Building the Anarchist Movement Through Continental Convergences, 1986–89

The 1980s is commonly understood as a decade of wholesale retreat for the American left, which was challenged economically by deindustrialization and politically by the Reagan Revolution. However, focusing on the triumph of the New Right misses an important development: the rebirth of an organized anarchist movement across North America. This paper explores how anarchists organized a series of annual continental convergences from 1986-1989 that revitalized the movement. The gatherings (in Chicago, Minneapolis, Toronto, and San Francisco) provided crucial spaces for anarchists from different backgrounds to encounter each other, engage in political debates, and organize networks of committed activists. I argue that these convergences laid a key foundation for renewed activism in the 1990s in the lead up to the turn-of-the-century anti-globalization movement. This history reveals a hidden genealogy of anti-state socialist movements and offers a historical model for organizing during the current moment of rightwing backlash.