Engaging our values, choosing our freedom
By Kermit

I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that I choose to value and what those values actually look like as they interact with each other in my life. Ideally, the things I believe in are not like objects that I acquire, and set on a shelf, but things that I continue to pick up, turn over in my hands and engage with in some meaningful way.

Too often it seems like shared aesthetic tastes become a kind of shorthand for shared values. Rather than getting to know the people that we interact with, we rely on superficial codes to identify allies. The world that we want to live in often becomes defined as one that looks like our vision, rather than one that feels like our truth. It is easy to understand the appeal. When we express ourselves with the same language and interact in a similar cultural mode it is easier to avoid conflict on the surface of things. This is helpful on days when it is all we can do to put one foot in front of the other. The problem is that it is also easier to avoid the passion and processing that is attached to conflict, to decide that it is not possible to find a point of connection with those whose words and actions trigger us.

When we assume that someone else's truth should look like ours, we become grotesque -- we begin to build a system of morality that separates 'right thinking' people from 'wrong headed' ones and inhibits our ability to understand people who are not like us. This is true among conservatives and reactionaries, but it is also true in radical circles. The vast majority of mass social movements, whether political or religious, have worked to deny or minimize facts that don't conform to their Truth. The channels of power put in place to do this, no matter how well intentioned, almost always lead to abuse and the dehumanization of people defined as enemies. When we state, as radicals or anarchists, that we want to create a better world, free from domination, and begin to build an aesthetic vision of what that world looks like, we run the risk of falling into the same trap.

If everyone in the world decided to become like-minded in regard to revolution, or pacifism, or anarchy, or whatever else is held up as 'the way', but the quality of their relationships and the way that they interact with and use power in their daily lives remained the same, the world would only be made duller and more grey. Trying to think intentionally about the essential elements of my values while continuing to grapple with and reassess them as I grow helps me focus on my goals and build relationships and structures in my life to support those goals in ways that are not loaded with aesthetic judgement.

FREEDOM

One of the values that I think about a lot is freedom. So many people use this word in so many different ways that it's meaning tends to fall apart when you look at it directly. One of the ways that I think about freedom is in terms of the autonomy each individual should have to construct/conduct their life as they see fit; that there is no right way to be in the world and that no person's reality is more valid than anyone else's. The implication of this statement is anarchy -- it is what gives people the strength to cast off the bonds of received knowledge and defy power hierarchies that do not acknowledge their own humanity. It also means that I am not able to stand unreservedly behind a unified vision of a revolutionary society. If I believe that there is no one right way to be in the world, then no program or plan can be applied to all people.

Another definition of freedom that I find compelling is the existentialist view of freedom as an internal process connected to choice, responsibility and passionate engagement. Choice, here, is not the choice between products or political leaders, but choosing how we react emotionally to the world. We exercise our freedom when we choose how we are going to react to and be a part of the situations that occur in our lives, most of which lie outside our ability to control. This allows one to claim their freedom and embody it as they negotiate and create systems of meaning in the world, rather than to view freedom as a state that is to be achieved only in some distant future, after irksome struggles. Taking responsibility for these choices makes one aware of their own power. It is not something that can be done for the sake of others, or for all time, but that must be claimed and maintained by each person as they make their way through the world.

The ramifications of radical autonomy are not safe or easy, they are at the heart of what people fear about anarchy. Without rules and powerful hierarchies looking out for society, what prevents everything from just falling apart? What will compel people to recognize any responsibility to themselves and others? For me, the answer is obvious, and grows out of the way that I think about the nature of my relationships.

RELATIONSHIPS

At the heart of feeling alive and engaged with the world is feeling connected to oneself and to others. When I decided to become a radical and build my life in an unconventional way in order to escape the quiet desperation that I associated with a conventional life, I thought, on some unconscious level, that changing what my life physically looked like was equivalent to changing the way that I emotionally engaged with the world. What I discovered was that even though I had found people whose lives more or less matched the broad strokes in my mind, I was still aching for a life I was not living. What I ached for was easy intimacy and shared trust, the ability for two people to expose a bit of their vulnerability to each other and come away stronger from the experience.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in a community with other wingnuts and radicals, and sometimes a similar aesthetic can lubricate the process of building intimacy, it's just that the emotional work of building sustainable intimate relationships is hard, even with people who dress and act and talk like me, and it is possible, even with people who don't.

