Author: Slingshot Collective

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

We’re excited about this issue, especially since it was almost canceled at last week’s deadline meeting when only three people and four solid articles showed up. We’re glad we took a leap of faith and decided to go forward. In the end, new people and existing members of the collective came out of the woodwork from all directions to pull the issue together on a hot, sweaty weekend. It’s hotter than the Arctic here in the Slingshot loft and we managed to overheat the printer doing layout because we have so many hands working on the paper. New energy keeps us inspired. We’re grateful for the friends of friends and travelers who come by, and we always welcome new faces.

The writing and editing before and after the deadline were a different matter with very few folks around. It is getting increasingly difficult for us to find writers and good articles. We suspect this is because so many great writers have turned to blogging and other internet publishing. We believe that the random people who pick up Slingshot at the laundromat are important & that by existing in print, we can inspire some of the folks who’ll never google “anarchy”. It’s true that you can reach a lot of people blogging but we think that good old print is still an important tool.

Even harder than getting writers is getting bookstores to pay us for the Slingshot organizers we sent them last October. As you may know, the organizer funds this project. We’ve been getting a lot of stories and a few checks. One place in Brooklyn that owed us $1,500 went out of business — we heard they even owed money to the Zapatistas!

On a totally random note, when we say you can send us checks or “concealed cash” for items, please don’t make the money impossible to find. Some lovely people who owed us $225 for organizers stuffed it into a teddy bear, put a red face mask on the bear and mailed it to us — no return address, no note saying there was money in the bear, just the bear in a box. We thought it was a weird toy and kind of silly. It sat around in the packing room for months and when we had a table at the SF Anarchist Book Fair, we tried to drop it off at the kid’s section. But we were too disorganized, so luckily it came back home. Then we tried to sell the bear at a yard sale, and when it didn’t sell, we put it in a free box. Then when we were calling folks to collect money, that store said “oh, we concealed it in a teddy bear.” We were pretty sure we had given or thrown the bear away, but unbelievably, we found it in a dark corner in the basement — the money still inside.

We’re enjoying the perfect California summer, riding our bikes and meeting everyone who comes to town. When will you be by?

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers, translators, distributors and independent thinkers to help us make this paper. If you send something written, please be open to editorial changes.

Editorial decisions are made by the Slingshot collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate, constructive criticism and discussion.

Thanks to all who worked on this: Adam, Artnoose, B, Dale, Eggplant, Hefty Lefty, Kerry, Maneli, Molly, Moxy, Natalia, PB, Rachel.

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on August 20 at 4 p.m. at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below).

Article Deadline and Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 92 by September 16, 2006 at 3 p.m.

Volume 1, Number 91, Circulation 15,000

Printed June 8, 2006

Slingshot Newspaper

Sponsored by Long Haul

3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley, CA 94705

Phone: (510) 540-0751

slingshot@tao.ca • www.slingshot.tao.ca

Back issue Project

We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues for the cost of postage: send us $2 for 2 lbs or $3 for 4 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. Or drop by our office. Send cash or check to Slingshot to: Slingshot 3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley, CA 94705.

Circulation Information

Slingshot is free in the Bay Area and is available at Long Haul and Bound Together Books (SF), plus lots of other places. Contact us or come by if you want to distribute Slingshot for free in the Bay Area.

Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income and anyone in the USA who owns a Slingshot organizer, or cost $1 per issue. International is $2.50 per issue. Back issues are also available for the cost of postage. National free distribution program: Outside of the Bay Area, we’ll mail a stack of free copies of Slingshot to distributors, infoshops, bookstores and random friendly individuals for FREE in the US if they give ’em out for free.

I’ve been thinking that “activist” or “radical” publications like Slingshot lack a sense of heart — of the raw emotion that makes life so amazing, difficult and complex. For all the articles about stopping the war, saving the freebox, defending immigrants, something is missing. The most radical thing in my life is not the articles I write for Slingshot, but the very personal way my life in this community — Berkeley — feels liberated.

I want to figure out a way to express that sense of excitement, liberation and life force and broadcast it out everywhere because I think if people were able to feel and see the way life can be when money, property and power are cast aside as the driving goals and replaced with having adventures, using just what we need, and cooperating with others, that vision would be powerful. It would shake people up on an emotional, heart level the way a dry analysis of neoliberalism can’t. It would be meaningful politically, economically, culturally and psychologically.

One of my best friends is named Artnoose – she publishes a hand-printed zine called Kerbloom and we silkscreen t-shirts in the basement together every Tuesday night after work. We talk about intimate, personal, very important stuff. When Artnoose and I have those talks in the basement, I feel a sense of presence — of actually living instead of just getting by. And not just when I’m talking with her. The confusing, complex, collective, economically marginal, but incredibly experientially rich life here that so many of us share feels very real, very present and radical beyond just life-stylism. Like the “revolution” is not some kind of a day that will be noted in the newspaper, but its a process of personal and social liberation that we’re each responsible for, engaged in, and swept up by each day.

Swept up because sometimes my love for these people and these alternatives we’re trying to create actually hurts and is out of control. In one day I can feel so exhausted and defeated by a project that I want to give up — and then 2 hours later I’ll realize how lucky I am to be involved and that keeping that project going is my destiny in life and that it is why my life has meaning.

