By Sarang Narasimhaiah

 My personal path to anarchy has been long, winding, and confusing, to say the least—and a strange part of me is grateful for the route I have taken.

I’m admittedly ashamed of my (neo) liberal phase, during which I wholeheartedly embraced every fixture of multicultural representative politics: the façade of diversity, cosmetic modifications to the “free” market and “free” trade, “dialoguing across the aisles,” “getting out the vote,” the works. I’m far less ashamed of my postcolonial phase, although I will concede that I hung on to the above-mentioned liberal fetishes for quite some time—and vestiges of them at the very least later on.

Thankfully, I was surrounded by grounded, brilliant, and endlessly compassionate mentors / comrades / friends who tolerated me and drove me to question my pseudo-leftist faith in prevailing institutions of power. Their anti-racism, anti-fascism, intersectional feminism, radical queerness, Indigenuity, disabled, neurodiverse, and/or disability-focused outlooks, and deep anti-colonialism began to chip away at my self-important Amerocentric, cisheteropatriachal, able-bodied, good middle class immigrant delusions. While my cherished co-agitators didn’t try to convert me to anarchism, the fundamentally anarchistic underpinnings of many of their interventions made a lasting impression on me.

Fast forward through three years filled with direct actions, community presentations, and graduate school frustrations, and I’m having breakfast and talking revolution (as you do) with another cherished fighter-in-arms. As we discuss how we aspire to engage with the communities we care about, I mention—for the first time, to anyone—that I think of myself as a decolonial anarcho-communitarian.

I’m writing this piece because I want to unpack that moment and its significance, both for me and the living beings with whom I strive to operate in solidarity. My self-reflection since that sunny morning has revolved around a question I’ve been asking myself and my peeps for a few months:

What is the color of anarchy?

“Black, maybe with a red accent” is perhaps the most instinctive, common, and commonsensical answer to that question—and this answer isn’t unjustified. Black, above all else, tends to embody anarchy’s negation of all hierarchies. It lends its name to countless black blocs around the world. It may hearken back to piracy’s swashbuckling influence upon early Eurowestern anarchist thinking and writing. It could and, in many quarters, does symbolically unify diverse anarcho-revolutionaries. A lot of anarchists also identify as communists, which is where the red might come in.

And yet, despite all these valid and valuable justifications, I don’t know if my flag is or can be (just) black and red.

Let me begin by addressing the colors I have already mentioned, so I can try to do them justice at the same time as I question them.

Anarchy cannot be black if the Blackradical tradition, in all its various manifestations, is absent from its conceptualizations and operationalizations. Maroon communities were arguably some of the first and most multifarious anarchistic (that is, anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-statist) communities consolidated after the colonization of Turtle Island and Abya Yala. Domingo Passos could, did, and does apparently go toe-to-toe with Bakunin. The Black Panthers’ autonomous learning/teaching, feeding/eating, and self-defense/community-building efforts exemplified mutual aid in many respects. Many committed Panthers later became committed, self-described anarchists in order to circumvent what they perceived as the BPP’s (perhaps partially realized) potential for hierarchical macho leadership and personality cults. Today, black folx are some of the first ninjasto shut down white supremacists, rapists, homophones, transphobes, and the other scum of the Earth.

Red, meanwhile, takes on a whole new significance for the Indigenous peoples of the so-called Americas. Notwithstanding their appalling racialization by white Euroamerica, many Native “Americans” entered battle wearing red (and, yes, black) war paint, prepared to fight their displacement, extermination, and assimilation by any means necessary. The Red PowerMovement of the 1960s and ‘70s, like its Black Power counterpart, channeled black-and-red power at several points; for one thing, it lent legitimacy to (re)occupations of Indigenous land in ways that the Occupy movement of movements by and large couldn’t and doesn’t. Indigenous redness further laughs at the United States’ sickening, shameless, futile border imperialism: the Zapotec and Mixtec womyn who blessed, conscientized, and provoked me with their wisdom while I was in southwestern Mexico use the rich red color derived from the cochineal beetle to dye the stunning tapetes (tapestries) that they exchange for economic autonomy.

However, the Black radical tradition and anarcho-Indigeneity are not just black or red—or, for that matter, black-and-red. Like virtually all anarchistic perspectives, communities, and movements, they stem and draw their strength from (if you’ll pardon the pun) a virtual rainbow of intersecting lived experiences and worldviews. The Combahee River Collective’s landmark “Black Feminist Statement”works from the standpoints of its legendary Black lesbian womyn as it calls for total and absolute liberation through “the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” I will not attempt to impose colors on these luminaries or the lived identities, communities, and movements to which they belong; that said, I still feel the need to recognize that they may not have restricted themselves to a black, Black, or black-and-red palette for good reason. In a similar vein–and despite its appropriation by the so-called post-neoliberal Bolivian nation-state–theWiphala, a square emblem that displays all the colors of the visible spectrum, continues to be deployed by equally if not even more multifarious Indigenous grassroots mobilizers across the Andes.

I wonder if one of the most beautiful and important aspects of red-and-blackness—in word and deed, in our communities and on the streets—could be its grounding in or transformation into other colors entirely. Or maybe its ability to disappear so that these other colors can perform the same functions and more, in accordance with their respective lived experiences, viewpoints, and visions.

Back to “rainbow flags.” In recent years, progressives, liberals, moderates, conservatives, and members of the far(ther) righthave all proudly flown rainbow flagsat their militarized, cis- and homonormative, white (supremacist), nationalistic, corporatist Pride parades. These distinct-but-not-really-different luminaries of the hegemonic political machine have also sought to show off their “tolerance”¹ during their “political [non-]revolutions,”their dinners to collect a little sumthin’ sumthin’ extra for Zionist pinkwashing, and their campaigns and rallies to unite the other, rather unaccommodating, and less-than-revolutionary wretched of the Earth. In selling their false sensitivity and savvy to a mostly oppressed captive population while preparing to betray the vast majority of its members, they spit in Miss Major and SylviaRivera’s faces. Against Equality spits back, and then some. The collective’s wide-ranging queer thinkers, writers, and artists boldly go where the Human Rights Campaign has never gone before by challenging one of the state’s plainer but nonetheless sacred cows, marriage.

