Author: Slingshot Collective

By P. Wingnut

To inform and encourage mass protests of the mainstream party conventions this summer, following is an account of my experience protesting at the 2000 Democratic Convention in LA. Slingshot is publishing several accounts of past convention protests on pages 10-12. This isn’t meant to be just nostalgia. What we need are lessons about what might work this year plus inspiration to get ourselves off facebook and out into the streets. When so many people are seduced by the empty promises of electoral politics, street action is particularly crucial.

Direct action during an election year isn’t just about the conventions. Black Lives Matter-inspired protests are popping up everywhere and are powerful because they are focused on local police killings. Or what about the hundreds who were arrested trying to shatter the collective stupor during Democracy Spring protests in Washington, DC.? And from May 4-15, thousands will blockade fossil fuel infrastructure in support of a just transition to renewable energy during the Break Free protests. Resistance outside and against the system is where the action is.

When I think back to the 2000 DNC, I want to start off by admitting that I went mostly for the spectacle and the idea of street action — which is always a good thing. Street chaos is exciting, empowering and it exposes the violence inherent in the system. I tend to think that a riot organizes more people than 10,000 fliers. Most people understand that they are oppressed and inherently connect with ruptures in acceptance of this shit.

The convention was just an excuse — which is what it ought to be in 2016, too. The two party system stopped bothering me years ago — it is a part of the mainstream reality along with freeways, corporate food, soulless jobs, climate change, meaninglessness and ugliness. Electoral politics aren’t better or all that much worse than the things listed above — the shit is all terrible. To stay sane and happy, I ignore as much as I can, refuse to participate if possible, and do what I can to fight and undermine this horrible reality.

The electoral system is a distraction from the real forces that shape the world — capitalism and techno/materialism. Don’t believe the hype! Electing someone “better” to lead a fundamentally bankrupt system is as meaningless as thinking you can reform consumerism buying the right thing or defeat the employment system by joining a union.

This year, racist violence associated with the election is boiling right below the surface — and many are concerned that bringing chaos to the streets in this context will only inflame dangerous forces. But the racist anti-Muslim/anti-immigrant rhetoric is a flawed response to real economic and political forces that have ground down the lives of millions of people for the last 40 years — declining wages, income stratification and betrayal. What’s desperately needed are inspirational sparks that help turn anger away from racial scapegoats and towards the real enemies: the economic elite, corporations and the systems of economic exploitation that steal and concentrate the wealth that regular people toil to create. Now is the perfect time to bring the spirit of Occupy and the 99% back into the picture as a positive response to divide-and-conquer racism. Working people of all races united against the 1% are an unstoppable force.

To understand the 2000 DNC protests, you have to realize how things felt just after the massive uprising at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in November, 1999. 50,000 people seized downtown Seattle shutting down the meeting and block-after-block of the business district despite thousands of heavily armed police who were on a rampage all day — emptying their cans of pepper spray on us, shooting us with rubber bullets and filling the air with tear gas and flash bang grenades. The WTO was probably the high point of my life (so far, anyway) — an inspiring rupture in the fabric of business as usual.

Radicals were so used to being invisible and atomized before the WTO but suddenly, all our isolated, tiny, ragtag communities of anarchists, environmentalists and labor militants came out of the shadows and for the first time in our lives, we mattered. We controlled the streets. Not only that, but I don’t think we ever felt so alive and in the moment before. It was profoundly sexy. I remember being out in the street until 3 am dodging police and tear gas and having to force myself to leave. The WTO protest brought up fundamental economic issues and transcended single-issue politics through leaderless mass action similar to Occupy years later.

Based on that electric sense of excitement and power, a few of us headed to Los Angeles the following summer. No doubt about it — we were looking for trouble. We wanted to do everything we could to disrupt the convention and expose the bullshit of the two-party system and we knew if we succeeded, it was going to be fun and fucking intense. Facing riot cops and the real threat of violence is scary, but mostly it is exciting. After the WTO, I couldn’t calm down for two months — I dreamt of police lines and explosions and probably had a little bit of PTSD.

When we showed up in Los Angeles, we quickly learned that the police had been thinking about the WTO a lot as well. They were determined not to ever let what had happened in Seattle repeat itself.

There were 2 or 3 marches scheduled per day during the convention — each organized by various interest groups focusing on labor, the environment, war, etc. It was blazing hot but we went to all the marches anyway — even though they felt pretty pointless because our numbers were small and we were surrounded by unlimited lines of police.

We couldn’t do shit. You could march around in the abandoned downtown LA heat knowing no one could see you and you couldn’t disrupt anything. If you wanted, you could charge the police line and get arrested, but so what? It was totally different than Seattle — we controlled nothing, the cops had total control and it wasn’t sexy or exciting. I guess the best we could say is that we were exposing the violence inherent in the system — perhaps images of the massive police overreaction would help shake the legitimacy of corporate democracy.

We went to every march anyway because we were all waiting for a chance — a mistake by the police. We hoped against hope that something was going to give and we wanted to be in the right place at the right time. Overall, this is an excellent strategy not only for a particular protest, but for the radical movement and even for life in general. You can’t be in the right place at the right time if you’re alone at home with your computer. Despite the hopeless situation, people did go on little rampages even though it meant certain arrest.

At night, somehow there was going to be a Rage Against The Machine concert in the protest-pen right in front of the fucking convention hall. Even though the pen was surrounded by police and a 14 foot chain link fence, it seemed like the concert had a lot going for it. It attracted an extra-large crowd — so lesson #1 is that having large numbers really does help even when the police are heavily armed and you are trapped in a tiny fenced-off area.

The crowd wasn’t necessarily mostly radicals — I think a lot of them just wanted to see a free show. Lesson #2: to get large numbers we need to draw folks outside the radical scene. Cliques, security culture, activist jargon that isolates us, refusal to associate with people who have different political perspectives — all of this suffocates the openness we need to pull off big things.

