Category: Articles

Tim was such a control freak, he even planned his own death. No memorial service, he said. No tributes. Not even a mention in his own magazine, Maximum Rock-N-Roll.

Jo said it to his face. “You can’t tell us what to do about it,” she said. “You’ll be dead.” But Tim just laughed.

Now we laugh too, talking about the Tim Yohannon statue we should build, part in tribute and part in spite. At as many tributes and memorials as possible, we get sappy and sentimental. He would have hated all the nostalgia and reverence. Why mourn the past when there’s work to do? Because, Tim, it helps us see where to go from here. For someone who made so many enemies, he sure had a lot of friends. I wonder who will miss him more.

Those who respected Tim for his stubbornness, his morality, his demands for responsibility and accountability; or those who hated him for it, and used his fanaticism as a defense for their own lack of character and hard work.

Of course it wasn’t that simple, because Tim was a pain in the ass to deal with, and often wrong. But he carried on, and that’s what really matters to me. Through personal attacks, physical threats, and years and years of hard work, he carried on without bitterness or a crippling sense of nostalgia. Working his day job of loading crates at the Lawrence hall of Science, spending all his free time working on the Maximum Rock-N-Roll radio show and MRR magazine, then turning all profits back into the community.

These profits and Tim’s knack for organization launched the Gilman Street Project club, Blacklist Mailorder, and the Epicenter record store and community center. In short, his hard work provided the radio show we could all listen to while doing the dishes, the magazine we could be bored by, the club we could stand outside, the place to mailorder our shitty fanzines, the record label to put out our shitty local bands, and the record store where we could play free pool and use the bathroom. Even taken at its lowest level, and taken for granted, it was the scenery and soundtrack for our community and the framework for keeping that community alive and self- sufficient. It’s easy to be critical of institutions, including Tim Yohannon, who was himself sort of an institution. But who has the passion and patience to create and uphold those institutions for everyone else to be critical of, take for granted, to measure themselves against?

I remember one show at Gilman, a young cute boy up at the microphone giving an impassioned speech against Tim and Maximum Rock-N-Roll. At the end of the speech a young beautiful girl came up and gave the boy a rose. The crowd cheered, the boy and girl congratulated themselves, and in a house across the bay Tim Yohannon continued typing and typing and typing. Where had the boy and girl been years earlier when Tim was breaking up fights at shows, confronting the skinheads, doing more than anyone to further the political agenda of punk? Where were they two years later? Naturally, they had moved on with their lives. The boy quit doing his fanzine and moved to Santa Cruz, the girl grew out her hair and got a job as secretary for a slumlord. They still stopped by Gilman occasionally, but they had their own lives to think about now. Meanwhile, Tim kept on typing and typing, and that year donated the MRR profits to fifty fanzines and small newspapers, including Slingshot. What the moral of the story is, I don’t know, except that life is cruel, Tim deserved the rose, and being right once is not as admirable as being wrong ten times and right ninety.

For someone so serious and hardworking, he sure laughed a lot. He had a way of laughing not just at your jokes, but also your troubles and criticisms and almost everything. Laughing with you, not at you, even though he started laughing first. I don’t know how he did that, but it was a good trick. It got you laughing at your troubles, and life itself, and at Tim for having such a weird, annoying laugh. It was contagious and really comforting.

It’s to sappy to say that when they made Tim they broke the mold, but also funny, because if they hadn’t, two or three Tim Yohannons would be running around working everyone to the bone and laughing that annoying laugh, and we would have lost our fucking minds. But though there’s no more mold and no more Tim, you can still see his imprint on a lot of lives.

Since the first murmurs about energy deregulation, I’ve been asking everyone I know “So what are you going to do?” By and large, the answer is the same. From radicals to conservatives, people answer, “Um, we don’t know, so nothing. We’ll stick with PGE until we figure it all out.” It’s hopelessly complicated, but even if you manage to make sense of it all, there really isn’t much choice. Energy deregulation does not discourage energy use, and moves us father from a system that would give people control over energy generation: public ownership of utilities. Deregulation is a fraud because it appears to offer choice in the market, but no matter who you choose, nothing is likely to change.

