WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #358 - Politics - Health Insurance: Arpège, When Outsourcing Turns into a Social Disaster (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The Arpège software, designed to automate the management of daily health

insurance benefits, is at the heart of a scandal that reveals the
excesses of outsourcing public services. This fiasco, costing EUR37
million, directly affects thousands of social security beneficiaries in
Loire-Atlantique and Vendée, while highlighting the limitations of
outsourcing management to private providers. For more than three months,
more than 15,000 insured persons, particularly those on sick leave or
maternity leave, have experienced delays in the payment of their daily
benefits. These delays, sometimes lasting several weeks, have plunged
many people into a critical financial situation, depriving them of
essential resources to live with dignity. The source of this chaos: the
Arpège software, developed by Sopra Steria, a French IT and business
services giant.

Designed to simplify and accelerate file processing, Arpège proved
incapable of handling certain complex cases, leading to calculation
errors, payment delays, and a backlog of unprocessed files. Faced with
the scale of the malfunctions, the National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM)
was forced to suspend use of the software, revealing a clear
manufacturing and supervision flaw.

A Flawed System with Dramatic Consequences
The choice of Sopra Steria to develop this IT system raises serious
questions about the appropriateness of outsourcing key health insurance
functions to private companies. In 2022, a Senate inquiry had already
highlighted the excessive dependence of public administrations on this
service provider, which generates 55% of its revenue through public
contracts.

This dependence, often justified by arguments of profitability and
efficiency, is now showing its limits. The Arpège case adds to a long
list of IT malfunctions in public services, where promises of
modernization regularly clash with the reality of poor management. These
repeated failures jeopardize the continuity of social security benefits
for insured persons and increase the workload of employees, who must
compensate for the errors of private providers. Deprived of their daily
benefits, thousands of people find themselves in a precarious financial
situation.[1]

Private management incompatible with public service missions
Health insurance employees, already facing a heavy workload, must face
an unmanageable situation. Forced to correct errors in the Arpège
software, they work in degraded conditions, often without sufficient
resources and within unrealistic deadlines. This work overload generates
increased stress and a feeling of helplessness in the face of a system
that seems to be spiraling out of control.

An agent, speaking on condition of anonymity, explains: "We spend hours
correcting errors that shouldn't even exist. It's exhausting and
discouraging. We feel like we're working in a constant state of
emergency, without any recognition." Marie-José Robin, secretary of the
SUD Social Protection union at the Paris CPAM (Health Insurance Fund),
points out that the situation has been going on for years: "SUD has been
denouncing the Arpège software since November 2020."

In a context where corporate profits often take precedence over the
quality and reliability of services, users and employees alike are
paying the highest price. How can we justify outsourcing tasks as
sensitive as the management of daily allowances to publicly listed
companies whose financial objectives conflict with the public interest?

Warning Precedents
The Arpège case is unfortunately not an isolated one. In recent years,
several IT projects in the public sector have turned into fiascos, often
due to poorly managed outsourcing. For example, the Louvois software,
used for military payroll management, experienced major malfunctions,
resulting in payment errors for thousands of soldiers. Similarly, the
tax management software project, entrusted to a private company, was
marred by delays and considerable cost overruns. These examples
demonstrate that outsourcing public services is not a miracle solution,
but rather a source of major risks.

The Arpège scandal lies behind significant economic and political
issues. Private companies like Sopra Steria benefit from lucrative
contracts with public administrations, often with no guarantee of
results. This dependence of public services on private providers raises
questions about the governance and transparency of public procurement.

Furthermore, policymakers are often accused of favoring outsourcing to
reduce short-term costs, without considering the long-term consequences.
This logic of immediate profitability comes at the expense of service
quality and the protection of beneficiaries' rights.

Proposals for emerging from the crisis
Faced with this alarming situation, several solutions can be considered
to prevent such scandals from recurring: strengthening controls over
private providers, improving the transparency of public procurement, and
favoring internal solutions to avoid dependence on private providers.
Finally, the rights of social security beneficiaries must be protected:
in the event of problems, compensation mechanisms must be put in place
to quickly compensate victims.

The Arpège fiasco is much more than a simple IT malfunction. It reveals
the limitations of a model that prioritizes private interests to the
detriment of the public interest. The thousands of social security
beneficiaries and employees, the primary victims of this disastrous
management, deserve concrete answers and a thorough reform of
outsourcing practices.

