Author: Jackie Sokolinsky

In April, Cincinnati, OH turned into a battlefield as the African-American community united against the deadly racism of city police. No one was left untouched; by the second week of the conflict, in the midst of a declared state of emergency, African-American members were leaving the Cincinnati police and fire-fighter’s unions, citing racism.

The transformation of Cincinnati into “Beirut”, as Cincinnati Mayor Charles Luken termed it, began April 7, 2001, when police officer Steven Roach shot and killed Timothy Thomas. It was the fifth police killing of a black male in Cincinnati in only seven months. Thomas’s family and protesters mobilized by African-American organizations packed the city council meeting held two days later, demanding official accountability for the murder. (At that time Roach was on a one week paid administrative leave.)

After the unsuccessful meeting, protesters reconvened at the District 1 police station and then proceeded on a two-hour march through the Over-the-Rhine and West End neighborhoods, where more people joined the march. The route ended back at the police station, where about 150 of the 800 demonstrators set up camp. Police sprayed teargas and other chemical weapons and fired approximately 50 rounds of rubber and bean-bag bullets, firing at point-blank range into crowds. The police station was only slightly smashed, alas.

In the next few days African-American youth, who suffer most from racial profiling and other forms of police surveillance and harassment, responded with growing militance. Solidarity was informal but very strong, with protesters acting quickly and effectively to unarrest many people. Their mobility, frequently breaking-up into a lot of different directions, helped prevent arrests as well. Some people took advantage of the cover of the crowds and the general atmosphere to loot shops; a pawn shop was completely emptied, smashed and burned. A few people assaulted drivers, but these incidents seem to have been stopped by onlookers.

Violence escalated very rapidly, as police brutality on the street was reinforced by Mayor Charles Luken’s declared state of emergency. From April 12 to 16, an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew imposed on Cincinnati and two neighboring cities enabled police to sweep the city making mass arrests, averaging 200 a night. In addition to police violence against protesters in custody, some people are reported to have been “disappeared,” police denying to family and friends of arrested individuals that they have them in custody.

Although police targeted a few isolated groups who “looked like anarchists,” the ferocity of police violence following the murder of Timothy Thomas was due to the close-to-the-bone nature of the conflict, over racism in the Cincinnati police force. Mayor Luken compared conditions in Cincinnati to Beirut; NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, in one of his more likable moments, compared them to Oakland.

Drive-by shootings by police officers occurred throughout the state of emergency, though only one made the Cincinnati papers. Luken had pledged to keep police away from the New Prospect Baptist Church, where on April 14 the funeral of Timothy Thomas was held, attended by hundreds, including African- American leaders, Cincinnati officials and Ohio Gov. Bob Taft. But half an hour after the funeral, as the last attendees were quietly dispersing, six SWAT team members drove by and fired a shotgun into a small group at close range, injuring two adults and two children. Christine Jones, hit twice in the back, was hospitalized for a cracked rib and injuries to the lung and spleen. The shotgun was loaded with the bean-bag bullets which the press widely accepts as virtually harmless.

The incident had a dozen witnesses and, occurring at an assembly of the country’s most notable black leaders, embarrassed the government. An FBI investigation into the “cause” of the incident was immediately ordered. Without benefit of the FBI’s formidable resources, here’s a guess: guns and authority in the hands of a group of paranoid, hostile and stupid racist bullies, allowed to roam freely in a city where chaos seems to provide an excuse for any excess they want. One could also speculate about the role capitalism plays in creating a community like Over-the-Rhine, which is the most economically depressed in Cincinnati. Or one could muse on the role of “law and order” which appears to be sheer self-perpetuation, no matter how inexcusable the conditions which the watchdogs of state strive to preserve and protect.

A definition of terms: “riot” (noun) the assaults, property destruction and theft carried out by civilians. Certainly not the assaults, property damage and theft carried out by police (see “law enforcement”).

In the aftermath of the riots, city officials scrambled to compensate business owners for broken windows, and declared it the “moral duty” (in exactly those words) of the government to help business owners who suffered financial losses due to general pillaging. One can’t help but notice that this is the very first occasion that the city council members have spoken of their moral duty. Certainly the concept of having a moral duty failed to arise when Angela Leisure, Timothy Thomas’s mother, confronted them demanding to know why her son had been killed. The concept of moral duty continued to slip their minds while police freely moved through the city, shooting men for holding their ground when ordered to step inside their houses at 8 p.m., and shooting 5-year-olds for the crime of being on the street in broad daylight.

