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Outside the fences: the rewilding of Detroit viewed from a prison

Outside the fence, the tom turkey jumped up on the stump, rock, or whatever piece of junk was back there to elevate him above the weeds, spread his feathers and gobbled away impressive and noisy, and all the more so as it was happening just a few feet away from the fences of a state prison in the City of Detroit.

The year was 2010, and I had just been returned to this particular prison after being transferred out in 2005 and taking a near 5-year tour of the Michigan prison system, from Kincheloe in the Upper Peninsula to Ionia and St. Louis in the approximate center of the state. Over the course of which, I did manage to see my fair share of wildlife, which was to be expected when you are plunked down next to a woods or farm fields in some isolate area.

Having grown up and spent the greater part of my 57 years in the Motor City, I was very familiar with the neighborhood. In fact, prior to catching this case in 1998, I was working no more than ten blocks away. At that time the sum total of local wildlife, besides various small birds and rabbits living in the nearby cemeteries, consisted of a pair each of red tail hawks and snow owls that would stop by in the Spring and Autumn to fest on the rats inhabiting the local Coney Island. When it was torn down, the rats left, and the hawks and owls stopped coming.

I first arrived at this particular prison in 2003 and was pleasantly surprised to see that the pair of red tail hawks stopped here to feast on the large population of pigeons, fattened up on bread fed to them by prisoners leaving the chow hall. However, there wasn’t much else in the way of wildlife to be seen, except some passing geese and sea gulls, plus a couple of pheasants, mourning doves, and rabbits living in the saplings and brush growing alongside the railroad tracks.

That has dramatically changed. Upon returning here in 2010, I found a veritable explosion in the local wildlife population. There were now at least a half dozen pheasants, over a dozen mourning doves, and numerous rabbits, all living along the railroad tracks in the saplings turned into trees and brush. Moreover, there was a flock of turkeys living in the brush and swallows, neither of which I had ever seen in the city before. The hawks were still around and I even saw a fox last year. The guards have told me that they’ve seen skunks (I’ve smelled them), possums, raccoons, wild dogs, and even coyotes outside the fences.

No doubt the animals are using the rarely used railroad tracks as a corridor to more into and around the ruins of Detroit, where the only businesses that seem to be left are junkyards and prisons and block upon block of homes sit vacant and derelict. At least, in this neighborhood anyway.

That being the case, I imagine it is only a matter of time before I hear the coyotes howling at night and see my first Motor City deer, aside from the little Formosa deer that have run wild on Belle Isle in the Detroit River for years. All of which, gives me some hope for the future of the planet. If the animals can survive here, in the toxic ruins of a former industrial center, they can survive anywhere and that goes for us Motor City humans too!

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Yukon Hannibal receives Slingshot's Lifetime Achievement Award

[The 6th Annual Slingshot Award to honor a lifetime of service to the radical community was presented to Yukon Hannibal in March at Slingshot’s 23rd birthday party. Thank you, Yukon, for your inspiration and dedication.]

I have seen Yukon work to create harmony. He de-escalates potentially violent situations using grace, an understanding of the situation, and often his friendship with the individuals involved. Yukon works with Berkeley Liberation Radio as a DJ and at the East Bay Free Skool teaching a Political Education class in People’s Park. The park is a Berkeley, California radical history landmark that is subject to an ongoing battle between the University of California and the users of the park over who has the right to develop it. He distributes Free Skool calendars and mediates conflict at meetings.

Some days when I’m in People’s Park it feels so nice. Seeing groups of friends sitting in circles in the sun or huddled under trees and awnings in the rain. But, some days are very violent. Seeing Yukon in the park makes me feel a level of calmness on the scene.

Slingshot: So, what’s your story?

Yukon: “I was born in Chicago August Third of 1949. My father was a truck driver for the United States Post Office and my mother was a renowned jazz singer named Lilli Palmore. That was her stage name. She performed with such grace. She played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and she was running buddies with Billie Holliday and other greats. I didn’t understand her significance because I was real young. I was eleven when she passed away into the spirit world. She left an influence on me. She put a piano on me when I was five years old. My mind wasn’t on it until later in life. But she gave me her song writing and her voice.

“Eventually, we moved from the South Side of Chicago where we were staying with my grandmother. We moved into Cabrini Greens.” Cabrini Greens became famous as a housing project known for being chaotic and dangerous. “It was very safe then. People would sleep outside because it was so hot. The only violence I saw was from the racist cops. But people stood up to the harassment and this was before the Black Panthers. Cops would come in to invade the communities, terrorize the folks, and the folks be resisting.”

Slingshot: When did you start thinking about making change to society?

Yukon: “When I was seventeen it was another significant time of my life. I started getting some political direction. I started fighting back in the projects with my friends. The cops would be coming up the stairs and we would drop bottles down the cracks. Then there was a big snowstorm and the police that came into the projects were stuck in the drifts. My friends and I were throwing everything at them and I was recognized and I served time in Cook County Jail at seventeen. In jail I met a lot of politically-minded people and a lot of crazy people who were trying to terrorize people… I was placed on the same tier as two rival gangs. The idea was to let the two gangs destroy each other, but people really got along.

“I was released from Cook County Jail in November of 1967. I got out and I went back to Cabrini Greens and went back to fighting the police. I was pointed out as someone who messed with the police so I had to move out. I moved to Old Town where I met Fred Hampton in the early months of the Chicago Black Panther Chapter. He invited me to move to the West Side where they were organizing their office…. Then a couple months later they murdered Fred and we were nuts with grief. We just loved him so much.

“When I went to the funeral I couldn’t get in because there were so many people. Everyone was saying, ‘I am Fred Hampton.’ I was crying buckets. That’s when I started thinking about leaving Chicago.”