The concert was at night — which almost always works to encourage disorder. Although I don’t think there was a plan, a few people started throwing empty plastic water bottles and other small objects over the tall fence at the police. It was a laughable and totally symbolic act. The bottles had to be thrown straight up in the air to clear the tall fence, so they fell harmlessly on a huge stretch of empty concrete between the fence and the police line. I am pretty sure my friends and I were making fun of the masked macho-types throwing stuff. But then somewhat to our surprise, this modest act worked!

Around 8 pm while Ozomatli was playing, “police suddenly shut down the lights on stage and LAPD Commander Gary Brennan declared the gathering an illegal assembly and ordered the audience to leave. Ten minutes later 400 police officers, most on motorcycles or horseback, began to wade into the crowd. Another group of police began firing ‘non-lethal munitions’ into the crowd, including rubber bullets, small bean bags fired from shotguns and pepper spray,” according to WSWS (who recall more details than I do.)

My friends and I made it out into the street to avoid getting surrounded in what looked like it might be a mass arrest. Some people ran away but a lot of people stood up to the police, maybe falling back a little when there were bullets flying, but then coming back. We finally all got hit with rubber bullets and the crowd got pushed back and dispersed. For a lot of people, what happened was terrible, scary or didn’t represent a dignified way to protest. Many people howled about the police brutality. A lot of people were there for a concert and were outraged that the police charged them even though 99.9% of the crowd hadn’t thrown anything. The police ordered everyone to disburse but then didn’t let people leave.

We had spent the whole day waiting for something to happen, and in the end, the police overreaction did our work for us. Lesson #3: the system always seeks order and management and often a win will be creating disorder — and this can be by mistake because you can’t organize dis-organization. Normally our strength isn’t a direct confrontation with power, which we’ll usually lose, but rather changing the game or even running away from the police. The police are happy when they know where you are and understand what you’re up to — but when they don’t, that’s chaos and that’s what really undermines an authoritarian system.

As far as I can tell, the 2000 DNC didn’t change the course of history, undermine the two-party system, or whatever. But if you live your life only measuring your experiences that way, you’re missing the point. It ended up feeling like it was worth it — a memorable experience. Since 2000, the police response to convention protests has become more and more intense, and the number of people willing to protest seems to be falling. But there’s really no telling what will go down this year if someone doesn’t try. The sense of danger and desperation is at an all time high — racism, immigrant bashing and violence are in the air, class inequality has never been so in our face in our lifetime, and the planet’s ecosystem is breaking down. We may be getting close to the point where no one has anything left to lose and if enough people get out into the streets, you never know what might happen.

 

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988.

There were moments when it looked like this issue would be canceled. Rather than bore you or ourselves with all the details, it is worth articulating why the paper keeps coming out despite all the obstacles and evidence that we should just give up and throw in the towel.

To live well, you must come to terms with your own mortality. If you woke up focused on the reality that “I will soon be dead forever” how would you have energy to make your oatmeal?

Similarly, resistance to the capitalist monster that is daily destroying the earth is a pre-condition for freedom, for being able to see reality clearly, for having fun and for being able to love. Being in Slingshot collective is one of the ways we fight the system. It keeps us sane and that keeps us alive — not walking dead employees / consumers who are just going through the motions.

There are a lot of articles about protests and riots in this issue because having these experiences has been transformative for us. Like taking LSD or falling in love or becoming a parent, going beyond talking and actually standing up to fight the system changes you forever. Afterwards, you know on a gut level that the system is fucked, that mainstream options aren’t the only way, and that anytime enough people stand to fight, we can win. Once you know all that, you can’t just turn it off and go along with it anymore. Once you’ve been handcuffed or seen your garden or your squat seized or watched chainsaws take down a forest, you’re always a member of the rebel alliance and the force will be with you.

There are many ways people struggle for a better world. As individuals, we’re small and isolated. But being an individual is also a strength because on an individual level, you’re free. No matter how top-down and micro-managed the world becomes, you still control your own decisions and you still have your own creativity. It’s up to each of us to refuse the boxes the system wants to force us into and the rules we never agreed to.

And while we might be weak individually, we can cooperate with others to create communities of resistance. These can be the bridge from powerlessness to creating spaces where we’re free to do as we please.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: the world is going to hell in a handbasket. But that isn’t the end of the story — life is still full of exciting opportunities even in the face all the eco-destruction, war, racism, refugees, income stratification, gentrification and the boring, sanitized, managed world.

It is precisely because everything we care about is so at risk — we’re being priced out of town, we’re being poisoned, our lives and freedom may be taken from us at any moment — that the moments of beauty and love that we still experience every day are all the more poignant. In the whole universe, there is nothing like the feeling of biting into a ripe peach. Or sinking into someone’s warm arms. Or seeing the clouds in the sky. The corporations and the cops and the fucking freeways are puny, temporary, and ridiculous compared to the things that really matter.

There are many ways to respond to all of these intense paradoxes, and Slingshot is one of ours. Won’t you join us?

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers, translators, distributors, etc. to make this paper. If you send an article, please be open to editing.

We’re a collective but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this: A. Iwasa, Ash, Dov, Eggplant, Elke, Fern, Isabel, Jesse, Kermit, Kerry Liz, Korvin, Larry, Lew, Max, Patrick, Peter, and all the authors and artists!

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on August 21, 2016 at 7 pm at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 122 by September 17, 2016 at 3 pm.

Volume 1, Number 121, Circulation 22,000

Printed April 22, 2016

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley CA 94705

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

Phone (510) 540-0751 • slingshot@tao.ca slingshot.tao.ca • twitter @slingshotnews

 

Corrections: The world map in the 2016 organizer fails to show South Sudan. Also the days were mislabeled April 21-23 in the spiral organizer. Sorry about that.

About the poster: The slogan is the name of an amazing deep ecology zine that existed in the 1990s. Find a copy if you can. The skull was drawn and sent to us by a prisoner but sorry we lost his name. Thanks Jenn Dieges for the flower collage.

Slingshot free stuff

We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues for the cost of postage. Send $3 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library . slingshot at tao.ca

Circulation information

Subscriptions to Slignshot are free to prisoners, low income, or anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue. International $3 per issue. Outside the Bay Area we’ll mail you a free stack of copies if you give them out for free. Say how many copies and how long you’ll be at your address. In the Bay Area pick up copies at Long Haul and Bound Together books, SF.