By April 15, Luken felt that the city had been sufficiently “pacified” and he lifted the curfew although not the state of emergency. After having poured all that money, time and energy into putting down the people, the government, unsurprisingly, failed to do anything meaningful to end police violence. City safety director Kent Ryan was forced to resign, in the hopes that he would bear the brunt of political unpopularity. The position was passed to Greg Baker. Formerly employed as Ryan’s assistant, Baker is a conservative African-American man who seems chiefly concerned with suppressing bursts of anti-authoritarianism throughout the city.

None of the civilian actions frightened the state as much as the rebellions among black firefighters and police. April 16, half of the 200 members of the African-American Firefighters Association signed a petition to withdraw from Cincinnati’s Fire Fighters Labor Union. “I was at the funeral for Tim Thomas, and I heard Rev. (Damon) Lynch and several other activists there say that it’s time for black men and black women to stand up,” Jeff Harris, Jr., president of the AAFA, said. “We have to stand up despite the fact that our lives may be in jeopardy. We have to stand up because we cannot continue to go on in this way, being treated like second class citizens within our own union.”

Members of the Sentinels Police Association, an association of African-American police officers, soon followed suit, resigning from the Fraternal Order of Police. Sgt. Andre Smith, long disgusted by the racism within the union, reached his limit during Luken’s state of emergency. Referring to FOP president Keith Fangman’s denials of racism within the police force (despite the many ties of the FOP to white supremacist organizations, Fangman has a gripe with being called a neo-nazi), support for Thomas’s killer, and sleazy unpleasantness in public discussions with black leader Kweisi Mfume, Smith said, “After this week’s events, to see Mr. Fangman totally distort facts, disrespect the black community, disrespect our black leaders, I felt it necessary for me to remove what I felt the personal stench of FOP membership.” Scotty Johnson, president of the Sentinels, apologized to the family of Timothy Thomas, and made it clear that the disenfranchisement of the community was a long-standing problem which ought to have been corrected a long time ago.

The Sentinels and the African-American Firefighters have
both taken a stand for civilian oversight of the police and fire departments. They are calling for the abolition of the city safety director’s office, which is why the new safety director, Greg Baker, is so preoccupied with them. The Sentinels and AAFA also support an initiative which would open the positions of chief of police, assistant chief of police and fire chief to candidates nationwide. Currently these positions are filled from within the Cincinnati departments.

It is exciting to see police officers identifying with their communities against the police hierarchy, and even more pleasing to note their assertiveness in trying to rewrite the script by which the community and police are stumbling along. One can only hope that this will be the seed for future rebellions and ultimately for the police fully identifying with the community and refusing to police.

Unfortunately, neither the rebelling cops nor black leaders appear to have been able to engage in dialog with the young people on the streets. Throughout the state of emergency, black leaders, predominantly churchmen, urged peace, pacifism and reform. They drew the attention of government officials and the media to the lawsuit filed by the ACLU and several African-American organizations with the aim of making racial profiling illegal nation-wide. But there was a gap of understanding as well as a difference of tactics between the youth battling police on the streets and the elders addressing church members: “You’re part of the problem,” one minister told youth on the street.

The issue isn’t “property-destruction: pro or con?” Rather, the issues raised in Cincinnati concern the ability of a community to use their resources to sustain and protect one another in the struggle against police domination. A good step was taken by the black fire-fighters and police, but a bigger and more transformative step would have been made had the leaders and authorities reconsidered the some of the values they were trying to protect. Does social harmony really require force?

If I could stop howling at all the amusing quips Bill Ford has made to the press, concerning the Ford Motor Company’s vision for a more virtuous future, I might actually be able to write this article.

It isn’t even supposed to be about the Ford Motor Co. Ford came up entirely by accident. You see, I looked up the website of the San Francisco-based Business for Social Responsibility, an organization dedicated to what is termed “socially responsible investing.” I learned, rather to my surprise, that the organization’s most prominent members include Starbucks, Ford Motor Co., Bank of America, Hewlett-Packard, KPMG LLP, Levi Strauss & Co., American Express, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Eddie Bauer, Liz Claiborne, McDonald’s Corporation, Providian Financial and WalMart.

But its actually not so surprising after all. The environment, as our friend Bill said somewhere, is a big seller. People like hearing terms like “environmentally friendly” thrown around. Use the term “environment” somewhere, prominently, and people will buy the product. “Oh look, honey. It’s environmental.” As our friend Bill likes to say in his amusing way, this is a really exciting development, and just might help people make the difficult decision to buy an SUV.

