Night Watch


This exercise was developed for a workshop in Chicago, October of 2024. The event was co-organized by CCTE and Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) to support the growing tide of popular support for anti-imperial leadership in West Africa, specifically Burkina Faso.

The exercise was one of a collection of activities that were set up at various tables throughout the room. The participants were able to run the activities largely at their own pace. This particular exercise was self-facilitated.

Note on terms
The people of Burkina Faso who participate in the all-night watches in defence of the revolution call each other Wayiyan, a Moore word meaning ‘come out’. These nightly vigils have been called La veille citoyenne in french and The Night Watch in english. The advantage of the french is that it carries the meaning that the watching is being done by the citizens. We used both terms interchangeably after introducing them.

Problems (ie. Why the exercise was done):

 Problem 1:  The Night Watch is an important mass organisation in Burkina Faso that has emerged to protect the progressive and popular revolution. However their activity (truly mass organisation) and the conditions (defending a state moving in an anti-imperialist, pan-african and progressive direction) are so far removed from the organising or life experiences of the vast majority of people in the Global North. In situations like these we often find that talking about these things remains at the vague level of encouraging people to look favourably onhave a favourable outlook to this type of thing - land occupations by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) is another example. We don’t think that this is sufficient if our goal is to:

    1: Problematise the reality participants are in, to get them to think about what is missing - especially at a human, moral, ethical level - in their current communities and organsiations;

    2: Explore and develop a consciousness of the interconnectedness of anti-imperialist struggles. If we agree with Ali Kadri’s formulation that The struggle for Palestine is the struggle of the International Proletariat then we should also be willing to consider what are the elements of the struggle in Burkina - material and moral - that matter to the analysis that we are developing of how to change the local situations that we are in.

Problem 2:   Conversations around ‘capacity’ and ‘burnout’ are popular in organizing spaces in the United States and the UK. The Night Watch is an enduring and disciplined organization that does not have an idealized conception of the struggle or how easy / hard it should be. One of the goals of this exercise is to help the participants’ develop their understanding of individual capacity and how and when these feelings might be challenged.

Techniques Deployed:

Exercise Fair
Writing Instead of Talking

Modes Deployed

Imagination
Emulation

Materials Used:

Plain paper cut into the shape of mobile phones
Scissors
Pens
A device to show the video on - laptop, phone

Participant Numbers:

The exercise was self-facilitated by participants as they moved through the tables. Some did it in pairs, but most participants ran through the activity alone. We would suggest that the exercise is always done in the context of a collective learning environment, despite the fact that, technically, it can be run by only one person.

How long does it take?

The exercise should take no longer than 15 - 20 minutes.

Instructions:

The following instructions should be printed and taped to the surface of a table. Place a laptop next to the instructions with the following video playing out loud on a loop.


Speaking in the video is Prudence Iticka, a Cameroonian pan-Africanist and member of United African Diaspora and The Coalition for the Elimination of Imperialism in Africa (@abasimperialsm on IG) [October 2024]

~ Instructions ~

Step 1
In this exercise, you will watch a video of comrade Prudence speaking on behalf of the Night Watch and her recent trip to Burkina Faso in June of 2024.  She is from an organization called the Coalition for the Elimination of Imperialism in Africa, which reports on the developments in the Alliance of the Sahel States as well as offers material support.

In this video, she talks about political involvement by regular people, popular support for the current regime, time commitment, taking risks and the Wayiyan. Wayiyan is the Mooré word for get out.

We find the work of the Wayians and the night watch inspiring because it has sprung from the people. They dedicate their nights to defend important points in the city and are an example of the popular support for the revolution. It made us reflect on what late nights are like for us.

Step 2:
Watch the video that Prudence sent in for this session: [playing on loop on computer]

Step 3:
Spend 2 minutes making a list of things you’ve stayed up late for. Especially things for which you stayed up all night.

Step 4:
Spend 2 minutes making a different list of the things that are so important you would never give an excuse to miss them. They can be from the past, present, or future, but should be real to your life.

Step 5:
Choose one of the things you wrote down for step 3 and imagine that it is now happening at 2 am. Don’t worry if this seems strange or unlikely. Write 2 to 3 sentences about the event for 3 minutes.

Step 6:
Now think of someone you know who doesn’t normally come along to these kinds of events but who you think should join you.

Step 7:
Grab one of the slips of paper shaped like a cell-phone. Write down for 3 minutes the first few sentences you would say to the person in a phone call to encourage them to come to this event. Think carefully about what you would say to actually convince them. If there is someone near you, ask if you can practice the phone call with them.

Step 8:
Stick the phones to the wall.


Some examples:


Hi Ma! How are you. U know we talked earlier but I just wanted to tell you about this event[...]. One cool thing that we learned was about the night watch in the Sahel region. They’re everyday people like you and all who take on the call of Wayian - they come out to protect the struggle, the revolution. Just like you’ve always tried to protect us (me and my siblings).


Hello my friend, you know I wouldn’t ask something like this of you unless it was very important. Tenants in a building we’ve been working with are looking to defend their neighbour from an illegal eviction. I wanted to ask if you would join all of us tonight in strategising our plan together and building blocades. You will be a huge help.

Criticism / Results of this exercise:

Because this is an exercise that is self -facilitated there is a problem as facilitators of knowing how it is going. It also creates a situation where participants may become disconnected from what others are doing. In the context of where we ran it we could have made more of a point asking new participants in the exercise to read the responses of those who had carried it out previously. Another way that this could be achieved is by adapting the summary of the exercise to better reflect the end question being posed.