Yukon set out for California hitchhiking across the Midwest and Southwest, and arrived in Berkeley, California in the summer of 1970. He became involved in the People’s Park movement. The fence, installed in 1969, was removed from the perimeter of the park in 1971 by protestors with bolt cutters concealed within loaves of bread. Yukon moved his vehicle onto the asphalt that is now a grove of trees and free speech stage. Yukon said he could sense the public opinion shifting, “a stupid move by the University would get people excited so we moved in. There was a lot of weed but nothing else. Not too much alcohol even.

“At this time I met my wife and we had kids and that’s where I went for fifteen years. When we broke up I went back to People’s Park and living on the streets.

“The idea was that we needed more publicity, more people in the park. So David Nadel asked me to do a political table on Telegraph, which I did. I was telling people that the University is trying to take the park away by building volleyball courts.

“I created flyers and went out and educated people on People’s Park to defend the park, which we did. For the first few months I felt like my words were falling on deaf ears, but then we had an opportunity when there was another riot.” In 1991 during a riot, one in a series of riots that summer in Berkeley, the fence around the corner of Telegraph and Haste was removed and placed in the street. The people of Berkeley started an encampment in the empty lot one half block away from People’s Park, the new park became known as the People’s Park Annex. “We were communal but we were individualized which means that we were in solidarity but we also did our own separate things in our space. When there were fights I would step in to stop them. If I wasn’t there someone else would step in as the peacemaker. And there were a lot of fights.

“David and other activists brought in sod grass and we laid out the sod grass. People brought in flowers and we planted them. Then we welcomed people in and it was a home for many.

“It accomplished a unity that is felt even today with the people involved. And there were a lot of people involved. The activists who had homes would go home, but they would always come back and they brought solidarity and food. The churches would bring sandwiches and they would pass out their literature. Every night when the sun went down it was very festive. People would celebrate being in the heart of Telegraph. I was parked so I could watch over the lot. There were a lot of times I had to follow someone in and they were bringing in a bottle of alcohol. They would be coming all loud so I would have to get in their face and ask them to keep it down or get out. There were people from all over.”

Noise and sirens woke Yukon one night. The police were on bullhorns ordering everyone to get out within five minutes or be thrown out. The Annex had lasted two and a half months it was the summer of 1991. “It was very difficult. There were those in wheelchairs who had made the place their home and then had to move all their possessions. The police were handing out vouchers for one free night in a motel. That shows the hypocrisy of the city (of Berkeley). Berkeley does have homeless services; it’s the people of Berkeley who look out for the people of Berkeley, like the churches and Food Not Bombs. That doesn’t make the city progressive. These are the same people that put in the sit-lie ordinance and anti-sleeping laws. The city seems to criminalize homelessness.

Slingshot: You helped organize encampments in People’s Park in violation of the 10pm curfew. How did that start?

Yukon: “In 1991 at the Peace and Freedom Party rally, I spoke and encouraged the people to sleep in People’s Park, and the people slept there that night and for 3 nights until the long arm of the pigs came. A lot of people got arrested.

“Then, we started sleeping on the Haste Street sidewalk. We stayed there for eight days, until they rousted us. We moved to Dwight Street on the other side of the park and then across the street. We took over that whole sidewalk. Must have been like one hundre
d people.”

Slingshot. Your major form of expression is the drum. What’s the significance of the Ashby Flea Market drum circle?

Yukon: “It’s a way to network with musicians and a place people come to network. It’s a center to come together, harmonize with the drums and build friendship. The drum circle consists of people from Oakland, San Francisco, and anyone else with a drum. Some serious players are there who come to groove and one groove can last from anywhere from 5-30 minutes. There’s a certain fellowship when we’re in a groove. It’s almost hypnotic.”

Slingshot: If you had anything to say to the world what would that be?

Yukon: “Amerikkka is a culture that manufactures racism and bigotry. You can see it on television or read it in their newspaper. White male domination has stereotyped these phobias and delivered them to the front doors of America’s homes. The planting of war thoughts in the form of video games and the constant barrage of war images has set the course for future wars for the nation’s youth. View these images as a blue print for future engagements and it continues as long as Hollywood and other makers of violence reap the profits off it and it is in the billions. Hollywood and the media have influenced the nation’s youth into becoming war makers and haters and yet it seems that our minds are so full of Hollywood that we act out Hollywood in our communities, the violence, the drugs, the guns, and it keeps coming.”

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Zine Reviews

Small Print Reviews

We got some cool responses to the zine reviews in last issue as well as getting a bunch of publications at the S.F. Anarchist book fair. The info shop that houses the Slingshot office had some days to make over the space – especially our zine library. Keep an eye for more work parties in the future to continue cataloging our entire collection. Hell! Stop by during our open hours and browse till your eyes fall out. If you do a zine we’ll take some to sell and one for our library.

SPEW #1 & 2

Spewdistro.tumblr.com

A punk zine out of the scene around Berkeley’s Gilman St. club. It is refreshing to see something coming from there to represent the changing counter culture & see first hand young people grapple with the world at a time the club itself is in a new chapter of renewing itself from the baggage of its past. Booze, art, stories from the gutter and a display of attitude makes for a cocktail that becomes Spew. (eggplant)

