Month: September 2022

By Shane Redd and Gerald Smith

For movie fans hoping for some semblance of a political perspective to offset what has become a repetitive and mostly stale Hollywood, the summer 2017 movie season remained mostly apolitical. Yet one summer film represents that bright shining star in a Hollywood sky filled with dull mindless remakes. 

War for the Planet of the Apes is part three of what has become one of the more inspiring movie trilogies of the decade; it’s also a major studio production (20th Century Fox) that has consistently highlighted the danger of the capitalist system and its potential to lay waste to the large majority of humanity, while offering a glimpse of the potential barbarism in store for the unfortunate souls who survive. War for the Planet of the Apes is the third film of 20th Century Fox’s reboot of the critically acclaimed 1968 original film — Planet of the Apes, based on French author Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel – La Planete des Singes. With War, fans of the trilogy can appreciate the highly relevant themes they’ve come to expect from watching Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes , including: Mans ceaseless attempts to manipulate and conquer nature, the dangers of shadowy capitalist industry (biotech, robotics, etc.), animal liberation, the importance of leadership, and socialism vs. barbarism. Each of these themes will inform the analysis of the film and help draw parallels with present-day capitalist realities.

At the opening of the third film, a mere fifteen years has passed since Caesar and his fellow apes uprising from captivity and escape into the redwood forests of Northern CA. In those fifteen years, planet earth has seen over 90% of humans killed off by a simian flu virus created in a Biotech research corporation (Gen-sys laboratories) experimenting on apes in the hopes of curing Alzheimer’s. 

Gen-sys is the biotech corporation where Caesar, a chimpanzee, and his mother before him were given samples of an experimental Alzheimer’s drug that allowed for their intelligence evolution. With the first film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, audiences are given a crystal clear glimpse of the dangers inherent with shadowy profit-driven capitalist industry. This danger becomes more significant and relevant to the present-day when considering the neoliberal deregulation that has become a staple of late capitalism. Humanity could any day come face to face with a contagion that wipes out the vast majority of people, with the survivors similarly blaming the victims, in the film the victims are the apes and the masses– all guinea pigs of profit driven biotechnology and big Pharma fantasies.

In the second film, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, we see the contrast between two communities of survivors. The apes, led by Caesar, have set up a communal society and are thriving in the Redwood forests to the north of the Bay Area. They live by one simple rule, “Apes don’t kill other Apes”. In contrast to their communal society, the surviving humans in San Francisco are struggling to come to terms with the reality they face. Rather than adapting and evolving to the new dawn, they are stockpiling weapons and are hell-bent on fixing a power source that lies in the heart of the Apes forest enclave. In other words, they cling to the hope that the capitalist society they knew, a society responsible for humanity’s demise, can be rebuilt.

War for the Planet of the Apes starts with the barbarism of the humans on full display. An elite soldier unit (Alpha Omega) has found the Apes hideout and is hoping to eliminate Caesar and his fellow apes once and for all. The elite soldiers are led by a demagogic colonel who is obsessed with exacting vengeance on the apes, despite their having nothing to do with the simian flu or the current war. The Alpha Omega soldiers are resisted by the Apes army, while four human soldiers are captured and ultimately let go by Caesar with a message for their rogue Colonel McCullough (played by Woody Harrelson). The message was clear and simple, “the apes did not start the war and they want peace between apes and humans”. Here again we see the “humanity” of intelligent apes compared with the vengeful barbarism of humans whom, despite their dwindling worldwide numbers, must conquer the apes and reclaim their “dominant” status on the planet.

Men and their ceaseless desire to manipulate and conquer all forms of nature is a consistent theme throughout the Planet of the Apes trilogy. The importance of leadership is also quite prominent, none more so than in the third film. At a certain point Caesar’s band is captured by the Alpha Omega soldiers and forced to work without food or water. Caesar steps up and tells the rogue colonel in no uncertain terms that if he wants the apes to work for him then he needs to feed them and quench their thirst. A request the desperate colonel grants as he needs the apes to build a wall to fend off an attack by U.S. Government forces, as it’s revealed (spoiler alert) the colonel and his Alpha Omega soldiers have gone rogue and are operating at the whims of the colonel who enjoys a cult status amongst his troops. 

At issue is the colonel’s callous disregard for chain of command and his troops all in the pursuit of the alleged enemy of humanity. Here parallels can be drawn with the Bush Administration’s hawkish disregard for international law in going after those responsible for 9/11, and more recently the Trump Administration’s failure to even bother investigating whether or not Assad Sarin gassed his own people before launching missiles at a Syrian Air Force Base. Like Assad

and Hussein before him, the apes are similarly blamed to suit hawkish military purposes. Throughout the film we see the courageous leadership of Caesar set against the fascist-like demagoguery of the rogue McCullough. With these contrasting leadership styles its not hard to surmise which side wins out.

“Winning”, unfortunately, isn’t a very accurate description at the conclusion of the “war”. The apes suffer heavy casualties throughout the fighting but ultimately they persist. The humans, never able to come to grips with the new reality on the planet, still hold out the belief that there is something to be won despite the 90% loss of their species, and the remaining pockets pretending nature can still be conquered. This is the real tragedy portrayed throughout the trilogy.

The Planet of the Apes series is a work of science fiction, yet many of the themes resonate with the present reality of 2017. We still see a relatively small group of humans mistakenly believing in their race supremacy, we still face shadowy capitalist industries with the potential to destroy humanity, we still confront world leaders who believe that nature can and must be conquered, and we still have yet to accept our only chance for survival is through collective and peaceful coexistence.

Maybe, before its too late, some intelligent apes will come along and save humanity from

ourselves, until then the War for the Planet of the Apes much like the entire trilogy is worth a

look.

To me the eternal Anarchist is ever replacing pavement with lush gardens. 

~Lew

I have found the enemy, and [she] is us. ~Pogo

By Teresa Smith

It is early autumn and helicopters are circling the UC Berkeley campus as I write this. I can see them from my window. The tut-tut-tut of their propellers punctuate my thoughts.

A few days ago, I rode my bike up to the university to use the library, and had to navigate through a swarm of media and security workers. An Alt Right speech was scheduled on campus that evening, but it was still several hours away. There were no protestors yet, but cable news teams were already milling all over the place, setting up their equipment, preparing their spins. I passed a vlogger talking into a cellphone, addressing his viewers: “Okay guys, we are here, just hours before these horrible, horrible people show up…” Meanwhile, near Sproul Plaza, the epicenter of the historic Free Speech Movement, police officers and rent-a-cops were blocking off intersections and erecting metal barricades, carefully constructing a designated space for the upcoming spectacle.

Not during Occupy, nor during Black Lives Matter, did I see this level of event staging occur for protests. The conflict between the Alt Right and the Antifa, it seems, is a very special type of media/security commodity. For the first time in recent memory, American protestors aren’t expressing dissent towards the corporate oligarchy or the state, but rather are pitted squarely against each other. Since January, citizens from “both sides” of the political spectrum have come together in Berkeley to punch, pepper spray, and kick the shit out of one another. Ribs, fingers, and noses have been broken, and people on both sides have wound up in the hospital and in jail. Security for these events has cost UC Berkeley $2.5 million this year — a stark overshot of the $100,000 yearly budget that the university usually allocates for security at protests. 

These street brawls, or whatever you want to call them, are a brilliant media commodity. There’s something for every demographic: there’s action, there’s politics, there are costumes and snarky commentators. A major news event rolled into a game show rolled into the rhetoric of the end of civilization. Could this be the rise of the modern gladiator? 

Every viewer, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum, is supposed to have a stake in this conflict, and thanks to social media and livestreaming technologies, you can follow your team’s champions as they navigate these hyper-historicized events in real time.  Is this the initiation of the mobile coliseum? 

It’s the Free Speech Nazis verses the Antifa Brawlers, and front row seats are just a click away…

*

As I struggle to scratch these observations down on paper, I find myself looking over my shoulder, feeling nervous. From within me, a critical voice arises, shouting, “You must take a stance — a strong stance — against the Alt Right!” 

So many people in my life have been saying that lately, saying things like, “Anything short of beating up a Nazi is racism!” 

In my mind now, these people are chasing me, throwing bricks and bagels, angry at me for discussing present events without firmly taking sides.

“Erase everything you have written!” these internalized voices say. “Erase all this and replace it with an impassioned treatise in defense of punching Nazis!”

