Category: Articles

Here’s another update of radical spaces and infoshops. Let us know if you know of any new spaces or places that have closed.

Rochester, New York Infohsop

The Rochester Infoshop is a cross tendency radical anti-capitalist library that hosts everything from anarchy, anarchist-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, primitivism, green anarchy, deep ecology, platformism, situationism, council communism, autonomist marxism, internationalism, international struggles, globalization, existentialism, and periodicals. They’re seeking donations of good periodicals, so send ‘em some. 222 Driving Park Ave. Rochester, NY 14613

Olympia, Washington Zine Library

Located in Last Word Books, an independent, student run collective bookstore, you can visit the zine library 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. 119 5th Avenue SE, Olympia, WA 98501 360-357-5255

Craiova, Romania Infoshop

Anarchists in Craiova have opened a library and infoshop featuring metings, workshop, and video showings. “The place is situated in the center of the town so it is gonna be very practical and we hope that the impact of our activities there will be very big.” They’re seeking zines, books, videos, etc. Popescu Adi, Aleea TeatruluI, BL.T2 Apt. 21, Craiova, DOLJ, COD 1100, Romania

Black Planet Books closing; will relocate and reopen with new name

Black Planet Books in Baltimore, Maryland has closed. They plan to reopen with a new name in April at a new space at the corner of St. Paul & Madison St. in the Mount Vernon district. Mount Vernon is a very centrally located area in the northern part of Baltimore. They will open up as a Cafe – Bookstore selling Fair Trade coffee and pastries. Watch this space for details.

Barricade infoshop, Australia

The 2004 Organizer contained the wrong address. The correct address is PO Box 199, East Brunswick VIC 3057 Australia. The current Shop address is: Upstairs @ Irene Community Arts Warehouse, 5 Pitt Street, Brunswick, VIC 3056

Autonomous Valley Collective

Folks are getting together an anti-authoritarian collective in the Antelope Valley (North Los Angeles County). They’re putting out a benefit music CD. No public address yet, but contact them at geocities.com/ AutonomousValley

Ecolibrium Environmental Shop

Located in Burlingame on the Peninsula South of San Francisco and just north of Silicon Valley, they carry zines, alternative magazines, videos, ecological products, clothing, bumpster stickers, shirts…lots of cool stuff. They also show free films once or twice a month. Check them out at 1160 Capuchino Ave Burlingame, CA 94010 (650)342-6054.

“So when you want to know good white folks in history where [people of color] are concerned, go read the history of John Brown. That was what I call a white liberal — those other kind, they are que

By Tomàs

It is a new year and I’m a year older; I normally take this time of year to digest what has happened, to plan for the future, to consider new paths I want to explore, to weigh the importance of things I have been doing. I look for new role models, new sources of inspiration.

When I think back about this year, I remember the earnestness of the people in my life trying desperately to do something, to make something happen, to affect a semblance of change. I think of my own actions, the subtle and not so subtle forms of resistance — writing, vandalism, billboard liberation, subversive and biased materials in my classes, premeditated encounters with folks I know disagree with me, guerilla theater. These have all been fun, all had their effect. But it is a new year and I am a year older, time’s a ticking and so a new year calls for new tactics, new role models.

John Brown saw 50 years of his liberal, law-abiding, business-making life do absolutely nothing to end slavery, to prevent the spread of it. For most of those years he did what normal anti-slavery proponents did: he stated his disapproval, he gave to helpful charities, he parented against it. Hell, he even moved to the free state of Kansas to leave the apathetic north that refused to pay anything but lip service to ending slavery and so he could simply live his life. He did what most of us do — see the evil and hope it will end, fight it by avoiding it, by turning away from it, by secluding ourselves from it.

But he changed. He happened to be in the epicenter of the Kansas guerilla war between the North and the South. And yes lots of things happened to him, but within five years or so he became the John Brown of myth (and of course lotsa romanticizing). Nevertheless, he decided to go to war against his government, he decided to pick up arms, to rally troops, to fight with deeds and bullets rather than words and money. Here was a man who could have continued to live happily within the confines of “feel good northern liberalism,” like so many of us do today; he could continue to benefit from his privileged position in society, like so many of us today eat, celebrate, work, recreate never once questioning these privileges; yet, he became the race traitor, the one who abandons his team when it is clearly in the lead, the one who recognizes community and connection and fears not the abandonment of riches and privileges. He gave it up and welcomed the salve and the redemption of authentic living. There are others like him that are the traitors: straight people standing with queers in direct action and not just in celebration on Castro street, the whites who attempt to understand reparations, who attempt to see diversity as diverse and multifaceted rather than food fairs and foreign films, men who refuse to let other men tell jokes about or comment on women in any fashion, adults who step in and speak up for youth who are continually demonized by cops, teachers, childless couples, single adult hipsters, anyone who has forgotten what it means to be young. There are others. And then, there’s you. And me.

I think we need to see how it is imperative to support those working for change in any way possible because it is only in the complete refusal to participate in this exploiting and dehumanizing way of life that it will change. It is, therefore, crucial that we support and encourage people to fight back with whatever weapons they want to employ. If you’re a parent, get involved with other parents in the PTA, if you’re a hipster, ride that bike, if you’re an E.L.F. member, burn that fucking condo.

But, and here’s the key, if you’re in the PTA and E.LF. actions come up, voice your solidarity with E.L.F. and the biker beside you in your minivan; if you’re on your bike, smile to that lady struggling to parent with hope and love and share stories with your people about direct action as necessary for change in the same way riding your bike is.

We can’t make the mistake of abandoning militant fighters because we don’t agree with their tactics; this only ostracizes them from their support network and makes them easy pray for FBI and police repression. Look at the Black Panther Party; they spoke of guns and middle class white liberals ran screaming.

Look at what happened in Seattle when anarchists smashed Nike town windows and liberal do-gooders circled the store singing we shall overcome and pointing out the perpetrators. I for one won’t burn a building down, but I’ll be damned if I choose not to recognize the need to change the course we are traveling. By any means necessary.

If you don’t like violence, don’t do it and don’t stand for the violence perpetrated in your name by cops and the government on its own citizens. When you hear about E.L.F. or other militant fighters, recognize the fight’s the same, but the tactics might be different. And we need them all if we are to have the luxury of thinking about how we could choose to live if we had the choice. I don’t know about you but I want that choice. And I want it now.

So this year I want more direct, confrontational actions on my part and on yours. I want you to know that when you step up, I got your back, when you pick up rocks, I’ll pick up rocks; I want us to consider new ways we can become the traitor to the privileges we all have access to. I want you to think of John Brown swinging from the gallows pole and instead of feel fear, feel inspired.