Is Against Equality, then, reclaiming the QUILTBAG+ rainbow flag? Or is the collective burning that flag and replacing it with its black-and-red superior? Is it flying both flags side by side or combining them into a single flag? Could it throw up some purple and/or pink flags for good measure?

On the other hand, do Against Equality and its movers and shakers have or need to have any flag, color, or color combination at all?

The assignment of colors to perspectives, communities, and movements arguably echoes the iron cages of gender and sexuality. Certainly in the latter cases–and maybe in the former as well–we need to ask ourselves if and why we behave as though we need, are entitled to, and/or can get a singular, straightforward answer. Do our mobilizations depend upon fitting ourselves and each other into one or some other limited number of categories and paradigms? If so, why, and should we maintain this dependency to any extent? And do our mobilizations, then, reflect, reaffirm, and strengthen the complexity, richness, and dynamism of the living beings involved in them?

At the end of the day, a rainbow flag—especially when uncritically accepted and deployed—seems to run the risk of turning a radical movement of movements into Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition instead of Fred Hampton’s. Lumbering, professionalized, compromised and complicit movements-turned-industrial NGOs/NPOs are just one of the many nasty surprises waiting for lapsed anarchists and other radicals at the end of the (neo)liberal multicultural rainbow. We can and must work through and with our and each other’s identities and lived experiences—not around them, to be clear—without resorting to collusive, self-destructive, self-deceiving, and ultimately futile “identity politics².”

Given that many perspectives, communities, and movements seem to operate in liminal spaces, some sort of neutral color (apart from or in addition to black, red, and black-and-red) seems to be in order. Unfortunately, the supposedly neutral alternatives to rainbow flags, flags of other colors, and colors in general don’t bode too well, either. Black, red, and black-and-red are limited and limiting, but they have nothing on white and its widespread signification of the cult of nonviolence, surrender and submission, the illusions of “non-partisanship,” and, well, whiteness. A clear flag, then? But would it then signify the fundamentally ableist and variously problematic notions of blindness—color-blindness, gender-blindness, and so on—that allow for dominant systems of power to prevail behind John Rawls’ ironically named “veil of ignorance?”

Okay, so, back to colors, then? Well, what about green? Many consider it the color of the Earth and, by extension, environmentalism; we know (at least I hope so!) that we can’t fight as and with the Wretched of the Earth if we devalue the ecosystems that make humyn existence possible. Nonetheless, the Earth isn’t just green, to state the obvious; neither are “environmental” movements,for that matter, especially when they resist the ecocide precipitated by ecological racism, cisheteropatriarchy, classism, and ableism. Green is also Black, brown, beige, and every color in-between and beyond, from Standing Rock to the Niger Delta to the Narmada Valley.

Furthermore, “non-white / decolonial greenness” is sacred to many. Numerous anarchist, anarchistic, or otherwise radical ecological interventions made by Indigenous peoples and peasants do not take up “environmentalism” or even deep ecology, diverging from conventionally defined green politics in the process. And they don’t necessarily take up black, red, or black-and-red flags, either, even though their interventions could very well fly under any of these flags. The limitations of hegemonic greenness stand to do quite a bit of damage to Indigenous and peasant persyns and peoples. “Environmentalism,” especially as it has been articulated at the centers and semi-peripheries of the world system, tends to presume a sharp division between human beings and their surroundings that simply does not resonate with many Indigenous and peasant worldviews.

“The environment” does not exist apart from “the economy,” “the polity,” “culture,” and/or “religion”—as well as the mind, body, heart, and soul—as far as innumerable Indigenous peoples across the world are concerned³. Living spirit or energy, also conceived simply as “livingness”—Sa’ah Naaghaii Bik’eh Hozho for the Diné, sumak kawsay for Andean Indigenous peoples, shakthi and prakriti for many South Asian adivasis and peasants—runs through and binds all of these existential spheres. Securing and creating conditions for the regeneration of this livingness—with the Earth and non-human living beings, not for them, and certainly not against them—is thus the goal of many radical Indigenous and peasant interventions. In my opinion, these holistic interventions provide a much surer footing for autonomous, just, equitable, and resilient ecological communities than “environmentalism” ever could. Non-Indigenous anarchists and radicals cannot and should not, of course, appropriate the worldviews that inform these interventions, but they nonetheless have much to teach us—much that we must know—as we do our parts to decolonize all colonized Indigenous land. We should be as unwilling to buy into the cult of Eurowestern scientific “greenness” as we are to put our faith in green partiesand their candidates.

The oversights and failures of Eurowestern greenness and environmentalism and the sacred power at the heart of Indigenuity bring what I would consider contemporary, (by no means exclusively) Eurowestern anarchism’s biggest areas of improvement into sharp relief:

First of all, we must recognize productivism, industrialization, commodification, economic growth, and the urban-rural divide in and of themselves as oppressions begging for abolition. Diverse contemporary anarchists typically recognize the misery induced by capitalist consumerism and overproduction but, in mapping and realizing anti-capitalist alternatives, they overlook the past and present violence involved in stripping “raw materials” from the Earth and converting them into monetized products. Worker-owned-and-operated maquiladoras—and worldwide factories in general—might eliminate the rampant gendered, racialized, and class-based exploitation and abuse that define these modern-day Victorian workhouses; however, they run the risk of continuing and even worsening the metabolic rift between the never-ending demands of productivism and the life cycles of the Earth. If you want my two cents, factories can only exist in a world in which many worlds fit if they operate as locally grounded, ecologically resilient and autonomous cottage industries, for all intents and purposes.

