant-observation and archival research with quantitative interview analysis to learn how individuals navigate the persistence and/or dismantling of oppressive norms, structures, and practices--particularly those based in misogynoir and heteropatriarchy--from within the movement’s bounds, and how this impacts their own engagement in swelling its ranks. I further discuss how my ethnographic approach proffers a more nuanced view of the practical distinctions between mainstream and radical "people-centered politics," and a more direct accounting of their underlying endogeneity, than can experimental or alternative observational methods.

Author

• Kanisha Bond, University of Maryland, College Park