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Title: Post Colonial Anarchism
Author: Roger White
Date: 2005
Language: en
Topics: colonialism, decolonization, Black Anarchism, nationalism, race, repression, culture, sex, drugs
Source: Retrieved on 12th October 2020 from https://archive.org/details/jailbreak_2005_post_colonial_anarchism_book/page/n1/mode/2up

Roger White

Post Colonial Anarchism

Dedicated to My Mother Gwen White

Much Love to Laurie Ann Phillips, mom and dad. Carmen, Carol, Pleaz,

Leah, Sookie, and Tyrone. Loving Gratitude to Auntie Marge and Uncle

Lloyd, Michael, Leroy, Zulma and Family. Special Thanks to Adrienne

Carey Hurley for helping to edit. Thanks also to the Data Center, all my

APOC comrades, Mark Sterling, Charles Bennett, Colin Asher, Bianca

Agustin, Jeremy Rayner, Anna Couey, Sonya Mehta, Heather McCormick,

Jeremy Soh, Tomas Moniz, Victor Chavez, Priscilla Hung, Julia Glazer,

Lynx, Christina Wilson, Micha Frasier and everyone who’ve I had a chance

to discuss issues with over the years. I’d also like to thank the folks

at Critical Resistance, All of Us or None, and all my east-coast peps

who are with me in spirit. Thanks for all the input and inspiration.

Introduction

It’s not immediately clear that anarchists of color (APOC), as a group,

have any basic philosophical or strategic differences with our white

allies and fellow travelers in the ‘movement.’ We don’t exist as a

formal, national organization (probably a good thing). Many of our

experiences in anarchist scenes have been characterized by a mixture of

racial isolation and patronizing tokenism. Some of us are just now

beginning to break out of this social and political box.

But just because our ties are not immediately clear doesn’t mean that

they don’t exist. What connects anarchists of color, I think, is our

common history of victimization and struggle against white supremacy,

capitalism and other forms of social domination, our common experiences

of marginalization in various anarchist circles, and our respective

spiritual/ cultural traditions that gave our ancestors inspiration to

fight in the face of odds even more daunting than the ones we face

today. Our comparable histories of victimization and struggle, our

social experiences from within the movement and our cultural traditions

provide APOC’s with a common ground to build trust and unity.

These short essays, written between Fall 1999 to Fall 2004 are an

attempt to articulate some of those points of contact between colored

organizers, activists, cultural and support workers in the movement

against authority and capitalism. I don’t pretend to speak for anyone

but myself and those who agree with me but don’t have time to sit around

writing essays. The topics range from re-thinking the traditional

anarchist stance on electoral involvement to punk to the fight against

the prison industrial complex. There are themes that run throughout. The

need for anarchists of color to develop our own analysis, priorities and

ideals. The need to reconstruct the history of non- white anti-

authoritarian societies and struggles so we can develop and pass down

our own traditions of resistance to youth of color. The need for us to

create our own institutions and organizations in order to produce a

legacy of struggle of our own.

All over the U.S. anarchists of color are communicating, building and

struggling together. This may prove to be one of the most important

developments in the North American movement against social domination in

the years to come.

Race and Anarchy

Towards a Different Path

In her now famous essay “Where Was the Color in Seattle?” Elizabeth

Betita Martinez looked into some of the reasons why, despite all the

progressive left talk about being committed to a multi-racial movement

against corporate globalization, “the overall turnout of color from the

U.S. remained around five percent of the total.” ( Colorlines, v3 Nl,

Spring 2000) According to Martinez, Direct Action Network had only one

person of color involved in it’s “central planning” process. It’s true

the progressive left has an unimpressive record when it comes to dealing

with race and inclusion. But with few exceptions (Love and Rage being

the most recent) anarchists have no record. We’ve chosen not to deal

with it.

Anarchists have generally taken their cues from other movements when it

comes to how to think about race. Organizationally anarchists have

followed the white radicals of the late 60’s and 70’s and have created

de-facto white solidarity groups that supported some of the struggles of

communities of color but have failed at creating effective, enduring

alliances. In radical socialist and progressive left circles white

solidarity made some sense because there were organizations of color in

communities of color to give life to the ideas, and traditions of the

movement. Anarchism had no organizations in communities of color

committed to organizing. It’s not clear whether communities of color

have any better understanding of what anarchism is and what its general

ideals are today than they did 30 years ago.

Anarchists have also failed to distinguish themselves in other ways on

race. Some still carry around the old marxist class analysis of racism

as being a “secondary” oppression, the first being the war over control

of the means of production. The oppression of people of color, and women

mean very little on their own, but under the meta-war of the proletarian

and the ruling class it all makes sense. Many believe that the working

class still represents a vanguard of sorts, but like to idealize black

and brown workers instead of white ones these days. White anarchists and

marxists still seek to chart the direction of the struggle against white

imperialism that activists and organizers of color are engaged in. In

this sense, APOC is a declaration of self- determination in our struggle

for liberation.

These first set of essays examine some of the theoretical and

organizational issues that anarchists of color are facing in our attempt

to develop a politics that appeal to communities of color. This is no

attempt to force some old European ideology down the throats of

communities of color. We have our own histories of effective struggle

against domination. Its an attempt to construct a vision that draws on

the similarities of the communalist, village based system of social

organization that has characterized the lived experience of much of the

global south for centuries and the current movements for

self-determination and autonomy from the gods of global neo-liberalism.

The goal is to build a vision that retains the communal heritage of our

ancestors but rejects the political and social domination that has

plagued societies all over the world throughout history. This task by

itself is worth any effort we have the energy to give to it.

Post Colonial Anarchism

I should be clear up front. I’m not a nationalist. Nor am I a tribalist,

nor an internationalist, nor a municipalist. Peoples from all over the

globe have been figuring out how to organize themselves into various

collectives long before I came onto the scene and no one in any of these

groups has ever bothered to ask me what I thought about their decisions.

I won’t hold my breath.

I do believe in free association and federalism because they usually

represent the most non-coercive avenues for people to develop ways to

live together in self-determined freedom and community. Anarchists have

traditionally been particularly hostile to nations and have often

attributed the worst crimes of states to them. This rejection of nations

and their struggles for self- rule (nationalism) may not be the same as

the anarchist demand for no rule, but getting free from foreign

domination is a step in the right direction. This is one reason why

anti- authoritarians (including anarchists) have generally supported

anti- imperialist movements regardless of their nationalist aspirations.

The rejection of nationalism by many North American anarchists is often

an expression of a colonial mindset that requires all of the peoples of

the world fighting for liberation to define their social selves in

relation to the class war. In this war there are two classes- the

workers and the ruling class. The downtrodden of the world are to see

themselves as workers. For this identity shift we gain the solidarity of

the class war anarchists.

Other anarchists who don’t subscribe to industrial age class war dogma

simply would like to see anarchists cut their ties to the left

completely. This severance would presumably free them of all of the

political baggage that solidarity with revolutionary nationalists and

indigenous autonomist struggles attract. The two above interpretations

of the international role and responsibility of the anarchist movement

with respect to the fight against neo-colonialism and imperialism are

not the ideas of an anti-state fringe. They represent the two strongest

tendencies in the North American scene.

Not all nations are states. In fact there are about 1600 nations in

existence today (about eight times the number of states in the world).

And as Sylvia Walby points out in her essay “The Myth of the

Nation-State,” “Nation-states are actually very rare as existing social

and political forms…there are many states, but very few nation-states.

The notion that there have been neatly bounded societies …is

inadequate.” (Sylvia Walby, The Myth of the Nation- State: theorizing

society and polities in a global era. British Sociological Association,

August 2003). There are many different types of states-

theocratic-states (the Vatican, Iran), city-states (Singapore,

Luxemburg), familial states (Saudi Arabia) tribal- states (Israel),

multinational states (Canada, Spain) and super-states (the United

Nations). Each type of state has been implicated in crimes against

various peoples over their histories. Since the European enlightenment

these various social groupings that states have succeeded in attaching

themselves to have been understood by the left as backward and

atavistic. They argue that peoples of the world should transcend things

like families, clans, tribes, and nations and embrace “universal”

principals of human identity. In truth, many of the social ideals that

the left has asserted as universal are culturally situated in 19th

century Europe.

The Politics of Arrogance

It’s regular for North American anarchists to use their political label

as a synonym for anti-authoritarian; although one is a term referring to

a specific social and political movement born in the 1800’s in Europe

and the other is a broad description of a political tendency that has

reared its head in some form in just about every society over the last

few centuries. A mainstream definition of authoritarian describes

someone who favors “blind submission to authority; of relating to,

favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not

constitutionally responsible to the people.” (Merriam-Webster Online

Dictionaryhttp://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoritarian)

Now certainly anarchists are not the only folks on the world scene who

are against the “blind submission to authority” and the “concentration

of power” in an unaccountable leader. But this easy inter-changeability

is an effect of a larger attitudinal cause. The attitude being that

non-white legacies of struggle and our histories of stateless, communal

modes of existence are at best, irrelevancies to the current struggles

against state/ corporate domination or, at worst, an obstacle to be

swept aside.

This attitude pervades the intellectual history of all the major

European political traditions- not just anarchism. But if those of us

who identify with the historical movement for non-hierarchical, free and

non- coercive social relations don’t begin to fundamentally rethink the

way we understand our struggle both internally and externally, we will

lose international allies and continue to alienate ones closer to home.

A different way of understanding anarchism in relation to the

centuries-old struggle against arbitrary power is to view it as the

newest member of a global family that includes numerous historical and

present day communal societies and struggles against authority. The

village communalism of the Ibo, and First Nations like the Zuni and the

Hopi are a part of the family. The indigenous autonomist movements for

self determination going on today in West Papua and Chiapas, Mexico with

the EZLN are a part of the family. The international prison abolitionist

movement, perhaps to most coordinated attack on the state’s monopoly of

the administration of justice, has deep anti-authoritarian currents,

just as the numerous stateless hunter and gatherer bands, clans, and

nomadic tribes that have managed to survive centuries without armies,

flags, or money systems do.

Anarchist movements have also played a part in the fight against

authority. Some valiant, if rather short-lived, episodes include the

Spanish CNT and FAI battles during the 1930’s and the Paris Commune 50

years earlier. The full record shows that North American anarchists

haven’t had much experience in maintaining long-term stateless, social

formations. But they have produced theory and “analysis”- plenty of it.

And it’s this busy intellectualism that has scorned and turned its nose

up at our national struggles for liberation as “statist” and “reformist”

while demanding that global south anti-authoritarians adopt anarchism’s

workerist mantle or conform to some romantic notion of how

pre-agricultural peoples lived. To help put this in context it’s

important to look at the universalist underpinnings of the traditional

anarchist worldview and how its adherents understand their movement in

relation to other struggles around the non- European world.

Colonial Universalism

To many, a critique of universalism on the left will seem like an

anachronism. After all, if post-modern social philosophy has had any

discernable political thrust, it’s been in opposition to foundationalist

claims and totalizing theories of human nature, relations, and power.

But despite the last six decades of post-world war II thinking and

action against universalism, there are still plenty of stubborn

anarchists who refuse to let go of the most Euro-centric aspects of

historical materialism.

Marx’s critique of capitalism has had an influence way beyond those who

choose to identify themselves as marxists. On the left, it has

encouraged analysis that puts the class struggle at the center of the

historical stage. Before the identity movements of the late 60’s this

analysis would regularly portray racism and other historical oppressions

as subalterns of class oppression. But after these movements began to

challenge some of the dogmas of class struggle orthodoxy some

accommodations were made.

Progressives embraced multiculturalism even as they focused most of

their attention towards corporate globalism and the international

institutions that protect them. Marxists supported revolutionary

nationalism, arguing that the modern vanguard is the black and brown

working class. Even liberals argued for a cultural pluralism that made

limited accommodations for social, cultural and religious differences

while clinging to the last vestiges of the welfare state. Anarchists

have largely rejected such left-of-center developments in response to

the legacy of white supremacy and cultural imperialism, but have failed

to develop their own. The default has been a rigid century and a

half-old economic determinism that even some marxists have abandoned.

The embrace of universalism by anarchists has had a significant impact

on their analysis of important issues and events. The interpretation of

imperialism as an economically driven regime of capital and the view of

nationalism as inherently retrograde and divisive owes a lot to the

internal logic of universalism. If imperialism has as much to do with

cultural hegemony or geo-political dominance as the capitalist market

expansion and raw material exploitation of private business, then maybe

an international workers revolution may not come first or be the most

fundamental task before all the world’s oppressed. If nations and

national liberation movements are not necessarily the statist antithesis

of internationalism but represent just another social grouping of

peoples with a common land, culture, and language, some of whom are

willing to fight to maintain their ways of life, then maybe anarchists

need to rethink their opposition to nationalism.

European universalism has never truly been about the recognition of our

common humanity. In practice it’s been about forcing the particular

norms, prejudices and ideals of white, Christian cultures on the rest of

the peoples of the earth, sometimes through economic domination,

sometimes through cultural imperialism, sometimes through force.

Christendom used appeals to universalism as a justification for crusades

and the persecution of “non believers” and native populations practicing

their traditional religions in various parts of the world. For left

internationalists, universalism provided a nice humanitarian cover for a

massive social engineering project that sought to strip the masses of

their national and communal identities in exchange for a workerist one

because, as Murry Bookchin put it, there was a “need to achieve

universality in order to abolish class society.” (Murry Bookchin.

“Nationalism and the ‘National

Question'”www.democracynature.org/dn/vol2/bookchin_nationalism.htm March

1993 P.1).

Under this view the universality and primacy of the class struggle is a

strategic necessity for the overthrow of the capitalist order. It’s not

a conclusion that comes out of the study and analysis of the history,

situation and cultures of all peoples. At this stage, anarchists,

autonomists, abolitionists and anti-authoritarians of color can not

afford to be swept up by theories that have never bothered to view

non-white peoples as historical subjects. We are not mere props in the

political stagecraft of white leftists.

Political universalism is part of the philosophical residue of

Anglo-European colonialism. Today we witness this in the attempts of the

U.S. to impose democracy in the Middle East and other parts of the

world. One of the problems with this view is that it “offers a hegemonic

view of existence by which the experiences, values and expectations of a

dominant cultural are held to be true for all humanity” and is a

“crucial feature of imperial hegemony because its assumption of a common

humanity underlies [an] imperial discourse for the advancement or

improvement of the colonized, goals that mask the extensive…

exploitation of the colony.” (Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen

Tiffin. Post Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. Routledge New York, NY

2000).

So when the anarchists behind the FAQ web-site project declare that

anarchists “oppose nationalism in all its forms as harmful to the

interests of those who make up a given nation and their cultural

identities,” (Are Anarchist Against Nationalism? The Anarchist FAQ.

Alternative Media

Project.http://infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionD6) we recognize

that the blatant condescension imbued in those sentiments are a

reflection of the conviction that they know what’s best for the

colonized, not the colonized themselves.

No War But The Class War

Ever since Antonio Gramsci’s writings on marxism in the 20’s and 30’s

the left has been re-thinking the role of the worker in revolutionary

practice. He argued that cultural hegemony was the key to class

subordination and that in order to change economic and political

structures we had to take over the institutions that transmit culture-

the schools, the church, the media, etc. This shift from the economic

determinism of orthodox marxism to the identitarian pluralism of what

some call “cultural marxism” lead a shift in emphasis away from the

worker towards a broader group of the marginalized that included women,

racial and sexual minorities and outlaws.

This thinking had little effect on the way marxist organizations and

regimes have operated over the last 90 years. Groups like the Spartacist

League in the U.S. have spent decades trashing black nationalism and

feminism as ‘petty bourgeois’ and ‘separatist’ and claiming that their

class analysis of racism, sexism, and other social systems of hierarchy

(as by- products or divide and conquer tactics of capitalism) is more

relevant to people of color and women than our own studies of how white

supremacy and patriarchy have maintained systems of domination over us.

Many Marxists groups have had an even worse record on LGBT liberation.

Khrushchev’s imperial attitude towards Mao’s peasant-led cultural

revolution in China reflected, in part, his inability to make common

cause with an Asian leader with the audacity to question the dogmas of

soviet communism. As the U.K. Guardian noted a few years back “Mao

deeply resented the Soviet assumption of superiority towards China,

which he described as the unacceptable behaviour of “a father towards

his son.” (John Gittings, The day Khrushchev and Chairman Mao saw red

Spitting images mark the end of the Sino-Soviet alliance. TheGuardian

(UK) 27 November 2001). Its been argued by anarchists like Murray

Bookchin that the Marxist support for nationalist movements is strategic

not ideological. In this instance we can attribute the failure of the

two most powerful and populous communist countries on the globe to unite

against the capitalist world in large part to a colonialist mentality

that couldn’t accept non-white regimes who strayed too far from the

European materialist intellectual plantation- strategy be damned.

The most organized elements of North American anarchism today are class

war based and anti- nationalist. The Northeast Federation of Anarcho-

Communists state “anarchists oppose the idea of nationalism” and instead

“believe in waging a class war.” (Northeast Federation of

Anarcho-Communists. November 2002). The Workers Solidarity Alliance

equates nationalism with “the idea that somehow both the rich and poor

can be wrapped in the same flag and thus have the same interests…”

(Against the Madness. Workers Solidarity

Alliance.http://workersolidarity.org/?p=188.) Of course class war

anarchists attempt to wrap the victims of colonial imperialism and the

beneficiaries of it together in the same black flag as if the two have

the same interests. As it turns out, it’s just as hard for whites to

give up imperial race privilege as it is for rich people to give up

class privilege.

Rather than acknowledging the importance of class stratification along

side other societal hierarchies and recognizing that each of them are

potentially as repressive and exploitative as the other depending on the

social context, class war anarchists have adopted a hierarchy of

oppressions that makes the class war the primary struggle and the worker

the primary agent of that struggle. The popular slogan “no war but the

class war” masks a deep historical truth over which many white leftists

are still in denial. White elites and their dupes, pawns, agents and

allies have been waging a race war on peoples of color for centuries.

When people of color who share a common culture, language and land

decide it’s time to make defending ourselves a priority, we’re told by

anarchists that they “never call for the victory of the dominated

country over the imperialist. Instead we call for a victory of the

workers (and peasants) of that country against both home and foreign

exploiters (in effect, ‘no war but the class war’)” Are Anarchist

Against Nationalism? (The Anarchist FAQ. Alternative Media

Project.www.infoshop.org/faq/secD6.html)

If communities of color can’t count on anarchists to do more than merely

recognize their ‘right’ to defend themselves against white imperialism,

then perhaps all anarchists can expect from communities of color is the

recognition that they have a right to protest against the IMF every time

they meet. If the price of solidarity is that we abandon our communal

identities and accept one created for us by some left-wing Euro- elites

over 150 years ago, then the hope of developing closer alliances with

other movements against authority around the globe is doomed.

Anti-imperialist anti-nationalism

Many anarchists have recognized that opposition to native or national

self- determination against Euro- Anglo colonial domination is a

betrayal of their anti- authoritarian principals and commitment to anti-

racism. This is why despite all the finger wagging that goes on by the

scribe defenders of the anarchist faith about global south movements not

being anarchist enough, there is a long history of anarchist solidarity

with nationalist movements for self rule. Lucien van der Walt, a South

African anarchist activist, details the many national struggles

anarchists have been involved in his essay “Towards a History of

Anarchist Anti- Imperialism.” He mentioned how groups like the Anarchist

Group of Indigenous Algerians, the Mexican Liberal Party and other anti-

imperialist anarchists “paid in blood for [their] opposition to imperial

domination and control.” (Van der Walt, Lucien. Towards a History of

Anarchist Anti-Imperialism. Northeast Federation of Anarcho-Communists.

http://nefac.net/node/261).

The movements and organizations he wrote about were by-and-large made up

of activists of color working in their own struggles for both social

revolution and national liberation. What these activists didn’t do was

refuse to fight along side nationalists because they believed that the

class war was the most important or only fight worth engaging in. They

didn’t try to convince their people that getting rid of the factory

bosses, of whom their were relatively few, was a bigger priority than

getting rid of the colonial administrators who controlled where they

could go and when they could go there, how or whether they could

practice their faith, and what they could produce on their own land,

among other things. They didn’t spend time trying to foment hatred

between urban workers (who represented a relatively privileged class in

many of these countries) and the middle classes in an effort to polarize

their nation into a class war. They knew that the colonial masters

controlled both groups and would only use internal divisions to solidify

their own domination. They instead worked to educate the masses about

how class also contributed to their oppression and how national

liberation wouldn’t necessarily address those issues.

National liberation struggles don’t end when the imperialists decide

that economic control and the threat of military intervention are more

effective means of domination than army bases and colonial governments

on native soil. They continue through early independence when the

imperialist powers are busy stabilizing their puppet regimes, and

corporate markets. It continues through the imposition of neo-liberal

economic pressures and dictates from organizations like the IMF, World

Bank, and the World Trade Organization along with a host of regional

outfits and private organized interests. And if and when those

mechanisms aren’t enough, the Security Council or the U.S. military will

step in. International solidarity is not about committing to a process.

It’s about committing to a people and their struggle for liberation.

This commitment means viewing solidarity not as a reward for doctrinal

compliance among the colonized but as a discourse betweens peoples and

across cultures about how we all can live, not in some imposed western

ideal of freedom and equality but in a self- determined freedom where

different people decide for themselves how they will arrange their

affairs. This doesn’t mean that anarchists always must agree and when we

don’t we should support voices in those societies who are committed to

the visions most like our own.

The nation and the state

It’s not that anarchists have always been closed to nationalist

arguments or have never questioned class war fundamentalism. Hakim Bey

in his book Millennium suggests that anarchists align their struggles

against authority with anti- colonial and nationalist movements around

the globe.(See his chapter “Notes on Nationalism” Hakim Bey Millennium

Autonomedia & Garden of Delight. 1996). Bob Black has rightly observed

that the anarchist ideal of the worker revolutionary in syndicalism is

more popular among college professors than with workers in North

America. (Bob Black. Anarchy after Leftism. Cal Press 1997 p. 149) Even

Bookchin in his 1971 essay “Listen Marxist” offered a devastating

critique of class war fundamentalism and argued that “Marx’s emphasis on

the industrial proletariat as the ‘agent’ of revolutionary change, and

his ‘class analysis’ in explaining the transition from a class to a

classless society” are “false in the context of our time.” (Murray

Bookchin. Post Scarcity Anarchism. Ramparts Press 1971 p.211). The

problem is that these writers and others either hide in the safe shadow

of critique where they debunk but don’t bother to offer alternatives

(Black) or come up with alternatives just as colonial as the universal

worker (Bookchin gives us the universal citizen).

But there’s an even bigger problem. Not only do these critics and

theorists fail to offer non-colonial alternatives, they actually find

time to dismiss efforts among activists of color and anarcho- feminists

who dare to work for liberation from domination from our own self

identities. Black dismisses anarcho- feminism as “separatist in

tendency” and “oriented more toward statist feminism than anarchism.”

(Black, p.150). Bookchin in his essay Nationalism and the National

Question lamented that the New Left in the 60’s embraced “the

particularism into which racial politics had degenerated instead of the

potential universalism (read European) of a humanitas…the New Left

placed blacks, colonial peoples, and even totalitarian colonial nations

on the top of its theoretical pyramid, endowing them with a commanding

or ‘hegemonic’ position in relation to whites, Euro-Americans, and

bourgeois- democratic nations.” He adds, “In the 1970’s this

particularistic strategy was adopted by certain feminists…” (Bookchin.

Nationalism and the National Question P. 11)

Bookchin’s assertion that blacks and “colonial peoples” occupied the top

of some theoretical new left pyramid is reminiscent of the stereotypical

poor white in the U.S. who’s convinced that blacks get all the breaks

and the reason for their own condition has more to do with affirmative

action than with the system of corporate feudalism that they’re the

victims of. To the extent that any white radicals on the new left in the

early 70’s paid more attention to what black, brown, red and yellow

revolutionaries we’re saying than intellectuals like Bookchin, it was

because they realized that the prime victims and biggest targets of

state/ capitalist repression and exploitation around the world were in

communities of color and their voices needed to be taken seriously.

Given the lack of clearly articulated alternatives, it’s not hard to

understand why many white anarchists cling to this narrow conception of

workers revolution. They feel that nationalism is in opposition to their

work because historically its Euro- and Anglo- manifestations have been

so closely tied to imperialism, and racism that, for them, it’s not a

revolutionary option. But the categorical rejection of all nationalisms

due to their perceived hostility to class revolution is not a necessary

conclusion of anarchist intellectual history.

Bakunin

For most of Bakunin’s political life he could be described as a pan-

Slavic revolutionary nationalist and an anarchist. He didn’t believe

that his anti-imperialism and his anarchism were in conflict. He felt

“strong sympathy for any national uprising against any form of

oppression” declaring that “no one is entitled to impose its costume,

its customs, its language and its laws.” (Cited in D. Guerin, 1970,

Anarchism, Monthly Review, p. 68) Bakunin was not agnostic on the issue

of self-determination. He clearly supported peoples who were fighting

for it.

Not only did Bakunin support self- determination, he recognized the

distinction between a nation and the state. “The state is not the

fatherland, it is the abstraction…of the fatherland. The common people

of all countries deeply love their fatherland, but that is a natural

real love. The patriotism of the people is not just an idea, it is a

fact; but political patriotism, love of the state, is not the faithful

expression of that fact…” (“The Political Philosophy of Bakunin” Edited

by G.P. Maximoff. The Free Press New York 1953 P.324). Nationalism is

not the worship of the state, because it refers to a people and the love

that they have for their land, their cultural and their language.

This was before the era of ‘diversity’ so Bakunin didn’t see anything in

the commitment people had to the preservation of their national culture

to celebrate. But he was smart enough to know that being anti- national

was pointless. “Therefore we bow before tradition, before history, or

rather, we recognize them, not because they appear to us as abstract

barriers raised meta- physically, juridical and politically…but only

because they have actually passed into the flesh and blood, into the

real thoughts and the will of populations.” (ibid.).

What Bakunin objected to was the principal of nationality because he

felt that it wasn’t universal. He gradually became more intolerant of

national struggles against colonialism because he saw how these

movements inspired national chauvinism and hatred across Europe. His

growing internationalism and commitment to workers solidarity put

distance between him and national liberation advocates towards the end

of his public life. “There is nothing more absurd and at the same time

more harmful, more deadly, for the people to uphold the fictitious

principal of nationality as the ideal of all the people’s aspirations,

nationality is not a universal human principal.” (Maximoff P.325). It’s

important to remember that Bakunin’s critique of nationalism was within

the context of intra-European conflicts.

True internationalism is not anti-nationalist. It is a constructive

ideal that seeks to create mutual respect, solidarity, and alliances

among nations. To the extent that class elites attempt to use race,

religion, gender, immigrant status, sexuality, age, or disability to

divide the people in the name of the nation, anarchists should stand

against it. But there are many nationalist struggles that are about self

determination and human dignity, not division. The Palestinian struggle

comes to mind along with the anti- colonial movement in Puerto Rico.

Anarchists may fairly critique the statist elements in these movements.

But the across the board opposition to the national unity of people of

color in our struggle against imperialism renders many anarchists

incapable of supporting even non-state, indigenous movements for

autonomy in places like Chiapas, Mexico, or the Tamil struggle for

autonomy in Sri Lanka.

Rocker

If there was some level of ambiguity around the relationship between

anarchism and nationalism in the 19th century, that ambiguity ended with

Rudolf Rocker’s opus Nationalism and Culture. Written in the 1930’s, the

book highlighted the role that nationalist appeals were playing in

solidifying domestic support for European fascist imperialism abroad and

racial hatred at home. It also challenged the mythology of nationhood as

an organic social grouping. He wrote “the nation is not the cause, but

the result of the state. It is the state that creates the nation, not

the nation the state.” (Rudolph Rocker. “Nationalism and Culture” Black

Rose Books 1998 (Reprint) Original 1937 P. 200)

The nation is a construction. And political leaders who resort to blood

and soil tales of national origins do so because their reactionary

nationalism is rooted in appeals to racism and imperialism and therefore

needs a biological- land tie. But the fact that nations are developed by

human action does not somehow invalidate their authenticity. Tribes are

also human constructions, as are families, bands, etc… The only way to

judge the usefulness of different social groupings is by observing their

longevity and their tendency to support the type of lasting bonds

between people that make human survival and growth possible. Families,

and ethnical based tribes have survived the three most significant

revolutions in human history- agriculture, industry, and the information

age. Nations are a newer development. Only time will tell whether this

construct will survive globalization and what some call ‘the new world

order.’

For Rocker the free-city of Europe’s middle ages represented “that great

epoch…of federalism whereby European culture was preserved from total

submersion and the political influence of the arising royalty was for a

long time confined to the non- urban country.” (Rocker P.2). He compared

this age to the rise of the monarchical nation- state and claimed that

among the medieval, European men of the free- cities “there never

existed…those rigid, insurmountable barriers which arose with the

appearance of the national states in Europe.” (Rocker P.3).

Rocker’s comparison of the golden age of autonomous, federated medieval

cities to the rise of the nation wasn’t very useful. This is because the

two are different in kind. The city is a geographic designation, like a

province, or a country, or a county. A nation is a human designation-

like a family, a tribe, or a gang.. This distinction is important

because it sharpens the dilemma that anarchists of color find themselves

in when we’re sorting through our politics. Since Rocker slammed the

door shut on nationalism, non-white anarchists have been told to choose

between our nation (or people) and our social philosophy. This choice is

much more profound and, in the end, unnecessary, than whether we think

cities are better units of social organization than counties. This

choice has also led some to abandon anarchism.

Perhaps the most illustrative passage in Rocker’s book on the colonial

character of universalism and its role in the construction of

anti-nationalism can be found in his description of the social glue that

tied medieval man together. “Medieval man felt himself to be bound up

with a single, uniform culture…It was the community of Christendom which

included all the scattered units of the Christian world and spiritually

unified them.” (Ibid.). Fair enough. But now for the kicker. “Church and

empire likewise had root in this universal idea…For pope and emperor

Christianity was the necessary ideological basis for the realization of

a new world dominion…For medieval man it was the symbol of a great

spiritual community…” but “while the Christian idea united them, the

idea of the nation separated and organized them into antagonistic

camps.” (Ibid.).