“I may be hung but I will not be shot. But what I will do is this: I will raise a storm in the country that will not be stayed so long as there is a slave on its soil.” John Brown

“We don’t want a government, we want to govern!” says Carlos Ortega, co-founder of Radio Perola, a community station at the center of local activism in the Caracas barrio of Caricuao. ”We want to decide what is done, when it’s done and how it’s done in our communities.”

People in Venezuela are in a remarkable position. With the encouragement of the leftist government, approximately one million people there are organizing themselves in a huge popular movement with strong anti-authoritarian strains. The democratically-elected president, Hugo Chavez, is the public face and voice of this monstrous movement– but it does not depend on him.

After seeing a salutary documentary on his successful recovery from the right-wing coup attempted against him in April 2002, it was impossible for me to not feel optimistic. I saw thousands of people take to the streets and force the opposition to return Chavez from a deserted island to the presidential palace.

But what was the real revolutionary potential of the grassroots social change sponsored by Chavez’s Bolivarian Movement? How did Chavez’s position as president affect his ability and motivation to make revolutionary change? More than optimism, I wanted an analysis of Chavez as a tool against US imperialism.

Beyond Bolivarian Circles

Chavez institutes political empowerment and social change through Bolivarian Circles, government-funded neighborhood organizations named after Simon Bolivar, a revolutionary fighter against Spanish colonialism in the early 1800s. The Bolivarian movement is essentially an action-oriented political party, and the official Bolivarian Circles include elements of political action committees in the US. But neighborhood organizing goes beyond government-sanctioned activities.

“Many barrio residents are taking action with little heed for official directives or government sanctions,” Reed Lindsay, a US reporter based in Argentina, wrote in the Manchester Guardian.

In the barrios, Bolivarian Circles fix broken water supply systems and run recycling programs. Committees take censuses and chart family histories as a part of a government plan to give land titles to families who have squatted in slums for decades.

On their own initiative, people organize “citizen assemblies” to discuss everything from neighborhood dynamics to national politics, and create local planning councils where city authorities are forced to share decision-making power with community representatives.

This mobilization led parents and students to take over a barrio elementary school last winter and restart classes with volunteer teachers, when the instructors walked out during the strike called by the right-wing opposition last winter.

And in the absence of Venezuelan doctors, who won’t enter the poor barrios, people receive door-to-door visits from Cuban doctors brought in by Chavez. The doctors operate out of health clinics taken over in the early 1990s by people fueled by what some call the first insurgency, the 1989 Caracas barrio riots that led to Chavez winning the presidency almost 10 years later.

The Venezuelan Constitution is a major force behind public mobilization. While Chavez is charismatic, it is the Constitution, based strongly on ideas of social equality, that people latch onto, read and discuss in the streets. At first I was impressed that Chavez had re-written the Constitution. As it turns out, new governments in many South American countries often bring in a new constitution to lend legitimacy to their regime. But rarely does a Constitution, the cornerstone of a state, provide inspiration for people to organize themselves independently.

“Paradoxically, it has been those leaders with feet of clay who have placed in the people’s hands some tools to develop the politics that will get rid of them, with a clear touch of autonomy and self-management;” writes the Venezuelan anarchist collective El Liberatorio.

Roland Denis, a leftist organizer and ex-minister in Chavez’s government, looks beyond this apparent dilemma. “Here it has been possible to reconcile grassroots movements inspired by anarchism with a conception of a different state…. There are projects in Venezuela that demonstrate that it is possible to transcend the contradiction between self-governance and the state.” If anti-authoritarian organizing permeated Venezuela, would people reinvent the state, or end it?

For the present, regardless of the tenacity of the state, people are making powerful, radical, meaningful changes in their lives and communities.

“It isn’t just about tens of thousands of people in the street, or even the constitutional changes that empower people,” observed solidarity activist Diana Valentine in January 2003. “In everyday encounters there’s this spirit of change–after greeting each other in the street people will immediately start talking about the projects they’re organizing, studying they constitution, establishing cooperatives.”

“What is new is not so much what the government is doing, but what is happening outside it,” says Arlene Espinal, a social worker and resident of a poor Caracas neighborhood. “There’s been a powerful reawakening in the barrios.”

Because the movement and the state are closely related, it is somewhat difficult to determine what would happen if the state changes direction. If a new regime changes the constitution yet again, how will the million people inspired by it on a daily basis react?

“The opposition might be able to slow the reforms and make people suffer–but stopping the revolutionary aspects of the process, the people’s self-organization and empowerment, they will find more difficult,” writes Reed Lindsay.

I would like to give people credit: that they are inspired and will continue to fight.

Who is Chavez?

Predictably, Hugo Chavez is more of a mixed bag than let on by ogling international leftists.

Despite his inspirational radical rhetoric, many of his specific economic reforms are more moderate. The laws governing land reform, oil, banking, and fisheries all impose modest limits and regulations much like what exists in other capitalist countries, especially in Europe.

“Here there are three worlds,” summarizes ex- Chavez minister Roland Denis. “There is a revolutionary process that is not just represented by the government, but by popular movements. Then there is the government, which does not assume clearly defined positions. Finally, there is opposition of the oligarchy and of the middle-classes who are ideologically controlled by the former.”

“The presidential leftist rhetoric is often combined with a favorable policy towards financial and profiteer sectors, suggesting the configuration of a new hegemonic bloc behind the “Bolivarian” regime,” says Francisco Sobrino, editor of the Argentinean journal Herramiente, who accuses Chavez of having a “fickle” relationship with the Venezuelan masses.

His analysis: “Nowadays the neoliberal tide is ebbing in the region, but it is not immediately replaced by a truly popular or revolutionary large wave. New heterogeneous regimes may then emerge filling the power vacuum, as a reflection of or reaction to those deep developing social trends. Chavism is just one of these cases.”

Chavistas want to make the state efficient, not sell it off to foreign interests as suggested by the World Bank, but neither turning it over to collectives and popular control.

“There’s a strong streak of authoritarianism in Chavismo. For all its talk of participation, there’s been a centralization of power in the hands of the president.” says Carlos Correa, of the human rights group Provea.

Some attribute his moderate reforms to an attempt to walk a moderate tightrope between the people’s demands and the looming hand of the United States. But Roland Den
is, the radical minister whom Chavez fired after 10 months, thinks differently: “I do not believe that the ambiguity of the Chavez Government has to do with fear of intervention. Rather, it is a consequence of a lack of clarity, debates, and confidence in the capacity of the self-governance of the people. The inhabitants of the barrios unconditionally supported the government during the coups, risking their lives. But the state hardly reaches out to the barrios. There is a closed, almost fort-like conception of power.”

As the Venezuelan anarchists are happy to point out, this is hardly surprising. “To claim that power will dissolve itself is as ludicrous as to claim that History is a mechanical sum of events that will bring us unerringly to freedom and social justice. These will only be conquered by keeping with the anti-capitalist struggle without abandoning, even for a second, our critical spirit and inquisitiveness.”