 

Compiled by Jesse D. Palmer

Here are some new radical community spaces we’ve learned about, plus updates to information published in the 2016 Slingshot Organizer. We collect info about these spaces not just so you can have a swell road trip this summer, but because autonomous, public radical spaces are an important tool in building the personal communities of trust, cooperation and love that are essential in fighting the grim forces of capitalism and building a livable world. DIY projects, independent art and music venues and other collective efforts are worthwhile on their own, but even more importantly they are where we meet others and make connections.

In many cases, such spaces are one of the only ways new people who want to join the radical “scene” can plug in, because all too often our projects are limited by their grounding in cliques and closed friendship circles. New connections people make at these spaces last and continue to expand for years.

In a way, radical spaces can be like the best part of an Occupy camp where there is a lot of cross-pollination between different types of people. And yes, like Occupy, these spaces can be fucking frustrating — sometimes all-too fragile and temporary. Sometimes they are disorganized, dominated by a few people, or subject to disruption by dysfunctional people. But claiming physical space is necessary if we really want to grow the resistance. And with all the frustration, there’s also a lot of space for experimentation, creativity, learning and growth. If you have any info about other spaces we don’t know about or have corrections for the 2017 Organizer, send them to us by July 29. We try to update the information on-line at slingshot.tao.ca/contacts.

Flyover Infoshop – Carbondale, IL

A one year old space with a stage, free zine library, a lending library, a kitchen made from scrap and salvaged items and the Carbondale Tool Lending Library which hosts classes. They host sewing workshops, jam nights, letter writing for prisoners, political reading groups, consent discussions, free massages, political presentations, community meals, parties, and training sessions. They also planted an organic vegetable garden in the abandoned lots across the street. The space is “founded on anarchist principles . . . an environment where no one has power over anyone else.” Across the street is also St. Shoe Shine, a store that employs formerly incarcerated folks and the newly opened Center for Empowerment and Justice that seeks to become a community space and currently focuses on getting legal and material aid to formerly incarcerated folks and families of currently incarcerated folks. 214 N Washington St. in Carbondale, IL 62901 flyoverinfoshop.org.

Bridgetown DIY – La Puente, CA

A DIY collectively operated zine library, lending library and meeting space that hosts shows, meetings, movies, dance classes, art classes, workshops, speakers and art shows. (They’ve been operating a ton of interesting events for 3 years and it seems like Slingshot fucked up for not listing them sooner. Sorry.) 1421 Valinda Ave., La Puente, CA 91744 facebook.com bridgetowndiy

The Universe Building – Detroit, MI

A collectively operated safe space that hosts art events, movies, a weekly community gathering / concert on Friday night, campfires, maker activities, and drum circles. They write: “Universal Intentional Organization is a grassroots movement of revitalization in community through cooperation & volunteer beautification work to restore & utilize abandoned, condemned or vacant space for intentional living along with the facilitation of cultural happenings & events, workshops & education for teaching independence to one another through environmental sustainability, permaculture knowledge & eco-friendly co-creation of our collective.” 1 E Montana, Detroit 48203 734-417-9233 / 616-570-1459

Savannah Tribe Intentional Community – Savannah, GA

An intentional community and safe space that hosts gardening and alternative living experiments, a Sunday cafe, workshops, Food Not Bombs, and couch surfers. 631 West 37th St., Savannah, GA 93415 912-999-6988

Common Gardens (AKA People’s Republic of Ketmora AKA West Driftless Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster) – Dane, WI

A large farm that hosts collectives and cooperatives and promotes art, radical feminism and agricultural innovation. They are training a new generation of farmers and work with local restaurants and food banks to build food security and food sovereignty. They host events with bands, brewers and speakers who address issues from homelessness to hunger to youth incarceration. They have space for Wwoofers, couch surfers and friends. 6389 Rimmel Ct. Dane WI, 53529, commongardens@gmail.com 608-849-7739

Vortex Coffee and Drinks Co-op at Donut Panic – San Diego, CA

A radical worker cooperative space that is vegan friendly with a small zine library. They say they are “a nexus for nourishment and finding other rad spaces in San Diego.” 6171 Mission Gorge Rd., #113, San Diego, CA 92102 619-280-1894

Quercus Community – Richmond, VA

Located at the former home of the Wingnut Anarchist Collective, the project hosts music and DIY events as well as Food Not Bombs cooking. They describe themselves as an “egalitarian, income-sharing community” that is “dedicated to ecological conservation, social justice, personal growth, and leading lives of beauty, agency, and fun.” 2005 Barton, Richmond, VA 23222 quercus.richmond@ gmail.com

Third Space Art Collective – Davis, CA

A DIY all-ages art, music and performance space. 946 Olive Drive, Davis, CA 95616. thirdspacedavis.com

Quincy Natural Foods Coop – Quincy, CA

A food coop in a small town in the beautiful Feather River canyon that is a community gathering spot. 269 Main St. Quincy, CA 95971. 530-283-3528. (Note: it is near the famous railroad-geek attraction the Keddie Wye bridge.) They also have a location in Portaola at 60 North Pine St. Portola, CA 96122 530-832-1642.

VerdEnergia Pacifica – San Jose, Costa Rica

A cooperatively owned permaculture community and reforestation project in the mountains of Lanas de Puriscal, Costa Rica. They have been working to repair destroyed cattle land into a food forest in one of the most

de-forested areas in the country. They are an educational/volunteer center and also offer permaculture classes. Please contact them before visiting – no drop-ins, please. 500 metros oeste de la escuela en Lanas, Mercedes Sur #2, Puriscal, San Jose Costa Rica. Verdenergia.org

Corrections to the 2016 Slingshot Organizer

• The new address for Sopo Bicycle Cooperative is 1270 Caroline St NE, Ste D120-392 Atlanta, GA 30307.

• Power U Center in Miami, FL moved – their new address is 745 NW 54th St Miami, FL 33127 305-576-7449 info@poweru.org.

• AK Press has moved. Their new address is 370 Ryan Avenue, Unit 100 Chico, CA 95973.