What Rocker leaves out are the crusades, the inquisitions, the witch

burnings, the Jewish pogroms, the slaughter of pagans. And that’s only

in Europe. By the late medieval period the conquistadors were in Central

and South America committing genocide against the heathen indigenous

populations in the name of Christianity. The Church may have had a

unifying effect for some Europeans, but this unity was achieved with the

blood of millions both inside and outside of the continent. I’ll take

the divisions of the nation over the “unity” of the Christian Church any

day.

For all its limitations, Rocker’s Nationalism and Culture was a mammoth

effort and clearly a classic of anarchist literature. More than any

other book, it detailed the connections between reactionary nationalism

and racism and made clear how the state used both to enhance its power

over the masses. While his sweeping dismissal of all nationalism is

regrettable, it is at least politically understandable within the

context of the rise of Euro-fascism in the 1930’s. What’s harder to

reconcile are post-world war II anarchists who have witnessed the

anti-colonial movements in the global south and still maintain that

national movements for liberation against colonialism are “the same” as

the imperial nationalist movements of Europe in the last two centuries.

Colonial Contemporaries

Murry Bookchin addressed himself specifically to anarchist universalism

within the context of the ‘national question’ in 1993. After echoing

Rocker’s idyllic view of the free cities of medieval Europe, he warned

“the great role assigned to reason by the enlightenment may well be in

grave doubt” if we forget that “our true social affinities are based on

citizenship, equality and a universalistic sense of a common humanity.”

(Bookchin, “Nationalism and the National Question” P. 11)

Are ‘our’ true affinities based on citizenship? I’m not sure that the

tens of millions of non- citizens in the U.S. who, due to their status

as undocumented immigrants, would agree. In fact, citizenship has

historically been a construction of property owners as a way to exercise

privilege and power over poor migrants, and religious and racial

minorities. This has been true from Roman times to present day America.

And affinities based on a “universalistic sense of a common humanity”

sound good, but who gets to define what that common humanity is? The

First International (an almost exclusively European affair)? Or maybe a

bunch of Institute for Social Ecology graduates?

The underlying issue is not the lack of diversity of various left

circles and movements that purport to represent universal principals.

It’s the very supposition that any single movement or political ideal

could represent any meaningful global consensus on how communities

should arrange their social institutions. Anarchists have their ideas

and should work in their communities to, among other things, demonstrate

that those ideas can work in the real world for other peoples around the

globe. Some success in this endeavor should be a prerequisite for

international anarchist criticism of national liberation and indigenous

struggles against western imperialism.

In the essay Bookchin evokes fondly the lyrics of the socialist anthem

the Internationale — “Tis the final conflict!”– and longs for the “sense

of universalistic commitment” that those words embodied. (Ibid.) Forgive

me for not being two inspired by the image of Bookchin and a group of

his old left New York buddies, hunched over in a semi- circle ready to

bust a note. But he goes into attack mode when he picks up where Rocker

left off and applies his across-the-board rejection of nationalism to

the colonial struggles of Africa, Asia, and the Americas of the 1950’s

and 60’s. Bookchin mocked the national liberation movements of the

period through his sophomoric use of quotes in describing their

“attempts to achieve ‘autonomy’ from imperialism…even at the expense of

a popular democracy in the colonized world.” (Bookchin, “Nationalism and

the National Question” P. 10)

Bookchin doesn’t bother to identify one colonial popular democracy (a

contradiction in terms) that was overthrown by nationalists or native

movements in the quest for autonomy. He doesn’t because none existed.

But that’s alright…we all know that darkies are always better off under

white rule. Bookchin’s larger point is that the nice, idealistic, white

kids in the new left got duped and intimidated into supporting

authoritarian national liberation movements by the usual assortment of

black national revolutionary thugs, solemn and sympathetic Native

Americans fighting to hang on to their land, Latino political gangs

lurking in the barrio, and other stereotypical ghosts of 1960’s radical

mythology. It’s astonishing that at this late date Bookchin would still

be walking around blaming black revolutionary nationalists and Asian

Maoists for the decline of the new left and the rise of ‘micro

nationalism.’ It’s always easier to blame others than it is to look in

the mirror.

‘Post Left’ Colonialism

There seems to be a developing split between anarchist journal writers

and activists on the national question. To their credit, lots of

anarchists have participated in anti-imperialist struggles with respect

for the people with whom they’ve struggled. Currently, anarchist

organizers and cultural workers in North America are increasingly

throwing off the shackles of dogma and are doing solidarity work with

national and autonomous movements against colonialism. But as this

divergence has taken place, the colonial anarchists have become even

more desperate in their attempt to hang on to the tradition. And on this

front the attempt to protect colonial anarchy has been led not by the

class war anarchists, but by a loosely knit network of green and

primitivist intellectuals who argue that anarchists should cut their

lingering ties to the left altogether.

A 1993 screed by Fredy Perlman that appeared in Anarchy: A Journal of

Desire Armed asserts that the fascist nationalism of Europe in the

1930’s and 40’s “could now be applied to Africans as well as Navahos,

Apaches as well as Palestinians. The borrowings from Mussolini, Hitler,

and the Zionists are judiciously covered up, because Mussolini and

Hitler failed to hold on to their seized power…” (Fredy Perlman, “The

Continuing Appeal of Nationalism” Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed.

37, Summer 1993).

This appeared in the same journal that did a four-part series called

‘Post- Left Anarchy’ in the fall of 1999 in which Lawrence Jarach

reprimanded anarchists who dared to show solidarity with the EZLN for

their “uncritical support.” “The name of the organization should be

enough to cause anarchists to pause” (Zapatista National Liberation

Army) because “national liberation has never been part of the anarchist

agenda…The EZLN, for all its revolutionary posturing, is a broad based

democratic movement for progressive social change within the fabric of

the Mexican state.” (Lawerence Jarach, “Don’t let the Left (overs) Ruin

Your Appetite”Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed#48, Fall- Winter

1999-2000). How do you even engage with people about colonialism who

treat “Africans” as some sort of Hitler-inspired nationalist monolith or

who claim that indigenous autonomists who have successfully sustained a

decade-old uprising through disciplined armed struggle are basically

revolutionary poseurs? Generally, you don’t.

But in the Spring 2002 issue of Green Anarchy a Zapatista did. It was a

response to an article that appeared in the paper a few months earlier

entitled “The EZLN is NOT Anarchist.” The article labels the EZLN as

“fundamentally reformist” not working towards anything “that could not

be provided for by capitalism.” (Green Anarchy. The EZLN is NOT

Anarchist. #6 Summer 2001). The piece went on to instruct anarchists to

find ways to “intervene in a way that is fitting with one’s aims, in a

way that moves one’s revolutionary anarchist project forward.” (Green

Anarchy. A Zapatista Response to The EZLN is NOT Anarchist #8 Spring

2002 P. 3)

The Zapatista responded “It would be difficult for us to design a more

concise list of colonial words and attitudes than those used in this

sentence. “Intervene?” “moves one’s ‘project’ forward?” Mexicans have a

very well developed understanding of what ‘intervention’ entails.”

(Green Anarchy P. 4) He ended with this, “Colonialism is one of the many

enemies we are fighting in this world and so long as North Americans

reinforce colonial thought patterns in their ‘revolutionary’ struggles,

they will never be on the side of any anti- colonial struggle anywhere.

We in the Zapatista struggle have never asked anyone for unflinching,

uncritical support. What we have asked the world to do is respect the

historical context we are in and think about the actions we do to pull

ourselves from under the boots of oppression.” (Ibid.).

If and when North American anarchists learn how to do this with all of

the struggles against colonial and neo-colonial domination around the

globe- whether they’re nationalist or go under some other label, then

we’ll be welcomed into a much larger and richer international tradition

of people’s struggles against domination. This is where we belong.

On Separatism

Since its enlightenment inception, the left has associated separatism

with tribal, primitive, backward instincts. It’s lineage “begins with

reactionaries, nationalists, and romantics,” in the words of Todd

Giltin, who “mock[ed] the pretensions of the enlightenment.” (Todd

Gitlin The Twilight of Common Dreams, Metropolitan Books 1995, P.210)

Left universalism offered a new man. Armed with the light of reason he

would throw off his provincial ways, cast off place and prejudice and

see himself first as a member the universal brotherhood of man.

Universal man shifted to the universal worker after a while but the idea

remained. Why worry about your little language and religion and silly

folkways when you have “our” universe. Anarchists nurtured on the

enlightenment ideal of cultural pluralism, naturally rejected separatist

movements that ran against this historical tide.

But as we travel further down the road of neo-liberal global

consolidation and the “twilight of sovereignty” it might be time to

re-examine separatism and make critical distinctions between reactionary

separatism and separatist movements that seek to maintain or

re-establish political self-determination. The latter aims to defend the

social, cultural, and economic integrity of a people from the social

repression of imperial states or the onslaught of multi-national

corporate hegemony. The desire among some to develop a universal

culture, an old left dream, shouldn’t make people blind to the fact that

America’s lifestyle industry and the corporations and armies that stand

in its shadows, are the agents of a creeping global consumerism (what

Benjamin Barber called “McWorld”). This new world order drives out the

scared, and unmediated. It supplants experience with virtuality and

replaces local culture with Euro- rationalism. This is universalism

todayJohn Lennon’s Imagine on IBM billboards, soldiers in blue helmets

enforcing a precarious peace in hostile lands, faceless IMF bureaucrats

adjusting monetary policies in far away places from their 19^(th) Street

D.C. offices and a Wal-mart on every corner. Some people around the

world have the audacity not to want anything to do with this.

Political Separatism

All political separatist movements are not equal in inspiration or

character. Autonomist or secessionist struggles can be organized into at

least three main categories. The first group can be labeled liberal

separatist. Liberal separatist movements are usually motivated by the

desire of propertied elites and the middle classes in a region to

consolidate their class status and protect the religious, language

and/or racial/ ethnic constitution of their communities. This is

sometimes linked to rhetoric about freedom and independence and often

involves settler populations. In many ways contemporary Taiwan fits the

first description as does the so-called U.S. war of independence from

Great Britain.

The second type of political separatism can be called resistance

separatism and is defined by the attempt by indigenous and

multi-ethnic/racial communities to maintain or re-establish their

traditional cultures and life-ways in the face of imperial state

violence and the encroachments of the remote rules and rulers of global

neo- liberalism. Above all else these populations seek self-

determination and community control over their own economies and

cultures. In this group you can include East Timor, the Tamil Eelam of

Sri Lanka, and the EZLN.

The last type of separatism can be referred to as exile separatism. This

is a group of people who seek to withdraw from society altogether. The

reasons vary: some are white racialists who simply don’t want to have to

see or be around blacks and other people of color. Some seek to get away

from technological society, “get off the grid” and live off the land..

Sometimes the latter comes in the form of the hippie commune, and

sometimes it comes in the form of the lone white man against modern

society (Ted Kaczynski).

These aren’t clear-cut categories. Historically there has been much

overlap between liberal and resistance separatism. Sometimes alliances

for secession or autonomy develop between the two camps each wanting to

breakaway but for different reasons. The Basque separatist movement has

consistently had more support from the poor and working class sectors of

the region than the middle classes. But the ETA has always attracted

advocates from every class over the years including wealthy enthusiasts.

And nationalists inspired by the goals of liberal separatism have been

known to use the people’s legitimate desire to hang on to their culture

as a way to whip up racial bigotry in the hopes that after the fighting

is over they’ll be next in line to rule after independence is won.

But these overlaps shouldn’t lead us to reject all separatist movements

out of hand. Active opposition to social institutions and movements that

use force and domination in order to gain and maintain power is

consistent with the anarchist belief in non-coercion. (If anarchists can

support the use of force against institutional purveyors of violence

then we should be able to support the use of force against individuals,

and political mobs that use violence to deny people their autonomy and

agency.) But in the absence of the above, it’s difficult to see on what

grounds we could oppose any of the various types of separatist

scenarios. Being uncomfortable with the motivation of a separatist

movement is different from refusing to acknowledge the right of a people

to break away from a larger political unit. This distinction is crucial

to the development of a more nuanced anarchist analysis of separatism.

Case Studies in Unity

Where have non-white anarchists and anti-authoritarians stood on the

question of support for separatist struggles against colonialism? In

Cuba an 1892 resolution in support of the war for separation from Spain

was passed by the First Workers Congress the largest and most

influential anarchist organization in the country. The resolution

stressed the important point that anarchism (what they called

revolutionary socialism) could not be an obstacle to “the triumph of the

independence of our country.” (Maurice Halperin: “The Rise and Fall of

Fidel Castro,” University of California 1972 p.4) Their support for

succession didn’t turn them into republicans. They still believed in the

class struggle. But this belief didn’t make them put the class war first

either. Cuba anarchists like Enrique Cresci and Eduardo Gonzalez (two

authors of the resolution) thought that it was more important to

demonstrate solidarity with the people’s legitimate desire to be free

from white colonial domination than it was to be “good anarchists” in

the international workers revolution. The Eastern Anarchist Federation,

an alliance that included anarchists from China, Vietnam, Taiwan and

Japan was first animated by the anti- colonial struggles in the region

against Japanese hegemony. It was these struggles that, according to

Jason Adams, brought anarchism to Korea.

“Korean migrants living in Tokyo came under the influence of Japanese

anarchism and engaged heartily in the anti-imperialist movement. As a

result over 6000 were rounded up after incredulously being blamed by the

authoritarian Japanese state for Tokyo’s 1923 earthquake. They were

beaten, jailed and two were even sentenced to death along with their

Japanese comrades in the “High Treason Case”(MacSimion, 1991). Later,

during the 1919 independence struggle, in which anarchists were

prominent, (my emphasis) refugees migrated into China, which was at the

height of anarchist influence as a result of the New Culture movement.

At the same time, Japanese anarchists at the time continue their

solidarity work with the Korean liberation movement.” (Jason Adams,

“Non-Western Anarchisms: Rethinking the Global Context 1993.)

Adams describes a courageous break away attempt by the Korea

Anarchist Communist Federation (KACF)

“The Apex of Korean anarchism however came later the same year outside

the actual borders of the country, in Manchuria. Over two million Korean

immigrants lived within Manchuria at the time when the KACF declared the

Shinmin Province autonomous and under the administration of the Korean

People’s Association. The decentralized, federative structure the

association adopted consisted of village councils, district councils and

area councils, all of which operated in a cooperative manner to deal

with agriculture, education ,finance and other vital issues. KACF

sections in China, Korea, Japan and elsewhere devoted all their energies

towards the success of the Shinmin Rebellion, most of them actually

relocating there. Dealing simultaneously with Stalinist Russia’s attempt

to overthrow the Shinmin autonomous region and Japan’s imperialist

attempts to claim the region for itself, Korean anarchists by 1932 had

been crushed (MacSimion, 1991)” (Ibid)

The Korean example shows not only that separatists struggles against

colonial rule and anarchism are compatible but that they can be

intimately connected in the fight for liberation. For Japanese and

Chinese anarchists solidarity with the Korean immigrants of Manchuria

didn’t turn on the movement’s nationalist profile or whether they saw

themselves as workers first and Koreans second. Adams plays down the

nationalist character of the East Asian anti-authoritarian formations of

the period “the “nationalism” of Chinese and Korean anarchists can be

seen as a form of anarchist internationalism dressed up in nationalist

clothing for political convenience.” (Ibid.)

But in truth nobody was dressing up anything because they didn’t have

to. The East Asian example demonstrates how any social grouping,

including national ones, can contribute to the fight against empire and

colonial rule within the context of anarchist ideals.

White anarchist support for separatist struggles for self determination

has been a tougher sell.

During the Algerian war for independence France’s anarchist community

was divided and politically marginal. In the book “The Brother’s

Comrades: Trotskyites and Anti-Authoritarians in the Algerian War”

Sylvain Pattieu reported that the Federation Anarchiste (FA) refused to

support the FLN due to its nationalist and religious ideas. Instead the

FA promoted an irrelevant third way by telling the Algerian people to

join “the only valuable struggle”- Euro- anarchist one. The FA rejected

anti-colonial praxis for meaningless gestures and self important navel

gazing. (Sylvain Pattieu, “The Brother’s Comrades: Trotskyites and

Anti-Authoritarians in the Algerian War” Paris: Editions Trotskyites,

2002)

On the other hand, a smaller France based group, the Federation

Communiste Libertaire (FCL) chose what it called “critical support” for

the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria. This position supported the anti-

colonial struggle by cultivating contacts with the Algerian anarchists

(few in number as they were) and showing solidarity with them. The FCL

also refused to let themselves be used by the supporters of colonial

rule by denouncing the FLN tactics in public. They too had misgivings

about the more reactionary elements and tactics in the Algerian

separatist movement but they recognized that Frances’s colonial

domination was the trigger of the suffering and violence taking place

and their responsibility was to weaken the empire not to tell the

victims of it how to liberate themselves from it. (Ibid.)

Anarchist societies and anarchist communities

It’s critical to distinguish between the ideal anarchist community and

what anarchy would most probably look like in a stateless society. In an

anarchist community one could presume not only the existence of

anarchist civic arrangements and practices (community control of public

resources, direct, participatory decision making, free association) but

also of certain social and cultural values that inform the way we live

(solidarity, mutual aid, anti-racist, queer, feminist) In an anarchist

society the statelessness would be a reality but not necessarily the

values and ways of life. Another words, noncoercion entails tolerating

local communities living in ways that don’t square with the prevailing

social and cultural priorities of anarchism.

Separatist movements have the effect of fracturing political

jurisdictions, making the units of social organization smaller and more

amenable to direct democratic practices, (although this is not always

the goal of the separatists). The more fractured political jurisdictions

become, the less dominant “the state” is. The monolith of authority

disintegrates. Its power is diffused. Its ability to coerce from remote

perches of privilege are undermined. Its proximity to the people is

increased. This is the paradox. An approximate anarchist society might

entail many more, weaker states than the world has today on the road to

a stateless world. The ability of anarchists to seriously challenge

states is tied to our ability to diminish their power, and political

reach. This is not a question of whether one is a real anarchist or not.

It’s a question of figuring out the best way to attack state authority

and power. If non-participation in electoral politics, event planning,

demonstrations and property destruction were the answers (the current

anarchist “strategy”) the state would be an historic relic by now. By

linking up with nationalist, autonomist, and political separatist

movements we potentially join in a broader struggle of resistance to

global corporate control and state colonialism. Each level of

resistance- individual, tribal, familial, national, international, is an

important point of challenge to the state and global neo-liberal

tyranny.

Organizational Separatism

A second, and perhaps more controversial, part of the separatism debate

centers around whether it makes sense for anarchists of color to start

their own organizations and political projects to the exclusion of

whites. APOC groups, conferences and blocks at demonstrations have been

labeled “separatist” and have been accused of breaking up the unity of

the working class and reinforcing the oppression of non-whites by using

group identities to fight against their domination instead of dealing

with it as an individual. Heavy shit. Let’s take a look see.

The problem appears to be the rise of “identity politics.” Its latest

wave in the 80’s and 90’s spawned a number of campusbased movements that

were driven by racial, gender, and sexuality-based organizing

strategies. A few of these groups left out straight white males. Many

others simply required them to step back at meetings and be allies

instead of leaders in the struggles against white supremacy, patriarchy,

and homophobia. But a mid- 1990’s backlash found expression in the

re-embrace of political universalism at the height of the U.S. academic

interest in French post-modernism with its rejection of foundationalism

and the “meta- narratives” of the Enlightenment. Books like Arthur

Schlesinger, Jr.‘s The Disuniting of America, Gitlin’s Twilight of

Common Dreams, and articles like Jonathan Chait’s “Backfire on Campus”

in the American Prospect accused identity activists of everything from

dividing the progressive movement to seeking to create new hierarchies

in it (presumably with a working class, black, disabled, undocumented,

lesbian immigrant witch at the top and a rich, straight, white, adult,

Christian American male at the bottom).

On the class war front, the problem with identity politics was that its

adherents viewed anyone who didn’t fit into their self-defined identity

as “the enemy” and saw “all other people in society” as “part of the

problem” (Sharon Smith, “Mistaken Identity- or can identity politics

liberate the oppressed?” International Socialism Journal Issue 62 Spring

1994) By contrast, the class struggle united “different groups of

activists into a common struggle.” (Ibid.)

If there are a few separatist feminist, queer, and race-based

organizations that traffic in bigotry of “the other,” there are many

more that exist simply so that they and their constituencies can define

for themselves what the critical issues and problems are and can lead

the struggle to address them. Contrary to Smith’s assertion, this hasn’t

meant that identity-based organizations have rejected support and

solidarity from others. What they’ve rejected is the argument that

claims when people most effected by a particular form of domination

demand that they lead the fight against it that that makes them bigoted

dupes of the capitalist class.

Identity politics on the left is divisive because whenever people lose

the ability to define a relationship of power (whether ally or enemy),

they lose power and folks generally don’t like losing power. As Kwame

Toure and Charles Hamilton point out in their 1967 book Black Power,

coalitions between groups with unequal social power are always steeped

in condescension and resentment. In the end these coalitions often wind

up doing more harm than good.

The class warriors aren’t the only folks unhappy with identity politics.

Wolfi Landstreicher, a post-left anarchist, argued in his essay From

Politics to Life: Ridding anarchy of the leftist millstone that

“The political need for categorization... leads the left to valorize

people in terms of their membership in various oppressed and exploited

groups, such as “workers”, “women”, “people of color”, “gays and

lesbians” and so on. This categorization is the basis of identity

politics. Identity politics is the particular form of false opposition

in which oppressed people choose to identify with a particular social

category through which their oppression is reinforced as a supposed act

of defiance against their oppression. In fact, the continued

identification with this social role limits the capacity of those who

practice identity politics to analyze their situation in this society

deeply and to act as individuals against their oppression.” (Wolfi

Landstreicher, “From Politics to Life: Ridding anarchy of the leftist

millstone,” Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed Issue 54 Winter

2002–2003).

Landstricher echoes a familiar right wing individualist refrain. People

who have born the brunt of state or private repression would be better

off fighting against institutionalized violence and exploitation as an

individual. Get an education, work hard, stay outta trouble and you too

can make it. Don’t worry about other people who happen to be in the same

boat as you for the same reasons. Don’t wallow in your victim hood etc.

To begin with, the Left is not alone in its “need for categorization.”

Categorization happens to be a low order form of critical thinking that

most kids start to learn fairly early on in life. Political

categorization takes place because some people have more social power,

and access to resources than others and this disparity is a fault line

that determines who lives and who dies. This causes people to coalesce

into communities of interest in order to keep what they have, or to get

what they consider their fair share. Some wealthy and powerful

individuals are able to defend their interests and agency alone. Most

can’t. There is power in numbers. Any woman who’s ever tried to confront

her boss about fair treatment, or any person of color who’s ever been

the victim of mob violence knows that solidarity means everything.

Uniting with other people who, due to their color, or race are the

victims of domination is the most intelligent thing that the

marginalized can do. Trying to prevent us from uniting with one another

is the most intelligent thing that people with privilege, power and

wealth can do to hang on to it.

Truth is, APOC is not identitarian. We’re a multiracial, multi-gender,

movement of people who come from every class, sexual orientation and

place. In other capacities we work with white folks on any number of

different political issues and events. The only biological

characteristic that we all have in common is that we’re human. Because

many of us question or reject the biological relevance of race, even the

non whiteness of folks in the APOC network is provisional and leads to

debate more often it leads to outright exclusion.

This makes the charge of separatism silly. APOCs have no essential

culture, history, ethnicity, or land that we choose to use as the basis

for separatism, (although we do have lots of common experiences and

traditions of resistance) And even if we did, any anarchist who would

equate the decision of historically subordinate and marginalized groups

to come together without whites to plan strategies for our liberation

with the separatism of patriot movement types or white suburban

neighborhood associations, should retake the challenging white supremacy

workshop.

There are a number of reasons why APOC formations and projects exist.

North American. APOCs have largely been ignored in anti-authoritarian

literature. We’re making the time and room to study and disseminate our

own history. We’re tried of being hit over the head with the dead, white

males of anarchy; primitivism vs. syndicalism; the organizers and

activists vs. the anarch scribes. It’s a white conversation, and it’s

boring.

APOCs also find interesting other people of color in projects and

campaigns easier when meetings, work spaces and demonstrations are

mainly people of color spaces. Whites have a way of dominating even when

they’re not aware they’re doing so (As men do). This is what is meant by

“white transparency.” Whites aren’t conscious of their race and the

broad behavioral traits of whiteness because they are white, and enjoy a

majority status and social power that makes what they do, say, and think

normative. Activists and organizers of color get tired of that. Colored

folks just being introduced to anarchist circles often make early exits

because of white obliviousness to white power.

Perhaps what’s so offensive to some white anarchists about the existence

of APOCs is that we actually set off space and tell them they’re not

invited. To a people who are used to going wherever they want, whenever

they want in “their” land, (free, white and 21!) this can be politically

unsettling. This makes sense. White North Americans are the most

privileged white people on the face of the earth. If any group of folks

think they’re entitled to be anywhere they want, whenever they wanna be,

it’s them. The very fact that APOCs have dared to draw a line is a good

lesson in how the dispossessed can create power for themselves and

humility among the master class.

Identity Politics and Essentialism

Is anyone who has ever defined their political work through a social

category historically associated with inferiority or submission in a

particular culture “essentialist?” Do activists involved in ‘identity

politics’ necessarily think of themselves as biologically or morally

superior to straight, white men? Is social victimization something

anarchists really need to be worried about? The answer to these

questions could determine the future relationship that anarchism has to

women, people of color, the LGBT community, immigrants and other groups

of people who have lived in the shadows of unaccountable authority

because of their real or perceived membership in a particular group.

In a Winter 2005 Anarchy: the Journal of Desire Armed article Lawrence

Jarach raises these issues and responds in a way that invites anarchists

to view essentialism as the inspiration of all identity driven political

work and to reject calls for solidarity with movements that base their

struggles on demands for justice for the victims of social domination.

Instead, anarchists should focus on the ways that the victims are

complicit in their own victimization by looking at how the recognition

and identification with social classifications work to continue their

own oppression. All this may seem like a slightly right of center

interpretation of Foucault but Jarach does more than simply point out

the fluidity of power relations. When his claims “...the ideologies of

innocence and victimization can quickly transform an identity based on

the history of shared oppression into a posture of superiority” he is

echoing a more right-wing analysis that is closer to figures like Dinesh

D’ Souza, David Horowitz and Shelbe Steele.

An essentialist is someone who believes there are different human

archetypes that correspond to a set of fixed attributes in the group

that the archetype represents. Plato is generally considered the author

of this wacky notion. On the left, Carol Gilligan’s 1982 book In a

Different Voice is a modern example of such thinking. “Left”

essentialism has generally been a minor tendency since the early

seventies. By contrast social constructionism has been much more popular

in feminist, queer and multiculturalist movements- the three theoretical

complements to the contemporary identity movement.

Self-identification with a particular social class or category does not

imply the belief that that class or category is static, eternal,

superior, or organic. Our identities are fragmented, intersectional, and

open to change. But oppositional identities are sometimes imposed from

the outside- a privilege of power that some people and communities do

not have the agency to resist. The reality is that in North America over

the last 600 years, white, Christian, men have held power and privilege

over and above others and they have often used that power and privilege

to the determent of others. This doesn’t mean that people who recognize

this fact with a period instead of a “but...” think they are superior to

white, Christian, men (many of the people who recognize this fact are

white, Christian, men) It simply means that we refuse to tell lies in

order to build unity in the service of some ideology.

“The Jarach offers the concept of “counter essentialism.

counter-essentialist discourse of Identity Politics attempts to invert

the historical categories of oppression into categories of

celebration... Counter-essentialism supposedly proves that the victim is

eternally innocent, so victims’ actions and reactions are forever beyond

reproach; all good Christians know that suffering is ennobling.

Oppression is never the result of anything the victim has actually done

to the Oppressor, so whatever strategies of resistance the victim

chooses are legitimate. Self-defense is its own justification.”

Under this view the female victim of domestic violence would be

complicit in a discourse that perpetuates her own domination if her

demands for justice went beyond an individual quest for recompense

against the perpetrator. If she happened to figure out that 95% of all

domestic violence victims are women and girls and concluded that there

were systemic and cultural causes that made women and girls targets for

abuse and men perpetrators of it, she’d be told by some post left

anarchists that she’s embracing the inverse of an historical narrative

that assumes female passivity and male domination. If she decided to

take a step further and become active in the feminist movement to fight

against violence against women she’d be labeled an essentialist by

Jarach and would find few allies among the post left anarchists.

Once we recognize a pattern in victimization that corresponds to a

social category that exists in reality — it effects the way people

think, act, and perceive- then the question of who invented the

categories becomes a topic ripe for a drunk PHD at an ethnic studies

department holiday party. The priority becomes stopping the

victimization. The ability to stop it and hold the victimizers

accountable largely depends on the number of people who decide to stand

up and demand it stop. Not just for themselves but for everyone who has

been victimized due to the “outward markings” (Jarach’s phrase) that

they share in common regardless of their biological meaning (or lack

thereof). The physical attributes that are invested with negative

meaning by people who create social hierarchies based on their existence

become relevant to those who’ve been targeted for victimization for

possessing these physical attributes because they’ve been targeted for

victimization for possessing these physical attributes! In this climate

pretending this discourse doesn’t exist just because you didn’t create

it can get you killed. The first order of survival is the ability to

recognize a present reality and adapt your behavior to meet its demands.

The unity of those who have suffered under oppression is the most

powerful weapon in the fight to end that oppression. It’s great to have

allies who will stand with your community when it’s under attack (as

anarchists should do). But the first priority of resistance is raising

the awareness of the people inside the community by sharing knowledge

about the ways in which their efforts to live in dignity and

self-determination are being denied and subverted and what they can do

to fight back. To label activists who are dedicated to this important

political education “essentialist” is absurd.

In the end the post left anarchist rejection of identity politics

reveals a double standard in its concern about hierarchy. The anarchist

rejects the state because it imposes political hierarchy. But getting

rid of the state wouldn’t necessarily dramatically effect social

hierarchy at all. (In fact, with the existence of corporate feudalism it

could make it worse) The state may solidify social inequality but it’s

not the author of it. Getting rid of social hierarchy will demand true

solidarity with those who have born the brunt of injustice and

repression. This is something Jarach and many his post left anarchist

friends are not willing to do.