As public services face growing challenges, it is time to reaffirm their
primary purpose: to serve those in need, not shareholders. The Arpège
scandal must mark a turning point in the way public service missions are
managed to prevent such social disasters from recurring.

Union members from SUD CPAM Paris

Sopra Steria: when public service finances shareholders
Ah, Sopra Steria! This name resonates like a promise of modernity... or
rather, like a warning for public services. This French IT giant is the
archetype of what happens when the private sector enters the public
sector. With revenue of EUR5.1 billion in 2023, 55% of which comes from
public contracts, Sopra Steria has successfully transformed government
funds into gold for its shareholders.

Listed on Euronext Paris, Sopra Steria is a delight for investors. With
a share price up 15% in 2023, shareholders are rubbing their hands in
glee. Every malfunction, every late payment, every work overload
translates into dividends for these lucky few.

In 2023, the company distributed EUR120 million in dividends. A handsome
reward for often flawed products.

The most ironic thing? Sopra Steria presents itself as a committed
player, concerned with the public interest. On its website, it boasts of
its "innovative solutions" and its "commitment to the common good." This
is empty talk when its software is plunging thousands of people into
poverty.

The next time you hear about faulty software in public services,
remember: behind every malfunction, there may be a company like Sopra
Steria, transforming your taxes into profits for its shareholders. Quite
a success, isn't it?

Validate

[1]"Trapped by its software, health insurance is cutting benefits for
thousands of users"

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Assurance-maladie-Arpege-quand-l-externalisation-vire-a-la-catastrophe-sociale
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca

WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, Umanita Nova #8-25 - Lying with statistics: ISTAT data and employment (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In December 2024, employed people, according to ISTAT data, were higher

than those of a year earlier, with an increase of 274 thousand units and
a percentage growth in the employment rate equal to 0.3%. For some age
groups, especially young people, employment was substantially decreasing
and this data alone should lead to reflection on the failure of training
and orientation paths, of active policies in general. ---- But it has
always been known that statistics alone are of no help, especially if
they fail to distinguish between stable and precarious employment: very
few days of employment per year are considered the same as a fixed-term
contract of 3 months and even an indefinite one.

But to be fair, the end-of-2024 surveys spoke of a small contraction in
self-employment, a significant drop in fixed-term contracts and a
recovery in permanent contracts, so in light of these data, is the
Meloni government right to claim victory?

The first observation concerns the number of elderly people who find
work after having lost it, which leads us to reflect on how the search
for specialized personnel to be promptly employed in the production
sector is still the preferred option to the long and costly processes of
direction, training and updating. In short, jobs are increasing
especially in the over-49 age group or among the under-30s where hiring
has decidedly advantageous costs for companies, including tax breaks,
apprenticeship contracts and more.

A bit like what happens with mobility in the Public Administration, in
the end new employment is not promoted and the unfair spending caps on
personnel remain, which then condemn the PA to have the oldest
workforce, and among the lowest paid overall, in the EU.

There is then a further consideration that would be worth studying,
namely Italian salaries that have been falling for over 30 years
compared to other EU countries, a decline in purchasing power with
contract renewals always below inflation. After decades, by losing
purchasing power, the Italian salary gap compared to the EU is starting
to become worrying but this news is not reported because it does not
increase the popularity of the executives.

And so to justify failed fiscal and labor policies (the flat tax, the
decontribution,    contracts in line with the IPCA code that in times of
rising energy prices reveals all its limits) resources equal to a third
of inflation are allocated to the Public Administration, economic
increases are exchanged for benefits and continuous recourse to
corporate welfare, everything is focused on second-level contracts that
in the long run represent a double-edged sword because they increase
productivity, fuel derogations from already inadequate national
contracts and exchange wages for services to private structures, which
fuels the spiral of dismantling public services.

Let's return, in closing, to the employed but not before having
highlighted two critical issues, namely the imminent reconversion of
part of the industry for war purposes that will certainly lead to an
increase in employment, as happened in the USA and Germany a century
ago. And even if we assume that producing weapons is a solution, it is
not explained that the ones who will benefit will not be the workers but
the multinationals in the sector who have seen their stock prices grow
by 50% in a few months, confirming that the speculative-financial spiral
is complementary to the militarization processes.