Revolution or regime change?

Sadly, Chavez’s position is growing more tenuous, as both external and internal forces converge against his leadership.

Chavez and Brazilian President Lula de Silva are the two strongest South American leaders who oppose the US proposal for a NAFTA-modeled Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). While Lula’s opposition is based on market concerns (the US refuses to open it markets to key Brazilian imports), Chavez’s concerns with the FTAA are moral and based on his commitment to social equality. In this sense, he is a stronger anti-globalization ally than Lula. In reaction to his strong stance, the US is funding the right-wing opposition to Chavez.

On Chavez’ s home front, poor Venezuelans, who despite the government’s community organizing have not seen their bottom-line economic situation improve significantly, are getting angry and impatient for concrete change.

And it seems that Chavez is actively eliminating any dissenting views within his government, dismissing ministers more radical than his moderate position.

All this will likely come to a head this March with a mid-term recall election. Up for recall is Chavez himself, 34 Chavista politicians, and 38 opposition politicians, many of whom are former Chavez supporters. Chavez’s support is strongly based with the increasingly-frustrated poor. Will he survive between the rock of angry people and the hard place of US imperial ambitions? Now is certainly the time for Chavez to bite the bullet and align his policies with his radical rhetoric. It’s not like the middle classes, constantly inflamed by “anti-communist” messages from the right-wing media, are going to be swayed by his timid economic reforms.

Chavez’s strength is the poor, and the poor’s strength is themselves. International anti-authoritarians should stand with the people in Venezuela as they use Chavez as a tool to create revolutionary change. The Chavez government opens up space for powerful, concrete, unprecedented change in the lives of millions of previously unempowered poor people. Radical organizing is radical organizing, regardless of whether it happens under the guise of the state or under the boot.

Contact El Libertario, the Venezuelan anarchist collective, via Emilio Tesoro, apartado postal 6303, Carmelitas, Venezuela. or ellibertario@nodo50.org.

Sources:

Francisco T. Sobrino, Filling the Vacuum After neoliberal failure: The confrontation in venezuela. Against the Current 4/30/03

Reed Lindsay, Venezuela’s slum army takes over. The Observer, 8/10/03

El Libertario editorial, Issue 33.

Zelik, Raul. Venezuela and the Popular Movement, an interview with Roland Denis. Z Magazine 8/03

building understanding through communication

One of the greatest ironies out there is that while anarchists claim to value cooperation, mutual aid, sharing, individual responsibility and respecting autonomy, all too often one finds incredible in-fighting, contention, controversy, ideological sectarianism, splits, name-calling, poor group dynamics, denial of responsibility and distrust within the anarchist scene. Anarchists claim to want a sweeping global social revolution based in local grass-roots organizing, yet it is well-known that anarchism as a coherent body of thought largely stays within a narrow sub-culture of activists, theorists and punks. I believe that there is a way out of these problems, and I believe that Compassionate Communication (also known as “Nonviolent Communication,” or “NVC” for short, I use all three terms interchangeably) can serve a vital role in us getting out of this mess. NVC is not a new way of policing how we speak, nor does it require two or more people practicing it in order for it to work. I’ve seen people use NVC to help themselves get really honest and vulnerable with other people, to help facilitate great compassion, caring and understanding among people, and I would really like to see anarchists and anti-authoritarians engage in this way of relating as well.

Compassionate Communication can be explained as series of tools, understandings and a framework that helps us focus our attention on whatever is really important and fundamental to others or ourselves in a given moment. One of the things that initially drew me to NVC was the many obvious similarities between it and anarchism. For example, NVC literature and materials repeatedly speak of eliminating relationships of domination, hierarchy and power over people. NVC emphasizes the importance of autonomy, cooperation, individual responsibility and interdependence, and many NVC proponents express a desire for a global social change to where a critical mass of people are living their lives based on voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, real democracy, and respecting one another’s autonomy.

NVC also appealed to me because I saw the cross-overs between it and my appreciation of the writings of the 19th century anarchist philosopher Max Stirner, what with NVC’s exhortations to not act out of guilt, shame, fear, duty or obligation but because you clearly see how it can meet your own needs or because you see how you can enjoy contributing to the well-being of others. While cross-overs with anarchism initially piqued my interest I soon discovered that there is a lot more to NVC as well.

I see NVC in many ways picking up where anarchism leaves off. I see anarchism as providing a broad social framework, envisioning a world without capitalism, patriarchy, the State or other forms of hierarchy and domination while also providing a coherent set of positive principles through which to live and organize by. I see NVC, in turn, as both providing a useful guide in how to apply anarchist principles to our lives and organizing as well as how to reach out to and genuinely connect with other people who are not anarchists or radicals. This can help us to both live our values, as well as to grow and spread our movement to social revolutionary proportions.

NVC itself can be described in two ways, the NVC model and the NVC consciousness. The NVC model is but a mere guide, a useful framework, that will hopefully aid in one achieving the NVC consciousness. The NVC model is broken down into four parts: observations, feelings, needs and requests.

Observations are clear, factual things that we experience in some way. It could be something that we see, hear, touch, etc., or it could even be a specific thought or memory that goes through your head. NVC makes sure to not mix observation with any form of evaluation, judgment, or interpretation. It seeks to keep the observation as pure and factual as possible. The observation is just something that happened, not what we or others think about something that happened.

Feelings are a clear physical or emotional thing that one experiences. NVC makes sure to not mix feelings with evaluation or judgment and only keep it in the realm of what one is directly experiencing. For example, some feelings would be “excited”, “overwhelmed”, “confident”, or “irritated” as opposed to “cheated”, “patronized”, “unwanted” or “ridiculed” which are feelings mixed with evaluations or judgments.

Needs are the fundamental motivating reasons for why we do the things that we do. Needs are universal, everyone has the same fundamental needs, and they exist independently of a certain person doing a certain thing. Needs are not just physical, psychological, or social. What NVC considers to be needs are things that are needed for a human being to have a really meaningful, enjoyable and fulfilling life, as opposed to just physically surviving. NVC makes a clear distinction between needs and strategies to meet needs. For example, “money” and “status” are considered to be just strategies to meet needs, whereas food, safety, autonomy, and appreciation are considered to be fundamental needs. Needs being met or not met are the cause of ones feelings, whereas the observation that one experiences is the stimulus for the feelings.

Requests are clear and doable things that we can ask to meet our needs. Requests are distinctly different from demands, things that one is asked to do and will be punished for if one does not carry them out. NVC strives to have people ask requests and carry them out not out of a hope for a reward, nor out of fear of punishment. NVC hopes to have people fulfill the requests of others purely out of a desire to contribute to the well-being of others or one’s self.