California was the first state to offer all electric customers a “choice” of power companies. The way you’ve purchased electricity in the past was through the highly regulated privately held monopoly of Pacific Gas and Electric. It is exactly because they were a monopoly that they were so highly regulated. Prices were somewhat controlled, safety issues were somewhat considered, and the government had some say in the way power was generated. At PGE profits (and there were and still are high profits) went to shareholders.

Despite well-packaged claims to the contrary, deregulation was explicitly designed to benefit business. At least in the short term, the average rate payer won’t be benefiting much from it. Just for starters, the Public Utilities Commission has allowed an $80 million add-on to rates so utilities can “educate” rate payers about the restructuring! This came in the form of ads, billboards, and colorful refrigerator magnets with witty slogans. They said things like “knowledge is power” but neglected to provide you with any information.

And that heralded 10% rate reduction? It is really a hidden tax since utilities will borrow money to make up for the lower rates and then make citizens pay the loan off over 10 years, adding about $7 a month to your bill. What it has meant for my house’s bill — a $20 savings for our 10% rate reduction, and a $28 charge (called the Competition Transition Charge or CTC) to subsidize the 10% mandated savings — thereby increasing our monthly bill by $8. Yes, a rate cut that is smaller than the charges added to pay for it. The added CTC charge will continue until at least March 2002. After that all bets are off. It could continue to “cover the ongoing costs associated with opening the electric utility industry to competition,” or it could disappear entirely.

The electric utility industry is divided into three parts — generation, transmission, and distribution. The only part being opened to competition is generation, which currently accounts for only 20-25% of your monthly bill. PGE will still hold a regulated monopoly over the transmission and distribution.

What is Green-E?

Traditional PGE power is generated by a mix of coal, nuclear, large hydro, and natural gas. Under deregulation, renewable, “Green-E” power, with its own cheerful Green-E logo, is available for a higher rate. Renewable energy is defined to include biomass, geothermal, small-scale hydroelectric, wind power and solar. Biomass refers to plants and organic matter which are burned or converted into fuel, then used to produce electricity. Geothermal power uses huge wells which pipe steam and hot water trapped underground to the surface to make electricity. If you stay with PGE while trying to figure out who the best company to switch to is, you are still getting their same old non-renewable mix, and you’re still adding to the pockets of PGE shareholders.

Will Choosing Green-E Make a Difference?

No one can filter which electrons will be delivered directly to your home: all the power gets mixed together. The propaganda of the clean producers tries to imply that more, better, cleaner power plants will be built if only you choose the higher rate and switch to them. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe this will happen. A few socially conscious people may be willing to pay higher rates, but industry, the largest user of power, will mostly continue to use the cheapest, and least environmentally sensitive, power production.

Converting a regulated, privately-held company to multiple privately-held companies all competing with each other does not change the amount of power people use or the ways in which it is produced.

Under deregulation, the same electrical needs of Californians will be met by many competing companies, each with their own marketing budgets, bureaucracy and overhead. This competition is unlikely to drive costs down since it creates lots of new costs. A 1970 Federal Power Commission report indicated that publicly owned power is 40% cheaper than privately run. The Green-E’s sing of the salvation that deregulation is for them (I’m sure they mean to say the environment). They say it is their only chance to compete, that the marketplace will eventually work itself out so that they are the winners. Rather than hold out for that day, we should demand municipal 100% green power now.

Capitalism forces people, and corporations, to become brutal in order to survive. It takes our brightest thinkers and co-ops their skills to helping capital accumulate more capital, not necessarily cleaning up the environment or coming up with new ideas on energy generation and use. What can sell gets developed. What can’t sell gets repressed. Deregulation places its hopes in the power of the market rather than the power of the people. The prevailing attitude seems to be that society works efficiently only when personal profit is involved. But certain things (like health care, mass transit, clean water) should not be required to make a profit in the marketplace. “Why should rich corporations have the right to deprive families of electricity, of gas to cook with, or fuel to heat their homes. These are life’s necessities, like food, air, water. They should not be the private property of corporations, which use them to hold us hostage to the dark, to the cold, until we pay their price,” (Zinn, 1975). Electricity, in a modern industrial society, is a basic need, not a product you either buy or don’t buy at the market. Such basic needs should be publicly controlled.