Group X: Lessons in Multiracial Anarchist Organizing

Group X was an organization that actually never was. The effort was

coordinated by a group of mainly East Bay Area anarchists who had been

involved in a series of post-Seattle meetings around how to harness the

growing momentum and interest in anarchist activism. These meetings

officially were in preparation for a conference. Strategic Resistance,

that was to take place in August of 2001 (and did). But a smaller set of

conference participants thought the time was right to move towards

creating an anarchist organization in the Bay Area. Unlike most similar

efforts in the past, this group would stress accountability and be

“highly structured.” In order for anarchists to take full advantage of

the organizing possibilities that the WTO victory created, it was time

to think big and get serious.

The following account is a reflection on a series of meetings organized

by Group X in preparation for its May 19^(th) and 20^(th) 2001

organizational meeting. I revisit these conversations, impressions, and

confrontations not to point fingers after the fact but to spur all of us

into thinking more critically about how anarchists deal (or choose not

to deal) with the issue of race in general and multiracial organizing in

particular.

The Screen

My first meeting was in the first week of April, 2001 with two members

of the original core who started Group X. This was an interview. I was

told later that the point wasn’t so much to keep out agent provocateurs

or the FBI, but to weed out the anarchist wheat from the chaff and to

keep out those crazy orthodox marxists with the glazed-over eyes, and

permanently attached forearm clipboards. You couldn’t just decide to be

in Group X. You had to be recruited. At least this was the rule.

The two organizers I met with seemed normal enough. They were cordial

and even laid back but serious -self consciously so. The woman who came

had done work in the early 80’s with Fireworks, an offshoot of the

legendary Weather Underground of the pervious decade, and third world

solidarity organizing as well. Her smile and her eyes made me feel more

comfortable, if not relaxed.

The guy was a few years younger than the female with a tall, imposing

body and a shaved head. He had done some union organizing in New York

and had been involved in a few anarchist projects in the Bay Area. They

were both white and knew I was black before we met. I didn’t like the

idea of being “interviewed” by them. But I wasn’t surprised by the lack

of color. With the possible exception of the neo nazi youth scene and

the Christian identity movement. North American anarchism is the whitest

political tendency around. This is a bigger problem to some in the

anarchist movement than it is to others. My guess is that if they had

had a black person in their core organizing committee to send to the

interview they probably would have- but they didn’t.

We had a short conversation about the anti- globalization movement and

how to channel the upsurge in youth activism. We agreed that the blanket

condemnations of third world nationalists struggles against white

colonialism (new and old) were short-sighted and dogmatic. They stressed

the strategic importance of race in building more effective

antiauthoritarian struggles and repeated their belief that the inability

of anarchism to mount a sustained challenge to state/ capitalist

structures was rooted in the old anarchist equation of structure, clear

direction, and accountability with authoritarianism. I agreed and still

do.

Second Prep Meeting

After going to a small prep meeting in Oakland a few weeks earlier that

focused on the vision thing, I was called to come to a second planning

meeting on the 25^(th) of April. There were about 30 people at the

meeting. I saw some familiar faces and met some anarchists of color whom

I had seen before but had never been introduced to.

The bulk of the meeting was taken up talking about what should be the

main priorities for the group for the first six months. We broke up into

groups of five and brainstormed about priority work. The group I was in

mirrored the other groups. The general consensus was that the first six

months should be a time of internal education and training. The only

memorable deviation came from this super articulate brother who was very

well known in Bay Area activist circles. He thought we should be looking

at campaigns and figuring out where we can plug in even if that meant

playing just a supportive role at first.

He was right. Momentum is everything when an organization is just

starting out. Taking action, getting noticed, building visibility is the

most effective guard against the tendency among political groups to

stall over process conflicts or ideological differences. Groups learn

and grow by doing, not by talking in meetings. People didn’t disagree,

they side stepped.

Things were coming to a close when I threw a monkey wrench. I asked for

the hands of all of the core organizers. They were, predictably, all

white. I made the point that the closed invite policy ensured the

reproduction of the race exclusive patterns that white anarchists claim

to be against. Organizers invited who they knew. Who they knew were

other white people.

I said this was problematic for an organization that saw race as

strategically central to the struggle against authority.

The response from the core organizers was muted, not defensive. One of

them brought up the fact that although the core organizing group was all

white now it hadn’t always been, which, of course, made me wonder why

the people of color who were initially involved with the group dropped

off. Another claimed that the core wasn’t closed and that if people of

color were interested in being a part of it, they could talk to one of

them. Another basically acknowledged that there was a problem and then

asked who wanted to work on dealing with it by recruiting more people of

color into the group. The room fell silent. A young white women proposed

to start a committee dedicated to recruiting more people of color into

the group.

No one spoke against it except for a San Francisco anarchist connected

to the punk scene over there. But people weren’t falling over themselves

to sign up either. Of course I offered to be on the committee. Both of

my interviewers volunteered as well, partly because of genuine interest

and partly to keep a lid on the whole thing and watch me and the woman

who spoke out of turn. (She apparently was one of the few folks who

wasn’t properly screened.) The new committee of six met for a few

minutes after the meeting to plan our own.

The end of this meeting spotlighted the deep ambiguity around the

developing identity of Group X. Although all of the members of the core

organizing group took the issue of race seriously and struggled with its

many complexities, it was clear that there had been no unified

commitment among the founding members towards a multiracial anarchist

organization. It later came out in a subsequent meeting that all options

on this question had been discussed, including Group X being a white

solidarity anarchist organization. Resolution of the matter was to be

put off for later. The most important thing to get out of the way was

agreement on the structure of the organization. Or so they thought.

This, in my mind, was the biggest mistake the core made on this issue.

Whatever the decision, there should have been clarity and commitment on

this from the very beginning.

The Organizing Weekend

The weekend was all planned out. The idea was to gain consensus on how

to build the organization around three predetermined “structural points”

that, theoretically, everyone had seen and agreed upon beforehand. They

included; a two tiered membership, guidelines on decision-making

procedure and the authority of working groups in relation to the

plenary.

A long-time Bay Area activist from the core organizing group and I were

the first to show up on Saturday morning at the South San Francisco

site. We spent a few minutes talking about where we grew up and our

politics. He struck me as one of the most grounded and genuine folks I

had met since being involved in the project. Although he was white, he

wasn’t from America. His demeanor was open and calming without all of

the defensive niceness that many white American activists project in

relation to colored people.

After an introduction from the core organizers we broke into groups of

ten to talk about the structural points. My group was facilitated by a

black woman. Her style was direct and, at times, abrasive, and it

shifted the energy of the group. Since that session she and I have had

conversations about the culture of whiteness and how it demands that

non-whites “speak its language.” In disneyland middle class America

where denial is the glue that holds together any number of personal,

social, and professional relationships, people who don’t use euphemism,

irony and obfuscation are often avoided and rejected as confrontational.

That race/ culture clash played itself out in our group.

But that wasn’t the only source of friction. I clashed with the black

woman’s partner- a self-identified Native American male with white skin.

The issue was next to meaningless- how much autonomy working groups

should have in relation to the larger organization. It’s the kind of

question you can argue about for hours but can’t really work out until

you’re doing campaigns and have to deal with real situations and power

conflicts.

When it came time to pick a spokesperson for the report back, the

white-skinned, part Native American said he didn’t trust me to do the

report back because (after knowing me for all of 30 minutes) he thought

I wouldn’t honestly portray his views to the larger group. After about

20 minutes of nervous back and forth about which three of us should do

the report backs, a team was chosen. The whole experience made me more

suspicious of activists with white skin privilege who claim non- white

racial identities and politically align themselves with activists of

color (which the person in question did shortly after the demise of

Group X.) In a white supremacist society, people who have white skin but

self identify with another race still receive the same social

preferences and immunities that people who self-identify as white do.

There is no difference between having white skin privilege and being

white.

By the end of the first day there were already rumors circulating that a

few Latino participants had felt alienated by the “cold and impersonal”

process and hurried schedule. There were also language issues. The

translators were being forced to fast forward conversations. By the time

translations were complete the English speakers were off to the next

issue. The Spanish speakers felt left out, rushed and ignored because

not enough time had been set aside for meaningful translation. This,

along with the perception that everyone was just too busy to stop and

get to know the people of color who weren’t in the various white social

cliques, led three of the Spanishspeaking Latino participants to drop

out after the first day.

A less ambitious schedule, more time for social activities and more

attention to translation issues on the part of the facilitators might

have prevented the defections.

The diversity committee that came out of the second prep meeting didn’t

do much. Our task was to recruit activists of color for the organizing

weekend and we had about ten days to do it. I failed to get anyone to

the weekend and felt bad about raising an issue without having either a

plan or the pull to remedy the situation. But what I really wanted to

see was an organizational commitment to bringing in more people of

color. This job was obviously too big for five people with a week and a

half to work with.

I had heard that one of the Latino participants who left had proposed a

six-week recruitment drive aimed at activists of color to begin right

after the weekend. Although the core organizers had brought about nine

people of color out of about 43 to the weekend (not bad considering what

most anarchist meetings and affinity groups look like) there was general

agreement that given the demographics of the East Bay the group could do

better (particularly after the departure of the three Latino Spanish

speakers).

I took up the six week recruitment proposal and spoke in favor of it on

Sunday morning. I argued that having more people of color in the

organizing project should have been a priority from day one and that if

Group X moved forward towards developing its politics without more

voices of color in the mix that our politics and our strategic vision

would be impoverished.

The group was resistant. Some asked what was so special about race? The

group also needed more women and queers too. Why not have a recruitment

committee for all “under-represented” groups? A few said that a special

recruitment of anarchists of color amounted to tokenism and would give

guilty whites an easy out from dealing with their own racism. These

comments came mainly from the other people of color in the group. The

white anarchists just sorta sat back and took it all in.

During a break one of the most well-known young Latino intellectuals in

the Bay Area recognized the need for some unity from the people of color

on the issue. He called for a caucus of color. We gathered in the front

hall right next to the main door and started talking about the

recruitment plan pro and con. White participants, obviously interested

in the conversation, kept coming up, listening for a minute and adding

their two cents to the debate. At one point the organizer of the caucus

ordered all the whites to “back off!” This didn’t sit too well. A white

guy stepped up and challenged his right to tell them to leave and

suggested there were better places to have a closed caucus than in the

middle of a hall. After an eerie pause everyone realized just how close

we super politically advanced Bay Area anarchists had come to a race

war. Folks started to disperse. It was the tensest moment I witnessed

all weekend.

For the most part the white activists were afraid to commit to something

that would push them out of their comfort zones and force them to talk

to people who weren’t like them. It wasn’t made clear to them how the

recruitment “plan” would work, how the outreach would be done or whether

they would have to go into black neighborhoods after dark to talk to

strangers about joining a majority white anarchist organization. It’s

also true that some participants rejected the very notion of

“recruiting” people of color into anarchist groups, preferring instead

to think about ways in which Group X could support the ongoing struggles

against social authority and capitalism in communities of color. This

view was held mainly by the older white activists who came out of the

third world solidarity struggles of the early 1980’s. The flip side of

this view is that the attempts at multiracial organizing on the radical

left in the 60s’s failed (SNCC being the most famous example) and that

the role of white anarchists is to organize their “own people.”

I had no plan. I was asking for a commitment to multiracialism before

anyone saw how the group could get from point A to point B. In

characteristic form the proposal wasn’t voted down. It was put off until

the first Group X meeting six weeks later.

My Last Meeting

In the first meeting after the organizing weekend in Berkeley there was

more racial bloodletting. The activist/ scholar who called for the

caucus of color over the organizing weekend quit the group saying that

he was too busy to spend a lot of time getting white anarchists “up to

speed” on racial politics and that their ambiguity on how to move

forward was frustrating. The sister who facilitated in my group over the

organizing weekend stayed but told the core organizers of the group that

it was naive of them to think that something as huge as the

organizational strategy of Group X in relation to race could be “put

off” until later or that it would just work itself out. I said that it

seemed as if the group had decided to drop the idea of putting time and

resources into bringing in more people of color altogether and that it

looked as if folks in the group were fine with the racial makeup. (By

then the number of colored people had dropped off to about four.) The

core organizers were visibly tried, and at a loss for “solutions.” The

woman who interviewed me at the very beginning was withdrawn and silent.

That night they took it from all sides. Folks started whispering about

Group X in the past tense.

After the Berkeley meeting I went to visit my female interviewer. We had

a relaxed and long conversation about stuff both personal and political.

I had grown to like her and felt a special connection. But after talking

for a while it became clear to me that we weren’t just shootin’ the

breeze. She was interested in me organizing other people of color into a

new group. I was interested too, but I also wanted to see through the

Group X project. This might have been her way of showing me the door or

her way of telling me to jump ship before Group X sank. In retrospect

she did me a favor. After “getting it ,” I went to the next meeting of

Group X two weeks later and quit the group, stating that I had decided

to start an anarchist of color group with another Oakland activist. We

started that organization a few weeks later. Group X folded soon

thereafter.

The Political Ghetto of Whiteness: Race and anarchist organization

Political and organizational cultures have a way of reproducing and

perpetuating themselves unless directly challenged. What this means for

white anarchist groups is clear. If they do not make organized efforts

to include people of color in their affinity groups then their struggles

in North America will remain an overwhelmingly white, youth orientated,

scene-based, political phenomenon. Unless anarchism is a white solution

to uniquely white political dilemmas, we should be concerned about the

dissemination of its critiques, and praxis to everyone, especially those

of us who have born the brunt of state repression, and capital

exploitation. In North America that means, among other groups, people of

color.

Respecting the fact that people in communities of color have been

fighting against the state and imperialism before anarchism even

developed as a distinct ideological trend, doesn’t mean that anarchists

can ignore their responsibility to relate the many visions of society

without authority to non-whites. This doesn’t mean arguing against APOC

groups because they’re divisive. If people of color want to organize

with one another whites should support those efforts. But they should

also make efforts to reach out to and work with everyone regardless of

color. There are a few activists and organizers of color who don’t agree

with the idea of excluding whites from their political work as

anarchists. There should be a place for these people in the movement as

well.

Anarchist groups that are 95% white don’t (and shouldn’t) lead campaigns

in communities of color. And those white groups who would use the few

people of color in its ranks as ambassadors to dark skinned

neighborhoods should be called out for tokenism. Not only is this an

expression of organizational racism, it fails as an organizing model.

But it’s not as if it hasn’t been tried.

The populist left Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

(ACORN) often places white organizers in black and brown neighborhoods

to find out about issues in the community and to facilitate action

geared towards fixing them while building power and a sense of civic

ownership among members in the neighborhood. ACORN portrays its largely

white organizing staff as behind the scenes trainers of indigenous

community leaders, and membership and in a number of cities they’ve done

a good job of leadership development in communities of color. But the

fact that the white organizers often make the vast majority of the

organizational, strategic, and tactical campaign decisions contributes

to the widespread conviction in communities of color that when white

politicos come into the hood or the barrio they come with a hidden

agenda. The distrust this approach (and others) has left makes leaving

the task of spreading anarchist principles in communities of color to

white radicals an insurmountable one. To its credit, ACORN has at least

realized that communities of color need to be engaged and has done

something about it. Anarchists have yet to reach that consensus on any

level.

People with the most at stake in the struggle for liberation must be at

the center of the struggles for that liberation. It’s this ideal that

should influence white activists most heavily with regard to the

campaigns they chose to work on. Organizationally it also means that

anarchist groups must develop the internal capacity to organize in

communities of color. They need to multiply the number of organizers of

color with an explicitly anti-authoritarian analysis to make that

happen. This should be in addition to anarchists of color organizing

ourselves into groups and campaigns that are for activists of color

only. It’s not enough to claim to be “open” to participation from people

of color. White anarchists must develop plans to build coalitions with

other groups of color working on similar issues that engage people of

color in anarchist struggle directly.

Concerns about the workability and ultimate aims of organizational

multiracialism have also been raised. The most persistent one is that if

white organizations affirmatively take on the challenge of including

people of color that will somehow lead to tokenism. They say we must

wait until groups have dealt with internal racism. To do otherwise will

just lead to a revolving door of members of color who join, become

disillusioned, than quit, full of resentment. In order to bring in

people of color successfully groups must be ready to assimilate them

into white anarchist organizations that have already figured out how not

to be racist through discussion, and training.

Not only does the above approach further exacerbate the perennial

problem of anarchist groups not having enough direct input and

engagement from people of color in the struggle, it also has tokenism

backward. Groups shouldn’t focus their membership efforts on activists

of color just to make “the meeting room darker.” They should do it to

listen to what activists of color have to say about the anarchist

vision, political direction, and tactics. Yes. Being an oppressed

minority in North America gives one a unique perspective on struggle

that white anarchists need to take seriously. The fewer members of color

the group has, the greater temptation there will be to point to the

three or four members of color as “proof” that the organization is not

segregated. It will also increase the likelihood that whites in the

group will begin to look to the few colored people at meetings to speak

for their racial, or ethic group. These are the real symptoms of

tokenism.

Another related concern is that radical pluralism does not prescribe a

numeric formula for inclusion. This leads to the question, how is it

defined? This should be determined by the nature and goals of the

campaign. Anarchist organizations should be concentrating lots of

efforts on campaigns that have the potential to destabilize and

challenge social hierarchy. Because the contradictions of state/ capital

serfdom are greatest in non- white, poor communities much of the work

will be done in those neighborhoods. Organizers of color should be at

the center of these campaigns.

Groups should think in terms of making organizations as hassle-free as

possible to join for those people of color who are interested. For

instance membership working groups could do away with interview or

“screen” requirements for potential members of color. Another model

includes freezing membership for whites at a ratio to non-whites. A good

test of whether an organization is being effective at including enough

people of color in its group is its ability to develop campaigns in

neighborhoods of color. Another test is the ability of anarchist

organizations to attract and keep members of color. If the numbers of

people of color in the movement are growing over a measurable period of

time that’s probably a sign the group is doing something right. Those

that suggest that anarchist politics would be watered down or somehow

less anarchist if more people of color became involved should stop.

The rhetorical demeanor of some on this issue seems to project a dour

realism that seeks to convince us of how difficult, and thorny race is.

But it’s not true that race plural radical organizations have never

existed. CORE in the 1960’s fit that description. Its freedom riders

were a multi-racial group of young activists who struggled together,

bled together and died together in the South. Today socialist Bay Area

groups like Storm, and Critical Resistance have taken this issue

seriously enough to create their own models for inclusion. Anarchists

can and should do the same.

I should also note some differences between liberal multiculturalism and

radical pluralism. Multiculturalism is the social descendant of

integration- the belief that prejudice was based on ignorance and if

blacks and whites worked, lived, and went to school together, people of

color would become assimilated, we would realize that “were all the same

inside” and bigotry would end. Today multiculturalism functions as an

attempt to absorb the novelties and “folk wisdom” of various racial

groups so long as these cultural artifacts run consistent with the

prevailing imperatives of the liberal elite in the academy, and the

corporate press. Diversity, within this context, is promoted primarily

to assuage white guilt and to convince youth of color that if they just

follow the law and work hard enough, there’s a place in this society for

them too.

Radical pluralism at least recognizes that there is a cultural war

taking place and responds by opposing white supremacy, and white

cultural homogenization. Radical pluralists defend indigenous cultures

not so we can have safe flirtations with native lifestyles but so we can

survive the onslaught of the total corporate state with its culture of

repression and commerce. This is one of the reasons we smash Starbucks

and struggle against gentrification.

Inclusion is a tall order because it means more than just openness. It

means devising strategies that will make it happen. And when those fail

we’ll have to devise new plans. Such is the work of liberation.

How can we dance? A brief look at Post Left Anarchism

As far as I can tell the most recent calls for anarchists to leave their

leftist associations in the past have come almost exclusively from the

professional primitivist scribes and their fellow travelers in our mist.

This makes sense. One of the few things that these post-left anarchists

are clear about is their disdain for organizations as such. The reason?

Well, anarchists organizations haven’t “worked” in the past,

particularly in North America. In organizations “the means tend to

displace the ends” and “the division of labor engenders inequality of

power.” (Bob Black, Anarchy After Leftism Cal Press 1997 P.61) We should

be talking more, writing more, listening to each other talk more,

reading more about who’s a real anarchist and who isn’t and why. You get

the picture.

If you never intend to change anything, then organizations are indeed

worse than useless. Creating propaganda is a lot easier than organizing

people and trying to convince them that taking action against

illegitimate authority and social hierarchy will bring more results than

spending time engaging in the type of internecine warfare that anarchist

intellectuals are infamous for. The large scale anarchists organizations

of 20^(th) century Europe certainly weren’t perfect. But due in part to

their efforts European workers get six to eight week vacations, free

health care, have real rights to organize, and generally work less hours

than American workers do. If the anti- organizational bias of post left

anarchism isn’t yet another capitulation to liberal market individualism

and its on going campaign to keep people from coming together to

struggle against social domination, what is it?

Whatever it is it ain’t revolutionary. And that’s just fine with them.

According to Hakim Bey we must not only give up “waiting for ‘the

revolution’” but we must also “give up wanting it” (Hakim Bey “T.A.Z.

The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchism, Poetic Terrorism,”

Autonomedia, 1985 P.101) Maybe a riot here, a Burning Man art gathering

there, ya know, “cultural terrorism.” Do I have to write that this is

about as relevant to communities of color fighting against police

repression and for economic survival as Grateful Dead jam sessions were

to the black liberation movement of the 1960’s? I don’t, but I did just

in case anyone needed to read it.

The post left anarchists don’t seem to mind that their notions are of

little use to the struggles of people of color in the Americas. Their

support for “Zero Work” is an example. John Zerzan’s critique of the

work demands that production requires in technical society, though by no

means original, is certainly worth a look. But to insist that the most

plausible anarchist reply to capital over production lays in an attempt

to reestablish hunter and gatherer, or forage/ scavenger societies with

dreams of their “primitive affluence” not only makes the real substance

of anti-authoritarian thought all but inaudible to communities of color

(who don’t have the class luxury of rejecting either work or technology

on philosophical grounds) but also to about 98 percent of the rest of

the population as well. Go up to a day laborer who gets up at 5:00 a.m.

every morning to find work to feed his family talking about the

“Abolition of Work” and you might find yourself in the hospital. Ahhh.

Could this be the reason the post leftists don’t want to organize?

Perhaps the split has already taken place. The post left anarchists have

already rejected feminism (Black P.150) and the vast majority of third

world liberation struggles against white neo- colonialism

(Internationalist Anarchist News, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed

Fall/Winter 2001–2 P.27.)

In short just about every major struggle against white, male world

domination. Before anti-authoritarians of color hop on the post- leftist

wagon we should not only ask where is it taking us from, but also where

is it leading us to. If there’s no social justice at the revolution how

can we dance?

Roots and White Supremacy

For too long anarchists have relied on old marxists explanations of the

roots of racism to guide their thinking on the issue. Even some

anarchists of color have viewed white supremacy as a symptom of

capitalism rather than a social system with its own dynamics and causes

that stand outside of (though not independent of) the class struggle.

Lucy Parsons fell into this camp. Lorenzo Ervin wrote in his ground

breaking work Anarchism and the Black Revolution that the “invention of

the white race” was a capitalist “scam” to pit black workers against

white workers to prevent a united front against its rule. (Lorenzo

Kom’boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution Self Published 1993

P3) This sounds plausible enough. But it fails to get at the real

internal logic of white supremacy.

It’s one thing to point out how capitalists have used race as a way to

divide working people in our struggle against their oppression. It’s

quite another to claim that capitalists invented race in order to

further their goal of global economic domination. Capitalism as a

coherent set of economic practices and principals didn’t emerge on the

world stage until the latter part of the 1600’s. And it wasn’t until

Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations a hundred years later that a

definitive exposition of its ideas was published. White colonialism

began three centuries before the development of European capitalism.

While this imperialism obviously had economic rationales (the

“explorers” of Europe were merely state sponsored looters), that’s not

the whole story.

Liberal European colonialism always understood its mission in the global

south as tutelary. Whites were bringing civilization to the dark

natives- Christianity, law, “democracy.” Often times these people

weren’t ruling class capitalists but missionaries, school teachers and

civil development workers. It was their duty to help the darkies out of

their darkness. Most of these people never got rich. In fact colonialism

as an economic prospect was a loser for Europe. After the devastation of

world war II Europeans started to pull out of the South.

The modern tendency has been to see all social relationships in material

terms- particularly in the information/ industrial societies of the

white world. No matter what new horror communities of color are

subjected to, it must trace back to a capitalist looking for more

profits. Neo-marxism is the most clear expression of this tendency. But

the sickness of white supremacy is fundamentally a psychological one. As

the psychologist Dr. Francis Cress Welsing pointed out in her book The

Isis Papers, white supremacy is a reaction- formation, an

overcompensation for feelings of genetic inferiority. (Dr. Francis Cress

Welsing, The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors Third World Press 1995)

Ultimately whites oppress people of color not to steal our resources,

but to kill us. Their deepest fear is “the fear of a black planet.”

Any study of white supremacy that relies exclusively or even

predominately on marxist class analysis is limited at best. White

supremacy may be pathological but its not irrational. White male control

over resources and female reproduction gives them options, tools and

time in their struggle for race survival. This, in part, helps us to

understand the deepseated drives for world economic hegemony,

patriarchy, and heterosexism. These oppressions are not rooted in white

supremacy but are connected to it in ways that must be better understood

by all of us. The argument here isn’t that race is more primary an

oppression than class or gender or any other historical relationship of

social domination. It’s that the attempts to subsume one oppression

under another devalues those real life experiences of marginalization

and exploitation that makes each encounter with social domination

unique.

The continuing relevance of Marx can be attributed to the way he

crystallized a fundamental truth of the social condition. The struggle

for human survival and dignity is inextricably tied to our capacity to

secure the material basics of lifefood, shelter, health- all those

things that make life livable. To the extent that those things are

denied to the masses of people through the rule of a small class of

elites who happen to have all the above in abundance, we are at war. But

Abner Louima wasn’t forcibly sodomized with a night-stick and beaten by

the NYPD because he was poor. Wen Ho Lee wasn’t singled out as a

“trader” and jailed because he didn’t make enough money. The 1996

California Proposition 187 didn’t make income distinctions between

undocumented immigrants when it decreed a cut off of all social services

to them. It was the color of their skin that got them into trouble.

If colored anarchists expect to do any better than the marxists at

building a multiracial movement against authority in North America we

must put down their tired class analysis of racism and develop a

different one that rejects the temptation to consume the various

experiences of marginalization under one, all encompassing oppression.

Race does burn class, except for when class burns race, except for when

gender burns class, except for when sex burns...

The Struggle Against Immigrant Prisons

By now many of us have heard the stories about the scores of immigrants

who have been tracked, spied on, questioned, held against their will and

imprisoned by the Justice Department since September 11. In many ways

agencies like the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the

Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) were fully prepared to take advantage

of the regulatory blank check that the attacks on the Pentagon and the

Trade Towers gave them. Since the early eighties the INS has been slowly

shedding its role as a social service agency while it has adopted a law

enforcement posture with immigrants inside the U.S. and a para- military

one along the southwest border for migrants coming from Mexico, Central/

South America and the Caribbean. The FBOP has steadily been expanding

its number of beds since the early eighties to accommodate the explosion

in the number of drug war prisoners, many of whom are non- citizens.

Because this directly involves state repression targeted at non- white

people, anarchists of color should be particular concerned about these

shifts in priorities.

In 2002 it’s safe to say that the central mission of the INS no longer

involves helping immigrants through the long and increasingly cumbersome

and expensive process of become visa holders, legal residents, or

citizens. Its main mission has become investigating, tracking down,

imprisoning and deporting immigrants. In the same vein, the FBOP has

dropped any pretense of rehabilitation and has focused its resources on

expanding its ability to incarcerate ever larger numbers of people of

color.

Criminalizing Immigrants

Even before the September 11 attacks the INS and FBOP were struggling

with capacity problems. The passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform

and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (The Immigration Reform Act of

1996) and the Anti- Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996

(the Anti- Terrorism Act of 1996) greatly accelerated the numbers of

immigrants locked up. From the mid 1990’s to the present the average

number of INS prisoners detained on any given day has tripled from 5,532

to 19,533. (Joseph Greene, Deputy Executive for Field Operations

Congressional Testimony December 19, 2000)

The INS budget has increased from 3.1 billion in 1997 to 5.3 billion in

early 2002. (INS Budget Increases, Washington Post June 8, 1997) Many of

these prisoners are seeking asylum or waiting to be deported. During

that same period the number of immigrants in federal prison serving

criminal sentences rose from 18,929 to 35, 629. (Judith Greene, Bailing

Out Private Jails The American Prospect Vol. 12 Issue 16 September 10,

2001) The FBOP has doubled its staff over the last six years to keep up.

In the Immigration Reform Act of 1996 a mandatory detention provision

was passed that requires confinement for all lawful permanent residents

ever convicted in the U.S. of most major and minor crimes. It also

expanded the definition of “aggravated felony.” Now the term includes

minor offenses like shoplifting and check kiting. The aggravated felony

provision runs retroactively so a theft charge that was cleared up years

ago can be used as a basis for deportation. The AntiTerrorism Act of

1996 includes a provision that allows for the use of secret evidence in

deportation hearings against non citizens accused of being a terrorist.

The dramatic increase in the number of immigrant prisoners under the

authority of the FBOP has led government officials to reach out to the

private prison industry for a helping hand. The timing couldn’t have

been better. The private prison industry was also in need of a helping

hand. As the incarceration rate increase began to slow in 2000–01 some

private companies found themselves with empty cells and falling profits.

According to Judith Greene, a private prisons expert. Corrections

Corporation of America stock “lost 93 percent of its value in 2000” and

the company “reported a fourth quarter loss of more than a third of a

billion dollars.” (Ibid.) The Sarasota, Florida based Correctional

Services had combined losses of $600,000 in the third quarter of last

year. Just when the free market was about to flush this industry out of

its system the federal government stepped in with a plan.

The C.A.R. Bailout

Since 1999 private contractors have been bidding on prison sites in

accordance with federal “Criminal Alien Requirements” (C.A.R.) that

spell out to what extent private companies and counties can lower the

floor with respect to education, training and counseling opportunities

inside of the purposed sites.

