Category: Articles

By Isabel Fava Bean

On a sunny Saturday in the spring of 2015 I found myself talking to a redwood tree. I was tripping on mushrooms at a local park with a couple of UC Berkeley students and one of them, a bio major, was trying to convince me that plants don’t have feelings. Naturally, I abandoned the group I was with and walked off to converse with some plants. And who better to converse with than the tallest plant on earth, the coast redwood? I sat down in the gnarled roots of one redwood, my back against her bark, and gazed up at her neighbor. I began to listen. “Mushroom Isabel,” she intoned, as the blue sky behind her swirled, “You need to tell Sober Isabel to stop fuckin up.” I understood immediately that Mushroom Isabel was my shrooming self, and Sober Isabel was myself when I wasn’t on shrooms, though that Isabel was hardly sober. The tree told me I needed to refocus on what I truly cared about — learning sustainable living skills, learning to grow food — and stop distracting myself with partying, social media, and working in foodservice. It happened to be layout weekend for Slingshot #117 and the culmination of my trip was wandering into the Slingshot office and falling asleep on the couch while the rest of the collective was scrambling to get the paper laid out.

It was during that spring that my friends started talking to me about their experiences of boundary violations and rape. I read that 1 in 3 women are raped or abused in their lifetimes. I couldn’t help but feel it was only a matter of time until I went through the same. The one common factor in each of my friends’ experiences was intoxication. Both they and their rapists were under the influence — usually alcohol, sometimes molly or another drug. And intoxication wasn’t just incidental — it was sometimes part and parcel to the rape: “He kept offering me alcohol until I was too wasted to resist.”

Around this time a sober coworker gave me a zine called “Toward A Less Fucked Up World: Sobriety and Anarchist Struggle” by Nick Riotfag. Holy shit! Reading this zine blew my mind. It drew connections that hadn’t occurred to me before — connections between intoxication culture and violence towards women, oppression of people of color and queer people, and general societal malaise and apathy. My mom had always told me not to use drugs and alcohol for my own health and safety, which, as a teenager, was easy to disregard — it’s my body, I’ll do what I want! But to see that my substance use fit into large scale social patterns of oppression and violence was, for me, a compelling reason not to partake.

I had been working the night shift at a bakery, going out a lot, drinking and dabbling with other drugs. I broke my dad’s trust by throwing parties at his house and got formally called out at work for using drugs on the clock. All of the above had been building in my mind, I guess, because around my 20th birthday, I quit my job, stopped drinking, and set off on a 450-mile bike tour down the California coast. It’s been over two years and I haven’t touched drugs or alcohol since then, but I often think of what that redwood told me during that mushroom trip, reminding me to stay focused on what I know is important.

I had originally intended to write an article condemning any use of substances, restating many of the arguments in “Toward a Less Fucked Up World”. But I realize that nobody who uses and enjoys substances wants to read about how everything they’re doing is wrong. And I do see some positive aspects of substance use.

So, after discussions with a few of the people closest to me who enjoy substances, I attempted to step outside my judgements and brainstormed a list of the potential positive impacts of intoxication culture on our lives. I acknowledge and respect the sacred roles that some substances play in many traditional cultures. Substances can be wonderful medicines. I think it can be healthy and positive to conscientiously use drugs and alcohol to self-medicate for struggles we face that we cannot change, or that we need help to change. Alcohol might act as a social lubricant that helps us get out of our shell as we build the confidence to eventually express ourselves without it. And when being constantly aware of the pain and injustice in the world incapacitates us, substances might help us take a break and relax just long enough to gather our strength and jump back into radical projects. I think it’s important to recognize how fucking insane the world is right now, and not hold ourselves to rigid standards of sanity and logic all the time — we need to chill, to be goofy, to be wild sometimes — and in a culture that puts everything in tight boxes, substances can give us a taste of freedom, however short-lived. I do want to work toward a world where everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves and feels free without any substances. But of course we’re not there, and probably won’t be for a long time. 

I know substances have been radicalizing and mind-opening for many folks. Psychedelics in particular have sparked friends of mine, and I’m sure many others, to open their eyes to the beauty of the natural world and our place within it and to question social norms and the values and lifestyles they were raised with.

I also brainstormed a list of the negative impacts of intoxication culture in our society. The connections between intoxication culture and rape culture are sharp. According to The Scientific American, when compared to people with XY chromosomes (“men”), people with XX chromosomes (“women”) are deficient in an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase that helps us metabolize alcohol. This, coupled with an average lower body weight, means “women” are more likely to have lower alcohol tolerance. Amongst young people, especially punks and bros, drinking more, faster is a point of pride, which pushes the most vulnerable people to drink past their limits. In my mind, some rape and boundary violations are the inevitable result of the combination of a culture of heavy drinking, the differences in the way that alcohol affects people, and the social expectations around sex. Logical ways to address this on a personal level are to reject social norms and redefine our sexualities using the language of consent, and to drink less or not at all, especially in spaces where rape is rampant, like on college campuses. Directing this suggestion just at female-identified folks echoes victim-blaming narratives — I direct it equally at male-identified folks. And of course we must continue to fight rape culture on all levels, not only in our personal choices.