The Future According to the Green-E’s

“Each time you buy an eco-product or service, you send a message to businesses about the kinds of goods and services you prefer. You create a demand for cleaner energy. That’s the power of the marketplace.”” The above reflects Green-E, eco-capitalist propaganda. Regardless of the product, it’s impossible to improve the environment through consumption. Ultimately, the best way to save the environment is to reduce human resource use: to consume less, not more. Using Green-E power can play a part because it means fewer non-renewable resources are used to meet people’s power needs. But when Green-E has to exist in a market, its providers are motivated to get you to use more power, not less.

The new power companies believe there will be lots of fabulous new clean power-generating technologies developed. It is true that green technology development has been stifled — except for a brief period during the Carter administration’s oil crisis — in favor of nuclear and fossil fuel power sources. But by depending on the market, and thus a tiny number of “green” consumers who can afford to pay more for their electricity, investment in green power-generating technology will continue to be starved. The best way to promote green power technology is simply to require it. A system which depends on the market serves another goal: enriching shareholders and taking the political pressure to go green off of the majority of the electrical industry.

Who will choose Green-E Anyhow?

In 1993, a power utilities company in Colorado surveyed residents about the potential demand for Green-E. 75% responded that they were interested in renewable energy, but of these people, only 10% actually signed a contract with a Green-E pro
vider because it would increase their bill by $2 a month. How many are going to switch when the increase for choosing renewable power in CA is at least $10/month?

If we were to ever take the real costs into consideration, green energy would win. But because we don’t consider the environmental and human damages in the cost of producing power, the historical investment in conventional power sources makes it cheaper to produce. Deregulation moves us further away from considering these hidden costs, because short-term profits are now the only reasons for energy providers to continue conducting business. Employee and environmental safety in the current deregulation scheme don’t enter the picture unless they increase profits. No one is quite sure what the added danger will be if plants sacrifice safety for profit. And there is no reason to believe that they won’t do so now that regulation has loosened.

Green power is good for capitalism. In an effort to get new “power brokers,” one web site advertises to potential green energy providers: “large users will get better prices while individuals make up the difference.” No surprise there — volume discounts for people and companies who use lots and lots of power. The only thing encouraged is more power use, and therefore more profits.

A Historical Perspective

Prior to deregulation, long-distance telephone calls were so expensive that people timed their calls, limited themselves to only a few minutes, and called only on special occasions. Fax machines and wireless phones were virtually non-existent. With a competitive market, people are buying more than ever just to stay in touch. And all the while they think they have a choice between one global mega-corporation and another. You can buy whatever brand of laundry detergent you want, but pretty much they are all owned by the same company. With increasing globalization, rather than one regulated monopoly, we lean towards a system with a few large companies and a competition that only serves to increase demand and drive up shareholder profits. Our long-term global goal should be to consume less, but capitalism doesn’t work that way. And it won’t work that way by opening up energy to competition either. Already some new power companies are demanding you purchase a new, fancy meter. Stay tuned — their hopes are to become mega-corporations that provide you with your power, internet connection, cable television, and probably anything else they could sell you.

Who’s winning in the Open Market

“With deregulation, the opportunity to make money is outstanding” hails a re-seller. The electric utility industry is a $215 billion market. The information about new power generating companies on the web indicates a pyramid scheme. Some companies are acting as middlemen — buying power on the wholesale market, then turning around and selling it on the retail market to business and residential customers for a large profit. Some purchase energy from a variety of local generation facilities while others are out-of-state electric utilities nudging in on the California market.

