Category: Articles

Why Americans love faith institutions

However much it may disgruntle the devoutly secular, all culture is steeped in institutional faith. Easy to forget sometimes, especially in the Bay Area and on the west coast in general, but most of the country and world is deeply influenced by religion. To work intelligently we have to acknowledge that reality and let it influence our own actions. Once we get to know faith institutions better, it’s possible to explore another question: what strategies are desirable for secular, politically left radicals, knowing what institutional faith offers people?

People join faith communities for many reasons. The first European settlements in the U.S. were so religiously homogenous that it was dangerous to not participate. Non-churchgoers were seen as witches and devil-possessed, and were castigated from the struggling towns to survive on their own. Religion in relation to society doesn’t overtly carry the same weight today. Instead, people seek out faith communities seemingly of their free will. The social and geographic context encourages us, however, to pledge allegiance to one or another religious organization. There has always been a strong rhetoric advocating secularism in the U.S. Separation of Church and State is written into the Constitution but all the presidents and powerful positions were filled by Protestant men for over half this country’s history; a majority of them still are. Church and State remain essentially joined, as the top political individuals belong to only a few, very similar, institutions of faith.

Breaking out of religion became more possible when geographic communities became culturally more diverse. People from all over the world, with their own religious practices, found themselves living up next to each other in the explosion of urban industrial America in the 19th century. In an unofficially Protestant nation, there were two potential results. Either there would be explicit repression and the rise of a religious state, or government would have to extract itself from the influence of religion. It did some of both.

Living as we do several generations after religious tensions tested this country so overtly (remember that the very first confrontation was with the American indigenous, and that was resolved through genocide), new forces have driven people back to religion, and in particular, religiously informed politics. In North America we have the unique distinction of living in places that were built to break up walkable communities. Much of present urban America was shaped in the 1960s or after, when living, working, and playing in one place became passé. In rural areas, cities, and neighborhoods that orbit around cars, a vacuum of isolation now bars us from strong community connections. Those connections would provide a sense of self, social identity, and political purpose. In the absence of cultural (i.e. immigrant and ethnic) or geographic (i.e. neighborhood) community, most people go searching for a placebo. They frequently land on churches, mosques, synagogues and the like. This is not random.

Faith communities or more accurately, faith institutions, replicate hierarchy and patriarchy, maintaining the existing order of society. They offer guidance in overwhelming, chaotic surroundings, often in the form of authoritarian orders. Unlike in secular society, however, they are presented in a paternal manner that feels familial (based on the patriarchal model children learn at home). Folded into teachings of love, justice, and morality (concepts open to wide interpretation), the rituals and tenets of faith almost always replicate leadership from above and dominance by male figures. The paternal hierarchy of religious order answers a strong yearning for close knit community. Even though hierarchy, patriarchy, and capitalism threaten and destabilize us, many people associate them with the need for safety and comfort. This is pure reflex. We were all raised amidst these oppressive structures. We know what to expect and how to respond. On a certain level, we respond positively to these systems. Realizing this can inform the culture of radical propaganda and groups. We’re good at critiquing hierarchy, patriarchy, and capitalism. We might go further, and start to acknowledge and compensate for how appealing these institutions are, because they are etched deeply on our psyches. The simple fact of feeling familiar draws millions of people to prefer this social arrangement to anything different.

As radicals of social, anarchist, non-hierarchical, feminist inclinations, it’s vital to recognize this genuine human need for feeling comfortable, oriented, and safe. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, these impulses rank directly under physical demands of food, water, warmth, and rest. Political struggle is much less urgent to our survival instinct.

Many people would rather be told what to do because it’s familiar than endure the struggles of learning new, less oppressive, ways of existing. The lessons that faith institutions teach are very puzzling. They contradict themselves. Despite the teachings of all the holy books, which command (or suggest as morally imperative) sharing with others and living through acts of compassion and love toward humanity, the deeply ingrained dream of independence, bootstraps, and superhero I-did-it-all-by-myself success perseveres. While preaching compassion, community, and generosity, faith institutions frequently act out individuality, criticism, and disregard for the social welfare of humanity. Why don’t people want a community that allows them to decide what they believe, who they love, what they do with their bodies and whether or not their children die in crusades? Why do they prefer the insularity of a conformist “in” group to compassion for everyone? An inclusive perspective of who deserves survival and justice allows people the freedom to be different from one another. The “in” group (which radical communities also easily replicate) demands unnecessary and repressive conformity.

Why do people go for this? Often it’s a question of family. In the words of a radical who was raised in an Apostolic Christian church, “How could you quit it? It’s the only thing you have.” She recalls being told that people outside the church were “morally inept.” There was no way to know any different because everybody she knew was in the church. It was a community in isolation. She explains that “people dropped it, but [they] came back because they wanted their families,” who completely rejected individuals who left the church.

A radical leftist movement can’t replicate right wing institutions that harbor one’s entire childhood community and family. But maybe it can compete. Some radical communities are doing this quite well. People recreate family, build new structures of support, safety, and familiarity. They do it consciously, well aware that we need these elements in our lives, more than we need to develop sharp political analyses and win campaigns (though they don’t need to be mutually exclusive).