SOLASTALGIA

emmaji@riseup.net

The back cover tells us that this zine bloomed out of copy machines “spring equinox 2011”, a time of transformation and internal revolution, even for those with heavy hearts and full minds focused on the disarray that our planet faces today. Solastalgia, we soon learn through a quote by the neologism’s founder, Glenn Albrecht, is “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault…a form of homesickness that one gets while one is still at ‘home'”. With this emotion at hand, the writer pulls us through the damage as we wiggle with unease in our seats — nuclear power industries, mass radiation, extraction industries. Connected to these concerns among others are the mental health issues that follow – ecoanxiety, global dread, a sense of powerlessness, dauntingly the list goes on. Poetic tips for calming one’s mind are soothingly speckled between global worries, as well as some sweet windows into the writer’s life: “Through a lifetime of activism, I have had to learn to focus on horrors without losing love”. Much of this mag is lyrical prose spilled during a winter trip the writer took through the US while hoping to curb her despair. Our relationship with the anifmal world, homelessness, tree-sitters, and the death of a friend also play vital roles in her writing. Much of the text was written on a typewriter and the whole zine is hand laid-out with beautiful black and white imagery on each page. My favorite written piece is the exchange she shares with a midwifery student who tells her about death doulas, who act as midwives for the dying. This zine is a successful display of love as well as a reminder to be loving through all of our courses and shades of ominous contemplation. (Bird)

ROT #2

avocado@riseup.net

Rot returns and speaks through soothing and sometimes swelteringly hot fairytale-like imagery — a tale of “furious inspiration” and shaky hands, a queer squatter episode of “The Girls Next Door”, an incantation imploring you to feed yourself with personal mythology meanwhile stressing the importance of “learning about and appreciating the ancient rites of others without appropriating and regurgitating them”. I appreciate how each page exists on its own and is balanced in detail much like a shrine or sacred space. If I’d found this mag instead of the hidden adult garbage that the past generations stashed, my childhood mind would’ve been blown for the better. Future kids will be thankful to discover and bury this raw and wondrous publication under their mattresses or hammocks, simultaneously feeding themselves Katrina’s imagery and contemplations while masturbating to some genuine punk soul. (Bird)

BRING ON THE DANCING HORSES

$2 PO Box 1282

Fullerton, CA 92836

We are taken to a place beyond the “No Trespassing” signs to abandoned community centers turned into squats, to unlicensed roadside campgrounds, and to derelict amusement parks on the verge of being converted into yuppie condos. Is this a note to future societies of primitives? It has a nomadic lawless edge to it as the narrator and their friends move from Portland, Oregon to Vermont, then to the junkyards of NY City. The writing is at times dense and other times plain spoken. The reflections and revelations they convey happen in short bursts. At first I thought I was reading a poetry zine. Then as I got into the flow I started to see it as a cross between CrimeThinc (with its ideas) and John Steinbeck (with the intense attention to details of our natural world and our unnatural systems at play with human lives). (eggplant)

FIFTH ESTATE

This long running, underground magazine strives to attract intellectual radicals and greasy counter culture types, but do they actually get either? The result of this “D.I.Y. Issue” is a bit hodge podge, which makes reading it seem like an oversized zine. You got the usual radical news items and articles alongside interviews and cultural pieces. Some of the latter is half-digested before it was printed. The editing suffered badly by the death of the editor. So the mere gesture that people pulled it together to finish his work testifies how the movement is made up of many hands. (eggplant)

FILLING THE VOID

PO Box 29

Athens, OH 45701

A very methodical look at people liberating themselves from a dependency on alcohol and drugs. By methodical I mean each of the 8 people interviewed are asked roughly the same questions. The result I believe is to aid and assist the reader wishing to get sober and not feel so alone. I found it hard to relate to at first since I’m not “in recovery,” and I found the repetition to be boring. But once I sat through the questions I found some usefulness in checking out people coping with their pain. I guess also knowing half the people via the punk scene made it have more dimensions than it would have had otherwise. Readers will get frank conversations of people’s struggles as they intersect with relationships, the party scene, the punk scene, Alcoholics Anonymous, Rehab Clinics, and self-made rules. (eggplant)

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Ctdzine.tumblr.com

Kind of an ugly publication made by UC Berkeley students that I found available at the new student food co-op. After forcing myself to read it I did a double take – the second article is on one of the underground resources of Berkeley that is sometimes referred to as “Pinball Palace.” Many Slingshot staff frequent the palace but have not yet spoiled its cover. The piece is almost journalistic and Beat-like. The other articles turn out to be a good mix of humor and intelligence with some aspects closer to journalism than journal writing. This gives a refuge from the official paper on campus – The Daily CAL, which is often alienating and shitty. Also featured is a useful campus calendar. People like to pretend that the computer has replaced the necessity of a printed calendar, so I’m happy to see what’s going on around town. (eggplant)

RESTLESS LEGS #5

316 Main St.

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Bryan’s zine is like an espresso shot at a punk run café. It is small enough to fit in your pocket, a burst of black spaced-pages that seeps with style. The content is unabashedly punk, with emphasis on anarcho-politics and personality. I want to know how he gets photos to look the way he does. (eggplant)

PORK#1

PO Box 12044

Eugene, OR 97440

Goblinko@gmail.com

I first heard of this before seeing it. It was described as a cross between Slingshot and Vice magazine. True it has Vice-like elements, pop culture overload with photos of throw away cultural items, interviews with bands and weirdo artists, with large photos throughout it – often with nearly naked women. Overall it has a busy layout. Its seeming glee in transgressing any sense of PC would make it distant from Slingshot. When looking more closely I found Sean “Goblin’s Armpit” behind the scenes with his partner Katie Aaberg. Both of whom have done tons in the underground and may have a good
plan with this bit of paper, which so far includes injecting intelligent discourse in their milieu of Portland to people who have a lot competing for their attention. (eggplant)

MISSION MINI COMIX

Commix.org

I recently got the “Obscure issue,” which pokes fun at being an overlooked comic. The art has some of the best elements of underground comix that has raged since the 60’s. (eggplant)

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Revoltin' Calendar!