But buyer beware: although there are over 200 newly registered electric service providers approved by the CA Public Utilities Commission, many are already listed as “suspended” or “revoked”. For only $150, anyone can register with the Public Utilities Commission as a provider/reseller and reap the benefits of privately owned power, but it requires huge amounts of start-up capital to maintain overhead and build infrastructure while waiting for new customers to sign up .

The independent Utility Reform Network (TURN) in San Francisco (415-929-8876) publishes an excellent newspaper on energy deregulation. They have a brochure which answers commonly-asked questions and which alerts citizens of their rights. They are also drafting a ballot initiative to make restructuring more fair to individual customers. According to a Utility Consumers Action Network (UCAN) report, only 23 of 132 companies they surveyed offered competitively-priced electric services to small businesses and residential customers. 20% of these companies registered with CPUC are not providing service at all, simply are part of a multi-level marketing scheme. 34% were “difficult to contact and did not return phone calls.” You can see how UCAN rated the companies at http://www.ucan.org.

And the winners are…

When I spoke with the UCAN survey providers in mid-July, I asked about the 23 companies that they claimed were offering competitive services. By that point there were even fewer choices. They recommend the following companies:

Non-renewable power

Commonwealth Energy Corp., Tustin, CA 92780, 1-800-225-4367 (can save you an addition 2-5%)

Friendly Power, 1-888-5POWER5

Renewable Green-E power

Clean ‘n Green, San Jose, CA, 1-888-425-3361 (locally-produced wind power)

Green Mountain, S. Burlington, VT, 1-888-246-6730 (excellent customer service and bonus gifts)

Earth Source 100, 1-888-334-7664

PG&E 100 if you are not easy with change but wanting Green-E.>

With reservation, our house is opting for the local Clean n’ Green. We are sucking up the extra cost of renewable energy and offsetting this by lowering our energy consumption.

>In the past year and a half, San Francisco bicycle messengers have taken significant steps toward organizing for collective action against their bosses — the courier company owners — and by extension, corporate downtown. This is a struggle that should be of interest to all pro-labor people, and, specifically, those who see the radical possibilities latent in a transient, counter-cultural workforce centered in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district.

The San Francisco Bicycle Messenger Association (SFBMA) was established in 1990 as an in-yer-face assertion that since the courier company bosses have a club (AMCS — translation unknown), so should their slaves. The reality, however, was that the SFBMA existed for years as little more than a mythic formation emblazoned on visors and t-shirts.

This began to change in the beginning of 1997 after a wild-cat strike nearly broke out in response to yet another indignity at the hands of Doc Holbrook, notorious owner of Ultra Ex, one of the largest courier firms in the city. Only a week or so before Christmas of 1996, Ultra Ex called an early morning, mandatory meeting to announce that riders would receive an across-the-board commission decrease as that year’s Christmas bonus. A petition threatening a walk-out was quickly circulated and signed by virtually every messenger as well as some of the office staff. Management’s response — a combination of minor concessions and threats to farm the work out to other courier firms, thus diluting the effect of an isolated job action — was successful in deterring a strike. However, it galvanized interest in, and underlined the need for, collective, industry-wide organization.

In fits and starts since that time, the SFBMA has developed into an organization that meets regularly, has clear demands, puts out a newsletter, and is in the process of formulating tactics and strategies. In the past several months, messengers at three different courier companies — Advanced, DMS and Professional — have banded together and made modest demands which their employers have ceded. A small fissure in the edifice of cynicism so prevalent amongst wage-salves can be seen. In other words, it’s a dynamic, open situation.

Late last March, the SFBMA voted to accept an offer by the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) to affiliate. A "working agreement" was signed in which the SFBMA retains its organizational autonomy and is afforded office space and use of the Union Hall at 255 9th Street, tactical support, and full legal defense. In exchange, the SFBMA pays the ILWU $137.50 a month (equivalent to 25 members paying $5.50) and is expected to fulfill an agreement to work to organize the entire courier industry.