Another thing that faith communities offer people, which nothing else in U.S. culture does, is the permission to be ethical or moral in the world. Ethics is a formal, deductively logical system of deciding right and wrong; morality is a set of codes based on cultural agreement of a people, for determining the same. In a nation where intellectual discussion of politics is shunned and religion is dogmatically if artificially banned, there is little room for ethics or morality to play an overt role. (However, if you want to sway people to totalitarian or capitalist policy, you can use the façade of morality as propaganda.) This is an important lesson for lefty radicals. Humans want to incorporate their intuitive sense of right and wrong into their intellectual grasp of politics and social vision. Again, it’s up to us to string the words together that do this. We certainly have examples from our history. Emma Goldm
an swayed crowds with her passionate claims for anti-war and anarchist beliefs on the basis of ethics. In Living My Life, she recounts a hostile audience in England, which she turns to her favor. On the topic of war, she deplores: “Who is there who would supinely sit by when what is best and highest in a people is being throttled before his very eyes?” More recently, the decentralized model of acting and speaking not as a leader but as a participant of radical social movements has yielded many anonymous voices that dissolve hierarchy and patriarchy and result in a less oppressed society. Madjiguène Cissé of the Sans-Papiers (a grassroots organization of African immigrants living in France) writes in We Are Everywhere (Verso 2004), “If we had not taken our autonomy, we would not be here today…Many organizations [told] us we could never win…We had to learn democracy…women have played an extremely important role in this struggle.”

Faith communities also possess the strength of longevity. Show up at city hall with your synagogue and people won’t say, “Jews? Never heard of ‘em.” To hook up with a faith community is to tap into a several century, even multi-millennial, history that works as credibility—or to a lesser degree, notoriety—in the broader world. Faith communities have a reputation for being honest and moral, despite the historical record. In reality some people are and some people aren’t honest and moral, as everywhere in societies. But the perception makes it easier accomplish things, as faith institutions can solicit broad support based on general trust.

In other times and places in history, revolutionary, secular movements were able to gain broad popularity (early 20th century Spain, currently in Afghanistan). Those movements were popular as a result of the complete control and overt repression of the faith institutions (Catholicism and fundamental Islam, in those cases). We do not live in such a place and time. Religion has a heavy influence on society around the globe, but here in the U.S. we aren’t living under its total control. And if we don’t want to wait around for the “moral majority” to create such blatant disaster, we need to understand where our own radical communities fall short and that faith communities fill some of those gaps. The opposite is also true; faith communities often obstruct revolutionary change. But what they do provide is a little higher on the hierarchy of needs, so we need to cultivate those same phenomena with our social and political critiques.

What a Long Strange Trip it’s Been

At Slingshot’s 17th birthday party, the Slingshot Collective awarded the first annual Wingnut prize for Lifetime Achievement to our comrade B Soffer. B’s auto-biography appears below. Slingshot created the Wingnut prize because direct action radicals generally lack awards and recognition, and that is sad. While sometimes awards are part of systems of hierarchy, a complete lack of recognition for long-term activists robs us of changes to appreciate and learn from the contributions individuals can make during a lifetime of struggle, disruption and wackiness.

By Wingnut, we mean an individual who walks the thin line between insanity and a refusal to abide by silly social conventions, mixed with a radical political analysis and practice. Wingnuts are incapable of recognition within the “mainstream” radical movement because they’re too on the edge. Folks like Noam Chomsky and David Solnit make great contributions to the movement, but they get enough recognition from the more respectable parts of the movement and mainstream society. Wingnut activists are little known outside their immediate circle — on the national level, they are invisible. Except to Slingshot and other wingnuts that is. Wingnuts can be — and usually are — a bit annoying at times, but their heart is utterly in the right place — with the struggle for liberation.

So we salute B — a real wingnut. We’ll announce the 2nd annual award on Slingshot’s birthday March 9, 2006. Nominations will be accepted until then.

Autobiography of B

By B

Conceived in Chicago, born in Jamaica, B’s been on the road ever since. B has never completed or graduated from any school including but not limited to college, high school, junior high, or grammar school although he has attended all of them. In the early sixties B volunteered in the New York office of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) the most radical of the national civil rights groups. At this time he was living in Greenwich Village and working in folk music clubs. In the mid-sixties he was arrested a couple of times for vagrancy in Arizona and was involved in a successful case the ACLU used in challenging that law which started “any non Indian who…”. B has been arrested over 120 times in the previous millennium (his last arrest was in April 1999 at the protests over the take-over of progressive radio station KPFA).

In the late sixties B was active in the antiwar and counter culture movement, primarily in NYC. B published an underground newspaper (mimeographed Street Sheet), ran a switchboard, worked with Abbie Hoffman et al. and was on the original steering committee of the Youth International Party (YIPPIE!). B spent most of 1968 organizing to get people to come to Chicago for the Democratic Convention where he miraculously avoided being arrested. However, while trying to recruit talent for the “Festival of Life” in Chicago, B was ejected from the Newport Folk festival and run out of town by the police for giving pornographic literature to a nun. B was also one of the 700+ folks who were arrested in the occupation of Columbia University (Math Building Commune).

The decade ended with the Indians back on Alcatraz and B as one of the original crew of the Hog Farm commune “Fast Bus”, The Incredible ASP. Later, after being part of “Wavy’s Navy”, B got off the bus and went to live in Vermont to work with Earth People’s Park a 600+ acre piece of land that was bought on the Canadian border with the only rule imposed from off the land being “Access to the land will be denied to nobody”. In Vermont, B’s Commune became involved with a network of collectives known as “Free Vermont”. As part of Free Vermont B was involved with founding the Burlington Free Clinic and practiced medicine there as a “paramedic”. During this time he was one of the founders of The Vermont Health Rights Committee a local chapter of the Medical Committee for Human Rights. B left Vermont to nip at the heels of the “Freedom Train” a national Bicentennial Sell-abration on wheels that visited all 48 contiguous states. After a couple of years on the road B landed in Southern California where his uncle had a computer business and the Hog Farm had an organic Grape Farm.

