about us

We are a group of people based in Humboldt County who are interested in advancing anarchism in theory and in practice. What is anarchism? In the words of Emma Goldman, Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and the restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals.

Humboldt Grassroots founded in 2007 around an anarchist recognizes anarchist strategies as the best methods in the class struggle to liberate the vast majority of society from the tiny minority who currently rule. This platform helps us to stick together during fierce times and to keep clear sights on our role in the struggle for freedom.

Membership in Humboldt Grassroots is open to anyone who is in agreement with our platform and committed to putting it into practice. Membership is based on participation in group communications and meetings, the organization of community initiatives, and payment of membership dues, which enables us to put our plans into action. Humboldt Grassroots also experiences and welcomes support and participation from members of the broader community who, while not official members of our organization, are vital to the success of our efforts.

What We Do:

Humboldt Grassroots participates in struggles against oppression and assists in building the strength of social movements. We develop and maintain solidarity between grassroots organizations and individuals who are engaged in in Humboldt, across the country, and around the world.

We are active in movements for worker’s and tenant’s rights, as well as the rights of those without houses or employment. We are active in student movements for fair education. We are active in struggles against the police state and capitalism. We are active in struggles to protect the environment and wildlife. We are active in struggles against nationalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, heterosexism, transphobia, and all other manifestations of oppression.

In addition to our member’s activity on the ground, Humboldt Grassroots engages in education and media support. Many of our members and supporters are well-informed artists, musicians, writers, poets, public speakers, and media personalities. We create and distribute artwork, writing, and radio and video pieces to spread messages of freedom. We host the popular Humboldt Anarchist Book Fair. We host presentations to inform the broader community about current movements and how they can get involved. We host workshops to help people develop their skills in organizing movements and fighting against oppression. We provide ways for people who are interested in the struggle for freedom to become active in that struggle.

What It Has To Do With You?

You have come into contact with a group of people who are concerned about your personal struggle as part of the broader struggle against oppression. Whether or not you agree with us on every point, Humboldt Grassroots is your friend in the struggle. If you are among the oppressed, your fight is also our fight. We see you as a potential partner in the work for a free, equitable, and directly democratic society. If you are interested or already actively engaged in such work, let us join together. Our strength is in solidarity.

We identify ourselves as anarchists and with the "platformist", anarchist-communist, or especifista tradition of anarchism. We broadly identify with the theoretical base of this tradition and the organizational practice it argues for, but not necessarily everything else it has done or said, so it is a starting point for our politics and not an endpoint. We also identify with the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement and the goals and analysis set out in Burn Down The American Plantation. 

Furthermore have deep sympathy for the Anti-authoritarian elements in the Rojava revolution as well as other Anti-authoritarian movements currently working towards stateless democracy; our class struggle anarchism is informed by democratic confederalism.

While understanding that form follows function within the struggles for anarchy;  freedom and equality through active solidarity.

The core ideas of this tradition that we identify with are the need for anarchist political organizations that seek to develop:

Theoretical Unity

Tactical Unity

Collective Action and Discipline

Federalism

Anarchism will be created by the class struggle between the vast majority of society (the working class, those who make life possible) and the tiny minority that currently rule (who currently threaten life itself). A successful revolution will require that anarchist ideas become the leading ideas within the working class. This will not happen spontaneously. Our role is to make anarchist ideas the leading ideas or, as it is sometimes expressed, to become a "leadership of ideas".

A major focus of our activity is our work within the economic organizations of the working class (labor organizations, trade unions, syndicates) where this is a possibility. We therefore reject views that dismiss activity in the unions because as members of the working class it is only natural that we should also be members of these mass organizations. Within them we fight for the democratic structures typical of anarcho-syndicalist unions like 1930's CNT and the IWW. However, the unions, no matter how revolutionary, cannot replace the need for anarchist political organization(s).