Unions, Radicals and Where to Go From Here

What excites me about the prospect of messengers organizing is the power that messengers could wield if they were to constitute themselves as a collective force. San Francisco’s retail-financial-corporate center, a base to many of the world’s biggest and most powerful businesses, could not function without hundreds and hundreds of messengers (not only on bikes: also by foot, moped, motorcycle and auto) servicing its same-day-delivery needs. This leverage is the basis for real social power that is far more inspiring, in my view, than simply securing a contract with our employers.

This raises many questions about the role of unions in the radical project which many leftists and progressives seem unwilling to entertain. In their chief role as labor merchandisers, unions seek to create a closed labor market within which they can sell their "wares". Is this radical? Is it inspiring? Why does it seem to fail so often even on its own limited terms? My guess is that the answer to the third question, at least in part, is because the answer to the first two is a resounding NO.

From the standpoint of traditional unionism, the transience which characterizes the courier industry is a major impediment to organizing because it doesn’t accommodate the designedly slow pace of the official recognition process. Isn’t this a reason to look beyond the legal, state-sanctioned mechanisms? After all, doesn’t worker fluidity and instability pervade the American economy in 1998? In fact, it seems itinerant/temp/transient workers, often the most oppressed, are apt to be mighty disloyal, and thus, potentially the most insurgent. If so, acting quickly seems in order!

Stay tuned.

Those interested in donating to the SFBMA strike fund and/or receiving the SFBMA newsletter, Cognition, should contact: SFBMA, PO Box 640251, San Francisco, CA 94164-0251. Ronnie R. has been a SF bike messenger for the better part of the past 4 years.

Proposed boxes he wants printed with the article:

Wanted: Insolent Radicals!

Get a job as a messenger and help the class war this Fall. Advanced, Ultra Ex, Professional, Aero and many others will be hiring like mad come September, just in time for the SFBMA’s intensified organizing campaign!

SFBMA Demands

1. Commissioned messengers should receive no less than $3 for a regular downtown delivery, regardless of what the client is charged.

2. Commissioned messengers should receive no less than 55% of the actual price to the client.

3. Commissioned messengers should make $80 minimum daily.

4. All messengers should receive: Paid sick days, vacation days and lunch.

5. Full health coverage or equivalent amount in cash monthly.

6. Direct comp for bike provision and maintenance.

7. Rainy day bonus.

8. Hourly messengers – whether on foot, bike, motorcycle or car: Minimum $11/hour with regulated work loads.

ick days, vacation days and lunch.

5. Full health coverage or equivalent amount in cash monthly.

6. Direct comp for bike provision and maintenance.

7. Rainy day bonus.

8. Hourly messengers – whether on foot, bike, motorcycle or car: Minimum $11/hour with regulated work loads.

When the fences went up around the grassy area at United Nations Plaza in San Francisco last November, Food Not Bombs (FNB) volunteers had apretty good idea of what they were for. When a volunteer from Food Not Bombs called the Department of Public Works (DPW), those suspicions were confirmed. The fences, he was told, were put up to keep homeless people off of the grass.   FNB confronts these attacks on public access to public space with direct-action – by serving free vegetarian food and distributing literature in and around these spaces, and by speaking out and holding demonstrations. This is just what they did on July 14th when a demonstration took the fences down.

The fences were barricades of the type used by the police for crowd control, held together with plastic handcuffs and hose clamps. ” What we really need from the community,” said Ronnie Eagles, from the Coalition On Homelessness, “… is some solutions. Solutions, not more fucking persecution ! “At the end of the day, some thirty folks had been arrested and charged with refusing to leave the scene of a riot and resisting arrest.

The post script to this event is that one week later, on July 22nd, the fences around the grassy areas at UN Plaza were taken down. “The green areas are for the people to look at, not necessarily to lay on,” said Jorge Alfaro of the DPW. “But we’re going to see how people use the space.

” When asked if there was any connections between the FNB demonstration and the fences coming down, Alfaro repsonded, “Of course there was a connection. The demonstrators brought it to everyone’s attention.” Remember … direct-action gets the goods!