The Eighties began with B in Berkeley, living with the Hog Farm on Woolsey St. and working in Babylon, the Hog Farm’s Answering Service. It was a relatively quiet decade for B who did some electrical work and opened and ran Acme Solvents, a company in Oakland. Politically B was involved in some local issues in Berkeley such as Rent Control, People’s Park and the fight to save the Ashby Flea Market and B also did a small amount of local work on some national issues like the anti-apartheid movement. To help the Hog Farm pay off the land bought in Mendocino County, B has worked with the Grateful Dead “skeleton crew” in campgrounds, back stage in the Kids Room, as part of “Flash” (the dragon that danced at the Dead Chinese New Year’s shows) and in various other Hog Farm functions for the Grateful Dead as well as at Electric on the Eel and Hog Farm Pignics.

The Eighties ended with B involved in working to organize a Green Party and trying to put it on the ballot in California. After a few years work in which B personally registered over 3000 people (of 88,000 required) as Greens, in 1992 the Green Party of California received ballot status. B has been active with the Green Party ever since. B is one of the founding members of the John Muir Greens. B is a self proclaimed “State-ist” and is prepared to die for the State, but hopes that before that is needed we will be able to have at least a halfway decent one.

As B has been fading into his twilight years, content to rest on his laurels, he enjoys hanging out and giving people a hard time. Upon hearing that he had been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award, B wanted to be sure to give thanks to all the little people who made his receiving it possible, the elves, the dwarfs, the munchkins, the hobbits, the gnomes and dare it be said, the trolls. Yes, even the trolls…

Jennifer Dieges, an occasional Slingshot writer and Organizer artist who lived with a number of Slingshot collective members, died March 19 of breast cancer. She was 35.

Jenn and I were a couple for a little over a year and after we broke up, we were best friends. She moved into my house two years ago and died there — in her own bed with her dignity intact. I was with her when she died, along with her mother and her sister. All our housemates were outside her room as she breathed her last breath.

Jenn was raised in a conservative Republican family in Southern California and her life represented an impressive journey to new ideas. She considered herself an eco-feminist and lived her ideals in many big and small ways. She loved communal living, sharing and living lightly on the earth. She was an avid bicyclist who biked to almost all her chemotherapy treatments. As she got too sick to ride by herself, she would ride on the back of my tandem bike. She protested the WTO in Seattle even though her doctor told her to avoid tear gas because of her treatments.

Jenn was a citizen of the world serving in the Peace Corps in Togo in West Africa after college and also living in England and Australia. She was terribly disappointed that her cancer prevented her from living on all 6 continents.

Jenn was a poet who wrote and read constantly. Her last Slingshot article entitled “Getting Around is Not AUTOmatic” appeared in issue #84. She was a loud person — argumentative and opinionated — with a great heart. She cared about everyone around her equally, without ranking people. At the very end of her life when we were scheduling people to sit with her, I handed her a list of the huge number of people who wanted to visit and asked her to tell me who should get to come first — she wrote “1” next to all the names.

She was an outdoors person who loved river rafting, backpacking, skiing and rock climbing. Even as the cancer weakened her body, she refused to let it limit her adventures. She went snow camping — cross-country skiing with a frame backpack to hot springs in the Sierras — about two months before she died.

After the cancer had metastasized to her bones, Jenn completed her teaching credential and became an English teacher at Berkeley High School where she helped found the School of Social Justice and Ecology — a small school within a school. She beat the cancer when it spread to her brain with a single radiation treatment. When the cancer spread to her liver, she kept teaching while doing increasingly harsh chemotherapy.

Jenn fought cancer for 7 years and the cancer hung over her the whole time I knew her. But Jenn never let the cancer define her life — she lived life like she didn’t have cancer. Mostly, unless she told you she had cancer, you wouldn’t know. Jenn didn’t lose her fight with cancer — in a profound way, she won.

Sometimes those with the deepest understanding of the world around them are the most paralyzed about how to make use of that knowledge. At times Ann Bulla revealed a profound wisdom which ecstatically mixed eastern spirituality, anti-civilization thought, traveling drop-out culture and synchronistic intuition. Through this understanding, Ann led the people around her on adventures which changed and enriched our lives, while she often remained unaltered and unimpressed, still seeking an experience that was deeper and more intense.

Ann was a mystery to most who met her or saw her around — perhaps because she demanded that her few long term interpersonal relationships be so intense that they became a torturous journey to the heights of ecstasy and the depths of despair.

Ann explored a vast range of life styles. She spent time at Twin Oaks, East Wind and Ganas intentional communities, followed Rainbow Gatherings, and rambled with a band of spiritual freaks dedicated to traveling without money in search of God on a journey that led her across North America twice, including a stint living in a cave in the desert outside Moab, Utah. She bottom lined with East Bay Food Not Bombs, lived at S.P.A.Z. collective, sang with the Eastern-influenced experimental band “Co” and traveled to both Mexico and India because of dreams and premonitions of enlightenment, direction and healing.

In the end Ann was a mystery even to herself. She never quite knew if the jarring depersonalization, torturous anxiety, and deep depression which plagued her were caused by repressed memories of molestation, biochemical imbalances, energy problems in her chakras, black magic, or demonic possession — at times she hypothesized all of these.

