I briefly called in to my friends' show yesterday, discussing the revival of Occupy Wall Street and the police state which forms after we scare the fuck out of the elite class.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/tash/2012/03/19/the-authority-smashing-hour
Take a listen. Support for the show is always needed.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sleepwalking (Left Forum 2012 and the Return of Occupy Wall Street)
On Friday, I finished up my spring break by heading down to New York City from Boston. The Left Forum was taking place, and even though I'm not a fan of the over-intellectualism which tends to come out of conferences such as this, I was willing to go. I knew that many of my comrades would be there as well.
Friday night was a serious hassle. I met up with my friend Scott and his friend, Michael Pellagatti (who is a well-known participant in Occupy Wall Street and has been featured on many, many media outlets focusing on the movement) in Manhattan. As we strolled through the city, we noticed that the infamous Wall Street Bull statue was still barricaded up and being guarded by pigs. Yes, still barricaded after six months! What the hell? The same was true of the actual Wall Street, which had two-thirds of its width blocked off with police barricades.
We ended up taking a break at an open space in the area. Scott and Pellagatti told me this was where many occupiers would gather to hold general assemblies after having been kicked of Zuccotti Park. The space itself is privately owned (there were signs all over the walls which stated that protest signs and other objects are prohibited inside, very similar to the stupid rules the state enforces on so-called "public" property) but open to anyone who wants to use it. As we sat down to chat, Scott told me of the first time in his life when he experienced anarchism in action: during the 2003 blackout in NYC, everyone in his neighborhood on Staten Island spontaneously got together to help each other out. They participated in what he described on his blog as direct democracy, and not one person was a designated "leader".
"See, these academics think workers can self-manage, but they don't believe workers can self-manage," he said.
Scott has little faith in intellectuals who think the way to go is to preach all sorts of radical theory, and then hope their words are drilled deep enough in people's heads that they'll take up those methods of activism. To him (as well as I), people already have a sense of what needs to be done and will go about doing it if the time comes. To use an example, something he noticed at OWS were certain state socialist groups and how they were trying to centralize Occupy and herd its participants into one big vanguard party, as if the Occupy Movement would fail to achieve anything if they weren't. I rolled my eyes. We both agreed, the whole point of OWS isn't necessarily to create change on the political level, but to bring people together to create change on the social level. It gives all of us a taste of anarchist principles like decentralism, direct democracy, federalism, mutual aid, and solidarity without any real "instructions". Certainly, there were anarchist comrades who set examples for others to follow early on, but there are no leaders and no academics spewing out the "right" ways to act or the "right" approach to take. Nearly everything at OWS (as well as the Occupations elsewhere) was spontaneous. I take it as evidence that everyone adheres to anarchism in their hearts; they've just never been able to realize it until they've practiced it.
After leaving the space, we continued to trek through Manhattan. The three of us walked over the Brooklyn Bridge. Pellagatti told us about his experiences at OWS and how he was arrested on the bridge the day when the activists tried crossing over. Smiling, he showed us the exact spot where the cops grabbed him. He followed by telling us all sorts of other crazy stories. It turns out he's been on all sorts of global media outlets featuring OWS. Pellagatti truly lives what he believes, and I greatly admire him for that. Right after hanging out on the bridge, the three of us walked over to Astor Place. We went into Starbucks where I met with my comrade Liberte. I told her, I plan on coming back to NYC for the general strike on May Day. There's no place I'd rather be on that day than here alongside thousands of others in the belly of the beast.
Our next stop was Staten Island. By now it was around midnight and all of us were pretty worn-out from all the walking and talking. For some reason, we weren't able to go back to Scott's parents' house to crash out for the night, so Scott drove us around the island for over five hours. He and I chatted for the vast majority of that time. Although I'm skeptical about his new-found egoism (as in, I'm really not sure what to make of the philosophy) it was refreshing to talk with someone like him. Finally, he dropped me and Pellagatti off at the ferry. Neither of us had any sleep. We drank coffee at the ferry stop but that didn't change the fact that we were heavily sleep-deprived.
Later that morning I walked over to Pace University for Left Forum. The event is known for being a platform for academic state socialists, although there were supposed to be many anarchists there as well. Unlike Liberty Forum, which takes place in a posh hotel and costs over $200 to attend, Left Forum is held at a university campus and costs very little to get inside. Hardly anyone there was heavily dressed up. About half the people I saw in attendance were young, usually college-aged. The talks and presentations being put on featured "big names" alongside local community activists. The first presentation I attended, on anarchism and the future of the Occupy Movement, was hosted by Cindy Milstein.
The talk focused on the Occupy Movement's roots in historical struggles and how the movement can be used as a means of bringing people together. My friend Dave (buddhagem on youtube) recorded the entire talk, so I'll post the video once he uploads it. About two-thirds of our time was spent on discussion from the audience. Even though there were a few people who were a bit contentious (for example, one person who kept talking about using OWS as a means of election reform and another who implied that anarchists didn't care about the anti-war movement), most everyone had very insightful and positive things to say. Many times, the discussion revolved around connecting everyone's struggle to a much bigger one. When it came time for me to speak, I spoke about OWS's social impact, and how we, as anti-authoritarians, should think about applying the kind of anarchistic model we use at the occupations to our workplaces, schools, and communities. As I was speaking, a woman in the audience from Occupy DC was showing with her fingers that she agreed with me. Perhaps I should take a trip down to DC and visit her sometime soon.
Things got a bit upsetting towards the end when a few activists and children from outside walked straight into our room banging pots and pans. They were trying to raise awareness about the lack of child care at Left Forum. One person from the audience became hopping mad and started yelling. In response, nearly everyone else in the room, including Cindy and the speakers, yelled back in an attempt to shut this guy up. He ended up leaving, thank god, but not without an awful scaffold. From there, the last ten minutes of our discussion became about the issue of child care and why it's so important for children to be involved in political activities. Cindy told us of one conference she was at where people in attendance ended up organizing a little circle for children and their parents, which ended up being the conference's most popular event in all irony.
The woman from Occupy DC remarked, "Without children there will be no revolution." I completely agree.
Once the talk was over, I headed downstairs. I was still horribly tired and thought I could find somewhere to get lunch and nap for an hour or two. As I waited for a downwards elevator, I overheard two men beside me having a conversation. They were talking about the fact that Loyola University in New Orleans is full of far-right libertarians and about organizing a panel on libertarian socialist economics at the school as a means of countering all of this. I butted in, telling them both that I happen to be from the one place on earth where propertarians exist outside the internet, and promised them that I'd definitely come to the talk if they're able to get it off the ground. Seeing Walter "Slavery Contracts" Block and his followers shit bricks would be quite enjoyable.
On my way to find a place to eat and sit down I passed a table full of free zines. Comrades who had set the table up were members of A New World In Our Hearts, a collective based in Brooklyn. I remember, they were very welcoming. I remarked about how refreshing it was to see other anarchists at an event like this, especially those who are much less academics obsessed with theory but rather strategists who are all about actions. They brought zines with a variety of topics. I picked out four which touched on capitalism and the state and two which touched on prisons. I told them of my friend Nick (the left-libertarian) who became interested in prison abolition after reading the writings of de Cleyre and Kropotkin on the topic, and who now talks about starting some kind of prison abolition movement in New Hampshire. The only problem is, most of the libertarians in NH don't seem to care, and, even though they are critical of the prison-industrial complex and would gladly engage in acts of civil disobedience to protest such a system, they would rather work to hand state prisons over to private companies than abolish them all together in favor of alternatives. Disappointing, yes, but let those people take their philosophies to their logical conclusions and they will see the light in no time at all.
I returned to their table after I finished lunch. I would have much rather stayed out there to help them out than to go back inside. They gave me some unfolded zines about dumpster diving and spotting infiltrators at rallies, and I eagerly helped them out. Whenever someone came up to us, which happened several times, we engaged with them. That is something quite common; whenever I talk with social anarchists, I find that I am always taken aback by their unconditional kindness and openness towards everyone. They live what they preach, in other words.