A year ago, when we talked about reconverting the economy for green
purposes, analysts and statisticians took it for granted that the loss
of employment would be significant, the singers of the new world are
often unaccustomed to dealing with real life.

According to the report by Exclesior and Unioncamere "Forecasts of
employment and professional needs in Italy in the medium term
(2024-2028)", in the next three years the most sought-after jobs will be
high-profile ones, such as managers, specialists and technicians. But
between limited numbers for access to many university faculties, lacking
and ineffective active labor policies, training business with few
positive repercussions, are we sure we are capable of responding
positively to these challenges? The trend in recent years, with
school-work placements, has often been to employ students for weeks in
low-skilled jobs (taking them away from teaching hours), when a new era
had been praised in which the very young would learn a job, acquiring
skills to be used after graduation. Few jobs have been created in recent
years by school-work placements and often for a fixed term.

We close with the relationship between immigration and employment: there
are approximately 2.5 million foreigners in Italy and they represent
approximately 10 percent of the total employed, with an employment rate
identical to that of the natives but with countless lower-paid jobs. In
a country where the residence permit is linked to an employment
contract, it often happens that undignified pay conditions are accepted,
and it is for this reason that a growing number of migrants today have a
greater class consciousness than Italians, especially in logistics
warehouses.

The so-called gender disparity also remains: migrant women have
employment (47.5%), unemployment (15.2%) and inactivity (43.8%) rates
that are significantly worse than men. The same argument, albeit with
different percentages, also applies to Italian women and men, it is
sufficient to remember that the places to be filled for nursery schools
are equal to 15% of boys and girls under 3 years old when the European
average is above 33 percent. And the ones who suffer the most are women
looking for a job: here other factors come into play such as the
inadequacy of welfare, stuck to single-income families and with an
increasingly aging population. But we will talk about this, and much
more, on another occasion.

Federico Giusti

https://umanitanova.org/mentire-con-le-statistiche-dati-istat-e-occupazione/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca

WORLD WORLDWIDE US - news journal UPDATE - (en) US, BRRN: How the Koreatown Popular Assembly Organized Neighborhood Power to Confront ICE (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 This interview is a reflection on the successes and missteps of the

Koreatown Popular Assembly (KPA), an attempt at neighborhood based
organizing that existed from 2016-2022 and aimed to confront the first
Trump administration's deportation policies. With Trump now back in
power, many are once again looking for models to defend themselves and
their communities from an even more rabidly anti-immigrant agenda. ----
This article is the companion to a forthcoming "how-to-organize a
popular assembly" guide based on lessons from KPA and other neighborhood
organizing efforts that members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra have been
embedded in over the years. Check back for that soon.

Two months into Donald Trump's second presidential term, and so far, his
administration has kept its campaign promises to terrorize immigrants,
undocumented or otherwise. Vicious lies about invasive criminality
plague press conferences and executive orders. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) seeks new collaborations with other state agencies to
recruit personnel and execute mass deportations. Border Czar Tom Homan
hints at caging kids once again.

As during Trump's first term, communities across the country have
refused to cower in fear. Residents ring tiplines around the clock to
report impending ICE activity while community organizers sponsor
trainings to defend against raids. Students, neighbors, and coworkers
plaster their schools, towns, and workplaces with Red Cards and other
Know-Your-Rights literature.

 From 2016 to 2022, Koreatown Popular Assembly (KPA), a Los
Angeles-based formation in an immigrant-rich multiethnic neighborhood,
did all this and more. Most importantly, KPA's members waited for no one
to save them; they proactively organized collective resistance to ICE
and Trump's nativist agenda from the ground up alongside other everyday
people.

Conducted and edited by Juan Verala Luz, this interview with Chris
Morgan, one of the project's lead organizers, and Elizabeth Chi, who
joined KPA when she moved to LA in late 2018, explores how KPA started,
what it did, and the context for its success and later dissolution.

Amidst a popular upsurge, dedicated revolutionaries patiently encouraged
one neighborhood to deliberately identify practical strategies to
confront the state terror it faced, together. Despite skepticism towards
making decisions and acting collectively, gentle onramps, multilingual
support, and efforts to accommodate diverse work schedules translated an
inclusive vision of direct democracy into a participatory experiment.
Ultimately, familiar organizing difficulties-shifting political winds
that temper interest, committed leaders stepping back, and struggles
with recruitment-undid KPA.

