Author: Slingshot Collective

Compiled by Jesse D. Palmer

The radical contact list published in the 2015 Slingshot Organizer that came out October 1 is the best contact list we’ve published in years reflecting hundreds of phone calls and emails we made over the summer to update and expand the list. But the very day we took the organizer to the printing press, we started learning about other spaces we left out and folks contacted us with corrections. So here are some updates.

Opening and maintaining radical spaces is a crucial part of the struggle for a new world based on cooperation, pleasure and love, not power, profit and greed. These spaces are fertile ground where seeds of thought and action can grow. You can help plant and nurture the seeds by plugging into your local radical spaces or starting one. To connect even more people to radical alternatives, we’re hoping folks who read this will help us add contacts in Russia, Africa, the Middle East and a handful of US states where we don’t currently have contacts. For the most updated information check slingshot.tao.ca/contacts

The Base – Brooklyn, NY

A space “committed to the dissemination of revolutionary left and anarchist ideas and organizing” that hosts events, study groups, meetings, a number of groups and an anarchist library. 1302 Myrtle Ave Brooklyn, NY 11221 thebasebk.org

Mutiny Information Cafe – Denver, CO

A bookstore, record store and cafe that hosts shows and events. 2 S. Broadway, Denver, CO 80209 303-778-7579 mutinyinfocafe.com

May Day Bar and Community Space – Brooklyn, NY

A community center “for social justice organizing, community empowerment and creative expression” with a bar, cafe, two events spaces, and a co-working space. 214 Starr Street in Brooklyn, N Y11237 maydayspace.org

Denver Zine Library – Denver, CO

They’ve been open since 2003 and have 15,000 zines from all over the world. You can borrow the zines and they hold workshops. Open Sat/Sun 11-3. New location. 2400 Curtis St., Denver, CO 80205 denverzinelibrary.org

Antioch Alternative Library – Yellow Springs, OH

An alternative library at the college that is nevertheless open to the public. Sontag Fels Building 800 Livermore Street Yellow Springs, OH 45387

George Wiley Center – Pawtucket, RI

A community organizing non-profit. 32 East Ave. Pawtucket, RI 02860 401-338-1665 georgewileycenter.org

IWW New York City General Member-ship Branch – Long Island City, NY

Someone recommended this as a contact but we’re not sure what happens here other than IWW stuff. Clue us in if you visit. 45-02 23rd St, 2nd Fl, Long Island City, NY 11101 www.wobblycity.org

Pineapple Arts Center – Duluth, MN

A cooperatively-run fine art supply store, staffed by volunteers that offers classes and studio space. 124 W. 1st St. Duluth, MN 55812 218-722-2919 pineapplearts@gmail.com

Revolutionary Autonomous Communities – Los Angeles, CA

They meet every Sunday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm at MacArthur Park in Downtown LA to distribute salvaged produce received from groceries and through mutual aid with farmers. Not a space but a solid long-running project. revolutionaryautonomouscommunities.blogspot.com

MoKaBe’s Coffeehouse – St. Louis, MO

A private business that hosts radical meetings and events. 3606 Arsenal St. St. Louis, MO 63116 314-865-2009 facebook.com/mokabes

Mercury Cafe – Denver, CO

An organic restaurant that hosts artistic and cultural events. Not sure they are really a radical space but someone suggested we list them so perhaps some of our friends in Denver will give us feedback on this. 2199 California Street Denver, CO 80205 303-294-9258 mercurycafe.com

Inkstorm + SadRad = RADSTORM – Halifax, NS, Canada

Inkstorm is a collectively run screenprinting studio with free access hours and classes. SadRad is an all-ages collectively operated show venue and jam space. They share space at 6050 Almon Street, 2nd Floor, Halifax, NS (mail: PO Box 33129 Halifax, NS B3L 4T6) sadrad.h-a-z.org and robertsstreet.org

Ateneu Anarquista del Poble Sec – Barcelona, Spain

An anarchist space that hosted the 2014 Barcelona Anarchist Book fair. c/ Creu dels Molers 86, Barcelona, Spain ateneuanarquistapoblesec.noblogs.org

Nosotros – Athens, Greece

A free social center with a library and meeting space that hosts a free skool and other projects. Themistokleous 66, Exarchia, Athens, Greece nosotros.gr

Ülase12 – Tallinn, Estonia

A volunteer run social center that features a library, free store, meetings, films, punk shows, vegan dinner and events. Tallinn, Kristiine district at Ülase street 12, Estonia. www.ylase12.org

Corrections to the 2015 Organizer

• The Black Coffee Coop in Seattle, WA is moving October 31 so they won’t be at the address we published in 2015. We’ll put their new address on our website once we know it.

• Internationalist Books moved from Chapel Hill to 101 Lloyd St, Carrboro NC 27510 on October 1.

• The day we went to the printer, Solidarity Houston (Texas) told us they won’t be at the address we listed for them in 2015 (2805 Wichita). They don’t have a new address yet but they still exist. Check their website for a new location once they know it. solidarityhouston.org

• The listing for Bad Egg Books in Eugene, OR has the wrong name. Their correct name is the Eugene Infoshop.

• We listed a space called the LA Infoshop at 176 W. Sunset Blvd. based on an email from them, but when someone went to visit, there was just a private business there, not an infoshop. Say it ain’t so!

• We left out the phone number for the Collective for Arts, Freedom and Ecology in Fresno, CA. It is is 559 237-0922.

• The Denver Community Health Collective (Colorado) is only at the address we published once a month on the 4th Wednesday from 5-7 pm. They may eventually add hours. Check their website: denverhealthcollective.com

• We left off the phone number for The Feminist Library in London. It is 020 7261 0879.

• We forgot to include the postal code for the House of Freedom in Brisbane, Australia – it is 4101. They also would have preferred we list the name as Brisbane Anarchist Library.

• Pogo Cafe in Hackney, UK no longer exists.

• The A-raamatukogu (A-library) in Tartu, Estonia is no longer at the address listed but there is still a punk squat there.

• Here’s a list of infoshops in Spain, but we haven’t had time to confirm them by press time: alasbarricadas.org/noticias/node/19036

Radical center seeking support

The Southern Woman’s Bookstore is raising money to open a non-profit feminist bookstore and community center in Denton, TX. Check SouthernWomansBookstore.com for info.

Che Cafe in San Diego under attack

Che Cafe is an all-ages music venue and 35 year-old student cooperative at University of California San Diego that has been a cornerstone of radical thought and action for students and the community. After years of rocky relations with campus authorities, they got an eviction notice in June and a judge ruled in favor of a UCSD eviction lawsuit in October. They may appeal the lawsuit and need political, financial and social support. 9500 Gilman Dr. La Jolla, CA 92093. thechecafe.blogspot.com

 

 

 

“What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.” — Nietzsche

By Margaret Matson

I imagine all people have felt shame at one point or another in their lives. Shame is a prison of the mind and heart that can cage us regardless of space or time. It is easy to feel powerless, alone and inherently flawed given the insurmountable challenges we face. Those of us who struggle to negate the conscripted fate that capitalism and social strata thrust upon us face a critical question. How do we spare ourselves and one another shame?

Moral panic is a sociological phenomena in which individuals or groups are persecuted within a larger social group. These panics are precipitated by the presence of several key ingredients: social order, fear of that social order being threatened, and the existence of taboos – unnameable things which members of the group cannot address without experiencing fear.

A moral panic begins with the accusation of a “folk devil” made by a “moral entrepreneur.” This folk devil is accused of causing ill within the community by violating the social order. The entrepreneur, often a priest, politician or activist, is quickly and readily validated because of the preexisting level of anxiety amongst the community. The problem becomes more convoluted because it centers upon a topic which is taboo to discuss, making it impossible for people to admit or even recognize their intentions and motivations. Soon, more and more people are accusing one another of deviant behavior and rushing to increasingly drastic measures to rid themselves of anybody that is perceived as a threat to the community, despite the fact that the folk devils were members of the established community to begin with. Moral panic often antecedes genocide.

