There’s lots more that could be plotted on the Holding A Safe Space For A Group Transformative Experience diagram above, I’m just starting this long post off by touching briefly on that. This post will take about five to ten minuets to read, hope you’ve got that kinda time!
As seen in the video and photo below, I finished updating and archiving all the compasses and re-positioned them on the Treasure Map yesterday. Its looking a lot tidier this morning! I’ve also filled out a few new compasses, and there’s plenty more to add!
There’s a lot of information on these compasses which relates to recent and upcoming events, for example: Court, the IPO, Parties, Cops & risk of arrest, Mare Street Co-op, the Washing Machine Installation, and lots more also on the whiteboard, here in the squat in real life.
There’s also lots of chat about these and other things in the Space Pirates General Group Chat.
The pace of that Group Chat has started to pick up, with more and more people responding to posters, word of mouth, etc, and so the dynamic of that group has started to change. As we start to approach 100 people that will obviously accelerate.
To adapt to this – and as part of my painfully slow decapitation process! – messages there are starting to be colour-coded by some of us using emoji heart reacts to reflect the colours of the Cypher.
For the rest of this post it helps to be familiar with the way affinity groups work as set out in this zine, for example but the basic idea is that:
You and your friends already constitute an affinity group, the essential building block of this model. An affinity group is a circle of friends who understand themselves as an autonomous political force. The idea is that people who already know and trust each other should work together to respond immediately, intelligently, and flexibly to emerging situations.
Affinity Groups: Essential Building Blocks of Anarchist Organization
Space Pirates is an affinity group based on a shared understanding and use of the Pirate’s Code.
As so much importance is dedicated to group chats generally, it feels necessary to point out that sharing an affinity for the Pirate’s Code, ie being a Space Pirate does not depend on being in any group chat. The Pirates Code Space Pirates Original Cipher Affinity Group aka SPOCAG chat is just one of many ‘places’ where The Pirates Code is shared, used and understood.
Joining and/or leaving any group chat is still a new experience socially and there’s plenty of chattiquette that remains undeveloped as yet. But getting back on track…
As this slightly chaotic diagram shows, having joined the first Affinity Group, the Pirates Code, there are then five further Affinity Groups to choose from in a variety of sequences outlined here:
There are a range of reasons for the Pirate’s Code being a ‘gatekeeper’ SPOCAG. If you’re unclear about these, please feel free to ask for clarification in the General group chat..
For the sake of clarity… a ‘SPOCAG’ is a Space Pirate’s Original Cypher Affinity Group. ‘Original’ is used in the sense “present or existing from the beginning; first or earliest.” rather than the slightly contranymic “created personally by a particular artist, writer, musician, etc.; not a copy.”
As with any of the SPOCAGs anyone who shares an affinity for 🔵 Scrolling (ie admin), for example, is automatically part of the Scrolling SPOCAG.
Being a member of the group chat on signal means you’re part of the SPOCAG. But being a member of the SPOCAG doesn’t mean that you have to join or be in the signal chat, it’s just there as one of many ways to collaborate within the Scrolling SPOCAG.
Other ways to collaborate in real life include using the treasure map, the whiteboard, and with the scrolling example, looking over the legal docs here, and of course actually talking to people in real life!!!
Here’s another slightly chaotic diagram to show how the signal chats relate to one another and to the Space Pirates General Signal Chat:
In the above hypothetical snapshot, there are two aspects of scrolling (bottom right in blue) which have their own dedicate affinity group chats: ‘£’ and ‘Legal’. These group chats would have Originated in the SPOCAG signal chat dedicated to Scrolling with a message like “Anyone want to discuss our court case?”
This new Affinity Group would then be called something like ‘Court on Tuesday’ and anyone interested would join that new Affinity group set self destruct timers etc and potentially leave it when it’s over, or go on to create a new more relevant group or be followed-up with on the next court date.
To wrap up this post I’m going to encourage you to read about Affinity Groups with this quote:
But an affinity group need not be a permanent arrangement. It can serve as a structure of convenience, assembled from the pool of interested and trusted people for the duration of a given project.
A particular team can act together over and over as an affinity group, but the members can also break up into smaller affinity groups, participate in other affinity groups, or act outside the affinity group structure. Freedom to associate and organize as each person sees fit is a fundamental anarchist principle; this promotes redundancy, so no one person or group is essential to the functioning of the whole, and different groups can reconfigure as needed.
The affinity group is a flexible model
I hope this long post has made sense, and will prove useful. Please let me know your thoughts, questions, concerns etc. I’m sure there are areas that don’t fully make sense and I’d love to iron them out with your help.
Thanks, Cyborg