So, to put these steps into the NVC model with the intention of expressing one’s own state of being, one would say something like: “When I see you get high” I feel “conflicted” because I am needing “to stay away from drugs right now”, would you be willing to “refrain from using in front of me?” Likewise, if one is to use the NVC model to guess at what someone else might be experiencing, one would say something like: “When you see your house mates argue” do you feel “upset” because you are needing “to feel safe”, and would you like me to “talk to them for you or schedule a house meeting where we can talk about this?”

A lot of people see the NVC model as being the entirety of NVC, and as a result come to a conclusion that NVC is just some kind of stilted formula for how to speak with people. It is for this reason why I consider it to be very important to be mindful of the NVC consciousness, which is the end goal that the NVC model is supposed to aid in one achieving.

The NVC consciousness is a certain mindset, a certain way that one views and approaches both one’s self and others. This includes staying aware of the four components of the NVC model in one’s dealings with others and with the thought processes that pass through ones own mind as well. However, unlike the NVC model, the consciousness of NVC is by no means sequential or formulaic, it is an awareness, a focus that one keeps in mind. The NVC consciousness also keeps in mind other things as well, like that one is not the “cause” of another persons emotions – peoples needs are the cause, that people are responsible for their own actions and choices that they make, that it makes more sense to connect with the needs behind what people do rather than punishing or rewarding them, that we are all human beings rather than labels, roles or enemy images, that in the long run it meets our needs in a more authentic and sustainable way to find solutions that meet the needs of all involved rather than just meeting our needs at the expense of others.

Miki Kashtan, coordinator of the NVC Social Change Project, elaborates on this last point: “When we use force, blame and self-righteousness instead
, even if we manage to create the outcome we want in the short run, we distance ourselves from those whose actions we want to change. Success in the short run does not lead to the transformation we so wish for, neither in ourselves nor in those we are trying to change. Sooner or later, those with more power will prevail, and we are left bitter and defeated. This cycle is a major cause of ’burn-out’ among activists.”

This brings me back to the application of NVC to anarchism and activism. I see a lot of in-fighting, controversies, splits, and general contention within the anarchist/activist scene, and I think that a lot of this stems from how we view and relate to one another and ourselves. For example, when we call people “selfish”, “reactionary”, “authoritarian”, “sexist”, “lazy”, “close-minded”, or “bourgeois”, we are not referring to a clear observation that we are reacting to, nor are we referring to what we are personally feeling, needing or what actions we would like to see. Labels such as these serve to project enemy images on those we are referring to, it is the automatic drawing up of “sides” with the implication being that the side that is labeled such is the “bad” side that deserves to be punished somehow.

I would like to see instead of this, an empathic interplay. When someone says or does something that you are triggered by, first you can check in with yourself, see what you are reacting to, see what you are feeling and needing, and what specific action you would like to see the other person do. Then you can express this to the other person, and if they respond by saying something that triggers you, you can repeat this process with this new stimulus. Another option is to empathize with the other person who is doing something that you do not enjoy. What is this other person feeling and what are their underlying needs behind what they are doing? You can guess at this and ask the other person for clarification on whether this is true. This can in turn be another kind of dialogue that you can have to help resolve this situation.

I tend to find it the most useful to engage in a mix of these two processes, both checking in with myself to see what is going on within myself as well as empathizing with the other person to try to discover what is going on within them and why they are doing what they are doing. It does not help to jump into a situation with an immediate goal in mind that one wants to see come about, I find it far more useful to make sure that a clear mutual understanding is established. Only once I am certain that we are all very much aware of which feelings and needs are active for everyone involved do I go about a process of creatively strategizing to find ways to meet the needs of all those involved.

NVC has great potential to be used in community outreach and organizing. Often, anarchists and radical activists exist in a very unique and marginal sub-culture, which makes it hard for us to truly understand those we regard as “mainstream” or “non-political”. NVC can be used to help us dissect what exactly is going on with those whom we do not understand, with those that we are alienated from for various cultural reasons. “Mainstream” and “non-political” people all have feelings and needs as well, and it is through the use of NVC that we can bridge the gaps between us and help us bring about clear mutual understanding while simultaneously allowing them to understand us.

When I first started seriously looking into Compassionate Communication, it took me a while to really get it and apply it to myself. For me, it was just such a different paradigm than what I was used to. I was used to labeling, judging and evaluating myself and other people. I was very stuck in my own head, part of which was because of the anarchist arguing culture that I came from. Soon I started understanding it more and more, until one night I had an epiphany that a lot of the conflicts, problems and unhappiness within the anarchist scene that I had experienced, I had actively contributed to myself. I realized that failed projects and friendships in my life could have developed differently if I knew and practiced NVC back then.

NVC has helped me connect with my own humanity and the humanity of those around me. I was able to stop viewing other anarchists as “reactionary”, “authoritarian”, “incompetent” or any other negating label, and instead was able to see them as actual human beings, striving to meet various needs of theirs in the best way they know how. The same goes for apolitical people. I stopped seeing them as “clueless”, “consumerist” and “short-sighted” and was able to see them as the fragile, scared and fallible human beings that they are, trying to get by in this world. Sure, all too often I lose the NVC consciousness and go off on labeling and judging myself or others, but at least now I know that a deeper understanding and way of authentically relating to other people without domination and hierarchy is indeed possible right now.

I would like to invite you to learn more about Nonviolent Communication. I suggest that you check out these books/pamphlets:

“Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life” by Marshall Rosenberg, a pretty thorough introduction to NVC.

“Don’t Be Nice, Be Real” by Kelly Bryson, an introduction to NVC with some broader social analysis thrown in as well.

“The Heart of Social Change” by Marshall Rosenberg, a pamphlet on applying NVC to social change activism.

“Punished By Rewards” by Alfie Kohn, an explanation how motivation and systems based on rewards and punishment does not help us in the long run.

Or you can check out these NVC web-sites:

http://www.nonviolentcommunication.c

http://www.cnvc.org

www.baynvc.org for NVC events that take place in the Bay Area.

I would also like to invite you to join me and NVC trainer, Miki Kashtan, for a free introduction to NVC at the Long Haul infoshop Sunday March 7th, 7-9PM.

My personal rEvolution, very much a work in progress, has been a slow creep leftward into the radical. My father and stepmom had a bourgie requirement that when my sisters and I became teenagers, we took on some kind of community service. We were privileged–white, middle class, Catholic kids in New England–and my folx’s response was noblesse oblige. They had know idea how far I would take it.

My first “gig”, you might say, was volunteering for a risk-reduction non-profit to keep kids off drugs. I had friends who were smoking marijuana or doing meth at 13 to ease family or personal trauma, and my response was less than compassionate. I knew they needed support, but didn’t understand how to give it to them without judging. Self-medication was a foreign idea.