A small-scale example, well known to many here in the US, is the Salem Witch Trials. Even before the witch trials erupted, the neighboring communities to the Salem area considered them “quarrelsome.” The moral entrepreneurs in this case were several young women who began having “fits,” along with the local magistrate, who accused three outliers within the community of witchcraft.

Soon, many were accusing many others of witchcraft. Almost all of those convicted were women. Upon examining the links within the Salem colony, it becomes obvious that many of these accusations had less to do with any real threat of the Devil and more to do with land and inheritance disputes. Needless to say, none of the trials record any frank discussion of sexuality or property.

There was likely real fear that gripped these people, which no doubt escalated as the panic gained momentum. A mysterious headache or sour milk could result in torture and public execution. I find myself giving those tightlipped Protestants the benefit of the doubt. They probably did not consciously seek to murder their female neighbors over land – they were probably truly terrified of the Devil. Ultimately, the young women having these “fits” surely were not aided by the public hangings.

Admitting that anarchist and radical groups have a “social order” may be uncomfortable, and the word “community” can be a touchy subject in and of itself. However, social order forms naturally and inevitably wherever and whenever people participate in groups, no matter how disordered or anti-order the group may be. One can also refer to this organic process as culture. When one is part of a social group, one remembers familiar faces, shares common references and might use cues like dress or speech to identify one another. Most members of radical circles have a sense of what’s appropriate and inappropriate to say or do in radical spaces and circles.

There is no such thing as a perfect anarchist. However, many seem to hold an idealized image of perfection aloft – constantly comparing themselves and others to it. The perfect anarchist is always an ally to the oppressed, yet an enemy of the oppressors. The perfect anarchist always respects “safe space” and knows how to conduct themselves in almost any social situation. The perfect anarchist is original, individualistic and unapologetic, in part because they never have to apologize. Perhaps within this caricature of perfection, one may see some anarchist taboos inverted: power, oppression and hierarchy. What is “right” for an anarchist? What is “wrong?” How do anarchists hold power? How can an individual be part of a community? How can a community embrace individuality? Why do we hold anarchists to higher standards than everybody else?

Many anarchists feel a certain amount of justified fear of the things which threaten their lives and lifestyles. It is natural and logical to have some anxiety regarding homelessness, police violence, surveillance and imprisonment. Not only do anarchists experience threats from the outside – we experience them from within. Informants, COINTELPRO, crypto-fascists and fools with no security culture are all threats which can and do harm us. However, this general sense of unease and distrust can lead to outcomes that threaten anarchist projects as much as any state oppression.

I feel that I have seen a growing tendency within radical circles towards “callout culture.” A callout is a disempowered party publicly calling out another party on their behavior. In theory, it is meant to restore power to the disempowered and create a climate in which accountability can happen. Callouts can result in people re-examining their attitudes and behaviors in ways which inspire a great deal of personal growth, especially when done in a respectful, sincere way. In practice, this is not always the case.

The crux of a callout relies on credibility and authority – how one gains and holds social power. Callouts generally favor whoever has more social currency within their circle. Rather than aiding the disempowered, callouts can give figures of authority more power, more credibility and more attention. Often, victims of oppressive or violent behavior are ignored, dismissed or viewed with distrust when they call out the party who has wronged them. Sometimes, victims of violence are used by others who call out on their behalf, acting without their permission or knowledge. Perhaps just as often, people are falsely accused of wrongdoing by a charismatic individual seeking power over a situation. The folk devil is effectively stripped of all credibility; they are suddenly the subject of distrust, debate and controversy. Sometimes, when somebody asks for accountability, they are really demanding revenge.

Instead of talking directly about the underlying power dynamics in these situations, it is easy to fall in line with whoever is thought to be more credible or whoever holds more authority. There are times when the loudest voices in the room are heard while others are silenced by shouting. Other times it is the quietest voices that carry the most weight. Whispered stories circulate and morph in an endless game of telephone. Meanwhile the storytellers impress upon their audience to not reveal their source because they fear retaliation.

Often, simply asking questions about what actually happened or searching for clarity is viewed as an oppressive, offensive act in and of itself. However, how can one seek justice without even understanding the situation, its context and the desired outcomes of all directly affected? How can one seek accountability without being able to be accountable for one’s own words? How can one redistribute power equitably without talking directly about power itself, both individual and systemic?

The definitive characteristics of moral panic are concern, hostility, volatility, consensus and disproportionality of reaction. When somebody is called out for oppressive, offensive or violent behavior, people often naturally react with concern and hostility. When there is a general consensus within a group that the called out is guilty until proven innocent, the course is set for actions and outcomes that often are unpredictable and harsh.

People overreact. They start flame wars, get into fights and try to ruin one another’s lives – the whole time forgetting that the people they are persecuting with so much self-righteousness are their friends, lovers, housemates, fellow activists and chosen-family. They feel ashamed and shame one another. And the persecution and pain usually doesn’t end there. Witch hunts hurt everybody involved. Everybody risks getting burnt at the stake.

The terrible irony is that calling somebody out can often be a violent, oppressive act in and of itself, especially when it results in being blacklisted, forcibly evicted and/or publicly shamed. Often people are called out for being “oppressors,” “abusers” or “predators,” and these vague terms can follow a person for years, across borders, regardless of their behavior or the original context. It is my heartfelt conviction that we must create our own vibrant forms of justice, sometimes calling one another out and establishing hard boundaries; however, one cannot use callouts to simply punish people, grasp power and recreate the worst aspects of state “justice.”

Callouts are rooted in critical social theory, which seeks a dialectic between sociology and free will. Sadly, critical awareness naturally suffers when one is experiencing fear and anxiety. Some questions I have asked myself in these situations and found helpful include: what results do I want? What results do others want? Are there material resources involved? How can I help the people that are affected (both accused and accuser)? Am I involved? If I’m not directly involved, why do I want to be? What are my motivations? What level of commitment to my involvement can I really make? How can I take care of my needs, regardless of outcome?

When a crisis erupts within a group, be it large or small, it can take a while to establish enough clarity and calm to even have a dialogue. Often, these situations are complex and take such a high level of commitment to work through, nobody finds healing. I have found solace in at least starting this dialogue internally. When a group experiences a sense of moral panic, all one can do as an individual is seek moral clarity for themselves. Personally, I do not want to pronounce others as either guilty or innocent, assured that I am often both. I prefer to judge myself, and know that my individual morality challenges me to act with sensitivity, caution, courage, integrity and commitment in all situations. I know that these values do not apply to anybody but me. I am not perfect and I never will be. And I know that a world beyond guilt and innocence is possible.

 

By Maria Siino

I recently started college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I have both good and bad news to report from my first year there.

When I first got here, I looked for activities I could be a part of, hopefully ones that were not simply clubs but organizations that felt meaningful to me. There weren’t a lot of clubs listed, but among them were the campus GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) and the Feminist Collective. I resolved to go to both. I have since become the president of the Feminist Collective and a casual member of the GSA.

The good news is that last year in particular, The Feminist Collective made some real strides in improving the campus’ attitude toward sexual assault. We established a better relationship with the local rape crisis center, we made zines, we held a successful gallery show on the topics of Sex, Kink, and Consent, and we held a successful Take Back the Night event. This year, we are hoping to get the official sexual assault policy changed and have the Residence Assistants be trained in matters of crises and sexual assault. We may be changing things for the better in our tiny community.

The bad news? Well the bad news…is that this isn’t really news. At least, the rampant sexual assault rate on campus is not news. It’s not scandalous or shocking, because colleges across the country face the same problem. The keynote speaker at our 2013 Take Back the Night said in her speech: “In the 11 years I have been teaching, I have never taught at a school where this process wasn’t happening.” The process that she was referring to is that of dealing with sexual assault on college campuses and learning how to counteract the rape apology that tends to exist within their administration. Rape apology is best defined as justification for rape or defense of rapists, which often includes blaming the victim, making excuses for rape in certain scenarios, and other ways of derailing the fight against sexual violence.