I was holding a flyer for different talks going on that day, and decided I wanted to see a few more of them. One featured Gar Alperovitz, whose book I had read over winter break. When I sat down in the room where the talk was taking place I literally thought I was going to pass out from lack of sleep. I abruptly left a few minutes before the talk began, planning to walk back to the ferry and go back to Staten Island.
However, as I was walking back down Broadway, I became caught up in the re-emergence of Occupy.
Everyone was back at Zuccotti doing what they had been doing before they were evicted months ago. The feeling was overwhelming. Everywhere, people were holding signs, banners, and flags. Others were passing out flyers for the general strike on May Day. It was the sixth-month anniversary of OWS, which had been the main reason for the gathering. Although, regardless as to what the gathering at Zuccotti was really about, everyone seemed to be assured that they were taking the park back and reviving the occupation.
I dove right into the crowd, although I didn't mingle with them. I found a place to sit down and rest for a little while. It wasn't too long before I heard all the other occupiers start shouting. Sure enough, the police had begun arrests. I don't exactly remember what happened next, but we all ran down to the corner of Cedar and Trinity where the police began detaining activists. The cops tried to push others away from the street, and arrested those who didn't move. For a second I thought I was going to be arrested as well, but I managed to get out of there.
By that time, nearly everyone from Zuccotti was watching the events unfold. We were all gathered at the very end of the park, watching and recording the pigs take protesters away to be locked up. We kept shouting, "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!" at the top of our lungs. Once those cops left, we retreated back to the park. I went back to the area where I had left my stuff (at OWS, no one really steals anyone else's personal possessions, so it's usually safe to leave your things unattended for a while) to try and nap again. Not too much longer, the occupiers flared up again as the police began arresting more people, this time on the other side of Zuccotti. By now, there existed a line of police extending all the way to Broadway. Yes, about forty cops on that side of the park to watch over peaceful protesters; even more of them on other sides. Absolutely nuts.
I stayed in my little area for a few hours until Pellagatti came back. He told me that Michael Moore and Cornel West were leading a march and were set to arrive back at Zuccotti fairly soon. Of course, the police presence was growing as the march came closer and closer. By that time, many people who had been at Left Forum that day had joined OWS. It felt more like a party than a political demonstration with everyone playing music and jumping around to celebrate. The movement had fully re-started. Although, as I told Pellagatti, I was so tired I was about to pass out at any second (we were set to stay overnight at his friend's place up in New Rochelle, although we had to wait for his friend to finish his activities). Luckily, one of the anarchist street medics noticed me and asked me if there was anything I needed. When I told him my situation, he brought over another medic, Shirley, who gave me some white flower to help me relax. It's always a good idea to have people such as this around all the time for those who need those kinds of services. I see it as more evidence that people can self-organize to help others in need.
The next morning I left NYC for Baltimore. For some reason, I acquired a pretty bad bruise on my leg during the time I spent in the city, so don't mind me limping around campus during this fine summer weather we're having.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Activist: "Kony 2012" Is Not What You Think
My comrades Paul and Derek ("Zeno") interviewed activist Michael Kirkpatrick about the recent controversy over the "Kony 2012" video on The Authority Smashing Hour radio show. Take a listen:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/tash/2012/03/12/the-authority-smashing-hour
Many of the things Kirkpatrick reveals are truly shocking, especially the fact that the US and US companies have been engaging in covert operations all over that region, and the notion that Kony may have been dead for years. I would advise others to share this link (not my blog post of course, but the direct link to their show). This information should be out there.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/tash/2012/03/12/the-authority-smashing-hour
Many of the things Kirkpatrick reveals are truly shocking, especially the fact that the US and US companies have been engaging in covert operations all over that region, and the notion that Kony may have been dead for years. I would advise others to share this link (not my blog post of course, but the direct link to their show). This information should be out there.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Swimming in the Belly of the Best (Liberty Forum 2012, AltExpo X)
I came back to New Hampshire for the weekend to participate in AltExpo. As well, my friends who are members of Alliance of the Libertarian Left were to set up a table at Liberty Forum (as they had been invited), and I was going to help them out. When I finally arrived in Boston Friday night, I was picked up by my friend Matt Cropp (from the Credit Union History blog) who had brought along my friend Nick and his girlfriend Lauren. Nick had already given his presentation in the morning and Matt was scheduled to do his as soon as we arrived back at TekArts in Milford.
Milford is a cute little town right on the edge of the Merrimack Valley where the suburb-of-Boston culture transitions into the "boonies" culture. TekArts is a hacker space hosted in an old mill building on the outskirts of town, co-run by Jack the agorist. It's been under threat of being shut down by the state recently. Soon after we arrived, Matt put on his presentation about credit unions and the cooperative economy. He showed us a lot of solid statistics which proved how credit unions function better than the big banks and have a much, much lower rate of failure. He heavily stressed the notion of an economy having social efficiency as well as what many economists call "economic efficiency". Unfortunately though, as he explained, a lot of credit unions and other cooperatives find themselves becoming less and less community-oriented as they're forced to compete with capitalist firms in a highly-monopolized market. He told us of how he's trying to work with certain credit unions in Vermont to bring them back to their roots. At the end of his talk I asked him how he thinks people's values would change if the market economy were to become entirely dominated with cooperative firms. He replied by telling me that he thinks social relations would greatly improve. For one thing, members of a cooperative become like family; you never intentionally screw over other members because you all feel as if you're in everything together.
The next day we headed over to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nashua to start tabling. Darian and Patrick from ALL had already had the table set up with all sorts of left-libertarian pamphlets and books, most notably Markets Not Capitalism. The first thing I noticed when arriving at this forum was, as Nick had warned me about, the presence of "suits". Nearly everyone was heavily dressed up in this very bourgie hotel. We must have looked pretty "scruffy" (for lack of a better term) in our sweaters and T-shirts. I was probably the only female in that hotel not in high heels or expensive jewelry. It should be noted that Liberty Forum costs a bit of money (over $200, thankfully neither Nick nor I paid a dime to get it) for full admission to presentations and a hotel room. I get the feeling that one of the goals of this event is to show off the more "professional" and top-down aspects of the Free State Project as a means of enticing intellectual-type right-libertarians (like the kinds of people who work for right-libertarian think tanks in DC or the people who are interested in being elected into the NH state legislature) to move to NH, hence the emphasis on libertarian politics, "big name" keynote speakers, and lots of propaganda which portrays NH as Hong Kong with trees.
Most of the other tables were from libertarian organizations with much more well-known reputations. Their messages were the same-old, same-old; "the government is bad", "the Federal Reserve is inflating the money supply so buy loads of gold and silver or else you'll be fucked", "vote Ron Paul", "privatize everything NOW", and of course "I LOVE NEW HAMPSHIRE! Move here or else the police state will eat you!". To be perfectly honest, if my ALL comrades weren't sitting beside me, I would have felt very much out-of-place at this event. Hell, our entire table looked a bit out-of-place knowing the environment and the audience. For most of the people in attendance at Liberty Forum, the definition of "market anarchist" is extremely (probably entirely) right-libertarian/propertarian centric (kind of ironic since mutualism is where market anarchism began, and, as we all know, Rothbard copied a lot of his philosophy from the old school American individualist anarchists, albeit having cut out all their libertarian socialist ideas). They've probably never heard the term "libertarian socialist" before, or still think of it as a contradiction.
It wasn't long before propertarians came up to our table. One person from our group was stuck in conversation with someone who made insulting remarks towards libertarian socialism: "Anarcho-socialists have zero understanding of basic economics...", that kind of thing. Not too long afterwards, we were approached by another
"I don't understand this," he said. I could feel the contention just waiting to come out. "What's up with all this 'class struggle', anti-bosses stuff? It sounds like marxism. Are you marxists?"
I thought to myself, no, words like "exploitation" and "struggle" are not just the words of marxism; they're the words of our current reality.
Darian, Nick, and I tried reasoning with this guy. We explained how, as anarchists, we are against economic authority like bosses and landlords for the same reason we're against the state. The propertarian, of course, tried to argue that bosses and landlords have every right to have power over others because those dominated by them have the ability to leave, which, apparently, can't be said of the state.
I told him, "Being able to leave your boss doesn't legitimize the boss's power. If we lived in a society where there were stateless territories people could escape to, would that legitimize the state?"