Often, political identities encourage people to ignore the health of their relationships. By shifting our focus to things very large and removed from our reality, political discourse runs the risk of allowing us an excuse to neglect the responsibility we have to be present in our own lives. If we are constantly aware of the abuse of governmental power but are unable to approach or confront the way that power operates in our relationships with the people we love, how are we ever going to be able to create beautiful realities in the lives we have been given? If people you know and are connected to began to heal themselves and learned how to talk to each other -- about power and pain, passion and death -- and became confident and aware of the ways in which their words, actions, and relationships shape the world they end up living in, how much more vibrant and less despairing would your existence be?

The charm of authoritarian systems is often in their ability to act as a surrogate for real connectedness. They pacify people by giving them simple answers and something they can easily hold on to. The ugliness of these systems is that they require shutting down our ability to recognize the humanity of people whose truth differs from the one we have connected ourselves to. Building substantial relationships in our lives that are based on trust and maintained through a mutual understanding of each other's particular truth gives people a sense of security that is certainly more appealing to me than anything authoritarianism has to offer.

CONCLUSION

Having a sense of yourself and your own power, as well as the ways that you depend, in so many ways, on your connections to others is not about the music you listen to, the food you eat, how you dress, or how you dress your children. I believe that people best relate to one another when they can see their own humanity reflected in the other person. This is not saying that everybody is really the same, but that no one is wholly 'other'. A direct implication of this is that I put much more stock into trying to understand how another person sees their world than I do in categorizing people. I deeply question whether the model of identity is the best way for people to talk about their differences and similarities; it can often obscure more than it clarifies. Only by placing ourselves firmly in our bodies right now and taking responsibility for our power and our freedom, even when that process is painful, or seems impossible, are we ever going to create engaged communities of strong and beautiful people who are connected to each other in healthy ways. The trick, for me, is figuring out how to be in deeply intimate networks of relationships with people while still maintaining an individual sense of freedom, finding a way to hold autonomy and mutual aid in my hands at the same time without reeling from the cognitive dissonance.

Source: http://slingshot.tao.ca/displaybi.php?0099002

B is for Bourgeoisie!

Bourgeoisie
or, the Tyranny of the Hair Dryer
[adapted from George Orwell's Homage to Catatonia]

From Crimethinc's Days of War, Nights of Love

Does your father drift from one hobby to another, fruitlessly seeking a meaningful way to spend the little "leisure time" he gets off from work? Does your mother endlessly redecorate the house, going from one room to the next until she can start over at the beginning again? Do you agonize constantly over your future, as if there was some kind of track laid out ahead you—and the world would end if you turned off of it? If the answer to these questions is yes, it sounds like you're in the clutches of the bourgeoisie, the last barbarians on earth.

The Martial Law of Public Opinion
Public opinion is an absolute value to the bourgeois man and woman because they know they are living in a herd: a herd of scared animals, that will turn on anyone it doesn't recognize as its own. They shiver in fear as they ponder what "the neighbors" will think of their son's new hairstyle. They plot ways to seem even more normal than their friends and coworkers. They don't dare fail to turn on their lawn sprinklers or dress appropriately for "casual Fridays" at the office. Anything that could drag them out of their routines is viewed as suspect at best. Love and lust are both diseases, possibly fatal, as are all the other passions that could drive one to do things that would result in expulsion from the flock. Keep them quarantined to secret affairs and teenage dates, to night clubs and strip clubs—for God's sake, don't contaminate the rest of us. Go wild when "your" football team wins a game, drink yourself into oblivion when the weekend comes, rent obscene movies if you have to, but don't you dare sing or run or make love out here. Under no circumstances admit to feeling anything that doesn't belong in the staff room or at the dinner party. Under no conditions admit to wanting anything more or different than what "everyone else" wants, whatever and whoever that might be.

And of course their children have learned this, too. Even after the death matches of the grade school nightmare, even among the most rebellious and radical of the nonconformists, the same rules are in place: don't confuse anybody as to where you stand. Don't use the wrong signifiers or subscribe to the wrong codes. Don't dance when you're supposed to be posing, don't speak when you're supposed to be dancing, don't mess with the genre or the moves. Make sure you have enough money to participate in the various rituals. To keep your identity intact, make it clear which subcultures and styles you're aligned to, which bands and fashions and politics you want to be associated with. You wouldn't dare risk your identity, would you?