I remember feeling dismayed (to say the least) upon finding out how badly my school handles sexual assault. The only reason I became less alarmed was by realizing that any college I could have gone to would likely have the same problem. If I had gone to the Big Apple, it would have been an issue. Recently in New York City, a student at Columbia University named Emma Sulcowicz was assaulted by a fellow student and brought it to the attention of the staff. In spite of other survivors who made similar claims about the same perpetrator, the college has not brought him to justice. While other students have publicly come out in support of Sulcowicz, the offender has faced no charges. If I had gone to the University of California in my hometown of Berkeley, it definitely would have been a problem. Earlier in 2013, a U.S. federal sexual assault probe was sent to UC Berkeley along with 54 other colleges in the country. UC Berkeley was also among 30 schools that had been reported for mishandling cases of sexual assault in 2013 to the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.

One might think that looking up sexual assault statistics would help a prospective student choose a college where they might be safest, but apparently this isn’t the case either. An article published in Al Jazeera earlier this summer discovered that colleges with ostensibly low rates of sexual assault are often misleading. These colleges frequently show low sexual assault rates because they have discouraged their students from reporting sexual assault, either actively or inadvertently. Surprisingly, the colleges with higher rates of reported sexual assault have actually encouraged their students to report their assaults and seek help, hence the statistics. Unfortunately, this information might only inform a prospective student as to how a college might handle sexual violence on campus, but holds no guarantee as to whether or not they will be safe at a particular school. No matter where I might have gone to college, rape apologism would be rampant in almost any campus I could have chosen. Even if I hadn’t gone to college, the issue would still be there. I would still face rape culture no matter where I went, and as a woman, this is the life I face.

One would think that in liberal havens like Berkeley and Santa Fe that there would be more precautions taken against these issues. Of course having lived in both of these places, I know that simply isn’t true. As Aaron Cometbus put it, Berkeley is a “failure” of sorts. Elements of counter-culture still exist here (though arguably in small quantities and quirky demeanors), but if an issue like rape can’t be quashed here, what good is it? I will always love the place where I grew up but I feel that as an adult I can see it more for what it really is. I’m beginning to feel a similar disenchantment about Santa Fe as well.

I wasn’t raised in a radical environment. My family is typical in most respects, and as such, I was raised to fear for my safety and follow arbitrary rules that don’t actually eliminate sexual assault. Time and time again my parents warned me against being out late. But what can they do? They live in this culture, too. They wanted to keep me safe, and even if it meant letting my brother ride the bus home at night and chewing me out for doing the same thing, I’m sure they don’t regret doing it. I can’t blame them for being pragmatic in a culture like this one.

Victim blaming wasn’t the reason they restricted my behavior, though. At least it never seemed that way to me, and they never said it would be my fault if something happened to me. They were just terrified of raising a 5’3” daughter in a world ostensibly different from the suburban environments that they grew up in. Even people who try to reject rape culture can sometimes become rape apologists because this whole culture is rape apologist. I often have trouble placing blame on these people, only because sexual assault is so ingrained in this culture. If we are lucky, we’re taught that rape is wrong, but not that it needs to be stopped. How fucked up is it that as a 15-year-old I was told to be careful absolutely everywhere I went so that I wouldn’t get jumped by someone twice my size? But I didn’t think much of it. I’ve only recently discovered how awful it is that we, as a culture, simply assume that rape will happen whether we like it or not.

Another issue is how counteractions of sexual assault are attempted. Currently, all responsibility to prevent sexual violence is placed upon the victims, who are usually women. Women, especially college students, often carry safety items such as pepper spray, stun guns, rape whistles, and sharp key chains. They also take self defense classes, carry weapons, and ask male friends to walk them to their cars. While these forms of protection are crucial and often empowering, they don’t always solve the problem at hand. Rapists need to be held accountable, severe punishment needs to be brought to students who commit sexual assault, and measures should be taken to keep these self defense measures from being necessary. Protection is only one part of eliminating sexual assault; the other is preventing the assaults from occurring in the first place. It’s like how I was told not to go out by myself as a teenager; while it was probably the most pragmatic way of keeping me safe, it didn’t uproot the problem at its source. On college campuses, women often keep items for protection on their key chains, but obviously the sexual violence hasn’t stopped because of it.

So the good news is that people all over the place, including myself and the other members of my school’s Feminist Collective, are taking measures to change the culture that we live in. Whether it’s teaching women how to defend themselves or educating people on the realities of sexual violence, efforts are being made to stop the secrecy and rape apology that permeates college campuses. The bad news is the fact that it has to be done at all, and that there is so much more work to be done. Rape apologists are everywhere, and some of them might say that we’re doing a good thing, idealistic as it may be, but wouldn’t question why we have to do this in the first place. They would probably say that the world is a bad place and rape is just a fact of life, even in a college environment that is supposed to be safe and educational. But I refuse to accept that. Until this rape culture is dismantled and my campus is safe, I will never accept a compromise.

By Dumpsta Love

On August 22 2014 Andrew Kerezman of the “traveling community” — nomadic punks carrying large backpacks who trainhop and hitchhike across the land — was struck by a truck while crossing the street in Grand Junction, Colorado and mortally injured. Immediately, everything seemed wrong at the scene of the accident. Witnesses reported that the truck was going extremely fast when Andrew was hit, but the police at the scene acted as if they didn’t care at all. Andrew’s friends asked the cops to test the driver for alcohol, but the police refused. Instead, they screamed profanities at us because of our tattered clothes and non-mainstream appearance.

The police formed a physical barrier between us and the driver while the driver remained in his truck for a long while and wasn’t asked anything. Andrew lay dying in the street, his face covered in blood. Why weren’t the cops acting as if they cared at all? Andrew was a human being wasn’t he? His clothes and appearance indicated to the police that he was destitute, but money isn’t what gives a human life value.

Society looks at members of the traveling community like garbage because of the way we dress and because we sit in public places. But while we may not have a big car, a house, or an office job, we have freedom that mainstream people can only dream about. We’re not blinded by the illusion that money will bring us happiness. Many of us have endured hardships and lived as outcasts our whole lives, constantly profiled and treated poorly by those who conform to society’s norms. We travel as a means of knowing the world in which we live, meeting new people and visiting old friends, having unforeseen adventures and persevering the difficulties, spreading happiness and love, sharing art and music, being intimate with other cultures and spiritual beliefs, and sometimes just to escape. Though not all travelers are the same, there is an overarching community of compassion and caring. We all share the value of love over money.

We endure burning summers and frozen winters, holding cardboard signs and pointing thumbs. Dirt from the ground we sleep on sifts through everything and covers our skin, like the Earth itself is leaving her mark on us to wear everywhere we go. The natural smells of our bodies are not disdained in our culture. While many of us are reasonable with our hygiene, we don’t obey the standards of poison associated with deodorants, perfumes, soaps, etc. Everything we need is contained in the heavy packs we carry. Our clothes are few and thoroughly used. We lead a nomadic lifestyle. Travelers are not opposed to working, but we do not resign to a 9-5 mindset and deferred retirement as an acceptable lifestyle. Andrew was a member of this lifestyle –- this culture, our culture.

After he died, we had a sincere and heartfelt memorial for Andrew burning candles and throwing flowers in the river under the train track trestles. On the road you get to know people’s natures very quickly, but a lot of time you know little else. Life isn’t cheap on the road –- it’s priceless.

Mainstream society discriminates against many minority cultures — abuse by the police against people of color is in the news every day. Misinformation created by church, state, and media creates an atmosphere of aggression toward any belief that isn’t part of a system such as Anarchy, Atheism, or self sustained living, to name just a few. We are often treated as ‘lesser than’ by the majority of establishments we encounter, even those places we spend money. People assume we don’t matter and will yell profanities at us, attempt to cause us harm, and treat us with general indifference. We are people too and should be treated with basic human decency — home or no home, money or no money. Andrew Kerezman was a person, too.

 

 

By Three Former Clones

“You may have noticed some campus buildings with two adjacent doors only have one door handle,” the University of California Berkeley tour guide cooed through her strangely unsettling smile. Not until she mentioned it did I notice. “That’s to prevent people from blockading a door and taking over a building,” she explained. The crowd of new students nodded in unison, seemingly unfazed. In the 1960s protesters had chained themselves to the doors of the Chancellor’s office in protest of the Vietnam War. The response? No policy changes in regards to the war. But they did make sure to remove the knobs on the Chancellor’s door.