Now, our pal Bill is a friend of the working man and the environment, but he likes to point out that his great-granddaddy was ahead of him in this. Henry Ford tried to inculcate real values in the working man by subjecting them to country music and dance lessons, and we’re still getting that kind of fine moral leadership from the Ford family.

What links all these companies — from Ford to WalMart (and how’s that for a mind-bending stretch of the imagination?) — is the discovery that a “values-based corporate culture” is highly profitable.

This is an understandable conclusion. I mean, when I was (between the ages of 14 and 18) a potential high-school dropout, my concerned parents grimly threatened: “Do you want to work at McDonald’s for the rest of your life?” To this day when I walk by a McDonald’s and see people inside working at McDonald’s I automatically think, That person didn’t listen to his-or-her parents. The corporation has a serious problem on its hands: if the mere concept of working for them is used by parents to terrify their teenage children into obedience, imagine the state of employee morale in those franchises?

Morale is a big issue for corporations. It gets more critical with every environmental disaster, plant closure, corporate takeover and switchover to an HMO. Morale is a problem for Job at the bottom, who has to work 70 hours a week to survive, and it’s a problem for Job, Jr at the top, who has to work 70 hours a week because its in his $100,000 contract and has to golf at the same country club as his boss.

Well the corporations have found an ingenious way to boost employee morale. Starbucks, for example, is proud of its many community-building programs, and as a matter of policy encourages employees to do charity work. Some corporations take their claims of do-gooding so far that they promote the idea that the company is itself a “good cause.” My all- time favorite is Chevron’s “People Do” marketing campaign, which portrays the oil company as a conservation organization, saving America’s wetlands and wildlife.

It doesn’t worry me too much that the corporations are coopting ideas like “social responsibility” — because the idea of socially responsible business was eminently cooptable from the get-go. Essentially, the idea was that capitalism could go on and on, endlessly exploiting resources (for the new ecologically-friendly market, of course), workers (who would be paid “living wages,” of course), and third world countries (in the most helpful, charitable way, of course) and ordinary Americans, like you and me, caring people, could make oodles of easy money by investing. In fact, it’s practically a duty to invest in Green Business, and Community Business, and Businesses Run By Disadvantaged People.

What does bother me is that business, whether big or small, has succeeded to some degree in boosting morale in corporate culture. Corporate culture is the culture of cheap, crummy developments built up on toxic waste dumps; it’s the culture of solacing unfulfilling lives with imaginary needs for Technology and Stuff; it’s the culture of days wasted in labors which have no satisfying conclusion and “free time” consumed by recovering from mental and physical exhaustion; it’s the culture of fear which keeps every man and woman a “worker” instead of a self-defined person, dependent on a hated way of life, convinced of the inevitability of disappointment. That is corporate culture, no matter how many walk-a-thons and literacy drives the corporation chooses to sponsor.

But according to observers like Corinne McLaughlin, Executive Director of The Center for Visionary Leadership, American corporations are becoming not only socially responsible, but spiritual. The proofs she cites are incontestable. The World Bank, whose commitment to social responsibility is already much admired internationally, drawing excited crowds everywhere its members go, has a Spiritual Unfoldment Society with lectures on meditation and reincarnation.

This movement to bring spiritual practices into the corporations is being led by people like Christopher Walker. Not only does Chris Walker teach InnerWealth™ to corporate executives, but he was brought in by the Canadian government to instruct the Mi’kmaqs of Big Cove in real spiritual values so they would stop killing themselves.

I expect that at this point we’re all getting a little confused about why we want to kill ourselves, but let me remind the reader that amassing vast private capital from the blood, sweat and tears of the suicidally depressed formerly independent populations of formerly clean and beautiful countries with the friendly help of U.S.-funded military dictators and corporate spiritualists, is not the solution. No, dear confused reader, it is the problem. Remember: problem. Not solution. Problem. Repeat this, if necessary, daily.

I’ve tried to read Chris Walker’s teachings, which are available online at www.walkerinternational.com, but they are very creepy. I don’t recommend them to anyone who values their sanity. He knows his stuff — you can’t fight him on that level. I am reminded of a former coworker, a friendly Jehovah’s Witness, who told me that in his view, there are just four kinds of people: good, bad, wicked and evil. Well, this guy is evil. On the other hand, the members of groups like the Fellowship of Companies for Christ International are only wicked. They blithely “request that you pray as you complete the contribution form, and ask God how HE would have you support FCCI.”