Three FBOP Criminal Alien Requirement prison solicitations have been

issued since 1999 with a fourth solicitation for bids due to open in the

near future. Over 10,500 beds have been requested by the FBOP through

C.A.R. The CAR system of proposal requests are organized by region and

are numbered accordingly. In 1999 the CAR 1 proposal called for 7500

beds to “serve” California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.

Corrections Corporation of America won two contracts with the FBOP to

house 2,304 in California City, California, and another 1012 beds at the

Cibola prison in Milan, New Mexico. These contracts are worth over 760

million.

Communities Fighting Back

These new immigrant prisons haven’t been a slam dunk in every case.

Corrections Corporation of America yanked a CAR II prison proposal after

an unexpected visit from the Georgia Department of Corrections found

that its Wheeler Correctional Facility in Alamo had “inadequate” medical

facilities and that the prison had a poor inmate tracking system.

(Prisons Company Blasted, Chattanooga Times May 23, 2000) The system

failure led to a two hour search for a prisoner. Cornell Corporations

was stopped cold due to stiff local opposition to its CAR 1 proposal to

house 2,000 prisoners on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Local

immigrant rights groups and prison reform activists forced Cornell to

withdraw its proposal.

The organization Southwest Alliance to Resist Militarization (SWARM) has

been active in its opposition to the criminalization of immigrants.

Their organizing against the FBOP Car III request for proposals (three

1,500 bed prisons in Arizona and California) in Arizona has received

attention not only from the press but from lawmakers as well. In Cochice

County the group was able to convince one of the three Board of

Supervisors to oppose a plan in November of 2001 that would have rezoned

land to make way for a proposed CAR prison.

SWARM has been able to engage people and policy makers in the ongoing

struggle against over-incarceration and its real effects on communities.

While the rezoning ordinance passed anyway, the vote switch demonstrates

that there are some legislators who can be reached with solid organizing

and good information.

Because over 20 sites have been proposed, Jennifer Allen, a lead

activist in SWARM has said the campaign against the prisons won’t really

get off the ground until the number of sites are narrowed. Until then

much of her work has involved talking with INS prison survivors and

documenting their stories for an upcoming report. Her long-term vision

for the campaign is to “build a state wide network of community groups

to push for a prison moratorium.” With this vision in mind SWARM helped

to organize a new group called the Arizona Prison Moratorium Coalition a

year ago. Allen said the idea was to create a coalition between people

working on immigrants rights and people doing prisoner’s rights work.

In the Bay Area, groups like Prison Moratorium Project have been

organizing against prisons in rural parts of California and, with groups

like Critical Resistance, have been forging coalitions between immigrant

rights groups and prison activist organizations. Prisoner support groups

like Anarchist Black Cross are well positioned to contribute to the

struggle by adding an anti-authoritarian analysis of state repression

and capital exploitation while engaging with various communities of

color fighting against prisons. Developing new alliances will be the

seed work for any successful challenge to the prison industrial complex

in the U.S.

The Voting Anarchist

A main staple of anarchism has always been its rejection of politics.

The only form of social organization that truly maintains participatory

decision making and non-hierarchical community organization is direct

democracy. A big part of anarchist localism is based on the diminished

workability of direct decision making in large scale systems of social

organization.

While the marxists were busy touting the need for workers parties a

century ago, Mikhail Bakunin was declaring “the system of democratic

representation” a “system of hypocrisy and perpetual lies.” (Mikhail

Bakunin The Political Philosophy of Bakunin Ed. G.P. Maximoff The Free

Press NY. 1953 P.220) When the marxists were spending time and resources

organizing central committees, anarchists like Emma Goldman were

denouncing the growing tendencies in industrial society towards

bureaucracy and rejecting the political vanguardism of the American

socialists. (Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks Ed. Alix Kates Shulman

Vintage Books NY. 1972 P. 30)

In North America there has always been a strict interpretation of

anarchist anti-politics. Today not only is there a rejection of party

building, there’s also an across the board rejection of voting. This

makes sense on the nation- state level. But even Bakunin recognized that

on the local level political participation was more effective.

“They [the people] know more or less the affairs of their municipality,

they take a great deal of interest in those matters, and they know how

to choose from their midst men who are the most capable of conducting

those affairs. In these matters control by the people is quite possible,

for they take place under the very eyes of the electors and touch upon

the most intimate interests of their daily existence. That is why

municipal elections are always and everywhere the best.” (Bakunin Ibid.

P. 220)

This insight has largely been lost. Admitting that you vote in anarchist

circles is like admitting you like Nirvana in a room full of punks.

You’ve been took, had, hoodwinked. You’re either super gullible or a

closet liberal. Ideologues like to make the perfect the enemy of the

better. So any political activism (voting, campaign work, community

service) that is not immediately aimed at the complete overthrow of the

state is seen as either diversionary or helping to prop up the

capitalist system by taking the edges off its exploitation and

oppression.

The Black Panthers taught us that a revolutionary organization can’t

just pop up in the neighborhood talking about a bunch of isms and expect

anyone to listen. We must make ourselves useful and help to provide for

our communities if we want to be taken seriously by anyone. This is not

liberalism. This is mutual aid and it happens to be sound revolutionary

strategy as well.

The past reluctance to engage in reformist movements in coalition with

liberals and progressives has led to a disinclination to develop

campaigns in general. When anarchists have involved themselves in

strategic political actions, they have been reactive (freeing political

prisoners) efforts in which victory is defined by our ability to fend

off state/ corporate attacks.

This view is too narrow. A rejection of the legitimacy of the state

should not lead anarchists of color into thinking that we can afford to

ignore or passively critique the states actions without doing anything

about them. A better approach to power recognizes that our very social

presence as political subjects implicates us in the struggle over state

domination and human agency. Refusing to pro-actively demand freedom and

justice from state structures out of some fear of legitimating them is a

meaningless gesture. Governments are a reality. They wield real power.

Communities of color don’t have the privilege of pretending otherwise.

This is why black people were in the streets being hit with Billy clubs

and sprayed with fire hoses 35 years ago just to get the right to vote.

If anarchists of color are serious about bringing our analysis to more

people living in our communities, we should know that we don’t have that

privilege either.

This is not a call for some anarchist party of color.

Political engagement should be looked at as an opportunity to build our

movement. Voting on and organizing around initiatives, referendum, and

recall campaigns could add any number of folks to our affinity groups,

and organizations and introduce them to anarchist ideas. Supporting

voting rights for the District of Columbia and other U.S. territories

will help them fight for more self-determination in their neighborhoods.

Developing campaigns that have real and winnable demands that seek to

roll back state repression and capital domination not only will give us

an opportunity to apply anarchist principals to real life problems and

act on them, it will be a way to shake off the biggest obstacle to the

realization of our goals, our own irrelevancy.

Our Own Traditions: anti-authoritarianism in our histories of

struggle

Although many non- white anti- authoritarian traditions never

self-identified as anarchist (many were in existence before the word was

invented), their social practices and formations demonstrate to us the

rich history out of which our own movement comes. There’s no need to

impose the term anarchist on descriptions of the history of non-white

societies and their struggles against authority and capital to validate

our own identification with the term. The history of resistance against

illegitimate authority by people of color speaks for itself.

But the problem of tracing and remembering the whole antiauthoritarian

tradition does turn on the axis of language and the power to name and

exclude through naming. If the substance of anarchism is communal

economics, mutual aid, local autonomy and the free federation of

communities, then the obvious first place to look at is the continent of

Africa. Long before the Paris commune or the Spanish Civil War, African

tribes and clans were practicing self-sustaining modes of living that

did not require political authority or static structures of social

hierarchy.

The Igbo tribe, which settled in the Awka and Orlu areas of West/

Central Africa in what is now Nigeria arranged “‘village’ political

units without kings or chiefs ruling over them or administering their

affairs.” (Sam Mbah and I.E. Igariwey, African Anarchism: The History of

a Movement See Sharp Press Az. 1997 P.35) The fact that Igboland was a

large scale society (at one point over 4 million organized into 2000

separate villages) demonstrates the capacity of whole societies to

organize themselves along autonomous and communal principals

successfully. (John Gunther, Inside Africa Harper and Brothers NY. 1953

P. 760.) “Igbo enwegh eze” “we have no kings” is a central creed of the

Igbo. Other African tribes with anti-authoritarian traditions include

the Shona of modern day Zimbabwe, the Mano of modern day Ivory Coast and

the Kusaasi of Ghana. These tribes and clans along with numerous

indigenous tribes in the Americas including the Hopi, Adena, and the

Zuni, constitute real examples of stateless social formations that

existed long before European political theorists discovered the horrors

of the nation- state and labeled the resistance to them anarchist.

In the history of anarchism the above tribes and clans are not mentioned

much. Instead we’re invited to study the intellectual progression of the

social ideal from William Godwin’s Political Justice to Murry Bookchin’s

Post Scarcity Anarchism and a handful of losing confrontations between

the forces of state hegemony and anti- authoritarians. People of color

who self-identify as anarchist are caught in strange place. How do we

reconcile with the term anarchist when its history excludes the

explicitly anti-authoritarian struggles of Kikuyus in Kenya against the

English Empire’s unsuccessful attempts to impose centralized government

structures on a stateless people, or the anti- emperor traditions in

various Asian societies that challenged modern 20^(th) century political

structures that sought to impose central rule on villages that had been

self governing for thousands of years.

An obvious place to begin the reconciliation is with writing the history

and doing the public education. Frank Fernandez’s

Cuban Anarchism: the History of a Movement published in 2001 traces the

resistance to both the U.S. puppet regimes of the first part of the

20^(th) century and the Castro dictatorship up to the present. Black

Rose Books has published Land and Liberty: Anarchist influences in the

Mexican Revolution by the late Ricardo Flores Magon. In it the author

details the struggles of Emiliano Zapata and the development of the

“village anarchist” movement within the context of the Mexican civil war

of the 1910’s. Y. Mihara’s 1993 piece “On the Present Situation of

Anarchism in Japan” in Anarchist Studies is a great review of modern

anarchism in a country that has been a hub of anti-authoritarian

activity and thinking in East Asia. Sam Mbah and I.E. Igariwey’s African

Anarchism: The History of a Movement concisely lays out the real roots

of stateless society without all the romantic nonsense that comes out of

primitivist anthropology these days.

A large part of building the movement against authority and capital in

communities of color will be reconstructing and popularizing our history

so young people can see the tradition and relate it to their everyday

lives. If this is the only thing that the current generation of colored

anarchists accomplished it would be an important achievement in the

struggle for liberation.

Goodbye, you ain’t all that

The above title is a take off from Robin Morgan’s famous 1970’s essay

“Goodbye to All That,” in which she details the reasons why more and

more women were leaving the ranks of anti-war, and other new left, male

dominated, organizations and starting their own collectives and groups

to work on their own liberation struggles. (Robin Morgan, “Goodbye to

All That,” The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade, ed.

Judith Clavir and Edward Albert NY: Praeger 1984 509–16)

It was a declaration of independence, an emancipation from the shit

work, the sex, and gender harassment and the second class status of

“movement” women on the left.

Anti- authoritarians of color involved in the anarchist movement suffer

through different marginalizations. Instead of being harassed we’re

ignored. Instead of being assigned to lick envelopes and clean up after

the boys, we’re patronized and put in the spotlight as tokens of

diversity. This type of stuff is usually just annoying, sometimes it can

be more than that.

If the tensions were only inter-organizational, my guess is that most

people of color with anarchists tendencies would simply call out racist

bullshit when it happens and demand that white anarchists do the same.

The stereotypes of activists of color, from the hyper- sensitive

complainer who sees everything in racial terms to the Mau Mau militant

who joins majority white groups on the left just to give long lectures

on the evils of white supremacy at meetings, are just that- stereotypes.

If activists of color challenged every comment, every “joke,” every

dirty look or strange gesture we couldn’t function as members of any

majority white group. Any person of color who has worked with white

activists on the left can tell you. For every exhale there’s a hundred

suck ups .

There is more to the developing divergence between anarchist of color

and Anglo anarchists. By claiming the term anarchist, people of color

not only declare their belief in a certain set of principals and ideas,

we also implicitly seek to be included in its history, its culture and

its future direction. But while there’s enough similarity between the

two camps for both to claim the term anarchist, there are also real

differences in substance and emphasis.

Social Liberation vs. Social Revolution

Anarchists have always been better at defining what we’re against rather

than what we’re for. Maybe this is because there’s more consensus about

who our enemies are than what kind of society we would like to see

develop after our liberation. This has given the struggle for local

control a defensive posture. Our “victories” are too often underscored

by what we prevent, destroy, disrupt, not what we create. A part of this

tradition comes from the residue of European nihilism that saw

destruction as some sort of social catharsis. This nihilism is alien to

the non-European antiauthoritarian traditions. Anti-authoritarian

indigenous struggles today are not about “smashing the state.” They’re

about self-determination, land reform and control over their own

economies and culture. To the extent that people in these struggles find

that they can’t have the latter without doing the former, the tasks

become clearer. From MOVE to the ELZN our goals always have been

defensive in nature. Our tradition focused on resisting land

confiscation schemes by national states. Their wars against the City of

Philadelphia and Mexican Government were wars of resistance not

meaningless gestures of violence isolated from any real strategy

(propaganda of the deed) or “symbolic” acts of property destruction.

Non- state anarchism rejects blanket condemnations of state action. The

overthrow of the American super- state would, among other positive

things, leave tens of millions of poor and working class people without

social security, medicare, mediaid, SSI, free lunch programs, head start

and what’s left of welfare. Mutual aid societies and churches could only

pick up a fraction of the pieces. Regional workers councils could take

on the task of redistribution of wealth from the workers to the non-

working, and working poor, but the voluntary nature of communal

federalism would leave the richer communities an easy out.

Left anti- statists have done precious little work on the problems of

contemporary poverty and how poor people would fair under anarchist

social conditions. The most recent work to address the issue cogently

was Colin Ward’s Social Policy: An Anarchist Approach. (London School of

Economics 1997) His arguments describing how mutual aid societies could

replace state systems hold together, but the British context is not

wholly applicable to the much larger Americas. Robert Nozick’s Anarchy,

State, and Utopia pretty much rejected distributive justice all together

and argued that in anarchist societies poor folk would just have to fend

for themselves. (Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia Basic Books

NY. 1974) Despite vague allusions to solidarity and the laudable work of

groups like Food Not Bombs, it’s still unclear in what ways social

anarchists differ and to what degree.

Anti-state dogma has also left anarchists of color who support the

anti-colonial struggles in Africa, Asia, and central/South America and

the Caribbean without a home. Anti- state purists support anti- colonial

struggles so long as they aren’t tainted by national liberation

organizations. Alfredo M Bonanno’s statement in Anarchism and the

National Liberation Struggle that anarchists “refuse to participate in

national liberation fronts” (Bratcah Dubh Edition Catania 1981. P.12) is

a declaration that anarchist revolutionaries of color must subordinate

the war against white imperialism to the war against the nation- state.

Like the marxists, who tell us that the class oppression is “primary”

and race is secondary, the anarchists tell us that the war against the

state must come first and if that means colored anarchists have to sit

out of the struggle against white neo-colonialism until a movement that

is sufficiently anti- statist comes along, well no one said being an

intellectual slave is easy.

Kuwasi Balagoon tells us in “Anarchy Can’t Fight Alone” that

“It is beside the point whether Black, Puerto Rican, Native American,

and Chicano- Mexicano people endorse nationalism as a vehicle for self

determination or agree with anarchism as being the only road to self

determination. It is not only racism but compliance with the enemy to

stand outside of the social arena and permit America to continue to

practice genocide against the third world captive colonies because

although they resist, they don’t agree with us.” (Kuwasi Balagoon,

Kuwasi Balagoon: A Soldier’s Story, Solidarity Publishing 2001 P.76)

What the anarchists need on the question of national liberation is

nuance. It is true that nationalist causes are often exploited by elites

to take power from external agents of oppression only to use that

authority to solidify class, ethnic, religious and gender domination

once the war against the settlers is over. But this is a generalization.

Not all fights for colonial liberation end in internal bloodbaths

perpetrated by military or capitalist elites. After gaining independence

from Britain in 1966, Botswana resumed its decentralized, communal

system of social organization. Since then hunger has been reduced,

villages maintain relative autonomy, and elections are about as free as

they are in the U.S.

Whether we’re talking about the best anti- authoritarian response to

disproportionate poverty in communities of color or supporting struggles

against white neo-colonialism that have nationalist elements or

aspirations, anti- state dogma ties our hands and leaves us with limited

responses to complex social problems. Attributing all of our woes to

“the state” or to corporations is reductionist and creates fetishes

where power analysis should be. A Palestinian state with borders and a

uniform means of self- defense may very well be the only thing that

stands between survival and genocide in the West Bank, Gaza, and East

Jerusalem. Anarchists of color can’t afford to be silent on things like

this.

Non- state anarchism advocates that we work towards dismantling the many

layers of illegitimate authority in ways that don’t exacerbate the very

social ills that anarchists claim to stand against- poverty and

oppression. This means supporting the efforts of anti- poverty workers

to gain more money from the state for social services and universal

health care and ignoring the anarchist purists who label advocacy work

as liberal because it demands something from the state rather than

demanding its immediate abolition. We can do this work while we develop

more wide spread experiments with mutual aid models that are reliable

and self-sustaining.

Likewise, anarchists of color should not be intimidated into abandoning

the struggles against colonialism in places like Puerto Rico because the

guardians of anarchy will claim we’re not real anarchists if we don’t.

The right of the people to decide for themselves how to arrange their

own communitieslocal autonomy- should weight just as heavily in

anarchist analysis as the demand to eradicate state capitalist

structures. If we want the latter, we must engage in debate, advocacy,

and organize the people- not sit back and petulantly demand that the

people become anarchists before we support their battles against white

supremacy.

Like most anarchists I have warm spot in my heart for revolution. But

anti- authoritarian communities of color have rarely seen overthrowing

the state as their main priority. They’ve fought to get free from its

grasp and control. When you’re being mugged you may fight with the

mugger not in order to beat him down, but just enough to get away and

liberate yourself. When liberation from State jurisdiction is only

possible by making war with the government until it doesn’t have the

capacity to dominate you, then revolution by any means necessary is

justified. But the goal isn’t to take over the state, the factory, the

church, or the bank or any other institution of their world order. The

goal is to liberate ourselves from these institutions and return to ones

or develop new ones that reflect our values and our social principles.

The revolutionist is one who seeks to overthrow, abolish, and

reconstitute society in their own image. The liberationist seeks to be

left alone by all of the coercive institutions of modern society so

they’re free to choose which communities to belong to and which ones to

reject. The revolutionary wants power to reshape the social order

according to a certain program. The liberationist wants autonomy so she

can share her ideas about how things should be organized and

administered with others in the community. Through this senetic process

new ways of being evolve and grow- freer, more equal, more

compassionate.

Idealism vs. Materialism

At the core of the marxist creed is the belief that material conditions

and the allocation of resources determine human consciousness and

history. The class war between the proletariat and the ruling class is

the central struggle for humanity. There’s no question that this view is

culturally situated in the struggles of the industrial working classes

of Europe from about the late 1700’s tol989.

Cultures from the southern cradle of the world have a different

tradition. To the extent that any one phenomena “determines”

consciousness or history it is ideation, usually through the forms of

religion and/ or ancestral or nature based spiritualism, but also

through cultural traditions, myths, and community customs. Reality is.

But it is our response to the material that determines the course of

history and, ultimately, our consciousness. The germs of that response

are our ideas and thoughts, not “objective” facts.

This idealism is in opposition to the economic determinism of Marx and

the idea that the course of evolutionary human development is

scientifically pre-ordained complete with various stages and the like.

Instead it places agency and responsibility within the individual it

looks to human ideas as the wellspring of creativity and construction.

In this light, the blanket condemnation of religion and spirituality by

the materialists as just ideology put in place by the ruling class to

pacify the stupid masses becomes itself an ideology. Science is the god

of materialism. And for every liberation from disease and toil it has

produced its has also brought bigger death tolls in the ever growing

industry of high tech weaponry.

Organized religion generally, and monotheistic fundamentalism more

specifically, has played a big part in the construction of social

hierarchy and oppression throughout history. For this reason many

colored anarchists reject them as dogma traps that discourage critical

thinking in favor of blind obedience and submission. But the idea that

there are energies in the universe that provide spiritual nourishment to

our souls but can’t be quantified by science is a strong one

particularly in peoples that have been the targets of oppression

throughout history. The rituals, celebrations and ceremonies that native

peoples have created to acknowledge those energies can be powerful

aspects of a libratory community and its culture.

Organizing vs. Mobilizing

Anarchists were pretty proud of themselves after Seattle. We should have

been. Finally we were the decisive component of a coalition that was

able to shut down the WTO and raise issues about its practices and the

role it plays in the global corporate takeover of communities. It is

widely regarded as a victory.

But successful mobilizations and demonstrations aren’t ends in

themselves. After Seattle anarchists jumped from Philadelphia, to Los

Angeles to Washington D.C. to protest various things. But rather than

building on Seattle, these subsequent mobilizations had diminishing

returns. The reason? The groups there were spending so much time,

resources and energy preparing for confrontations with pigs that they

had little time left over for organizing and growing their base of

support in communities. Some of this did take place, but not nearly

enough.

Activists are not necessarily organizers. It is organizers who grow

organizations and movements by making the point of their activities

bringing in new folks and introducing them to ideas and people. This is

what sustains struggles over the long haul- new people with new ideas.

With the exception of Love and Rage, there hasn’t been a national

anarchist organization committed to organizing over the past 20 years

that has lasted for any length of time. Anarchists of color have just

begun to organize. There are anarchist scenes of color in Los Angeles,

New York, Texas and in pockets in the South. Long ago, Lorenzo Komboa

Ervin, the former Black Panther and political prisoner, was imploring us

to “get organized” and developing his own groups including what is today

called the Black Autonomy International.

Anarchists of color should be committed to organizing due to the stark

reality that there are more people of color in America who are

republican than there are who identify as anarchist. If we want to

survive as a counter to the endless varieties of authoritarianism in

communities of color, we must grow. Mobilizations are only opportunities

to build our movement. Spending more time and resources directly

organizing people through strategic campaigns that challenge power may

not make front page news like Seattle did, but it will create a more

sustainable movement for freedom and social justice.

No Second Chance: How Crime-Free Multi-Housing Programs are Unfair to

Ex-Prisoners

Finding adequate housing is a struggle for most working people. Security

deposits, credit checks, and sky rocketing rents are just a few of the

roadblocks that contribute to the ongoing crisis in housing and

homelessness in cities and towns across the U.S. But for ex-prisoners

there are additional obstacles in their search for long- term shelter.

An increasingly popular one being promoted by some local police

departments is “Crime-Free Multi-Housing.”

Started in Mesa Arizona in 1992, these crime-free housing initiatives

are ‘partnerships’ between police forces and private apartment complex

owners that seek to reduce criminal activity in and around apartment

buildings. Typically, local police representatives team up with

apartment owners to implement crime-free programs which require owners

to screen out ex-prisoners from the application process, add addendums

to their tenant leases that authorize immediate evictions for alleged

criminal activity and put in ‘environmental crime deterrence’ fixtures

on their property. In return, the apartment owners receive a ‘crime-free

certificate’ that supposedly certifies the safety of the complex.

According to the International Crime Free Association, Crime- Free

MultiHousing programs are in over 1700 cities. In Southern California

alone there are over 1000 apartment complexes with these programs in

effect. (International Crime free Association

www.crime-freeassociation.org/ 2001) .

Crime Free Leases

Renters are familiar with the regular credit check process required by

most rental management companies. Increasingly these outfits are

requiring broader background checks that include the criminal histories

of applicants. This additional screening process tries to weed out ex-

prisoners from the applicant pool. For someone trying to come back into

a community after being incarcerated, this adds an additional burden to

the task of finding a place to stay.

Now not only do ex-prisoners have to save enough money to afford rent

and a security deposit, but they also have to find a complex that

doesn’t screen them out due to past felony convictions. In the report

“from locked Up to locked Out” Kristina Hals, a housing justice

researcher, writes “Those who once had a home can be un-welcomed in the

homes of family members, as a result of whatever they did to get

lock-up.”

This along with “special exclusions in much of public housing...become a

ball and chain, sinking efforts to get a room or apartment.” (Kristina

Hals. “From locked Up to locked Out: Creating and Implementing

Post-release Housing for Exprisoners” AIDS Housing of Washington 2003.

Note:

There are a many jurisdictions that classify relatively low level,

non-violent crimes as felonies like petty theft, or check fraud.

Disqualifying someone from housing based on these types of crimes is

particularly unfair). Add these facts to the growing Crime-Free Lease

phenomenon, and you have a recipe for more homeless, more recidivism,

more despair.

Screening Prisoners Out

From August 2002 to November 2002, Jim Bowman of the Criminal Justice

program of the American Friends Service Committee of Tucson, Arizona,

spoke with 36 rental property representatives whose information was

available to the public through the LowCost Housing List Supplement

distributed by Pima County. (Jim Bowman. ‘“Rental Property Survey”

American Friends Services Committee Criminal Justice Program 2002) The

purpose was to better understand attitudes and policies about renting

units to ex-prisoners.

According to the data, over twice as many landlords surveyed would never

rent a unit to an ex-prisoner than would and over 80 percent indicated

that those ex-prisoners who had been locked up for drug, sex or violent

offenses would not be welcomed in their complexes. As more and more

ex-prisoners are released from incarceration for these types of crimes,

they too will need places to stay. Their inability to find shelter could

lead many into dangerous environments that put them and others at risk.

Those applicants who make it past the criminal record screen are

required to sign a Crime-Free Lease Addendum to the regular lease. The

addendum generally gives the property owners the explicit authority to

terminate the lease agreement if management suspects the tenant of

engaging in illegal activities. In most all addendums drug use,

possession, distribution, and manufacture are specifically mentioned as

lease breakers. No official finding of guilt by a criminal court is

necessary. On this point the Modesto California Police Department’s

Crime Free Lease template represents typical language. “Proof of

violation shall not require criminal conviction, but shall be by a

preponderance of the evidence.” (City of Modesto Police Department.

Crime Free Lease Addendum www.modestopolice.com/cfmh/Lease.html 2004)

In other words, hearsay, rumors, and anonymous tips can all be used to

evict a family from their home. This brings private apartment complexes

into line with the one- strike drug policies of local public housing

authorities under the federal Department of Health and Human Services

guidelines. Because ex-prisoners are not a protected class under federal

or state laws and receive no shield from local housing ordinances or

policies, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against them.

Some cities have taken crime free leases a step further. In Cincinnati,

Ohio City Council member David Pepper introduced and passed a motion

called ‘rapid dealer eviction’ that enables landlords to evict anyone

charged with a drug crime (not just dealing drugs) within three days of

the charge. This effectively denies tenants their due process rights

until after they’ve been evicted. In the Spring of 2004 the Oakland

California City Council passed an ordinance that would authorize the

City to force landlords to evict tenants accused of drug or gang

activity and provides for City enforced evictions, and apartment owner

fines if the landlord doesn’t act. This law was modeled after a similar

one passed in Los Angeles a few years earlier.

While police representatives and complex owners claim they’re just

keeping their neighborhoods safe, the data shows that most ex-prisoners

upon release wind up back in their old neighborhoods- where their family

and friends are. Prisoners that are unable to find stable housing often

wind up either back in prison or homeless. The Kristina Hals report

pointed out that “[a] recent survey of homeless service providers by the

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that 54 percent

of currently homeless clients had experienced incarceration.” (Kristina

Hals P. 13)

Ultimately the question isn’t whether ex-prisoners will be a part of our

communities. It is whether they will be provided the opportunities and

tools to re-integrate successfully, or whether a punitive and

discriminatory definition of community safety will prevail—making our

communities less stable and less safe.

Protecting Tenants

Despite the increasing appeal of co- joining local law enforcement with

tenant screening, and ‘rapid eviction’ policies, some protections do

exist. In New York, landlords cannot reject an application based on a

previous arrest unless the arrest resulted in a criminal conviction.

They also cannot deny an applicant due to a previous drug conviction.

There are also places where Crime Free Multi- Housing eviction

legislation has been beat back. In Omaha, Nebraska the city council re-

worked legislation that would have implemented zero- tolerance eviction

policies for alleged drug activity. Council member Chad Primmer raised

concerns over the severity of the remedy and the potential for abuse by

landlords. (Dave Morantz. Eviction Plan to be Softened. Omaha World-

Herald. April 23, 2002) This demonstrates that criminal justice

reformers and fair housing advocates can reach law- makers with

reasonable arguments based on fairness and nondiscrimination .

But real progress in securing housing for ex-prisoners won’t happen

until our society once again embraces the idea that once someone has

done their time that they should be welcomed back into the communities

from where they came and given a second chance. That’s precisely what

so- called crime-free leases take from ex- prisoners.

A Note on the Guardians of Anarchy

As Noam Chomsky has indicated in the past, anarchism is more of an

historical political tendency than a static set of postulates and rules.

This is what has maintained anarchism as a relevant critique (if not

movement) against power and social hierarchy long after other political

movements have dried up from their own inability to grow and interest

new generations in its ideals.

But we have our fundamentalists too. They spend a lot of time “defining”

anarchism and telling folks what it is and what it isn’t. They also love

telling us who is a real anarchist and who isn’t. For them, anarchism is

like a high school club, an intellectual refuge from the jock bullies in

the locker room and the laughter of the upper middle preppies who never

invited them to any of their parties. The guardians of anarchy are

mainly just geeks. Anarchism is theirs.

As a result they’re not too interested in growing the movement or

organizing. They’re mainly interested in the stuff high school clubs are

interested in- arguing over arcane points of process and philosophy,

being the gatekeepers to outsiders who want in the club, arranging

functions where other like-minded folks can let their hair down and

socialize, perhaps even get laid.

It’s a mistake to think that these people who have fallen in love with

their own marginalization, and anarchism’s as well, can just be ignored.

They have chosen to guard a tradition that is 95% white and 90% male.

Their purist approach to anarchism will ensure that it remains the

purview of white middle class misfits and fails to grow beyond what it

has been. Those of us who care about making anarchism relevant to

communities of color must find the voice to challenge anarchist dogma

and force it to open up to new ideas. The guardians of anarchy will

redouble their efforts to protect and defend the old anarchist

tradition. Our task is to create the new one.