That's your character armor, your only protection against certain death at the hands of your friends. Without an identity, without borders to define the edges of your self, you'd just dissolve into the void... wouldn't you?

conform EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T SEE ANY people AROUND YOU. THE ONE YOU DON'T SEE MIGHT HIT YOU.
WHEN YOU ARE detached DECISIONS ARE SLOWER AND HARDER TO MAKE.
GOOD JUDGEMENT IS NOTHING MORE THAN compliance

The Generation Gap
The older generations of the bourgeoisie have nothing to offer the younger ones because they have nothing in the first place. All their standards are hollow, all of their riches are consolation prizes, not one of their values contains any reference to real joy or fulfillment. Their children sense this, and rebel accordingly, whenever they can get away with it. The ones that don't have already been beaten into terrified submission.

So how has bourgeois society continued to perpetuate itself through so many generations? By absorbing this rebellion as a part of the natural life cycle. Because every child rebels as soon as she is old enough to have a sense of self at all, this rebellion is presented as an integral part of adolescence—and thus the woman who wants to continue her rebellion into adulthood is made to feel that she is insisting on remaining a child forever. It's worth pointing out that a brief survey of other cultures and peoples will reveal that this "adolescent rebellion" is not inevitable or "natural."

This perpetual rebellion of the youth also creates deep gulfs between different generations of the bourgeoisie, which play a crucial role in maintaining the existence of the bourgeoisie as such. Because the adults always seem to be the enforcers of the status quo, and the youth do not have the perspective yet to see that their rebellion has also been absorbed into that status quo, generation after generation of young people are able to make the mistake of identifying older people themselves as the source of their misfortunes rather than realizing that these misfortunes are the result of a larger system of misery. They grow older and become bourgeois adults themselves, unable to recognize that they are merely replacing their former enemies, and still unable to bridge the so-called generation gap to learn from people of other age groups... let alone establish some kind of unified resistance with them. Thus the different generations of the bourgeoisie, while seemingly fighting amongst themselves, work together harmoniously as components of the larger social machine to ensure maximum alienation for all.

The Myth of the Mainstream
The bourgeois man depends upon the existence of a mythical mainstream to justify his way of life. He needs this mainstream because his social instincts are skewed in the same way his conception of democracy is: he thinks that whatever the majority is, wants, does, must be right. Nothing could be more terrifying to him than this new development, which he is beginning to sense today: that there no longer is a majority, if there ever was.

Our society is so fragmented, so diverse, that at this point it is absurd to speak of a "mainstream." This is a myth partly created by the anonymity of our cities. Almost everyone one passes on the street is a stranger: one mentally relegates these anonymous figures to the faceless mass one calls the mainstream, to which one attributes whatever properties one thinks of strangers as possessing (for the smug salesman, they all envy him for being even more respectable than they are; for the insecure bohemian rebel, they must disapprove of him for not being like they all are).

They must be part of the silent majority, that invisible force that makes everything the way it is; one assumes that they are the same "normal people" seen in television commercials. But the fact is, of course, that those commercials refer to an unattainable ideal, in order to keep everyone feeling left out and insufficient. The "mainstream" is analogous to this ideal, as it keeps everyone in line without ever actually making an appearance, and possesses the same degree of reality as the perfect family in the toothpaste advertisement.

No one worries more about this absent mass than the bohemian children of the bourgeoisie. They bicker over how to orchestrate their protests to gain "mass appeal" for their radical ideas, as if there still was a mass to appeal to! Their society is now made up of many communities, and the only question is which communities they should approach... and dressing "nice," proper language and all, is probably not the best way to appeal to the most potentially revolutionary elements of their society. In the last analysis, the so-called "mainstream" audience most of them imagine they are dressing up for at their demonstrations and political events is probably just the spectre of their bourgeois parents, engraved deep in their collective unconscious (collective psychosis?) as a symbol of the adolescent insecurity and guilt they never got over. They would do better to cut their ties to the bourgeoisie entirely by feeling free to act, look, and speak in whatever ways are pleasurable, no matter who is watching—even when they are trying to advance some political cause: for no political objective reached by activists in camouflage could be more important than beginning the struggle towards a world in which people will not have to disguise themselves to be taken seriously.