*

I realize I cannot go any further until I unpack my Privilege Knapsack. Until I lay my Oppression Credentials on the table. So here goes:

I’m a mixed-race gender-queer cis-lady who spent her childhood in low-income housing and foster care but who has attended college and gained a master’s degree. 

As a mixed-race person, I acknowledge that I sometimes have the privilege of passing as white, but because I don’t always pass, I’ve experienced racist bullshit throughout my life, like having my bag searched in the grocery store as a teen, or being asked by teachers to speak to the class on behalf of my “race,” or…a million other things. As a cis-lady, I have the privilege of having been assigned the gender I supposedly identify with at birth, but I have to deal with the financial, sexual, and emotional oppression experienced by women, cis- and trans- alike. As a gender-queer person, I don’t always quite identify as female, and at times I sorely want to express myself in traditionally masculine ways, but because I live in a binary-enforcing culture I am pressured to pick one gender and stick to the script. As someone who grew up in low-income housing, I have some serious PTSD triggers from having experienced the violence of poverty as a child, but having an advanced degree has granted me access to types of spaces, communities, and conversations that many of the people I grew up with will never be able to enter. Additionally, myself and my entire extended family was born on the “correct” side of certain borders, so I have never had to deal with the fear of myself or my loved ones being kidnapped and deported by ICE. Also, I was raised Catholic so I have never had to deal with Islamophobia or anti-Semitism and the horrible hate crimes to which they give rise. Also, I have had the privilege of having been exposed to certain ideas and communities that have allowed to me properly frame this statement of my identity, privileges, and oppressions in such a way that people on the left are likely to accept me — and even tokenize me as someone who is supposed to be visible and speak — so long as I follow the script.

So there we have it.

Have I passed the checkpoint?

Am I allowed to continue to speak? 

Or perhaps I don’t have quite the right identity markers, and for me to open my mouth at this time will be dismissed by people on the left as pointless noise.

*

How you ever been accused of being white as a way to silence you? I have.

It happened to me three years ago in a radical newspaper meeting in which a collective member shot down an article I’d written about my fear of the police because “no one wants to hear that kind of thing from a white person.” 

I’d written the article under a pseudonym, and hadn’t mentioned my race because I wanted to focus on class. I wanted to focus on the way people are policed in low income housing, about how as a little kid I watched my fourteen-year-old babysitter, who happened to be white, get chased by cops with their guns drawn through my apartments. Even once I’d left the projects and was safely in grad school, all the fear came rushing back every time I passed campus police officers patrolling the halls with guns and batons strapped to their bodies.

“No one wants to hear that from a white person,” is what someone in my collective said. This person, by the way, was white. 

I was wildly triggered at the time — to be told you can’t speak because of whiteness you don’t possess is crazy-making. But later, I started to wonder if this is how white people must sometimes feel in leftist spaces. To be told your pain is invalid, just because you’re white? That’s not right. Pain is pain. 

Sure, there are moments when someone else is in a lot more pain and they need attention first, but that doesn’t mean your pain doesn’t matter at all.

*

Recently, I was drinking beers with a friend who is queer and brown who told me, “Yeah, I got called ‘white and straight’ by a roommate a few weeks ago…” 

He explained that the housemate was trying to make a case against him to the other housemates, and in the process said something along the lines of “he’s just a freaking white straight male” — even though he very clearly is not. Weirdly, the person who accused him of being white was, you guessed it, himself white. Hmm…self-hatred much?

This reminded me of another friend who is a rad mixed-race Asian lady, who last year told me she was accused of being white by someone in her zinemaking collective, and after that, just dropped out, because, yeah, the accusation of whiteness being used to silence you, especially if you aren’t even white is really, wow. Just wow.

I can think of several other examples of moments when, in leftist community discourse, folks of color who were specifically accused of being white as a way to undermine and silence them.

It seems like there is an undercurrent in leftist circles of accusing someone of having a type of privilege — especially white-maleness — as a way of saying their opinions don’t matter, that they should stop taking up space.

*

Another, more common way that leftists shut down underprivileged people whose opinions they don’t like is to accuse them of harboring an “inner oppressor” — of being “white/able-bodied/etc/male on the inside.”

If a brown or black person takes part in a “too militant” anti-capitalist action, other leftists of color may accuse you of being a “Coconut” or “Oreo” — this literally happened during the 2012 occupation of the UC Davis Cross-Cultural Center. People of color, it seems, are encouraged to speak and hold space by mainstream leftists — until it is realized that we have a class analysis, and then the mic is quickly taken away. “Ignore that brown person,” the liberal¹ p.o.c.s say, “She is really white on the inside!” 

Likewise, women who voted for Bernie Sanders during the primary election were accused by liberal “feminists” like Gloria Steinem of “letting their boyfriends vote through them.” It didn’t matter that Clinton was the big-bank candidate — women are apparently supposed to only ever vote for another woman, regardless of whether or not we agree with her politics, otherwise we are denounced as being mindless pawns of men.

On the mainstream left, women, people of color and other oppressed groups are embraced as tokens, but only if we promote the big-bank-friendly neoliberal version of diversity. If we happen to have a post-colonial class-based analysis (which is to say: if we’re friggin Marxists who read Fanon, baby), we are robbed of our p.o.c. and lady points. The mic is taken away. We are accused of being “white on the inside,” of being the “empty vessel for the will of our boyfriends.” 

*

When, on the left, did we let “white” become such a dirty word that we’re using it on people of color to silence them? 

Since when did we start accusing women of being “pawns of males” as a way to indicate their opinions don’t matter? 

I’m tired of feeling like I have to police my privilege and slap my oppression credentials on the table every time I want to speak. 

I’m tired of seeing words like “male” “white” “straight” and “cis” thrown around like they are insults. 

I’m tired of watching people play the Gotcha Game: calling out microaggressions so fiercely in our spaces that bystanders get scared and never want to come back.

I’m tired of the weird witch-hunts that go down in squats, radical spaces, and housing projects in which a small group gets accused of “having inner oppressors.”

What I’ve started to see is a type of leftist fundamentalism emerging. Rather than attempting to repair our communities when microaggressions occur, we’ve fallen into a pattern of vilifying and taking down the _______-ist. Like, rather than identifying hurtful/oppressive behaviors, we’ve started putting labels on individuals in such a way that those individuals are not able to redeem themselves. Or we simply label oppressor groups as being inherently _____-ist, whether or not individual members have done things to change. 

I think the fact that the term “whiteness” gets thrown around on the left as a way of saying “shut up” has everything to do with the reality of those helicopters outside my window: we now have a fascist movement that has descended upon the leftist epicenter of the Free Speech Movement, eager to provoke us into beating them up because they know they can come here to get media images that prove their point to rural Americans that urban leftists are unreasonable.

At this time — a time when all Americans are suffering in the wake of a recession that decimated the middle class — white Americans are being offered two very different versions of reality. According to the left, white people’s pain isn’t valid and they need to shut up. According to these Alt Right assholes, white people are some kind of magical unicorn “superior race” being held back by an “evil left wing conspiracy” of “enforcing diversity.” 

We all know how ludicrous the words of these Alt Right speakers are, and yet, there are millions of white people in America who are buying into this fantasy version of themselves being offered by the right. And at moments, when I see the way “white” gets thrown around as a slur in leftist circles, I can almost understand why. 

These Alt Right fascists are idiots. We can outsmart them. But we have to put effort into building up our own spaces, and we have to start working towards smarter discussions in which everyone’s suffering is given space. We need to stop telling people they aren’t allowed to have any pain simply because they are part of an oppressor demographic. I believe we can do this, while continuing the vital work of undermining the oppressions created by race, class, gender, sexual bio-essentialism, and capitalist colonialism. We can do our amazing work of building intersectional community on the left without othering people. 

Several friends in the Bay Area leftist scene are ready to engage in compassionate criticism that moves us beyond Leftist Fundamentalism. We are starting a new publication called Subversas.com. We are interested in articles that discuss leftist taboos, and that hold space for the types of discussions that normally get shut down on the left. The fundamentalism that has emerged on the left is like concrete being poured over a lush garden — it is time for the flowers to break through the cement!

The American populace has never been so close to uniting against the big banks and stripping the 1% of their power. The corporations are dumping money into fanning the flames of conflict because they know how close we are to going for their throats. 