I get swept up and I end up loving too many people or the wrong people at the wrong time and love is so ultimately powerful. It isn’t really under my power to control it all — I have to ride the reality and the emotion. It is scary — I was raised to value control and knowing what I would be doing next week, in six months, or in five years. Part of living this kind of life has meant exchanging that knowing for a million complexities and questions and risks. But for each thing that I “give up” — convenience, security, power, certainty — I keep noticing that I get something else that I hadn’t expected to get and that I can’t always even describe. When things get complex and harder, they also seem more meaningful, authentic, beautiful and fun. Like I remember studying feminism and the idea of smashing the patriarchy and feeling so satisfied to realize that this didn’t just mean that women would get power and get to live as more whole people — it also meant that men would get to live as more whole people, too.

It is all a jumble to try to explain what I’m talking about when I talk about life here and now and when I say it isn’t just a lifestyle — just buying different stuff or not buying or living a certain way — but that its something more fundamental, important and radical. A paradigm shift personally, locally, politically, at home, at work and all day long. I’m talking about endless meetings with lots of different collectives, constant parties and new people to meet, travel, romance and sex, playing music sitting around a campfire at the landfill, dressing in drag, going for long walks with crying and hugging and smelling flowers, planting gardens and cursing the snails that eat the basil just after it comes up, and then re-planting it, spreading the ashes of our lovers with compost on an apple tree, writing this article and publishing Slingshot, riding on critical mass bike ride stoned in a tuxedo, blocking a street at a protest, building a solar heater.

My atheist sense is that I really am here because of an amazing, cosmic mistake — our world was a cloud of gas that became a sun and a cloud of debris that became the Earth, my life is part of an evolutionary chain of accidents that created those snails that are eating my basil, and we’ll all be dead and gone for eternity soon enough. So if there’s no point to all this, why do anything and what should be done? I figure the best I can hope is to have as many experiences that could be good stories as I can, and spend as little time on drudgery / earning money, etc. as I can. Life really is way too short and you really do have to do what you want now while you’re here this very moment. And clichés you realize while tripping on acid at the beach are sometimes true. I’m really the same as all life around me — an animal in an ecosystem with other creatures both human and non-human — so I want to cooperate with the survival and pleasure of other living things while I experience that pleasure myself.

On a political and a personal level, this means that it makes more sense to do something than to do nothing. If you are focused on avoiding romantic mistakes, you’ll never take a chance at loving someone because it might not work out and hurt one or both of you or even other people. And if you always act with such caution, you’ll have a lot of lonely Saturday nights.

Politically, we never know before we try whether a particular tactic or campaign or project will succeed or fail. But it is an absolute certainty that if no one tries it, it won’t happen and thus it will fail. Three days ago at the Slingshot meeting, we were trying to decide whether to do this issue this week or not. It didn’t look good — there weren’t a lot of articles, most of the collective had left to travel, and the new volunteers hadn’t shown up to the meeting. But somehow, here is the issue because it seemed like doing something — even if it isn’t our best work — couldn’t possibly be worse than doing nothing at all.

And things always look different from different vantage points in time. If you look at a problem you can’t figure out that is keeping you up at nights from the perspective of a year in the future instead of from where you are, you realize that in a year something will have happened. The worst most painful things that have ever happened to me — as awful as they were at the time — from my perspective now looking back are sometimes good stories. Stops along my way. But if you try to look into the future, you really can’t tell what the hell is going to happen.

Politically, things often look pretty awful. Right now, for instance. The war in Iraq is like a broken marriage that neither of the spouses can figure out how to finally end — it just lingers on. The eco-system is under attack and it somehow seems we’re simultaneously all responsible and all spectators to an out of control machine gone mad.

If you look at things from now, you’ll get paralyzed politically and be incapable of taking any action at all because the problems look insurmountable — those in power too rich and mighty — everyone else too disorganized and distracted. But if you look at history, there is both progress and regression all the time — slavery abolished, women liberated, gays out of the closet, polluted rivers saved — and also lots of terrible oppression unaddressed still.

Things changed because millions of nameless people took risks and fought. They didn’t know if their acts would be successful or pointless. But they knew that if they failed to act, then surely nothing would happen. And many of their acts were failures, just as many of our actions will be failures. But some of them will succeed.

Everyday the fundamental choice we face is wheth
er we can deal with the uncertainty of history and life and do something — throwing a bottle into the ocean with no idea whatsoever if that something is the right thing or whether it will make a difference or get smashed on the rocks. If you get paralyzed worrying if it will make a difference or if you’re doing the right thing and end up not doing anything, you’re going to lose the opportunity offered by that day.

I’ve been working on Slingshot for 18 years now — my life is organized around it — and I still have no idea if it makes any difference or is just a pathetic and embarrassing waste of trees and ink. Sometimes I think both. I do know that doing this project and the many other complex, confusing, struggling, half-failure projects around Berkeley feel like a better option than just minding my own business and doing nothing. And I do know that I feel a hell-of-a-lot more alive doing stuff that is messy and uncertain and possibly even crazy than living the life the teevee says I’m supposed to be living.

This article excerpted from the first volume of Vortex Summer, a new zine about the authors continuing struggle to learn how to be a human being.

People’s Park in Berkeley has been an emblem of the people’s power to create a world of our own design in it’s tumultuous thirty-seven years, and now once again, the park community is under attack. Over the last nine months, the University of California (UC) has been using its police to prevent re-construction of a free clothing exchange box at the park. For 30 years people have used the free box to share clothing, children’s toys, and a wide range of household items and necessities, that would otherwise go to waste. The idea, seemingly simple enough, is for people to take what they’d like from the free box and to contribute to it what they don’t need, nourishing a system of mutual aid and un-mediated (by money) exchange, although for the past several years it has been anything but simple.