This is not to pardon those insecure bohemians who use their activism not as a means of building ties with others, but rather as a way to set themselves apart: in their desperation to purchase an identity for themselves, they believe they must pay for it by defining themselves against others. You can recognize them by their self-righteousness, their pompous show of ideological certainty, the ostentatious way they declare themselves "activists" at every opportunity. Political "activism" is almost exclusively their sphere, today, and "exclusive" is the key word... until this changes, the world will not.

Marriage... and Other Substitutes for Love and Community
Reproduction is a big issue for the bourgeois man and woman. They can only have children under very precise circumstances; anything else is "irresponsible," "unwise," "a poor decision for the future." They must be prepared to give up every last vestige of their youthful, selfish freedom to have children, for the mobility their corporations demand and the strain of vicious competition have destroyed the community network that long ago used to share the labor of child-rearing. Now every family unit is a tiny military outpost, closed and locked to the outside world both in their hearts and in the paranoia-turned-city-planning of their suburbs, each one an isolated emotional economy to itself where scarcity is the key word. The father and mother must abandon their selves for the prescribed roles of care-giver and bread-winner, for in the bourgeois world there is no other way to provide for the child. Thus the bourgeois couple's own fertility has been made a threat to their freedom, and a natural part of human life has become a social control mechanism.

Marriage and the "nuclear family" (the atomized family?) as chain gang have survived as a result of this calamity, much to the misfortune of potential lovers everywhere. For as the young adventurer, who keeps her lusts strong and her appetite whetted with constant danger and solitude, knows well, love and sexual desire cannot survive overexposure—especially in the dull and lifeless settings that most married partners share time. The bourgeois husband sees the only lover he is permitted under only the worst possible circumstances: after every other force in his world has had the chance to exhaust and infuriate him for the day. The bourgeois wife learns to punish and ignore as "unrealistic" and "impractical" her every desire for romance, spontaneity, wonder. Together, they live in a hell of unfulfillment. What they need is a real community of caring people around them, so parenthood would not force them into unwanted "respectability," so they would still be free to have the individual adventures they need to keep their time together sweet, so they would never find themselves so lost and desperately lonely.

In just the same way, their steady supply of food, of conveniences, comforts, and diversions avail them not. For as every hitchhiker, every hero, every terrorist knows, these things gain their value through their absence, and can offer real joy only as luxuries happened upon in the pursuit of something greater. Constant access to sex, food, warmth, and shelter desensitize a man to the very pleasures they afford. The bourgeois man has given up his chance to pursue real stakes in life for the assurance that he will have these amenities and securities; but without real stakes in his life, these can offer him no more real joy than the company of his fellow prisoners.

The Joys of Surrogate Living!
You can take a quick tour of all the unacted desires of the bourgeois man just by turning on his television or stepping into one of his movie theaters. He spends as much of his time as he can in these various virtual realities because he instinctively feels that they can offer him more excitement and satisfaction than the real world. The saddest part is that, so long as he remains bourgeois, this may actually be true. And as long as he accepts the displacement of his desires into the marketplace by paying for imitations of their fulfillment, he will be trapped in the empty role that is himself.

These desires are not always pretty to see played out in Technicolor and SurroundSound: the bourgeois man's dreams and appetites are as infected by the fetishization of power and control as his society is. The closest he seems to be able to offer to an expression of free, liberated desire is the fantasy of all-consuming destruction that appears again and again at the black heart of his wildest cinematic fever dreams. This makes sense enough—after all, in a world of nothing but strip malls and theme parks, what honest thing is there to do but destroy?

The bourgeois man is not equipped to view his desires as anything but unfortunate weaknesses to be fended off with placebos, because his life has never been about the pursuit of pleasure—he has spent several centuries achieving higher and higher standards of survival, at the cost of everything else. Tonight he sits in his living room surrounded by computers, can openers, radar detectors, home entertainment systems, novelty ties, microwave dinners, and cellular phones, with no idea what went wrong.

The bourgeois man is only possible by virtue of the blinders he wears that prevent him from imagining that any other way of life is possible. As far as he can tell, everyone from the impoverished migrant workers of his own nation to the monks of Tibet would be bourgeois too, if only they could afford it. He does his damnedest to maintain these illusions; without them, he would have to face the fact that he has thrown his life away for nothing.