Drugs

Where are the Grassroots in the Movement?

For too long the fight to end the drug war has been led by people of

relative privilege who don’t have to bear the brunt of the endless

indignities, brutality and death the war has brought to communities of

color. Many of these folks are good people- smart, progressive,

committed, and compassionate. Others are Libertarians. But both have

failed to grasp the central importance of engaging the prime victims of

the war on drugs in the struggle to end it. They work on changing laws

and public education. Most know very little about grassroots organizing

or building resistance through militant direct action.

As a result the anti- drug war movement has had numerous electoral

victories but our ability to mobilize local resistance to the almost

daily drug war outrages that take place in colored communities is still

almost non-existent. The Drop the Rock campaign in many ways represents

an exception to this but the campaigns coalition building proved to be

effective then its legislative expertise. From the massive Tulia, Texas

drug sting that wiped out 10% of that town’s black population to the dog

drug searches of Native American kindergarteners in Wagner, South

Dakota, we have failed to build the kind of broad based movement that

would deter the drug warriors from committing these offensives. Having

the ACLU file lawsuits after each drug war abomination is no strategy

for peace.

This problem is not a piece of cake. There is a deep strand of social

conservatism in communities of color that’s rooted in respect for

tradition and authority. This coupled with the deep wounds that crack

cocaine and heroine have left in so many neighborhoods over the last 20

years, has made any talk about ending the drug crackdown a tough sell.

What has made the problem worse is a lack of recognition on the part of

the movement of the very real evidence of government agents bringing

drugs into Black and Brown neighborhoods in an effort to disrupt our

liberation struggles. The anti- drug war movement should learn from the

pro- choice one. There should be an affirmation of the right of

individuals to control their own bodies and to ingest whatever substance

they like so long as they don’t harm anyone else in that process. But

just like the pro-choice movement had to come to terms with its

eugenics-associated past and reject forced sterilization we must

recognize that drugs have been used by white elites in the past to

subdue people of color (the British in China, the CIA in LA) and must

stand against chemical warfare in all of its guises. This will give the

movement more credibility and will help to counter the image of anti —

drug war activist as being a bunch of pot heads who just want to be able

to smoke in public — legally.

These essays on the drug war are more of a short chronicle of the latest

offensives that have been executed by the state than anything else. I

also try to mention what folks and organizations are doing in

retaliation to the endless harassment, propaganda and coercion that’s

taking place in the war. The anti-drug war movement clearly is in need

of grassroots organizers. Anarchists of color are uniquely situated to

play a major role in this fight because we believe in bodily autonomy

and come from the communities that have been the hardest hit in the drug

war.

Sloppy Justice in Oakland Car Seizure Programs

Oakland motorists have no rights that the Oakland Police Department are

bound to respect. The latest outrage took place over the last weekend in

June 2003 when over 100 cars were confiscated by the OPD and the

California Highway Patrol.

While the latest wave of municipal car-jackings have taken place in

response to so-called “side shows,” the practice of confiscating

vehicles first and asking questions later began earlier.

In 1997 Oakland introduced Beat Feet, a drug war inspired OPD program

that allows cops to seize cars based on the suspicion that the driver is

soliciting for drugs or prostitution. Of course the key word here is

“suspicion.” There was a time when even suspects were presumed innocent

until they were proven guilty. But with programs like Beat Feet, the

cops get to play judge and jury at the alleged scene of the crime.

There’s a term for places that allow their cops to try and punish

suspects in the street- a police state.

According to the OPD, car confiscation is just another “tool” they use

to keep our communities safe, but there’s no evidence that the practice

has had any impact on crime reduction or neighborhood safety. On the

other hand, there are hundreds of victims who have had their most

valuable asset taken from them without a trial or even a hearing. If you

get your car taken from you in Oakland and you don’t have a few thousand

dollars laying around to get it back within a few days of the seizure,

you can kiss it goodbye regardless if you’re proven innocent in

subsequent court proceedings. Under Beat Feet, the OPD auctions off the

cars and keeps half the money. The other half goes to the City

Attorney’s Office.

The majority of the cars that get confiscated by the City belong to

innocent owners, not the actual motorist. (City Attorney’s Office- Beat

Feet Report, City of Oakland August 2002) Despite what confiscation

boosters insist, the targets for seizure are not rich, suburban,

out-of-towners who come to Oakland looking for kicks. According to a San

Francisco Chronicle survey done in 2000, the average value of the cars

seized is $1210.00. (Operation: Beat Up On Civil Rights, San Francisco

Chronicle May 24, 2002) The targets are the usual ones, mainly low

income, black and brown motorists who more than likely share their

vehicle with other members of their family and rely on it to get to work

and school. Not only do these car seizure schemes encourage racial

profiling, they’re yet another offensive in Jerry Brown’s class warfare

against working people in Oakland.

A more constructive response to rowdy East Bay youth who drive around at

night is to give them more destinations- community centers, concerts,

arcades, pool halls. Teenagers cruise because they have nothing better

to do. And as for folks who ride around Oakland looking for drugs maybe

some of them need help. The 1.2 million Oakland spends annually on

police overtime to seize peoples cars could be spent constructing new

treatment centers and teen centers. If the last 20 years of the drug war

has taught us anything, it’s that the endless crackdown in poor

neighborhoods of color don’t eliminate drug dealers or users. They just

shuffle them from one block to another. The passage of Prop. 36

demonstrated that most California voters get it. When will the City of

Oakland?

One Strike Public Housing Policy Unfair

We can thank the drug war for a number of horrendous developments in law

and social policy- the death of the 4^(th) Amendment, the proliferation

of mandatory minimum sentencing laws that have led to a four-fold

increase in U.S. incarceration rates since the early 80’s, the tying of

drug law violations to access to education loans and welfare assistance.

One of the broader shifts has been the appearance of collective

punishment. Today if someone in your family or a friend happens to be

involved with illegal drugs, you could wide up paying for it.

This is the case with the ‘one strike’ public housing policy of the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development. This allows local housing

authorities to throw whole families out of housing projects if one

member of the family is ‘caught’ with drugs. I put the word caught in

quotes because an arrest or conviction is not even necessary under the

provision. Security guard reports, tenant rumors and anonymous complains

are all fair game.

Given Oakland’s commitment to the failed war on drugs its not surprising

that the Housing Authority seized upon the opportunity to evict elderly

tenants in the name of fighting it. In 1998 the Oakland Housing

Authority sent eviction notices to four tenants due to the drug use of a

family member or caretaker. After an April 2002 Supreme Court ruling

upholding the evictions, the housing authority was gracious enough to

allow three of the four tenants to stay. The fourth one, Herman Walker,

a 75 year old disabled resident whose caretaker had been seen with a

crack- pipe, was thrown out with no place to go. In that case, as with

others around the country, the caretaker wasn’t even related to the

tenant. But never mind. Guilt by association is more than enough

evidence to prove that you’re an enemy when you’re fighting a war. In

the drug war no one is innocent.

This willingness to make innocents pay for the indiscretions of others

has made authoritarians very happy. They know that notions of self

autonomy and individual responsibility run so deep in the American

psyche that the only way to counter our ‘live and let live’ attitude is

to collectivize the punishment associated with illegal drugs to the

point where everyone has something to lose by ignoring or tolerating

their use. This not only strikes at the drug user but at the culture

that allows the use. People become anti-drug because they have a direct

stake in being on the ‘right’ side of the drug war.

The problem with this is that it’s wrong to punish someone for the

crimes of another. The guiding presumption of collective punishment is

that individuals have control over others and should be held responsible

for their actions. A case can perhaps be made for this point of view

with regard to parentchild relations (although I’d disagree with it).

But the HUD one strike policy makes no distinction between minors and

adults. Herman Walker’s caretaker was not a minor and wasn’t subject to

his commands. Nor does it take into account the fact that many families

in public housing are made up of elderly grandparents and teenagers in

their most rebellious and difficult years. To expect a 75 year old

grandmother to chase after and credibly threaten an irreverent 15 year

old teenager is unfair.

A more plausible approach would be to create treatment options for those

family members who need measures that pull families apart it and to end

the punitive and land them on the street.

Oakland’s Lip Service to Needle Exchange

Ask any elected official in Oakland about needle exchange and they’re

likely to claim they support it. They’re familiar with the endless

studies that demonstrate that needle programs slow the spread of HIV

transmission among intravenous drug users without increasing drug abuse.

They know that needle exchange organizations provide other support

programs that contribute to the prevention of other communicable

diseases like hepatitis C. They’re aware that these programs help get

chronic drug users into treatment programs where some of them are able

to turn their lives around. But ask them about Casa Segura and you’re

likely to get buck passing and double talk. In theory the City of

Oakland supports needle exchange. In practice they’ve found every excuse

to block it.

Casa Segura is a mobile Oakland based health clinic that helps provide a

wide range of services to addicts who otherwise would fall through the

huge cracks that our for-profit health care system creates. But instead

of supporting the work of Casa Segura, members of the Oakland Council

have done everything in their power to stymie its mission.

Since 1998 the clinic has been searching for an East Oakland home. They

first were interested in settling in the Fruitvale area, but Ignacio De

La Fuentes, the current president of the city council, did everything he

could to prevent that. He argued that a needle exchange program would

put kids in harms way and tried to get the program to locate in an

industrial area of the district far removed from the population that the

clinic needed to serve. A mysterious and, to this day, unsolved December

2000 arson of the group’s temporary offices in Fruitvale put a temporary

halt to their work and forced them to look for another space.

They thought they had found that space in the Melrose neighborhood a few

blocks east of Fruitvale. They had meetings with Moses Mayne the now

former City Council Representative for the 6^(th) District and believed

they had a commitment from him to support their clinic. Pro-cop

community activists who controlled the Neighborhood Crime Prevention

Council in the area came out against the facility.

Their main argument was that the area had more than its share of halfway

houses, rehabs and treatment centers. But needle exchange programs don’t

just set up shop anywhere. They go where they’re needed. Blacks make up

almost 60 percent of the AIDS cases, and most of them are located in

East and West Oakland. It was the combination of fear, denial and

classism that mobilized a handful of folks in the 6^(th) District

against the clinic. Mayne, being a political novice, went where he

thought the wind was blowing and flipped his support for the clinic. He

lost his election bid in 2001 to Desley Brooks- a supporter of Casa

Segura.

Casa Segura has been a pawn in Oakland politics. But the real victims

have been the politically powerless addicts and their loved ones who

have contracted HIV as a result of the Council’s actions against Casa

Segura.

Gramm Amendment to Welfare Reform Targets Women

Since the Gramm Amendment to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act has been in

effect over 92,000 public assistance applicants and recipients have been

denied or cut off from aid due to prior drug convictions. (“Life

Sentences: Denying Welfare Benefits to Women Convicted of Drug

Offenses,” The Sentencing Project , February 2002 P.l) Since nearly all

of these victims are vulnerable, poor women with children, some of whom

have drug addiction problems, we’re justified in asking what possible

policy goal was this provision enacted to produce and whether its been

successful.

The sponsor of the amendment. Republican Senator Phil Gramm gave a

characteristically stupid response to this question.

“If we are serious about our drug laws we ought not to give people

welfare benefits who are violating them.” (“Senate Approves Welfare

Reform,” Los Angeles Times July 24, 1996)

Does the fact that convicted murderers are eligible for benefits mean

that we don’t take the federal criminal code “seriously”?

Despite Gramm’s inability to articulate it, the policy goal of the

welfare reform drug ban is no secret. Right- wing culture war

intellectuals have always viewed welfare as more of a problem than a

solution. To them welfare has been responsible for spawning other social

pathologies- out-of-wedlock births, teen pregnancy, violent crime,

etc... After years of focused propaganda directed at the political

class, they were able to convince policy makers that it wasn’t a lack of

money that made people poor it was a lack of “family values” that did.

Public assistance did nothing but enable a culture of dependence among

recipients and sap their initiative. The overriding policy goal of

welfare reform became counting how many people were cut from the rolls,

not how many people were able to get out of poverty through assistance.

By this measure the drug ban has been a stunning success. In California

alone 37, 825 women have been slashed from the rolls due to drug

convictions. (Sentencing Project P.5) When State Senator Cathie Wright

submitted opt-out legislation from the federal drug ban provision in

1998, Governor Davis vetoed the bill, claiming “convicted felons do not

deserve the same treatment as law abiding citizens especially those that

manufacture, transport or distribute drugs.” (Food Stamps Become a

Weapon in the War on Drugs, Contra Costa Times June, 3 2001) Since the

vast majority of the women effected by the ban in California are

convicted for drug possession and not the manufacture, transport or

distribution of them, we might have expected the Governor to gladly sign

Jackie Goldburg’s revised 2000 opt-out bill that only exempted those

welfare applicants who’ve been convicted of drug possession from the

ban. Not so. The second time around Davis blamed “economic uncertainty”

for his continued support for the ban.

Not everyone agrees with the prevailing definition of welfare reform

success. The main opponents have been the women impacted by the ban. A

Pennsylvania women who was cut off explained.

“I have no income what so ever right now and I need something. Now it

matters because I’m trying to do the right thing. They [drug treatment

counselors] tell you not to go get a job the first six months to focus

on your recovery. What are you suppose to do if you can’t get welfare?

The children are going to suffer.” (Sentencing Project P.8)

With little or no family support network, no public assistance, waiting

lines for drug treatment, inadequate child care and no federal aid for

school due to the drug ban on that as well, the real impact of the Gramm

provision is clear- more female headed, single parent families on the

street, more drug addicted mothers with nowhere to turn and no way out

of substance abuse, and (something that might register with the

politicians) more tax dollars being spent on social services, state run

foster care programs, homeless shelters and other ‘back end’ fixes to

clean up the social mess.

Of course we’ll also need more cops and prisons to put away those women

(the fastest growing population of inmates in the U.S.) who turn to

crime in their desperation. Maybe this is the real policy goal behind

the 1996 Gramm Amendment.

Feds Call off the Party

Drug warriors salivate over the chance to unleash their ever growing

apparatus of repression on young people. Up until recently, the raids,

shakedowns, and swat team killings of innocents have mostly been aimed

at urban youth of color in the U.S. and suspected traffickers south of

the border and in Asia. But recent drug war salvos from the Feds

indicate that the drag net is growing even wider. Now more middle class

white kids who get caught dabbling in recreational drugs can look

forward to draconian punishments, degrading searches, and long prison

terms. This may look like racial fairness to the Charlie Ragels of the

liberal establishment who have been pointing to uneven enforcement of

drug laws for sometime. But the problem isn’t racism in the drug war.

The problem is that the drug war is racist. The only way to eradicate

the disproportionate effects of drug enforcement on youth of color is to

end the war.

In 1998 the Congress passed an amendment to the Higher Education Act

that has denied over 87,000 federal school loan applicants access to

financial help due to previous drug convictions. (Drugs Cost Student Aid

Money, The Orion September 18, 2002) In June of 2002 the Supreme Court

gave the green light to expanded random, suspicion-less drug testing for

public school students engaged in extracurricular activities. ( Board of

Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County

vs. Earls , 01–332. 2002) Only a month later the U.S. Senate was poised

to pass S.2633 the socalled RAVE Act. This would hold party promoters,

hosts, property managers and owners criminally liable for the drug

possession and use of anyone at their events.

Like the Federal Housing and Urban Development one strike eviction

policy that throws whole families out of public housing if one member is

caught with illegal drugs, the RAVE Act would hold party organizers

responsible for the actions of others whether they knew about them or

not. The idea that a Rave promoter can somehow monitor the drug use or

abstinence of thousands of party goers is ridiculous on its face and

reveals the real motive behind S. 2633. After a handful of high profile

DEA Ecstasy ‘club drug’ raids, promoters and club managers will be much

less likely to host techno gatherings and other big parties where lots

of young people are likely to attend. This is particularly the case if

the harsh penalties (up to $250,000 in fines and 20 years in prison)

remain intact as the bill makes its way though Congress. Their goal is

to kill the whole sub-culture.

They won’t succeed. State repression may be effective at destroying

political movements but sub-cultures are harder to smash because they

revolve around attitudes, symbols, rituals, and social behavioral

patterns- not leaders or formal organizations. As William D. McColl from

the Drug Policy Alliance said, “raves and other musical events [will] go

further underground and away from emergency care and hospitals.” (Ill-

Informed Bill to Counter Ecstasy Use in Clubs is Nothing to Rave About,

Los Angeles Times July 29, 2002) Venue owners will be less likely to

make sure that harm reduction measures like “cool off” rooms and bottled

water are available to patrons if those safety precautions could be used

by federal prosecutors as evidence that organizers and hosts knew about

and facilitated drug use at an event.

These recent drug war offensives will surely create less politically

appealing victims. The DEA has spent resources over the years chasing

after Dead Heads for LSD and infiltrating motorcycle clubs on the West

Coast in anti-meth operations. But the broad support for the war on

drugs has always been based on the tacit understanding by white

Americans that the enemy was the black male standing on the corner, or

the Mexican “drug lord” shipping cocaine into the U.S. Once the enemy

becomes their next door neighbor’s kid who was busted at a Rave for

being in same bathroom with drug users or their cousin who was denied a

federal school loan due to a marijuana conviction, the enthusiasm for a

zero tolerance war against the youth may dissipate very quickly.

Ironically the racism that made black and brown youth the prime targets

in the drug war might be the same racism that demands an end to the war

when more white youth start feeling the heat of the domestic drug war

machine.

Oakland Parolees Targeted by OPD

Since the defeat of a series of tax measures put on the ballot by the

Oakland City Council to fund the salaries of 100 new cops in November

2002, the Brown administration has been scrambling to address the rising

homicide rate. According to the Oakland Tribune, 54 percent of the

City’s 113 homicide victims in 2002 were either on parole or probation.

(Cecily Burt, “Officials study curbs on parolees,” Oakland Tribune,

January 3, 2003) The vast majority of the assailants and victims were

from East or West Oakland.

Chief Word of the Oakland Police Department has beefed up a three

year-old project called the Police and Corrections Team (PACT) to

address the recent surge. It calls for stepped up surveillance, visits,

drug testing, house and body searches, home monitoring and use of

tracking bracelets- in short a program of 24/7 snooping on and

harassment of parolees and probationers.

By threatening to lock parolees back up based on real or made up

violations of their parole terms the OPD hopes to intimidate ex-

prisoners into community re-entry programs that many ex-prisoners say

are a waste of their time. This socalled ‘preventative’ strategy may

appeal to some in the law and order crowd and some East and West Oakland

residence who want the cops to do something- anything to stop the

killing. A dour prediction. It will have little if any effect on the

Oakland murder rate.

California has the most aggressive parolee harassment system in the

country. The result? More than two-thirds of all

California prisoners are behind bars for parole violations compared to

about one third for the rest of the country according to the Urban

Institute, a Washington D.C. based think tank. And since the State of

California declared that its prisons were for punishment not

rehabilitation in the early 1980’s and began eliminating programs for

prisoners, many inmates don’t have access to education, training or

counseling while they’re locked up. This continues the proverbial

revolving door of inmates.

The fact that it is cruel and inhuman to create a penal system to

neutralize a whole population of people, mainly poor, black and brown

youth, certainly by itself hasn’t been enough to give pause to decision

makers around law enforcement and corrections. Even the fact that the

parolee harassment model for violent crime reduction hasn’t worked

doesn’t count for much in a political world dominated by unions like

California Correctional Peace Officers Association. But one thing that

politicians have to pay attention to is money.

Currently states and cities all over the country are beginning to take a

second look at their law enforcement and corrections budgets as hard

economic times continue. In Kentucky, Governor Paul Patton released over

500 non- violent offenders due to a tight budget claiming the state’s

prisons were “just as full as they can be.” (Philip Smith. Pressure on

Prisons. DRCNet December 6 2002.

www.alternet.org

) The Oklahoma governor has recommended that over 1000 prisoners be

released. Other states like Hawaii are also looking into early release

programs.

But in California, Governor Davis’s 2003 budget proposed cuts to every

department, including education and health, except for corrections.

Legislators in Sacramento subsequently proposed a reinstatement of the

vehicle registration tax to fund more cops on the local level. The state

would rather close hospitals or schools instead of stop construction on

a new prison in Delano even when the number of inmates coming into the

state prison system is not projected to increase for the first time in

decades.

Oakland itself is facing a budget deficit. This may force it to rethink

its strategies around reducing the murder rate. Instead of spending

resources spying on parolees and probationers and violating their Fourth

Amendment rights to privacy, maybe the City will focus on proven crime

reduction efforts- creating jobs, investing in education and expanding

voluntary drug and alcohol treatment programs for those who need them.

These efforts might not make front page news but they might lead to the

long term reduction in Oakland homicides we’d all like to see.

DEA Pot Raids Reveal Real Face of Drug War

If any recent actions by Asa Huchenson’s DEA encapsulate the real nature

of America’s war against drugs it’s the medical marijuana raids that

have taken place in California since a May 2002 Supreme Court ruling

encouraged federal law enforcement to step up its repression on sick and

dying patients who use pot to gain some relief from pain. In Santa Rosa

DEA agents arrested Edward Bierling and Dan Nelson a few days after the

decision at the Aiko Cannabis Club after rolling up in dark colored

SUV’S and blocking the front door swat team style. (“Pot Clubs Find a

New Venue,” The Recorder June 7, 2002) In West Hollywood federal pigs

seized computers, financial documents, 400 marijuana plants and the

medical records of 900 patients. (“The Ultimate Bohemian,” LA Weekly

December 14, 2001) Their latest hit (as of mid September 2002) was in

Santa Cruz at the WAMM pot collective. (“Medicinal Pot Issue is About

the Sick, Dying,” The Mercury News September 20 , 2002 )

There are lots of reasons to be against this kind of authoritarian

bullshit. But the most compelling argument has nothing to do with

diverted resources from the “war on terrorism” or states rights. People

are overwhelmingly against this kind of heavy-handed domestic militarism

because the DEA has chosen to target the sick and dying in their war.

Despite national surveys indicating upwards of 75% approval for medical

marijuana, the drug warriors just don’t get it.

For them maintaining a rigid, zero tolerance stance against pot use is a

symbolic gesture in their never-ending battle against the social residue

of the counterculture. They ignore the thousands of ill AIDS and cancer

patients who say that smoking marijuana helps to relieve excruciating

pain, nausea, and loss of appetite.

This particularly arrogant brand of cultural fascism plays well in many

white, upper middle, suburban districts where drug war politics performs

a key role in the psychology of social denial. The kids binge drink in

high school and stay high their first two years of college. Some go on

to other stuff. A few disappear for a few months and come back all

better. A handful disappear forever. No news. But it’s not the kids who

need the drug war. It’s their parents who need it. It’s a great proxy

for being a part of their kids’ lives.

So we all suffer the political consequences. But a growing number of

people refuse to suffer quietly. On June of 2002 there were nationwide

protests against the DEA pot raids, calling on them to “cease and

desist” in their war against the sick and dying, (o.k., so maybe lawyers

were overrepresented) . Folks from the National Organization for Reform

of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the Marijuana Policy Project and other groups

chained themselves outside of DEA offices and were arrested.

On the legal front the California Supreme court strongly reaffirmed

Proposition 215 in a July 19^(th) 2002 ruling which secured the right of

patients to seek summary judgment dismissal of charges brought against

them by demonstrating serious illness and having a doctor’s

recommendation. The May Supreme Court ruling sought to halt cannabis

clubs from distributing pot, but in California high court justices

maintained that individuals still have limited immunity from prosecution

if they decide to grow marijuana themselves for personal use.

Mark Leno, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, has just

introduced a bill that would allow the city to grow and dispense its own

pot to ill patients who have a doctor’s recommendation. According to

him, “If the federal government is going to continue to harass and shut

down these clubs, then I think it’s the City’s responsibility to take

action...If 60 or 70 percent of voters say ‘yes’ the supervisors would

be on very solid ground knowing that voters would be with us.” (“S.F.

Considers Growing Own Medical Marijuana,” Contra Costa Times July 24,

2002)

In the Fall of 2002 Montana and (maybe) the District of Columbia will

vote on medical marijuana measures. If recent electoral history is any

indication, we can count on one state and one colony to join Alaska,

California, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington State in

protecting the right of their sick residents to use marijuana to help

ease their pain.

Ethnic Cleansing in Tulia

What happened in Tulia, Texas in the summer of 1999 when over ten

percent of the towns Black population was arrested and convicted in an

undercover drug sting was not altogether an anomaly. Each year thousands

of Black and Brown drug defendants wind up behind bars because nice

trustworthy police officers falsify police reports, plant evidence, lie

on the stand, and fail to do even cursory investigations. Real evidence

like corroborating witnesses, non-coerced confessions, and physical

proof are always nice to have around. But Tom Coleman, the undercover

drug war cowboy for hire who ran the 43-person Tulia sting knew he

wouldn’t need them. He had his white skin and his police uniform. For

most juries in America that’s all you need.

What’s most striking (if not surprising) in the Tulia episode is the

almost universal racial united front that whites in the town forged

after questions over the targeting of Blacks (40 out of the 43 arrested

were Black) and sloppy or non-existent evidence gathering led to civil

lawsuits by the NAACP and the ACLU. (“Department Probes Texas Drug

Bust,” WashingtonPost.Com October 26, 2000)

The local media took the lead. The Tulia Sentinel Newspaper

characterized the suspects as “drug traffickers” and “known dealers”

before anyone was even convicted. (“ACLU Sues, Claims Drug Sting Was

Racially Motivated,” Contra Costa Times October 7, 2000) According to

the Dallas Morning News, the local network t.v. station “tipped by the

sheriff, had filmed the suspects as they were brought to jail after the

sunrise arrests.” (“Town Still Deep in Racial Divide,” Dallas Morning

News June 30, 2002) Gary Gardner one of the few outspoken white critics

of the racist drug sting described how the Swisher County Sheriff Larry

Steward “paraded those people before the cameras with their skivvies and

their hair uncombed like they had caught animals.” (“The Heat is on a

Texas Town After the Arrest of 40 Blacks,” New York Times October 7,

2000) The establishment media knew the role they had to play to solidify

white opinion against the Black defendants and they played it well.

Business and church leaders chimed in too. Their sentiments read like a

high school social psychology textbook case study in denial. Lana

Barnett, the Executive Director of the Tulia Chamber of Commerce claimed

“this was never a racial problem. These are problem kids and the truth

is they’re guilty.” (Dallas Morning News June 30, 2002)

Well not quite, Lana. Two people got their charges dropped after trial

evidence contradicted Coleman’s testimony as to their whereabouts during

alleged drug buys. Scores of other defendants took plea bargains after a

string of seven all white jury convictions of blacks took place. One

Black defendant received a 300 year sentence. Others got 10–20 years for

drug crimes that would have gotten them supervised probation in other

cities. The aunt of one of the victims stated “when the defendants

started seeing those big sentences, they realized it didn’t matter what

they had done. Whether they had used drugs or not, they were going to

pay a price.” (Dallas Morning News June 30, 2002)

Other whites in the town had opinions similar to Lana’s. A

fundamentalist “elder” with the local Central Church of Christ, Bob

Colson, declared “we don’t want drugs in our community. The jurors

believed those people were guilty and I have to agree. I don’t have any

doubts.” When someone asked Tom Colemen himself about the controversial

sting, rather than address the obvious racial issues involved, he simply

stated,

“ I hate dope, and I hate dope dealers. I figured that this, I could

maybe put a few dealers in jail before they came across the path of

somebody’s kid.” (Contra Costa Times, October 7, 2000)

The lesson is old but clear. The best way to deny racism is not

refutation, but oblivion. Just pretend it doesn’t exist. White Americans

are especially adept at make-believe. They invented disneyland after

all...

Oakland Anti-loitering Bill a Step in the Wrong Direction

The Oakland Police Department is in search of yet another “tool” to

combat violent crime in the City. The City Council has voted up an anti-

loitering law that will allow cops to hand out citations to people who

decide to stand around in the wrong places. A first offense gets you a

$100 fine. A fourth can land you in jail for up to six months. In 1998 a

similar bill was put before the Council in an attempt to crack down on

youth gangs and drugs. It failed. This time we weren’t as lucky.

Since their inception U.S. anti-loitering laws have been associated with

racist social policy. Historically, they first appeared in the south as

a way to keep blacks out of white neighborhoods. In 1965 the Supreme

Court struck down those laws as unconstitutional. Anti- loitering laws

started popping up again in the late eighties in big and medium sized

cities as violent crime continued to increase due in large part to the

illegal crack trade.

The main difficulty in measuring the effectiveness of antiloitering laws

is that the laws tend to be short-lived. Typically, a city will pass an

ordinance against loitering and a few years later it will be struck down

as unconstitutional by either state or federal courts. Meanwhile the

courts reviewing the statute will commonly order an injunction on

enforcement of the ordinance until its constitutionality can be

adjudicated.

There is evidence that, at best, anti-loitering laws have no effect on

crime rates. Tampa, Florida passed an anti-loitering ordinance in 1989

as a response to a growing problem with open air drug markets in certain

neighborhoods. During the three years it was in existence the crime rate

increased. In 1993 the Florida Supreme Court struck the ordinance down

because it was too vague.

In 1992 the Chicago City Council passed an anti- loitering ordinance

aimed at curbing gang violence. According to the LA Times, “by 1995

Chicago police had issued 89,000 dispersal orders under the ordinance

and made 42,000 arrests. Most of the arrests were Black or Latino.” A

state court ordered the police department to halt enforcement in 1995

and sent the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the

ordinance in 1999. From 1995 to 1998 the murder rate continued to

decline even after the City was forced to stop enforcement of the

anti-loitering law. This suggests that the law itself had little to do

with falling homicide rates during the 1990’s in Chicago.

But focusing too long on the effectiveness of anti- loitering laws

misses the point. The Oakland Police Department could (and has) come up

with any number of enforcement tactics that “work,” including beating up

suspects and lying in court. The basic problem with anti- loitering

statutes is that they encourage police to harass certain groups of

people based not on any suspicion of criminal activity but on the mere

fact that they’re hanging out on the streets, have on certain ‘profile’

cloths and happen to be Black or Brown. Even the conservative Supreme

Court has said this gives cops too much discretion and violates the

First Amendment right to freedom of assembly and association.