Intoxication culture also has strong ties to consumer culture. The tobacco and alcohol industries are fat with the profits from our addictions and hold powerful positions in Amerika the Corporatocracy. The cannabis industry is set to take its place next to them, providing yet another packaged substance, taxed, regulated, and industrially produced and marketed. We all know that industrial, corporate food is killing the environment and the people who consume it, and that disadvantaged people and ecosystems are the hardest hit — let’s extend that critique to the systems that produce substances on a global, commercial scale. Some radicals see intoxication as a form of resistance to capitalist values of productivity, but this is a myth. Spending money on booze and drugs only ties us closer to the rat wheel. I know too many punks who work jobs they hate and spend much of their hard earned cash on booze, weed, and cigarettes — largely so they can forget about their crappy jobs for the weekend. Fuck that.

On a personal level, substances can be coping mechanisms for issues we might otherwise be challenged to address. They can numb us, keep us content and apathetic when faced with our own pain and trauma, global injustice, and environmental collapse. The popular narrative justifying intoxication culture says that we are using substances to “have fun” or “celebrate”. This avoids any awareness that attraction to substance use often comes from deep emotional wounds. Substances can help us cope with what we cannot change, and that is a beautiful thing, but we can’t let them keep us from facing the struggles that we can overcome.

Let me be clear that I do not wish to pathologize, criminalize, or condemn drug users, or to suggest that everyone should abstain from drugs or that sobriety is necessarily more radical than intoxication. Rather, I believe one can take a radical approach to intoxication, through self-awareness, and of course many people take a reactionary approach to sobriety, by stigmatizing and criminalizing drugs. I wholeheartedly believe in the decriminalization of drugs and freeing of those locked up for drug related crimes. I would like us to examine our substance use, or lack thereof, and consider the personal and political effects of our choices. Despite the prominent straightedge current within punk, I feel this subject largely goes undiscussed in radical circles — and I suspect that many of us are using substances not after thoughtful consideration, but merely because substance use is normalized and expected in our social circles.

Regarding approaching substance use through a radical lens, what can we actually do, tonight, tomorrow, to intoxicate in positive and conscientious ways? Here are some ideas — add your own!

Let’s DIY substances the way we DIY music, art, and radical organizing. Lots of us already do this. Brew your own beer. Distill your own booze. Mushroom hunt. Grow weed or opium poppies. If you gotta buy drugs, source them ethically. Decommercialize your drug use. Trade and give drugs away instead of buying and selling. Or barter for other goods. Dumpster dive for booze and drugs at college campuses on move-out day.

When we’re at bars and parties, let’s regulate our own levels of intoxication. Let’s watch those around us, and respectfully check in with people who are wasted, see what they need. Make sure they are safe. We can prevent individual instances of rape, drunk driving and other fucked up shit by being aware and taking care of each other. Cultivate safer spaces and spaces where intoxication is an option but sobriety is also socially acceptable. Let’s use substances to cope with what is beyond our control and to feel okay so we can stay engaged in radical struggle. Let’s let ourselves feel shitty sometimes and do that with substances when we need to. When we allow ourselves to feel shitty, we can begin to identify what is wrong and what we might need to change.

Sober people can frame their sobriety through a radical lens. Some ideas: We can respect everyone’s personal choices by not preaching. We can support comrades who are trying to use less substances by sharing our own experiences, and hanging out with them sober. Let’s consider how we could change our interactions so that people need drugs less often because they feel accepted, appreciated, and brave enough to face whatever demons they carry. Let’s learn harm reduction skills and support related programs, like needle exchanges and safer injection sites. Let’s continue to educate ourselves about the oppressive systems that target marginalized people by encouraging them to use drugs, and then victimize them further through a war on drugs that is really a war on drug users. Let’s acknowledge and examine our own dependencies, such as tobacco, coffee, pharmaceuticals, or refined sugar. Or buy coffee produced by a Zapatista collective.

I present these ideas less as a doctrine and more as a spark for discussion. A PDF of Toward A Less Fucked Up World is available online. Write to Slingshot and let’s talk! The most important thing is for all of us, whether we choose to use substances or not, to continue educating ourselves and each other about the ways in which those in power use intoxication culture to reinforce their dominance — and to fight that dominance on every front.

I present these ideas less as a doctrine and more as a spark for discussion. A PDF of Toward A Less Fucked Up World is available online. Contact me at isabelxochitl@gmail.com

and let’s talk! The most important thing is for all of us, whether we choose to use substances or not, to continue educating ourselves and each other about the ways in which those in power use intoxication culture to reinforce their dominance — and to fight that dominance on every front.

Let me be clear that I do not wish to pathologize, criminalize, or condemn drug users, or to suggest that everyone should abstain from drugs or that sobriety is necessarily more radical than intoxication. Rather, I believe one can take a radical approach to intoxication, through self-awareness, and of course many people take a reactionary approach to sobriety, by stigmatizing and criminalizing drugs. I wholeheartedly believe in the decriminalization of drugs and freeing of those locked up for

By I Steve

A lot of white activist-types can talk our ears off about unconscious racial bias, micro-aggressions, and privelege, but are still gosh-darn twits. Is the problem that they have to try harder, read every article in Everyday Feminism? Or is there something deeper? Is it not good enough to have a list of exceptions where you don’t act like you’re better than other people: anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-homophobia?

How are there decent-hearted people with terrible predudices, and assholes with perfect politics? “I’m an anti-racist asshole. Why don’t people of color like me? Why doesn’t everyone like me?” Because you’re still an asshole!

What’s missing is basic humility. It’s not just about how to relate to marginalized groups. It’s about how you relate to yourself, and your relationship to reality.