We need to grow interconnected living communities, not insulated economies or the “industrial sector” and definitely not the GDP, GNP, or any other P. Similarly, cities—which are indispensable to civilizational modernities around the globe—can only persist if they cease to be metropoles, colonial or imperial, industrial or post-industrial. As long as “global cities” like Mumbai, Nairobi, New York City, and Mexico City are distinguished from their respective rural regions and the rest of the world by the accumulation of “resources” from near and far, neither can survive. Steel grey, brick red, and tinted blue could be important to a global anarcho-society’s subsistence, but their predominant applications as of now have got to go.

Secondly, institutionalized religion may well be the opiate of the masses now as much as it was in Marx and Kropotkin’s day, but secularism is an equally, though differently, dangerous drug, even when it is adopted by well-meaning anarchists. Hindu nationalists have been able to build a stronghold in India’s chambers of power since the late 1980s precisely because they could and still can ride the tide of popular discontent with Nehruvian / Congress Party secularism. Authoritarian fundamentalist factions, organizations, movements, and regimes across the world—from Amerikkka to the Middle East and North Africa to Western and Eastern Europe—have provided the likes of Prime Murderer Modi with ample company over the years for comparable reasons. If anarchists are not careful, we could reproduce the very failures of the nation-state system we claim to oppose by failing to oppose its secular dogmatism. We must do everything in our power to (solidariously) decolonize a number of major (and minor) religious and spiritual traditionsand communities across the world; however, religious/spiritual decolonization is not, cannot, and should not be synonymous with rash, headlong disassemblage and disposal, nor accountability with pseudo-anarchist (re)missionization.

“No gods, no masters!” chant anarchists everywhere; perhaps we need to revise that well-heeled battle cry to, “Many and/or no gods, but no masters!” That revision needs to be revised for catchiness and practicality for sure but—in a world with billions of devotees of all stripes as well as agnostics, atheists, and everyone in between and beyond—an “and/or” clause may not be a terrible idea. By inspiring the horizontalization of and voluntary participation in religious and spiritual praxis, radical but not fundamentalist or exclusionary responses to Orientalismand other cultural imperialisms, and inter-faith dialogue that moves well beyond liberal CoeXisTence, this reformulation could prove invaluable. Global anarcho-communities and societies do not need to be secular to embrace, respect, celebrate, harmonize, and draw strength from conceptualizations of autonomy, dignity, equity, justice, and sustainability rooted in diverse beliefs and lifeways (sorry, not sorry, Ayaan Hirsi Ali). In fact, they may want to avoid secularism like the plagues of yore.

***

When I began thinking about addressing the question that serves as this essay’s title in writing, I was concerned that I would end up producing cheap, obnoxious, tedious Sesame Street anarcho-fan-fiction—an asinine commentary on colors of little use to any of the comrades I have yet to meet. If that is what I ended up doing, I apologize for wasting your time, and I hope that Elmo gives you what I didn’t.

I decided to write this article in no small part because I believe that discursive materiality and material discursivity lie at the heart of anarchist, anarchistic, and otherwise radical thinking and action. The symbols that we choose and use have a profound influence upon the ideas that we realize, and vice-versa. This reciprocal relationship runs through the plurality of perspectives that I strive to engage, and it seems to inform the plurality of actions that these perspectives inspire. The burning limo from the #DisruptJ20 protests is more than just an image or a symbol. This pigmobile was material in and of itself, it produced wide-ranging material impacts inseparable from its symbolic resonances, and it is part of a long history of symbolic-material anarchist counter-inaugural action.

I chose to analyze the color—or, as I might as well say at this juncture, colors–of anarchy because colors are among the most noticeable, influential, and, in my view, telling symbols that we deploy as budding co-creators of another world. Our deepest convictions shape the colors we brandish as we make some noise, take back our streets, lock horns with our adversaries, and commune with each other and the oppressed peoples we love. These colors, in turn showcase and shape how we think of ourselves and our roles in the struggles we carry out. I will never forget the first and subsequent times I saw the anarchy symbol on a black and red background—the mixture of curiosity and inexplicable exhilaration that spiked me the first time and the hope, courage, and warmth that flooded me when I understood a little more a little later. I still feel the reverberations of those moments when I read, hear, or meet one of us—one of you, if I may be so bold.

All that said, I think that a black-and-red world would be rather drab. Such a world would also betray anarchism’s core commitments to learning from the failures of other leftist and radical frameworks and movements, to complementing the negation of all hierarchies with the cultivation of lasting horizontality, and, more than anything, to hosting the otherness of many “Others” as they define it themselves.

Anarchy is—anarchy must be—brown, beige, pink, purple, rainbow-colored, red, invisible, striped, translucent, polka-dotted, yellow ochre, grey, all shades of green (though not Green), black, Black, and black-and-red (though never white) all at the same time. As a bipolar depressive whose mental condition has molded my personal-intellectual-political positionality in important ways, I guess the anarchy I practice is blue as well—maybe yours is, too.⁴

The beauty of anarchy is that it is not contingent upon doctrinal knowledge of anarchism as an explicit critical/radical philosophy. You can be anarchistic—and innumerable individuals, communities, and societies have been and continue to be—without calling yourself an anarchist, just as you can be an intersectional feminist or a queer revolutionary without calling yourself either. Anarchy’s potential for transformative beauty hinges, in a sense, upon its compatibility with all other possible color combinations—and the embodied viewpoints and daring futures that underpin these combinations.

Black, red, and black-and-red have served and continue to serve anarchists (myself included) well. But the time has come for us to move them away from anarchy’s global centerstages to make way for other colors that are just as vital, if not more so.

