[lbo-talk] NCOR RIP

Joseph Catron jncatron at gmail.com
Sun Oct 5 18:36:00 PDT 2008


I haven't been in a few years, but these annual events played a huge role in my political development (and, I think, in paving the way for much larger events like the US Social Forum). Did anyone else go to them?

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: <ncor at riseup.net> Date: Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:21 PM Subject: [ncor] NCOR Closes After 11 Years To: ncor at riseup.net

October 2008

Dear friends and allies of NCOR,

The current organizing collective of the National Conference on Organized Resistance, together with ex-collective members, have decided to close the conference indefinitely, following the unavoidable reality that no AU students have volunteered to be part of the next organizing collective. There will be no NCOR 2009. Our strong hope is that other nonsectarian spaces emerge to support the intellectual development of the organized US Left. It is in the spirit of that desire that we write this statement, to communicate to the thousands of activists who have supported the conference since its inception to explain the reasons for its closing, remind ourselves of why it was important, and support efforts to create new radical intellectual conference spaces. But first...

*Thank You & We Apologize, To...*

Everyone who heard about this decision second or third-hand and felt like they should have heard about it from one of us directly. We know many of you have made NCOR a central part of your organizing each year. There was no slight intended. We've all been grieving privately and, as a coping mechanism, frantically deprioritizing NCOR in general. You deserved better. We'll put a more complete list of thank-yous in the memories blog.

*Brief History of NCOR*

The National Conference on Organized Resistance, originally titled the National Conference on Civil Disobedience, was founded by American University student activists in 1997. It was a part of the AU Animal Rights Effort (AWARE), one of the oldest clubs at the university. The first conference was held in the winter of 1998 and had around 150 participants.

The National Conference on Civil Disobedience centered on examining examples of traditional nonviolent direct action of the type practiced by antiwar, animal rights and antinuclear groups. In 2000, inspired by the multifaceted demonstrations that had taken place to protest the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, the collective changed the name of the conference to the National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR), reasoning that many self-described "resistance" movements were excluded from traditional definitions of civil disobedience.

Since then the conference has continued to diversify and includes a broad spectrum of identity-based groups, both affiliated with specific struggles, activist or organizing projects or institutions. In the past few years, the conference has drawn over a thousand participants and presenters from across the country and from abroad as well. Several Left organizations have made NCOR an important aspect of their organizing, education and activist efforts each year, and have organized dozens of people and several well-attended workshops or panel discussions each.

*Why We're Closing NCOR*

For the first four years, NCOR maintained a fairly consistent organizing collective of mostly AU students, anchored throughout this period by its founder, Nisha Anand. In 2002, the collective turned over entirely for the first time, beginning what would become an annual ritual of student and non-student organizing collective members departing the collective each spring. Conference organizers cited the intense time demanded of collective organizing, internal relationship dynamics, graduation/moving and the high-stress conference environment as reasons for moving on. In recent years the outgoing collective – or ex-organizers helping with the year-to-year transition – have struggled to recruit collective members, particularly from AU. In 2008 the situation became untenable: no students volunteered to serve on the collective, despite extensive outreach building on a history of student activist leadership development.

AU provides free space and travel subsidies for dozens of presenters, comparable to direct cost subsidies from $10,000 to $20,000 each year, and the university also covers cost overruns. Past conference collectives of AU students and local activists have tried to move the conference to another site, but have never matched the subsidies possible at AU that make NCOR affordable ($12 registration) for up to 2,000 conference participants to attend from across the US and Canada.

The lack of AU student interest in the core collective (general participation is another matter; dozens of AU students attend and serve critical volunteer roles each year) is symptomatic of a larger struggle that has defined the conference organizing in the last several years: emotional burnout. Each year, a new collective takes the helm, often with just one organizer staying on from the previous year. Briefly, we'd like to offer a few factors that we think contribute to this:

1) The pressure-cooker environment of conference organizing. The collective meets at least once a week for between two and five hours, plus individual and committee work, for 6-8 months.

2) Exhaustion inherent in reinventing the conference each year. Former collective members have cited the unique challenges of conference organizing – distinct from many of their previous collective projects – which are exacerbated by the lack of institutional memory that comes with about 80% annual turnover.

3) An annual renegotiation of the goals for the conference. Without a strong internal leadership anchor, the collective members often seek to define NCOR anew each year, and there are often at least two very distinct and conflicting visions of who the conference should serve and what project it contributes to in the broader work of the Left.