1 Liberals are leftists who think the system is working, and thus are afraid of revolutionary politics & anti-capitalism. 

By P Wingnut and Teresa

Moral debates between violence/non-violence and trying to appeal to the media regarding antifa amidst a rising tide of alt right publicity stunts misses the point. The alt right are setting up situations in which they define the agenda, they pick the time and place, and no matter how anyone reacts they will declare victory. 

A lot of people are condemning some antifa (anti-fascist) actions, particularly those in Berkeley in which large black-clad groups have militantly shut down alt-right gatherings. Just as it is wrong to condemn all militant antifa tactics, it’s simplistic to automatically support everything and anything antifa—or any particular member of antifa—might decide to do. There are members of antifa who do the right thing, others who make mistakes, and there are probably police agents posing as antifa to harm us.

What’s important is effectiveness and acting thoughtfully and strategically — which isn’t always measured by the toughest or most militant action. Strategy involves questioning our own tactics when necessary. The alt right is trying to provoke violence because they think it will work to their advantage and help expand their numbers, so we need to be careful not to play by their rules, while still acting in self-defense when people are attacked.

It’s a mistake to think that by jumping a particular racist extremist, we’re having a meaningful effect on the system of white supremacy. If we managed to get rid of all the alt right morons who met in Charlottesville and have been descending on Berkeley, the system of racism would remain. 

Antifa members with the courage to act in self-defense are heroes. Antifa also engages in other tactics like blowing bubbles, peaceful chanting, dressing in costumes, participating in comments threads on the internet, etc. In August, Antifa in Boston surrounded an alt-right rally chatting “we can’t hear you,” shutting it down seemingly without having to throw a punch. 

It’s important to interrogate the concept of “nonviolence.” By holding nonviolence as a fetish, we limit our ability to affect change and allow our movements to be co-opted by business-as-usual liberalism. We have to start looking at these things as tactics rather than ideologies. We still live in a world in which women are making 77 cents to the man’s dollar, in which black people disproportionately fill our prisons and are disproportionally murdered by police. If we are to dismantle the systems of social injustice that surround us, we are going to need to work together on a grand scale. The current efforts of the media and alt-right to divide us undermines our organizing power. We can’t let go of our greater visions of a better world as we work to strategically address the rise of fascism in this country. 

Flag-waving thugs have a dubious connection with the power structures that are destroying the world and enslaving her people. These people and their hateful ideas are symptoms of deeper problems. The most dangerous people don’t wander the streets — they rule from fancy offices. 

Exclusively militant rhetoric and images obscure the complex, nuanced and beautiful simplicity that we’re trying to create — a world without rulers based on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation. Escalating violence plays right into the hands of people who thrive to the extent violence—and the hate and fear violence breeds—escalates. We need to stop playing into this game. If solidarity has any meaning, it doesn’t just mean solidarity within a tiny politically air-tight clique eager to give the middle finger to every working slob who isn’t woke. 

Solidarity is big, broad, messy and hard because it means working out differences that threaten to divide us so we can focus on the system. This struggle is about stories, conversations, connections, ideas, and building community — and at times militant self-defense against racists. 

By Arlie Russell Hochschild

We are in the midst of a crisis: signs are appearing of a rise in the US of white supremacy and fascism. I’m old enough to have seen white supremacist violence before. I was a civil rights worker in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964. In June of that summer, three of my fellow workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner were murdered by Klansmen and, over the course of the summer, dozens more were badly beaten. Since the lives of those three, and, over the years, many others, ended through right wing violence, some called for left wing violence in response. But leaders with greater foresight prevailed and a powerful civil rights movement changed the nation, rewrote its laws, and enfranchised millions of African Americans who previously had never been able to vote. While much remains to be done, the movement itself was extraordinary, and while various strategies were pursued, under the leadership of Martin Luther King, it was predominantly non-violent.

I recently spent five years getting to know, and write a book about, Tea Party enthusiasts in the heartland of the petrochemical industry in the deep South, people who came to believe in Donald Trump. I discovered that they felt themselves to be — and in many ways were — victims. Their wages are often stagnating or declining, many of their jobs have been automated or offshored, and the air they breathe and the water they drink are grossly polluted. The president cleverly offered them scapegoats for their sense of victimhood: Mexicans, Muslims, black Americans, the mainstream press, and the left. Like Hitler and plenty of other demagogues, Trump understood that appealing to that sense of victimhood was his path to power. And at every step of the way, Fox News, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Rush Limbaugh and others supplied the sound bites and images to reinforce this dark worldview.

When, in a series of skirmishes which broke out earlier this year on and around the U.C. Berkeley campus, an Antifa activist beat an older man wearing in a Trump T-shirt, leaving blood streaming down his face, it was the greatest possible gift to Fox News, and to the Trump/Fox narrative of a victimized right. Who might this anonymous man in the Trump T- shirt be? Who knows, maybe he was one of the estimated six to eight million who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 but voted for Trump in 2016. Or maybe he was one the one out of four — other studies say one out of three — white high school-educated voters who say they would have voted for Bernie Sanders had he won the Democratic Party nomination, but when Sanders lost, voted for Donald Trump instead. 46 percent of American voters voted for Trump and they’re not all “deplorable.” If we treat them as people to be attacked and beaten, we’re treating them as contemptuously as did Hillary Clinton when she used that word. But what they are is caught up in a narrative of victimhood and the search for people and causes to blame.

To bash, punch, or kick a man, to smash a window or light a fire is to make the greatest possible gift to Fox News and to Donald Trump and his unsavory brew of KKK members, neo-Nazis and others whose appeal is based on the narrative of victimhood. When we make such people victims of violence, we reinforce that narrative. We rob the movement against racism and fascism of the high ground through which the civil rights movement transformed America. Since we are indeed facing forces that include outright fascists, it’s worth looking closely at how the greatest fascist of them all, Adolf Hitler, came to power. How did he end up as chancellor of Germany in 1933, when, five years earlier, the Nazi Party won less than 3% of the vote? There were many factors, but an absolutely crucial one was that the Nazis were brilliantly successful in provoking the German left into violent street-fighting. Dozens of people were killed on both sides. Hitler was able to appeal to his followers that they were victims of the left, and to the public at large that he would restore order. 

At Charlottesville, of course, the most deadly violence came from the right. Nonetheless, because Fox News and other outlets were able to show some pushing and shoving from anti-racist protesters, surveys show that more Americans thought the fault lay mainly with the “left” or with “both sides” than thought the fault lay with the alt-right. This was a gift to the alt-right. Let that not happen again. Should we show opposition to the forces of racism and white supremacy that we see around us? Of course! There is much to do. Let’s all get busy. Be relentless — but not through violence.

Arlie Hochschild is the author of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. 

By Gerald Smith

We’ve got a problem.

In spite of the fact that the American workers have trounced the fragments of fascism all over this land from Boston to Charlottesville to the San Francisco Bay Area, too many Anti-Fascist fighters are under indictment. There is a crying need for a public organization to support these Anti-Fascists.

In Central California, three Anti-Fascists have been indicted in Sacramento in relation to the smashing and scattering of the attempted “Unite the Right” Rally on June 26th: Yvette Felarca of By Any Means Necessary ($20,000 bail), Mike Williams of the Brown Berets ($250,000 bail), and Porfirio Paz. Mention of bail amounts is not done to melt the gentle snowflake but to harden the resolve of the conscious Anti-Fascist.

In Berkeley the number of arrestees has ballooned since the “Anti-Hate” rallies in August and September of this year. In one of the more serious cases Eric Clanton was arrested ($200,000 bail). The “Berkeley 5” Dustin Sawtelle, Jeffrey Armstrong, Scott Hendrick, Taylor Fuller, Nathan Perry have also been arrested. There are more.

These outrageous bails beg the question as to the actual role the state is playing. Are the police protecting citizens or is this a form of political repression? To look at the facts and ask the question is to answer it. Here are a few examples:

* Department of Homeland Security agents allowed an Oath Keeper (right–winger) to assist in the arrest of an anti-fascist protester providing handcuffs in the arrest.

* “Liberty Revival Alliance” Rich Black’s right-wing coalition was meeting with Berkeley police ahead of March 4 and April 15 actions (both of which were unpermitted, but police facilitated them anyway).

* Numerous instances of the police collaborating with alt-right trolls in a doxing, internet harassment campaign.