By a stroke of luck, I met an amazing sex educator who invited me to work at her reproductive health clinic for teenagers. I worked there for all of high school, and did sex ed for clients who came from as far 3 hours away. We provided everything but abortion services (clinic was 40 minutes away) and it probably saved my life to have education and health care. Besides knowing my body and safer sex techniques, I learned empathy and love. When a sexually assaulted 12 year old asks you how to get an abortion, you either hate the world or decide to be empathetic more often. I learned that shame only keeps us from being real with one another. I wish anarchists hugged each other more.

During college (I love math and wanted formal training), I taught with my school’s rape crisis center for four years. Although it took me a while to see the racism and classism that taints a lot of feminism, I got to teach classes on the porn industry to frat boys, edit a queer column for the student newspaper, model consensual communication with high school kids, explore alternative (non-prosecutorial) justice with survivors and coordinate workshops on sex trafficking. By speaking publicly on so many issues, I processed my own identities as a survivor, queer-female, polyamorist, and slut. Of course, I’m always renegotiating and growing.

I finally understood the effects of capitalism and awakend to my own outrage when I left the States. During my semester in Hungary, I saw people terrified of the instability of the market economy and terrified of old and new state repression. Trade, privilege, community and exploitation were thrown in my face. The communities and land that people depended on were disappearing with an influx of foreign capital and youth emigration was leaving the region without a future. Transylvania is being destroyed as farmers, herders and artisans are forced to low-wage city jobs. Everywhere, it’s the same shit, different corporations.

When I returned to the US, post 9/11, it was hard to reincorporate. I’ve never been into accumulating stuff, but the only “collective” living situations I saw were college kids in rented shit-holes or Christian communes. It took me almost a year to find people who were articulate anarchists and to realize what I was becoming. Some I found through Unitarian young adult networks and others through local justice work. As liberal politics grew less enticing, I felt the urge to be in a community where being different, freakish, ME, was ok.

It took me awhile to distinguish between punk and anarchism. There is such an overlap in the Northeast, that I felt isolated because I liked bluegrass and didn’t know “Against Me.” My longstanding association with punk was a-political, skinny, sex-deprived boys who went to shows and jumped around. That’s never been my scene. I have since met lots of cool punks, anarchists and anarcho-punks, but I felt alienated at first.

Moving to East Oakland has made me acknowledge my racist-nativist acculturation–coming from a state that’s 96% white, and hanging out in Berkeley makes me itch to grow organic vegetables. I’m figuring out how to live my ethics without condemning conservative old friends and simultaneously create a radical future for myself. Big questions still loom for me personally, and I don’t pretend to have answers. How will I eat when I’m old? How do I feel about satiating my inner nerd and getting a PhD? Will I be a radical poly parent some day?

I’m grateful that, for all the shit I say about radical politics, I haven’t lost my family or old friends. When I told my parents about being harassed in Miami at the FTAA protests, they were scared, but they didn’t think I was crazy. For me, revolution is about clean water, allowing people autonomy in education, love and work, and riding a bike cart for Food Not Bombs deliveries. If that makes me crazy, I don’t need any medication.

Put This Paper Down

The sad state of the world over the past few years — the increased concentration of power — spiraling environmental destruction — the Iraq war and occupation — Bush’s naked attempts to create fear — stepped up attacks on privacy — is creating a deeper level of popular opposition to the structures of power than has been seen for quite some time. Increasingly, huge numbers of folks who used to think of themselves as “mainstream” are having to face the fact that the systems of power they believed were justified, reasonable and legitimate are instead threats to freedom, peace, stability and life itself. There are opportunities for something positive to come out of a very scary situation.

The question is, how can folks in the activist community promote this transformation? And assuming more people are willing to take action against the system, what actions can we take?

I haven’t heard very good answers to either of these questions and I wish the activist community would think about them carefully and seriously. In such dangerous times, the activist scene appears to be going about business as usual, which means that it is celebrating its own marginalization and impotency, rather than trying to figure out how to attack the system.

If we’re going to help people decide to reject the system, we have to be willing to talk to people who aren’t already involved in the activist scene. This means people of different ages, races, backgrounds. On the most basic level, it means that we shouldn’t write-off so many folks because we think that they are too mainstream to ever oppose the system. We have to give people some credit that they’re not stupid. We need to stop rejecting people who aren’t young and pierced.

It’s true that ultimately, people must transform their own consciousness and political understanding, but there is a role for political outreach. Outreach doesn’t mean that we should all become preachers of a radical faith — we need to realize that thinking or behaving as if we have the “truth” just sets up a new hierarchy.

What I mean is that activists can encourage dialog and discussion — questioning authority. We should also realize that the system maintains power by keeping people isolated from each other and breaking down common spaces and moments when people can interact outside of realms organized by the market. We ought to be about creating these types of free spaces — and not just for ourselves and our friends, but for people who are isolated from discussion about political issues and isolated from political action.

At a time like this, we need to stop spending so much of our activist time organizing endless conferences or events primarily meant for people already involved in “the scene” — anarchist picnics, anarchist soccer teams, etc. Even a lot of actions seem mostly directed at folks who are already involved — basically, we organize an action by trying to “organize” those who are already organized and in the activist community, rather than by organizing society. The idea of organizing means organizing society, not just organizing the could-be organizers.

The forces of power spend huge amounts of energy on media propaganda and public manipulation. We need to figure out a grassroots response, and more than that, a way to go beyond responding and communicate a positive alternative agenda.

Day to day life in advanced capitalism can be grim — living alone, working a meaningless job that takes up most of your time and energy. There is a hunger for community and finding some kind of meaning or hope for a better future. If our process and actions empower people, provide meaning, and are based on community and connection, they will be powerful because they will fill the gap that the current top-down society creates.

I hope the activist community will make a New Year’s Resolution to start taking itself more seriously. Far too often, we get distracted by single issue campaigns because we assume that our efforts are incapable of addressing the biggest, systemic issues. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy — we make our own resistance irrelevant when we assume it can’t succeed.

Those who lived or studied the 1960’s will remember SDS- Students For a Democratic Society as a radical multi- issue center of the new left active for civil rights, economic justice, education reform, opposing the Vietnam war and trying broadly to change the country and the world.

A notice was circulated a few months ago, announcing “the next meeting of SDS.” The old SDS hadn’t met, of course, for 30 plus years. SDS, after the 60’s, spread out into a hundred different movements: feminist, environmentalist, human growth, identity, freedom and liberation and solidarity, and underground. Some have nostalgic memories of the good old days (which weren’t that great). Activist students and youth study the old SDS. Some wondered why there wasn’t an SDS now, now that we needed it.