But some in Oakland don’t seem to mind the prospect of tying up City

Attorney staff time and resources to defend the proposed law and

exposing the City to more police harassment and brutality suits. Council

member Larry Reid, the main sponsor of the anti- loitering bill called

on the American Civil Liberties Union to “move to Dowling Street and

84^(th) Avenue for a couple a months” to see firsthand what people in

one of the neighborhoods that he represents have to live through each

day. If the Council member isn’t too busy he might have a talk with some

of the victims of the OPD “Riders” who are currently on trail for

regularly beating, planting evidence, and kidnapping Oakland residents.

This new antiloitering law will no doubt produce more victims for

Council Member Reid to talk to.

Drug Warriors Target Native American Kids for Dog Searches

It might be tempting to chalk up the May 2002 police dog searches of

Native American kindergarten students in Wagner, South Dakota as ‘bad

judgment’ on the part of the principal, the local police department, the

school board and federal (yes, federal) agents. But we shouldn’t let the

authoritarians off so easy.

In an effort to crackdown on drugs in the small town 85 miles southeast

of Sioux Falls, local Wagner school officials and law enforcement agents

decided to do a drug sweep of the Wagner Community School. According to

a New York Times report “Wagner police and federal officers took [a] dog

into classes...frightening some students so badly that they cried and at

least one urinated involuntarily.” (“Drug Dogs Sniff Even 6-Year-Olds;

Parents Sue,” New York Times July 26, 2002) An American Civil Liberties

Union suit filed on behalf of 17 Native American students claims one dog

ran wild after pulling loose from an officer. It apparently chased after

students in the classroom and hopped up on desks. The students were

warned that any sudden moves might make the dog attack.

If this wasn’t so horrific, it would just be sick. But this is exactly

the kind of local favored fascism you get when the government creates

“drug exceptions” to the constitution. Judges weren’t listening to

Througood Marshall when he tried to remind them in Skinner v. Railway

Labor Executives Assn, that there was no such animal.

This is also the logical result of a steady stream of opinions from the

Supreme Court that have stripped privacy rights away from students. Both

Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 v. Earls and

Verononia School District v.

Acton greatly expanded the ability of school districts to engage in

suspicion-less searches and drug testing of students. Private bags,

lockers, cars parked in school lots and even strip searches are all fair

game. This by itself is enough to make parents concerned about civil

liberties to seriously consider home schooling.

As fucked up as the above developments are, the most tragic aspect of

the Wagner dog searches is the racial dimension. The question of whether

white kindergarten kids from a middle class school district would be

susceptible to this type of police state nonsense is almost beside the

point. The real outrage is the process by which state authorities are

targeting youth of color for humiliation, violence and confinement at

earlier, and earlier ages. The ugliest example is the state murder of

minors who’ve been sentenced to death. Cops teach children fear and deep

resentment while prompting youth of color to internalize a suspect

mentality. These native children will always remember ‘the drug dogs’

and for many of them it will leave the lasting impression that cops

don’t respect them, that they don’t recognize their dignity, that they

are the enemy.

Which in the end may not be all bad. It’s important that young people

know the truth about the cops- what they stand for and represent, as

well as why they should never trust them. It’s just a shame that

sometimes it takes deeply traumatic experiences with police to make this

clear to children of color.

The Royal Thai Massacres : Bush Complicity in Drug War Atrocities in

Thailand

Hauy Khieng Sang natives in the north western region of Thailand marched

from their village to Phrao government district offices 300 miles north

of Bangkok to perform a cursing ritual on the 70 National Thailand

Police Officers who raided their village in May of 2003 and arrested

four community leaders on drug trafficking charges. Once the 200 Hauy

Khieng Sang inhabitants arrived at the Phrao offices they set up a

bamboo table, killed a pig and a few chickens and smeared the blood on

two straw effigies representing the drug police. “We want the people in

Phrao district to witness our cursing ceremony against the police, who

have labeled innocent people as guilty.” (“Thai Villagers Place

Traditional Curse on Thai Police Over Drug War,” Agence France Presse,

May 8, 2003)

The four village leaders are in the company of thousands of dead and

imprisoned Thai Landers who’ve been accused of drug related crimes in a

political climate where a government accusation is as good as a guilty

verdict.

The village raid was part of a three-month Thai government crackdown on

drugs that killed over 2,275 up to mid 2003 (the Thaksin Administration

stopped publicizing the number of casualties after Human Rights groups

started paying attention to the body count) and incarcerated over 6,700

suspects. (ibid.) The police campaign was largely “extra judicial”

meaning cops shot suspects on sight, jailed them without trials and

framed many innocents who were on a government “blacklist” of alleged

drug traffickers, dealers, and users.

To some who had been following Thailand’s human rights record the drug

war killings came as some what of a surprise.

Thailand had a history of post World War II dictatorships up through the

1990’s. But after a deadly 1992 crackdown on pro democracy demonstrators

in Bangkok, pressure from human rights advocates lead to the

establishment of a National Human Rights Commission and the adoption of

the Rome Treaty in October of 2001 .

But closer observers were aware of serious and continuing abuses by

national police forces in its drug war. According to one June 2002

Amnesty International brief

“The military and army use torture and illtreatment in detention,

shortly after arrest, during transport of detainees, and in military

drug treatment camps. Poor Thai people, migrants, and members of ethnic

groups are particularly vulnerable.” (Thailand: Widespread Use of

Torture From Policing to Prisons. Amnesty International Press Release

June 11, 2002)

Amnesty went on to describe two Akha tribesmen who were seized by

government agents in Chiang Rai Province for opium detoxification. The

men were dropped in a ground hole. “Soldiers then poured water, coal,

and ashes” on them. Hours later they were questioned, and beaten. One

man died from the beatings, the other was hospitalized with a ruptured

lung. A year later no investigation had been done. A few years earlier

in the Suphanburi Province police were implicated in the deaths of three

drug suspects in their custody. No charges were filed by the Attorney

General in the deaths. These two examples don’t exhaust the number of

cases of drug war police crimes by any stretch.

Throughout the nineties and up to the present, the Drug Enforcement

Agency has been partners with their Thai counterparts in the drug war.

This partnership developed out of U.S. concerns about heroine

trafficking in the Golden Triangle in the 1970’s. Since then the U.S.

has provided training, intelligence and money to the Thai military and

police for drug war interdiction along their northern border with Burma

and internal drug enforcement.

As the U.S. interdiction budget grew in the late eighties and nineties

so did the scope of drug operations in foreign countries. Thailand was

no exception. In 1994 the DEA and Thai police started “Operation Tiger

Trap” a joint anti- narcotics investigation that brought down Yang

Wan-Hsuan, a major drug dealer in 2001. U.S. and Thailand government

officials started the International Law Enforcement Academy in 1998 to

“enhance the effectiveness of regional cooperation against transnational

crime in Southeast Asia.” Today the official U.S./ Thailand Embassy

web-site states “The U.S. contributed 4.5 million in 1998 and 1999 and

now provides over 1.5 million annually in operating funds.” (U.S.

Embassy, Bangkok Thailand Narcotics Assistance Fact Sheet,

www.usa.or.th/service/docs/report/narcotics.pdf)

All of the above was fairly uncontroversial before February of 2003. If

the Bush Administration had pulled all of its material support from the

Thai police and military after reports of drug blacklists, imprisonment

without trials, and mass police killings of drug suspects, the Justice

Department would still would be guilty of gross negligence in its

failure to heed human rights reports of ongoing police abuse and demand

real reforms before providing them with money and equipment to carry out

their repression.

But not only did the Bush Administration continue to fund the Royal Thai

police before, during and after its vicious drug war crackdown, it

praised the campaign and proceeded to intensify relations with the

Thaksin government as the atrocities were being committed by police.

It’s fair to ask whether any U.S. resources were used to slaughter

thousands of drug suspects and whether this slaughter took place with

the aid and approval of the Bush Administration. According to the DEA’S

own documents the U.S. has spent tens of millions of dollars training,

equipping, and funding domestic Thailand drug enforcement. Its hard to

imagine that the Thaksin administration would have had the

“intelligence” or the resources to embark on such an ambitious or brutal

crackdown without that support.

The Thaksin Record

Prime Minister Thaksin, one of the richest men in Thailand and a former

police officer, was elected to office in 2001 as a benevolent populist,

tough but fair. His dominance of Thai media made it hard for his

opponents to counter this portrayal. But soon after his election he

began to show his true colors. He immediately supported and cooperated

with the brutal Burmese military government and ramped up the murderous

repression of Burmese refugees and migrants along Thailand’s northern

border (He’s quoted as saying “they must stay in their places and must

be controlled”) (Yumadee Tunyasiri. P.M. Takes a Whack at UNHCR, Bangkok

Post June 28, 2003) His police forces had bloody clashes with protesters

in Hat Yai Sangkhla

Province on December 20 2002 over the environmentally disastrous Thai/

Malaysian gas pipeline project leaving over 100 demonstrators injured.

He’s also encouraged a climate of fear among press and human rights

workers who dare to speak out against his policies. Pradit

Charoenthaitaweea a Thai National Human Rights Commissioner received

death treats after speaking out against Thaksin’s drug war and was

warned by Suranand Vejjajiva a ruling party spokesman not to accuse

Thaksin of being a dictator. In a March 2003 radio address Thaksin

himself claimed Dr. Pradit’s comments were “sickening” and that the

human rights commissioner was a “non-patriot” and “whistleblower.”

(Asia-Pacific Human Rights Network, HYPERLINK “

www.hrdc.net

” www.hrdc.net/sahrdc ) Bad things happen to those who speak the truth.

Nothing in Thaksin’s first two years in office approached the level of

barbarity of the drug police massacres.

According to Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission,

“On the first day of the “war” four suspects were shot dead, 264 were

taken into custody and 727 met amphetamine tablets...were seized...On 4

March 2003, nearly a month after the anti-drug operations began; the

death toll had exceeded 1,100. Among those killed were an eight-month

pregnant woman, a nine-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman — all of

whom had been unarmed.” (ibid)

Reports of drug suspects who turned themselves into police who were shot

in custody or, after going to police in an effort to clear their name

from drug blacklists, were shot in the back after leaving police

stations, were frequent. Attempts to launch an independent investigation

into the ‘extra judicial killings’ have been thwarted by Thaksin

government officials who refuse to provide documents, be interviewed, or

testify about the campaign. The chair of the Commission, Charan

Dithapichai has condemned the intransigence and intimidation coming from

the Thaskin government, but his protests have fallen on deaf ears in

Thailand and in the rest of the world.

A deafening silence

It’s not as if the Bush Administration didn’t know what was going down

in Thailand. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights special

repporteur Asma Jahangir expressed “deep concern” about the

“extra-judicial executions” in the spring of 2003. Before Prime Minister

Thaksin came to the U.S. for the first time as a head of state in June

2003, Human Rights Watch sent the White House a letter detailing the

drug war atrocities taking place. The June 9^(th) letter mentioned the

over “2000 killings” and quoted Thai government officials including

Thaksin himself on the drug crackdown. “In this war drug dealers must

die.” (Letter to U.S. President George Bush: Press Thaksin on

Extra-judicial Executions, Burma, Human Rights Watch, June 9, 2003). It

also quoted Interior Minister Wan Muhamad Nor Matha referring to the

drug crackdown. “They will be put behind bars or even vanish without a

trace...who cares?” (ibid) The Human Rights Watch report politely

mentioned that the U.S. reputation may be “sullied by association with a

bloody and murderous campaign in the name of the war on drugs” due to

our on going anti- narcotics training and money to the Thai police,

(ibid)

The Bush Administration chose to ignore these letters and other numerous

press reports documenting the scope of the Thaksin slaughter in

Thailand. In fact after the first phase of the crackdown ended in May,

Thaksin thought he’d take a vacation to Washington D.C. to meet with

Bush and tell him about all the hard work he’d been doing fighting

drugs. His visit to the U.S. was upgraded from unofficial to “working”

in early June by the State Department, and the Thai delegation secured a

meeting with the president for June 12. At the meeting the two talked

about the war on terrorism, and Bush offered to upgrade the formal

security relationship with Thailand to “non- NATO ally,” giving the

regime more access to weaponry and capital. (“Thaksin in U.S.: Thailand

to Become a major non-NATO ally,” The Nation (Thailand), June 12, 2003).

According to Thai government spokesman Sita Divari, Bush also praised

Thaksin’s war on drugs claiming he was surprised at Thailand’s success

in drug eradication. The spokesmen also noted with pride “the president

did not voice his concern or complain about extra-judicial killings and

silencings during the three month campaign” in a dig at local press for

negative portrayals of the campaign, (ibid)

A couple of weeks after the meeting, the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand

Darryl Johnson presided over a groundbreaking ceremony for the opening

of the new International Law Enforcement Academy building in Bangkok to

train a new generation of drug warriors for the Royal Thai National

Police. “I would like to express my respect and appreciation for the

outstanding resourcefulness and support of our Thai colleagues in this

joint undertaking...Together, working through and supporting

institutions such as ILEA Bangkok, we can bring about real change and

improve the lives of our fellow citizens.” (Embassy of the United States

of America, Press Release June 27, 2003) Note: Apparently Ambassador

Johnson recently chastised the Thaskin Administration for not reigning

in his drug police. Too little too late.

Currently, estimates are that over 3,000 drug suspects have been killed

in Thaksin’s campaign to make Thailand “drug-free by December 2^(nd)

2003,” the Birthday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Tens of millions of U.S.

dollars continue to help fund and train Thai national police forces in

their continued crackdown on drug users, traffickers, and dealers. The

Bush Administration’s support for the Thaksin regime in the face of this

brutal crackdown is an accomplice crime in itself and should be

investigated by Congress. Attorney General Ashcroft could also do some

digging himself to find out if any domestic laws might have been broken,

but he might be too busy eagerly studying how the Thaksin regime got

away with its drug war massacre to do much probing into White House

complicity in the Thaksin atrocities.

Sex

Bodily Autonomy and Liberation

It’s long past the time for anarchists to take back sexual liberation

from the capitalists and to reclaim the struggle for free bodies and

sex- positive exhibition. For many sex liberation means Playboy

magazine, phone sex, 24/7 internet porn, and Sex in the City reruns. In

other words, the commercial exploitation of women to sell production.

There is a different and more meaningful definition of sexual liberation

that came out of the free love movement of the late 1800’s and was

heavily influenced by anarchist feminists. This movement never preached

libertinism as an end in itself but argued that women and men should be

free from the social constraints of sexism and Puritanism and be allowed

to love as they see fit. But this was about more than just sex. The free

love movement also demanded an end to restrictive dress codes for women,

talked about the degradations of marriage for women and brought out the

sexual hypocrisies and pretensions of “Victorian” America.

Today the terrain is considerably different. The Trans, Bi, Lesbian and

Gay liberation struggle has won some victories and has done an

incredible amount of public education work in a relatively short span of

time (30 years). Sex- positive performance art has combined social

commentary with erotic themes in an attempt to re-politicize sexual

discourse. Of course AIDS has changed everything, and the fight against

it has spawned some of the most important and innovative grassroots,

direct action groups since the early seventies like the group ACT-UP.

But the AIDS crisis has also left thousands of people dead, millions

more sick and has changed the terms of the dialogue regarding bodily

liberation and its consequences. By the mid80’s, sex was once again

spoken of in terms of fear, silence, shame. Even some campus feminists

sought to reintroduce female sexual danger into the center of debate

around sexual relations and power. At the same time the culture industry

was successful at blurring the lines between revolutionary sexual

liberation and capitalist “free” sexuality while the rightwing was able

to reestablish an abstinence-only atmosphere in its attempt to

desexualize society. All the while laws against sex offenders have grown

more punitive, and harsh. Over the last 15 years we’ve lost more ground

than we’ve gained.

These essays suggest and comment on how we might gain back the lost

ground. We’re fighting on many fronts. Against the corporate exploiters

of the female body for profit, against the right- wing Christian

fanatics who seek to reestablish sexual shame and guilt and against

those feminist authoritarians from within the movement against

patriarchy who advocate the curtailment of sexual speech in the name of

protecting women and girls from men. We’re also living through a

black-lash against the LGBT and Queer youth community. The successful

attempts to ban same sex marriage on the state level has given the right

wing momentum to try an even larger roll back of rights. The good news

is that people and organizations continue to stir the pot, and challenge

orthodoxies in the face of vicious attacks. They demonstrate that sexual

liberation is not hostile to radical feminism; it’s essential to it.

Sexual Liberation and Anarchism: Unfinished Business

Prominent anarchists spend considerable time in their books justifying

social policy structures that would allow democratic majorities to deny

personal freedoms to individuals in the name of “public administration.”

Libertarian feminists who have pointed this out in the recent past like

Susan L. Brown have been labeled as ‘‘lifestyle’ anarchists for their

commitment to self-autonomy. But each year in America cops arrest

hundreds of thousands of people for exercising selfdetermination over

their bodies in ways that don’t square with straight society. What

interest do the powerful have in suppressing consensual, victimless,

domestic and sexual arrangements and activity? Beyond the right -wing

rhetorical bullshit about protecting public morals, there is a more

plausible set of considerations involved.

It is in the very nature of states (and large social institutions

generally) to expand, and usurp authority over progressively greater

areas of personal and social life. For authoritarians, the old fascist

adage ‘war is the health of the state’ rings true. If a state is not

expanding its territorial, cultural, and economic control, it is in

decline. As the prolific 20^(th) century anarchist activist and writer

Emma Goldman put it,

“The psychology of government demands that its influence and prestige

constantly grow, at home and abroad, and it exploits every opportunity

to increase it. This tendency is motivated by the financial and

commercial interest back of the government, represented and served by

it.” (Red Emma, Vintage Books 1972 P.92)

She went on to underline the exclusivity of this tendency with

expressive selfhood.

“Our political and social scheme can not afford to tolerate the

individual and his constant quest for innovation. In ‘self defense’ the

state therefore suppresses, persecutes, punishes and even deprives the

individual of life. It is aided in this by every institution that stands

for preservation of the existing order.”(Ibid.)

Not only does the state make sexual and domestic relations a part of its

sphere of domination because of its organizational imperative to control

ever-increasing facets of social life, it also is contributing to the

maintenance of a particular social order that’s ‘capital friendly.’ This

job is way too big for the state alone, however. The state uses its guns

when it has too. But in liberal society the preference is towards more

subtle ways of controlling the people.

A well run liberal market society is a society where people are

investing, producing, servicing, consuming and not destroying property

in the interim. The corporate culture industry does its part to keep the

public consciousness in tune with the needs of capital by providing the

required social diversions. Without these diversions cultural vacuums

develop that allow for all manner of ideas in conflict with the

priorities of capital to gain currency in the public mind. These

diversions usually take the form of entertainmentsports, tabloid news,

pop music etc.. Our masters even provide political theater for those so

inclined; the Democrat liberals vs. the Republican right and so on. All

of this media ‘noise’ works towards a pacification of the people that so

formats our consciousness, our values, what we think of as important,

and how we understand our own needs and desires, that dangerous agendas

connected to the rearrangement of power relations rarely hit the radar

screen.

It is within this context of social domination through the apparatuses

of culture that bodily and sex repression gain their significance in the

struggle for liberation from state/capital hegemony. Demands for sex

liberation and selfautonomy are not in and of themselves understood as a

direct threat to the structure of privilege and repression. We are

familiar with the almost limitless ability of the market to absorb and

exploit sexuality for profit. But to the extent that it can not do this,

to the extent sex and the body are consciously deployed as weapons in

the service of liberation from capital exploitation, they become a

threat to the cultural stability of market society.

The exercise of influence over sexual mores creates opportunities for

the powerful to condition people towards ‘functional’ expressions of

bodily, and sexual freedom. What is functional is determined by whatever

serves the interest of current social hierarchies and the institutions

that stabilize them- patriarchal marriage, compulsory heterosexuality,

even the very notion of gender itself. Sex co modification , for

example, emphasizes personal ecstasy and immediate male orgasmic

gratification over mutuality and fore/ after-play. This trend seems to

be in line with market societies tendencies toward ‘alienated pleasure.’

Sex individualism keeps people isolated with phone sex, computer porn,

sex videos, blow-up dolls, and other toys. The political promise of the

sex instinct- ever greater social unites, is diminished before an ever

expanding menu of auto-erotic phantasmagoria for profit. Why brother

with real people when you can surround yourself with sexual chimeras,

have your orgasm, and go to bed early so you can get up for work in the

morning.

Sex attraction represents one of the most powerful forces towards unity,

mutuality, and pleasure. If Eros were liberated, it perhaps would

provide the social space for the development of different visions of

culture. Our instincts towards touch, play and connectivity would

contradict the work demands of production (which is why Sigmund Freud

insisted that there was an ‘inverse relation’ between sex repression and

the level of ‘civilization’ [read production]in society. (Three Essays

on the Theory of Sexuality, Sigmund Freud, New York: Basic Books, 1975

P. 16) It would also create a counter social aesthetic against social

conformity, abstinence, and shame. While cops whirled their billy clubs

and soldiers had their death parades, we’d be fucking in the streets

inviting people to join us instead of them.

This would not be ‘functional’ for their social order. It would invite a

type of radical freedom that would represent a more spontaneous

expression of organic society. This random interplay of life systems

would encourage more variability, diversity, higher capacities for

adaptability and greater freedom and autonomy for living things. The

Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine labeled this phenomenon as ‘self

organization’ in his description of what is common referred to as chaos

theory. (Order out of Chaos, Iiya Prigogine 1984) But market society

needs just the opposite- easily molded, predictable, docile,

organization men who don’t ask too many questions beginning with the

word why. In her essay “The Individual, Society and the State,” Goldman

pointed out that “the strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity” and

went on to implicate industrial capitalism’s division of labor, what

Georg Lukacs identified as reification, as the main factor in the

“wholesale mechanization of modern life...present in habits tastes,

dress, thoughts and ideas.” (Red Emma Speaks, Vintage Books 1972 P.93)

The point is clear. Social regimentation (what the corporate press calls

social ‘stability’) is a central factor to the capitalist class and must

be maintained in the interest of profits.

Of course the idea that bodily and sexual liberation is a revolutionary

issue that is a central part of antiauthoritarian analysis is not new.

This distinctly feminist approach to libertarian cultural theory was

first expressed by thinkers, and activists like Victoria Woodhull,

Voltairine De Cleyre, and Emma Goldman. They protested compulsory

marriage, restrictive dress codes, and embraced female sex pleasure and

choice as things women have a right to. Today this position implicates a

long list of crimes and legal prohibitions including sodomy, homosexual

marriage, polygamy, and polyandry, age of consent prohibitions, indecent

exposure, lewd behavior and laws against prostitution. The struggle for

these freedoms represent a continuation of the earlier battles against

sex repression fought by feminist anti- authoritarians a century ago. In

the recent past pro-sex porn activists like Karen Finley, Frank Moore,

and Annie Sprinkel have been transforming erotic performance from

commodity, male centered exploitation to a space for the celebration of

the body, and an opportunity to challenge authoritarian patriarchal

culture in public.

Future sex performance activism could provide anarchist praxis with a

model of social confrontation that challenges the aesthetics of straight

society with the violence of our beautiful liberated bodies.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: Willful Ignorance in U.S. sexual politics

The current Catholic Church pedophile scandals have given those of us

who care about the ways in which our attitudes about sex effects the

culture an opportunity to ask some fundamental questions about childhood

and adolescent sexuality, consent, and coercion. Sad thing, not much

fundamental questioning has been taking place. The “story” is the

ongoing cover-up, the hypocrisy, and the arrogance of the church

hierarchy. Not exactly news.

Some folks have taken the opportunity to challenge assumptions about

what constitutes socially legitimate sexual relationships. The author

Judith Levine wrote the book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting

Children from Sex as a way to broach the issue in a way that would

introduce some nuance into the discussion. Not surprisingly she’s been

accused of justifying child molestation and of providing “cover” for

pedophiles.

She contends that demonstrable harm should be the measure by which we

determine whether sexual encounters between minors and adults should be

criminally prosecuted.

“How do we know what’s harmful to kids? I think a good start would be to

ask them what their experiences feel like, instead of always assuming we

know. There’s almost no research that asks kids what they do, what they

feel, or what they think. We must help kids when they’re hurt sexually.

But it does a child no good to be told she’s been terribly victimized

when she may have undergone a merely unpleasant experience.” (University

of Minnesota Press Interview with Judith Levine April 2002)

She describes the Dutch “child welfare” model where officials talk to

the parents, the minor, the adult, and then decide whether the case is

criminal or not and suggests that that’s a better approach to the issue

than the America’s criminal justice model. In the U.S., state statutory

rape laws presume that anyone under a certain age is incapable of sexual

consent with someone who is over a particular age. This arbitrary, one

size fits all justice discounts not only the specific circumstances of

the relationship in question, it also ignores the minor’s experience and

emotions. Even when a youth does report feeling victimized, it is often

after scores of authority figures (prosecutors, judges, counselors,

parents) have insisted to them that they’ve been traumatized, and

exploited by the adult.

The problem is that one can’t even introduce these points in polite

society without being charged with supporting child molestation. Even

though Levine has been clear, (“Should people be punished for molesting

children? Absolutely. Anyone who forces sex on any person of any age

should be punished”) her ideas have been roundly misrepresented by the

right- wing. Robert Knight, executive director of the Culture and Family

Institute (a front group for Concerned Women for America) claimed

Levine’s book was “the latest academic cover for child molesters.”

(Bryan Robinson. A Harmful Message: A new book on child sex sparks

uproar. ABCNEWS.com April 2002) Other conservatives like state

Representative Tim Pawlenty, the majority leader of Minnesota’s House

legislature called for University of Minnesota Press to stop release of

the book.

While there’s no question that intergenerational sex, particularly

between male adults and their own children, often is an expression of

America’s rape culture and exemplifies the most conspicuous type of

patriarchal domination, it is also true that an awful lot of sexual

relationships between adults and minors are much grayer than the above

category. Is it true that all relationships between 15 year olds and 21

year-olds are exploitative and based on coercion? Is it possible that a

minor may prefer to learn about sexual pleasure from someone who is

older and has more experience? Why is it legal for 15 year-olds to drive

but not to consent to having sexual relations with a 24 year-old? The

fact that these questions are offensive to so many people indicates the

impoverished state of the current American discussion on sexuality.

A Dissent from Decency

Some Supreme Court decisions deserve to be unanimous. Like Brown v.

Board of Education, the case that invalidated the separate but equal

doctrine from Plessy v. Ferguson or the unanimous court decision in 1973

that forced Nixon to hand over the Watergate tapes to a special

prosecutor investigating his attempt to cover up a pretty larceny. The

Summer 2003 case Lawrence v. Texas is another one that should have been

decide unanimously. Unfortunately with right-wing freaks like Scalia,

Thomas, and Rehnquist on the bench even the most powerful court in the

land can’t speak with one voice on sexual privacy rights.

John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were at Lawrence’s apartment in September

1998 when Houston police broke into his place in response to a false

report of an armed intruder. Once inside they found Lawrence having sex

with Tyron Garner and jailed both men under a state law banning sex

between consenting adults of the same gender. The case went up to the

Texas Supreme Court which relied on Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 Supreme

Court decision that upheld an anti- sodomy law in Georgia, to justify

sustaining the sodomy convictions. If this all sounds pretty fascist you

have good ears.

But apparently Antonia Scalia has no problem giving due deference to

Texas fascists so long as their fascism is “reasonably related” to a

legitimate state interests- in this case punishing interracial queer

couples with fines and jail time. In his dissent from the six to three

decision in favor of Lawrence he claimed that the overturning of Bower’s

was a “massive disruption of the current social order.” Why? Well,

because a whole bunch of states have relied on the 1986

Bower’s decision to codify anti-homosexual bigotry and now all those

laws have been invalidated.

Scalia believes that as long as a state can demonstrate that a law

banning consensual sexual activity is reasonably related to a legitimate

state interest, a less exacting Equal Protection test than the “strict

scrutiny” criterion, than it passes constitutional muster. For him it is

clear enough. “Certain sexual behavior is ‘immoral and unacceptable’”

and in his mind and the minds of thousands of state and local

authoritarians the country over this fact alone “constitutes a rational

basis for regulation.”

But he has it backward. Even with the “rationally related” test the

burden is on the State to demonstrate why it’s singling out a particular

class of people for punishment. Absent this demonstration the

presumption is that the State does not have the authority to single out

one class of people for punishment and repression. In this case we start

with the assumption that what consenting adults do sexual in the privacy

of their own home is their own business. The State simply does not have

a legitimate state interest in preventing two consenting adults of the

same sex from engaging in sexual contact in their own homes. The desire

to enforce a strict code of Christian morality on the whole community,

many of whom may not be Christian, the court found, was not a legitimate

state interest. The question isn’t whether there is some constitutional

right to engage in homosexual activity. It is what legitimate authority

does the State have to forbid same sex activity in the absence of any

evidence that the prohibition is even remotely related to anything that

resembles a “legitimate” state function or responsibility. The court

answer? Zero. I agree.

Anorexia Nervosa and White Supremacy

Some work has been done on the relation that the commodification of the

female body has (both as product and to sell products) to eating

disorders. The ubiquitous projection of the pale waif as the epitome of

western beauty introjects an insidious self contempt in girls and women

who don’t match the body type of desire. This self contempt,

particularly when absorbed by insecure adolescent females, can be fatal

in its effects. Not eating or, in the case of bulimia, binging and

purging, becomes a ritual of self denial and slow selfdestruction.

Eating is always accompanied by shame, and afterward guilt.

Another aspect of eating disorders that has received no attention to my

knowledge is the role that race or, more specifically, white supremacy,

plays in the development of eating disorders. White male supremacists

standards of beauty are so narrow that girls are literally dying to meet

them.

Statistics show that in the U.S. the vast majority of eating disorder

cases happen among fairly well off, educated, young, white girls. This

is no accident. They self identify with the “Aryan princess” iconography

of desire because they are disproportionately used as its

personification to sell production. White standards of beauty still

dominate our society’s popular culture from magazines, to prime time

t.v. It’s only to the extent that people of color approximate Aryan

features- light skin, straight hair, pointed nose, thin lipsthat we too

are protected as exemplars of beauty by the various industries of

culture.