The tour ended in Cesar Chavez plaza. This space was designed in the wake of the 1964 Free Speech Movement, in such a way that it would concentrate protests and mass mobilizations, and facilitate a quick and efficient police response. Notice it or not, social spaces are often designed to isolate and separate people. Once I began to notice this architecture of separation at Berkeley, I couldn’t stop. The architecture of separation is not just a phenomenon found in design or city planning. It is deeply ingrained in our legal, justice and social system. It is everywhere, all the way from our zoning laws down to our door handles.

Which is why, when I encounter those rare but beautiful spaces that do not serve to isolate, but instead facilitate human interaction and transformation, I recognize them as spaces worth fighting for. Unfortunately, these spaces are often singled out and challenged, with some arbitrary justification or another, pulled into the mainstream or pushed out of existence.

I think this is what many people found in Occupy. Occupy was a reclamation of public space. Spaces where we normally hurried past one another were temporarily transformed into places where we slowed down, smiled, conversed, argued, debated, dreamed, and transformed strangers into friends, companions and comrades. What many found in Occupy, I found in Cloyne Court.

Cloyne Court, one block north of the Berkeley campus, was the largest student-housing cooperative in North America – housing 149 students – under the umbrella organization of the Berkeley Student Cooperatives (BSC). But it was much more than that. It was the place I came home to after getting beaten by police on the lawn next to the Mario Savio steps, and blinded by tear gas in Oakland. It was a music venue, a community center, and an art gallery. A yoga studio. A darkroom. A place where we ate meals together. It was a place to celebrate our friends’ victories, and in tragic times, a place to mourn those taken from us.

Through everything, it was always my home, my sanctuary and my rock. It gave me hope in the power of humanity as I watched Occupy lose steam and the world around me seemingly dig deeper its trenches of social stratification, environmental degradation, hopelessness and despair.

Perhaps it should have come as no surprise that Cloyne was a contested space that was destroyed purposefully by those in positions of power. Cloyne was shut down allegedly because of “liability” stemming from “a culture perceived to be tolerant of drugs.” Contrary to popular belief, you can polish bullshit. But whatever pretty excuses you may have, at the end of the day, what happened to Occupy, Albany Bulb, and Cloyne – while each unique and distinct – was eviction.

The BSC which operated Cloyne was founded in 1933 to provide cooperative student housing. It operates 17 coop houses and 3 apartments which house 1,300 students. Residents elect a board of directors and although individual houses have some autonomy, the board with heavy influence from paid professional management staff ultimately calls the shots.

The details of our ordeal are convoluted; our story is only one of many radical organizations that are bent into conformity by scare tactics. The impetus behind the ultimate decision to prevent all Cloyne residents from renewing their contracts, forcing all of us to move at the end of the spring 2014 semester, was the out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit regarding the drug overdose of John Gibson, a Cloyne resident in 2010. Gibson’s mother sued the BSC, claiming the BSC was aware of a drug tolerant culture in Cloyne and had done nothing to stop it. In December 2013, the BSC’s insurance carrier settled the lawsuit, and with the start of Spring semester, the BSC Cabinet (a sub-set of the Board of Directors) entered into weeks of closed executive sessions, crafting their “Cloyne Plan.” Cloyne was targeted as a space that fostered substance abuse, with the “solution” being the destruction of a community, rather than any attempt to address the mental health issues that plague, and are systematically ignored by, society at large.

Those weeks Cabinet spent in private executive sessions were weeks the entire community of BSC could have spent having a discussion about the future of Cloyne and the BSC as a whole. Members of Cloyne, and the other student members of BSC, were only given the opportunity to discuss the situation once Cabinet had already decided on a plan. By identifying us as the problem – rather than the solution we could have been – they disenfranchised us as members and ignored the transformation that had already been happening in the house for years.

It’s easy for co-ops to be co-opted. People get tired of the structure and the decision-making process. They forget that the structure and process are the foundation of what is distinct about a cooperative. It is, after all, what defines a co-op. Power structures are created to help the organization grow, or be more efficient, but if they are not consistently critiqued and put under scrutiny, they may co-opt the very democratic process they were supposed to support. Often, when decision-making is opened up to a larger group, while it may be less efficient, the airing of many ideas in an open, collaborative environment can allow the best ideas to float to the top.

BSC Board members, Cabinet and the paid executive staff resisted and ignored bylaws. While the BSC technically has direct democratic safeguards – an annual General Membership Meeting (GMM), a referendum process, and the ability to pull votes from your Board representative – each of these processes were made ineffectual. The GMM was cancelled just before the Cloyne Plan was announced, a petition for a referendum signed by the required number of members was rejected due to “timeline issues” as well as the membership being “ill-informed,” and in order for members to pull their vote from the Cloyne Plan, they had to stay at the Board meeting until five o’clock in the morning, when votes were cast.

Supporters of the “Cloyne Plan” repeatedly emphasized that in order to defend themselves in court and limit their liability, they needed to prove that there had been a genuine cultural shift. They argued that it was necessary for all members to be kicked out in order for a culture shift to occur. They ignored the fact that there was an influx of new membership all the time, and that none of the current membership had lived in the house at the time of the overdose. As an alternative, members of Cloyne proposed a plan that aimed to create a space that would promote healthy living, allowing for open dialogue about substance-use, instead of one that pretended, unrealistically, that all members would commit to the substance-free lifestyle.

When we realized that our community was in jeopardy, we reached out to professionals and organizations with decades of experience in substance-use problems, specifically those aimed towards restorative justice practices. Weeks after Cabinet presented their plan, they still had no comment to how restorative justice practices would be implemented in the New Cloyne Court. In the end, we were the doorknob that got removed, and the issue of substance abuse and mental health was left untouched.

Radical spaces and cooperative organizations stay radical only when people are willing to commit wholeheartedly to things that are not easy. These spaces have helped us grow as individuals, and have facilitated communities that embrace the innumerable potentialities of humanity. Their structures must constantly be questioned, critiqued, and challenged in order to ensure that the membership retains complete autonomy over decision-making processes. Without this dedication, these beautiful, transformative, autonomous spaces will be gone and forgotten.

 

By Otto Destruct

Queer theory liberates by exploding the bounds of gender and making everything possible — bodies and identities that had existed all along now have the opportunity to be recognized and acknowledged, to be “real”. At the heart of queer theory is the presumption that all identities are legitimate, that a person’s gender is as idiosyncratic and specific as they are, that they are sovereign in their right to determine what that gender is, and that gender expressions can be described as occupying points (sometimes multiple points) on a spectrum, from femme to butch to androgyne, with all kinds of interests in all kinds of bodies, in all kinds of combinations. Queer theory can be seen, then, as a kind of gender existentialism, in the sense that its up to each of us to really look at ourselves, be honest, be brave, and decide for ourselves who and what we are — and nobody has the right to tell us we aren’t, or that what we are is wrong or ugly. We have a right and a responsibility to be honest with ourselves!

Suppose this soul-searching yields surprising results. Suppose the queer (we are all queer now) discovers what they really want and who they really are looks a lot like what we might call a traditional gender and sex role — that despite some variation and some play with image, they are essentially heterosexual. This can be uncomfortable for a lot of people. Are they a “real” queer now? By acknowledging, even to themselves, that they are more-or-less hetero, do they become part of a structure of oppression? Some parts of our scene use words like “cis” as derogatory terms, as if systematic oppression were a product of our bodies instead of our culture. Nobody wants to be identified with the enemy, so sometimes the heterosexual queer opts out of expressing themselves as they really are.

This is a drag for at least two reasons. By escaping to an identification and appearance that looks more “queer” than people feel or in ways that they don’t really identify with is contrary to the spirit of queer theory itself. It contradicts the wide-open, liberatory aspect of queer theory by enforcing a new orthodoxy — this time an orthodoxy of glitter instead of grey flannel. It also gives people a way to avoid thinking about their heterosexuality and whatever privilege that might entail.

