Category: Articles

By Kathy Labriola

I am a nurse, counselor, and hypnotherapist as well as an anarchist and political activist in Berkeley, California. Not surprisingly, most of my clients are anarchists, political activists, and community organizers. Many of them have sought counseling because they are struggling with some kind of mental health condition or challenge. Many have been coping with these conditions for years and even decades, and have tried many different approaches to minimize their painful symptoms and maximize their happiness. Quite a few have confided to me that they have been criticized and shamed by other activists for going to counseling , for prioritizing self-care, or for utilizing medications to manage their most disabling symptoms. Many describe how they have suffered in silence for many years with mental health conditions, before finally seeking help from a doctor, therapist, or other medical practitioner.

There is no “one size fits all” approach to mental health, and I want to support our friends and comrades in choosing the path they feel is best for them. It is not up to me or anyone else to tell anyone how to handle a mental health challenge. However, I would like to express some ideas I believe can add to this conversation in our anarchist community.

Whether or not you have a mental health conditions yourself, learn as much as you can about mental health conditions. This will empower you to take care of yourself if you have such a condition, or help you to be a useful ally to any friend, family member, or loved one who may need support during a mental health crisis. You can educate yourself through a variety of books, articles, websites, podcasts, and other resources from a variety of different points of view. Engage in respectful conversations with people you know who have experienced depression, anxiety, a manic state, hearing voices or having hallucinations, or a state where they felt impaired in decision-making or taking care of themselves. If they are willing to discuss their experiences with you, learn about what this was like for them and what strategies or treatments they have found to be helpful. They may or may not already have a support system of friends and/or family members set up to be there for them either during a crisis or on an ongoing basis. If you feel you can commit time and energy to be part of their support team, offer to be available to them in times of distress, being as clear as you can about what you can provide and any boundaries you need. They may want help with practical things like cooking meals or doing laundry, rides to appointments, or help with paperwork or finding counseling or a support group. Or they may be feeling so distressed that they need to take time off work and may need people to loan them a little money or give them a temporary place to stay. Or they may need someone to listen and give them emotional support as they try to make decisions and plans for their recovery.

Our comrades deserve autonomy, privacy, and control over their bodies, minds, and spirits, and it is important that we respect their choices with acceptance and love. They may choose to take medications such as anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, mood stabilizers, or anti-psychotic drugs to reduce their symptoms. Many people with mental health conditions have said they have felt unfairly judged by other activists who believe these medications are harmful and unnecessary.

In fact, these medications are grossly over-prescribed by doctors and are given out like candy to anyone who mentions to a doctor that they are a little anxious or depressed, and they do have potential dangers and side effects. However, for some people, severe depression can be so disabling that they are unable to work, they cannot safely take care of their children, and they feel in danger of self-harm. For people in so much pain, taking one or more of these drugs can make the difference between living in a horrible hell of despair and actually feeling well enough to do the things they want and need to do in their lives.

Similarly, people who are experiencing a manic episode are often experiencing intense panic, and their mind feels so frenzied that they cannot sleep, eat, or focus on any task or activity. And people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia often hear voices and see visions and hallucinations, and many feel convinced that they are being pursued by dangerous people who intend to harm them. This can be so terrifying and painful that if drives many people to suicide attempts. As a result, many of them choose to take anti-psychotic medications, which significantly reduce or even eliminate the hallucinations and the voices. This can allow someone to feel safer and calmer, and be able to focus on work, school, art, friends and family, and/or activism, rather than being exhausted and distraught from coping with unwanted voices and visions.

No one should be forced to take drugs against their will, but people deserve to have agency over these decisions and they need accurate information and support from their loved ones and comrades in order to make an informed choice. Some people with mental health conditions may choose not to take medications, and they need a support system to help them develop healthy strategies to reduce their symptoms and enhance their wellbeing. Some people focus on self-care, making sure to get enough exercise, eat healthy meals, do regular journaling, spend time in nature, and have quality time with friends and lovers . Others find counseling, support groups, and classes to be nurturing and restorative. Creating art or music is very healing for many people. For some, pursuing a spiritual path through meditation or some other form of spiritual practice is central to sustaining their mental health.

None of these options are mutually exclusive. Many people take medication, either for a few months while they are experiencing a mental health crisis, or for a much longer period, sometimes for many years, to relieve their symptoms. However, they may also concurrently utilize many of the other strategies of self-care, counseling, creating art, or a spiritual practice, both to help them recover and then to prevent the symptoms from recurring.

Rather than judging anyone for the tools they choose to use to survive, radical movements can support our comrades and respect their choices. Many activists struggle with these conditions and need as much support and love as we can offer them.

Doing radical political activism is very hard work, and many people become exhausted and experience burn-out, frustration, sadness, self-doubt, and a deep feeling of hopelessness at certain points in their lives. Capitalism is stubbornly resistant to change, and many people feel angry and discouraged after spending years working so hard and seeing only incremental progress. This can lead to many of our comrades experiencing periods of depression, anxiety, and feeling incapacitated.

