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Title: David Porter Remembered
Author: Fifth Estate Collective
Date: 2019, Spring
Language: en
Topics: anarchists, United States of America, obituary, appreciation
Source: FIFTH ESTATE #403, Spring, 2019, accessed February 26, 2022 at https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/403-spring-2019/david-porter-remembered/

Fifth Estate Collective

David Porter Remembered

Longtime Fifth Estate friend and contributor, David Porter, died

December 29; he was 79. A dedicated teacher, anarchist researcher, and

grassroots community activist, Porter applied his anti-authoritarian

principles to many projects.

Growing up near Chicago, Porter graduated from Oberlin College near

Cleveland in 1961. He then attended the Institute of Political Studies

in Paris. His doctoral studies in politics at Columbia University

included a year in Algeria learning directly about the workers’

self-management movement there.

Porter went on to teach at several colleges and universities in the U.S.

and Canada. His last position was in SUNY-Empire State in Saratoga

Springs, where he taught for 25 years.

Perhaps his best known books on anarchist topics are his 1983 anthology

Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution and his 2011

study, Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria.

Vision on Fire enriches our understanding both of Emma Goldman’s

libertarian life and ideas and the Spanish events she interpreted as a

dedicated anarchist eyewitness. The book, which took eight years of

research and writing to complete, has been reprinted and translated into

several languages.

Eyes to the South has also been of value to many anarchists and other

anti-authoritarians.

In her review for Fifth Estate #389 (Summer, 2013) Kathy E. Ferguson

indicates, “The great strength of the book is that it lets French

anarchists speak for themselves…A recurrent theme in Porter’s account is

the relation of anarchism to anti-colonial nationalist struggles, to

states, and to other progressive actors. Anarchists oppose the

oppressive racist practices at the heart of colonialism, but how is that

opposition best expressed? Should anarchists support struggles for

national liberation because they strike blows against the empire, or

oppose them because they usually end up creating new states?”

Ferguson noted that Porter concretely described the circumstances within

which anarchists of various tendencies addressed these complex

questions.

A longtime resident of New Paltz, New York, Porter was active in

challenging threats to the local environment and economy posed by

corporate development. Among other activities, in the 1990s he

co-founded a grass-roots group that contributed to defeating plans for

inflicting a Walmart and shopping mall on his hometown and region. He

considered participation in the campaign one of his life’s achievements.

Coming out of the years-long struggle, Porter, along with Chester L.

Mirsky, wrote Megamall on the Hudson: Walmart, Planning and Grassroots

Resistance, published in 2003. It has much to say to community and

environmental activists facing new struggles.

David’s contributions to the FE include in-depth articles about

anarchists in the Spanish Revolution and its aftermath and discussions

of the life of Emma Goldman, as well as articles about grassroots

activities in Algeria, Egypt, and the Arab Spring.

Ten of his articles are currently online on our website (and more to

come) for viewing and download in the growing archive, fifthestate.org.

Type David Porter into a search box. Those interested in libertarian

analyses of the Spanish Revolution, women’s issues, autonomist

organizing, among other subjects, will find them of interest.

In a 2011 article relating to the Arab Spring, David describes the

Egyptian situation with words that also describe his general outlook as

a libertarian rebel:

“While the human face of the oppressive regime—as Mubarak in Egypt, Ben

Ali in Tunisia and Bouteflika in Algiers—is despised with good reason on

its own, such targets also symbolize a wide and deep range of grievances

that extend from national-level organs of the state and military down to

local-level daily humiliations of officials’ contempt, bosses’

exploitation, mistreatment of students and women’s exclusion from the

workplace and political life. These are the larger realities of the

existing ‘regime’ of oppression. And this much larger dimension of

grassroots revolution poses a whole other question of leadership.’ When

certain ‘spokespeople’ for the movement or independent ‘power brokers’

become fixed in place—encouraged by negotiators for the old regime or by

the media or by their own self-promotion—it is doubtful that those deep

levels of revolutionary aspirations will be heard. This will be a key

dynamic to watch in Egypt in the weeks to come.”

(See “On ‘Leaderless Revolutions’ and the Fall of Mubarak,” available at

theanarchistlibrary.org)

David Porter will be greatly missed. His engagement was energetic,

creative and long, and he left an example to be appreciated by free

thinking and acting rebels.