4) Attacks on conference organizers. Each year, collective members come under personal attack by prospective workshop presenters, attendees, and others who make demands that the collective officially ban x-person/group from attending the conference, threaten to denounce them personally as racists if proposals aren't accepted, accuse them of prejudice for allowing AU to take too long to process travel reimbursements, and use their social rank to intimidate student organizers to bend policies to accommodate their extra housing subsidy, etc. Unfortunately, responding to these attacks diverts a huge amount of time and emotional energy. However, we do acknowledge that at times, the collective may not have had its act together. This, combined with the AU bureaucracy, has led to past presenters and those who have submitted workshop proposals that got overlooked to get shafted. This was never our intention and we offer our sincerest apologies to those of you who experienced this.

We think there are strategies for moving forward beyond these challenges, most relying on a committed core of nonstudent activists to anchor the conference goals, vision, and institutional memory. We have had little success in generating this core to date, and collective members have for years now been forced to spend more time repairing relationships than evaluating and building on the experience of organizing the conference. We feel that the net impact on local activists involved in the conference organizing has been negative. NCOR has drained energy from other worthwhile projects, damaged relationships and broken community bonds. This is our reality. But it's not the only one. Having explained why we're closing the conference indefinitely, we'd like to speak to the reasons we still give ourselves to the conference each year, in one form or another, and why we hope spaces like it will endure.

*Accomplishments & Highlights*

*NCOR Workshops*

The workshops are at the heart of the conference and what have been its greatest contributions to movement building and political education. The presentations were classified as Strategy & Theory, Case Studies or Skill-shares. This categorization has varied through the years, depending on the collective. For the last two years of the conference, new tracks were added including the Institute for Anarchist Studies' Radical Theory track, the Left Turn track and the Direct Action track. Space was also reserved for impromptu workshops, known more popularly as "guerrilla workshops," for those whose proposals were not accepted or for more informal discussions.

In the early years of the conference, there were about a dozen workshops. Many of them focused on animal rights or non-violent direct action. At the 2008 conference, there were over 80 workshops that highlighted a wide spectrum of radical causes and struggles. Some workshops and presenters have become a regular part of the NCOR roster, and presenters returned to share their incredible wealth of knowledge and experience with the audience. A few examples of these are Catalyst Project, Institute for Anarchist Studies, Icarus Project and Freedom Center, Left Turn, and International Solidarity Movement. NCOR also supported a number of DC-based groups and activists including the Mobilization for Global Justice, Empower DC and SUSTAIN.

*External Impacts*

In spite of its many problems and controversies, NCOR did its fair share for movement building, especially for developing the politics and skills of young activists. One former presenter described his experience of speaking at the conference for the first time as a young recent graduate: "Although it nearly took me under, it was an incredible opportunity to be able to present my ideas for the first time to so many engaged activists and organizers (mostly of my age range)."

In January 2006, NCOR received a letter of solidarity from the Zapatista General Coordinating Council. In their letter they stated, "Meetings like yours are a source of strength for us; they renew our hope and raise our spirits…This is how our efforts and courage and rebellion came to be a reality and convinced us that everything is possible, an education that we know you too are committed to — in which there's room for many ways of educating ourselves, of consciousness-raising — with the support of people and organizations, forums and national as well as international meetings like yours." This expression of solidarity and love did much to uplift the spirits of the members and the participants of the 2006 conference.

The conference also led to the beginning of some incredible projects like the news program, "Alive in Baghdad," and the Radical Theory Track curated by the Institute for Anarchist Studies.

*Next Steps for Us & Ways to Contribute*

While we have been critical of the conference and of our participation in it, we would like to acknowledge that NCOR played an important role in cultivating many of our radical identities. It took a lot out of us but it also brought us a lot of joy and pride and helped us build some strong friendships. In spite of the problems, we looked forward to organizing NCOR year after year. So it is with a heavy heart that we write this letter.

We'd like to begin – in a very limited form – documenting the impacts the conference has had, particularly as a space for developing critical consciousness and building a broader Left. We invite you to contribute your anecdotes, stories, poems and video diaries to our blog: http://ncor.wordpress.com

We want to continue to support the development of radical intellectuals – particularly here in DC – on a much smaller scale. A few of us are working on some ideas, so stay tuned for updates.

And we want you to organize NCOR-style spaces in your cities. We're available as resources. Email us if we can help you think through conference organizing: ncor at riseup.net

Thank you for all of your support of NCOR and the organizers. We hope our letter serves as a beacon of hope and that others will learn from our experiences.

In love and solidarity,

NCOR Organizers

-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."



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