And Slingshot, amen.

I’ve singled out the most evil and the most funny, but actually there are many “spiritual” corporate consultants and religious alliances of business owners. After all, there’s a huge market for what they’re peddling. Why? 1. Morale. Like the Mi’kmaq kids, we (the employees) are being told not to see our futures of continuing privation and exploitation with despair. The corporate executives want us to have a sense of optimism, a sense that things are changing, that we are living, as Chris Walker puts it, in revolutionary times. Raise morale, and people will work harder, more willingly. Their lives will still feel hard, but they will think it’s in a good cause. The members of the World Bank feel — despite all the hostility they get every time they show their faces — that they are making a positive contribution to the world. Why do you think corporations organize vision quests and higher power lunches and feng shui and yoga for their executives? Simply, the executives carry the burden of conscious responsibility. They have to believe that their actions are good, or at worst, inevitable. Belief is what keeps them going, day after day. Belief is everything.

2. Greed. Flat out greed. T
here seems to be profit in it for everybody. Spiritual corporate consultants can make a killing preaching the gospel of capital. Corporations can reap the benefits of improved morale and marketability — don’t forget how well social responsibility sells! Even small-fry employees seem to believe there’s a profit in it for them. Some are inspired by the gospel to start their own business. Others swear that the office feng shui brought them unanticipated windfalls of money. Managers believe that “incentives” get people to work harder, and help combat the tendency of people to hate the company they work for. Spiritual meditations help people to drive away “bad attitude” and before you know it, those gift certificates for $5 off at the company store start looking like sincere gestures of appreciation from one’s fellow inspired and loving man.

3. Piety. Many people want their lives to be infused with the sort of depth and quality which comes from living in tune with their spiritual beliefs. The trouble is that no gospel worth its salt can accept — much less endorse, accommodate and work for — the goals of capitalism. The gospel of capital depends on the assumption that the physical and metaphysical are entirely separate entities. Damaging one can be done with impunity if one simply prays and has a good heart. But the metaphysical is entwined with the physical world, and when we damage the physical, we do harm to the metaphysical at the same time. The only way to truly infuse our lives with sanctity is to approach living with faith instead of fear; to believe that if we step away from capitalism and act on our values instead, that we will find the support we need. That is true piety.

So, what can we do about it, besides make fun of Bill Ford, which is always amusing?

• First, we need to be really really clear about what true spirituality is.
• We need to be able to identity the gospel of capitalism when we see it, and understand why it’s bunk.
• We need to destroy corporate morale — at every level, from the little guys to the big guys. Don’t let the World Bank’s members believe they are doing good in the world.
• Get better at distinguishing between pleasure and greed. Live for pleasure, not for profit.
• Know the difference between kindness and exploitation.
• Know the difference between inner truth and bad attitude.
• Recognize and respect the harmony of the physical and the metaphysical.
• Don’t allow fear to prevent you from changing, growing, and acting in ways which expand freedom and joy.
• Expose the Chris Walkers of the world.
• Smash capitalism, smash the state, eat lunch, get more soil amendments and start thinking about a new article.

NEFAC Founding Raises Questions

The Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC) was founded in April 2000. The organizers, based in Boston and Quebec, are still in the process of developing the federation, which will bring to the northeastern region an organization modeled on such groups as the Anarchist Federation and Class War of the UK and the Workers Solidarity Movement of Ireland.

The political perspective of NEFAC is based on three pillars: anarchist-communism, federalism, and platformism.

The first, anarchist-communism, holds that the social transformation of work is fundamental to achieving freedom in any meaningful way. Moreover, anarchist-communism recognizes that economic, state and social systems of oppression are structured in such a way as to create disparate classes. These classes are naturally in conflict with each other-the exploited and the exploiter-but without organization and a genuine understanding of social freedom, this conflict will continue to sap the strength of the exploited class without leading closer to liberation. Only with organization and a genuine understanding of social freedom will the bleak conflict turn into a true struggle for the life of freedom.

NEFAC declares that the anarchist movement today has a need for an energetic and strong element taking this direction, and I agree. However, anarchist-communism is not all that NEFAC stands for.

