Posts Tagged Our Culture, Our Resistance: Collected Works

By Ernesto Aguilar

I first began writing for Our Culture, Our Resistance on anarchist people of color and the conversations I believe we need to get started. During that process, very kind individuals offered up much help in ideas and structure, but at some point, the work became academic. So, stepping back, I realized that, to be compelling and motivate change, starting any conversation has to be fluid and open, but also geared at accomplishing something. I took a step back and returned to the roots of my piece, of the conversations we need to get started if we are going to grow and politically advance ourselves as revolutionaries of color. And here we are.

When people visualized the emergence of a tendency of anti-authoritarian people of color, no one believed it would grow at the pace and direction it has. It is sprouting up and fostering awareness in ways few people envisioned, which has been fantastic. At the same time, we are at a critical point; where many see our organizing must evolve. We need to create a space for our unity, culture and identity, but also our politics.

We need to be clear that advocacy of rights and roles for people of color, while certainly needed, permits the state and white-led movement to institutionalize and mediate our struggles. Fighting racism and white supremacy, when included at all, are problems typically regarded as line-items for social change. Even among anarchists of color, the attraction is strong to build own our anarchist movement, made up of people of color, or to demand greater respect from the white-led movement. In the process, we’re failing to ask critical questions about the viability of the white-led movement or our own loyalties.

For people of color who identify as anti-authoritarians, bringing us into the clearest solidarity with oppressed people around the world should be our primary focus. We need to give respect to those who’ve come before us by building on their successes and learning from their mistakes, while bringing the anarchist people of color tendency to the next level.

Understanding oppression

Ask someone what they think of when they consider racism, oppression and white supremacy. You’ll likely get many answers. What does oppression mean to you as a person of color? I believe that, in order to find answers, it’s important to know what we’re dealing with when we talk about such broad concepts.

Francis Cress-Welsing argues that racism is white supremacy. That distinction alone is significant. Some whites and a few people of color are confused by the word racism; they’ll sometimes fall into traps of terms popularized by the far right, or take the word literally, thinking it to be a prejudice of any race by any race. Historically, however, racism has always meant white supremacy and collusion with institutional power. Race was, in many instances, a line of distinction separating Europeans from non-whites. Cress-Welsing states racism consists of “patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war).” Cress-Welsing’s definition grasps the totality of racism/white supremacy, and how it shapes our own views, as well as that of white people, virtually from birth. Cress-Welsing’s clarity makes us think about how we got into the global mess we face. In truth, Europeans have waged military and cultural war against people of color for nearly a thousand years. Such exercises were never a means of dividing rich and poor, but to unite the white masses to fight for the moral, political, social and/or economic superiority of their way of life over other races.

Addressing the social and political realities of white supremacy requires a strategy. In my view, that approach must make self-determination for oppressed people a basis of unity for looking at the world, among those professed anti-authoritarian people of color and all others. Our first stand must be with people of color worldwide fighting for room to breathe. Our first prerogative must be freedom for all oppressed people, by any means. At its core, self-determination is an opportunity to finally be free, to determine one’s own political, social and economic destinies. For North American radicals of color, this kind of idea can be a leap; we live in a society of relative privilege, where corporate corruption, globalization and other movements compete for our hearts and minds. Occupation and oppression aren’t harsh and in our faces as, for instance, in Palestine. As such, we’re conditioned to think about our struggles related to what we’re against, rather than that for which we are fighting.

Tactics and unity

Clearly, it’s on us to start thinking about how we make efforts if we are to be self-determined. One of the beautiful things about anarchism, many people tell me, is that it is fluid and open; flexible enough to respond to social and political conditions, but strong enough in its anti-authoritarianism to stand up against dictatorship of any kind. However, all of us get frustrated in the roadblocks that come before any movement. I submit that we need think about our tactics and our unity.

It is crucial that we start looking at our politics with a nod to what we, as revolutionaries, hope to create of this world. We know what we’re against, but how are we getting to the world we want to create? And, as importantly, what actions do we need to make to get there? What is a fundamental call from which our movements emanate?

Although I have spoken out frequently on the need to locally organize, I respect that not everyone is an organizer. It can be intimidating for even experienced people. In reality, I am an advocate of the growth of our movements on many levels. Whether you are an organizer, somebody just looking for answers, someone fed up with how the system works, or an intellectual, what you are about and what we as a movement stand for needs to be out front, fearless, imperfect and courageous.

Some ideas that touch on tactics and unity, no matter who you are:

• Objectives: What do you want? What are the long-term, mid-range and short-term goals? What are the process goals (i.e. building cultural consciousness among members) in reaching the objective?

• Resources: What/where are the alliances, money and relationships?

• Audience: Who are the people you want to connect to? Who are you trying motivate to action?

• Message: What do people need to hear? What parts of the message apply to people’s sense of justice, and which to their self-interest?

• Spokespeople: If you are organizing something for your idea, who should deliver the message? Who is credible to the audience, and how do we equip spokespeople with information and comfort levels?

• Jump-Off: How do we kick off and move forward?

• Venue: How do we get the audience the message?

• Opportunities: What do we need to cultivate?

• Evaluation: How do we judge our progress?

As one example, I wrote a missive on tactical politics, focusing on lifestyle politics. Also called conscientious consumerism, lifestyle politics (and other forms of reactive activism), have come to the fore as leading trends in social action. Boycotts; buying green, fair trade, et al.; and voluntary simplicity are everywhere. The failure of these kinds of strategies is in vision. Writer Angus Maguire argues that, at its worst, lifestyle politics “overemphasize the importance of white and middle-class buying habits while marginalizing the work of communities of color around the world to gain power in struggles against the same injustices our buying habits are supposedly addressing.” And I concur. But the ensuing responses from whites as well as a few people of color failed to offer a vision about how such consumerism connects with our program for advancement. Many people are not ready for a discussion about a “program for advancement” or much of a program for anything, but we need to be. Time and conditions require we stop spinning our wheels. We need to see a strategic vision for our work as part of an explicit and comprehensive program for reaching political, social and economic self-determination. Lifestyle politics is perhaps an easy target, but this instance demonstrates our need to analyze tactics.

Unity is perhaps one of the most curious roads to navigate in this respect, because once you find out what you’re for, your allies become a little clearer. It’s vibrant, for sure, and presents opportunities for us.

I don’t want to open the conversation with the typical us-versus-other-ideologies rhetoric, but nudge you to consider priorities. Herb Boyd writes in a revised edition of Detroit: I Do Mind Dying that ideologues on various sides of the political spectrum had, “political positions so bitterly opposed in the 1970s that it disrupted the remnants of the Black liberation movement, thereby ending any possibility of operational unity.” Anarchists of color get caught up in that too; some of us see our internal contradictions as people of color as more important than the external contradictions of white supremacist-engineered society out to do us all in. We’ve been sold the line that joining the white-led movement serves “humanity,” when humanity can’t speak for itself in struggle in which it doesn’t lead. Some of us eschew other people of color as being anti-white, et al., but fail to see who is served by our divisions. By no means am I saying to ignore our differences. I don’t believe paper unity serves anyone. I encourage all my people to consider who you unite with, why and the interests it serves.

Allies and language

Whether we unite with white anarchists is a tough question. While I believe broad-based work presents unique opportunities, I am very passionate in feeling it’s not our job to hold white folks’ hands, make them feel empowered, good about their politics, not downplayed, etc. The white-led movement should provide that to them, since it’s theirs and whites should be demanding more of other white progressives. But the subject of allies is altogether different.

When the Anarchist People of Color listserv began, some of us came to the table with the idea that we’d have this open space for ourselves to create a more visible presence of people of color in the `anarchist movement,’ essentially the white-led movement. Undoubtedly, our at-first unpopular little crew has now gotten more support from whites who see this effort as important. However, while most anarchists of color still participate in white-led organizing, our collective analysis is slowly evolving to a place where we are standing on our own, and what such unity means for us in the long term.

There’s an equal amount of work around the question of anarchism, and how we can grow it to meet the needs of communities of color. Not a few people of color observe that the contemporary anarchist scene, if indeed it’s embodied by testosterone-pumped white boys and Anarchy magazine, relates to a minuscule fraction of the populace. How do we make the ideas of anarchy relate to those who are not pissed off Caucasians and grad students? Such a question doesn’t even get into the troubling failure in anarchism to adequately address white supremacy, e.g. Bakunin’s anti-Semitism, Emma Goldman’s advocacy of eugenics and modern anarchism’s denial of the centrality of race in the dialogue. Anarchism, looked at objectively, should be applied as a model of social organization. North American trends in anarchist thinking have advocated anarchism as an ideology, philosophy or lifestyle choice. Yet the fault of such application is that many assumptions made by anarchists deliver firmly Eurocentric values in their introduction.

Just to be clear, when I say Eurocentric values, I mean values that have become a little more complex than merely ‘white values,’ but concepts, through the system of white supremacy, capital and subjugation, that have become part of mass consciousness. The rise of modern Eurocentric values can be traced to the rise of capitalism, and embody ideas which, despite pretensions to the contrary by their most radical carriers, are intended to serve white supremacy and capital.

Calling individualism, liberalism, the rule of (natural, structural or other) law, democracy and free markets (e.g. free trade, fair trade, et al.) Eurocentric values denies the rightful link people of color have to them. In fact, Eurocentric values mean a sense of power, and of moral, political, social and/or economic superiority to other cultures, with the mission of assimilating them. For hundreds of years, European scholars have bemoaned the failures of “other” people as a means of talking up the superiority of their own belief systems, and assimilating them into Eurocentrism. All of us fall into the trap sometime; as people of color, we’ve been indoctrinated to tacitly accept the superiority of whites over us, while whites have been taught to assume their values are right. The “unite and fight” abstraction, at its core, is aimed at winning people to its philosophy and assimilating all struggles into “one.” In another example, you regularly hear proponents of anarchism rejecting community cohesion and religious faith, but failing to grasp that, to many people, such things are important and can, in some historical examples, be an organizing spot. Even notions of consensus — an organizing model developed by white, middle-class anti-nuclear activists where a tiny group of people, often with many of the same values, get together and mutually agree to something — are an illusion aimed at reinforcing the values of a small group to the contrasting values of outsiders. Proponents of North American anarchism too often look to bring allegedly superior lifestyles and belief systems to the fore, and oppressed people, directly or indirectly, can be the victims.

I do think a revolutionary movement will take root, and that it will be broad-based. However, the mindset of many is a rush to idealism — that social justice is “all one struggle” and that we all need to be united to defeat fascism. I put forward the conversation that the rush to idealism will be our demise as a movement. The white-led movement should answer for its internal racism, and people of color should understand what we want, how we plan to work, and be conscious and organized as a struggle enough to fight this battle alone, if necessary. That kind of conviction is important in this undertaking. We should not make concessions to our demand for self-determination to win anyone’s support.

Related: Class

Another issue on the unity tip is the anarchist romance with class. As we forge a new path of oppressed peoples’ politics, as well as anarchist theory and practice, we must take a critical look at class. Are we surrendering our self-determination in the name of unity?

Within white-led anarchism, there is a subtle, and occasionally overt, competitiveness between race and class. For example, in “Race and Class: Burning Questions, Unpopular Answers,” a member of the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists brings arguments such as “racism is an excuse” and that racism is prevalent among people of color. These ideas are presented to show class is the primary issue we should unite under. “There’s an overwhelming amount of class-privileged `people of color’ spearheading this movement, creating a culture that is class reactionary to all working class people of all races in the United States,” the piece notes. “These people are also quick to react to what they see as `class trumping race,’ and find the common class struggle between people of different races to be not as important as what they share in common with the community in question.”

Similar points are made in a far cruder fashion. Most white radicals, and some radicals of color, have adopted old Marxist notions of class, class struggle and, most importantly, class solidarity. There are dozens of names people of color get called — from “nationalist” to “reverse racist” to “privilege pimp” — for pointing out the obvious importance of self-determination, racism and the historical fallacies of class unity. Although I do agree with familiarity with how capitalism functions is appropriate, my concern is many class-unity concepts are based on two fundamentally false ideas: 1.) that “the working class” (meaning the white working class and workers of color, in the United States and internationally) can unite to fight; and that workers of color and the white working class have common interests, from the workplace on down.

Even most anarchist intellectualism stakes positions to which the two misconceptions as their foundation. While there are indubitably surface commonalities (i.e. workplace, housing, etc.), history demonstrates that working-class solidarity between white workers and workers of color does not exist. History further demonstrates that white workers, in almost all cases, side with the oppressor and against workers of color. I’m sure there are isolated examples of unity. Does that mean I believe people of color should take such cavernous leaps of faith? Not without their eyes open and minds sharp.

J. Sakai, author of Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat, has been one of the hardest critics of the white working class. In an interview I conducted with him, Sakai explained he researched history and put his findings bluntly “I figured out that actually there wasn’t any time when the white working class wasn’t white supremacist and racist and essentially pro-empire.” Those who ad hominem dismiss Sakai ought to follow up on what he says. From colonization to ongoing wars and the dismantling of Affirmative Action, how many mass movements of white workers (or whites altogether) were there, compared to instances where white masses either stood with the elite, actively or passively? 100-to-1? 500-to-1? Herein lies the dirty secret of class politics. If we have a few hundred years of history to look upon, in which the white working class has consistently and in most instances actively sided with oppressors and sold out people of color, what is the basis for solidarity? If working-class solidarity were more than a slogan, wouldn’t the racial discrimination and even profound racism within the ranks of white workers have been obliterated years ago? If white workers have rejected significant demands supporting people of color, what makes them different now? They’re not. As Sakai points out, and deftly illustrates, the white working class and people of color have divergent interests. White workers just side with their own interests and the empire’s.

Another conspicuous issue is the history of cross-class alliances among people of color in fighting colonialism. Read the histories of Algeria, Mexico and other countries and you’ll discover the internal contradictions of class become far less important when faced by the external contradiction of an occupying army. It’s the kind of history that swims against North American radicalism’s beliefs that classes don’t or can’t unite. Moving forward as anarchist people of color means understanding our allies, as well as our enemies, and what that means for our freedom.

Privilege and Assertiveness

One of the beauties of self-determination is the fact that it draws lines of opposition, contradictions and prompts us to consider privilege. Not simply the (still important) roads typically hewn by activist-types — gender, sexual orientation and class — but looking at one another and acknowledging the privileges of people within this movement, and navigating that in hopes of being honest as possible. Being self-determined requires such.

For people of color who were raised in or politicized by white-dominant spaces, concept of self and one’s relationship with non-white-dominant spaces represent one point of privilege worth exploring. In no other instance is the difference between anarchists of color bigger than between white-acculturated persons of color, and those socialized by their respective cultures. Relational views; concepts of autonomy/people of color spaces, racial experience, overall objectives for empowerment and more are thus profoundly varied. In many cases, being raised in white-dominant spaces is not a choice, although voluntary involvement is. In both cases, participants must recognize that, historically, such spaces impart values that, while dressed in democratic language, are intended to further white supremacy; create confusion and division; and, as a means of self-perpetuation, can make white-acculturated people of color unwitting agents of white supremacist ideology. How internalized marginalization and oppression function are critical considerations.

Very honestly, there are internal struggles being waged by conscious people of color all around us. The sense of estrangement from communities is real, as is the indignation some people of color feel when whites assume that people of color have no other interests but race. We need to be actively supporting one another through these explorations, exhibiting care and knowledge. Internalized oppression for people of color, manifested as guilt or defensiveness, helps no one, and we need to see these issues of privilege as collective issues for all of us in the movement.

Similarly, it’s important white-skinned people of various cultures and ethnicities to understand the dynamics of race. This is a challenging segment of privilege to steer, but it’s necessary. Light skin versus dark skin is a demonstration of our internal struggles, as well as the debates within our own colonies. As one person put it well: “How has your light skin operate like white privilege among people of color? How have used your light skin to pass as white in the dominant culture? How has your light skin been used as a way to separate yourself from people of color? Do you use it to separate yourself from other people of color but not from people of your ethnic group? How does the collusion of your light skin give people of color the impression that you are not in their camp, but only come to their camp when excommunicated from the dominant culture not wanting to have these privileges is not the point here. The point is this: the fact that you do have light skin privilege in this racialized society, it is important to be racially responsible with it.”

Talking about collective freedom through self-determination also requires we have a discussion about individualism. Individual freedom is one of the reasons we fight, and it is one of the highest ideals, although the ultra-competitive society fostered by capitalism has turned the idea of individual conscience on its head. Our objective as anarchists is not to emulate what the media tries to make of us, as self-involved monsters bent on greed and serving ourselves. Autonomy doesn’t mean that our politics are defined by our moods or interests at the moment, but by study, struggle and discovery. Individualist politics are an exercise in privilege. Many Americans exercise that privilege every day by passively supporting the empire. Some anarchists of color get swept up in the moment, and start defining our politics by what’s exciting at the moment, rather than realizing we don’t have that many moments to lose.

Lastly, it is critical to recognize that the need for respecting each other and organizing ourselves collectively. I’m regularly surprised by the lackadaisical approach some people of color bring to anarchist people of color spaces. From small things like showing up late to gatherings to major things like exclusionary organizing, the message is one of power dynamics and privilege. Sometimes it’s unconscious. Sometimes people came up in a lazy political culture or one that didn’t have to consider what starting a meeting 45 minutes late, for instance, might do for a poor person’s bus ride or parent’s time with their kids. Yet these examples are matters of privilege that mirror what is already going on in white anarchist milieus. This needs to be examined clearly.

What do relevant politics look like?

Think about Adidas. Its purpose is to sell expensive shoes. But nobody in their right mind will buy $200 sneakers. So Adidas has to evolve from selling shoes to selling a lifestyle. The baller of the moment rocks a pair of signature shoes as a hot track bumps in the background. Adidas is flexible; it grows its campaigns as the tastes of potential buyers evolve. Now think about a movement. Making signs and sweating in the hot sun doesn’t sell well. Who in their right minds wants that, verdad? So we need to evolve as people’s media-savviness and minds evolve; the problem is not that people don’t believe what we believe, but that anarchists can seem completely uninspiring doing what we do. Why would anyone care for a lifestyle of protests, long meetings, drum circles and getting arrested? Maybe those pissed-off Caucasians or grad students I mentioned earlier, but that’s all.

We all want movements that are flexible and can respond to social conditions. We also need to work tirelessly to keep political goals like self-determination and tactics for getting there relevant to everyday folks. No, we don’t need a movement led by Adidas, but we need to look at, without bias, the world our people live in, and how our messages can speak to them. I’ve heard `we can’t go to such-and-such because it’s corporate’ as proclamations of people’s individualist politics twice as much as I’ve heard `where do people hang, and can we go talk with them about such-and-such campaign?’ If Adidas can have legions of cats wearing their $200 gear, they’ve tapped into what we need to get a dose of, and quick. A few points that came out of the “Building an APOC Movement” workshop at the 2003 APOC conference, in terms of organizing:

• How people go about doing things; for the benefit and greater good take where people are and build from that. We have more to learn from people than they do from us;

• Using skills and resources already in existence; empowering to teach each other-working from our strengths; and

• More vision; not just talk about, make it more participatory, more organizing.

And in terms of networking and resources:

• Find common ground and be in the community;

• Bring together by using each others’ resources together;

• Focusing on commonalities;

• Be honest when balancing your values and other groups as a basis for building trust; and

• Be simplistic; talk about how you can support.

We also resolved on a few ideas related to points of unity:

• Ask people first; value system respecting existing knowledge;

• Clarity of goals makes things clear;

• Be aware anarchism is not better than what exists; be open; and

• Ultimately support community decisions; mistakes are part of the process.

Four key points of anarchist organizing:

• Helping people experiment with decentralized, collective and cooperative forms of organization;

• Increasing the control that people have over actions that affect them;

• Building counterculture that uses all forms of communication to resist illegitimate authority, racism, sexism, and capitalism. Creating alternatives to the dominant culture; and

• Strengthening the `social fabric’ of neighborhood units that network of informal association, support services, and contacts that enable people to survive in spite of the negative influences of government and its bureaucracies.

Five criteria covered at the conference for measuring success:

• People learn skills needed to analyze issues and confront those who exert control over their lives;

• People learn to interact, make decisions and get things done collectively; rotating tasks, sharing skills, confronting racism, sexism and hierarchy;

• Community residents realize some direct benefit or some resolution of problems they personally face through the organizing work;

• Existing institutions change their priorities or way of doing things so that the authority of government, corporations, and large institutions is replaced by extensions of decentralized, grassroots authority; and

• Community residents feel stronger and better about themselves in the collective effort.

These aren’t gospel, but they’re a start in moving towards the conversations we need to have — whether you’re an organizer or not — about self-determination, tactics, allies, privilege and more. As with anything, we need to treat each other with compassion and empathy; don’t let hostility, resentment or a quest for `accountability’ color your efforts. Tearing each other down as people of color for perceived transgressions is never acceptable under any circumstance. We’re not the military, and nor should we strive for that. We have serious discussions to have, and hopefully more learning, caring, fighting and loving in the future.

19 September 2004

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By Danielle Buckery

His voice was deep and mellifluous — almost intoxicating. There was no doubt in my mind that the message being delivered was anything short of omnipotent. Both the context of the words and the manner in which he spoke permeated the message of Du Bois in a sweet air of mystique and glorification. As I sat beside my uncle, I found that I could not suppress the deep wave of numbness that flooded through my bloodstream; my limbs paralyzed. I was barely conscious of the tears which caressed my cheekbones, forming a diminutive puddle at the base of my chin. These words, the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, were of great magnitude; pregnant with meaning. There he sat, Uncle Vincent, reading The Souls of Black Folk with as much energy and enthusiasm as he could congregate; speaking in a clear-turquoise voice.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world-a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others… One ever feels his twoness — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being tom asunder… He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world (Du Bois 3).

“Beautiful,” I whispered, once Uncle Vincent had finished reading. My voice was low, barely audible — clandestine. I knew not, whether the softness of my voice was an act of subconscious vocalization or if I did not want my uncle to discover that I had detected a painful truth in Du Bois’ message. Gradually, I became aware of certain physical elements I had grown oblivious to over the years: the tawny coloring of my flesh — a unique mixture between that of my father’s rich chocolate and my mother’s vanilla-ginger. The rich, deep luster of Grandpa Walter’s dark coffee skin; the ivory-yellow paleness of Grandma Myrtle’s fair winter complexion-the captivating color of Grandpa Joshua’s blue-gray eyes. Looking back on it, he was the only blue-eyed black man I had ever met. Had Du Bois explored his theory of the double-consciousness even further, he would have, perhaps, applied the idea of the “triple” and “quadruple” consciousness to individuals like Grandpa Joshua.

Du Bois’ double-consciousness referred to the reality of being both black and American. Neither of the two realities would allow the other to exist in sweet serenity. How can one reconcile such a complexity? I reflected upon Du Bois’ words once more: “He would not Africanize America… He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism…” How should one go about prioritizing such an enigmatic reality? Is he fIrst black, or is he first an American? Should it even matter?

I found myself, again, thinking of my grandfather, Joshua Hunt, recollecting an odd mixture of memory and fact. Joshua Hunt: born in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1902.

He first arrived in the United States as an indentured servant. A delightful fellow whose strength and pride lit an electric flfe in his pale blue eyes. My mind raced, rehashing everything I knew about the culture and heritage of Grandpa’s background. It is said that my grandfather’s family was of a great and odd mixture; possessing the blood of West

Africa: Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. They, too, possessed the blood of the English, French and Portuguese. Negligent, in their eyes, was the tiny portion of “Native Indian” and East Asian blood flowing through their veins: the blood of Siam and Japan. I often smile at the prospect of Grandpa’s great-great-great grandmother being a geisha; a woman of great elegance and exoticism.

What, then, would be an appropriate title for my grandfather? A Trinidadian? A West Indian? An American? A black man? A man of African decent? A man of European decent? A man of Asian decent? There is no way that the premise of Du Bois’ double- consciousness could accurately define my grandfather. The double-consciousness dissects and explores the psyche of the African-descended man in America. So, what are we to do with the “African-American” who is not exclusively of African decent? How is he categorized? What level of consciousness does he possess? Does he even posses a cultural and patriotic consciousness? There was only one way to answer these questions. I was to read Du Bois again. In doing so, I came across a rather interesting passage. In a chapter entitled Of the Passing of the First-Born, Du Bois wrote of his son — one who clearly sported the blood of Africa and Europe:

How beautiful he was, with his olive-tinted flesh and dark gold ringlets, his eyes of mingled blue and brown… the blood of Africa had moulded into his features… Why was his hair tinted with gold? … Why had not the brown of his eyes crushed out and killed the blue? …And thus in the Land of the Color-line I saw, as it fell across my baby, the shadow of the Veil (170).