The world could have destroyed Ann: she could have become a Prozac popping drone, a lobotomized prisoner of the state’s psyche wards, or a lost soul wandering the streets in an angry babbling daze. She saw these imminent possibilities and told me in the last couple months of her life that she just wanted to get out now, before things became a whole lot worse. Despite all the ideas that her friends and family inundated her with about how to become healthy again, it was the option of taking autonomous power over her own life and death which ultimately drew Ann most intensely. Perhaps she was in a muddled suicidal trance, or perhaps she saw more clearly than all the optimistic people who loved her so much that they couldn’t let go.

Ann’s final hours were her last great adventure: she stole a car, took it out into a wild area of fields and woods, hiked up into hills full of deer, turkey and butterflies, and lay down as the sun was setting and the stars coming out, to set off on her final, deepest and most intense experience of all.

Indigenous people defend their autonomy in Oaxaca

I am a wild being, a child of nature, because of this I feel any atack directed at my freedom. My soul is animated by the pulse of the mountains that watched my birth, a vigorous beat, a pure beat. — Ricardo Flores Magon

Right now the government of Oaxaca is conducting a low-intensity war against indigenous peoples who have organized to defend their traditional way of life. The state’s jails have been filling every day with social fighters, activists, indigenous people, and campesinos. It is also common to find people grieving for compañeros or family members who have been killed by despotism and governmental tyranny.

CIPO-RFM

Constant aggression, persecutions, detainment, jailing, intimidation, and raids bring suffering to the members of the Indigenous Popular Council of Oaxaca- Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-RFM). CIPO is made up of 20 communities and about 2000 members in Oaxaca’s seven regions. In the face of constant struggle, the position of this organization has been to radically oppose the destruction of the forests and the presence of paramilitary. The paramilitary want to infiltrate the communities because the people oppose privatization of their lands and they recognize that political parties are only for greed—that politics can only divide, trick and maintain oppression through paramilitary power.

Due to CIPO’s well-organized, anti-authoritarian resistance, the government intensified the campaign of repression against CIPO in April 2003. Members were threatened with psychological torture and death, if they continued to struggle for the indigenous communities against the interests of the government and the rich.

In response to the innumerable injustices, the indigenous people of the CIPO decided to start an indefinite rally in April 2004 and occupy the Zocalo (central plaza) of Oaxaca City. Under the banner “For Reorganization and Free Association of the People– Not to Command or Obey,” they denounced the repression and demanded a cease of hostilities, the destruction of the forests, and the punishment and murders of their people.

Five months later, very early in the morning and without prior warning or any justification, the occupation was brutally evicted. More than 150 “Executors of the Law”, including federal uniformed and undercover police armed with batons, poles, pistols, high caliber guns, tear gas, and dogs savagely beat the people. The police pulled them by their hair, destroyed their belongings, broke their cameras and sound equipment, and threw away their food and art.

Finally police stuffed people into two unmarked trucks where they continued beating them saying they were going to rape the women and kill everyone. Various active members who were injured and tortured are now prisoners in Oaxaca prisons, including the prison of Ixcotel.

Now the CIPO-RFM does not exist; only dreams remain. What once was CIPO-RFM is now AMZ (Alianza Magonista-Zapatista), a mix of pro-Magonista and pro-Zapatista organizations.

January 2005, Xanica, Oaxaca

Using the tactics of the Dirty War of the 60s and 70s, more than 230 police have established martial law in the indigenous Zapoteco community of Santiago Xanica, making raids and arbitrary detentions.

It’s been 6 years since the town of Zapoteca, in the southern mountains of the state, began a struggle to defend their collective rights to automomy, mainly the right to elect their own government according to tradition. In February 1999, the state government imposed an authority and since then, the community has not had peace or freedom. It took 2 years of struggle to get the illegitimate municipal president to quit.

In August 2004, the government, with help from rich agribusiness ranchers, appointed Sergio Garcia as municipal president, violating indigenous election codes. Two-thirds of the indigenous election assembly walked out, demonstrating Garcia’s illigitimacy. The election assembly sets requirements for election elegibility, including community service requirements, which were ignored by Garcia.

The Committee for the Defense of the Indigenous Rights of Santiago Xanica (CODEDI) then began the impeachment of Sergio Garcia. Since the government broke the customs and practices to fraudulently impose an authority complicit with Oaxaca’s government, the brutality of the repression has increased. This endangers the lives of CODEDI members and other Santiago Xanica residents. CODEDI resolved not to do community services or assist tequios (community work days) called by Sergio Garcia after January 1, 2005 .

On January 15, a few minutes before noon, the (Federal) Preventative Police, lead by the impostor president, with 2 patrols of local cops, surrounded indigenous workers who had formed a tequio and began shooting. In the crossfire more than 80 people of Xanica were injured. Among them were Abraham Ramirez Vazquez, director of CODEDI Xanica, who was critically wounded, and 2 youths, Juventino and Noel Garcia Cruz, who were under arrest in the hospital and afterwards transferred to Oaxaca’s penitentiary.

On January 16, undercover and State Police with high caliber weapons harassed compañeros from the region under the orders of Sergio Garcia and the community’s priest. Since then more than 250 ministerial and state police have been working to choke out the popular discontent. This has a cost of blood and violence, cancels out guarantees of basic rights of freedom of movement, freedom of expression and demonstration, and violates the most fundamental human rights.

For more information, contact:

Colectiveo Autonomo Magonista camadf@yahoo.com.mx

www.nodo50.org/cipo

the struggle for a life without violence

It’s been 3 months since I first saw the banner Nunca Mas! in Chihuahua, Mexico with photos of women gone missing, then found violated and dead. Mexico felt safe, but the more I traveled south, the more posters I saw, the more stories I read. The zine, Femicidio, reports that more than 340 women in Juarez City alone have been brutally murdered since 1993—right next to El Paso, TX, the third safest city in the US. Once I crossed the border to Guatemala, similar stories appeared of women mutilated, raped, and murdered daily. According to the feminist newspaper, La Cuerda (11/2004), in the past 2 years, more than 700 women in Guatemala have died from femicide, what Femicidio describes as the mass slaughter of women. And since 2001, 1,188 women have died from femicide (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights No. 20/04). Below is some of the information I gathered while in Guatemala for 2 1/2 months, in the hopes that you will read this and tell others, tell the government of Guatemala, tell your country, your media, that enough is enough. Ya basta.

A History of Violence•why is this happening?

The 36-year brutal war in Guatemala killed some 200,000 people, mostly indigenous. Since the Peace Accords in 1992, senseless murder has not disappeared. Most Guatemalans are afraid to walk at night, especially in Guatemala City, in fear of growing maras, gangs. On average, 2 people die a day in Guatemala City alone (La Hora, 2/2005), and the wealthy 3% own 64% of the land (Agenda Maya, 2005). Peace hasn’t exactly prevailed. Violence has bred a culture of violence, compounded by the war. According to Rigoberto Menchu, 1992 Nobel Prize winner, the assassinations of so many women is one of the echoes of the war that Guatemala lived through and that left footprints of violence and deep resentment (Entremundos, 10, 11/2004). In 2002, 184 women were killed; in 2003, 250 women; and in 2004 more than 300 women (AP, 8/28/2004). And while many murders are stranger related, more incidences of domestic violence have been reported. One third of all female homicides have been related to domestic violence. While violence affects all sectors of society, the femicides are almost always accompanied by sexual assault and/or mutilation. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, this sends a message of terror and intimidation that women should leave public space and end their role in the development of their own country, leaving it to the perpetrators.

The women

Most of the victims have had two things in common; they were poor and had a low social status. Most of the women were ages 18-30, but all ages have been affected (CONAPREVI). Murders have happened in rural areas and in the cities. One third of femicides related to domestic violence have happened in Guatemala City alone (AP). Boyfriends, husbands, gang members, and strangers have committed the violence. There is no conspiracy; there is no one person or group to blame for the crimes.

Government Response

Vice-president Eduardo Stein says that the Guatemalan government is getting a bad rap for the statistics piling up about sexual violence. He reasons that the same level of violence exists in other Latin American countries (Prensa Libre, Lorena Seijo). The major response is that the violence is general, not misogynist. Maya, from Grupo Guatemalteco de Mujeres (GGM), said “the government is doing very little other than an investigation going on now, but it’s only in the capitol and it’s not very functional.” For indigenous women dealing with sexual violence, they are confronted with a racist penal system and little bilingual support. When women seek help, they have few places to go to. In Guatemala city, GGM has one safe house for women and in Xela, Nuevos Horizontes has one. Two shelters are hardly sufficient. Many women fear that speaking out will make matters worse for them. When women do find the courage to speak out, the investigations are usually short-changed and nothing comes of it. Lack of proof means that women must endure the recurrence of violence or retaliation.

Ni una muerte mas! Response from Guatemalan Women’s Groups

“Not even one more death!” women yelled at the National Palace of Culture this year as CONAPREVI and other groups gathered to denounce the rise in sexual violence and the government’s complacency. “Enough of good intentions and little action already!” CONAPREVI has been active in creating laws to help make women’s voices heard. They have just created a ten year plan to address sexual violence. Most of CONAPREVI has made sexual violence a public issue by raising funding for research and investigations necessary to make people believe this is a real issue. One member, Maya talked about the actions that GGM and others do. “We write about the issue, report on it, and on a governmental level CONAPREVI is helping to make laws. We also do sit-ins, demonstrations, vigils, and marches.”

International Support

When I mentioned to Maya and the women at CONAPREVI that foreigners would be interested in supporting their efforts, they were delighted. The women at CONAPREVI kept saying, “Welcome! Welcome!” and that any support would be appreciated. They seemed to especially like the idea of speaking about these issues, writing about them in the US and putting pressure on the Guatemalan government to intervene. Volunteer opportunities are open for both groups, in translating or other work. You can reach GGM at ggms@intelnet.net.gt, and CONAPREVI at conaprevi@intelnet.net.gt.

Overall, people felt that the government was ignoring sexual violence, leaving women like Maya afraid to walk alone at night; afraid her daughter won’t make it back from school or work. However, stopping at this conclusion alone leaves one a victim. I admire that despite the bureaucratic walls they are up against and a culture of misogyny, the women I spoke with are fighting together and making the media and the government listen to them. Little by little they are transforming their society into a more equitable one. I am grateful for the hard work of so many Guatemalan women and all the information they shared with me.

To Contact the US embassy in Guatemala: guatemala.usembassy.state.gov.

Please send comments to the author at kindlady76@ hotmail.com

Radical activists with family in the military

My brother is twenty-one years old. Since October of 2002, he has been in the US Army, a decision which I, as an anti-imperialist, have naturally had a really hard time with. This decision inevitably found him fighting in Iraq for a year and a half, just like the tens of thousands of other US soldiers being used to wage this obscene war. It was not until I was talking to a friend of mine who also has a younger brother in Iraq did it really hit me that there are bound to be thousands of others like us- anarchist/ anti-capitalist activists with family and other loved ones serving in the military. This is not an easy position to be in; I personally have struggled with trying to balance my feelings of loyalty and love for my brother (and cousin, and all the others in my family for that matter) with my absolute horror and disgust with the job he is currently performing. Talking to others in my situation, I realize that our position also poses problems not only in how we relate to our families (who are often conservative or have a hard time understanding our beliefs), but also within our various activist communities.

Because this topic is so closely interwoven with issues of class, I feel that it’s important to address this first. Many of us are finally starting to understand that for a lot of soldiers, their decision to enlist has a lot more to do with a lack of other viable options than a desire to go and hold citizens at gunpoint in 120-degree weather. Combine that with what is often the working-class family expectations of military service, social expectations around masculinity and contrived notions of “honor” and “courage,” and it’s not hard for most people to see why military enlistment can seem okay to an average, middle-America kid without a lot else on the horizon. The mainstream (and often even leftist) media, however, would never dare open a discussion around this, and is also quite adept at overlooking those of us from these same backgrounds who have chosen to dissent.

One of the reasons I’m writing this article is because there seems to be a belief in this country that there are two kinds of people: “liberals” and “conservatives,” both replete with their own sets of stereotypes; i.e. you believe the government should pay for everything, or you want to sit back and count your money while waging war on anyone who isn’t American. The reality of the situation, of course, is that nobody actually fits into these crazy stereotypes completely. My Mormon, Republican mother, for instance, could give a lot clearer analysis of why people are boycotting Wal-Mart than most of the anarchists I know, and I am aware that it continually surprises conservative adults when they realize that I do not support banning gun use and ownership (although as an anarchist, I don’t exactly believe in banning anything)…But I digress.

The point is, the right wing of Amerikkka has painted our myriad movements of anti-oppression as being the whining of a few disenchanted white, upper middle class college kids with too much time on their hands. This makes it incredibly easy for the rest of the country to brush off what we’re saying by declaring us elitists or by assuming that what we are fighting for and against has nothing to do with their lives. While it is true that many with the time, access to information, and privilege to actively participate in radical politics do fit the stereotypes, there are also many, many people who do not- those of us who are working class, and/or people of color, and/or queer, and/or disabled, and/or…the list goes on and on. Allowing outside forces to put a specific face and label on our movements completely denies visibility to all of us “others,” and if we don’t rail against the assertions thrown our way, our movements will continue to alienate, rather than empower those people who would benefit the most from the world we are trying to build. The fact that the working class of this country is increasingly embracing right-wing values is, to me, an indication that we are doing something wrong; and one of those things is believing the hype of “us” vs. “them.

All of these thoughts have made me wonder where I can start to find some common ground with those who I personally often feel so different from. It is clear to me that there can be no real discussion of the ramifications of war and our families who are fighting it without looking at the reasons why we live this way in the first place. When my friend and I first began having this discussion, I realized that although I was aware of several friends in the same situation (siblings or close relatives in Iraq), none of us had ever really talked to each other about it. It has been really strange and challenging for me to navigate my feelings around wanting to support my little brother while he’s in this incredibly intense situation, and yet still trying to help him understand why I think that the whole idea of this war, and even this country as it stands, is disgusting. It is odd to me that this is not something that is really being discussed in radical circles, at least not the ones that I inhabit.

One of the first ideas my friend and I came up with was to try to put together an anthology of stories from other radicals who are dealing with this same situation. There is a lot to be said here- about upbringing, about class, about race, racism, our internalized issues with all of these things and most of all how we each handle the nuances of dealing with our families (each of which, of course, comes with its own set of beliefs and experiences). I want to know how each person is handling this, what their unique experiences have been, and I think that having this insight can help a lot of other people, too. I am hoping that this project can help both activists who are not experiencing this type of situation and people who would generally have a hard time accepting radical viewpoints to see that we are all humans, after all, each of us with our own complex ways of seeing the world and moving in it. I want to help break down these invisible barriers and bring people together around the things they can agree on: namely, we love our families and want them to be safe and do the “right” thing.

Even more than putting together the book, though, what we are hoping is to help start a dialogue that will eventually lead to more understanding between both ourselves and the communities we come from, as well as the new communities we have created for ourselves. Bridging this gap is often perilous and many of us have experienced the alienation of feeling like we don’t fully belong to “either” world, but that we are still undeniably a part of “both.” We want to help inspire conversations among friends and loved ones about this, and we are even planning a forum here in San Francisco where people can come together to share their stories and build a tangible system of support around this.

So! Write us your story, come to the forum, or if you’re not in the Bay Area we hope you will start your own networks. Solidarity begins with understanding and building real alliances- as friends, family, and fellow human beings. Hope to hear from you soon! Pike On A Bike.

To write or submit a story for the book, you can email: common_bonds@riseup.net, or snail mail to PO Box 460-412, San Francisco, CA 94146.

It’s not crazy to want to participate in the fate of your cunt. And—surprise!—choosing to have an abortion doesn’t have to mean paying a wealthy HMO to do it. For those of us unhappy with inviting chemicals or surgery into the abortion scene, menstrual extraction (ME) is an alternative option that can be safe, effective & cheap.

While herbal abortion may be the most visible abortion option in radical culture, menstrual extraction provides another clear alternative to participating in the “health care” industry. And, despite what the medical profession, the church, and the state want you to believe, reclaiming this low-tech reproductive technology is possible, and it can be safe.

The first time this anarcha-feminist got pregnant, she also got a little confused. I didn’t want to be pregnant. But I also didn’t want to call some receptionist at a Planned Parenthood clinic, schedule an appointment, meet a doctor, fall asleep, and wake up groggy & un-pregnant, problem solved! I wanted to participate in my abortion, and I didn’t want to be separated from the physical & emotional sensations of it. Amazingly, I was lucky enough to have access to an experienced menstrual extraction practitioner, and I had the privilege of turning what could’ve been one of the most traumatic experiences in my life into one of the most empowering.

In the ME procedure, the contents of the uterus (i.e. the fetus) are manually suctioned out using equipment you can gather in your own kitchen and a science supply store for under $100. It usually lasts 15-30 minutes, and the pain is like experiencing a regular cycle worth of menstrual cramps in a few minutes. Yeah, it hurts, but I could take it. There’s no anesthesia, no painful & traumatic dilation of the cervix, and no high powered vacuums involved.

Oh yeah, and it’s illegal. A menstrual extraction performed on a woman without a confirmed pregnancy is legal, and can be used to get rid of an inconvenient period. But as soon as a fertilized egg is present, whoever’s performing it can be charged with practicing medicine without a license & lots of other bullshit. Obviously, anything that provides women with easy access to reproductive control should be outlawed.

The procedure was developed underground in 1970 by Los Angeles feminist activists, & was all the rage till ’73 when Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. The legal availability of surgical abortion pretty much squashed the ME movement, despite ME’s potential to serve as a low-cost abortion option for poor folks. There was somewhat of a menstrual extraction revival in the early 90’s, when the Supreme Court granted states new leeway to regulate abortion and fear was once again struck in the hearts of the pro-choice masses. Activists toured the country doing menstrual extraction workshops, selling ME kits, and showing the video “No Going Back” which demonstrates the specifics on how to perform an extraction.

That was the last time menstrual extraction surfaced into the public spotlight. Underground, though, the body of knowledge surrounding menstrual extraction still exists, as do networks of experienced women who’ve been performing them for 30 years—but these practitioners are few and far between. It’s amazing how many anarchist ladies & reproductive rights activists have never heard of this technique, which has the potential to change the way women experience abortion. It’s amazing that in 2002—30 years after the legalization of abortion—I found myself making a secret phone call and using code words to obtain an abortion. Roe v. Wade may have granted women the legal right to obtain publicly acceptable forms of abortion, but it didn’t grant me access to the low-tech, empowering abortion I wanted. Rebecca Chalker’s book “A Woman’s Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, & RU-486” offers specifics on the procedure & equipment. But don’t be fooled: this is not a self-abortion technique, and not something you can do hastily. Menstrual extraction needs to be researched and practiced in the context of a women’s self-help or gynecological self-care group, under the guidance of a skilled practitioner. I am not a health care provider or doctor, but I am an anarchist, a feminist, and someone really grateful for having had access to a menstrual extraction.

EDITORS’ NOTE:

The SlingShot Collective would like to add that Menstrual Extraction can ONLY be performed in the earliest stages of pregnancy, sometimes up to 7 weeks if you dilate the cervix. Also. anytime you extract things from the uterus there is a risk of infection, so insuring absolute cleanliness throughout the process is a necessity. Additionally, taking a pregnancy test is advisable, especially after an ME, to make sure that everything in the uterus was indeed extracted.

I have been active in the radical/anarchist community for a pretty long time now, and through my interactions with that community as a crazy person some things have become obvious to me. I have noticed that most of the folks active in the anarchist community hold themselves up to a standard that most cannot achieve. This leads to activist burn-out, and says something about how accessible and accountable we are to people who cannot achieve this ideal. There are many reasons that the activist community at large needs to deal with the problems that this paragon of revolution presents.

It seems to me that there is an ideal of what an activist should be that exists in the community that I have primarily been a part of since I was around sixteen; the anarchist punk community. I have seen this model both discussed and personified. Most of the people who are revered in this scene are involved in numerous projects and do an incredible amount of work. Most radicals know someone like this; they are the people who volunteer at a space, have six collective meetings a week, are organizing a conference, writing a book, run the local chapter of fill-in-the-blank, and still find time to do all that other stuff like work and eat and sleep, though perhaps not often. There are various differing reasons why these people are capable of doing so much. In no way do I want to negate the valuable contributions of all the people around the country single-handedly running various projects with talent and passion. They are indeed admirable. What I find is that there are many reasons that this model is not sustainable, at best, and problematic at worst.

One thing I have experienced a few of times in my life is activist burn out. There has been a time or two where I have just had to step back from the work I was doing and take some time to myself. Unfortunately, this time was taken after I had reached crisis and was in a very unhealthy space, rather than before I had gotten to that point, when I would have had a chance to maintain stability. When I stepped back, it was frowned upon by other activists. It seemed that the people around me felt I was taking some kind of “easy way out” or that I was being lazy. It was certainly not seen as a positive, healthy decision. In the past, I was embarrassed to admit that I am bipolar and that it greatly affects my life. People’s reactions to my admission of being crazy ranged from mutual embarrassment, to open disgust, to being just plain unsure of how to handle the information. The negative reactions made me feel like a burden to my community and taught me to try to hide that aspect of myself and keep striving towards being the Most Productive Person Ever. There were a couple of people who handled my craziness in an awesome, supportive way. I will always be grateful to them. (xo Sera).

I have seen burn-out in my friends as well. Most friends who have dealt with this agree with my assertion that there is not enough active support in the communities and projects we work with to be able to deal with the incredible amount of pressure we are under. Often, it seems that to complain about workload or to seek support is seen as “weakness.” Dealing with mental health, whether it is being crazy or simply striving to support someone who is having a hard time, has been largely neglected by the one very communities that needs to address it most. Having a radical perspective on society and institutions in this country can be a very tiring and frustrating position! Between the wars abroad; those here at home against people of color, women, trans folk, queers, poor people, disabled people, etc; and the capitalist system this country runs on being the antithesis of mutual aid, outrage can be overwhelming. Without systems of support in place, it is easy to become lost in despair, not to mention floored by the sheer amount of work it takes to make any kind of change. This is a reality that all radical activists have to deal with, so why shouldn’t we be trying to support and help each other deal with the world we live in?