Revolutionary Anarchist Newspaper

The Love and Rage newspaper and Revolutionary Anarchist Federation voted to dissolve itself during a brief conference in New York on May 23. The break-up occurred as a result of a philosophical/political split preceded by a two-year-long debate within the organization around a number of issues that proved irreconcilable. Neither side in the split will continue using the Love and Rage name.

One side is forming a new organization calling itself the Fire By Night Organizing Committee and will, at least initially, not be publishing a paper. This faction which springs largely from the New York chapter of Love and Rage wants an organization that is less explicitly anarchist and that will require greater adherence to the organization by its members than was the case with Love and Rage.

The other faction which is more Mid-west based has put out a call to form a new revolutionary anarchist group and will put out a theoretical anarchist journal, but neither of these projects have names yet. This faction wants to do a significant amount of work with Anti-Racist Action.

We propose that a conference be held in San Francisco, California from June 1st through the 5th 1999. We hope to facilitate discussions regarding the working class and our struggles with capitalism. These are issues that we hope to address at the conference;

Stop factionalism within the progression towards a more effective movement of direct democracy.

Combat the world bank and its structural adjustments by seeking alternatives and taking action.

Illustrate connections between workers, the environment, poverty and other pressing issues which urge resolution because of our need for an involved and compassionate society.

Explore alternative forms of organizing and cooperation.

Registration, input for the agenda and applications to facilitate workshops/ discussion groups are all due to the following address by December 31, 1998. Please contact us at these addresses for further information.

I99 International Solidarity Conference Committee

c/o San Francisco IWW
POB 40485
S.F. CA 94140 USA
Email: intl99@iww.org
Web: http://www.iww.org/~intl99/

Music by Woodie Guthrie 50 years later

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you or me, says this folksong about murdered IWW organizer Joe Hill. And so it is with Woody Guthrie. With the release of Mermaid Avenue by Billy Bragg and Wilco, a fifteen song album of unpublished Guthrie lyrics, it’s clear that, in the words of Bragg Woody Guthrie has not spoken his last words to us…this is just his first record for fifty years.

And that’s exactly how Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, wanted it. But she also wanted the album to feel like a collaboration- one between herself, Bragg, and, of course, her father. Woody was really open to other musicians, she says. And it was important to work with a musician who was like that. I didn’t want to just hand over this stuff and say, OK, go make a record; I’ll see you in a year. Mermaid Avenue (named for the street where the Guthrie family lived on Coney Island) does seem like a collaboration, one between two musicians who were in it not just for the music, but for the politics as well. For anyone familiar with Billy Bragg’s music, his socialist sensibility is always evident in his lyrics; and we all know who wrote This Land Is Your Land. The cuts on Mermaid Avenue show us a more complicated man than just a social commentator. However, we see that Guthrie had written plenty of songs that expressed his radical ideals and vision.

Woody definitely was a visionary. As, She Came Along To Me proclaims But I’m sure the women are equal, and they may be ahead of the men. As Bragg commented when I saw him play last month at the Fleadh The fact that Woody managed to write a song about women’s liberation in 1944, that’s just amazing. Yes, it is. I Guess I planted, an extremely well done pro-union song, while not exactly visionary, certainly speaks to his ideals and hopes for the world, the proletariat in particular.

This Woody Guthrie album is excellent, and there are many more to come. Not only does the Billy Bragg and Wilco ensemble have enough tracks cut for another album, but Nora has some 2,500 lyrics left in her father’s archive. And she intends to put them to good use. She has collaborations planned with The Klezmatics, an avant garde klezmer band from New York who will create music for Woody’s lyrics on Jewish themes, and Ani DiFranco, who is certainly an artist who carries on the Guthrie singer-songwriter tradition. Nora Guthrie is just as brilliant at choosing artists who can do justice to interpreting her father’s lyrics for a new generation as Woody was at writing them in the first place.

The Lucy Parsons Center, Boston’s only collectively-run autonomous infoshop/bookstore was hit with disaster on Saturday, June 13th. An extraordinary amount of rain hit the Boston area over that weekend, and flooded our basement with over a foot of water.