May 21, 4 – 10 pm

Houston Zine Fest – Khon’s Rooftop, 2808 Milam St zinefesthouston.org

May 21 – 22 • 10 am – 5

Montreal, Canada Anarchist bookfair – 2515 rue Delisle – anarchistbookfair.ca

May 26 – 27

Protest the 37th G8 summit – Deauville, France – resist.org.uk

May 27 • 6 pm

San Francisco critical mass bike ride – Justin Herman Plaza –

June 5 – 11

March on Blair Mountain starting in Marmet, WV to protest mountain top removal – marchonblairmountain.org

June 14 – 22

Wild Roots Feral Futures direct action/eco-defense camp – foothills of San Juan mountains, Colorado – feralfutures.blogspot.com

June 23 – 26

Allied Media Conference, Detroit, MI, alliedmedia.org

June 23 – 26

8th annual Bike! Bike! Conference. San Marcos, Texas bikebike.org

June 24 • 3:30, march 7

SF Trans march – Dolores Park – transmarch.org

June 25 • 11 am – 6

Los Angeles Anarchist bookfair – 801 East 4th Pl. anarchistbookfair.com

June 25 – 26 • Noon – 10

San Francisco Free Folk Festival – 450 30th Avenue – sffolkfest.org

July 5 – 12

Earth First! Summer Round River Rendezvous in the Northern Rockies – earthfirstjournal.org

July 8 -10

CLITFest (Combating Latent Inequality Together), Washington DC http://clitfestdc.tumblr.com/about

July 27 – August 1

Trans and Womyn’s Action Camp Cascadia – Exact location TBA! twac [at] riseup.net

August 6 – 7

Portland Zine Symposium, Refuge (116 SE Yamhill St.)

August 28 • 4 pm

Slingshot new volunteer meeting

3124 Shattuck, Berkeley

September 10-11 • 3pm

Victoria, BC Anarchist Bookfair – 1240 Gladstone Ave – victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca

September 17 • 3 pm

Article deadline for Slingshot issue #107 – 3124 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley

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Let Bufffalo Roam – Wildlife “management” is an oxymoron

They have no space. Land-owners have taken all that was theirs and made it private property, leaving little allotments here and there; small spaces of ‘reserved’ land, unconnected and geographically uninformed.

That statement can be applied to a host of issues and nouns in the US. What I am describing is the plight of the last wild bison in the US, the Yellowstone herds. They are descendants of the only survivors that saved themselves from the shameful buffalo slaughter of the 1800’s. I have for several years been located out of southwest Montana, near the small town of West Yellowstone. Here I work every winter and spring with Buffalo Field Campaign, a grassroots media organization that documents the harassment and slaughter of these creatures, advocating for their right to roam their native homelands.

Conflict occurs when bison leave Yellowstone National Park in the winter and spring to find food and give birth. When the animals are in Montana, they are subject to harassment and slaughter at the hands of the state and federal agencies who claim to be protecting them and their habitat. A European cattle disease called Brucellosis is touted as the reason for the mismanagement, but livestock-industry control over grass and space are the real rationale.

We’ve used any and all tools in the infamous “bag-of-tricks” to try and stop the slaughter over many years. We are dealing with a war over grass and who gets to eat it. The cowpokes of the Western landscape did their damnedest to ensure that only cows could eat the grass, and they will fight tooth and nail to make it remain so, and banks are on their side. But, rag-tag and passionate as we are, we will fight back, tooth and nail, for the rightful roamers: wild buffalo.

These bison are the last continuously “free-roaming” population that remains of the 40-60 million bison that once ruled this continent. They are the last to maintain their identity as a wildlife species. In efforts to subjugate First Nations and to fill a lust for shaggy buffalo coats and strong hides to run the industrial revolution, settlers brought that vast number to just 23 at one point and have from that time on been involved in “bison conservation”.

Free Roaming is meant to elicit thoughts of unhindered movement by force of will. In actuality the agencies that “manage” these animals forcibly chase them away from what should be designated as their winter range when they follow their natural instincts of migration outside of Yellowstone in search of accessible forage and to continue the uses of their ancestral calving grounds. Bison Conservation to date consists of public herds being created around the nation by capturing and transporting animals from the Yellowstone population to start new herds or improve the genetics of existing herds. The vast majority of “bison” in this country are found on ranches, where they are raised for meat. This type of conservation does nothing to preserve what is special about these wild animals. Chasing animals into a trap, poking and prodding, keeping them in captivity and transporting them by truck across the nation is not congruent with the word wild. Destinations that are large enclosed areas or geographically isolated areas effectively destroy the migratory instincts these animals would follow in their natural environments.

The Yellowstone herds are the only population of bison in the world that still follow their ancient traveling intuition. So while the current form of conservation does create public herds, it removes what is distinctive about bison to create what is manageable by man. “Manage” is a word that, when used in the context of wildlife by wildlife management agencies, means nothing more then those actions or activities performed by that agency out of convenience. Herd numbers are kept at a level that corresponds with available resources (money, people, etc), not healthy numbers for the animals or the ecosystem of which they are an integral part. Boundaries are crated to safeguard livestock and their producers, and to make management operations easier for agencies, not to be harmonious with how bison access or use the land. In writing this I hope to articulate some larger social malignance that I think is at the base of all this mismanagement, the concept of private property.

I am not going to expound the evils of land ownership, but rather try to illuminate the need for responsible land stewardship practices. In the uncluttered western states there is debate right now over the current use of lands for livestock production and what some believe to be the opposite and adverse reaction to lands without livestock: housing subdivisions. I hear this debate termed “cows or condos.” This paradigm I think is an example of the social paradox that is currently limiting the entire native flora and fauna that truly hold the land rights in the country from their open spaces. If we continue to manage the land for our personal benefit, if government lands are managed with the economic benefit of industry first, there will continue to be no room for wild horses, for the black-footed ferrets, for the purple dwarf monkey flower, or for the wild bison.