In communities of color there is less contempt and scorn thrown at

full-figured females. In fact, in many cases fullbodied women are

considered more attractive than there skinnier counter-parts (remember

the video “Baby got Back”?). Obviously females of color still feel

social pressures to be slim. But because there’s generally more

acceptance of flesh in black and brown cultures, the internalization of

societal fat intolerance is somewhat less.

White men seem to have the least amount of tolerance for flesh, and

white women respond to this intolerance by buying all those diet pills,

binging and purging and compulsive exercise. This also could account for

fetishization of Asian females by some white males. (See A Bachelor’s

Japan by Boye de Mente]) Because white men overwhelmingly control the

levers of cultural production, their tastes, prejudices, and assumptions

about beauty pervade capital media and entertainment. This is yet

another reason (in a long list of them) for people of color to demand

fair access to the media and decision making authority within its many

outlets.

The old notion that eating disorders could be blamed on teenage stress

or anxiety should be discarded. In too many cases these disorders are

provoked by the twin external social oppressions of patriarchy and white

supremacy. The first objectifies the female body through

commodification, while the second excludes women of color from its

definitions of beauty and uses popular media to stigmatize white girls

into conformity with its impossible ideals of body type.

Until we win the culture war our aesthetic rebellion against patriarchy

and white supremacy should focus on reinventing beauty, knocking over

boundaries, and celebrating our bodies.

Sexual danger and the Sex Positive Movement

In the early 1990’s there was a resurgence of feminist activity on

college campuses. Some of this was spawned by a spate of Supreme Court

rulings that put Roe v. Wade in jeopardy and aggressive anti- choice

thuggery at reproductive health clinics all over the country. Some of

the activity was the result of coalition building between women’s rights

organizations and gay, lesbian, trans, and bi groups around AIDS and

anti-gay/ lesbian harassment, discrimination and violence.

Much of the activity was generated by a renewed sense of outrage over

violence against women and girls. Take Back the Night marches seemed

bigger, louder and more defiant. A new consensus among third wave campus

feminists at elite universities appeared to be taking hold. The sexual

liberation movement of the 60’s had accomplished little for women and

girls and had brought them much trouble- a whole generation of date

rappers and sexual assaulters not to mention the multitude of pseudo-

feminist “sensitive males” who watched Michael on “Thirty Something” to

pick up all the right mannerisms and political gestures.

This consensus couldn’t have been solidified without the direction of a

number of feminist professors who made the deconstruction of rape

culture the center of women’s studies classes. Two of them, Andrea

Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, caused a storm when they suggested that

pornography was violence against women and that women should be able to

sue the manufacturers of it under certain circumstances. Although they

didn’t call for outright government censorship, many free speech

advocates believed that the civil remedy would have a chilling effect on

all sexually explicit speech, not just obscenity. Nadine Strossen of the

American Civil Liberties Union worried that the proposed tort would

“suppress a new and broader category of sexually oriented expression,

distinct from the speech that is targeted under the obscenity laws-

namely, the ill-defined category for which they have appropriated the

term ‘pornography “ (Nadine Strossen, Defending Pornography Free Speech,

Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights Simon and Schuster 1995 P.59)

The focus on rape and sexual coercion as the effect of sexual

representation led to a discourse that emphasized the victimization of

women and devalued the whole history of sexual liberation, going back to

the feminist anarchists of a hundred years ago, not to mention the

1960’s. After fighting long and hard for decades to gain a semblance of

sexual agency and bodily self determination much of the 1990’s campus

feminist movement retreated from this struggle and decided to put faith

in more paternal answers to sexual danger (more security guards,

escorts, cop patrols etc.).

Free love anarchist advocates argued for free self-expression as an

avenue for women to shake off the social expectations of passivity and

modesty. Radical feminists in the 1960’s sought to liberate themselves

from the strictures of law and regulation that inscribed sexual

submission into the fabric of society. Lesbian and Bi feminists like the

editors of On Our Backs and Anything That Moves celebrated sex- positive

lifestyles, not the archetype of the sexless celibate as feminist hero.

But victim-identified feminists have little time to celebrate sex. In

MacKinnon’s view, rape and sex

“look a lot alike... [T] he major distinction between

intercourse(normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so

often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it.” (Ibid.

P. 108)

According to Dworkin any women or girl who claims to like heterosexual

sex is a victim of, you guessed it, “false consciousness.” The very

notion of sexual agency is a denial of the “unspeakable humiliation’ of

being ‘cajoled, pressured, tricked, blackmailed, or outright forced into

sex.” (Ibid. P.lll) Once again those who don’t agree with the narrow

antisex attitude of the northeastern, upper-middle, academic, feminist

set (don’t forget white) are poor and misguided and need to be saved

from themselves.

Lucky for the women’s movement, the anti- sex voices have quieted their

protest for now. After episodes that included requiring explicit verbal

approval of every progressive step of intimate contact between dating

mates (Antioch College) and randomly picking male names out of a phone

book and posting their names as “potential rapists” all over campus

bulletin boards (University of Maryland) less one- dimensional heads

have intervened in the debate.

Despite her insufferable shock jock intellectual persona and right wing

politics, Camille Paglia has combated the notion that women and girls

should retreat from the dangers of sexual agency into a world of

paternal state protection and personal modesty. In 1993 at the apex of

third wave campus activism, Katie Roiphe’s book The Morning After: Sex,

Fear, and Feminism on Campus criticized victim feminism and its

attendant extremes. Much of bell hooks’ work has stressed how one sided

the anti- sex view is in its inability to wholly understand how the

absence of true sexual liberation entraps women and men

“Feminist activists who see male sexuality as inherently despicable have

been those most willing to de-emphasize issues of sexual freedom.

Focusing solely on those aspects of male sexual expression that have to

do with reinforcing male domination of women, they are reluctant and

downright unwilling to acknowledge that sexuality as it is constructed

in sexist society is no more “liberating” for men than it is for women.”

(Bell Hooks, Feminist Theory P.149)

So while those of us who are focused on sexual liberation must

acknowledge the reality of male sexual violence and exploitation against

women if we’re serious about working towards a truly libratory Eros,

feminists who concern themselves primarily with the dangers of sexual

encounter should also reject the shame and guilt-based female sexuality

of the past (and present) and support sexual choice and empowerment. No

society can be sexually liberated if women and girls are being hunted,

raped, assaulted and, finally, killed by scorned boyfriends, husbands

and strangers. No society can be truly sexually liberated if old notions

of gender enclose women into passive, sexual subjects without the means

to give voice to their sexual desires and interests.

Culture

The Punk Scapegoat: Why punk rock is not an anarchist albatross

Punk anarchists have taken quite a beating. In the broader anarchist

press their almost always portrayed as the dumb fucks of the movement-

drunk, sexist, and unable to see how their leather boots contribute to

the suffering of animals. The punks get blamed for just about everything

that’s wrong with North American anarchism. Punk is suppose to be the

reason people of color don’t want anything to do with anarchism although

a lot of the people of color who identify with it came out of punk

scenes. To Chaz Bufe many punks are actually “fashion anarchist” that

use anarchism as a way to add philosophical justification to their

“anti-social” behavior. (Chaz Bufe, Listen Anarchist See Sharp Press

1985 P.l)

Otto Nomous in his great essay “Race, Anarchy and Punk Rock” rightly

points out that punks sometimes seem oblivious to the cultural

boundaries that keep people of color from exploring anarchism but

doesn’t differentiate between scenes or suggest ways to deal with those

boundaries beyond punk introspection. (Otto Nomous, Race, Anarchy and

Punk Rock Pamphlet 2000) For example there are many punks of color in

the larger cities of North America (like LA) who share the same cultural

trappings that the wider punk community has. Are they part of the

solution or part of the problem? What about how punks of color are

received, or rejected, in our own neighborhoods? An honest look may

reveal that all white anarchists have work to do around issues of

culture and inclusion- not just punks.

Why has punk become the whipping boy? Well its not like it doesn’t

deserve a few lashes. The words are right (most of the time) but the

music is off. Punk has always been the most politically conscious of all

of rocks genres but its scenes, which revolve around shows, have always

been exclusionary and culturally narrow. This is mostly youth just being

cliquish but it’s also racial. In this context looking like you belong

is everything. If you’re a person of color and you happen to be alone at

a show you can bet that you’ll stay alone, polite smiles not

withstanding.

Class also plays a role. Within scenes there’s always been tensions

between suburban punks who tend to be drawn by the personal angst of the

sub- culture and the more working class and poor urban punks who have

generally been more political. But to most middle class activists

involved in radical politics it all looks the same- loud, angry,

obnoxious. Nice, college educated left activists with good class

politics and straight teeth find it easy to point the finger at punks

because everyone knows they smell, don’t comb their hair and don’t have

any friends of color. If they would just get a little hygiene and be

more, ya know... multicultural, anti authoritarian politics would just

take off.

But punk’s an easy target because in many ways it’s the biggest. Today

Punk is anarchist culture. Before punk, anarchism was defined by the

idioms and causes of the old left- labor solidarity, songs of

revolutionary martyrdom, hand me down realist art from the marxists. The

cultural explorations of the 1960’s were certainly influenced by

anarchism but the revolutionary organizations that came out of that era

choose marxism over anti- authoritarian ideals. As soon as punk found

its political voice in the working class neighborhoods of Britain in the

late 1970’s it was explicitly anarchist. Since then it has given the

world DIY zines and music (a renewal of direct action), it has spawned a

number of organizations including Anti- Racist Action, Skinheads Against

Racial Prejudice and Girl Army, a riot grrrl group that does female self

defense classes, skill shares and other work.. And lets not forget punk

rock’s tireless benefit work on behalf of anarchist and progressive

organizations worldwide.

The problem of anarchism’s inability to reach and interest more people

of color with its message is too serious an issue to scapegoat one sub-

culture. In the end the real reason why more people of color aren’t

involved in the anarchist movement is because anarchists are not talking

to them about their lives, their concerns, their hopes and fears. If the

Democrat Party can do it why can’t anarchists?

The Feminist Roots of Punk

Despite the efforts of legions of anarchist intellectuals in the

struggle against authority only a hand full of movements have been

successful in providing the social/ political framework for a whole

subculture. Punk has always been animated by both a commitment to

self-autonomy and a communal ethic exemplified by collectives like DC ‘S

Positive Force and music groups like Fuguzi. The synthesis of these two

tendencies first developed with the feminist anarchists late in the 19

th century. Victoria Woodhull was among the first anarchists to argue

for personal freedom and an end to capitalist, for profit, exploitation.

(She later went on to become a stockbroker).

Emma Goldman wrote about how social conformity served the cultural needs

of capital stability at a time when many other anti-authoritarians

dismissed these type of concerns as bourgeoisie or liberal. She

emphasized the importance of individuality to combat the growth of “mass

society.”

“The wholesale mechanization of modern life has increased uniformity a

thousand fold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress,

thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is a “public

opinion.’ Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses

to submit is at once labeled “queer ,” different and decried as a

disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.” (P.93

Red Emma Speaks)

Marginals can relate to the above passage. We’ve had fight for the right

to express ourselves in our own way and think for ourselves. The

attempts by school administrators and bosses to force us to conform is

what has fed our resentment of authority and desire to smash it.

Punks have also rejected corporate capitalism and its exploitation and

oppression of women, workers, and people of color. Social hierarchies

are built into the very dynamics of liberal market society and serves to

perpetuate economic and social inequality. Craig O’Hare, author of the

Philosophy of Punk put it this way “capitalism, as far as its basis lies

in the dehumanization and exploitation of people (animals/plants) for

wealth, can not be accepted by anarchists.”

The sad irony about the development of punk is that although much of its

‘philosophy’ was created in the early days of feminist anarchist

agitation the movement has also produced overtly misogynistic shit in

the past. Records like the 1986 Black Flag release “Slip it in”

instructed boys to “slip it on in” after the girls “say they don’t want

it.” And how many girls and women have stayed away from shows because of

jocks with mohawks who enjoy knocking people on their asses who are

smaller than they are?

The upshot of this is that it was this sexism in punk that helped to

spawn the riot grrrl movement which, in a very real way, is in the

process of reclaim punk’s feminist, antiauthoritarian roots. Spawned out

of the vibrant punk rock scenes of Washington D.C. and Washington State,

this loosely knit band of rockers, zine writers, sex workers, and

activists were the real rebellion that everyone was waiting to come from

the academy. But unlike the women studies majors who stayed up late

studying abstruse “post” feminist French theories, these women and girls

were busy creating a new sub-culture that stressed the importance of

developing spaces where females could perform, and share their

experiences with each other without the muscle flexing mosh pit

atmosphere of traditional punk shows.

But these spaces weren’t the sentimental consciousness rising gatherings

of the 70’s post counter-culture either. The music and writing that the

movement has produced is often angry, direct, viscerally expressive. Kim

Gordon of Sonic Youth provided much of the initial inspiration for the

Riot Grrrl movement with her pale, sharp, screech and sex positive

feminism. Lyrics like “support the power of women, use the power of men,

use the word fuck, the word is love” off the 1983 album Confusion is Sex

created a whirlwind in punk scenes across the U.S. Gordon was later

instrumental in starting and promoting other Riot Grrrl bands like the

Lunachicks and Hole.

Riot Grrrl bands like Babes in Toyland promoted Girl Power (in all of

its appropriated current pink disney pop manifestations) with Cinderella

big shoes, exaggerated make-up and puff dress. It challenged the gender

association of femininity with weakness and modesty. You didn’t have to

copy the drab, understated, unisex look of the Ivy league seven sister

feminists to be one. You could wear a dress, put lipstick on, put on

combat boots and be just as powerful as any boy or man on the planet. It

was also about the reclamation of girlhood. In the winter 2000 issue of

Bust magazine, the former lead singer for Bikini Kill Kathleen Hanana

talked with Gloria Steinem and Celina Hex about the politics of the

aesthetic.

“For me some of the youth oriented stuff of dressing like a little girl,

was also about women who had to numb out most of their childhood due to

sexual abuse...and saying ‘I deserve to have a childhood and I didn’t

have it.’ It was also just about being freaks, being punk rockers, being

people who are oppositional to the whole American system, and not

wanting to look like adults and our parents who we saw fucking up the

world.” Celina Hex, “Fierce Funny, Feminists” Bust (Winter 2000 ) Vol.16

P. 52

Hanna described her vision of feminism as a “broad- based political

movement that’s bent on challenging hierarchies of all kinds in our

society, including racism, and classism, and able-body-ism. (Ibid.) She

spoke out against some in the feminist establishment for their stand

against porn and their alleged collusion with police and state agents

who harass sex workers. Of course Steinem defended the anti-porn stance

and claimed Andrea Dworkin was “misunderstood.”

The Riot Grrrl emphasis on bodily autonomy was apparent from its

earliest inception. A 1991 quote by Ne Tantillo from the Washington D.C.

zine Riot Grrl explained

“I should feel comfortable to carry myself as I please, where I please,

and when I please...I will project the strength and anger I feel...I am

not pleased to have my sex ridiculed, to be seen as an item, not a free

thinking being. I am not ‘asking for it’ by existing in a space that is

rightfully mine, the world .” (Ne Tantillo, Riot Grrrl, (1991)

This brings us back to an issue larger than sexual liberation. Its

bodily self- determination and having the social power to make choices

about how you live your life that’s the fundamental basis of selfhood.

This is the autonomy that Riot Girl punk and the broader feminist

anarchist movement have embraced.

Despite rumors of the “dissipation” of the Riot Grrrl movement (the

authors of the third wave feminist primer Manifests got that wrong) it

keeps producing bands, literature, and activism. After a flurry of

national mainstream press in the early 1990’s many of its adherents

decided to remain independent and underground instead of turning into

media darlings of the corporate press. The U.S. continues to have a

vibrant Riot Grrrl scene with bands Bratmobile, Sleater Kinney and

festivals like Ladyfest, a five day Riot Grrrl art and music gathering.

This Time the Revolution Will be Televised

It’s an old debate but an important one. I was reminded if it again

while reading the book Detroit: I Do Mind Dying. In it the authors

traced the back forth between factions of the League of Revolutionary

Black Workers about the role of popular media in revolutionary struggle.

Some in the League thought that leader John Watson and his focus on mass

media projects like the film company Black Star Productions took too

much attention away from organizing- the real work of revolution. Others

believed that the development of a mass based movement needed a mass

based communications strategy to reach people who otherwise wouldn’t be

reached.

Both points are right. Organizing is the real work of revolution. But

media can be a very effective organizing tool. The conflict over primacy

arises out of the attempt to make the two exclusive of one another. Just

about everyone can agree that mass movements need some strategy to reach

the people with their message. But beyond that the disagreement over the

kind of media strategy liberation movements should have goes to the core

of the importance of how we make radical change and what that says about

our principals.

If its true that any mass based movement for radical change needs

projects that reach mass numbers of people with it’s message than the

question of using institutions that have the capacity to reach large

numbers of people becomes centralMedia corporations. Indie purists argue

that any use of corporate manufacturing, distribution, marketing, or

sponsoring of movement messages automatic render that message non-

libratory. They point to indie successes like Fuguzi and

Alternative Tenancies as prove that we can create and sustain dual

cultural and media power.

Fair enough. But what about the kid that has some talent and a conscious

message that doesn’t has access to $10,000 dollar loans to create

independent distribution networks and buy manufacturing equipment. The

internet is promising but to many poor folks who are the main victims of

state repression and capitalism ownership of a computer with internet

access is a rarity. Pointing the finger (or giving it) to young people

who choose to use corporate means to get paid and get heard does nothing

but estrange cultural workers who could be valuable in our struggle to

reach people with conscious messages.

What about the sell out. Maybe an overused pejorative. The definition of

a sell out is someone who declares certain beliefs and values and chucks

them when they get in the way of “moving up.” But many bands do the

opposite. Bruce Springsteen started out as an urban troubadour singing

songs about broken dreams and neighborhood romance. He became more

political over the years not less. Ministry started off as a mediocre

white funk dance group and developed into one of the most influential

political industrial bands of the 1990 ‘s. Both were on major labels.

Sure, self professed revolutionaries sell out. But just as often they

grow and develop in their consciousness regardless of the business side

of things. To the extent that corporate pressures force cultural and

political workers to alter their messages they should refuse. Maybe this

happens less than we think it does.

The most salient argument questioning the strategy of using corporate

tools to popularize revolutionary messages is the Lourdian ‘can’t use

the masters tools to dismantle the masters house’ contention. Don’t we

make the very institutions we wish to abolish stronger by using them to

get our message out? Don’t we play into the commodification of culture

and its illusion of liberal tolerance of “free speech” by submitting our

messages and images of revolt for their manipulation and profit?

Well, yes. But its important to remember that the point to social

liberation is not necessarily to abolish all social institutions but to

change their constitution and the way they are run. There is nothing

inherently exploitative about businesses that produce things and trade

with other businesses. The exploitation comes in when workers are not

co-owners and lack decision making authority. In the Spanish civil war

the anarchists didn’t shut down the factories they took them over. The

idea is to abolish capitalism not the useful social operations it

performs.

As for allowing our revolutionary messages to be manipulated by the

corporate system as an example of the liberal tolerance of market

society, it is true. Our task is to push the envelope when we can and

continue to build independent structures that allow us to point to the

contradictions and oppressions that are inherent in the state capitalist

system and use that to organize people.

We should use the enemies resources to defeat the enemy. Pop will eat

itself. As the neo- con cultural critic Daniel Bell pointed out in his

book “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism”, in the absence of a

religious buffer market commodification amplifies all of the cultures

most nihilist tendencies including those which serve to undermine the

very values that support its existence “work, delayed gratification,

career orientation, devotion to the enterprise.” (Daniel Bell, The

Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism Basic Books 1976 P.xxv.) Included

in his definition of nihilism are both radical political currents and

hedonismour friends. Our task? To figure out ways to use the masters

tools to club the master over the head.

Odds and Ends

Impeaching Clinton

The impeachment of Bill Clinton was the right thing to do. Problem is,

it was done by the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. When Bill

Clinton decided to bomb Belgrade for 79 days without the approval of the

Security Council he was in direct violation of the United Nations

Charter. This treaty provides two avenues to the lawful use of force.

Article 51 allows member states to use force in self-defense and Article

42 permits the use of force pursuant to a unanimous vote of the Security

Council. Bill Clinton was in direct violation of the Constitution of the

United States as well which requires that the president get a

declaration of war from the Congress before going to war with another

country. He was also in direct violation of the War Powers Act of 1973

which directs the president to obtain statutory approval for U.S. troop

involvement in a conflict if the engagement lasts over 60 days .

This is an impeachable offense. There is no power that is more important

than the power to make war. This is why the framers of the Constitution

wanted that power in the hands of the most democratic branch of the

government- the Congress. In 1793 James Madison wrote that it’s the

“fundamental doctrine of the Constitution that the power to declare war

is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.” (James Madison,

Letters of Helvidius, nos. 1—4 24 Aug. — 14 Sept. 1793 Writings

6:138—77) George Mason of Virginia claimed that the president “is not

safely to be entrusted with” war powers. (The Founders’ Constitution

Volume 3, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11, Document, The University of

Chicago Press) Today the U.S. goes to war in the same manner that a

fascist state does. A dictator decides to go to war and his lieutenants

carry out his commands. Substitute the word President for dictator and

you have the current process for war making in the U.S.

The problem is that the right-wing in this country is much more outraged

over adultery than killing innocent people in wars of aggression. And so

we must witness a parade of conservative hypocrites- Bob Livingston,

Henry Hyde, Newt Gingrich, moralize about Bill Clinton’s character flaws

and sexual indiscretions rather than holding him accountable for his

immoral and illegal war mongering. Technically, Clinton was impeached by

the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice. He

lied about and tried to cover up getting his dick sucked in the White

House by an intern. High Crimes and Misdemeanors? Their can be no doubt

that impeaching a president for something as ridiculous as this is a

reconfirmation of just how narcissistic the baby boomer generation

really is. Shutting down the government (man I wish I had thought of

that), peace making in the Middle East that has lead to more war,

impeachment... These folks will do just about anything to make it into

the history books.

Clinton will go down in history as a President that slowed the rise of

post cold war conservatism. He was able to make a right- wing agenda-

welfare “reform”, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Crime

Bill, the Immigration Reform Act, the expansion of the North Atlantic

Treaty Organizationslightly less right wing. He will be remembered for

the quiet genocide he coordinated in Iraq that killed over one million

innocence people through sanctions. He might be remembered as the

president that didn’t inhale, or a president that had the best economic

record of any administration since the Kennedy/

Johnson years. But his impeachment will be looked upon as a desperate

gesture by an obsessive special prosecutor conservative establishment

that was hell bent on pay Nixon. Clinton was lucky. The last time these

forces someone out of office they just assassinated him. and a back for

wanted

The 2000 Election Debacle

The December 2000 Supreme Court decision in Gore v. Bush that anointed

George W. Bush president is yet another reminder of just how easy it is

in this country for the right wing to commit and get away with one coup

de- tat after another without getting even a speck of blood on their

nice white collared shirts. Just because people can vote doesn’t mean

they live in a democracy. Democracy is, fundamentally, about the people

deciding for themselves who will carry out the functions of government.

If one believes in government (I don’t) it’s the most participatory form

of rule there is. If a majority of voters decide they want candidate A

for an elective office and candidate B somehow ends up taking the oath

of office on inauguration day your democracy isn’t brokeyou simply don’t

have one.

We don’t have a democracy for a lot of reasons- prohibitive ballot

access laws, single member districts, two party collusion to exclude

third parties from debates, scant media coverage of third party

movements and candidates, corporate political domination, the electoral

college, good old fashioned Jim Crow racism etc. All of these deficits

of democracy were evident in 2000 (particularly the last one)

More generally, in a country this large its hard to imagine a workable

system of popular sovereignty. But in 2000 it was that great liberal

menace of judicial supremacy that blocked the people’s will. In Gore v.

Bush five Supreme Court judges decided the will of the people had to

take a back seat to the will of the philosopher kings. King George the

II is the result.

The facts. Bush was projected the winner in Florida around 2:30 a.m.

November 8 th by a number of networks who had projected Gore the winner

earlier in the night. A number of canvassing boards in heavily Democrat

counties decide to do manual re-counts of the ballots in the weeks

following the election. Florida’s Secretary of State, Katherine Harris,

went to state court to block the canvassing board decisions and prevent

all the votes from being counted. On November 21^(st) the Florida

Supreme Court handed down a ruling that permitted these counties to

continue their recounts and stipulated that the results be included in

the final vote count. George Bush filed a case with the U.S. Supreme

Court in an attempt to stop the recounts in Florida. On November 26,

2000 Katherine Harris certified Republican George W. Bush the winner in

Florida by 537 votes out of over 6 million cast. She refused to wait for

Palm Beach County to finish its vote count leaving 1000 votes uncounted.

(They finished 90 minutes after the 5:00 deadline.) The next day Gore

filed suit in Florida claiming all the votes had not been counted in

three counties (Dade, Nassau, Palm Beach) and on December 8 the Florida

Supreme Court voted 4–3 to order a statewide manual recount of all under

votes. On December 12 th the U.S. Supreme Court ordered an end to all

Florida recounts “because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet

the Dec. 12 date will be unconstitutional ... we reverse the judgment of

the Supreme Court of Florida ordering the recount to proceed.” (Bush v.

Gore (00–949) December 12, 2000) Gore conceded the next day.

What the Supreme Court didn’t address was its own competency to hear the

case in the first place. The Reinquist Court had always emphasized

federalism and the prerogative of states to resist federal mandates. In

fact, it was this states rights posture that was partially responsible

for the 2000 voting debacle. In all 50 states there are 50 sets of rules

and regulations around voting standards, equipment and law. It’s ironic

in the extreme that the Supreme Court would choose the closest election

in the history of the country to become nationalists with respect to

election law.

But the farce still leaves a bad taste in your mouth. In a country that

loves to send representatives all around the world to lecture other

people about democracy one would think that little things like making

sure that all the votes are counted before a state can certify a winner

in a presidential election would be more important than meeting

arbitrary deadlines. But then you would also have to assume that

everyone in the process wanted all the votes to be counted. In this

country that assumption would have no basis in evidence.

Spook in the Spotlight

The current UN Security Council standoff over a possible second

resolution green lighting the use of force in Iraq is easily the most

conspicuous foreign policy failure for the U.S. since the 1981 bombing

in Beirut. U.S. diplomacy has certainly suffered set backs over the last

quarter century. These set backs are cheered by anarchists and other

antiimperialists world- wide. But nothing is more vicious than a wounded

beast. The man currently in charge of representing this beast to the

world happens to be white America’s favorite soul brother- Colin Powell.

No Secretary of State has ever presided over such a sloppy and inept war

propaganda campaign. Henry Kissinger made have committed war crimes in

Chile. He may have coordinated illegal and immoral bombings in Cambodia

and Laos. But at least he knew how to lie, spin and conceal effectively

in the service of Nixon’s Southeast Asian war aims. By contrast, Powell

and his team at the State Department apparently lack even the most basic

strategic finesse and geo- political skill. Powell has destroyed the

little credibility he had by insisting on a link between Iraq and Al-

Quaida. The proof? Unnamed A1 Qaeda operatives told unnamed U.S.

intelligence agents that unnamed Iraqis with “ties” to the ruling Baath

party were involved at some point in the last half century in chemical

weapons training with Al Qaeda members. No verifiable sources, no

physical evidence, no witnesses.

It doesn’t stop there. Powell also asserted in a March 7 th 2004 speech

that Iraq officials had tried to purchase high strength aluminum tubes

to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment two years ago. The

documents that Secretary Powell pointed to as proof were determined to

be forged documents by Mohamed ElBaradei the director of the

International Atomic Energy Agency and current weapons inspector in

Iraq. It wasn’t made clear whether U.S. or British officials were

directly involved in the creation of the criminal documents. When CBS

news was caught using fake documents to support a true story about

Bush’s National Guard record the Network’s long time anchor, Dan Rather,

stepped down and four people were fired after an internal investigation.

Don’t count on any investigation or firings connected to this forgery

any time soon.

Where lies and misrepresentations have failed the war propaganda team

have turned to strong- arm tactics. The Washington Post reported in a

February 16 th 2003 article that even foreign allies of the Bush

Administration’s position on Iraq feel “the U.S. team often acts like

thugs. People feel bullied and that can affect the way you respond when

someone makes a request.” (Glenn Kessler. “Forceful Tactics Catch Up

with U.S.” Washington Post, February 16, 2003) When you’re the most

powerful gangster on the block you don’t have to explain yourself or say

please. Its this arrogance of power and contempt for democracy that has

lead Powell’s crowd to ignore the need to develop logical, plausible

arguments for military force (are there any?) and to respect differences

of opinion and circumstance by trying to find common ground.

Instead U.S. ‘diplomacy’ has been heavy handed at best. Bush National

Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice flew to New York on the 14 th of

January to punk Hans Blix and pressure him not to hold a February 27

briefing that the Bush Administration felt was going to report Iraqi

progress towards 1441 compliance.

Her meeting was unscheduled and was a clear attempt to intimidate the

chief weapons inspector into muzzling any news on the search for weapons

of mass destruction that didn’t support the U.S. push for war.

There has also been bribes and threats. Political bribes happen

everyday. Smart people try to keep their bribes quite at least until

they get what they want for the money they spend. Powell’s crowd wasn’t

that slick. Secretary Powell talked to Prime Minister of Turkey,

Abudullah Gul on February the 27 th a few days before a vote to allow

20,000 U.S. troops to use Turkish bases to attack Iraq from the north.

(CNN: Showdown IRAQ February, 2003) He dropped him a line just to

reassure the Prime Minster that a vote for landing rights would secure a

six billion dollar payoff along with access to thirty billion more in

commercial loans. The U.S. corporate press all through out the

negotiations over the use of Turkish bases kept insisting that what

looked like principled opposition to war in Turkey was just a good old

fashion shakedown for more money from the U.S. This insult fueled

resentment on the part of Turkish lawmakers and helped to sink the deal.