All power to the Earth and to the Wretched of the Earth. May our revolutions be colorful as hell.⁵

By the Reverend Eggking

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” ~Not Plato

Disclaimer: I have been homeless multiple times. I know what it’s like to see a tasty slice of pizza on the filthy pavement and break out in remorse as I walk away from it. I have also begged for food and change all over this beautiful continent. The best hustle my main road dog ever showed me was to take all our change, spell out an “L” , part of an “O”, and surround it with flowers. Then as folks walked by, we would ask them to “Help us make love on the sidewalk!” I can plainly recall nights of wolfing down rich folk’s half eaten leftovers, as well as their backwash laced near empty glasses of alcohol, both in this country and abroad. By comparison, the story below about going deep into debt for things that cause suffering for those involved in their production, is a quite fucking luxurious problem to have. I fully understand that. But that doesn’t make it any less real for me. I have never had access to credit before the last few years. I am now 42 (Don’t Panic!) and this past year alone I went into $60,000+ of credit debt. That is more than every preceding year combined. The following is a somewhat brutal self examination of this ridiculous way to live. Also, as an added bonus, fresh sarcasm has been sprinkled liberally throughout the piece. Enjoy……

Every time I inadvertently start to fantasize about the latest “must have” commodity, there is a section of my brain that feels an abnormal sense of loss. There is also actual physical pain. I can only equate this pain with someone trying to bail out water on a ship that is sinking faster than the speed of Disney buying up every hero that I have ever turned to. Next, my mind uses a significant portion of itself to figure out how best to manipulate the Rubik’s Cube of my current finances. Then, and only then, can this “must have” product find it’s way into the gaping hole of debt that I have dug for myself over this past year. Looking back, it seems that I had no choice but to pimp out my future paychecks for both my third iPhone in the past 4 years and my second Samsung Galaxy (it came with a magic pen, damnit!) in less than a year. Apparently, I also couldn’t sleep at night until I finally got my grimy fingerprints all over the largest iPad screen known to man. In 2015, I went massively into debt to get my first Prius, but snagging the new 2017 model was worth it! By plunging deeper into this particular indentured servitude, I am able to continue enjoying the honor of celebrating my uniqueness with the other 5,287,317,842 Prius drivers in the Bay Area.

As you can plainly see, generic awareness of the world wide suffering that goes into these “must haves” was not enough to stave off my perfect storm of consumerism these past 11 months. I know that children all over the world are an indentured labor force for the many products that I have purchased. I know that cobalt is a key component in the lithium-ion batteries that power so many of our “must haves”, and that child labor is heavily utilized for the cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I know that there is currently well over a trillion dollars worth of lithium found within the borders of Afghanistan. I know about the estimates of over 360,000 human beings whose lives have been cut short in Afghanistan, due to indirect causes related with our “War on Terror”. I know that our country’s collective murderous impulses have been raining down upon them without mercy since 2001. But guess what else I know? Slaughtered innocent civilians and lithium are not all that is found there. Trillions of dollars of other minerals and natural gas are also found in Afghanistan. I am certain that my lack of acting upon awareness supports the world wide suffering for those hit hardest by humanity’s relentless greed for these supplies. And last, and certainly not fracking least, we have 90% of the world’s current opium supply found in this fabled land.

That is just a few of the reasons why the “Owners of All Things” are willing to spend so many billions on the media blitzkrieg that is required to justify the fuckery they continue to unleash. All of this carnage just so Wall Street can continue to be the gift that keeps on giving. How quaint.

Quick 9/11 reminder: If you are one of those who doesn’t believe that it was an inside job, fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens from Saudi Arabia, and the others were from the United Arab Emerites (2), Egypt, and Lebanaon. There is nary an Afghanistan citizen involved in 9/11. And yet, here we are, well over a decade and a half later, still blowing up their people, land, and dreams to smithereens. And that’s right folks, for those of you paying close attention (shout out to Big Brother), my consumeristic tendencies are also imbedded deeply into the endless “War on Drugs”, which was lovingly set up to obliterate as much hope as fuckkking possible.

The “War on Drugs” is one of the main driving forces of our country’s not so subtle caste system. This caste system insidiously winds it’s way throughout the granular details of our healthcare, environmental assaults and the vicious entrapment factory better known as the industrial prison complex. Just think about everything that goes into it’s daily operations. Prisoners in the San Bruno Jail in California have no yard time to gain access to fresh air or feel the sun and wind upon their face. Countless prisoners country wide slave away for pennies on the dollar so that the companies who continue destroying the last remnants of “Mom and Pop” shops can cash in on the billion dollar prison labor industry. Even “Whole Foods” was guilty of this practice, until they got called on it. And don’t forget about the massive disenfranchisement of voters, infinitesimal opportunities for gainful employment upon release, and the endless hell that is unleashed while they are behind bars, often for being guilty of nothing more than a pathetic lack of opportunity where they were raised. You think it’s a coincidence that crack and meth houses have replaced former neighborhoods where, just a few generations ago, hardworking families had economic opportunities that were legal and a source of pride? This caste system has grown from the seeds planted by the genocidal slaughtering of between 30 – 130 million indigenous human beings (so many estimates, but they seem fall between that range) who were a part of this continent long before any cracker ass cracker ever stepped foot upon it’s shores. This caste system took those ol’ Jim Crow laws and evolved them into more than their inceptors could have ever fathomed within their most pyschotic of fantasies.

OBVIOUSLY, I am as much of a cog in this fourth Reich powered machine (hail hydra!) that we call home as the next asshole who feels the need to feed their greed and watch it force their conscience to concede victory to capitalism’s juggernaut. This bloodlust based monstrosity keeps picking up more steam with each and every new birth upon this planet. We deserve better, and so does the rest of the world.

Now we can get into a whole other crate of canned serpents that I just had Amazoned to me straight from Costco. Wait a second. Fuck Amazon and Costco. They both denied my credit application and actually want me to pay for what I purchase before I check out of their respective stores. Don’t they know who the drunk I am? My long suffering wife knows who I am. I am a gutter pissant addict in recovery with a clean and sober date of August 31st, 2009. Can you believe that shit? Just because I would black out nightly, and wake up in a bed stained in psychedelic urine samples doesn’t mean I have a problem does it? What about all of the fecal matter that was accustomed to having its way within my pants as I walked home, and the bar, bathroom, and bedroom walls where my projectile vomit would work it’s magic? Fun, fun, fun.