He used the same old arguments we're heard propertarians use to legitimize capitalism and delegitimize libertarian socialism. He asked us again to explain left-libertarianism to him in the same condescending manner he had when he first approached us. We handed him a copy of the introduction to Markets Not Capitalism (which we had been giving out for free), but he quickly put it back on the table. Nick explained that left-libertarian is an umbrella term. He pointed out that my views on private property are very much the mutualist and social anarchist notion of occupancy and use. He instantly became fired up. Once again, I told him that the reason for my views rests on anti-authoritarian principles, that private property and absentee landlordism create extremely authoritarian relationships and systems which I seek to abolish. Again, he used the whole, "it's not really authoritarian because you can leave," excuse, and again I told him that being able to leave does not legitimize anything. I decided to ask him how he would maintain his ownership of any land he didn't actively use if we lived in a stateless society. He made some remarks about "mob justice" and then openly admitted that he'd shoot squatters on-sight. Not surprising. He also admitted that he's a "minarchist" who doesn't support a stateless society for a few reasons.
I decided to take a different approach. "As an anarchist, I don't see why anyone would want to own more than they use," I said. "I know we live in a society where who we are as a person is based on what we own instead of what we do, and of course, we're always going to own stuff - possession is just a fact of life - but we should focus more on what we do and our relations with others instead of what we own. I know I wouldn't care about owning that much stuff if I knew I was valued for who I am as a person."
He didn't seem to understand me, and soon enough he left. I was expecting several people like him to show up and try to delegitimize us, though no one else did to my knowledge. Not that long afterwards Nick told me that he thinks that one person did come over to our table with the intention of starting shit. He then said to me, "You know, private property is too much work," and told me I handled that guy's ramblings well. Thank god it wasn't a repeat of Milly's where the whole thing disintegrated into a yelling contest. Nick also asked me if I'd like to participate in the left-libertarian discussion panel later on that day. I told him I'd feel way too uncomfortable, especially knowing that a good number of people in the audience would probably hold the same views as the person I had just confronted.
A few hours later us lefties briefly left the hotel to have dinner. We went over to this little pizza place called Olivia's. While there,
Jack, Nick, Darian, and others gave us the scoop on a lot of things. It turns out the left-libertarian presentation went pretty well with not much contention during the Q&A. Darian, Nick, and I joked about the guy we confronted to equated individualist anarchism to state-socialism. I told them I take it that the propertarians who bash on libertarian socialism do so because they feel "threatened" in a sense, and thus get all defensive as a result of it. Turns out the joke about libertarian capitalists becoming libertarian socialists after reading a few philosophy books and spending some cold harsh time in the real world is evidently true. From there, we went on about all the little things that piss us off about certain people who were at the Forum, which later evolved right back into discussing the usual right-libertarian absurdities like the idea of putting all this faith in the market to resolve social problems or this weird notion that bosses and wage laborers have an equal amount of power in the market. I was quite surprised about how much Darian and Patrick knew about labor struggles. Patrick brought up how there are entire companies dedicated to murdering union organizers in third world countries, and Darian remarked by saying how ironic it is that pro-capitalists talk about "union thugs" but never about capitalist bosses' own private armies of thugs (for example, the private police Rockefeller used to terrorize workers out of organizing). That's actually why I am extremely skeptical of certain libertarian groups which claim to be all over police accountability, as their motives seem to have a lot more to do with replacing state police with pinkertons than actually wanting to do away with the presence of armed assholes on the street. I told everyone at our restaurant table, "I have to ask, why is it that so many 'an'-caps are so hell bent on making a new society so similar to the one we have now?" They laughed. Something else which came up was the fact that a certain free stater who serves as a NH state representative was supposedly barred from Liberty Forum this year. What my comrades told me is, this guy has an extreme hatred for anarchists/left-libertarians, and even accused them of stealing items from some other free stater event because, apparently, "they don't believe in laws". Ugh. As if our group isn't given enough dirty looks as it is.
A few hours later, Nick and I went back to TekArts. Jack had a ride already, so the two of us ended up being driven back to Milford by a father and son who live near Keene. As we left the Crowne Plaza, Nick told me that he had been approached at the ALL table by Reason TV (I was somewhere else when that meeting took place) and was briefly interviewed. It wasn't long before the car conversation started getting a bit weird. The father, who was riding shotgun, was obviously drunk and flipping out. He was going on and on about how "amusing" it would be to watch entire communities succumb to collapse. Of course, he said that Keene would be one of the few towns to survive since there's so many libertarians and survivalists there. So in response, I started repeating some anarcho-primitivist stuff I've heard about civilization being a cage and mixed with some situationist ideas about how human beings have fucked themselves over by imprisoning themselves in authoritarian systems. He was fucking crazy, I'm not going to lie!
I was able to give my speech on solidarity vs. charity at TekArts just fine. I had told Nick beforehand that I'm a much better writer than speaker. Everyone told me I did fine though. We only had a handful of people in attendance: Nick, Jack, and my friend John who lives in Milford. The talk itself was only ten minutes or so, but the discussion the four of us had lasted over an hour. The video should be on the AltExpo website by now. During our talk afterwards (which was supposed to have been an ALL roundtable if more people had made it) we discussed all sorts of things we can do to build those social relations which may in turn be a prerequisite to more revolutionary activity. We talked more about SeaSol, The Really Really Free Market, and free medics at Occupy Wall Street. Jack brought up a particular free stater who had tried starting a charity in NH with other free staters. It turns out she now feels upset about how little the charity was able to provide for the Bhutanese refugees they tried to help, and now she wants to focus on finding jobs for them. I can't help but think though, her actions might have those refugees becoming the cheap labor source of some asshole, not doubt. At least she understands why charitable handouts are usually bull, let's hope she realizes the same about capitalism soon enough. Perhaps we should work with them to create some kind of coop (as in, an act of solidarity) so that they'll have both food and autonomy?
The next day we all went back to Crowne Plaza where we finished packing up the ALL table. I said my goodbyes to everyone. Thankfully, I was able to get a ride with one of Nick's friends, who lives in the Mid-Atlantic as well. He and his girlfriend dropped me off in New York City where I was able to get a bus back to Baltimore.
Milford is a cute little town right on the edge of the Merrimack Valley where the suburb-of-Boston culture transitions into the "boonies" culture. TekArts is a hacker space hosted in an old mill building on the outskirts of town, co-run by Jack the agorist. It's been under threat of being shut down by the state recently. Soon after we arrived, Matt put on his presentation about credit unions and the cooperative economy. He showed us a lot of solid statistics which proved how credit unions function better than the big banks and have a much, much lower rate of failure. He heavily stressed the notion of an economy having social efficiency as well as what many economists call "economic efficiency". Unfortunately though, as he explained, a lot of credit unions and other cooperatives find themselves becoming less and less community-oriented as they're forced to compete with capitalist firms in a highly-monopolized market. He told us of how he's trying to work with certain credit unions in Vermont to bring them back to their roots. At the end of his talk I asked him how he thinks people's values would change if the market economy were to become entirely dominated with cooperative firms. He replied by telling me that he thinks social relations would greatly improve. For one thing, members of a cooperative become like family; you never intentionally screw over other members because you all feel as if you're in everything together.