We also see it as vital to work in struggles that happen outside the unions and the workplace. These include struggles against particular oppressions, imperialism and indeed the struggles of the working class for a decent place and environment in which to live. Our general approach to these, like our approach to the unions, is to involve ourselves with mass movements and within these movements, in order to promote anarchist methods of organization involving direct democracy and direct action.

We actively oppose all manifestations of prejudice within the workers' movement and society in general and we work alongside those struggling against racism, sexism, [religious] sectarianism and homophobia as a priority. We see the success of a revolution and the successful elimination of these oppressions after the revolution being determined by the building of such struggles in the pre-revolutionary period. The methods of struggle that we promote are a preparation for the running of society along anarchist and communist lines after the revolution.

We oppose imperialism but put forward anarchism as an alternative goal to nationalism. We defend grassroots anti-imperialist movements while arguing for an anarchist rather than nationalist strategy.

We recognise a need for anarchist organizations who agree with these principles to federate on an international basis. However, we believe the degree of federation possible and the amount of effort put into it must be determined by success at building national or regional organizations capable of making such international work a reality, rather than a matter of slogans.

Our goals: 
1.Popularize Anarchism as a theory and practice. 
2.Make libertarian socialism the conscious goal of radical activity 
3.Sharing of information/coordination between various forms of activity Anarchists are involved in so as to help each others’ efforts as opposed to getting in each other’s way. 
4.Let people know what anarchism is about why this method is effective for analyzing the world and acting to change it. 
5.Helping build anarchism as a political force that speaks for itself as opposed to being pulled into bourgeois progressive parties and projects. 
6.Provide a tactical avenue for developing a one struggle mentality. 
7.Build solidarity between grass roots community resources and struggles 
We will do this through 
A way for newcomers to get involved 
Anarchist Book fair 
Participating in actions and organizing campaigns 
Promoting Anarchist ideas and strategy in various groups and projects 
Helping to build alternative media 
Speaking tours 
By putting forward a political agenda of free cooperative society held by our group Humboldt grassroots we will open dialogue within and without the anarchist movement 
Provide a tactical avenue for developing a one struggle mentality, all forms of oppression are interconnected, none are free until we all are. 
Help workers, those in the group, and outside it, to push working class interests. 
Membership is: Agree with our Platform and goals 
Participate in activity to further these goals, including staying in regular communication with Humboldt Grassroots. 
Fulfill other membership responsibilities defined by current bylaws. 

Articles – Good topics for articles include anything related to your company – recent changes to operations, the latest company softball game – or the industry you’re in. General business trends (think national and even international) are great article fodder, too.

Mission statements – You can tell a lot about a company by its mission statement. Don’t have one? Now might be a good time to create one and post it here. A good mission statement tells you what drives a company to do what it does.

Company policies – Are there company policies that are particularly important to your business? Perhaps your unlimited paternity/maternity leave policy has endeared you to employees across the company. This is a good place to talk about that.

Executive profiles – A company is only as strong as its executive leadership. This is a good place to show off who’s occupying the corner offices. Write a nice bio about each executive that includes what they do, how long they’ve been at it, and what got them to where they are.

Humboldt Grassroots has been paying attention to fascists trying to organize in our area. The trolls are active not just on the internet. Likely the same group of fascists who, on September 11th, 2018, were attempting to recruit at College of the Redwoods, then students and faculty complained and the fascists ran off.

Many are now sounding the alarm suspiciously late. This isn't the first time, nor the only call for fascist violence that has happened locally. Remember when the Eureka Police Department was part of a group where there was public talk from the leadership about a final solution for the homeless and addicted. Luckily, after that did incite violence and its echoes, the group and the EPD distanced themselves from such explicit murderous rhetoric.

Still, police unions nationally supported Trump who openly called for more police brutality and has inspired a fascist movement whose terrorism has hit schools, synagogues, churches and public spaces.

The FBI is also saying it is coming to our communities’ aid. The FBI has been undermining social movements, Anarchists, standing rock, anti-colonial, anti-ICE, animal rights, anti-fascist and ecology movements; while the fascists’ terrorism has continued unabated. The FBI hasn’t done a thing to counter fascism, instead they have helped it.