However, the experience paints a picture rich with lessons for
(re)building rooted organs of direct democracy and mass social movements
for immigrant liberation, both of which can lay the groundwork for a
popular power that can challenge the state and capital.

Members of the Koreatown Popular Assembly (KPA) participate in a May Day
demonstration.
Early Days of KPA
BRRN: Let's set the stage for KPA. What was the social movement and
broader political landscape like in the neighborhood, the city more
generally, and even the country?

CM: In contrast to today, there was just an explosion of people trying
to figure out what we can do and there were a lot of people coming into
the streets. If you called a meeting at that time, you'd get floods of
people who just wanted to do something. There was also a huge amount of
fear, particularly in immigrant communities. There were a lot of
spontaneous marches. In Koreatown, a lot of the public schools that we
were closely connected to, the teachers and students had a walkout on
the day of the inauguration, I think.

There were a few scattered walkouts at other schools and places. There
was sometime around that A Day Without Immigrants that was very poorly
planned and communicated, but still going down Pico Boulevard I remember
thinking, "Oh, there are actually a whole bunch of places that shut down
because of this random call-out." That was kind of the vibe in response
to the election, and all that energy had no where to go. People wanted
to do something, but it wasn't clear what.

BRRN: What led to your decision to organize a popular assembly? Why not
some other sort of organizational form or structure?

CM: Basically, there was a citywide assembly called to talk about Los
Angeles's response to Trump. ... After that, the meeting organizers
said, "Okay, let's go and form breakout groups and then go meet up and
form a group for your neighborhood." Koreatown was one of the breakout
groups from that citywide meeting. Then I became involved, I think, in
one of the first meetings of what had been a breakout group from that
citywide meeting.

I believe the name "popular assembly" was there from the beginning, but
almost nobody knew what a popular assembly was. I think it was NDLON,
the National Day Labor Organizing Network, that gave the name popular
assembly to, first, the citywide meeting and then the breakout groups
that then became these neighborhood groups. My memory is that they were
relying on an experience from Arizona where...there was a group they
organized...that organized the immigrant community to form popular
assemblies as a community defense tactic and hoped to implement
something similar in Los Angeles. That wasn't really communicated very
well to most people. There was this term, "popular assembly," and then
this big meeting in the breakout groups, and there was not really any
direction.

"They thought of it as a kind of ambiguous 'community building' effort.
There was no vision for structure, or strategy, or specific goals. So,
we proposed instead...let's have an open assembly for the neighborhood
and let's make it a decision-making space."

When[I]and a couple other people saw the name, "popular assembly," we
got a little excited because obviously we have some political ideas
about that and about the importance of neighborhood-based democratic
decision making. So that neighborhood group then started meeting, and
basically me, Sarah, who was a member of a Trotskyist organization and a
public-school teacher in Koreatown, and David, who was a staffer for
NDLON who was living in the area, were the main people who then said,
"Let's actually make this a popular assembly."

Most of the other people who came to those initial meetings were more of
the opinion of "Let's have a picnic. Let's just get connected and get to
know each other." They thought of it as a kind of ambiguous 'community
building' effort. There was no vision for structure, or strategy, or
specific goals. So, we proposed instead of just this little breakout
group, let's have an open assembly for the neighborhood and let's make
it a decision-making space.

There was actually a lot of debate about that. A lot of people were
against making a decision-making space ...[In the notes]there's a
proposal from someone where the outcome was we talk about projects we
can plug into and how we're going to stay connected. So, there's
actually nothing concrete; no decisions are made. I had been to plenty
of "assemblies" like that before; people come, they share information,
and then they leave and there are probably going to be more meetings
scheduled with no clear purpose until people get bored of meetings and
stop showing up. We actually had to really debate, propose, and put
forward...[an]emphasis on it being open and a decision-making
space[to]try to actually get something concrete coming out of this so
people can feel like we're actually doing a thing together.

BRRN: Do you remember the sorts of opposition and arguments that were
raised against making KPA a decision-making body?

CM: I remember a lot of the opposition was not so much ideological. I
think maybe it was just not what people are used to.