The events in Charlotesville greatly increased the chances of getting all the charges dropped both in the Berkeley and Sacramento cases and simultaneously going on the offensive against the fascists about what they truly are, what they truly stand for and that they do indeed stand for, advocate and practice mass mayhem and murder.

With the Democrats having piled on to condemn Trump’s deliberately equivocal casting of blame — and some prominent Republicans condemning Trump as well (and reportedly the Navy chief also taking a nominally decent stand) — a skillfully run defense movement and political education campaign in California will make it very hard for the Democratic establishment to press forward with court charges.

The fascists’ attempts to paint themselves as defenders of free speech can now be politically shredded (despite the past mistakes of some antifa including the Black Block in over-emphasizing physical confrontation at the expense of mass political education).

In spite of Trump’s self-exposure on this matter, Antifa has continued to be condemned and denounced by the corporate media.

Loss of life is a reasonable measure as to whom is actually causing harm to our society. Consider the following:

Richard Collins, a black man, was killed at the University of Maryland by Sean Ubanski (Ubanski is affiliated with the Facebook page Alt-Reich Nation).

On May 26, 2017, Jeremy Joseph Christian fatally stabbed two people and injured a third on a train in Portland, Ore., after he was confronted for yelling a gamut of anti-Muslim slurs at two young women.

Heather Heyer was killed and 19 others injured by James Alex Feilds who drove his car into a crowd of Anti-Fascist protestors on August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville. 

And there are more, many more. According to Political Research Associates: “The U.S. Far Right has killed nearly 450 people since 1990. Heather Heyer of Charlottesville, Virginia is the latest casualty of White nationalism. We can honor the sacrifice of the dead and wounded by matching their courage in standing down similar rallies planned for the weeks ahead. Equally important, we can defend members of our communities who are under attack. People of good conscience, regardless of party affiliation, faith tradition, or identity should look upon Charlottesville as a call to moral action in defense of humanity and rejection of White supremacy.”

The fascists have murdered scores of Americans. How many Americans have been killed by Antifa?

Zero.

Cornel West, among others, has publicly stated that when the fascists surrounded a black church in Charlottesville, the Antifa saved his life. If there is any doubt of the racist danger we’re facing, consider the beating of a young black man, Deandre Harris. 

Since 40,000 people showed up in Boston to meet 50 fascists, the Hitler-lovers have canceled every rally they have called. But they have not disappeared. The fascists have joined the Republican Party on the campus of UC Berkeley which gives them access to money, lots of money. The fascists have also created numerous fronts and allied with various right-wing organizations (Red Elephant, Proud Boys, Patriotic Prayer, Identity Evropa, etc.). While not every member of these allied organization is a fascist, they are clearly fascist collaborators. Our strategy and tactics should be adjusted to allow our activities to become more effective.
Here is something we can do to aid the growing list of Anti-Fascists presently under indictment: Let’s create an online petition campaign aimed at the cities of Berkeley, San Francisco, and Sacramento that demands that the charges against all Anti-Fascists be dropped.
Our lever is the fact that after the events in Charlottesville, Trump was denounced by the Democrats for equating the Alt right/fascists with Anti-Fascist protesters. OK. These cities are run by the Democrats. Did they really mean what they said? Let’s put them to the test.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD WILL RISE AGAIN!  FASCISM NEVER!

By Jesse D. Palmer

The world feels like it’s crumbling around us, and not just because climate change and the sixth extinction are becoming personal and undeniable. What’s particularly disturbing is that the cultural and social glue that humans need to live together is fraying. We’re losing the ability to tolerate other people who are different from us. We’re losing the ability to talk. This sadly is not just a comment about right wing racists. My friends and community are radicals and anarchists — I’m talking about us as well as the racists as well as plenty of other people we all bump into everyday. 

Our response to these extreme times has to be extreme, but not in the way a lot of people are thinking. It’s time to focus on why we’re against racism, why we’re against oppression — which is fundamentally because of love, not because of what and who we’re against.

Starting with love means remembering that we love everyone and everything as well as ourselves. Being in such a state of universal love can be hard, but it is achievable. In my heart, when I take time to feel deeply, I have too much love to bear. Most of the time while we’re going about our daily lives we have to suppress the love so we can get stuff done. But it is there and it is the central powerful life force that enables everything. I’m talking about awe seeing the morning light, contemplating a tree, thinking about how much we love our housemates, our children, the members of our collective, riding a bike on a warm day, eating a delicious lunch, making love, building a treehouse, looking at pictures of old friends, staring at the Milky Way, watching people at the next table at the restaurant laughing together even though we’ve never met them and our backgrounds are totally different. The feeling of universal love goes back to nature. We are all astronauts on the earth — people, plants, animals, bugs. It’s not a cliché — we really are all one.

We need to start our activism and our revolution with love and let it infect and inform everything we’re doing. A lot of activist burnout and a lot of the failures of our movements are because activism gets stuck in the mud and thinks too small. Our actions feel harsh, based on guilt, based on anger, based on division, sometimes edging towards violence. In the activist scene, I sometimes feel scared to say or write what I really think. This is not a way we can win. These dynamics keep us distracted from understanding the big picture and tackling the big issues that underlie and structure the wars, the oppression, the economic inequality, and the ecological disasters. 

People are struggling with change that’s too fast, with a lack of meaning, with isolation, and with too much technology, which is leading to psychological disorder as we struggle for some sort of refuge or bandaid. This stress feeds the rise of tribalism, alt right nationalism and fundamentalist religious movements, as well as radical scenes that are not tender, that are not welcoming or generous or safe.

Right now we need to fight oppression and struggle against ecological collapse while being particularly careful to avoid making intolerance and social division worse. We must resist racists and fight their ideas, yet avoid dehumanizing anyone no matter how wrong their actions may be. 

There is a big picture we’re missing. The tiny elite who are profiting from killing the planet want to keep us divided and fighting amongst ourselves because it distracts us from building an alternative to a system which requires inequality, which requires destroying the earth, and which is organized by competition and violence, not cooperation and humanity. We need to stay focused on fighting those systems. 

Self-hatred is an emotion behind a lot of destructive human behavior because — unable to love oneself — one is unable to love the world, the trees and the oceans, and anyone perceived as different. Self-hatred and emotional shut-down that interferes with all of our ability to tap into the love that is within us is something everyone has to work on all the time. 

Let’s train ourselves to spread and grow love. It can help to start with feelings of love that are outside you – your feelings of love for places or things or people — and let that grow until it becomes a habit and can feed upon itself. Eventually once love is strong enough in your heart and free enough that it floats near the surface, it shines back upon you. 

The earth is hurting because of people and our machines and capitalism — but really the earth will be okay. People might not be okay — maybe probably won’t be okay. That is scary to me. Let it sink in but don’t let it paralyze you or cause you to turn away from life and love. At my best moments, I love myself which means I love human beings and the good things we’ve created enough to fight to keep human society going against the odds. People are complex and sure we’re responsible for a lot of terrible stuff — oppression, genocide, ecological domination. 

But there is plenty to love about humans and our social formations — parts of our rich diverse beautiful cultures, our music, our learning, our art. And just our simple day-to-day lives with all the small pleasures and moments we experience. 

Now is the time to keep our eyes on why we want to save the world. That tenderness can give us the courage and eloquence we need to communicate and resonate with others. Most people love being alive — it is an intense rush. We don’t need a lot of fancy jargon, gymnastic mental justifications or economic theories to figure out why living is fun and worthwhile and why human communities are worth trying to preserve and improve. From the big picture we can move to particular movements against police killings, against pipelines, for people getting the food and housing and healthcare they need, for freedom and justice and for ecological sustainability. 

The earth is what unites us all. Avoiding damage to the environment may be our biggest challenge, but it could also be the wake up call that forces us to grow up as a species and cast off sloppy earth-killing structures built only on greed. 

If we start with love, we can try to make stuff better even though we recognize that we make mistakes — that we aren’t always good or loving ourselves. No one is perfect. We need to approach that reality with self-love, not shame but rather compassion and acceptance. Then we need to try to do better.