A larger collective mental shift is needed to make any real headway for wild spaces and the creatures that inhabit them. I encourage everyone to find her or his individual voice for helping this shift to come about organically. It feels to me that a change is on the cusp of rising and a persistent push will send it over the edge of possibility into reality. To paraphrase the words of Broch Evans, we need “endless pressure endlessly applied” to create the changes we want. An encouraging thought for me is that the spaces don’t need to be created: they are there. They just need to become available to the animals that require them for their survival.

Montana, as an example, is full of open space. Millions of acres of federally designated wilderness, state owned and managed Wildlife Management Areas (which unfortunately are used more often than not for cattle grazing), millions of acres of National Forest, and all the state and federal parks located in our great state are all there for the bison’s taking once we overcome a few political and social hurdles. With the help of private landowners that are willing to incorporate their spaces into safe and protected migration corridors, the dots of available public lands can be connected and utilized to preserve a national treasure, our wild bison. That is the real bison conservation plan.

Buffalo Field Campaign is in the field everyday where wild bison go, maintaining a frontline presence to document any action taken against our shaggy friends, and we are always looking for support. To get involved and volunteer for the bison write us at volunteer@buffalofieldcampaign or call 406-646-0070. For more information concerning the plight of the wild bison please visit, www.buffalofieldcampaign.org, or give us a call.

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Creating Conscious Communities – our modest efforst are really the only hope

Each day there are opportunities for resistance, liberation, freedom, creativity, engagement, and meaning. It is easy to miss these opportunities and get distracted and bogged down by day-to-day hassles — stuck in traffic, staring at the internet, emotionally numb, confused, and feeling disconnected from anything important. There are no easy answers about how to live our lives but we all make choices about where we put our time, our energy, and our passion. While you can never guarantee the outcome, if you aren’t even putting time and energy on a daily basis into some kind of alternative to the mainstream economic / cultural / political / technological system, your tomorrow is going to end up similar to your today. By contrast, as tough, frustrating and scary as it can be, putting some of your life every day into the counter-culture and alternatives to the system makes a difference — at least in the way you experience your own life.

You can look at the discouraging state of the world with its wars, oil spills, sweatshops, global warming, and Velveeta culture, and feel lost and powerless. Very powerful corporate and government structures have devised many ways to maintain the status quo. But something has to give. We live on a finite planet — if our lives are reduced to ever-increasing mass industrial consumption while population continues its increase, our species will push ecological systems beyond their limits and we’ll suffer collapse. It may be we’ve already gone too far and this process is already beginning.

The powers that be are betting on a technological fix to the problem of a finite planet that won’t threaten the existing power structure with its unequal distribution of power and centralized decision-making — a way to keep living as we’re living. Even if this was possible, a technological breakthrough would not address the dehumanizing way the system subordinates human needs for freedom, meaning and engagement to the needs of the system.

What we need is a cultural and political breakthrough — a total shift in values and social structures in which human satisfaction, expression and connection with the moment, other people and the earth become more important than acquiring and consuming things and services.

Whereas a government / corporate technological fix requires funding for research in universities and corporate labs, a values breakthrough requires reviving community and creating more vibrant dialog, independent organizing outside of the system’s imperatives, and an explosion of creative and visionary experimentation. Even people with a critique of the current system and a yearning for change don’t yet know what a new world will look like or how we can create one. Our values and understanding is limited by the world we inhabit. Our ability to cooperate and communicate with others — our self-knowledge and capacity for universal love –are always inadequate to the task at hand and in the process of evolving, growing and developing.

In figuring out what to do day-to-day, it can be helpful to keep in mind our most visionary goals and values and then work backwards to figure out how we can live them. People should be able to live decent lives without hurting other people and without hurting the earth. We must have freedom, meaning, excitement, opportunities to fulfill our individual potential, chances to be close to other people, and space to enjoy beauty, the natural world, and pleasure. This means we have to be safe from violence, have self-determination and have sufficient material resources to meet our needs.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the need to keep my greater goals in mind and reverse engineer them to figure out how to negotiate a complex series of bummers at the Long Haul infoshop collective in Berkeley. Actual involvement in any human project is not like a visionary Slingshot article. Instead, it is messy, compromised, potentially discouraging and complex. Things can be ambiguous and sometimes you can’t solve a problem, you can only pick the least bad option. When you get frustrated like that, you need to step back. Instead of getting stuck in each specific problem — which could easily trap you in an endless and depressing cycle of reaction and negativity — maybe you can figure out a way to change the level of discourse. Maybe a positive new initiative can do more good than struggling to fix an impossible knot.

At the end of the day, I would rather be engaged in a meaningful, exciting, deeply human, creative, and yet marginal, dysfunctional and struggling counter-culture than clinging to the status quo that chases absurd goals and is crumbling.

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Questions of Race & Resistance – Oakland house squat evicted

Recently here in Oakland I got a call from one of my comrade’s squats. After 7 months of residency with little yet positive interactions from the buildings actual on-paper owners, the day had come when the owners decided it was time for everyone to go.

The community had been called via a phone tree, and I think the collective expectation in all our minds was a battle with the police. Banners had been prepared, and almost everyone was ready.

But when the supporters arrived at the scene, we learned that there are some things that us anarchists here in Oakland just hadn’t considered.

The owners, a black, Muslim family, had come and called the police. When the police came, they told the owners that they needed to file an eviction notice with the court and left shortly after. Following their departure, the owners, by now very angry, took matters into their own hands. They threw items out of the house, tore up plants in the yard, assaulted people multiple times with their feet, plates, bookshelves and fists, as well as attacking the folks outside with video cameras who had originally intended on doing cop-watching.