The call to “a meeting” gave an opportunity to explore: should there be another one? Either another meeting or another attempt at organization?

“The next meeting of SDS” was held on November 29. 2003. The notice / invitation proposed a too-full agenda. Though opinions were wide ranging on what to do, or what are social forces now in motion, a spirited discussion continued until 9:30. One impatient long time fighter left early, saying “we were a depressing lot and we should move on.”

The depressing discussion focused on a number of topics:

*Votes are fixed, votes are uncounted, new machines can be hacked. *Votes are irrelevant, who is there to vote for? *The power of the monopolized media is overwhelming, shaping the image in people’s minds of what is true. *University service workers just sold out their union gains for a mere $500, facilitating privatizing, piece working, and outsourcing future jobs, falling for the union busting two-tier strategy of the corporations. *There is no consciousness out there, people sell out for nothing and feel no solidarity. *Bush is the best thing for the revolution, bankrupting America — 4 more years is what it might take to wake up the working class. *The poor and immigrant and alien are all among us, the “peace movement” does not see the reality at home — the class war in our own town. *People live in a bubble of delusion, fed on consumption.

*European Americans, which was all but one in the room, live at the top of a pyramid of privilege sharing in the capital exploited and stolen from the Native Americans and African Americans, in slavery and since, and now fed on the riches of the global system of exploitation. We have all imbibed white supremacy as the assumption of this culture and denial of the thievery on which our way of life is based.

On the other hand, every negative had a more positive perspective: the magnifying power of “move-on” like networks, the growing independent media and independent sources of information, the winning of small victories locally, several of which were recounted — winning an environmental taxation vote, winning a water privatization case, raising money to rebuild Palestinian homes, and being in the streets.

The quest most returned to in the discussion was what local actions or questions could both focus energy and connect with the larger picture. The on-going “borders books and music” strike was most mentioned — don’t shop Borders, Walden books or Amazon until the corporation settles with its Ann Arbor workers. Can our extended networks help make this an effective national boycott?

I began the discussion with a call to remember our networks, and proposed we undertake together to make the “a political association adequate to our needs in these times.”

Such an association is social, and radiates along lines of affinity, love and affiliations of heart. One person proposed and read a text for a new membership card. International SDS was proposed. Many readings of “s” were offered — seniors, survivors, et al. — and coming back to students, our needs, at whatever age or occupation, to study, to be students of life and to learn, what else are we here for?

Those interested in the next next meeting of SDS, call 734-761-7967, write post office box 7213 Ann Arbor, MI 48107, or e-mail megiddo@umich.edu

Once upon a time I thought that polyamory was a radical act, and when I finally came out last year as a poly person, I realized that it’s not always a choice. I last about a month in a monogamous situation–it’s stifling for me–so I’ve begun to consider poly as I see other non-dominant sexual preferences, as conscious radical choices or natural urges. It’s also helped me understand that monogamy works as well for some people as poly works for me.

Coming out has been a bit painful–telling friends one at a time, finding a supportive community that understands–but rewarding. I’m developing my own ethic for intimacy, since I don’t believing extending a monogamous framework to many partners is sufficient. My influences have been anarchism, Buddhism and the wisdom of my community. Principally I’m working on overcoming physical and emotional scarcity, practicing full disclosure, and seeing love as a gift exchange.

My vision of functioning polyamory is to become my own primary partner. As I discard the residual morality of monogamy, having a primary relationship seems less necessary. As I understand my own completeness, I can honor intimacy without prioritizing, and practice honesty with partners instead of getting permission to be poly from them.

The need for fidelity is changing as I depend less on others’ approval for my self worth. Just as I would be delighted over my best friend finding a new lover, I find delight in my lovers’ new joys. Cheating, per se, is not about sex, but about emotional dishonesty and breaking commitments. If a lover of mine had unsafe sex, broke a date to fuck someone else, or lied about what level of intimacy they wanted, I would be hurt enough to need the issue addressed. However, everyone has different triggers, and we can only know by discussing them.

The biggest downfall of being poly for me is the amount of time it consumes. I could spend the next 50 years happily dancing, cuddling, talking, fucking and processing and never do another minute of justice work, but it would be a life less than fulfilling. Knowing that my love is not finite but my time and energy are will form the most concrete boundaries of my relationships. If only orgasms could overthrow the government.

I firmly believe in non obligatory relationships. Love is a gift exchange and in order for intimacy to be healthy, I must give and receive. While I can’t know what joy is coming, I expect it, as well as some pain. Growth often comes from such discomfort.

As I stray farther from monogamy into my own definitions of intimacy, I find more gratification. I know that I’ll be grateful for lovers and at other times retreat to my own self-satisfaction. Either way, I’ll know that I’m loved.

The regime that will succeed the nation-state will not be the fruit of preconception or social engineering, but of sociological and political imagination wielded through transformative actions. (1)Gustavo Esteva

The chilling observations by Israeli historian Benny Morris in an interview recently published in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz (2) shed intriguing light on the real face of the Zionist rationale of ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Palestinians in 1948 under David Ben Gurion and its perpetuation today. His remarks also point out the utter hopelessness of the imaginary nation-state in resolving the conflict in historic Palestine.

But the bleak assessment of the future of ‘statism’ in Palestine, Morris suggests, can also be read against its own grain. Inverting his grim evaluation of Zionist history and the present impasse, anti-authoritarians must address the problem of reinventing politics in Israel/Falastin now — laying the groundwork for a kind of Jewish-Palestinian Zapatismo, a grassroots movement to “reclaim the commons.” Moving beyond the necessary preoccupation with the brutal Occupation, and resistance against it, will entail strategies of building direct democracy, participatory economy and genuine autonomy for the people, a new symbiosis of ta’ayush (togetherness). In that mix of anti-Power, Martin Buber’s vision of the “rebirth of the commune” could also be re-energized: “an organic commonwealth — that is a community of communities” (3). Advancing toward a ‘no-state solution.’

‘Systemic Bifurcation’?

Israel and Palestine may be entering what Wallerstein calls a conjuncture of “systemic bifurcation,” a “transformational TimeSpace,” when fundamental values and narratives are questioned and the “face of an alternative, credibly better, and historically possible (but far from certain) future” becomes visible. For Wallerstein, the end to the “process of endless accumulation of capital that governs our existing world” is leading to a “structurally chaotic situation —thoroughly unpredictable in its trajectory” on a global scale (4). In his diagnosis, this system is swelling into terminal crisis, unsustainable socially and environmentally, the most non-egalitarian order in world history.