• The North Country Food Alliance moved to 2 East Franklin Ave, Suite #1, Minneapolis, MN 55404. It’s also the union hall for the Twin Cities Industrial Workers of the World.

• The Wingnut Anarchist Collective in Richmond, VA no longer exists.

• It appears the Heart of Art Gallery in Los Angeles, CA has lost their space.

• We got mail returned from the Blood Orange Infoshop in Riverside, CA. It seems like the project changed to the Black and Brown Underground, but it is hard to tell if that is still operating – let us know if you know.

• The Root Social Center in Brattleboro, VT hosts the Root Radical Lending Library which has its own projects, events, and website: therootsjclibrary.weebly.com

• The mailing address for Durham Bike coop is PO Box 1225 Durham, NC 27701.

• The Horn Of Plenty in Reservoir, Australia is now closed permanently.

 

By Jayme Winell

A group of Mexican campesinos, rural farmers, peacefully seized 200 hectares of a sugar cane plantation where many of their grandparents had worked since the mid 1900s in San Isidrio de los Laureles on December 20. Sugar cane work is brutally hard and dismally paid and the community surrounding the plantation has struggled with poverty for generations. The ranch named “El Refugio,” or “The Refuge” is located amidst very dry country toward the Pacific coast in Chiapas Mexico. The land includes a natural spring which from which clean, pure water gushes forth that is believed to be sacred and will bless children.  The water is known as the “Blessed River.”

Just a few years ago the owners of the ranch relaxed in their two pools filled with water from the Blessed River while the campesinos of San Isidro worked their sugar cane fields. After the land was seized, the children and grandchildren of those campesinos could finally swim in the cool, clean waters, playing and running with enthusiasm and energy. This new generation, their parents believe, will have access to a more dignified life with land to call their own.

Despite living on the very fertile land that produced such profits for the owners, members of the San Isidrio community were unable to meet their families’ basic needs. In an average eight hour day, they would earn 60-80 pesos, or about 5 US dollars. Over the course of the last five years they began talking about how to change their situation, or as they like to say, how to take out the roots of the problem.  They identified having access to land as being a major goal.

In 1994 there were widespread land recuperation projects successfully completed by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional, EZLN). The EZLN used a strategy of training in secret, making surprise attacks on key land holdings and then quickly setting aside weapons to focus on founding self-governing systems, economic cooperatives, health clinics and schools. The watershed moment of 1994 certainly reached the minds and hearts of San Isidrio campesinos but physically was far away.  It would take another twenty-one years for them to take similar action.

They joined the organization Semilla Digna/Dignified Seed, became adherents of the EZLN Sixth Declaration from the Lancondon Jungle and aligned themselves with the National Congress of Indigenous Peoples (CNI).  As an organization they believe that land belongs to those who work it and that the defense of Mother Earth is of utmost importance. They have taken part in workshops ranging from organic agriculture, to human rights, to participatory theater about illegal police detention.

The land and community building project in San Isidrio at “The Refuge” is still a work in progress.  They fear police repression and vigilante violence on the part of the owners but so far have been able to guard the ranch twenty-four hours a day.

 

In Their Own Words: From The Radio Zapatista Project:

How do you feel being in control of land that your grandparents worked on?

“Happy, content that our children will live more dignified.”

When and how did you decide to take over this land?

“Around 2010 we had a reawakening of consciousness and we said that since we’re from here then we should also defend the territory. It’s very integral there: there is water, trees, it is sacred land and so…we decided to recuperate the land. It’s not right that we have always been here but someone from outside comes in and buys what belongs to us.”

What is your view of politicians?

“Before, we let politicians deceive us. they said ‘if you vote, lots of things will change.’ But …all they did was promise and promise and promise but they never deliver. So last year we decided to not vote…  Sometimes the politicians bring programs but they don’t get at the problem from the roots.”

There is grafitti about taking care of the Earth. How do you view yourselves taking care of the Earth?

“We have started a cooperative on some land, it is not much, about a half hectare, but we don’t use any petrochemicals. We use some fertilizer but it is organic and insecticide, well repellent, that is also natural.”

Is there something else you’d like to tell us people in other places?

“Well, that you are never alone. We are always organizing. And now may people get inspired to fight for their lands, for yourself, for your families, for our children. Fight together and organize together because alone we won’t achieve anything. But if we articulate that another world is possible, it depends on how many of us are ready to do lots of things…together.”

 

To hear the full interview with community members of San Isidrio de los Laureles, go to Radio Zapatista:  http://radiozapatista.org/?p=16211

Edited by Fern’s Dad

The Prison Ecology Project (PEP) addresses the intersection between the environment and incarceration. Initiated by Paul Wright of Prison Legal News and the Human Rights Defense Center, PEP seeks to bring environmental activists and the skill sets of the ecology movement to the struggle against the prison industry, prisoner’s rights, criminal justice reform and prison abolition. PEP builds on the experience some radical environmental activists gained when we were either thrown in prison for eco-actions, or organized support for imprisoned activists. These experiences gave us an inside look at the prison epidemic in the US. With the steady stream of urban uprisings against the police state, there has never been a better time to organize at this intersection of ecology and incarceration.

One way to accomplish this is to expose the stream of environmental and health violations flowing from overcrowded prisons around the country as a weak point in the system of mass incarceration. A prime example is the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) plans to build a massive maximum-security prison on top of a former mountaintop removal coal mine in Letcher County, Eastern Kentucky, an area surrounded by sludge ponds and coal processing and transport operations. This produces an environmental justice nightmare, where prisoners, who are disproportionately low-income and people of color, face toxic conditions behind bars. The prison site is a mile from a rare and biodiverse pocket of Eastern old-growth called the Lilley Cornett Woods.

As of December 2015, the BOP got $400 million approved for the prison’s construction. The newly formed Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP) is organizing to stop the Letcher county prison and looking to grow a coalition of opposition.

Stopping one prison is not a magic bullet to ending the US police state, the one that gave way to world’s largest prison nation and in turn serves as the apparatus of repression that keeps the planet shackled to industrial capitalism, but it’s a pretty good place to build from. In particular, it is a powerful place that the environmental movement can express solidarity with the growing rage over the racist criminal justice system.

