Important discussions about race, appropriation and anarchism going on over use of images of people of color. The full statement by the area APOC crew about the primitivist zine and images of people of color, as well as a pretty ignorant response from the zine’s editor, are posted. An excerpt of Harjit Singh Gill’s reply back:

One of the issues is that there is a constant exploitation of images of people of color without their necessary consent (unless I am unaware of this) and that violates the basic idea of consent-based relationships. It’s very clear; are those groups of people in support of what your purporting them to be in support of, or did you take photos of “anti-civilazationists” (aka people in their customary ways who probably don’t attach a huge ideological framework to it) out of an anthropology book or journal article and then propel them into the face of your organization?

Isn’t that sorta like putting people of color on your group’s website’s front page so that when people look at it, racism issues are disarmed because ‘there is a black guy on the front page of our site!”

…I’m also not sure how it is that the only organized group of people of color anarchists (already a vastly underrepresented group within anarchism in this US movement) get together, talk, discuss, and put out a statement, and white anarchists start beating the attack drum. I’m now just waiting for a call of “reverse racism” to complete the deal. Think, just think about why we feel APOC is necessary, and about our position as unfortunate watchers of umpteen thousand racist or insensitive actions yearly and that really; anarchism is a smidge better than the rest of the world at not being racist…

Keep an eye out for an upcoming piece on racism and the radical enviro movement. Should be up in a few days.

Via Media Dissent (anyone want to buy us some of that fly gear, holla!)

EDIT: Forgot to share the infoshop fuckery that originated this to some degree. Enjoy.

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