It was a couple hours of chaos. The squatters and supporters inside attempted soft barricades and ran around in confusion. At one point they did a banner drop that seemed pretty inappropriate for the situation, since it had been intended for the cops. The folks outside stood around in equal confusion. Some talked to the home owners about the situation, some got in arguments with them, some gawked from across the street, some took the squatters possession and animal companions to safe spaces, and a lot just didn’t know what to do or what to feel.

Racial tensions arose from both sides. The owners expressed a lot racist sentiment for the white squatters, while I witnessed a couple supporters say racist things themselves. One supporter, when asked by a black neighbor what was going on, responded “You people…” and proceeded to assume the neighbor was one of the owners and accuse them of assault. Multiple squatters and supporters criticized the family for wearing gold, saying that by wearing it they were oppressing “their own people”.

At one point the squatters themselves called the police. The police once again told the owners that they needed to file an eviction notice, and one of the supporters that had been inside pressed charges against one of the owners, who the police took away to jail. I am not sure, but the word was that he was cited and released.

Shortly after the police left the remaining owners left as well. In the couple of weeks following, owners would drive by multiple times in a day, and at one point assaulted one of the squatters on their way back home.

Eventually the owners showed up with baseball bats while only a couple of the squatters were home. The squatters had-had enough of the violence and left the house. It is now empty with no trespassing signs on the doors and windows.

Although this is an extremely brief summary of what happened that day, what happened has brought up a lot of questions about race and resistance.

This house was owned by a black family in a predominantly black neighborhood. It was abandoned for 13 years while owned by the family, and the owners had no intentions to inhabit it. It was squatted by predominantly young, white radicals. There was racism on both sides.

One of the first questions with this squat is: is this gentrification, and should the squatters have been more considerate to this in the first place? The squatters were doing things for their immediate community, like fixing bikes for the neighborhood children. They had support from their immediate neighbors and were giving advice to the ones in danger of foreclosure. But what is more important, helping the neighbors or the squatters being sensitive to their contribution to gentrification? And it’s important to keep in mind that in the neighborhood in question, West Oakland, there is an abundance of radical houses with young white inhabitants.

White privilege needs to be addressed. If the house had been squatted by people of color, would the police have not asked for an eviction notice? What if the owners were a white family? How could squatters in this type of situation address their privilege?

Another question is: is it okay for squatters to occupy a building when the owners, who are a family and not a bank, are ready to reclaim their property? Anarchists have a lot of rhetoric about how property is theft, and how private property is fucked up and no one should own land. If property owners are claiming the house, then they are saying it’s their property and theirs alone. When squatters claim a building, are they doing the same as the owners? Both have justifications as to why it’s theirs. Is one justification right and the other wrong? Are they both right, or both wrong?

A big issue from this experience was the decision to call the police. The owners called them the first time. As a black family, they did not get support from the police, which is unfortunately common for most people of color. The family then took action independently to reclaim their property. They made decisions independent of the state to try to physically intimidate people out of the building. I am not condoning the violence against the squatters and supporters, a lot of them were my friends and allies and it hurts me to have them hurt. I am not supporting pulling up the vegetable plants from the garden or throwing peoples bikes off of the second floor. But we as anarchists for the most part agree that we need to find ways to live our lives without turning to the police for support, and once the police didn’t help the family, they collectively found a way to reach their goals themselves.

The next time the police came; it was the anarchists that had called. This was a controversial issue within our community, for various reasons. The most obvious, why are anarchists calling the police? Are there times when it is acceptable for us to turn to the state for assistance?

Since the family had called and was willing to have people arrested, was it okay for the folks in the house to fight with the same tools as the family? If someone has a gun, you would probably rather have a gun as opposed to a knife. If the squatters had physically fought back, they would have been arrested. It’s also important to note that the family had brought children with them, and the squatters and supporters were very uncomfortable with the idea of fighting back with these kids’ parents.

I personally still don’t know what my feelings are about this, and I think a lot of the people involved feel the same way. Physical assault is a serious and traumatic thing, and I think it’s very important to support any victim of assault. The environment at the time was so chaotic it doesn’t appear that the folks on the inside had the ability to really get together and make a collective decision.

I feel that after going through this experience, it is really important that radical folks, especially in urban, multiracial areas, start pondering these questions and making personal decisions. Such as, is it ever okay to call the police? I’m sure there are a variety of different answers to the question. My personal feelings are no. I feel as radical folks, we need to do more expansive thinking and discussion on problem solving. One thing that will be more helpful to actions such as this one in the future is to spend the time before the action thinking of the possibilities and worst case scenarios and making a collective plan for all of them. It is best to be as prepared as possible, especially since in a bind an affinity group may not be able to make collective decisions.

And how should we treat our allies when they make decisions we don’t necessarily support. Here in Oakland the responses have been mixed. Some folks have
completely turned their backs on the people involved in this particular situation and said that they are snitches. Some don’t think we should write someone off as a bad person or a snitch for calling the pigs under pressure. And others are completely supportive of the decisions made that day by the people involved.

It’s very easy for a community to become divided, but I think through sensitivity and honest communication we can keep a community strong.

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Slingshot issue #105 – introduction

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

A crucial aspect of creating this paper is breaking down the false barrier between publisher and reader — between a tiny group of active “experts” who impart knowledge and faceless masses of passive readers who soak it up. Over and over while we’re making the paper, we’re reminded how silly that division is and how it works against the paper we’re trying to publish and the world we want to live in.

While we were wrapping up work on this issue, we discussed how we wished we could have had an article on the revolution in Tunisia that was unfolding the week we made the paper. Or something about the sudden and surprising sale of local college station KUSF that threw dozens of volunteer djs off the air with no notice. And while we pulled together a tiny selection of upcoming actions and on-going campaigns, we know we could do a lot better if folks let us know about the work they’re doing or the things they’re experiencing.