One position may have been that the assembly should then fractalize into
smaller and smaller groups.[After]we had a Koreatown General Assembly or
popular assembly,[some people argued that]then we split up into breakout
groups[by geography].[People]in Northwest Koreatown[and]Northeast
Koreatown[would go]set up separate committee meetings. I don't think
that's really a debate on principles, so much of a debate on
practicality and the purpose of repeated meetings. I think we did make a
gesture[to that with]breakout groups by what part of Koreatown where we
were in, but then we kept everyone coming back to one whole Koreatown
organizing committee. Then we actually broadened it because there was no
other group like this in LA. We basically made it "greater" Koreatown.

I think partly there was maybe a resistance to when you make a decision
it means also saying no to things. I think some people want to have a
space where people can just bring in their ideas and just say yes to
everything and not have to choose and prioritize or develop a real strategy.

There was also a sense of people wanting to have breakout groups by...a
tactic or affinity. For example, "we're gonna break out for people who
want to focus on queer issues, we're gonna have a breakout for people
who want to focus on immigrant issues" ... We argued against that
because we all ended up doing immigrant-based stuff, whether we were
immigrants or not. Doing those kinds of breakout issues 1) tends to
multiply the number of things you're trying to do rather than building
enough capacity to get enough critical mass behind one effort to make it
sustainable and successful and 2) it defeats the purpose of having a
neighborhood-based group because you're not making decisions in the
neighborhood at that point.

A flyer advertising KPA's rapid response network and illustrating how it
operated.
Organizing in and Through KPA
BRRN: Now let's learn a little bit more about what KPA did. What were
its major objectives and how did it land on them?

CM:[At]the big General Assembly there were three decisions made: that we
focus on building an all-volunteer rapid response network; creating
sanctuary schools that were protecting against ICE raids; and educating
the neighborhood about their rights.

We did a lot of work around sanctuary schools but there actually was not
as much that needed to be done because ICE was not actually going into
schools at that point. But we were organizing in the main public school
in K-Town.

"We were able to report when ICE started using unmarked vehicles in the
neighborhood or when there were patterns and shifts in their behavior"

We very quickly became super focused on just providing a rapid response
network. That took up so much time and effort because doing that as a
volunteer project requires a whole team of people doing logistics and
doing trainings. Then a whole separate group of people has 24-hour
dispatchers answering phone calls at any time of the day. And then a
whole team of 200-plus first responders who are trained and ready
to[act]. It is a lot of work, so we very quickly became consumed by
keeping those structures running.

Our objective as a rapid response network was to block ICE raids. A lot
of the nonprofit rapid response networks, their only purpose is for
people to call, and they give callers resources on how they can maybe
access legal representation or tell you your rights-which, you know, how
much are those worth? Our goal was to actually intervene as much as
possible, and we didn't really succeed in that as much as we might have.
It's very hard to actually block ICE raids. I followed the news and
reports of this very closely when we were organizing because I was
trying to figure out how we could do it better. During the first Trump
administration, it happened a couple of times around the whole of the US.

We did block an ICE truck once, but that was when we had a protest
actually at the ICE building.

EC: I feel like we were actually able to figure out ICE's plans a bit in
the neighborhood. I remember we were constantly canvassing the Ralph's
parking lot because there were reports of a staging ground there. We
reached out to local businesses and just had people almost patrolling
there and had sent out first responders there several times. We were
able to report when ICE started using unmarked vehicles in the
neighborhood or when there were patterns and shifts in their behavior.

CM:[It's]the only neighborhood in Los Angeles that actually feels like
you're in a city ... Being a neighborhood group, we were able to do more
social events than we would have if we were an LA-based group where
we're all two hours away from each other.

EC: I think there was a lot of trust, too, within most people of the
organization. We had solid community guidelines and not just in a "let's
just do them" kind of way, but pretty strong commitment to them. I think
it connects to the first thing, too, of valuing different perspectives
and everyone's experience is as valuable as the next person's. By the
time I got there, I think everyone had already built in relationships.

CM: One part is that making a local practical group or project means
it's going to be less focused on some of the various left groups and
activist personalities. We didn't really have to deal with a lot of
that[in KPA]. We didn't have to deal with people who were coming to try
and stroke their own ego or get credit for something.

I also think that doing a lot of work together where you could see
that[you were]having an impact and you knew what you were doing and what
your purpose was also kept people focused and grounded. Being more of a
neighborhood-based group kept things grounded[by]having a lot of
existing connections prior to KPA, whether it's members' former high
school students or co-workers. A lot of people worked together and knew
each other from different workplaces or groups.