The veil, of which Du Bois writes, is a theoretical blurring of one’s mental vision. It grants an individual a clouded, indistinct view of himself; awarding him little knowledge and truth as to who he really is. My eyes moistened with tears, once more, as I thought of Du Bois message: “the Negro is… born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world-a world which yields him no true self-consciousness…” The veil; an opaque vision, defined by neither falsehood nor truth. The “eighth-generation” African-American does not necessarily see himself as a native African would. This is not to say that he is unable to do so, but his psyche has been tainted; compromised by White-America for more than twenty generations. He would never be categorized as “white,” even if he is of “mixed blood,” for the white community is exclusive; austere. White-America created “the one-drop rule” or the law of “hypo-descent,” exclaiming African blood to be a contaminant. Therefore, an individual with any degree of African blood, no matter how miniscule the percentage, is “black.” Hence, the “brown-skinned” woman of French and Kenyan blood will never be categorized as white; however, her blackness is still viewed as partial, inauthentic–equivocal.

Again, I ask, how does the “nontraditional” African-descended person in America view himself? It seems he can only view himself through a veil; a clouded prospect, an apparition. Perhaps W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory holds some weight to it after all. This American world yields him no true self-consciousness, rather, lets him see himself, only, “through the revelation of the other world.” Du Bois’ message became clear when I thought of my grandfather, Joshua Hunt, comparing him to Du Bois’ son: “How beautiful he was with his olive-tinted flesh… his eyes of mingled blue and brown.” Grandpa Joshua: olive-tinted skin, eyes of mingled blue and gray. What a paradoxical world he must live in: A Trinidadian, a black man, an American. He could never escape one world for another. The brown of his skin was forever reminiscent of Africa. The pale, blue-gray of his eyes belonged to the blood of Europe. Joshua Hunt and others like him certainly face a double consciousness and, perhaps, myriad levels of this awareness. It would certainly seem that Du Bois’ veil yields no true self-consciousness; merely a distorted reality.

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By Aragorn

The story of the people who have not written the history books, who have not built empires, and who have not aspired to lord over others is our history. To some extent, the nature of these times is that for this tale to be told, each of us have to make a commitment to it, to both write, speak and learn about the crevices and shadows in which the “winners” did not invade, and in which we live. This story of survival, of just getting by, is the story of the life of the vast (as in over 90%) majority of the people throughout time, throughout modern civilization. Survival is the only possibility when participation means what it does today.

While this text cites Europe as the ultimate expression of the successes that reflect our loss, it is not solely Europe’s legacy. Similar (if not as grand) tales of invasion, colonization, and genocide can be told of other cultures. The difference is that they are not the inheritors of the world system today. Europe is.

Militarism, Capitalism, Statecraft and their consequences in Racism, Genocide, and Total War can all be placed on Europe’s doorstop. This doesn’t mean that there are not Europeans who resist this tradition, this practice, but if the world has a problem, or a set of problems, it can be traced to origins. It is not enough to eke out examples of these problems in other places as an escape from the consequences of origin. In an alternate universe it is possible that we could be railing against the tyranny of the Ottoman Empire.

There is a need at this time to declare an anti-authoritarian tendency that both respects its origins and fights against them. An anti-statist, anti-economic position that prioritizes cultural values over scientific determinism and the maintenance of empire. A position that values diversity over any unitary answer to political and social life. It is the time to connect the realities of our colonial history, land relations, and politics to the conclusions of both its rebels and our elders. From the Irish to the Makah, the Kurds to the Mbuti, the urban African-American to the settled Rom a story can be told outside of Western Civilization. A non-European Anarchism is the politic of that story set within the context of a resistance to it.

What is Europe

When I speak of Europeans or mental Europeans I’m not allowing for false distinctions. I’m not saying that on the one hand there are the byproducts of a few thousand years of genocidal, reactionary European intellectual development which is bad, and on the other hand there is some new revolutionary development which is good. I’m referring here to the so-called theories of Marxism and anarchism and “leftism” in general. I don’t believe their theories can be separated from the rest of the European intellectual tradition. It’s really just the same old song
- Russel Means, The Same Old Song

Europe is an unusual continent for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that there are as many people living outside of the continent as live within its boundaries. History, at least as taught in North America, is mostly interested in the consequences and developments that have occurred on the continent over the past two millennia. This history, if compared to the history of every other continent combined, would still loom as entirely dominant in the minds and culture of the US and Canada. It is safe to call the mainstream of North American culture European. You can consider the largest landmass of Oceania as European also, which demonstrates that it is a distinctive trend of Europe to export itself throughout the globe.

This expansionist phenomenon has a historical context that is worth examining. Europe is not where the rise of Civilization occurred. It appears to have begun in the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Mesopotamia. Dozens, if not hundreds, of societies thrived in this valley over 3000 years. The best known of these societies are the Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite and Phoenician societies. They are best know for the technics they provided future societies which include mythology (Sumeria), the Code of Hammurabi (Babylon), iron (Hittites), and the alphabet (Phoenicians). Around the same time a vast and vibrant society arose around the river Nile, called Egypt. This African society existed for several thousand years in one form or another, and presaged modern government. These two regions along with China comprise the vast majority of our understanding of ancient society.

The formation of mass society on the European continent is clearer and more recent. The arc of the Greek Empire (1200 – 300 BCE) includes the formation of just about all the intellectual trajectories pursued over the past three millennia including Art, Science, Politics (especially the form of Democracy and the Republic), and Philosophy. This leads us to Rome, the most demonstrable foundation of modern Europe.

We shall continue to focus on Rome’s contributions to the civilization we currently live in. Notable in modern life is the Roman development of urban infrastructure and the resulting expectations that the citizenry of empire have had to it. The delivery of potable water, sewage, well maintained roads, and the construction of large buildings have all become expectations of civilized, urban life. The organization of a disciplined and standing army that waged total war has defined every empire and quasi-empire since.

The Fall of Rome could have possibly lead to a hidden revolutionary time on the European continent. The period formerly referred to as the Dark Ages was notable for not suffering under the yoke of Empire and for not having a great deal of history written about it. The histories that we do have access to tell of a set of cultures that closely resembled the North American mound-builders. What is easily known is that Feudalism, and eventually Monarchies began to consolidate the land and cultures of Europe. The form of this consolidation can be seen today in the formation of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

The Rise of Christianity sparked much of this creation of the State, but more pointedly was responsible for, in the name of the Crusades, eliminating the bulk of the hundreds of cultures that existed up to that point on the continent.

This is actually where Rome, in hindsight, could be called progressive in comparison. If a defeated society paid their tax, they could largely practice their own cultural beliefs. This changed with the formation of the Christian state.

After the Middle Ages and the rise of Christianity comes the Reformation and then Humanism. These changes to the simplicity of the one Church, one state model of Europe hearken to the techniques used now to modify conservative and socially backward elements in the modern ideological matrix. The Reformation allowed, eventually, Christianity to be defined far more broadly than just allegiance to a specific institution, but to a set of organizations and interpretations of spirituality. This allowed for a specifically European (and not local) cultural expression that crossed national borders, and carried currency well into the modern era. Humanism is, simply put, the priority of human concerns over any other. Humanism led to the specific formation of the individual as social character, the entire arena of social sciences, and to a great degree to the formation of the creation of modern science as a conquest of nature.

War

The primary technology that Europe has excelled at, beyond all others, is warfare. This is not to argue that armed conflict did not exist beyond the continent, but the form it has taken in Europe has been qualitatively different. It is only in Europe, with the rise of the practice and theory of ‘total war’ that much of European expansionist history can be understood. It is only through understanding the cultural tradition of total war that one can understand the horrors of the twentieth century in Europe and abroad.

While ‘The Art of War’ and ‘A Book of Five Rings’ concern the techniques of the battlefield, they did not relate war to a particularly functionalist worldview. War was not an application of imperialist power as much as the practice of a certain class of citizenry amongst themselves. Military strategy was as connected to the spiritual understanding of being a warrior as it was to placing men in power.

The 18th century transformed staid codification of military principles into a scientific practice that remains today. As opposed to the general outlines of relationships between military and civic leaders given in the ancient texts, modern military strategists, especially Clausewitz, were specific. Total war is military conflict in which the contenders are willing to make any sacrifice in lives and other resources to obtain a complete victory. Limited war is similar to total war, but does attend to political, social and economic concerns. The formation of the differentiation between total and limited war gave texture to the behavior of the Europeans that colonized the New World, Africa, and institutionalized the Crusades.

The question is worth revisiting, what is Europe? Europe is the history of hundreds of cultures being crushed. Europe is a disparate set of people who both infringe on others’ sovereignty throughout the world and continue to be beset upon (NATO, Slovakia, Serbia, EU). Europe is the benefactor of a set of ideas  economic, military, religious and secular  that have dominated the entire planet.

If Europe is everywhere, on every newscast, every billboard, every thoroughfare, then what is not-Europe? On one level not-Europe are all the people in the process of being Europeanized, all the people being introduced to modern conveniences, like microwave ovens, coca-cola, and cruise missiles. Many of these people look forward to the change in their traditional, conservative society. Many resist, understanding the consequences that Western values, power, and money will bring to them.

On another level not-Europe is the vital cultural tapestry of the Fourth world. Indigenous people exist throughout the globe, and resisting or not they comprise sets of perspectives and histories that are distinctive and unique. They compromise much of the most resistant aspects to the global order. Not because they are not poor, but because they understand the poverty of another cultures.

Finally not-Europe could be the silent benefactors and victims of modern society. It is a foregone conclusion that modern society is comprised of a vast majority of people who cannot exert political power, are not wealthy, and may wish to resist the way things are. With its combination of engaging topical propaganda, cursory and self-serving historical education, and general economic satisfaction it becomes easy to lose track of these people. They do exist and their very anonymity is the political engine behind every popular and reactionary movement over the past 200 years.

What is European Anarchism?

While the semantics of anarchy (that is, “without ruler”) could illuminate future discussion, any type of analysis of the potential of anarchism has to grapple with the ideology that is. This ideology is a) a history of iconic figures, b) a set of increasingly radical ideas about social transformation, and c) a practice that has only been uniform in its rejection by those in power. Understanding the repercussions of the use of language, the history (broadly defined) and the culture of the anarchist tradition will help us understand the qualities that anarchism has that are worth reclaiming.

The clearest origin of anarchism in the western tradition lies in ancient Greece and the argument of Zeno (the Stoic) for a society ruled by the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual. While not specifically an anarchist position, Zeno serves as a practical counter-point to the ideal nation of Plato’s Republic  the foundation for the nation-building that has occurred since. In the modern, post-Enlightenment era the first treatise in defense of anarchism came from William Godwin (1793)1. He argued that government is unnecessary and harmful to the conduct of human affairs. He also believed that society could be transformed into a world of justice and equality through education and propaganda, and not through specific political struggle. His influence of anarchism as a school of thought (and not just a movement for social change) cannot be overstated. The four fathers of European anarchism lived in the second half of the 19th century and included Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Pierre Proudhon and Max Stirner. They stand as the central figures in modern anarchist activism, anarcho-communism, mutualism, and individualism respectively. In the twentieth century such figures as Emma Goldman, known for her advocacy of contraception and free love, Sacco and Vanzetti, known as anarchist martyrs killed by the state, and Nestor Makhno, who fought against the Bolsheviks and White armies in the Russian Revolution, inform a conception of anarchism as martyrdom and activism.

The preceding paragraph is an attempt to scurry past the mythology of the anarchist. Not because of any rejection of these mythologies, as they are some of the most human stories that can be told in the face of their opposition, but because understanding that there are deeper stories of actual human struggle and inspiration is what an observation of individual anarchists should provide us. It is not as a result of glamorous rebels that the anarchist tradition breathes life into human experience today. Their stories exemplify the tradition without obscuring each of our parts in it.

While the origins of Anarchism seem most interested in the science of statecraft, anarchism has since evolved into a criticism of technology, religion, capitalism, and the state. This evolution happened because the principles that would lead one to conclude that the state was oppressive naturally led to the conclusion that those same systems also exist in other arenas of the human experience. What are these principles? Vaneigem has described them so2.

“Although each of us starts along the path as a whole, living being, intending to return just as we were when we left off, we became completely lost in a maze of wasted time, so that what returns is only a corpse of our being, mummified in its memories. The striving of humanity after survival is a saga of childhood bartered away for decrepitude.”

Vaneigem’s choice of metaphors and the principle of a “first man” runs through most libertarian literature. Bakunin in God and the State3 exemplifies the principle of contrariness.

“The abolition of the Church and the State must be the first and indispensable condition of the true liberation of society; only after this can society be organized in another manner, but not from the top downwards and according to some ideal plan, dreamed up by a few sages and scholars, and certainly not by decrees issued by some dictatorial power or even by a national assembly elected by universal suffrage. As I have already shown, such a system would lead inevitably to the creation of a new state, and consequently to the formation of a governmental aristocracy, that is to say a whole class of individuals having nothing in common with the mass of the people, which would immediately begin to exploit and subdue that people in the name of the commonwealth or in order to save the State.”

Finally, the principle of cooperation (over competition) as articulated by Pyotr Kropotkin4.

“Mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle…as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favors the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy.”

While not authoritative, most modern incarnations of Anarchism derive from and include these principles. The application and depth has changed, but the idea that people were once free, can be again, and can do it ethically is a useful definition of anarchist intention.

In practice this labor of social transformation is connected to political activism. Often this happens within larger historical movements, frequently as the action of determined individuals to transform reality, and most often as the rejection of alienated people refusing to participate in the social and political apparatus.

There have been a variety of movements that have had an articulated anarchistic quality. The Free Spirit movement of the 13th and 14th century (scattered throughout the European Continent), inspired a female member to say “I have created all things. I created more than God. It is my hand that supports Heaven and Earth. Without me nothing exists.” The Diggers of the 17th century England attempted to use public lands for living on, and were subsequently burned out of their homes. The Paris Commune liberated the city for 73 days before the army retook the city and slaughtered the Communards. Anarchistic soviets provided a backbone to the Russian Revolution before they were co-opted by the Bolsheviks in the name of the people. The Industrial Workers of the World, in the United States, were a labor union that attempted to unite the workers into ‘One Big Union’ against capitalism as a whole and had some successes in early twentieth century America before many of their leaders were jailed or shipped to the Soviet Union. The ‘propagandists by the deed’ successfully murdered leaders of France (Carnot, 1894), Austria (Elisabeth, 1898) and the United States (McKinley, 1901). Millions of people collectivized their land and workplaces in the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1937) only to be defeated by their own compromises and the fascists (but especially the fascists). Finally, in our parade of anarchistic moments, are the events of May ‘68 in France where a coalition of students and workers brought the French nation to its knees for nearly a month.

With the grand historical stage in place, the actual history of practiced anarchy has happened on a much smaller scale. Whether it has been within the left counter-cultural space (living arrangements, small cooperatives), the self-help movement (alcoholics anonymous, etc.), or youth counter-culture, the principles of living ethically, without hierarchies (and the people who love them), in cooperation with other people, and in opposition to authority is a major part of our human experience.

What is Non-European Anarchism?

It is not enough to take everything that has been stated so far about anarchism and Europe and therefore call our work done. Simply put, a non-European anarchism is not on the radar of most people. Most ‘people of color’, even within the anti-authoritarian sphere, take more of their political center of gravity from the rights movements over the past decades than from their own cultural practice or from a synthesis of what could to be.

There are things that we can distill from what we have covered. Europe is a location, a symbol, an oppressor, a history and way to understand our current condition. It is a center of gravity which people involved with social change find very hard to escape. There are aspects of the traditional Anarchist canon that are worth holding on to.

The formation of a non-European anarchism is untenable. The term bespeaks a general movement when the goal is an infinite series of disparate movements. A non-European anarchism is the thumbnail sketch of what could be an African anarchism, a Maquiladora anarchism, a Plains Indian anarchism, an inner-city breed anarchism, et al.

A category should exist for every self-determined group of people to form their own interpretation of a non-European anarchism. The principle is that if European anarchism could be shifted onto the shoulders of the people living outside the burden of the European system than it could be borne far more easily. It could be carried more ‘anarchistically’ than when safe-guarded by the current group of cosmopolitan materialists.

What, then, are the aspects of anarchism that are worth claiming, what are the principles of a non-European anarchism, what would the practice of a non-European anarchism look like and what would a non-European anarchist take on modern problems look like?
Evaluating anarchism within the context of its history as a political movement, its current presentation as a social and political movement and what it has to offer to a non-European perspective has its complications. Respecting the tradition is not enough for many of its followers, they also require adherence to their particular definition. If you do not subscribe to the syndicalist approach to the question of unions or the communist approach to the question of economy or the individualist approach to the question of organization and personal freedom you are sure to hear of it. These issues have importance in this world, between the adherents to one tendency or another, but are not particularly interesting for those of us outside this canon.

With all respect due to its history, and a clear sight with regard to my own biases regarding modern anarchism, the aspects of anarchism that are relevant to a non-European anarchism are its perspectives regarding decentralization, mutual aid, power, cultural bias, single solutions to political questions, and rejection of authority.

A non-European anarchism would most likely concern itself with different sets of priorities than modern anarchism does. It would look to its traditions to resolve ‘organizational’ questions. It would approach strategic questions regarding social change alongside questions of cultural heritage and traditional outlooks. Concerns of recruitment, propaganda, and motivation would look very different to a non-European anarchism.

To speak to one possible example… A woodland native anarchism could evade the life-ways of the city dweller, opting instead for very few fixed locations over the course of a year and a generally seasonal lifestyle. Organization could look like a series of consensus decision-making groups concerned with differing elements of daily life. Politics would be concerned with questions of food acquisition, engagement with outsiders, travel, and conflict negotiation. This could only be possible in another world.

What could a non-European anarchism look like in this world? How could the fracturing of an already miniscule political tendency along cultural lines improve it? A primary concern to most people who criticize the Euro-centric aspects of anarchism is its tendency not to highly place the priorities of their cultural group. They are right, of course, but structurally there is very little (if not nothing) that modern anarchists can do about it. The resignation of anarchists to rely on what are fundamentally liberal notions of representation speaks for itself. Not only is it not particularly successful at attracting people from other cultures, it embeds resentment at the authoritarian, arbitrary, and ‘politically correct’ assertion of equality based on demographics. If the form of social organization were along cultural lines these problems would not exist. The problems would be different, but would not default to solutions that contain defeat. Larger social organization, as in between disperse groups, can begin to be conceptualized along a multitude of traditions and not just the European one. Struggle against the current political forms would reflect a far more complex level of participation that we could only hope would have more interesting results.

1. Political Justice and its influence on morals and happiness, by William Godwin
2. The Movement of the Free Spirit, Raoul Vaneigem
3. God and the State, Mikhail Bakunin
4. Mutual Aid, Pyotr Kropotkin

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By Victoria Law

My great-grandfather was the type of man who refused to get out of bed unless there was breakfast waiting for him. Since he wouldn’t get out of bed to go and work, there was never any breakfast waiting for him. It was a cycle that did nothing to alleviate the family’s poverty.

When he grew old enough, his son, my grandfather, left the small village to seek work in Shanghai. He found it and spent the next year shoveling manure for a living. He worked his way up to become a jeweler’s apprentice, eventually opening his own jewelry store. He returned home to build the village’s largest private house for his mother, who had long endured the ridicule of her neighbors and acquaintances. When the Communists won the Civil War, confiscating both the house and the jewelry store, he started again in Hong Kong, this time with a family of six and a wife who loved the latest fashion. One year, he held the traditional Chinese New Year’s party. It was packed with fellow entrepreneurs. The next year, his business crashed; their doorway remained empty. The visitors of yesteryear, who had eaten all his snacks and drank all his liquor, had found more lucrative families to call upon.

My other grandfather was the unsuccessful owner of a factory that made burlap bags. Rarely did these bags yield a profit and so my mother’s strongest childhood memories are of eating salted peanuts one at a time to make them last. Her younger sister died of hunger. One of her older sisters had to be given away.

Despite these inauspicious beginnings, both of my parents had attained middle-class status by the time I was born. They had come to the States to go to college. Both were the first generation in their families to attend, let alone graduate, high school. They owned their own home in a predominantly white area in Queens. Both parents worked white-collar office jobs. I have no childhood memories of material want.

This last fact has been used against me when I bring up race and racism. There have been more than a few occasions when white anarchists quickly shift the conversation from my discomfort at being the only non-white face in the room to class issues. I had a middle-class childhood. How dare I complain about, or even question, the lack of racial diversity in any given anarchist project when I have never experienced material deprivation? It does not matter that I grew up to become a single mother making less than fifteen thousand a year. The fact that I grew up privileged invalidates anything I might have to say about discrimination-whether it be based on race, skin color, gender or even my status as a parent-both in and out of anarchist circles.

In their attacks on my well-to-do childhood, white anarchists overlook some deep-rooted cultural differences. For instance, I grew up with a series of amahs. In pre-1949 China (and in post-Revolution Hong Kong), Chinese parents rarely cared for their own young. Instead, they turned them over to amahs, who acted as wet nurses, babysitters and maids. Most amahs remained with the family until all the children were grown and continued to maintain close ties with their nurslings. For the poorer families, like that of my maternal grandfather who could not afford to hire a woman, the elder children took responsibility for the younger. In earlier times, the son was married off-at the age of two or three-to a preteenage girl whose role was more that of surrogate mother than wife.

American culture has nothing that resembles the amah. Wealthier families may have nannies, which is what I suppose the average American anarchist envisions when I talk about my childhood. Because many of them have grown up in places that encourage ethnic and cultural segregation and because Chinese culture discourages unnecessary interaction-particularly more intimate interaction-with other cultures, they have no frame of reference for my stories. I am seen as having grown up with the privilege of having had servants. There is little attempt to probe further into the culture and understand that amahs, while technically employees of the household, had more intimate relationships than an American family’s maid, cleaning lady or dog walker.

Perhaps this refusal speaks to the internalized notion that only American heritage and tradition matter. If an experience comes from someplace else, it doesn’t count.

It is not just the differences in culture that cause misunderstanding. What many self-proclaimed working-class (white) anarchists fail to understand is that having money did not insulate me from the insults American society heaps upon its children of color and its girl children. The fact that my parents held white-collar jobs did not prevent me from encountering grown men who believed it was within their right to approach a ten-year-old girl and quietly say, “Nice pussy.” My parents owning their own home did not protect me from other children pulling their eyes sideways and taunting me. Living in a well-to-do neighborhood did not shield me from the history teacher who looked at me and the Indian girl in his sixth-grade classroom and said, in all seriousness, “It’s too bad that you come from inferior cultures.”

Such closed-mindedness is not limited to anarchists focused on class struggle. Although all anarchist groups and projects proclaim, “We welcome all who agree with our mission statement, regardless of race, sexual orientation, etc,” what many of these groups fail to realize (or perhaps don’t care to realize) is that their mission statements and their ideal visions often fail to address, or even acknowledge, the very different realities we come from. Their mission statements may sound good on paper, but often fail to take into account that many people of color do not feel comfortable in almost all-white spaces. They refuse to acknowledge that we may have had bad experiences with predominantly white groups both in and out of the anarchist movement. They refuse to understand that we automatically notice when we are the only ones in the room. They refuse to comprehend that we are tired of being touted as the group’s (sole) member of color, of being accused of being overly sensitive to skin color or of having our concerns ignored altogether. They refuse to see that overthrowing the capitalist system will not automatically address the institutional and internalized racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination that we experience every day.

Last winter, I went to a meeting of anarcha-feminists. The flier offered childcare-a rarity in the anarchist scene. That alone made me hope that this would be different than other meetings and groups I’d attended in the past. After all, the organizers, neither of whom were parents, understood the need for childcare. They might be more open-minded about other issues as well.

After dropping my daughter off in the childcare space, I entered the meeting room. A circle of chairs had been set up. As the room filled, I noticed that every face except mine was white.

A few years ago, this would not have bothered me. I had entered the anarchist scene in high school and hadn’t cared much about racial diversity or differences. I was just glad that no one made fun of me because I looked different or acted different or actually cared about what went on in the world. As I grew older, I began to notice my difference more and more. I noticed that people sometimes treated me differently, as if they were going out of their way to welcome the one woman of color and prove that they were not racist. (In high school, I was invited to a Love and Rage meeting. Love and Rage was a closed collective; more than a few older white anarchists in the scene were surprised that I, a girl so new to politics, had been asked to participate while they had been ignored by the group for years. I arrived to the meeting late. The discussion was going full force. The topic? How to bring more people of color into the organization.)

That day, I was acutely aware that I was very unlike the others in the circle. My discomfort lessened only slightly when one other woman of color entered the room.

Throughout the meeting, I struggled with the prospect of bringing up the group’s lack of diversity. I wondered if my concerns would be dismissed or even ridiculed. I wondered if I would be accused of being divisive or of distracting from the “real” issue of women’s status in the anarchist movement.

At the end of the meeting, as a sign-up sheet was being passed around, another woman-one with blond hair and blue eyes-saved me the discomfort.

“Before I agree to be on any sort of listserv or be part of any kind of network, I want to ask about future outreach. I’m not interested in being part of a predominantly white group.”
All eyes divided between darting towards me and towards the other woman of color on the far end of the room. I was glad that a white woman had brought up the subject. However, since half the people in the room were looking at me and no one at all was speaking, I decided to add my thoughts. “I think the term anarcha-feminist might turn away some women of color who share the same politics but don’t explicitly identify as anarchist. Maybe the next flier can drop the term.”