White people don’t have a monopoly on arrogance. Just as being white doesn’t make you racist, it doesn’t mean you’re arrogant either. But white people collectively are as notorious for arrogance as for racism. That whiteness is intertwined with arrogance is obvious to everyone who isn’t an arrogant white person.

Humility, being humble, is usually defined as a lack of fixation on oneself and a deference to others. You’ve probably heard that humility isn’t about self-effacing. It’s about self-acceptance. If I don’t accept my real self with all my weirdness, I can create a glorious false-self to avoid accepting my real self. For some people, this goes all the way to Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

But I’m a ‘Radical’ who Does Good Things

One of the ways a culture preserves itself is by teaching itself good things about itself, and activist culture is no exception. Our teaching on arrogance is that it is a quality of the mainstream society we oppose. Those people try to get lots and lots of money so they can glorify themselves with bigger houses and bigger cars. They grow up wanting to be star athletes, leaders in business and politics, Nobel prize winners and best-selling writers, and foist their bitterness on the rest of us when their dreams evaporate.

All true, but look at us. We demand our demands be met. We no longer believe in “scientific” socialism, but we know our logic is flawless; we are right. Drawn to the cause by Dr. King and Che Guevara, why would I want to be a foot soldier or a shit-worker? Or I may reject mass organizing with its leaders and followers—I’m a free ego unencumbered by ancestors, culture, anything but my desires. While that approach appeals to the young-at-heart in all-of-us, it risks obliviousness to our interdependence, another form of arrogance.

Part of the activist identity is anti-Racism. Since I’m such a great activist, I’m a great anti-racist. So yup, if you tell me I did something disrespectful or ignorant, I’ll put you in your place to protect my ego. That’s why allies—or accomplices or whatever word the Internet says distinguishes us from those allies—can be so much more fragile than ordinary white people with twisted minds and good hearts.

Instead, I can realize I have more to learn. The Urban Dictionary’s entry on humility:

“Remaining teachable, knowing that you do not have all the answers.” Their example: “I had to have a good sense of humility to listen to my teammate’s advice, even though i have been playing baseball a lot longer than him.” “Veteran protesters” who think Millennial activists don’t know anything—do take note.

Humility is from Religion, and You Hate Jesus, your Mom, and your Buddhist Housemate

Humility is a virtue and core subject in most religions. Religion is an aspect of most cultures. Humility is a theme in most cultures. Among your many options, you can keep your culture’s religion and reject it’s idea of humility. You may also reject your religion but keep the humility.

We’ve watched enough cave-people movies to think humility was for humans before the Era of Reason, cowering before superstition and volcanoes. But that “Era of Reason,” the European “Enlightenment,” was also the dawn of whiteness. Enlightenment utopias like America were built with the stolen land and slave labor or non-white peoples.

You can listen to others’ wisdom and still be an atheist. You can be a humble atheist. An anonymous person explains how humility is why atheists paradoxically succeed in Twelve-Steps programs: “The steps work if you believe in God. The steps work if you do not believe in God. The steps do not work if you think you are God.”

Can You Tell Me How to be Humble?

There’s a whole lot written on humility and how to be humble spanning the whole world and three millennia. What about special humility for radicals? The whole point of this is that we need the basic humility that everyone else can do.

One thing you can do is think about who you were before you were an activist. Do you remember people practicing humility in your family? In your school? If so, you can find your real self by connecting to your roots. If not, if you were surrounded by arrogance, when did you know? What was your idea of humility that provided that insight? Don’t despair. It’s common for middle-class families, actually a blend of upper and lower class characteristics, to deny their humble roots out of shame, aspiring to the big time. Even if this is your origin, you can accept yourself.

Do you know anyone, can you think of anyone who you think is humble? They probably are. Notice how you feel in their presence. Learn from them.

Becoming Humble Will Make Little Birds Like You

No joke, animals will be less afraid of you. Including humans who will trust you more. 

Then you can reach the ears of those people with twisted minds but good hearts. Not a tourist in your own neighborhood, whether in Fruitvale, Oakland or on Park Avenue, NY. Even where you are a stranger, you might still belong.

Humility has been described as the foundation of other virtues. When you can see yourself as you are, there’s a feedback loop so you just get more awesome.

Quotes to maybe have enlarged like (instead of?) quotes from the article:

One of the most curious of writerly traits is the onion-like layering of outrageous arrogance and abject humility. 

Judith Merrill, Sci-fi pioneer

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm. 

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devil and the Good Lord

Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove! I’m being humble”, and almost immediately pride — pride at his own humility — will appear. 

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

If “humility” means nothing more than the capacity to learn from criticism, then it has an undoubted value; but if “humility” means a willingness to submit to authority—to abandon or to modify what one is doing merely because it does not accord with the teachings of the Bible or the thoughts of Chairman Mao—then it is death to the spirit: the proper name for it, indeed, is “servility.”

John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man

The following was written by one of the Anti-Fascist arrestees who requested to remain anonymous.

Even as public exposure after Charlottesville has turned the tide and the fascist movement has begun to fracture, the narrative and aims of the right have been taken up as always by the state. The Berkeley mayor has tried to designate “Antifa” as a gang. Berkeley police have pursued serious charges against anti-fascist protestors, even trying to charge community members with “hate crimes” for alleged anti-fascist graffiti. The California Highway Patrol have pursued serious charges against counter protestors to the nazi’s attempted rally at the state capital last summer. Repression is happening all around us and solidarity is our best weapon against it.