Many anarchists have told me that they weathered these periods alone, because they were reluctant to talk to others for fear of being seen as weak or wrong, and they did not think anyone would care about their struggles. In fact, many activists have said that when they reached out for help, they were told they were “self-centered” or “entitled” and attacked for “not pulling their weight” in a political organization or collective. Or they were told that other people are more oppressed than they are so they shouldn’t complain about their problems, or that mental health problems are a “first world problem.” Many people drop out of our organizations and even give up on political activism when they are ridiculed instead of supported.

On a positive note, I have seen some people in crisis who have had a very tight community of friends and loved ones who provided emotional and practical support to help them through it. This is our anarchist community at its best: providing mutual aid that can include anything from keeping someone fed and housed to taking turns staying up all night with them during a suicidal crisis. We can sustain ourselves, our loved ones, and our movements over time by being compassionate and providing support.

Thanks if you purchased a 2017 Slingshot Organizer – they are how we pay to print and distribute this newspaper for free. We still have copies if you want to order some. Also we have some returns so if you can distribute a few free copies to low-income people, prisoners, immigrants or teens or others who couldn’t otherwise have an orgnaizer, let us know (please no requests for just one copy, though).

If you want to help make the 2018 Organizer, we need your help. It’s just a handful of people working on the project so a single additional person makes a huge difference. Join us, no experience necessary, and it’s super fun and social:

• May/June: We’ll edit the historical dates. Send us suggestions for dates and holidays we should include.

• June 25-July 24: Artists draw the calendar section. If you want to draw a 4 week section, let us know. We call/email the radical contacts to update the list – send us corrections in July or volunteer to help with the update.

• July 28-30: Art and editing party to put the Organizer together. If you’re in the Bay Area, drop by for an hour or the whole weekend. It is a fun participatory project – no experience necessary.

No matter where you are, you can send us art to paste here and there, cover submissions, feature essays for the back, the letters A-Z, the numbers 1-31, the names of each month, and the days of the week — we’ll paste it in for you.

 

By the Slingshot Collective

We believe the Prison Industrial Complex is one of the flashpoints of class warfare and internal colonization in the United States.

The Slingshot paper is mailed free of charge to prisoners in the US who request it, our small but symbolically important act of solidarity with those behind bars. We receive a lot of prisoner mail; simple requests for subscriptions but also submissions of writing, artwork and requests for penpals and for legal aid. We appreciate that prisoners reach out but find ourselves overwhelmed as well….we simply can’t respond to the bulk of these communications and it’s a challenge for us just to keep our prisoner subscription address list updated.

We are unable to provide legal aid/advice, financial assistance, penpals, literature or respond to requests for other kinds of help. We understand that many prisoners are desperate for outside contact but we just don’t have the resources or the time to respond to the hundreds of letters we receive.

Slingshot is a small volunteer collective…. often no more than 5 people working the many hours required to produce and distribute the paper and fundraise thru the production and sale of the Slingshot organizers. We raise all the funds and do all the work with no grants, no advertisements and no paid staff. This project is a labor of love.

Alot of the article submissions we receive for Slingshot require extensive editing which we do in conjunction with the authors directly or over email but this process is often impractical with prisoners because the time required to do several back and forths by snail mail exceeds the timeline for next issue publication. If you are a prisoner submitting an article please do your best to be concise, clear and to the point… the Slingshot paper is a small publication so every word should count. We don’t publish poetry or fiction, and only run personal narratives if they are framed within the context of broader struggles. Understand that we do read every submission but can only publish a fraction of what we receive. We will run your article if it fits with the issue in question and requires little more than copy-editting. If you’re Ok with us editing your article without your input please say so when you submit, we will do our best to honor your ideas and intention.

If you don’t hear back from us please don’t despair,… we read your words and appreciate the thoughts and stories you share.

And if you are part of the Slingshot universe and are free to come to the Longhaul in Berkeley and help us, please do! Opening prisoner mail is just one of the many tasks we need help with and there are many other ways to contribute to the project. Get in touch, become a Slingshotter!

 

Here are some other projects that inspire us and might be able to help prisoners:

Incarcerated Worker Organizing Committee

IWOC

PO Box 414304

Kansas City, MO 64141

iwoc at riseup dot net

:

Prisoner Literature Project

C/O Bound Together Bookstore

1369 Haight St.

San Francisco, CA 94117

 

They don’t give legal advice or pen pal services, but you can find out about those sort of things from:

Prison Activist Resource Center

P.O. Box 70447

Oakland, CA 94612

 

Similarly, any defendant facing felony charges can request a free copy of The Criminal Legal System for Radicals ‘zine by writing the Tilted Scales Collective at tiltedscales at riseup dot net or:

Tilted Scales Collective

c/o PARC

P.O. Box 70447

Oakland, CA 94612

 

 