As I spoke, I remembered past conversations with radical women of color-women who shared anti-authoritarian ideas and beliefs but who didn’t want to be identified with a movement that they saw as white brick throwers. I thought about the woman of color who had attended a few different anarchist meetings and been turned off by white male anarchists’ dismissal of race issues. I thought about the woman of color who had posted the article, “Where was the color in Seattle?” Her concerns had been dismissed as unimportant; what really mattered were class differences. I thought about the radical women of color who had the perception that anarchists were either unwashed, smelly white punk kids or white academics. Both had the option of renouncing radical politics and rejoining the mainstream world. This was what the word anarchist conjured up for them. Why would they want to get involved with any group that labeled itself that?

There was an uncomfortable pause. “Well…” one of the organizers began. After some hemming and hawing, she suggested that perhaps instead of directly trying to reach out to women of color, this group could do fundraisers and donate the proceeds to women of color organizations “that are doing good work.”

I felt as if I’d been smacked. I wondered if the woman realized how patronizing and racist her suggestion was. In my mind, I could see Charlotte Mason giving money to the black artists that she deemed “primitive” enough. Only, instead of the 1930s heiress who demanded that her artists sit at her feet and call her “Godmother,” these were post-millenium anarchists deciding which women of color were anti-authoritarian enough to receive their money.

The other organizer had a different suggestion, one which also circumvented the possibility that they would have to reach out to women other than the same old (white) faces. She suggested that the group work around issues facing women of color, such as the prison-industrial complex. Although she didn’t outright say it, I felt that her suggestion was that this predominantly white group speak for and act on behalf of women of color rather than actively trying to get them involved or even find out what their main concerns were.

Later I learned that one or two of the attendees had felt offended on my behalf. How dare someone bring up race and the lack of non-white faces with Vikki sitting right there? Is she blind? Doesn’t she realize that Vikki is a person of color? Is she implying that Asians are not really people of color? They refused to see her question as anything other than an attack on me. I tried to explain that I was glad that a white person had broached the subject because, frankly, I was tired of being the one who always had to. Instead, I began to understand that many white anarchists are unwilling to talk about race. They would rather dismiss it as a social construct that does not apply to anarchists and, thus, ignore the issue altogether.

The next time I saw this woman, I thanked her for bringing up the subject. I wanted to let her know that I was not angry or offended by her observation.

“You shouldn’t have to always be the one to bring it up,” she stated.

Since then, I have not had a white ally in other projects to pipe up and point out the obvious. It has fallen to me-the woman of color, often the only woman of color in the room-to point this out. The responses have ranged from uncomfortable silences to lukewarm acknowledgments to outrage. Whatever the tone, the common defense is always, “We don’t discriminate against people of color.” What is left unsaid is, “See? We welcome you. That’s proof that we don’t discriminate.”

I now understand why so many people of color are wary of working with whites. When I first encountered the suspicions and wariness of people of color towards white anarchists, I dismissed their concerns. “Hey, they’re doing good work,” I defended. “Who cares what color they are?”

I now see that it is not that white anarchists are white. It is that many of them are unwilling to try to understand the needs, concerns and experiences of those with different skin colors.
As an anarchist of color, this disturbs me. I am tired of always being put in the position of explaining racism and race issues to white anarchists, sexism and gender issues to male (and sometimes female) anarchists, or some form of discrimination to virtually everyone I encounter. I am tired of the prophecy that in an anarchist society, racism, sexism and all other forms of discrimination will magically cease to exist. Such explanations no longer appease me. Instead, I see them as white anarchists’ way of not confronting the problems and issues within our own movement and within themselves.

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By Tomás Moniz

It starts with a story:

My grandma, worried that her 3-year son had not spoken a word yet, had him chase down a grasshopper. Diligently, without complaint, the boy did and returned with a smile. Open she said; confused and scared, he did. She shoved it in and closed his mouth. Hablas, mijo, hablas. He spit it out crying. Crying and yelling. He has not stopped either since, she says, and smiles thinking of her now 50 year old son talking his time away in a New Mexican state penitentiary.

This is not make-believe. This is how we find our voice. This defines our language.

Here is my story. Or the start of it. My name is Tomas Ignacio Aragon; everyone calls me Tom. This I know for sure. I come from families of lies, of stories to deceive you, to deflect discovery. As a bicultural child, I was not comfortable in nor completely accepted by either side of my families. In the white world of my working class mother, I was the visible mistake, the dark stain on the family name. White working class military folk, dealing with the daughter who runs away to find her place, to save the world in the late 60s, and comes home struggling to save herself and feed her two year old son. With her, I was raised to avoid declarations of race, of difference, trying not to discuss my brown skin and brown hair in a family of blondes and blue eyes, forgetting my Spanish, speaking English only. I hid my shame with my silence.

On the Chicano side, I was the product of typical male weakness, the sign of my father’s co-option and ultimate demise by white women come to save the poor, the natives. He was seduced by her presence, her education, her future. And those things he loved about her, she used to leave him when he found his place in el pinto, the typical educational facilities for poor Chicanos in New Mexico. His anger at her transferred in to his abandonment of me. No letters. No contact. My father running from the law, running, running, knowing the inside of a cell more than his son.

Wait. This is not a story. This explains nothing, so I create my own explanations.

I started writing to find my color, saying on paper in black indelible ink what I couldn’t to my classmates, to my first few lovers, to my mother and members of my own family: I am Mexican. I am white. I am.

‘Fight one bean you fight the whole burrito.’

I remember this saying as a warning white kids said about fucking with Mexicans in Ventura, California. I remember the sound that they made on the school bus, slapping hands, laughing, all building a solidarity of whiteness or non-brown-ness when one kid calls out ’smells like beans’ as the Mexicans leave the bus, walking down the aisle. At 15, I couldn’t stand it any more. I stood up and hit the kid in front of me with my backpack breaking my connection to them. I wanted to be the burrito. I am Mexican; I am not white. But in the end I was wasn’t welcomed. I am the one who had to find trouble rather than it finding me. It has been the same ever since. I walk the borders of cultures, the too white to be brown and too brown to be white. Sometimes hassled by both sides and sometimes passing into each. Sometimes seen as one of the boys, sometimes the affirmative action product. I enter college deciding to claim, to rename, to embrace and revel in my contradiction, my displacement, my ambiguity, my absence of certainty.

MEChistAs in college scoffing about my lack of Spanish and my complaint that meetings were in held only in Spanish. ‘Chale, man. What’s up with you?’ Because I was raised by a English speaking white mother. Awkward silence.

My teacher asked why the absence of Mexican American writers in a California literature class bothered me. Because I am one. Awkward silence.

This is the only way I can speak to you. I am an academic and I am not afraid to talk that talk — the hybrity of myself causes these contradictions that I embrace like old lovers knowing how to sooth each one, how to excite and comfort. I was freed in theory and abstraction finding voice in books by Moraga, Anzaldua. Finding fathers in Acosta, Reechy. Finding heart in the radical acts of violation and violence like Tijerina at the New Mexican courthouse, Murrieta’s refusal to bow his head, Los Crudos’ demand for an uncompromising politic, Rage Against the Machine’s connection to difference and abhorrence of authority. I became a bicultural, Chicano with no respect for authority, no time for lazy assumptions about race, culture, politics, class, sexuality. I found myself in the refusal to singularly define myself.

Wait. This is a lie. These words. Stories.

How do I claim myself: how to separate what I feel as a Chicano, as a male, as a person of privilege. How do you claim anything when you can’t claim the authenticity of your own voice? Remember: speak clearly, be careful if your pronunciation is off, if your skin fades too pale in the winter, present you color in your movements, your clothes, your lovers.

In a world that wants singularity, I choose both. In a culture that wants uniformed sexuality, I choose to embrace bisexuality. In a society that denies authentic autonomy, I found myself in anti-authoritarian histories, in the romance of clandestine organizations. I was seduced by the pen and the gun, by non-monogamist lifestyles, by radical, dissident Chicano nationalism, by the feminist rhetoric to reclaim our selves, our lives, our sex, our religion, our consciousness. This has defined me and hurt me. I tend to be the problem, the one who asks too many questions, who is never comfortable with the way it is. With the way I am.

But now I refuse to be silent or shameful or half or half-hearted.

I tried to avoid it for a while, but if I wanted to find and meet other anarchists in the East Bay, I needed to go to the Long Haul, an anarchist infoshop in Berkeley. So I took a deep breath, opened the door and entered, trying to free myself of my previous feelings, my stereotypes, my love and hate for the anarchist community; and yes, I know it ain’t one homogeneous thing, but regardless, my experiences with it have been fraught with good ol’ revolutionary angst.

Let me explain.

I have never been into the punk scene, I am not white, I became a father at 20 and had to think about changing diapers, not just about changing social structures. I remember being chastised by someone trying to get us to go up one summer to the logging protests and when I reminded him of my responsibilities, he snapped back: ‘what was more important.’ I wanted to punch him, to make him see his ignorance, the elitism of privilege, the typical dismissal of people with children, with jobs to pay for food and rent. Yet, this has happened over and over. Meetings at 6 p.m. or reading my child a bed time story? How to choose? It felt as if I could never fully commit, never be as dedicated as the people I met — mostly younger, white, students, who were mobile, who could survive on a fluctuating income. Now there is nothing wrong with this, but this was not me, not my experience, not my culture. But I knew that the anarchist views more closely resembled my views about how life could be lived than anything else, so I tried as much as I could to find that community. I brought my kids to meetings; I swapped childcare with other parents on my block (a nice way of realizing it truly does take a neighborhood to raise a child). I tried to figure out how to balance riding bikes with my kids around the block versus riding in critical mass, which is right at dinner time.

I realized I needed the anarchist community after years of trying to compartmentalize the seemingly disparate aspects of my life — the non-monogamist, the self-schooling parent, the activist, the Chicano academic, the fuck-the-police poet. But how I got to this point is another story. Is in fact many stories.

Let me start at the beginning

I began noticing the glaring discrepancies in my life; I grew up on hip hop and could see it being co-opted into cheap fronting and frivolity. This was not the community I was a part of, dressed in hand-me-downs and learning to break on ripped up sections of linoleum. I simply couldn’t handle the growing consumerism, the value placed on objects, after having lived in poverty, after scoffing at and detesting the symbols of wealth for so long (yes out of envy and jealousy at the time perhaps). Yet, I desperately needed to believe in the anti-authoritarian politics of NWA, Public Enemy, Freestyle Fellowship and others, for I was not hearing it from anyone else nor in any other way that spoke to me.

It continued in undergraduate classrooms in which I was appalled at the refusal to engage in anything but what was deemed ‘practical and possible realties.’ After being told that republicans and democrats held the only legitimate and viable worldviews, I wondered how the hometowns I grew up in — Las Vegas, New Mexico, Kailua, Hawaii, Ventura, California — were included in anything we discussed. How did these ‘viable’ political choices account for the poverty, the single mothers, the drugs, the lack of choices available? There had to be another way. And when I did make my way to an anarchist study group. I seethed at people’s unwillingness to even attempt to connect anarchy with issues of race and privilege. There had to be other ways. Other places. Others.

So I retreated for a while into my own experiences, creating and nurturing a lifestyle that embodied the values I couldn’t find elsewhere. I found connections with my imprisoned father and prison issues that introduced me to Attica, to my father’s penitentiary, to political prisoners. I reveled in becoming a father and was soon horrified as disciplined behavior became the primary learning objective in my son’s school. What could I do, where to turn? I refused to participate in the privilege of private schooling so that was out. And then I found The Teenage Liberation Handbook, and we created our autonomy, but struggled to connect with others who chose to homeschool for reasons of liberation rather than Christian bullshit and racist, classist fears about public education. Where were the other parents? People fuck, so I know people reproduce.

Moving to the East Bay from the city did help me meet more people with similar values. While attempting to create a relationship based on free choice rather than social coercion, my partner and I met another young parent questioning the rigid social definitions of what relationships could be. With the inspiration from Emma Goldman and the practical advice from The Ethical Slut, we began to embrace non-monogamist freedom to explore our own sexuality, our growing identities, our interests. But even here we felt out of place: we weren’t 50 year old hippies reminiscing about free love, nor were we new age converts trying to fuck while rubbing crystals and engaging in tantric poses. We were in our late twenties, we were looking for others more like us.

All these interests and choices of my life culminated in the tear gas of Seattle. Studying globalism as an advisor to student clubs on the campus I taught at, we decided to participate in the WTO protests, not realizing the dramatic and liberating events that we would be a part of.

So after the smoke cleared from Seattle and then DC and then Quebec, I realized that I could no longer chase the revolution, that I could no longer compartmentalize the different aspects of my life. I needed a way to synthesize them all. After ten years of making half-hearted attempts to connect with people who looked and lived so differently it seemed than me, I decided to toss aside my ego, my attitude, and my fears and both find and help create the community I wanted.

In the three years since I have made this commitment to be involved in the anarchist community, I have met some powerful and inspirational people; I have learned to see that resisting the oppressive and seemingly undefeatable social world we live in can be practiced in so many minute, marvelous and meaningful ways — in fucking, in gardening, in punk, in slumming it, in cooking. Perhaps even in crystals. I’ve been a part of RACE (revolutionary anarchists of color), been to and participated in the anarchist conference, started a zine, boxcutter, with a few others to explore aspects of personal liberation. I even staff a shift now at the Long Haul. With each step I try to bring my stories and my experiences with me. I want to be a part of something that combines theory and praxis, that can talk the talk and walk the walk, I want to work with people that I can learn from, that inspire me in my own efforts of teaching, parenting, living my daily life. I want to try and fail rather than remain safe in stasis. And yet, at times I still feel like an outsider to the radical/anarchist community. But now I know that I am apart of it, and so I have a responsibility to it, to help shape it. I am writing to engage myself in this process that will force me to embrace more of it, to be more involved in it, and to welcome other people like me — marginalized from the mainstream, yet not quite the typical anarchist — to join this discussion. I know many more people are out there, many more stories, and I hope we can start sharing them.

Anarchy is the radical approach to life of not simply living a fair equal and free life for yourself, but making the connection and working for the liberation and equality of everyone. It is anti-authoritarian; it is non-coercive; it is based on the principles of active involvement, of direct action, of a radical faith in diversity. Now this doesn’t imply that the struggles of all comminutes are equal. Therefore, it is imperative to recognize, within ourselves individually and within our individual cultures, the points of privilege we may have access to and benefit from. It is crucial in anarchist thinking to understand the workings of white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege and so on, and to work to destroy these forces. And one of the first things to realize is that the state in all its aberrations must go. We need to radically imagine new ways to relate to each other within communities of our devising — until then, police will always be an abusive presence of control and white privilege, behavior will only be tolerated that works to reinforce the status quo.

I am tired of anarchist thinking that only serves intellectual exercises and academic notions of social discourse and I fear generally white male punk violent angst against private property that serves only the transitory pleasure of the actor while serving to marginalize poor communities and heighten the repression of difference by condoned state terrorists — the cops. I also am tired of isolated individual anarchist practices that serve only the development and liberation of the individual who has access to and time for these pursuits such as veganism, voluntary simplicity and conscious social marginalization.

There is another way

People of color and the anarchist tradition are now set to revitalize that

I came to anarchy through sex and Seattle; and now that I’m here, now that I’ve plundered my way through the ‘classical or canonical’ texts (how ironic that so many fight for these labels as if this provides some authority to these anti-authoritarian texts), I’ve come to fuck it up, to shake it down and push it forward into the multicultural, diverse pedagogically flexible revolutionary philosophy it is. No longer will I be told that real anarchy is not related to struggles for national liberation, not about the praxis of living a life defined by radical honesty and trust, not about coalitions and communication.

For me anarchy must be linked to the individual only in relation to the communal, whether that community is lovers, or family, or children, or employers, or neighbors.

Political Sex

I cannot separate my political growth from my personal growth. Nor will I even try. I knew there must be something out there, something to validate what my partner and I felt but could not articulate — that true commitment, true respect and ìlove’ was not linked to ownership, possession, fear, and distrust. After years of working hard to ‘make it,’ to be successful, good, liberal citizens, we looked around and realized that there must be more than what we have been striving so hard for,. We rejected marriage, but were unable to articulate a philosophical reason yet, we had kids, but refused to become the conservative self-centered parents we saw other new mothers and fathers becoming, we were political in all the condoned ways — liberal democrat, wanting taxes to go to public schools and senior centers.

All wasn’t perfect; we each wanted things, but we wanted to be together, we each had attractions to other s but know it was wrong, we each understood that after working so hard raising three kids, a few years away from out thirties, that we had to change something or choose this path forever. And then came Emma and Andee.

Emma Goldman hit us like a ton of bricks — non-monogamy, freedom to do and love who you want, to choose to be together rather than to have to be together. The essays spoke deeply to our own unspoken philosophy. Andee the woman down the street whom we each were attracted to for various reasons, who seemed like a person

Let me tell you a story:

At 20, I hitchhiked from Las Vegas, New Mexico down the highway to see my father face to face. To try to find some answers. He tells me he fucked up. He should be out there with me, working with me, living life with me. Because, he says, I realized I’m a slave in here. And now I can only fight against other slaves. Out there, when I realized I was a slave, I coulda done something, I coulda fought back at least. Somehow. In here, it’s just fucked up.

My father explained that in jail, pencils are like daggers, you can write and you can stab. ‘Mira, ‘ he points to his arm, ‘here are the pencil tips that I cannot get out.’

This is not a metaphor.

This is a warning.

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By Sara Ramirez Galindo

It is difficult to write about a topic like anarchism, which is already controversial enough, to people who are familiar with its theory and practice without being intensely judged and questioned about what is written. Not that questioning is wrong. It is necessary, but in my opinion, it is unproductive if it lacks respect for someone’s ideas, thorough thinking, reflection, and constructive feedback. That is why I ask that you, the reader, to please just read, think and reflect about what I am expressing here. It might not be a perfectly written composition but it is not meant to be one, it is simply my experience with anarchism.

I first learned of “Anarchism,” the kind known to most activists in the United States, through literature given to me by a friend who had traveled to Washington State for the anti-World Trade Organization actions in Seattle of 1999. My curiosity about the subject led me to research more about it. I never read entire books by Proudhon, Bakunin or Emma Goldman for lack of time, so I read articles, zines and excerpts of books instead. Through this literature I learned of an anarchist conference.

This first anarchist conference I attended left me perplexed, for I had read about anarchism as the theory and practice towards the abolition of authority, hierarchies, practicing collectivity and active organizing. The feeling I got from that conference was uninviting, dry, alienating, extremely sub-cultural and life-stylish. I could not understand many of the things people were talking about in discussion circles. I could not understand why several of them had re-named themselves after plants and animals. I did not understand why they wore no deodorant; and it seemed weird to me that nobody bothered asking others how they were doing, if they needed anything, or even took the time to offer a greeting or a smile. I did not enjoy the conference but still remained interested in anarchism telling myself, “I’m sure this isn’t all there’s to it.”

Once I got in contact with a self-defined anarchist group in my region that was holding weekly meetings, I decided to check them out. The way I was received by the people in the group was not any different from what I’d experienced at my first anarchist conference, except that after the conclusion of the meeting a couple of women in the group approached me to ask my name and how I was doing and invited me to their next meeting. I did not stay in that group long. I never spoke up because I was afraid of saying something wrong, something outside the “anarchist” terms they understood, and I did not want to be the center of attention if anything I asked became controversial, for I felt none of that “solidarity” and less of that “collectivity” that anarchism is supposed to generate. Though some people were very nice, others were very arrogant, unapproachable and plain intimidating, so I moved on.

While visiting “anarchist” groups every now and then, I was simultaneously involved in anti-sweatshop student activism, not because it was the “thing to do,” but because my mother, uncles, aunts and myself had worked in clandestine garment sweatshops before. From this student activist work, I met a woman who introduced me to her collective, the Zapatista Committee of Los Angeles.

That day was the beginning of a life-changing experience.

Nobody in any activist or typical anarchist organization had greeted me with honest handshakes and looked at me in the eye with interest of knowing who I was or what I had to say like the people in this collective did. I was once again confused because this group was not self-defined as anarchist, but they based their practices on non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian politics, they did practice collectivity, held weekly reading circles, and most importantly they were organizing events, not just shows — these were based on accomplishing truly radical and practical goals. And I for the first time felt these actions were building a true sense of community.

As I became to know each and every one of the people in the collective, I was not surprised to know many of them were in fact self-defined anarchists who had simply felt the need to work with a group of people who could produce and provide what mainstream anarchist circles had not. Upon experiencing anarchism through those events, groups and people, I constructed this view about today’s many types of anarchists: the self-defined image anarchists, the read-only anarchists, the underground and non-self-defined working anarchists, the anarchists who are a combination of all these, and others.

At this point I had understood that the anarchists I had initially met did not necessarily comprise what the theory and practice of anarchism was, as I understood it. It was like understanding that in the world there are nation-states and then there are the people living in them, two different entities. It was also at this point that I openly acknowledged that I was not wrong for being one of the few women and people of color walking into a predominantly-white anarchist book fair, but that is was in fact this homogenized “movement” of anarchists that had unfortunately allowed things to be structured this way.

This homogenization has unfortunately built boundaries that mark what kind of issues are of priority, what kind of actions are “revolutionary,” the kind of workshops to be given at a conference and so on. It was difficult for me to feel connected to these anarchists; our realities and priorities had nothing in common. Anarchist literature circulating in the majority of anarchist groups today speaks mainly of European (and European descendants’) anarchists’ history and present. I’m sure that is not on purpose, yet the beginning of this trend led to the simplification of ideas, such as that of Europe being the “birthplace” of anarchism and this information was used to simplify another idea, that supposedly anarchism later “reached” Latin America in the mid 1800s. I saw how this was not questioned often or ever by mainstream anarchism. Was it never considered that other people, whose histories just never made it to books, could have been practicing anarchism?

Understanding the importance of rescuing other anarchist histories has led to the emergence of materials about Cuban anarchism, African anarchism, Argentine anarchism, etc. At the same time a growing number of anarchists — including myself, a non-white person — have started identifying as anarchists of color in order to rescue and expose (to everyone, not just to mainstream anarchists) our struggles and those fought by historic individuals like Luisa Capetillo from Puerto Rico, Lucy Parsons from the United States, Julia Arévalo from Chile, Maria Angelina Soares from Brazil and others.

Being part of this is my attempt to break up this standardization of anarchism’s current Eurocentric tendencies that, in my opinion, could be causing some of the stagnation of its theory and practice; and to use it as a supplement to the gradual dismantling of racism and similar hierarchies of power that unfortunately exist in mainstream anarchism.

I keep mentioning, “mainstream anarchism” because in the United States, the only anarchism recognized is that which is externally visible, while it is in fact being “actively and seriously” taken into practice in other parts of the world through struggles that are simply not getting the amount of solidarity an all-white-boy black-block “action” gets. I am certain that the anarchist activity taking place right this minute in Magonista communities in the Mazateca Highlands in Oaxaca (Mexico), and in the Bolivian region are not the type of anarchist “scene,” we are accustomed to see, for these movements include bloody confrontations, tears, death, mutual trust and hope, and most importantly constant struggle as a priority to survival. The realities for U.S. anarchism are others, and so the responses are going to be different, that is understood. Yet, this mainstream anarchist movement in the U.S. lacks understanding and consideration for the realities lived by non-privileged anarchists in the same region. Mainstream anarchism in this aspect lacks the solidarity, the convivial feeling needed to work with each other, to learn and unlearn from each other, and most importantly to build trust to back each other up.

I was fortunate enough to participate in an amazing event where these elements of respect, solidarity, inspiration and revitalization were experienced.

The Anarchist People of Color Conference in Detroit boosted up my hope for anarchism. This was an event that became controversial (to mainstream anarchists) from the very beginning, as many considered it exclusionary, “racist,” and every other negative thing possible. I did not pay much attention to this drama, as I knew we were not gathering to plot a battle against white anarchists, we were simply in need to meet and share ideas with each other. It felt humiliating to have to explain to some white and non-white anarchists why we wanted to meet. We wanted to meet for the same reason anarchist women gather separate from anarchist men: to empower themselves; we gathered, with similar reasons to those anarchists break away from authoritarian nation-state governments: to change things that were going wrong, to change things in the system. To me this conference meant meeting people who had experienced the discrimination I had lived within mainstream anarchist circles. It also meant meeting individuals who were highly interested in developing and carrying out projects, not just for those in the “scene” or in their cliques, but mainly with those in their communities (community meaning neighbors, co-workers, families, etc.), projects that could truly exemplify the ideals of anarchism rather than simply spending time theorizing about them.

This conference did not produce a separate anarchist group, as that was not our purpose. We created a different understanding of its practice and theory. To us, anarchism meant something diverse, since we all came from different communities and with different psychological, emotional, and spiritual experiences. We stressed on the importance of having serious commitment on building relationships with our community rather than encircling ourselves in a subculture that unconsciously excludes others around us. We also planted that this anarchism we were talking was non-vanguardist/ non-elitist/ non-arrogant, respectful, humble, honest, loving, gentle and accountable to others. As revolutionary anarchist people of color we understood that our communities need non-traditional anarchist projects that could be constantly assessed to see if they are indeed creating solidarity, mutual-aid, self-determination, self-sufficiency and autonomy.