A KPA T-shirt.
Resolute Revolutionaries, Inclusive Structures Cultivate KPA
BRRN: In terms of organizing outcomes like campaign wins, organizer
development, consistency of a project, KPA seems to have been one of, if
not the most, successful experiments in popular assemblies during the
first Trump administration. What contributed to it?

CM: I agree that probably it was one of the most successful. That
doesn't mean that we actually had lots of big wins, though.

EC: Probably what contributed most to its success was a few very, very
dedicated individuals, one of them being Chris, but also some others
that really went above and beyond and put in a ton of time and thought
and heart into it.

CM: There were a number of breakout groups aiming to become 'popular
assemblies' from that first citywide General Assembly. KPA is the only
one where there were basically revolutionaries who had a vision of
neighborhood organizing and democracy who proposed "Let's actually make
this into an assembly." Every single other 'popular assembly' from that
initial citywide meeting died off very quickly. I think there were some
similar efforts in other cities that died also either[because]they just
didn't take on a focus or they didn't open themselves up as a
neighborhood space and so they also didn't really get on their feet.
There may have been a couple of exceptions in, like, Portland.

EC: I think there was a lot of dedication to making[KPA]not just a
typical organizing space[and]to making it as inclusive as possible, not
just[for]academics or typical organizers but[for]everyday people.

There was the language justice component. By the time I was there, there
was a designated interpreter with every meeting, notes were taken in
both English and Spanish, and all statements were made in English and
Spanish. But when did that get implemented?

"The geography I think helps too: Koreatown's not huge, so it just made
it easier to meet and to keep the project rooted in the identity of the
neighborhood"

CM: I think from the beginning. From the beginning, all the notes are in
English, but I see from who's there[in the notes]that there are some
people I remember being monolingual Spanish speakers. I also see that
someone who was there was also a member of a group, Antena Los Ángeles,
that provided movement interpretation services.  I'm pretty sure the
group was bilingual from the beginning, but I don't remember exactly how
we logistically did that in those very, very first meetings. The first
General Assembly was trilingual, because it was in Korean as well, but
we never had monolingual Korean speakers participate in the ongoing
meetings.

EC: There was also an attempt to not just have meetings be centered
around a nine-to-five schedule. They typically were, unfortunately, but
there was at least a recognition that doesn't necessarily coincide with
the schedules of non-nine-to-five office workers. There would be some
meetings and events that[were]at different times. I think just a lot of
general statements of intention to that effect, right? I also think we
could have done a better job, but the intent was there.

EC: The geography I think helps too: Koreatown's not huge, so it just
made it easier to meet and to keep the project rooted in the identity of
the neighborhood.

CM:[It's]the only neighborhood in Los Angeles that actually feels like
you're in a city ... Being a neighborhood group, we were able to do more
social events than we would have if we were an LA-based group where
we're all two hours away from each other.

EC: I think there was a lot of trust, too, within most people of the
organization. We had solid community guidelines and not just in a "let's
just do them" kind of way, but pretty strong commitment to them. I think
it connects to the first thing, too, of valuing different perspectives
and everyone's experience is as valuable as the next person's. By the
time I got there, I think everyone had already built in relationships.

CM: One part is that making a local practical group or project means
it's going to be less focused on some of the various left groups and
activist personalities.

We didn't really have to deal with a lot of that[in KPA]. We didn't have
to deal with people who were coming to try and stroke their own ego or
get credit for something.

I also think that doing a lot of work together where you could see
that[you were]having an impact and you knew what you were doing and what
your purpose was also kept people focused and grounded. Being more of a
neighborhood-based group kept things grounded[by]having a lot of
existing connections prior to KPA, whether it's members' former high
school students or co-workers. A lot of people worked together and knew
each other from different workplaces or groups.

COVID Complications, Biden in Office Stall KPA
BRRN: KPA slowly wound down its activity before formally closing in
2022. Can you share what led to its slow decline and eventual end?

EC: I think it was core members leaving, and not because of not liking
the work, but[because of]life: people moving, people getting promoted,
getting married, having kids. I went to law school[outside of LA], Chris
through his work had to move[out of LA], too, and there were other
members who had to leave for various reasons.

CM: We were[meeting]online[because]the pandemic scattered a number of
us. At that point a number of us were out of LA. COVID meant we were
meeting on Zoom and it was so much harder to bring people in and recruit
people.