PEP is helping to organize a convergence in support of eco-prisoners & against toxic prisons June 11-13 in Washington DC. For over a decade, June 11 has been a day of international solidarity events with environmentalists and anarchists imprisoned for their actions in defense of the Earth. The gathering will have networking, strategizing and organizing June 11/12, culminating with a mass action on Monday the 13th. The gathering will put dual pressure on both the BOP and the EPA regarding the Kentucky prison, and environmental justice issues related to prisoners in general, while continuing to fight for the release of eco-prisoners in the spirit of June 11th. We also hope to see this effort build stronger bonds between the eco-defense movement and the movements against police and mass incarceration.

For those interested, but can’t make it to D.C., the BOP has 5 regional offices or you can organize your own June 11 event anywhere. For more info, email FightToxicPrisons@gmail.com

 

Reviewed by A. Iwasa

The City is Ours begins with a preface by George Katsiaficas, who I consider to be the next Noam Chomsky. Though he is an academic, I feel like he has long overcome that world’s tendency towards dry writing.

The foreword was written by Geronimo, the author of Fire and Flames, a history of the German Autonomist Movement,.  Though he is as passionate as he is in his earlier writings, a diatribe against anti-sexism almost completely derailed my train of thought as I read his foreword.

That written, this book starts off strong before calming down to a more nuanced, academic feeling with the introduction.

I was reading the book with a real sense of urgency, having recently become involved with the squatters’ and squat supporters’ collective, East Bay Homes Not Jails.  After living in two squats that had been evicted in Oakland the previous year, I was ready to look just about anywhere for advice.  The subtitle of the book should be stressed, this isn’t just about squatting, it’s also very much about European Autonomist Movements.

But it was well worth working through all the historical context to get to the actual material about squatting.

The chapter on Brighton was one of the major highlights, written by two groups, one explicitly of squatters, the Needle Collective.  It’s exactly the sort of writing I was hoping for when I got the book.  Though the post-World War II emergence of squatting in Britain and general historical context is touched on, this is mostly a fiery account of squatting in Brighton from 1969-2012.

An interesting side note to the mostly academic writing style of the book was the amount of documentary film footage referenced, much of which I was able to find on the youtube!  Taking breaks from reading to watch some of these videos reminded me of history classes in high school big time, but far more interesting.  This could make a fun Squatting 101 textbook and study guide!  Possibly the best of these films was 69, about a Youth House, Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen.

The chapter on London was written by a Lecturer in Law, Lucy Finchett-Maddock.  Though the emphasis on her specialty comes off as dry at first, the flip of it is she also focuses on the political organizations of the squatters, even going back to the Ex-Servicemen’s Secret Committee, who were one of the many groups helping homeless families get into squats in the post-World War II wave.

As a participant in East Bay Homes Not Jails, these sort of organizational forms were some of the specific things I was hoping to learn more about.

The next chapter is about the Rozbrat squatted social center in Poznan, Poland.  Being the only chapter about what I consider to be Eastern Europe, I particularly enjoyed it on several levels.  How the emergence of the Polish squatting movement fit into the post-State Communist era, and how Rozbrat in particular also fit into the Anti-Globalization Movement was fun and exciting to read.

As a participant in the Infoshop Movement with many white relatives of Slovak descent, there was something homey feeling about this chapter for me.  There was even a reference to Anarchist Soccer!

The final chapter, Squatting and Autonomous Action in Vienna, 1976-2012, is solid. The whole book, for the most part, should probably be called Autonomous Action and Squatting.  In some ways, this book is more like what I had hoped Fire and Flames and The Subversion of Politics would have been like:  an exciting, well written and researched history of Autonomists.  But it wasn’t as full of helpful advice on squatting as I hoped it would be.  Still well worth reading and discussing for what it is.

 

PM Press, PO Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623

By A. Iwasa

One of the little things that I think has improved my life over the last eight or so months has been making my own deodorant.  I’ve experimented with a few different recipes, but am currently doing this:

1 tablespoon of baking soda to 1 table spoon of organic coconut oil, smooshing them together and adding about 8 drops of tea tree oil per ½ cup or so.

Not exactly science; since fall I’ve only been places where the coconut oil is solid at room temperatures, and I refuse to heat it to work with it more easily.  And I keep having to abandon supplies, and just trying to make sure my jar is full before I leave, so I’m half assing it like I always do.

By Daddy LongShanks

By the time Nosebleed squat started, I’d been houseless for almost two years and considered myself something of a pro-squatter. The upside of squatting is zero dollars rent and total freedom to spend your days as you please, free of indentured servitude to the corporate ogre; the downside is zero stability, frequent unplanned moves and occasional loss of possessions up to and including all of them. The average life-span of a squat in San Francisco, according to my Homes Not Jails cohorts, is three weeks; my own experience more or less confirms that statistic. Moving more than once a month adds up to plenty of stress on its own, but squatters have more to deal with: periodic confrontations with angry property owners, and police, who invariably take the gentry’s side against their ragtag, would-be disseisors.

The first night I stayed there, we agreed to set the roster at five, not to accept any more members (other than overnight guests), and set some loose house rules. (They can only be loose in a household of anarchist cat people.) After lone-wolfing it for so long, I was happy to be part of a group again, building a house with others outside the capitalism box. Safety in numbers, the synergy of human interactions, personality dynamics I’d missed (a little). We all had our failings and foibles and eccentricities, but no one was judging, or hiding in shame. We were all fuck-ups of one kind or another and that was okay. It was some kind of wonderful.

We discussed intelligence gathered so far on the property, over dinner and drinks in the kitchen. From the street, Nosebleed wasn’t much to look at, but inside the house was full of retro charm. What it lacked in size it made up with a cozy, finished basement and a fenced backyard with garden. It was an inheritance property. The owners appeared to live in the East Bay. They had major renovations planned that would involve extensive construction, as evidenced by blueprints and other Department of Building Inspection documents we’d intercepted. This dampened any hopes for a long-term tenancy, though not completely: we’d all seen enough construction projects stall for long periods, sometimes indefinitely, for reasons one could only guess: owner moves or sells the property, dies, runs out of money; plans delayed or derailed by permits, Planning Department bureaucracy, complaints from other homeowners, etc. Though hope was further eroded by the fact that The Great Recession was itself receding by this point (early 2013), and construction was starting to pick up again all over the place.