Dave Linn, an incredible, warm, giving radical lawyer, died March 14.  Dave was an immigration and criminal defense attorney who was really in it for the cause, defending people with little funds. During the 1991 volleyball riots in People’s Park in Berkeley he was always there, willing to help with legal actions and defend people in court. Later he moved to rural Washington where he continued lawyering for the little guy.  “Linn started working with the Peace and Freedom Party in 1980s,” wrote Hilda Rangel, a friend. “He ran for Congress in 1992 in California against a prominent Democrat at the time, winning 10,472 votes out of 238,939. Linn also helped organize the Oakland Tenants Union and wrote for Grassroots, an independent newspaper out of Berkeley,” Rangel wrote. “He participated in protests against the Vietnam War, the Iraq war and the Nicaragua and El Salvador interventions. Linn wasn’t a pacifist — he was an activist, a feminist and a revolutionary,” she said.  He will be missed but his spirit inspires still.

 

It is with mixed feelings that we announce a price increase for the 2018 Slingshot Organizer which will be out in October, 2017. It’s the first price increase for the pocket organizer since the late 1990s, and the first price hike for the spiral organizer since 2007.

Your purchase of the Organizer provides 99% of the funding source for the Slingshot Collective, which publishes this newspaper and the Organizer. Over the years, the cost of printing and mailing the organizer has crept up as has the cost of producing and distributing the Slingshot paper. We currently print over 60,000 copies of the paper a year and distribute it free of charge to infoshops, bookstores and cafes around the country (and even some outside the country) as well as to 2,000+ prisoners. We are a 100% volunteer collective and run a tight ship financially but we have had significant deficits the last 2 years and cannot continue much longer without reconciling this disparrity.

While we are against raising prices for philosophical reasons we also see our project as an opportunity for the community of radicals who loyally use the organizer to support the paper (and a good part of the Long Haul infoshop’s overhead). We want to make the relationship between the organizer and the project clear,.. organizer purchases are what make it all possible and we are very grateful to the amazing and loyal universe of Slingshot supporters! You are the engine that makes the little Slingshot train go, toot toot!

The nuts and bolts is that we will raise the wholesale prices $1 for the pocket and $2 for the spiral organizers. This will be reflected in retail prices (which we don’t have any say in).

To soften the blow, we’re going to keep the old retail prices at the Long Haul Infoshop (3124 Shattuck in Berkeley) if you can make it there and will offer a reduced wholesale price to non-profit radical projects like infoshops so they can keep the retail price lower as well.

Thanks for everyone’s amazing support of the Organizer and the Slingshot Collective over the last 29 years! We love you!!

 

By A. Lacran

We are approaching a critical period of history. The environmental crises of extreme climate change (Anthropogenic Climate Disruption – ACD) brought on by capitalism, industrialism and a philosophy of anthropocentrism has created monumental threats to the existence of life on earth as we know it with the onrush of the sixth mass extinction. In fact, the very nature of the earth itself has become molded by what is now known as the Anthropocene. The human footprint is now everywhere upon the biosphere – for better or worse.

Moreover, capitalism, itself, is on the verge of another historic and fundamental change of its technological structure based on the digital revolution and its byproducts of robotics, genomics and artificial intelligence. The social reconstruction that capitalism will employ may well threaten the very existence of masses of people above and beyond the longer reach of climate change. The demand for cheap abundant human labor that created the modern working class may no longer be the primary focus of capitalism.

Unfortunately, the leftist movement and, in particular, anarchists are not addressing these developments. Ignoring them and relying on the old tactics of bygone eras will no longer suffice. While movements such as neo-primitivism may be a prescient warning of a dystopian future, the decision to become hunter-gatherers foregoing husbandry and agriculture may alter the course of human kind in that possible future, but it doesn’t appeal to the present in any way that will win over people to the anarchist perspective, aside from survivalists and romantics.

The reality is, “regular people”, if not the left, are beginning to sense the bleak future that the technological changes are bringing cannot be undone. The fear that is inherent in electing false capitalist saviors such as Trump is an indication of the growth of a reactionary movement that will grow if not countered. Jobs and money for the lower and middle classes are not coming back within the present globalist or national capitalist economic system. Now the question remains, what happens when they realize they’ve been lied to and fed false promises?

The Trap of Reformist Politics

At this early juncture of the Trump Presidency in the US, the overriding tendency for the more progressive movements is to call for resistance to the emergent fascist movement within the extant political system. The weakness of this call for resistance is that it is not a call to end or combat capitalism and empire, instead it is a call to strengthen the capitalistic republic and its empire by demanding an inclusive “representative democracy” to strengthen the American capitalist system and its empire and hence, re-enforcing its hold on the American people and the peoples of the world.

What we are faced with is the era of “take away.” It is the end of the reform period that began in earnest following the Great Depression. Programs like the New Deal and The Great Society, the Women’s suffrage and rights movement and the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s are quickly becoming passé. What the Reagan years portended for a Corporate State dominated by the one percent is now in full swing.