By Isabel Fava Bean

On a sunny Saturday in the spring of 2015 I found myself talking to a redwood tree. I was tripping on mushrooms at a local park with a couple of UC Berkeley students and one of them, a bio major, was trying to convince me that plants don’t have feelings. Naturally, I abandoned the group I was with and walked off to converse with some plants. And who better to converse with than the tallest plant on earth, the coast redwood? I sat down in the gnarled roots of one redwood, my back against her bark, and gazed up at her neighbor. I began to listen. “Mushroom Isabel,” she intoned, as the blue sky behind her swirled, “You need to tell Sober Isabel to stop fuckin up.” I understood immediately that Mushroom Isabel was my shrooming self, and Sober Isabel was myself when I wasn’t on shrooms, though that Isabel was hardly sober. The tree told me I needed to refocus on what I truly cared about — learning sustainable living skills, learning to grow food — and stop distracting myself with partying, social media, and working in foodservice. It happened to be layout weekend for Slingshot #117 and the culmination of my trip was wandering into the Slingshot office and falling asleep on the couch while the rest of the collective was scrambling to get the paper laid out.

It was during that spring that my friends started talking to me about their experiences of boundary violations and rape. I read that 1 in 3 women are raped or abused in their lifetimes. I couldn’t help but feel it was only a matter of time until I went through the same. The one common factor in each of my friends’ experiences was intoxication. Both they and their rapists were under the influence — usually alcohol, sometimes molly or another drug. And intoxication wasn’t just incidental — it was sometimes part and parcel to the rape: “He kept offering me alcohol until I was too wasted to resist.”

Around this time a sober coworker gave me a zine called “Toward A Less Fucked Up World: Sobriety and Anarchist Struggle” by Nick Riotfag. Holy shit! Reading this zine blew my mind. It drew connections that hadn’t occurred to me before — connections between intoxication culture and violence towards women, oppression of people of color and queer people, and general societal malaise and apathy. My mom had always told me not to use drugs and alcohol for my own health and safety, which, as a teenager, was easy to disregard — it’s my body, I’ll do what I want! But to see that my substance use fit into large scale social patterns of oppression and violence was, for me, a compelling reason not to partake.

I had been working the night shift at a bakery, going out a lot, drinking and dabbling with other drugs. I broke my dad’s trust by throwing parties at his house and got formally called out at work for using drugs on the clock. All of the above had been building in my mind, I guess, because around my 20th birthday, I quit my job, stopped drinking, and set off on a 450-mile bike tour down the California coast. It’s been over two years and I haven’t touched drugs or alcohol since then, but I often think of what that redwood told me during that mushroom trip, reminding me to stay focused on what I know is important.

I had originally intended to write an article condemning any use of substances, restating many of the arguments in “Toward a Less Fucked Up World”. But I realize that nobody who uses and enjoys substances wants to read about how everything they’re doing is wrong. And I do see some positive aspects of substance use.

So, after discussions with a few of the people closest to me who enjoy substances, I attempted to step outside my judgements and brainstormed a list of the potential positive impacts of intoxication culture on our lives. I acknowledge and respect the sacred roles that some substances play in many traditional cultures. Substances can be wonderful medicines. I think it can be healthy and positive to conscientiously use drugs and alcohol to self-medicate for struggles we face that we cannot change, or that we need help to change. Alcohol might act as a social lubricant that helps us get out of our shell as we build the confidence to eventually express ourselves without it. And when being constantly aware of the pain and injustice in the world incapacitates us, substances might help us take a break and relax just long enough to gather our strength and jump back into radical projects. I think it’s important to recognize how fucking insane the world is right now, and not hold ourselves to rigid standards of sanity and logic all the time — we need to chill, to be goofy, to be wild sometimes — and in a culture that puts everything in tight boxes, substances can give us a taste of freedom, however short-lived. I do want to work toward a world where everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves and feels free without any substances. But of course we’re not there, and probably won’t be for a long time. 

I know substances have been radicalizing and mind-opening for many folks. Psychedelics in particular have sparked friends of mine, and I’m sure many others, to open their eyes to the beauty of the natural world and our place within it and to question social norms and the values and lifestyles they were raised with.

I also brainstormed a list of the negative impacts of intoxication culture in our society. The connections between intoxication culture and rape culture are sharp. According to The Scientific American, when compared to people with XY chromosomes (“men”), people with XX chromosomes (“women”) are deficient in an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase that helps us metabolize alcohol. This, coupled with an average lower body weight, means “women” are more likely to have lower alcohol tolerance. Amongst young people, especially punks and bros, drinking more, faster is a point of pride, which pushes the most vulnerable people to drink past their limits. In my mind, some rape and boundary violations are the inevitable result of the combination of a culture of heavy drinking, the differences in the way that alcohol affects people, and the social expectations around sex. Logical ways to address this on a personal level are to reject social norms and redefine our sexualities using the language of consent, and to drink less or not at all, especially in spaces where rape is rampant, like on college campuses. Directing this suggestion just at female-identified folks echoes victim-blaming narratives — I direct it equally at male-identified folks. And of course we must continue to fight rape culture on all levels, not only in our personal choices.

Intoxication culture also has strong ties to consumer culture. The tobacco and alcohol industries are fat with the profits from our addictions and hold powerful positions in Amerika the Corporatocracy. The cannabis industry is set to take its place next to them, providing yet another packaged substance, taxed, regulated, and industrially produced and marketed. We all know that industrial, corporate food is killing the environment and the people who consume it, and that disadvantaged people and ecosystems are the hardest hit — let’s extend that critique to the systems that produce substances on a global, commercial scale. Some radicals see intoxication as a form of resistance to capitalist values of productivity, but this is a myth. Spending money on booze and drugs only ties us closer to the rat wheel. I know too many punks who work jobs they hate and spend much of their hard earned cash on booze, weed, and cigarettes — largely so they can forget about their crappy jobs for the weekend. Fuck that.

On a personal level, substances can be coping mechanisms for issues we might otherwise be challenged to address. They can numb us, keep us content and apathetic when faced with our own pain and trauma, global injustice, and environmental collapse. The popular narrative justifying intoxication culture says that we are using substances to “have fun” or “celebrate”. This avoids any awareness that attraction to substance use often comes from deep emotional wounds. Substances can help us cope with what we cannot change, and that is a beautiful thing, but we can’t let them keep us from facing the struggles that we can overcome.

Let me be clear that I do not wish to pathologize, criminalize, or condemn drug users, or to suggest that everyone should abstain from drugs or that sobriety is necessarily more radical than intoxication. Rather, I believe one can take a radical approach to intoxication, through self-awareness, and of course many people take a reactionary approach to sobriety, by stigmatizing and criminalizing drugs. I wholeheartedly believe in the decriminalization of drugs and freeing of those locked up for drug related crimes. I would like us to examine our substance use, or lack thereof, and consider the personal and political effects of our choices. Despite the prominent straightedge current within punk, I feel this subject largely goes undiscussed in radical circles — and I suspect that many of us are using substances not after thoughtful consideration, but merely because substance use is normalized and expected in our social circles.

Regarding approaching substance use through a radical lens, what can we actually do, tonight, tomorrow, to intoxicate in positive and conscientious ways? Here are some ideas — add your own!

Let’s DIY substances the way we DIY music, art, and radical organizing. Lots of us already do this. Brew your own beer. Distill your own booze. Mushroom hunt. Grow weed or opium poppies. If you gotta buy drugs, source them ethically. Decommercialize your drug use. Trade and give drugs away instead of buying and selling. Or barter for other goods. Dumpster dive for booze and drugs at college campuses on move-out day.

When we’re at bars and parties, let’s regulate our own levels of intoxication. Let’s watch those around us, and respectfully check in with people who are wasted, see what they need. Make sure they are safe. We can prevent individual instances of rape, drunk driving and other fucked up shit by being aware and taking care of each other. Cultivate safer spaces and spaces where intoxication is an option but sobriety is also socially acceptable. Let’s use substances to cope with what is beyond our control and to feel okay so we can stay engaged in radical struggle. Let’s let ourselves feel shitty sometimes and do that with substances when we need to. When we allow ourselves to feel shitty, we can begin to identify what is wrong and what we might need to change.

Sober people can frame their sobriety through a radical lens. Some ideas: We can respect everyone’s personal choices by not preaching. We can support comrades who are trying to use less substances by sharing our own experiences, and hanging out with them sober. Let’s consider how we could change our interactions so that people need drugs less often because they feel accepted, appreciated, and brave enough to face whatever demons they carry. Let’s learn harm reduction skills and support related programs, like needle exchanges and safer injection sites. Let’s continue to educate ourselves about the oppressive systems that target marginalized people by encouraging them to use drugs, and then victimize them further through a war on drugs that is really a war on drug users. Let’s acknowledge and examine our own dependencies, such as tobacco, coffee, pharmaceuticals, or refined sugar. Or buy coffee produced by a Zapatista collective.