Creating a new, queered heterosexuality is a way to create a world that is much more free of oppression. Some people imagine a world where there are no heterosexuals but this would take severe repression of peoples’ desires and probably organized violence. It’s more practical and certainly more in line with Anarchist and queer values to promote the development of a new, queered heterosexuality than it is to exterminate heterosexuals from the face of the earth. Queering ourselves is a lot more honest, more comfortable, and ultimately less oppressive, than it is for any of us to feel like we have to pretend to be something other than what we are.

I am often mistaken for more queer than I “really” am. My gender presentation takes many cues from a familiar kind of hyper-masculine camp style — the leather daddy. I am often mistaken for a gay man, although one does not necessarily have to be gay to use the fantastic backdoor to masculinity (if you’ll pardon the expression) that gay men’s culture built. Butch leather daddy style is an over-representation of masculinity — it reduces (or elevates) signifiers of traditional manhood, at times to the point of satire. By displaying this over-identified style I can indicate that I am male and masculine while simultaneously indicating that I know (and I assume you know) that all masculinity is a kind of put-on, a Halloween costume. It is a lie that tells the truth.

I had always wanted to be masculine — that’s just how I feel inside. At the same time, I grew up reacting to the disgusting excesses of traditional men and manhood that I saw around me, and wanted to distance myself from what masculinity means culturally. It wasn’t until very recently that I could accept, thanks to the popular ascent of queer theory, that all gender is a kind of game of signs and that I could actually be as male as I wanted to be.

Sometimes the leather jacket leads people to think I’ll be a clueless, crude bore. I have the pleasure of surprising people by being a real human being who is interested in relating. Having an identifiable, even stable gender, and simultaneously defying gender expectations is part of what it means to be a heterosexual queer.

Accepting the prospect of a queered heterosexuality will allow us to recognize that the heterosexual queer is already here. I call myself “traditionally masculine” and in a lot of ways that’s true, but what’s traditionally masculine about my desire to place mine and others’ emotional experience in the fore of how I understand us and our choices? What’s traditionally masculine about valorizing communication and understanding above action? What’s traditionally masculine about admitting I’m often wrong and hoping to learn from others? These are traits that are often described as “feminine.” Is there really such a contradiction that I should display these too?

And what about heterosexual desire for non-traditional gender expressions of the “opposite” gender? Or for hyper-expressions? What about people who are open to all kinds of new experiences? In a queer world, does anyone really have to be thought of in essentialist terms?

The heterosexual queer should be permitted to be who they are because the heterosexual queer has really important work to do toward the liberation of all people. The normative standards of traditional heterosexuality are so enmeshed with patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia and other kinds of cultural and literal violence that we must queer, question, critique and reinvent it. To accept one’s queer heterosexuality, to be heterosexual but to understand that position as an open prospect, subject to changes from within, rather than a fact of God or Nature — provides the opportunity for us to change what being “heterosexual” means.

 

By Matti Salminen

At the age of 22, I began to take self-education seriously and I ventured far from my psychological center. This venture took the shape of seclusion—of emotional exile. It was at this time that I also began to believe I had a rat in my brain. My life was broken. And slowly the pieces of what I had left were lost in madness.

For 10 years, in addition to believing I had a rat in my brain, I also believed that if I didn’t spend the rest of my life in jail I’d be the most tortured man in history.

Beginning at age 14, I frequently broke the law but caused no real harm to anyone. I was trying to prove my worth by stepping out into the world facing the wrong direction. When I was seventeen, I was arrested and charged with burglary, possession of stolen goods, and driving under the influence.

Knowing what I do now, I see how my recklessness and mischief precipitated the emotional exile, which led to my “madness.” But madness is defined by an oppressive socio-political construct known as the mental health system. Our mental health system is part of a larger network of social institutions, which divest too many capable citizens of freedom and equality.

All societal constructs serve a paradigm, which has aligned itself with the needs of the wealthiest and most powerful.

This society has shown itself to be oppressive towards human difference in all forms. Great suffering and injustice are prevalent due to the narrow perspective of what is a healthy, happy, or productive human being. Many people in our society are poor and homeless because they don’t work. And this goes on because social injustice is big business—there is no other reason.

One population which society is especially misaligned towards is those suffering from mental illness. It might be better to say “suffering from a mental health system which was created out of social control.”

Madness is not organic, even if there are biological markers, which indicate it to be of natural origin. Suffering is not genetic. What is natural is an alternative experience and perception of the world; however, what is unnatural and prohibitive is for those alternate expressions of character to be a source of depravity.

My intention in writing this essay isn’t to denounce our system of psychiatric care or other socio-political institutions. I wish to share something that I understood deep down, even as an adolescent. That is creative maladjustment.

Creative maladjustment is resistance to societal standards. These standards breed hostility, segregation, poverty, homelessness, and overall inequality. We are taught early in school that if we work hard we will get ahead. But we are, as a society, working hard so that the wealthiest and the most powerful may exploit the most vulnerable.

Living in an unjust society means that we—as citizens—must venture off the beaten path. We all must find a way to survive in this world without serving indignity or injustice. To do so is to be creatively maladjusted.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on the subject of creative maladjustment to a crowd at Western Michigan University, on December 18, 1963. In this speech, Dr. King spoke of the sacrifice necessary to move society towards a state, which would allow dignity and freedom for all. Dr. King believed, then, that a new order was emerging—one in which the creatively maladjusted would rise up for equality.

Looking back, I believe I saw something in human potential, which incited me to venture far from the norm. School did not provide the resources I needed to probe the depths of my psyche or my soul. Pursuing a misspent youth and self-education put me on a path towards intellectual freedom.

Many of my heroes growing up were creatively maladjusted people—some were people of color, some suffered through poverty for their art, and others pursued self-education. These heroes showed me that we are not, as individuals, predestined for anything.

Years have gone by now since I began cultivating my mind without indoctrination into any formal institution. Those years have allowed me to free myself and to live an existence that promotes inner peace and human compassion.

No individual can ever truly compensate to lead a sane life while living in an insane world. And thus, creatively misaligning yourself with the world you live in is to exhort personal truth throughout your life, your work, and your spirituality. This is the only natural response to the unnatural disorder of our modern world.

Our society will only right itself when conformity is wholly invalidated.

 

By Johnny Sunset

There are no kings in the dirtbag kingdom. Here at the bottom of the barrel, as construction workers and cooks and dump truck drivers and parking meter change collectors, we see clearly. Our exchanges are exchanges of skills, not currency. Our promises are made and fulfilled in moments shared between free individuals. Theirs is a bloodless justice. Our justice is spontaneous will.

My neighbor helps me move my bed two houses down and up the stairs. I cook him sausage biscuits. We get whisky drunk and hop the fence to his yard. We dig holes for pylons in ground riddled with bottle glass and bullet casings to build half a shed in the empty lot owned by the city, well past midnight by headlamp light.

Down here on the lower rungs, if we sustain the health of our minds and bodies, the weight of oppression reveals the potential for freedom. By the very definition of who and where we are, we are made to imagine the possibility of a lawless world.

The construction worker shares his drugs with me. We talk conspiracy and chain smoke on the balcony. He shows me the inner machinations of an exacto knife. The intricate simplicity. The spring steel. The blade carriage. The rails of the knife train. In return I unsheathe my saxophone and we examine the tiny cylinders of yes is it really again the spring steel, and the octave key, and the way each orifice farther from the origin of vibration must be larger to shift the frequency within Pythagorean musical ratio. He tells me the gun oil for the rifle would keep the leather pads from sticking. And he gifts me a breechloader shotgun registered to someone we both despise, as a token of friendship.

We are dirtbags, which is to say we are human beings, which is to say we are terrible and beautiful. And if to be terrible is to have the strength of will to reject the system which might coddle us if we subjugated ourselves to it, we must be terrible. And if to be beautiful is to imagine the ideal beyond that subjugation, we must be beautiful.

I call up my friend in Tennessee to discuss the blueprint for a cheaply reproducible backyard stream hydroelectric generator.