Experiencing anarchism to me has not been what books say it is. It has meant how my actions can in fact produce it effectively.

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By Ramiro “Ramsey” Muniz

“I covered my face with my hands as I was shackled and chained, beginning three years of solitary confinement in the belly of the beast. I sat still in pure unconsciousness, neither hearing nor feeling, nor knowing in the darkness of the dungeons of America, like the deep of the sea, with no time and no world. In the depths that are timeless and worldless, it was then that the revolutionary spirit of Ricardo Flores Magon reached into the depths of my heart…”

Into my second year of solitary confinement, in the mode of darkness, I was informed by the forcing oppressor that seventy four years ago, our revolutionary brother Flores Magon had been confined in the same cell. Even before the latter information, his revolutionary spirits would appear at any given time or day. Fortunately, with the support of family and others, I was able to receive various books written on the life, history and death of Flores Magon. The most vivid and profound statement has made months before his death here at Leavenworth USP is the following:

“My dream of beauty and beloved visions pf a humanity living in peace, love and liberty… will not die with me, while there is on Earth a painful heart or an eye full of tears. My dreams and visions will live…”

– March 16, 1922

His visions, his dreams and his revolutionary spirituality are very much alive tonight. Even though I have been condemned by the oppressor to a death sentence, it is my tonalli (destiny) to continue with the visions, dreams and liberation of all humanity, especially the oppressed people of color. It is in the dungeons of the oppressor where I have found the truth and direction that we as oppressed people must take in order to be free once again.

During my confinement in the hole, if I would wish to communicate in my dreams with my brother Flores Magon, I would concentrate for days on his spirituality and writings. Within a few days, he would appear in my dreams, not only sharing his inner thoughts, but, most importantly, what we must do to rise again and remove the chains that our people bear in the present. His most profound statement was, “My brother, you must reach into the ancient past, reach into the roots of our hearts, reach into the strength of our revolutionary spirituality.” I will never forget how I would rise from my sleep and immediately begin to write the essence of our conversations. Yes, he is very much alive!

Our Mexicano spirituality is alive and throughout all Aztlan and in our Holy Land (Mexico). In fact, it is more alive than those so-called leaders who pretend to represent the masses of our people while, at the same time, compromising and making political deals with the same oppressor that continues to tighten the noose of the rope of oppression.

In a letter to his attorney, Flores Magon said he would rather die in prison than abdicate his ideals. “I prefer this to turning my back on the organizers and having the prison doors opened at the price of my honor.” Flores Magon wrote. “I will not outlive my capitivity, for I am already old, but when I die, my friends will perhaps inscribe on my tomb, ‘here lies a dreamer,’ and my enemies, ‘here lies a madman.’ But no one will be able to stamp the inscription, ‘here lies a coward and traitor to his ideas.’”

It is our duty and responsibility as liberators to pass on our oral traditions of struggle, sacrifice and freedom. From the medieval mazorra of this oppressor, we reach out of the voices of the mountains in Chiapas, where our brother Marcos continues to liberate our sisters and brothers from the same oppressor that rules here in America. And in this world of conflicts, that fire of spirituality continues to rise regardless of the genocide wrought. Everywhere throughout the world, the oppressed, people of color, are rising. It seems as if the entire universe is reaching into its ancient past for the answers of tomorrow. We of the sixth sun, Mexicanos from Aztlan, have reached and embraced the enlightenment of our spiritual, cultural and historical pasts for the last five hundred years. We have lived in a mode of darkness and ignorance. The oppressor has, with malicious intent, destroyed and/or refused the right for us to be exposed to the beauty and power of our ancient past. A race without a history or past is a race of non-existence.

In conclusion, it is with pride and honor that I share this by Flores Magon. It represents the purpose of this book on culture, resistance and anarchism:

“It us necessary to educate our people, to teach them the real causes of their misery and slavery… This is why our hands, instead of being armed with muskets, are armed with pens, a weapon more formidable and far more feared by tyrants and exploiters.”
– 1916

Presently, we of Aztlanahuac are in the midst of rising, with a power of resistance and liberation like never before in our history. The silence has now become our new fire ceremony of liberation, justice and land. We must all come with clean hearts and be prepared to sacrifice, because without sacrifice, there will never be freedom.

“I am free when all others feel caged;
I am strong when all others are week;
I am alive when all others feel dead;
But I am death for all those who fear life;
I am the Mexica revolutionary warrior of the sixth sun;
Awakened from the sumbler of 500 years of enslavement;
I am all that I will, I am all that was, I am all that will be;
Yo soy Mexica!

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Back in the early 1990s, under the name “Greg Jackson,” Greg Lewis brought the heat as the editor of Black Autonomy, the first Black anarchist newspaper in the United States. Lewis, along with Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, became the most high-profile members of the Federation of Black Community Partisans, a Black autonomist formation. Although the FBCP disbanded, Lewis remained active. Today, he is a self-defense and fitness trainer still living in the Seattle area. We talked about his history, the trails blazed by Black Autonomy, and struggles today.

Can you talk how you grew up? Are you originally from Seattle?

I was born to a white mother and a black father in 1970 and was raised in Seattle. They were separated. My mother and I were on welfare off and on for the first 16 years of my life. She was killed in 1991. I was 20 at the time. My father died in 2000 of old age.

Was there a defining moment in your life that opened up political struggle to you?

Actually, one thing just led to another. All my life my mother struggled to feed us and keep a roof over our heads. Welfare used to send her on jobs that didn’t pay a living wage. But she was required to go, or else we would be cut off for good. But, if by some miracle she made any money, it would be deducted from her monthly check and they would threaten her with prosecution or being cut off for making too much money. Every year I had to take a form to the school to fill out and send to them to prove I was in school. One more reason other kids had to pick on me.

The day she died she was a college grad, Phi Theta Kappa, with a bachelor of arts in journalism; but she was working at a fast-food restaurant because local newspapers refused to pay her a living wage or didn’t hire her at all.

When I was a teenager, I was on the bus going to work as a dishwasher at an upscale restaurant when a group of white police stopped the bus and ordered all of the black people off, accusing us of shoplifting at a local mall. I glanced at one officer’s badge as I got off, he saw me do it, and said that he would be more than happy to put a third ‘eye’ in my forehead.

Years later, I was confronted by neo-Nazis in the University District, and I successfully defended myself against them. At the time, I was a trained kick-boxer who fought ring matches regularly; they never saw it coming. I later found out that I wasn’t alone; there was a “movement” of punk rock homeless kids, gangster types, and weed dealers who were doing their part to run them off the Ave also.

It wasn’t until I read “Revolutionary Suicide” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” that I began to get a clearer picture of what I was dealing with. Later, some of the homeless kids turned me on to Marxist and anarchist writings.

I drifted from one struggle to another. First, there were the protests due to the police raiding a squat. At the same time, the former City Attorney, Mark Sidran, was pushing for an anti-sitting and anti-panhandling ordinance. Then, the neo-Nazis returned and stabbed a black man on a bus on the Ave on Christmas Eve. It was shortly after that the homeless kids got organized and marched to Broadway 100 or so deep to confront them Then the first Gulf War happened and the large protests shutting down the freeway, and finally the beating of Rodney King, which led to two nights of riots, fires, and fighting the cops downtown and on Broadway. All of these things happened one after the other with very little time in between events. It was in this climate that my politics began to expand and change.

What inspired you as a youth to speak out?

The words and actions of idiots; I was always in trouble for asking too many questions or defending myself or someone else from being harassed or assaulted.

How would you say your politics evolved over time, and at one point in that development would you say anarchist ideas became most real to you?

What drew me to anarchism was not so much the theory or the ideal, but the way the anarchists did things. The Maoists were around in greater numbers back then, but they seemed a lot like religious people seeking converts. And they would get mad if you didn’t agree with them. Some of them would actually challenge you to fight!

The anarchists did things. They took over buildings and lived in them, they chased the Nazis off the streets, they would go to community meetings and blast the so-called “experts” on homelessness or youth issues, and they would share whatever they had with you without asking for anything in return except for your opinion on whatever subject.

I used to call myself an anarchist, until one day an older activist, now a political prisoner, Omari Tahir (he was convicted of hitting former Seattle mayor Paul Schell in the face with a bullhorn; it took them two trials to get the conviction), said to me, “I know what you’re against, but what are you for!?” He also warned against letting others put you in a box by of labeling yourself in way that is alienating to others.

To me, all “isms” out there are a form of ideological and social prison. Like Bruce Lee said in “The Tao of Jeet Kune Do”, “Absorb what is useful; discard what is not. Use no way as a way”.

If I am to be labeled, here’s the box to put me in: life-long black man in amerikkka of mixed racial background, a so-called “person of color”. I am a certified personal fitness trainer, and professional martial artist and instructor. I am for reparations (for chattel slavery, for genocide of indigenous people and the theft of their land, and for police terrorism/murder of people of color; white people should also be compensated for being assaulted by cops or losing loved ones to police violence), self-determination (individual and collective), direct workers control of community institutions by those within that particular community, and an economy based the equal distribution of wealth and resources. I am for freedom, justice, and equality for all the human families of the planet. I am a revolutionary.

You were a founding member of two groups that planted the seeds for a lot of movements today – Seattle Copwatch and the Federation of Black Community Partisans. Can you talk about those groups and what, in your mind, made them significant?

The Copwatch was significant since it was the first one in Seattle since the Black Panther Party did their patrols in the 1960s. We were the only group at the time that monitored the police directly on the street. We defiantly got the attention of the police department, the local media, and attorneys on both sides of the police accountability issue. I don’t think the FBCP was all that significant; it wasn’t widely supported.

But out of FBCP came groups like the Black Autonomy Network of Community Organizers. More importantly, the group prompted a real discussion on anarchism and race. You, as someone who pushed the envelope on these issues, made a huge impact. Wouldn’t you say that is significant?

To me, the jury is still out as far as our significance. As far as the discussion on race and class Lorenzo Ervin, Ashanti Alston, and myself (and I’m sure many, many others) are still fighting that particular battle and probably will until the day we die. I suppose the fact that the APOC conference happened at all is evidence, but none of the younger folks I spoke to there even mentioned Black Autonomy to me, so who knows?

How big was FBCP at its peak, if you can mention that? And can you drop some knowledge on the FBCP formed?

I honestly don’t know. Lorenzo was the common contact we all had. It basically came about from discussions I had with him, and discussions he had with black activists in the various cities he spoke in.

Do you think that kind of dynamic — where one person was the conduit and leader, for lack of a better word — hurt the organizing generally? And being who you are, one could guess you were not comfortable with such a communication flow.

For me, the problem was more of a lack of numbers locally. I got calls and emails from other folks involved with the project all the time. I had plenty of allies locally, but the organization itself wasn’t growing. Another problem was people not following through on what they said they would do on a consistent basis.

Are you still in touch with your old FBCP comrades?

Not really. I hear from one individual in particular every once in a while.

In what ways do you think FBCP contributed to the theoretical framework of today’s Anarchist People of Color movement?

I do believe it gave a voice to what many folks were already thinking. Beyond that, it’s hard to say. Usually it’s the white anarchists that come up to me talking about how moved they were by the newspaper, how they were inspired by what Lorenzo had to say in their town, etc.

Back in the day, you edited the Federation of Black Community Partisans’ newspaper Black Autonomy. And, like Prison News Service and Black Fist, it
completely flipped the script when it came to anarchism and race. Take the new school back for a bit to the time before Black Autonomy came out, the reaction it got and what you think the paper’s most critical contributions were.

Well, the reactions came slowly. Most liked it, some didn’t. Prisoners loved it. The only ones who didn’t like it were usually the rabid neo-nazi types and the most rigid and dogmatic amongst the leftists.

Time will tell what exactly the newspaper’s contributions were. I do know that we published news and writings not found anywhere else.

Could you build on that? One thing that was impressive about Black Autonomy was coverage of the Diaspora as well as unapologetic analysis.

I spent a lot of time online and reading other publications and talking to people involved in local struggles to get the news that others wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. That “unapologetic analysis” has made me more enemies than friends over the years.

I had someone at the APOC conference the first night I was there try to confront me around what I had to say about the RCP years ago. Later on, other folks were pointing out him and his friend as disruptive elements in the different workshops. I suspect they were sent by some black leftist cult to get the 411 on us. Or maybe they were just new to politics.

A lot of people still pass around “Mythology of the White-Led ‘Vanguard’: A Critical Look at the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA,” your article and analysis on the RCP. Some people — mostly whites but even a few people of color — allege the piece was divisive. But most really feel it and say it’s time opportunist elements like the RCP get called out for how they target people of color. How do you respond to the critics of that piece, and what’s your take on that piece now?

To the critics I ask, “If you can’t criticize them while they do not hold state power, what happens if or when they do have state power and they are criticized?” This question also applies to any other organization jockeying for a position of leadership in “the movement”; claiming to be a vanguard or whatever. Are the critics saying that the RCP and/or other organizations are above criticism? Are the critics saying that they themselves are above criticism as well?

I agree that criticizing allies or potential allies should be done in a way that is constructive and doesn’t purposely hurt them, but at the time this was written the RCP was doing things to directly hurt groups and individuals outside their party, and the movement generally; and either didn’t know, or didn’t care, or didn’t care to know.

I was under the impression that they didn’t care, since conversations around various issues (some brought up in the pamphlet, some not) with local RCP members always degenerated into shouting matches, veiled threats from both sides, routine vandalism upon their bookstore, and occasional violence.

It was to a point where other organizations were calling for ‘party discipline’ from the national RCP leadership. Some actually attempted to contact the RCP’s central committee with their concerns. I was one of them. At one point (around 1997) some black activists ordered them out of the Central District (a historically Black neighborhood in Seattle) because of how they treated oppressed people.

I don’t know about other cities, but the Seattle RCP behaves considerably better now. I believe they have a clearer understanding of their role in local politics and realize that they too cannot afford to be alienated anymore than any of us already is.

In all reality, that piece was written in the spirit of Mao’s principles of “unity-criticism-unity” and “let 100 flowers bloom, let 100 schools of thought contend”. And this, despite any personality conflicts that activists may have with individual RCP cadre, is precisely what happened.

The October 22nd event locally, which was for years exclusively an RCP event, is now much more diverse and powerful. Many activists are still critical of their overall political line, but they do make an effort to involve as many people as they can reach out to. They attend all the major political events out here. They make an effort to encourage people to pack the courtroom for every police shooting inquest and activist trial, and they sent members to both of my trials (criminal and civil) around the events of September 1998.

I have no beef with the RCP or its supporters at this time; they know perfectly well what I think, they know where I stand on important issues, and what I am willing and capable of doing. They may not like me as a person, and this could be said for some of the anarchists out here, but I’m pretty sure they respect me as activist.

Do you think it’s still fair to call the RCP on its politics related to race, and particularly its portrayal of people of color in its paper and literature when the organization is white-dominated?

Although the argument could be made that having images of people of color protesting and speaking out is good, it also comes off as ultra-liberal and even pimping the images and histories of the oppressed, particularly when the RCP is against decolonization and other issues.

There is not one white-led organization out there that is above criticism for racist practices, no matter how ‘revolutionary’ they claim to be. This one of many reasons this APOC network exists. Some groups are better than others.

The only way this will change as far as the RCP goes is when the people of color within the party or those who support the party make that change occur. I notice that top-down leadership type organizations tend to improve when the rank and file either leave or force the leadership to leave.

Back to your activist work. Being out in the streets as you were certainly made you and your comrades targets. You in fact had a run in with police and were almost railroaded. What happened?

In September of 1998, we heard a car crash. When we got there, we saw it had slammed into a telephone pole and saw a teenager was trapped inside. We ran over to help. My co-defendant climbed in the back seat to release the front passenger seat so he could breathe; the dashboard was crushing his chest, he was bleeding, and he was going into shock.

The paramedics came and then the police. By now there was a large crowd gathered; a mostly black crowd. The paramedics told us to get out of the way, so we did. Then the white cop ran up on my friend, picked him off the ground, and slammed him on the hood of the crashed car. The crowd was shouting “he didn’t do anything!” and “he was trying to help!”. The cop’s black partner came over to me and asked me what happened and I told him. The white cop let go of my friend, only to run after him again, yelling “the next time I tell you to do something, you do it!” I walked up along side the cop and said “what are you, deaf? I just told you what happened!” He responded by attempting to strike me in the throat. No warning, nothing. In the martial arts/self-defense world, this technique can cripple or kill an opponent.

After that, my training took over. It took three of them to get me to the ground. According to the police report, the officer who attacked me, Ronald Martin, wrote that he received “numerous punches and kicks to the head”.

In the east precinct lock up, that same officer paid me a visit to issue threats and rant about how he was going to do this and that to me (“I’m bigger than you and stronger than you; I’ll slap you down and knock you out!” According to him, from now on every time I am stopped a red flag goes up next to my name on their computer system warning whoever stops me that I assault cops, and that they will approach me with guns drawn.

Those statements proved to be his undoing in court. But don’t get it twisted, he’s still on the force! He’s now with the harbor patrol of the Seattle Police department.

After the trial, we were regularly followed and watched. Eventually, as the WTO was preparing to come to Seattle, the FBI joined in the surveillance.

On the one-year anniversary of the WTO protests, I was arrested at school (at the time I was going to Seattle Vocational Institute; my attorneys had instructed me to avoid the protests planned for that day) by six riot cops and three detectives. One of them said to me, “keep your feet on the ground Mr. Lewis, we know you’re a karate expert” as he put his boot on my foot, while the others searched and cuffed me.

They claimed that I had sent an email threatening the mayor’s life. Even the county prosecutor saw that this charge was ground less! The only “threat” from me received by Mayor Schell was the subpoena to appear my attorneys sent to him and Police Chief Gil Kerlikowski while they were doing a live press conference on local television! That happened a few days before my arrest.

In addition to fighting the charges the cops threw at you, you went an extra step to file a lawsuit against the police, and you won! Speak on some of that process, what it meant, and maybe advice for others looking to win on that level.

Well, the lawsuit wasn’t “won” exactly. We had a hung jury; some of them didn’t want us to get the 11 million dollars each that we demanded. The city did settle with us, for $50,000 each plus attorney’s fees when they figured out it would be more expensive to keep fighting us.

Again, don’t get it twisted, it was a small “v” victory; the police are still brutal and are still beating people and gunning people down in the street. The only difference is that more people are stepping up to call bullshit on their actions and the city’s liability insurance for paying off the victims of police terror has gone up.

Do you worry about retribution at all by the cops?

I don’t worry about them, I worry about proper technique, proper training methods, and proper conditioning for combat. If you prepare for the worst, it generally doesn’t happen. I treat everyone fairly, I live a peaceful life, and I obey the law.

It is the police who need to worry. And they do, and that’s why they are watching me now. Prior to the recent LEIU (Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit) conference here, I received info from a source that mentions my co-defendant and me indirectly as the subjects of on-going surveillance, for life, which was approved by the city council around the time the city settled with us.

Why did the Federation of Black Community Partisans end? And what would you have done differently if you knew then what you do now?

It barely even started. It was really a formal organization in name only. People weren’t interested in a formal organization. I received very little help in funding or publishing Black Autonomy or in building an organization.

To do it all over, I wouldn’t have done it at all had I known that people’s word was not bond and that I would be used and abused for my work ethic. Or maybe I would have published it as a more of a personal ‘zine. Lately, people have been asking me if I ever thought about starting it up again. I don’t know. It was a lot of work and most people, even so called “conscious activists,” don’t have the discipline for the tedious work that it was.

The paper was tight! You don’t have to dish the dirt, but you definitely need to elaborate on work ethic. A lot of organizations and work relationships suffer from disparities on several levels. Could you break down your experience for newer activists to avoid similar pitfalls? And do you think what happened with FBCP could have been avoided?

When I was doing the newspaper, I didn’t even own a computer. I had to arrange to use other people’s gear or go to Kinko’s or to a college campus. That took planning and organization in itself. Then, I had to assemble the graphics and pictures. That meant lots of cutting, photocopying, scanning and re-scanning. Then I was forever waiting on people to send their articles and letters, especially FBCP comrades who were doing work in the streets. People had a really hard time with deadlines. And all of that had to be spell-checked and edited for length.

Once that was done, I had to send the hard copy to a printer down south, since printing on newsprint is so expensive out here. After that, distribution took up more of my time. And I still had to go to work, do my own local activism, answer mail, maintain the accounting, train in karate, teach the occasional self-defense seminar, and stay current on what was going on in the world.

I think the way to avoid those kind of pitfalls is to be prepared to do it all yourself, no matter what anyone promises. Plan ahead prior to trying to put the paper together. And be sure that you have a way for the newspaper to make money, because with publishing you will usually lose money. In the four years that “Black Autonomy came out, I never broke even.

Same question about the group ending, but regarding Copwatch 206?

Lack of money. Political hatred from other local anti-police brutality groups. Eventual burn out. No non-profit funding agency will give you money to really and truly solve the problem of police terrorism. They, like the paid activists, are too tied to the system. Without the problem, they won’t collect a paycheck. They don’t grasp with real depth that capitalism and white supremacy are necessary components for keeping “the American way” alive and well. And because of that, they are generally more a part of the problem than the solution. Another Copwatch exists in Seattle, born out the WTO protests, but they focus more on the large demonstrations and confronting the city council on police accountability to the public.

That’s one reason Copwatch 206 was so important! In a lot of ways, it really changed the police accountability dialogue many Copwatch groups do to address the issue of race more clearly. Phoenix Copwatch, which argues that fighting police brutality means fighting racism, cites the work of your Copwatch as an inspiration — and that group’s principles helped Copwatch crews in Houston, Cincy, and elsewhere jump off. Can you talk about the tactics and political objectives, and how those differed from others at the time, and even now?

Our job, as we saw it, was to ‘police the police’ and educate the public on what their rights were under the law. Our slogan was “Copwatch 206: the REAL civilian review board!” We even considered conducting citizen’s arrests of police officers, but decided that would be inviting death even more so than we already were. As it turned out, the people weren’t ready for that; it was all we could do to get them to share information with us.

We advocated for an independent civilian review board with broad legal power, with a well funded over sight patrol, the copwatch, as the “eyes and ears” of the board. We would use the investigative tactics of the police against them. A brother by the name of Diop Kamal, who heads the Police Complaint Center in Florida, is already doing it. He, along with the Black Panther Party, was our inspiration.

The line that the rightists like to use is “well, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about”. This what we would say to the police when they would pitch a fit about us filming them.

I cannot talk specifically about our tactics, since some of them are still in use by copwatch volunteers throughout the world. I would advise folks to learn the law, learn how to use a camera under pressure, get in shape and stay in shape, fix any legal contradictions you may have before you go deal with their contradictions (pay your fines, do your time, etc), learn the investigative techniques of the world’s law enforcement agencies, surround yourself with lawyers and media people, read (and re-read) Sun-Tzu’s “The Art of War” or Mao’s “On Protracted Warfare”, and plan, plan, plan. And be prepared to be killed in action; copwatching is serious business and is not to be taken lightly.

How do you look at some of the criticism of Copwatch work today? There tends to be an analysis from some people that tends to lump Copwatch in with white activism, and another school that presents Copwatch as tremendously empowering, and good for oppressed communities. Specifically that refers to the Copwatch groups mentioned, as well as groups like the Xicana/o Education Project in San Antonio, Texas, that polices the police out harassing kids who cruise.

Every cop watch is different in every city. I believe that over time a uniform standard will develop. For me, the current standard of service to the people has been firmly established by the Police Complaint Center (www.policeabuse.org). Ultimately, it’s a question of what a cop watch actually does day to day and what community a cop watch actually serves. If it is limited to just the large demonstrations involving the “usual suspects”, then its obviously not keeping it real. If it’s only a cop watch in name, limited to informational forums, harassing politicians, and doing its own demonstrations, then its not keeping it real. All of the above are important, however the cop watch is most needed and effective when it serves the interests of people of color, primarily, in a real and tangible way.

As I see it, the real test of a cop watch’s validity is measured by how many beatings and killings of the most directly affected are actually prevented. If the people the cop watch serves and the organization itself can look back after a year and say, “see, because of our vigilance in the streets, in the courts, in the media, and in the halls of government, no one has been hospitalized or died at the hands of the police in the past year!” or, “because of our vigilance in the streets, in the courts, in the media, and in the halls of government, not one police officer has gotten away with assaulting or killing anyone in the ‘hood or on the campus!” then all will have to bear witness that the cop watch is real, is revolutionary, and is effective.

Where do you think the Copwatch movement as a whole needs to be going tactically and politically?

Tactically, the Police Complaint Center is the current model that activists need to study, dissect, and improve upon. Diop Kamal and his team have been instrumental in numerous successful lawsuits and convictions against abusive police officers and their leadership. Study the methods used by the great reactionary law enforcement groups of the world, FBI, CIA, Mossad, MI5, etc; and use their investigative and spy tools against them. Just don’t kill anybody, like they do. It might be a good idea if some folks actually went to school to learn how film making, criminology, police science, and other skills, at a professional level, to make the copwatch that much better.

