Birds Before The Storm

So this is vaguely random, but today as I sat at Red Emma’s, the worker-owned coffeeshop/bookstore in Baltimore, I was thinking about anarchist projects. We’re used to the idea of the “infoshop”, which is more or less to say anarchist bookstore (although it has implications of meeting space as well). In some cities we’re spoiled enough to have anarchist cafe’s as well, so those of us who like to spend money on prepared food and coffee and other such non-essentials have a good place to do so. There are a handful of bike shops (Baltimore just got one). Then there are a few anarchist free stores… these are my favorite of all of these, though of course they are the hardest to maintain. But to focus on the moment on anarchist businesses… why mostly bookstores? (I’d rather not get into the pros and cons of anarchist business in general at the moment)

Maybe it’s been done, but I’d love to see a craft/hardware store run by and for DIY folks. Bookstores (and I love bookstores, don’t get me wrong) offer mostly the exposure to theory, but what if we had a place that offered an exposure to craft? Homebrewing supplies, fabric and thread (kevlar is cheaper in bulk, by the way), metalworking tools… available from a worker-owned place. Hell, if it’s a downtown kind of location, you could also do consignment selling of crafts, offering local artisans another outlet to earn a living. Let’s re-invent the infoshop.

Now, I’m just throwing this out there. I don’t see myself really working on it. I would just go there a lot if it existed. If anyone knows about projects like this already in existence, please let me know!

As I’m certain much of the world is aware, Greece has been alive with riots these past two weeks since the police killed a teenage anarchist. It’s hard to keep up with it all, being over here in the USA, of course, but Crimethinc has come out with an excellent analysis of the uprising. One major point they propose is that, contrary to what the mainstream press has supposed, the riots are about more than just the economy, they are about the existence of the police, of the state. These protests, after all, were started with anarchist momentum.

But it’s not just the economic hardships accompanying times of recession—the resistance in Greece is also a revolt against the exploitation, alienation, and hierarchy inherent in the capitalist system, that set the stage for police to murder teenagers whether or not a significant percentage of the population is unemployed.

For a blow by blow of the action, I suggest The Center for Strategic Anarchy.

Ah, Day X. On March 20th, 2003, the city of Portland came together in a pretty amazing protest that shut down a good portion of downtown for many an hour. The idea was “no business as usual”, a general consensus of the anti-war movement at the time: if we made the system cease to work by protests and demonstrations, the government might be forced to listen to us. San Fran did the best, of course, managing rolling blockades throughout downtown for almost a week, but our 6 hours were pretty amazing.

Anyhow, my friend “Lyra234″ appears to have made a video game with the title Day X: The Riot (Day X was the name that we used in our video about the protest). In this version, you are a ninja anarchist who throws molotov cocktails at cops and collects such classic video game power-ups like “shield”, “health”, and “circle bomb”. It’s fun. It has absolutely nothing to do with the protests I was just talking about. You should play it.

So eventually I’m going to start posting about events before they happen, even reasonably far before they happen. But last night was Red Emma’s first ever art auction, and it was a grand good time. Basically, they collected donations of art from tons of local baltimore artists and then auctioned them off, most of them as silent auction. I made like 10 pieces for them, and they all sold. And I forgot to photograph the pieces, of course.

Red Emma’s is baltimores worker-owned radical bookstore/cafe/infoshop, and it’s actually my favorite infoshop in the world. They are really passionate people, working incredibly hard in what is a rather dangerous, dirty city. There are a lot of radicals working really hard here, as a matter of fact. You have to. In baltimore, poverty and inequity are just so prevalent. But yeah, Red Emma’s is a wonderful place, and whenever I’m in town I spend almost every afternoon sitting around reading their books.

I’m sad I only learned about Harold Thompson because of his death. He was an anarchist prisoner, but one I never heard much, if anything about. He was convicted of killing a man who had killed the mother of his son and was threatening to kill his son.

He became interested in anarchism early, but his beliefs solidified when he served in Vietnam. Upon his return, he was actively involved in anarchist struggle and worked with the veterans against the war. (The modern incarnation of which, the IVAW, includes quite a number of anarchist veterans at all levels of involvement.) Since going to jail he was involved in a number of escape attempts and was well known as a “jail house lawyer,” both admirable things. (Sad, of course, that his escape attempts never bore fruit.)

His support website has plenty more information about him, including his writings. I’m just looking at it all right now and I’m kind of sad that I’d never heard of him before. He seems like an amazing soul. Too often, we anarchists focus on our prisoners who are in jail for politically-motivated direct action and forget about other anarchist prisoners. Certainly, defending our loved ones from a murderer is the right of every human being, and it is very much within the realm of anarchist desires.

So yeah, Harold, may you rest in peace.