I am not going to get too much deeper into the trials and tribulations resulting from the endless sedations that I administered to my heart, body and soul during my sanity’s vacations. Suffice to say, I have never met anything that I am not capable of abusing. And that includes the patience, financial security, and faith of my incredibly intelligent and beautiful wife, Mariposa Loca. Just imagine her stress, if you will, as she watched my spending habits this last year, fully aware that I am still employed for a non-profit organization based in San FranSpending Cisco.

But I am making amends to her right now as we speak. I am seeking solutions on a daily basis. I have redoubled my efforts to be more cognizant of each purchase I make. I have stopped purchasing technology. It has been at least four months since I bought something that brought my wife pain and discomfort. I no longer shop at Safeway, Whole Foods, or any other corporate store, to the best of my ability, I seek out family owned retail opportunities by investigating a business’s history. I seek to make amends to my wife by actually paying off all of my debt in a timely manner so that I can actually be the provider that she deserves, all while living in a city where the succubi never sleep, honoring their programming to drain every penny found in my bank account.

I am continuing to get deeper entrenched within the RESIST Community that has so many branches throughout the incredible Bay Area. I am the event coordinator for both a non profit Soto Zen Japanese Buddhist organization comprised of multiple temples throughout California, and the only Anarchist Collective Bookstore in San Francisco which has been volunteer run for over 40 years. I facilitate a weekly open showcase there on Thursday nights that has everything from 18 year Non-Binary identifying poets to 75 year old living encyclopedic jukeboxes of every protest folk song known to humanity. I am seeking to take advantage of all of the ecstatic bliss, genius, and pure unadulterated power that the Bay Area has to offer. And I am thriving.

Now we can get down to the sub-atomic molecular structure of what this article is all about. I am calling myself out to live according to the principles that I claim to hold dear. I have not been respecting them with my rampant consumerism, and that needs to change, pronto. “McTexAssTrumpLandia” wants to be the air that I breath. It wants me to swallow the lies that so many believe and ignore the totality of why I ever grieve. “The Owners of All Things” do not pledge allegiance to any flag. All the flags of the world are butt toilet paper for the digestive systems, I mean “governments”, that they place in power by any means necessary from sea to toxic sea. Saddam Huissein was put into power through a C.I.A sponsored military coup in the late 1970’s. Osama Bin Ladin and his boys received tens of millions of our tax dollars from the late 1980’s until just about a month before the events of 9/11. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. In fact, I could give a fuck. I am so tired and broken down physically, mentally and spiritually from trying to figure this all out. After all, as my lovely voices are reminding me right now, what I really care about is my quest for the meaning of meaning. Meanwhile, I am fucking sapped like a tree in a haunted forrest that knows the chainsaw is all gassed up and waiting in the shed while the master sleeps.

I know that I have a part to play in all of this. My daily decisions ripple to the ends of infinity’s patience with being ascertained. I vote each and every goddamn moment that I spend a cent and it is high time that I hold myself accountable for these reckless decisions. I take part in a goregous revolution each and every time I offer kindness and compassion to anyone, whether or not I feel they deserve it. For that judgement is not up to me. There is a sacred force which is so beyond my ability to encapsulate it within the confines of the written word(or typed:). All I ever need to be reminded of this awesome unknown is to try and listen to a motherfucking dog whistle. How dare anyone, especially myself, ever think that our pathetic explanations of anything can be considered an absolute for all of time. We need to evolve past the fear of the unknown. I am going to start right now.

Be well my friends, and know that you are loved. You can trust me on that……

February 17 – 7pm

Chris Robe author of A History of Anarchist Filmmakers @Interference Archive 7th St. Brooklyn, NY

February 18 – 3pm (every Sunday)

Occupy Oakland General Assembly Frank Ogawa (Oscar Grant) Plaza

February 21 – 7:30pm

Anti-Police Terror General Meeting – Eastside Alliance – 2277 International Blvd. Oakland

February 21 – 6:30pm

Meeting Oakland Privacy Fighting Against the Surveillance State – Omni Commons 4799 Shattuck Ave. Oakland

February 21 – 7:30pm

KPFA Benefit w/ Richard Wolff – First Congregational Church of Berkeley 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley

February 24 – 9pm

Thrillhouse Winter Formal w/ Fleshies, The Banannas, Midnite Snaxx, Robo Cop3 @ The Knockout – 3223 Mission St San Fran-sicko

February 25 – noon-5pm

Dear diary zine fest – Humanist Hall 390 27th Street, Oakland CA :).

February 27 – 7pm FREE ALL AGES

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on Disarming the 2nd Amendment

City Lights Books 261 Columbus Ave San Francisco

February 28 – 7:30pm FREE ALL AGES

Shaping SF Public Talk om Art & politics w/ Lou Dematteis

518 Valencia St. San Francisco

March 3 & 4 FREE ALL AGES

Steel City Anarchist Book Fair – Venue TBA Hamilton, ON

March 4 – 10:30-am FREE ALL AGES

Talk on the Death of God @ Niebyl Proctor Library 6501 Telegraph Ave. Oakland

March 4 – 7pm

Slingshot article brainstorm & new volunteer meeting to kick-off work on issue #127 – 3124 Shattuck, Berkeley

March 5

Al-Mutanabbi St Starts Here, Poets & Writers Respond to the bombing of Baghdad’s Street of Booksellers – everywhere

March 7 – 7:30pm

Shaping SF Public Talk on the Language of Water – 518 Valencia St San Francisco

March 8

International Women’s Day

March 9 – 8pm

East Bay Bike Party – at a BART station to be announced

March 10

World Naked Bike Ride

March 11 – 7pm FREE ALL AGES

Party for 30 years of Slingshot publishing – Long Haul – 3124 Shattuck Berkeley

March 14 – 7:30pm FREE ALL AGES

Shaping SF Public Talk Tenderloin & Mission Dirt w/ llana Crispi -518 Valencia St. San Francisco

March 28 – 7:30pm FREE ALL AGES

Shaping SF Public Talk Saving the Bay from “The Future” –

518 Valencia St. San Francisco

April 4 – 7:30pm FREE ALL AGES

SHAPING SF Public Talk Insurgent Country Music w/ Glenda & Jesse Drew – 518 Valencia St San Francisco

April 7 – 7:30pm Free All Ages

Liverpool Anarchist Bookfair 1 Great George St.