Water and power, at minimum, are considered necessary by self-respecting squatters for decent indoor living. In this respect, Nosebleed was a peach, boasting not only these baseline amenities but also a gas stove and furnace, working washer and dryer, and even hot running water — a rare luxury indeed! That first night, I washed a load of clothes and went to bed earlier than the others, setting up my tent in the basement. Indoor camping! I would have camped outside, but we wanted to maintain a low profile.

To access the basement, one had to go outside. When I did so, I noticed that our clamoring voices were clearly audible to the next-door neighbors, who struck me as the sort of married couple who wake up early and pack their kids off to school before leaving for work themselves. At that very moment, I could hear talking, loud as day, about strategies for dealing with cops if they showed up, and how we should fabricate and memorize a story so as not to be taken off guard or caught in a lie if owners or others came calling.

I brought this up the next night, my second in the house. Again we stood in the kitchen eating dinner, by dint of no furniture so far. “You guys, we’ve gotta talk quieter,” I exhorted them. The response seemed to be a collective shrug. Not wanting to come off as a fussbudget, I didn’t press the issue. After dinner, I took a hot shower, something I’d anticipated with relish all day. When I emerged a half hour later, steamy and well-scrubbed, I was in congenial spirits, starting to really look forward to this little house adventure and already feeling fondness for my surrogate squatter family. Wicked sugarplums were dancing in my head, of how cool and fun this house could be. Maybe we would make it so cool that the owners, when they got wind of our unauthorized tenancy, wouldn’t even mind! The permission squat of my dreams come true!

But the next day the squat blew up. The owner showed up, found one of us and threatened to call the police. He ran off with a few of his belongings and the rest of us lost everything we had left in the house. We understood. I think we’d all been through our share of squat busts by that point. Nonetheless, I was disappointed. It was a nice house, and we were a fun group. It was too bad the experiment never got to play out. That night, I walked by the house and saw it boarded up, and looked over the fence into the dark, desolate garden we’d hoped to cultivate. That squat, lasting only two days, came to symbolize for me the wasted potential and brusquely shattered daydreams of those attempting to build a better world at this early and subliminal stage of human enlightenment.

When I became homeless and hit the street for the first time in my adult life in San Francisco in mid-2011, I had no conception of how to live outside the prescribed course of mainstream capitalist society, and thought my life was ending. Thanks to Occupy SF, Homes Not Jails, and Noisebridge (as it was then), I discovered another life outside the mainstream that offered total freedom at the heavy cost of constant struggle, insecurity and instability. Unfortunately, I became addicted to crystal meth, which took me away from the larger activist community I’d begun to be involved with. Eventually, after brushes with the law and worsening circumstances, I emerged with a heightened spiritual sense and consciousness level — there is something to be said for the view that suffering leads to enlightenment, I’m afraid! I was determined to plug back into the grassroots communities and make up for lost time as best I could. I still sleep in abandoned houses and explore, but now I don’t need heavy drugs to do so.

Contact the author at longshanks@spaz.org

By A. Iwasa

The decline of squatting in the East Bay has been one of the most heartbreaking signs of its rapid gentrification. I believe, without a doubt, this is a critical time for people to stand up to the moneyed interests by doing things such as squatting. Like Slingshot itself, whose roots are in the land struggle of People’s Park and the Haste St. and Barrington Co-op squats, we need to struggle for space or we will surely lose it. East Bay Homes Not Jails (HnJ) can be one of the many ways that we fight.

East Bay HnJ is a collective of squatters and squat supporters that meets Wednesdays at 7PM at the Oakland Omni Commons. Its goal is to open and enter as many vacant houses as possible, and keep them open as long as possible. Its politics are anti-oppression, and those who display oppressive behaviors such as racism, sexism and/or homophobia will be asked to leave meetings.

I first became aware that a new East Bay HnJ had formed around New Year’s Day, 2016. I was living in a rather large “commune” in the Mission District of San Francisco (SF) with two other people, and was so miserable I had taken to an audio book to help me fall asleep at night and get my mental wheels turning in the mornings. I had come to the East Bay to celebrate New Year’s Eve by goofing around with comrades, and saw a flyer for HnJ meetings at the Long Haul Infoshop.

Those mental wheels got turning the old fashioned way, and after my reluctant return to SF, I got my final pushes to get back to the serious work of the East Bay between the commune’s creepy “guru’s” attempts at micro-management, and loose travel plans with a freight train rider I met at Voku, a semi-monthly free meal in SF similar to Food Not Bombs in spirit, the next Friday. I packed up my gear and split for the East Bay.

The deadline for Slingshot #120 was also coming up, so I figured worst case scenario: I wouldn’t leave the East Bay after all and would be sleeping out again soon, but I had another newspaper to look forward to helping get out and my living arrangement wasn’t worth all the hassle.

Of course I hoped for a best-case scenario: getting back into a great squat with another issue of Slingshot on the horizon and all the East Bay’s other happenings. As might be expected, reality was somewhere in the middle.

Frankly, squatting in Oakland and working on Slingshot had been the two reasons I had come to the East Bay in the fall of 2013; having hitchhiked, rode freight trains and walked here from the White Castle Timber Sale Blockade near Myrtle Creek in Oregon.

I had been following the squatting scene in the East Bay for years in the pages of Slingshot, and though I had very mixed feelings about it, I wanted to come see things for myself. Similarly, I felt worst case scenario: I’d still have something to write an article about and then it would be back off to Arizona sooner rather than later, where my year had started.

At that time there had been an East Bay HnJ, but it had folded by the time I got to town. There was also an HnJ in SF, and some of its veterans are the folks who initiated the current East Bay HnJ. Though the squatting scenes in SF and Oakland are very different, the comrades are pretty cool and they are very skilled in the basics of scouting vacant houses, cracking them open and navigating the legal waters of occupying them.