They will know the dirtbags by our inventions. By our circumventions of what is believed to be possible. Problems are obstacles. Obstacles are challenges. Challenges are to be overcome. Our anthem is the rusty banjo and the voice that skips into falsetto. Our dialogue is thick with profane slang. Our hands are the hands that build and demolish. Our world is the real world, and here at the bottom we can see the foundation of the whole rickety garbage heap. We can see how a single match, careless or placed with the greatest of care, could bring the whole structure to ash.

I bring my new friend figs stolen from a tree in someone’s backyard, french bread and gouda cheese filched from a restaurant where I work to pay rent. I make her a sandwich on a small cutting board in the saloon of a sailboat. She tells me weeks later in a drunken stupor that she has celiac disease and that goddamn sandwich made her shit every hour for the better part of a week but she ate it anyway.

They will know us by our generosity. Because we dirtbags are generous with our pleasure, and generous with our pain. They will know us by our honor. Our honor will shame them.

Three of us go to the lake after a long shift and drink beer until three in the morning. One brags about hand-to-hand combat skills. I challenge him to a wrestling match, hop off the tree branch, chide him. He has me over his shoulder then down and pinned in twenty seconds but I dance around him every moment, up until the end when I can’t move or breathe. I tap out. He asks if I’m satisfied. I say one more. The third still up in the tree branch high as a kite, laughing like a maniac. As my opponent takes me down again. We rise from the ground together, and shake hands.

Dirtbags do not shrink from confrontation. We accept it and love it as an exchange of ability, as a psychological exercise, as an intimate exchange.

After the wrestling match I’m driven home to find my whole block roped off by the police. Another homicide, the fifth in a year. I am drunk and I talk shit to the police officer who won’t tell me a damn thing or let me through the line. I’ve lived here a long time, I know everyone, what the fuck happened. I can’t tell you that. What the fuck happened, who was it. I can’t tell you anything. Well fuck you I’m going home I live here.

And the next night, after another long shift, across the street from my house at the place where he was shot. Lit and wavering, winking out as the wax gathers, the candles spelling out a name I recognize. Of a seventeen year old boy. Who had no choice but to sell. Who owed someone something, maybe, that was worth, at that moment in time, to the man with the gun, more than his life.

The candles, and the poster paper ramshackle taped to the fence, and the signatures and good byes of those who loved or knew or cared or heard or thought to sketch a figment of love in pen or pencil or chalk or blood or whatever, whatever the fuck was available.

I can almost see the stars… (TRIGGER WARNINGS: rape, war, capital, human extinction)

by Teresa Smith

Peace is not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice. ~MLK

In autumn of 2004, I joined the astronomy club at a small university nestled in the Cascade Mountains. Eager to share our view of the stars, we built a wooden cart for the school’s telescope (a high-powered soviet-designed scrappy-looking thing we lovingly called “The Light Bucket”), and every clear Friday, we wheeled our scope out to the footpath next to the Science Building and enticed passersby to join us: “Want to look at another galaxy?”

Some nights, the football team was practicing in the field next to us, and the sky seemed lost behind the blinding haze of stadium lights. That didn’t stop us.

“How can you see through all that light pollution?” confused passersby wanted to know.

“See for yourself,” one of us would reply. Such a jolt of surprise overtook the person when they held their eye to the little circle of glass and saw a stunning globular cluster, the rings of Saturn, or whatever delightful glowing mass we’d been gazing at.

“How am I seeing this?” they always wanted to know.

Unlike magicians, scientists always explain their tricks: “Our pupils constrict to protect themselves from the light, but telescopes don’t. These tools can see past the optical illusion of light pollution, reminding us that even under a seemingly blank sky, the light of the stars still reaches us.”

…

Ten years later and a thousand miles away, a rapist is at large in the East Bay radical community.

One of the collectives received an email warning from a comrade in a distant city, and now the rapist has been spotted at local infoshops and hacker spaces. Some of us are in a dilemma: “Do we ban him?”

So far, no formal decision has been made. No one wants to deal with it until we have to. Banning accused rapists is seen as a distraction from the real reasons we are here. And it can be, especially when it devolves into a “rape tribunal” lasting weeks or months in which people are driven away from boredom or by triggers.

While my friends struggle with the dilemma of whether or not to bar him from our space, I am faced with a rather different problem: I am grappling with the desire to kill him.

…

The sky is filled with rape, you know. The Greeks and the Renaissance astronomers painted the stars with abuse, naming so many of them after victims and their rapists.

As the lone literature student at astronomy club, I always looked forward to hearing the physics students raise their voices, clearing away these ghosts, explaining the simple, yet powerful laws that actually govern the glowing blobs of matter that populate our sky.

…

When I was seven, my head was torn open in a car accident, and after the experience of having my body repaired at a hospital, I was suddenly home again, with a face full of stitches. The problem was: I couldn’t feel at home anymore. I had fallen into a sort of Trauma Place. A place where time changes. The present dilates, the future is obscured. Catastrophe seems to lurk in every shadow.

Humans have deeply social nervous systems. The vagus nerve runs from the base of our brains to the seat of our gut, and it is stimulated by social interaction. When volcanoes blow, seas rise, or cars smash into us, we are confronted with the anti-social nature of our random universe, and this can freeze up the vagus nerve and other connected nerves and organs, impeding our ability to learn new things, remember the past, feel emotions, digest food, and repair tissue.

Luckily, after the car accident, a parade of my favorite people came to visit me. They gasped when they saw my stitches, and wanted to hear the tale of how I survived. This showed me that I mattered. Even though the universe is a chaotic, uncaring place, people are able to create bubbles of intention and care within that chaos. Bubbles of community. And sure, communities can’t guarantee your safety, but if you are hurt they will help pull your consciousness back from that place of chaos.  Engaged by my community, I began to regain my sense of being at home, and I could approach the future again with curiosity and joy.

…

My senior year in college, I was raped by someone in a theatre community that I’d joined off campus. Reeling in the post-trauma weirdness, I sought emotional support from the people closest to me.

I called my foster mom, who promptly informed me that “this is why we shouldn’t be so friendly to people.”

Hoping for a female mentor to tell me I was okay, I went to my boss and a professor. Instead, they also informed me that my “friendliness” had brought it on.

I went to my friends and classmates, who asked questions like, “What were you wearing? How much time did you spend with him beforehand?”

I was starting to get defensive now. I began revising my story, trying to tell it in such a way that I wouldn’t be blamed. I tried leaving out labels like “rape” and “sexual assault,” and just described the bare details of being touched without my consent. Still, I was questioned, blamed every time.

The terror that I felt on that first day never dissipated.

I spoke to people in the theatre community about it, and they told me it wasn’t their problem, “Go get a restraining order.” I did so, and discovered that this wouldn’t prevent the rapist from going to the theatre meetings. “Was there alcohol involved?” the judge insisted to ask at the restraining order hearing.

Everywhere I went for support, I was put on the defense for my clothing choices, my personality, my behavior. Even the people who blamed the rapist said things like, “You should have been able to sense he was going to do that.”

I was back in that Trauma Space I knew as a child. But now, catastrophe seemed to lurk inside all other human beings. Anyone could violate me—anyone could bypass the will of my mind and touch my body without my consent—and that I would be blamed for it.

I am no longer a friendly person. Fear has settled into my bones, and I’ve found that I become exhausted if I spend too much time in the presence of others. An entire community had rallied, one by one, in their own ways, to show me that rape was supposed to happen to me.

…

In her writings on war, Judith Butler explains that English-speakers have invented rhetorical devices like “War Zone” to make it seem okay when a bystander dies in an armed conflict. We tell ourselves, “That’s what you get for living in a War Zone.” This rhetoric lets us normalize the catastrophe that is war.

I believe we also have created a nasty rhetoric of Rape Zones, which is a social space in which (some people) believe there are circumstances that make it okay to touch someone without their consent.

After my rape, I learned where everyone in my community had laid the borders of the Rape Zone, based on the questions they asked me as they attempted to assign blame.  Some people believed being friendly to someone birth-gendered differently than you makes you zoned for rape. Others will tell you drinking alcohol or attending music festivals zones you for rape. I’ve spoken with people who believe that when a woman gets married, she is now zoned for rape by her husband.