The state’s cooperation in the right-wing story about “Antifa” is also taking place at the national level. After Milo Yiannopolis’ attempted speech at UC Berkeley was shut down by thousands of counter-protestors in February, a petition began circulating online which sought to have “Antifa” labeled as a terrorist organization. Recently this goal has come to fruition, as the department of homeland security has designated “Antifa” a terrorist group.

In this case DHS collaborates with right-wing anger about anti-fascism, which is a consistent theme of this first year of resistance to the Trump regime. Right-wing extremists have killed 46 people since 2001. Some, like Jeremy Christian are organized Nazis. In March of this year, a 66 year old Black man named Timothy Caughman was stabbed to death in Manhattan by a white supremacist upset about “interracial relationships.” Fascist groups like Identity Evropa are engaged in constant harassment campaigns and recruitment campaigns on college campuses and in the streets of the bay. In late September, a synagogue was graffitied in Oakland. Who are the terrorists? Who have the antifascists killed? Who have the “Antifa” even killed? No one.

The shut-down of the Milo event was also the beginning of the alt-right’s perverse fascination with the streets of Berkeley. Remember, the cops and klan (and the alt-right) go hand and hand. Despite not having permits for their four Berkeley events this year, police met with alt-right organizers ahead of the actions, physically protected and facilitated their presence, and disproportionately targeted counter-protesters for detention, disarmament, and arrest. In Portland at a rally in early June, a member of the right-wing militia the Oathkeepers was even allowed by DHS agents to assist in arresting a counter-protester. Berkeley police have also assisted in a targeting campaign against a local professor. Eric Clanton was targeted with accusations and an avalanche of online harassment in the wake of the April 15 engagement in Berkeley. As a result of these accusation made by white-supremacists on the internet, two houses were raided by over a dozen cops with guns drawn, several doors were smashed in, and Eric was arrested, charged with four felonies and held at $200,000 bail. All of this in response to a story told and popularized in the nastiest most racist corners of the internet. Remember, the alt-right lie about everything.

Furthermore, one year after antifascists shut down a neo-nazi demonstration in Sacramento, three counter-protesters were arrested and held on up to $250,000 dollars in bail. Two of them were brought all the way from southern California. These are just the most publicized examples of a phenomenon that is much broader in scope, even locally. Dozens of other arrestees are facing charges in connection with this year’s actions in Berkeley and across the country, and investigations will certainly continue. What happened to Eric can happen in reverse too. When the state criminalizes antifascists their names become public and they are at risk of being targeted for threats and harassment by the alt-right.

It is also essential to remember that repression is NOT new, not unique, and not just something that happens when there are confrontations in the streets. Dejuan Hall was brutally beaten and arrested by the police in Vallejo in March of this year in an incident that was filmed. Jesse Buna, one of the people filming, was also arrested and both face charges of assault on an officer. The message here is clear: any resistance to white supremacy and the police can make you a physical and a legal target. In fact, white-supremacists are so embedded in local police agencies that the FBI refuses to share information on white supremacist organizing with local law enforcement.

This is the effect of strategies by both the right and the state to make the streets more dangerous for people who would resist the Trump regime. These strategies go beyond the jails and courts too. Months before Heather Heyer was murdered in the streets of Charlottesville by a member of the neo-nazi group American Vanguard, state legislators were working to legitimize violence against those who protested in the street. 7-8 state houses introduced legislation that would limit liability for people running their cars through protestors in the street. Moreover, laws across the country have been passed or introduced to limit constraints on police, and stiffen penalties for protestors. Just this month the Berkeley city council voted to allow police to deploy pepper spray against protestors.

Repression is coming down hard in this time across the country. The state is responding to the strength of our organizing. In addition to the dozens of antifascist defendants in California, more than two hundred people are facing years of prison time for protesting Trump’s inauguration in Washington D.C. simply because corporate property was damaged. Hundreds more are facing charges for protecting indigenous water and land by resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Not only does this create trauma and anxiety for defendants and their loved ones, but it ripples out to create fear and hesitation for anyone who chooses to resist. Especially those who will not let power prescribe for them how they resist.

Now more than ever it is essential to support anti-fascist defendants and all targets of repression. These are all attempts to criminalize and deter the growing momentum of organized resistance, all attempts to create feelings of hopelessness, to remind us that the state will always be bigger and more powerful than we are. This hopelessness breeds the complicity that state power thrives on. We know better, we know that the people will always be bigger, and will always be more powerful when we stand together. Solidarity is our strength, so continued resistance in this time must mean standing together against our common enemies. It must mean standing behind and with people who are targeted by the right and by the state. It must mean standing with and organizing with the communities that this fascist movement seeks to victimize and erase.

It must also mean recognizing that solidarity does not erase our tactical and ideological differences, it only gives us more impetus to respect one another despite them. We are not a monolith, we are a hydra. We are all antifascists!

By Loki Coyote

On February 22, I was arrested for resisting the eviction of the Oceti Oyate camp at Standing Rock. I’ve been mourning Oceti’s loss ever since, and I’m sure many others have too. It’s hard to see in the fog of grief, hard to think clearly in its clutches. But if we don’t learn from the example of Standing Rock, mistakes that could be avoided will be repeated. I want people to learn from Standing Rock, so that future water protectors are better prepared to fight to win. I hope these words are meaningful to someone. If they are, please write me! Those of us who were there for this immortal moment will keep the spirit of Oceti alive. Still, it hurts me. We fucking lost.