The next day we headed over to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nashua to start tabling. Darian and Patrick from ALL had already had the table set up with all sorts of left-libertarian pamphlets and books, most notably Markets Not Capitalism. The first thing I noticed when arriving at this forum was, as Nick had warned me about, the presence of "suits". Nearly everyone was heavily dressed up in this very bourgie hotel. We must have looked pretty "scruffy" (for lack of a better term) in our sweaters and T-shirts. I was probably the only female in that hotel not in high heels or expensive jewelry. It should be noted that Liberty Forum costs a bit of money (over $200, thankfully neither Nick nor I paid a dime to get it) for full admission to presentations and a hotel room. I get the feeling that one of the goals of this event is to show off the more "professional" and top-down aspects of the Free State Project as a means of enticing intellectual-type right-libertarians (like the kinds of people who work for right-libertarian think tanks in DC or the people who are interested in being elected into the NH state legislature) to move to NH, hence the emphasis on libertarian politics, "big name" keynote speakers, and lots of propaganda which portrays NH as Hong Kong with trees.Most of the other tables were from libertarian organizations with much more well-known reputations. Their messages were the same-old, same-old; "the government is bad", "the Federal Reserve is inflating the money supply so buy loads of gold and silver or else you'll be fucked", "vote Ron Paul", "privatize everything NOW", and of course "I LOVE NEW HAMPSHIRE! Move here or else the police state will eat you!". To be perfectly honest, if my ALL comrades weren't sitting beside me, I would have felt very much out-of-place at this event. Hell, our entire table looked a bit out-of-place knowing the environment and the audience. For most of the people in attendance at Liberty Forum, the definition of "market anarchist" is extremely (probably entirely) right-libertarian/propertarian centric (kind of ironic since mutualism is where market anarchism began, and, as we all know, Rothbard copied a lot of his philosophy from the old school American individualist anarchists, albeit having cut out all their libertarian socialist ideas). They've probably never heard the term "libertarian socialist" before, or still think of it as a contradiction.
It wasn't long before propertarians came up to our table. One person from our group was stuck in conversation with someone who made insulting remarks towards libertarian socialism: "Anarcho-socialists have zero understanding of basic economics...", that kind of thing. Not too long afterwards, we were approached by another
"I don't understand this," he said. I could feel the contention just waiting to come out. "What's up with all this 'class struggle', anti-bosses stuff? It sounds like marxism. Are you marxists?"
I thought to myself, no, words like "exploitation" and "struggle" are not just the words of marxism; they're the words of our current reality.
Darian, Nick, and I tried reasoning with this guy. We explained how, as anarchists, we are against economic authority like bosses and landlords for the same reason we're against the state. The propertarian, of course, tried to argue that bosses and landlords have every right to have power over others because those dominated by them have the ability to leave, which, apparently, can't be said of the state.
I told him, "Being able to leave your boss doesn't legitimize the boss's power. If we lived in a society where there were stateless territories people could escape to, would that legitimize the state?"
He used the same old arguments we're heard propertarians use to legitimize capitalism and delegitimize libertarian socialism. He asked us again to explain left-libertarianism to him in the same condescending manner he had when he first approached us. We handed him a copy of the introduction to Markets Not Capitalism (which we had been giving out for free), but he quickly put it back on the table. Nick explained that left-libertarian is an umbrella term. He pointed out that my views on private property are very much the mutualist and social anarchist notion of occupancy and use. He instantly became fired up. Once again, I told him that the reason for my views rests on anti-authoritarian principles, that private property and absentee landlordism create extremely authoritarian relationships and systems which I seek to abolish. Again, he used the whole, "it's not really authoritarian because you can leave," excuse, and again I told him that being able to leave does not legitimize anything. I decided to ask him how he would maintain his ownership of any land he didn't actively use if we lived in a stateless society. He made some remarks about "mob justice" and then openly admitted that he'd shoot squatters on-sight. Not surprising. He also admitted that he's a "minarchist" who doesn't support a stateless society for a few reasons.
I decided to take a different approach. "As an anarchist, I don't see why anyone would want to own more than they use," I said. "I know we live in a society where who we are as a person is based on what we own instead of what we do, and of course, we're always going to own stuff - possession is just a fact of life - but we should focus more on what we do and our relations with others instead of what we own. I know I wouldn't care about owning that much stuff if I knew I was valued for who I am as a person."
He didn't seem to understand me, and soon enough he left. I was expecting several people like him to show up and try to delegitimize us, though no one else did to my knowledge. Not that long afterwards Nick told me that he thinks that one person did come over to our table with the intention of starting shit. He then said to me, "You know, private property is too much work," and told me I handled that guy's ramblings well. Thank god it wasn't a repeat of Milly's where the whole thing disintegrated into a yelling contest. Nick also asked me if I'd like to participate in the left-libertarian discussion panel later on that day. I told him I'd feel way too uncomfortable, especially knowing that a good number of people in the audience would probably hold the same views as the person I had just confronted.
A few hours later us lefties briefly left the hotel to have dinner. We went over to this little pizza place called Olivia's. While there,
Jack, Nick, Darian, and others gave us the scoop on a lot of things. It turns out the left-libertarian presentation went pretty well with not much contention during the Q&A. Darian, Nick, and I joked about the guy we confronted to equated individualist anarchism to state-socialism. I told them I take it that the propertarians who bash on libertarian socialism do so because they feel "threatened" in a sense, and thus get all defensive as a result of it. Turns out the joke about libertarian capitalists becoming libertarian socialists after reading a few philosophy books and spending some cold harsh time in the real world is evidently true. From there, we went on about all the little things that piss us off about certain people who were at the Forum, which later evolved right back into discussing the usual right-libertarian absurdities like the idea of putting all this faith in the market to resolve social problems or this weird notion that bosses and wage laborers have an equal amount of power in the market. I was quite surprised about how much Darian and Patrick knew about labor struggles. Patrick brought up how there are entire companies dedicated to murdering union organizers in third world countries, and Darian remarked by saying how ironic it is that pro-capitalists talk about "union thugs" but never about capitalist bosses' own private armies of thugs (for example, the private police Rockefeller used to terrorize workers out of organizing). That's actually why I am extremely skeptical of certain libertarian groups which claim to be all over police accountability, as their motives seem to have a lot more to do with replacing state police with pinkertons than actually wanting to do away with the presence of armed assholes on the street. I told everyone at our restaurant table, "I have to ask, why is it that so many 'an'-caps are so hell bent on making a new society so similar to the one we have now?" They laughed. Something else which came up was the fact that a certain free stater who serves as a NH state representative was supposedly barred from Liberty Forum this year. What my comrades told me is, this guy has an extreme hatred for anarchists/left-libertarians, and even accused them of stealing items from some other free stater event because, apparently, "they don't believe in laws". Ugh. As if our group isn't given enough dirty looks as it is.
A few hours later, Nick and I went back to TekArts. Jack had a ride already, so the two of us ended up being driven back to Milford by a father and son who live near Keene. As we left the Crowne Plaza, Nick told me that he had been approached at the ALL table by Reason TV (I was somewhere else when that meeting took place) and was briefly interviewed. It wasn't long before the car conversation started getting a bit weird. The father, who was riding shotgun, was obviously drunk and flipping out. He was going on and on about how "amusing" it would be to watch entire communities succumb to collapse. Of course, he said that Keene would be one of the few towns to survive since there's so many libertarians and survivalists there. So in response, I started repeating some anarcho-primitivist stuff I've heard about civilization being a cage and mixed with some situationist ideas about how human beings have fucked themselves over by imprisoning themselves in authoritarian systems. He was fucking crazy, I'm not going to lie!
I was able to give my speech on solidarity vs. charity at TekArts just fine. I had told Nick beforehand that I'm a much better writer than speaker. Everyone told me I did fine though. We only had a handful of people in attendance: Nick, Jack, and my friend John who lives in Milford. The talk itself was only ten minutes or so, but the discussion the four of us had lasted over an hour. The video should be on the AltExpo website by now. During our talk afterwards (which was supposed to have been an ALL roundtable if more people had made it) we discussed all sorts of things we can do to build those social relations which may in turn be a prerequisite to more revolutionary activity. We talked more about SeaSol, The Really Really Free Market, and free medics at Occupy Wall Street. Jack brought up a particular free stater who had tried starting a charity in NH with other free staters. It turns out she now feels upset about how little the charity was able to provide for the Bhutanese refugees they tried to help, and now she wants to focus on finding jobs for them. I can't help but think though, her actions might have those refugees becoming the cheap labor source of some asshole, not doubt. At least she understands why charitable handouts are usually bull, let's hope she realizes the same about capitalism soon enough. Perhaps we should work with them to create some kind of coop (as in, an act of solidarity) so that they'll have both food and autonomy?