In Palestine, the cumulative effect of the continued Occupation and its monstrosities, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, and the implosion of internationally engineered ‘peace processes,’ has been system-shattering, at multiple fractal scales. Bifurcation there finds its literal icon in the Great Wall of Palestine being gouged into the land against the will of all Palestinians and many Israelis. Opposition to that Apartheid Wall, including direct action by new groups such as Anarchists Against the Wall in Israel and the grassroots Palestinian resistance initiative Stop the Wall, signals a new qualitative change in the deepening struggle. The views elaborated by Morris, who has been pushed to the nationalist right by the dynamic of bifurcation and violence, should be interpreted in that light. They are worth reviewing at some length to sense the desperation and reactionary dearth of vision of a key commentator at the present ‘liminal’ juncture.

Masks RemovedMorris is Israel’s preeminent historian of the Palestinian expulsion and catastrophe (al-Nakba) in 1948. Over several decades of research, he has carefully documented the numerous atrocities (the worst at Dawayima village near Hebron [5]) and systematic evictions committed by the Hagana in the ‘War of Independence.’ This pre-state precursor of the present Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was under explicit orders to capture territory to create the new state and ‘cleanse’ it (le-taher, the term repeatedly used in 1948 Hagana orders and field reports) of its native Palestinian population (6). He has long been considered a leading light of the ‘post-Zionist’ left in Israel. In 1988, he was jailed for refusing to serve in the territories. Yet now Morris has taken off his mask, expressing hard-bitten views that can only hearten Israelis on the extreme right. As his interviewer Ari Shavit notes: “the great documenter of the sins of Zionism in fact identifies with those sins.”

Alas, an ‘Incomplete’ Transfer

Morris praises Ben Gurion’s policy of population ‘transfer’: “Of course. Ben Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. —Ben Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.”

But Morris ups the ante. Startling many Israelis, he accuses Ben Gurion of a colossal ‘mistake’: “Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered. —But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country – the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. —It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion – rather than a partial one – he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.”

Destroy or be Destroyed

Asked if he thinks ‘ethnic cleansing’ is justified, he replies: “A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.” And he does not think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes: “when the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it’s better to destroy. There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.”

Cages and Iron Walls

In commenting on the Great Wall of Palestine now being built, Morris’s take is almost vicious, racist: “Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another. —An iron wall is a good image. An iron wall is the most reasonable policy for the coming generation. In the 1950s — Ben Gurion argued that the Arabs understand only force and that ultimate force is the one thing that will persuade them to accept our presence here. He was right —Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts” (7).,

The Enemy Within

Speaking about his fellow citizens who are Palestinian, nearly 20 percent of the Israeli population today, and more than a quarter of the population of the Negev/al-Naqab desert where Morris teaches at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva/ Bi’r As-Sab’, he replies: “The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms, they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. — If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified.”

Dead End

Does Morris see any solution? Wedded to the notion that there must be two nation-states, he is totally pessimistic: “in practice, in this generation, a settlement of that kind will not hold water. At least 30 to 40 percent of the Palestinian public and at least 30 to 40 percent of the heart of every Palestinian will not accept it. —There will not be a solution. We are doomed to live by the sword. —Even if Israel is n
ot destroyed, we won’t see a good, normal life here in the decades ahead. —The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable. It wasn’t reasonable for it to succeed in 1881 and it wasn’t reasonable for it to succeed in 1948 and it’s not reasonable that it will succeed now.” He does not even consider the one-state, bi-national solution, an option now being rekindled in desperation by many commentators, both Israeli and Palestinian.

Barbarians at the Gate

Invoking racist arguments, Morris goes so far as to reiterate the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, with Israel at its very forward outpost: “The Arab world as it is today is barbarian. —I think that the war between the civilizations is the main characteristic of the 21st century. —This is a struggle against a whole world that espouses different values. And we are on the front line. Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the vulnerable branch of Europe in this place.”

Shavit then concludes: “Which leaves us, nevertheless, with two possibilities: either a cruel, tragic Zionism, or the foregoing of Zionism.” And Morris concurs: “Yes. That’s so. You have pared it down, but that’s correct.”

Reclaiming Commons: Harambee!

Morris’s dark assessment of the fundamental unworkability of the nation-state in Palestine is a powerful argument for the imperative of alternative vision: the need for a Zapatista’d movement to capture the imagination of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians to move beyond the solution of conventional ‘governmentality’ and any ‘state.’ In a sense, this conflict is emblematic of the “perverse perseverance of sovereignty,” its “vicious, security-based ontology” (8). We have to turn that authoritarian ontology on its head, precisely where community has imploded and the commons is controlled on both sides of the divide by hierarchies of violence. We must strive to create a mosaic society of ta’ayush, founded on autonomy, direct democracy, participatory economy and the kind of neighborhood Household and Home Assemblies that Jared James envisions in Getting Free, generating a scalar geometry of peopleís initiatives from the bottom up, a network of dual power, the incubators of a new society of synergism (9). In the spirit of an Arab-Jewish harambee!, we must press ahead to a more egalitarian society of mutual aid (10) and advance a call for “non-hierarchy, confederated direct democracies, communal economics, social freedom, and an ecological sensibility”(11).

How that movement can be built at this historic impasse, itself perhaps a ‘transformational TimeSpace,’ is a topic anti-authoritarians need to be addressing (12). In the transition from the disintegrating capitalist world-system that Wallerstein foresees, there will be a period of conflicts and aggravated disorders, and what many will see as the collapse of moral systems. Not paradoxically, it will also be a period in which the “free will” factor will be at its maximum, meaning that individual and collective action can have a greater impact on the future structuring of the world than such action can have in more “normal” times, that is, during the ongoing life of an historical system (13).

Beginnings in Israel/Falastin can be small. Nodes for an anti-authoritarian sub-politics are necessary. There is one; the social-anarchist space now opened on the Israeli left by the libertarian affinity group One Struggle (Ma’avak Ehad) needs to be broadened, and extended into Palestinian society. Popularizing its anti-authoritarian values into a grassroots movement to prioritize equity, diversity, solidarity, and self-management within and across the communities in this internecine struggle (14). The focus on animal rights inside One Struggle (human and animal liberation) is a distinctive component many libertarian socialists would not espouse so centrally. But their overall analysis is congruent with core anti-authoritarian positions, and they are in daily motion and direct action against militarism, Zionism, the IDF and the Occupation. And, they are the principal group in Israel behind Anarchists Against the Wall.

A hundred flowers can bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend in this pluralistic imaginary — its very eclecticism a necessary amplitude at this juncture, as the manifesto of One Struggle stresses (15). Geographer David Harvey has noted that there is a time and place “where alternative visions, no matter how fantastic, provide the grist for shaping powerful forces for change. I believe we are precisely at such a moment. Utopian dreams —are omnipresent in the signifiers of our desires” (16). Khalas!

Notes

1. Esteva, Gustavo. 2003 “A flower in the hands of the people,” The New Internationalist, #360, http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0JQP/360/108648118/p1/article.jhtml

2. “Survival of the Fittest,” Ari Shavit interviews Benny Morris, ‘04 Ha’aretz, Jan. 9.