Attempts to rebuild the box, which was mysteriously destroyed by arson in 2005, have been met with police repression and the destruction of a number of volunteer constructed boxes, all destruction being orchestrated by UC under its claims to ownership of the land upon which the park was built by the people in 1969. Park activists are struggling to re-build and defend the free box today in order to preserve its very practical significance.

Park activists are asking the community to bring clothing donations to People’s Park during the times that FNB serves – weekdays, 3 pm- 4:30 pm, as UC police have been threatening tickets to clothing donors at other times. A mobile Free Box has been showing up somewhat sporadically.

The most recent incident in the struggle for the free box was on May 16 when two UC workers demolished a free box that volunteers had built the previous Saturday afternoon, and had been conducting night time Copwatch vigils to defend. A supervisor from the UC Sports and Rec. Department was present (Sports and Rec. is the body that administrates the Park.) There were three UC police officers in attendance, including a lieutenant, who was videotaping the procedure.

On April 25, early in the morning, a free box was removed which had been built on the parking strip near the driveway on Haste St.

On April 28, at 3 pm, a bicycle cart intended for use as a mobile free clothing distribution site was impounded by UC police in front of the Free Speech stage. It was empty at the time.

Copwatch is participating in the vigils, and has been sending teams to the Park to document police abuse and police harassment of FNB, and the weekday afternoon free clothing distribution has stopped when they are around.

In defending their refusal to permit a new box to be re-built at the park, university officials argue that the free box attracts undesirable people to the Park. A press release from 1999, entitled “UC Berkeley’s New Security Campaign” attempts to demonize the free box and push for its removal by alleging that “Individuals gather around the box to conduct drug-dealing transactions…” and …. “some sell the donated clothing – using the proceeds to fund their alcohol habits” as if to say that a box is in some way contributing to the drug trade and in some way responsible for the propagation of chemical dependency.

It is increasingly apparent that the principle of free economic exchange proposed by the free box is a threat to the University and its corporate clients. They have spent thousands of dollars in attempts to shut down the park all together throughout the years.

With all the pressure and scare-tactics being imposed by UC, it is clear that this fight has some serious underlying motives. For thirty-seven years now, the struggle over ownership of the park has been at the forefront — it has been over this question of property rights that so much sweat, tears and blood has been shed. When the park was peacefully created by volunteers in 1969 on vacant, UC-owned land, the university’s massive, military over-reaction delegitimized future UC claims to ownership of the land. During days of rioting after the university’s middle of the night construction of a fence around the park, police shot into crowds with shotguns, killing one, blinding one, and wounding 128. Governor Reagan ordered the National Guard to occupy Berkeley. Although the fence stayed up for a while, the university has never been able to develop the land because of permanent community support for the park.

One can draw a correlation from the very beginning of the park’s history to today’s free box battle, in which throughout this time span, People’s Park has been creating an independent spirit of community cooperation. It is this demonstration of people’s power that so greatly threatens those who would rather see the continuance of the people’s dependency on a hierarchical and capitalist system. Rather than crouch down and give up, people are still struggling for self-determination, sustainability, and change.

In the last six months the issue of ‘illegal’ immigration has returned to the news. As law makers and media spin jockeys talk about dealing with the ‘crisis’ and people across the country have conversations, choose sides, and take action in the emerging debate it is important to look at how that debate is being shaped.

The US House of Representatives bill, H.R. 4437, which proposes to make undocumented workers and those who assist them felons and construct a 700 mile fence along the US/Mexico border, has sparked months of protests leading up the massive demonstrations on May 1. As we go to press, the Senate has passed a supposedly more immigrant friendly bill and the media is focusing on whether the hard-line bill passed by the House can be mixed with the Senate bill to produce a compromise that can be signed into law.

The framing of the debate between the supposedly “immigrant-friendly” Senate bill and the hard-line House bill is intended to appease Latinos — the fastest growing block of voters — while maintaining a two-tier structure that pits native workers against immigrants. The real winners in this system, however, are not immigrants or native born workers, but their bosses. The Senate bill caters to business interests who depend on cheap immigrant labor by creating a guest worker program and a road to citizenship for some people who immigrated to the US illegally. It is on this basis that the Senate bill is being hailed as pro-immigrant.

The reality, however, is that the Senate bill also heavily panders to anti-immigrant partisans. It proposes hiring fifteen thousand additional border guards over the next few years, install new surveillance equipment on the border, construct five hundred miles of border fencing, and provide for the deportation of all undocumented workers who have been in the US for less than two years — potentially millions of people. The bill also requires that those immigrants who are eligible to apply for citizenship learn English, pay a fine and back taxes, and, in the words of Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa) “go to the back of the line”. Specter’s condescending tone is the norm on both sides of the ‘debate’ and demonstrates the underlying assumption in the mainstream discourse that undocumented workers must atone for their wrong doing, and are in fact less important human beings than US citizens.

So what is framed by the mainstream media as an immigration debate is actually a debate between business interests looking to continue benefiting from a cheap labor supply, and cultural conservatives seeking to preserve their white, WASPy vision of US culture.

What this means is that folks who could otherwise be united against corporate interests and racist nationalism are divided against each other. Many working-class citizens who have been most harmed by the effects of globalization are encouraged to vent their frustration at immigrant workers, rather than at the larger system that keeps both groups engaged in a struggle to survive. Political progressives are encouraged to choose the Senate bill as the “lesser of two evils” even though it would keep immigrants as second class citizens and only really benefits the business interests that rely on cheap labor. In fact, any law eventually signed will surely be somewhere between the House and Senate bill, i.e. worse than the current Senate bill.