April 12 – 7:30pm FREE ALL AGES

Kathleen Belew on The White Power Movement & Paramilitary America – City Lights Books 261 Columbus Ave. San Francisco

April 14 – 3pm

Article deadline for Slingshot issue #127 – 3124 Shattuck Ave Berkeley

April 25 – 7:30pm FREE ALL AGES

Shaping SF Public Talk Universal Basic Income – 518 Valencia St San Francisco

Late April

People’s Park 49th Anniversary – Berkeley

May 1

MAY DAY

May 1 – noon-8pm

How Weird Street Faire Howard@2nd St. San Francisco

May 9 – 7:30pm FREE ALL AGES

Shaping SF Public Talk Platform Cooperatives- 518 Valencia St San Francisco

May 16 – 7pm FREE ALL AGES

Michelle Tea reads from Against Memoir – City Lights Books 261 Columbus Ave. San Francisco

May 23 – 7:30pm FREE ALL AGES

Shaping SF Public Talk on Archives & Memory – 518 Valencia St San Francisco

May 28

Los Angeles Zine Fest

June 1 – 3

Left Forum conference (New York City)

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Book Review

 

“Street Farm” – Growing Food, Jobs and Hope on the Urban Frontier

by Michael Ableman, Chelsea Green Publishing, $ 29.95

or read for free at the Long Haul Info-Shop

Review by elke

 

Author Michael Ableman is one of the early visionaries of urban agriculture and co-founder of Sole Food Street Farms.

The colorful, expressive pictures alone were soul food to me.

The book describes the struggles, set backs and lessons learned in pursuing the vision to establish a farming project in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a neighborhood that was lacking healthy food and jobs. It tells the heart- (and soul-)warming stories of a lot of the person(alitie)s working hard to grow the project. I was touched by the openness and honesty of these stories about how the connection to food also was changing people’s connection to life, a sometimes challenging process.

This is an inspiring and, at the same time, very practical book for people who want to get involved in urban farming or start their own project even outside the city. It also contains numerous tables and side notes, turning it into a valuable handbook for future urban farmers.

It is a beautiful book, even if it didn’t fulfill my hope of presenting a way out of our disconnected agricultural and economic system: The farm is heavily dependent on the high end restaurants that it serves (it also sells some of it’s produce at local farmers markets).

Much of the money generated by Sole Food Street Farms stays in the community and gives meaningful work to people who have been socially and economically marginalized.

Though I admire the folks involved with this project very much, the image of these fat cats dining on this beautiful produce in their 5 star restaurants made me want to throw a pipe bomb! You know that feeling, right?

 

ZINE Reviews

 

So we were cleaning the Slingshot loft and discovered this pile of fucking zines from like years ago that we probably should have reviewed but well, we’re activists, so like we’ve been busy with freeway shutdowns and putting on punk shows, and all sorts of other stuff that seemed more important than reviewing your zine (sorry). (seriously, sorry!!) We wish we could review everything that is sent to us, and it totally keeps us up at night, all these great zines that just keep piling up for us at the infoshop. The zines we don’t review still get added to the Long Haul zine library, where they will live until someone steals them—so at least that’s something, right? Shit. Anyway, sorry. Here are some hella belated zine reviews:

 

GREEN-EYED MONSTERS: My Report on Jealousy

By Lacey Johnson

www.etsy.com/shop/CreamyThighs

 

This terrific zine is a very courageous personal exploration of the intense jealousy Lacey experienced in a romantic relationship. She responded to a crippling episode of jealousy by reading about, researching, and analyzing jealousy. Being a professional illustrator and writer, she wrote the zine as a therapeutic tool for herself and others struggling with the primal experience of fear, anger, and sadness that can be triggered by a partner being attracted to or involved with someone else.

While brutally honest about the pain and the sometimes less than stellar behavior that jealousy can cause, the zine is hilariously funny. Even better, every page is brimming with amazing graphics and comics including everything from Miss Piggy and her rival pig Denise, to Beyonce with the baseball bat, from Homer Simpson to Oprah, to Bob Ross painting your emotional landscape, and more. Despite the heavy topic, she doesn’t take herself too seriously. The disclaimer on page one says, “This was born from snot and confusion and a failed love project and turning on the light to look in the mirror. I am not a love doctor, I am just a Pisces with an Aquarius moon.” The whole zine has that same humility and humor, and whatever your experience with jealousy, you are likely to find it educational and entertaining.

It is filled with great advice and specific tips on coping with and reducing your jealousy, in very bite-sized chunks and and a very welcoming format. She includes a bibliography with books, websites, and videos for those who want to learn more about jealousy. “Green Eyed Monsters” can be ordered from etsy.com/shop/CreamyThighs. You can find Lacey’s other comics at: tumblr.com/blog/whaleribbed and her artwork at: laceyjohnsonxoxo.com.

(Review by Kathy Labriola, Counselor/Nurse)

 

The Anarchist’s Guide to Travel: A Manual for Future Hitchhikers, Hobos, and Other Misfit Wanders

By Matthew Derrick

www.squattheplanet.com

 

Whether you’re a seasoned train-hopper, an urban explorer, or a homebody who likes to occasionally pick up hitchhikers, this book will make you smile and nod your head. It has the feel of sitting at a campfire and slowly sipping a forty with Squat the Planet founder Matthew Derrick, while he spills all his tips, knowledge, stories, and personal philosophies from over 15 years of being a migrant.

It gets a little preachy at times (spoiler alert: the Golden Rule is do your own damn dishes), but Derrick’s earned it. Like the dude has seriously figured out how to live a pretty decent life while traveling the country and living in tents and cars and squats and shit, and he wants you to know that you can too.

I especially appreciate that he included a bunch of interview questions with other travelers, so you get to hear stories from folks of other backgrounds and orientations in regards to what their experience has been like. Also, seriously, don’t hop a train until you’ve really thoroughly read the section on train hopping like ten times at least. Whether you just want to do your first off-the-grid road trip, or actually plan go all in and start rubber-tramping, bike touring, or become a boat punk, grab a copy of this book, hit the road, and unplug your ass from the capitalist machine. (Review a. Cat)

 

Restless Legs: A Photo Zine

www.cargocollective.com/bryanbrybry

 

If you’d like to venture through Portland, trash dive a punk art festival, and train hop to Pennsylvania alongside a crew of ruggedly inked friends, this could be a ride for you.

The true love of zine making as archive blooms in this collaborative photo zine.  The epigraph reads: “Nobody sees a flower, really. It is so small. We haven’t time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”

The artist’s friends appear in vivid color photographs that capture a certain and sincere care that the photographer puts into each relationship. Whether the subject is smoking a cigarette, grinning wildly, or reaching their hand into a trash can, the shared devotion of time between artist and subject—both past and present—throughout the transiency of space, paints a warm portrait of solidarity among radicals.

Capitalism’s colonization of time has endangered time as “the ultimate scarce resource”. Our allocation of time is a matter of justice. (Shippen, Nichole Marie “The Colonization of Time: Production, Consumption, and Leisure”)  This zine is in itself a fight for time, a political response—using moments and travel to nourish friendships, to create community, to support one another.

The diligent printing and care in the craft complement the zine’s beautiful simplicity. At second and third read, its deeper complexity moves the reader to go outside, call a friend, and take back one of the most precious resources—time.

Find this and other works by the artist at www.cargocollective.com/bryanbrybry.

(Review by H. Sabet)

 

No Gods. No Dungeon Masters.

Text by Ion O’Clast. Art by Rachel Dukes. Cover by Andy Warner.

www.silversprocket.net

(2015)

 

Anarcho-nerds rejoice! Behold an anti-capitalist riot populated by ents, druids, and Dr. Who! Gawk at a group of anarchists who disguise themselves as a Katamari ball-o-garbage cosplay to sneak into Comic Con! This zine is brimming with hella geek soul food punctuated by philosophical reminiscings about how radicals and nerds ought to team and rule the galaxy together. “Out of the Ether! Into the Streets!” +2 damage against cops! Check out their website for more of this ilk. (Review by a. Cat)

 

 

By Catakin P. Parkwalker

The key difference between the Jedi and the Sith is the difference between experiential and authoritarian teaching styles.

The Sith teach through authoritarian obedience, with apprentices unwaveringly obeying the dictates of masters who lie to and manipulate them. Rather than asking questions of those more powerful than them, the Sith either obey an authority unquestioningly or murder and replace it with themselves. It is this type of pattern that replicates empire. It is a pattern that will tempt revolutionaries to merely throw rebellions, a pattern that tempts revolutionaries into directing their energy towards narrow visions that are simply regime changes rather engaging in true revolutionary overhauls to the system. It is because of this that Sith spirituality lends itself so acutely to empire —the building of structures for the sake of replicating a structure, rather than the wellbeing of those interpolated by them.

The Jedi are about learning things organically. They hold on to the names they were given at their births, and their journeys as individuals are woven intricately into their training. Jedi Masters don’t attempt to divert their claim to mastery to some abstract system but rather embody it, meaning at times a Jedi Master’s personal truth and personal experience will, by necessity, cloud their judgment. And the Jedi Masters let their judgement be clouded as such; they let themselves make mistakes because they are letting themselves be specific people with actual specific circumstances that are meaningful to them. They retain their connection to those very personal circumstances, and never, like the Sith, attempt to erase them. And that is why a true Jedi is always ever a revolutionary, without even meaning to be, as their very existence posits itself as a challenge to empire. When a Jedi is turned, something terrible happens to the way they use the force. One might say that they lose themselves to the force, or at least to the social power it grants them, and rather than defending what they love with it, defending what makes them who they are, they find the deployment of the force eclipses them, subverting their subjectivities.

True mastery isn’t about doing things correctly, it is about how you direct your attention. The force might be thought of as a metaphor for many things. Religious Star Wars fans think it is god. I think it is social power — systematized social power in the Foucauldian sense. Star Wars offers a universe in which that Hegelian fantasy is given a more tangible form, with the Jedi and the Sith serving as larger-than-life ideological figures around which the sometimes clownish social structures of daily life in the empire or rebellion form themselves. But yeah, the force isn’t real or you would have noticed it. This isn’t some kind of Kansas City Shuffle. No.

Women have always been in positions of high leadership in the rebellion, even in the original 1977 film in which Leia Organa and Mon Mothma play central roles as decision-makers in the assault on the First Death Star, which might also be thought of as an assault upon that empirical, Platonic impulse best described by T.S. Eliot as “To have squeezed the universe into a ball. To roll it toward some overwhelming question.” Perhaps we all have to blow up our own inner Death Stars sometimes, to destroy those overwhelming ego questions, that, if left unchecked, will destroy the everyday world of eating peaches, of being there for our friends.

It is exciting to see, in the 2017 Star Wars universe, there are more women in all levels of labor in the Rebellion, and to also see a woman on the bridge in a Star Destroyer. Hey, representation goes both ways! And no matter what side you work for, this conflict must belong to all of us, and be accessible to all of us, and so much so the pageant of it. Good versus evil isn’t just a game for white men to play any more, thank goddess. But perhaps as Kylo Ren tempts us to speculate, there is more to “evil” than we, who shun the concept, might give it credit for. As Nietzsche argues in his Genealogy of Morals, evil is a category that can only be perceived by those who experience oppression. To those who are oppressors, there is only “good” and “bad,” which is to say that oppressors don’t see their enemies as evil, just as “scum” to be eliminated. Evil is a mask we put upon those who oppress us so we can hate them as we fight them. But as Ren’s shedding of his mask shows, it is in seeing our oppressors as human that their power over us is made complete, and in its completion, finds itself destroyed. When Ren begs Rey to join him by his side, it is no longer as an oppressor but a frightened creature who, in that fleeting moment before manipulating his way back into the structure of the Empire, is at his most human.

Among the Jedi and their rebel counterparts, individual lives matter. Among the Sith and their imperial counterparts, individuals are killed for failing because their lives don’t matter. To be among the Imperials and the Sith is to have been made into a type of human commodity, into a faceless, interchange thing, and publicly murdering their own who fail is a way of reifying everyone’s interchangeability within the empire, of showcasing to each other the degree to which, within the empire, individual lives don’t matter.

To those of the dark side, only raw power matters. They see the talent rather than the person. They are focused only on properly placing that talent within the pyramid-shaped hierarchy of their organizational structure and have no grasp of what it means to have a personal experience as an individual, which is why they so frequently deface individuals with masks and new names, erasing the individual’s past and future, erasing that person’s journey and any markers that might allow them to construct the narrative of being on a journey, and rather reduce existence to an ever-present state of completing tasks and obeying or destroying your superiors and subordinates. The dark side doesn’t afford its adherents things like sisters, lovers, and comrades. The only antidote for this despair is extreme obedience. Vader knelt before the emperor even as he commanded him to murder is own son, but in a reversal of the ancient story of Abraham, Vader’s unwavering faith in the force-for-the-sake-of-the-force is shattered by the command to end his son’s life and his humanity is restored.

As people on the internet have pointed out, the new film redeems the prequels, as unwatchable as they are, by reframing them as a time in which the Jedi Order became corrupted, with a pseudoscience of “midichlorian counts” overshadowing the spiritual underpinnings of using the force.

To turn someone from the dark side back to the light is to make their life matter again, to give them an identity with relationships and channels of meaning that matter to them and to others.

The rebellion offers no ready-made hierarchy between strategy and feelings, so at times, two groups within the movement find themselves at odds, talking past each other, one group saying “this is how it feels,” the other group saying “this is how it should be done.” This type of social messiness is tied to the basic human expression that they fight to maintain space for.

The Buddha is sometimes credited with saying, “Be your own light,” but to do that means you don’t get to have the sort of easy answers that only others can give. This is why Jedi Masters do not demand that their apprentices obey unwaveringly, but rather, as Master Yoda says to Master Luke after setting fire to the ancient Jedi texts, “We are what they grow beyond, that is the true burden of all masters.”

Master Yoda also tells us that fear is what turns people towards the dark. And this is what we see time and again in the lives of those who succumb to the way of the Sith. Sure, the Jedi also have fear and insecurity — they are plagued by it — but the Jedi manage their fear and insecurity as best they can, sometimes making wild, irrational decisions propelled by it. But the Sith have a very different relationship with fear and insecurity. Rather than managing it daily, they attempt to make it vanish by making themselves so powerful that they no longer have fear and insecurity. In doing so, they erase themselves. Giving in to the dark side is guided by fear — fear that you aren’t enough — leading to the donning of a mask: you become fear itself. This embracing of fear to escape fear — of turning yourself into a thing to be feared as a way to avoid grappling with your own fear — is at the heart of any gesture towards fascism, of any turn towards the dark side, towards the rigid lines of empire and colonialism, it is self-erasure at its deepest form and it is this that guides members of our species towards organized, machine-inspired behavior that destroys all living things.

Like the Sith, the Jedi sometimes do conceal the truth from their apprentices. Old Ben lies to Luke about his father being dead, and Luke conceals the truth about Ben Solo’s turn from Rey. These lies come from the very flawed yet deeply human place of wanting to protect others, and perhaps oneself, from the truth. Does that make these lies any better then the types of lies Sith tell, lies inspired by the desire to increase the power and obedience of the apprentice? In words of moral relativist DJ, “Maybe.”

Luke’s end was so perfect for him. Yoda had long chided Luke for always watching the horizon — never focused on where he is, what he is doing. In his final act, Luke’s not-there-ness achieves perfection. Because Luke was never supposed to be “there” or “here now” or any of that 1970s Ram Dass crap. Luke Skywalker’s job was to be a symbol, to direct people’s attention, to direct it in all the wrong places, or in the right ones, depending on who you are. Yes, Luke Skywalker is a commodity, and what Episode VIII does so well is it acknowledges that. But Luke Skywalker, at least within the story world of the films, is a revolutionary commodity. As Jedi Master Gil Scott-Heron taught us, “The Revolution will not be televised.” But until capital falls as hard as Darth Weinstein did last October, perhaps, for now embodying the revolutionary commodity is the most we can hope to achieve. #OccupytheSpectacle

Even if the police, guided by the lifeless logic of capital, march in and crush our seedlings with their bulldozers, as they did at Occupy the Farm in 2012 and 2013, and even if they fence in People’s Park and harm and murder peaceful protestors as they did in 1969 and the early 1990s, and even if the FBI breaks into the Slingshot loft and steals our computers as they did in 2009 — even as they strike us down in so, so many ways, we only grow stronger. The more they tighten their grip… well, you get the idea.

The rebellion could be wiped off the map — we have been before — but as long children are born who can feel their inherent worth as living beings — and refuse to let anyone convince them otherwise — the struggle will live on.

Water is Sacred.

Occupy Everything, Demand Nothing.

Black Lives Matter.

May the Farm be with you.

May 1000 Parks bloom.

Another collective member’s opinion

Okay so other than being a big goofy metaphor for the “Bernie bros” screwing up the 2016 election through their, uhhhh, “tangential” direct tactics to confront the conditions that empower empire at the codic level, the new Star Wars movie was okay I guess. Worth the torrent. (Wendy)