I’ve been buried 10 tabs deep into No Media Kings, the self-publishing resource site run by Jim Munroe, an anarchist sci-fi author from Canada who I am embarrassed to have not heard about before now. There’s tons of information on here about self-publishing and writing, from a really awesome perspective. (including a freely downloadable how-to comic book, Time Management For Anarchists). Of particular interest is a project he and others undertook in Toronto a few years back in which they wrote one-page SF dystopias about local gentrification and posted them to poles around town!

So I found out today, after sorting my way through election nonsense, that illegal immigrants swept up in ICE raids are facing ridiculous charges.

The illegal immigrants arrested must plead guilty to lesser counts or face indictment on charges of aggravated identity theft and possible mandatory two-year prison terms.

That is to say that immigrants, who often use fake SS numbers, can be treated the same as someone who steals someone’s SS for the purpose of emptying their bank account. There is clearly a quantitative difference here.

As for the immigration issue itself, for anarchists it plays out fairly simple: we don’t respect the right of the nation-state to exist, let alone enforce arbitrary, war-won borders (most of the places inhabited by Mexicans, for example, are places that were historically part of Mexico). But let’s take it in a modern context… the anti-globalizationists problem with this insane level of immigration enforcement is the hypocrisy of opening borders to resources but not to people.

Immigration exploded after NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Act, which “liberalized” our monetary exchanges with Mexico. Basically what happened is that we, as the richer nation, gained the ability to extract resources from Mexico without paying tariffs or other fees that are used to insulate an economy. Within the USA, we can see how this plays out in ghettos: by putting in a McDonalds, we are essentially siphoning money out of the local neighborhoods.

So we’re able to take Mexico’s wealth, but when Mexicans come to the USA for a chance to earn a decent (hardly decent) wage, we throw them in jail as if they had stolen all of someone’s money?

It’s like a car wreck: anarchist or no, you can’t help but pay attention to some degree to the upcoming election. But what I like to hear is anarchist strategy in regards to the election, and the good old Center For Strategic Anarchy has offered up an analysis of the election from an anarchist point of view.

we are far better equipped to take advantage of liberal disillusionment than liberal outrage. The last four years have been a testament to this, with the clearest beneficiaries of outrage being the Democratic party and the authoritarian Left (see: the anti-war movement.) Liberal disillusionment has been far kinder to anarchists. The C.S.A. is of the opinion that it is no accident that the surge of anarchist activity in the late ’90s overlapped with a Democratic administration in the process of moving to the right.

Four years ago, I put it to my uncle, a concerned and politically aware liberal. I asked him how he would convince me, an anarchist, to vote for president. And his primary response was that while yes, the president has little power to change things for the better, the tone they set “trickles down” (yes, my uncle intended that irony) to all levels of the system.

I’m certainly not of the opinion that anarchists need to rush off and go vote (except for in local elections… Oregon has got some seriously racist and classist initiatives that need shooting down), but there’s no denying that what happens in a couple weeks is going to affect everyone, probably everyone in the world.

What anarchists actually want, and our problems with the “democratic” system as stands, are pretty well summed up in this new zine by crimethInc: The Party Is Over.

And, of course, Bill Hick’s little speech still rings true:

Desolation
He loses the fingers, sudden as
arms
Sarah Gridley

That poem is on page 3076 of Issue 1, a wonderful jab at culture by forgodot.com (and possibly Steve McLaughlin), an experimental poetry group.

Why is it interesting? Because Sarah Gridley, whoever she is, didn’t write that poem. In fact, none of the 3,000+ authors listed wrote the pieces that are attributed to them. It’s a 3785 page PDF file poetry anthology of beautiful lies and blasphemy!

One of the most fun parts is reading all of the writers respond in the comments. Tons of them are hopping mad. Others get it.

Silliman (whoever that is), is worried about his good name and makes vague threats about suing the editors. He also calls it “anarcho-flarf vandalism”. And all I gotta say is, go anarcho-flarf vandalism! I wonder what the anarcho-flarf flag would be. Maybe black and newspaper print? I could get down with that.

Honestly, I haven’t been excited about poetry in years. Or art, really, though I have to pretend like I am. Dada and surrealism got sucked into mainstream art, what’s left? Well, for starters, 3,000 poem anthologies of god-knows-what.

One poet that took it well and spoke reasonably on the subject is Sharanya Manivannan, who explains a bit more about the nature of the project and also the root of the word “anarcho-flarf”.

Thanks to a comment from Ben, I’ve come to learn the real identity of Peter the Painter. He was a latvian named Janis Zhaklis. Ian Bone has covered the story and has an audio interview with Philip Ruff, who traveled to Latvia numerous times to uncover the story. (You can also watch the interview on youtube).

And there’s also an interesting bit about the story of uncovering the truth from the kate sharpley library (pdf).

The short of it is that Peter the Painter was not a damned bolshevik, and he most certainly wasn’t the bolshevik responsible for the literal eradication of the anarchists in soviet russia. That’s a relief. We get to keep our folk hero.