The next day we all went back to Crowne Plaza where we finished packing up the ALL table. I said my goodbyes to everyone. Thankfully, I was able to get a ride with one of Nick's friends, who lives in the Mid-Atlantic as well. He and his girlfriend dropped me off in New York City where I was able to get a bus back to Baltimore.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Text to my AltExpo Talk
People I know wanted to read this, so here it is:
I would like to speak on something which I feel that we should take into consideration if we are planning on participating in creating a new society, more specifically the contrast between acts of charity versus acts of solidarity. Now, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding between the two. I mean, how many times have you heard the assertion that social issues which can't be solved by the market will be solved by private charity, such as those carried out by religious groups and "philanthropic" organizations run by wealthy donors? As I will be going over shortly, the use of charity to solve what the market can't has not just limits on what it's able to accomplish but also contains a myriad of problems within itself, and that acts of solidarity are much more beneficial as a whole. Solidarity is the means in which people work together to accomplish common goals, when the daily struggles of others become interwoven with yours. It has always been an essential part of anarchism, stressing both social relations and action against the authoritarian system. In contrast to charity, solidarity is a horizontal relationship; charity is hierarchical. Charity creates a relationship of dependency which humiliates the receiver and "entitles" the giver; solidarity empowers all parties involved. While charitable giving feeds people for a day or two, acts of solidarity help people never go hungry again.
Now that we have a basic conception of the two, it should be important to understand how each functions and how their outcomes mean for society at large. Right off the bat, it should be noted that charity bears a striking resemblance to state welfare. For one thing, like state welfare, charitable giving is a handout from the top-down; a way in which those who sit on top of our unquestionably hierarchical system to give those below them a little bit of what was stolen from them. As we know, state welfare keeps people attached to the state. Why should libertarians be surprised when the working poor who are dependent on government-provided services such as schools and public transport vehemently defend them against budget cuts? After all, people will defend the source of their survival. We all know what results from relying on those above you for your needs to live: you are under their thumb constantly and your autonomy is severely hindered. You become trapped in this endless cycle of dependency that you simply cannot get out of. Charitable giving does the exact same thing. It is hierarchical in nature where the "receivers" are under the thumb of the "givers", who in turn keep their privilege and can feel entitled to belittle those whom they're giving to. A billionaire could give 25 cents to a beggar - the same way in which the state provides services to those who otherwise wouldn't be able to have those services - and the beggar would be thrilled to have it. The billionaire, on the other hand, feels no shame in hoarding all of his money and assets in the same way the state would feel no shame in heavily taxing and maintaining control over others.
Another aspect of this is the inefficiency of charity - and state welfare - to solve the issue at hand. To put things into perspective, the social ills found in our society - be they poverty, exploitation, homelessness, racism, patriarchy, the prison system, or overall abuse and powerlessness - didn't just come out of nowhere. There is a whole political and economic system in the background which creates and facilitates all of this. What charity succeeds in doing is, obscuring this link between the social issue at hand and the system which created that problem in the first place. When we think of social problems like the parts of a tree, where the effects of the problem at hand are like the leaves of the tree, the conditions which created the problem are like the branches of the tree, and the institutions and overall political-economic system which created those conditions are like the roots of the tree, does it make sense to spend the time picking off each individual leaf in hopes that the tree will eventually fall when one could spend the time striking at the roots? One would ask as well, why would we need charitable organizations if the system was so efficient in providing for others as it is?
Solidarity, on the other hand, is about making those connections between people's personal struggles and the overall whole. As well, it seeks not to merely strike at the root and wait until a new society is formed, but to build those personal relationships which are vital to forming that new system. Take the instance of someone who has been evicted from their living space by an absentee landlord. A solidarity network would not only take action against the laws which put the privileges of landlords before people's needs for shelter, but would form a social bond with that person by working together in cooperation. This in itself chips away at the system, as those engaged in actions of solidarity participate in creating a new system and culture, namely one based on cooperation. In fact, I would argue that it is only with acts of solidarity that our new, free society will be able to emerge.
We see as charity is a handout from the powerful to the weak, solidarity stresses an equality of power and reciprocity. When you work alongside others, as I previously mentioned, you form certain social bonds which do not form in regards to charity. You see yourself in others to the extent where your goals become others' goals, their goals become yours. This kind of cooperation is essential to anyone's existence; human beings are not islands and we associate with others every day.
So, now that I've touched on the contrast between charity vs solidarity to the point where everyone has a sense of where they differ and why solidarity is far more important, I'd like to move on to ways in which we can create this kind of culture of solidarity. Something which frequently comes up when discussing solutions to social problems is this feeling of powerlessness people tend to have. Something that's very common is for people to focus on "quick fixes" like begging the state to pass a certain policy, simply because they feel they are not powerful enough to do much else. But, this assumption has been proven to be false. There are many examples showing that when people join together and work together, their collective efforts can "get the goods", as they say. Throughout history you had plenty of solidarity organizations such as Friendly Societies and fraternal organizations. Today, you're seeing an emergence of cooperative economic institutions which have sprung out of this failed capitalist system. Currently, there are anarchist organizations such as Food Not Bombs and the Really Really Free Market which work with communities. To these organizations, giving to others is much more of a personal obligation - albeit, one without force - than simply random voluntary acts of kindness on a certain day. But the anarchist organization I would like to focus in on is the Seattle Solidarity Network, or SeaSol for short. SeaSol was started by a group of social anarchists in 2007. It uses collective direct action to fight for certain demands, usually being more autonomy for workers and tenants. It is a democratic, horizontally-organized collective which has no leaders and is all volunteer-run. So far, the network has been fairly successful fighting against abuses by bosses and landlords in the Seattle area. They created a pamphlet which explains how people can go about building a solidarity network in their own city or community. I will now read an edited excerpt from their pamphlet on building your own solidarity network:
Some of the actions they have done and which they recommend others participate in include protesting around the boss or landlord's home, crashing events, picketing outside public meetings, and making noncompliance pacts when a large number of tenants are facing eviction or rent hikes. Within all of this, the network pays special attention to whether or not their actions could possibly cause more harm than good to the people they are standing with. The emphasis is placed on building community relations along with challenging these social hierarchies.
So, I would recommend that if you have the desire to create a freer society, you should look into building some kind of solidarity movement. As I've said, private charity is never enough and creates all sorts of other effects which are not all that free or desirable.
I would like to speak on something which I feel that we should take into consideration if we are planning on participating in creating a new society, more specifically the contrast between acts of charity versus acts of solidarity. Now, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding between the two. I mean, how many times have you heard the assertion that social issues which can't be solved by the market will be solved by private charity, such as those carried out by religious groups and "philanthropic" organizations run by wealthy donors? As I will be going over shortly, the use of charity to solve what the market can't has not just limits on what it's able to accomplish but also contains a myriad of problems within itself, and that acts of solidarity are much more beneficial as a whole. Solidarity is the means in which people work together to accomplish common goals, when the daily struggles of others become interwoven with yours. It has always been an essential part of anarchism, stressing both social relations and action against the authoritarian system. In contrast to charity, solidarity is a horizontal relationship; charity is hierarchical. Charity creates a relationship of dependency which humiliates the receiver and "entitles" the giver; solidarity empowers all parties involved. While charitable giving feeds people for a day or two, acts of solidarity help people never go hungry again.
Now that we have a basic conception of the two, it should be important to understand how each functions and how their outcomes mean for society at large. Right off the bat, it should be noted that charity bears a striking resemblance to state welfare. For one thing, like state welfare, charitable giving is a handout from the top-down; a way in which those who sit on top of our unquestionably hierarchical system to give those below them a little bit of what was stolen from them. As we know, state welfare keeps people attached to the state. Why should libertarians be surprised when the working poor who are dependent on government-provided services such as schools and public transport vehemently defend them against budget cuts? After all, people will defend the source of their survival. We all know what results from relying on those above you for your needs to live: you are under their thumb constantly and your autonomy is severely hindered. You become trapped in this endless cycle of dependency that you simply cannot get out of. Charitable giving does the exact same thing. It is hierarchical in nature where the "receivers" are under the thumb of the "givers", who in turn keep their privilege and can feel entitled to belittle those whom they're giving to. A billionaire could give 25 cents to a beggar - the same way in which the state provides services to those who otherwise wouldn't be able to have those services - and the beggar would be thrilled to have it. The billionaire, on the other hand, feels no shame in hoarding all of his money and assets in the same way the state would feel no shame in heavily taxing and maintaining control over others.