I present these ideas less as a doctrine and more as a spark for discussion. A PDF of Toward A Less Fucked Up World is available online. Write to Slingshot and let’s talk! The most important thing is for all of us, whether we choose to use substances or not, to continue educating ourselves and each other about the ways in which those in power use intoxication culture to reinforce their dominance — and to fight that dominance on every front.

I present these ideas less as a doctrine and more as a spark for discussion. A PDF of Toward A Less Fucked Up World is available online. Contact me at isabelxochitl@gmail.com

and let’s talk! The most important thing is for all of us, whether we choose to use substances or not, to continue educating ourselves and each other about the ways in which those in power use intoxication culture to reinforce their dominance — and to fight that dominance on every front.

Let me be clear that I do not wish to pathologize, criminalize, or condemn drug users, or to suggest that everyone should abstain from drugs or that sobriety is necessarily more radical than intoxication. Rather, I believe one can take a radical approach to intoxication, through self-awareness, and of course many people take a reactionary approach to sobriety, by stigmatizing and criminalizing drugs. I wholeheartedly believe in the decriminalization of drugs and freeing of those locked up for

By I Steve

A lot of white activist-types can talk our ears off about unconscious racial bias, micro-aggressions, and privelege, but are still gosh-darn twits. Is the problem that they have to try harder, read every article in Everyday Feminism? Or is there something deeper? Is it not good enough to have a list of exceptions where you don’t act like you’re better than other people: anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-homophobia?

How are there decent-hearted people with terrible predudices, and assholes with perfect politics? “I’m an anti-racist asshole. Why don’t people of color like me? Why doesn’t everyone like me?” Because you’re still an asshole!

What’s missing is basic humility. It’s not just about how to relate to marginalized groups. It’s about how you relate to yourself, and your relationship to reality.

White people don’t have a monopoly on arrogance. Just as being white doesn’t make you racist, it doesn’t mean you’re arrogant either. But white people collectively are as notorious for arrogance as for racism. That whiteness is intertwined with arrogance is obvious to everyone who isn’t an arrogant white person.

Humility, being humble, is usually defined as a lack of fixation on oneself and a deference to others. You’ve probably heard that humility isn’t about self-effacing. It’s about self-acceptance. If I don’t accept my real self with all my weirdness, I can create a glorious false-self to avoid accepting my real self. For some people, this goes all the way to Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

But I’m a ‘Radical’ who Does Good Things

One of the ways a culture preserves itself is by teaching itself good things about itself, and activist culture is no exception. Our teaching on arrogance is that it is a quality of the mainstream society we oppose. Those people try to get lots and lots of money so they can glorify themselves with bigger houses and bigger cars. They grow up wanting to be star athletes, leaders in business and politics, Nobel prize winners and best-selling writers, and foist their bitterness on the rest of us when their dreams evaporate.

All true, but look at us. We demand our demands be met. We no longer believe in “scientific” socialism, but we know our logic is flawless; we are right. Drawn to the cause by Dr. King and Che Guevara, why would I want to be a foot soldier or a shit-worker? Or I may reject mass organizing with its leaders and followers—I’m a free ego unencumbered by ancestors, culture, anything but my desires. While that approach appeals to the young-at-heart in all-of-us, it risks obliviousness to our interdependence, another form of arrogance.

Part of the activist identity is anti-Racism. Since I’m such a great activist, I’m a great anti-racist. So yup, if you tell me I did something disrespectful or ignorant, I’ll put you in your place to protect my ego. That’s why allies—or accomplices or whatever word the Internet says distinguishes us from those allies—can be so much more fragile than ordinary white people with twisted minds and good hearts.

Instead, I can realize I have more to learn. The Urban Dictionary’s entry on humility:

“Remaining teachable, knowing that you do not have all the answers.” Their example: “I had to have a good sense of humility to listen to my teammate’s advice, even though i have been playing baseball a lot longer than him.” “Veteran protesters” who think Millennial activists don’t know anything—do take note.

Humility is from Religion, and You Hate Jesus, your Mom, and your Buddhist Housemate

Humility is a virtue and core subject in most religions. Religion is an aspect of most cultures. Humility is a theme in most cultures. Among your many options, you can keep your culture’s religion and reject it’s idea of humility. You may also reject your religion but keep the humility.

We’ve watched enough cave-people movies to think humility was for humans before the Era of Reason, cowering before superstition and volcanoes. But that “Era of Reason,” the European “Enlightenment,” was also the dawn of whiteness. Enlightenment utopias like America were built with the stolen land and slave labor or non-white peoples.

You can listen to others’ wisdom and still be an atheist. You can be a humble atheist. An anonymous person explains how humility is why atheists paradoxically succeed in Twelve-Steps programs: “The steps work if you believe in God. The steps work if you do not believe in God. The steps do not work if you think you are God.”

Can You Tell Me How to be Humble?

There’s a whole lot written on humility and how to be humble spanning the whole world and three millennia. What about special humility for radicals? The whole point of this is that we need the basic humility that everyone else can do.

One thing you can do is think about who you were before you were an activist. Do you remember people practicing humility in your family? In your school? If so, you can find your real self by connecting to your roots. If not, if you were surrounded by arrogance, when did you know? What was your idea of humility that provided that insight? Don’t despair. It’s common for middle-class families, actually a blend of upper and lower class characteristics, to deny their humble roots out of shame, aspiring to the big time. Even if this is your origin, you can accept yourself.

Do you know anyone, can you think of anyone who you think is humble? They probably are. Notice how you feel in their presence. Learn from them.

Becoming Humble Will Make Little Birds Like You

No joke, animals will be less afraid of you. Including humans who will trust you more. 

Then you can reach the ears of those people with twisted minds but good hearts. Not a tourist in your own neighborhood, whether in Fruitvale, Oakland or on Park Avenue, NY. Even where you are a stranger, you might still belong.

Humility has been described as the foundation of other virtues. When you can see yourself as you are, there’s a feedback loop so you just get more awesome.

Quotes to maybe have enlarged like (instead of?) quotes from the article:

One of the most curious of writerly traits is the onion-like layering of outrageous arrogance and abject humility. 

Judith Merrill, Sci-fi pioneer

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm. 

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devil and the Good Lord

Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove! I’m being humble”, and almost immediately pride — pride at his own humility — will appear. 

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

If “humility” means nothing more than the capacity to learn from criticism, then it has an undoubted value; but if “humility” means a willingness to submit to authority—to abandon or to modify what one is doing merely because it does not accord with the teachings of the Bible or the thoughts of Chairman Mao—then it is death to the spirit: the proper name for it, indeed, is “servility.”

John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man

The following was written by one of the Anti-Fascist arrestees who requested to remain anonymous.

Even as public exposure after Charlottesville has turned the tide and the fascist movement has begun to fracture, the narrative and aims of the right have been taken up as always by the state. The Berkeley mayor has tried to designate “Antifa” as a gang. Berkeley police have pursued serious charges against anti-fascist protestors, even trying to charge community members with “hate crimes” for alleged anti-fascist graffiti. The California Highway Patrol have pursued serious charges against counter protestors to the nazi’s attempted rally at the state capital last summer. Repression is happening all around us and solidarity is our best weapon against it.

The state’s cooperation in the right-wing story about “Antifa” is also taking place at the national level. After Milo Yiannopolis’ attempted speech at UC Berkeley was shut down by thousands of counter-protestors in February, a petition began circulating online which sought to have “Antifa” labeled as a terrorist organization. Recently this goal has come to fruition, as the department of homeland security has designated “Antifa” a terrorist group.

In this case DHS collaborates with right-wing anger about anti-fascism, which is a consistent theme of this first year of resistance to the Trump regime. Right-wing extremists have killed 46 people since 2001. Some, like Jeremy Christian are organized Nazis. In March of this year, a 66 year old Black man named Timothy Caughman was stabbed to death in Manhattan by a white supremacist upset about “interracial relationships.” Fascist groups like Identity Evropa are engaged in constant harassment campaigns and recruitment campaigns on college campuses and in the streets of the bay. In late September, a synagogue was graffitied in Oakland. Who are the terrorists? Who have the antifascists killed? Who have the “Antifa” even killed? No one.

