
**There are also two relevent downloads in the zine section. (Our proclaimation and a leaflet that answers the question"Isn't an Anarchist social club a contradiction?".)**
How to start an Anarchist Social Club at your own school:
(or at least how we started)
I guess this could be applied to starting just about any student political group.
1. Get together a small group of people (you only need 3 or 4) who are really interested in getting the group started.
2. Pick a meeting time and place. For example, we meet in our schools student lounge on Tuesdays and Fridays at lunch.
3. Make flyers and post them everywhere!!! (I probably wouldn't be involved in the ASC or politics at all right now if it weren't for a well placed flyer above the urinal in one of the bathrooms...) We originally posted the proclamation and a flyer with the time of our first meeting together.
4. Have an awesome first meeting! Bring food, get friends to come, etc.
5. Organize events and post flyers and make announcements for them. They don't have to be anything big or fancy - our first one was just a Dr. Seuss reading and discussion outside on a nice day. (Seriously, Dr. Seuss is awesome. Of course it's ridiculous too, but there are A TON of connections to anarchism/anti-authoritarianism (Yertle the Turtle,) environmentalism (the Lorax,) and anti-war ideas (The Bitter Butter Battle).)
6. Expect to answer lots of questions about anarchy. Some people will show up knowing about it, others will show just to find out what anarchy is. Some of the our best discussions were started by people who were new to the idea of anarchy.
7. Expect to get a lot crap from some people. There are a lot of people who see anarchists as pointlessly rebellious punks or as a bunch of crazy kids who like to throw bricks and blow stuff up for the hell of it. It's hard to get people to accept anarchy as a serious political idea.
We've had to explain that it ISN'T hypocritical for anarchists to organize groups and that we are against hierarchy, not organization so many times that we ended up writing a leaflet explaining our point of view.
And you may also have to explain to your school's administration that, yes, having a teacher/advisor as a leader WOULD be hypocritical for an anarchist group.
8. Keep doing stuff. Organize more events, hold skill-shares and teach-ins that interest different groups of people, go to protests, make literature, etc.
Good luck!!!
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