Community members join LAB for a variety of reasons, and with varying levels of experience with abolition or decolonization. We encourage you to reflect on your ‘why’, and keep it mind as you engage with the community. Remember, there are no wrong answers here! Doing this prepares you for a better experience at LAB, and encourages just and meaningful connections with other community members.
The following principles are points of unity which individuals must agree to in order to be admitted as a member of LAB Collective. These Points of Unity represent the principles of the organization, which shape the actions and direction of the organization’s decisions.
- Direct Democracy
Members must recognize that all people should have an equal voice in determining our common future. Members organize for self-determination by having decision-making power come from the bottom up.
- Anti-Hierarchy
Members must recognize that all hierarchical power structures should be abolished, such as: racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ageism, ableism, religious discrimination, the state, capitalism, and all other forms of abuse through hierarchical domination. Members oppose all systems of domination, fight against all forms of oppression, and lift up the voices of the marginalized.
- Anti-Capitalism
Economic democracy is essential for the preservation of our ecosystems and the self-determination of our communities. Members must share an intolerance for the capitalist economic model and seek its abolition. Members must seek to abolish the profit system and place economic decision-making in the hands of communities and workers through communal, cooperative economics and an ethic of mutual aid.
- Social Ecology
The fate of humanity is intertwined with all other life on Earth. We braid together the holistic and reconstructive threads of indigenous knowledge and ecological science. Capitalism is killing life on our planet, and we are fighting to sustain life by reharmonizing human societies with the rest of the natural world.
- Dual Power Prefiguration
Members seek to transform the current oppressive society through the creation of horizontal alternatives. Members must share a commitment to help prefigure the creation of horizontal power structures controlled by the community which countervail and eventually abolish the current social structure, creating a new form of social organization based on solidarity, autonomy, and mutual aid.
- Intersectional Unity
Members must recognize the unique forms of oppression that can be found at the intersections of gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, sexuality, class orientation, disabilities, and other aspects of identity. Under no circumstances should members tolerate or enable discrimination, bigotry, or the reduction of forms of oppression. Members must strive for the liberation of all who face the many intersecting forms of oppression and must work towards unifying the struggle for the freedom of all.
- Decolonization
This land was stolen and enclosed, and LAB Collective’s aim must be to return it to the commons, beyond private property. Members of LAB Collective must center and empower the voices of the Indigenous and dispossessed. Tribal autonomy must be protected and expanded. I believe we should add a note about the rejection of coercion in all of its forms.
- Accountability
Members must be committed to respond to violence, harm, and abuse in a way that does not perpetuate oppressive norms, and actively cultivates accountability and safety for all involved. Members share a commitment to personal and organizational accountability, and will be held responsible for any actions considered harmful to other members or neighbors. I would like to outline an accountability framework in the charter.