Another aspect of this is the inefficiency of charity - and state welfare - to solve the issue at hand. To put things into perspective, the social ills found in our society - be they poverty, exploitation, homelessness, racism, patriarchy, the prison system, or overall abuse and powerlessness - didn't just come out of nowhere. There is a whole political and economic system in the background which creates and facilitates all of this. What charity succeeds in doing is, obscuring this link between the social issue at hand and the system which created that problem in the first place. When we think of social problems like the parts of a tree, where the effects of the problem at hand are like the leaves of the tree, the conditions which created the problem are like the branches of the tree, and the institutions and overall political-economic system which created those conditions are like the roots of the tree, does it make sense to spend the time picking off each individual leaf in hopes that the tree will eventually fall when one could spend the time striking at the roots? One would ask as well, why would we need charitable organizations if the system was so efficient in providing for others as it is?
Solidarity, on the other hand, is about making those connections between people's personal struggles and the overall whole. As well, it seeks not to merely strike at the root and wait until a new society is formed, but to build those personal relationships which are vital to forming that new system. Take the instance of someone who has been evicted from their living space by an absentee landlord. A solidarity network would not only take action against the laws which put the privileges of landlords before people's needs for shelter, but would form a social bond with that person by working together in cooperation. This in itself chips away at the system, as those engaged in actions of solidarity participate in creating a new system and culture, namely one based on cooperation. In fact, I would argue that it is only with acts of solidarity that our new, free society will be able to emerge.
We see as charity is a handout from the powerful to the weak, solidarity stresses an equality of power and reciprocity. When you work alongside others, as I previously mentioned, you form certain social bonds which do not form in regards to charity. You see yourself in others to the extent where your goals become others' goals, their goals become yours. This kind of cooperation is essential to anyone's existence; human beings are not islands and we associate with others every day.
So, now that I've touched on the contrast between charity vs solidarity to the point where everyone has a sense of where they differ and why solidarity is far more important, I'd like to move on to ways in which we can create this kind of culture of solidarity. Something which frequently comes up when discussing solutions to social problems is this feeling of powerlessness people tend to have. Something that's very common is for people to focus on "quick fixes" like begging the state to pass a certain policy, simply because they feel they are not powerful enough to do much else. But, this assumption has been proven to be false. There are many examples showing that when people join together and work together, their collective efforts can "get the goods", as they say. Throughout history you had plenty of solidarity organizations such as Friendly Societies and fraternal organizations. Today, you're seeing an emergence of cooperative economic institutions which have sprung out of this failed capitalist system. Currently, there are anarchist organizations such as Food Not Bombs and the Really Really Free Market which work with communities. To these organizations, giving to others is much more of a personal obligation - albeit, one without force - than simply random voluntary acts of kindness on a certain day. But the anarchist organization I would like to focus in on is the Seattle Solidarity Network, or SeaSol for short. SeaSol was started by a group of social anarchists in 2007. It uses collective direct action to fight for certain demands, usually being more autonomy for workers and tenants. It is a democratic, horizontally-organized collective which has no leaders and is all volunteer-run. So far, the network has been fairly successful fighting against abuses by bosses and landlords in the Seattle area. They created a pamphlet which explains how people can go about building a solidarity network in their own city or community. I will now read an edited excerpt from their pamphlet on building your own solidarity network:
"The first step in starting an organization is to decide what it’s for. When starting SeaSol, we made a point of defining the scope of it very broadly, and this has proved to be one of its greatest strengths. Last month we were fighting a housing agency over towing fees. Today we are fighting a restaurant owner over unpaid wages. Next month we might be up against a bank, an insurance company, or a school administration.
"In this first meeting, we go through the classic organizing steps of “agitate – educate – organize”. “Agitate”, in this case, doesn’t mean making a speech. It means listening to their story (even if they already told it on the phone) and asking questions to bring out exactly how the injustices affect their life. In talking through this they’re “agitating” themselves - in other words, they’re bringing to the surface the emotional forces which made them want to contact us in the first place. The emotional response to getting stepped on is often extremely powerful, but most of the time people bury these feelings in the back of their minds so they can get through day-to-day life. Now it all has to come back out. Only then will they be ready to face the possibly unfamiliar and scary idea of fighting back using direct action.
The next step, “Educate”, means helping them understand how something could be done about their situation through collective direct action. We do this by briefly describing how our action campaigns work, using real examples. We give them a sense of what their first action (the group demand delivery) might be like. We don’t bullshit them or promise that we will win their fight, but we give them a sense of the strategy behind our campaigns, and why it usually succeeds. We also briefly explain the other key things they need to understand about SeaSol, especially the fact that we're all volunteers and that we're not a law firm or a social service.
Finally, “Organize” means getting into the specific, practical tasks that we need to ask from them. Can they help us boil their problems down to a specific demand that we could fight for (see the ‘Demands’ section for more on this)? If we did fight for it, would they be able and willing to come to our meetings every week to take part in the planning? Would they be willing to become members of the solidarity network, receive frequent phone calls for actions in support of other workers and tenants, and commit to coming out whenever they could?
When we present our demands, we always do so by handing over a written demand letter. If we were to present our demands verbally, we might find ourselves getting bogged down in back-and-forth arguments with the boss or landlord, which would lead to confusion and delay. Presenting the demands in writing helps us avoid this, and it also lets the group democratically decide on exactly what message we want to get across to the boss or landlord, without much risk of mix-ups or miscommunication.
Obviously the affected worker/tenant (or group of them) needs to be involved in the process of putting together the demand letter, and they need to be in agreement with the final version we end up with. However, this doesn’t mean we let them write whatever they want. The demand letter is signed in the name of the solidarity network as a whole, so we have to make sure it’s something that we as an organization are prepared to stand behind, and to fight a potentially long and hard campaign over.
There is no sense doing a demand delivery unless we’re ready to back it up with an action plan that can force the enemy to give in. Therefore we consider, what are the pressure points we can use against the enemy? How many people can we get out to an action, and what are people willing to do at those actions? All of this takes a serious and thoughtful analysis of our own strength.
Our campaign strategy is based on the basic insight that the boss or landlord doesn't cave in as a result of what we just did to them--they cave in as a result of their fear of what we're going to do next. So we have to be able to escalate, or increase the pressure over time, and we have to pace ourselves so that we can sustain the fight for as long as it takes. At least once during a fight, we brainstorm possible tactics and order them from least to most pressure. Then we make a plan for how often and in which order we should carry them out."
Some of the actions they have done and which they recommend others participate in include protesting around the boss or landlord's home, crashing events, picketing outside public meetings, and making noncompliance pacts when a large number of tenants are facing eviction or rent hikes. Within all of this, the network pays special attention to whether or not their actions could possibly cause more harm than good to the people they are standing with. The emphasis is placed on building community relations along with challenging these social hierarchies.
So, I would recommend that if you have the desire to create a freer society, you should look into building some kind of solidarity movement. As I've said, private charity is never enough and creates all sorts of other effects which are not all that free or desirable.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Writing Because I Feel The Need To Write
It's the time of year again where every other person on campus is sick as hell. Monday afternoon I came down with something awful. I spent the rest of the day as well as most of Tuesday in bed, sleeping for over 12 hours. When I was up I spent time reading through Paul Avrich's Anarchist Voices. Bad idea. That book is like crack for me. It's full of oral histories from people who knew Goldman, Kropotkin, Berkman, Tucker, de Cleyre, Rocker, Labadie, and many others, and people who participated in anarchist colonies and Modern School movements. It's full of anecdotes and all sorts of stuff which makes me feel like I know these people personally. But I have so much shit I need to read for school that I shouldn't be dealing with all these distractions (at least not yet; this book will come in handy later on).
By Wednesday I was feeling a lot better, but I'm still in that daze which trails the flu. Before my Greek class that morning I caught Dr. Leahy in the hall. She introduced me to a friend of hers (also a comrade) who was visiting from Vermont. Even though I forget his name, I remember him telling me that where he lives is very close to Keene, NH. He told me the story of how he was arrested by the FBI for throwing golf balls on the White House lawn in protest back when Reagan was president. I thought he was pretty cool. Later on, Leahy told me that there's a seminar in June that she's probably going to take me to on radical politics. We're still waiting to see if my summer project has been approved yet.
