History
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Although Affinity groups are a natural way for humans to organize and are, in that sense, as old as humanity, the origin of Affinity groups, in the current context, dates back to 19th century Spain. It was the favourite way of organization by Spanish anarchists (grupos de afinidad), and had their base in the tertulias or in the local groups.
Affinity groups appeared again in the U.S. anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The term was used by Ben Morea and the group Black Mask. Later, anti-war activists on college campuses organized around their interests or backgrounds -- religious, gender, ethnic group, etc. They became popular in the 1970s in the anti-nuclear movement in the United States and Europe. The 30,000 person occupation and blockade of the Ruhr nuclear power station in Germany in 1969 was organized on the Affinity group model. Today, the structure is used by many different activists: animal rights, environmental, anti-war, and anti-globalization, to name some examples.
The 1999 protests in Seattle which shut down the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 included coordinated organization by many clusters of Affinity groups.
Read more about this topic: Affinity Group
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (18771962)
“If usually the present age is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (18551916)
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)