Form an XRDC Affinity Group 

As Extinction Rebellion DC membership starts reaching into the hundreds and thousands, are forming into affinity groups in order to keep ourselves organized. An affinity group is an autonomous collection of 5 to 20 people coming together to take direct action. 

Affinity groups fill a very specific role within the XRDC structure: they are a way of organizing people en masse to participate in mass actions. In other words, AGs are action-focused. Most of the ongoing work for XRDC happens within the Working Groups. If people in your group want to take a more involved role within the planning processes of the chapter, they can fill out this form to join a working group. The working groups are always looking for more help!

Most working group members should be in affinity groups during actions, but not all affinity group members need to be in a working group. Thus, affinity groups give people with limited capacity the opportunity to engage with and participate in XRDC in an ongoing way without needing to put in lots of volunteer hours.

This document explains the process for forming a new affinity group.

1. Affinity Group Fundamentals

Each affinity group has a set of responsibilities it needs to fill. Those responsibilities can be generally divided into the following four roles:

  • Spokesperson: responsible for communication between the Group and XRDC, representing the group at Spokecouncil meetings,  monitor the Keybase #announcements chat to share important information with the group

  • Greeter: reaches out and greets new AG members, informing them of next AG meeting or events, and regularly adds new people to AG communications lists, such as email lists, Keybase channels, or Signal chats.

  • Event Planner: schedules monthly meetings or other events, including finding space

  • Training Coordinator: keeps members informed of training opportunities, maintains a list of who has been trained for what roles, communicates with Action Working Group to fill roles before mass mobilizations.

These suggested roles can be modified to fit the needs of each affinity group. Two people could divide up the four roles. One extremely dedicated person could fill all four roles. Or the individual responsibilities could be mixed and matched among people in a completely different way. The important thing is that all of these functions get filled by the AG in some way.

Affinity groups should follow the decision-making guidelines laid out in the XRDC constitution. Practicing consensus decision-making within your affinity group will make it easier for your group to make decisions during actions.

Once 5 people are ready to create an affinity group together, one of the point people should fill out this form to register the group: 

https://actionnetwork.org/forms/xrdc-new-affinity-group-form

After the form is filled out, we’ll add the affinity group to the list of AGs, and people will start flowing into your group.

Please note that the maximum recommended number of people in an affinity group is 20. Beyond 20 members, many of the benefits of the affinity group are lost, and the organizing burden on the point people becomes unsustainable. If your group reaches 20 members, you should try to do a mitosis and form two new affinity groups. An affinity group mitosis is a cause for celebration - it means our group is growing!

2. Getting Off the Ground

Once your affinity group has formed, the next step is to have a meeting with all of your affinity group members. During this meeting, you should aim to achieve a couple of goals:

  • Get to know everyone! Spend some time doing something informal or fun. The meeting could be structured around a potluck, a walk in the park, or something specific to the interest that brought your group together.

  • Make sure all affinity group members have a way to communicate - an email list, a Signal group chat, or a keybase channel

  • Divide up responsibilities within the working group

  • Discuss everyone’s risk level during actions, how they want to participate, etc. 

  • Brainstorm how you see your affinity group taking part in a mass disruption in the streets

  • Discuss whether your affinity group would like to take a creative and/or disruptive action other than an an XRDC mass disruption

  • If your group is interested, you can design a shirt, collect money from members, and send your order information to @countbassy on keybase. Shirts are $8 one-sided, $10 two-sided. Check out the XR design programme for ideas.

Once your affinity group has met up, gotten to know one another, and gotten into communication with one another, it's up to your group how to proceed. If you want to remain action focused and only meet up to prepare for actions, that's totally cool. On the other end of the spectrum, if your affinity group wants to hold events and invite the XRDC community, or even take direct action together, it's empowered to do so! We encourage the affinity groups to view themselves as self-empowered to do whatever they want, so long as they act in compliance with the XR demands and principles.

The best ways to stay up to date on what’s happening within XRDC are to monitor the #announcements chat on Keybase and to read the email newsletters. It’s important that affinity groups are up to date on what’s going on with the chapter. One of the main purposes of AGs is to keep members informed on upcoming actions and events.

3. Affinity Groups and Mass Actions

Affinity groups play a crucial role during XRDC’s mass mobilizations. It allows us to quickly and efficiently organize our members for deployment. It also provides a pathway for participants in mass actions to have input into the action planning process.

In the leadup to an action, the Action Working Group will convene spokescouncils to get buy-in from participants. During a spokescouncil, a spokesperson from each affinity group will participate in a council to make decisions. The spokesperson's job is to represent the viewpoints of their affinity group to the wider group. If there are more than 20 affinity groups taking part in an action, a nested spokescouncil will be used.

During an action, our affinity groups form the basis of flying squads. People who show up on the day of can join a flying squad and participate safely, since the affinity group has the key roles filled already. Those key roles are:

  • 2 marshals, who have been to a roadblock training

  • 1 police liaison, who has taken a police liaison training 

  • 1 tactical comms person, who has been in touch with the central command group for XRDC

  • 1 documentarian, who is in touch with the XRDC social media team

Beyond these basic roles, affinity groups are encouraged to add additional roles to make the protest more successful:

  • Rebel Rousers, who lead chants, songs, and speakouts in the streets

  • Care Bears, who bring water and food for participants

  • De-Escalators, who bring flyers or snacks to people stuck in traffic

4. Why We Use Affinity Groups

Affinity groups have many benefits:

  • Building capacity - The affinity group structure will allow people to participate in XRDC in an ongoing way without committing to volunteering with a working group. In this way, we hope to accommodate people who are passionate about the climate but limited on time.

  • Building community - Members of affinity groups will all know each other personally. It will be much easier to handle intense situations in the streets if you’re surrounded by people you know and trust. 

  • Collective decision making - If we need to make decisions in the street, affinity groups will be the core decision-making units. An affinity group structure will allow us to quickly execute a spokescouncil model ([more info on spokescouncils here](https://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/spokescouncil))

  • Tactical effectiveness - by organizing actions at the affinity group level, we can be much more targeted in our deployment of personpower and have a better sense of our capacity. 

  • Activist empowerment - Since affinity groups are autonomous, they are empowered to make decisions on their own during actions. They can also take actions without getting prior approval, so long as they adhere to the demands and principles of XR. An affinity groups structure will make our group far more dynamic.

  • Security -  Since your group will all know each other and understand each other’s risk levels, you will be more sensitive to potential security breaches. With this system, someone with bad intentions entering the group will be much more obvious.

  • They’re fun! - In the near future, XRDC will be holding community-building events and competitions based around affinity groups. Stay tuned for more info.

If you have questions about forming an affinity group or what to do once it’s formed, you can email us at extinctionrebelliondc@protonmail.com