Speaking of seminars, I'm in the midst of writing my talk on charity vs. solidarity for AltExpo. It should be done soon. Nick and I were going over the event via Skype this afternoon. Everything looks good except my means of transport, meaning I might have to shell out over $100 to get to Nashua from Westminster/Baltimore and back. It's going to be a fun time though so I'm not upset. Nick assured me that AltExpo, unlike Liberty Forum, is mainly comprised of people whose political/social views are very much like ours, so I shouldn't feel out-of-place at all. In fact, unlike having earfuls of, "the government is sooooo bad" in 40 different ways, the main ideas behind our event is to give people ideas on how to reshape our society and make them feel empowered. Also take into consideration that Liberty Forum costs over $200 to attend and has a habit of attracting "people in suits" (*cough cough* extremely vulgar corporate-funded top-down think tank members *cough cough cough*), as they say. But the left-libertarians in our crowd are welcoming. Nick even told me he wants to team up with others in that circle to turn Nashua into a libertarian socialist/left-libertarian version of Keene, only instead of challenging the state by smoking pot and running around naked in public they'll be creating an alternative economy. We'll see.
By Wednesday I was feeling a lot better, but I'm still in that daze which trails the flu. Before my Greek class that morning I caught Dr. Leahy in the hall. She introduced me to a friend of hers (also a comrade) who was visiting from Vermont. Even though I forget his name, I remember him telling me that where he lives is very close to Keene, NH. He told me the story of how he was arrested by the FBI for throwing golf balls on the White House lawn in protest back when Reagan was president. I thought he was pretty cool. Later on, Leahy told me that there's a seminar in June that she's probably going to take me to on radical politics. We're still waiting to see if my summer project has been approved yet.
Speaking of seminars, I'm in the midst of writing my talk on charity vs. solidarity for AltExpo. It should be done soon. Nick and I were going over the event via Skype this afternoon. Everything looks good except my means of transport, meaning I might have to shell out over $100 to get to Nashua from Westminster/Baltimore and back. It's going to be a fun time though so I'm not upset. Nick assured me that AltExpo, unlike Liberty Forum, is mainly comprised of people whose political/social views are very much like ours, so I shouldn't feel out-of-place at all. In fact, unlike having earfuls of, "the government is sooooo bad" in 40 different ways, the main ideas behind our event is to give people ideas on how to reshape our society and make them feel empowered. Also take into consideration that Liberty Forum costs over $200 to attend and has a habit of attracting "people in suits" (*cough cough* extremely vulgar corporate-funded top-down think tank members *cough cough cough*), as they say. But the left-libertarians in our crowd are welcoming. Nick even told me he wants to team up with others in that circle to turn Nashua into a libertarian socialist/left-libertarian version of Keene, only instead of challenging the state by smoking pot and running around naked in public they'll be creating an alternative economy. We'll see.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Protesters Throw Firebombs at Police (Athens, Greece)
Here is a video from Athens today.
Notice how the protesters carry black flags, so I'm almost certain they are insurrectionist anarchists. Crazy!
Athens is burning. There's no doubt these riots are only going to get more intense. Perhaps the state will collapse, perhaps it won't. We can only wait.
Notice how the protesters carry black flags, so I'm almost certain they are insurrectionist anarchists. Crazy!
Athens is burning. There's no doubt these riots are only going to get more intense. Perhaps the state will collapse, perhaps it won't. We can only wait.
Because Youtube Comments Are Where You'll Find Intellectual Discussion
Ridley finally posted a short video of me debating two Ron Paul campaigners during the OccupyNH actions outside the NH Primary debate.
As of now, it has about 5,600 views (which is quite a bit considering how most of Ridley's videos rarely get more than 1,000 views within three days of their postings) and over 400 comments, many of which use sexist words and phrases like "stupid bitch", "c*nt", "whore", and "I want to punch that bitch in the face so she'll shut up" all aimed at me. Really goes to show the level of shit people will spew out at someone so as long as they're hidden behind an anonymous username and a computer screen. It was posted on a few libertarian and Ron Paul websites, as every video critical of Ron Paul and/or his supporters usually are. Thankfully, an internet friend of mine, Rob (who is a left-libertarian and very pro-free market) responded to some of the commenters on facebook. He told me on skype that market anarchists of all sorts should embrace this new narrative of history and look at it from an austrian schooler perspective. I mean, what are you really going to do when it's very clear that anthropology has debunked myths economists held for centuries: continue with the myths and try to prove the damning facts wrong or reshape your theories so that they fit the newly-discovered facts? Perhaps economists should double as anthropologists as opposed to mathematicians/logicians, no? I reminded him as well, Graeber never argues that markets couldn't exist without the state; he only contends that markets would have to be radically different than they are now if they were to exist without a state (as in, we would have to build up a high amount of trust with others, which we obviously don't do under our current capitalist system).
So yeah, watch the video, comment, share it. I dislike the way my voice sounds on camera but it's not all that bad here. Vermin Supreme shows up as well.
As of now, it has about 5,600 views (which is quite a bit considering how most of Ridley's videos rarely get more than 1,000 views within three days of their postings) and over 400 comments, many of which use sexist words and phrases like "stupid bitch", "c*nt", "whore", and "I want to punch that bitch in the face so she'll shut up" all aimed at me. Really goes to show the level of shit people will spew out at someone so as long as they're hidden behind an anonymous username and a computer screen. It was posted on a few libertarian and Ron Paul websites, as every video critical of Ron Paul and/or his supporters usually are. Thankfully, an internet friend of mine, Rob (who is a left-libertarian and very pro-free market) responded to some of the commenters on facebook. He told me on skype that market anarchists of all sorts should embrace this new narrative of history and look at it from an austrian schooler perspective. I mean, what are you really going to do when it's very clear that anthropology has debunked myths economists held for centuries: continue with the myths and try to prove the damning facts wrong or reshape your theories so that they fit the newly-discovered facts? Perhaps economists should double as anthropologists as opposed to mathematicians/logicians, no? I reminded him as well, Graeber never argues that markets couldn't exist without the state; he only contends that markets would have to be radically different than they are now if they were to exist without a state (as in, we would have to build up a high amount of trust with others, which we obviously don't do under our current capitalist system).
So yeah, watch the video, comment, share it. I dislike the way my voice sounds on camera but it's not all that bad here. Vermin Supreme shows up as well.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Let's #OccupyBullshit
About half my facebook friends shared this article today. It sucks.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/
What can I say about Hedges' article which hasn't already been said? It's full of misinformation, non-sequiturs, dubious definitions, and out-right fallacious reasoning. For example, it's a huge mistake to call the Black Bloc a "movement". It's not a "movement" by any means nor is it an actual group; it's a tactic, and one based on self-defense at that. As well, it is hardly "violence for the sake of violence" as many media outlets paint it as. Rather, it is a form of resistance. The police are known to use violence against activists and demonstrators, so it's hardly surprising that activists would join together in such ways to protect themselves. I'm in contact with a comrade who actively participates in Occupy Oakland. He assured me that the activists don't go around committing random acts of destruction. They only targeted big business chains, and the ones who targeted small businesses were later discovered to be cops. Hedges' initial criticism are completely unfounded. How are the tactics used by the Black Bloc a form of "hypermasculinity", as he puts it? Are such actions unique to males? Of course not. In fact, I would call such wording an insult to female and queer activists.
We shouldn't forget, Hedges is a social democrat, and his alliances are with state-socialists and reformists, not anti-authoritarians. I'm much more surprised at Jensen, who goes along with Hedges' nowhere arguments.
I think I should mention, as many others have, that two years ago Hedges wrote this piece in praise of the anti-austerity riots in Greece:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_greeks_get_it_20100524/
See the hypocrisy? Though it's not really unique to Hedges. Many times I've read pieces by American pundits who attack radical activists in the US but praise uprisings in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and everywhere else on the planet. The "not in my backyard" mentality is alive and well.
