Anarchist Black Cross In The United States

ANARCHIST BLACK CROSS IN THE UNITED STATES. The Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), an international prisoner support movement, grew out of the Anarchist Red Cross that began in Russia in 1906 to provide mail, money, and food to prisoners. In 1907 the London Anarchist Red Cross was formed, which included anarchist luminaries Peter Kropotkin and Rudolf Rocker. In the same year, chapters in the United States, chapters were organized, the first in New York City. Until the end of World War I, the organization comprised mostly Russian-Jewish activists who supported Russian and other regional anarchists. Their most popular fundraising events were balls. In 1914, members of the Lettish Anarchist Red Cross in New York City were killed when a bomb—intended for John D. Rockefeller—exploded prematurely.

The 1917 February Revolution freed all Russian political prisoners, and the Russian organization dissolved. Many returned home, some joining Nestor Makhno’s army in the Ukraine (where self-defense groups used the ABC name). By 1919, the Russian organization reemerged to support a growing number of anarchist prisoners and took the name Anarchist Black Cross to prevent confusion with other, similarly named groups. By 1921 the main support work had relocated to Western Europe.
In 1922, New York City’s Anarchist Red Cross was reestablished. Chapters spread, but by 1926 only the Chicago Aid Fund remained; in 1936 it became the Alexander Berkman Aid Fund. Until 1958, the organization aided anarchists in Russia (until Stalin’s 1939 purges), Spain, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy.

In 1967, the ABC was reestablished in Britain by Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer to aid Spanish anarchists. Lacking a central office and formal organization, the support network spread throughout in Europe and became intertwined with armed struggle movements. Three of its members were killed by police in Germany and Italy.

In the United States, the new ABCs were no longer organized on ethnic lines, and they had a broader geographical focus. In 1972 a short-lived branch existed in Chicago, and in 1973 in Seattle. In 1979, then-prisoner Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin published “A Draft Proposal for an Anarchist Black Cross Network.” In 1982, ABCs organized in California and Canada, and more groups slowly emerged and accelerated in the 1990s. A New York City conference drew 100 people in 1994, and globally there were up to fifty ABCs. The ABC Federation was created in 1995; the ABCs favoring less structure formed the ABC Confederation and in 2002 the ABC Network.

There were other differences, too. Many ABCs support armed struggle Communists and Black/New Afrikan radicals. Others embraced animal and earth liberation, plus indigenous, prisoners. There were debates over supporting those locked up for non-political crimes. Anarchists were also involved in other prison support groups: for example, the IWW’s General Defense Committee (GDC), Books Thru Bars, Jericho Movement, and Black and Pink (for LGBTQ+ prisoners). As the U.S. prison population soared, prison abolition groups became popular.

By 2020, ABC had international standing with more than fifty groups including more than twenty in the United States; seven are in the ABCF. The Federation’s projects include the Warchest Program, which provides regular funds to specific political prisoners, and Running Down the Walls, an annual 5k benefit run.

Yelensky, Boris. The Struggle for Equality: The History of the Anarchist Red Cross. Whitefish, Montana: Literary Licensing, LLC., 2011.

Ervin, Lorenzo Kom’boa. “A Draft Proposal for an Anarchist Black Cross Network,” second edition, http://www.spunk.org/library/groups/abc/sp001498/abc.html

“Yelensky’s Fable: A History of the ABC,” www.abcf.net/losangeles/yelenskys-fable-a-history-of-the-abcn