Installment #2 from a loyal and concerned reader: TWAC/EarthFirst! and the elections in Lake Worth 2014 (Continued)

This is the second article concerning EarthFirst! (EF) and their affinity group (or “off-shoot”), TWAC. TWAC, if you recall, staged a demonstration in Boca Raton on April 9 against the GEO Group. Four of their members were arrested, two members reside in Lake Worth FL: Lynne Purvis and Christine Baglieri.

EF is what's called a “collective.” Collectives in the anarchist community are informal, self-described “non-hierarchical” groups with varying membership numbers. This tactic is approximately forty years old and has proven highly effective. It's effectiveness primarily due to the Internet, the access to information and the ability of members to go underground yet able to supply information to the public, share information with each other and between collectives, and most importantly: the majority of the collective members remain anonymous.

Collectives can have fifty members, hundreds or even thousands. EF stands out due to it's large membership/sympathizers but also because EF is international, with outreach in Europe and Australia. This exposure increases both fund-raising and an ever-growing collective.

A tremendously successful strategy EF utilizes is taking advantage of social conflicts. Be it nuclear energy, immigrant and farm worker rights, biotechnology, feminism, and in the case of TWAC, “the oppression of womyn [sic] and transgendered people”, EF has been adept at tapping into that energy to aid the EF collective. On the EF news link from 4/19: “TWAC Storms Prison Industry Giant GEO Group's HQ in Boca Raton”. What does EF have to do with the transgender movement? Everything.

As collectives grow and become increasingly active an issue or event may need particular or immediate attention. Too difficult for the collective to address but an ideal situation for a small group of activists. A small group, five to twenty, will thus be spun off as an “affinity” group. They can claim almost any issue to protest as long as the collective is not seen publicly as involved. Still part of the EF collective but tasked to accomplish short-term goals, with very limited scope. Whereas the collective is concerned with long-term goals, strategy, publishing journals and maintaining a soaring Internet presence, an affinity group like TWAC for example, can be formed and trained to work on a local, city level. For example, upset the present 4 to 1 Lake Worth majority, an unfriendly majority to the anarchist agenda, and elect a new mayor and one, possibly two new commissioners to the Lake Worth commission next March, 2014.

What EF provides to sympathetic candidates who opt to run against the current majority is “boots on the ground.” EF will not donate money, officially, but can donate something worth much more than currency, trained and trusted campaign workers handing out literature, knocking on doors, monkeywrenching, gathering intelligence, putting up/stealing yard signs, and other efforts.

Much more to come. 
For more proof from the Internet, click here for EF!'s posting on Idealist and here for the intern application, requirements and stipend information to work on their newsletter.  All very interesting reading and confirms what many think about this collective network headquartered here in LW.