I take it that many on the reformist left think of OWS as some kind of public relations stunt where the sole purpose is to draw attention to the grievances of those who have been fucked over by this economy. Therefore, in their view, any action other than the usual marching and chanting runs a chance of "discrediting" the movement, thereby preventing it from having influence over politicians. Of course, we should realize by now that the state has very little interest in serving us. If we hold any chance of getting a $20 minimum wage or a guaranteed national income anytime soon we would see these things being debated in Washington right now.
But that's not the point, at least not the way I see it. I would argue that the defining factor of OWS is not going to be what it accomplishes on a political level, but what it accomplished on a social level. It has shown us, as Cindy Milstein so nicely put it during her talk last month, that we are perfectly capable of creating and organizing a new society. The occupations in themselves are what make this a revolutionary movement. Young people who once believed all the red herrings about human nature not being compatible with self-governance and direct democracy start changing their tune as soon as they start participating. That's what I predict will be the ultimate aftermath of this movement. Let the assholes in DC keep feeding the rich; we'll be creating a new system from below.
With all of that said, I'm reminded of something else Cindy brought up during her talk: that being the presence of the Ron Paul campaigners and their reluctance to join in with most of the other occupiers. For all the Ron Paul crowd's talk of anti-statism and self-rule, I find it ironic that so many of them would diss the occupy movement. Of course, some of the demands that many in OWS make are most definitely social democratic and state-socialist in nature, but - as I just said - the occupations themselves are an example of what an anarchistic society would be like (for the most part anyway). We have no centralized authority, no social hierarchy, everyone voluntarily associates with one another, food and medical care are given for free, all the "big decisions" are decided by consensus, and all actions are - gasp! - voluntary. Of course, they will say, direct democracy (even on a decentralized level) is antithetical to their version of an anarchist and/or libertarian society because it is "collectivist", but to that I would ask, how can a stateless society be organized other than through direct democracy and consensus? Human beings are not islands, nor would we retreat to proverbial little islands when the state dissolves. We interact with one another and form collectives every day. Better get used to the procedures now.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/
What can I say about Hedges' article which hasn't already been said? It's full of misinformation, non-sequiturs, dubious definitions, and out-right fallacious reasoning. For example, it's a huge mistake to call the Black Bloc a "movement". It's not a "movement" by any means nor is it an actual group; it's a tactic, and one based on self-defense at that. As well, it is hardly "violence for the sake of violence" as many media outlets paint it as. Rather, it is a form of resistance. The police are known to use violence against activists and demonstrators, so it's hardly surprising that activists would join together in such ways to protect themselves. I'm in contact with a comrade who actively participates in Occupy Oakland. He assured me that the activists don't go around committing random acts of destruction. They only targeted big business chains, and the ones who targeted small businesses were later discovered to be cops. Hedges' initial criticism are completely unfounded. How are the tactics used by the Black Bloc a form of "hypermasculinity", as he puts it? Are such actions unique to males? Of course not. In fact, I would call such wording an insult to female and queer activists.
We shouldn't forget, Hedges is a social democrat, and his alliances are with state-socialists and reformists, not anti-authoritarians. I'm much more surprised at Jensen, who goes along with Hedges' nowhere arguments.
I think I should mention, as many others have, that two years ago Hedges wrote this piece in praise of the anti-austerity riots in Greece:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_greeks_get_it_20100524/
See the hypocrisy? Though it's not really unique to Hedges. Many times I've read pieces by American pundits who attack radical activists in the US but praise uprisings in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and everywhere else on the planet. The "not in my backyard" mentality is alive and well.
I take it that many on the reformist left think of OWS as some kind of public relations stunt where the sole purpose is to draw attention to the grievances of those who have been fucked over by this economy. Therefore, in their view, any action other than the usual marching and chanting runs a chance of "discrediting" the movement, thereby preventing it from having influence over politicians. Of course, we should realize by now that the state has very little interest in serving us. If we hold any chance of getting a $20 minimum wage or a guaranteed national income anytime soon we would see these things being debated in Washington right now.
But that's not the point, at least not the way I see it. I would argue that the defining factor of OWS is not going to be what it accomplishes on a political level, but what it accomplished on a social level. It has shown us, as Cindy Milstein so nicely put it during her talk last month, that we are perfectly capable of creating and organizing a new society. The occupations in themselves are what make this a revolutionary movement. Young people who once believed all the red herrings about human nature not being compatible with self-governance and direct democracy start changing their tune as soon as they start participating. That's what I predict will be the ultimate aftermath of this movement. Let the assholes in DC keep feeding the rich; we'll be creating a new system from below.
With all of that said, I'm reminded of something else Cindy brought up during her talk: that being the presence of the Ron Paul campaigners and their reluctance to join in with most of the other occupiers. For all the Ron Paul crowd's talk of anti-statism and self-rule, I find it ironic that so many of them would diss the occupy movement. Of course, some of the demands that many in OWS make are most definitely social democratic and state-socialist in nature, but - as I just said - the occupations themselves are an example of what an anarchistic society would be like (for the most part anyway). We have no centralized authority, no social hierarchy, everyone voluntarily associates with one another, food and medical care are given for free, all the "big decisions" are decided by consensus, and all actions are - gasp! - voluntary. Of course, they will say, direct democracy (even on a decentralized level) is antithetical to their version of an anarchist and/or libertarian society because it is "collectivist", but to that I would ask, how can a stateless society be organized other than through direct democracy and consensus? Human beings are not islands, nor would we retreat to proverbial little islands when the state dissolves. We interact with one another and form collectives every day. Better get used to the procedures now.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
The Proof of the Pudding
Ever heard the claim that horizontal workplaces aren't efficient? Unlike most naysayers, this video provides statistics and historical evidence. Watch it, even if mutualism isn't your cup of tea.
In related news, I've been invited to speak at the AltExpo later this month, and, if everything works out, I'm going to do so. For those of you who aren't familiar, it's put on during Liberty Forum, serving as something different for the otherwise right-centric libertarian movement. I was thinking of a topic that could appeal to both the "libcom crowd" and the "C4SS crowd", so I've decided to speak about building a new economy of solidarity and why solidarity-based institutions work much better than private charity. There's two books I'm going to pull my info from: America Beyond Capitalism and an anthology I received the other day called Life Without Money which touches on both free market anti-capitalism and gift economies. I might also want to mention how the system in Anarchist Catalonia was far more efficient than its predecessor. The only thing is, I'm awful at public speaking (since I get extremely nervous and have a bad habit of fidgeting). As well, I know that propertarians can be very condescending and I would expect them to release all sorts of strawman arguments during the Q&A. I hope there's no repeat of what happened at Milly's back in December.
In more related news, I had to talk to one of my advisors about my thesis the other day. She told me that the best way to prevent my philosophy paper from morphing into an anthropology paper is to focus on the values which grow out of our economy. It's always essential to ask "Why?" when writing these kinds of essays. I'm thinking I might include some details about solidarity economies (including market-based ones) and the values they promote and create if it fits. Let's see what I can find.
In related news, I've been invited to speak at the AltExpo later this month, and, if everything works out, I'm going to do so. For those of you who aren't familiar, it's put on during Liberty Forum, serving as something different for the otherwise right-centric libertarian movement. I was thinking of a topic that could appeal to both the "libcom crowd" and the "C4SS crowd", so I've decided to speak about building a new economy of solidarity and why solidarity-based institutions work much better than private charity. There's two books I'm going to pull my info from: America Beyond Capitalism and an anthology I received the other day called Life Without Money which touches on both free market anti-capitalism and gift economies. I might also want to mention how the system in Anarchist Catalonia was far more efficient than its predecessor. The only thing is, I'm awful at public speaking (since I get extremely nervous and have a bad habit of fidgeting). As well, I know that propertarians can be very condescending and I would expect them to release all sorts of strawman arguments during the Q&A. I hope there's no repeat of what happened at Milly's back in December.
In more related news, I had to talk to one of my advisors about my thesis the other day. She told me that the best way to prevent my philosophy paper from morphing into an anthropology paper is to focus on the values which grow out of our economy. It's always essential to ask "Why?" when writing these kinds of essays. I'm thinking I might include some details about solidarity economies (including market-based ones) and the values they promote and create if it fits. Let's see what I can find.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)