The center was relocated to this temporary space in Davis Square after having been evicted from our former location in Central Square just over a month ago. With plans to move to a permanent storefront within the next month or so, our morale has been crushed as about 2/3 of our stock was stored in the basement. We have no estimate of the damage done at this point, but we have absolutely no insurance that will cover the loss.

Already suffering from very low sales and participation due to our low visibility location, our funds have been depleting quickly and we are not sure how we will afford the higher rent of a new location. We are setting forth a plea for any fundraising help that anyone can give us. Never in our 30 year existence have we dealt with such a blow. Please extend your solidarity in helping us to ensure that the Lucy Parsons center continues to exist.

Lucy Parsons Center
259A Elm Street
Somerville, MA 02144

The upcoming millennium shift has to be the most anticipated event in the history of the Christian calendar. Some people are consciously expecting the end of the world (or at least the end of the world as WE know it), while most others are simply anticipating that something will happen. As I will unfold, in these attitudes may lie an important opportunity for people interested in creating a new decentralized, non-authoritarian, socialist society.

The different feelings about the millennium in the collective unconscious of Western civilization are mirrored by the uproar surrounding the Year 2000 (Y2K) computer problem. People who already expected some kind of apocalypse see this electronic quirk as a validation of their beliefs. Others who heavily depend upon computers, to the point that they cannot imagine life without them (like, say, computer programmers) are in an uproar about the collapse of major world computer systems. Their minds have suddenly been confronted with the larger implication that the Y2K problems makes about our ridiculous over-dependence on technology and our often idiotic misuse of it. The misuse which I am referring to is the sloppy way that most important computer programs are written with the emphasis (as with everything produced in our capitalist society) on speed of production and the glitzy outward appearance of speed and complexity. With this ethic of computer programming predominant, most corporate programmers completely sacrifice the idea of creating space- efficient programs which can perform simple, utilitarian functions free of long term glitches and bugs.

With the advent of Y2K, computer programmers are beginning to see how the computer controlled society which they have helped to create is ridiculously wobbly and full of holes It has them so scared that someone recently told me about visiting a huge survivalist supply store and finding employees of Intel, Microsoft and other such corporations lined up out of the door to stock up for the forthcoming apocalypse.

But it is not the attitudes of these pathetically frightened members of the professional, managerial class which should most concern people interested in using the Y2K computer problem to spread social revolution. The emotions which we can most readily capitalize upon are the ambiguous anticipation lying in the back of the minds of the masses. Something has to happen to mark this numerological change over, and it should be something as big as the birth which this calendar commemorates. Something must come to end the lives of desperation that most people live, even in the bountiful land of America, tied to soul-crushing jobs which waste their time in unfulfilling, repetitive tasks that only serve to prop up a capitalist regime which keeps them chained to constantly escalating material desires while our social, mental and spiritual natures are increasingly stifled and perverted.

Scores of fly-by-night and corner-store prophets are waiting to take advantage of this millenarian anticipation. Their answers are on the whole nothing but pernicious superstition meant to prop up some new authoritarian, hierarchical reign. In the end they are all too small, scattered and unappealing to the majority of the population to be any threat to the current regime.

But perhaps the shining light of anarchism can brighten this millenarian darkness of superstitious obscurantist cults trying to take advantage of modern capitalism being crippled by computer problems.

And anyone who has even looked over the technical facts cannot doubt that our capitalist government will be at least partly injured by computer problems with the coming of the year 2000. Even if the California DMV has managed to safeguard its records, the systems are too widespread and variegated to avoid all computer chaos on this momentous date. The Y2K problem may well cause a majority of the electronic toys used to distract the first world masses from their enslavement to suddenly break down and stop functioning. It also has the potential to do great damage to the webs of electronic registration and observation which are increasingly used to monitor the most minute details of our lives.