It is especially in the interest of the activist community to deal with these problems. Every time an activist burns out and drops out of whatever work they are doing, we lose a valuable person who cares about things and is willing to work towards change. Within apathetic, mainstream American culture, people involved in the various movements fighting for real change are a minority, and can be taken for granted. Not only are we losing incredible people with a lot to offer by not supporting them, we are also failing them as a community. If our goal is to make the world a better place and forge new societies and communities based on mutual aid and sustainability, what does it mean when we can’t even take care of each other and keep things running? It is incredibly important that we set up systems of support to combat activist burn-out. We need to respect and affirm the need to take breaks, or retire altogether. Self-care is radical! Be sure that not everything that you do is activist-focused. It is okay to take some time for yourself! In order to maintain energy you must have it to begin with; recharge in some way that suits you, whether it be sleeping in till noon, spending a weekend camping, calling in to a meeting and going to a movie instead- take some time off! We should all be working towards a community in which it is possible for people to do this. If one person is in charge of an entire project, how can they ever take time for themselves? Or, for that matter, live their lives? Work forty hours a week? Raise their children? If our project would fall apart if one or two people took time off, then we need to look at the model. That isn’t very sustainable.

This leads me to another problem I see in this model of the “perfect activist.” Not all people are capable of funneling endless amounts of energy into activism. I know that for myself, there are days that I can’t even get out of bed. There is a myriad of reasons why someone couldn’t dedicate the majority of their life to “The Revolution”, whether it be that they are a single mom with three jobs, or they are a bipolar, socially anxious crazy kid (like me); many people can’t maintain that level of energy. This is not to discount the work of the many people who manage to devote boundless energy to projects even while having the cards stacked against them. I just find myself wondering why the activist community holds up this ideal that is not within the capabilities of so many types of people; often times the very people activists claim to be fighting for. Often, progressively minded folks do not recognize this behavior in themselves until it is pointed out to them. Some questions to ask yourself are:

What privileges allow me to be working on this project?

What are my attitudes towards my fellow activists?

What are my attitudes towards the people I am “fighting for?”

Am I contributing to the self-empowerment of people or are my attitudes more paternalistic?

Do I think I am “saving” people?

Do I recognize the work of others, even if it is not how I would do it?

I think this last one is important to note. There are all different types of activism and resistance. There is no “one way” to do things. That mentality is very counterproductive, not to mention ableist and symptomatic of the white supremacy culture that dominates this country*. If we only praise people who do activism “our way,” we are excluding others. We are creating a dynamic that places the “ideal” at the top and implies that other models are inferior or nonproductive.

One important solution that should be discussed is creating a culture of appreciation. The dominant culture in this country does not teach us to appreciate the hard work and contributions of the people around us. We need to change this pattern. To do so will take commitment; it is unlearning an aspect of our socialization. Next ti
me you are working on a project with someone, take some time out to think about the amount of work that the both of you have put into the project, not how much more you have to do. Recognize and respect the time taken to work on the project and any sacrifices either of you have made in order to get things done. Be vocal! Give praise; don’t just assume that because you aren’t criticizing someone that they know you think they are doing a good job. Focus on constructive criticism rather than destructive criticism. Be sure to be aware of the people who have come before you. Not only is it comforting to know the stories of people who have fought before you, but we can learn a lot from history. No need to reinvent the wheel! Give credit where credit is due.

This problem cannot be solved by one article, and I don’t think the solution is to come up with an alternative ideal. We should each be setting our own standards and not trying to live up to someone else’s. That flexibility is what attracted me to anarchism in the first place: do what works best for you while maintaining accountability and equality. I think that what is important is that we have dialogue on the topics discussed in this piece. How can we support crazy folks? How can we support non-crazy folks having a hard time? How can we prevent crisis or activist burn-out before it happens? It is up to us to create the solutions. The only thing stopping us is an ideal that many of us erroneously hold ourselves up to; it is time we stopped looking up to that person we are trying to be and look to each other instead. We are all valuable, productive and creative people; it is time to scrap the model that tells us otherwise!

* See Tema Okun’s article “White Supremacy Culture” on the Challenging White Supremacy website.

The month of March saw an amazing amount of direct action/civil disobedience events in retaliation against the implementation of the aggregious Biscuit Salvage Logging “recovery” plan. This is a complex of many timber sales comprising almost 20,000 acres slated for destruction, or 372 million board feet. Although 95% of the 23,000 comments posted on the sale were against the logging scheme, the forest service proceeded to release the sales, flying in the face of public opinion and fueling a controversy that increases to this day.

Resistance to the destruction of these wild places in the Siskiyou Mtns. has crystallized in March, with nearly 50 arrests occuring in acts of civil disobedience that included 4 technical blockades of eight dollar mountain road (leading to the fiddler timber sale, in land legally designated as an old growth reserve), and the erection of a giant tripod in the streets of portland that blocked traffic in front of the forest service office for nearly 2 hours. These actions build off the resistance generated last summer that included a rope blockade in the Indi timber sale, a tripod blockade halting operations in the Horse sale, and a rowdy costumed rally at the yearly Society of American Foresters meeting where potbanging locals clashed with USFS law enforcement and proceeded to chase US Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey out of town!

Visit www.rogueimc.org or portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/314311.shtml for more info on how to find us,