The U.S. is using threats as well. Bush administration officials have

continuously implied that once the U.S. overthrows the Iraqi government

access to oil production contracts would be determined by which counties

were willing to support Bush’s war. Since France has numerous contracts

with the current government this would mean French based companies would

take a huge financial hit if they were locked out of the Post Hussein

Iraqi oil market. Of course “unnamed sources” in the State Department

were quoted in the establishment press suggesting that this fact alone

would force Prime Minister Chirac to let Bush get his war on and abstain

in any Security Council vote on the issue. When France decided to take a

strong stand against the war many American observers were surprised to

learn that the French weren’t as craven and money obsessed as they would

be if faced with the same situation.

There are numerous reasons why Secretary Powell should step down. The

lies before the Security Council, the open political bribes and threats

to allies and other countries in the UN, the inept and unpersuasive

‘arguments’ for a war that the world has consistently said no to. But

the most compelling reason Powell should resign is because he’s been a

willing participate in the construction of the U.N. sanctions regime

that has caused the genocide of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi

civilians since the 1991Gulf War and has advocated going through with a

second war against the people of Iraq even if the Security Council

refuses to authorize it. Both are war crimes. They, not the ‘liberation’

of Iraq, will be Secretary Powell’s legacy.

Recall Fiasco?

We have a long month and a half to go before the October 2003 recall but

the jokes, jabs and sophomoric civic lessons to Californians on the

differences between a direct democracy (bad) and a constitutional

republic (for the temperate and discriminating polity) have already

grown tiresome.

The problem? We suffer from an “excess of democracy” that, according to

Joe Klein in the August 11 issue of Time Magazine, lead to a “slew of

myopic, half-witted ballot initiatives that have pretty much paralyzed

the political process.” (Joe Klein. “California’s Bad Karma” Time

Magazine, August 11, 2003) Blaming the current budget crisis in

California on the initiative process is like blaming high school drop

out rates on rap lyrics. Sounds good. But what about all those 15 year

olds riding around during school hours in their pick up trucks listening

to Clint Black? We don’t have national referendums so you can’t blame

the government shut down of 1995 on an “excess of democracy.” Ten years

ago during an oil price slump Texas had a similar budget crisis that

lead to a drop in tax revenue and a long legislative deadlock. They have

no mechanism for direct popular participation in their legislative

process. Turns out that legislators and professional politicians do a

fine job of causing political paralysis all by themselves.

Some have even gone further. David Broder of the Washington Post called

initiatives, referendums, and recalls “perversions of democracy” and

warned other states to heed the lessons of California’s recall “fiasco.”

(David Broder. “A Warning We Ignore at Our Peril” Biloxi Sun Herald,

July 30,

2003). In truth, Americans don’t utilize these progressive era options

enough (Two governors have been recalled in the last 100 hundred years.)

There’s too much stability in our system. Inept and corrupt politicians

rarely are held accountable and have little to worry about. They know

once they’ve won election they are protected from the wrath of the

people no matter how they behave until the next election.

Apparently California is setting a bad example of what can happen when

democracy breaks out. The untutored rabble actually get to directly

decide on state laws that effect them and vote out politicians and laws

when they choose to. Imagine the horror. Candidates being taken

seriously by voters who haven’t been given the corporate media seal of

approval.

People getting on to ballots who aren’t rich or haven’t gone to the

right schools. And how will we ever choose from all those

candidates...It’ s all so confusing.

Sure. California’s electoral system is far from perfect. I’ve been

against many ballot measures that have passed in the golden state- the

affirmative action ban 209, Proposition 13 (the law that capped property

taxes), and the anti immigrant initiative 187, just to name a few. More

democracy doesn’t necessarily mean more progressive policies. And it

certainly isn’t the most efficient or tidy of political set-ups. In the

words of Winston Churchill, democracy’s the worst form of government,

except for all the rest.

Instead of arguing for specific reforms to popular democratic systems

like having individual and corporate contribution limits for ballot

measures, we get imperious sermons from, of all Americans, editorial

writers like those from the Orlando Sentinel about how “recall votes”

are “bad for democracy.” (Mark Silva. ‘“California Circus is Cue for

Florida” Orlando Sentinel, August 17 2003) Wrong. Recalls happen to be

the essence of democracy. Its not only good for voters to remind their

officials of who’s in charge, it is necessary in order to keep the

arrogance of power in check.

The Authority State and personal freedom in Market Society

For sometime now the conservative establishment has been telling the

American people they’re against “big government.” But our on going

culture war has drawn the bigots and law and order fascists out of their

churches, think tanks and government offices into the public arena. Many

of them, once there, openly advocate for big government round ups and

domestic wars. Their hypocrisy reveals itself in the demand for more

cops, more prisons and more state control over our personal lives while

claiming to be advocates for smaller government.

Their on going campaign against civil liberties, privacy and human

rights in the name of the war on terrorism and the drug war are not mere

historical accidents in our political march towards greater freedom.

These campaigns of repression are the expressions of a cohesive

political tradition that looks to the state to step in when the exercise

of personal freedom begins to interfere with the freedom of property

owners to sell, consume and invest.

Modern conservatives generally trace their political lineage from two

sources. Edmund Burke, the 18 th century British parliamentarian is

cited by social traditionalists as the wellspring of their views on

civil society. Market materialists erroneously point to the Scottish

moral philosopher Adam Smith as the patriarch of their faith. The latter

have enthusiastically embraced the corporatization of the of the market

place, and with it, the centralization of social power, ownership and

economic decision making to the exchange houses and banks of a few major

international cities. While Smith was against state interventionist

polices in the market he also recognized that the state wasn’t the only

threat to the system of free exchange.

David Korten explained in his book When Corporations Rule the World

“Adam Smith’s ideal was a market composed of small buyers and sellers...

Smith saw corporations, as much as governments, as instruments for

suppressing the competitive forces of the market.” David Korten When

Corporations Rule the World (p.55) In his classic The Wealth of Nations

Smith points out the monopolistic purpose of corporations in the market.

“It is to prevent this reduction of price, and consequently of wages and

profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly

occasion it that all corporations and the greater part of corporation

laws have been established.” (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations New York

Mod. Library 1937 P. 123)

Because corporations have assumed such a dominate role in the

marketplace since the time of Adam Smith, the conservative complicity in

their growing hegemony puts them outside of Smith’s liberal market

decentralism.

In reality Thomas Hobbes is closer ancestor of today’s market

materialists than Adam Smith. Hobbes understood pre-civil society as a

state of nature of “all against all.” Individuals handed over their

absolute freedom in the state of nature to the sovereign in return for

security against violent death and protection of property. The social

contract is born of fear and the authority state is the only institution

that can secure the individual and his property in society. The

forfeiture of freedom for security is at the base of what the late

University of Toronto professor C.B. Macpherson called “possessive

market society.”

In his book The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism he wrote

“There is in Hobbes’s model no measure of merit other than the actual

market assessment of a man’s merit.” For Hobbes “the modal of the

self-moving, appetitive, possessive individual [was] a sufficient source

of political obligation” for humans. “Possessive market society also

implies that where labor has become a market commodity, market relations

so shape all social relations that it may properly be called a market

society, not merely a market economy.”(ibid.P.48) This market society is

not Adam Smith’s society of free, rational, selfinterested, industrious

equals engaged in exchange for mutual benefit. It’s the Hobbesian world

of fearful, avaricious, irrational, egoists all in competition with one

another. This society mirrors the market materialism of the compulsive,

hyper-ambitious, amoral yuppie in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.

The internal dynamic of market society pre-supposes the Hobbesian model

of humans in a “perpetuall and restlesse desire of power after power.”

This dark view of human nature as almost exclusively driven by the

irrational, negative, passions is characteristic of both strains of

modern conservatism. For Hobbes “the laws of nature... without the

terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our

natural passions.” A century later Edmund Burke, in rejection of the

French Revolution and its ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity,

agreed

“Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be

subjected, but that even in the mass body as well as in the individual,

the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will

controlled and their passions brought into subjection. This can only

done by a power outside of themselves.” (p. 151 Reflections on the

Revolution). ”

The running theme is clear. The two main progenitors of the modern

conservative establishment both share the same distrust of the

“subjects.” If we the people are left alone to pursue our own personal

freedom we’ll be carried away by our passions. Therefore we need what

Hobbes called a “Leviathan” or monster state to keep us in line.

As the exponential economic growth of repressive East Asian countries

like Singapore, and China demonstrates, the authority state is the

optimal governing regime in a market society. The state need not concern

itself with the poor and disadvantaged as it must in a welfare state.

Its energies and resources are almost exclusively focused on monitoring,

interrogating, searching, seizing, fining, prosecuting, imprisoning,

bankrupting and killing its subjects and enemies. Not only has the U.S.

government cut back on public assistance in the name ‘welfare reform’ it

has also stepped up its attack on the civil rights and liberties of the

people since 9/11. With the Patriot Act, the Airline Security Act,

military orders that allow military tribunals to hold and try citizens

and non-citizens based on national origin and ethnicity in detention

camps and a new department that institutionalizes Co-Intel-Pro, the U.S.

has entered a dangerous phase of its history that resembles an empire

abroad and a police state at home. Of course liberals have done next to

nothing to stop this and in many cases have lent their support. The hand

full of liberals who have spoken up, Barbara Lee, and Cynthia McKinney

to name two, have been vilified and targeted for electoral defeat.

McKinney lost her congressional electoral bid in a 2002Georgia

Congressional primary.

At every level the conservative establishment has been successful at

using fear as a tool to further their agenda. They have been able to

convince many that the biggest threat to their freedom comes from each

other rather than from the state’s inexorable appetite for “power after

power” over our personal lives. The challenge is to demonstrate how

seemingly little things like piss tests and traffic light cameras are

manifestations not of a benevolent state concerned for our well being,

but of the growing authority state driven by a fundamentally pessimistic

view of the capacity of human beings to make our own life choices.

Sometimes Solidarity is Hard to Do

Sometimes solidarity is hard. Case and point- the California

Correctional Peace Officers Association, and the demand by the state

legislature to rescind the five- year 37% pay increase that the union

bargained for (and the legislature passed) under the Davis

administration. (Don Morain. “Guards Union Spreads its Wealth “ Los

Angeles Times, May 20, 2004) A lot of ugly things can and have been said

about the CCPOA. They’re a union who’s growth depends on the expansion

of prisons and other “correctional” infrastructures of repression. Their

unofficial motto “build them and they will come” reflects a callous

indifference to the social effects of paying off state politicians to

invest more and more public resources in caging Californians at the

expense of education, health care, jobs, and other investments. We know

who “they” are. They are poor black and brown people with limited

education, and hope. Once in the system, these folks often end up being

brutalized by guards that have histories of abuse but are shielded from

accountability by their union. There are all sorts of reasons for labor

advocates to walk away from the workers CCPOA represent.

We shouldn’t. Allowing the State to unilaterally void a labor contract

bargained for in good faith would set a horrible precedent. Today the

Legislature decides that it made a mistake by approving the ridiculously

high 37% pay raise a year ago. Which set of workers are next? State

health care workers? Cal-works case workers? If we don’t stand against

the state taking back this contract what kind of credibility will we

have when they really come after workers that share our progressive

vision?

A tip off to the larger implications that this contract revocation could

have on all of labor is apparent in the way that some state legislators

have talked about the role back. Some of the 17 lawmakers in Sacramento

who signed on to the push to force the CCPOA back to the table to

renegotiate often have objected to the union due to its power. This

sentiment should give pro- union folks pause. Isn’t the point of

unionism to takeover the workplace? In order to make the workplace

democratic we need to get rid of the bosses and professional

administrators and turn the decisions that were once made by them over

to the workers. We can certainly question how much internal democracy

the CCPOA has pushed for in the workplace. But the fact that they’re

workers can’t be ignored by Sacramento is a good thing. As State Senator

Jackie Speier said “I don’t fault them [the Union] I fault the

administration that negotiated the contract for doing a lousy job.” (Don

Thompson. “Prison Guards’ Union Faces Sea Change in Lawmaker Support “

Associated Press State & Local Wire May 24, 2004) .

In fact, labor has already begun to slip down the slippery

Schwarzenegger slop. His administration has been clear about its larger

goal. He’s seeking 465 million in union give backs, 300 million of which

he wants to come from the CCPOA. This could be the beginning shot of an

across the board assault on public sector unions in California- a plan

that the corporateright has been busy pushing since the late IQ’s. Of

course, all of this is suppose to be in the name of “shared sacrifice”

to pull the state out of insolvency. But the Chronicle released an

article that revealed that Schwarzenegger’s executive staff is actually

more expensive than his predecessors. If cut backs are good enough for

state workers laboring in prisons and hospitals why aren’t they good

enough for his Republican advisors, speech writers, and spin mangers?

Instead of forcing state workers to give up they’re hard won piece of

the pie why don’t we expand the pie by making wealthy Californians pay

their fair share in corporate, and state income taxes. Perhaps we could

also “take back” Proposition 13 instead of forcing workers to give back

raises.

The Politics of Brutality

There’s a good reason for preserving the separation between the

administration of justice and the pressures and promises that

characterize popular elections. Officials in the justice system need to

be about protecting rights not popularity contests or political

posturing and paybacks. When justice officials become politicians you

get outrages like Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s decision to not file

criminal charges against the California Youth Authority guards caught on

video tape beating and kicking two wards in April 2002.

Locker’s main rational for declining to press charges against the three

guards was that their was no abuse of discretion on the part of the San

Joaquin County prosecutors who reviewed the case and decided not to file

criminal charges against the guards. (“AG’S Decision not to Prosecute in

CYA Beating is a Bad Move” (editorial) Modesto Bee May 3, 2004) The

problem with this excuse is that the CYA is a State of California

Institution- its not run by the county of San Joaquin. If we can’t count

on the state attorney general to hold state corrections officers who get

their pay checks from the State of California accountable for criminal

assault we need to get a new attorney general.

We will get our wish soon enough. Bill Locker has been planning to run

for governor since the beginning of Gray Davis’s second term. Cruz

Bustamante’s ill fated run in the recall blocked Locker in late 2003

(the reason why Locker made a point of announcing that he voted for

Arnold to the media after the election) but all indications point to a

Locker run in 2006.

In this political context his choice not to prosecute these guards makes

more sense. Looking the other way when CO’s in San Joaquin rough up

wards might help him pick up votes in the center-right central valley- a

place any Democrat who aspires to state wide office must win. If a jury

would be unlikely to convict (another reason San Joaquin County

prosecutors and Locker declined to press charges against the CYA guards)

there’s a good chance that these are the kind of good law and order

folks that helped Davis get elected twice. Lockyer wants to keep these

voters inside the Democrat fold when he runs in 2006 .

Of course this was a fight Lockyer wanted no parts of. His plan was to

ignore the beatings and the San Joaquin prosecutor’s office failure to

do their job until the controversy died down. It was State Senator

Gloria Romero that forced his hand by releasing the beating video to

news outlets and showing it to Senate colleagues after Lockyer warned

her not to. In the end Locker may have just decided that settling

political scores was more important than pressing charges against

criminals.

Currently Bay Area criminal justice reform groups like Books not Bars

and Lets Get Free are confronting Bill Lockyer on the issue of CYA

brutality and are demanding that the state just scrap the CYA all

together and begin studying the way in which other states like Missouri

(which has lower recidivism and less brutality complains) are operating

their juvenile justice systems. With fresh video accounts of more

brutality at a CYA prison in Stockton against a ward involving the use

of attack dogs, and another unexplained death in September 2004, lets

hope the people in Sacramento are listening to them.

Senator’s Racist Death Penalty Standard

The controversy surrounding Kamala Harris’s decision not to pursue the

death penalty in the shooting death of Officer Isaac Espinosa is an

important reminder of the second-class status of blacks in San

Francisco. Once again death penalty supporters have demonstrated their

contempt for black life by elevating the killing of a cop above the

scores of blacks who’ve lost their lives due to gun violence. As long as

niggers are killing niggers a new crime task force will do. But let a

black person kill a non- Black cop and its time to hold press

conferences, speechify at funerals, plug in the killing chair.

The death penalty has always disproportionately been applied to poor

black and brown people in the U.S. Blacks and Latinos make up over half

of all inmates on death row today although we only account for a quarter

of the U.S. population. The human rights group Campaign to end the Death

Penalty states that “over 90 percent of defendants charged with capital

crimes are indigent and cannot afford to hire an experienced criminal

defense attorney to represent them. They are forced to use

inexperienced, underpaid court-appointed attorneys.” (Death Penalty

Information Center

www.deathpenaltyinfo.org

. php?scid=5&did=184 , ) Spring 2004)

If general support for the death penalty based on who gets killed isn’t

a reliable enough indicator of deep seeded class subjugation and racism,

a look at the way juries respond to the victim’s race is even more

revealing. According to the United States General Accounting Office, “In

82% of the studies [reviewed], the race of the victim was found to

influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or

receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found

more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks.”

(United States General Accounting Office, Death Penalty Sentencing,

February 1990)

It might be easy to dismiss Diane Feinstein’s (aka Lady Die) pro-death

penalty out burst at Officer Espinosa’s funeral or Barbara Boxer’s

gratuitous me tooism as crass political posturing (Boxer’s in a November

2004 Senate race against Republican Bill. Jones) But it’s more than

that. Our two U.S. Senator’s think that Chris Johnson’s killer doesn’t

deserve the same punishment as the alleged killer of Officer Espinosa

because one of the victims is Black and the other isn’t and happens to

be a cop. (Chris Johnson was a 26 year old Black resident of the Western

Addition who was shot in July 2004,) The answer isn’t to put to death

more murderers of blacks, or to put to death more rich, white men. The

answer is to end the death penalty (like the vast majority of the rest

of the world). Before that happens a consolation prize would be for

California political leaders to start showing some consistency with

regard for their support for capital punishment. A cops life is not

worth more than anyone else’s life. They consensual do a dangerous job

(made all the more so by the way cops act in certain neighborhoods) and

get paid very well for it. But until Lady Die and Senator Boxer hold a

press conference announcing more federal dollars for things that reduce

crime like living wage jobs, youth programs and treatment on demand they

should leave local law criminal justice administration to the locally

elected criminal justice administrators.

Nothing New About NEO

The Oakland City Council’s passage of the Nuisance Eviction Ordinance

(NEO) in April of 2004 was just the latest offensive in its five year

assault on civil liberties. The arguments that were used to pass Beat

Feat (the 1997 law that allowed cops to seize cars based on alleged

suspicious drug or prostitution related activity) and the 2003 Anti-

Loitering law are the same. The police need more tools in order to crack

down on drug related violence. The people who live in high crime

neighborhoods want more aggressive policing and don’t care about civil

rights. And a perennial favorite of municipal fascists the world over-

we know who the bad guys are. If you’re not one of them you have nothing

to worry about. We should all feel better.

This time the Oakland Council decided that renters in the city who are

determined by the City Attorney’s office (not the courts) of being

involved in drug or gang activity within ‘close’ proximity of their

rental unit must be evicted by their landlords. If these private

landlords refuse the city order the landlord can be fined and held

liable for all eviction related costs incurred by the City of Oakland.

Governments are always eager to nullify civil liberties when faced with

rising violent crime rates. But in Oakland what often gets forgotten in

the rush to embrace repression for security is the fact that repression

hasn’t worked. In 1998, a year after Beat Feat was introduced there were

81 homicides. After five years of enforcement the number of murder

victims in Oakland In 2003 was 114. (Oakland Police Department Website

www.oaklandpolice.com

/ ) It’s too soon to tell what effect anti-loitering law enforcement

will have on the murder rate in Oakland but in The City of Tampa,

Florida the Council enacted an anti-loitering ordinance in 1989 as a

response to a growing problem with open air drug markets. During the

three years it was in existence the crime rate increased. Giving the

cops more power to ignore civil and human rights doesn’t always make us

safer.

Now NEO can be added to the list of laws that diminish our civil rights

without necessarily making us safer. No conviction or even arrest is

needed for the City Attorney’s office to order a landlord to evict. The

NEO complaint process can be initiated by disgruntled neighbors,

anonymous snitches, or the police department. Once a tenant has been

given an eviction notice they have a right to request a meeting with a

city attorney to challenge the order. If the Attorney’s Office is not

too busy writing briefs defending the City from police misconduct suits,

the tenant might be invited to come in and prove that their not a drug

dealer or a gang member. Its hard to imagine too many people taking part

in the charade. They will go quietly, stay with family, friends or on

the street. They won’t just disappear from Oakland despite the wishes of

Jerry Brown’s land developer friends. They will remain and some will be

homeless, unemployed, and desperate. As West Oakland Council member

Nancy Nadel put it “It [NEO] creates a class of outcasts with no way for

society to integrate them.” (Bruce Gerstman. “Council ordinance aims to

evict problem tenants” Contra Costa Times March 19, 2004) This is not a

recipe for reducing violent crime.

The recipe for reducing violent crime is the same as its always been.

Educational opportunities that encourage young people to pursue their

talents and develop their interests.

Good jobs that pay a living wage. After school programs, drug treatment

for those who choose it and equal access to public assistance. The

recipe doesn’t include yet another initiative in November 2004 to pay

for an increase in the number of Oakland cops. Oakland voters have twice

rejected similar “we need more police” solutions to the problem of

violent crime. We’ve sent a clear message that more police repression

and fascist laws are not the direction we wish to go in. The passage of

NEO is an indication that the Oakland Council is not listening.

Oakland Peace and Justice Summit a Huge Success

After months of planning, meeting, and getting the word out. All of Us

or None, an ex-prisoner’s rights Bay Area organization, had their first

of three “Peace and Justice Summits” in Oakland on July 31^(st). 2004.

It couldn’t have come at a better time. Today in California probation

departments and state prisons release over 160,000 people from probation

and 125,000 from state prisons each year. Once released many in this

population find it next to impossible to secure housing, find a job, get

drug treatment, or access public assistance. For folks with felony

records legal discrimination is a wide- spread, day to day reality that

they face in their attempts to re-enter their communities.

Over 400 people from all over the Bay came to the First Unitarian Church

to hear personal testimony from formerly incarcerated people and their

families about one-strike evictions from public housing, the lifetime

welfare and foodstamp ban that drug felons face in California,

fast-track adoptions and barriers to family reunification,

discrimination in public and private employment, deportations of

immigrants and how deportations tear families apart, and the impact of

youth incarceration and felony convictions.

The speakers addressed themselves to an “Action Panel” of community

leaders that included Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, a main

co-sponsor of the event, Nancy Nadel, a member of the Oakland City

Council, and Berkeley School Board member Terry Doran, among others.

Emani Davis, the daughter of an incarcerated parent and activist for

prisoner’s rights explained “Visiting our parents who are incarcerated

is not a privilege but a right.” Elder Freeman, a Black Panther, and ex-

prisoner talked about the connection between incarceration,

homelessness, and the failure of the re-entry system in California. “I

was released from San Quentin in 1979 and got $200 dollars gate money.

Now in 2004, they are still releasing you with 200...When folks come out

with no family or friends or support they end up in the streets, they

end up homeless.” Each testimony was an impassioned, first hand account

of the ways in which discrimination and lack of resources had put up

road- blocks to successful community reentry .

The organizers of the summit brought five demands to the Action

Panel. 1) End discrimination against people with criminal records. 2)

Have California opt out of the Federal lifetime welfare and food-stamp

ban against people with felony convictions. 3) Implement the Bill of

Rights for Children of Incarcerated Parents. 4) Ban the box on public

employment applications that ask about prior felony convictions. 5)

Increase funding for support services for people coming out of prison.

The Data Center, All of Us or None and the East Bay Community Law Center

in Berkeley produced a demand research briefing packet for the event

that provided supporting data and analysis for the demands.

The event ended with inspired spoken word performances from Colored Ink,

the Black Dot Collective and other community members. The Action Panel

agreed to work with All of Us or None. Some officials agreed to put the

list of demands on their respective legislative agendas, and hold

hearings in Sacramento on re-entry issues that were state- wide. Some on

the panel endorsed the idea of taking a portion of the money that’s

confiscated in drug busts and using it to fund re-entry programs. The

next step- hold them accountable.

9/ 11 and Submission to the Will of America

In a country where the masses of people are used to the imperial

privilege of not knowing or caring about the death and destruction that

is being done in their name around the world, it’s not surprising that

9/11 caught Americans by surprise. Any nation of people would have been

shocked and horrified by the site of bodies jumping to their death from

high rise buildings. But after the initial jolt of 9/11 many walked

around in a “why do they hate us” state of bewilderment for months. It

was the pathetic pretense of innocence rooted in willful ignorance of

the bloody trail of American imperialism that made this question so

contemptible to so many around the world and here at home.

But it didn’t take long for the wide-eyed puzzlement over the attacks to

turn into calls for revenge. Americans weren’t that concerned about the

details and the Bush administration used this to its advantage to

execute an illegal war against a country who had nothing to do with

9/11. It didn’t matter whether America went after Osama Bin Laden or

Saddam Hussein, whether we went to war with Iraq or Al-Qeada or the

Taliban or some other “new Hitler” in the Middle East. And once we

started bombing it didn’t much matter whether the pretext was 9/11 or

weapons of mass destruction or freedom and democracy. Americans just

wanted to see Arab and South Asia looking Muslims in submission. This is

what they got.

In what may go down as one of the most indiscriminate round ups in

American history, thousands of Middle Eastern nationals and some Arab

American citizens were put into concentration camps at Guantanamo Bay,

Cuba after 9/11 where they were stripped of all their rights under

international law and U.S. law. After the war with Iraq began more

concentration camps went up in that country including the notorious Abu

Ghraib center. Many of these detainees were subjected to run of the mill

brutality during war type stuff- indiscriminate killings, beatings,

sensory deprivation, pain holds etc. But this was incidental. The kind

of stuff a young soldier from Nebraska might do just because he can.

What wasn’t incidental was the sexual humiliation and the

sadomasochistic homoerotic torture, rape and assault. This isn’t the

kind of stuff a young soldier from Nebraska would do just because he

could. It’s the kind of stuff that people who are familiar with the

social and sexual psychology of a culture, like say, psychological

operations folks in the Pentagon, would cook up. The wide spread nature

of this mode of treatment and the ubiquitous picture taking by the

troops involved suggests that there was a plan to use this type of

domination to demoralize the detainees- spiritually. When someone is not

afraid of death their spirit is the only thing that is left to conquer.

Well, the Military needed a fall guy. They chose Army Reserve Spc.

Charles Graner who was being described as the “ring leader” of the Abu

Ghraib sex/ torture scandal by the establishment media. He got 10 years.

Pfc. Lynndie England, who had said that she “was instructed by persons

in higher rank” and that she was told that the pictures she took with

the detainees where being used “for psyop reasons” will also take a

fall. (Brian Maass, interview, Denver CBS station KCNCTV May 13, 2004)

As the global nightmare of illegal Bush wars continue to unfold

Americans will no doubt get new opportunities to witness the humiliation

of more brown people from the Middle

East. The Bush Administration knows a lot about marketing wars. Not only

do they know when to start them (never offer up a new war during the

summer months says presidential advisor Andrew Card) they also know that

if you want the people to buy a war you’ve got to give them what they

want to get out of it. Submission to America.

Weak Kneed Progressives Buckle Under Democrat Pressure

Ralph Nader has managed to call the bluff of progressives who’ve made a

habit of walking around moaning about corporate control of the two party

system in the U.S., and it’s narrow ideological scope. His sin? He made

the Green Party relevant in the 2000 elections. All of a sudden the

party and its coalition of social justice and environmental

organizations were being covered by the national media and examined by

hundreds of thousands of voters who had never heard of the Greens

before. For a moment they weren’t just a bunch of fringe

environmentalists and ageing hippies. They mattered.

For this Nader has been vilified, mocked and ostracized. The saddest

part of this is that progressives are leading the charge.

The group United Progressives for Victory is an organization that was

formed for the explicit purpose of discrediting Ralph Nader and his 2004

presidential campaign. The group includes Toby Moffett, a former

congressman from Connecticut and Roy Neel, a former Gore aide. The goal

of the group is to keep Nader off the ballot in as many states as

possible and to target Nader voters with direct mail in key states that

assail him for his “big ego” and reiterate the lesser of two evils

argument of the liberal establishment. According to Moffett they seek

“to drain him of resources and force him to spend his time and money.”

This and similar efforts to “stop Nader” by folks like filmmaker Michael

Moore, comedian Bill Maher, and other progressives who supported Nader

in 2000 reveals a sad lack of conviction and spine. It appears that what

many U.S. progressives wanted wasn’t a viable third party but just some

attention. After they got some they decided protesting, writing letters

to the editor that never get published, and going to seven person

meetings to plan more seven person meetings- in short being irrelevant-

is preferable to being hated by the liberal establishment. Never mind

that liberals and progressives have real differences on real issues

(corporate globalization, electoral reform, the war on drugs, same sex

marriage, single payer universal health care etc..) More specifically,

never mind that John Kerry has said he wants to send more troops to Iraq

(he has also said he wants to bring troops home), double the CIA budget,

cut corporate taxes, continue the ban against same sex marriage, and

appoint anti- abortion judges to lower level federal benches. The

important thing for progressives after 2000 was to apologize to the

Democrats for not being team players and promise to be more responsible

next time around.

The Green Party decision not to run a real campaign in 2004 is the fruit

of this contrition. At their party convention in Summer 2004 they

declined to endorse Ralph Nader’s campaign and instead nominated a no

name California lawyer, David Cobb, to carry the Green mantle. He vowed

to run a “safe states” strategy to make sure the Greens didn’t take

votes away from Democrats. For this concession the Green Party got

nothing from the Democrats but a pat on the head. The Kerry Campaign

didn’t even have to meet with them. They’re intimidation of Green party

leaders and activists worked.

The truth about electoral politics is that it’s a zero sum game

(particularly with single member districts- something neither the

Democrats or the Republicans are going to change)

For the Greens to win. Democrats must lose. And the more the Greens

cause the Democrats to lose the more serious the Democrats have to take

the Greens. When the Democrats start calling Greens about making

compromises and adopting planks that’s when the Greens can reasonably

think about safe states strategies and similar concessions. If a

political party is not building power by forcing its rival parties to

the table it’s wasting the time and money of its members. Better that

the cowardly Greens go back to the Democrats and map out a 30 year plan

for a progressive take over (the way conservatives did in the Republican

Party) then to continue the third party farce in the hopes that someday

its very existence will compel Democrats to legislate into existence all

those reforms that will make third parties viable in the U.S. Message to

weakkneed progressives: don’t hold your breath.