On May Day, thousands of people left their posts to demonstrate the power of their numbers to their employers and the state. In the weeks since, not much has happened. It is always questionable how effective mass popular demonstrations are in a political system that seems to have inoculated itself against them. This is especially true if they are a flash in the pan, and not accompanied by discussions and analysis that question the systems which frame the debate.

Neither side asks why thousands of people risk their lives to come to the US every year. The provincial belief that everyone wants to be an ‘American’ is too strong to ask this question. If anyone did, they might have to acknowledge that people do not go through the physical and psychic pain of being separated from the people and culture they know in order to live a fear filled life in the shadows of US society simply for the honor of waving the US flag and cleaning up after the wealthy. The reason people come to the United States illegally is because the economic policies of the US and other rich nations and the corporations that craft those policies are impoverishing vast regions of the world, striping economies and ecosystems bare, in order to create and concentrate enormous wealth.

In order to maintain the global economic system, states like the US need both large corporate interests that do the work of extracting resources and thus ‘creating’ wealth, and the rabid and arrogant nationalism that protects the idea of the state at all costs. The balance achieved through mainstream politics is often just a balance between the forces necessary to keep the established order in place without any genuine regard for life or freedom.

What this all means is that once again a complex issue that has human suffering at its core is redefined and simplified into a forced choice that is actually no choice at all. What if instead of having the same old conversation, people began to complicate and analyze their understanding of the world, questioning the systems that lead to increased immigration, starting from the assumption that where someone was born and the language that they learned to speak first does not make them any more or less valuable, or their pain any more or less real, than anybody else’s.

It is a gross day in the history of America when an eighth grader commits suicide after participating in a student walkout protesting anti-immigrant legislation. On March 30th Anthony Soltero, an organizer of his school’s walkout, shot himself in the head after De Anza Middle School threatened Soltero with a three year prison term, forbid his involvement in the graduation ceremonies, and threatened his mother with a fine.

Rallies began in response to House Res. 4437, which would penalize 11 million illegal immigrants as felons and allow the building of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border. Across southern California alone, tens of thousands of students walked out of school to protest — to later face abuse from police and school officials.

Students walked out in hundreds of middle and high schools across the country, including the following cities: Charlotte, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Carson City, Houston, Washington DC, Denver, Boston, Albuquerque, Chicago (with up to 85% absence rate— yeah!), Providence, New York, and Portland, as well as several schools in Southern California, the Central Valley, and the Bay Area.

School districts and police continue to use collaborative efforts to threaten students protesting during schools hours with citations and possible incarceration.

The abuse of students skipping school needs to stop. Change rarely occurs when youth are behind their desks. From the Popular movement to the Civil Rights movement, youth have been at the leading edge of the struggle against injustice. The months of March and April found the streets crowded with young people from Detroit to Los Angeles.

Students who participate in walkouts should not be subject to any punishment different from the punishment normally used when students miss school. Students who leave school to attend an anti-war protest should receive no harsher punishment than students who leave to go to a Dodger baseball game, for example.

Why is it that a student’s absence is meeting with such a strong reaction from the authorities? Simply put, schools are training grounds for the workplace. In this way, students are essentially like workers, and so when they stage walkouts, they are in fact learning how to strike. This cannot be tolerated by a system that requires obedience from its workers.

Students engaged in walkouts and protests can check out the National Lawyers Guild pamphlet titled, “Your Rights to Demonstrate and Protest” for good information on how to defend themselves from school punishment.

Students engaging in demonstrations attend life’s greatest classroom. Students need more than reassurance when deciding to skip school to protest — they need support from the community if they face punishment. These students are searching for new professors. We must know and trust that they are our teachers.

Check out Natural Learning, a journal of the Olympia Free School and RiseOut, a weblog supportive of a young person’s choice to dropout of school. www.olympiafreeschool.org, riseoutcenter.wordpress.com

Another issue of Slingshot means it’s time to write another article to try to end the horrendous slaughter in Iraq. It feels like the world has gotten used to living with war — the daily body count of Iraqi and American lives wasted. Just more business as usual that has to be accepted as the price of living in the modern world. The millions who protested in the streets right before and after the war have dwindled to just a few.

Only perhaps one hundred people showed up to a very well organized and well publicized protest outside the Oakland, Calif. military recruitment center on May 15. We shut down the recruitment center and wheatpasted posters over its windows. Local teens rapped and did spoken world. It was a great effort, but somehow, the intensity of the protest failed to match the scale of the ongoing war.

The Slingshot collective sat around at our article meeting not wanting to just rehash the contents of the articles we’ve been publishing every issue for the last three years, and yet not feeling it is appropriate to publish a radical paper in a country fighting a war of aggression without trying to publish something that might help stop the war.

There is nothing new to say, and everything new to say. The revelations of the Mai Lai-style killing of 24 civilians by US Marines in Haditha after one of their buddies got killed, the US-funded Iraqi police degenerating into death squads, the official lies, the billion dollars a day spent on nothing while kids go hungry here in the USA and in Iraq alike — what will it take to get people to rise to their feet to stop the US from operating until the occupation ends?

The media asks “is the US winning or losing the war in Iraq.” Clearly, the US has lost. All that is left is the pullout of troops, but a political paralysis grips the mainstream politicians. It is far easier politically to let the killing go on than to admit that mistakes were made.

As Slingshot has noted repeatedly over the last three years, one of the only hopes of stopping the war is for ordinary people to demand that it stop. In an ABC News/Washington Post Poll conducted May 11-15 of 1,103 adults nationwide, 66 percent said they “disapproved” when asked “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?” 62 percent said the war was “not worth fighting.” This popular sentiment has not translated into change at the top, but it could at any time, and chances are, it will sooner or later.