The Lost Coast Outpost (LOCO) is also rightly joining the chorus of condemnation against fascists trying to recruit kids. We are glad. However, it is well known that LOCO facilitates through their comments section (an editorial choice) a culture of authoritarianism, elitism, and disrespect for human life. They routinely humiliate the oppressed, by posting pictures of people calling them thieves who were never charged nor convicted.

To deal with fascist organizing and the fascist movement in this country and in this community we need to address the authoritarian structures and nature our society. We need a revolution that gives everyone access to the resources and decision making power we all need to thrive.

“No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.” -Buenaventura Durruti

That is what the ecological crisis is for Capitalism, an existential threat. The Scientific consensus is that our current relationship with the planet we live on is unsustainable, and that without an immense restructuring of society, we will see the unraveling and degradation of the ecosystems that sustain our life. The current authoritarian relationships with the planet and each other are hurling us towards crisis. Proponents of racial superiority, either openly or unwittingly, advocate for an authoritarian relationship with the planet and each other. Capitalism and fascism (eco-fascism) is the embodiment of this idea and threatens to destroy our hope for the future.

The initial comment from EPD Chief Steve Watson in response to the white supremacist recruiting posters, “we’re coming for you,” plays right into their hands and only reiterates what the poster already said – that the system hates them. But where they’re wrong is the basis on which the system hates them: it does not concern itself with *whites* but rather with anyone who challenges the system, which is the increasing number of people suffering from an increasing economic inequality. If anything, *whites* are late to challenge this system due to the fact that, as a group, the system has benefited them the longest. But as the number of people holding the vast majority of the world’s depleted resources grows smaller, it has become clear that it is no longer in their interest to support a significant *privileged* population.

Trump’s main purpose has been to pit the general population against one another, across race, gender, and other lines of identity, so that we’ll be busy fighting one another rather than putting up any real resistance to the system that establishes such disparity. The police enforce this through violence every day. Just as the EPD reinforces the white supremacists’ paranoia, the same supremacist recruiters, unwittingly or not, are reinforcing the system that they claim to be victims of by misrepresenting who and what that system is about. It’s about vast wealth gained through exploitation of labor and environmental devastation, and placed into the hands of only a few by means of violent authoritarianism.

So to embrace the future we must turn away from competition and towards cooperation, from oppression towards freedom. Fascism is the future refusing to be born. That push is coming from the police, the justice system, those who facilitate authoritarian ideas and the people who don’t stand up to it.

In school, at work, in housing and in how we treat each other. 

That may seem daunting. Society is us, it is what we all do in relation to each other. The experience of solidarity, that recognition of our common humanity, and a direct say in improving our lives and the world, changes everything.

We can come together and do this. Every fight for freedom, justice, ecological harmony, and for a better life, matters. That is how we destroy fascism at the root.

There are so many ideas and opportunities we would like to explore with the community this coming Humboldt Anarchist Book fair!  Can you believe this is the 11th one? We're excited to see all the familiar faces, and those of you joining us for the first time!

We invite you to share your ideas for presentations and send tabling requests to :

humboldtgrassroots@riseup.net

Our line up of speakers and workshops are sure  to keep you busy and of course there will be an abundance of books to peruse, brought to you by Anarchist publishers like AK Press, PM Press, Black Powder Press, and more. As always, the Kid's Corner will have activities for the littles all day. As the event draws nearer, we'll  get you updated on the schedule and for the bus schedule that can bring you directly to us. Attendance is free of charge.

Also if you're interested in volunteering for the Humboldt Anarchist Book Fair, please be on the look-out for our volunteer meetings, which will be posted of our facebook page, or message us privately here. We are in need of musicians/bands/artists and venues to help with fundraising, we are in need of poster putter-uppers, and on the day of we need people to join the kitchen crew, the security crew, and the clean-up crew. Thank you in advance!!