Something else that we found in our time doing it was that Copwatch was also an effective deterrent to crime; no one wants to look stupid on camera, and no one wants to get caught on tape.

One thing that progressives don’t usually get involved in is the neighborhood watch programs. At the very least by being involved progressive forces will know intimately well who the reactionaries are in the community, what they are up to, and be better able to deal with them before they get anymore out of hand than they already are.

In addition, the police are very open about the fact that they cannot operate effectively in a neighborhood without the help of civilian auxiliary organizations. I wonder how would they would operate if the neighborhood watch or the local police reserve unit in a particular area was dominated by radicals and the local copwatch was on a first-name basis with just about everybody who lived in the ‘hood and all the activists on both sides of the color line and the language barrier?

Same question, regarding the Anarchist People of Color movement?

Oh boy, here we go; you had to ask the ‘million-dollar’ question…

Well, first of all, I believe that the term AUTONOMOUS People of Color movement is a more accurate description of what’s really going on today. I can’t speak for everybody, but I’m sure there are others who feel me on this.

Let’s face it, we are separate from, yet at the same time allied with, the main anarchist movement, the left, and the various struggle-based tendencies (anti-globalization, anti-racism, Palestinian independence, reparations, police brutality, tenant rights, homelessness, religious freedom/post 9-11, etc) that call themselves movements. We may do work with individuals and organizations within these circles, but I can almost guarantee that we are a new breed of activist; a new type of people, based on how we see ourselves, how we see the rest of the world, and how we see ourselves in the world.

We may agree (or disagree) with some aspects and concepts that are espoused by the various anarchist/anti-authoritarian groups out there in the world, or we may (or may not) take positions on other subjects that casual observers may label “Maoist”, “Islamic”, “Christian”, “Indigenous”, etc. Our political, cultural, and, for some of us, even our genetic influences are diverse. Our needs, wants, and desires transcend mere political struggle; we are outside ‘the box’. There are spiritual dimensions to all of this, regardless of whether we pray to a God (or Gods), don’t believe in a God, or call ourselves “God.”

The one common ideological thread I saw at the conference with those I spoke to and the discussions I heard in workshops was that no one was down with a leadership clique, a messiah or savior leading ‘the masses’ to the promised land, or individuals doing what they pleased with no regard for others. People were for collective decision-making and the idea of leadership by personal example. I think that’s what makes us all “anti-authoritarian” and “revolutionary.”

Right now, my advice would be for everybody who was at this historic event to stay in contact with one another. Organize similar APOC affinity groups in your city. Attend the next conference if you can and bring as many people as you can. Go to the APOC website (www.illegalvoices.org/apoc) and review the notes that were posted from the various workshops. Discuss what happened with other people in your community, especially the youth. And read this book. Twice. And discuss it in your community.

I feel that the way forward is through all of us, in our own way, making a conscious effort to contribute to the (r)evolution of popular culture from that of consumerism and backwardness to that of intelligence and popular resistance. Many of the artistic types (emcees, spoken word artists, DJs, etc) are already doing it. This means more networking, this means making communication between groups and individuals easier. This means building more bridges between artists, street activists, certified professionals in various fields, academics, and the “average” brother or sister on the block.

This means being careful not to re-invent oppressive social relationships (we must get rid of fear, hate, greed, and jealousy in our own heads, amongst each other, and amongst our respective peoples; all of these things breed reactionary ideas and actions) since this kills activism and popular struggle from within, and allows COINTELPRO-type operations to kill it from without. Out of that will come trust; then tighter, more formal organizational structures; necessity is the mother of invention, and I believe this is how it will occur. This is how we will build our power.

Power consists of four main elements: knowledge, wealth, violence, and unity.

Together, we possess more than enough knowledge collectively to do great things; the wealth and unity will come with the proper utilization of the knowledge we all have. If violence can be avoided, that would be great; but if our enemies want to box, then we will have to defend ourselves.

Today, you teach karate and self-defense, and you’ve been an advocate of self-defense awareness. How important is self-defense in the lives of people of color? Could you compare and contrast physical self-defense to firearms self-defense advocated in the 1970s by some segments of the white left?

Self-defense has been extremely important in the life of this particular person of color. My journey in the martial arts began due in large part to being regularly attacked because of how I look, how I speak, how I used to dress, how I was a klutz and had asthma, the fact that my dad was not around, and my mother was white. To this day, there are people who hate on me for some of the same reasons.

What I teach is more rooted in the real living struggles of the oppressed, rather than any ideological posturing. Historically, traditional Okinawan karate was refined in the struggle of peasants against Japanese invaders and the sell out king who disarmed them in the 1600’s. Later, Japanese-adapted karate was used by some elements of the population against G.I.s during the U.S. occupation of Japan after World War 2.

In this country you have the legacy of the Deacons for Defense, the BPP (as well as the Brown Berets, Puerto Rican Independence Movement, AIM, etc) and the Black Liberation Army. Most of them, probably all of them, taught some form of unarmed self-defense to anyone willing to learn.

And then there’s the reality of domestic violence; this is something Franz Fanon actually touched on indirectly when he wrote about how the oppressed will attack each other if they are unable to attack their enemies. This goes on amongst men and women daily in this country, regardless of sexual preference. People of color are the targets and victims of violence more often than white people are; often at the hands of other persons of color; people who look like us and speak our language(s). Sad, but true.

The reactionaries are light years ahead of the forces of progress on this subject. There is an entire industry devoted to teaching middle class white America, both civilians and cops, how to fight back against terrorists, car-jackers, thugs, serial rapists, etc.

Thankfully, there are small groups of progressive folks like Home Alive in Seattle and Girl Army in Oakland who teach self-defense in a way that is not about patriotism, racism, xenophobia, or personality cults around a fighting style or teacher.

Many of those who are progressive, anarchists in particular, often fail to deal with “what is” and try to leap directly to “what they wish to be”. Some progressives grew up bourgeois and sheltered, and never have been placed in a situation where their lives were truly in immediate peril (until they got involved in radical politics). Or they got their first education in the concept of self-defense from someone who used the words and the overall concept to justify targeting them for abuse.

There are still those out there who subscribe to the ideology of “redemptive suffering”, a pacifist politico-religious doctrine advocated by Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Ghandi; that somehow those who do evil to the most defenseless segments of the population will finally ‘come to their senses’ or ‘repent’ for their sins against humanity because of the willingness of a few nonviolent martyrs to be brutalized. Those who advocate nonviolent resistance have been jailed and killed in numbers equal to or greater than those who (as Malcolm X put it) “stop singing and come out swinging”. Proclaiming yourself to have sole ownership of the ‘moral high ground’ or ‘the truth’ in a situation only leads to alienation from those around you and execution at the hands of your enemies, with help from those around you who are now alienated from you. Jesus is a prime example.

I believe in self-defense by any means necessary, but what I specialize in is unarmed self-defense and the use of improvised weapons. In an age of tighter control on handguns, knives, and specialty blunt force weapons (sap gloves, brass knuckles, etc) and longer prison sentences for their use (even if its justified), it makes more sense in my opinion. At the same time, it is good to be well rounded in the use of tools other than your bare hands and I study in that direction.

Philosophically, I believe as Gichin Funakoshi (the founder of the Shotokan style of Karate) did, that “karate is for the development of character”.

If you can control yourself, then no one else can control you. If you cannot control yourself, then someone else will control you.

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Bruce and Rivka Gewirtz Little met in Texas and now reside in New York City. Some may remember Bruce as a founding member of the Federation of Black Community Partisans, the predecessor to many APOC groups. Rivka is a great organizer in her own right. This interview focuses on parenting and how being parents has changed the lives to two kickass revolutionaries.

Can you give people a little background about yourselves and your political development?

Bruce: Being an introvert, I had a lot of political influence from books, TV, and music. As a teen when I was in junior high, I read a lot of books on the Vietnam War and the international insurgent movements during that time period. I remember looking at CNN during the days I skipped school and recognizing the kind of military build up in the South and Central Americas as being somewhat identical to the kind of U.S military buildup that took place in Vietnam. Being a working class black male at 14, I knew for sure that I was gonna be drafted. Later, in my twenties, I read Malcolm X’s speeches and got involved in peace and justice coalitions in Houston.

Rivka: The ’80s affected my political development. I grew up in a lesbian-parent household in upper Manhattan. Crack hit like a ton of bricks, addicting or helping to jail many of my lifelong friends. AIDS hit even harder, with many of my mother’s friends dying. Gentrification eventually claimed the apartment I grew up in. Marshals evicted my mother, throwing 25 years of our shit on the street and dragging me out kicking and screaming. Yet I hated the left and all that it embodied. My mother (a Jewish woman) and her partner (a black woman) forced me to canvas for the Rainbow Party and I had been to more patchouli-smelling sing-ins than any kid could handle. I didn’t see anything concrete being done. I tuned out as much as possible. Thank god for that blip of a conscious era in hip hop. I put my thinking cap back on and began to organize around issues in college and later as a journalist focusing on criminal justice issues.

Can you talk about how having your daughter has changed your lives, and what you want out of life?

Bruce: Having Navah has definitely added on more consideration to how we used to function as activists before we became parents. We still strive to work for the transformation of our communities, but we do have to work through child care issues and “switching” to make meeting s or get to certain protests.

Rivka: Having grown up in a severe state of urban emergency, affecting change has always been part of my MO. However, as N grows, my political work has taken a much clearer and more solid form. I am now desperate to work for underground education, cooperative child care and other services for children that function outside the oppressive laws of the system. If there is any sanity to be maintained for me on a Saturday night when my daughter becomes a teen, I know that I need to expose police corruption and exploitation of youth of color now. I know there needs to be an attitude that every kid in the ‘hood could be my kid and therefore is my responsibility. My goals are very defined.

How has parenthood changed your politics, if at all?

Bruce: I was made more aware of issues like education and social services since we had been thrust into dealing with them first hand. All last year we were playing survival games with the State in trying to keep our daughter in affordable child care. In a situation like that, you almost have to be living on the street to qualify for these kinds of services.
And you have to be in a single parent situation as well. I was unemployed and R was working, but that wasn’t enough. The State wanted me out of the picture altogether in order for N to be qualified to continue to get childcare services. We wanted to look at certain daycare programs that were started by grassroots activists back in the day because we knew that they had progressive learning curriculums for toddlers. But as funding for alternative grassroots based schools become scarce, they get swallowed by the State and hence the classist guidelines.

Rivka: Again, instead of looking at all the issues all the time, I have really begun to focus on what’s happening to inner city kids. Being involved with children all the time thrusts it in our face. Right now the scariest part seems to be the prison state we have created for urban youth in public schools, which later transfers into the prison industrial complex. But then it’s also terrifying that mothers on welfare are forced to deposit their newborns into the hands of strangers so that they can meet welfare guidelines. There are so many issues it seems overwhelming – so the thought of having to organize around something like globalization (though I know its crucial) seems to dilute my efforts on any front. Maybe in 18 years, I’ll start to branch out again.

Is anti-authoritarian parenting possible or practical?

Bruce: I believe it can be, but it really comes down to the parent. What are they willing to live with or live without as they raise a kid up under capitalism? There are networks of alternative health care providers although small and scarce that anti-authoritarians can turn to if they do not want to go to take their child to a “real” doctor. There are alternatives to public schools and you can even squat or choose a primitivist lifestyle in a remote setting. What I’m saying is that radical parents throughout the years have chosen to live lives where they raise children “unplugged” from the dominant culture and it can work. I just see it as a “Your Mileage May Vary” kind of thing. There shouldn’t be rules on how to build a family under an oppressed state. I follow my instincts and common sense along with Rivka’s consul as a partner. We may choose a medical doctor for Navah based on the individual and how they practice medicine. Do they blindly prescribe the medicines of the industry when there are alternative medicines to consider? Are they open minded to holistic alternatives? Do we as parents decide if we want to give our child those medicines when we know based on our own research that that medicine may not be good for Navah? I think being a conscious and thoughtful parent leads to practical decisions.

Rivka: It’s totally possible-though hard. To me its all about collaboration and cooperation. If you want to keep your kid out of the system by way of doctor, school, etc, it takes a group of people who are willing to chip and in cooperatively provide services. For example, the only way for parents without cash to get daycare without going through the state is to come together with a group of other parents to form a daycare collective. I think the hard part is making the connections with other people who have committed themselves to raising their children in that environment. Once you make the connections, I believe it to be possible.

How do you handle discipline?

Rivka: I have spent a lot of time thinking about this very issue. Is it possible to raise a kid that questions and bucks authority while instilling “discipline” in the home? In other words, how do you tell a kid to challenge the state and existing laws and then tell them to shut up and listen to your rules? On the other hand, four-year-olds don’t necessarily have the capability to know that playing with the stove could kill them-hence the clear need for rules: “Hey kid, stay away from the stove, or else!” Ultimately, as a mother, my job is to extend the womb for as long as possible until my child doesn’t need the support anymore. The womb provides boundaries that make a fetus feel safe. On the outside world, toddlers seek instruction to feel safe in a big scary park, for instance. The trick is to provide rules for safety, while teaching kids to question rules that seem bogus-including their parents. Oddly, the safety and security that comes from a disciplined home can empower kids to become adults who are strong enough to fight the system. Of course, I’m talking a lot of shit right now. What am I gonna say if Navah heads out the house in a hoochie skirt to the club at 16 and “challenges my authority” on going … Hmmm …. ass whoopin’s all around!

Bruce: Although I kid around the house about passin’ out ass whoopin’s and I also make threats if I’m caught in bad mood, I have realized how my upbringing instilled that “fear of getting in trouble” as a kid and how we track that same fear into adulthood in the work place or at a protest dealing with cops. I don’t want Navah to fear other people, just respect other people who respect her. So I take my cue from Rivka’s ideas on discipline, which means talking things out with her, not bargaining. But also pointing out the consequences of your actions: if you don’t clean up and take care of your shit, it’s not gonna be any good to you in pieces if someone steps on it or it gets lost, or if I get tired of picking it up all the time and it “disappears.”

Can you talk a little about how to impart culture to your daughter, particularly when the push for assimilation is so intense for youth of color, especially young girls.

Bruce: We started getting white Barbie dolls for gifts from some relatives when Navah was like, one. Granted we did not lay ground rules to our peoples not to give us Barbies of any color, but regardless, we always knew that we had our work cut out for us to counter indoctrination of white supremacy and negative body image via Barbie’s marketing.

Barbie’s blonde looks and body image are targeted to girls Navah’s age and it can have that effect of self hating of a child of color hating their brown skin and dark unruly hair. I think of the old Whoopi piece she used to do portraying a young black girl with a yellow towel on her head pretending that it was blonde hair. We counter this in a couple of ways like telling her how she and other kids that look like her are beautiful too. As she gets older it will be easier to explain that there is an industry out there making mad dollars off of people of color who have been tricked to hate themselves and in turn will want to look like someone they are not, or kill themselves trying. I would hope that she will make her own conclusion that she should love her natural self.

Rivka: I think the way to impart culture is to provide it without ramming it down your child’s throat. In other words, surround the house with cultural books, and avoid the typical children’s crap, have parties in which people are naturally wearing cultural dress, instill values of your culture in simple ways like focusing on community and story telling. However, I don’t think it’s helpful to start some sort of counter indoctrination. I was raised with a little of that and had a severe rebellion. I am hoping that if the parents love and are proud of their cultural heritage and fill the home with ceremony and other folks living the same way, the child will incorporate that in their way of being.

One thing many multicultural adults say is that they struggle with confusion about who they are and being accepted. How are you encouraging your daughter to honor her many cultures and feel confidence in that?

Rivka: I have a very unpopular take on this issue. I am all about Navah honoring her many cultures, i.e. Black, Jewish, etc. But at the end of the day, when the police stop her ass driving a car, she will be a Black woman and they will treat her as such. While that officer is beating her ass for whatever sick reason he finds, he won’t be asking her if she is a quarter French – know what I mean? My feeling is you provide all the beauty of culture in the house in a positive way, but you let your kid know the ropes on the outside world – bottom line. If there is some confusion or refusal to accept at some point – well hey that’s normal. As someone who comes from a multicultural home, I have gone through my periods of self-doubt and even hatred, but it all shook out in the end.

What advice can you offer other parents to keep their child’s curiosity and sprit going in a school system in which conformity is most pressing?

Rivka: Provide examples of alternative ways of being on their free time. Go to plays, free art exhibits and concerts, libraries, etc. I think it takes providing alternative perspectives to keep kids away from that conformist thinking. No kid will remain a conformist when they know there are cool alternatives. And if they do, that will all change in time.

Bruce: deprogramming at home is the key. First you need to know the school your child is attending. Who are the teachers, what are they teaching, etc. Then ask your kid what they are being taught. It will be the usual shit, like the first Thanksgiving where the first colonizers partied with the indigenous Americans. Here is the opportunity to arm them with tools like A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It provides an alternative to conforming to the reactionary historical perspective of the school system.
But you also have to be active in countering the stuff being taught in schools by speaking out when you attend school board meetings, or yes, even PTA meetings.

Most importantly encourage the child to satisfy their curiosity by challenging the school authorities on the stuff they are teaching.

How can political meetings and spaces improve child-friendliness? What behaviors — conscious or unconscious — need to be more actively checked when it comes to welcoming parents?

Bruce: Political meetings and workspaces can improve with the increased involvement of politically conscious parents. Building the APOC movement means reaching out across class and age lines. If there are more parents involved in radical community building, I believe that will improve child-friendliness at meetings. Parents could organize themselves to switch off in the child caring area from meeting to meeting so it just won’t be any particular person’s “job” to watch the children.

So far I have been to meetings that have offered childcare, but I have never really used that resource because Rivka and I usually plan ahead of time when it comes to managing our time to attend meetings. As for what kind of behaviors that needs to be checked, I can only say that hopefully you can work with people who are patient and understanding with children who cannot or will not sit through a four hour meeting patiently.

What do you think about taking their kids to demonstrations?

Rivka: Take them, take them, take them. We had a scary experience at one of the anti-war demos here in New York where police on horses were trampling folks without regard to age or physical stability (including seriously old folks). Navah and her cousin (also a toddler) were pinned against a wall on our shoulders, just watching the horses charging people and we couldn’t move and could barely breathe. It was terrifying. However, both girls remember the experience with love and they remember all the chants. They still joke “1, 2, 3, 4, we don’t want your stinkin’ war. That’s part of “imparting” culture and politics. It would be good for parents to work in cooperation so that when scary things happen, there are parents who can take over and get the kids out of the crowd or help form shields around the kids so they don’t get injured.

Bruce: Yes, the parents definitely need to be organized, networked to come to a demo and form contingency plans for when the police begin to riot and break up a demo.
There is also the school of thought that you should be more selective about what kind of demos you can take your children to. But in light of the police assaults in some of the most peaceful actions that took place in Florida around the FTAA, I don’t really know how selective you can be. The police are defiantly following a decree to break up actions as quickly as possible and as they see fit. Still some common sense and a heightened sense of when things go wrong could be a parents’ best tool.

How prepared are you for her teenage years?

Rivka: Not. It’s all about instinct. My big fear there is that she will come to think of MTV’s pimp and whore culture as her own urban culture. I really want to help her get around that bullshit that so victimizes women and criminalizes youth of color for the fun of white kids.

If Navah were to read this interview in 20 years, what would you tell her?

Rivka: We have the utmost love and respect for you and all that you embody.

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By Soo Na

There are many discussions happening around the purpose of conferences. Often, people feel tired and frustrated at such gatherings. While serving as connection points – where isolated people can find a sense of safety for a few hours, or even days, long-time comrades can meet and catch up, and networking occurs – conferences can also be points of frustration. Critical observations were made at the DC APOC conference, where people felt that certain issues were not being addressed. In the spirit of constructive criticism, I wanted to share my experiences. I hope that in my sharing, it opens up spaces for other critical and necessary discussions to occur.

More and more, I question the ability of weekend-long, or any length, conference to really act as a place of sustainable connection. Much of the connecting often occurs in the hallways between workshops, where people find the time to, as Ashanti talks about in his zine, “unmask” what has been kept hidden from the majority of people that one might interact with in a given day. It is difficult to find places where vulnerability can be risked, and that difficulty is proportionate to the joy one experiences when a sense of safety is attained, however briefly. I am not criticizing nor judging that safety.

The general feeling I received from previous APOC gatherings, whether in Detroit, or in the regional organized gatherings since (and prior to) then, was that these spaces felt safest to share experiences, as well as organizing. In that collective spirit of shared vulnerability, beautiful spaces are created. I experienced that while in the queer and trans APOC workshop. One person stated that they “felt at home”. However, that collectivity is difficult to create and maintain. It can happen spontaneously, but it’s not inevitable, nor is it magic. Creating that sense of community often means unlearning and actively challenging internalized ideas of charismatic personalities, and learning to be critically aware of judgment and criticism – one’s own and that directed at other people.

Now, if you bear with me, I will make a contradictory statement. In light of what I said about charismatic personalities, I will reference Ella Jo Baker, who cautioned against singling out a single person as spokesperson, in her speech which came to be remembered as, “More than just a hamburger”. Her belief is that people must not look for a (s)(z)(h)ero; rather, people must believe and love and empower themselves, with collective help, to “lead”, that we are all leaders, and that this can be taught and passed on. Ella’s work with young people, and her own life experiences, gave her insight into thinking about the ways in which people’s internal fires are extinguished when they are silenced, overpowered, or seen as less exciting than another person’s.

We have all, in one way or another, been silenced in our lives. Popular culture, revolutionary culture, cultures, whet us (and I use the “us” with caution) to the idea of celebrity. It is romantic and deeply compelling. But, it is important to think about what one is seeking in such aggrandizing of another person over and beyond one’s own power. There is a quote by Julius Lester, from his fictional novel, “And All Our Wounds Forgiven”, where he talks about the dislocating positionalities of both the “admirer” and “admired”:

I don’t watch much TV anymore. I found myself on constant emotional overload because in the course of an evening I would have fifty relationships, intensely liking this one, disliking that one, wondering what this actor and that actress was like, that politician or that celebrity without portfolio. It is psychically disorienting having powerful emotions about people you know only as images. But television seduces us into trusting image as reality. Daily I watched people approach him. There was always an instant when they realized that all the love and emotion they had for him was not reciprocated, that he had been in their homes and had not known it, that his existence was crucial to their lives while they were nonexistent in his. They had no alternative but to make themselves known to him because they had been forced into a relationship with him.

I want to think about forced relationships, forced ways of relating, and habitual ways of connecting that may or may not be connected with liberation, trust, and mutual growth.

I am Korean, and have been living in North America since age six. My experiences as an Asian yellow womon are complicated as, I am sure, all people’s experiences are. One thing I notice consistently among other Asian womyn is a feeling of competition. Often, when I am in a room, I will notice the eyes of other Asian womyn, and there is a feeling of endangerment. It is as though we are in competition against each other. I think that competition between womyn has many origins, but I think there are specific racialized, gendered, and heteronormative reasons why womyn, including Asian womyn, see each other as competition.

I want to state that, as a personal belief, womyn are not endangered as a people. In stating that, I am not erasing or ignoring the realities of sexism, white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, intersex phobia, classism, ableism, and the numerous oppressions that people of color face. These oppressions also seem to be places of solidarity. But I think it’s important to think about how that solidarity can occur even though the most challenging conversations do not take place, precisely because the connection itself, so desperately sought, suddenly overrides the desire to actively decolonize and LIBERATE one’s self, one’s desires, one’s body, and one’s politics. That, in fact, those challenging conversations become places where the connection, so desperately forged, becomes endangered through the idea of it being in crisis and precious, fragile. That is a dangerous place to be. It is my belief that connections should not be places where difficult conversations cannot occur.

Part of why people attend conferences has to do with the idea of wholeness. It is possible that certain people, through their activism, seek to find that sense of wholeness, but it is difficult. There are powerful connections made at conferences, even life-long friendships, lovers, partners, creative erotic movements. Audre Lorde defines the erotic in the following way:

The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessons the threat of their difference.

Much dispute exists around whether or not there is an APOC “community” per se. From what I heard, many people feel that APOC, like the concept of queer, is an ambiguous, fluid concept. It is visionary, an idea(l). With vision comes spaces, pushing and pulling of limitations, expansion and stretching of internalized self-robbings and robbings of each other. Likewise, APOC is heterogeneous, multi-level, and multidimensional. It is never one thing, and it never remains the same. Can we, as APOC, and as people and individuals in our communities, experience the erotic with people without it devolving into heteronormative ways of relating with each other?

People are different and complicated, come from different places, both geographically and psychically. There are critiques of the phrase, “people of color”, which is also, for lack of a better word, inadequate. But it is a ratchet, a visionary ratchet from where movement can begin. There is always creation of languages during times of connection and vulnerability.