The Y2K problem will certainly not bring down the U.S. government and its massive military in one fell swoop. If anyone has the monetary and technological resources to avoid such catastrophe, it would certainly be them. Even if its systems are disrupted, computers are not necessary to a large-scale repressive state. As the German Nazis and the imperialist dynasties of China proved, only violent force and perhaps well-kept paperwork are necessary. But the year 2000 may well bring the collapse of the TV-internet mind control network at a time when massively repressive militaristic emergency measures are required for America’s capitalist government to maintain control. This has the potential to suddenly make a whole lot of people aware of the ultimately repressive nature of government.

So what better time for an anarchist revolution and a libertarian socialist re-structuring of society?

What we need to keep in mind here is that its always a good day for a revolution — and January 1st, 2000 could be the best day of Ôem all. As year 00, it’s certainly got the numerological significance requirement covered. At the least the anarchist community and other groups of radical social activists need to stop buying wholesale what the capitalist press is telling us about possible Y2K problems and begin realizing the opportunities that they are offered by a massive shock to the technological systems which our modern capitalist government relies on to maintain its power. Revolution now!

Berkeley Initiative would require full pay for 35 hours of work

An initiative measure on the Berkeley ballot this November, if passed, would require Berkeley employers to reduce the work week to 35 hours, with no reduction in pay, and pay double time for all hours worked over 35 hours.

Although the 35-for-40  law must be passed on a state or national level in order to be truly effective, and although the measure does not appear to cut the work week for the many salaried workers in Berkeley, folks should pass  35-for-40

Although government reports show that US unemployment is low right now, the government statistics don t count the long-term unemployed.  And, the US numbers count under-employed and part time workers as employed, distorting the picture.     Decreasing the work week will mean more full time, good jobs at better wages.  A 35 hour week also gives workers more hours to enjoy life or participate in their families.  In a era when almost every parent works, the 35 hour week is  pro-family.

The Berkeley ballot measure would apply to all Berkeley businesses licensed by the city or having contracts with the city.  In addition to requiring double time for hours worked in excess of 35, the bill would make compulsory hours over 35 illegal.  The proposed law is similar to a bill introduced in Congress in 1980 by Rep. John Conyers of Detroit.  That bill would have created an estimated 7 million extra jobs nationally, but it was never voted on.  Currently, American workers are working a longer work week than workers in almost any other industrial country.  Although the 35-for-40 law would only apply in Berkeley, and it is admittedly difficult to make labor standards advances in one small city in a competitive capitalist context, Berkeley voters need to vote their self- interest and pass 35-for-40. 

Voting against giving yourself an extra hour everyday shows a lack of self-respect and is, in a word, pathetic.  Passage of such a law in Berkeley would put cutting the work week back on the political map in the US for the first time since the 1930s.    A majority of Berkeley s voters work for someone else, either getting a salary or a wage.  Salaried workers should vote with those who earn wages, as a majority of Californians recently voted on the minimum wage increase ballot measure which recently passed.  Although not everyone earns the minimum wage, and not everyone would benefit from 35-for-40, it advances the interests of everyone who works for an employer.  That the media has already dismissed the measure s likelihood of passing, and that even the progressive politicians in Berkeley have not endorsed 35-for-40, only shows how far American political discussion has been dominated by the boss s interests.    Having a 35 hour week in Berkeley may cause some bosses to move certain jobs to Oakland or elsewhere, which is why the 35-for-40 ballot measure in Berkeley is only a first step.  If it can be passed in Berkeley, the next step is passing a similar law at the state and national level.  Ultimately, getting a fair share requires more than just voting – mass organizing, union drives, and worker solidarity on an international level are required to achieve any adjustment in the distribution of wealth between workers and bosses.  Reducing the work week gives workers more of the wealth they produce, and bosses will never voluntarily accept it.

The Share the Work Committee, which wrote the ballot measure and collected over 3000 signatures to get it on the ballot, is planning a grassroots campaign to pass 35-for-40.  Volunteers and donations are need.

Contact the Committee at 841-7460 or write to PO Box 5832, Berkeley, CA 94705.