EC: At another level, all of these things ultimately led to its demise
because of underlying issues around recruitment and retention. You had
to have a lot of knowledge around how the group worked in order to not
be bored at meetings or to not feel intimidated. And as much as I think
we tried to have intros each time about the background and stuff,
sometimes those meetings could get long, and so people skip them
sometimes and forget to explain some things. It's a small group, we were
doing a lot, and there was not someone who's actively always doing mass
recruitment; it was just people connecting with people they already knew.

Even if there were recruitment efforts, to follow up with people to get
them to really join was hard. On top of the meetings, there was actual
first response stuff, too: taking shifts as dispatchers, planning the
trainings, and responding to calls. Also, a lot of stuff started coming
through Instagram instead of the call line. So, I think, in general, it
was too much work for too few people and I think that leads to burnout.
It also just makes it harder for new people to join because it seems so
intimidating.

CM: We consistently got recruitment and activity when there were things
in the news around immigration-related stuff. During the Trump
administration, there consistently would be like, oh, DACA is going to
be repealed, for example, and children being separated at the border. We
consistently[would]get pulses of activity. More people would come to our
events or trainings and through the trainings, people would get involved
with the planning committee, we build capacity, etc.

Multilingual flyer advertising KPA.
Under Biden, that stopped happening. It was much harder to recruit
people after Biden was elected[even though]Biden was deporting just as
many people as Trump did in his first term. But it wasn't nearly as
flashy in a way. It was much more of a bureaucratic process. So, there
wasn't the same attention on the issue.

Dream Big, Start Small, Prepare for the Long Haul
BRRN: There's lots of interest and excitement about popular and
neighborhood assemblies now, as Trump has returned to office. Having
gone through this experience, what advice and lessons would you want to
share with organizers interested in experimenting with this kind of
neighborhood structure in their backyards?

CM: Don't be grandiose. If you go out and just declare "I'm going to
have a neighborhood assembly," it's probably not going to happen. I
think if KPA had been called at any other moment, it would not have
happened in the way it did. I think if we had tried to do it the same
way after Trump's election in 2024, it would not have happened.[Trump's
first election in 2016]was a unique moment when we could just flyer the
streets and random strangers who had never come to an organizing meeting
before would show up, all speaking different languages. Today it would
take much more ground work.

"If you're going to do it, you have to start small and be prepared to
put in years of work"

You need to have built a lot of connections with people before you ever
call a first assembly. If there are a bunch of churches or other social
institutions on board and they can vouch and turn people out, that's
something. ... There were people who had a lot of connections in the
neighborhood, but[KPA]was put together without much background, without
much organizing on the ground initially, again because of the moment we
were in. We built connections to various churches later. If you have
that kind of history and those kinds of connections, then you can build
something like KPA. Otherwise, I think it's quite hard in our present
political context and in a context where people aren't very used to
neighborhood assemblies. If you're going to do it, you have to start
small and be prepared to put in years of work.

The other key lesson is that, if you reach a place where you have the
capacity to actually call an assembly, you have to have a structure and
decision making process in mind as you begin. Really, you have to make
sure your spaces are democratic, open decision-making spaces and have a
clear idea of what you're going to do with that. I think that moment was
also special[when]the first assembly was in February 2017, right around
the inauguration, because the problems and the answers were both quite
clear to people. The problem in the neighborhood was immigration raids
and the solution was to stop them, to keep them out. Our task was to
develop a strategy and set of tactics for how to actually do that.

In times when it's more diffuse, when there's a whole bunch of competing
issues and nobody is quite clear on what to do about it, it's a lot
harder and it'll take a lot more time. But it's also, I think, the
responsibility of revolutionaries to think through those and propose the
key issues and the key solutions, which is what these spaces are for,
right? Then from there you come to a concrete project. I think a
neighborhood assembly, like any other meeting, is kind of pointless to
most people unless it's clear: this is what we're doing, this is how,
and this is what the purpose is.

If you're interested in learning more about the Koreatown Popular
Assembly, we recommend watching A Year in Popular Power #2: Stopping ICE
Raids with Koreatown Popular Assembly and reading Koreatown Popular
Assembly: Shutting Down ICE, Building Popular Power.

https://www.blackrosefed.org/kpa-reflection-2025/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca