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Title: The A Word
Author: Various Authors
Language: en
Topics: activism, anti-civ, feminist, history, leftism, Palestine, prison, privilege, race, Seattle, violence, war
Source: Retrieved on 1 January 2008 from http://www.theaword.net

Various Authors

The A Word

Issue 5

First World Problems and First World Revolution By Mike Andrew

Don’t be deceived

When they tell you

Things are better now

Even if there’s no poverty to be seen

Because the poverty’s been hidden

Even if you never had better wages

And you could afford to buy

More of these new and useless goods

Which these new industries foist on you

And even if it seems to you

That you never had so much

That is only the slogan of those

Who still have much more than you.

Don’t be taken in

When they pat you paternally on the shoulder

And say

There’s no inequality worth speaking of

And no more reason

For fighting.

Because if you believe them

They will be completely in charge

In their marble homes and granite banks

From which they rob the people of the world

Under the pretense of bringing them culture.

Watch out

For as soon as it pleases them

They’ll send you out

To protect their gold

In wars

Whose weapons rapidly developed

By servile scientists

Will become more and more deadly

Until they can with a flick of the finger

Tear a million of you to pieces.

— Jean Paul Marat, in Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss

How many times have you heard someone brush off a concern with the

comment “1^(st) World problems”? On one hand, it’s good to remind

ourselves of our relative privilege and the fact that issues that seem

important to us don’t even arise in poorer and less industrialized

countries. On the other hand, it’s always seemed to me that there’s an

underlying defensiveness behind that expression, as if people somehow

felt apologetic for living in a 1^(st) World country. Maybe the

assumption is that people in the 1^(st) World don’t have genuine

problems, don’t suffer genuine exploitation and oppression, and won’t

ever make revolution. And that’s coming from 1^(st) Worlders who call

themselves as revolutionaries! That kind of inferiority complex is a big

problem for the revolutionary movement, not only in the 1^(st) World but

internationally.

1^(st) World revolution is a necessary condition for the long term

success of revolutions in the rest of the world.

During China’s revolutionary war, Mao Zedong used to say “The

countryside surrounds the city.” He meant that revolutionary armies

operating in rural China could surround government armies based in the

big cities, cut off their supplies, harass them, and ultimately force

them to retreat or surrender. After the victory of the Chinese People’s

Liberation Army, Mao claimed that the same strategy could be applied

globally — that the 3^(rd) World countries could surround and defeat the

1^(st) World. This seemed plausible at the time, and the victories of

national liberation struggles in many countries, Vietnam being only one

example, seemed to prove Mao right.

Well, the countryside may surround and defeat the city, but global

capital seems to surround and defeat everybody! In the 30 years since

the end of the Vietnam war, not only Vietnam but even the People’s

Republic of China itself has caved to global capitalism.

This isn’t surprising. Even where genuine revolutionary movements have

been able to seize power, they have to try to survive in a world

dominated by capital. And it isn’t easy. They have to start from the

basis of national economies distorted by many years of domination by

foreign capital, and often destroyed by years of revolutionary warfare.

Global capital will use every means at its disposal — sanctions (Iraq),

embargoes (Cuba), and covert destabilization schemes (Chile) — to wreck

the economies of countries that refuse to go along with its program.

Even without that kind of obvious economic aggression, global capital

always seeks to penetrate local economies, to displace local capital, to

disrupt and ultimately destroy economic relations not based on money.

The flaw in Mao’s strategic vision is that revolutions are made country

by country. This leaves global capital free to deal with the challenges

country by country, to its advantage. The problems encountered by

revolutionaries who have come to power in 3^(rd) World countries are, of

course, only made more severe by the deep contradictions of nationalist

revolutions and the weaknesses of the semi-Leninist, semi-nationalist

Parties which have typically led them. (But that’s a subject for another

discussion.) The only way to smash the matrix of capital is to defeat

capital in its historic homeland — the 1^(st) World — and in particular

in the US which is the military and political base area of global

capital.

For many movement people here in the US this is not welcome news. In the

60s many people were attracted to Mao’s “3^(rd) Worldism” precisely

because it let them off the hook. If those 3^(rd) World people were the

engine of global revolution, then all we (white people) had to do was

“support their just struggles” and sit around and wait to topple the

tottering corpse. Today many people call themselves “revolutionaries”

but hope that revolution will be made by other people elsewhere.

To be very frank, many white “Leftists” in the US have used the

discussion of privilege as an excuse to evade their own political

responsibilities. It’s far easier to talk about why their material

advantages make white male workers more conservative, than it is

actually to challenge their conservatism with anti-racist

anti-patriarchal class struggle politics. It’s far, far easier (and

safer) to explain why revolution must begin in the colonies of US

capital (external or “internal”) than it is to put your ass on the line

and work to do it here and in this historical period. Even among real

revolutionaries, many, many people are demoralized by the apparent

strength of US capital as the Bush administration carries out its

on-going war on the world. They want to see revolution here, but they

can’t believe it will happen.

We should certainly support people fighting against the domination of

capital, wherever they are. How could we not? Their enemies are our

enemies. Their future is our future. And their victories — no matter how

tenuous or temporary — are real victories that help to undermine the

global hegemony of capital. But the best way, and in the long term the

only way, to support others fighting against global capital is to defeat

capital here in the US. And it’s entirely possible for us to do that.

The apparent strength of US capital is just that — merely apparent! Emma

Goldman once wrote an essay, “War is the Health of the State.” Much as I

love Red Emma, I think she’s wrong. War does not indicate the strength

of the capitalist state. Just the opposite. War indicates deep political

and economic crisis for capital. Given the choice, the owners of capital

would very much prefer to control the planet thru contracts and treaties

and loans and the exchange of currencies — business as usual. War is

expensive. War is risky. War is unpredictable. And war requires them to

arm a lot of working class kids and young people of color.

That fact in itself creates opportunities for revolutionaries here in

the US, and other opportunities will certainly arise out of the economic

and political crisis that gave rise to the war in the first place, or

out of the further economic and political dislocation that results from

war. Historically, imperialist wars have always brought periods of mass

struggle. WW1 did, WW2 did, and WW3 will. That’s because people always

resist oppression. They always resist the demands of the state. They

always try to take advantage of the crises that affect their masters to

fight for a better life. And they don’t need know-it-all “Leftists” to

tell them to do it either.

Middle class Leftists, who themselves come from a situation of

privilege, often fail to appreciate how thin the veneer of privilege

really is in the US. The owners of capital like to brag that US workers

are the “most productive in the world.” Well, in a capitalist economy

productivity is a virtue that benefits only the owners of capital, not

working people. “Most productive” means “most exploited.” So even though

US workers have many material comforts 3^(rd) World workers lack, they

have no reason to be grateful to the owners of capital. Just the

opposite.

Even among the most privileged sections of white workers, there are

many, many people who are just one or two paychecks away from the

street. Even the most privileged sections of the US working class have

seen their real incomes decline over the past 30 years and continue to

see deterioration in their wages, working conditions, and quality of

life. Their ability to secure even basic medical services for their

families, or a good education for their kids is slipping away from them.

The consumer goods that they create, and that give the illusion of

material privilege, sit on the store shelves and mock them.

For communities of color in the US (and for the poorest sections of

white workers) even the illusion of material privilege is often

inaccessible. Communities of color have been called “internal colonies”

of US capital, and for good reason. The free labor (of African slaves)

and free land (of Native Nations) that were stolen from them by white

settlers formed the original basis for capital accumulation in the US.

And since then the owners of capital have relied on the ideology of

white supremacy — and on the occupation of communities of color by armed

police — to extort even more value from workers of color than from white

workers.

US capitalism in the 21^(st) century relies on white supremacy, but also

on patriarchy, heterosexism, and many other mutually reinforcing layers

of domination and oppression. While many of these forms of oppression

arose before capitalism, and many are likely to remain after the rule of

capital is overthrown, they take on historically specific

characteristics under capitalism, they support the rule of the owners of

capital, and together with that class rule they add up to a whole

culture of domination and death.

And they’re only made worse by the restructuring of international

capital that is usually described by the word “globalization” and the

accompanying political victory of Neo-Liberalism in the US and other

1^(st) World countries. Neo-Liberalism is not just something the US does

to other countries. The Neo-Liberal agenda will have very serious

consequences for working people in the US itself — in particular for

women workers and workers of color. Already the “structural

re-adjustments” that mean misery and deprivation for 3^(rd) World people

are being paralleled by “structural re-adjustments” in the US economy,

and this will only accelerate as more and more money needs to be devoted

to financing US militarization.

Since Reagan’s electoral victory in 1980, and continuing at an

accelerating pace over the past 20 years, US capital has consistently

shifted the burden of paying for the corporate state onto working

people. The “flattening” of federal income tax brackets, the shift in

the burden of paying for social services from the federal government

(financed by income taxes) to the states and municipal governments

(financed by sales and property taxes which force poorer strata to pay a

disproportionate share of the cost), privatization of essential services

and public facilities — all these mean a deterioration in people’s

conditions of life. In particular, they mean a deterioration in the

already fragile life situations of the poorest strata

(disproportionately people of color and working women) but also, and

significantly from a strategic point of view, in the life situations of

the more privileged strata of workers with respect to their rulers.

These are 1^(st) World problems, but not ones that can be shrugged off

as “1^(st) World problems”! The prospects for human life under the

continued rule of capital are not bright. Of course, no one can

guarantee that a revolutionary situation will develop in this country in

this period. That depends in part on factors outside of our control. In

part it also depends on our ability to understand the oppression of

1^(st) World people — our oppression — and the solution — revolution.

And it depends in part on our ability to articulate that understanding

in a way that the majority of people of all races who are oppressed by

capital understand it, agree with it, and act on it.

There will be real opportunities for revolutionary action in the US in

the coming period — even if these fall short of the opportunity to seize

power and begin to dismantle the rule of capital and all the forms of

oppression that reinforce it.

Our task is to prepare to take advantage of those opportunities as they

arise, and to make the most of them. To do that, we need a clear

understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of our enemies. The

situation of US capital is, in fact, marked by great tactical strength —

they have a fuck of a lot of weapons — but great strategic weakness.

It’s the tactical strength of US capital that creates the illusion that

it’s invincible. The cops can kick our ass when we go in the street. The

US army can win a war in a week or two, with only a couple of hundred

casualties, using weapons that can kill thousands of people from miles

away. This tactical superiority is real, and we need to take it into

account as we elaborate our action program in this period. But it’s also

temporary.

The tactical strength of capital is only temporary because of capital’s

greatest strategic weakness — it depends on the cooperation of millions

of people who have no real interest in seeing it continue.

That doesn’t mean US capital will collapse overnight, and with out any

effort on our part. During the 60s, many of us imagined that revolution

in the US was actually on the agenda. As it turned out, US capital

retained sufficient resources to make strategic economic and social

concessions to key sections of the people, and to maintain civil order

in this country (although it did have to retreat from Vietnam, if only

temporarily).

But our enemies, the owners of capital, don’t have infinite resources.

The concessions they were forced to hand out in the 60s are being

withdrawn now. In fact, the whole “New Deal” compromise, which

guaranteed social peace in the US since the 30s, has been unilaterally

terminated. Their ability to make future economic concessions is

compromised by the necessity to finance their program of global

militarization. They have committed a huge portion of their military

resources to warfare outside the US. They cannot sustain that commitment

over the long term, and against determined opposition both in and out of

the US. They will be defeated.

Part of our task, then, is to work out an action agenda that recognizes

our enemies’ strategic weaknesses and uses them to overcome their

tactical strengths. Those of us who were alive in the 60s often wished

we were Cubans, or Vietnamese, or Chinese so that we could be on the

front lines of global revolution. It may be that in this period we will

be on the front lines — but here in the US — and we’ll be able to fight

a really decisive battle against capital in its homeland. We just need

to be ready for it.

Why aren’t they coming over to our side?: Building a Mass Base of

Support by Curtis Brown

I don’t think there’s anyone that thinks a major change in the world

order is going to come about with the number of people currently

involved in the movement — many don’t even feel there is anything

cohesive enough to call a “movement”. People know that we need bigger

numbers to win bigger battles, but in practice, are doing very little to

meet the problems we face head on. What it boils down to is that there

is not enough strategic thought about how we are going to advance our

plans, solve our problems, and ultimately win.

Let’s examine what constitutes outreach in many activist groups;

leaflets, fliers, pamphlets, etc. Propaganda has a lot of potential to

grab people’s attention and give them some information, an idea, or what

have you. So when every flat surface of downtown is wheatpasted with

fliers and extensive literature is available at every radical bookstore

and other hip location in town, why aren’t more people getting involved?

Sadly, this question doesn’t even get asked most of the time and we’re

not even considering whether or not our outreach will be effective.

When making fliers, writing up leaflets, face-to-face talking with

folks, or in any way trying to attract people to the movement, we need

to remember what we are doing; marketing. We’re saying “Hey, we have

something that you want, and if you don’t want it, after you see this

you will!” Now obviously marketing a good cause is a lot different than

selling tampons or cars, but there’s a lot of similarities too.

Activists are living in a fantasy world if they think they can just put

their version of the truth on a bunch of telephone poles and all

different kinds of people will start spontaneously getting involved in

the movement. The most important rule of marketing is to know your

target audience. Most people are scared off by molotov cocktails and the

word “Anarchy”. Most people just plain don’t give a shit about what

happens in other countries. Most people are bored when stuff gets too

long (for example, a coworker of mine recently told me that although she

was interested in the topic, she didn’t want to read a ½ page article on

the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit because it was “too long”...) If

this kind of stuff is too prevalent in propaganda, the only kind of

people who will more than glance at it will be people who probably

already know about the issue.

But let’s say you’ve got the perfect propaganda, propaganda that could

convince even the most tepid liberals to show up to your meetings. John

Smith from down the street reads it, thinks about it, gets interested,

and maybe (that’s a big maybe) goes to a meeting. And when John Smith

from down the street takes his monumental first step to becoming

politically active, what does he find there? A bunch of people that seem

to talk a different language, wear different clothes, eat different

food, and are different from him in a million other ways. Too often, he

is put off from the group right from the start. This isn’t to say you

have to make yourself completely “normal” and trade in your facial

tattoos for dockers to interact meaningfully with middle americans

(though it wouldn’t hurt) — the point is that John Smith needs to be

approached very differently than all of your already radicalized

friends. The more different you look and act from someone, the more you

are going to have to prove to them that you are an alright person. Step

outside yourself and think about what an average American is like, and

try to connect with that. If you can’t, or find you have nothing but

negative feelings for them, maybe you need to reconnect with the reality

of average Americans.

Many class privileged white activist/anarchist individuals and

organizations have developed a real knack for doing just the opposite —

alienating themselves from as many different kinds of people as possible

— especially the mainstream. When Ernesto Aguilar was asked if the

Anarchist People of Color organization has ties to any specific

anarchist ideology, (anarcho-communism, primitivism, etc.) he responded,

“we don’t have the power or privilege to start dividing up by ideology”.

In this respect, white anarchists are swimming in a sea of privilege,

splitting themselves off from other activists and anarchists, but the

middle class environment which they mostly came out of, as well. Not to

mention groups people of color! Many activist/anarchist groups, while

trying hard to maintain that their groups are open, are really the

furthest thing from it.

Basically, a lot of privileged white activists/anarchists don’t consider

what it takes to make the movement larger and more effective because

they don’t really care about making a change. People that become

politicized by reading a book rather than lived experience often start

out with lofty ideals, but once they have food, shelter, and a group of

friends that are on the same righteous wave as them, don’t push to go

outside that comfort (unless something is directly threatening them).

People of color, on the other hand, are on the receiving end of

oppression. They don’t have the option to ignore or hide out from

oppression — if a campaign for affordable housing or police

accountability doesn’t find results, they will try something different,

because the problem isn’t going away for them. But when the WTO or the

FTAA leaves town, so do many white activists. Why? Because, they can

afford not to win. Revolution, class war, freedom, anarchy — all these

things are pushed off to the side and become abstracts while symbolic

gestures and circular discussions which never end in action take center

stage. To have social justice be a hobby (and a half-assed one at that)

rather than a struggle is a reflection of white activists’ immense

amount of privilege.

The most preliminary step for white people looking to make social change

should be to make sure you want to win. If the desire to win is there,

then it’s time to get strategic. But if you feel like you’re stuck in a

rut or you can’t seem to get the motivation to do all the shit you wish

you could, try some/all of these things: Step back and think about what

your group is really doing — are you taking a step towards a victory or

are you just spinning your wheels in the air? Read some books by people

that have won victories, large or small. Get out of your “white zone”

and ask how you can help groups led by people of color, people that have

a real tangible stake in what they are working for. Track down and talk

to experienced organizers. Ask yourself if you really value the ideals

of anarchy enough to do what it takes to realize them. Be honest. Get

out of your comfort zone and start getting down to the business of

building a movement.

Recommended reading:

Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky

Reveille for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky.

Detroit: I Do Mind Dying by Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin

Anarchist People of Color website — www.illegalvoices.org/apoc

Colours of Resistance website — colours.mahost.org

Hamas Interview with Jamal Abu Alhija by Andrew C. Kennis,

Independent Media Center of New York City

[Andrew Kennis] I am here with a leader from Hamas in the middle of the

Jenin refugee camp, and my first question was going to be, what is

Hamas? This is an especially important question because most Americans

have one idea of Hamas, and that is crazy, terrorist, Islamic people. I

wanted to hear from him a more accurate and comprehensive picture of

Hamas.

[Jamal Abu Alhija] In fact, Hamas is a Palestinian movement and it was

founded to help the Palestinian people here, to help them realize their

rights. It is a movement that has introduced many activities, not only

political activities, but also educational activities, sanitation

projects, sports programs and social projects. In terms of cultural

activities, Hamas has been active in maintaining sports programs. Hamas

has contributed to many activities in the Palestinian society. We have

also participated in many workshops, conferences and conventions in

calling for the peace process. During this Intifada, Hamas has done

excellent work and has distinguished itself from other Palestinian

movements and groups.

We are against the occupation because we see our friends and our sons

killed by the Israeli army...

[AK] What are the differences?

[JAA] A lot of people belong to Hamas — it is a mass movement. Hamas has

organized mass demonstrations and the people have reacted positively to

such demonstrations, which have been against the Israeli occupation.

They have also reacted positively to the other social and cultural

activities that Hamas has engaged in.

The first phase of [this second] Intifada, was to engage in peaceful

demonstrations. However, the Israeli army killed our sons, our brothers

and wounded thousands of our people. And they killed a lot of people. I

want to clarify that Hamas is against the occupation. We are against the

occupation because we see our friends and our sons killed by the Israeli

army...our trees and our lands have been taken by the Israelis in light

of this aggression and with these victims, we have found ourselves

obliged to fight and struggle against the Israeli soldiers.

...we have found ourselves obliged to fight and struggle against the

Israeli soldiers. We are obliged to undertake operations inside Israel,

to stop the Israeli aggression. We don’t like to do this, but we have

found ourselves obliged to do as much, to defend our sons, our lands,

our people in our struggle against the occupation. The Hamas movement

wants to find a strategy as to how to fight the Israelis. The strategy

that we have found to work now, is to sneak our people into Israel and

to undertake operations. The last strong operation was near the Haifa

airport, which was very successful against Israeli politics. Another

successful operation was undertaken in Jerusalem by Azardine Amazray,

which killed 22 or 25 people or so. Actually, we don’t know exactly how

many people were killed, but whatever the numbers may be, we want to

match the same level of Israeli aggression.

We also organized our members to fight against the last Jenin invasion

and many other previous invasions by the Israeli army. You can visit

many houses inside the camp and you will discover that Hamas has a lot

of martyrs and brave fighters that Jenin depends upon.

[AK] He means that there have been a lot of resistance fighters from

Hamas who have defended Jenin?

[Translator] Yes, exactly, they have defended Jenin in resisting the

occupation.

[AK] But something that some people criticize is that resistance should

only be inside the green line. These people say if they only resisted

within the green line that their cause could look better, less terrorist

and more legitimate and that they could then get more support.

[JAA] In the first year of the second Intifada, Hamas did not undertake

any operations inside Israel. In the previous Intifada, the first one,

in 1987, Hamas also did not undertake any operations. At the same time,

the Israelis killed many of our people. Hamas has been obliged to do

this for many reasons.

The first reason is that the people here have been repressed by Israeli

politics. If you remember, during the first Intifada, they followed the

breaking of arms politics by Yitzhak Rabin. This is during the first

Intifada. The second reason is that the Israeli government refused to

comply with any important United Nations resolutions. For example,

Israel failed to implement 242, 338 and 198. Another reason is that the

investigation committee from the United Nations that was supposed to

investigate the recent invasion was blocked by the Israeli government.

[AK] Everybody agrees that the UN resolutions should be implemented,

everybody agrees that Israeli aggression is wrong. For one, Palestinians

die, the bombers. Secondly, they have the terrorist excuse, they can

more easily accuse the Palestinians of being terrorists. So they

question whether it is tactically effective.

These people are often dismayed about the fact that these bombers are

often young — young kids.

[JAA] Let me give you some good examples. For instance, Hezbollah. The

Israeli soldiers withdrew from these lands [southern Lebanon] not

because of the UN resolutions, but because of Hezbollah being

successfully able to scare the Israeli soldiers out of Lebanon, only

through strikes. Also, if you want to wait for the world to solve this

problem and to ask Israel to leave our land, this will not work. The

Israeli government does not care, they just want to continue to occupy

our land. Another example is the Golan Heights, Syria’s land. This has

been occupied territory by Israel since 1967. And what has the world

done about this problem? Nothing. If we wait for Israel to do something,

or for the world to force it to do something, we cannot solve any

problem. If the Israeli government does not want to obey or to implement

the UN resolutions, what can we do? In Judaism, in Christianity and in

Islam there are scriptures that allow for self-defense. We are only

defending ourselves. In response to the point on young people: Yes, most

of the young men that did these operations inside of Israel range from

about 18 to 20. These people did these operations because in their

previous experience, they had done good work and have excellent

enthusiasm.

[AK] Are they volunteers or are they chosen?

[JAA] Both volunteers from inside and outside the organization have done

these operations. They do these operations as a result of the Israeli

aggressions. When they hear that the Israelis have killed two

Palestinians, or 10 Palestinians, or when Israel commits crimes such as

the invasion of the Jenin refugee camp, they volunteer. The members of

this movement want to do something, because they want revenge; because

the Israelis killed their brothers and their sons.

[Raheb, another Hamas member who sat in on the interview] I want to make

a point about the operations against “innocent Israelis.” They are not

innocent. They are not innocent because when Sharon, the Israeli Prime

Minister, called auxiliary soldiers, they are not official soldiers.

They are [not?] innocent because as you know, military work is

obligatory in Israel. When he called upon the auxiliary soldiers, within

one hour, they arrived with their tanks, their planes and started to

kill our sons and brothers inside Jenin camp. Lastly, there are

scriptures for self-defense in three major religions. In Judaism, in

Christianity and in Islam there are scriptures that allow for

self-defense. We are only defending ourselves.

[AK] I wanted to ask Jamal what he thinks the meaning of Jenin is, that

is, what people can learn about the Israeli government.

[JAA] The first thing I want to mention is that from this battle in

Jenin, against the occupation and the Israeli soldiers, that from this

battle in Jenin, Sharon will learn that this land belongs only to

Palestinians. Even if he does a lot more criminal acts, more attacks

against our people, I will not respond with telling our people to leave

our lands, to leave their lands. As he puts it, the “transfers.” This

state terrorism from Sharon and the Israeli soldiers will not make the

people here inside the West Bank and Gaza leave their lands. We will

stay here. We will continue to stand and sit down, to sleep and to grow,

and to live in our houses. For example, in the last invasion of Jenin,

the Israeli soldiers asked the people to leave their houses. They asked

the civilians to leave their houses so that the Israeli soldiers could

destroy our camp. But they refused. They want to stand with the people

who are struggling against the occupation. They don’t want to leave us

alone. Because they are part of us. And they believe that these are our

lands, and not for Sharon or the Israeli people. So, the first lesson

from this battle, that the Israeli people and Sharon learned is that

this land belongs to Palestinians, not to Israel, and that we will not

leave this land. We will stay, forever! Sharon and the Israeli people

should not ignore the results of these invasions. Sharon entered and

invaded the Palestinian lands to kill and to destroy the infrastructure

of the people in the struggle against the occupation. Not to destroy

terrorism, because it is [not?] terrorism, but instead a struggle

against the occupation. After Sharon finished the invasion, the struggle

responded to this crime and we undertook more activities against state

terrorism. So I want to point out to the American and English people

that they look out only from one eye.... The support of the US and

Europe has killed innocent people. So it is a cycle that Sharon cannot

win. If Sharon will return here again, we will respond with more

operations. It is useless, these kind of politics that Sharon engages

in.

[AK] So what do you think people from outside of Palestine and Israel

can learn about Sharon from the invasion?

[JAA] The first lesson from the Jenin battle that the Arab people should

learn, is that little persons struggled alone against the occupation and

the Israeli soldiers for about 10 days and we killed Israeli soldiers.

We did what all the other Arab countries did not do and should have

done. I have a message for the European and American people. It’s

hopeless, I suppose, to transmit this message to them, but here it is. I

will clarify first though, that the Palestinian people were expelled by

Israeli forces in 1948 to camps, such as here, in Jenin refugee camp.

And then they came in 2002, in this new century, they came again to

fight again against people that were expelled by Israeli forces. So I

want to point out to the American and English people that they look out

only from one eye. They close the other eye and both of their ears. The

support of the US and Europe has killed innocent people. Most of the

people who were killed inside the camp, were killed by untrained Israeli

soldiers, by auxiliary soldiers. That is, the people of the Jenin camp

were mostly killed by “innocent” Israeli people.

[AK] Would Hamas end all operations inside of Israel if it had a

Palestinian state with the 1967 borders and a right of return, a limited

right of return and East Jerusalem as the capital? Would that be enough

to satisfy the demands of Hamas?

[JAA] We can accept and be satisfied with this solution, that is, with

the ’67 lands and to have some people returned as refugees to their

houses. We can be satisfied with this. In this scenario, we will then be

a peaceful political party that object to our government in peaceful

means, not by force, like now. So as a phase one, we can accept. But

that is as a preliminary phase and not a permanent solution. You see,

this man, [looking to his left at another Hamas member] this man’s

village is inside of Israel. And I cannot convince this man that his

village will be finished and will always belong to the Israeli people.

One day, they should return our lands.

I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape by

Andrea Dworkin

This was a speech given at the Midwest Regional Conference of the

National Organization for Changing Men in the fall of 1983 in St Paul,

Minnesota. One of the organizers kindly sent me a tape and a transcript

of my speech. The magazine of the men’s movement, M., published it. I

was teaching in Minneapolis. This was before Catharine MacKinnon and I

had proposed or developed the civil rights approach to pornography as a

legislative strategy. Lots of people were in the audience who later

became key players in the fight for the civil rights bill. I didn’t know

them then. It was an audience of about 500 men, with scattered women. I

spoke from notes and was actually on my way to Idaho — an eight-hour

trip each way (because of bad air connections) to give a one-hour speech

on Art — fly out Saturday, come back Sunday, can’t talk more than one

hour or you’ll miss the only plane leaving that day, you have to run

from the podium to the car for the two-hour drive to the plane. Why

would a militant feminist under this kind of pressure stop off on her

way to the airport to say hi to 500 men? In a sense, this was a feminist

dream-come-true. What would you say to 500 men if you could? This is

what I said, how I used my chance. The men reacted with considerable

love and support and also with considerable anger. Both. I hurried out

to get my plane, the first hurdle for getting to Idaho. Only one man in

the 500 threatened me physically. He was stopped by a woman bodyguard

(and friend) who had accompanied me.

I have thought a great deal about how a feminist, like myself, addresses

an audience primarily of political men who say that they are antisexist.

And I thought a lot about whether there should be a qualitative

difference in the kind of speech I address to you. And then I found

myself incapable of pretending that I really believe that that

qualitative difference exists. I have watched the men’s movement for

many years. I am close with some of the people who participate in it. I

can’t come here as a friend even though I might very much want to. What

I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the

screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in

the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women’s

silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in

which most of us die.

And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that

scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to

understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things.

You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women

are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don’t have forever.

Some of us don’t have another week or another day to take time for you

to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those

streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And

we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are

inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We

use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the

world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not

abstractions. It is easy to say, “Ah, the statistics, somebody writes

them up one way and somebody writes them up another way.” That’s true.

But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is

also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every

three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is

being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right

now as I am speaking.

And it is happening for a simple reason. There is nothing complex and

difficult about the reason. Men are doing it, because of the kind of

power that men have over women. That power is real, concrete, exercised

from one body to another body, exercised by someone who feels he has a

right to exercise it, exercised in public and exercised in private. It

is the sum and substance of women’s oppression.

It is not done 5000 miles away or 3000 miles away. It is done here and

it is done now and it is done by the people in this room as well as by

other contemporaries: our friends, our neighbors, people that we know.

Women don’t have to go to school to learn about power. We just have to

be women, walking down the street or trying to get the housework done

after having given one’s body in marriage and then having no rights over

it.

The power exercised by men day to day in life is power that is

institutionalized. It is protected by law. It is protected by religion

and religious practice. It is protected by universities, which are

strongholds of male supremacy. It is protected by a police force. It is

protected by those whom Shelley called “the unacknowledged legislators

of the world”: the poets, the artists. Against that power, we have

silence.

It is an extraordinary thing to try to understand and confront why it is

that men believe — and men do believe — that they have the right to

rape. Men may not believe it when asked. Everybody raise your hand who

believes you have the right to rape. Not too many hands will go up. It’s

in life that men believe they have the right to force sex, which they

don’t call rape. And it is an extraordinary thing to try to understand

that men really believe that they have the right to hit and to hurt. And

it is an equally extraordinary thing to try to understand that men

really believe that they have the right to buy a woman’s body for the

purpose of having sex: that that is a right. And it is very amazing to

try to understand that men believe that the seven-billion-dollar-a-year

industry that provides men with cunts is something that men have a right

to.

That is the way the power of men is manifest in real life. That is what

theory about male supremacy means. It means you can rape. It means you

can hit. It means you can hurt. It means you can buy and sell women. It

means that there is a class of people there to provide you with what you

need. You stay richer than they are, so that they have to sell you sex.

Not just on street corners, but in the workplace. That’s another right

that you can presume to have: sexual access to any woman in your

environment, when you want. Now, the men’s movement suggests that men

don’t want the kind of power I have just described. I’ve actually heard

explicit whole sentences to that effect. And yet, everything is a reason

not to do something about changing the fact that you do have that power.

Hiding behind guilt, that’s my favorite. I love that one. Oh, it’s

horrible, yes, and I’m so sorry. You have the time to feel guilty. We

don’t have the time for you to feel guilty. Your guilt is a form of

acquiescence in what continues to occur. Your guilt helps keep things

the way they are.

I have heard in the last several years a great deal about the suffering

of men over sexism. Of course, I have heard a great deal about the

suffering of men all my life. Needless to say, I have read Hamlet. I

have read King Lear. I am an educated woman. I know that men suffer.

This is a new wrinkle. Implicit in the idea that this is a different

kind of suffering is the claim, I think, that in part you are actually

suffering because of something that you know happens to someone else.

That would indeed be new.

But mostly your guilt, your suffering, reduces to: gee, we really feel

so bad. Everything makes men feel so bad: what you do, what you don’t

do, what you want to do, what you don’t want to want to do but are going

to do anyway. I think most of your distress is: gee, we really feel so

bad. And I’m sorry that you feel so bad — so uselessly and stupidly bad

— because there is a way in which this really is your tragedy. And I

don’t mean because you can’t cry. And I don’t mean because there is no

real intimacy in your lives. And I don’t mean because the armor that you

have to live with as men is stultifying: and I don’t doubt that it is.

But I don’t mean any of that.

I mean that there is a relationship between the way that women are raped

and your socialization to rape and the war machine that grinds you up

and spits you out: the war machine that you go through just like that

woman went through Larry Flynt’s meat grinder on the cover of Hustler.

You damn well better believe that you’re involved in this tragedy and

that it’s your tragedy too. Because you’re turned into little soldier

boys from the day that you are born and everything that you learn about

how to avoid the humanity of women becomes part of the militarism of the

country in which you live and the world in which you live. It is also

part of the economy that you frequently claim to protest.

And the problem is that you think it’s out there: and it’s not out

there. It’s in you. The pimps and the warmongers speak for you. Rape and

war are not so different. And what the pimps and the warmongers do is

that they make you so proud of being men who can get it up and give it

hard. And they take that acculturated sexuality and they put you in

little uniforms and they send you out to kill and to die. Now, I am not

going to suggest to you that I think that’s more important than what you

do to women, because I don’t.

But I think that if you want to look at what this system does to you,

then that is where you should start looking: the sexual politics of

aggression; the sexual politics of militarism. I think that men are very

afraid of other men. That is something that you sometimes try to address

in your small groups, as if if you changed your attitudes towards each

other, you wouldn’t be afraid of each other.

But as long as your sexuality has to do with aggression and your sense

of entitlement to humanity has to do with being superior to other

people, and there is so much contempt and hostility in your attitudes

towards women and children, how could you not be afraid of each other? I

think that you rightly perceive — without being willing to face it

politically — that men are very dangerous: because you are.

The solution of the men’s movement to make men less dangerous to each

other by changing the way you touch and feel each other is not a

solution. It’s a recreational break.

These conferences are also concerned with homophobia. Homophobia is very

important: it is very important to the way male supremacy works. In my

opinion, the prohibitions against male homosexuality exist in order to

protect male power. Do it to her. That is to say: as long as men rape,

it is very important that men be directed to rape women. As long as sex

is full of hostility and expresses both power over and contempt for the

other person, it is very important that men not be declassed,

stigmatized as female, used similarly. The power of men as a class

depends on keeping men sexually inviolate and women sexually used by

men. Homophobia helps maintain that class power: it also helps keep you

as individuals safe from each other, safe from rape. If you want to do

something about homophobia, you are going to have to do something about

the fact that men rape, and that forced sex is not incidental to male

sexuality but is in practice paradigmatic.

Some of you are very concerned about the rise of the Right in this

country, as if that is something separate from the issues of feminism or

the men’s movement. There is a cartoon I saw that brought it all

together nicely. It was a big picture of Ronald Reagan as a cowboy with

a big hat and a gun. And it said: “A gun in every holster; a pregnant

woman in every home. Make America a man again.” Those are the politics

of the Right.

If you are afraid of the ascendancy of fascism in this country — and you

would be very foolish not to be right now — then you had better

understand that the root issue here has to do with male supremacy and

the control of women; sexual access to women; women as reproductive

slaves; private ownership of women. That is the program of the Right.

That is the morality they talk about. That is what they mean. That is

what they want. And the only opposition to them that matters is an

opposition to men owning women.

What’s involved in doing something about all of this? The men’s movement

seems to stay stuck on two points. The first is that men don’t really

feel very good about themselves. How could you? The second is that men

come to me or to other feminists and say: “What you’re saying about men

isn’t true. It isn’t true of me. I don’t feel that way. I’m opposed to

all of this.”

And I say: don’t tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell

the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and

the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is

wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There’s no point in

telling me. I’m only a woman. There’s nothing I can do about it. These

men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying that

they represent you. If they don’t, then you had better let them know.

Then there is the private world of misogyny: what you know about each

other; what you say in private life; the exploitation that you see in

the private sphere; the relationships called love, based on

exploitation. It’s not enough to find some traveling feminist on the

road and go up to her and say: “Gee, I hate it.”

Say it to your friends who are doing it. And there are streets out there

on which you can say these things loud and dear, so as to affect the

actual institutions that maintain these abuses. You don’t like

pornography? I wish I could believe it’s true. I will believe it when I

see you on the streets. I will believe it when I see an organized

political opposition. I will believe it when pimps go out of business

because there are no more male consumers.

You want to organize men. You don’t have to search for issues. The

issues are part of the fabric of your everyday lives.

I want to talk to you about equality, what equality is and what it

means. It isn’t just an idea. It’s not some insipid word that ends up

being bullshit. It doesn’t have anything at all to do with all those

statements like: “Oh, that happens to men too.” I name an abuse and I

hear: “Oh, it happens to men too.” That is not the equality we are

struggling for. We could change our strategy and say: well, okay, we

want equality; we’ll stick something up the ass of a man every three

minutes.

You’ve never heard that from the feminist movement, because for us

equality has real dignity and importance — it’s not some dumb word that

can be twisted and made to look stupid as if it had no real meaning.

As a way of practicing equality, some vague idea about giving up power

is useless. Some men have vague thoughts about a future in which men are

going to give up power or an individual man is going to give up some

kind of privilege that he has. That is not what equality means either.

Equality is a practice. It is an action. It is a way of life. It is a

social practice. It is an economic practice. It is a sexual practice. It

can’t exist in a vacuum. You can’t have it in your home if, when the

people leave the home, he is in a world of his supremacy based on the

existence of his cock and she is in a world of humiliation and

degradation because she is perceived to be inferior and because her

sexuality is a curse.

This is not to say that the attempt to practice equality in the home

doesn’t matter. It matters, but it is not enough. If you love equality,

if you believe in it, if it is the way you want to live — not just men

and women together in a home, but men and men together in a home and

women and women together in a home — if equality is what you want and

what you care about, then you have to fight for the institutions that

will make it socially real.

It is not just a matter of your attitude. You can’t think it and make it

exist. You can’t try sometimes, when it works to your advantage, and

throw it out the rest of the time. Equality is a discipline. It is a way

of life. It is a political necessity to create equality in institutions.

And another thing about equality is that it cannot coexist with rape. It

cannot. And it cannot coexist with pornography or with prostitution or

with the economic degradation of women on any level, in any way. It

cannot coexist, because implicit in all those things is the inferiority

of women.

I want to see this men’s movement make a commitment to ending rape

because that is the only meaningful commitment to equality. It is

astonishing that in all our worlds of feminism and antisexism we never

talk seriously about ending rape. Ending it. Stopping it. No more. No

more rape. In the back of our minds, are we holding on to its

inevitability as the last preserve of the biological? Do we think that

it is always going to exist no matter what we do? All of our political

actions are lies if we don’t make a commitment to ending the practice of

rape. This commitment has to be political. It has to be serious. It has

to be systematic. It has to be public. It can’t be self-indulgent.

The things the men’s movement has wanted are things worth having.

Intimacy is worth having. Tenderness is worth having. Cooperation is

worth having. A real emotional life is worth having. But you can’t have

them in a world with rape. Ending homophobia is worth doing. But you

can’t do it in a world with rape. Rape stands in the way of each and

every one of those things you say you want. And by rape you know what I

mean. A judge does not have to walk into this room and say that

according to statute such and such these are the elements of proof.

We’re talking about any kind of coerced sex, including sex coerced by

poverty.

You can’t have equality or tenderness or intimacy as long as there is

rape, because rape means terror. It means that part of the population

lives in a state of terror and pretends — to please and pacify you —

that it doesn’t. So there is no honesty. How can there be? Can you

imagine what it is like to live as a woman day in and day out with the

threat of rape? Or what it is like to live with the reality? I want to

see you use those legendary bodies and that legendary strength and that

legendary courage and the tenderness that you say you have in behalf of

women; and that means against the rapists, against the pimps, and

against the pornographers. It means something more than a personal

renunciation. It means a systematic, political, active, public attack.

And there has been very little of that.

I came here today because I don’t believe that rape is inevitable or

natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my

political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever or with

the economic degradation of women on any level, in any way. It cannot

coexist, because implicit in all those things is the inferiority of

women. I want to see this men’s movement make a commitment to ending

rape because that is the only meaningful commitment to equality. It is

astonishing that in all our worlds of feminism and antisexism we never

talk seriously about ending rape. Ending it. Stopping it. No more. No

more rape. In the back of our minds, are we holding on to its

inevitability as the last preserve of the biological? Do we think that

it is always going to exist no matter what we do? All of our political

actions are lies if we don’t make a commitment to ending the practice of

rape. This commitment has to be political. It has to be serious. It has

to be systematic. It has to be public. It can’t be self-indulgent. The

things the men’s movement has wanted are things worth having. Intimacy

is worth having. Tenderness is worth having. Cooperation is worth

having. A real emotional life is worth having. But you can’t have them

in a world with rape. Ending homophobia is worth doing. But you can’t do

it in a world with rape. Rape stands in the way of each and every one of

those things you say you want. And by rape you know what I mean. A judge

does not have to walk into this room and say that according to statute

such and such these are the elements of proof. We’re talking about any

kind of coerced sex, including sex coerced by poverty. You can’t have

equality or tenderness or intimacy as long as there is rape, because

rape means terror. It means that part of the population lives in a state

of terror and pretends — to please and pacify you — that it doesn’t. So

there is no honesty. How can there be ? Can you imagine what it is like

to live as a woman day in and day out with the threat of rape? Or what

it is like to live with the reality? I want to see you use those

legendary bodies and that legendary strength and that legendary courage

and the tenderness that you say you have in behalf of women; and that

means against the rapists, against the pimps, and against the

pornographers. It means something more than a personal renunciation. It

means a systematic, political, active, public attack. And there has been

very little of that.

I came here today because I don’t believe that rape is inevitable or

natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my

political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered

why we are not just in armed combat against you? It’s not because

there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we

believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.

We do not want to do the work of helping you to believe in your

humanity. We cannot do it anymore. We have always tried. We have been

repaid with systematic exploitation and systematic abuse. You are going

to have to do this yourselves from now on and you know it.

The shame of men in front of women is, I think, an appropriate response

both to what men do do and to what men do not do. I think you should be

ashamed. But what you do with that shame is to use it as an excuse to

keep doing what you want and to keep not doing anything else; and you’ve

got to stop. You’ve got to stop. Your psychology doesn’t matter. How

much you hurt doesn’t matter in the end any more than how much we hurt

matters. If we sat around and only talked about how much rape hurt us,

do you think there would have been one of the changes that you have seen

in this country in the last fifteen years? There wouldn’t have been.

It is true that we had to talk to each other. How else, after all, were

we supposed to find out that each of us was not the only woman in the

world not asking for it to whom rape or battery had ever happened? We

couldn’t read it in the newspapers, not then. We couldn’t find a book

about it. But you do know and now the question is what you are going to

do; and so your shame and your guilt are very much beside the point.

They don’t matter to us at all, in any way. They’re not good enough.

They don’t do anything.

As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I’ve talked to over the

past ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with

me. Do you remember pictures that you’ve seen of European cities during

the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people

would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is

like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have

whole lives and human names and human faces.

I speak for many feminists, not only myself, when I tell you that I am

tired of what I know and sad beyond any words I have about what has

already been done to women up to this point, now, up to 2:24 p.m. on

this day, here in this place.

And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new

bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old,

and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less —

it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even

in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your

side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is

no rape.

I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don’t mind begging you

to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could

this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?

And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is

raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can’t

begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is

nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes

real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives

— both men and women — begin to experience freedom. If you have a

conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are

wrong. You cannot change what you say you want to change. For myself, I

want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave

you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.

Self Defense: If not now, when? by Lore Axe

“If we are sitting upon a dying earth, and consequently dying as a

species solely as a result of the nature of our society, if the

technology we have developed is indeed depleting the earth, destroying

the air and water, wiping out entire species daily, and steadily

weakening us to the point of extinction ... then is it not time — long

past time — when we should do anything, indeed everything, necessary to

put an end to such madness? Is it not in fact an act of unadulterated

self defense to do so?” [1]

For those concerned with radical economic, political, and social change,

it should be apparent that ecologically speaking time is very short.

Scientists estimate that as many as 137 species disappear from the Earth

each day, which adds up to an astounding 50,000 species disappearing

every year. [2] While movements of the past may have had the luxury of

putting off an idealized Revolution far into the future, those who are

oppressed now and those who desire an ecologically sustainable world

certainly feel the need for immediate action.

Fundamental change requires that the means to achieve the desired end

challenge the extreme violence of the present system. Mike Ryan’s

assessment on the efficacy of nonviolent resistance is poignant: “Do we

really believe the state allows small groups to engage in openly planned

and publicized protest actions because it is somehow powerless in the

face of our truth, superior morality, or whatever? Clearly, the state

allows us to engage in these actions because they are harmless, or

worse, because they reinforce the popular myth of ... democracy.” [3]

While nonviolence can be an effective tactic in some circumstances,

strict pacifism by itself will never threaten the current system.

In modern civilized culture, the term “violence”, when applied to the

actions of the oppressed struggling against the oppressors, is loaded

with negative moral connotations beyond the simple definition of “using

great physical force.” [4]

The institutions controlling the media further manipulate the term, as

it pertains to protest and other forms of struggle, by ignoring the

violent acts committed by people and institutions in power, demonizing

acts of self-defense by protesters, and justifying the force used by the

authorities. This tactic infers that those who are oppressed have no

business being disruptive or violent (completely obfuscating the

violence perpetrated by the state) and that the police are justified in

defending private property and suppressing free speech with violence.

The people in power are waging war against the poor, women, children,

people of color, and the environment. This is nothing new and by now it

should be clear to all that those in power are not going to end their

oppression simply by being asked, or because it is the rational and

ethical thing to do. Non-violent protest is simply a way of begging

those in power to voluntarily change behavior that they directly benefit

from. This groveling reinforces the hierarchy structure, promotes the

illusion of democracy and has never resulted in any fundamental social

or political change. The inherent contradiction of a strict pacifistic

strategy for revolutionary change, in the words of Ward Churchill, is:

Any nonviolent confrontation of state power must ultimately depend

either on the state refraining from unleashing some real measure of its

potential violence, or the active presence of some counterbalancing

violence of precisely the sort pacifism professes to reject as a

political option. Absurdity clearly abounds when suggesting that the

state will refrain form using all necessary physical force to protect

against undesired forms of change and threats to its safety. Nonviolent

tacticians imply (perhaps unwittingly) that the ‘immoral state’ which

they seek to transform will somehow exhibit exactly the same sort of

superior morality they claim for themselves.” [5]

Those who control the state and capital must essentially suppress their

ethics in favor of adopting the principles necessary for being

successful in an exploitative system. To wage war against humanity, and

the rest of the biosphere, explicitly reveals that those in power lack

ethical compassion; to paraphrase Craig Rosebraugh, appealing to the

moral conscience of the ruling class is flawed because they lack a

healthy functioning conscience. [6]

Those struggling against oppression desire a less violent, more just

world. It is not wanting more, but less, aggression and destruction that

leads people to challenge the violence of the present system. To do

nothing, or to engage in action that does not change the present

conditions, only allows the current atrocities to persist and increase.

Che Guevara put it best when he said, “the true revolutionary is guided

by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine

revolutionary lacking this quality.” [7] Che’s understanding of the

revolutionary is similar to Morihei Ueshiba’s belief that the true

purpose of budo, translated as “the way of the warrior,” is love. [8]

The apparent contradiction between love and fighting actually

demonstrates the balance necessary in the life of a warrior. Lack of

compassion can lead to the life of a thug, while the absence of martial

skills will result in the inability to defend one’s self and community.

The similarity between the revolutionary and the martial artist is

centered in the principle of self-defense. There is no place within

either set of ethics for violence based on selfishness or personal gain;

however, it is recognized that violence is at times necessary to defend

lives and rights.

The martial art Aikido is often referred to as nonviolent, which sounds

like an oxymoron; however, nonviolent conflict resolution in Aikido is

rooted in the ability to kill the opponent, and only when the option to

do harm is present, can the true choice between a violent and

non-violent end be made. A non-violent result also requires that the

opponent desires to live and that they are placed in a position where

the only way to survive the confrontation is to yield. If the opponent

has no concern for their own safety, or cannot recognize that they are

in a situation where they will be harmed if they continue to attack,

then a non-violent resolution is not possible. Only when the power to

take life is present, does the real choice not to take it exist.

If we take the above principles and apply them to a large-scale

revolutionary movement, certain things become evident. If there is no

intent or ability to do harm to the system, then any attempts to do so

without the necessary skills will be fruitless. Even with the skills to

do significant harm, it’s evident that the system is willing to

sacrifice those employed in its defense, and therefore not committed to

the long-term survival of all of its components. Nonviolent (sic)

principles, when applied to revolutionary strategy, look nothing like

moral pacifism; rather they appear as coercion by threat of violence,

which when applied to the state and capitalism are generally labeled by

the ruling class as terrorism. Another aspect of this parallel which

needs to be addressed is that there should be no interest in having the

system survive the encounter in the first place. While individuals

within might yield and allow the power structure to be destroyed, there

are those whose identities are so tied into it that they will do

everything possible to stop the revolution.

When the rich and powerful exploit the rest of world by use and threat

of violent force, the only way to achieve a relatively nonviolent world

is through violent means, while attempts to use a nonviolent strategy to

achieve these same ends would only result in catastrophe. The maxim that

violence begets violence is transformed into revolutionary (sic)

nonviolence begets violence, while revolutionary violence may result in

a less violent world. This appears to be somewhat of a koan; however,

unlike the Zen riddles without rational answers, there is an obvious

answer to this apparent contradiction. Violence is already being

perpetrated on an extreme level by the controllers of the state and

capitalism. A nonviolent response to this institutionalized violence in

no way threatens or challenges it; if anything, it only leads to

increased violence. What is needed is self-defense that protects against

current attacks and removes the ability for those in power to continue

their assault on humanity and the rest of the biosphere.

One argument put forth to discourage militant action now is that the

state is too powerful. Waiting only gives the state time to increase its

power. The biosphere is being destroyed at an apocalyptic rate. Telling

the oppressed that they should wait to defend themselves is siding with

the oppressors. The state’s response to the radical militant actions of

AIM, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, the George Jackson

Brigade, is often used as evidence of what the state will do to those

who take up arms against it. Ward Churchill provides an excellent

example of how pacifism can be divisive and aid the enemy:

As the Panthers evidenced signs of making significant headway ... the

state perceived something more threatening than yet another series of

candlelight vigils. It reacted accordingly, targeting the Panthers for

physical elimination. When Party cadres responded (as promised) by

meeting the violence of repression with armed resistance, the bulk of

their ‘principled’ white support evaporated. This horrifying retreat

rapidly isolated the Party from any possible mediating or buffering from

the full force of state terror and left its members nakedly exposed to

‘surgical termination’ by special police units. [9]

What is needed is not an avoidance of militant tactics, but rather

organized solidarity between different groups organizing to abolish

oppression. Without the necessary cross-community support required for

revolutionary acts, militants will continued to be isolated and

neutralized.

As long as the state is ignoring a method of resistance, it isn’t being

effective; however, directly engaging the enemy on their terms, when

they have superior numbers and firepower, is suicidal. What is needed

for victory is effective strategy and tactics that recognize some of the

points Churchill puts forth:

The tenets are: (1) the Napoleonic credo that ‘victory goes to the side

fielding the biggest battalions’; (2) that sheer scale of force can be

offset through the utilization of the element of surprise; and (3) even

more than surprise, tactical flexibility (i.e. concentration of force at

weak points) can often compensate for lack of numbers (this is a prime

point of ju jitsu). [10]

Considering the US military budget is larger than all other countries’

military budgets combined gives it the advantage of resources against

any opponent. However, the military is comprised primarily of people

from the lower economic classes, as well as people of color, who have

more in common with revolutionaries than with the government whom they

serve. Tenets two and three are the key to taking on a superior force

and that is where the path to victory lies. While legal political

protest has its place as a tactic, it completely nullifies any element

of surprise or flexibility when the time, place, and methods are

revealed to the police.

Ignoring the oppression, exploitation and destruction will not make them

go away, and neither will pleading with those who directly benefit from

it. What is required for revolutionary success is long term strategy,

including an escalation of tactics that is proportional to the strength

of the movement, as well as the amount of support and solidarity

provided by our allies. Self-defense is a right, and to be effective it

not only requires the acquisition of technical skills, but on the larger

scale, real community organizing. There is no time like the present to

begin working on both.

Smash Imperialism, at Home! by Brady McGarry

Author’s Note: This piece is written by a white person, for white

people. The aim is to expose how white activists ignore and neglect the

struggles of people of color, and thus only damage their own chances for

liberation. The hope is that it helps develop ideas about how white

people can try to be accountable to communities of color, and do their

part in the struggle against colonialism... right here at home.

In June 2003, two significant events happened in the United States. One

was a labor stoppage of a big city construction project in Seattle. The

other involved urban insurrection, a small Michigan community in revolt.

You didn’t hear much about these events in most news sources, not even

on left-oriented or activist-oriented web sites. Both events involved

people of color and only people of color. These acts of resistance

passed without any public support or outreach from white activist

communities. The incidents are qualitatively different, but highlight

the same principle of white supremacy and the lack of support (or even

notice) given to communities of color from white communities. These two

incidents are clear examples that white people, even working class white

people, neglect the continuing struggles of people of color in America.

There was seldom mention of these two events on their respective city’s

Indymedia web site. During the riot in Benton Harbor, and until at least

the next day, there was only one post on the Michigan web site. If we

remember back to any riot or militant action that involved white people,

internationally or in the United States, there was always a flurry of

analysis praising the “insurrection,” claiming that these isolated

events were evidence that “the movement” was growing. There are dozens

of armed conflicts between the Federal Government and Native Americans,

occurring right now on their land (like the struggle of the Shuswap

Nation in British Columbia, Canada.) But these issues are rarely (if

ever) talked about in white activist circles. Most white activists tend

to focus on International Trade Summits, and the international

implications of them, instead of focusing on the local or domestic

effects of Neo-Liberalism. An embarassing yet ongoing example of this

kind of ignorance is the pervasiveness of the “Black Bloc” debate in

white circles. Certainly militant tactics, and movement strategy are

important to discuss, but when there are armed conflicts involving

people of color, and the focus is on white kids who wear black and smash

windows, the contrast is clear. White activists often inflate the

importance of their own actions (or other white people’s actions) even

if they are strategically insignificant. These same white activists, who

tirelessly analyze and write about exclusively white activism, ignore

and thus make invisible the resistance of people of color — even when

that resistance is in fact more important, more militant, more

widespread, more community-oriented, and more rooted in concrete social

struggle.

Incident #1

Benton Harbor is a small town of 12,000 residents, 92 percent of whom

are African American. It is also one of the poorest communities in

Michigan and has a staggering 25 percent unemployment rate. Its white

and upper class neighbor, the town of St. Joseph, has a miniscule two

percent unemployment rate. Whirlpool and Bosch are the two largest

employers in the area, maintaining a stranglehold on any

community-driven economic development.

On June 18, 2003, a riot erupted in Benton Harbor after white police

officers killed a black man. Terance Shurn, 28 years old, was allegedly

speeding on a motorcycle, which was the officers’ justification for the

ensuing chase. The white policemen involved left their jurisdiction, the

wealthier neighborhood of Benton Township, and continued their pursuit

into Benton Harbor. Since the facts are disputed in this case, it is

hard to tell what actually transpired. What is known for sure is that in

their pursuit, the police officers did hit Terance’s motorcycle from

behind. Many residents of Benton Harbor say that Terance was afraid to

pull over, because he feared for his life. The chase finally ended with

Terance losing control of his motorcycle, which ended his life. He

crashed into a building and died on site.

The riot lasted two nights prompting the Governor of Michigan to declare

a State of Emergency, which allows the National Guard to be used if

needed to maintain “law and order.” During the riot, Benton Harbor

residents looted businesses, burnt down several buildings, and even

fired shots at riot police.

Reverend F. Russell Baker, pastor of Benton Harbor’s First

Congregational UCC, bluntly stated, “Riots have reasons.” He pointed to

abandoned and boarded-up housing, police brutality, adult illiteracy,

and extreme economic segregation as the main causes of community unrest.

“What we have witnessed in the recent riot was the rage, anger, and

frustration of the victims of abuse in this poor African American

community that goes far deeper than we may have ever imagined.”

Incident #2

On June 3, 2003, a City of Seattle construction project was shut down to

protest the lack of racial equity in the city’s selection of

construction contracts. The targeted project was road maintenance on

Rainier Avenue South in a largely black neighborhood. When the

construction crew that showed up was all white, it added insult to

injury. President of the Seattle NAACP Carl Mack said, “We’re seeing

millions of dollars being awarded in contracts on a constant basis and

now they get the audacity to bring one of those huge contracts down in

the heart of our area [the south end of Seattle]. People are fed up and

we needed to send a message.”

Organizers of the event, the Black Contractors Coalition, highlighted

that their struggle is for all African Americans, especially African

American youth, to be employed in living wage jobs. The protest also

exposed the inherent class component in this racial justice struggle. Of

all Seattle construction contracts for 2003, which total about $475

million, only $400,000 goes to “minority” owned businesses. There was

support given by other prominent African American community leaders,

including numerous leaders from local Black Churches.

On the day of the protest, there was no mention of it on Seattle’s

Indymedia web site. Imagine if there had been a wildcat strike involving

a white dominated labor union. Envision workers shutting down a store or

a factory for an entire day. It would be on every single labor-oriented

email list, web site, newspaper, and magazine in existence — but the

Black Contractors Coalition wasn’t, because it was black workers. The

entire spectrum of (white) labor-oriented groups were either unaware, or

ignored the protest. Everyone from the hard-line dogmatic

Marxist-Leninists all the way to the mainstream labor unions. Often,

white groups will be silent to or worse even refuse support of groups

led by people of color, because “that’s a black issue” or “we are

working on our issues”. What these white groups don’t understand is that

unless sufficient unity can be achieved among white people and people of

color, the chances of cross-race solidarity are minimal, if

non-existent. United class action across racial lines could help in the

reconciliation between people of color and white people. As solidarity

develops, the movement towards common goals could develop and escalate.

When white workers fail to support the struggles of people of color,

they are in fact siding with their own class enemy — by falling into the

trappings of racism, and thus helping to perpetuate oppression for both

parties respectively.

Our Job

The task at hand is to begin to link the broad anti-capitalist movement

with grassroots organizing efforts focused on the local effects of

capitalism. Neo-liberal economic policies are being implemented around

the world, through institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and the WTO.

But we have to remember that neo-liberalism isn’t just something that

happens around the world, or in “Third World” countries. It also happens

right here at home. It can be in the form of cutting social services,

raising tuition, or privatizing public industries. These global

institutions are guided by the United States, and the same policies we

see being forced onto “developing countries” are being pushed onto

working class people here in the United States. So why aren’t more

activists focusing on the local assault of neo-liberalism? Most white

activists focus on justice struggles that are based outside of the

United States — which is fine, but if that struggle is not linked

inextricably to the struggle of poor people here, then an incredible

opportunity is being missed. It might make sense to show people here how

they are exploited by capitalism, and not just try to expose the

injustices of U.S. International Imperialism. One idea would be to focus

organizing efforts on people who are most clearly being exploited by

capitalism, racism, and all other forms of institutional oppressions.

For the anti-capitalist movement to succeed, it’s going to need more

than guilt-ridden middle class “activists” or lifestylist white punk

rockers to fundamentally change society. The anti-capitalist movement

will need to strategize about who it is focusing its efforts on, and

probably abandon much of the generalized and idealized “educational

work” that most activists focus on. If campaigns are conceived of only

as education work, and not tied to community organizing, then true

concessions and struggle will never be achieved. White people must take

responsibility for the position in society we have been granted. That

means acknowledging the job ahead, and committing ourselves to being

allies with community organizations led by people of color. That means

organizing in the white community against racism, that means pushing the

issue in places where it has never been advanced. It’s about creating

humanistic relationships with people of color based on solidarity,

community, and respect.

A Legacy

The struggle for self-determination of people of color has been an

ongoing and unending fight since Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue — hell,

it’s as American as apple pie. The Civil Rights movement rocked the

foundations of our society; by demanding that their basic rights be

recognized, people of color opened up new avenues of struggle and

advanced the possibility for a truly equitable society. Historically

Seattle has been home to groundbreaking anti-racist labor organizing.

Tyree Scott, an amazing man and organizer, is sadly a similar case to

the events mentioned above. Tyree became a prominent organizer by

bringing together electrical workers of color to demand equality in job

accessibility — the same issue the Black Contractor’s Coalition is

currently engaging. He will never be fully recognized for his lifetime

of struggle and he will never be on television. Tyree was at the

forefront of labor organizing in Seattle in the late ‘60s, and at that

time in America, not only were certain jobs off limits to people of

color, but even most labor unions upheld racist values and excluded

people of color from equal access to jobs.

Tyree Scott died June 19, 2003, one day after Terance Shurn died in

Benton Harbor. The date is ironic, yet fitting. It is symbolic of the

continuing struggle of people of color which is completely foreign to

white people. Across the board, in almost every imaginable arena of

American society, people of color are treated worse than whites, they

are persecuted, and actively attacked. This is not a coincidence, but a

direct result of institutional racism stemming from the very foundations

of American society. It’s not about individual cases of oppression, but

across the board oppression. White people are therefore only dealing

with part of the exploitation dealt out by capitalist society. This

division is deeper than just ignorance or insensitivity on the part of

white people; white people are benefiting from this separation. Most

people of color know this, and see it every day of their lives. Until

this resentment can be healed, and historical injustices rectified, our

collective struggle will not advance beyond infancy, and justice cannot

be won.

Issue 6

Who’s Buried in Lenin’s Tomb? Reinventing the Left by Mike Andrew

Part 1: Finding Our Own Voice

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all the events and personalities of great

importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add:

the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” Karl Marx, The 18^(th)

Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Lenin won. The Bolsheviks managed to consolidate state power in Soviet

Russia over the dead bodies of “Whites” and rival “Reds” (anarchists and

Socialist Revolutionaries). After Lenin’s death, his pupils seemingly

defied the laws of economic development and built an advanced industrial

economy in what had been a largely peasant country. The Bolshevik (later

Communist) Party became the international model for revolutionary

parties, even in those countries that had very little in common with

Soviet Russia. After World War 2, the USSR became, briefly, the center

of a whole “socialist camp” and the rival of the US for global hegemony.

Like the old saying goes, nothing succeeds like success. The apparent

practical successes of Lenin and his Party established the credibility

of Leninism as a theory of revolution, and made Lenin’s belief in the

centrality of the Russian Revolution to world politics the dominant

“Left” analysis of these events. Even the non-Leninist Left by and large

accepted Lenin’s views, and came to define their own politics in

relation to the USSR. This was true in the US just as much as in other

countries. The fact that the US Left before the 1940s was based to a

large extent among European immigrants, who brought with them all the

political assumptions (and the rivalries) of their home countries, also

helped give credibility to Lenin’s own interpretation of the Bolshevik

revolution.

These circumstances led the Left to ignore the really hard question

posed by the events in Russia:

What if the Russian Revolution of 1917 was not — as Lenin believed — the

first revolution of a new world-historical era of proletarian revolution

and socialism? What if it was, instead, the last (bourgeois) revolution

of 19^(th) century Europe, occurring when and how it did because Russia

was the most backward of the major European countries, and Russian

capital the least capable of asserting an independent political program.

In other words, what if the Russian Revolution of 1917 has no special

significance for our movement then, now, or in the future?

It may seem self-evident that no one should ever have taken Lenin’s

ideas seriously, especially after the collapse of the USSR and the

Communists’ sudden loss of state power there and in its Eastern European

dependencies. After all, if Leninists want to take credit for the

successes of Soviet Russia, they should certainly take responsibility

for its eventual collapse as well. Still, the idea that the central task

of the “Left” is to replicate the Russian Revolution of 1917 continues

to guide almost all “Leftist” formations, even explicitly anti-Leninist

ones. And the dominance of this idea has been — and still is — a huge

obstacle to revolutionary politics, both in the US and internationally.

Anarchists and Russia

Anarchists were disarmed (literally as well as figuratively) by the

Bolshevik victory in Russia. While anarchism as an ideological tendency

had a significant following in Russia, dating back to the 19^(th)

century “Populist” organizations Land and Liberty, People’s Will, and

Black Repartition, and while anarchists played an important role in

organizing the Soviets in both 1905 and 1917, the Russian anarchists

lacked a coherent political program and effective organization. Many

anarchists supported the Bolshevik coup in October 1917, and some

subsequently joined the Bolshevik Party (many of the Workers Opposition

group which Lenin suppressed at the 10^(th) Party Congress in 1921 were

former anarchists). The suppression of the Kronstadt Commune and the

defeat of Nestor Makhno’s forces in the Ukraine (also in 1921) marked

the end of organized anarchist political activity in Soviet Russia.

In exile in Paris in 1926, Makhno and Peter Arshinov analyzed the

reasons for their defeat. In their “Platform” they put forward a

specific program to correct the organizational and political weaknesses

they believed had led to the collapse of anarchism in revolutionary

Russia. Had the “Platform” been taken as a starting point for a new

analysis of anarchist aims and methods, the anarchist movement might

have been able to move forward politically and theoretically even in

spite of the defeat in Russia. However, the “Platform” was almost

immediately rejected by other anarchists, most famously by Errico

Malatesta and Alexander Berkman. Unfortunately for our movement,

Malatesta, Berkman, and the others really failed to address Makhno’s

very concrete analysis. They dismissed the “Platform” out of hand as an

attempt to “Bolshevize” anarchism. Consequently anarchists were left

with nothing better than nostalgia for the soviets of February-October

1917 and the Kronstadt Commune of 1921 — institutions that had already

proved themselves incapable of leading the revolution forward, or even

defending themselves against the Bolsheviks. Worse yet, sentimental

attachment to these institutions became enshrined as an anarchist

“principle.”

Speaking for myself, I’m not interested at all in “principles” that lead

us to defeat. If we’re revolutionaries, our job is to win. And I don’t

care whether the supporters of those “principles” fly a red flag or a

black one. At the same time, I’m also not interested at all in platforms

or programs that speak to an historical moment and political conditions

that are not our own. Rather than endlessly repeating what Makhno said,

it would be much more productive to do what he did — to make a specific

analysis of the actual conditions that we face, and of what we need to

do to move forward under those conditions.

As anarchists, one of our greatest theoretical strengths is that we’re

not compelled by our ideology to try to replicate other people’s

revolutions. The ability to analyze our immediate conditions, to

formulate an action agenda, and to take specific direct action to change

our situation ought to be second nature to us. If it’s not, this is a

weakness in our movement we need to correct. In part, this weakness

comes from the fact that many US anarchists are young, white, and from

middle class backgrounds. What they know about revolution comes from

books, newspapers, and the ideas of others rather than from personal

experience in struggle. This is a weakness that can be overcome if our

young comrades stick around long enough to get some practical

experience, and if we’re all able to analyze our collective experience

in a way that helps us formulate an action agenda based on our own needs

and conditions. To be able to do so, the first thing we need to do is to

forget about Russia, and think about what revolution means in and for

the US.

Class and Race

In other words, we need to learn to speak in our own voice and in a

political language specific to the US. By that I emphatically don’t mean

a nationalist one, or one that romanticizes a history that is in fact

awash in blood, but I emphatically do mean one that speaks to the common

experience of US working people, and not to the experience of the

Bolsheviks or the Kronstadt sailors. This will be a complex — and

painful — task, because the common experience of the multi-racial US

working class includes at least as much mutual suspicion, hostility,

rage, and fratricidal bloodshed as it does struggle in common for common

goals. And this is not just because of “errors” or “misunderstandings”

on the part of working people and their leaders, or of conscious

attempts by the owners of capital to divide the working class along

racial lines — although both have occurred and continue to occur. It’s

because of the historical origins of the US as a white settler state. A

white settler state, moreover, that for the first half of its history

was dominated by slave-owners, and for most of the second half has been

dominated by white supremacists who regretted the defeat of the

slave-owning southern aristocracy in the US Civil War.

Race is the central problem of US history. By saying that, I don’t mean

at all to negate the fundamental importance of class. Class and race

have been so completely intertwined in the historical development of US

capitalism that we can’t deal with either problem separately from the

other. Capital formation in the (colonial era) US depended on the free

labor extorted from African slaves and the free land stolen from Native

Nations. Even in New England, where slavery was never institutionalized

because plantation agriculture was not economically viable, capital

accumulation depended on the institution of slavery. Most of the

Africans transported to plantations in the South were carried in the

holds of Yankee ships out of Boston, Newport, or Providence. And when

these Yankee ships were not bringing African slaves to America, they

were taking the products of slavery — cotton, tobacco, sugar, molasses —

to markets in Europe.

The westward expansion of the US (and also of the institution of

slavery) which resulted in the extermination of indigenous peoples and

the dismemberment of Mexico, resulted also in a kind of “social safety

valve” that allowed capital to accommodate (in part) the demands of a

surplus population of white workers and successive waves of European

immigrants. Remember that Thomas Jefferson, who acquired the Louisiana

Purchase and sent Lewis and Clark to explore trade routes and settlement

opportunities in the west, was terrified of the landless workers of the

northeast and convinced that only universal land ownership could

guarantee social peace in the US. And where would the land come from, if

not from the Native Nations of the west? The bankers and merchants of

New England and the slave-owning aristocrats of the south said to the

lower classes “Don’t take our land and our gold. Go west and take land

and gold from the Indians. Oh, and by the way, send the gold back east

for deposit in our banks.” (Jefferson sometimes described the

institution of slavery as a “moral evil.” Nevertheless, he was

economically dependent on the labor of his own slaves, and he was firmly

convinced that Africans were his social and intellectual inferiors, and

needed to be ruled by white people.) Remember also that Andrew Jackson

of Tennessee, the first US President who lived outside the original 13

States and the political heir of “Jeffersonian democracy” as the

presidential candidate of western small farmers and traders, was both a

slave-owner and a notorious “Indian-killer.”

The defeat of the southern aristocracy in the US Civil War, and the

defeat of Reconstruction less than 20 years later left African Americans

free, but on the most disadvantageous terms — without land, without

access to political power, and without the protection of federal troops

to guarantee enforcement of the 14^(th) and 15^(th) Amendments. Both US

political parties played out cynical race politics in a way that pitted

the lowest strata of workers against one another — the Republicans

posing as pro-Black and anti-Irish, the Democrats pro-Irish and

anti-Black, both of them anti-Chinese — to the benefit of US capital.

Under the circumstances, the growth of the organized labor movement in

the late 19^(th) and early 20^(th) century could only benefit white

workers, and only the most privileged of them — the most skilled and the

native-born. Even CIO unions (the “Left” wing of the labor movement in

the 1930s) accepted the idea of unequal pay scales for white workers and

workers of color. While the IWW (the Industrial Workers of the World, a

union influenced by anarchist ideas) did promote racial equality, their

views mostly reflected a straight-up syndicalism and they did not

develop any analysis of race or a specific program to combat racism in

the US working class.

My grandparents came to the US from Greece in 1923. Possibly they never

even realized that slavery and genocide against indigenous peoples ever

happened. After all, they arrived here barely able to read Greek, much

less English, and the English language skills they acquired were

intended for practical matters like finding work and buying food, not

for studying history. (Their children, my parents, would go to school

here and study a sanitized version of US history that glorified the

“founding fathers,” capitalism, and white protestant culture.) Still, my

grandparents — like the other European immigrants — chose to come here

(as opposed to some other country) exactly because of the immense social

wealth created in large part by the labor of African slaves, and the

opportunity to settle and buy property in a huge country taken by force

from the indigenous peoples. And although they were ordinary working

people, and they were exploited by the owners of capital, they were

still exploited under much better conditions than they would have been

in Greece, or than working people of color would be even in the US.

All of this tended to work against the development of any sense of class

solidarity — let alone revolutionary class consciousness — and impeded

the growth of revolutionary organizations. It contributed to the myth

that the US is a “middle class” country without the social antagonisms

that characterized Europe or pre-revolutionary Russia. Of course this

was a self-serving myth promoted by the owners of capital, but even when

events like the Crash of 1929 and the global Depression which followed

seemed to reveal the true nature of capitalism, this myth (and the

pervasive racism which it partially concealed) retained enough

credibility among some sections of the US working class to remain a real

obstacle to revolutionary politics.

The “Left” and Race

Obviously, this is just a sketch of some aspects of US history, showing

how class and race have tended to play themselves out in the past. Just

as obviously, I’m writing now mainly to other white Leftists — nothing

I’ve said here should be news to people of color who’ve directly

experienced the historical circumstances I’m just sketching out for

others. But if we white Leftists are going to move forward along with

our friends and comrades from communities of color, we need to think and

talk to one another about what this history means for us.

US capitalism is inconceivable without white supremacy. Therefore class

struggle in the US is inconceivable without struggle against white

supremacy. Anti-racist organizing strikes at the heart of US capitalism,

even if it’s not explicitly anti-capitalist. Anti-capitalist organizing,

on the other hand, will always fall short if it’s not explicitly

anti-racist.

Class struggle in the US is inconceivable without struggle against white

supremacy, and yet the dominant tendencies on the “Left” — both Leninist

and anti-Leninist — have historically been white supremacist in fact if

not in intention. How many times have white “Leftists” called a meeting

to begin an organizing project, and then looked around at a room full of

white faces and said “Why don’t people of color want to work with us?”

But a more pertinent question might be “Why would they want to work with

us?” given the sorry history of the US “Left” and given that a lot of us

still want to talk to them about Russia and the soviets rather than how

to overcome the dead weight of racism in the US. Not that the US “Left”

was ever explicitly racist. On the contrary, all US “Leftist” formations

have developed critiques of racism. In fact, that’s been part of the

problem. Most of these “Leftist” critiques of racism have been based in

large part on theoretical categories derived from the experience of

revolutionary Russia. First time tragedy, second time farce, as Marx

said.

This was not only because the leadership of so many of these “Left”

formations was — and still is — white. Where white people were in

leadership of these organizations, they adopted a particularly

patronizing attitude towards communities of color. Because there are

more white workers in the US than working people of color, and because

people of color tend to be concentrated in agriculture or unskilled (and

therefore low-pay) domestic and/or service occupations as opposed to

manufacturing industries — which are supposed to be the strategically

crucial sectors for proletarian revolution — many “Left” formations

didn’t even want to talk about race much less promote anti-racist

politics. The whole history of struggle by people of color against US

capital, which began even before there was a US, and which continues to

this day, tended to be dismissed as secondary to “workers’ struggles.”

As if people of color did not work? Even when the Black Liberation

Movement in the 60s gave rise to a number of revolutionary organizations

led by people of color and inspired by the revolutions in China, Cuba,

and Vietnam, the US Left as a whole (and particularly the white “Left”

at that time) was never able to free itself from the ideological

straight jacket of Leninism and the “workerist” model inherited from

Russia.

Leninists might claim to be “dialectical and historical materialists”

but when dealing with the specific conditions of struggle in the US they

have been uncompromising idealists (in the philosophical sense that they

identify their own ideas as real reality).

I’m not going to repeat the mistakes of the past and try to outline what

their political agenda and demands of communities of color ought to be.

That’s up to my comrades in those communities. If we white Leftists want

to eliminate the institutions of white supremacy, as we say we do, the

first thing we need to do is to stop claiming to be supreme. That means

(among other things) to stop talking and acting as if our own

experiences, our own programs, and the history of the European

revolutionary movement — which is our inheritance as white Leftists —

are the only things that matter.

We’ve all encountered people who can (and will!) tell you word for word

what Lenin wrote to Plekhanov in 1902, or what Stalin did at the 16^(th)

Party Congress in 1929, or what Trotsky had for dinner on October

23^(rd) 1932, but if you talk to them about John Brown or Thad Stevens,

about General Baker or Reies Lopez Tijerina, their eyes glaze over and

they don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. This indicates a

highly intellectualized and abstract political movement, cut off from

its historical roots in the actual struggles of US working people — and

cut off from any possibility of organizing real working people for real

change in power relations. (And by the way, it’s no better to be able to

recite what Malatesta said to Makhno, or what Emma Goldman liked with

her tea.)

(In subsequent issues of “The A Word,” I’ll continue this article, and

talk more about the goals, methods, strategy and tactics of revolution

in the US, and about the global struggle against US capital.)

How to Burn Out and Fuck Everything Up by Brady McGarry

A reflection on three years of being radical, and still not knowing

everything

Living My Life

It all started with the WTO protests. Or, at least that’s what I

thought. In reality, it started long before those fateful days in late

November of 1999. For me, it started with my childhood. I inherited a

vague yet firm Feminism from my Mom. She raised my sister and I almost

exclusively, and that instilled some very clear lessons in me. She

suffered a lot because she was a single mother, but she persevered and

did an amazing job. I remember this one time going to the car dealership

with her, on her request, so the guy wouldn’t try and scam her. She

thought if another male was there, she wouldn’t get ripped off. I think

that was the first time I was an official ally to a woman.

I grew up pretty typically. My parents divorced when I was seven years

old, and my Mom couldn’t afford the mortgage on the house, so we moved

to a small, at that point still developing suburb 15 miles north of

Seattle. The house we moved to, the one she still lives in, cost $90,000

at the time. Since then, the entire area has skyrocketed in value,

coming with it a plethora of strip malls and fast food restaurants.

Although I would consider myself solidly middle class, perhaps lower

middle class on a bad day, not all my friends growing up were as

fortunate. I used to envy my friends who lived at the trailer park,

because they lived so close to their friends. That was the first time I

saw a poor community up close and personal.

Spark to the Flame

In the Summer after my Freshman year, I found myself in the Emergency

Room with Alcohol poisoning. I remember vividly looking up at the

ceiling and wondering “What the fuck happened to my life?” I later found

out that I had a BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) of 30%. I had

consumed about 25 shots of vodka. I luckily realized the stakes, and

decided not to gamble. The deep despair and pain I felt after that

experience, and almost dying was definitely “hitting bottom” for me. I

got into AA and checked into Drug and Alcohol treatment. It was by far

the hardest thing I have ever done. Climbing back up out of that ditch,

and trying to stay sober, at age 16 is something I can’t really explain.

I grew up pretty quickly after that. I slowly but surely got my life

back together, and began to try and be “normal.”

Most of my life has been like that — just on the edge, but not quite

falling. Always at the extreme and never in the middle. If I found

something I liked, I not only ran with it — I sprinted. Anything from

comic books to card games, from sports to girls. I was always on the

move.

My junior year of High School was 1999. The year of the now famous WTO

protests in Seattle. On November 30, I was watching TV, and my friends

and I were all shocked by what we saw. Police fighting with kids our

age, and thousands of people in the street. We all rushed downtown and

actively participated in the festivities. Within 10 minutes of being

downtown, I saw Niketown’s windows get smashed, a hippy white guy get

socked in the face for yelling at a black kid who was engaging in more

“outgoing” activities which all culminated together turned out to be the

most significant and influential moments of my life.

I was exposed to a culture of people that were not only disillusioned

with the system, but were (seemingly) determined to do something about

it. I instantly loved it. I had no idea that other people felt the same

way I did about everything. I felt like I had finally found my niche.

Narcissistic Wounding

After the N30 Anniversary demonstration a year later, I reunited with my

childhood friend Emily, who was doing organizing at the community

college. I officially began to identify as part of “the movement.” I got

involved tabling, passing out flyers, and even organizing a few

demonstrations at the GAP store downtown. I didn’t even know what I was

doing at the time. I knew I was trying to “make a difference” and

“change the world”, but beyond that, I didn’t know I didn’t know much

else. My attendance at AA began to dwindle, and eventually faded to

zero. I began to be a full time professional student activist. Doing

nothing but activism at my campus. I stopped hanging out with my

“non-political” friends as I referred to them.

For the next two years I lived, breathed, ate and slept activism. My

mental and physical health were rarely taken into consideration, much

less how the work I was doing was actually going to lead to societal

change. I don’t blame myself entirely, as I was new to things. I just

knew deep down that things were fucked up, and I “had to do something.”

The only problem was that the “something” wasn’t very well defined.

After September 11^(th), I dove even deeper into politics and student

activism. I had problems holding jobs because I was so obsessed with

politics, and would debate all my co-workers, and usually cause a scene.

In the Spring of 2002, a few friends and I started planning a massive

and “militant” demonstration against the IMF and World Bank. We

organized a large solidarity protest with a national demonstration

simultaneously in Washington, DC. Months of endless work coalesced in a

big street party, where a 25 foot tripod was erected. There were arrests

and police beatings of my friends, but I was untouched. After the event,

accusations of sexism and reports of hurt feelings came my way. I never

dealt with it, as I was “too busy” and “too important” to deal with

“stupid shit” like that. I thoroughly disrespected and hurt my female

comrades during that process by not listening to what they had to say.

After that, I moved into a collective house, and was now even more

immersed in radical culture. It was literally a part of almost every

aspect of my daily life. I loved it. Since all my housemates were into

politics (at least in theory), they could now be debated 24 hours a day,

with small breaks for sleeping and eating. During that time, I was

exposed to anti-racist work through my friend Vanessa. It was a

completely new set of ideas to me. The groups she worked with focused on

localized organizing, local issues, and emphasized fighting for concrete

and clear goals at home. This was a stark difference to the political

work I was used to, which usually involved vague and unclear goals, if

any goals at all. Most of the issues I had worked on involved injustice

in other places in the world, never at home. I didn’t even know that

there were organizations doing localized community organizing.

Short Stories With Tragic Endings

In late 2002, President Bush started publicly planning on bombing Iraq

(again). I immediately threw myself into a fever pitch of enthusiasm,

and an unsustainable workload. I started to organize against the

potential War in Iraq. I started to sleep less, and work even more. Most

of my relationships that didn’t immediately involve the political work I

was doing began to suffer. I burned a lot bridges, in and out of

politics, simply because I valued “the work” more than I valued my

comrades. I was one of the main organizers of the N30 protest of that

year, and my workaholism and sexism had reached new heights. Although

there were attempts at trying to reconcile some hurt after that

experience, it fell apart. I once again was not accountable for my

behavior, and for the second time hurt numerous female comrades with my

behavior. A person that was involved with the big protest that garnered

myself with prominence in the activist community the Spring before, had

just been victim to more ego-inflating counter-productive organizing

from me. During the entire N30 organizing drive, many women in my

community stepped up and supported the women who took shit from me (and

the other men involved), and they were the only reason the project

didn’t self-destruct.

As the War with Iraq loomed closer, my insistence that work needed to be

done “right fucking now” intensified. I worked tirelessly on one-off

demonstrations and actions, desperate for attention and effectiveness. I

began to feel powerless as an organizer, and began to publicly argue

that more militant tactics needed to be implemented in our movement if

we were ever going to succeed. My life began to spiral even more out of

control.

In the Spring of 2003, organizing against a Law Enforcement Intelligence

conference began, and myself and a few others spearheaded the effort.

Even more of my relationships began to suffer. I was beginning to be

very out of control. The main romantic relationship I was in started to

suffer, and I neglected the person entirely. As that relationship

starting to go down the toilet, I threw myself into a new one. My

workaholism continued, and most of my housemates began to openly call me

out on unaccountable behavior almost daily. My housemates organized

meetings to discuss conflicts in the house that I was usually at the

center of.

I kept telling myself I needed to “take a break”, and promised myself

that after this demo was done, I would “calm down.” The demonstration

went off much different than envisioned, and luckily no one got

seriously hurt. I looked around at the white anarchists I knew, and

began to realize just how stupid the whole thing was. White people’s

Racism and militant rhetoric had ruined any chances of effective action

against the Conference, and I started to seriously reflect on my

effectiveness as an organizer. The period of reflection didn’t last long

though, because I was gearing up for a two month road trip. I told

myself that I would process and reflect on the trip. What was planned as

a vacation, and a break, ended up being the breaking point. My main

romantic relationship was disintegrating, but I insisted on trying to

“work it out” even though I was being treated worse by the day.

The trip ended up an utter and complete disaster. I withstood abuse of

all kinds. Here is a big announcement I am making for the first time

publicly: I was sexually assaulted/raped (I still don’t know what word

is accurate for me) on the trip. Recovering from trauma like that is an

intense experience to say the least. When concretely dealt with, trauma

attacks the very fabric of your psyche, and makes it almost impossible

to function. I survived, and the nightmare trip-from-hell finally ended

with me being ditched and left alone at a truck stop in New Jersey by my

“partner.” Walking up Route 1 North, alone at 3am, I once again thought

to myself: “What the fuck happened to my life?”

Looking to the Future

My experience these last three years has been hectic and insane. Anyone

that knows me can vouch for that. This piece isn’t a total condemnation

of me or my behavior. It’s a reflection of my experience, no more — no

less. Much of the last three years I wouldn’t change for a million

dollars. I will cherish the memories of staying up all night chain

smoking with my friends. Making political banners until 5am. Sneaking

around places we weren’t supposed to be. Whispering softly into a

beautiful girl’s ear. Those are important moments. The point is that I

need to learn from my past. I did a lot right too, and it’s important to

acknowledge that as well as all the things I would change.

This is perhaps an extreme example of “burning out”, but the point is

clear. We all have issues, we all are far from perfect, and we all need

to work on our emotional health. This is far from a complete

autobiography, or an entire list of bad/good shit I have done. I wanted

to, without concern for my ego or reputation, be open and clear about my

thoughts and feelings regarding my experience here in Seattle. I owe

that to people I have fucked over, as well as myself. I left a lot of

examples out that probably should be in here. But this isn’t about my

regrets, it’s about moving on. An important part of political work for

me is self-critique, and this was just a more public version of that. I

hope you took something from my experience, and can apply it to your own

life.

I always heard about activists “burning out”, but I never thought it

could happen to me. I did make it longer than the usual two year

hallmark, but that’s not much of an accomplishment, considering the wake

I left behind me. As a mentor of mine told me once: “This is going to be

a long war, don’t think you have to do it all at once, or all by

yourself.” I am trying to figure out a sustainable workload of

organizing for myself. I, like many other white activists do, harbored

an extremely unrealistic and ultimately counter-productive sense of

urgency. Instead of making the revolution come quicker, it killed my

spirit, and the spirit of those around me. We need to be acknowledging

that this is a lifelong struggle. Build community while making

revolution in the streets. Have fun, laugh. It’s not

counter-revolutionary, I promise. Don’t take on too much work for

yourself. You might think you are the only one who can do the work — but

don’t flatter yourself. If you are overworking yourself, then that means

you probably aren’t building leadership within people who aren’t as

experienced as you. And what is organizing if you aren’t helping to

instill confidence in those who could learn from you? Slow down, think

strategically about the future, and then do the work.

Thank you to all those who put up with me, nurtured me, or otherwise

helped me through tough shit. I look forward to a vibrant future

fighting this system. A special thanks goes to Emily for loving me so

honestly and true. You know I got your back. “DON’T FUCK WITH THE

INTERLAKEN BLOC.”

The Education Trap by Curtis Brown

I was excited. This speaker was talking to a room full of 40 year old

liberals, basically calling George Bush Hitler. He wasn’t talking about

the need for “justice” or “peace” or denouncing Bush for lying — he was

throwing out some scary as hell stuff. The guy had obviously done his

research and he had pretty solid evidence that Bush’s regime had a good

idea that 9/11 was going to happen before it did. Just as his speech was

reaching it’s climax, everyone in the room seething with emotion, he

pulled out an AK-47 and screamed “LET’S RUN UP ON THIS MOTHERFUCKER

TONIGHT! AHHH!!!”

Well, at least that’s what I was hoping he’d do. For someone that had

convictions in what they were saying, that would seem like a more

sensible reaction than what he actually did; after speaking in a dead

pan about the most serious issues imaginable for at least half an hour

to this crowd, he recommended that 300 people stand on street corners

with signs and tell people that walk by that Bush lied about 9/11. Once

enough people are educated, as the theory goes, there will be a critical

mass of dissent and the current order will, for some unexplained reason,

not be able to continue. While imagining launching a full-out AK-47

assault on the government may be merely wishful thinking at the present

moment, at least it would get results if it had popular support in its

favor. But this fantasy that we need only to learn and teach to get free

seems to have little grounding in reality. It’s an idea I like to call

“The Education Trap”.

A Question of Tactics

It seems like no matter what group, cause, or movement you’re involved

with, you will be very likely to hear that education, perhaps of “the

masses,” perhaps of “the community,” is of utmost importance in your

campaign. Of course, there’s no way anyone could contest this. Many

people have a feeling that something is wrong in the world but don’t

have the words or ideas to understand the root causes — without an

understanding of a problem you can’t start to fight it. Many people get

involved with social justice movements because someone bothered to write

an essay, copy some literature, or most often, just sit down and talk

with them, myself included. But I’ve seen many different groups,

liberals and radicals alike, misunderstanding the importance of

education. It’s not that people don’t have faith in education. Quite the

opposite — people have put all of their faith into it.

This kind of wishful thinking manifests itself in many ways. One recent

example is the protest put on by the liberal anti-war group Not In Our

Name (NION) in Seattle on October 5^(th). When I first heard about this

protest I asked someone involved in the organizing what the purpose of

the protest was, what specific demands they were making. She told me

that it was a protest to call for an end to harassment of immigrants,

taking civil rights away under the guise of security, an end to the

occupation of Iraq by the US and an end to the occupation of Palestine

by Israel. “Whew!,” I thought, “That’s quite a list of demands!” I asked

what exactly they hoped to accomplish by coming out to march and rally.

Her reply was that it was more of a symbolic thing, meant more to raise

awareness (educate) than to petition for any particular change. This

kind of thinking is pervasive in social justice work, especially that

done by groups of privileged individuals. Again, you see the idea that

if enough people are educated about a problem it will either just

disappear or people will spontaneously overthrow the American

government. If you think about it in the context of recent protests, it

doesn’t make any sense to do an action of this nature. The worldwide

rally on February 15^(th) in which millions and millions of people

opposed the war on Iraq specifically didn’t work — good ol’ Bush Jr.

simply said “I respectfully disagree,” effectively giving the finger to

the huge masses of people around the world. If marching in the streets

proved ineffective in eliciting even more than a sentence from Bush, why

would anyone want to attempt it again, but with 4 times the number of

demands and with less than 1% of the people? This is a question that had

it been asked in the planning of such an event may have funneled

valuable time and resources to more concrete projects.

Another example is the highly limited tactics espoused by various

individuals under the CrimethInc banner. Many young, white, class

privileged CrimethIncers spread propaganda almost exclusively as a means

for change. Examples of the bulk of CrimethInc’s repertoire can be found

in their DIY Guides, and include such fun tricks as making stencils,

wheatpasting, and silk-screening. How do these arts and crafts

activities relate to revolution? Well, it seems that once enough of

these shenanigans take place and enough punk bands are formed, people

will obviously begin to realize that the petit bourgeois lifestyle is a

pathetic replacement for an authentic existence and will then

spontaneously identify and rise up against their common oppressors. Or,

to quote one CrimethInc publication: “Our project is to push you over

the imaginary lines and out of the (self-constructed and self-decorated)

cages of this society.” Hmm. Interesting. I’m not saying that marching

in the street never does anything, or that wheatpasting fliers has no

place in organizing for social justice, or that people shouldn’t sing

their hearts out in a punk band — as far as I am concerned, when it

comes to tactics anything goes, whether it be taking up arms or writing

to your senators. But there’s a right place and a right time for

everything. For example, when the Martin Lurther King Jr. and the SNCC

started marching in the streets during the Civil Rights movement it was

a radical and effective act — black people congregating in the streets

in Alabama in 1968 means a whole lot more than white people marching

around in Seattle in 2003.

One main reason I see for this coming up is that for many politically

active people (most especially middle/upper class white people),

everything we learned was learned out of a book. I know when I was

growing up and first began finding out about all the injustice in the

world, I always wondered “Why do people always talk about all the

problems in the world? Why isn’t there a book on what to do about all

this?”. This is a question that I struggled with for a long time,

reading more and more books to hopefully find an answer. It took a while

to realize that the answer isn’t in a book, and that I’d have to sit

down and take on problems of my size rather than try to focusing on

giant scale things like “capitalism” and “the state”.

This kind of intellectualizing makes us ineffective in our work.

Organizing means creating something relevant to your unique time and

place. Simply repeating actions that have worked in the past shows a

lack of understanding of the current conditions, and confuses tactics

for a strategy.

At Least They’re Doing Something!

Oftentimes I will hear “so what’s the problem? — at least the liberals

and the punks and the intellectuals are doing something!” And I would

say that that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing:

they’ve got good intentions. They could just be off somewhere gambling

or browsing an Ikea catalog. But it’s also a bad thing: they’re just

doing something. Not the thing that will work specifically in the

current historical conditions. It’s like saying “Man, I really think the

war in Iraq sucks.” I do too — but merely recognizing there’s a problem

is not the same as recognizing a good solution. If we’re really down to

make a change happen, there’s going to be some level of discomfort that

comes from honest self critique, and there’s going to be hard work to do

after we evaluate where we’re at. Or we can just do “something” and hope

that our efforts will eventually add up to a Revolution. Personally, I

don’t trust that anything less than a combination of analysis and

practice (aka “praxis”) will get us to the big R. The yield of activist

work not informed by an analysis of current social conditions is slight.

So why do people continue to fall into this trap? Lots of reasons: they

feel less guilty if they just do something whether it’s effective or

not, it makes them feel better than people that aren’t doing something,

it puts responsibility on others to make actions happen, they just don’t

know a better way to do things — when you get right down to it though,

the only thing that’s important to understand is that random shots at

victory will find few victories and without victories people get

demoralized and go home.

When’s the Last Time You Read Z Magazine Cover to Cover?

When then is education an appropriate and effective tactic? Simply put:

When people can relate to it. When people relate to what you’re saying

they have a reason to get involved. Too often anarchists/activists talk

at people instead of talking with them. Rather than engage in a

discussion about what people in our communities care about, we are

telling them what they should care about. This is where many people

reach a stumbling block in activist/anarchist communities — they are

many times so enveloped in their own small world that they do not know

what problems oppressed people around them are facing. To do any kind of

work well, we need to know what’s going on right now where we live, even

if that means picking up a mainstream newspaper every now and then. Or

better yet having real human relations with people around you!

For instance, if you’re at work and you’re trying to talk to people

about water being privatized in third world countries while a thousand

jobs within your company just got shipped to Mexico, people might not

care what you have to say about free trade. But they would care about

free trade if you show them that it is effecting them in a very concrete

way. Political education doesn’t always have to start from pure self

interest...but that’s when it will have the most impact. When people can

feel how the issue relates to them, they will be much more serious and

passionate about fighting and winning struggles. History confirms that

the largest struggles in recent history — civil rights, feminism,

nationalist groups — were all movements whose membership was mainly

comprised of those affected by the problems they sought to end.

It’s unrealistic to expect people to want to know everything about every

country’s situations. Honestly, when’s the last time you read Z Magazine

cover to cover? It’s hard. Chechnya, Iraq, Bolivia, animals living and

dying in factory farms, people being murdered and tortured — it’s hard

to deal with this stuff when it’s not right in your face. In terms of

mental health, it’s much easier to just forget about it. And while some

people get some satisfaction by reading up on every bad situation in the

world, it’s not something most people enjoy doing. Why would you want

to? It’s hard stuff to confront when you don’t feel powerful enough to

stop any of it.

Service, Advocacy, and Power: Educating for Action

This is another major point that activists often fail to address when

doing “education” work — is there anything we can do about it? Even if

you can relate to people, and you can get them interested in learning

more about the problem, you still have to address the matter of the huge

struggle it will take to get ourselves free. The point when the

organizer makes the pitch for their social change group is where most

people decide not to get involved.

There are three different kinds of social change organizations —

service, advocacy, and power. Service groups are things like soup

kitchens and shelters — they make no effort whatsoever to change the

power dynamics. In fact, they serve to enforce the power relations (poor

people wouldn’t have any food if it weren’t for the service groups of

people with resources).

Advocacy groups are one step better when it comes to making meaningful

change — groups such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations

for Reform Now) are a good example of this. While they may work for

meaningful change, they are still primarily composed of organizers (paid

organizers, in the case of ACORN) that are oftentimes not people

directly affected by the problems. Groups in this category are also

sometimes characterized by meeting new problems as they arise rather

than taking an offensive posture.

This is where power comes into play. Power building organizations are

groups most often made up of people directly under the gun of

oppression, working to take power away from the people who are abusing

it. For instance, a union (or a good one, at least) is a power

organization — workers gather together to seize power, bit by bit, from

the boss who rules over their lives. Another good example of power

building organizations is OCAP (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty). It

should be obvious why this kind of work is most suited to us anarchists,

and is what will most inspire people to actually get involved!

People that have had to face any kind of oppression have good bullshit

detectors, much more than most activists. That’s the reason more people

aren’t involved in SNOW, CrimethInc, or the groups I mentioned earlier —

they have enough connection with the real world to still know that spray

painting walls won’t change who’s in control of the world or anything

else, but it will put you at risk of getting arrested. Why not just

drink beer if you want a rush? Normal people know that candlelight

vigils don’t change a damn thing because politicians and bosses don’t

really listen to the people. Why bother standing outside getting all

cold when the people who are in control aren’t even gonna listen to you?

This kind of innate knowledge often seems to be filtered out in the

process of entering activist circles. And this is why we need to come to

the table with something real, something more than words and ideas.

LET’S RUN UP ON THIS MOTHERFUCKER TONIGHT!

I hope that it is glaringly apparent why advocating education and

propaganda to the exclusion of almost any other tactics is doomed to

failure. This practice rests on either the assumption that those in

power are listening to the voice of the people rather than trying to

dictate it, or that people will miraculously rise up simply from

learning an injustice exists. Either assumption is naïve and a dead end

road.

Saul Alinsky espoused the idea that it is the organizer’s first and

foremost job to sow the seeds of discontent — then when there is enough

discontent it’s time to organize. Without this second aspect to our

work, the first is useless (as if you could even call it work without

the second). We need to remember that everything we do should be aimed

at winning victories and building a revolutionary movement. This sounds

cliché, but it’s easily forgotten that revolution isn’t something that

just happens, or only took place in other countries long ago — it’s

something that is slowly and steadily built by people.

It’s for this reason that when doing educational work, we need to be

conscious of our goals from the start, not just hoping that something

will come out of it at some point down the line. We have no way of

evaluating whether or not that kind of scattershot approach is

successful. Educational work should not only explain the problems people

face, but also show that there’s a vibrant and important fight going on

— a fight that anyone can get involved in, and most importantly, a fight

that can be won.

Of course, simply having good propaganda rather than shoddily thrown

together propaganda does not make a revolution! We can’t bullshit about

there being a vibrant and important fight if we’re not in the midst of

one already or aren’t willing to start one. And we sure as hell

shouldn’t talk about it being a fight people can get involved in and win

if there’s not a real chance of that happening. This is our challenge as

anarchists and as organizers — to step up to the plate and agitate the

situations, build the organizations, and fight the struggles that we so

often expect everyone else to.

Would You Shoplift “Days of War, Nights of Love”? by Butch Lee

“What ‘insurance’ could you buy that would keep you safer than living in

a world where people actually cared for each other?” (page 260)

Get the uzi!

Some MAN i’d never met before handed this book to me at a meeting, and

mumbled something about reviewing it. Lucky wimmin get to review six

course dinners or new CDs, but i get to review a fucking polish sausage.

Which is to say i’d rather be talking about women’s armed struggle

against men & their insane and inane cultures. But there it is. And then

again, i’m something of a maoista.

Let’s get to the point. There’s bitching about this book, but no airline

ticket is good for all times and all places. There is no all-day sucker,

only suckers. The subtitle on this book is “Crimethink for Beginners”

and that’s just what it is. So if you know someone young trapped in the

suburban box, this is pages that might get them to see life from a

different doorway. If you know someone young and suburban who has heard

the word “anarchism” but knows nothing else about anything, lay this on

them. “Days of Blah, Nights of Barf” is for beginners. An introduction

that’s not too heavy and might be a gust of fresh air. Maybe they’ll get

a subversive laugh, a hint of rebellious spirit, maybe a seed planted in

their mind.

And “Days” is real easy to slide into, since it’s not really a long

book. It’s like fifteen short essays on breaking with boring, regimented

capitalist life. There’s tons of pictures, funny sarcastic cartoons,

little boxed examples of this or that from what some rebels actually

did. And you don’t even have to take it that reverentially (it isn’t as

though the authors were doing something real, like fixing the brakes on

your truck). Start reading it anywhere, skip pages, go backwards, don’t

worry, it’s all the same. The CrimethInc people who put this together

really designed a clever “book”, that’s a contrast to the usual thick

books loaded with information that we’re supposed to learn from. Here

there’s almost nothing to learn, which is so liberating.

To me, the thing I like best about “Days” is that it brings out how

barren the life of the spectator is. It challenges the spectatorism, the

viewerism of passive virtual life in middle class capitalism. With its

passive anti-sports (ten chemical-saturated dicks play, ten million

overweight dicks sit and watch) and video game “challenges” and

televised “relationships”. At its best, “Days” is provocative and

thought-provoking, happily starting trouble for straight, middle class

goal-seeking suburban youth.

“Whatever each [of] us may be looking for, we all tend to pursue our

desires by purchasing images: symbols of the things we desire. We buy

leather jackets when we want rebellion and danger...When we want to live

in a different world, we buy political pamphlets and bumper stickers.

Somehow we assume that having all the right accessories will get us the

perfect lives. And as we construct our lives, we tend to do it according

to an image, a pattern that has been laid out for us...At our jobs, we

exchange our time, energy, and creativity for the ability to buy these

symbols...Rather than satisfying our needs, these products multiply

them: for to get them, we must sell our lives away.”

What I dislike most about the book is that as a woman, as a

trans-person, there’s no ability in it to fight back against being

obliterated. It’s as though they’re saying that if you just switch your

little mind to a different mental station then you can be free and

running. That’s just bullshit. In fact, that’s just the empty pursuit of

symbols and images that they put down. You can’t be free in a world that

isn’t free, and we have the fucking scars from the mine fields to prove

it. Though they don’t say it, these aren’t new ideas in their book.

Mined out of seventy year old dada and surrealism, but could dada defeat

the nazis? Here’s some free advice: Let someone else test that — don’t

you bet your life on it.

You can see what I mean by checking out their heavy advocacy of

shoplifting. “Days” really blasts off on this: “...shoplifting makes me

feel liberated and empowered”. Or “Everything changes when I shoplift.”

Or “Shoplifting says NO to all the objectionable features that have come

to characterize the modern corporation.” And on and on. Dumpster diving

is also a big deal in the CrimethInc ideology. I think only

superprivileged people talk this phony way, folks sitting on top of the

rest of the human race but playing at being someone else.

Hey, we should entertain the really revolutionary far-out daring novel

idea of...shoplifting? Hel-lo! Earth to CrimethInc! Wake up! Any of you

ever worked for a living at a store? Oh, I forgot, working is giving in

to the corporations. Well, then, let me tell you the news that in real

life millions and millions of Americans of every class, age, race and

genders are shoplifting like mad weasels. It’s the fucking national

sport. My roomate once had a richass white grandmother stuff a baby

carriage with a baby in it full of shit and race full speed out the

store shouting, “If you try and stop us and my baby granddaughter is

injured we’ll sue you!” Hostage shoplifting.

And you think the oppressed should shoplift what they need? Oh, they’ll

really appreciate your teaching them, kemosabi. Hey, ever been in an

inner city corner store with its bulletproof plexiglass inner walls,

where you point out the canned soup or soap you want and the clerk hands

it out to you through the revolving tray — after you slide your money

in? The oppressed have been shoplifting and stealing and ripping since

long before any of you were conceived of. And guess what, they aren’t

“liberated” or “empowered” yet.

Talk of subverting the system is cheap, but other people are being run

over by the reality of it. The families who literally live their entire

lives in the giant garbage dumps in the Philippines, living off of

sifting for the scraps of cloth, metal, bottles or food, they’re the

pros at dumpster diving and the white people here who do it are just

posers at worst and amateurs at best. But those Filipino families aren’t

“subverting the system” at all, they’re just struggling to survive. Life

isn’t a spectator game for most wimmin in the world. It’s all too real —

AIDS, malaria, rape, being really sick and still having to labor twelve

hours a day on your feet. Dying young knowing that no one is going to

take care of your kids. Sometimes this book is itself a spectator sport,

privileged folks having the thrill of playing at life. As that possum

said, “We have met the enemy, and they is us.”

Revolution, Sustainability, and Civilization: Exclusive Interview

With Derrick Jensen by the Lore Axe

Lore Axe: What do you believe are the origins of hate and oppression in

our culture?

Derrick Jensen: We can take that from a number of different directions.

One direction I took in A Language Older than Words was that we have an

entire culture suffering from, what Judith Herman would call, complex

post traumatic stress disorder. In a nutshell the entire culture has

been traumatized through the violence that manifests through its child

rearing and educational practices, as well as through killing the

planet. We are so traumatized that we are too terrified to enter

relationships.

I examined another level of what could be an origin in The Culture of

Make Believe, which is if a culture is based on competition, it will

lead inevitably to hatred and atrocity. If you believe you need to out

compete everyone, that the natural world is red in tooth and claw, and

basically the meanest survive, then you are going to be mean.

Another level, which will be in a book I am going to write, takes a

different direction, one informed by Jack Forbes’ book Columbus and

Other Cannibals. He believes that the nature of the problem is a

spiritual illness with a physical vector. It’s not a metaphor. It’s a

real thing where, if I get the flu and I cough, the little aerosols go

through the air and you inspire them, then you could end up with the

symptoms of the flu: cough, fever, upset stomach, and chills. If I have

the cannibal sickness when I cough and you inspire it, you could end up

needing to consume the souls of others and become a capitalist. It’s a

very contagious disease and I’m going to explore that possibility in a

book down the road.

The problems of our culture originate in civilization. In a book I’m

currently working on, I realized I’ve been bashing civilization for many

years, and finally decided I better define it. The short definition is

the one Stanley Diamond gave, which is that “civilization originates in

conquest abroad and repression at home.” I define civilization as a way

of life characterized by the growth of cities. I define a city as a

collective of people living in numbers large enough to require the

importation of resources. This means the people who lived in Tu’nes, the

Tolowa name for the place I live which is now called Crescent City

California, were not civilized. They didn’t live in a city; they lived

in villages or camps and they didn’t require the importation of

resources. They lived on the salmon, deer, elk, huckleberries, clams,

salal, salmon, lampreys, salmon and salmon.

Two things happen when you require the importation of resources. One is

that your way of living is not and can never be sustainable. Because you

require the importation of resources you are using more resources than

the place has. That means you have denuded that area and as your city

grows you will denude a larger and larger area and for obvious reasons

that can never be sustainable.

Although in this culture it’s not so obvious and we can’t take this for

granted. We are made so stupid by our denial and enculturation that we

believe the stupid notion that natural selection — presuming it exists —

is based on competition and the way to survive is to out compete all

your neighbors. The reason we can show that’s bullshit is in two

sentences. Those creatures that survive in the long run, survive in the

long run. You don’t survive in the long run by hyper-exploiting or

damaging your surroundings; you survive in the long run by actually

improving your surroundings. So if you take more than you give back,

then it doesn’t take a rocket scientist — it takes anybody but a rocket

scientist — to figure out that way of living won’t be sustainable. The

only way of living that can be sustainable is by giving back to your

surroundings at least as much as you take.

The need to import resources also means the culture is based on

violence, because if you require the importation of resources trade will

never be sufficiently reliable. If I require fish from the next

watershed over and the local people there don’t want to give me those

fish, I’m going to take them if my collection of people requires that we

have them. We could all become junior Bodhisatvas at this point and it

wouldn’t really matter because the U.S. government would still need to

important resources and would still need a huge military.

I don’t know what the original source of it was, but what is the thing

that needs to be unmade right now? Civilization. At the very least we

should be honest with ourselves and recognize this way of living is not

and can never be sustainable and recycling or a little bit of

legislation is not going to make it so.

LA: Do you believe civilization will collapse on its own or must it be

actively fought against?

DJ: It seems clear to me that civilization can’t continue. The oil age

is almost over and there are those — Ted Kaczynski among them — who

believe that civilization can limp on for hundreds of more years. I pray

that’s not the case. It needs to be actively fought against, but I don’t

think that we can bring it down. What we can do is assist the natural

world to bring it down. I think we can help. The natural world is way

stronger than we are or could ever be.

In some ways it doesn’t really matter whether or not civilization comes

down through ecological collapse or through our efforts. It doesn’t

matter to whether we make the effort because what is happening now is

wrong. It’s wrong to drive salmon extinct. That’s grotesquely immoral, I

can think of few things that are more immoral. The next reason deals

with selfishness. The longer civilization goes on, the worse things will

be for the people who come after us. If civilization had come down —

whatever that means — a hundred years ago there would still be passenger

pigeons and Eskimo curlews for people in the Midwest to eat. There will

be people twenty or fifty years from now, when civilization comes down,

who will sit next to the Columbia River and say “god damn you! I’m

hungry. There are no salmon here because you wanted cheap electricity to

smelt aluminum to make beer cans.” More to the point, it’s because you

didn’t stop those who did.

At the same time it does make a great deal of difference what you

believe. Whether you believe it is going to come down on it’s own or not

makes a great deal of difference to your tactics. If civilization is

going to come down in ten years your tactics will be one thing and if

civilization comes down in five hundred years your tactics are going to

be something else. Most of the environmentalists I know are basically

just hanging on by our fingernails hoping and praying that grizzly

bears, salmon and whomever else we love survive until civilization comes

down.

Basically it’s all really simple. People say, “what should we do?” My

answer to this is that we need to dismantle everything around us and we

need to do it now.

LA: What are the obstacles keeping us from doing that?

DJ: Our biggest obstacle is that we identify more closely with the

culture than we do with our own bodies and our own land-bases. I had a

conversation with a guy a couple weeks ago at the post office. It’s very

warm where I live and he said, “the interesting thing about global

warming ...” and I said, “yeah 14,000 or 19,000 died from the heat and

the damn newspapers don’t even mention global warming.” He nods and

says; “did you see those pictures of the glaciers melting in Europe?”

“The climate is changing,” I say “and those in power won’t do anything

about it.” “The culture has too much momentum,” he says, “those in power

have too much power and money to stop them.” “That’s why my next book is

how to take down civilization,” I say. He looks at me for a moment; “you

can write about it but you can’t make it happen.” “I can push in the

right direction at the right times and I think that can make a

difference.” “It’ll come down all right” he says, “and pretty soon, but

it won’t be your doing. It will be the system collapsing in on itself.”

“I can hurry it up,” I say. “It’s going to be nasty,” he says. “It’s

already nasty,” I say. “The nastiness is why I bought a gun, a .38,” he

says. I’m about to say that’s why I bought a gun a few years ago but he

carries my packages to the big bins in the back. When he comes back he

says, “it’s for myself.” I don’t know what he means. He says, “I don’t

want to live like that.” I say, “I don’t want to live like this.” He

says, “I don’t want to live like an animal.” I say, “I got news for you

Jim you already are an animal.” He says, “I need my electricity, I can’t

live without it.” I don’t say anything, I think; is it worth it to you?

He looks me straight in the eye and says, “I’m going to retire in

January, don’t do this right now. Give me a few years to enjoy my

retirement.”

He identifies more closely with his need for electricity than he does

with his need for a livable planet. I think that is really common.

People more closely identify with all this machine culture. We are

living inside a machine. Look around right now, how many machines are

within ten feet of us? How many wild animals are within a hundred yards

of us? How often do you interact with machines on a daily basis, or on a

minute by minute basis? How often do you interact with wild animals? How

many wild animals do you know? How many know you?

What will it take for people to fight back? I’ve asked people at talks

before, “how many people have loved someone who’s died from cancer?”

Virtually everybody raised their hands. Why is it when cancer, a disease

of civilization, is killing people they love, they don’t fight back?

Part of it is that they identify more closely with the culture. They

want the culture to survive more than they want their loved ones to

survive, and even — with dioxins in their own bodies — more than they

want their own selves to survive. They identify more closely with the

“survival” of the machine than they do with their own survival. That’s

part of the problem.

One of the things I try and get across in my talks is that the dominant

culture is a culture of occupation and the government is a government of

occupation. Just last night I was driving and talking with my mom; she

said, “so how long do you think we’re going to be in Iraq?” I said, “I’m

not in Iraq, are you in Iraq?” She said, “ok, how long are the sol-diers

of the U.S. government going to be over in Iraq?” Later she said, “did

we have any casualties today?” I say, “I didn’t have any casualties, did

you?” I do that all the time.

People get so jazzed about 9–11; you know we were attacked. Well, I

wasn’t attacked. I’m attacked on a daily basis from carcinogens. Would

we react differently if instead of our government — to which we pledged

allegiance — doing this to us, it was space aliens putting dioxin in

every mother’s breast milk? What would we do? We’d fight like hell, and

we’d kill the motherfuckers. The reason we don’t do that is because we

identify with them, because we are members of the oppressors. We believe

in law and order, we believe that the strictures of those in power carry

moral weight. We believe that because it’s a law, we should follow it.

Stealing is bad.

I wouldn’t take this tape recorder from you; but then again, I have a

relationship with you. But I can’t see why I shouldn’t take food from a

grocery store. It’s crazy; a guy at one of my talks said, “I don’t think

I’m particularly violent. Where is the violence in my life?” The first

thing I said was “where was your shirt made?” He said, “Bangladesh.” So

that’s obvious. The next thing I said was “why do you pay rent?” He

said, “because I don’t own.” I said, “what happens if you don’t pay

rent?” He said, “I get evicted.” I said, “by whom?” He said, “by a

sheriff.” I said, “What happens to you if when the sheriff comes to your

home to evict you, you say, ‘come on in for dinner’ and after dinner you

say, ‘I’m getting kind of tired, you should go now, I need to go to

bed.’ The sheriff says ‘no you have to leave’ and you say, ‘no this is

my home, I live here.’ What would happen?” He says, “the sheriff would

take a gun and forcibly evict me.” I say, “so the reason you pay rent,

is because if you don’t, someone with a gun will kick you out. What

would happen if you went to a grocery store and you’re hungry so you

start to eat?” “People with guns would come and take me away.”

It’s really strange that we actually have to pay to exist on this

planet. We have to pay to sleep somewhere and we have to pay to eat. I

can understand — if you are going to have a cash economy — paying for a

luxury. I have no problem with someone paying for something. But it’s

really extraordinarily strange to make someone pay to simply exist. My

point is, I’ve got no problem with people paying rent, if that is what

they want to do that’s fine — I pay rent for crying out loud — but at

least let’s be honest. Let’s work our way through it, and don’t just pay

rent because that’s what we do. Instead let’s examine the premises

underlying it.

Another reason we don’t fight back is because we’re addicted. It’s all

the logic of addiction. I asked some of my students when they get out of

prison would they use again? Most of them said yes even though they were

in for drugs. I said why? They said it’s hard to break the physical

addiction, harder to break the emotional identification, and harder

still that your whole support system, all of your friends, are part of

it. One guy said, “my courtship with my wife is all bound up in drugs

because we took drugs together. So if I change that, and she doesn’t

change? I have to leave her.” Let’s think about this and not talk about

drugs but talk about capitalism and civilization. Where will your

support system be if decide you don’t want to be a member of the wage

economy, and that you don’t think it’s appropriate to pay rent? That you

instead think it’s appropriate to fight against the system? You’ve got

to find a new support system.

Then there’s the question of those in power having tanks, guns and

airplanes and show no hesitation to use them. There are members of the

Black Panthers still in solitary confinement since the early 1970’s.

Jeff “Free” Luers in Eugene, Oregon torched four SUVs and got twenty-two

and a half years in prison.

LA: Leonard Peltier was just up for parole and denied yet again.

DJ: Even though everybody, even the parole officers, said the case was

bogus. Which is another reason why we participate, why we don’t fight

back: because we believe in law and order. I’ll say this again, we

believe that laws carry moral weight. I want to be clear. I’m not

talking some kind of moral relativism where anything goes. I think that

it is often immoral to kill people. I would include in that through the

toxification of their total environment. I think there are many things

that are immoral to do circumstantially. I will say that morality is not

relative. It is always circumstantial, because there are circumstances

in which it’s absolutely moral to kill someone. I can think of very few

acts that are never moral to do. Rape being one, I can’t conceptualize a

circumstance that would make it moral. My point is that just because

something is a law doesn’t make it moral. We all know that in our heads,

but we don’t know it in our guts. It’s much easier to deal with not

resisting because we’re afraid of cops, than not acting because we

perceive the cops as good guys.

LA: If we’re a culture of traumatized individuals, addicted to the

system, who only see relationships being based on power or competition,

how can we break the cycle?

DJ: I ask people all over the country if they believe we are going to

undergo a voluntary transformation into a sane and sustainable way of

living. Almost nobody ever says yes. The next question to ask is what

that means for our strategy and tactics? The answer is, we don’t know

because we don’t talk about it.

I’ve worked like hell to recover from the effects of my childhood and my

coercive upbringing. I think I’m reasonably sane at this point. I know a

lot of people who have not been able to make that transition and who are

really fucked up. I don’t think there’s hope for most of them and I

don’t think most people are reachable. A lot of people say if we just

get the information out there about environmental problems then people

will change and that’s bullshit. One reason we can know it’s bullshit is

because one out of four women in this culture are raped in their

lifetime and another one out of five have to fend off attempts and all

the women I know say those figures are very low. That’s only if you

include criminal definitions of rape, it doesn’t include routine

objectification and abuse of women. No matter what’s in the newspapers,

the truth is most of the men committing those rapes are fathers,

brothers, uncles, lovers, friends, those who say they love those women.

565,000 American children are killed or injured by their parents or

guardians each year. My point in bringing that up is that if men are

raping the women they purport to love, if they’re raping and beating

their sons and daughters, there is no hope for the salmon.

It’s not just the culture as a whole — whatever that means — that’s

crazy. Most of the people in this culture are crazy. Once again if it’s

565,000 American children who are killed or injured, that’s a hell of a

lot of parents that are abusing their kids. With all those women getting

raped, it’s not one guy. A good portion of men are active rapists.

If we talk about addiction the statistics are so burning on relapse.

Relapse is a part of the process of recovery and most addicts don’t make

it to get clean. The statistics on domestic violence are even more

burning. England quit giving money to programs for domestic violence

perpetrators because their recidivism was so high. There was maybe only

one person who had ever benefited from those projects. Instead they give

the money to battered women’s shelters. They’ve given up on trying to

fix the men who are like that. Those men aren’t reachable. I think what

needs to happen is women need to stay away from them. I’m not going to

blame women for that.

Those of us who really care about salmon or grizzlies don’t need to

appeal to fence sitters or to the culture at large. We need to act to

defend the salmon. What would salmon do if they could take on human

manifestation? What would children three generations into the future do

if they could take on human manifestation now? Would they try to

convince a senator who is never going to be convinced?

Your question has to do with healing. Part of that has to do with

finding a community. I don’t have many friends who don’t want to bring

down the system. Everytime I open my mouth I don’t want to repeat

civilization is bad 101. I don’t want to have to recover that ground.

What I want are people I can talk to, cry with, and fight with against

the system. I want people who have my back covered emotionally. I can’t

emphasize too much the role of supporting and loving communities for

healing.

LA: Since civilization is all around us so many people consider

themselves culpable to the damage being done, and because the system is

so complex, how do we know who the enemy is? Certain individuals and

institutions are obvious ...

DJ: That’s a good place start.

LA: Do you think there will be a polarization as things get worse?

DJ: There already is a polarization. People say, “Derrick your rhetoric

is so divisive and militaristic.” Shit, the war is going on already, and

has been for a long time. I’m just acknowledging it. It’s funny, when I

give talks about violence the response by the audience is really

predictable. Mainstream environmentalists and peace and social justice

activists will put up what I’ve taken to calling a Ghandi shield and

mutter “Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Dalai Lama” repeatedly to keep evil

thoughts out. Grass roots environmentalists will do the same thing, but

then come up to me afterward and whisper in my ear, “thank you for

bringing this up.” Prisoners, family farmers, victims of domestic

violence, American Indians, and radical environmentalists all have

similar responses to each other which is “yeah, so tell us something we

don’t know. Let’s go bro.” The difference for all those latter groups is

that violence is not some theoretical question to be dealt with

abstractly. It’s instead a part of daily life that you respond to. It

doesn’t mean you’re going to be violent, but that you respond to it

viscerally. You deal with it. You don’t put it out here and say I’m not

even going deal with this question.

One of the beauties of the whole machine system is that we’re all cogs

in it. It’s real easy to just go “oh nobody has any responsibility”.

Adolf Eichman just ran trains, but he got hanged. Goering said he was

“following orders.” He got sentenced to hang. Kaltenbruner was

“following orders.” It’s a pathetic response.

I’ve written a novel that doesn’t work yet about some teenagers who

kidnap a CEO and put him on trial for poisoning the area. I’ll rewrite

the book in a couple years. There is a part where the CEO says, “It’s

not my fault, it’s the system. If I didn’t act in the financial best

interests of this corporation I would get fired and somebody else would

do it.” One of the kids says to him “So what your saying is ‘if you

didn’t do it, somebody else would.’ You know my mom wouldn’t let me get

by with that when I was seven. So why should I let you get by with it

now?” The fact that “somebody else will do it,” or that somebody is

“following orders” or not questioning assumptions, is no excuse.

That said, I think we need to not get lost in the kind of solipsistic

pretension that lifestyle change equals social change. I’ve known some

people who get so tied up in knots because “oh my god, I use toilet

paper, which means I’m just as culpable as the CEO of Weyerhaeuser.”

That’s just silly. Just because I drive a car, I’m responsible for

global warming? That’s bullshit. If I die tomorrow global warming will

proceed apace.

I use domestic violence as a lens to look at the larger violence of the

culture. One of the things abused children often do is take on

responsibility for things that they have no control over. They say, “If

only I would’ve washed the dishes better I wouldn’t have been beaten ...

if only I would have parked the car differently ... if only I would have

not made any noise ... if only I had done this or that.” It’s incredibly

important for those children to take on that responsibility because

they’re powerless and they need to take on power. If they recognize how

utterly powerless they are they would go more insane than they already

do. But, when you are no longer powerless it’s really absurd to do that.

Our culture specializes in toxic mimics. That’s when you take the form

of something and change the content. Rape is a toxic mimic of sex. It

takes the form of sex and perverts the content entirely. People who say,

“I am just as responsible for all of the destruction — as much as anyone

else is — because I participate in the system” are creating a toxic

mimic of our real responsibility. It’s an acknowledgement of

powerlessness because it’s still falling into that childhood trap where

if I’m just perfect enough, pure enough, then the system will stop. It’s

magical thinking; it’s the same magical thinking as that child. It’s a

mask, a toxic mimic of the real culpability. Yes, I am culpable for

deforestation, not because I use toilet paper, but because I don’t stop

Weyerhaeuser from deforesting. That’s my real responsibility. I need to

shut them down.

What should people do? I think they should first stop identifying

themselves as a cog in the machine. This is a classic trick of abusers;

it’s known by pimps and CIA torturers everywhere. It says in the CIA

handbook on torture that it’s more effective to force someone to stand

against a wall for days at a time than it is to beat them, because you

force them to torture themselves. If you can get them to take on

responsibility then you’ve won essentially. It’s the same with the idea

that I’m supposed to feel guilty or responsible because I went to

Albertson’s or to Safeway. You have forced me off land, systematically

destroyed stocks of wild foodstuffs, and now I’m supposed to feel

responsible for that? Bullshit, I refuse to take responsibility for

that, because I didn’t do it. What I can do, is attempt to take

responsibility for my own actions and I can further, attempt to shut

down the system that is doing this.

LA: How do you feel about the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal

Liberation Front (ALF) actions? Are they symbolic? How can they be more

effective?

DJ: As you know, I’ve done a number of benefits for Earth Liberation

prisoners, so I strongly support those kinds of actions. I would never

criticize their actions. It would be like someone criticizing me because

I don’t write something else besides what I write. I’m good friends with

the former tree-sitter Remedy and she would get notes from people

saying; why are you sitting in that tree as opposed to some other tree?

The only person who could criticize Remedy or her choice of trees at all

would be another tree-sitter and they wouldn’t. The only people who can

criticize what I write about would be other people doing that work and

once again they wouldn’t.

I have no criticism of the ELF or ALF. That said, I would like to see

further actions that move up the infrastructure, because they are doing

what I would call endpoint sabotage. I see a difference between symbolic

and non-symbolic actions; and certainly symbolic actions can be also be

non-symbolic, and vice versa. When the ALF liberates some cats from a

lab, sure there is the symbolism of sending out the press release, but

primarily what they’re doing is those particular cats are liberated. I

would not call that a primarily symbolic action. When you burn four SUVs

— and this is not pejorative at all, I want that explicit — that’s a

symbolic action, because four SUVs doesn’t make that much difference. Of

course you could say ten cats doesn’t make that much difference. Of

course it matters to those cats.

I’ve got that line: “every morning I wake up and ask myself whether I

should write or blow up a dam.” A few people have written to me and

said: “that’s not the best way to get your message out.” I always

respond to that if I were to take out a dam it would not be to send a

message; if I want to send a message, I’m going to write a book. Taking

out a dam would be to help a river liberate itself and to help the

salmon. That would be a non-symbolic action. We, in the environmental

movement, are far too fond of symbolic action. That’s all we do.

Recently I read about the big environmental organizations’ response to

the Healthy Forest Initiative, which was to take chainsaws and cut up

pumpkins on Halloween, with the slogan “carve pumpkins not the forests.”

It’s pretty fucking stupid. The symbolism is even stupid when you

consider loggers often call big trees “pumpkins.” Do some fucking

research for something.

Symbolic action still is based on the notion of sending a message. It’s

based on the notion that people are reachable. I’m not saying that

people aren’t reachable, but who’s your audience? If you are burning

some SUVs in order to attract other people to burn SUVs, that’s one

thing. If you’re burning SUVs in an attempt to send a message to the

manufacturers of SUVs it’s a waste of time, I think.

When I say it’s a government of occupation and a culture of occupation,

I’m not speaking metaphorically. What did Russian partisans in World War

II do? What did members of the Dutch underground do to try and undermine

the Nazi Army? Did they hold up banners? What did they do? How did they

do it?

Why do I write? I’m a recruiter for the revolution. I think all the ELF

actions are great for that because you get “oh my god, somebody else did

this. It’s a great idea.” It encourages other people to do it too. This

kind of stuff happens all the time, we just don’t hear about it very

much.

I asked some hackers, maybe a year and a half ago, do you think that

people could cause major damage to corporations through hacking? The

woman looked at me and said, “you’re presuming people aren’t already

doing that.” The corporations don’t want people to know how easy it is,

so it never gets publicized.

How would we act if we really wanted to shut down the economy? How would

we act if we really wanted to save salmon? I get so tired of the

environmental movement because basically what we want is to feel good

about ourselves for having fought the good fight; but we have not made

any effective difference. The bottom line is it’s a complete failure.

Not only do we not slow deforestation, we don’t even slow the rate of

acceleration of deforestation.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be fighting like hell. I think

palliative work is really important. I know so many people who do it and

I have done so much myself. We’re just giving everything we’ve got to

attempt to save some piece of ground. The thing we need to remember is

the line by Red Cloud who said of the dominant culture: “They made us

many promises, more than I can remember. But they never kept but one.

They promised to take our land and they took it.”

That’s part of the problem too, we don’t know what we want. The timber

industry knows what they want; they want every fucking tree. The mining

industry knows what they want. The dominant culture knows what it wants;

it wants to destroy life on the planet. It wants to convert everything

into cash, which is dead. What do we want? Do we want smaller or fewer

clear-cuts? Do we want sixteen salmon that come from hatcheries? Do we

want animals in zoos? Do we want a few less women raped? What do we

want? I think that is one of our barriers to action too. We don’t know

what we want.

Many people don’t know what they want, but I know what I want. I want

civilization brought down and I want it brought down now. People say

that’s a negative vision. Well, frankly we live in a pretty fucking

negative situation. You want me to put that positively? I want to live

in a world where every year there are more wild salmon than there were

the year before. I want to live in world where there are more migratory

songbirds, more ancient forests, more prairie dogs, more wild tigers,

and less dioxins every year than the year before. Is that positive

enough for you? So how do you want to get there, how is that going to

happen? I don’t see any way of that happening other than civilization

coming down.

This brings up something else. I don’t believe that people in general

are reachable. I don’t believe that the culture is going to have a

voluntary transformation. I think that fathers are going to continue to

rape daughters for a long time into the future. I have reduced what I

want to do at this point to stopping their reach. So that you can have

some abusive person and I don’t know how to stop them, it’s not my job

to try and stop him from beating his children. There are people who work

on domestic violence issues and I’ve done a lot of work on domestic

violence. I care about that; but, what I’m working on right now is

trying to figure out a way to at least make sanctuaries and refuges. So

if those in power want to destroy the center of the ocean, they have to

go out in a masted ship like they did once before. I want to shorten

their reach so there are at least some places that survive.

The rest of this interview will appear in issue seven of The A Word.

Gangstarizing a Movement by Duwan Tyson

This article is not meant to be a call to action for the white or just

middle class movement, but truthfully is just a jittery black dude’s

view on it. If you don’t know what I mean or you think that this is

negative then this really isn’t for you.

Once again I return home late in the evening soaking wet, tired, and

mentally fed up. I’m tired in every way — I’m tired of political

maneuvering, tired of long conversations on personal opinions, tired of

eating tasteless corn chips with cold dip, tired of cheap generic food.

When I get home I’m surprised how fast home life is going, it seems for

the last few hours I’ve been in mental time warp oblivious to reality.

Can you guess where I’ve been? Yes, you guessed it; a meeting. Doesn’t

really matter what organization, doesn’t matter what were talking about,

I’m bored. Even when I learn a lot, even when I have an epiphany about

internalized racial oppression or when I understand at a deeper level

“What globalization is all about” I still feel drained after an

organizationally successful meeting.

Why? I ask myself this all the time. Why can’t I sit still at an

anti-war rally? Why can’t I be interested in what the speakers are

saying? I know it’s important, but for some reason I can’t. I’m sure

you’ve ran into me before at sometime or another, or someone like me.

I’m the kid who knows shit’s fucked up but you still can’t get me out to

your meeting. I know you probably hate me but you need people like me,

and this is your chance to get into my head so don’t zone out yet.

Think about how a lot of people understand what’s going on but are too

busy being oppressed or too apathetic or both. I’ve been on both sides

of the equation coming from the point of view of the organizer and

organized, I still struggle with this every day. Tell you the truth,

I’ve never felt so disempowered in my life as when I’m doing the most

empowering work on the planet (ending governmental oppression through

community self determination). Why is this? I’ve thought of every reason

my Negro mind could conceive. There was never one concrete answer,

always a litany of pre-programmed responses, quick explanations and

write-offs, but never somthing concrete with a plan of action. I usually

felt more confused and distraught after I hear all the answers then

before I asked the question. This movement lacks clarity as much as it

lacks...well, movement. Not internal clarity — no, not at all, people

communicate great in esoteric meetings — but when it comes to events,

I’m bored as hell. I’m sick and tired of the over-intellectualization

ingrained in the way we organize, it seems like once you join an

organization you lose all ability to speak real English — everything

turns into a jumbled mess of ism’s, which the average person doesn’t

really care to hear. You can’t come to someone talking as if you watched

20 days straight of PBS.

I’m probably offending a lot of people but think about it how often do

you see the average teenage colored kid in your rally? How many

gangbangers show up to you protest?? If you’re in Seattle probably

little to none. Why is this — when we are the people who suffer the most

from war, globalization, and such, why does it seem that we don’t care??

Truth is we do, but the problem is the fucking movement is corny,

entirely too corny! For Christ sakes La Rouche drones pull more people

than most organizations! Because when they talk to you they have energy

and charisma, they talk to you as if you have a brain. That my be due to

the fact that they’re fuckin wackos, but still, when are people gonna

understand that marching around Broadway chanting shit that’s older than

me IS NOT INTERESTING, nor is it empowering.

It’s the year 2003, kids like me have an attention span of 2 seconds —

you can’t expect people to come out cause it’s the right thing to do! If

people did get involved for this reason, the movement would be 10 times

the size it is now. It’s time to start meeting people where they’re at.

If peoples lives aren’t filled with esoteric BS then organizations

shouldn’t take it upon themselves to start dumping it on them. I’m not

saying education and reading are bad, but when I hear the word

education, to me it usually means masturbation. “We’re all gonna read

this essay, then discuss what we thought of it”. This is what a lot of

meetings I’ve been to are like, that’s what most anarchist circles are

like. I swear to god if I hear one more punk anarchist talk about armed

struggle in Greece, or some revolution 100 years ago in some country I

can’t pronounce I’m gonna flip.

I’m not trying to say that this kind of stuff isn’t important, but it

does have it’s place, and one thing I’ve learned is when it comes to

organizing, a starving child can’t eat a book. Anarchist zines don’t

stop cop bullets and marches don’t stop wars. So what does?? If we want

gangsta outcomes (ending an imperialist war) then we’re gonna have to

start taking gangsta action. We need to start focusing on what’s the

most effective way to get shit done and do it. We need to start standing

up for ourselves!! No more Nazis at anti-war rallies! You know our

movement is getting punked when Nazis can openly come to antiwar rallies

with signs that read “no war for Israel”. This shit can’t go on any

longer it’s time we start organizing like and start bein G’s.

Issue 7

World War 3: Two Years In by Mike Andrew

Notes on the War, the Anti-War Movement, and Our Tasks

March 20, 2005 marks the two-year anniversary of the US invasion and

occupation of Iraq, and therefore of the Iraqi resistance and the

anti-war movement here in the US.

The anti-Iraq-war movement in the US began at a relatively higher level

than the movement against the war in Vietnam did, both in terms of

numbers of people engaged and in the breadth of anti-war sentiment. This

was due in part to the fact that the social and political ideas of the

Vietnam period have become (to some extent) a part of US popular

culture, and in part to the fact that many veterans of the Vietnam-era

movement are still politically active. It was also due in part to the

declining economic situation of US workers and the consequent political

difficulties in mobilizing their support for US policy. And in part it

was due to the almost total global rejection of the US administration’s

policy, even among key US allies.

Nevertheless, two years into the war there seems to be a sense of

frustration in the movement. The war is still going on. The Bush

administration seems to be on the brink of extending the theater of

operations to Iran and/or Syria. Many activists are disillusioned with

the typical marches and rallies, yet they are unable to envision and

organize alternatives. This has led to the conclusion among many people

that the anti-war movement in the US has been and continues to be

“ineffective” — and this sentiment has given rise to demoralization and

cynicism.

To raise the issue of effectiveness begs the question “effective at

what?” In other words, what are the strategic political objectives of

the anti-war movement? Early on, in the run-up to war, the movement set

itself the goal of actually preventing the US invasion of Iraq. In

retrospect, this goal was both too ambitious and too narrow.

In the title of this piece, I’ve described the on-going war as “World

War 3” and I mean that very precisely. The invasion of Iraq is not a

“mistake” of an otherwise humane and responsible country. It is not an

historical aberration. It is not even the result of a conspiracy among a

small cabal of rich and powerful white men who coalesced around Dick

Cheney, Donny Rumsfeld, and Daddy Bush — although that cabal is

certainly helping to direct the war. The invasion of Iraq is a logical

consequence of the growth of the US empire in the 20^(th) and now the

21^(st) century.

The Spanish-American War and World War 1 made the US a global power.

Alone among the Western Allies, the US emerged from World War 2 in a

strengthened position. In the 20 years following World War 2, Britain

and France — ruined and exhausted by the war, even though they ended up

on the winning side — lost their colonial empires. The US absorbed them,

not as colonies tied to the US constitutionally, but as neo-colonies

dominated by US capital and US military bases.

None of this happened without opposition, both inside and outside the

US. But even though the US was forced to retreat from Vietnam and other

countries, and even though it was also forced (in the 1960s and 1970s)

to make political concessions especially to communities of color within

its own boundaries, still the US has been able to reverse those losses

to a large extent. Having now defeated and dismembered its main rival

for global hegemony — the Soviet Union — the US is proceeding to

reorganize the whole planet in its image and likeness.

The “peaceful” side of this empire-building is usually called

“globalization” and is going forward through trade treaties meant to

remove obstacles to US economic penetration of other countries. The

bloody side is clearly visible in Iraq. But “peaceful” or bloody, the

intention is clearly global domination. Look at Bush’s second inaugural

address. Stripped of all the pretty language about “liberty” it is

nothing but a claim that the US has the right to re-organize the

government of any country to suit its own interests.

In the wake of 9–11 2001, policy makers in the Bush administration came

to believe (if they didn’t think so before) that the Saudis were

unreliable allies. Important members of the Saudi royal family and their

allies among the wealthiest families of the kingdom clearly supported

the Islamists who claimed credit for 9–11, giving them protection,

political cover, and a vast amount of money. Under the circumstances, it

seemed to many people in Bush’s entourage that it would be prudent to

secure alternative oil reserves and alternative locations for US bases

in the Persian Gulf. Hence the invasion of Iraq.

Again, none of this is happening without opposition, but it’s precisely

the failure to recognize the terms and stakes of this opposition that is

holding back the anti-war movement in the US. No demonstration or series

of demonstrations the anti-war movement could have organized would have

been sufficient to deter the invasion of Iraq. Furthermore, no

demonstration or series of demonstrations the anti-war movement is

likely to organize in the future will be sufficient either to force the

exit of the US from Iraq, or to deter future US action against Iran,

Syria, or any other country.

Specifying the prevention of war as the goal of the movement — within

the context of an international system that requires war — is a mistake

that sets people up for subsequent disillusionment and demoralization.

Even the formulation “anti-war movement” itself is an indication of a

narrowness of political vision that is unhelpful now, and could be even

more so as events develop.

What, then, is the way forward for the movement in the US?

First of all, there is much more at stake in this present period than

Iraq only. There is more at stake than even the issue of whether US

policy will be “peaceful” or bloody. The stakes really are whether US

capital will be allowed to dominate the planet militarily and

economically. Therefore, it’s necessary for the US “anti-war movement”

to redefine itself as a global “opposition movement” in alliance with

everyone everywhere struggling against domination by the owners of

capital here in the US.

Second, this war concentrates all the major problems that arise out of

the rule of money in the US, especially the pervasive racism that

underlay original capital formation in North America, and that now

results in young people of color bearing a disproportionate burden in

fighting the war and dying for their own oppressors. I’ve observed that

African Americans in particular feel a real affinity for the Arab

people, especially Palestinians and Iraqis, who are living under an

occupation that differs only in degree of severity from the occupation

of African American neighborhoods by alien police forces. In building

this “opposition movement” we need to pay particular attention to

supporting the on-going resistance of communities of color, and doing so

under their leadership.

Third, it’s futile for us to try to prevent wars when war is the logical

consequence of the whole trajectory of recent (and not so recent) US

history. War is the foundation of the US empire, both within and outside

US borders. Therefore, our task has to be to render the US incapable of

fighting the wars US capital needs to fight, or at least incapable of

winning those wars.

Fourth, wars can’t be won or even fought absent willing soldiers. No

“anti-war” or “opposition” organizing strategy is more important or more

useful than one specifically targeting the US armed forces and their

potential recruits.

Not that mass demonstrations are useless. In fact they’re very good at

showing the breadth of anti-war sentiment, which is an important thing.

The problem is that the breadth of anti-war sentiment doesn’t mean shit

to the Bush administration. The war aims of the administration (the real

ones, not the ones they fed to the public) are simply too important to

them to be set aside. And this raises the question whether all the

resources (including people’s time and energy) that now go into

producing huge one-shot demonstrations might not be better applied to

smaller but more targeted organizing projects that directly interfere

with the war-making capacity of the US government.

The prospects for such organizing are actually quite bright. Maintaining

morale and discipline in the armed forces and keeping them properly

staffed are problems the corporate state faces under all circumstances

(because the army is full of kids who have no real or lasting interest

in taking a bullet for other people’s money and property), but they

become especially critical in war time, and even more so if the war is

being lost and is, in any case, unpopular.

And in fact, the US is losing the war in Iraq, both militarily and

politically. It is also unpopular, and nowhere more so than among young

people of color who are required to fight the war in disproportionate

numbers. The desire of the Pentagon to fight the war “on the cheap” with

a cruel disregard even for the safety of their troops, much less their

comfort in the field, only compounds morale problems. So too does the

fact that so many of the troops posted to Iraq are not regular army at

all, but reservists and National Guard (who were quite literally

defrauded into combat with promises of a free education and easy

service).

All these circumstances naturally give rise to resistance within the

armed forces themselves, just as they did during the Vietnam war. For

the most part, the troops’ desire to resist the demands of the military

command has manifested itself individually, in desertions and a few

fragging incidents, but in at least one case an entire supply battalion

refused orders as a unit. The significance of this incident is

multiplied by the fact that the Pentagon felt politically unable to take

disciplinary action against that unit.

So obviously, one potential area of action for the opposition movement

is to link up with and support resistance within the US armed forces.

Part of this work will undoubtedly involve facilitating the exit of

serving soldiers from the military, but that’s not all that could be

done. This area of work presents certain risks, because it’s likely to

involve actions that are illegal as well as legal ones, and organizing

inside as well as outside the armed forces, so it seems best not to

write about it too explicitly, but to trust the people who want to take

up this work to determine their own methods (including good security

practices).

Another area of action is to organize among military families. It’s

striking that so many families of casualties express opposition to the

war when interviewed in the mass media. This is quite different from the

situation in Vietnam, when military families, especially the families of

those killed or wounded in action, could be counted on to be reliably

pro-war (at least until the Tet offensive in 1968). Families can be a

crucial element of support for resisting troops, as well as organizing

around their own specific demands (the precarious economic situation of

families who have had a wage-earner called up for active duty, for

example).

Anti-recruitment organizing is a third potential area of action, which

is already under way in many areas including here in Seattle. I’d invite

anyone interested in anti-recruiting work to look at the article by one

of my A Word comrades in this issue, and contact us.

Obviously, I’m only sketching out some potential areas of action for

people who are interested in actually helping to bring about the

military and political defeat of the US in this 3^(rd) World War. The

specific tactics and methods of work will need lots of thought and

discussion, but if we have the imagination to re-envision our purpose,

our prospects are very bright.

Forget Chiapas Emily Reilly

The failure of white activists to acknowledge and address institutional

racism has undermined the power and longevity of every major progressive

social movement in US history. Currently, we as white activists fail to

evaluate and challenge how our race and class privileges affect the way

we conceptualize the world and its problems. As a result, many of the

ways that we organize actually reinforce the status quo, and are largely

ineffective. This continues to be one of, if not the most significant

barriers to building an effective movement for social, economic and

environmental justice in the US.

We know that we have all been raised in a society that remains deeply

stratified by both class and race. What most of us white activists don’t

realize is how our conditioning as whites is impeding effective social

justice work. While our causes are linked to poverty, most us have never

actually struggled for material resources: our families never had

problems putting food on the table or getting housing; In fact many of

us have never even really thought about what it would be like to be poor

in the United States.

Additionally, we have had both access to and acceptance from the

institutions of society: education, jobs, stores, hospitals,

transportation etc. Also most of us have had little or no negative

contact with the police, the prison system, or the need to enlist in the

armed services, or take low-wage jobs. Our privileges prevent us from

seeing that the very same institutions that have had their door open and

helped us, have been closed to and hurt people of color and poor whites.

As progressive as we are, most of us fail to see our status of

privilege, and that it rests on the backs of others in our very own

communities.

Our blindness to the privileges we have is one of the most important

factors that keep the system in place. We feel entitled to our higher

social and economic status; we have internalized it so much many us have

never even questioned it- its natural.

Unfortunately with this we also subconsciously assume that those below

us deserve their status as well. Thus, by internalizing our entitlements

as whites, we legitimize the poverty of poor whites and people of color

in our own communities. We don’t even see it. That’s why we love

Chiapas.

As whites we easily see the poverty of the Global South, the injustice

in the treatment of animals, and of the environment, but we fail to see

the very same injustices in our own communities upon poor whites and

people of color. We sympathize with sweatshop workers in Indonesia, but

we care little about the farmworkers in our own state who work under

similar conditions. We sympathize with indigenous people all over Latin

America, but we certainly are not true allies to indigenous people in

our regions. We decry the war in Iraq, but do not have the same concern

for the local communities who have lived under US militarism for

generations. And this phenomenon — of seeing injustice toward human

beings as largely outside of our borders — perpetuates the great lie of

American history: that everything here is pretty much OK.

We love Chiapas because we can. Our politicization as not come from a

direct experience with injustice, poverty, or repression, but rather

through intellectual channels; books, lectures, films etc... This is

fine — and it is great that we are dedicated activists — as long as we

realize that our position is very different from those who have no

choice but to struggle for the immediate protection of their

communities. We have had the luxury of “shopping” for which issue

appeals to us — and we have the freedom to change whenever we feel like

it. Thus we have no accountability to the communities most impacted by

the intuitions we oppose, but we build our identities as activists

around them.

We love Chiapas because it we are supposed to. Our over fascination on

the Global South is a logical effect of our privileges; in order for the

maintenance of our society and government, we needed to be complacent

with the hierarchy of our communities and society. We love Chiapas

because it allows us to avoid challenging our upbringing, our family and

our selves. By seeing and focusing oninjustice as primarily outside of

the United States we are complacent with the brutal race and class

divides on which the global economy has been built, and which continue

to be deeply imbedded every aspect of society today. By ‘loving Chiapas’

we romanticize the struggles of activists in the Global South, while

paternalistically assuming that they lack the skills to make decisions

about their own lives. We do not see them as human, as capable of making

change on their own, and we certainly don’t see the role our own

personal ideologies play in upholding the legacy of imperialism in poor

communities across the world.

If we care about change the devastating social and economic relations in

our country and the world, we have to get serious about building a

powerful movement here that can challenge the US government from within.

To do this, we as white activists need to get serious about challenging

our race and class privilege.

The Art of War All the Time by Brady McGarry

“All warfare is based on deception.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Our enemy is a worthy one, and we need clarity about what this struggle

will require. This essay is an introduction to thinking strategically

about our movement against the “War on Terrorism”. It also seeks to

refute the common arguments that assert only “reformist” or “liberal”

goals can be achieved in this period. The US Government is not

invincible, and has concrete and clear weaknesses. This paper aims to

highlight those weaknesses, and suggest ideas about how we can maximize

our effectiveness in this period.

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State.” (The Art of War,

Chapter 1)

The Bush Administration has promised Global War for the next 20 years,

until “Terrorism” has been defeated. What this really means is that the

US Government wants to exploit the current political climate of fear to

achieve it’s goals of “liberalizing” foreign economies, and subverting

them to it’s own goals. This, surprisingly, should be viewed as a

blessing in disguise, as Sun Tzu reminds us:

“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged

warfare.” (Art of War, Chapter 2)

Instead of the War being a reason for sadness, or desperation, it should

instead be viewed as a prime opportunity to mount an attack on our

enemy, when it is weakest. It’s doubtful that the US can indeed follow

through on it’s grandiose plans for Global War, as the military campaign

in Iraq is already running into “problems” (such as the population

resisting it’s “democratic” occupation). Currently, almost all of US

Ground Combat forces are committed to Iraq. That’s why they are calling

up reserves and extending tours of duty. They can’t sustain that level

of commitment over the long term, especially if they have to deal with

other disobedience in other countries and/or with an insurgent

population at home. The basis for an insurgent population already exists

and is intensifying — the racism inherent in recruiting young people of

color, the strain on the domestic economy arising from the war, and the

long-term decline in working people’s standard of living.

“Hence, to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme

excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s

resistance without fighting.” (Art of War, Chapter 3)

As mentioned earlier, the US Government has committed to 20 years of

Global War. It’s primary goal is to ensure that Middle Eastern Oil is

flowing abundantly to the West, so it is creating contingency plans if

the Saudi’s aren’t consistent and obedient. Specifically this means

conquering or otherwise forcing every country in the Middle East to

comply with the agenda of the United States. To fulfill even the

preliminary stages of this goal, there will have to be an increase in

active duty military, specifically infantry and ground troops. A major

weakness of the US Government’s situation is that it primarily relies on

young people to fill the ranks of it’s military — young people who risk

more than they gain if they join the military. One of our major

strengths is that a large portion of our movement is compromised of the

same young people that the Military is trying to recruit. A potential

mass base of resistance is already in formation...

“It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that

can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.” (Art of

War, Chapter 2)

It’s often implied that the US Government is invincible, and cannot be

defeated in any sphere. Although we should never underestimate our

enemy, what this analysis is forgetting is that going to war in itself

is a sign of weakness; it is a sign of losing control politically and

economically. War is not the “health of the state,” it is in fact the

opposite. The US Government would much rather rule the world with

Treaties, Tariffs, and Secret Death Squads than openly declare war.

“If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.”

(Art of War, Chapter 6)

When our enemy goes to war abroad, this is in fact a strategic benefit

for our side. Too much time is spent lamenting over the supposed

strength of the US Government, (which is something we don’t have control

over) and not enough time is spent analyzing our own weaknesses —

something we do have control over. Only after we have done this, will we

be able to perform effective action.

“Such is the art of warfare.” (Art of War, Chapter 7)

The United States is losing power internationally; it’s economy is

weakening, it’s international legitimacy and relations with other

countries is also deteriorating. The Vietnam War was planned as a quick

operation, and extended over two decades. It seems that a similar

situation is occurring in Iraq.

The United States is imposing War on the world. If they really want a

war, let’s give them one. Can you dig it?

Goodbye, Arafat by Mike Andrew

When I told my younger comrades I wanted to write an obituary for Yasir

Arafat, they couldn’t understand why. They’ve only known him as a

rumpled old man, the besieged President of a besieged nation. I remember

Arafat as a guerilla general who re-configured international politics

with the assault rifles and grenades of his fighters.

Before Fatah (which Arafat founded in 1959) and other Palestinian

resistance organizations began their military operations no one in the

world gave a shit about the Palestinians. Not the US, not the Europeans,

not even other Arabs. The Zionists even denied that the Palestinians

existed (the Zionist slogan was “A land without a people for a people

without a land” as if Palestine was empty when they got there!).

Even supposedly sympathetic Arab states turned their backs on

Palestinian national rights. After the 1947 war Egypt occupied Gaza, and

Jordan occupied and later annexed the West Bank. Arab governments herded

Palestinian refugees into squalid camps in Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon,

where many of them and their descendants still live. The four wars

fought by the Arab states against Israel were never struggles for

Palestine or the Palestinians, but wars for control of local strategic

points — the Golan Heights, the Jordan river valley, the Gulf of Aqaba,

the Suez Canal and Sinai.

Today however, Palestinian national rights are universally acknowledged

to be at the heart of politics in the Middle East (if not global

politics), and even the relations between Israel and the neighboring

Arab states are conditioned by the Palestinian problem. This is due

entirely to the military successes of Arafat and the Fatah fighters.

I’ve deliberately called Arafat a “general.” His nation’s enemies called

him a “terrorist,” but in fact he did what any military commander would

do in his situation, what Norman Schwarzkopf or Tommy Franks would

do...what Moshe Dayan or Arik Sharon would do, for that matter. Arafat

analyzed Israel’s defenses, found the enemy’s weak and undefended

points, and — relying on tactical mobility and surprise — concentrated

his own forces precisely there to achieve local tactical superiority

(however briefly) and a tactical victory. What difference does it make

if the forces Fatah could assemble were 10 or 20 fighters instead of 10

or 20 thousand?

In actual fact there is only one important difference for the guerilla

commander, and that is a strategic difference, not a tactical one.

Guerilla fighters can’t win a purely “military” victory over enemy

forces who are superior in every way — in numbers, weapons, training,

international alliances, etc. If the enemy forces can catch the

guerillas they can certainly kill them all, but no matter how many

tactical victories the guerilla forces win they’re not likely to be able

to kill enough of the enemy to put them out of the war.

Instead, a guerilla fighter aims at winning a psychological victory over

the enemy, not a physical one. Guerillas must convince their enemies

that the cost of continuing the war long enough to kill them all is too

great to bear. In other words, the guerilla fighter attacks the enemy’s

will rather than the enemy’s military forces.

In such a struggle, the enemy’s apparent strengths become weaknesses and

the guerilla’s apparent weaknesses become strengths. All the soldiers,

arms, equipment, and infrastructure of a large army and a rich country

are merely targets for the guerilla fighter. The bigger the army and the

richer the country, the more vulnerable they are to guerilla attacks and

the more resources they must expend to defend all their assets.

Guerillas, on the other hand, are invisible. They assemble quickly,

carry out their operation, and then they’re gone. They have no assets to

speak of, so they don’t have to worry about defending anything. Because

there’s only a few of them, they don’t need bases, barracks, supply

depots, or other structures that might provide targets for the enemy.

Their weapons are simple and portable. Because their units are small,

the members are all well known to each other, and communications can be

face-to-face, it’s hard for enemy intelligence to penetrate them (and

this is especially true in national liberation wars, where the guerillas

are usually ethnically, culturally, and linguistically distinct from

their enemies).

Guerilla forces are often able to inflict losses out of proportion to

their small numbers and simple equipment, and for this reason, their

enemies become convinced that their numbers are far greater than they

actually are.

Of course the cost of war includes human lives as well as money spent

and equipment destroyed. In spite of Fatah’s stated intention not to

attack Israeli civilians inside (pre-1967) Israel, their operations

resulted in civilian casualties on the other side. Casualties among

Israeli civilians were used to support the accusation that Arafat was a

“terrorist” but the Israelis themselves never shrank from killing

civilians and destroying their property. In fact the Zionist Irgun and

Stern organizations adopted a deliberate strategy of killing Palestinian

civilians in the 1947 war, hoping to drive them off their lands which

would then be available to Israeli settlers.

Arafat, in contrast, typically practiced a theatrical “terrorism” which

aimed at being seen by the greatest number of people rather than killing

the greatest number. Arafat’s audience, in the first place, was the

Palestinian people themselves. He aimed to convince them that they were

not a beaten and homeless people, but a resisting people who could and

would make their enemies pay for the invasion and occupation of their

country. Fatah fighters humiliated the IDF — which had crushed the

armies of every Arab state they’d fought against — by raiding Israeli

settlements seemingly at will.

In the second phase of the guerilla war, after “Black September” 1970,

Arafat’s audience became the international community as a whole. Fatah

and other resistance organizations devoted considerable attention to

seizing airliners, and to attacking Israeli assets abroad (where they

lacked the security protection available to them in Israel itself). The

aim of this campaign was to demonstrate that no country would be secure

from attacks on its own soil until the Palestinians were secure in their

own country. Again, Arafat was completely successful in achieving this

objective.

Arafat was not always a successful military commander, however. Three

times he led the Palestinian armed forces into historic disasters —

“Black September” 1970 when Fatah forces were massacred by the Jordanian

army, the siege of Beirut in 1982 when Arafat was forced to flee to

Tunisia to save his own life, and the final siege of Arafat’s

headquarters in Ramallah (which Arafat left only to go to Paris to die).

Ironically, these defeats happened precisely because Arafat departed

from guerilla methods, and sought to construct the infrastructure of a

Palestinian state-in-exile complete with offices, military bases,

prisons, radio stations, etc., and also with a visible hierarchy (both

military and civilian). All these things gave his enemies targets to

attack...so they did. Fatah’s armed forces, which had been developed for

guerilla combat, were unable to defend this infrastructure against the

Jordanian army or the IDF.

Arafat’s errors were not the result of a mental lapse, but of the

contradictory nature of middle class nationalist revolutionaries — the

historical category of which he was, arguably, the most important recent

example. Middle class nationalists dream of liberating their countries

from foreign domination, but they envision their countries free with

themselves in high public office. For almost all of them, the temptation

of elaborating a state apparatus (and everything that comes with it) is

too great to resist.

Unlike some of his colleagues in the Palestinian National Authority,

Arafat was never greedy for money. He died without ever having owned a

house, a plot of land, or (apparently) a change of clothes. And although

he devoted considerable energy, especially in his old age, to

re-constructing and defending the state infrastructure which had been

destroyed twice previously (1970 and 1980), he never finally abandoned

the principle of armed resistance to Israeli occupation. This was why he

remained wildly popular among the Palestinian people to the day he died.

Revolution, Sustainability, and Civilization: An Interview with

Derrick Jensen (part II) by the Lore Axe

Derrick Jensen is an author, anarchist, and environmental activist.

While he was in Seattle recently I had the opportunity to talk with him

about his analysis of the dominant culture and revolution. The first

half of this interview appeared in issue #6 of The A Word.

Lore Axe: How do you define revolution and how do you see one unfolding?

Derrick Jensen: One mistake many revolutions of the past made was

attempting to seize the means of production. Which is exactly why the

mass of people ended up meeting the new boss, who was of course the same

as the old boss, because resources have to flow toward the producers. It

doesn’t matter whether they are horny-handed workers, Maoists,

capitalists, or Bill Gates, it’s meet the new boss, same as the old

boss.

Production within our culture really is the conversion of living to the

dead. I want to shut down production. I would like to see people go

after the electrical infrastructure, the oil infrastructure and all the

means of production, finding the bottlenecks, the weaknesses and

shutting them down. Which is what I think Ward Churchill meant when he

said we need to make the system unworkable. Attack the system; make it

unstable.

I’ve asked third world activists, if the US economy disappeared tomorrow

would the people of India be better off? They laugh and say “of course.”

One of the reasons given — in this example it’s the European not US

economy — is there are former granaries in India that now export dog

food and tulips to Europe. People are starving in India because they

export those goods, because of the rules of global trade. The government

of India wanted to dump almost sixty million tons of grain into the

ocean because they were no longer allowed, due to international trade

regulations, to sell that food at subsidized prices to the poor.

Somebody sued the government over that and the Indian Supreme Court said

they couldn’t dump the food into the ocean. So they’ve left all those

tons of grain in warehouses to rot and be eaten by rats. People are

dying right now because of international trade.

We need to be smart about bringing down civilization. There are things

people can hit that would have no moral consequences whatsoever. You

can’t make a moral argument for leaving a cell phone tower up. You

aren’t going to kill people by taking them out. On the other hand cell

towers kill between five and fifty million migratory songbirds every

year. I think somebody blowing up a hospital is really fucked up.

Whether that’s done by an anarcho-primitivist or the U.S. military. I’m

not talking about senseless destruction. One can be smart and moral.

That’s one of the problems with our culture. If someone mentions the “V”

word people freak out. If some guy bursts in right now and is going to

chop us into little bits with a machete, I think it would not be

unreasonable for us to grab a chair and bop him on the head.

That said, there are some groups of people that would be better off if

the U.S. economy disappeared tomorrow. The rural poor, all over the

world, would be instantly better off. The urban poor would be really

fucked; they’re already fucked, and would be even more fucked. The urban

rich are probably fucked, but I don’t care about them, because they are

the problem anyway.

I don’t mean to blithely say we need to bring down civilization. There

are some premises and if we agree with them, we’re going to go a certain

direction. First off, civilization is not sustainable — someday it will

crash; second, this crash will be messy and lots of people will die;

third, the longer civilization continues, the messier this crash will

be, because there will be less of the natural world to support us. If

you agree with those three things and if your main concern is the

survival and comfort of the humans who live during and after that crash,

but don’t want to mess up your own conscience or spiritual purity with

actually taking it down, then what you — or whomever — need to do is to

stop complaining because I’m simply stating the obvious. Instead, work

like hell to make things as survivable as possible for the people that

live through the crash. Instead of railing at me for taking things down

— since your acknowledging they’re going to be nasty — start pulling up

asphalt and putting in community gardens. Start teaching people to

identify local edible plants, and what insects they can eat. Start

working to save habitat so when things do get nastier there will be some

calories for people. Salmon deserve to live for their own purposes, but

people are going to want those calories. We can all work together. Those

people who want to take out dams have a responsibility to support the

people working to learn about local medicinal herbs. The people learning

about medicinal herbs to increase survivability during the crash have a

responsibility to support people who want to take out dams. It has to go

both ways.

That is frankly the problem I have with pacifists. I don’t have a

problem with pacifism, if somebody wants to devote their life to that.

The problem I have is they need to give us the same respect and support

that we’re supposed to give them.

LA: I’d like to hear more about the situation of the urban poor.

Especially because this often includes people of color and I’ve heard

the Green-Anarchist/Primitivist movement has been criticized for being

predominantly white.

DJ: I don’t think that’s true. I’d say the best anarcho-primitivists in

the world are all the indigenous peoples still living. I think that’s

actually crap and really racist to say that most of them are white.

Among the civilized, sure it’s probably true. But that’s just the same

silencing of the indigenous anyway. For an anarcho-primitivist to

silence the indigenous is even more ridiculous than ever.

I think we — whoever we are — need to reach out and make alliances in

ways we don’t. I was corresponding with a former member of the Dutch

resistance in World War II and what he said blew me away; “of course the

resistance was made up mainly of prostitutes, murderers and thieves.” I

was like “shit that’s not the way it was in Casablanca. I always thought

it was upper class British officers.” It never occurred to me.

Many of my students at the prison were among the most politicized people

I had ever met. A lot of them don’t suffer from the belief in the system

like we do, or are squeamish about laws. Obviously, or they wouldn’t

have ended up there. They don’t believe the system has any more validity

than what comes out of the point of a gun. I think a lot of the

revolution is going to come out of the so-called criminal class. I’ve

met family farmers who understand way the hell more about these issues

than a lot of environmentalists. Of course a lot of Native Americans,

victims of domestic violence, and others understand as well. Yes, some

are as stupid as we are, but some of them aren’t. There are all sorts of

reaching out that need to be done.

At a talk I gave recently I said a lot of the revolution is going to

come out of the so-called criminal class. A guy in the audience said

“I’m a public defender and I don’t agree with you, because most of my

clients simply want to get off and when they get off they want a tiny

bit bigger piece of the pie.” I was talking with someone else who

pointed out that we’re actually both right and we’re seeing these people

at different stages of the process; but I see them after they’ve been

run through the system. The big difference is the students that I had at

the prison realized they don’t have anything left to lose.

You want to know why we don’t rebel? We still think we have something to

lose. That’s what’s stopping us. As soon as we realize we have nothing

left to lose we’ll be dangerous. Until we get there and reach out to

other people who are too, the Green Anarchist movement is going to be

nothing but theoretical and sporadic action.

At what point do we resist? That is the point I try to make with dioxin.

Every mother’s breast milk in the world is contaminated with dioxin. My

grandfather died from pancreatic cancer. I have Crohn’s disease, a

disease of civilization. How close does it have to get before we realize

we don’t have anything left to lose? When the salmon are gone? Ok, well

that’s fine, but they can’t take the redwoods. Well, ok, they can’t take

clean air. We draw a line in the sand and say they can’t cross it. Well,

ok you can’t cross this one and ok now you can’t cross that one. Well,

ok you can have all my clothes. Well, you can rape me but you can’t make

me say I like it. Ok, I’ll say I like it but you can’t cut off my foot.

Ok, just don’t cut off my other foot. “They made us many promises, more

than I can remember. But they never kept but one. They promised to take

our land and they took it.” [Red Cloud]

Somebody asked me at one of the talks I gave recently, “at what point do

you think we’ll reach the point where people should use any means

necessary?” The first thing I thought of was we should probably start to

fight back when the last passenger pigeon is killed. The point I tried

to make was the point has passed. I realized it was a really bad answer.

Maybe we should’ve fought back when the last indigenous person, living

traditionally, was forced off their land in Massachusetts? Why not

Germany? Why not Italy? The real answer is we should fight back when we

realize the other tactics aren’t working.

Back to the urban poor. We need to reach out. That doesn’t mean reaching

out blindly. There are plenty of family farmers who get it, and there

are probably family farmers who are anti-environmental assholes. There

are prisoners that I talk to who are really politicized and really get

it and there are ones who I would never turn my back on because they’re

psychopaths or sociopaths that I don’t trust. I didn’t care if some

students walked behind me, but there were a few students I’d watch if

they walked behind me. I’m not saying we need to talk to every prisoner

or talk to every family farmer, or every poor person of color in the

city, but talk to some of them.

LA: What kind of foundation is necessary to make the struggle effective?

Do you think actions by individuals and small cells are going to be

enough or do we need something more? What kind of foundation is

necessary to prepare for post-revolutionary situations?

DJ: I got in a big disagreement with some young anarchists not very long

ago, who said they couldn’t see the need for a larger, more hierarchical

organization system than the leaderless cell. I disagreed. Part of the

problem with our notion of authority in this culture is the assumption

that all authority is oppressive. That’s a toxic mimic of real

authority. You can have authority and leadership that are fluid and

based on effectiveness. You can do small-scale actions with leaderless

cells, but you can’t do a large-scale one. You can’t do actions spread

out all over the country and the world with leaderless cells. You have

to have people who are making decisions like those.

They also said there shouldn’t be any coercion at all. I agree that no

one should be coerced into joining. Nonetheless, if five of us are

committed to do some action (to the feds who are reading this: my role

in this is to write and that’s what I’m doing right now) and at the last

minute one of them decides they don’t want to do it — just for the hell

of it — and that endangers the rest of us? That’s not acceptable

behavior. Say their choice to bail out kills my best friend? That’s not

a way to have an effective resistance movement.

Concerning after the revolution — whatever that means — no, I wouldn’t

want a large-scale organization. People ask me what kind of culture do

you want? I say, I don’t want a culture. I want a hundred thousand

cultures based on the needs of each particular land-base. I don’t want

to establish something large and I would fight against that.

We’re in a hell of a corner and it’s going to be nasty no matter what

happens for the next five hundred to a thousand years at least. I once

said to an indigenous friend of mine, “you obviously live on the same

land your people have lived on for ten thousand years or more, so I can

understand how you’re indigenous. But what about somebody who lives in

Colorado, whose people are originally from what is now the Carolinas,

his people have a reservation in Oklahoma, and he grew up in LA? How is

he that much more indigenous than me?” She said she considered them

half-indigenous. Also she would say that many hill people of the Ozarks

and Appalachians are half-indigenous, because they’ve lived in place for

two hundred years. What will come afterwards won’t be indigenous. A lot

of my indigenous friends say they will help us learn how to live once

civilization goes away and the land itself will teach us how to live, if

we are willing to listen. Yes, there will be a period of upheaval, but

eventually there will be people living in place again. Simply

recognizing that if you eat more salmon than is sustainable you won’t

have the salmon and won’t survive. People recognizing that reentering

face to face economics, relationships with the natural world and even

with enemies are necessary. I’m not saying people are going to be happy

and agreeing with everything all the time.

So I would not want higher level structures. Once again, indigenous

peoples have an entirely different relationship with authority. It

doesn’t mean that there is no authority. It’s different because there

aren’t what we consider bosses. I don’t want to speak for all indigenous

peoples, because there are as many kinds of authority relationships as

there are indigenous peoples. Some of which are pretty nasty.

LA: So, you use the word authority to refer to someone who is an

authority on a subject reflecting that they have some kind of experience

in a particular area being different from arbitrary authority, or power

over someone?

DJ: Well, it’s generally fluid, and that is an important feature too.

I’m a terrible hunter and the two guys I used to go hunting with are

really good. They would tell me what to do and I would do it. Then when

we were done hunting, they wouldn’t tell me what to do, and if they did,

I would tell them to fuck off. The very first time one of them took me

out to shoot target practice, he showed me how to not cross someone with

a gun. He said “if you ever once cross me with a gun I will never go

with you again.” That is an example of a really good authority figure,

very straightforward.

LA: Do you consider yourself a Primitivist?

DJ: Sure, if somebody wants to put me in a box I don’t care; but I don’t

identify myself as one. If somebody says, are you a writer? Ok, sure.

Are you an Anarcho-Primitivist? Sure. In a review I once read someone

said I wasn’t enough of an anarchist.

LA: That’s pretty common among anarchists.

DJ: Yeah, there’s a joke one of my students at the prison told me: “if

you go to a party how do you recognize the anarchists? They’re the ones

wearing the same uniform.” I don’t have any patience for that.

I don’t care; you want to call me an anarchist? You want to not call me

an anarchist? You want to call me not enough of an anarchist? I don’t

care about any of that shit. I’m just doing the work. What I care about

is living in a world that has salmon in it. Living in a world that has

not been dismembered. I care about living in a world where women are not

being raped, children are not being beaten, and indigenous peoples

aren’t being forced off their land.

If that makes me an anarchist, great, if that makes me not an anarchist,

great, I don’t care. Besides which, I’ve been called an eco-terrorist,

an environmental extremist, an enviro-technie — whatever that means —

and a green weenie. It doesn’t matter. What is important is what is

happening on the ground.

LA: You’ve called John Zerzan “the most important philosopher of our

time.” How do you feel about his analysis of language, art and symbolic

thought?

DJ: Actually, I don’t understand it. When many of John’s ideas were

first presented to me they didn’t make a lot of sense. It was only after

a lot of thought that they started to come together. Numbers and time

are good examples of that.

I’m still not there with language. I see how language can be used to

deceive and used to distance us from our experience. Language is not

experience, but I don’t know if language necessarily has to separate us

from our experience. I don’t know if that is the point he is making, but

if it is, then I don’t think I agree. I used to think that way and then

one day I was driving off an interstate; as I came off it, suddenly

there was a stop sign and I realized that the stop sign is not supposed

to actually stop your car. Language is not supposed to be experience,

but instead is supposed to point us towards, incorporate and make sense

of our experience. So, in it’s proper role I have no problem with it.

Similarly, I have no problem with counting, so long as one recognizes

that counting inherently objectifies. So long as you realize that words

aren’t experience, I wouldn’t have a problem with them.

I think it’s the same with art; but a few years ago I was watching

aborigines dance in the movie Baraka and I suddenly understood a

question that has bothering me for a long time. Some people will tell

you since humans are natural that everything humans create is natural,

like atomic bombs. That never made any sense to me. I finally got it

when I saw that scene in the movie. Unless that particular dance was a

dance for the movie camera — which is entirely possible — I can

guarantee what it was about. It was about helping them to understand

their place and imbeddedness in the natural world. I realized any

technology is natural to the degree it reinforces our understanding of

our imbeddedness in the natural world and it’s unnatural to the degree

that it separates us. So if a piece of art or language can remind us of

our place in the natural world then I would say that it’s natural and if

not then its unnatural. So I don’t know exactly what John is saying but

I may disagree with him slightly on that, or I might not, I don’t know.

As far as symbolic thought, I don’t know if I can comment on that,

because I’m not really sure what he means.

LA: You mentioned earlier the need to take advantage of civilization’s

bottlenecks or weak points. What are some of these — physical and

otherwise — that can be used to bring civilization down? You’ve already

mentioned the electrical and oil infrastructures, but can you expand on

those or talk about others?

DJ: I think that there are weaknesses on every level. On the personal

level the weak point is people’s fundamental dissatisfaction with their

exploitation. Talking to people about how much they hate their jobs and

helping them to understand that the system isn’t serving them well is

one way the contradictions of the system can be used to our advantage.

One of the great weaknesses of the system is that it requires raw

materials from around the world to make the thing function. I don’t know

if it’s true for you, but something that’s really frustrated me for as

long as I can remember is that it takes a thousand years for some tree

to grow into an elder, and some moron can go cut it down in six minutes.

In some ways it’s much easier to destroy than to not destroy. But that’s

all wrong and I realized this a couple days ago. The truth is, cutting

down a tree is an incredibly intricate and complicated act requiring

assistance from all over the world. What I mean by that is you’ve got to

get the oil, refine the oil, get the materials for the chainsaw,

manufacture the chainsaw — or axe whatever — it requires this from all

over the world. Go try cutting down a redwood tree by yourself, with no

assistance from the global economy. Good luck.

So, it made me realize that all this destruction is actually really

difficult. We can use that to our advantage. Something to remember and

think about in terms of stopping raw materials.

Years ago I asked George Draffan if you could change one thing about the

culture, without getting rid of civilization, what would it be? He said

he would stop international trade, because that is a huge engine for the

destruction of the planet. So that’s something else we can think about,

how can we effectively disrupt international trade?

Another thing I’ve thought about lately is most people aren’t ready for

this discussion because they still identify with the system. The truth

is the technical questions for the most part are really easy. I write

and talk a lot about how much I care for the salmon; but the truth is if

I really care about the salmon in the Klamath River it would be really

easy to stop their extirpation. What would you have to do? You have to

remove the dams, stop logging, and stop industrial fishing. Which

actually is not a difficult technical task. Even if you had a fair

number of people to do it. All of those are imminently doable tasks. The

same is true if you love prairie dogs: you find out what the threats are

and you remove the threats. The problem is that we don’t do it. One of

the reasons we don’t is because those in power will kill us if they

catch us. Fear is stopping us, but what else? We identify more with the

system than we do with our landbase. I had a conversation ten minutes

ago with someone who was saying that “violence is bullshit; nothing good

ever comes from violence.” I said, you know what? We’re all in the midst

of violence; it’s not that simple.

Transportation is another big ones weak points. I was stuck on

Interstate 5 several years ago when four lanes of the highway were

closed off where two hazardous trucks had flipped over. It took probably

three or four hours to go about five miles around that, cause everybody

had to pull off and get on two lane roads. That made me think (I’m not

going to take out bridges or anything) what would happen if the 520 or

I-90 floating bridges in Seattle — or east to Snoqualmie pass — came

down, whether through earthquake (like the one in San Francisco), or

through hazardous trucks blowing up on them?

I interviewed someone who said he’s been studying the movement of raw

materials for years and the thing that amazes him is how fragile the

system actually is and how it hasn’t collapsed already. He pointed out

that the U.S. economy almost ground to a halt a couple years ago within

two or three days of a dock workers’ strike on the west coast, because

all these manufacturing plants couldn’t get their raw materials. What

happens if GM shuts down their assembly lines? It costs them millions of

dollars a minute. That is why the strike had to be brought to an end. It

was dock workers not environmentalists or anyone else.

The whole system is really fragile on every level. One of the heads of

security in the South African regime under apartheid, said the thing

that most scared him about the ANC was not the sabotage or the violence

but the knowledge that if they could get the mass of people to no longer

believe in law and order no security force in the world could deal with

them. They can’t catch all of us. If you are really in love you do what

is necessary to protect your beloved. We are policing ourselves. The

biggest chink in the whole armor of the system is the reliance on us to

believe that their laws carry moral weight and that there is something

immoral about acting outside of the desires of those in power.

LA: How do you envision bringing down civilization? Do you think it will

be a single event, a short series of events, or perhaps in a way that is

less visible in the short term, like the fall of Rome?

DJ: The bad news is that the way I honestly see that playing out is:

nobody wins. Because I think if those in power find their power

threatened enough they’ll blow up the world. Nukes really scare me. Even

if we totally stayed in line and no environmentalist or anarchist does

anything, those in power will still use nukes because their power will

start slipping. Wes Jackson said years ago that “Wal-Mart is keeping

people from rebelling in this country; so long as people can get cheap

disposable diapers they’re not going to rebel.” You want to start a

revolution? Pop the price of gas up to ten dollars and watch the fun

begin. If people who go to Wal-Mart to get their disposable diapers —

not environmentalists — started to rebel those in power would have no

problem using nukes. They’ve used nukes on the United States already;

can you say Nevada? Can you say the Shoshone? Or all the experiments

done on U.S. soldiers or U.S. civilians anyway?

A few years ago, I talked with some really good hackers and asked,

“could you stop that possibility?” They said, “no there are too many. We

could probably hack our way into maybe a half dozen sites and stop a

half dozen missiles from launching, but there is no way we can counter

thousands. No matter how many of us there are.” I don’t know what to do

with that information.

Setting that possibility aside, I don’t see it as one big act. One of

the things those of us who really want to bring it down need to be aware

of is we need to have staying power. I asked the hackers, “would a

number of hackers be able to bring down civilization?” They said, “yes”

and that if you are going to take the electrical grid or whatever

through hacking — and I need to say by the way that I know nothing about

hacking, and I’m not just saying that for the feds. I know even less

about hacking then I do about explosives. Computers give me the heebie

jeebies — they would need to be “the last one standing.” What they meant

was if you are going to take out the grid using computers you need to

have your own electrical site so you can keep hitting it and hitting it.

I think a lot about Wee Willy Keeler who was a baseball player early

last century who, when somebody asked him how he got so many hits, he

said “hit them where they ain’t.” I think also about what Nathan Bedford

Forrest the confederate general — who was a horrible racist by the way

but an excellent general — said when someone asked him how do you win so

many battles, he said “you get there first with the most.” That means

you need to find where you can get local superiority in forces.

A complaint I have of black block type actions is that those have

usually taken place where the cops have already massed anyway because of

some other protest. I understand the point of them breaking windows is

not to break windows but to send a message. If you’re really interested

in doing some sort of damage you “hit them where they ain’t.” That’s

another huge weakness that we can find our way into. There is a sense in

which defenders have an advantage in any sort of battle. I’m using

military language intentionally because war is what we are talking

about. Those in power have never had any illusions about that. It’s only

those of us who are pretending to resist who ever question that language

or that reality. Being the defender has the advantage to just sit and

wait for the other person to act; but there’s a big disadvantage too: if

you are attempting to cover and defend a lot of ground they’ll be able

to find places where you’re not, because you can’t protect everywhere.

There is a tremendous cost associated with protecting every bit of the

infrastructure, especially all around the globe, especially with people

who aren’t happy with what you are doing to them. That is a huge

advantage we have if we don’t police ourselves.

LA: Assuming Civilization comes down, what’s to stop it from “rising” up

again?

DJ: I wish that we had the luxury of trying to figure out how to keep it

from coming up again. I would say this is analogous to you are lying in

bed at night at home and somebody bursting in with a gun and trying to

shoot you, while you’re thinking hmm how can we make sure nobody breaks

in again? That’s a question that future generations find answers to,

it’s not my job. That won’t be the job of any one particular person, it

will be the job of everyone, because one of the things we want to do is

decentralize. It will be the job of all the local people to fight and

make sure that the power structures don’t start to rebuild themselves.

I’m sure that they will. Presuming nukes don’t happen, I think that Mad

Max is probably reasonably accurate at least until for a while until the

gasoline decomposes, which is I think is pretty fast, maybe a year or

two. There will be just as much rape and domestic violence, just as many

local assholes trying to kill the last of the salmon but you’ve reduced

their reach. One of the things I’m hoping for with the collapse of

civilization is that there will at least be sanctuaries where those in

power can’t reach.

I was at a talk where somebody gave me a photograph of salmon in Alaska.

A week before that I’d seen about fifteen salmon spawning where I was

again just yesterday and it’s totally covered with silt from the logging

up stream, and god knows if any of those salmon eggs will survive. I’ve

read about how the salmon used to be so thick that horses were afraid to

get in and that you could walk across on their backs, but I’d never seen

it. The picture shows a river full of fish, it’s no hyperbole to say

it’s full of fish. You could not step into this water without stepping

on a fish. I showed the picture to my mom, and she said “we’ve got about

ten years to take down civilization, because that’s not going to last.

It’ll be gone in ten to fifteen years.” If civilization comes down those

salmon can make their way back and it would probably only take four or

five hundred years for them to re-inhabit. It will take that long for

the streams to clean themselves out, and be ready to welcome the salmon.

After civilization comes down there will still be people who don’t know

what they hell they’re doing but it will take them a thousand years, or

fifteen hundred, or two thousand years to figure out how to live on that

land and be indigenous to that landscape. But, at least this way there

will still be reserves. There will still be the center of the ocean

where fish can survive. There will still be forests recovering and there

will still be streams that can recover with the salmon and their

neighbors. That’s one thing that I hope for with the collapse, that

there will be those sanctuaries in place.

Civilization rising up again is not our primary concern. On the big

scale, it won’t rise up because the easily accessible reserves of iron

are gone. There will never be another Iron Age. There will never be

another Bronze Age. There will never be another Oil Age; that’s for

sure.

Recently on the derrickjensen-discussion list someone said that he would

hope that people could make it so people are too ashamed to restart

civilization. That makes a lot of sense to me. Will we have learned our

lesson? Some will and some won’t. The people in this watershed might end

up being pretty bad — not as bad as this culture because they won’t have

the technology — but the next watershed over they might not. One of the

lessons I hope people will learn is that if the people in this watershed

try and steal from the next watershed over, the people in that watershed

will learn to resist effectively and don’t make the mistake of thinking

that you can reason with an abuser.

LA: You have a book on surveillance that will be out in June. What are

some of the technologies and tactics the government presently has, and

will most likely have in the near future that should concern us most?

DJ: It’s the scariest book I’ve ever written. It’s really scary what

they are capable of doing already.

Something that not the feds, but corporations have — and the isn’t

science fiction it’s already being put in place — are RFID (radio

frequency identification) chips which right now are about the size of a

grain of rice and they are going to be the size of a speck of dust. They

want to put individual ID tags on every consumer item made. That doesn’t

mean every pair of shoes of a certain sort will have an ID tag; it means

every particular shoe will have an ID tag. There will be receivers all

over. The town of Tulsa was already wired for this and they ran a test

of the receivers so that the items could be tracked everywhere. They say

the reason is for inventory control so if you want to know where your

load of toilet paper is you can tell that it’s on the highway between

Redding and Arcata. That’s small potatoes, cause they also talk about

having these little chips in your pill bottles in your medicine cabinet

that will remind you to take your pills and let the pharmacy know when

your pills are low so they’ll have your pills ready for when you need

them. When they’re in every consumer item in the next year or so and I

walk into a store the store clerk can say “hello Mr. Jensen would you

like to see some sweaters the same price as the sweater you are

wearing?” The point is they’ll be able to track you everywhere if you

are wearing any consumer item. Which is pretty scary.

Wal-Mart, International Paper, Gillette, Michelin and other companies

are all in the process of implementing RFID technology. The European

Union is putting them into the Euro bank notes, so they can literally

follow the money. If you have money it will be traceable and every place

you take your money it — meaning you — will be tracked.

The book started because a guy sent me a zine that was filled with

outlandish technology and I didn’t believe any of it until I started

following back his sources, which were original sources like the

department of defense. They have microwaves that they can beam into one

spot, like into people’s brains, beaming words into your head and make

you think you are thinking them. You read this, and it’s like “yeah,

yeah, bullshit. This is science fiction stuff;” but it’s not.

Another technology that scares me and makes me sad is one the feds are

in the process of creating: what they call a morning after pill for

regret. They want to give it to soldiers so they can go in and slaughter

a village and afterwards won’t develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

and it will guarantee even more than boot camp that they’ll never

develop a conscience. That’s the end of all humanity and animal nature.

There’s also “Smart Dust,” little receptors that are tiny, which they

are already putting out, they can detect movement. They can put these

into a forest and detect when somebody is there. So far — wink, wink —

they are using them for bird counts and to monitor forest fires, but the

military is already talking about putting them on the battlefield so

that they can see everything. That’s really what this is about; there is

no limit to their psychopathological urge of those in power to control

and destroy.

LA: Do you see any way we can counter some of those technologies and

strategies?

DJ: I’m sure that there are a lot of people who can come up with better

ways than I to counter particular strategies. Somebody at one of my

talks suggested that people microwave their sweaters to destroy the RFID

tag, and George Draffan pointed out the tags are metal and we all know

what happens when you put metal into microwaves. I don’t want to see

them blow their faces off. I don’t want to recommend something I haven’t

done myself because I don’t know if it’s a good idea.

LA: Someone on the derrickjensen-discussion list posted an article that

mentioned RFID tags being used in microwavable food, and receivers in

the microwaves would be able to read the tag and know how long and at

what temperature level, to cook the food. So I don’t know if microwaves

would even effect the chips.

DJ: Well that’s handy! The answer seems pretty obvious to me at this

point. We can come up with technical solutions to all of this but what

we need to do is stop the capacity of those in power to do it because I

don’t think they’re reachable and they’re not going to stop because we

ask nicely. So we need to find out a way, using our own gifts

individually and collectively, to figure out ways to stop them, to shut

down the whole system.

Do you think that if we vote and elect the right people they’ll say,

you’re right we won’t allow RFID tags? It ain’t gonna happen; but you

know that.

LA: What kind of advice can you offer potential revolutionaries in the

first world, particularly in the U.S.?

DJ: The first thing that comes to mind is figure out what you want. I

just wrote a long essay for Adbusters (I don’t know if they’re going to

use it or not) which talked about why our resistance is so ineffective,

but part of what I said in it is that we don’t know what we want. Those

on other side know what they want: every last tree, every last fish,

every last bit of resistance crushed, control everything turned into

products, kill everything and they want it right now. We don’t know what

we want. Do we want a few smaller clearcuts? Kinder gentler clearcuts?

The first advice I would give is figure out what you want. I think I’m

clear, I want a world where there is more wild salmon, ancient trees and

migratory songbirds in the world than there was the year before. Do I? I

ask that question because: am I doing what it takes to save the Klamath

River salmon? I don’t know.

I read a really good essay by Eduardo Galeano not very long ago and I

love his work. In this article he attacks writers by saying that they

aren’t actually doing anything. Maybe I am doing something to help the

salmon, but it’s really frustrating because it’s acting symbolically as

opposed to doing something tangible to help the salmon. It’s incredibly

frustrating. What do you want? Then figure out what to do to get that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about pacifism for a long time and one of the

problems I have with pacifism is that — as Philip Berrigan said before

he died — when someone said that pacifism doesn’t actually achieve

anything, it doesn’t get results, he said your god doesn’t want results,

your god doesn’t need results, god requires faith. He was acknowledging

there that pacifism and much of our so-called resistance really is based

on magical thinking: that if we’re just nice enough God will take care

of everything or the Easter Bunny will, or the great mother, or

somebody. My point is that I can give advice to people if they figure

out what they want to do. Figure out what you want to protect and then

go ask the creature or place itself, ask them “what can I do to help

you” and then act. Then ask what are the biggest problems that I can

help resolve using the gifts that are unique to me in all the world?

Like I said, I don’t know how to act, I don’t know anything about

explosives, what I do is know how to write and for now that is the way I

can serve best.

I have to say — and this blasphemy among some places — I’m really sick

of all the pacifists, protesters, or whatever, doing something symbolic

and then standing there waiting to get arrested. What’s that about? I

don’t understand. There is this whole perverse thing where we have our

resistance — which is dada-esque — the cops get off on beating people up

and the protesters seem to get some sort of pride getting arrested. I

don’t understand what any of that is about. What really ultimately is

accomplished? The advice I would give them is what do you want to

accomplish and do it. Take care of yourself.

The consequences of not acting are real. Real salmon are really going

extinct. I just read a couple days ago in The Ecologist (volume 33 #10

page 4) about Chemical Induced Puberty. In 1997, 1% of the girls under 8

were developing breasts and pubic hair from the way that chemicals have

been pumped into the natural world. By the end of the survey — now — it

rose to 27.2% for black girls and 6% for white before the age of 8.

Worse, the doctor reported that 1% of the 3 year olds they examined had

developed breasts or pubic hair. 57% of the carcasses of deer in Montana

had severe genital abnormalities. The majority of lakes in the state of

Florida contain alligators that are unable to breed because their testes

have become shriveled. There are real consequences to this.

What will it take for people fight back? The answer unfortunately is

that for most people it won’t take anything because they won’t do it, no

matter what. So the consequence of that is forget them. People say you

are going to scare away fence sitters. I don’t give a fuck, they’re

going to be scared away anyway.

At the same time there are real consequences to getting caught. A very

cool kid came up to me after a talk and said “I want to go blow up a

factory.” I asked how old he was and he said 17. I said “have you ever

had sex?” He said “no.” I said “just remember if you get caught you

aren’t going to have sex for twenty years at least. That’s not saying

that one person having sex is worth the salmon. I’m not saying it’s a

reason not to act, I’m saying don’t be stupid.

The Abolition of Activism by Noose Papier

Seattle has a rich history, from the point of view of revolutionaries as

well as the vantage point of the capitalist families that are in charge.

During the Aerospace boom in the late 60’s and early 70’s, there was the

Black Panthers (the second largest chapter on the West Coast), the

American Indian Movement, much of it active in the Puget Sound region,

and of course the anti-war movement. During the Lumber and Shipbuilding

boom around World War I, there was the Socialist Party, the Sailor /

Soldier’s council, the IWW, and even a left wing dominated AFL. In both

of these eras, people were building toward a new world, a total

transformation of society in a tangible way, and not just reacting

against the old society, against those who were trying to realize the

robber baron’s dream.

Some will argue that for the recent boom (and now bust), WTO protests

were a worthy comparison. It was an important event, a wake up call, but

was not the same thing as what has happened in the past. The WTO did

illuminate the wrongs of the ruling class on a global scale, as well as

the pathologies within the “Activist Community” which had been in

hibernation for many years. Much of the fallout has yet to be dealt

with, from the liberal revisionism in many books and articles about the

protests to unhealed grudges and unspoken agendas.

Much of the blue collar was kicked out of town in the 1990’s. The dive

bars and greasy cafes. The cheap studios downtown; the warehouse space

inhabited by struggling working artists; venues to see music and

experience all types of grassroots (alternative) culture vanished for a

time. Space to simply exist and not be hassled by some security guard,

cop, or property owner became an anomaly. Even things that people in

other cities take for granted, such as hanging out in your neighborhood

with a few friends on the street at night, putting a poster on a

telephone pole, or even sitting on the sidewalk — became effectively

criminal acts. One would think that all this, exacerbated by a massive

acceleration of wealth division, at the expense of us who struggle just

to pay the rent would produce a movement that if not capable of

overthrowing this power, that would at least alter it some or even

challenge its policies, and not merely its ideology. In spite of all of

the rhetoric we see five years after the WTO protests, this has never

materialized. In fact, it has been marked by the continued cultism and

splintering on the left, opportunism by career activists, and the

inability for seasoned and experienced activists to deal with their

personal issues. What we should be concerned about is the state of the

“movement” now, and most important, what can be done about it.

The Social Atomization of Activism in Seattle

A community is defined as a grouping of people who share a common

interest and culture and have a cohesive social structure that

encompasses these things. For example, we hear about the “business

community”; their goals are to make money, and members of this community

will collaborate in many ways to make even more money (and suppress

opposition), through political lobbying, forming of associations and

clubs, especially informally. When we hear about the African American

community, we can understand that we are talking about people who share

a common heritage, history, culture, and experience in a white

controlled society. Same goes for the GBLT community; people who share a

common interest and culture and have a cohesive social structure. Or,

cultural subcultures of artists, artisans, musicians, and economic

communities, such as coops or some labor unions; all of these

aforementioned communities are the components of all political and

economic institutions.

Every institution that has been perceived as a restriction of free will,

individual or collective, has been rightfully pinpointed as something

that needs to go, to be abolished. In the last three hundred years,

institutions such as the church, monarchies, economic systems —

capitalist and state socialist alike, patriarchy, white supremacy,

homophobia, and other systems that support these structures have been

the target of the disenfranchised, the prisoners, the wage slaves, and

anyone else that has felt the pressure of a privileged class of people

above them getting social or political perks. Rarely will members of

such institutions call upon their own abolition.

This is especially true of the Activist Scene; note the use of an

uppercase letter.

We can accept that you don’t have to be a Carpenter to build something.

You don’t have to be a Politician to understand politics. You don’t have

to be a Rock Star to play an instrument, an Artist to produce art, nor a

Priest to have spirituality. You do not have to be an Economist to

manage your money, a Lawyer to understand law, nor a Philosophy

professor to understand ethics. Some may argue that such titles might be

a barrier to the craft of understanding. So why on earth do we assume

that we have to be an “Activist” to struggle?

We hear the phrase “Activist Community”, and many roll their eyes,

because it is a misnomer. Nonetheless, this self-definition of Activists

elevates a scene into a class of people that have a set of interests

that are different from those that struggle against authority on a daily

basis who are not Activists. Individually, these interests may include

the desire to be noticed, to act as a leader of others, to assert an

opinion, to have a specialized knowledge on the meaning of “struggle”

and even to gain some amount of fame or notoriety. When there is a

community of people in competition for so many things, and in the

activist scene the competition is something fierce — there is something

that cannot be attained in spite of the rhetoric to the contrary: unity.

And while a person’s social status within larger society does play into

the inter-turmoil of many groups, it is virtually impossible to have a

meaningful discussion about any of it because of the inherent

contradictions within the “Activist” scene.

What is lost in this lack of unity is our ability, and in some cases

desire, to win struggles and control our own lives. It is not apathy; it

is demoralization. Such demoralization leads to a scene that develops,

that is disconnected with the concerns of people at large, and as a

result, Activism takes on a cult like character. In general, the

fettishization of intense conflict and martyrdom attracts unhealthy

people, and repels those who are capable; you must be a martyr, lest you

not be “down” with the “cause”. These expectations destroy personal

lives, physical and mental health, personal relationships, and our

ability to effectively challenge power. It also creates an intermediary

role for the “career Activist” to pass judgment upon “the masses” and

negotiate on behalf of them for personal gains.

There are no words in the English language within Activism which

describe the desire of someone who is trying to get into, but hasn’t

quite made it to an intermediary role between “power” and the “people”

as an activist; we have them in other aspects of life: tattle tail,

teacher’s pet, brown noser, ass kiss, and the list goes on. This class

of, dare we say — Activist bosses, create a condition of competition for

the title, the prestige, and often the pay that goes with being a

“leader” in the “Activist” community, deriving power not from below, but

from the next strata in the hierarchy dealing with whatever issue — be

it an NGO, a foundation grant, or a promotion higher into the

bureaucracy. Often, it is as simple as fulfilling an unmet psychological

need, at everyone else’s expense.

Like any social class, “Activists” have progressive and conservative

elements within their own context. The battle within this continuum is

over what issue shall be the flavor of the month to appeal to the

“masses”. The discussion is often moot, because the issue will always

primarily appeal to the Activist class, who will then go out to

“educate” the “community” on why the issue is so important. Every once

in a while, the issue will strike a chord with those who are not

Activists, but because the leadership and direction of the struggle is

always controlled by the established

Activists, the energy fades from a struggle not being taken to the next

level — as the (mis)leadership collapses and blames one another for the

“masses” not buying in. It is for this reason that “the people” rarely

show up to the meetings, unless the pain of tolerating the problem

outweighs the pain of listening to blowhards pontificate about various

isms and phony unity. As a result, the Activist Scene, by its inability

to connect with the uninitiated and through its internal competitive and

reactionary behavior, is inherently conservative, and is in fact more

damaging then bona fide conservatism, because it is cloaked in left

ideals. All of this may sound vague, and so I will provide an example of

how this power works outside of activist scene circles, to remove the

emotional attachment that some might have to this criticism and create

an understanding.

A few years back here in Seattle, a single mom was assaulted brutally by

her boyfriend in her apartment. This took place in a neighborhood where

blatant assaults like these are not public, and the entire neighborhood

was in shock over the brutality. The woman was forced to relocate, pay

medical expenses out of her own pocket, and deal with the trauma (both

hers and her child’s) in isolation, while having to quit her job. The

condition that led to this was a neighborhood of people who generally

got along, but were not used to communicating on such complex issues.

Having experience in organizing people, I decided I would do so in this

case since it was literally next door, and that the main goal would be

to simply get the neighbors to organize themselves around the issue and

raise some cash to benefit the victim. I purposely left politics out of

the equation, not using the opportunity to promote anything, even

implicitly, and asked the employees of a local cafe if I could post

leaflets advertising a rummage sale, to see if I could secure their

parking lot for the sale, and if she would get the word out. Of course,

the employees (and even the owner) quickly agreed to this and the idea

caught on quickly, and before I knew it, my living room as almost full

to capacity to the ceiling of used goods donated by the neighbors. When

the sale was rained out, we quickly secured a parking lot of an

apartment complex for the next weekend, and in six hours, $1400 had been

raised. It was not surprising that even though a male had initiated

this, about 90% of those donating time and goods were women, and toward

the end, my role became superfluous; the community had taken leadership

on an issue that they cared about, and it happened because someone took

the initiative, without trying to control the outcome.

Since this was a neighborhood “thing”, I contacted the adjoining

neighborhood association on e-mail to ask for donations, and sent them

an e-mail explaining the purpose and needs of the event. At this point,

the story of the tragedy itself was somewhat public and in the local

news. I received an e-mail from the community association: an exact copy

of mine, with the header removed, and a claim that they had organized

the sale! My concern was to get the job done, and so I only criticized

them privately. The people who claimed jurisdiction over the

neighborhood on all issues were trying to use the publicity as a means

to promote their name and take the credit for things they did not do.

Now one asks, so what it the point?

This is what many see as Activism from the outside: crass opportunism.

How many times have we seen people and groups try make a name (or a

paper sale) for themselves on an issue, rather then providing a vehicle

or material support for the realization of a struggle? How many times

have we seen left parties strategically insert themselves into roles of

visibility in a struggle though group manipulation, only to represent

themselves as the leaders? Can we remember when many activists came to

town for WTO, and the ones with the power and the money and the prestige

denounced locals for fighting the resulting oppression: our newly

militarized police force and clueless city council — while promptly

leaving town? How many times have we seen organizing around a political

issue, only to have the same people step in the spotlight without having

done a lick of work? And finally, how many times have we seen leaders in

movements who are pure grass roots bullied back out of the movement by

self proclaimed experts on radicalism?

The abolition of Activism is the abolition of a class of people who wish

to tell us what to do, once the immediate goals of a struggle are

achieved — be it an electoral issue, or a revolution in some form. In

any class system, there are those who want to be the engineers of it all

— from Lenin, to Walter Lippman, to the CEO, and the rest who refuse to

get their hands dirty. What will replace activism, in order for us to

succeed, is self-managed struggle, where we choose our leaders based on

our respect for their experience, and not because of a cult of

personality, political manipulation, party line, or a desire to be seen

as “legitimate” by those we are struggling against.

This struggle over our identity as people who are challenging power is

not an easy task. We may want to get our own people into intermediary

roles to displace those who are only there for their own enrichment, so

that we can have a firmer grip on the levers of pressure to make those

in power make decisions they otherwise will not. We will have to cast

off our identification under a political label or ideology, while

understanding the areas of struggle where aspects of different ideas can

be applied based on conditions as they present themselves. Our label

should be what is it that we are building, not what we say others should

build. Most important: we have to walk away from trying to recruit each

other out of the “Activist scene” and into our workplaces, our

neighborhoods, and other aspects of our lives, organize our peers, and

with them collectively learn how to advance struggle. If each “activist”

in town stopped trying to organize, co-opt, dominate, compete with,

harass, bully and outshine one another, and instead spent energy

organizing people in all other aspects of life — in real life, instead

of the imaginary political scene, then we might have a movement. The

relationships of people who are engage in this work are built through

informal social networking and trust; saying “thank you” or “I’m sorry”

might be the fist simple step for some.

And if an Activist doesn’t know anyone else besides other Activists,

then that person has even more work to do.

Wars End: Blacks and RITA in the Vietnam War by Andrew Hedden

“Our Troops,” Our Tactics

A white peace activist explained the reasoning behind her organization’s

anti-Iraq war signs. Their slogan — “Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home

Now” — was meant to correct an error of the Vietnam War era: the callous

demonization of war veterans by anti-war activists. And it’s true, the

G.I. got shortchanged — but not by the activist, by the Brass. Where

there was oppression, there was RITA — the military officials’ acronym

for “Resistance In The Army.” By 1971, the Pentagon noted at least 14

military dissident groups, with 6 or more veteran groups to boot, all

“attempting to subvert the armed forces and the war effort in Vietnam.”

Whether its troops grilling Rumsfeld or increasing desertion rates,

recent headlines concerning the war on Iraq highlight what history shows

us to be imperative. If one is looking to build a movement parallel in

strength to that of the 1960s, the role RITA has to play can scarcely be

overstated. We always have to look back on history to learn the mistakes

of the past — but our white peace activist only had it half right. So

far as the vantage point is one of privilege, the mistakes of the past

become mistakes of the present. Asked what role anti-racism played in

her organization, the woman pondered aloud whether communities of color

could be made to understand that “peace” was in their interest. “Our

Troops” had a place in her account of the armed forces as an

institution, but without a larger social depiction — drawing in both

class and race, for instance — her “troops” remained but a caricature.

Following from such a faulty image, the white peace activist — much like

her counterparts across this county — drew up equally faulty tactics

that, in practice, are less maps for social change than they are symbols

of good conscience. Peace is possible, to be sure, though that depends

on what one’s idea of peace is. Even given that, though, the

sign-holding vigils of this one activist’s organization — a thirty-year

old tradition — haven’t done much to achieve peace by anyone’s

definition.

Good conscience only goes so far — not far enough to end a war, by any

means — so it’s of utmost importance to study what does end wars. In the

Vietnam era, at least, that was, first of all, the struggle of the

Vietnamese themselves; but second of all, the struggle of G.I.’s within

the army, and Black G.I.’s most of all. Contrary to our peace activist’s

assumptions, “peace” has been a demand of people of color for centuries

— and if RITA owed itself to any one struggle, it was the struggle for

black self-determination and freedom.

RITA — Born in Flames

Stateside, what began in the rural South fighting segregation had by the

end of the 1960s erupted in the supposedly integrated urban North —

first as spontaneous violence and riots, then as organized self-defense,

in organizations like the Black Panther Party. The resistance of black

G.I.s followed a similar trajectory. Since Harry Truman’s executive

order for desegregation of the armed forces in 1948, the Army had seen

itself as a racially progressive institution. Officially colorblind,

there were no black marines, or white marines, only green marines. Or so

it thought. By 1968, racial violence had disrupted the integrated

consensus on such a scale that by 1970 “had begun to hinder the fighting

effort” in Vietnam. What had at first spontaneously erupted began to

coalesce into organized efforts like the American Servicemen’s Union,

Movement for a Democractic Military, and the Black Berets — and as

occurred with the Panthers, the strength built by these groups was met

with systematic repression.

From induction to discharge, institutional racism was a fact the black

G.I. had to deal with throughout his military career. For many, it was

the very reason they were there in the first place. Whatever its

intention, this was the function of “Project 100,000,” an experimental

program which inducted 100,000 men a year who would have otherwise been

screened out of the draft due to low educational scoring. Given that

only 5 percent of black males held college degrees at the time, Project

100,000 translated into more black combat troops, which inevitably meant

a disproportionate amount of black casualties in Vietanm. Lest the

statistics reflect negatively on themselves, government officials made

quick to put a civil rights spin on the whole thing. “History may

record,” declared Johnson’s secretary of labor, Daniel Moynihan, “that

the single most important psychological event in race relations in the

nineteen-sixties was the appearance of the Negro fighting men on the TV

screens of the nation. Acquiring a reputation for military valor is one

of the oldest known routes to social equality — from the Catholic Irish

in the Mexican War to the Japanese-American Purple Heart Division of

Word War II.”

G.I. Joe, meet Black Power

Blacks were busy navigating their own route to social equality, despite

the repeated attempts of government officials to map it for them.

“Blacks found community not in the service,” explained Lawrence Baskir

and William Strauss, “but among themselves.” Symbols of black power

emerged: flags were designed, leather “slave bracelets” were made and

worn as signs of solidarity, and dapping — elaborate rituals of hand

shaking — was invented. Yet no matter how flagrant racial inequity was —

as in the dearth of black officers or the lack of black commissary

goods, for instance — almost every sign of black solidarity was

interpreted by whites as, at best, self-segregation, and at worst,

outright rebellion. While some white soldiers displayed the Confederate

flag freely, a black power flag was a sign of insubordination. Afro

hairstyles, black power salutes, and dapping too all signified to white

officers a large measure of indiscipline. Military justice had come to

mean compliance to the white standard of culture and conduct: blacks

received more infractions, harsher sentences, and showed a

“disproportionately high percentage of the military prison population

through the war years.”

These were the roots of RITA — in Vietnam stockades, on naval vessels,

to stateside Air Force and Marine Corps bases, riots erupted as they had

in the U.S.’s inner city ghettos. As James Westheider observes, “Because

the underlying factors truly responsible for the violence were so

intense and widespread, almost anything could trigger a racial gang

fight.” The existence of underlying factors made the problem an

institutional one — but the military, at least at first, refused to see

it that way. Instead, the blame was deflected. “The immediate cause of

racial problems in Vietnam is black people themselves,” explained black

Navy Lieutenant Owen Heggs. “White people haven’t changed.” But that was

the problem — white people hadn’t changed. Officially colorblind

institutions were “still essentially white-controlled and dominated.”

The situation left many black G.Is wondering if the Vietcong were really

the enemy.

Destabilizing Elements

Government officials soon realized the potential fix they were in, as

Sol Stern explained in a March 24, 1968 New York Times feature “When the

Black G.I. Comes Back from Vietnam.” With blacks training in military

skills, accruing combat experience, then returning to impoverished inner

city ghettos, it was feared “some returning black Vietnam vets may

become ‘destabilizing’ elements rather than a force for civil-rights

progress:” that is, the ex-G.I. would join a militant group such as the

Panthers, and turn the gun back on the government itself. The Pentagon

responded with Project Transition, which aimed “to reach black G.I.’s

headed back to big explosive urban ghettos and train them for jobs which

will take them out of those ghettos.”

Though the entire article had a ense of urgency to it, Stern allowed the

fearful white reader a momentary breath of relief. “Although black

militants are looking hopefully toward the Vietnam vets as allies,” he

consoled,” they have so far made no attempts to organize them.” It was

true, black militants were not organizing the vets specifically. But any

breath of relief was false — many vets were busy organizing themselves.

While many organizations were small and limited to one base, based on

rap sessions and discussion groups, others were larger, with much more

ambitious goals. The American Servicemen’s Union (ASU), for instance, in

1970 boasted of more than 10,000 members with several hundred chapters,

and had its own newspaper, The Bond. The ASU had ten demands, listed in

each issue of The Bond, which were at once anti-war, anti-imperialist,

anti-racist, pro-labor and pro-rank-and-file.

• The right to refuse to obey illegal orders — like orders to fight in

the illegal, imperialist war in Southeast Asia.

• Election of officers by vote of the rank and file.

• An end to saluting and sir-ing of officers

• The right of Black, Latin and other national minority servicemen and

women to determine their lives free from the oppression of any racist

whites. No troops to be sent into Black, Latin or other national

minority communities.

• No troops to be used against anti-war demonstrators.

• No troops to be used against workers on strike.

• Rank-and-file control of court-martial boards.

• The right of free political association.

• Federal minimum wages.

• The right of collective bargaining.

Though it was an independent organization, the ASU — along with other

groups like Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM) — worked closely

with the Black Panther Party (BPP). Begun in 1967 as an armed legal

observation patrol of police in the Black community of Oakland,

California, the popularity of the Panther model spawned hundreds of

chapters across the U.S. in but a matter of years. Thanks to their

success, the BPP also drew the ire of the U.S. government. Claimed the

House Committee on Internal Security, “the BPP, through its deliberately

inflammatory rhetoric and through the actual arming and military

training of its members, has contributed to an increase in acts of

violence and constitutes a threat to the internal security of the United

States.” True, the BPP did not mince words; nor did they hold back on

the question of Vietnam. Letters from G.I.s were a frequent sight in the

Party newspaper, as were chronicles of the ASU and MDM. One of many

Panther appeals to the black G.I. appeared in the newspaper in 1970,

written by Communications Secretary Kathleen Cleaver.

Right inside of the U.S. imperialist beast’s Army, you are strategically

placed to begin the process of destroying him from within... You don’t

have to wait... to begin to fight... Sabotage from within until you get

into a position to destroy without! We need you, your military skills,

your military equipment and your courage for our own struggle.

Despite the machinations of Project Transition, many Vets heeded the

call, putting their skills to use in the struggle at home. Groups like

MDM and the Black Berets “stole weapons from the military and stockpiled

them for use in the coming revolution” while some military authorities

suspected they were responsible for arsons and bombings. But as far as

individual capacity was concerned, no one was more important in this

respect than Vietnam veteran Elmer “Geronimo” ji Jaga (then known as

Geronimo Pratt). With Party Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton in jail

awaiting trial for the murder of a police officer — he was later

acquitted — ji Jaga took on Newton’s position. “I went through every

ghetto,” explains ji Jaga, “every swamp, every one-horse town that they

sent me to, teaching people how to defend themselves, what I had learned

in the military.” As FBI repression heated up against the Panthers, the

necessity of ji Jaga’s teachings became more and more evident. When the

Los Angeles Police Department attempted to raid the LA BPP office, the

largely teenager staff was able to hold off the attack for five hours,

despite the LAPD’s use of a SWAT team and the detonation of a bomb.

“While ji Jaga was not present during the raid,” writes Akinyele Omowale

Umoja, “the preparations and militarily [sic] training provided by him

was decisive to the survival of his comrades.”

The Brass Brings Their Boot Down

The success of L.A. proved difficult to sustain, and the Panthers

eventually met their demise after years of severe FBI repression. At the

same time, military officials were beginning to strike back against the

movement in their ranks. In 1969, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird

passed down a new directive for “Handling Dissident and Protest

Activities among Members of The Armed Forces.” Thanks to Laird’s

directive, commanders were given sweeping restrictive powers against

personnel. Virtually all alternative literature was banned, and rallies,

demonstrations, as well as off-base G.I. coffee houses — from which much

of the resistance was organized — were declared off limits.

Coupled with the racist perceptions of white officers, this directive

meant double the repression for the black G.I. According to James

Westheider, “Most in the command structure considered any display of

black pride or unity to be inherently dangerous and used their newfound

powers to suppress virtually all black-oriented activity in the

military, regardless of whether it advocated outright revolution or just

a more militant type of black pride.” Those perceived as radicals were

sometimes transferred to remote military outposts, but were most often

submitted to military justice, resulting in harsh sentences of hard

labor and bad conduct discharges. While eliminating radical influence on

the one hand, the military officials also sought to contain it. By the

late 1960s, reform programs were already being implemented to enforce

the official equal opportunity policy, and race relations boards and

committees were becoming common place.

Breakdown

“By February 1973,” Westheider writes, “the armed forces had not totally

eliminated radical influence in the services, but they had successfully

contained it, and its strength was definitely in decline.” 1973, of

course, saw the end of the draft, and soon after occurred the end of the

war itself. Much of the impetus for RITA was then gone — due in part to

its success. Bernard Nalty notes that, as early as 1970,

the outbreaks of racial violence and the frequency of drug abuse could

be seen as manifestations of a general collapse of morale and failure of

purpose that permeated the armed forces, especially the units in South

Vietnam. At root of the problem was a loss of confidence in the military

as an institution, its officers, and its values. Mistrust gave way to

contempt, and contempt to disobedience and revenge.

If anything indicated the breakdown in discipline, it was “fragging” —

the killing of military officers by disgruntled privates. Between 1969

and 1972, a Congressional investigation found that more than 1,016 such

incidents had occurred.

To Mitch Smith, writing in the American Servicemen’s Union newspaper The

Bond, fragging was “just the most dramatic example of a general

‘breakdown in discipline’ taking place in the military.” This breakdown

is often portrayed as the demoralization stemming from low troop morale

— and for the most part this was the case. The next step, at least as is

so often taken in popular culture, is to blame the anti-war movement for

sapping the morale of the troops. But this not only takes the blame off

the decision-makers and those in power; it also serves to strip away the

agency of those troops who themselves chose to fight against the war

from — in Kathleen Cleaver’s words — “right inside of the U.S.

imperialist beast’s Army.”

Our Tactics Bring Them Home

It says something about who is ghostwriting the story of history when

popular culture casts flower children and college radicals — that is,

the white middle class — as stars of the 1960s, despite the plot having

been developed through the struggles of people of color — RITA and the

struggle of the black GI included. Today, even as white radicals seek to

build a new anti-war movement, the same ghost still dictates the

present, leaving some whites to wonder when communities of color will

finally get on board their peace train. What so many whites can afford

to ignore is that the tracks their train rides on were laid by the

struggles of people of color. Not only does this slight the struggles

that today’s movements are built upon, it also misconstrues the very

nature of the wars we fight against, in all their racist and imperialist

dimensions. The extent to which we have no idea what it is we’re up

against is the extent to which our movements remain at the thirty-year

old peace vigil, holding signs, out in the cold, feeling good but more

or less leaving essential questions unanswered about “peace.” Peace by

plea? Or — as the late New Afrikan anarchist Kuwasi Balagoon wrote —

“peace by piece”? Will our tactics bring them home? The answers will

ultimately come from those waging the struggles for empowerment

themselves, not those on the sidewalk rooting them on (however useful

that solidarity might sometimes be).

Between Whiteness and a Hard Place: The Liberal’s Dilemma by Andrew

Hedden

In 1970, self-described middle-class white liberal Don Schanche found

his liberal conscience in a dilemma. Such a dilemma, in fact, that he

felt it demanded an entire book: The Panther Paradox: A Liberal’s

Dilemma. Schanche’s dilemma? Oakland, California’s Black Panther Party,

the revolutionary black nationalist organization known to liberals like

Schanche mainly for their guns. With bemused interest, he watched “their

haphazard close formation drill on a makeshift parade ground;” listened

to their “banal, adolescent chatter;” read the “Jew-baiting Black

Panther weekly;” and shuddered “as they go through precisely coordinated

public demonstrations of ferocity with clearly implied goals of

assassination and guerilla warfare.” The diagnosis, he declared, was

clearly insanity. But of course, such a diagnosis Schanche dared not

deliver without a qualifier of liberal compassion. “They have been

driven by white society to their insanity,” he explained, “they have not

marched to it by choice;”[11] not to mention “what clearly appears to be

an unuttered, unwritten police conspiracy to deprive the Panthers of

their civil liberties.”[12]

While Schanche insisted this situation had him morally “pinched between

a rock and a hard place,” an elementary fact eluded him — that the

Panthers had him exactly where they wanted him. Black leaders spoke in a

voice which shot past white ears with a swiftness — all the better for

the black masses to hear it. The consequence of this — fortunate or

unfortunate depending on one’s place along the revolutionary continuum —

was that, as scholar Arthur L. Smith relates in his 1969 study Rhetoric

of Black Revolution, “to the unsophisticated white audience, these terms

suggest[ed] unique seperateness, maybe even prejudice.”[13] Schanche

can’t imagine himself as belonging to the “unsophisticated” party. Yet

what struck Schanche’s ears as “ineptly constructed doctrine”[14] was

not without its sophistication; in fact, it was the very essence of

sanity.

While it appeared that what the liberals said never amounted to more

than the linguistic equivalent of wringing hands, Black Power spoke

direct and to the point — and the point for the Panthers was action.

That’s what distinguished the Party: it provided the organization

through which the linguistic could facilitate real — and revolutionary —

struggle: “When the party says ‘power to the people,’” asserted one

Panther captain, “we ain’t jiving a pound.”[15] As Party chairman Bobby

Seale explained, elemental to this process was the Ten Point Program,

“Just a basic platform that the mothers who struggled hard to raise us,

that the fathers who worked hard to feed us, that the young brothers in

school, who come of school semi-literate, saying and reading broken

words, that all of these can read.”[16]

In their stress on the basic, it’s important to note that the Panthers

did not shirk complexity so much as disdain perplexity. As Assata Shakur

recalls, “Panthers didn’t try to sound all intellectual... They simply

called a pig a pig.”[17] While New Leftist icon Herbert Marcuse saw in

the language of black militants “a systematic linguistic rebellion,

which smashes the ideological context in which the words are employed

and defined, and places them into the opposite context;”[18] Party

founder Huey P. Newton hadn’t needed a Marcuse to describe the same

“negation” one year prior, in a much more straight-forward — if not

theoretical — fashion.

Matter of fact, the omnipotent administrator along with his security

agents are less than a man because we define them as pigs! I think that

this is a revolutionary thing in itself. That’s political power. That’s

power itself. Matter of fact, what is power other than the ability to

define phenomenon and then make it act in a desired manner?[19]

When, two years later, Newton found himself at Yale — on a national

speaking tour to promote his “intercommunal” theory — psychoanalyst

Erick H. Erikson was quick to pick up on this facet of the Panther

method. “Huey Newton’s main deed... and one powerful reason for the

appeal of the Panther’s stance both here and abroad, is in the turning

of a negative identity into a positive one, in the sense in which a

cornered animal turns on the attacker. This is what the Black Panther

imagery stands for, after all.”[20] Only after Erickson saw the need to

distinguish between “a new Newton, the radical theorist” and “the

earlier Newton, the radical activist,” did his Ivy League tenure really

begin to show. Newton was quick to retort that “there hasn’t been any

kind of qualitative leap, any real change,”[21] and as to his goals,

nothing really did. It was only after the vocabulary had changed, only

after Newton had begun to sound off in an academic arena, did Erickson

even think to take Newton seriously.

Some would say that this change in relation went both ways. As Newton

began to think himself an organic intellectual, all that was once

“organic” about Newton was subsumed under “intellectual.” Assata Shakur

felt she wasn’t alone in the feeling that “his rambling for three hours

about the negation of the negation was sheer disaster. People walked out

in droves.”[22] To some, then, this was one indication of the beginning

of the end for the Black Panther Party. Even so, the reputation they had

accrued over their short history was still so potent that the very

presence of Newton was enough to import Schanche’s “liberal dilemma”

beyond the walls of the Ivory Tower to an entire generation of

privileged white collegians. “It seems to me,” admitted a white student

at Yale, “that just your presence here, Mr. Newton, forces me to some

kind of subjective analysis: there are certain things I am going to have

to do sooner or later, certain conclusions that I am going to have to

reach for myself about this society and whether I want to fit into it or

try to effect some type of change.”[23]

Bobby Seale was but one Panther among many unafraid to declare, as he

did, “Liberal, I’m gonna force you to support the black liberation

struggle, whether you like it or not.”[24] Given this student’s

testimony, it would seem Seale, and the Black Panther Party, achieved

their objective, at least in this respect. Indeed, Don Schanche’s

problem — and the essence of the “liberal dilemma” — was that he didn’t

like being forced. In a cheap attempt to escape this support, Schanche

assumed the role of doctor, diagnosing “insanity.”

We might wonder what credentials a liberal such as Schanche must prove

before playing psychologist. We might wonder, until we turn the check-up

back on the liberals themselves — in this racist society they require no

other credential but their whiteness. Following this, Schanche’s final

prescription proved as perplexed as his diagnosis. “Unlike the madness

of the Panthers,” whom he deemed both “politically and socially

unsalvageable,” Schanche concluded that “police behavior is subject to

citizen control.”[25] This claim in itself is enough to prove Schanche

didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. Maybe Schanche

spilled white-out on this section of his notes; whatever the case, there

is some sort of white-out going on here. Schanche misses that the very

premise of the Black Panther Party was “citizen control” of the Black

community, especially citizen control of the police — hence the original

name Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

The Panthers just found that sometimes the bullet is more effective than

bureaucracy. Schanche and liberals like him couldn’t believe it, because

they’d never known an institution that didn’t work in their favor. What

their “dilemma” really goes to show is how far white Amerika — 30 years

later — is yet to come in terms of racial consciousness. Like any white

person, Schanche should have gotten down off his liberal high horse and

taken a good long look at the privilege he rode in on. “If Americans

were not so terrified of their private selves,” James Baldwin once

wrote, “they would never have needed to invent and could never have

become so dependent on what they still call ‘the Negro Problem.”[26]

Schanche was so terrified that he wrote an entire 200-page book on the

subject without asking a single question of himself. Most white people

have a similar narrative in their head, even if we never get around to

publishing it. What was needed in 1970, and what is still needed now, is

for us to turn that diagnosis on ourselves, not some racialized Other.

It’s the least that we can do to prove our case isn’t a hopeless one.

Because it wasn’t the Panthers who were sick. Physician — heal thyself.

I Love Paris in the Spring Time, I Love Paris in the Fall... by Mike

Andrew

Twice in my lifetime Paris has exploded in insurrection.

I was 16 in the spring of 1968 when the students and young workers of

Paris rebelled against the petty repressions of the De Gaulle regime.

Every evening in that May and June my friends and I would turn on the

network news, first of all to see the Viet Cong take on the US army, and

then to watch the student rebellion spread from city to city throughout

France.

Today’s rebels are different from those of 1968. They’re just as young,

but they are not students this time, and not factory workers. In fact

almost all of them are unemployed — even the ones with certificates from

the Sorbonne — and many have been all their lives. They are not white

this time, they are Arabs and Africans, the children of French

colonialism. Most of them were born in France to immigrant families from

former French colonies, but France has nothing to offer them but welfare

checks, housing projects, and police records.

The young rebels of 2005 are not children of privilege acting out the

Marxist or Anarchist or Situationist theories they got from books. They

are not in the streets because “another world is possible.” They are in

the streets because their lives in this world are impossible.

Unlike the generation of 1968, they have no line of retreat. They can’t

get a haircut and buy nice clothes and become lawyers or accountants or

stockbrokers. Their skin marks them off as unquestionably people of the

lower class, not privileged, not even truly “French” in the eyes of many

French citizens.

For precisely these reasons they are much more dangerous to the French

state than the rebels of 1968. For the same reasons they’re very much

like young people of color here in the US. No one who was alive in the

‘60s, as I was, could fail to be reminded of Detroit or Watts or any of

a dozen other US cities where young African Americans rebelled against

the institutions of racism and the state under very similar

circumstances.