Since the 1980’s there has been a concerted effort to build up the corporate/ military/surveillance/police/incarceration state; the rulers feel they do not need to buy people off to keep them from rebellion – no more crumbs! The ruling elite are no longer amenable to economic or social justice as an act of acquiescence to “scofflaws” of any sort.

The reason is that workers in capitalist societies are rapidly becoming, not what Marx termed “surplus labor” waiting for the next great boom in capitalist production, but rather “superfluous and expendable.” This is due to a massive reshaping of the capitalist reality that is taking place through technological innovation of robotics and AI. They know they do not need our numbers any longer. Capitalist society has gone through several transformations that have deeply affected society in ways that many of us have not fully understood.

The digital revolution with its proliferation of the technology of robotics and, ultimately, of artificial intelligence signifies the end of the working class as we know it and the growth and proliferation of what has been called the precariat. “In sociology and economics, the precariat is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare as well as being a member of a proletariat class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live.” This new formation merges disintegrating elements of the middle and working class with the lumpen proletariat.

The development of the precariat is also arising out of the final destruction of the peasant societies of the Third World. The confiscation of land by the transnational corporations and elites coupled with climate change and, now, continuous war has escalated the destruction of peasant society to the point that the growth of the precariat in the cities has grown exponentially. Worldwide, we can see that the merging of the lumpen with the elements of the former peasant population and the squeezed working and middle classes present very dangerous possibilities for the ruling elites and their imperialist allies whichever direction the new class embraces.

The direction of this new class formation is not yet decided. It is possible it can be turned to a totally reactionary movement embracing fascism. It is also possible the state will attempt to exterminate a potential dangerous and revolutionary class that is unpredictable and volatile for a hierarchical shrinking society. But, without a doubt, the revolutionary potential of this class is high. The political development of this new class depends on the ability of the precariat to develop a class consciousness of itself and for itself. It must be able to thrust itself into an active revolutionary role in order to defend itself from the onslaught of the ruling class.

Many in the precariat have already politically disengaged from the system either by choice or circumstance, but their disengagement is not necessarily active, rather, many times it is primarily demoralized, passive, cynical and/or pessimistic. The reasons are numerous and diverse, ranging from progressive to reactionary. The intrinsic feelings are obvious: it is understood that no one cares about them, that politics is a lie and the rich get richer while the rest of us are thrown onto the garbage heap. The truth is obvious – the state serves the rich and powerful! We are at a stage that has the potential for great disaster or great change. The time is ripe for tyrants and dictators or an alternative revolutionary way of thinking that allows us to build and defend a new paradigm. Unless the autonomous left can offer something different for the majority of us, the options are dire indeed.

However, it is not the state alone that is the problem. The state is the apparatus of control over the people by those who control the economic system of capitalism – the ultra-rich and their minions. The system of capitalism has obtained much more control over mass consciousness than the state. It is true that the idea of “representative democracy” has a great hold on many people, but it pales in comparison to the value system of capitalism that has been perpetuated upon the masses. While it is difficult to disengage from the state, it is twice as difficult to disengage from the capitalist ideology. The values of private property, profit and loss, greed and accumulation, hierarchy and domination with class distinctions based on one’s bank account or lack thereof, sexism, racism, homophobia and a view of the world that reduces everything to a commodity and a “resource” all serve to demean, degrade and alienate us from nature and each other from the cradle to the grave.

Disengagement from capitalism and its state is a herculean task that requires a break with the dominant mental paradigm and the creation of something that captures our imagination and allows us to imagine a world without either capitalism or the state. Autonomous disengagement is a strategic move to prepare the groundwork for a new phase of the struggle against capitalism and for a communal system.

Developing a new World View

We need to visualize a new reality separated from capitalism on a daily basis. We need to recognize it in ourselves and others; the need to communicate with each other to break down the alienation that dominates life under capitalism and work together through mutual aid and cooperation. The very things that hierarchy tries to convince us are not a natural state of affairs. They attempt to convince us that competition, ambition, greed and meritocracy are the natural states for humans. Only by creating a new world view within and without ourselves can we begin to break through the isolation that serves to perpetuate this nightmare that hierarchy, statism and capitalism have brainwashed us into believing.

Further, the belief in anthropocentrism that humans are the center of the universe, viewing the Earth as a “resource” to be used indiscriminately for profit and greed; seeing all living things as inferior and there for human needs; the intrinsic belief in hierarchical structures led by superior being where all others are expendable; the view that material possession is the only criteria for worthiness – all are methods of alienating us from each other and all living things and the earth. Unless this world view, that dominant society has implanted within our minds, is supplanted by a new world view, we will not be able to construct a future that doesn’t lead us back into the same traps of life and environmental destruction.

Developing a biocentric nature based philosophy that rejects speciesism and addresses panpsychism (the notion that a life force is in all things) is vital to a world view that disengages us from the world of capitalism and hierarchy. Embracing ideas such the Gaia Hypothesis, put forth by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis and Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid,“ then beginning to imagine and conceptualize a different world view; a vision that does not place humans at the center, but rather integrates our species into a more egalitarian and communal system of existence that does not elevate concepts of “survival of the fittest” and “top predator” as an end in itself.