The bourgeois man is not an individual. He is not a real person (although if he was, he would probably live in Connecticut). He is a cancer inside all of us. He can now be cured.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Days_of_War,_Nights_of_Love/B"
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The High Cost of Living

The High Cost of Living
by Ima Gardener

NBC's “Today Show” about a woman who dies, untreated, on an Emergency Room floor while others watch. Matt Lauer simply sighs, shakes his head and resumes business as usual. (Youtube link)

This is a secret transmission from one human heart to another, from one soul to another, from one human being to another. Human to human, heart to heart. It is an appeal for you to feel with your heart rather than ignore it. To see through the lens of shared experience, empathy and compassion rather than bitterness, resentment and apathy.

I write to you now with a busted leg. I'm not entirely sure what is wrong with it but I haven't been able to walk in three days. I have been unable to leave my small apartment, to work or do any chores. Since I am unable to walk I am essentially helpless to take care of myself. Three days ago I fell wrong on my knee and there was a loud popping sound and a wave of excruciating pain—from this I have guessed that I have a sprain, perhaps a second degree sprain or a third degree sprain. That means that one of my ligaments is either partially or totally torn; an extraordinarily uncomfortable experience which rendered my leg totally useless for all intents and purposes. Without proper medical care, which may include a cast or even surgery, I may not be able to walk correctly for months to come or even for the rest of my life. It's an injury that was entirely a freak accident and it could happen to anyone, even you. It could happen at any time, when riding a bike, walking or playing with friends. It is only a small example of all the possible misfortunes that can strike any one of us at any moment—a problem which is very easy to fix and yet, if untreated, could have repercussions for the rest of your life. I am lucky, however. I did not cut an artery or break a bone (to the best of my knowledge); I did not have the type of accident where I would die quickly if it was left untreated. Those types of accidents are very possible for all of us, too.

Unlike millions of Americans I actually have some health insurance. The problem is that I have the lowest and cheapest health insurance available, as it is all I can afford. After calling literally dozens of hospitals and doctors in my area (all of whom asked for my health insurance information before even asking my name) I found that my best option was to wait weeks. This would be a serious problem for anybody with any level of insurance. Even "Walk-In" clinics are so full that you would be lucky to be treated the same day you needed help. But my real problem is more common: though I have a low co-pay for a doctor's visit, I will have to pay up to $1500 out of my own pocket to get an x-ray or MRI. $1500, even $300 or $200, is an unacceptably high amount of money for me to pay. The economy is down and we're all living more hand to mouth now. It would be better for me to not get the x-ray and hope that my leg heals without knowing exactly what is wrong with it on the inside. In a single moment my life may have been changed forever... at this point I am not sure, but the social and political issues surrounding this are clearer than ever for me. And they can be for you, too, if you just use your imagination and think about yourself in a situation perhaps different than your own. Perhaps it isn't different at all, and what is happening to me is exactly what will happen to you. And what is happening to me is far better than what has happened to literally millions of human beings in this country. Human beings with souls, who laugh and cry and love and hate just like you. Human beings who are just like you.

We have to ask ourselves—right now—whether this is something we find acceptable or not. Each one of us has helped build a national wealth that is almost unparalleled in the world, and yet we all exist under the threat of illness or injury that is too expensive for us. As a society we have put price tags on human beings, an action which is, in every religious and/or ethical thought process, evil and wrong. We call ourselves a Christian nation and yet we act in the most singularly un-Christian ways humanly possible.

We have two options: either we work extremely hard and wash the best years of our lives down the drain to help build a wealth and a society which does not care for us and only cares about the bottom line or we don't. We either contribute to a system of violence and negligence—a cold, beurocratic monolith which truly serves only the interests of a sickeningly small minority of people, or we don't. Either we scramble after as much money as we can in an attempt to have the best health insurance possible, playing along with a system which is damaging to that very same health, our psychological wellbeing, our emotional wellbeing, our environment, and our friends and loved ones, or we don't. Either we sell our souls to the All-Mighty Dollar Bill and literally BUY IN to the factory death machines, the war machines, the exploitation and rape of the earth and its inhabitants, or we don't.