Just like the poster in this issue declares, “we’re all artists”: We’re all journalists. We’re all publishers. We all have something important to share and contribute to the collective knowledge. If you could meet us, you might be disappointed to realize that the people who make Slingshot are pretty ordinary. Or maybe it would be empowering — we’re nothing special; we’re just like you. If you have some information you think might belong in Slingshot, chances are we won’t know about it unless you tell us. And chances are we would love to know about it and share it with others.

Each issue, people wander in to see if they can help out and end up designing a page or drawing the cover. This issue, one of us who thought of herself as “just” a cartoonist spoke up at a meeting wondering if we had a particular article, and ended up writing it for the front page.

We seek to create a supportive atmosphere so people can access their inner journalist and achieve their full potential for creativity and expression. This isn’t easy and we don’t necessarily know how — but we’re trying.

• • •

Despite our landlord’s ongoing bankruptcy case, which could threaten us with eviction (mentioned in last issue), we’re still here at the moment. The threat hasn’t stopped us from discussing how we can encourage more active uses of the Long Haul space and from making lots of small changes and improvements over the last few months. We’re working on having more events, craft workshops and zine reading times. One of the most successful improvements has been our DIY zine space featuring everything you need to make your own zine. We even have a light table — fancy. Lots of people are typing, cutting, pasting and drawing.

• • •

We’re changing the way we mail out copies off the paper this issue to comply with postal rules. If you are a free distributor, you’ll now get multiple one pound envelopes, rather than 1 six pound envelope, for example. Sorry for the waste of envelopes.

• • •

Two years ago we published a full-color coffee table book to celebrate the 40th anniversary of People’s Park in Berkeley. It is a great book but apparently not commercially viable. We want it to be a powerful inspiration in people’s hands, not sitting unread in our basement. Please help by letting us know if we can send you a free copy for your infoshop, coop or local library. We’re also still selling and/or accepting donations for copies.

• • •

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

Editorial decisions are made by the Slingshot Collective but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collectives members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this: Bird, Brian, Carolina, Citizen, David, Dee, Eggplant, Emmalee, Glenn, Heather, Hurricane, Jackie, Jake, Jayson, Jesse, Josh, Julia, Kathryn, Katrina, Kermit, Kerry, Kyle, Mando, Tristan.

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 4 p.m. at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 106 by April 16, 2011 at 3 p.m.

Volume 1, Number 105, Circulation 19,000

Printed January 28, 2011

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

Phone (510) 540-0751

slingshot@tao.ca • slingshot.tao.ca

Circulation Information

Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income and anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue or back 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. Note: they come in 1 lb. packages – you can order 1 package or up to 6 (6 lbs) for free – let us know how many you want. In the Bay Area, pick up copies at Long Haul or Bound Together Books in SF.

Slingshot Back Issues

We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues of Slingshot for the cost of postage: Send $3 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. PO Box 3051 Berkeley, CA 94703.

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Upcoming actions around North America

People all over the world are organizing for a better world and against corporations, government repression, environmental destruction and injustice. Here’s a small sampling of upcoming actions, ongoing campaigns, and calls to action. Organize your own and let us know about it for next issue or lend a hand to one of these.

Tar sand resistance

As oil deposits around the world become more scarce, companies have turned their eye toward reserves that have, in the past, been considered too difficult, too dirty, or too expensive to extract. The tar sand mines in Alberta account for half of Canada’s oil production and have been described as the single most destructive industrial project on the face of the planet. Tar sand mining requires tearing up large areas of land, using huge amount of water, and generating lots of toxic waste. It also takes a huge amount of energy to extract and refine the oil, meaning that each barrel of tar sand oil carries a carbon footprint 10 to 45 percent greater than traditionally extracted oil. Because of expanding tar sand oil production, Canada has become the single largest supplier of oil to the US.

Northern Rockies Rising Tide in Missoula, Montana is resisting transport over Highway 12 of hundreds of mega-loads of mining equipment built by Exxon Mobil, Conoco/Phillips, and Harvest Energy Corp for use in Alberta tar sand mining. The loads are 30 feet tall, 27 feet wide, and over 200 feet long — like a three story house almost the length of a football field. Highway 12 is two-lanes and winds along a river that has been designated as Wild and Scenic up and over the Rocky Mountains. These highway shipments are visible aspects of an oil industry mostly hidden from view.

While local officials have opposed the shipments, they lack jurisdiction to stop them. It will take a grassroots movement of native communities, environmental groups and residents to resist big oil’s privatization of public roads and continued destruction of Northern Alberta and the earth’s climate. Rising Tide has been on the ground floor conducting trainings, organizing the first International Tar Sands Resistance Summit, and being a vocal opponent of the shipments. Over 270 shipments will leave the Port of Lewiston, Idaho between now and the end of next year. To plug into the resistance, check out northernrockiesrisingtide@gmail.com.

Revolting Borders

US border policies are designed to kill. The increase in border wall construction, surveillance, checkpoints and internal deportations — tied up with the inequality of global capitalism and free trade — have driven people crossing the US/Mexico border to travel dangerous routes. The vast, rugged, and confusing desert border of Arizona has taken an unknown number of lives. The official death toll was 250 last year, but anyone who has spent any time in this desert knows it is, in reality, immeasurable. It is hard to find people, alive or otherwise, and easy to get lost. These desolate routes are the preferred routes for guides leading migrants across the border, where one can walk 4 days before reaching the first paved road and find shelter from surveillance in canyons and dense shrubbery.