Imagining the Commune

The Commune has an historical context throughout human existence. It is founded in the communal relations that humans needed in order to survive as we struggle to find our place in the world. It has never disappeared during the 15,000 years of civilization’s hierarchical domination. It always reappears when the people rebel against the powers that be. The Commune is characterized by a belief that the people can decide for themselves what is in their best self-interests apart from the influence and guidance of leaders, gods and masters. The Commune surfaces wherever and whenever rebellion against oppression by the lowest levels of society, be it slaves, peasants, workers, students or citizens who take matters into their own hands and decide for themselves the time has come to resist the power of the rulers. The Commune surfaces as Spartacus during the Roman Empire, peasant revolts, the Luddites, the Paris Commune, Nat Turner’s Rebellion, Makhnovshchina in the Ukraine, the sailors of Kronsdadt, the anarchists of the Spanish Civil War, the Hungarian workers committees of 1956, the student and worker uprising in Paris in 1968, the reformation of the Zapatistas into a more horizontal organization, the Oakland Commune during Occupy and the Kurdish communalism of Rojava in Syria. The Commune always resurfaces, be it in small groups or mass movements that decide to work together without leaders, using direct democracy to make decisions and direct action to resist the dominant paradigm – The Commune never dies.

The next step in the struggle for Autonomous Disengagement is developing the inner consciousness of the Commune. It is the act of overcoming alienation from each other and the world around us. The recognition that we need each other to not only survive, but we need each other for meaning in our lives. Communal consciousness is the realization that we only know we exist when others recognize us as themselves and we recognize them as ourselves. Capitalist society has made a fetish out of competition turning us against each other in order to succeed and commodified all social relations by defining them by “use value” and “exchange value.” The Communal consciousness knows these things are at best false and at worst dehumanizing.

Actively Building the Commune

There are two vital aspects of constructing the Commune. The first part is the mental/subjective aspect of the Commune. The second aspect is the material objective reality of the Commune – bringing it into actuality.

Once the consciousness of the Commune exists, every action therein becomes a struggle to realize the Commune in objective fact. This begins by creating the Commune with anyone one comes into contact with; wherever one is, whatever one does, whomever one speaks to about the Commune while acting with Communal consciousness without leaders through direct democracy creates the foundation for the Commune.

Objectively, the Commune is an intentional social organization that is based on communal use of property, horizontal decision making through direct democracy and egalitarian social relationships. It is defined only by the philosophical and practical agreement of those that form it. Whether the commune defines property as communally owned or in a more earth centered philosophy that the members are merely caretakers of the land and no one owns the commons is dependent on its participants.

When we have begun the active construction of the Commune, be it cooperatives, collective living situations, small group activities, movements like Occupy, or land occupations, we have begun the process of physical disengagement from the system. We are building our own future within the reality of the system but outside of our sense of trying to either reform or take over the state.

Defending the Commune

The Commune must be defended at all costs. Self-defense is not violence. It is the basic life force instinct for survival. We have come to a point where the endgame for survival has begun. If we do not recognize that ACD, the sixth mass extinction, corporate statism and economic strangulation is an assault against us all by the powers that be with their methods of repression and their aberrant philosophies, then we are lost.

Those that preach compromise and long-term reform are not only fooling us, they are fooling themselves. The long term has ended. Time is of the essence. We must begin the process, now. Fighting back and resistance are not euphemisms for “donate money to our tax deductible organization” or “vote for me” or fawning over another pontificating leftist icon protecting her or his tenure. We must claim our territory and defend it against attack, because we will be attacked, make no mistake. We must take back the night and build a new day. Remember, you are the Commune, pass it on.

Compiled by Charis

Here are some voices from the fields where much of our food is produced, in this case, the farms near Salinas, California. These farmworkers are from various parts of Mexico and primarily work producing lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and strawberries. The fear of deportation has hit their community hard and we heard some workers are staying home on days when immigration raids are rumored.

They were asked “What do you want consumers to know about you and your work?” and these are some of their answers:

 

Elena: I wish people took into consideration the work that we do. For example, this president talks about the undocumented, but doesn’t talk about farm workers because everyone actually needs us to do this job. Americans might try it but won’t last a week. Working in an office or McDonald’s is much better than working in the fields. People say the undocumented are stealing jobs but they won’t do this work. I’ve never seen anyone else but Latinos/Central Americans in the fields. No one else. There’s no option but to increase wages.

Lupe: We all need a job to survive, but those bosses, what would they do if we decided not to work? In this company they don’t want to let the lettuce rot because there weren’t enough workers. I would like to ask that boss [by this she means a farm manager we had talked to earlier] “what would you do if every worker stayed home for one week?” They would lose more than we do.

Miguel: They should know how we work and work to make food come to their tables with a lot of love and sweat on our faces.