The shut-down of the Milo event was also the beginning of the alt-right’s perverse fascination with the streets of Berkeley. Remember, the cops and klan (and the alt-right) go hand and hand. Despite not having permits for their four Berkeley events this year, police met with alt-right organizers ahead of the actions, physically protected and facilitated their presence, and disproportionately targeted counter-protesters for detention, disarmament, and arrest. In Portland at a rally in early June, a member of the right-wing militia the Oathkeepers was even allowed by DHS agents to assist in arresting a counter-protester. Berkeley police have also assisted in a targeting campaign against a local professor. Eric Clanton was targeted with accusations and an avalanche of online harassment in the wake of the April 15 engagement in Berkeley. As a result of these accusation made by white-supremacists on the internet, two houses were raided by over a dozen cops with guns drawn, several doors were smashed in, and Eric was arrested, charged with four felonies and held at $200,000 bail. All of this in response to a story told and popularized in the nastiest most racist corners of the internet. Remember, the alt-right lie about everything.

Furthermore, one year after antifascists shut down a neo-nazi demonstration in Sacramento, three counter-protesters were arrested and held on up to $250,000 dollars in bail. Two of them were brought all the way from southern California. These are just the most publicized examples of a phenomenon that is much broader in scope, even locally. Dozens of other arrestees are facing charges in connection with this year’s actions in Berkeley and across the country, and investigations will certainly continue. What happened to Eric can happen in reverse too. When the state criminalizes antifascists their names become public and they are at risk of being targeted for threats and harassment by the alt-right.

It is also essential to remember that repression is NOT new, not unique, and not just something that happens when there are confrontations in the streets. Dejuan Hall was brutally beaten and arrested by the police in Vallejo in March of this year in an incident that was filmed. Jesse Buna, one of the people filming, was also arrested and both face charges of assault on an officer. The message here is clear: any resistance to white supremacy and the police can make you a physical and a legal target. In fact, white-supremacists are so embedded in local police agencies that the FBI refuses to share information on white supremacist organizing with local law enforcement.

This is the effect of strategies by both the right and the state to make the streets more dangerous for people who would resist the Trump regime. These strategies go beyond the jails and courts too. Months before Heather Heyer was murdered in the streets of Charlottesville by a member of the neo-nazi group American Vanguard, state legislators were working to legitimize violence against those who protested in the street. 7-8 state houses introduced legislation that would limit liability for people running their cars through protestors in the street. Moreover, laws across the country have been passed or introduced to limit constraints on police, and stiffen penalties for protestors. Just this month the Berkeley city council voted to allow police to deploy pepper spray against protestors.

Repression is coming down hard in this time across the country. The state is responding to the strength of our organizing. In addition to the dozens of antifascist defendants in California, more than two hundred people are facing years of prison time for protesting Trump’s inauguration in Washington D.C. simply because corporate property was damaged. Hundreds more are facing charges for protecting indigenous water and land by resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Not only does this create trauma and anxiety for defendants and their loved ones, but it ripples out to create fear and hesitation for anyone who chooses to resist. Especially those who will not let power prescribe for them how they resist.

Now more than ever it is essential to support anti-fascist defendants and all targets of repression. These are all attempts to criminalize and deter the growing momentum of organized resistance, all attempts to create feelings of hopelessness, to remind us that the state will always be bigger and more powerful than we are. This hopelessness breeds the complicity that state power thrives on. We know better, we know that the people will always be bigger, and will always be more powerful when we stand together. Solidarity is our strength, so continued resistance in this time must mean standing together against our common enemies. It must mean standing behind and with people who are targeted by the right and by the state. It must mean standing with and organizing with the communities that this fascist movement seeks to victimize and erase.

It must also mean recognizing that solidarity does not erase our tactical and ideological differences, it only gives us more impetus to respect one another despite them. We are not a monolith, we are a hydra. We are all antifascists!

By Loki Coyote

On February 22, I was arrested for resisting the eviction of the Oceti Oyate camp at Standing Rock. I’ve been mourning Oceti’s loss ever since, and I’m sure many others have too. It’s hard to see in the fog of grief, hard to think clearly in its clutches. But if we don’t learn from the example of Standing Rock, mistakes that could be avoided will be repeated. I want people to learn from Standing Rock, so that future water protectors are better prepared to fight to win. I hope these words are meaningful to someone. If they are, please write me! Those of us who were there for this immortal moment will keep the spirit of Oceti alive. Still, it hurts me. We fucking lost.

Those of you who are in the habit of defying authority have probably at some point heard a cop utter these words: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” This is called a double bind, a false choice designed to make submission seem like the best option. If you accept that your only choices are the two that you’re being presented, you’ve already lost. 

It was a foregone conclusion that the police would successfully evict the camp that day. No one intended to put up the kind of resistance that would actually be effective in stopping the eviction. How did it come to this? Why did the mighty Oceti camp allow itself to be defeated?

“We Must Be Defenseless!”

The day before the scheduled eviction, there was a meeting for people who had decided to stay in camp on February 22. Everyone was asked to hand over their phones and any other electronic devices at the entrance of the tent. Then, when the meeting was about to start, the facilitator announced that a journalist would be filming the meeting, so that if law enforcement later said in court that something had taken place in the meeting that hadn’t, there would be evidence to contradict them. I don’t understand why, but everyone just accepted this nonsense. I was the only one to object.

The facilitator of this meeting was a non-native woman I hadn’t seen before. I do not understand how this vitally important role fell to her. She made no pretense of neutrality or even-handedness. She began with a long speech about how we needed to be aware that the police would construe shields as weapons, and that people who chose to defend themselves were putting the lives of everyone else in jeopardy. She said the magic words: “Remember why you are here!” At one point she declared with stupendous moral conviction, “We must be defenceless!” Her words were a reiteration of a familiar narrative: We must be prayerful, to be prayerful means to be peaceful, to be peaceful means to be compliant. Defiance equals violence, disobedience equals disrespect. Besides leaving camp peacefully, which was strongly encouraged, there was only one option: symbolic arrest. The double bind.

I could barely take it. I hate being told what to do. I hate manipulative language and badly-facilitated meetings. In these situations, where there’s no question that undercover cops are present, many activists are reluctant to speak their minds. For security reasons, they don’t want to out themselves as militants, especially if they have something planned. You’ve got a room full of tension, full of distrust, and at a time when folks need a morale boost the most, they get exactly the opposite. 

One “action” that was proposed was a prayer walk. The idea was to gather with drums, prayer flags, and sacred items, and march around Oceti before continuing straight on out of camp. Valorizing surrender. This idea was taken up enthusiastically by the facilitator, as if she’d been waiting for it to be proposed.

Eventually, a person gave a speech advocating resistance. He had a plan. He’d already started building a barricade. He wanted help. Then, in quick succession, several other people spoke up declaring their intentions to stand up to the police. The facilitator attempted to redirect the conversation back to her personal agenda. I asked on whose behalf she was speaking, and eventually she rattled off a few names, none of which I recognized. But the person who had been advocating building a barricade said that he had received explicit permission to build the barricade from one of the people the facilitator mentioned. “I’m going to start now,” he said. “Whoever wants to help, come with me.”

I followed him out. The plan was to fix four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood to posts in the ground. I spent most of the rest of the day digging holes. At first I felt good about what I was doing, then I started using my mind. It made little to no sense to build a barricade where we were building it. Someone left to go get the wood, but they never returned. By the time it was dark, I didn’t care about the barricade anymore. I went to bed early that night and slept like a baby.

The Pressure Mounts

Some have portrayed the resistance at Standing Rock as wildly successful, despite the eviction, despite the fact that oil now flows through the main vein of the Black Snake. These eternal optimists point to the many anti-pipeline campaigns inspired by Standing Rock. They point out that #NoDAPL has raised the political and economic cost of pipelines, and that some pipelines have been cancelled due to the new climate of resistance. All this makes me think of an archer who aims for a target, fires, misses, then paints a target around the arrow and claims to have hit the bull’s eye.

