Excerpts of an Interview with Betsy Anderson

Toronto, 2014

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First Introduction to LAWG

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I first knew about LAWG through Bob Carty and Frances Arbour and Pat Bird, I think in May of ‘72. I was involved in the Student Christian Movement when I was at U of T. And we had a national conference up in Minden, Ontario. They made a very positive impression as people a little bit older than us, but very committed to Latin American solidarity and just interested in youth

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And then when the coup happened, those of us at the U of T SCM and the SCM more widely were very concerned and interested in what was happening and LAWG was a very important resource to us as we were writing articles for the SCM’s national newsletter, the Canadian Student and other things. I do remember visiting at the Ecumenical Forum on Madison Avenue, this small room with all sorts of people and paper, working out of that space on a temporary basis during the aftermath of the coup. We got involved in working with a couple of young Chileans who were trying to support the comedores populares, which were the community kitchens which the women in Santiago and other cities had set up as a way to try to address the poverty and hunger and situations of families whose parents were gone because of the repression. There were people in prison and how to get everybody fed. And they were doing very modest fundraising, so we did some work with them.

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I definitely experienced LAWG as a facilitative, supportive resource to our little efforts, and welcoming of our efforts. And at that time, there was this whole network of Chilean solidarity groups developing and we were part of some of those meetings, where people were part of local Chilean support groups. So even though we were just university students, and not big actors, we were ‘connected’ and ‘networked’ and appreciated that.

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In 1974, the World Student Christian Federation had a World Executive Committee meeting in Buenos Aires and I was one of two representatives from the North American region. The SCMs in Latin America had encouraged SCMers to take more time and go visit SCMs around the continent after the meeting, not just to come to the meeting and leave. So I had made time to do that and I also wanted to go and visit the Chacon’s because they were friends of my parents from SCM in the ‘50’s and ‘60s. Before going, I met with LAWG and a number of the other solidarity organizations here to talk about what I could do that would be useful and you know, information that needed to be sent down, and information that they needed to come back.

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So I did go. I wasn’t there too many days, but I met a number of people. And I went to the Vicaria de Solidaridad and brought my information and they gave me information to take back to the group in Toronto, and met some of the people that were there waiting for help. And went to a few other places, but it was very powerful! And then I went to Peru and then Mexico to visit the SCMs there on the way back to Toronto.

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Working at LAWG

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I worked a lot on the LAWG Newsletter. Sheila Katz taught me how to do layout on the light table. Apart from the powerful content and the learning opportunities with the collective meetings and so on, it was also a neat work environment in terms of being challenged to do things, or learning how to do things or picking up stuff that you didn’t necessarily think you knew how to do, or been formally trained to do. So lots of mentoring. I also remember doing writing, and Bob offering good sort of editorial suggestions about how to write, which benefited my university courses as well.

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I also was involved in the Dominical Republic work to a certain extent. I remember I represented LAWG in New York at a DR meeting, which was different groups that were involved in the DR work. And I also went to Sudbury on this trip with Mine Mill. We went down in the mine and … I must have been travelling with some visitors because we had a meeting with the union local and we went down in the mine

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It was an incredible discipline – every week! I certainly remember feeling frustrated and stuff about things, but mostly you felt like you were contributing to something really significant, and really important, and wanted to do that. It was very exciting work and somehow, the way people worked in LAWG was participatory but also inclusive. Yes, there were the leading lights, but everybody had a voice and you know, you felt equally part of something and I felt like I was doing a small piece that, somehow all this other big stuff was happening and was pretty amazing, but at the same time, I knew that the nitty-gritty administrative day-to-day stuff had to happen as well, and so it didn’t feel insignificant to be part of, to be doing that.

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All the people that came through LAWG and came to LAWG for resources and that were travelling to Latin America that were briefed – I remember Suzanne briefing Bruce Cockburn before he went to Latin America, and after he came back to some extent – and again, the networking and the sense of being connected to the solidarity groups across the country and the evolving way that, as the dictatorships in the rest of Latin America gained strength – being very responsive, and organic in the way that people worked – and very relational, both in terms of Latin American friends and colleagues and activists, and in terms of the core LAWG group.

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From people outside of LAWG I think there might have sometimes been a feeling it was cliquey and insider, or, I don’t know what the word is, maybe “critical” or “disparaging” but I didn’t feel it was. I felt LAWG was astute and careful, and not acting in a naïve way, not in the “we have the line and we’ll leave all these people out” way.  And it was a fine line, LAWG’s ability to be engaged in a way that wouldn’t be aligned with particular, political, ideological perspectives, and not be side-lined or purist or whatever, but really finding a way to work with everyone, and encouraging everyone to work with each other, and kind of being a force to build unified action rather than divided.

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We were always aware of security and being monitored and all those things. So while you had sort of a sense of an open process, you also knew that you were considered a potential threat and undermining of the interests of the Establishment, and those connections to revolutionary movements, of course put LAWG on the radar and all those things, …not quite as bad as during the early years of the Cold War, but still people had to be careful and cautious because a lot of people’s lives were at stake. You couldn’t be frivolous.

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Mutual Solidarity

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I think the thing I found most exciting about LAWG’s approach was ‘mutual solidarity’ which was the language being used, its sense that we were engaged in support of Latin American movements because, as Canadians, we were involved in social change in Canada and we could learn from each other, and also we knew that our capitalist organizations were impacting negatively the people’s movements in Latin America, so we could help change that here. It wasn’t all about going down there and being involved in their struggle or helping them. It was about us doing our part in Canada – and that would help them, and that would help us. As people who were socialists, or working for social change in Canada, it was a both/and – it wasn’t that “Well, I’m working for change in Canada … You’re working for Latin Americans …. You should be working in Canada” – It was both! That was very strong and that was very formative. I don’t know how it translates to what I do now.

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And it was very grounded. It was: “Where’s the research?” “Where are the facts?” “Where’s the information that supports this position?”  And if it doesn’t, then it’s not a good position. It was a critical, engaged way of thinking – and not lined-up with being Trotskyist or Maoist or a this or a that, or being more committed to the purity of the political analysis you decided to line yourself up with, than actual working people and their lives. So that was a very formative part for me. And it fit very well with my Christian formation, and my sense of the ambiguity and the potential for it being intended to do good and ending up doing bad, that is part of lots of political organizations’ lives.

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I had confidence in LAWG because LAWG was willing to debate and to test ideas against an analytical framework that looked at facts rather than trying to make it line up with an ideological line. So that was really important. That gave me tools and the intention to try to look that way in every situation. And, it’s contextual analysis – conjunctural analysis was a big thing – I don’t know if that’s Gramsci or who it is in terms of theorists, but it was very much formative in the way that LAWG tried to decide what to do in a certain situation, and that was pretty heady stuff – to have people doing conjunctural analysis and the work that GATT-fly was doing, and the Ah-Hah seminars, and popular organizing and popular analysis – and all that engagement of people. So I think compared to other political organizations that I had some relationship to, it was the confidence in “the people”, that the people KNEW! And if you could listen to the people and work with the people – in that broad term – they have the knowledge. Like Paulo Freire and all of that. So it’s to empower the people and to listen to them, and not be top-down. And people did it. It wasn’t just language, it was real.