Rosa: People see the lettuce in their sandwich and think how yummy it is going to be, but they don’t think about the work to produce that lettuce.

Carlos: It all depends on Mexicans, even though they don’t want us. If we don’t work any more, who is going to cut and pack?

Maria: Latino people are the ones who work in the fields.

Pedro: There should be someone who films a commercial about us and shows it nationwide, like during the Superbowl, and also put people like us in the commercial. We would like to see people like you be the one to start it, since you have taken the interest and the first steps to try and help.

Antonio: Before buying, we should take into consideration how hard it is to make that produce possible to buy. Don’t throw any away! You may think it doesn’t matter because it only cost a dollar, but it isn’t just the price, it is the life of the worker.

Jose: If I had a magic wand I would give every person who actually works an opportunity.

 

These are excerpts from interviews that were conducted as part of a UC Berkeley class applying human centered design to food topics (Eat.Think.Design!),

 

 

 

As one comrade from Station 40 Food Not Bombs pointed out in San Francisco, at the same time many ‘zines are becoming something you look at on your phone, one of the ‘zines we reviewed this issue has recently reversed the trend and become a print project that started with something you did on your phone.

Even in the middle of the information technology beast’s belly, we continue with our commitment to print and celebrating others that do so also. Hopefully you dig these ‘zines as much as we did! (A. Iwasa)

 

The Abolitionist #26, Summer 2016

C/O Critical Resistance

1904 Franklin St., Suite 504

Oakland, CA 94612

As a testament to this prison abolition group’s writing and editing, and the depth of the problem that is the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), the newspaper was still well worth reading months after publication.

Sharply laid out with great photographs and art, completely translated into Spanish and connecting the struggle against the PIC in the United States to other places such as Palestine and Argentina, this is a must read.  Perhaps best of all, it’s free to people in prisons, jails and detention centers! (A. Iwasa)

 

Turning The Tide: A Journal of Inter Communal Resistance.

Volume 29, Number 1, January-March 2017

Anti-Racist Action

PO Box 1055

Culver City, CA 90232

Tired of knowing what we’re against but never seeing the materialization of what we’re for? The need for proactive action is perpetual. Turning The Tide: A Journal of Inter-communal Solidarity (TTT) focuses on the necessity of radical organizing, education, and analysis in the face of white supremacy, colonialism, ecological devastation, fascism and the perils of empire. This journal has been published for 29 years and is produced by Anti Racist Action- LA (ARA-LA) and People Against Racist Terror (PART).

Starting as A Journal of Anti Racist Action, its name was later changed to highlight the recognition that in order to effectively organize for the liberation of all, we need to be clear about what we stand for as opposed to what we stand against. This is true for coalition building and networking across ideological lines. It’s for this reason that at times, TTT may publish articles that are contradictory along ideological lines, but remain consistent that POC and Indigenous liberation is the goal, and that capitalism and white supremacy are intertwined and work to undermine that goal.

Over the last 29 years of printing, TTT has published a 24-page tabloid. Often on a bi-monthly basis, with 6 journals being published

per year. They are distributed both in the streets and to prisons.

At the moment, economic hardship has become an understandable limit to the scope of the journal’s distribution. Postage alone costs around $1,000 for every issue. That’s why they’ve cut down to an 8 page journal published 4 times a year. They’re kicking off a campaign to get 100 people of means to donate $100 dollars a year, or $10 a month, to help spread their work further.

Check them out, and if you like their work and want to see more of it in your community, you can donate to their gofundme page by going to http://gofundme.com/eugzgg. Or, if you like to keep it old school, you can send cash, a check, or a money order to Anti-Racist Action. (Forest)

 

Slaughterhouse and Prisons for People and Animals by A. Rayson

South Chicago ABC

PO Box 721

Homewood, IL 60430

Slaughterhouse is a very biting, intricate, and widely-scoped criticism of capitalism in our society, artfully discussed in a frame of comparison between modern societal issues and industrialized animal brutality. Rayson describes and details their views by drawing connections between the corporate farming and meat industry and the natural damage done to human society by capitalist institutions’ deterioration of basic rights — the connections made are, in my opinion, understandably passionate and well-written, though a bit dense for it to be considered light reading by most. Rayson details the intensity of effects on economic, sociological, and political justice with ambition, bringing both the violent shift from indigenous anarchical societies to colonialist domination and that shift’s modern-day echoes to their discussion. I found this piece to be very well-done and dense in a way that makes sense for the huge net of topics Rayson discusses. Recommended for anyone who likes re-reading paragraphs a few times over. (dog food)

 

510 BAD SMUT

C/O Absolutely Zippo

PO Box 4985

Berkeley, CA 94704

The San Francisco Bay Area’s premier events hotline, BAD SMUT (1-510-223-7688 for those with phones too fancy to stick numbers 2-9 with three or four letters each) is now a print ‘zine!