Those of you who are in the habit of defying authority have probably at some point heard a cop utter these words: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” This is called a double bind, a false choice designed to make submission seem like the best option. If you accept that your only choices are the two that you’re being presented, you’ve already lost. 

It was a foregone conclusion that the police would successfully evict the camp that day. No one intended to put up the kind of resistance that would actually be effective in stopping the eviction. How did it come to this? Why did the mighty Oceti camp allow itself to be defeated?

“We Must Be Defenseless!”

The day before the scheduled eviction, there was a meeting for people who had decided to stay in camp on February 22. Everyone was asked to hand over their phones and any other electronic devices at the entrance of the tent. Then, when the meeting was about to start, the facilitator announced that a journalist would be filming the meeting, so that if law enforcement later said in court that something had taken place in the meeting that hadn’t, there would be evidence to contradict them. I don’t understand why, but everyone just accepted this nonsense. I was the only one to object.

The facilitator of this meeting was a non-native woman I hadn’t seen before. I do not understand how this vitally important role fell to her. She made no pretense of neutrality or even-handedness. She began with a long speech about how we needed to be aware that the police would construe shields as weapons, and that people who chose to defend themselves were putting the lives of everyone else in jeopardy. She said the magic words: “Remember why you are here!” At one point she declared with stupendous moral conviction, “We must be defenceless!” Her words were a reiteration of a familiar narrative: We must be prayerful, to be prayerful means to be peaceful, to be peaceful means to be compliant. Defiance equals violence, disobedience equals disrespect. Besides leaving camp peacefully, which was strongly encouraged, there was only one option: symbolic arrest. The double bind.

I could barely take it. I hate being told what to do. I hate manipulative language and badly-facilitated meetings. In these situations, where there’s no question that undercover cops are present, many activists are reluctant to speak their minds. For security reasons, they don’t want to out themselves as militants, especially if they have something planned. You’ve got a room full of tension, full of distrust, and at a time when folks need a morale boost the most, they get exactly the opposite. 

One “action” that was proposed was a prayer walk. The idea was to gather with drums, prayer flags, and sacred items, and march around Oceti before continuing straight on out of camp. Valorizing surrender. This idea was taken up enthusiastically by the facilitator, as if she’d been waiting for it to be proposed.

Eventually, a person gave a speech advocating resistance. He had a plan. He’d already started building a barricade. He wanted help. Then, in quick succession, several other people spoke up declaring their intentions to stand up to the police. The facilitator attempted to redirect the conversation back to her personal agenda. I asked on whose behalf she was speaking, and eventually she rattled off a few names, none of which I recognized. But the person who had been advocating building a barricade said that he had received explicit permission to build the barricade from one of the people the facilitator mentioned. “I’m going to start now,” he said. “Whoever wants to help, come with me.”

I followed him out. The plan was to fix four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood to posts in the ground. I spent most of the rest of the day digging holes. At first I felt good about what I was doing, then I started using my mind. It made little to no sense to build a barricade where we were building it. Someone left to go get the wood, but they never returned. By the time it was dark, I didn’t care about the barricade anymore. I went to bed early that night and slept like a baby.

The Pressure Mounts

Some have portrayed the resistance at Standing Rock as wildly successful, despite the eviction, despite the fact that oil now flows through the main vein of the Black Snake. These eternal optimists point to the many anti-pipeline campaigns inspired by Standing Rock. They point out that #NoDAPL has raised the political and economic cost of pipelines, and that some pipelines have been cancelled due to the new climate of resistance. All this makes me think of an archer who aims for a target, fires, misses, then paints a target around the arrow and claims to have hit the bull’s eye.

Let’s not sugarcoat things: We lost. We were trying to stop a pipeline, and we failed. Let’s learn from our mistakes, evaluate them, study what worked and what didn’t, and commit to being better prepared next time around. Not to say that the fight against DAPL is over. No war is ever won unless one side accepts defeat. Have the water protectors of Oceti accepted defeat? Only time will tell…

A lot took place that day. 

Most peculiar of all was a certain quality of ordinariness. Maybe there’s only so much the mind can take before it decides to reassert normalcy. Maybe if one could just manage to ignore how surreal everything was, things would go back to normal. 

I found a deflated soccer ball lying around. I joked that we should challenge the cops to a game of soccer, telling them that we’d leave if they beat us fair and square, so long as they’d fuck off if we beat them. I’ve read about how radical clowns mess with the cops in Europe, and it seemed like a good alternative to the binary of submission or violence. It makes sense to me to use humour as a way to diffuse tension. 

The day earlier, the prayer walk had been proposed as an action to boost morale. I kept my distance. Later I read that the leader of this prayer walk had declared victory, telling the crowd: “We’re here to tell the spirits that we won.”

The Hour Strikes

At 2:00 pm, the time that we had been told a few days prior that police would start making arrests, a group of at least thirty people gathered near the road, many bloc’ed up, wearing masks, body armour, gas masks, goggles, and other protective gear. There were three shields. Someone had created a small barricade with barbed wire at the entrance into camp. Mad props to whoever did that, if you’re reading this.

No one had a plan. We were just a bunch of rebels who didn’t want to roll over and let the police move into a place that meant so much to us, a place of such global significance. We milled about. Two o’clock came and went without incident. Some of us started playing soccer in the mud with the deflated ball. Someone showed me where to find an inflated ball. Maybe it sounds silly, but that meant a lot to me.