Most of them are tenants now, but have been busy supporting squatters such as the Land Action 4 and other land struggles such as that saving the Gill Tract, supporting the Ohlone re-occupation last year and the civil disobedience earlier this year that stopped construction destroying the farm.

Also they are eager to share the previously mentioned skills; weekly meetings frequently include skill shares such as lock picking and key making.

Plus if more people get involved with the meetings and keep coming, we could start having more Away Team Missions where new squats can be scouted and cracked open.

At the check in of every meeting people are asked if they are housed and available for an Away Team Mission that night. The only place I’ve squatted in the Bay Area this year I was brought to through these meetings.

We also have a strong tendency towards sharing food and goofing around the way comrades can when you actually get along, so participating in HnJ has helped improve my life a great deal even if I’m still mostly homeless.

As one of the comrades told me about HnJ around 2013 in SF, “All I did was crack open houses and cook Food Not Bombs.” Sounds like a dream to me! But with the old membership requirements of showing up to three meetings in a row, then half of the subsequent meetings, I’m the only one who has joined the new collective since it started towards the end of last year.

Please consider joining, or starting your own HnJ Collective, and letting us know how things go for you all. eastbayhnj@riseup.net

by Asar Imhotep Amen, Ph.D. (aka T. T. Thomas)

“One of the most tragic beliefs widely shared by Blacks throughout the world is that white people need or want us or will treat us equally and share societal resources with us. Faith continues to prevail in spite of overwhelming evidence, which disputes this belief. Blacks continue to ignore the irrefutable truth that, in a racist social system, all institutions will reflect, protect and sustain values that are consistent with racism/white supremacy. This should not be considered surprising or profound since all institutions serve to perpetuate the social theory of the group that created them.” – Dr. Bobby E. Wright, African- Centered Psychologist

Sometimes, different people can independently arrive at the same conclusion. I didn’t start and haven’t been affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, but I respect their analysis of the problem and their desire to end it. Around the same time as #BLM was starting, I, like other people, was thinking along the same lines about what the fundamental problem was behind seemingly rampant police murders of Black people. And for once, I didn’t feel alone in centering the problem on what Black life means. If Black life doesn’t mean anything, the USA would be a genocidal slave state in which the killing and punishment of Black people is meted out and widely considered acceptable, regardless of guilt or innocence, gender, socioeconomic status, or other factors. And that’s exactly what it is.

#BLM (Black Lives Matter) is a grassroots coalition-based social movement started in the United States by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi in the wake of several unpunished (or lightly punished) incidents of police killing unarmed Black people, including the killing of Oscar Grant and Kenneth Harding in Oakland, as well as Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, and Michael Brown. While it consists of people with diverse viewpoints and tactics, the movement’s central aim is to oppose the systematic normalization of Black peoples’ deaths, which makes violence against Black people more likely and more acceptable. #BLM began as a social media movement, but has quickly become an on-the-ground social movement with many different actors and organizations that aren’t necessarily connected as one organization but have the same general aims.

Actions and policies of the state result in the disproportionate killing, injuring, and incarceration of Black people, but the struggle for Black life to matter is not just about opposing policing practices against Black men, boys, & girls. It is also about how domestic abuse victim Marissa Alexander was not allowed to defend herself against her abusive husband under the same “stand your ground” defense in Florida law that George Zimmerman used to get exonerated in the killing of Trayvon Martin. It is also about how Black transwoman Cece McDonald was prosecuted and convicted for defending herself against a hostile and racist group of white youths in Minneapolis. It is also about how broader political practices, like the mass disenfranchisement of Florida and Ohio Black voters, the shutting down of water services to Detroit residents, and the anemic federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, show a remarkable disregard for Black lives.

Because the nature of racism is not just prejudice but also the power to enforce prejudice, punishing or educating those who commit violence against Black people without justification cannot address these problems individually. It’s too big a problem. The conservative Wall Street Journal reported that in 2011 NYPD had more stops of young Black men in Manhattan than there are young Black men in Manhattan. And at least one former NYPD officer has stepped forward to say that he was specifically ordered to stop young Black males at every opportunity. But he is just one officer, and NYPD is just one department. Police officers everywhere have broad latitude to stop anyone they suspect may be involved in a crime and use that latitude to systematically target Black and Latino men and boys. The problem is deeper than any one department and it’s “stop-and-frisk” policies.

For one thing, it’s everywhere, not just New York. One report described anti-Black racism as “baked into” police practices. “The root of the problem,” says #BLM co-founder Alicia Garza, “is anti-Black racism.” In other words, there is a unique, deeply ingrained, and pervasive kind of racism that American society at large feels toward Black people that goes a long way toward explaining these disparities as well as many others. What does Blackness mean to America? There are not-so-subtle hints everywhere.

-Black people make up approximately 12 percent of the US population, but constitute more than 40 percent of the prison population.

-White Americans use illegal drugs at rates that are comparable to, or well in excess of, the rates at which Black Americans use illegal drugs, but Black Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses 10 times more.

-In 2012, police and security forces killed a Black american at least once every 28 hours. According to another report, “Black teens were 21 times more likely to be shot dead [by police] than their white counterparts”.

The problem is not just that a de facto police state is ready to descend on Black people at any time, but also, more broadly, that the entire population of African Americans is perceived by the broader society (1) as a potential threat and (2) as unworthy of being listened to when we protest through legal, institutional, or other means. This problem must be viewed as a systemic one, not just an individual or institutional one, and it must be addressed on multiple levels, including not only institutionally or interpersonally but especially in our unconscious thought, the deeply ingrained thought processes that are reflected by our actions before we even have the opportunity to think. Before we can change our thinking to make Black lives matter, we must truly understand that the problem of Black lives not mattering is a problem of meaning that isn’t just individual or institutional but structural. It is rooted in what America is.