3. Buber, Martin. 1958 Paths in Utopia, Boston: Beacon, 136. Separated from their Zionist nationalist envelope, Buber’s ideas on communalism, heavily influenced by Gustav Landauer’s anarchism, are worth being retrofitted within a retrieval of Israeli libertarian heritage, itself feeding into the beginning of an Israeli and Palestinian people’s movement for a ‘Cooperative Commonwealth of Jerusalem.’

4. Wallerstein, Immanuel 1998 Utopistics, New York: New Press, 2-3, 89-90.

5. Morris: “a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.”

6. See Morris, 2004 The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

7. The need for an ‘iron wall’ against the Palestinians is a slogan coined in 1923 by Zeev Jabotinsky, founder and ideologue of the movement and party Ariel Sharon now heads.

8. Burke, Anthony 2002 “The Perverse Perseverance of Sovereignty,” borderlands e-journal 1 (2), http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no2_2002/burke_perverse.html

9. James, Jared. 2002 Getting Free, http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strategy/GettingFree/

10. In Swahili, harambee means “let’s all pull together!” It is the cry in unison of the fishermen as they draw their nets towards the shore, the chorus when a collective effort is made for the common good. It can be adopted as a rallying cry for mutual aid on both sides of the divide in Israel/Falastin. See also Wallerstein, Utopistics, 92.

11. Alliance for Freedom and Direct Democracy 2002 “Manifesto,” http://www.afadd.org

12. See my exploratory paper forthcoming in borderlands e-journal 2004.

13. Wallerstein, 35.

14. Albert, Michael. 2003 Parecon. Life after Capitalism, London: Verso, 4 ff.

15. One Struggle 2003 Manifesto, http://www.onestruggle.org (Hebrew & partial English).

16. Harvey, D. 2000 Spaces of Hope, Berkeley: UCP, 195.

______________________

Bill Templer is a Chicago-born Israeli on the staff of the Dubnow Institute for Jewish History, University of Leipzig.

You can tell a great deal about a society if you look at how they treat their children and their elderly. In our society both children and the elderly are often disconnected from other age groups and forced into institutional settings; schools for children and nursing homes for the elderly. Children are brainwashed into the system and the elderly are forgotten and faded out once their ability to produce and spend capital wanes.

It is because of this that I believe in radical youth liberation. Some people have a hard time fully understanding this. “How does ageism compare to the brutalities of imperialism/capitalism/the state?” they ask me. “Ageism”, the mere prejudice and discrimination of people based on their age, may not be as big a problem as capitalism/the state, I agree. To look at youth liberation in terms of just “ageism” is to miss the point. “Gerontocracy”, or, the ongoing and systemic domination of kids* by those older than them is my focus.

One important thing to always keep in mind is that kids are human beings, just like the rest of us. People do not suddenly become human when they turn a certain age – they are born that way. With this being the case, kids have the inherent human ability to learn, grow, develop and direct their own lives as they see fit, just like anybody else. Kids do not understand everything, kids make mistakes, and kids need help and support but all of this can be said of every human being.

The often unspoken notion that adults are omniscient, infallible and not dependent upon the help and support of others while kids are very much the opposite is a distortion of reality necessary to construct the social hierarchy of adults over kids. This all becomes very apparent if one reflects on how a proposition to systematically dominate people who are physically ill, injured, ignorant, ill informed, or intoxicated (all of which are also temporary conditions) would be universally laughed at and dismissed.

With this being the case, let’s call it like it is – kids are slaves in this society. Kids cannot freely disassociate without fear of their parents or the state somehow hunting them down and dragging them back. Kids are forced to go to concentration camps (we call them “schools”). Kids cannot deny or receive medical care at their own will – an adult has to decide for them. Kids do not have ultimate say over their own time, bodies, activities, behaviors and choices – some parental or other adult figure has to determine it for them. This is slavery, pure, systemic, out-right slavery. It is slavery based upon the widespread use of violence, the threat of violence, and by emotional manipulation, intimidation and brainwashing.

The spirits of kids are continually beaten down by authority, particularly adult authority, in order to crush their wills, to break them of their individuality, spontaneity, creativity, curiosity and comfort with their own autonomy. Kids are constantly faced with various kinds of parental authorities, school authorities, state institutions, and a mass culture all intended to mold them, to get them to jump on command, take orders, and do what they’re told.

As I see it, the domination of kids is not just a horror because of the sheer lack of autonomy, respect and dignity that all these unique young human beings experience, it is also an integral part of the greater social system of domination, control and alienation – civilization itself. The domination of kids breaks the wills of people and inserts authoritarian programming so that they can later reproduce institutions such as the state, capitalism and gerontocracy when they get older themselves.

The domination of kids contains within it the very same fundamental dynamics of authority and control that as anarchists, we should actively be opposing. The very act of being subservient, the very act of compliance and submission, the very act of rule and bossing are all at play within the dichotomy of “parental authority figure” and “child”, and it is because of this that we need to decisively condemn and attack this horrendous relationship in favor of relations based upon mutual respect, autonomy and free association.

Striving for the liberation of kids is not just some single-issue cause, it is not some guilt-ridden “identity politics” thing, and it is not some radical past time totally disconnected from the greater struggle against the System. The domination of kids is a form of real-life slavery that goes on all around us, it acts to reinforce and reproduce the state, capitalism and other institutions of control, and it contains within it the same fundamental relations of authority and domination that are entirely antagonistic with anarchy and true liberation. If we are serious about bringing down this disgusting global system of control and hierarchy then we need to attack it wherever it manifests itself – and this includes within our own relationships, lives, behaviors and mentalities as well as the more traditionally “political” arenas.

Youth liberation is not a new idea, a lot of people have written about it and articulated it in different ways. There are already a number of people out there practicing, or at least trying to practice, autonomy respecting ways of relating with kids. Something new that I would like to see is a consistent, coherent and passionate defense of kids by the anarchist community. Every person goes through being a kid and that’s usually the first time the spirit is broken by authority. With this being the case, it only makes sense for anarchists to have youth liberation fully integrated with the rest of the anarchist perspective. Gerontocracy needs to be right up there with capitalism, the state, patriarchy, and white supremacy as institutions of social control that, as anarchists, we aim to destroy.

* I use the word “kids” in this article because “young people” can mean people over the age of 18, a group of people which do experience prejudice and discrimination but does not have to deal with the out-right slavery that those under 18 face. I do not use “children”, because I see that word as being an equivalent to the N-word in this context. “Childish”, “child-like”, etc. usually have very negative or derogatory connotations. “Kids”, however, usually refers to those under 18 and has positive connotations; hence, I use that word here.