It should be sooner. This summer what are we going to do to end this war? Virtually every part of America is contributing to the war effort in some way, and thus every community has targets for protest and disruption.

In a hopeful sign, folks in Olympia, WA blockaded a cargo ship at the Port of Olympia that was being loaded with hundreds of Stryker armored vehicles and other war materials bound for Iraq during the last week of May. The shipment was part of the deployment to Iraq of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, a 4,000-soldier unit stationed at Fort Lewis, WA. Police repeatedly pepper sprayed the crowd and arrested more than 35 people over a week of protest. Demonstrators tried to pry open the port gates. Let a hundred Olympias bloom!

Gabriel Meyers, 28, is facing an August 4 trial on felony and misdemeanor charges in connection with his arrest at a July 8, 2005 San Francisco protest against the G8 Summit. The G8 includes the richest industrialized countries whose leaders gather annually to organize continued global economic domination by the powerful over everyone else. Protests against the G8 were held world-wide last summer during the Scotland G8 Summit meeting. Gabe could face up to three years in prison if convicted, and he needs support.

Gabe was arrested along with two others last year and charged with felony attempted lynching — i.e. “unarresting” someone by trying to free them from police custody — and misdemeanor rioting during an incident in which a cop was hit in the head and suffered a fractured skull. Gabe is not charged with striking the officer. The police didn’t arrest anyone in connection with the beating. The government is accusing Gabe of attempting to lynch himself — essentially of trying to get away from the cops after they grabbed him. He was originally also charged with two misdemeanor resisting arrest charges, but they were dropped because of their weakness at a June 2 court hearing.

Gabe’s lawyers think the other charges are also very weak and that the government is pressing on with the case for political reasons. Gabe is being used as a scapegoat for the incident because the cops never found the person who hit the officer and they want to get someone for something. After the officer was injured, members of the police force were furious over the beating and circulated a petition voicing “no confidence” in the police chief and other police commanders.

Gabe is receiving support from the Midnight Special Law Collective and the National Lawyers Guild. He is asking people to contact SF district Attorney Kamala Harris and tell her to drop the charges against Gabriel Meyers – call her at 415 553-1752 or email at www.sfgov.org/.

En la tarde del 3 de mayo del 2006, lo que hubiera sido un pequeño incidente se convirtió en un ataque militar contra una población civil. En Texcoco, Estado de Méjico, la policia intentó remover a un grupo de ocho vendedores quienes estaban vendiendo flores sin permiso formal frente un mercado público llamado Belisario Dominguez. De hecho, la acción policiaca tenía motivos políticos, los cuales extendieron muy lejos de estos detalles técnicos: que los floristas son aliados presumidos del Frente del Pueblo en Defensa de la Tierra (FPDT), que ha chocado con los gobiernos locales y federales durante años. Tambien, Texcoco es uno de los sitios propuestos para un nuevo megamall WalMart, lo cual los floristas tanto como el FPDT se oponen vehementamente.

En el curso de la confrontación, Javier Cortés, un joven de 14 años, señaló al público el escondite de un policía a quien le vió agazapado en las sombras. Con el próposito de silenciar al joven, el policía le disparó, matándole al instante. Se desembocó la rabia del público, que intentó quitar a fuerza a la policía del mercado, con palos, piedras, cócteles molotov y machetes. Ahí empezó una pelea sangrienta, y después de que el público alcanzó bloquear la carretera, las tropas federales y municipales aparecieron para dispersarles.

San Salvador Atenco, un pueblo campesino a una distancía de 25 millas del Distrito Federal, tiene una historía de defenderse del gobierno y corporaciones con el intento de depojarle de su tierra. En 2002, tras más de un año de resistencía amplia y una represión correspondiente, la población general de Atenco, junto con las tácticas militantes del FPDT, fue capaz de forzar al gobierno federal de cancelar sus planes de construir el nuevo aeropuerto internacional en su pueblo. Este fue un hecho impresionante, e hizo un precedente en Méjico para la resistencía al desarrollo basado en los intereses corporativos y desplazamiento forzado.

En la noche del 3 de mayo después del enfrentamiento y motín subsecuente en el mercado, los medios masivos mejicanos se inundaron al público con imagénes violentas de campesinos atacando a la policía, enfocando en “la brutal paliza a que fue sometido un policía inerme, tirado en el piso, por un pequeño grupo de ejidatarios.” (Carlos Fazio, 21 de mayo 2006, La Jornada) en vez de la muerte del joven. Esta propaganda alimentó la animosidad al pueblo de Atenco, y la simpatía a la policía, lo cual dió la oportunidad a los gobiernos estatal y federal para invadir y represar violentamente esta comunidad bien organizada con un ataque militar el próximo día.

La mañana del 4 de mayo, en la tradición de resistencía atenquense, la comunidad se mobilizó y salió a la calle. Sin ningún aviso, los campesinos y otros fueron sujetos a un ataque sorpresivo que nunca pudieran haber previsto.

A la hora del amanecer la policía ya había sitiado Atenco y bloqueado las vías de comunicación en preparación de detenciones masivas. La gente adentro fue atrapado en una zona de guerra, enfrentado con una fuerza militar, y sin ningún medio de escape, ni autodefensa adecuada. El gas lacrimógeno empezó casi inmediamente, luego las detenciones y la persecución por las calles. Personas inermes fueron acorralados y madreados brutalmente con toletes antes de estar aventados en camionetas y llevados fuera de los limites del municipio. Otro joven, Alexis Benhumea, recibió un balazo de una granada en la cabeza y permanece en un estado de coma aún hoy. Hasta 250 personas fueron detenidas, la mayoría campesinos y otros quienes tuvieron el coraje de irse a las calles y arriesgar la vida en muestra de oposición a la política neoliberal y la represión militar del gobierno.