It is the subjectivity of it all, the way the borders of a Rape Zone expand and contract depending on who you are talking to, that make it all so terrifying.

I am terrified for certain bright-eyed young women in my community—women who, when I see them, the first thought that pops into my head is “looks like she hasn’t been raped yet.” And I realize I am thinking this because, according to some people, acting friendly and loving in public makes you zoned for rape. I am terrified for these women—sometimes at political and social gatherings, I spot creepers lurking around them. That is when I make my presence known, and flash my hate-filled eyes at the lurker. And then the adrenaline release, and the urge to kill.

…

Perhaps the desire to escape these socially constructed Rape Zones is why we’ve seen the rise of “sexually sterile zones”—suburbs and artificial communities marketed in such a way that it seems rape could never happen there. But anyone with their eyes open in the burbs will tell you otherwise.

After spending my teen years in the East Seattle sprawl, I’ve come to think of the suburbs as “Rapetopia” because I knew so many kids in their perfect-looking middle-class suburban families who got raped or assaulted by their dads, neighbors, church deacons, grandfathers, bosses. Of the dozen or so people who spoke to me about their experiences of assault, only two of them chose to report it publicly.

It’s the wall of silence that allows Rapetopia to continue—people keep buying into the myth that they can move to a “rape-free zone,” but it is in those spaces, lacking any kind of community cohesion, in which rapists end up having the most power over individuals’ lives.

…

Before the rape, I used to travel alone, by Greyhound, by train. I hitchhiked in Alaska. I made friends easily, and made a point to talk to strangers, to pull people into loopy philosophical conversations. I read a book a day or more and dated people of multiple genders. I was also very protective about how and when my body was touched.

After the rape, I no longer liked being with people, but being alone was even worse. I moved in with one cis-man after another and pushed them into protective roles. I continued volunteering, but my role in community was very different. My conversations became linear and didactic; I was afraid to display my propensity to wander. I stopped traveling, and didn’t like to leave the house alone. I couldn’t concentrate: reading, watching movies, so many pleasures fell away. I didn’t care how my lovers touched me anymore. My body was the site of my betrayal, it no longer belonged to me.

…

The human animal is at such a beautiful, but dark point in our evolution. Only 50,000 or so years ago, our ability to use tools blossomed into a region of the brain known as Broca’s area, the seat of language. Mix that with our highly-developed prefrontal cortices (which facilitate planning), and you get a creature with the uncanny ability to hold symbolic tools inside its head, and to use those symbols to direct its actions.  This ability has allowed us to travel to the moon, but it comes with a dark underside:

After I was raped, I thought my rapist was simply insane. But as I’ve slowly come to chart the borders of Rape Zones, another possibility has lodged itself in my mind: he likely did not know he was raping me. He was likely interacting with symbols in his head, rather than checking in with me so I could communicate what I actually wanted.

This is a chilling thought for me personally. Then I thing about how so many of the worst abuses are rooted in a failure to communicate.

…

“I was raped quite badly in my teens,” a sex worker friend recently told me over tea. “First by a stranger, then by the friend I went to for support.”

“How have you kept your sanity?” I asked.

“The sex work really helps,” my friend said cheerfully. “Personally, I think sex work may be the key to ending sexual violence.”

She explains that in her work, she sets her boundaries upfront: she is paid beforehand and can walk away from a client if she no longer feels comfortable. Intimacy is no longer an ambiguous space for her, but a clearly communicated transaction between an empowered businesswoman and a client.  

As she speaks, I wonder if this is the shadow of the future—a future in which the circumference of the market is everywhere, and ambiguity is not to be found. A future in which children are educated to be business-owners of their own body-commodity.  Perhaps this is the role trauma plays in what Marx calls “primitive accumulation”—the fencing off of the commons, the moment of taking things that were once free and turning them into commodities, creating a society where people must sell their labor to buy things that were once free.

This is capital’s cruel bargain: As sex flees rape, it is metamorphosized into exchange. In a world ruled by capital, where else does it have to go?

…

“Capital is coercion,” I say to the group of young men. I’m visiting a permaculture farm in Oakland, a group of male permies in their early twenties has gathered around me. This place is known for sexual harassment, and I’ve been quick to route the conversation towards economic theory. I begin to perform a reverse magic trick my favorite Marxist once taught me.

“Would you rip up this $20 bill?” I say, passing around a Jackson twenty. “Feel the weight of it. It’s not like ordinary paper. It’s been blessed as capital.”

I take the bill back and hold it up, “What is this?”

“It’s people!” a young man ventures.

“Right!” I say. “This is congealed human labor! With this, I can access a system that compels someone who doesn’t even know me to make my shoes or grow my food.”

We’re all getting excited now. 

“Man!” a welder among them is on a roll: “how many people do you think you’re coercing to labor for you? How big is your invisible slave cloud? Ten people? A hundred? All those people out in the burbs who only use money to get things, I’ll bet if you add all the hours up, they’ve got slave clouds of thousands of people. And they don’t even know it because this money stuff stands in for the labor—for the real human connection of wanting to do stuff for each other.”

In the excitement, one of the young men offers me a bottle of homebrew, “I made this myself, I insist!”

I take the gift and I thank him, but my face contorts with fear. A gift.

…

A common tactic used by rapists is forcefully giving things to their targets.

In the month leading up to him raping me, the guy from my theatre group started forcing favors upon me – fixing my computer without asking, buying me food, giving me gifts I didn’t want.

InThe Gift of Fear, violent crime investigator Gavin de Becker warns women to watch out for gifts and favors—they are a tactic used by rapists to disarm their targets, to make them feel guilty, like they owe something to the rapist. This allows the rapist to swoop past their boundaries, enter their homes and assault them.

This is also the pattern in the logic of colonial invasion: “We’ll come in and give you books, Human Rights – we’ll even give you democracy, the greatest gift ever!” And watch the local people’s shock as tanks roll in, as armed soldiers are shooting their teenagers, drones dropping bombs on their dinner parties.

…

Is capital really congealed labor? Or is it a symbol of the tension between those who wish to give, and those who take without asking?

I still haven’t been able to forgive my rapist, though I’ve run circles inside myself trying. The emotional pain seems to be stuck in my body. It could have been released with the help of my friends, but they weren’t ready.

Not long after he raped me, my rapist became general manager of the volunteer theatre group. I later learned that several other women were raped by him during his ascent. All of us left after being raped—it is insanity to be in the presence of your abuser, especially when you both know they could do it again anytime they want and no one would care or believe you.

What has been mindboggling is the prevalence of this pattern as I have moved on to organizations and projects. So, so many community spaces are held by a league of abusers and their apologists. As I move through the communities in the Bay, I inevitably meet the victims who were pushed out of those communities.  They are many. I am losing my trust for cis-men in power. Every time I meet a charismatic, forceful man in charge of something, I immediately wonder how many women aren’t in the room because of him.

Why do I want to kill rapists? That much should be obvious by now.

Why do I bother to hope? That is the bigger question.

…

Anarchy is self-control.  Before I came to think of myself as anarchist, I saw these words carved into the cement near my home in NW Portland.

Anarchy is self-control. These words were a glimmer of hope that stayed with me, and after a partner’s job led me to move with him to the Bay Area, I found myself seeking out Anarchists, joining the Slingshot collective, moving into cooperative housing.

Gradually, I’ve come to realize that Anarchy is not just self-control.

Three years ago, I spent some time at Hellarity House. It was my first experience of a radical open-door squat governed by anarchist consensus process. At my first house meeting, I saw an amazing thing: a traveler was asked to leave—without malice or punishment—because he had touched someone without their consent. Over the next few weeks, this happened several more times. There were never tribunals questioning either party, or moments of forcing the target to “provide evidence” (consent violation, by definition, can only be expressed as the word of one person against another anyway). Watching this process, I saw the women in the house becoming stronger, more outspoken. I felt stronger. Even though the space was filled with rowdiness, arguments, and all sorts of spontaneity and danger, I felt drawn there because I knew that if I asked someone to back off, they’d respect me, and if they didn’t, they’d have to leave. A few years later, I found myself at the Sudo Room hackerspace, and similarly witnessed a consent violator being asked to leave. There was no malice—this wasn’t an punishment thing—it was simply a way to respect the target for speaking up. It meant the community could be a space for victims to heal, rather than harboring their abusers. And in these spaces, it wasn’t just one person or group upholding the safe space—cis males were equally vocal and committed as everyone else to creating consent-based community, and often did the hard work of asking people to leave.

