Anarchist Movement

Anarchism in this collection means a way of organizing rather than a programme: without hierarchy, without formal leadership, and without an executive that can commit anyone else. That is a structural commitment, not a stylistic one, and the concept in the literature is prefigurative politics — organizing whose internal form is meant to model the society it aims at.

Leach’s reference treatment sets out the concept; it is why a movement of this kind cannot be described in terms of leaders, membership or decisions in the way the rest of this collection’s pages are.

Indymedia

The clearest institutional expression in the American context is the Independent Media Center network, which formed around the 1999 protests in Seattle. Milan’s reference entry describes it as participant-run media: anyone could publish, with no editorial gatekeeper, distributed across local centres.

That model is the direct ancestor of a good deal of what this collection documents elsewhere, and it preceded social media by years.

What was removed

The previous version carried a chronology from 1999 to the present asserting participation in specific protest waves, the adoption of particular encrypted messaging applications, and involvement in 2020 protest activity. None was sourced.

The founded field, which read 1999, has been removed. 1999 is the date of the Seattle protests, not of the movement; American anarchist organizing is more than a century older, and dating it to a protest is the same category error the page’s chronology made throughout.