For those of us stuck in the ’90s or worse, this is quite a positive development.  Not just shows like the old Cleveland Mosh Team’s Mosh Line, BAD SMUT includes political events and the print edition has scene reports not just for Bay Area punx, but also Humboldt County and the non-show or political Leona Canyon. (A. Iwasa)

 

Self Liberation: Join the Resistance

by Scott Zirus

dist. by South Chicago ABC Zine Distro

PO Box 721

Homewood, IL 60430

This zine is a short, informative publication about how to assert your autonomy in the various governments of the world. The zine includes an introduction to self-liberation as well as a list of the Universal Laws of Self Liberation, and is extremely accessible. Plus, it’s anti-copyright, so buy one and spread it around! (GoGo)

 

Health and Safety at Militant Actions

by On The Ground

dist. by Sprout Distro

PO Box 68271

Grand Rapids, MI 49516

sproutdistro.com

Health and Safety at Militant Actions is a must-have for any protester in this day and age. With the increased use of “less-lethal” weapons by the police, more protesters are being hurt and are unprepared. The zine gives info on how to protect yourself while protesting — including what clothing to wear, techniques to lower the risk of injury from tear gas and pepper spray, and basic protest first aid procedures. Available for order or in pdf form. (GoGo)

 

Thoughts on Squatting in the Francisco Bay Area: from 1970 to 2015

compiled by A. Iwasa, $2.00

Little Black Cart books

PO Box 3920

Berkeley, CA 94703

Here is the great idea: this zine is a call for submissions to compile a book on Squatting! (Interested people please write to a.iwasa@riseup.net)

Thoughts on Squatting… is an inspiring first step for this project. A. Iwasa not only compiled a lot of thoughts but even more questions on squatting.

In his introduction he lets us participate in his Travels and introduces us to a lot of different squats, collective and co-op houses mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area and some other places. He also draws our attention to two books: An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz and Nine-Tenths of the Law: Property and Resistance by Hannah Dobbz.

He shares a lot of connecting thoughts, experiences and observations.

The following two articles in this zine are a starting point for the book project.

Heather Wreckage’s article called ‘Questions of Race and Resistance…’ is inviting us to re-visit an unusual event in the swatting movement. I was disturbed to read how this incident played out with mixed up roles. It led to a lot of questions about privilege, and questions of property definition when not banks or investors are involved but a family home. Heather calls for deeper questioning and exploring those kind of contradictions. She ends with “It’s very easy for a community to become divided, but I think through sensitivity and honest communication we can keep a community strong.”

The other article gives us a quick tour through history, focussing on capitalism, landownership, and the owning classes. Samara Hayley Steele points out that to really let capitalism collapse there should (or must?) be other different “new social spaces in which post-capitalist identities and practices can evolve.” She describes the roots of the squatting movement in the European Autonomous Movement that quickly spread to the United States.

Samara has the curious question in mind if and how far the living reality in squats might be a practice of those post-capitalist social spaces. The question carries on when she ends with “everyone seems to have a different idea about what squatting is, what it could be, and how it should be represented.” (eoh)

 

Compiled by Jesse D. Palmer

Here are some corrections to the Radical Contact list published in the 2017 Slingshot Organizer, plus a few new spaces we’ve heard about recently. Radical spaces invite us to live life according to our own priorities, not the narrow boxes dangled before us by corporations and mainstream culture. We want something better than fun — we’re creating joy which is an experience we create communally and have in relation to others. Please send us your suggestions and corrections for the 2018 contact list, which we’ll be compiling in June and July. Due to computer problems, we haven’t been able to update the on-line version of the list at slignshot.tao.ca, but we hope to soon.

Counterpoint – Roswell, GA

An anarchist hackerspace for sharing knowledge and tools that hosts events and has literature. 625 Colonial Park Dr. Suite 203, Roswell, GA 30075 counterpoint.info

Bexley Natural Market – Bexley, OH

A non-profit cooperative grocery food. 508 N. Cassady Ave. Bexley, OH 43209 614-252-3951

Info-Lounge und Mediathek – Goerlitz, Germany

They in a rather small town but seem to be very active in political education, critical history. They have a library and a communal living project. HausundHof e.V., Hospitalstrasse 30, 02826 Goerlitz

Hambacher Forest Infoshop – Buir, Germany

An infoshop at the site of a five year blockade of the expansion of the largest coal mine in Western Europe that features tree sits and barricades throughout the Hambacher Forest. Broichstrasse 79, 50171 Buir, Germany hambachforest.blogsport.de

La Serafina and Aireana – Asunción – Paraguay

La Serafina is a LGBT meet-up space that caters primarily to lesbians and is open at 8:00 on Fridays as a social space. Aireana is a rights organization that provides legal support to LGBT folks in Paraguay. Being LGBT is very stigmatized in Paraguay and our contact reports that “the fact this place exists is quite radical.” Eligio Ayala 907 c/Tacuary Asunción – Paraguay Tel. 595 21 447976.