Valentina Palma Novoa, una chilena con estancía de once años en el DF, fue una de la multidud acorralada ese día por el delito no mas de estar presente en las calles de Atenco. Valentina consta de la brutalidad de que fue testigo y experimentó ella misma despues de estar aventada en un camión por la policía, con muchos otros aun más heridos que ella, y de haber sido forzada en la cara en un charco de sangre de los otros. El traslado fue un infierno y ni Valentina ni nadie atrapado en ese vehículo sabiean si ivan a sobrevivir y mucho menos si su destino final terminaría inevitablemente en ejecución. Fueron golpeados continuosamente, manoseados, agredidos sexualmente y violados por la policía. Eso duró unos dos o tres horas mientras la policía circulaba la ciudad.

La crónica de Valentina es solo una de muchas. Mujeres y hombres fueron torturados brutalmente y colectivamente. Las mujeres reportaron haber sido violadas con dedos, penes, y otros objetos en la boca, la vagina, y el ano. Algunas fueron forzadas seguidamente a tener sexo oral con grupos de policías. Es imperativo entender el hecho horripilante que la tortura sexual, la brutalidad, y las violaciones fueron completamente premeditadas y ordenadas desde arriba. Los policías fueron entregados instrucciones de hacer a estas mujeres su blanco militar: fueron abastecidos con condones por sus mandos superiores quienes les dijeron que no se apuren en llegar a la verja de la cárcel.

En una manifestación en el DF que denunció la violencía contra mujeres en Atenco, el Subcomandante Marcos, la voz del Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), subrayó que según los testimonios de las violadas, los policías disfrutaron y derivaron placer de su conducta atroz. Además, “la promesa de ese placer sobre esos cuerpos de mujer, fue la suma que la policia recibió junto al mandato de ‘imponer la paz y el orden’ en Atenco.” En otras palabras, la violación y humillación de hombres, mujeres y niñas es lo que la policía consideran su saldo de un trabajo bien hecho. Después de las detenciones inciales en Atenco en el 4 de mayo, empezaron incursiones en pueblo, con su objectivo cuya persona con cabello largo, aretes, tatuajes, o cualquier artículo vinculándose al EZLN.

Es lógicamente imposible creer que el ataque contra Atenco fue improvisto por un grupo de “malos” policías asesinos. La evidencia deja claro que el ataque fue cuidadosamente planeado como una maniobra militar estratégica de la parte del gobierno de Méjico, con la participación de las autoridades estatales y federales, junto con los servicios médicos y penales requeridas para cumplirlo.

Carlos Montemayor escribe: “Las detenciones violentas e ilegales en las primeras horas del amanecer. son una antigua y recurrente práctica de ejrcitos represivos y de cuerpos policiacos.” (13 de mayo del 2006, La Jornada). Además, el apoyo de los medios masivos y conservadores que estigmatiza a los campesinos en resistencia, que esconde y pone en duda los testimonios de las víctimas, es esencial para el éxito de estos operativos. Los funcionarios piden “pruebas”, pero hay periodistas que fuereon testigos de las detenciones pero niegan denunciarlas por miedo a lo el gobierno puede hacerles. En el caso de la masacre de los estudiantes en Tlatelolco, DF el 2 de octubre 1968 y la década subsecuente de represión conocida como “la guerra sucia”, la gente mejicana ni siquiera supo que centenares de estudiantes y radicales fueron asesinados y desaparecidos en su propia cuidad por los militares. La masacre tuvo plazo una noche y en la próxima mañana la sangre y los cadáveres habían sido limpiado de las calles, y jamás se vieron a los téstigos de nuevo.

La meta de represión gobermental es siempre el control social. Así como Tlatelolco, la atrocidades en Atenco vienen en una época de organización amplía en Méjico entre los más pobres y más afectuados por la globalización. Actualmente, está movilización ha centrado en La Otra Campaña, iniciativa del EZLN, que hace 8 meses ha estado viajando por todo Méjico para vincular las luchas en comunidades indígenas y pobres con díalogo y intercambio. “La Otra” ha ganado gran atención mediática sobre asuntos normalmente
censurados e ignorados por completo. La Otra Campaña es un esfuerzo desde las raíces para crear un foro donde comunidades pueden participar en el movimiento contra el capitalismo neoliberal como un cuerpo unido a gran escala. La opresión que vivimos en Atenco obviamente tiene la meta contraria. La violación y humillación son intencionadas para tener el efecto de callar a la sociedad civil, a la vez dificultando el trabajo de los Zapatistas y muchísimos otros. Las familías reciben el mensaje que no pueden participar en la resistencía, que “no se atrevan a involucrarse” en la política en ninguna capacidad fuera de las elecciones presidenciales sancionadas para el próxima 2 de julio . El efecto talvez será que mas gente se serigne a apoyar a uno de los tres partidos políticos corruptos, como la única manera segura para evitar más represión violenta.

Es cierto, que eso es lo que quiere el gobierno, y el imponer políticas neoliberales que equivalen al fascismo es una manera de alcanzarlo, porque señala claramente que no van a tolerar ni resistencía ni la autodefensa en Méjico. Al contrario, que serán castigadas brutalmente e ilegalmente. No debemos soprendernos que cualquier estado sería de buena voluntad de irse hasta allá para detener y prevenir la resistencía. Se ve por toda la historía y en todas partes del mundo. Es importante reconocer que mientras la globalización por los Estados Unidos y las corporaciones transnacionales sigue imponiendo las políticas neoliberales de “libre comercio” sobre el mundo entero y sigue apoyando regimenes represivos, atrocidades como Atenco tambien seguirán.