NEFAC’s members believe that anarchists — or at least anarchist-communists — need a unified and comprehensive political platform. In their first conference, NEFAC discussed a proposed platform. The conference ended without having a final draft of the platform; the draft will be discussed again at the second conference. There are some small problems with the draft. For example, the points tend to emphasize things-we’re-against (capitalism, statism, patriarchy, racism, nationalism, ecological stupidity, and so on) which leaves the whole susceptible to leftism. For greater effectiveness, the platform would need to provide a cogent summation of what-we’re-for.

However, even if the platform is redrafted in more confident and effective terms, anarchism and platformism may be mutually incompatible. Political platforms repeat the old hierarchical structure of political control. As anarchists, we easily enough detect the bullshit when the state forms think-tanks to transmit official ideologies via the press to the “masses.” That’s a one-way transmission of ideas and a monopoly on political action. It’s statism. The role of state propaganda is to maintain systems of oppression by turning people in their own perceptions into the objects of another’s thought. But anarchism, in contrast, holds that every person is and should be self-determining, and the subject of his or her own thought.

The strongest defense against statism, and the strongest basis on which to nurture freedom, is to transform the objectified “masses” into critical-thinking and socially-conscious individuals. Anarchism must not only achieve this, but it must lead the way in fostering a new kind of politics in which one-way communication can no longer exist.

NEFAC goals include both self-directed “study and theoretical development” and other-oriented “agitation and propaganda.” Until these goals are merged — until study and theoretical development are the basis of a two-way — dialog their liberatory aim cannot be realized. Political platforms and propaganda are structurally authoritarian; even the development of a perfect idea cannot make it less so, once enshrined as The Answer. But this is not cause for despair – it is the seed for transformation. Class struggle begins with genuine dialog, with the return of men and women to their authentic self-knowledge.

NEFAC also holds that the federation is a model of how society as a whole should be organized.

Federalism is a political system in which semi-autonomous collectivities (in this case affinity groups) unite for certain specified political purposes. At the moment NEFAC’s purpose is somewhat sketchy. Their documents state, “The activity of the federation is organized around three poles: study and theoretical development; anarchist agitation and propaganda; and intervention in the struggle of our class, be it autonomously or by way of direct involvement in social movements.”

Theoretical and tactical unity are major goals of NEFAC. Study groups and agitprop are intended to create theoretical unity, while the federation hopes (by providing a general framework) to attain a degree of consistency in the actions of its members. But what sort of action is intended? How is consistency possible, when the tactics are never defined? What are the implications or the limitations of intervention? At the present time, NEFAC’s Aims & Principles and Constitution are too ambiguous to serve as guidelines for unified theory or action.

Talking to NEFAC members, however, a simpler but more cogent picture of NEFAC emerges. Intervention may mean, as Mark Laskey says, “pushing for [a] more radical direction in the way of tactics and perspectives, [and] popularizing anarchist and anti-hierarchical organizing principles (such as decentralization, self-management and direct democracy).”

The idea that unity or even consistency are always liberatory is mistaken. Sometimes inconsistency and a bit of discord is exactly what’s needed to accomplish the work of liberation.

The problems which crop up with Federalism are very real ones. Rather than focus on NEFAC and Federalism, though, I would like to suggest some of the critical problems which concern any anarchist organization. These are my personal point of view, as indeed is the whole article; I do not pretend to speak for “anarchists in general” or “the editorial collective.” I, to the best of my current understanding, believe that any organization which is liberatory in structure and intent must include these basic elements:

First, it must allow and perhaps even foster dissent; the individual should not be supressed by any false need for unity.

Second, it must allow and foster on-going self-criticism. This does not mean a sort of self-flagellation, but merely an honest questioning consciousness. Social freedom in practice doesn’t look like a religion; there can be no “higher answers” or “ultimate truths” — and that can indeed be very scary to face. But there are higher questions — and seeing that relieves the fear; because higher questions are based on understanding; and understanding (in my personal experience) alleviates fear.

Third, the structure of membership and decision-making must be somewhat fluid. Whoever wants to do the work should be welcome to do the work. But what is “the work”? Whether it is organizing class struggle or putting out a newspaper, there is a certain degree of agreement necessary as to what the purpose of the group is. Beyond that modest basis of unity, however, suppressing diversity merely undermines the group’s growth — or the growth of its individual members.

Fourth, groups should understand and acknowledge that direct democracy, consensus and collective responsibility are simply methods of imposing a social order. They can all be used to suppress dissent. If they are enshrined as Sacred Principles of Anarchist Method, they become invisible structures of authority. This is not healthy in anti-authoritarian organizations.

In thought and action, the means are the ends. The means to freedom must be consonant with freedom itself.