I am wondering how people of color, and people who identify as womyn, can employ Audre’s definition of the erotic to think about the ways in which APOC people (don’t) relate with each other. As a queer Asian womon, I struggle with heterosexism, both internalized and in my interactions with people and institutions – whether family, school, health care, and the like. I think heterosexism occurs in many of my interactions with Asian womyn, not because they “know” I identify as queer, but because of the ways in which gender and sex have been conflated as one and the same. Fear is a product of heterosexism, as is competition. When I see an Asian person in a room, I do not assume that we will have things in common. Part of this comes from experience. As an adopted Korean womon, I have often interacted with Korean North American folks who regard me with pity or unmasked disgust when they learn I do not speak Hangul, the official spoken language both in the Republic of Korea (southern Korea), and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (northern Korea). Many people have experienced similar separations and experienced the pain of what Gloria Anzaldúa refers to as “existing in borderlands”.

But, when I get the endangered, or what I refer to as the “heteronormative fear” glance, it is painful. Heterosexism operates in tandem with misogyny and patriarchy, in that womyn are meant to compete with each other, in the service of men. It is for their benefit that we are kept separated from each other, we being womyn, queer folks, femmes, and all people. I want to ask, is the separation worth it? Or, rather, what do we gain from competing with each other? Where is the fear coming from? And how is the interesting mental health idea of self-esteem, or the anarchist idea of self-management (which I heard a lot this weekend) bolstered by this fear?

At this conference, I went up to a person because I knew that if I did not approach them, we would never end up talking. This is not coming from a place of forced interaction, but a place where I sensed competition and in order to bridge that fear and that separation, I moved to correct it and started a simple conversation, at the level of small talk. I do not think this person was necessarily queerphobic. I simply think that this had to do with heterosexism and the competition that often occurs between Asian womyn. I want to think about why I feel it, and what it reinforces.

We are traumatized daily. We struggle with differences. It is not the call of political and self revolution to perpetuate that trauma through fear, indifference and its product, inaction. And it is also not my intent to reduce my experiences and observations into rhetoric. I want to think about trust and fear, connection and political engagement. I also want to think about the beauty in the ordinary, and the challenges and also the necessity of having difficult conversations. I think another word for difficult conversations is “ordinary”. Isn’t that true? That the status quo, though perhaps indifferent, monotonous, is also challenging, that which so many people rail against, so that it becomes un desafio, a challenge? June Jordan, in her poem, “On A New Year’s Eve”, talks about the ordinary:

let the world blot
obliterate remove so-
called
magnificence
so-called
almighty/fathomless and everlasting
treasures/
wealth
(whatever that may be)

it is this time
that matters

it is this history
I care about

the one we make together
awkward
inconsistent
as a lame cat on the loose
or quick as kids freed by the bell
or else as strictly
once
as only life must mean
a once upon a time

I have rejected propaganda teaching me
about the beautiful
the truly rare

(supposedly
the soft push of the ocean at the hushpoint of the shore
supposedly
the soft push of the ocean at the hushpoint of the shore
is beautiful
for instance)
but
the truly rare can stay out there

I have rejected that
abstraction that enormity
unless I see a dog walk on the beach/
a bird seize sandflies
or yourself
approach me
laughing out a sound to spoil
the pretty picture
make an uncontrolled
heartbeating memory
instead

I read the papers preaching on
that oil and oxygen
that redwoods and the evergreens
that trees the waters and the atmosphere
compile a final listing of the world in
short supply

but all alive and all the lives
persist perpetual
in jeopardy
persist
as scarce as every one of us
as difficult to find
or keep
as irreplaceable
as frail
as every one of us

And Alice Walker also writes about this in her poem about loving what is abundant more than what is scarce.

In the spirit of the deep love and affection I have for people of color, in the spirit of thinking about joy’s proportionality to pain and my acknowledgment that I have responsibility for the pain that other people in the world experience, in the spirit of healing, I offer my thoughts. I do not identify as anarchist. I am still learning about this political visioning ideology / way of life. As such, I draw from numerous living philosophies and ideas.

I appreciate this space for engagement.

Alston, Ashanti Omowali. “Childhood and the Psychological Dimension of Revolution.” The Anarchist Black Panther Zine. Summer Fall 2002, Vol. 4 : 59-70.

Lester, Julius. And All Our Wounds Forgiven. New York: Harvest Books, 1996.

Lorde, Audre. “Use of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (excerpt)”. Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women’s Spirituality. Ed. Marilyn Sewell. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991.

See her essays in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Ed. Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. Watertown: Persephone Press, 1981. Also see Anzaldúa’s Borderlands = La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987).

Pavi. “On A New Year’s Eve.” Online Posting. 10 Oct. 2002. Minstrels. 20 January 2002. .
Walker, Alice. “We Alone”. From the speech, “What Can I Give My Daughters, Who Are Brave?” Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. 92.

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By Victoria Law

Siu Loong means “Little Dragon” in Cantonese.

But Siu Loong herself isn’t Cantonese. She isn’t even one hundred percent Chinese. Through me, she can claim to be Hakka, Suzhonese and Shanghainese. From her father, she can claim to be Finnish, Hungarian and Jewish. But she is also an American living among American anarchists, where none of this supposedly matters.

Before motherhood became a consideration, I paid little attention to the lack of color in the New York City anarchist “scene.” So what if no one looked like me? Weren’t we all struggling for the same thing?

Pregnancy made me sit up and look around at the demographics of the anarchists around me. Yes, I had followed (but not participated) in the short-lived discussion on white privilege in Seattle’s protests against the WTO. Yes, I would confront my fellow anarchists about their internalized racism. But I never really went further and questioned why there were so few people of color-never mind people of color like me-in the anarchist movement.

Motherhood forced me to open my eyes. Before the recommended six weeks of postpartum rest were up, I was up and about on my various projects. Virtually everyone was supportive of my new role as mother and on-call cow. However, I started noticing small things that bothered me about my (mostly white) activist circles.

For starters, no one could pronounce my daughter’s name correctly. It was pronounced, “Sue Long,” “Siu Long,” “Sue La,” any which way except the way it was supposed to be pronounced. If people didn’t have trouble making a small circle with their lips to say the word “siu,” they couldn’t remember that “loong” had two “o”s. One person tried to shorter her name to Suzy. I very firmly put a stop to that.

Before Siu Loong could even remember her environment, I looked at the young children who made up the anarchist scene. Who would she be playing with when she grew old enough to interact with other kids?

Most anarchists do not have children. Whether this is a political statement or a personal choice, the face remains that anarchist children are few and far between. On the Lower East Side, the anarchists who choose parenthood and had enough support to remain somewhat involved in the movement tend to be white.

It bothers me that Siu Loong’s companions are almost all white. I do not want her growing up in an all-white (or predominantly white) environment. I do not want her to wonder if she is somehow incorrect for not having blond hair and blue eyes as many of her peers do. When I have brought this up with other anarchist parents, they dismiss my concerns. Of course they do not have to worry about whether their child will feel as if she does not belong. Their children, even those who are of mixed parentage, have white skin. They do not have to worry that their child may feel as if she is not as good as her lighter-skinned, lighter-haired friends. They do not have to worry about the fact that our small community sometimes mirrors the racism and ethnocentrism found out in the larger world.

Sometimes I wonder if I obsess about race too much. I buy her books that emphasize her Chinese heritage and, more importantly, have characters that look like her. When she began Early Head Start, I was secretly thrilled that there were no white children in her class. When she entered Head Start seven months later, I was delighted that ten of the fifteen kids running around were Chinese and that all spoke Cantonese. No one mispronounced Siu Loong’s name, not even the non-Chinese teachers.

However, the parents and caretakers of these children are not ones with whom I share anything except an ancestral homeland. For the most part, we do not share the same language and thus cannot talk with each other. Some of them do not return my tentative or “Jou sahn” when we pass each other in the hall or wait for the elevator together. I do not know their politics and opinions. After seeing my punk rock babysitter, they may have guessed mine, although this did not prevent them from electing me the chairperson of both the Class Committee and the Settlement House’s Policy Committee. But because we have virtually nothing in common, we do not arrange for our children to see each other outside the classroom. Perhaps because their children are full-blooded Chinese, often raised in a community of other full-blooded Chinese, they do not see arranging play dates with the other Chinese children as a concern. Or perhaps they already do, but because my Cantonese is limited to ordering food and asking for prices, I am left out of the invitation loop.

In addition, despite my visible pleasure at Siu Loong being around children who share the more neglected half of her heritage, I feel as if I’m compromising some of my anti-authoritarian beliefs by placing her in a school-like atmosphere. She not only picks up the odd Cantonese phrase but also the seemingly senseless rules and regulations found in all classrooms.

One evening, as I sat and talked with a friend, Siu Loong grabbed my legs. “Put your feet like this,” she commanded, attempting to bend my legs into a cross-legged position. Then she grabbed my hands.

“Put your hands like this,” she demanded, intertwining my fingers and then folding my hands.

This was not a comfortable position for a grown woman in a chair, so I promptly uncrossed my legs and unfolded my hands.

Siu Loong tried to reposition me again.

“This isn’t comfortable,” I protested.

“It is comfortable,” she insisted, trying to bend my fingers.

“You need to sit like that so I can read you a story,” she added.

That was when I realized that, for some unknown and probably nonsensical reason, Siu Loong’s teachers were having their charges sit for story time with folded hands and crossed legs.

The logic of this escapes me. Isn’t it enough that the kids are seated and quiet? Why impose a needless rule? Especially one that she will parrot and annoy me with?

Often, I feel as if my life is split. If I want to be around people who think as I do, who believe and are willing to fight for the same things, they will not look as I do. They will not share the same culture or upbringing. I will have to explain certain aspects of my life and sometimes have these aspects be misunderstood or distorted. If I choose to be with those who share my culture and collective history, I risk having my individuality misunderstood or ignored. During high school, I chose to be with other Chinese. We shared nothing except a common ancestry. In that circle of friends, my needs and wants as an individual and as an emerging anarchist were ignored. As an adult, I have been asked why I choose to be around so many white people, why I do not choose to be around “my own.” In this circle, my needs and wants as a woman of color are ignored.

Sometimes I wonder if Siu Loong feels the split as acutely as I do. I wonder if she notices that, around white people, virtually anything is okay. She can run and climb and laugh and shout. She can even take all of her clothes off. No one will chastise her. The most that will happen is that the grown-ups will laugh.

However, among those who look more like she does, whether they be schoolmates or relatives, such behavior is not only not laughed at, but actively discouraged and chastised.

When I try to talk with my anarchist friends about this split in my life and hers, they don’t get it. Why is it important that I send Siu Loong to “school”? Why am I subjecting Siu Loong to regiment and restrictions at such an early age? Can’t I find an alternative source of childcare for her-one that does not reinforce models of hierarchy and oppression? And why am I so hung up on race? One anarchist described my concerns about race and ethnicity as “nationalistic bullshit.”

How can I raise a baby anarchist of color if my choices lay between a white, color-blind movement or a gathering of those who can identify with her looks and heritage but little else?

I’m still struggling to find some sort of balance between these two extremes. It’s hard to think of solutions when those around me-both my peers and the parents of Siu Loong’s peers-do not acknowledge that there is a problem. This reflects a larger issue-white anarchists’ refusal to discuss race, racism and exclusivity in the movement. Knowing this doesn’t make it any easier. I am still struggling alone with this concern.

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By Shawn McDougal

My goal in writing this is to help expand the movement for human liberation which many of us understand ourselves to be a part of. First I’ll explain a bit about the vision that drives me in my social change work. Next, I will offer one key practical idea for movement-building. I will follow the idea with a concrete example of how I and some comrades have put the idea into practice. Then, I will share some key concepts useful not only for explaining the practical idea, but also for developing and evaluating virtually any tactical plan for mass liberation that movement-builders might consider.

The ideas I present here are not new. I am a synthesizer; I like to take disparate ideas and fashion them into a synthesis that is my own. Feel free to take the pieces you desire and synthesize them in a way that makes sense for you.

The title of this piece was inspired partially by a leaflet I created a couple of years ago called “Mobilize like kittens, not sheep!”, and partially by the notion that culture is fundamentally about patterns of activity that we continually (re)create. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I hope the title makes sense by the time you finish reading this.

I. THE VISION

What is my vision?
A world where everyone understands that they are creators of social reality, rather than spectators…a world where everyone feels worthy of the best in life, and no one feels subordinate or less worthy than anyone else…a world where our interactions bring out the best in us, rather than the worst…a world where our institutions are nurturing and life-affirming, rather than domineering and life-negating…a world where our hopes overcome our fears.

(Note that in describing my vision I do not mention the usual list of ‘isms’ that so many of us rightfully oppose: capitalism, racism, heterosexism, patriarchy, adultism, elitism, etc. I believe these dehumanizing social patterns are really symptoms of more fundamental problems: We are unconscious of our own power, and we are ruled by fear. To the extent we realize that we do not merely inherit the world but that we shape it, these destructive and fear-based patterns will be replaced by creative and hope-based patterns-at every level, and in every facet of our lives.)

What drives my vision?
Growing up in an underclass Black family in Los Angeles, I experienced the effects of racism and classism-external and internalized-around and within me. (I call my family underclass and not working-class, cuz most of the time nobody had a job-it was mostly welfare and petty hustles.) Seeing my older brother marginalized for being gay, and seeing my single-mom have to hustle and get money from her boyfriends for us to survive (‘Can you throw me down some change this month?’), taught me about heterosexism and patriarchy. Also, seeing people risk jail-time just so they could have something that looked nice taught me about the power of conformity and internalized oppression in people’s lives. Seeing (and much later, experiencing) drug addiction taught me about the often self-destructive power of escapism.

Success in school shaped me to be a young elitist-the kid who was gonna make it out of the ghetto. That same success got me a scholarship to an elite boarding school in New England where I began to see the levers of elite power close up. I realized that the people in power were no more deserving than anyone else. Eventually, time spent as an exchange student in Brazil helped me see the global nature of class society, patriarchy, white supremacy, and the other ‘isms’ I had come to despise, as well as the crucial role America plays in the global system. The people I met in Brazil also reminded me of the amazing power of the human spirit, and our capacity to create connections and joy even under miserable social conditions. It was in Brazil that I realized that I could not escape from or ignore the problems of the world, but that I had to live my life fighting them.

When I was in college I met people who called themselves anarchists. I saw that we had the same basic attitude on a lot of things-especially challenging authority and conformity-so I realized that I was an anarchist, too.

II. THE IDEA

Let’s do a thought experiment. Two actually. Ready?

First, imagine a mass action in your favorite city. It’s a march-rally. Five-hundred (or 5000) people gather in a park. You’re there with them. While people stand around waiting for the action to begin, organizers circulate around with extra signs, chant sheets, and whistles. You all line up and walk along a route-maybe a mile or two-where city officials make sure traffic is cleared. Or, maybe you couldn’t get a permit and you’re walking along the sidewalk. Along the way folk are chanting, singing, drumming, waving signs, a few even passing out leaflets to lookers-on. After an hour or two of marching, you reach the destination point. There is a rally. Great speakers, rousing performers, old acquaintances, drums and chants. You even spot a reporter or two from the local media. You and your friends go home, confident that you did your part for the movement for peace and justice today.

Now, change the channels.

A second mass action. Same city. Five-hundred (or 5000) people gather in a park. You’re there with them. Organizers circulate around with handouts on how to approach strangers and talk politics in public, and suggested locations. People share leaflets, surveys, stickers, street-theater scripts, chalk. You all form teams of 2 to 5 people. The teams-hundreds (or thousands) of them-fan out to locations all throughout the city. (Supermarkets, gas stations, post offices, shopping centers, laundromats, bus stops, and movie lines are among the favored spots.) At these locations the teams talk to people about the issues, ask questions from a survey, hand out stickers and leaflets to those who are down with the cause. A few even perform theater or create chalkings on busy sidewalks. After an hour or two of connecting with people on the street, you all reconverge for a rally. Folk share stories about how it felt to engage with the public-the challenges and the breakthroughs. Great speakers, rousing performers, old acquaintances, drums and chants. You even spot a reporter or two from the local media. You and your friends go home, confident that you did your part for the movement for peace and justice today.

Questions for you to consider before moving on:
Which action has the greatest impact on public awareness?
Which action is more likely to empower people to stay active in between the mass actions?
Which action is more dependent on the corporate media to get its message out?
Which action spreads more of a practical understanding of what it takes to build a movement among the people who participate?
Which action creates a deeper sense of community among the participants?
Any other differences you think noteworthy?

The second mass action is the practical tool-a tactic-that I promised to offer in this essay. I call it the kittens action. I choose this term because of what it evokes. Kittens (cats) are different from sheep in that, because they are not herd animals, their movements are not easily controlled or constrained by those who would domesticate them. If you’ve ever lent an ear to a frustrated meeting facilitator, school teacher, or soccer mom-or if you’ve ever been one!-you will probably recognize the phrase “It’s like herding kittens!” .

The kittens action follows a very simple recipe:
Step 1. Converge.
Step 2. Form teams, share materials for outreach.
Step 3. Spread out.
Step 4. Engage the public.
Step 5. Reconverge.
Step 6. Share stories and celebrate.

The kittens action is similar to what some people call an organizing blitz, though blitzes usually have organization-specific goals (like signing up new members), and I’ve never seen this sort of tactic used at a mass action level involving people and groups with diverse interests. Also somebody told me once that in Mexico City they did something similar with teams called brigadas.

III. THE PRACTICE

There was a gathering of diverse organizers and activists in December 2003 to discuss community and autonomy in LA. The event was organized by folk who’d been inspired by their exposure to Zapatismo, such as the people at Casa del Pueblo. At the end of that meeting one of the requests was for a way for the diverse people and organizations present to continue to connect and work together. I suggested putting together a monthly kittens action, perhaps with a different theme each month, so that various forces around LA could come together on a more regular basis and do concrete work together.

Many were in agreement, so some of us organized the first event, called POP! the Revolution (POP= People Organizing & Partying), to happen in January. Here is the email announcement we sent out:

Ready to see LA-area activism taken to the next level?

Ready to connect with diverse activists working on various fronts in the struggle for social justice?

Ready to stop feeling angry and start celebrating and building the culture of resistance?

Then you are invited to:

P. O. P. ! t h e R e v o l u t i o n P a r t y

People Organizing & Partying

*People: because to win we don’t need to convince those who stand against us–we simply need to activate those already on our side

*Organizing: because it’s time to move from the margins and into the center

*Partying: because revolution needs to be fun!

Saturday, January 17th, 2004
2pm

Echo Park Methodist Church
1226 Alvarado, just north of Sunset

Sounds intriguing…In a nutshell, what is it?

Activists from all over LA coming together to join forces for a day of schmoozing and organizing in the community, to turn traditional protest into community engagement, and to have fun. A new way to help the LA left feel more connected.

agenda in brief:
2:00: PREPARE–welcome to the community, intros, brief training, form street teams

3:00: OUTREACH–street teams fan out to surrounding grocery stores, gas stations, connect with the public, ask critical questions, share resources

5:30: PARTY–food, music, open-mic, performance art, share experiences

This is the first of what will become a monthly event, held at different locations all throughout LA, highlighting our various struggles

If you are interested in teaming up with us, or to help make this and future events successful, then spread the word, and join our email list!

At that first event about 50 people showed up. Many of the people present were not regular activists; just progressive folk who were fed up with feeling powerless and wanted to do something.

After intros we did a training on how to talk to people, on how to approach strangers to get their attention, on what to expect in terms of people turning you down or ignoring you, on how to focus your efforts on people willing to dialogue and not waste time debating people who wanna be haters, etc. We gave everyone a list of questions to ask people about community issues, and a stack of informational leaflets with alternative media and community resources.

Next, people went out in teams of 2 to 5. Some went to supermarkets, others to gas stations, and others to bus stops nearby. People were out for about an hour. (From the agenda we put in the email you can see we’d planned for a longer time outreaching, but, shockingly, we were behind schedule.)

When the teams returned we had a debriefing session. The energy was palpable. Folk talked about how exhilarating it felt to approach total strangers in the streets and talk politics. Folk talked about some of the amazing and interesting people they’d met-for example, one guy who is not a typical ‘activist’ but who organizes his buddies every year to donate SUV-loads of food to homeless folk on Skid Row. Folk talked about how most of the people they met were actually pretty open to chatting and happy to receive info on alternative media. One guy mentioned how he realized how difficult it was to judge people by the way they look or dressed-an older guy who he’d assumed would be a Bush-lover was actually pretty critical of the war and complained about all the tax breaks going to the rich. One woman said how now she feels more confident, so that next time she’s in line at a grocery store she’ll be less afraid to talk to people in line next to her.

We did another POP! the Revolution event the following month, with similar experiences reported by a new set of participants. One complaint was that our leaflets didn’t have enough info on local resources to help people in need of specific help: How to move more from talking to action?

Although the POP! the Revolution event was more like a workshop than a mass action, it is essentially a mini kittens action. With more participants-hundreds or thousands instead of a few dozen-a mass kittens action would likely include many forms of outreach to engage the public, from various sorts of leaflets and surveys to street preaching to street theater and interactive art. My hope is efforts like POP! will help popularize the idea of the kittens action, so that more mass action organizers will think in terms of getting folk they mobilize to be organizers, outreaching in the community, not just warm bodies to fill the streets or hold one sign in a sea of signs. Imagine the impact of 5000 activists spending an hour or two throughout the city having conversations with 50,000 or 100,000 people!

IV. THE THEORY

One criticism often leveled at anarchists by certain segments of the left-in particular Marxists-is that we are all tactics and no theory. I vehemently disagree with this criticism. The reality is that anarchist practice usually has strong theoretical underpinnings. The problem comes with articulating those ideas in a way that non-anarchists can understand.

Before we continue, there is a term that I use that may be unfamiliar to many readers. It’s that weird term that appears in the title of this essay: meme. (It rhymes with seem.) It was coined by zoologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. It was taken from a Greek root meaning ‘imitate’. Memes are units of cultural information such as recipes, ideas, songs, social conventions, fashions, gestures, rituals, and sayings. Memes are to culture what genes are to biology. Like genes, memes replicate, mutate, spread, and die out. Just as genes powerfully shape the form and function of biological organisms, memes shape the form and function of cultures and societies.

In the rest of this section I will give you a sense of the theoretical basis for and the visionary implications of the kittens action. I will do this by explaining five key concepts-five powerful memes that, taken together, may serve as tools to shift how we think about and do social change work. In explaining these memes I will show that the kittens action is not merely a tactic as it’s commonly understood-a choice of action to be used or not as expedient. The kittens action carries within it both a strategy-a long-term plan of action, and a vision-a place we want our strategies to take us to. I also hope to show that whatever one thinks of this particular tactic, there is a sore need for anarchists in particular and progressives in general to create and promote tactics whose long-term effects are similar to those of the kittens action if our vision for a more liberated and just world is to be realized. What exactly the long-term effects of the kittens action are will be clearer as we proceed.

What’s the connection between tactics, strategy, and vision?
Meme 1: Feedback-everywhere

Maybe it’s because my first intellectual passions lay in the sciences and mathematics, but I often find useful metaphors for thinking about how people, social groups, and society work coming from fields like mathematics, biology, and complex systems theory. For example, I’ve found the biological cell with its semi-permeable boundary-selectively and flexibly allowing in some but not all outside influences-useful in thinking about how an evolving culture or social group interacts with other groups or cultures.

In thinking about how society as a whole functions, one useful metaphor is the human brain. Like society, the brain is made up of multitudes of specialized yet adaptable, highly-interconnected, dynamically developing yet historically shaped, semi-autonomous units. In the brain these units are neurons, while in society they are people.

In a complex system such as the brain (organisms and ecosystems are further examples of these sorts of systems), there are various levels at which one may examine the system’s dynamics. These levels fall along a spectrum from the micro-the realm of individual parts-to the macro-the realm of patterns and relationships among parts. For example, in the brain there are neurons (micro level) and there are concepts (macro level). Whereas small numbers of neurons may be involved in a processing a particular sense datum (for instance, recognizing the color green), large collections of neurons are involved with more emotional or conceptual work (for example, appropriately recognizing a green traffic light).

The standard view of the philosophy of reductionism is that a whole can be understood simply by understanding its parts. Classical physical science is the child of reductionism-for example, the search in physics for the smallest building blocks of matter. In reaction to the limitations of reductionism, holistic approaches to knowledge emphasize relationships and wholes-parts only can be understood in a particular context or environment.

Feedback-everywhere is the idea that reductionism and holism are both true, but only partially. Parts create the whole and the whole shapes the parts. There is mutual influence between the various levels in a complex system, a dialectical cascade between the micro and the macro.

For example, it turns out that in the brain not only do the things we sense, perceive, or experience inform our concepts, and shape our moods, but that our concepts and moods in turn shape what we perceive. Have you ever misinterpreted a friend’s innocent remark? Then you know what I mean.

In the social realm these contending perspectives-reductionism and holism-play out in debates between rugged individualist ‘conservatives’, and social constructionist ‘liberals’. (A lot of contentiousness in our society actually seems to arise from these same clashing views on the relationship of individuals to groups.) Feedback-everywhere allows us to transcend this duality: not only do individuals create society, but society creates individuals.