A la hora de publicar este ejemplar de Slingshot a comienzos de junio, al menos de 31 de los 218 presos políticos de Atenco siguen encarcelados, con una veintena más no encontrado y considerado o “desaparecidos” o escondiéndose. Los cinco extranjeros expulsados inmediatamente despues de sus detenciones no se han dejado volver a Méjico. Mientras tanto, policías incontables, ahora conocidos en mundo como violadores y abusadores, gozan de la impunidad otorgada por su gobierno. 52 de los policías estatales y solo 3 policías federales están siendo investigados, pero ni uno de los más de 3500 agentes que participaron en la atrocidad ha sido despedido de su puesto. Basta decir que los jefes mismos, que sigen enriquiciéndose con su política económica neoliberal a costa de las vidas de muchos y los sustentos de millones.

Pero muchos siguen resistiendo sin miedo. Una marcha grandísima está planeada para el 28 de junio en el DF y La Otra Campaña zapatista continua mobilizandose para liberar a los presos restantes y para exigir que todos los niveles de culpabilidad y participación gobermental sean castigados. En los EEUU, debemos seguir manifestando nuestra solidaridad en cualquier manera posible, con cartas y protestas en los consulados mexicanos, tanto como oposición fuerte al “libre comercio” y la política extranjera de los Estados Unidos.

Para más información sobre Atenco, checa:

Chiapas Indymedia Mexico Indymedia Narco News Enlace Zapatista

La Jornada

Sarah Shourd es una residente de Oakland influida por el Zapatismo y movimientos de resistencía en todas partes.

On the afternoon of May 3, 2006, what could have been a small incident turned into a military attack on a civilian population. In Texcoco, Mexico State, police attempted to remove a group of eight vendors selling flowers without permits in a public marketplace, the Mercado Belisario Dominguez. In truth, the action had political motives that reached far beyond these technicalities, namely that the flower vendors were assumed allies of the FPDT (People’s Front in Defense of the Land), who have clashed with the local and federal government for years. Texcoco is also one of the proposed sites for a new Walmart which both the flower vendors and the People’s Front vehemently oppose.

During the confrontation Javier Cortés, a 14 year-old boy, exposed the location of a policeman to the crowd, who he had seen crouching in the shadows. Allegedly to silence the boy, the policemen shot and killed him on the spot. This unleashed the fury of the crowd, which attempted to force the police out of the marketplace with sticks, stones, molotov cocktails and machetes. A bloody scuffle ensued and, after the crowd successfully blocked a highway, federal and municipal troops were brought in to disperse them.

Atenco is a campesino, or farming town, roughly 25 miles east of Mexico City with a history of defending itself from government and corporate land-grabbers. In 2002, after over a year of wide-spread resistance and repression, the general population of Atenco, in conjunction with the more militant tactics of the People’s Front, were able to force the Mexican government to cancel its plans to build an airport in their town. This was an amazing feat and set a precedent in Mexico for resistance to corporate development and forced displacement.

On the evening of May 3rd following the confrontation and subsequent riot in the marketplace, the Mexican mainstream press barraged the public with violent images of campesinos attacking police, focusing on “the brutal beating of a policeman lying on the ground” (Carlos Fazio, May 21st, La Jornada) instead of that of the murdered boy. This propaganda fueled animosity towards the people of Atenco, and sympathy towards police, which then gave state and federal government the opportunity to descend on and violently repress this well-organized community in an military attack the following day.

The morning of May 4th, in the tradition of Atenco resistance, the people mobilized and took to the streets. Without warning, campesinos and others were subject to an police attack that they never could have predicted. At dawn the police had already surrounded the city and blocked off the roads in preparation for mass-arrest. The people inside were trapped in a war zone, up against a military force with no means of escape or adequate self-defense. The tear gas began almost immediately, then round-ups and chasing through the streets. Unarmed people were cornered and brutally beaten with batons before being thrown in trucks and taken from the city limits. Another young man, Alexis Benhumea, was put into a coma by the beatings, in which he remains to this day. Up to 250 people were detained, mostly farmers and others willing to come out into the streets and risk their lives to show opposition to the government’s neoliberal policies and military crack-down.

A Chilean woman, Valentina Palma Novoa, 11 year resident of Mexico City, was one of the many to get swept up that day for the simple crime of being in the streets of Atenco. She writes of the brutality she witnessed and experienced after being thrown into the back of a truck by the police, along with many others even more injured than her, and having her face shoved by a policeman’s boot into a pool of someone else’s blood. The trip was hellish and neither Valentina nor anyone else trapped in the vehicle had any idea if they would survive, or if their final destination would inevitably end in execution. They were beaten continuously, groped, sexually assaulted and raped by the police. This went on for two or three hours and the police circled the city.

Valentina’s story is only one of many, many accounts. Women and men were brutally tortured en mass. Women have reported being raped with fingers, penises and other objects in the mouth, vagina and anus. Some were forced to repeatedly perform oral sex for groups of police. It is imperative to understand the horrifying fact that the sexual torture, brutality and rape were completely premeditated and mandated from above. The police were given instructions to target these women — they were supplied with condoms by their superiors and instructed to take their time before arriving at the prison gates.