A woman that I’d only seen once before wound up in the important role of police liaison. She wore a shabby high-visibility vest with the words “neutral mediator” written on it in Sharpie. She wasn’t presenting herself as a water protector, but as a third party working for some unspecified organization. 

Everything she said was fear-mongering. We were told at one point that those people who wanted to be peacefully arrested were to go to the road. There was a subtle threat woven into the presentation of this option, implying that people who remained in camp would also be arrested, but face more dire consequences, such as police violence and felony charges. Later, in a variation on the same theme, the police liaison came back and told the remaining water protectors that if they didn’t leave, the police would be coming into the camp “with live rounds.” I thought this was ridiculous: Don’t police normally have “live rounds” in the gun at their hip? But energy flows where attention goes; little things like this contributed to a doubtful, indecisive mood.

Sometime not long after 2:00 pm, a handsome young man rolled in and gave an incredible performance, calling upon everyone in the crowd to rise to the occasion, to find their warrior spirit. There was a twist, though; it wasn’t a call to fight, it was a call to flight. Pacing back and forth, his whole body electric, hands and arms gesticulating furiously, this zealot gave a passionate speech about how we should all march out of camp, in the name of the movement. He invoked the spirits. He called on the thunder beings. Other than a short beginning, it was framed as a prayer. As such, it wasn’t up for debate. Who interrupts a prayer? It framed walking away from the camp as the noble thing, the intelligent thing, the brave thing. It was an incredible use of language.

One of the things that he yelled with conviction was a phrase that we’d heard many times before, in different contexts: REMEMBER WHY YOU ARE HERE!

I urge everyone to think about this phrase, because it was incredibly effective at silencing people. On the surface, it is benign, but its effect is powerful. The command “Remember why you are here!” implies togetherness—that why you are here is the same as the reason I am here, and therefore what I am encouraging you to do is what you yourself want to do. Say the words “Remember why you are here!” and then follow it with a volley of embedded commands; while the conscious mind is searching for an amorphous memory, the subconscious mind accepts the suggestions.

It was almost 4:00 pm when the police started threatening people with arrest. There was a crowd on the road, where there was a line of riot cops. The boss was ordering people to leave or face arrest. A lot of people had cameras. Some were livestreaming. Legal observers were present. The line between spectator and participant was blurry. 

Then, the first arrest. A snatch squad rushed forward, grabbed someone, and pulled him back behind the police line. Some people fled in terror. I was arrested and charged with two misdemeanours Eight other people got arrested along with me. We spent the night in jail. The worst part of the experience was spending three hours in a van with our hands bound. It hurt. Last time I spoke with the legal team, they told me that dozens of misdemeanour charges had been dropped, and that there’s a good chance that mine will be dropped too. And that is where my story ends. 

Some Seeds Need Fire to Open Them

Oceti meant a lot to me. It came as the fulfillment of a dream and the answer to a prayer. Before the movement at Standing Rock arose, I envisioned the anti-pipeline movement giving rise to truly sovereign territories. This is what decolonization means to me—not a shift in attitude, but freeing land-based communities from state control. It was my hope that Oceti would become an autonomous zone, where plans for a more beautiful world could be hatched.

Now that my wish has been granted, and its time has come and gone, I’m left picking up the pieces of my dreams, shards that will cut me if I hold them the wrong way. I’m driven by a maddening hunch that if I put them together the right way, they’ll spell out a secret message that will re-enchant the world. 

Please, make no mistake: I have tremendous faith. I too acknowledge the magnificent beauty of what transpired at Standing Rock. The beauty of life is not diminished by death, nor is the beauty of a moment in time diminished by its ending. The spirit of Oceti Oyate will live on in the hearts and minds of all those who gave themselves whole-heartedly to it, and each of these water protectors now carries a seed within their hearts, which they will take to the four directions. And some seeds need fire to open them. 

I’m profoundly grateful to have been a part of this moment in history, which will dwell in our collective memory for generations. For a time, I lived my dream of living in a society without authority, without money, rooted in a deep respect for all life. At Standing Rock, we were free. We felt part of the Great Circle of life—deeply connected to both the past and the future, drawing from a well that is the source. 

Understanding the Enemy Within

I believe that Oceti Oyate was defeated because of shrewd COINTELPRO-style tactics. Divide-and-conquer tactics. Psychological warfare, spiritual warfare; whichever you prefer. Just like everyone else, I’m left guessing. The available evidence doesn’t lend itself to any tidy conclusions. 

We can theorize, though, and we should. It’s only safe to assume that whatever government programs (and their corporate counterparts) have descended from COINTRELPRO are leaps and bounds ahead of their predecessor. The enemy is amongst us… sowing seeds of discord, pacifying us when it is strategic to agitate, agitating when it would be wise to stand down.

What’s worse is the thought that the enemy is within our own minds as well. Many people on our side have internalized the mainstream media narrative of “good protester vs. bad protester.” Now we have the narrative of the “good ally vs. agitator.” Certain ideologies are operational and self-reinforcing at this point—ideologies which may have been promoted by our enemies in ways too obscure to pin down. Some will consider this conspiracy theory, but I’m convinced that certain attitudes serve those in power too well to have arisen accidentally. I can’t point my finger at anyone and accuse them of being a government agent without evidence. I can tell a story, though. I can do my best to convey to others what it feels to live inside a riddle. 