Let’s not sugarcoat things: We lost. We were trying to stop a pipeline, and we failed. Let’s learn from our mistakes, evaluate them, study what worked and what didn’t, and commit to being better prepared next time around. Not to say that the fight against DAPL is over. No war is ever won unless one side accepts defeat. Have the water protectors of Oceti accepted defeat? Only time will tell…

A lot took place that day. 

Most peculiar of all was a certain quality of ordinariness. Maybe there’s only so much the mind can take before it decides to reassert normalcy. Maybe if one could just manage to ignore how surreal everything was, things would go back to normal. 

I found a deflated soccer ball lying around. I joked that we should challenge the cops to a game of soccer, telling them that we’d leave if they beat us fair and square, so long as they’d fuck off if we beat them. I’ve read about how radical clowns mess with the cops in Europe, and it seemed like a good alternative to the binary of submission or violence. It makes sense to me to use humour as a way to diffuse tension. 

The day earlier, the prayer walk had been proposed as an action to boost morale. I kept my distance. Later I read that the leader of this prayer walk had declared victory, telling the crowd: “We’re here to tell the spirits that we won.”

The Hour Strikes

At 2:00 pm, the time that we had been told a few days prior that police would start making arrests, a group of at least thirty people gathered near the road, many bloc’ed up, wearing masks, body armour, gas masks, goggles, and other protective gear. There were three shields. Someone had created a small barricade with barbed wire at the entrance into camp. Mad props to whoever did that, if you’re reading this.

No one had a plan. We were just a bunch of rebels who didn’t want to roll over and let the police move into a place that meant so much to us, a place of such global significance. We milled about. Two o’clock came and went without incident. Some of us started playing soccer in the mud with the deflated ball. Someone showed me where to find an inflated ball. Maybe it sounds silly, but that meant a lot to me.

A woman that I’d only seen once before wound up in the important role of police liaison. She wore a shabby high-visibility vest with the words “neutral mediator” written on it in Sharpie. She wasn’t presenting herself as a water protector, but as a third party working for some unspecified organization. 

Everything she said was fear-mongering. We were told at one point that those people who wanted to be peacefully arrested were to go to the road. There was a subtle threat woven into the presentation of this option, implying that people who remained in camp would also be arrested, but face more dire consequences, such as police violence and felony charges. Later, in a variation on the same theme, the police liaison came back and told the remaining water protectors that if they didn’t leave, the police would be coming into the camp “with live rounds.” I thought this was ridiculous: Don’t police normally have “live rounds” in the gun at their hip? But energy flows where attention goes; little things like this contributed to a doubtful, indecisive mood.

Sometime not long after 2:00 pm, a handsome young man rolled in and gave an incredible performance, calling upon everyone in the crowd to rise to the occasion, to find their warrior spirit. There was a twist, though; it wasn’t a call to fight, it was a call to flight. Pacing back and forth, his whole body electric, hands and arms gesticulating furiously, this zealot gave a passionate speech about how we should all march out of camp, in the name of the movement. He invoked the spirits. He called on the thunder beings. Other than a short beginning, it was framed as a prayer. As such, it wasn’t up for debate. Who interrupts a prayer? It framed walking away from the camp as the noble thing, the intelligent thing, the brave thing. It was an incredible use of language.

One of the things that he yelled with conviction was a phrase that we’d heard many times before, in different contexts: REMEMBER WHY YOU ARE HERE!

I urge everyone to think about this phrase, because it was incredibly effective at silencing people. On the surface, it is benign, but its effect is powerful. The command “Remember why you are here!” implies togetherness—that why you are here is the same as the reason I am here, and therefore what I am encouraging you to do is what you yourself want to do. Say the words “Remember why you are here!” and then follow it with a volley of embedded commands; while the conscious mind is searching for an amorphous memory, the subconscious mind accepts the suggestions.

It was almost 4:00 pm when the police started threatening people with arrest. There was a crowd on the road, where there was a line of riot cops. The boss was ordering people to leave or face arrest. A lot of people had cameras. Some were livestreaming. Legal observers were present. The line between spectator and participant was blurry. 

Then, the first arrest. A snatch squad rushed forward, grabbed someone, and pulled him back behind the police line. Some people fled in terror. I was arrested and charged with two misdemeanours Eight other people got arrested along with me. We spent the night in jail. The worst part of the experience was spending three hours in a van with our hands bound. It hurt. Last time I spoke with the legal team, they told me that dozens of misdemeanour charges had been dropped, and that there’s a good chance that mine will be dropped too. And that is where my story ends. 

Some Seeds Need Fire to Open Them

Oceti meant a lot to me. It came as the fulfillment of a dream and the answer to a prayer. Before the movement at Standing Rock arose, I envisioned the anti-pipeline movement giving rise to truly sovereign territories. This is what decolonization means to me—not a shift in attitude, but freeing land-based communities from state control. It was my hope that Oceti would become an autonomous zone, where plans for a more beautiful world could be hatched.

Now that my wish has been granted, and its time has come and gone, I’m left picking up the pieces of my dreams, shards that will cut me if I hold them the wrong way. I’m driven by a maddening hunch that if I put them together the right way, they’ll spell out a secret message that will re-enchant the world. 

Please, make no mistake: I have tremendous faith. I too acknowledge the magnificent beauty of what transpired at Standing Rock. The beauty of life is not diminished by death, nor is the beauty of a moment in time diminished by its ending. The spirit of Oceti Oyate will live on in the hearts and minds of all those who gave themselves whole-heartedly to it, and each of these water protectors now carries a seed within their hearts, which they will take to the four directions. And some seeds need fire to open them. 

I’m profoundly grateful to have been a part of this moment in history, which will dwell in our collective memory for generations. For a time, I lived my dream of living in a society without authority, without money, rooted in a deep respect for all life. At Standing Rock, we were free. We felt part of the Great Circle of life—deeply connected to both the past and the future, drawing from a well that is the source. 

Understanding the Enemy Within

I believe that Oceti Oyate was defeated because of shrewd COINTELPRO-style tactics. Divide-and-conquer tactics. Psychological warfare, spiritual warfare; whichever you prefer. Just like everyone else, I’m left guessing. The available evidence doesn’t lend itself to any tidy conclusions. 

We can theorize, though, and we should. It’s only safe to assume that whatever government programs (and their corporate counterparts) have descended from COINTRELPRO are leaps and bounds ahead of their predecessor. The enemy is amongst us… sowing seeds of discord, pacifying us when it is strategic to agitate, agitating when it would be wise to stand down.

What’s worse is the thought that the enemy is within our own minds as well. Many people on our side have internalized the mainstream media narrative of “good protester vs. bad protester.” Now we have the narrative of the “good ally vs. agitator.” Certain ideologies are operational and self-reinforcing at this point—ideologies which may have been promoted by our enemies in ways too obscure to pin down. Some will consider this conspiracy theory, but I’m convinced that certain attitudes serve those in power too well to have arisen accidentally. I can’t point my finger at anyone and accuse them of being a government agent without evidence. I can tell a story, though. I can do my best to convey to others what it feels to live inside a riddle. 

Make no mistake: We can be sure that state and corporate forces are at this very moment recruiting and training agents to disrupt our movement, to derail us, to pacify us, to divert our energy into useless channels. They’ll use what they learned from Standing Rock; use spirituality to divide people; use clever techniques of persuasion to promote weak ideas, tactics, and strategies. They’ll use the politics of legitimacy to divide people; use smear campaigns; use anti-oppression politics, especially the spectre of the “good ally.” If we are to prevail, we must be solid, resolute, and practice a culture of solidarity. We must be strong in ourselves, unwavering in our belief, unshakable in our determination. And we must be willing to be honest with ourselves, preferring hard truth to easy fantasy.

This Ain’t Over

To my enemies reading this, mark my words: This ain’t over. The day is fast approaching when you will realize that we are no longer resisting you. You are resisting us. A new world will be born from the ashes of your crumbling empire, and day will break on the dawn of total freedom. Your legacies will live in infamy, serving as nothing more than pathetic examples of human stupidity, sad reminders of the price of ignorance, cautionary tales about the dangers of greed. We are armed with visions infinitely more powerful than your money, your guns, and your lies. You’ve seen our movement grow, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re just getting warmed up, motherfuckers.

MNI WICONI! WATER IS LIFE!

This article is meant to be part of a series reflecting on lessons that can be learned from Standing Rock. If you participated in the movement and want to contribute to the conversation, drop me a line at rebelrebuildrewild@riseup.net.