In a speech given by Subcommandante Marcos, the public voice of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, at a protest in Mexico City exposing the violence against women at Atenco, Marcos pointed out that according to the testimonies of the women raped by police on May 4th, the police enjoyed and derived pleasure from their hideous misconduct. Further, it was “the promise of pleasure from these women’s bodies was a añadito (little reward) that the police received with the orders to ‘impose peace and order in Atenco.'” In other words, the rape and humiliation of men, women and girls is what police consider their due for a job well-done.

Following the initial arrests in Atenco on May 4th came neighborhood raids, targeting anyone with long hair, earrings, tattoos or any item associating them with the EZLN or Zapatista Liberation Army.

It is logically impossible that the attack in Atenco was improvised by a group of ‘bad’ murderous cops. The evidence is clear that the attack was a carefully planned and militarily strategic move on the part of Mexican government, with participation of both state and federal authorities, as well as local medical and prison services, required to pull it off. Carlos Montemayor writes “The violent and illegal detentions in the first hours of dawn….are an ancient and reoccurring practice of repressive armies and police forces” (La Jornada, May 13, 2006). In addition, the support of a complacent and conservative media that stigmatizes the campesinos in resistance, covers up and calls into question the testimonies of the victims is essential to the success of these actions. Officials are asking for “evidence,” but there were reporters who witnessed the arrests and refuse to come forward for fear of what the government will do to them. In the case of the massacre of students at Tlatelolco in Mexico City 1968, and the subsequent decade of repression referred to as the ‘dirty war,’ much of the public didn’t even know that hundreds of students and radicals had been killed and disappeared in their own city by the military. The massacre happened one evening and by the next morning the blood and bodies had already been cleared from the streets, the witnesses never seen again.

The purpose of government repression is always social control. Like Tlateloco, Atenco has come at a time of wide-spread organization in Mexico among the poorest and most effected by globalization, more recently centered around the Zapatista-initiated ‘Other Campaign’ which is has been traveling around Mexico for the last 8 months linking the struggles in indigenous and poor communities through dialogue and exchange. The Campaign has garnered huge media attention around issues usually completely censored and ignored. The Other Campaign is a grass-roots effort to create a forum in which communities can participate in the movement against neoliberal capitalism as a large-scale, unified body. The oppression we saw at Atenco obviously has the opposite goal in mind. The rape and humiliation is intended to have the effect of silencing civil society, making the work that the Zapatistas and many, many others are trying to do that much more difficult. Families get the message that they cannot participate in resistance, that they “must not get involved” in politics in any capacity other than the state-sponsored presidential election
s this July. The effect may be that more people resign themselves to one of three corrupt political parties, seemingly the only ‘safe’ way to avoid more violent repression.

That is certainly what the government wants, and neoliberal policies that amount to fascism is certainly one way of attempting to achieve it, making it clear that resistance and self-defense in Mexico will not be tolerated, but will instead be brutally and criminally punished. We shouldn’t be surprised that any state would be willing to go this far to deter and prevent resistance. It has been seen too many times throughout history and across the globe. It is important to recognize that as long as the U.S. and corporate globalization continue to impose neoliberal policies of “free trade” all over the world and support repressive governments, atrocities like those seen in Atenco will continue.

As Slingshot goes to press in early June, at least 31 of the original 218 political prisoners remain incarcerated, with an additional 20 or more people missing or unaccounted for and feared ‘disappeared’ or in hiding. Five internationals expelled immediately after the arrests from Mexico have not been able to return. Meanwhile, countless police, now known to the world as rapists and abusers, bask in the impunity granted by their government. Though 52 are under state and a mere 3 under federal investigation, not one of the over 3,500 federal and local law enforcement agents known to have participated in this atrocity has been taken off his/her beat. Not to mention the masterminds themselves who continue to get rich off neoliberal economic policy at the expense of the lives of many and the livelihoods of millions.

But many continue to resist without fear, a huge march in Mexico City is planned for the 28th of June and the Zapatista Other Campaign continues to use its weight to mobilize a movement to free the remaining political prisoners and demand that all levels of government guilt and involvement be punished. In the U.S., we must continue to show our solidarity in any way possible, from letters to and protests in front of Mexican Consulates, as well as strong opposition to free trade and U.S. international policy.

For more info about Atenco check out:

Chiapas Indymedia chiapas.mediosindependientes.org, Mexico Indymedia mexico.indymedia.org/, Narco News narconews.com/, Enlace Zapatista enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/, La Jornada www.jornada.unam.mx/

Sarah Shourd is an Oakland resident influenced by Zapatismo and resistance movements everywhere.

M.A.I.Z. — a collective compromised of Mujeres, Artistas, acitivistas and zine-istas (women of color, artists, acitivsts and zinesters) — seeks to nurture our creativity, highlight social problems and put aside apathy and passiveness so we can fight for social change. Submissions are being accepted for the first issue of The MAIZ Chronicles. If you are a mujer (women of color) and would like to submit to the zine, please do. We would like to publish pieces from unique perspectives by mujeres on issues concerning mujeres and folks of colors — issues that are hardly covered in zines. MAIZ also seeks to organize platicas (talks), art & poetry performances and community outreach.

The MAIZ Chronicles is being edited by Noemi Martinez, who writes the zines Hermana, Resist, South Texas Experience and Homespun and runs C/S Distro. Noemi is a Chicana/Boriqua activist writer & poet, single mama living on the Texas/Mexico border. She works as a VAWA (violence against women act) caseworker, helping undocumented women who have been abused by their US citizen or legal permanent resident spouse attain their working permit and legal status. Contact noemi.mtz@gmail.com.