Make no mistake: We can be sure that state and corporate forces are at this very moment recruiting and training agents to disrupt our movement, to derail us, to pacify us, to divert our energy into useless channels. They’ll use what they learned from Standing Rock; use spirituality to divide people; use clever techniques of persuasion to promote weak ideas, tactics, and strategies. They’ll use the politics of legitimacy to divide people; use smear campaigns; use anti-oppression politics, especially the spectre of the “good ally.” If we are to prevail, we must be solid, resolute, and practice a culture of solidarity. We must be strong in ourselves, unwavering in our belief, unshakable in our determination. And we must be willing to be honest with ourselves, preferring hard truth to easy fantasy.

This Ain’t Over

To my enemies reading this, mark my words: This ain’t over. The day is fast approaching when you will realize that we are no longer resisting you. You are resisting us. A new world will be born from the ashes of your crumbling empire, and day will break on the dawn of total freedom. Your legacies will live in infamy, serving as nothing more than pathetic examples of human stupidity, sad reminders of the price of ignorance, cautionary tales about the dangers of greed. We are armed with visions infinitely more powerful than your money, your guns, and your lies. You’ve seen our movement grow, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re just getting warmed up, motherfuckers.

MNI WICONI! WATER IS LIFE!

This article is meant to be part of a series reflecting on lessons that can be learned from Standing Rock. If you participated in the movement and want to contribute to the conversation, drop me a line at rebelrebuildrewild@riseup.net.

By Wendy & Jesse & Hayley & Teresa

Three of the most intense hurricanes ever recorded just ripped through Puerto Rico and the southern US — within weeks of each other! Ash rained from the sky in Seattle and Portland for weeks. Record monsoons swept through Asia. Parts of Sierra Leon and Niger are underwater. San Francisco recorded its hottest day ever and Europe endured a triple-digit heat wave they called “Diablo.” The fucking devil is here man, and its name is climate change.

But despite all this, no one is talking much about it — and even more lacking are concrete, urgent and massive plans to immediately and dramatically cut the carbon and other emissions that are driving the increasingly abnormal weather. What the hell is going on? How can most people realize we’re tipping the world into a sixth mass extinction which fundamentally threatens human society, and be so easily distracted, so resigned, so apathetic?

There are many feedback loops in nature and in human social interaction in which particular events feed on themselves. These loops can cause downward spirals, but sometimes there are also virtuous cycles in which particular actions succeed and in so doing, open doors for even greater success.

At the moment, our failure to meet climate change head-on with massive social action is taking us on a downward spiral. As carbon concentrations rise, it becomes harder to imagine any hope, harder to feel like anything anyone can do will make any difference, and it gets easier to checkout. This is causing diverse psychological and cultural trauma. Arguably the rise of nationalism and the break-down of communication across social and political divides is a symptom of the fear and loss of hope we’re feeling as the threat of human extinction sinks in. A tiny number of corporations and elites who run the fossil fuel-based system are doing everything they can to keep people distracted and fighting amongst themselves.

What we need right away is to step off this vicious cycle, and step onto a virtuous cycle, which is just within our reach. Turning away from fossil fuels will mean more than just changing fuel sources — it requires changes in the way we relate to the earth and other people. As we move away from an extractive, centralized model, there are huge opportunities to reorganize the economy away from inequality, racism, oppression and meaninglessness and towards cooperation, diversity, mutual aid and engagement. Each step forward can make the next step easier as together we reclaim a future worth living that is sustainable and in harmony with the earth. Deliberately and meaningfully dealing with climate change will allow us to stay calm and focused so we can keep forward momentum. There’s a world to be won in this transition, and nothing to lose.

But right now, what can you do to make a difference? Sure, you can strive to live a low-carbon lifestyle, boycott cars and meat, but still, even if you get your personal carbon footprint down to zero, all around you people are still pumping carbon into the atmosphere like they’re on a suicide mission and plan to take out the whole planet with them. We don’t get to have hope that climate change will be avoided — that ship has sailed. If we’re going to get out of this capitalist planetary death wish with anything resembling a habitable planet left, we’re going to need a diversity of tactics.

On a psychic level, we need to hold in our heart how success looks — a world where people get what they need, where our lives aren’t serving a system at odds with the earth, but where people serve their own needs and the needs of those around the and the earth. To hell with living large — we need to re-learn how to live close to the ground valuing simplicity, freedom, cooperation, art, music and pleasure more than our stuff. Once we can see it, it’s up to all of us to discuss it and start working out the details.

We can do this. Massive shifts in social structures as well as technological norms aren’t just possible — they’re inevitable if you look at how human societies have changed just over the last few hundred years. A lot of the racism and oppression we’re struggling with now are legacies of slavery and feudalism. People argued that both of those systems were inevitable and permanent, too, but both were swept away.

We’re at another historical tipping point — corporate capitalism has run its course. The difference this time is that these oppressive structures have exceeded the earth’s limits — we’re in a race to kill capitalism before it kills us. Systems and historical epochs don’t change on their own, and many people will cling to the old ways until the last moment. This shift requires fearless, humble, clever humans willing to fight like hell.

We need to continually test for weak spots and run with whatever works — being flexible and willing to accept alternatives that may only be partial answers but still move us forward.

It’s time to talk about taboo topics — like encouraging people to have fewer children or none at all for the next few generations to take pressure off the earth. Like supporting more urban density which dramatically reduces emissions, even when doing so changes things we love about how our cities are now. Like pointing out that rebuilding houses in hurricane country or in flood plains is crazy given near certainty that violent weather events will increase — people may need to move. Like admitting that bike sharing programs cut emissions and keep cars off the roads and there need to be anti-capitalist options that don’t have ugly corporate logos on them.