America needs Black lives to not matter. Due to centuries of negative images and stereotypes about Africans and racial Blackness, in the collective psyches of the United States, throughout the Americas, and across the world Blackness means, as the late psychiatrist Dr. Frantz Fanon said, “the lower emotions, the baser inclinations, the dark side of the soul”. A field of study within cognitive psychology known as implicit cognition (or implicit bias) finds quantifiable evidence of what Black people have been knowing for better of 1,000 years (had anyone with power ever bothered to listen): that deeply rooted negative attitudes towards people of African descent are held widely across the American population, even among those who claim to be non racist, even when other possible causes for these attitudes (like socioeconomic class or education level) are taken into consideration — and these attitudes tend to increase people’s willingness to use violence (interpersonal, institutional, or state) and punishment against Black people.

One recent quantitative study from Stanford, titled “Not Yet Human”, shows that people of African descent are commonly associated with apes at an unconscious level of mental processing. According to the study” “this Black-ape association alters visual perception and attention, and it increases endorsement of violence against Black suspects. In an archival study of actual criminal cases, the authors show that news articles written about Blacks who are convicted of capital crimes are more likely to contain ape-relevant language than news articles written about white convicts. Moreover, those who are implicitly portrayed as more apelike in these articles are more likely to be executed by the state than those that are not.” This finding agrees with the earlier work of Stanford literature professor Sylvia Wynter, who found that police in Los Angeles in the 1980s and early 1990s commonly used the incident code “NHI” — meaning “no humans involved” — for incidents involving African Americans. While many people acknowledge this police code have been racist, the Stanford quantitative study shows that even people who don’t think themselves racist have the same thoughts.

Other studies show that children of African descent are believed to be older, more mature, and less innocent than their white counterparts are, something that might explain why teachers suspend African American preschoolers at triple the rate of white preschoolers and why police and prosecutors are more likely to charge African American youths with harsher crimes or in adult court than they are in cases involving non-Black youths. It might also explain why 12-year-old youth Tamir Rice was shot dead by police at a playground in Cleveland, Ohio, while holding a toy gun, whereas white youths are free to regularly play with toy guns in their neighborhoods.

Another set of studies (“shooter bias” studies) shows that Black males holding cell phones are, on quick glance, believed to be holding guns, while white males are believed to be holding cell phones. These studies also found that people would be quicker to draw and shoot their weapons when faced with a Black male who might be holding a cell phone or a gun, compared with a white man in the same position. These studies might explain why plainclothes police shot unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo after he reached for his wallet presumably thinking the officers wanted to see his identification or were trying to rob him.

Still other studies have shown that a stereotypically-named hypothetical Black defendant will receive a higher rate of conviction and harsher degree of punishment for the same crime than will a stereotypically-named hypothetical white defendant, even when identical evidence is presented.

A hypothetical job applicant with an African-American-sounding name is less likely to receive further consideration when a hypothetical job applicant with a white-sounding name is granted further consideration, even when both have the exact same resume except for the name at the top. An applicant for housing or mortgage will be similarly screened based on assumptions about whether they are Black or not, thereby shaping geographic segregation patterns.

African-American employees are more likely to be evaluated poorly by employers than are white employees.

Black NFL players are required to return from injury sooner than their white counterparts with the same injury. Other studies show that the medical profession is slower to give aggressive treatment to African Americans and less sensitive to the pain of African American patients.

Regardless of whether one stands on the side of those addressing the problem, like the founders of #BLM, describing the problem, like researchers at Stanford, or even denying the problem or defending police murders of Black people, the central problem is not a swirling morass of practices to be altered. It is a structure. These problems of anti-Black racism are not simply problems of individual or institutional practice or prejudice because they are repeated across widely disparate individuals and institutions with the same independent results. The psyche of anti-Black racism is not individual or institutional. Both the psyche and the institution are networked together as part of one dynamic, fluid, and massive structure. The psyche, like the institution, is a structure. The problems of Black life mattering are hence fundamentally problems of structural power. In other words, structural racism encompasses the entire system of white supremacy, diffused and infused in all aspects of society, including our history, culture, politics, economics, and our entire social fabric. Structural racism is the most profound and pervasive form of racism-all other forms of racism (e.g. institutional, interpersonal, internalized, etc.) emerges from structural racism.

The key indicators of structural racism are inequalities in power, access, opportunities, treatment, and policy impacts and outcomes, whether they are intentional or not. Structural racism is more difficult to locate in a particular institution because it involves the reinforcing effects of multiple institutions and cultural norms, past and present, continually producing new, and re-producing old forms of racism.

The problem of Black life mattering extends to unconscious levels of thinking and is not only deeply rooted, but also widely diffused and reinforced through multiple networks of power. It is therefore quite challenging to uproot without a massive change in the social structure that abolishes the ways that both personal and institutional practice, as well as individual and social frames of meaning, are tethered to the genocidal slave empire of the “modern” world, the United States. If we only think about the practice of prejudice without centering the ways that all racism derives from structural racism — what I call anti-Blackness — we will be at pains to explain why there is so deep a reserve of animosity that can result in normalized violence toward Black people (and people of color in general) and why the mass loss of Black life does not constitute a national emergency or a cause for widespread grief. True dedication to the principle that Black Lives Matter will require a revolution using all means necessary to end the structure of anti-Blackness.

Racism/white supremacy in America is deeply rooted in a global system of settler-colonial capitalism, land theft, mass murder (or if you prefer the sanitized euphemism of the term “genocide”) racial chattel slavery and its consequences. White privilege is the manifestation, consequence, and flip-side of Black oppression and exploitation, attacks on indigenous sovereignty, and the Eurocentric imposition of private property relations on both land and people is to extract profit through domination. This is a global Empire, and it is an empire here within the US itself as well. White supremacy, white privilege, and racism can only be uprooted by overturning that system of settler colonialism and imperialism, here in the US and throughout the world. Nothing short of decolonization, self-determination of oppressed and colonized people, and revolutionary social, political, economic and ecological transformation of entire society will do.

“Powerful people never educate the victims of their power in how to take their power away from them… the ideology of our “former” slave masters cannot save us. We will not be truly liberated until we are the main instruments of our liberation”. – Dr. John Henrick Clarke

Correspondence:

Troy T. Thomas, H-01001,

CSP-LAC A1-137-UP

PO Box #4430

Lancaster, CA 93539