Mission:
The Neighborhood Anarchist Collective (NAC) strives to grow the anarchist movement through strategic direct action and by providing a welcoming environment for education and participation. We organize locally to help build a society where neighbors support each other to meet basic needs, individuals are free to follow their passions, and empowered communities collectively shape the future.
Purpose
There is so much misinformation and misunderstanding about anarchists that we wanted a group to loudly and proudly show people what anarchism is really about. We will do that through concrete projects in the community that support people and contributes to the world we want to see. We want to break some common stereotypes about anarchists and do things that make people unfamiliar with anarchism take a second look.
We choose the name “Neighborhood Anarchist Collective” because it was very important to us to have “anarchist” in the name so that was clear, and “neighborhood” to make it friendly and welcoming.
Principles
We as a group have written some principles as a foundation for how the group operates. They show what kind of group we strive to be.
Structure
We’ve spent a lot of time trying to create a structure that balances collective will and individual autonomy.
Why Anarchism?
No matter how much you may know about anarchism, you are probably aware that it proposes some big changes to the current method of organizing society and communities. For one it advocates for an end to a formal government and replaces that oppressive structure with leadership of communities and individuals by the communities and individuals themselves. It proposes people be treated with absolute equality, and have the right to determine the course of their lives.
This sounds like a lot of work, and for a lot of people, that change is too big to visualize. It can be difficult to understand some of the ways that anarchism could work. This is in part due to misinformation, and fear. Fear of eachother, fear of ourselves and fear that has been instilled within us by institutions that wish to use it as a means of control and domination.
Anarchism is a functional, viable method of seeking greater freedom for individuals and society as a whole. NAC seeks to broaden the understanding of anarchists and anarchism, pull it out of the dark and show people what they can do with the many theories and tools that have been given to us by the many thinkers and visionaries of the anarchist tradition.
What better way to do this than to demonstrate it. NAC organizes without hierarchy, acting with each other and the community we live in to make direct substantial changes in the way people understand anarchy and in the way we are able to live our lives. We hope to inspire people to organize a freer, fairer future.