As I mentioned before, a common criticism of anarchists is that we are all action without theory, tactics without strategy. A corollary of the feedback-everywhere principle provides adequate response to this criticism: the unity of tactics, strategy, and vision. Although it is axiomatic among folk who wanna be smart planners that vision determines strategy determines tactics, it is rarely recognized that the chain of effect runs in reverse as well: what we do today (a tactical choice) shapes our path for tomorrow (strategic possibilities), and the unfolding of that path shapes our evolving vision. This corollary of feedback-everywhere-the unity of tactics, strategy, and vision-is embodied in the classic anarchist understanding that our means (tactics/strategy) must harmonize with our ends (vision).

Thus, the kittens action is not only a tactic for mobilization-to be used or not as expedient-but it also implies a class of compatible strategies for transformation, and a class of compatible visions of the society it’s practitioners would like to create. Again, the kind of strategy and vision implicit in the kittens action will be made more clear as we look at the five other memes.

How do we fight the/for power?
Meme 2: Power as a relationship (rather than a commodity)

Power exists only in the interaction between people. Although the power relationship may imply different roles-the ‘powerful’ and the ‘disempowered’-that relationship only has reality because of the participation and the acquiescence of each participant.

This principle has been recognized by generations of diverse social theorists and social actionists (e.g. Hume, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Foucault, and Biko, to name just a few) who have long argued that the power of an oppressive regime rests on the people’s obedience to that regime. In the words of Steven Biko, “The most powerful tool in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”.

Despite this long tradition of nuanced and dialectical thinking about power, many people, including many on the left, still tend to think in absolute and static terms when they ponder the nature of power: the elite or the privileged are ‘powerful’ while the oppressed and the marginalized are ‘powerless’. Power for them becomes like a scarce commodity: some people have it while others don’t.

Why is this way of thinking so pervasive? There at least three reasons for the popularity of this idea of power: 1) It provides a kind of rationalization for resignation-’We have good reason to feel hopeless! We’re powerless for chrissakes!’; 2) It results from internalized oppression-resistance becomes inconceivable when we see ourselves as powerless; 3) Our concepts work metaphorically. The commodity concept of power arises via metaphorical extension: Power is something we desire and that we negotiate in social transactions, and thus it is like a commodity.

The problem with this scarce commodity concept of power is that it can lead people to make bad strategic choices in their social change work, and it can lead to perceived and therefore manifest powerlessness. For example, radical social actionists often criticize liberal reformists for solving social problems in a way that reinforces the power of the oppressive social forces that cause the problems to begin with. By begging the master to throw you a bone, you affirm the master’s power over your life. To the extent this criticism is true, it is the liberal reformists’ assumptions about the ‘powerlessness’ of the people they want to save that is to blame.

A thought experiment I like to give people when it seems like their understanding of power is too absolute or commodity-like is this:

Imagine you could get rid of the top 1,000,000 power people in the world-you know, the CEOs, the high-level officials, the presidents, the generals, the corporate boards of directors, the biotech wizards, the movie moguls, etc. Imagine you could just snap your fingers and boom! they would all disappear without a trace.

After their twinkling eyes tell me they’ve gotten the picture, I then ask:

Ok. So the rulers of society are gone. Now what happens next? Social liberation? The struggle’s over? We won?

After some moments of consideration, they usually will say something like, “Naw, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Other people-the middle managers, the staffers, the lieutenants, the assistants, etc.-would all just move up to take their places. What would need to change is the system, the consciousness.”

To fight the power (and win), it is not enough to get rid of the people who are privileged. We must change the consciousness that the current power relations reflect. I’m reminded of the marvelous title of an anarchist pamphlet I’ve had on my shelf for the longest but that I’ve never gotten around to reading: You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship.

A characteristically anarchist approach to taking action to challenge power relations is direct action. Direct action means taking action to directly address a problem or get your needs met, without asking the powers that be to do it for you. Direct action means fighting power by asserting your own power, as opposed to asking that others with power treat you kinder or gentler. Although many activists don’t emphasize this, direct action isn’t just about fighting power: it’s also about changing consciousness. People who take direct action to improve their lives end up by having a greater sense of control over their own lives. By taking action they change the world, and by changing the world they change themselves. (This is another example of feedback-everywhere. Also, see Meme 5 for more on the role of action in shaping our sense of self.)

Some people confuse direct action with civil disobedience, especially after the dramatic protests involving mass arrests that we’ve seen in the global justice movement since Seattle. Though direct action and civil disobedience can overlap, they are not the same. Civil disobedience means breaking a law in order to get justice-either directly in the moment or indirectly through a moral appeal to other people. Direct action means doing what it takes to get immediate justice-whether the action is legal or not. Consider the issue of police brutality. An example of a civil disobedience response would blocking the streets in order to highlight the issue for the public. An example of direct action would be forming a copwatch group to show up and closely observe whenever folk get stopped by the police.

Since any tactic has implications for strategy and vision (cf. feedback-everywhere), when evaluating a tactic we should ask ourselves: Does the tactic (or its related strategy) work to change power relations and consciousness in a fundamental way? If the answer is yes, great. If the answer is no, time to rethink our tactics.

How does the kittens action work to change power relations and consciousness? In some ways the kittens action is closer to direct action than the typical march-rally.

At a march, most participants do not directly engage the public; they are merely part of a crowd passing by waving their signs. The immediate target of a typical march-rally is actually the media, and only indirectly the public. Organizers draw media attention in the hopes that the media will then communicate their message to the public. In contrast, at a kittens action, the participants interact with the public directly; they become the media themselves and take their message directly to the people.

Also, participants at a kittens action (kittens for short) must think and make decisions on the spot-where to go? who to engage? what to say? how to respond?-whereas few such decisions need to be made by marchers following the crowds on a pre-planned route. And these interactions happen involving many, many more members of the public than the relative few who happen to see a march go by. Their autonomy combined with the widespread nature of their action means kittens pose a greater challenge than marchers to the taboos about how to behave in public.

Finally, kittens interact with lots of people who may not automatically agree with or be as passionate about the issues as them. Thus they work more than marchers in challenging their own fears of rejection. They become stronger organizers.

One visionary implication of the kittens action is thus revealed: building a society where everyone sees themselves as creators of social reality, with lead-not just supporting-roles to play.

There are other ways I believe the kittens action fits within a larger vision of consciousness change. I’ll explain more below.

What needs to change in our culture?
Meme 3: Transformation as Culture Shift

Political structures and economic structures not only shape culture, but they arise out of culture (cf. feedback-everywhere). Social transformation of the kind people like us wanna see will require more than a changing of the guard-it will require a shift in our culture, a shift in our everyday habits of thinking and acting.

In what ways does our culture need to shift? There are many, many ways I can think of, and I’m sure you can, too. I’ll list a few here that are of particular relevance to the kittens action.

First, mainstream US culture has a bizarre taboo against talking politics in public. Our media primarily focus on personalities, trivia, and tragedies. Social reality is mainly a show-one with us as spectators, and whose key events seem beyond our control.

How can people see themselves as creators of social reality?

Second, we have a dominant culture that squashes dialogue on deeper levels. For most people in our society, it is not cool to seem ignorant or confused, so asking questions is uncool. It is not cool to show a need for help or a reliance on other humans. We strive to be independent, so we tend to repress-not express-many of the feelings that arise from our basic needs. Hence, for these reasons and others, instead of communication, dialogue, and understanding, we have advertisements, announcements, and arguments.

How can we create dialogue that deepens our understanding of ourselves and each other?

Furthermore, our economic system actually depends on people feeling disconnected and unable to rely on others: individually wrapped lifestyles make us bigger consumers and more fearful workers. Ways of relating that are about mutual aid and interpersonal connection outside scripted roles-insofar as they are not marketable or commodifiable, and insofar as they interfere with workplace discipline-get deemphasized in our corporate-mediated culture. (The historical loss of the commons has been well-documented, and continues to play out in contemporary struggles over privatization.) The acceptable roles-consumers, workers, sports fans, et al.-get scripted for us. As we spend our time wearing masks not of our own creation, we feel less in control of our own lives, and a sense of powerlessness (or alienation) becomes pervasive. The alienation leads to greed and fear: Greed to beat out our competition (i.e., fellow humans), and fear that the competition will beat us out. The business and the government elites use greed and fear to increase the power they wield in our lives. And the alienation grows…

How can we stop this cycle of alienation, fear, and greed?

Finally, most forms of collectivity in our society-teams, companies, public agencies, etc.-are organized as clear hierarchies, with bosses, managers, and followers. Very rarely do we have opportunities to work in groups that are organized in an egalitarian way, where the experiences of each participant are equally important. Thus, we get used to seeing collectivity as requiring a weakening of our individuality. We come to see individuality and collectivity as locked in a zero-sum competition. To be a ’strong individual’ means to ignore the collective, and to be a ‘good team-player’ means to efface one’s own needs.

How can we create social groups that both enhance and feed off of the power of the individual members? How can we create liberated forms of collectivity?

In reaction to the pervasive hierarchy that informs our social groups, and because they cannot think of alternative structures, some anarchists espouse doing away with complex forms of social organization altogether. Some pine for an idyllic past where everyone lived in small egalitarian bands and complex divisions of labor did not exist. However, the majority of thoughtful anarchists make a distinction between the legitimate authority of experts who we choose to listen to for advice or situational leadership, and the imposed authority of bosses, rulers, and elites.

But knowing in theory that legitimate and non-coercive leadership is possible doesn’t mean that it’s always clear how to make it work in practice. A huge stumbling block for efforts to create egalitarian social arrangements is that the vast majority of people’s socialization has occurred primarily through hierarchical groups and institutions. One of the powerful and far-reaching impacts of the global justice movement’s mass mobilization efforts has been the exposure of many, many people to effective egalitarian forms of decision-making (e.g. affinity groups). These people certainly take their experiences into other aspects of their lives and their social change work.

A question to ask about any tactics (or strategies) for social change is this: to what extent do those tactics (or strategies) help prefigure or bring about a desirable and necessary change in the way we live our lives, a desirable and necessary shift in our culture?

The kittens action promotes a culture-shift on all the fronts I’ve just mentioned.

First, it gets folk to transgress the taboo about talking politics in public. The demise of this taboo would have deep and far-reaching consequences in our society. No longer would the American public be content to limit its sophisticated analyses and passionate debates to sports, pop stars, and movies. No longer would our roles as consumers or workers eclipse our roles as community members, as citizens (documented or not). When social reality ceases to be a trivial show, when social reality is something that we have important things to say about, then we can move from being spectators to being creators.

Second, by breaking through not only the taboo against politics but the taboo against purposefully engaging strangers in dialogue, kittens renew their sense of interdependence and connection with the real people who make up the real society around them. Conversing about heartfelt stuff with people outside our normal circles makes it hard to reduce people to tokens in a theory, it expands our sense of our own humanity, and it moves us out of alienation.

Third, the kittens action-just like other anti-authoritarian forms of mass action (e.g. affinity group convergences)-engages participants in a form of collectivity where every individual is a key actor and decision-maker, and where the power of the group is directly dependent on the power of the individuals, and where the power of the individuals is directly connected with the power of their team and indirectly (especially at the final reconvergence/sharing stories step) connected with the power of the overall action. We learn to create liberated forms of collectivity through practical experience.

How do we move from the margins into the center?
Meme 4: Organization vs. Marginalization

Anarchists who are into organizing are often critical of those who represent anarchism largely as a subculture or lifestyle. Anarchist organizers argue that lifestylist anarchists marginalize themselves in their safe subculture-niches and thus become invisible and irrelevant in the wider movement.

The marginalization anarchist organizers worry about is not just a problem for anarchists-it’s a problem for the left as a whole. (N.B. I know some of y’all don’t like the word ‘left’. Sorry for any semantic inconvenience. What I mean by ‘left’ is very broad: the people who believe we need more social equality, more sustainability, less hatred, and more liberation in the world.) For most of us on the left, the longer we see ourselves as part of the left, the more we feel estranged and distant from regions of culture that used to be familiar to us. We spend more and more time with other progressives and activists, and less and less time with that ‘conservative brother-in-law who just doesn’t get it’. We shift our sense of community as we shift our sense of self. This is quite normal.

However, if we on the left are going to win the public to our side of the struggle, we gotta do more than complain about the people who don’t know what we know, or the people who aren’t activated like us. We gotta figure out how to teach people what we know, and we gotta figure out how to activate people. In short, we gotta organize.

A lotta people assume that organizing means organization-building. Perhaps this comes from the (correct) notion that systemic change requires institutional change, and the (incorrect) notion that institutional change requires mass organizations. Or perhaps it comes from Marxist-Leninist party-fetishism. Who knows?

When I talk about organizing I don’t mean getting people to join an organization, although that can be a part of it. By organizing I simply mean doing what organizers do-getting people to do something, getting people to take action. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if someone joins a particular organization, as long as that person is doing work to expand human liberation, and as long as they understand that their work is part of a larger tapestry of transformation, a tapestry that includes the work I and people like me are doing.

This is a critical point so let me take time to be clear here. The impact and legacy of left social movements (e.g. the civil rights movement, the anti-nuke movement) cannot be measured simply by the policies that are passed or by the organizations that get created. After all, policies can be subverted and organizations can ossify. The main value of left social movements comes from the transformative actions they inspire from millions of unnamed and unaffiliated people, people whose lives are changed by something they are a part of, people who take what they learn into the rest of their lives. The main value of social movements comes from the way they deepen our consciousness and shift our culture.

Any tactic or strategy connected with a vision for liberation must say yes to the following question: Does this tactic or strategy lead to transformative action? Does this tactic or strategy organize?

It is clear that the kittens action-like any mass action-does organize people, at least its participants. Participants step outside their normal scripts of silence and anonymity in the face of the culture of complicity, and they do something about the ills they perceive. Further, by directly engaging the public, kittens can organize many, many others as well. More on this to come.

How do people learn? What makes people change?
Meme 5: experience over symbolism

What makes people change? This is the fundamental question facing all organizers (and teachers). This question should be on the mental front burners of anyone who cares about changing the world.

There are essentially two views on the problem of getting people to learn or change. One view is that learning happens primarily through symbols-words, texts, stories, images, etc. The other view is that learning happens primarily through experience-things that happen to us and things that we do. (These two views are really part of a more complex continuum. For instance, consider role-models, people in our lives that serve as examples for us to follow. Are they experiences? Are they symbols? Both? Neither?)

Organizers (and teachers) who take the symbolic approach focus on making convincing arguments, telling compelling stories, showing people evocative images. Symbolic learning is the dominant approach taken in traditional schooling, and it serves important functions-the memorization of facts, the communication of the experiences of others. Also, within organizing symbolic work serves a vital function-background knowledge, raising critical questions, .

The experiential approach to learning focuses on hands-on projects, field trips, apprenticeships, experiments, student-centered learning. (One example of student-centered learning is Paulo Freire’s liberation pedagogy: it is all about privileging the ’subjective’ experience of the learner over the ‘objective’ official knowledge of the teacher.) In organizing, the experiential approach focuses on helping people reflect on their own experiences, and pushing people to have new experiences-to expand their understanding of an issue and their relationship to the issue.

Although formal schooling is dominated by symbolic learning, experiential learning is almost universally recognized among educators to be the most powerful approach.

Pause for a moment to think about your most powerful and memorable learning experience. Did it happen because someone made an especially convincing argument to you, or told you a particularly compelling story? If you’re like most people, chances are your most powerful learning experience was precisely that-an experience, something that happened that you were a part of.

In the realm of social change as well, the symbolic approach has limitations.

One weakness of the symbolic approach to social change can be seen in the diluted and in some cases reversed policy victories of the civil rights movement. For instance, although Brown v. Board of Education (and following rulings and legislation) ended de jure segregation in schooling, de facto segregation continues. Fifty years after Brown the racial gaps in education persist, mainly because the racist attitudes of whites in America have not changed that much.

Another weakness with symbolic approaches to change as compared to experiential approaches has to do with long-term vision. Is our vision to continue a culture where politics is a spectacle, a parade of rhetoric and images, controlled by an elite minority of privileged and highly-trained image-makers, story-tellers, and symbolic analysts (be they from the left, center, or right)? Or do we want to create a culture where politics is not seen primarily as something you watch, read about, or listen to, but rather as something you do, something you experience?

This is a really difficult thing to imagine. It is perhaps a universal of human culture that the leaders and chiefs tend to be the ones who are the most verbally astute. Throughout human history-and evidence suggests even in the days when we were all hunters and gatherers living in small nomadic bands-political life has been disproportionately influenced if not dominated by those who were the most adept at words and images. Is it even possible to have a political culture that doesn’t have this sort of built-in status hierarchy?

(Additionally, personality typologies such as the Myers-Briggs and learning theories that look at multiple intelligences and learning styles suggest that symbolic-oriented learners-as opposed to concrete-experientially-oriented learners-form a privileged minority within our schooling system, especially at the secondary and post-secondary levels.)

Recognizing the problematics with this kind of power is difficult-especially as many of us-including me-have found a kind of power to fight oppression through our facility with language and symbols.

Yet there is a paradox. On the one hand, we want people to take action and take charge of their own lives, and not be lead by whatever images they’re fed by the elites, or whatever myths they’re told by charismatic people around them. On the other hand, the most ready tool for social change many of us have is our own influential voice (be it spoken or written or performed or illustrated). (Eugene Debs, socialist presidential candidate in the early 1900s, illustrated this paradox when he said, “I don’t want you to follow me or anyone else. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, somebody else would lead you out.” )

It is essentially the question of how to promote revolution without promoting oneself. This question must be recognized and grappled with those of us who envision a society without elites of any kind.

The history of revolutions for social equality creating new elites and ruling castes shows the difficulty of overcoming this conundrum. Clearly, in these instances, symbolic revolution, articulated by revolutionary elites, won out over experiential revolution grounded in the unique perspectives of all members of society. Top-down won out over bottom-up.

Perhaps the conundrum can be cancelled by an approach that combines actions with symbols in some sort of dialectic or transformation? To the extent both the actions and the symbols are controlled by each individual, elitist divisions of labor between those who instruct and those who follow instructions could be overcome. (I once chatted with a woman who was a self-made life-planning counselor. She told me a bit about neurolinguistic programming-a self-improvement approach that uses individually chosen gestures to symbolize moods or mindsets that we want to reinforce in ourselves. Something for further study…)

So we’ve considered some weaknesses with symbolic approaches to social change. What about experiential approaches?

An example of the power of action and experience in personal transformation comes from the field of social psychology.

There was study conducted by a team of social psychologists in a suburban neighborhood. They posed as ‘community workers’ and asked the residents whether they would be willing to place a billboard in their front lawns as a public service. The billboards would say ‘Please Drive Carefully’. Of course, the vast majority of them said ‘hell no!’ to the request-85% of the people in the study’s control group in fact refused to do this public service. In the test group, however, in the same neighborhood, with demographics exactly the same, 83% said ‘yes’ to the ‘community workers’ strange request.

One group was 85% ‘no’ while the other group just the reverse, 83% ‘yes’. Why such a dramatic reversal in response between the two groups of residents? The only difference between the two groups was that, two weeks previously, another set of ‘community workers’ had visited the test group, with a smaller and much easier request: Would they be willing to place a 3-by-3 inch card in their front window with the words ‘Please Drive Carefully’? When given this token request, the almost all of the people said ‘yes’.

Because the people in the test group had already done a token action supporting the cause (placing the card in their window), they were much more likely to do a bigger action (putting up a billboard in their yard) for the cause later on. By taking a small action people’s sense of themselves had changed, and they were much more likely to do other and bigger actions in the future, consistent with their changed sense of self. (This study and similarly interesting results from social psychology can be found in Robert Cialdini’s Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion, and Eliot Aaronson’s The Social Animal.)

This notion of getting people to do small things in order to make them more likely to do bigger things later on is known as baby-steps by organizers (and foot-in-the-door by sales people). It is a powerful example of the power of action in transformation.

The kittens action applies this notion of baby-steps on two levels, at the level of the wider public and at the level of the kittens themselves.

Firstly, in a kittens action, because the kittens are engaging the public-and not just holding signs or chanting in a crowd-they can get the people they meet to do things like write letters, sign petitions, put stickers on their cars, wear buttons, swear oaths, and a host of other token actions that will get the people who are not activists to move one baby-step in the direction of becoming activists.

Thus, the movement becomes bigger.

Secondly, by helping kittens have a baby-step experience as organizers directly and personally engaging the public to promote their cause, the kittens action helps the participants to see themselves as organizers. Thus the kittens action help create more organizers, more people who will be active and effective over the long-term at expanding the movement. These individuals will not only interact with the people they meet that particular day; they will go on to be more likely to interact with others they meet in the future-in their workplaces, in their neighborhoods, in the supermarkets. In this way, not only does the kittens action do like any mass action and organize the people who participate-the kittens action spreads the meme of organizing to create more organizers!

Thus, the movement becomes deeper.

With the help of baby-steps, we can see how the kittens action provides a powerful application of the meme of experience over symbolism, and a powerful tactic in helping us build a bigger and deeper movement.

Conclusion: Spreading Revolution

For me, as an organizer and as a teacher, the biggest question I face everyday is: What can I do to get people to have experiences that transform and enrichen their sense of possibilities? One of the things I’ve learned (and relearned many times!) is that this question is equivalent to the question: What can I do to transform and enrichen my own sense of possibilities? As a religion teacher I had in college named Thandeka once told me, The inner and the outer are one.

On some days or at some moments I see the light and feel inspired, at other times it’s enough just to get through the day without seriously wanting to hurt somebody or myself. Such is life.

Besides self-care, like walking or playing or staring at stars or fun personal stuff like that, one thing that renews my hope in a heartbeat, that allows me to smile and say things like “George Bush is good for America” to my friends and not feel like I’m telling a sick joke is this: remembering that I am just but a single thread in a huge and unfolding tapestry of liberation. Every single person on this planet has a role in weaving that tapestry. And everybody’s got a unique thread to weave. The best and only thing I can do is weave my thread and get out of the way of people trying to weave theirs.

The revolution is now. The revolution is all the time. Welcome to the revolution.

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By Tiffany King

Reflecting on my own participation as a person of color in the 2003 protest marches of the anti-war movement, I am now aware that my presence is being manipulated and abused. I have been rendered a puppet for white liberal pageantry. Any time that I have attended a march I find that I subject myself to objectification, marginalization and exploitation. Beyond the personal offenses that I have incurred, I now truly believe that the presence of people of color in Anti-War and other so called “global justice” protest marches led and organized by whites legitimizes tactics that undermine a true pursuit for justice.

On February 15, 2003 grappling with my own frustration, anger and feelings of impotency as our country charged towards war; I attended a protest march. The march was organized by the usual suspects, A.N.S.W.E.R, Not in Our Name, Unite for Peace and Justice and the other white led coalitions here in Philly. As the Bush Administration moved closer and closer to dropping the first bombs on Iraq, I caved in and decided I had to go regardless of who organized this thing. I thought to myself, that if there was ever a time to momentarily get over the racism of the white left and past scars from previous interactions, it was now.

My justification for my attendance was, we were facing war, and at least the illusion of a collective and unified voice would be “more powerful” than the efforts of isolated communities of color or my own for that matter. In that moment, I had just given into white supremacist systems of domination. White supremacy asserts it’s own agenda by absorbing, subverting and negating any dissent and resistance to its domination. The structures of white supremacy demand submission by professing to be both the norm and alternative.

In the book, Black Anti-Ballistic Missives, activist, author and poet Ewuare Osayande argues that white supremacy is the critical component that the anti-war movement fails to address, thus rendering it irrelevant. The racist anti-war movement is devoid of any self-critical process to acknowledge or address how white supremacy contributes to the oppression of people of color within the movement, so how could it possibly have an analysis of how white supremacy oppresses people of color around the world?

Given the reality that the anti-war movement does not address white supremacy, it is to be expected that people of color would be objectified and exploited at one of its’ protest marches. On February 15, the people of color contingency that I attended the march with decided to create a feeder march that would join the larger march on Broad Street. I assume this was an attempt to empower the POC who would be participating that day. We would temporarily march on our own terms, citing white supremacist imperialism as the true evil. Momentarily, I had the feeling that we would reclaim the political act of protest as a relevant and meaningful tool used by self-determining people of color around the world who have and continue to resist white supremacist imperialism. Yet I realized once I got to the march that this would not be possible.

We would chant Black, Latino, Muslim, Asian and…so forth to evoke a feeling of camaraderie and equal partnership. Yet the unequal distribution of power and privilege amongst people of color, which played a part in determining the convening groups ability to organize this very effort, stared us in the face and was left unaddressed. Still, we feigned a content and empowered united front and proceeded to Broad Street to meet up with the rest of the protestors.

As soon as we approached the sea of white folks and they became aware of our presence we became a sideshow. White people started to clap and cheer as if we were the long awaited people of color parade float that they could awe and point at. They appreciated our presence and danced to our drumming as long as we were their entertainment. However, as soon as members of the contingency started to pick up our bullhorns and speak to the white supremacist imperialism that murdered people of color they became offended. We were suddenly the recipients of annoyed stares, shushes and interruptions because we were talking over the “slated” speakers.

We kept on speaking, however our attempts to define and adhere to our own agenda did nothing. We did not create self-determining space that would allow our particular analysis of the war and white supremacy, as the global terrorist, to challenge the shallow, racist analysis of the white activists and organizers. We were not even able to make the white folks aware of their own racism at the protest itself. We became a pawn, a mere prop, one of those larger than life puppets (often rendered to depict oppressed people of color) that white groups make for “protests”.

