Why Carrboro Commune is neither Carrboro nor Communal

The next few days will see the Carrboro, NC newspapers full of pictures of happy-clappy family folk merrily planting what appears to be a community garden, in peaceful protest of controlling corporatist America, and in the name of Carrboro Commune, whose stated ambition is ostensibly no more than to invite casual passers-by to partake of herbs and fragrance.

Please do not be fooled – as I was. It pains me to have to write this. Some of these people are folk I have friended over the past few months. But Carrboro Commune is not a benign communal organization, that believes in community-building through consensus-based decision-making, as it would have us believe. It is a driven group of people, with a very definite agenda, that owes nothing to community, and that is determined to achieve that agenda, by means that care not a whit for community consensus.

Leaving labels to one side, Carrboro Commune talks the language of anarchy – in its purist sense, as I understand it. And I know this from having debated with them, at meetings and at their community garden protest this past Saturday. They say they do not believe in arbitrary authority. They say they believe in the autonomy of the individual to make their own decisions. And where group decisions need to be made, they say they are made openly, consensually and in consort with the local community.

But, what I have seen of Carrboro Commune is quite the reverse. They appear to have taken a leaf out of the book of the very folks they claim to oppose – corporate America. They act with an authority which could not be more arbitrary, since it has been given to them by no-one. They rail against those who reach in and disrupt our community; yet all of their actions are disruptive of that same community. A community which has given them permission to do nothing but get out of the way. They do not welcome consensual discussion. If you disagree with them, they argue until you give up. Or they wait until you are not there, and ‘consense’ in your absence.

And the worst part of all. And you may see it if any care to respond to this Note. They never stand still long enough for you to be able to clarify who they are, what name they are using on any particular day, or what is their precise agenda. I have seen much the same folk merrily morph from the group with which I am associated (Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro) to Nomadic Occupy to Carrboro Commune to Occupy Everything to ‘I’m an autonomous individual today.’

So what, you might say? If all they are doing (as they were this past Saturday) is planting seeds, then who cares? It’s harmless. But it is not. Much preceded this apparent innocent display of gardening. Much that was destructive and disruptive and costly for the taxpayers of Carrboro. And there is no reason to believe more of the same will not be on the way – if we allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security.

I have been around the block a few times in my life. Seen some stuff. Done some stuff. And I know classic destabilization technique when I witness it. Stage One: remove or co-opt competing institutions (Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro – which, let’s be honest, has been almost completely emasculated since Carrboro Commune used OCH as a launching platform for its occupation of the CVS building in downtown Carrboro a few weeks ago). Stage Two: disrupt the community. Stage Three: bring a sense of order out of the chaos.

The constant oscillation between Two and Three is not unlike watching a practicing addict manipulate those around them with contrasting displays of disruptive anger and clingy love, in order to achieve their ambition of codependent enabling of their addiction.

You might think I overstate the design behind the action of Carrboro Commune. Yet I watched the protest on Saturday first-hand. This was no loose group of hippies, wandering about scattering seeds as the whim took them. I’ve seen groups based on consensus in action. It’s beautiful mayhem. That’s the point. It’s so difficult to make decisions, it’s almost impossible to be controlled. And control is the last thing true anarchists want. Either to exercise it, or to suffer it.

Yet, what I saw on Saturday, was a tight-knit, centrally-controlled process of organization. Materials had been prepared. They were made available on order. And I mean ‘order.’ I stood there listening to commands being given. There was no loose and equal consensus. There was a very clear line of command. These people knew what they wanted to do, they had prepared for it, they knew how to achieve it, and they were crisp about effecting it. If it had not been so scary, it would have been a marvel; an operation worthy of any military force.

But still. So what? All we saw were seeds. Who cares? Hmm. Two points:

First, look more closely. If all of the past few months have built to this moment when Carrboro Commune gets to plant a few seeds. And that is all they want to do. Then fine. I’m overstating the case.

But these same people have pretty much destroyed one Occupy organization. They broke into a building. They screamed at our Mayor. They disrupted a community meeting, when the real community were attempting to negotiate with the CVS developers.

All of their actions have been disruptive. Even the plant-seeding. Which cost the taxpayer dear, when some 20 police officers had to be on duty, because Carrboro Commune had already proven they could not be trusted not to break the law if left on their own.

Meanwhile, with all of their showboating stunts, the very real and hard work of the many, who are dedicated actually to building community, and to focusing on the issues that are genuinely about social and economic injustice, rather than self-aggrandizement, that hard work is sidelined and consigned to the shadows.

I would suffer all the showboating in the world, if it was followed by the hard work of community-building, rather than continual disruption and destruction. I would accept seeds up the wazoo, if Carrboro Commune spent but one day on social and economic justice in the community they pretend to support. If they were to do something like sponsor a community luncheon at the local homeless shelter. And by the way, no. Building a ‘community garden’ on someone else’s property, without anyone’s permission but your own, does not count as community-building.

Secondly, from what I have read of Carrboro Commune, the language their number have used in the meetings I have attended of Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro, and what was discussed at the protest on Saturday, their agenda reaches beyond mere seeds. All the talk has been and continues to be of circumventing community processes because those processes have ‘failed.’ Of action to counter corporate interest and property interests.

All of this chatter leaves me cold. I joined Occupy because I cared about fighting economic and social injustice. For sure, I get the equation that says much of the malignant arbitrary authority in our society comes from out-of-control huge corporations. That they get that authority from their tight grip on the mass of our wealth and our property. That they use that wealth to buy our elected officials. And that this is what caused the Great Recession.

I get all of that. I even get that there are those who genuinely believe that the dominance of corporate authority and property interest is so great in our society that it is beyond rectification. The only answer is to crash the system and start again. I have no problem with those folks. Happy to converse with them.

My problem arises when they abrogate to themselves the same arbitrary authority they decry, to pursue an agenda of destruction and disruption they do not openly disclose, claiming it to be in support of a community that has given them no permission, and their whole purpose becomes anti-corporatism, rather than advocacy of social and economic justice.

What’s more, the community processes have not failed. What we find on closer examination is that the processes have worked; they have just come up with an answer the anarchists do not like – which is what happened to Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro.

It is no good telling me that the Carrboro Commune agenda is good. Good does not automatically mean right. And right does not automatically mean democratic. You have to ask to find out what is democratic. And you have to provide full information to get a meaningful answer. And then you have to pay attention to that answer.

The greatest sadness for me is that I see this pattern of behavior repeated in so-called progressive and consensual organizations throughout Carrboro. I saw it in my community radio station, WCOM, when for a while a small group of people thought that consensus meant, I listen, I absorb, then I ignore. I see it still in my co-operative grocery store, where one person has created an administrative edifice to shield him from democratic scrutiny, while he pursues his own hidden agenda.

I have fought arbitrary authority all of my life. Since I first demanded, at the age of 13, that my boarding school principal make a teacher apologize to me for hitting me in the face. But, I also have a life of my own. I can’t say that I will devote a huge amount of my time to tracking the actions and arbitrary authority of Carrboro Commune.

There are just under 20,000 people in our municipality. Any one of us can perform that duty. But I do sound this clarion call. And the worst that can happen if I am wrong? Then, I’m wrong. These are just words. And if there is nothing to hide, then words can only hurt for a very short time. And I’ll apologize.