It’s time to point out the obvious, refuse to participate, and change: taking uber and lyft rides still puts carbon into the air — the better option is always to ride the bus! We need to demand better public transit, and do everything we can to get cars off the road. Why are so many products shipped thousands of miles, when we have the recourses to grow and build almost everything locally?! Folks need to stop idling their car when they’re just talking on a cell phone. Do you need to put your clothes in that dryer on the hottest day of the year? Cooperative businesses and housing save resources and are the bottom up solutions we need right now — they’re not just for hippies anymore. 

We can’t let ourselves off the hook just because we’ve individually figured out how to live a low-carbon lifestyle — we have to look towards the bigger picture of how to make it easy for everyone else on the planet to likewise make the same changes.  We are going to have to get creative, and we are going to have to get fierce if we are going to take down the 90 corporations that are responsible for 71% of carbon emissions. This will mean facing them in court, and in the streets! Seriously, we need to sue these fuckers for everything they’re worth for destroying our futures (and our present!) and do all we can to make it sure it’s no longer ever lucrative to pump carbon into the air.

Kicking the carbon habit requires social, legal, and political change, but there’s a technological aspect, too. Right after the US entered World War II, almost all factories were rapidly converted to war production, and thousands of new technologies were rapidly developed and deployed almost overnight. We’ll know we may have a chance against carbon emissions when we start seeing something similar in the form of a massive green energy boom. Right now most investment is still in dirty technologies with, at best, a trickle of money going into solar, wind, batteries, grid improvements, electric cars, conservation, high speed rail, and other transitions to carbon free tech. Let’s fight any new investment in fossil fuels — not just a few pipelines but all of it. This means, if you’re saving up for retirement or whatever, do the research, find out if any of your money is invested in fossil fuels, and if so, move your damn funds! Same with your bank: find out if your bank invents in fossil fuels, and if so, get your damn money out of there and into a credit union that only invests in clean energy!  

How frequently do we write to our climate scientists and thank them for their work? Recently, Hayley was speaking to a climate scientist friend who informed her of the incredible amount of hate mail that he and his colleagues receive. At least once a week, he’ll get a threatening email from a climate change denier. Climate scientists often work at public universities, so their contact info is online. Send them thank you letters—it will really help their morale! And while you’re at it, give yourself a treat, too. Maybe a walk amongst trees or find some friends to sing with. Let’s celebrate the awesome beauty of being alive on this living planet as we work to keep it that way!

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

As Slingshot goes to press, our Indymedia comrades in Germany are freaking out, being shut down and dealing with government surveillance. Our comrades in Barcelona are being shot with rubber bullets.

Flipping through the pages of this issue, you will find articles that completely contradict each other. That’s the idea: we aren’t a monolith, we’re a movement. Lots of voices make up this movement, and not everyone is supposed to agree. That’s where our power comes from: holding space for contradiction and internal critique. Being able to see things from different points of view — to discuss, disagree but still be comrades in the same struggle is the only way we can win. May our diverse voices burst up like flowers through the pavement of the corporate oligarchy!

It’s projects like Slingshot that hold the movement together, not because of our propaganda, but because of the great times we share listening to James Brown, The Clash and Gil Scott-Heron on vinyl while we put the pages together. We share stories, go to shows, and break bread. We write what’s in our hearts and make the best art we can. 

While we were making this issue, Sam went to the hospital and discovered his arm was broken — and it had been broken for a month! We all felt pretty bad about it, especially since Sam helped us unload a bunch of boxes of organizers when his arm was totally broken 3 weeks ago… And then, as if that wasn’t enough, Sam got freaking mugged while walking home in Berkeley from layout on Saturday night. Tthe muggers punched him in the face because he was being “too slow.” “I mean, come on guys, I’m not the one mugging me,” Sam said. Everyone in Berkeley is such a critic. Sheesh. 

During layout the clock said 2:25 but it was actually 1:30 am and we were sleep deprived and layout-drunk so a collective member threw the clock down the stairs and then we destroyed every clock in our office with the Homes Not Jails crowbar. Fuck time! Then we all helped sweep up. This is the essence of a collective — we all get to smash things, and we all get to clean up afterwards so that our 5-year old collective member won’t get cut by glass when she arrives the next morning. 

Sometimes we wonder if making Slingshot is worth it, and find ourselves lamenting that we don’t have better quality articles to cover such important topics. But then we find value in the weird and wonderful process of making the paper, and in the overwhelming volume of positive feedback from readers — especially prisoners. And it’s amazing when we talk to people involved in radical projects and spaces all over the world and they say, “Oh, you work with Slingshot? Cool!” 

We regret that this issue includes a sobriety article without an article to counter it. There was an article of tips for doing LSD, but unfortunately it was too incoherent to publish. 

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers, translators, distributors, etc. to make this paper. If you send an article, please be open to editing.

We’re a collective but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this: Davey, Devin, Dov, eggplant, Elke, Fern, Gerald, Hayley, Indiana Joe, Isabel, Jesse, Joey, Joey Provolone, Korvin, Laundro-Matt, Sam, and all the authors and artists!

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on Saturday, December 10, 2017 at 7 pm at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 126 by January 13, 2018 at 3 pm.

Volume 1, Number 125, Circulation 22,000

Printed October 6, 2017

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley CA 94705

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 slingshotcollective@protonmail.com 

slingshotcollective.org • twitter @slingshotnews