For most migrants, the Arizona desert is neither the beginning nor the end of their journey. People are forced to leave home by poverty crafted and maintained by the global north. For Central Americans, the journey through Mexico can be more dangerous than through Arizona. As a warm welcome, or welcome back, to the USA, many face work-place exploitation, the complications of an undocumented life, racism, and the constant fear or separation from loved ones. Many people profit from this migration and the restrictions against it.

No More Deaths takes direct action against the lethal border conditions and the politics behind them by locating and exploring trails used by migrants and then placing food, water and supplies on the trails. Over the last seven years, these actions have saved countless lives. No More Deaths also hosts volunteers in the border city of Nogales, Sonora, provides medical treatment to migrants, and document abuses experienced at the hands of the Border Patrol.

Out of town volunteers can join these efforts each summer and local residents volunteer year-round. The more time one can stay, the better you can discern the intricacies of the desert, the border, and the group. Government policies dehumanize, demoralize, and generally attempt to weaken those who are already vulnerable. Often they succeed. The people, however, are resilient and strong. Supporting that strength in others, and nursing our own for another time when we might need it ourselves, is a direct act of opposition. Contact www.nomoredeaths.org to get involved. (Note: There is related work responding to the increasing collaboration of local law enforcement with federal immigration enforcement agencies in Tucson and Phoenix by groups like CopWatch and MigraPatrol. Check them out, too.)

Move against Mountain top removal

The campaign against mountaintop removal (MTR) mining in Appalachia continues throughout the coalfields. MTR is a form of strip mining where rock over a coal seam is blasted away and dumped into stream valleys to expose coal. MTR magnifies the environmental damage of coal — global warming, mercury pollution, etc. — by destroying hardwood forests and habitat and poisoning local watercourses. Local campaigns are going on in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and beyond.

In West Virginia, a five-day march to Blair Mountain will take place this summer. The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest armed labor uprising in American history, and the battlefield is currently being threatened by mountaintop removal — Massey Energy and two other coal companies hold permits to blast on this historic site. In 1921, after a generation of violent suppression and exploitation of the people in the southern coalfields of West Virginia, 15,000 coal miners rebelled in an attempt to overthrow the coal barons and marched on Blair Mountain. To join the march on Blair Mountain, see friendsofblairmountain.org.

For details about other upcoming actions including Mountain Justice Spring Break or Summer actions, check out mountainjustice.org, ilovemountains.org, or appalachiarising.org.

Legal support is also ongoing. Coal companies are pursuing a federal lawsuit against five protesters who participated in a January 2010 tree-sit on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia. The tree-sit lasted nine days and prevented Massey Energy from blasting within 2,000 feet of the Brushy Fork Impoundment — a 9.8 billion gallon dam of toxic sludge that would engulf entire communities if it were to fail. Marfork Coal Company is using the lawsuit as an attempt to intimidate activists, target journalists, and gather personal information of political opponents. A trial is scheduled for June 14 in Beckley, WV. Info: marfork5.wordpress.com.

Activists with the Sludge Safety Project are working to pass the Alternative Coal Slurry Disposal Act, which would ban slurry injections in West Virginia. Slurry is the byproduct of washing coal and contains heavy metals and other toxic chemicals. Slurry injection has poisoned the water of entire communities like Prenter and Rawl in West Virginia. Info: www.sludgesafety.org.

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We want more than this DREAM

The DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act) lost a Congressional vote in late 2010. It would have provided a path to citizenship for young undocumented people who came into the US before the age of 16, are under 30, have ‘good moral character’ and have resided in the US for 5 consecutive years if they finish two years of college or the military and meet other requirements.

*****

The DREAM Act was never the end goal. In our hands, it was a tool. It was a tool of hope, for those of us who look towards the future and see that those paths we thought we could walk down are not open to us. It was a tool that would have allowed thousands of young people to say they were undocumented with out fear of deportation or losing their jobs. It was a tool to push the issues of undocumented immigrants farther in the government’s agenda than they had ever gone in over 20 years.

But because it is a tool not made by us — undocumented youth — and a tool made for Congress, it is an imperfect tool. Whether or not people agree with the specifics of it, what is clear to me is that the commitment of young undocumented people to fight for the rights of all immigrants has not and will not waver. It is also clear to me that even though we could not get the DREAM Act, not yet anyway, we won something much greater and useful than a bill.

We formed a stronger movement, filled with people coming out as undocumented and challenging immigration laws, authorities and stereotypes whenever needed; people willing to get arrested for our beliefs and risk deportation. People continue to do the work necessary to educate the public, create resources for undocumented communities-resources in jobs, in scholarships, even in traveling within the US, and boldly assert our rights as part of this nation and our right to change it for the better living of all.

As much as I would love to write that the solution is to create alternative systems to education and jobs, alternatives that do not require a social security number, and that we need not be constrained by the laws and rules of society as they exist, I know the reality of fearing the deportation of the ones you love even for a minor traffic violation. I know the reality of talking to students who want to be teachers and doctors and know they could never get a license to practice these, or even a driver’s license for that matter. These immigration laws are real and they are suffocating all of our society. When young people lose motivation to study because they know they cannot get federal aid for college, or a job in their chosen field, as a society we hurt our present and future. When people can be scared into not fighting for their rights at a workplace all the workers lose out.

We must not just imagine and create a different path to learning, working and interacting with each other, but we have to make sure we address and rewrite the old laws, old paths, old guidelines or requirements that are keeping about 11 million residents from contributing and living fully in this country. I believe that is what we, the people of the undocumented youth movement, have been doing and will continue to do.

Yeah, it would have been nice to win the DREAM Act this time around, but it is by no means the only resource we have, nor is it the only thing we are after. The world belongs to all of us, all living creatures and ecosystems, and we are not about to give that up.

For more information and to join us go to www.iyjl.org and/or www.dreamactivist.org/