I don’t know how many times I saw and heard white people look at us and say… “It’s sooo good to finally see some color here.” I could see them patting themselves on the back for the good work they had done to reach out to people of color and educate us or make us feel welcome to join them.

Our presence only legitimized the work of whites, which is to stay in positions of power and control the discourse, action, and direction of so called progressive politics. By participating we allow them to delude themselves that, 1) their particular analysis of the war and imperialism is a legitimate one and 2) the power and resources at their disposal to lead “social change” movements are legitimately earned. Our presence at the march made the statement that we support the white supremacy of the left.

Many non-white critics of white leadership within the “global justice movement” have challenged the analysis of whites who have reframed and distorted issues of justice. Whites conveniently impose an anachronistic time period on imperialism, with a NAFTA obsessed political analysis, that places the start of multinational corporate imperialism in the early 1990’s. Whites on the left also relegate the issue of accountability and blame to that of the corruption of a select few corporate executives and their Washington DC cronies. They conveniently ignore their own culpability in reinforcing systems of white supremacist capitalist imperialism.

I actually heard white people saying things like, “We’re all French now” and “Long live the French.” How can a credible and legitimate global justice movement congratulate a country that actively engages in the white supremacist, imperialist exploitation of people of color all over the globe? French multinational corporate monopolies are currently fueling conflict and repression in the Ivory Coast and West Africa. The French are white supremacist imperialists just like the U.S. The tyranny of France’s white supremacist imperialism is a present day political reality that people of color all around the world are suffering under and resisting. This lack of analysis of French imperialism and global repression is lost because of the racist analysis of the white leadership that dominates the current “global justice movement.”

In the past, like many others, I would be inclined to engage in the ongoing discussions of Where was the Color in/at…, in order to try and address the lack of participation/leadership by people of color at anti-globalization marches and other mass mobilizations. So often these discussions lack a sound analysis of the structures of white supremacy and its’ impact on why mass mobilizations look the way they look. These arguments frequently end up placing the burden on people of color to explain why they are not present at an event or protest. In her introduction to the essay Where’s the Revolution? Part II, activist and author, Barbara Smith critiques the racism of so-called “progressive” movements in general and the LGBT movement specifically. In speaking about the state of progressive movements in general, she states, “Thanks to racism and elitism, progressive people of color are barely allowed to share movement leadership, let alone control it. Rest assured if we did get to decide movement agendas, they would be a lot different from what they are now.” (Smith, 1998)

Some people of color are challenging white leadership in the global justice movement by acknowledging that people of color need to organize on their own terms without the presence of whites and then bring our own platform from the margins of the global justice movement to the center. People of color are absolutely right that we need to organize ourselves on our own terms without whites. However, when we come back to the table have we done anymore to challenge the power structure that marginalizes us? This strategy was attempted on February 15 at the Anti-War demonstration in Philly, but as people of color we still found ourselves marginalized and exploited.

An even better example of how the racist power structure of the white left marginalizes and then kills acts of self-determination is the more recent October 25, 2003 Anti-War March. As early as summer of 2002, Black Voices for Peace, The Black Radical Congress and other people of color led organizations were planning a Black led mobilization in October of 2003 to resist the war in Iraq before the first bombs even dropped. There was no mention of A.N.S.W.E.R. or any other majority white groups playing even a supporting role in the effort. This Black led mobilization which was acknowledged by the White left almost from its inception interestingly enough would be reduced to a feeder march and side show for the larger mass mobilization orchestrated by A.N.S.W.E.R. The Black March for Peace became a mere “feeder” march that ended up feeding into the white supremacy of the White Left.

I am no longer frustrated or disturbed by the often failed attempts to mobilize Black people and people of color in the numbers that white people are mobilized for protest marches. We need to begin to question the value and relevancy of the protest march for people of color, particularly as they are currently conceived and organized. The protest march has become nothing more than a vapid cultural product of the White Left used solely as a means to attract media attention and funding to sustain its elitism and racism. I struggle less and less with answering the question of “Where are the People of Color?”

Ewuare Osayande, who I have cited earlier, has offered an alternative view on the question of where people of color are in the anti-war and “global justice” movements. “White people will start to see people of color when white people start doing the work that people of color have always been doing. The question people of color ask is: Where are the white people?”

White privilege so often positions whites outside of the very oppression that they speak about resisting. Revolutionary movements do not willingly permit oppressors or collaborators to lead movement struggle. White leadership in the anti-war movement has resulted in the development of an analysis and tactics that are far removed from the daily reality and revolutionary struggles of oppressed people of color. The racist analysis and the misguided tactics of the White left have resulted in exploitative “protest art” inspired by a vicarious objectification of the lives of oppressed people of color and shallow symbolic media events like the protest march/pageant.

Oppressed people of color, on the other hand, are engaged in daily acts of resistance that appropriately place white supremacy at the root of injustice. This work is being done on the margins in communities of color, without the prodding of the white left or in front of the glare of media cameras. This work is rarely ever acknowledged or is more often dismissed by the white left as not being real “social change.” People of color who have a clear commitment to resisting all white supremacist systems of domination will not be found organizing protest pageantry and they will definitely not be featured as the premiere puppets of these spectacles.

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By Kapila

Let’s put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism – the lie that there can be such thing as ‘men liberation’ groups. Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group specifically because of a ‘threatening’ characteristic shared by the latter group – skin color or sex or age etc. The oppressors are indeed fucked up by being masters (racism hurts whites, sexual stereotypes are harmful to men) but those masters are not oppressed. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism – the oppressed have no alternative – for they have no power-but to fight. In the long run, Women’s Liberation will of course free men, but, in the short run, is going to cost men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is not the fault of women; kill your fathers, not your mothers.
-Robin Morgan

I look at their faces, I see reflection and masks that sometimes repeat my own in a strange cyclic pattern of power. Because in here, I am but a wage-slave, condemn sweating and hurting for eight bucks an hour, forced to smile and accept condescend behavior from the all-smiling, ever merry elite of the capital. Out there, they might call me a brother, an equal. We are not.

The system of class and the European system of white dominance and colonialism fused to became one single straight brute force, a giant juggernaut that tramples over the working-class worldwide and its two legs are racism and sexism.

Let us be realistic.

While I work at Stanford University, serving food for the sons of the elite and the future elite, it is increasingly strange for me to realize that this elite sometimes has skin darker than mine, accent thicker than mine, visible cultural roots sometimes more apparent than mine. The strength in which this realization affects me cannot be easily described – it is an eye-opener and is a mind narrower, it is both an epiphany as it is of such an obscurity. This multicolored, multicultural bourgeoisie is always the enemy and sometimes the most unexpected and always undesired ally, which forces its “diversity” and its “oppressed situation” down my throat, in an obscene mockery of the plight of the workers of the world.

Let us be realistic.

Racism – white dominance, is not an American phenomenon. The “white race” supports a global system of racial inequality and prejudice where, worldwide, the white male has a hegemonic dominance. It is the new capitalist model, and it is the old. Imperialism is a stream that never dried because it is vital for the World Capitalism.
The World Elite – World Capitalism

The capitalist globalization process that everyday kills and destroys the lives of millions and millions of people around the globe serves the political, social and economic agenda of a very well structured global elite. This global elite is composed essentially of capitalist white males, power-hungry and with no desire whatsoever of relinquish or divide power. It is paramount to their institutions of power to ensure the security of the ‘invisibility’ of the fact that the elite of the world is composed of one class, one race and one gender. This elite controls the levels of government and the levels of business. They are the church (the moral authority) and they are the creators of culture. They are the philosophers, the educators. They are too the most pernicious and dangerous group of people.

This elite has across the centuries used the divisions and social inequalities in society. In fact, they are the creators and the maintainers of this oppressive structure, and the sole beneficiaries of it. Through a structured and systemic misogynist, racist, homophobic, brutal capitalist protocol, they ensure the maintenance of their global empire and especially, the maintenance of their privilege domain over the majority of the people on earth.

It is, it always was, in the interest of that elite that we, the people, do not understand their affairs and could have no access to their domains. The institutions of race, class and gender are notably set to the advancement and comfort of these people and the exploitation of others.

This elite maintains nowadays a global system of exploitation, a structure that interlocks racism, sexism and “traditional” capitalist exploitation – which, for lack of a better word, I shall call World Capitalism.

Traditional Marxist and class struggle analysis have always had a very bad understanding of the race and gender – the concept that those two systems of exploitation were a “fruit” of capitalist society and would be eliminated when the class struggle is resolved fails to analytically criticize a culture based in racism and sexism – both of which came into the picture way before capitalism was around – and how the power structure of privilege does not have to be ratified by the police, the capitalists or even the State. Culture alone can be a catalyst of exploitation and submission, and the change and the complete revolution in the bourgeoisie social fabric cannot be done by simply taking the bourgeois out of the picture.

The understanding of the concept of privilege and how privilege imposes itself is necessary to understand why is that racism and sexism are so strong in our societies, why is that we to fight for the “right” of getting jobs (not goods jobs, just jobs in general), why it is two or three times scarier for us to walk at night, why is that, even when economically would make sense to alleviate the tension around race and gender – our society is adamant in keeping those tensions alive and burning.

This elite beneficiates threefold from the system of World Capitalism – the system devised, planned and structure around the white male bourgeois privilege, a system that connects the different levels of exploitation in one single machine.
Race

Different from others, I firmly believe that the structure of the World Capitalism could not do without racism and sexism. The reasons for the existence of this two can be slightly different but the end result is the same – the submission of the oppressed levels of the people to the elite of the capitalist society.

For the purpose of this analysis, racism and sexism shall be broadened to comprehend a multitude of other correlated subjects that are intrinsically tied to and share the same roots of those concepts. Racism, in this essay, refers (unless noted) to race dominance and privilege, national identity, nationalism, imperialism, colonialism and cultural repression. All those share a basic identity of a dominating ethnic/national group and a subordinated one.

To understand Race and Capitalism in a broader sense of the American concept of race, it is paramount to us to analyze race in its historical context.

Racism in Europe started before Capitalism. The feudal lords and the crown of Spain (absolutist and mercantilist) already obsessed over the concept of “limpieza de sangre”, the purity of blood. This concept became strong in Spain in the 1400’s, when the Spaniards fought against the Moors invaders. A national liberation struggle, if you like.

These concepts of race and the purity of blood, however, were deeply ingrained in European culture. Europe was a continent driven by conquest and tribal wars. The Romans regarded the tribes of Germans and Francs to be barbarians, brutes of low intelligence and destined to be submitted to the rule of the roman fasciae.
Examples run back in history ad nauseaum, in demonstrating a racist culture and a racist system as an integral part of the European culture. Why should we be shocked that they, when spreading their empire, spread too their racist system?

It is sometimes a fairly common misconception that other cultures had no racist background until the arrival of the Europeans. That is not true. The African tribal wars that to this day plight the people in that continent are a living proof that race (identity) has been an issue long before Capitalism.

What seems then to be the purpose of racism? In classical dialectical materialistic analysis, the constant struggle over power between forces of society shapes the format of the future and the present of the said society. In the case of the disappearance of race and gender in our society, the only struggle to be faced would be the class war – and against a united working class, the capitalist are bound to lose. The need of a different struggle, the need of race and gender inequality for the capitalist is to engage the working class in different battles, to divide and conquer it.

Based on that, one could argue that, in the long run, racism has always been a structure designed to maintain the power of a certain class over another by creating a platform of “equality” of sorts, making them “brothers” of the oppressed class. This definition of racism carries more weight than we can initially imagine, but it fails to recognize that racism can outlive class oppression – and be still the source of power to a few that would dominate the hierarchy that from that would emerge.

Racism and Sexism are more culturally rooted in the world than Capitalism, more than the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Some cultures are feudal systems, other monarchic dictatorships (But I deny the Marxist evolutionism of societies in the sense of feudal-to-capitalist-to-communist-to-free-socialist as being an evolutionary process that is absolute to any society). Racism and Sexism are two paramount structures of domination with which the world dominant class maintains its power, and, without them, the structure of World Capitalism would collapse.

It is part of the strategy of the global elite to actively support and maintain white dominance worldwide.

The idea that white supremacy is an American phenomenon, that it is a national issue to be dealt nationally, and that racism in the U.S. have origins in American Capitalism is, in essence, a very American idea. At the same time, the complex aspects of race in the U.S. and the current debate on racism and classism might be the catalyst for the change in the perception of race and white dominance.

Global white dominance appears in two different aspects: privilege and de facto ruling.

The privilege of the white race is an absolute in the world’s politics and economics; nowhere in the face of the world are people of European descent the oppressed minority (or majority) to an elite of color. The “white race” enjoys a privilege that does not falter by geographic means.

The white colonial/imperial power stretched itself through the process of capitalist globalization. The consolidation of global capitalism is not only rooted in racism but dependant on it. From Brazil to India to Mexico, the lighter skin carries a lighter burden and occupies the higher place.

The de facto ruling of a white elite that controls the global capitalist state enforces the privilege of the “white race”. Transnational corporate forces are massively concentrated in the U.S. and Europe and so are the powerful nation-states. The “white race” enjoys a position of privilege in these two segments.

Token gains on race and gender are not so much to pacify race and gender struggles, as it is to foment further struggle. The idea is to give the exploited a little taste of what they could get, but to make it clear that would have to carry a certain burden in order to get it. Just like a mule that tasted a piece of the carrot once is bound to want to eat the whole carrot, and will work with all its strength to reach the unreachable carrot, and carry the weight of the cart in its back. But, apparently contradicting themselves, the capitalist class shows its contempt by race and gender equality by openly attacking any form of improvement in the situation of the oppressed genders and races. This makes the structure, in the eyes of people of color, a racist one, instead of a purely classist one. It is necessary to keep people thinking that a) gains can be achieved inside the structure and b) racism is everywhere (which is true, but it needs to be really thrown at people’s faces all the times). The objective of this exercise is to demonstrate both that power is in the side in the elite; and that the oppressed’s situation can improve if only they submit enough so the elite do not seem them as a threat, but as something they can thoroughly control. At the same time, they need to keep the distance between those that have privilege, and those who do not.

It is interesting to see that the elite of color too benefits from the racist structure, and if racism were to simply be wiped out of the whole scenario, they would be in bad waters. It is of their interest that the white elite dominates – that would eagerly try to take over if they thought that they could do it without tearing the fabric of social control that the white capitalist elite maintains.

The racist structure of the system allows the elites of color to maintain their power and give them other possibilities. Imperialism has been used as a shield by every single dictator that had power threatened by the bigger shark, from Castro to Hussein to Milosevic. This dragged into direct or indirect the defense of their oppressive regime millions of people of color, working class people and anti-imperialist militants. This is not a justification to the U.S. actions, but an example of how the racist structure benefits not only the white elite and therefore supports directly or indirectly by the elites worldwide. It is a case of opportunism, where oppressors assume an “oppressed” mask to defend themselves against the taking of dominance against another.

A very concrete example of that is the role that Brazil plays now in the FTAA meetings. Lula and the PT (Brazilian Worker’s Party) have been repeatedly trying to sell this image of a defiant Brazil, which is concerned with the imperialist role that the U.S. would play in South America in case the FTAA gets approved. What they are concerned about is that Brazil might lose its hegemonic dominance over the South American market; and then, if the U.S. does not open its market to Brazilian products, the Brazilian elite of landlords would lose power. They are not concerned with the effects of the FTAA on labor, environment and the people. It is just very convenient that those issues show up so they can rally public support.

This pattern repeats itself around the globe. Besides, the majority of this “elite of color” are actually descendent of Europeans. Just look at South America, the diversity and richness of races and cultures in it – then look at the elite of South America, a very white and European class of bourgeois. The elites of Africa, while not European in skin, are mostly educated and raised in Europe or the U.S. The pattern repeats itself.

In maintaining the white supremacy, the elites of color try to escape guilt-free. In the fight for racial and gender equality, the working class remains bound. It is not that these fights are not important; if anything, alongside with class, they are the most important ones. It is only that, without the fall of the capitalist system as a whole, any fight becomes just filler.

Other parts of the elites of color take a more aggressive position in the defense of the interests of the world capitalist elite. The elites of Japan thrive over the complete subjugation to the American empire. Make no mistake: this is hardly a submissive elite – they were imperial forces for centuries and held an elitist racial position over their neighbors. However, in this game they play, the subordinate elite because is very much in their interest to keep the status quo, and the rest is inconsequential. Japan, defeated on WWII, is reborn as a global potency. But in submission to the white empire. Their pop culture, their dream, their means of production – everything about modern Japan cries – slave, but this condition of slave to the elite of world capitalism asserts its hegemony and dominance over other nations. More than that, it asserts the dominance of the Japanese elite.

The left worldwide have, for decades now, struggled with race and class and gender – which liberation should take precedence over another – without realizing that if any take precedence, the whole fight in itself is almost a moot point. Racism is not only a pillar of class oppression. It is one of the single bases of oppression itself.
Gender

In this essay, when referring to sexism, the concept, unless noted, incorporates issues like women’s rights, women’s position in the bottom of the scale of the capitalist society, homophobia and male violence against women.

Sexism — male dominance — is the less addressed and consequentially the most widespread system of oppression in the world. The roots of sexism in societies cannot be easily traced and I will not even attempt to dwell in its history to avoid any fallacy. However, in this essay, we shall analyze sexism in its relationship with global capitalism and the struggle for liberation.

The revolution of the capitalists was an economic and political revolution — not social. The French Revolution, the fall of the Absolutists in Europe, the social changes that followed were design to enforce the rule of the bourgeoisie and strengthen the influence and power of this rising class against outside forces. Representative democracy, liberty and freedom and all the other promises that the revolution made to the people were designed according to which form would create a favorable atmosphere for the establishment of capitalism.

It is interesting then to notice that the revolutionary leaders were quick to crush the women’s movement that was born during the revolution. The establishment of Capitalism could not allow the development of such a movement, especially since, in order to satisfy what those women were demanding, a distribution of power was necessary. One pamphlet distributed by those women during the revolution was called Request for Women to be Admitted to the Estates-General, and had the following quote: “”Man is born egotist…he reduces us to managing his household affairs and to partaking of his rare favors when he feels so inclined.” Nothing could be more true and it exemplifies the relationship between the elite and women – the relationship of power and the need of a structure that ‘justifies’ and maintain such a relationship.

The strained relationship between capitalism and women has a lot to do, in a modern setting, with the fact that the elites of the world are – no matter their “color” – an oppressive majority of males. The male dominance is not only a “cultural trait” as it is one of applying a simple rule of power – those hoe have power will not give it up for free. Concentrated power is limited – the more you share the less you have and the elites of the World will not relinquish power for women.

The relationship of power between men and women needs to transcend race and class in other to be effective. Although one could argue that this is just another classist plot of the bourgeois to keep their economic rule over the working class, it is very interesting to notice that misogynist thinking is part (in different levels) of a multitude of cultures, even before they got in contact with each other. ‘Primitive’ societies had their good share of misogyny – they were hardly the utopia that certain people picture them to be. The dominant gender in our societies has been exploiting women’s work and women in general for millennia after millennia. Sexism is not a capitalist invention. It is not accident that the bourgeoisie power is composed essentially of males, this is merely a consequence of the fact that even when the class struggle between the nobility and the bourgeois aristocrats was being fought, in one thing they agreed – that was a fight between men, to see which men was going to be the ruler. It is obvious then why the views of women like Olympe de Gouges were so threatening to them that she was guillotined in 1793 as a reactionary loyalist. Robespierre, Marat and the men of the Revolution were most certainly terrified of losing their power to a woman who advocated not only the necessity of full legal equality between the genders, job opportunities for women, schooling for girls and the creation of a national theater were only plays written by women could be performed, but the creation of the National Assembly of Women, emphasizing the need for women of self-governing and equal power.

Gouges understood that – because the culture of sexism – a structure that “embraced” men and women as “equals” would do nothing to actually satisfy women’s need and desire for liberation. It would be a token act. The need of self-organization for women came from the realization that in a social structure, every single relationship is one of power, and if men constructed the social structure, it would be inherently sexist. Only women could devise a structure that would really beneficiate women.

Sexism always had a condescending tone to its rhetoric, a view that men’s subjugation of women was actually a necessity for the welfare of women. What is interesting is that this view is deeply ingrained in the social fabric of our society, and too ensure this, it is necessary that all men participate consciously or unconsciously in terrorizing women – much like the State, the function of manhood is to terrify women into accepting men’s ‘protection’ for the price of their total submission. As Susan Brownmiller puts it, rape “is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” Domestic violence, violence against women and rape are forms of intimidation and bullying through which, firstly, male dominance is imposed, and second, male ‘protection’ is made ‘necessary.’ Culture reinforces the dominant role of the male and its ‘need’ of violence.

The cult of violent behavior by men, against women and against each other, is more than just assertion of power against the recipient of violence. It is part of the engine that feeds of the terrorizing of women to keep them submissive. Is the double use of the rod – it can beat you up or beat someone else to protect you. And, as Susan Griffin notes in the book Rape: The All-American Crime, “if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual [male], it may be mainly a quantitative difference.” The level to which dominance and violence are exerted to the domination of women may vary in quantity, but not in substance.

The idea of our social fabric reinforcing gender roles of violence/passivity is to create an atmosphere of fear so overwhelming that the mere presence of the male becomes threatening. Male attitudes – tone of voice, way of sitting, conversation, clothing – everything is designed in order to keep women guessing and consequentially, afraid. Why is it then surprising that our movement and our spaces are normally male dominated if why do not critically analyze the balance of power in the attitudes and presence of men and women inside the movement.

A woman in a room full of men, no matter how strong, outspoken and determined she is, and no matter how much the men are determined to treat her as an equal – is definitively in a position of less power and thus will not have the same weight in her voice. And with the institutions are not conscious of this power imbalance and do not work actively in reverting this situation – the maintenance of the status quo is inevitable.

The oppression of women by the working class males is a phenomenon that can be traced back to almost every single culture. To see the feminist struggle as separate and a “division of forces” of the working class is a ludicrous statement – a reflection of a poor understanding of the nature of oppression and the nature of the working class.

Indeed, to separate these three fights is to divide the working class, but to set priority in any of them and have the others as a tag along is to destroy any hopes of liberation that the working class might have.

The gender-based oppression serves a political purpose too. It serves the elites that women have no political power for the same reason that it serves the elites that people of color do not enjoy political power. There is, however, a difference between the gender elite and the elite of color. The male-dominated elite of color is, globally speaking, fairly stronger and definitively more aggressive in its pursuit of power than the gender-elite. The gender-elite lives in a much more subordinate position (to their male counterparts) than the elite of color – thus putting them in a closer position with the women of the working class. An abused woman will identify with the plight of another one – independent of class or race; a queer person can identify with persecution and prejudice.

It is however, very important to notice that, empathy and de facto equality are a far cry from each other, and while the bourgeois women might have in common with the working-class women their subordinate position, they are enemies of class and therefore not allies.

Conclusion

The union of the working class in one fight will not happen without the acknowledgement of the levels of oppression inside the working class itself and the actual facing and destroying of the power imbalance in the movement that proposes to change the reality of oppression lived by the working class nowadays. A forced union of the working class, with disregard of the real issues of gender and race except in a superficial way is bound to fail.

A world revolution is necessary – a complete change of structure, a social, economic and political revolution that destroys class, gender and racial oppression.

I disagree with the idea that the class struggle should take priority over the race and gender struggle. This centralist and elitist view of disregarding the concerns of women and people of color have been seen thousands of times before, and we have been betrayed and stomped on enough to realize that those with power will not relinquish it, it must be taken from them. Only the oppressed can liberate the oppressed, and it is vital that we understand people of color, women, queers and all the other oppressed people inside the working class have not only this motto repeated in their heads like a mantra, but that they actually need to exercise that line inside the movement and draw their own conclusions of where they want to go and what needs to be done.

I too disagree with the idea that race and gender should be taken a priority over the class struggle – the simple idea that race and gender issues could be solved inside the capitalist system in any frame is simply ludicrous. Inside the capitalist system, we have no real say in the affairs of business and very little (in the most optimistic of the views) in the affairs of the government. A feminist or a race movement that did not have as priority to smash the capitalist system would fall sort on its legs – gender and race justice are impossible inside the capitalist system. The capitalist system is not only a system based on class dominance, but one too that maintain women and people of color inside that class and oppressed inside of it.

The means must be coherent with the ends. A movement that disregards any of the oppression-systems is bound to be limited and to create a society based on elitism. Unless the movement is committed to be one that will be addressing those three issues seriously and not sidestepping it with “we are all equal” condescending behavior, its range is going to be limited and it will turn off people that see themselves as not only working-class, but feel other pressing form of oppression crushing them.

It is time to reevaluate the movements approach on issues of race, gender and sexuality – it is good to see there is a movement of people already working in that direction. It is time for us to have a revolution in ourselves to change our perception on what a real liberation of the people means.

I see their faces – their smiling brown faces – and there is nothing of me in there. We shall build a different world.

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