Context: a broken step is someone or something within your community which only the locals know to avoid.
Suppose we have a confederation, and someone within the confederation is accused of being dangerous to others in some way. If we kick them out then what stops them from going somewhere else and repeating the pattern? Or coming back for revenge? Or, Stirner Forbid, they’re innocent? And even if they are dangerous, is that any reason to turn them away? We make considerations when it comes to wolves and cacti but draw the line at cousins? But they could hurt the community… you see my dilemma.
Edit: this is not a hypothetical, but I don’t want to get into details. We’re not going to beat anyone up because we can’t confirm anything actually happened.
In every anarchist space I’ve been in, people let whatever harm happen until it crosses some unspoken line, and them everyone decides to kick that person out and cut them off in a really harsh way. Even when they had devised a code of conduct or adopted “anti-racist” principles or whatever, they would allow the thing to happen most of the time until something egregious would force them to follow their own stated agreements in that particular case.