This new wave of anarchists understands that addressing abuse is not some afterthought, but is the core of creating post-capitalist communities. But like any policy, consent-based safe space could easily be overused. As one space-keeper explains, “Safe space shouldn’t be treated as a decision-making process, but as a problem-solving tool.” Safe Space practices are not a cave to climb into, but something to help us see through the haze in those moments when abuse does arise. Some people are afraid of safe space practices, afraid they will be misused by liars. They are justified in that fear, because that risk is always there. But if we fail to create equitable and thriving self-supporting communities, we stand facing a far bigger problem.

…

The myth-weavers of capital dazzle us with a pseudo-mathematical fantasy world of random chance, a world of competition that is supposed to be “natural,” even though it defies our deeply cooperative evolutionary disposition. We are forced into this system because our food, clothing, shelter, and care is held hostage by it. But many of us choose to enter this system because we are afraid of individuals, and we don’t trust our communities to protect us from abuse. Capital offers easy shelter by sterilizing the whole messy chaos of social reality, and distilling it into a single question: “How to I assist the creation of profit?”

So, collectively, we scrape the tops off of our mountains. We create famines throughout the Global South. We tear out the public rail systems and replace them with roads. We inflict armed occupations within our borders and around the world. We raze forests, and pump poison into our air, into our water, into our minds with advertisements. We inflict unfair trade laws upon entire nations, leading droves of people to cross our borders to take back the value that’s been stolen from them.

Abuse is one of the strongest motivating forces that compels us to invite capital into our lives. Capital feeds upon the forces of fear and produces an artificial randomness.  It holds us in a place of stasis, walking dead, traumatized, trapped in the fantasy of “profit is the only thing that matters.” As we organize ourselves to compete for profit, it is the bullies, rapists, and murderers who rise to the top, directing us as we destroy each other and ourselves–with the destruction of our planet’s life support system as “collateral damage.”

…

Imagine for a moment that the apocalypse isn’t something in the future, but something that is happening right now.  It is something that has been happening since humans gained the power to justify raping and murdering each other. Look into our past, and you’ll see there never has been a golden age.  

Archaeological sites new and ancient show mass graves—horrors beyond our wildest nightmares—we are just becoming aware of this apocalypse.

From this nightmare we are only just now waking up.

…

Consent.

I want to write the word in the sky every day for each person I’ve known who was hurt or raped.

Consent.

Can the defense of single word, a single concept help bring back light back into the eyes of the traumatized, help us reactivate our parasympathetic nervous systems?

Consent.

Sing life back into our species with a single word.

Consent.

Wake up! Here is a splash of cold water in the face:

Consent.

Pray for consent.

Ask for consent.

Destroy the ideas of a Rape Zone, a War Zone—no one deserves to be touched without their consent. We need to dismantle the last of the cultural myths that are holding the apocalypse in place.

Consent, consent, consent.

Demand consent.

Defend consent.

Uphold consent in your spaces. And as the haze of abuse diminishes, watch as communities emerge from beneath capital, like the stars coming out after the lights are finally shut off.

By Kyle Merrit Ludowitz *The Syrian Border -*

Bassam Abadi survived the military siege and bombing campaigns of his home city of Aleppo, Syria for three years. Yet after finally escaping and illegally smuggling himself to safety in neighboring Turkey, Bassam began experiencing the severe hardships of living as a refugee in a foreign country without housing, employment, or a familiar language—a desperate situation known by many Syrian refugees as ‘the Second Siege’. Now, after a full year of scraping by in Turkey, the difficulties of being a refugee are driving Bassam to return home, where he will opt to live in the midst of the civil war rather than continue to struggle to make a new life for himself in an unfamiliar land.

Unlike the military siege occurring within Syria, the Second Siege is not an assault of artillery and airstrikes, but of culture and economics. The past four years of civil war have devastated the value of Syria’s currency, at a time when the Turkish economy has seen a steady rise in its national industries. This rapidly expanding gap in currency values adds an almost insurmountable level of difficulty for Syrian refugees trying to adapt to a new life outside their own country. A Syrian family’s weekly budget for food and public transportation before the civil war can easily be spent in a day or two when living in Turkey, due to the widening exchange rate between the two nations. This weakened purchasing power forces families to choose between rent or food, between medicines or clothing, or between school supplies for the children or bus fare for a father to look for employment or to travel to work.

Syrian refugees living in Turkey also face the barriers of navigating a country with a wholly unfamiliar language and culture. Once outside the Arabic-speaking border communities, Syrian refugees generally find themselves unable to communicate with local Turks. This language barrier can make critical tasks such as finding employment, asking for directions, or seeking medical assistance acutely difficult, encouraging Syrian refugees to clump together with other Arabic speakers in overcrowded, economically depressed neighborhoods. These desperate living conditions and lack of assimilation in turn exacerbate existing Turkish animosity toward Arabs, dating back to historical resentments over Arab complicity in the fall of the Ottoman Empire. This anti-Arab hostility has only intensified as the Syrian civil war grinds on and more and more Arab refugees are permanently settling in Turkey.

“[The Syrian refugees] come to Turkey illegally and take our jobs for a lower wage,” Garip Batur, a Turkish bus driver from the city of Gaziantep expresses as we sit in the lounge of a transit depot. “Unemployment is already a large problem here in Turkey, and Syrian people are taking jobs away from Turkish citizens. Arabs don’t bother to learn Turkish, and they open shops with only Arabic writing. Housing prices and rents have doubled or tripled in the area because there are so many Syrian people arriving, and even then, families sleep on the ground in our parks because there are too many of them. Turkish culture is being replaced by a more conservative Arabic culture. How can young Turkish people manage to make a life with these problems? Arabs are changing everything here and I don’t feel safe in my own city anymore.”

Under such devastating economic challenges and with so much animosity from the Turkish populace, many Syrians surpass their own personal limits and can no longer bear to live as displaced refugees in an unfamiliar and unwelcoming society. The return to Syria—the return to life in a war zone—is one of the only remaining options open to them. Riding with Bassam in a bus full of refugees returning to Syria, the mingled emotions of desperation, frustration and uncertainty hang heavy in the hot summer air. A somber silence falls over everyone as passengers anxiously text on their phones to friends and family in Syria awaiting their return. The dejected expressions of those peering out the bus windows grow more distraught as the barbed wire fences defining the border come into view.

“What am I going to do now?” Bassam exclaims, unable to suppress his desperation any longer. “How can I go back to Syria and try to live in war? But I have no other option. I can’t afford to be a refugee. Everything is so expensive here [in Turkey] and all my savings were used in the first month. I can’t afford to live as a refugee in this country anymore. I have to go back now and live with the bombs.” Another long silence takes hold as the border fence grows closer. Staring out of the window, he shakes his head in defeat, muttering almost under his breath. “This isn’t fair. This isn’t right. What am I going to do?” Finally the bus comes to a halt, and the doors draw open. Disembarking, Bassam and his fellow refugees begin walking through the barred, metal gates that will usher them across the border and back to their home country—back to a life amidst what may well be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

It is unclear what will happen to Bassam and the others like him who have given up on building a new life and are returning home to Syria. Some will likely be killed by the bombings, while others may starve to death. Those who make it through the war will be witnesses to the horrors of combat, the destruction of their country, and the mass slaughter of their neighbors and countrymen. There was a moment of hope for these civilians—a chance to start a new, safer life in Turkey—but that moment is gone for them now. For countless Syrians who once fled to Turkey hoping for a better future, the burdens of the Second Siege have simply proven too great to bear.

— Humanitarian Photojournalist & War Photographer www.kylemerrit.com