Fuck Identity, We Need Solidarity

The following collection of texts from Pittsburgh critiques identity politics in the context of the recent uprising following the police murder of George Floyd. Originally published by the Filler Collective.

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Contents
Synopsis – Page 2
I. We Need Autonomous Organizing! – Page 4
II. The Situation Today! – Page 5
III. Anti-Oppression Theory & Practice in Pittsburgh has Failed! – Page 9
IV. Pittsburgh as an Example – Page 11

Fuck Identity, We Need Solidarity was written collaboratively by a group of people of color, women, and queers – most of whom are students at Point Park University and University of Pittsburgh – in deep solidarity and in the spirit of conversation with anyone, be they anarchist, Marxist, progressive, socialist, or what have you, who is committed to ending oppression and exploitation materially. We’d also like to extend our unconditional solidarity with all Pittsburgh protestors who are facing charges.

This is a critique of how privilege theory and cultural essentialism has been a boom in our city and how it has incapacitated antiracist, feminist, and queer organizing in this country by taking identity categories and equating them with culture, and culture with solidarity. This conflation minimizes and misrepresents the severity and structural character of the violence and material deprivation faced by oppressed people, and plays up the division among the people who are out rebelling to a point of making liberation impossible in the long-term.