Manuke Guesthouse – Tokyo, Japan

A new radical guesthouse/cheap hostel. Fudeno bldg. 4f 3-8-12 Koenji-kita Suginamiku Tokyo 1660002 Japan, +81 (0)3 3330 5163, manuke.asia/english/home.html

Slingshot loves New Jersey!

A friend sent a list of safe spaces in New Jersey including the following:

• Cedar Ridge Cafe: a LGBTQ and vegan-friendly bakery that hosts events. 410 Ridgewood Rd, Maplewood, NJ 07040 973-327-2286.

• Gallery Aferro: An art Gallery and community space. 73 Market St., Newark, NJ 07102 973-353-9533

• Human Rights Institute: an art Gallery and research Institute at Kean University. 1000 Morris Ave, Union NJ 07083 908-737-4670.

• Java Love: a coffee Shop and acoustic space. 244 Bellevue Ave, Montclair NJ 07043 973-744-2122.

• Index Art Center: 237 Washington St., Newark, NJ 07102 862-218-0278

• Meatlocker: A multipurpose basement, 8 Park St., Montclair, NJ 07042 908-433-3380

Changes to the 2017 Slingshot Organizer

• We think the Tannex in Albuquerque still exists, but you can’t send snail mail to the address we published. Email us if you can confirm they still exist.

• Oops we published the wrong address for La Coche / Ovaria Psychos Bicycle Brigade. The correct info is: 2628 E. Cesar E Chavez, LA, CA 90033 323-285-2019

• Hallongrottan in Stockholm, Sweden is closed down permanently.

• Bokkafe Vulgo in Gothenburg. Sweden is closed down permanently.

• Bokaféen Jaap in Oslo, Norway is closed down for the time being due to fire. It is being rebuilt.

• Assata Autonomous Bookstore in Nijmegen, Netherlands no longer exists.

• Chat Noir Toulousain in Toulouse, France no longer exists.

• Kiosk Arnaud-Bernard in Toulouse, France no longer exists.

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

The elephant in the room as we go to press is the increasingly pitched series of battles between antifascists (antifa) and white nationalists in the streets of Berkeley. Nationally reported dustups happened while we were making the issue and more are expected right after the issue gets back from the printing press. Slingshot is more effective with analysis, questions and ideas rather than news, which quickly overtakes a quarterly paper and is the main reason we don’t have any articles on this topic in the issue. We welcome a variety of submissions on this topic for next issue, so get out your writing pens.

We’re anxious about the rise of nationalist violence — hate crimes, arson attacks and armed militias as well as provocative nationalist media stunts in Berkeley. The real question is how can radicals be strategic in responding so that our actions isolate, divide and weaken nationalists while unifying and strengthening tolerance and freedom. Acting strategically requires reflection and willingness to use a wide variety of tactics to achieve particular goals.

Diversity of tactics needs to go both ways — both a willingness to use militant tactics when they will advance our goals, and also openness to using other tactics when they are more appropriate to a particular situation. It may not always be to our advantage to participate in our enemy’s sideshow but neither is it acceptable to let rising fascism go unchallenged.

There is both beauty and strength in the many ways anarchists express ourselves in the world — worker collectives, community gardens, housing coops and protest affinity groups. How can we engage in self defense when we have to, while also avoiding the trap of militant rhetoric and images overshadowing and obscuring the complex, nuanced and fragile simplicity of our other projects that aim to build a world without rulers based on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation?

We need to look at the history of fascism and see the connections with the current rise of nationalism while balancing that knowledge with an understanding of the more traditional power structures that are destroying the world and enslaving her people. We need tactics that threaten the dangerous authoritarians who don’t wander the streets wrapped in flags but rather rule from fancy offices.

Answers to these paradoxes will be written in the streets and from the ground up. What is clear no matter what is that it’s time for all hands on deck and engaged in the struggle.

And finally, fuck the internet.

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: Ashlan, Caroline, Dogfood, Dov, eggplant, Elke, Forest, Gogo, Hayley, Isabel, Iwasa, Jesse, John, Korvin, Mike, Talia, 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 August 20, 2017 at 7 pm at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 125 by September 23, 2017 at 3 pm.

 

Volume 1, Number 124, Circulation 22,000

Printed April 28, 2017

 

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley CA 94705

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

Phone (510) 540-0751 • slingshot@tao.ca slingshot.tao.ca • twitter @slingshotnews

 

Slingshot free stuff

We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues for the cost of postage. Send $3 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. slingshot at tao.ca

 

Corrections to Slingshot #123

Eliane Knorr and Paul Z. Simons translated The Many Coups in Brazil.

In the last issue of Slingshot there was a misprint: The actual name of the new publication being started by members of the Slingshot collective is: Subversas.com.

 

Circulation information

Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income, or anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue. International $3 per issue. Outside the Bay Area we’ll mail you a free stack of copies if you give them out for free. Say how many copies and how long you’ll be at your address. In the Bay Area pick up copies at Long Haul and Bound Together books, SF.