Yet it is the French students of ’68 that have a romantic appeal for the

“Left” even today, 37 years later, both in Europe and in the US. These

new rebellions have been watched in relative silence by a US “Left” that

is otherwise all too chatty. True, Paris 1968 was an iconic event for my

generation and remains, in a way, an international symbol of the whole

decade of the ‘60s. Still, there’s more to it than just nostalgia for

the ‘60s. I suspect that it is the covert racism and Euro-centrism of

the “Left” — especially in the US — that makes the rebels of ’68

appealing and leaves those of ’05 politically isolated.

So I see Paris in flames on CNN and I think back to 1968 with mixed

feelings.

All the images my friends and I saw in those days...Paris...the student

strikes here in the US...the Black Panthers whose members, many of them,

were our age and whose leaders were only 10 or so years older...the Red

Guards in China...all of that convinced us that our generation would be

in the vanguard of a global transformation of political power and

culture. And we imagined we could bring it off before we turned 30.

Things didn’t work out quite as we envisioned them.

By the end of summer 1968 the French students were defeated. We didn’t

know it at the time, but 1968 was high tide for the mass movements of

the 1960s, after which the struggle would ebb — although things would

never go back to the way they were before. There were many reasons for

this, some of them crystal clear, some of them not.

The French students were defeated in 1968 in part because they were

inexperienced — as we all were — in part because they were betrayed by

people who should have been their allies and their leaders, and in part

because global capitalism turned out to be much tougher than we thought

it was.

De Gaulle understood state power much better than the rebels. The first

thing he did, once he realized that he was facing something more serious

than mere campus turmoil, was to go to the French army stationed in

Germany and ensure that its officers were willing to fight for him if it

came to that. As it turned out, De Gaulle didn’t need the army. The

police were sufficiently brutal. And De Gaulle was sufficiently cunning

to mobilize all the established political tendencies — “Left” as well as

Right — against the students and their worker allies.

The students who talked so readily about empowering the imagination

lacked practical intelligence. They imagined they would occupy campus

after campus and factory after factory, making revolution by attrition,

until the Gaullist state simply became irrelevant. They didn’t

understand how dangerous and how determined their enemy really was.

Of course it was not their fault. Every one of those students, if they’d

been asked, would have said they renounced and rejected absolutely all

the privileges and attitudes of their middle class origins. So would we

all. But mental habits we’d acquired from our earliest days are not so

easily renounced. For white middle class students, French or American,

the police were at worst a petty nuisance. None of us, there or here,

imagined they could be as brutal as they really were. And no one gave

any thought at all to how students would deal with the army, if Gen

Massu’s paras had landed at Orly Airport. How do you defend a school or

a factory when veterans of the Battle of Algiers come marching down the

street? It was too far outside of anyone’s day-to-day experience.

Yet those were precisely the terms of the struggle — and they will be

the terms of the struggle whenever revolutionaries confront the state in

a serious and determined way.

The student revolutionaries did not understand those terms, at least not

at first, but there were plenty of people on the “Left” who should have

understood them. The French “Left” knew the army very well. All of them

had lived through the military coups and counter-coups centered on

Algiers that brought De Gaulle to power 10 years before. Many of them

had been activists in the Resistance when Marshal Petain and the French

High Command were collaborating with the Nazis. These veterans could —

and should — have taken the lead in building actual organs of resistance

to the Gaullist state. They could and should have taken up agitation

against military intervention in politics — inside the armed forces as

well as outside. Or failing that, they could at least have mobilized

public support for the immediate demands of the students and striking

workers.

But as it turned out, the French students were betrayed by the old

Communists and trade union leaders who preferred to protect their

monopoly on “The Revolution” rather than actually leading people in

revolutionary action. Apart from some intellectuals like Jean Paul

Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, the adult leaders of the French “Left”

were tacitly — and sometimes quite openly — hostile to the students.

These “leaders” had spent most of their adult lives rising to positions

of power and influence in their unions or party organizations, in civic

society, in some cases in the state itself. They were not at all

sympathetic to people they saw as young upstarts and troublemakers, and

they were not willing to risk everything on an alliance with them.

As the rebellions spread across France, the old “Left” became

increasingly uneasy. The situation was out of their control even more

than it was out of De Gaulle’s. After all, they had no army and no

police to back them up, they had only the prestige of their party and

union offices, and none of the young rebels feared or respected them.

They were undoubtedly relieved when the Gaullist state reasserted

itself, and they could resume their roles as the proper spokespeople for

“The Working Class.”

Like the older generation of rebels, the generation of ‘05 will be

betrayed by today’s Communists and trade union leaders who feel even

less responsibility to them than they did to the students of 1968. They

will also be betrayed by their own sheiks and imams who are issuing

fatwas against the risings even now as I write this. This is sad but

entirely predictable. However, it would be absolutely criminal if they

were also let down by anarchists, and doubly so if that happened only

because they’ve failed to adopt a vocabulary and symbols we find

comfortable or acceptable.

It’s only natural for people to express themselves in language familiar

to them. It was obvious that the generation of ’68 would dress up like

Che or Mao and speak in the vocabulary of Frankfurt School Marxism. It

is equally obvious that the generation of ’05 will not. So far they have

not shown the appetite for publicity, not to say self-promotion, that

characterized the generation of ’68, and to my mind that’s an advantage,

but it also makes it more difficult for those of us not on-scene to know

what their political agenda really is.

The French government has hinted they are Islamists, or at least dupes

of Islamist agents. Most of the young people in the streets of Paris are

in fact from Muslim backgrounds. How many of them identify primarily as

Muslims, and how much those that do might or might not identify with

revivalist Islam of the al Qaeda brand, is not clear at this time. In

any case, it should be no surprise that people from a Muslim background

express their grievances against colonialism — whether French or North

American — in language derived from Islam. They have done so before, at

least as early as the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and will undoubtedly

continue to do so.

Absent a coherent revolutionary program grounded in their own

experiences and expressed in terms accessible to them, how could they

not?

It is pure racism, and intellectual snobbery besides, to suggest that

people actually fighting the corporate state have to speak in the

vocabulary of Marx or Bakunin, let alone Marcuse or Baudrillard, in

order to be taken seriously. I don’t care if they are Muslims or

whatever, they are fighting the enemy. Nevertheless, absent a

revolutionary program, and absent a political vocabulary that allows

people of color and potential allies who are white to speak to one

another, I doubt whether the rebellion of 2005 will be any more

sustainable than that of ’68.

So this is the challenge for anarchists. How do we develop a

revolutionary program that speaks to the experiences of communities of

color in their struggle against white supremacy and all the ugly legacy

of colonialism, and fuses that revolutionary impulse with the desire of

working people of all races to control their own lives and the products

of their own labor? And how do those of us who are white ensure that our

comrades from communities of color are heard with attention and respect

when they talk to us about their experiences, which after all are not

the same as ours and may not be understood by us?

When I pose these questions I’m not suggesting we have anything to teach

the young people of Paris. On the contrary, we have a lot to learn from

them.

Tactically they are brilliant. Within a couple of days, entire suburbs

of Paris were no-go areas for the police, and the head of the national

police force was begging for the army to intervene in what he openly

called an “insurrection.” A couple of days more, and the insurrection

had spread to just about every city in France.

In 1968, the students were hampered by their own sense of entitlement.

They thought of the campuses as somehow “theirs” and they felt they had

to defend “their” schools from the police. In this way they surrendered

the initiative to the state’s forces, and almost guaranteed they’d be

beaten. Storming a prepared defensive position is hard work, but it’s

something any law enforcement officer can be trained to do and it’s made

a lot easier by the chemical weapons and concussion grenades police have

at their disposal. And in the end, if the police can’t do the job, the

state can call in the army with even heavier weapons.

On the other hand, if you don’t own anything you don’t have anything to

defend. That frees you up to take the offensive, to dictate the location

and the terms of combat, and it forces the police to respond to you.

Insurgents fighting in small and mobile teams who can attack when and

where they want to, and then disperse, force the police to try to defend

all the state’s assets everywhere and at the same time — which is

impossible. Even mass arrests of the kind French police are carrying out

now are ineffective against a tactically mobile enemy. If rebels strike

a target where the police aren’t, it’s quite likely they can be gone by

the time the police get there, and arrests of innocent people are seen

by the community as a confirmation of the oppressive role of the police.

So both militarily and politically the state loses.

Having said all that, I want to end by saying that it’s not my place to

agitate for — or agitate against — similar uprisings here in the US. For

the last 40 years — at least! — it’s been a source of tension between

white revolutionaries and our comrades of color that white people

romanticize rebellions in communities of color, then stand back and

applaud from the sidelines while people of color take all the

casualties. So I won’t say what should or should not happen here. I will

only say what I know. I know that there are many, many young people of

color here in the US living very much like young people of color in

France do, and I know they’re just as angry. I also know that white

people here in the US are even less likely to be sympathetic to

rebellions of people of color than the French are, and therefore any

rising here would be even more isolated and vulnerable to police

reprisals. And I know as an absolute certainty that the revolutionary

forces of any race here in the US have not achieved a level of

organization sufficient to sustain resistance at that level.

Once again, Paris presents us with opportunities and with unfinished

business.

Feminist Domestic Violence Shelters: From the Battered Women’s

Movement to the Battle Against Bureaucracy by Anna Lee Preyapongpisan

The civil rights, anti-war, and black liberation movements of the 1950s

and 1960s gave the nation a whole new way to look at people, power, and

the struggle for equal rights in our society. In a time of political

unrest and social upheaval, these movements paved the way for a new

women’s liberation movement. This movement, which mobilized thousands of

women across the country to fight against a dominant and oppressive

social system, also set the stage for further movements to develop out

of it — the anti-rape movement, as well as the battered women’s

movement.

The problem of the battered woman is nothing new. It has been around for

centuries. However, before the 1960s, wife abuse, intimate partner

violence against women, or domestic violence, as it is often referred to

as, was not a public issue. It was something that occurred behind closed

doors, within one’s own home, and it was not discussed with others.

Women were forced to bear this burden in silence and shame. The

emergence of the women’s liberation movement in the late 1960s and early

1970s changed this. The battered women’s movement grew out of the

realization by women that domestic violence, as well as public and state

violence against women was an all too common occurrence. Awareness of

domestic violence did not grow out of social workers, sociologists,

government bureaucrats, or other professionals stating that is was a

problem, although they later recognized that it was in fact an enormous

problem. It was feminists and other grassroots activists that first used

the term “battered women” and raised public awareness around this issue

— they are the ones who turned the private and personal into the public

and political. This public knowledge made it easier for abused women to

speak out and seek help.

In 1971, some women in a consciousness raising group in St. Paul,

Minnesota decided that they were tired of sitting around and talking

about the problems that were facing women, and wanted to do something

about it. Three years later, in 1974, these women opened Women’s

Advocates, one of the first domestic violence shelters for battered

women in the United States. Many early shelters had small staffs and

volunteers made up primarily of working-class women without professional

degrees; most operated as collectives with a consensus model as their

primary decision making process. These shelters were often old, run-down

houses with many bedrooms and funding to rent the house came from the

women organizers and their friends and allies. Needless to say, most

shelters were not able to operate on steady funding and it was not

uncommon for shelters to have to shut down and fire its staff rather

abruptly.

While many organizers’ long-term goals were to make fundamental changes

to the systems that oppress women and perpetuate violence against them,

the goal at hand was to simply survive as an organization and maintain

shelters. In addition to funding, other problems included overcrowding,

inadequate community services and referral networks, and shortages of

staff. As the problem of domestic violence was further forced into the

public eye, however, more and more shelters were able to receive public

support, which included major grants from nonprofit, state, and private

sectors. These grants provided a tremendous amount of stability to the

organizations that accepted them. Many were able to build new shelters,

have a separate office in the community, hire most staff, and have more

funding to develop various programs to support the women who came into

shelter.

While State funding significantly increased organizations’ ability to

address their clients’ needs through safe shelter and services, many

feminist organizers were a bit weary of this new funding. They felt it

was a threat to the ideological and political cohesion of the movement.

With the acceptance of public funding came more control from forces

outside of the organization. Along with a variety of other new

guidelines, shelters with state funding were now required to keep very

detailed records of finances, submit clients’ case histories, and

regularly evaluate the success of the programs. Failure to meet the

expected requirements sometimes meant a loss of funding for a shelter.

These new policies and procedures also began to change the structure of

many organizations. Positions became more specialized and hierarchical.

Credentialed mental health professionals and social workers were hired

to fill positions within shelters and more formal means of communication

and decision-making were implemented. Many organizations created a board

of directors that included prominent figures in the community, such as

lawyers, judges, and teachers. In some cases, what once were grassroots,

community-based, collectivist groups, became bureaucratic,

professionalized, and institutionalized organizations.

State acquired funds brought with them a division of labor within

organizations and increased inequalities in pay rates, power and

authority. These often reflected divisions along lines of ethnicity,

region, and class. In such a shift in power, it is important to consider

who is gaining control and how that reflects upon the organization. As

mentioned earlier, many feminist organizers’ values are compromised when

they receive state funding because often times, they become part of the

system that they are trying to resist.

When working class women have struggled for years to build a movement

and a safe space in their communities for women who have been abused,

what message are we sending when we go and replace them with

“professionals” and “experts” with degrees and hierarchical structures?

What happens to the movement? Where does the agenda for social change

lie in all of this? How can feminist organizations maintain the

stability that comes with state power and funding without compromising

their values and integrity? How can we resist the co-optation of the

battered women’s movement and feminist shelters? It’s not always an easy

task, but it can be done.

Many organizations did not entirely give up the collectivist model when

state funding came into the picture, but rather developed a “modified

collective.” On paper, in documentation and whatnot, these organizations

looked like hierarchical organizations, but in practice, they shared

information, were not as formal with communication, and practiced

consensus decision-making in many situations. In addition to these

methods, some organizations have attempted to maintain much of their

autonomy by limiting the amount of funding they receive from the state,

instead drafting contracts that ensure that primary funding comes from

community resources.

One of the most important aspects of resisting co-optation is to work

collectively towards common goals. As Claire Reinelt has written,

“The effects of state funding are mitigated when the movement’s

leadership has feminist vision and engages in feminist practices that

challenge the bureaucratic and hierarchical practices of the state’s

decision-making structure by empowering movement participants to work

collectively towards common goals.”

Despite involvement in bureaucratic institutions, feminist organizations

can still practice the values of equality, participation, and

empowerment, which the first shelter organizations were built upon.

These values and goals are often written into mission and philosophy

statements, and organizations usually require all their members to honor

them. When it comes down to it, however, people who get involved with

this kind of work/activism and wish to work with feminist shelter

organizations bring with them a common goal or purpose. As Ann Russo

puts it in her book Taking Back Our Lives: A Call to Action for the

Feminist Movement,

“The strengths of grassroots feminist theories and activism, to me, are

the passionate anger, astute analyses, and resilient resistance of women

who have been willing to speak out about the truths of our lives and

call for an end to violence against women.”

This is the purpose of our work, and if we can always try and remember

this without letting the bureaucracy get in the way of this work, then

we will be able to accomplish our goal.

Dispatches from Europe by Aaron Leaf

January 28, 2005

It’s during the 60^(th) anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz that

I find myself on a plane full of Germans bound for Frankfurt. It’s quite

creepy really. I’m glad for the presence of the few Middle Easterners on

board, it makes Germans easier to bear.

The old woman beside me speaks no English or German. She’s wearing two

headscarves, not one hair is showing. She looks nervous. I smile at her

whenever I get a chance. The sort of look that says “I know how you

feel.”

She is intent on flagging down a stewardess, but none notice her. One

walks right pass as the woman feebly waves her hand. I try to help. When

a steward does notice her, he seems quite put off by her lack of

language skills. The old woman, holding a piece of paper with a

Frankfurt address on it, simply wants to confirm that she is on the

right plane.

After an uncomfortable dream filled sleep, we land. The landscape around

Frankfurt is a stark brown and white this time of year, leafless trees,

drab buildings and snow. It reminds me of the Sepia tinted holocaust

photos that are in all the papers today. Concentration camp victims, big

eyed, fleshless, surrounded by barbed wire and snow.

I can’t help thinking how Lufthansa, Germany’s national airline, sounds

like Luftwaffe.

February 9, 2005

Last night the bar we were at was overrun by skinheads, not the nice

type either. Well actually they were Dutch, so kind of polite, but

fascists nonetheless.

I had arrived in Europe expecting to come across virulent xenophobia.

Reading accounts of immigrants being beaten up, mosques burned and

Muslim women harassed about their head scarves made me very wary. My

first two weeks in Holland, however, had been fairly tame.

It was the bar’s really popular international student night, standing

room only. Just after midnight I saw about five or six bald headed types

standing by the bar. I jokingly told my friend, “hey look at those

skinheads,” assuming their haircuts were just a coincidence. He gets

serious and tells me to stay well away. Apparently these guys are known

around town for starting fights, some of them are in the military.

On my way downstairs to the bathroom I noticed that their numbers had

tripled. In the men’s bathroom there was a heated debate going on in

English between a Spanish guy and a skinhead. There were five other

skins in there, blocking the toilets. I was drunk enough, and needed to

piss enough, that I bravely pushed through them and found a free urinal.

They were dressed not like the skinheads I knew from movies, but more

like football fans in track pants and trainers. Some had polo shirts on,

you could easily mistake them for Hip-Hop fans. A few were nodding their

heads to Snoop Dogg’s “Drop it Like It’s Hot.” The debate had something

to do with the European Union. I only remember snippets of the

conversation. “You guys will overrun our country... The Netherlands will

be dominated by France and Germany just like we were by Napoleon and

Hitler... We want a strong Holland...”

The Spanish guy, surrounded by fascists, didn’t put up much of a fight,

mostly agreeing with what the other guy was saying. The Spaniard

responded by saying that the European Union made a stronger Europe in

the world, making the Skin stop to think for a bit.

At this point I became suddenly very self conscious, aware that I was

standing amidst a gang of skinheads in a poorly lit basement bathroom.

Upstairs, many people had already left on account of the skins but quite

a few people, mostly Dutch students, were friendly with them. One bald

headed jerk had rudely shoved my friend, a black woman, at the bar. A

friendly Dutch student recommended that we leave, “for our own good.” It

was unbearable. We left before they got any drunker. The weirdest part

was that a lot of people seemed quite oblivious.

A group of Spanish students asked me to take a picture of them just as

we were leaving. While taking it, five more skins started yelling at me

“Photo, take photo!” and arranged themselves into a pose. I gave them a

look, something between a “what the hell?” and a “you worthless turds,”

which I think embarrassed them. They were kids, really.

March 24th 2005

I took a Eurolines bus from Utrecht to London via the channel ferry.

This is the cheapest way to go and is usually quite crowded. The

passengers are mostly black or South Asian, most are middle aged, with

the occasional backpacker or family.

For the overnight trip I sat next to a middle aged man named Ibrahim. He

had come to Europe with his wife from Khartoum in 1992 to escape the

general poverty and violence of Sudan. He was very friendly and

eventually we were talking like old friends.

“Khartoum is very beautiful. It’s where the two Niles meet, one coming

from Ethiopia, the other from who knows where. The desert is all

around.”

He works at a Turkish Mosque in Rotterdam as a caretaker and security

guard. His wife and two children live in Birmingham England. He visits

them once a month.

“Holland is much better than England: cleaner, the busses run on time

and the people are nice. England is a very old country, it’s dirty and

falling apart. Sometimes the busses don’t come. Rotterdam is much

better.”

Regardless, he wants his children to be educated in English. When I ask

him about violence against Muslims he smiles and shakes his head. He is

not worried about the latest wave of attacks.

“In Rotterdam, we are all from somewhere else. Everyone is peaceful.”

He tells me that he is overjoyed when Dutch schoolchildren come to visit

his mosque on school trips. He gestures excitedly when talking about his

own children, two girls.

Before working in the mosque, Ibrahim was a sailor working on oil

freighters coming from the gulf. He would go for many months at a time

without seeing his family. He prefers his situation now better.

“The Dutch,” he says, “went to Indonesia, Suriname and took what they

needed. Now they have all this.” He gestures towards the surrounding

countryside and industrial buildings.

“Now I’ve come to take what I need for myself and my family.”

Crossing the channel by bus is a reoccurring nightmare for him. He is

often detained by the French authorities, kept in a little room in

Calais and interrogated. As the passport office nears, he takes off his

embroidered muslim scullcap and stuffs it into the pocket on the seat in

front of him. Today he is lucky. There is only a luggage scan and he is

free to go.

Two Malaysian students are not so lucky. One is detained, the other one,

furious about the treatment of his friend stays with him. The bus boards

the ferry to Dover without them.

Ibrahim hopes to return to Khartoum for a visit sometime in the next

year. It’ll be his first in twelve years. He believes the political

situation in Sudan, except for the Darfur region, is very good right now

and he is dying to see the Nile again.

February 8, 2005

I discovered a really interesting market. It’s mostly Turkish and

Morrocan owned shops and produce stands with a few African, Caribbean

and Indonesian snackshops in the mix. Oranges here are half the price

they are at the supermarket.

It’s funny because just the day before I was thinking how few minorities

I’d seen riding around central Utrecht. It didn’t occur to me that Dutch

cities are as, or more, segregated than North American cities. Crossing

the train tracks into Lombok (the neighborhood with the market) was like

entering a different world. The same beautiful old canal houses had

boarded up windows and were falling apart.

Women with chadors and kids with shiny black curls bustled down the main

street. It took me over two hours of wandering without cash to realize

that the neighborhood didn’t have a working bank machine. Funnily

enough, the streets here are named after former Dutch colonies.

Sumatrastraat, Balistraat, Lan Van Neiuw Guinea, even Malakka, my

mother’s birthplace and the site of an eighteenth century Dutch fort.

2 April 2005

Tariq Ramadan is being interviewed on the BBC world service. He speaks

with conviction and without the arrogance typical of European

intellectuals. This Swiss academic of Egyptian descent is the leader of

a new European Muslim movement. He’s trying to build a consciousness

that is inclusive of both identities.

He is a proponent of integration which, he explains, is a two way track.

The problem today, he says, is that European legislation regarding

muslims and immigrants in general is based on feelings of fear rather

than equality and justice. Not satisfied only to condemn European

xenophobia he believes that Muslims must reach out to their western

neighbors, to teach and to integrate themselves into the European

community.

April 5, 2005

Last night I had a rather uncomfortable dinner with my European room

mates. The conversation kept coming back to Turkish people and how awful

they were for ruining European culture.

“Oh we’re not being racist” my room mates said when i challenged them.

My Macedonian roommate explained, “those immigrants who come here are

social outcasts at home already. Why would they have been kicked out of

Turkey in the first place?” The others nodded in agreement.

Being the only male in a house with four women I was a bit intimidated

so I just nodded sagely and quickly finished off my bottle of 2 euro

Spanish Wine...

The Importance of Supporting Prisoners by Harold H. Thompson

Harold H. Thompson is an anarchist prisoner serving life plus sentences

in Tennessee, USA. Behind the walls, Harold is well known for his work

as a “jailhouse lawyer,” and as a result has been the target of petty

harassment, including the confiscation of his anarchist literature and

law books and deliberate damage and theft of his personal belongings by

prison guards. Literature sent in to Harold was even withheld by the

prison mailroom because it contained “narratives of anarchy.”

The following is taken from a zine of Harold’s writings, They Will Never

Get Us All! that was released in 1996. A second edition is now

available, and can be acquired by contacting the A Word Collective, or

writing Harold, who welcomes all correspondence, at

Harold H. Thompson #93992

West Tennessee High Security Facility

P.O. Box 1150

Henning, Tennessee 38041

First, it is important to stress that none of us is immune from arrest

and prosecution for any number of alleged crimes. Especially once we

have placed ourselves into the eye of the storm of struggle against the

masters of capital, who believe their station in life gives them the

legitimate power to enslave us in whatsoever form they choose, to use us

up, throw us away and profit by the blood and sweat we shed in their

wage slave shops, factories and mills of capitalism. Once we step out in

any form of protest then the power of the state may fall upon us with

unrelenting force. We are subject to arrest and imprisonment at any

time, most of us, simply because we choose to be who we are because we

want to live the lives we choose in spite of the plans others make for

us; because we dare to be different; or because our eyes are open to the

realities of our likely future, wearing the yoke of capitalism around

our necks like beasts of burden, not equal human beings, unless we throw

off the weight on our back to stand in the sun in our rightful place.

Look at the person beside you, across the way from you and then fully

realize that individual may one day be arrested and so may you because

you dare to be different, threatening to those who seek to control us,

especially if your life is governed by the principles of anarchism or

you believe in/have undertaken direct action against your oppressors.

Getting arrested is no joke, so without getting too paranoid, find out

what to do in such a situation and also wise up about the police. I am

often blunt to the point of pain so I do apologize if my words have made

anybody uncomfortable, but I think one sobering thought really needs to

bring a wake-up call, feeling of discomfort with it. That thought is I

am here today sitting in a steel and concrete, tomblike cage writing

these words to you but sometime in the future it might actually be you

behind prison walls, writing comparable thoughts to the outside. If they

come for you in the morning...

The ‘system’ and mainstream media portrays those of us within the

ever-increasing number of jails and prisons as being the equivalent of

the proverbial biblical ‘unclean people’, to be feared, less than

humans, and not to be bothered with or worth any degree of outside

concern or support. It amazes me how many intelligent people, including

anarchists, active in political struggles, have to varying degrees

bought into the disinformation put out by the system. The majority of

the unfortunate residents of the gulags are for the most part just like

other working class people on the outside, only through a twist of their

destiny they were arrested, stood trial and were imprisoned. The system

provides the sensationalist image of those behind gulag walls being a

bad lot, best steered clear of because the system fears association

between those inside and outside. Inside is a potential army waiting to

happen, which needs education, direction and support. The system desires

nothing more than to maintain a wall of silence around the gulags

isolating prisoners to break their minds and spirits. I have seen bodies

broken and minds fragmented forever by the brutal hands of the keepers

and their clever use of weak, inmate lackeys. I have seen many men reach

out to the struggles outside with heartfelt letters, eager for

information about the various movements, education about them. Prisoners

seeking compassion and comradeship. I have seen only a few of those who

make contact, who are encouraged to learn, to grow, to realize who they

are, their potential value to themselves and to the communities outside

gulag walls.

I have seen far many more give up and sometimes even gravitate towards

the hate groups which are now in abundance within the gulags as they are

out there. These eventual recruits to the ranks of the extreme right

could have been soldiers within our ranks but those who claim to be

revolutionaries outside chose to ignore their very existence.

I myself tried in vain for over a decade ‘inside’ to make contact with

like-minded people embracing anarchist politics. I was determined to

reach out and refused to give up, unlike a lot of other prisoners around

me. I reached out at every opportunity and continued to reach out when

there was no response, through many letters requesting political

literature and anarchist books but above all, comradeship with other

anarchists. My unanswered letters began in the late seventies, continued

throughout the eighties and into the early nineties. Finally a first

anarchist solidarity letter was handed to me by a faceless clone of a

guard at a Tennessee gulag in 1992! That letter and letters since has

been like a welcome breeze of fresh air blowing through a place where

the air and life stands dormant. The mere fact a fellow anarchist

bothered to write brought tears to my eyes, eyes I was long convinced

would never feel tearful moisture again. I’ve worked hard since that

first communication to break down the walls between us, you and I, to

reach out, to show those who write I’m not different except for my

circumstances of being within the belly of the beast.

I am not saying the gulags do not hold their fair share of social

predators but many prisoners do become politicized within gulag walls

often due to their own learning efforts. Through direct experience of

the system itself, which generally treats prisoners with such blatant

injustice that many soon feel only resentment, contempt and anger

towards it. Repression breeds resistance. I am merely trying to point

out the obvious pitfall of not supporting those seeking the tools to

become politicized.

Sadder still than these social prisoners ignored by the revolutionary

movements are those souls captured during direct or other political

actions only to discover once in captivity that they appear to have

somehow not been deemed worthy of support and are hence soon forgotten

by their so called ‘comrades’. One conceptual truth screams out in my

heart to be voiced so I will state it now. Any political movement or

people’s struggle which fails to provide support to fallen comrades is

doomed to failure as certain as day follows night. Prisoner support

should be considered as a top priority within all political movements

and with all activists, as we, you or I never know when gulag gates will

slam shut behind us or when those gates to the outside will open again

to allow our passage back out once the system has us in its grasp.

I have endured many hard years, over two decades and a half, within the

gulags of this state. As I’ve already said I spent the first decade

banging my head and heart against a wall of silence, attempting to reach

out to ears that appeared to be deaf and eyes which appeared to be blind

to my existence in hell. I never gave up and have earned the right to

point these issues out now. I have earned the right to speak out with

the shedding of my blood, the pain of this, in past beaten, tired body,

and my spirit of anarchism has never been broken by my keepers and never

will be! It has only been in recent years that I have been acknowledged

by my anarchist brothers and sisters out there. From my heart I state to

you that I love you all! I will close now with these final words. Take

care of each other, keep each other safe in the struggles which you face

and never forget those in captivity because tomorrow’s captive of the

monsters of this earth may well be you. Our common enemies are the same

from country to country being only different in name and face. They

represent the same ideology, which sees this planet and its populace as

throwaway commodities. They threw away their humanity in exchange for

Power and profits. Stay strong and know in your hearts I am with you in

revolutionary spirit in every act you undertake against those who

oppress us. We only want the earth, they will never get us all!

Written April 18 1995

Revised July 18 2005

[1] Ryan, Mike; On Ward Churchill’s “Pacifism as Pathology”: Toward a

Consistent Revolutionary Practice, pg. 161–162; 1998, Arbeiter Ring

Publishing

[2] Rainforest Action Network,

www.ran.org

[3] Ryan, Mike; On Ward Churchill’s “Pacifism as Pathology”: Toward a

Consistent Revolutionary Practice, pg. 140; 1998, Arbeiter Ring

Publishing

[4] The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary; Oxford University Press,

1991

[5] Churchill, Ward; Pacifism as Pathology, pg. 44; 1998, Arbeiter Ring

Publishing

[6] Rosebraugh, Craig; talk on Political Violence, Seattle Independent

Media Center, March, 2003

[7] Guevara, Ernesto Che; Socialism and Man in Cuba;

playagiron.org

[8] Morihei Ueshiba was the founder of the Japanese martial art Aikido.

Aikido can be translated as “the way of harmony” or “the way of love.”

Budo can be translated as “the way of the warrior.”

[9] Churchill, Ward; Pacifism as Pathology pg. 59; 1998, Arbeiter Ring

Publishing

[10] Churchill. Ward; Pacifism as Pathology pg. 87–88; 1998, Arbeiter

Ring Publishing

[11] Schanche, Don A. The Panther Paradox: A Liberal’s Dilemma (New

York: David McKay Company, 1970), p. ix.

[12] Ibid, p. xx

[13] Smith, Arthur L. Rhetoric of Black Revolution (Boston: Allyn &

Bacon, 1969), pg. 8

[14] Schanche, p. xi

[15] Major, Reginald. A Panther is a Black Cat (New York: William Morrow

& Co., 1971), pg. 58

[16] Seale, Bobby. “Free Huey” in Rhetoric of Black Revolution, pg. 176

[17] Shakur, Assata. Assata (Lawrence Hill & Co., 1988), p. 203

[18] Marcuse, Herbert. An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press,

1969), p. 35

[19] Huey P. Newton, August 1968 interview with The Movement. See

www.hippy.com

[20] Erikson, Erik H. and Huey P. Newton. In Search of Common Ground

(New York: Norton & Co., 1973) p. 49

[21] Ibid, pg. 61

[22] Shakur, p. 226

[23] In Search of Common Ground, p. 86

[24] Transcribed from a recorded speech, circa 1968.

[25] Schanche, p. 230

[26] Baldwin, James. No Name in the Street (New York: Dell, 1973), p. 54