The wealth of this nation is huge—think of it as a huge mountain of gold. Each one of us has slaved away in our jobs, whether they are retail or manufacturing, small business or corporate... we have all worked so hard and so long to build this capital, this huge mountain of gold. But then, when we need a little of that gold to mend our broken wings we are refused, because, though we have worked so long and so hard at such great sacrifice to ourselves and others, it does not, in the end, belong to us. It belongs to less than 3% of the population of this nation. The rest of us are out in the cold; confused, frustrated and scared. And in this society we were all born afraid—and with only one solution: work! Work, work, work!

This reality is so clear but so few of us can clearly see it. We have so many distractions... so many flashing screens and unrealistic desires. Though our society and our lives are exactly what we make of them—they are external projections of our internal states. Do we accept the evidence we see around us? The preventable death, the preventable suffering, all of it unnecessary? Do we accept those things as who we are? Because we are all causing them.

And many of us are actually Christian, or at least consider ourselves to be. Or we are Hindu, or we are Muslim, or we are Buddhist. Has any of our religious icons, our spiritual leaders, our moral examples... would any of them--Christ, Krishna, Shiva, Muhammad, Buddha—would a single one of them have turned someone back who needed help? Did Christ ask for payment before healing the blind? Did Buddha require a subscription fee before helping others ease their own suffering (his only solution to ending personal suffering is compassion, by the way)?

Is this the society that you want? Are these the forces and pressures that you would choose to bear down on you? We have all been hoodwinked... we've been told that this is the only way it can happen when in reality we are choosing for it to happen and are empowering it. And that mountain of gold still exists, and we continue to shovel money into other people's pockets, even when we ourselves are faced with a medical situation which could potentially alter our end our lives forever.

Now we have this new president. A young, black man which promises change along true ethical and moral grounds. But what will change? Will the Free Trade Agreements be repealed, ending the sufferings of untold millions across the world, including small children worked to death in sweatshops? Will we actually find ourselves free from the constant stress of our own health, knowing that our work will come back to us and our communal efforts as a society will work for us instead of against us? What change will we actually see? What moral standard is actually going to be applied? A human standard, which takes into account every preventable case of suffering? Or a standard which still allows for the greed and exploitation on behalf of the elite owner class? Obama is a symbol which has placated the masses and we will see no substantial change.

But how will you feel when you have a leg which no longer works and the future is uncertain? When you aren't even sure if you'll be able to walk correctly again? Will the same cynicism that you wrap around the suffering of others consume your own situation? Will you say about yourself, “That lazy (insert racial, sexist or class slur here) should just work harder” about your own self? Or, when it's your life and happiness at stake, will it seem totally different to you? Will you see that your work and effort did indeed go out into the world only to be grabbed and held greedily in other people's bank accounts as opposed to coming back to you in the form of health care services? Though you manufactured the doctor's equipment or sold him his food, will he return his services to you? Though the poor was used to grow and pick his food, a thing necessary for his survival, will he help them with their survival? Even though both are being paid, is it truly fair? And, if you were to truly face judgment, how would you be judged? Will you plead with God and use the Nuremberg Defense? Will you try to explain to God that you were only following orders or that you did the best you could for yourself though you knew millions were dying? Though you believe that Christ died for your sins, do you really believe that that means God doesn't care if you DO sin?

Or are you too concerned about right now to do anything, too busy working every single day, to notice? So eager to relax during your two days of rest a week (if you're lucky) that you drown your woes in alcohol desperately searching for this mysterious concept called “fun”? You can't be bothered with this all right now, you have accepted this as a “kill or be killed” world of haves and have-nots. What greater sickness could possibly afflict your soul?

The stock market is down, the recession is deepening, and even now, after all our work, all of our decades and centuries of work, there are so many poor and dying human beings in our own country. What, after all, did we believe we were working for? Have we collectively put in so much effort to see so much misery in the world? This country was called a “Great Experiment.” When will we step back and assess the results of this capitalist experiment? If we're all going to be working so hard anyway, why not be working for something rather than so eagerly putting in such effort towards digging our own graves?

It's all quite possible that my leg will be fine. I simply don't know. But even if my leg completely heals, or your leg completely heals and we are OK for now, does that change any of these questions, really?

We need to think about more fundamental issues and stop living hypocritically if we are to live with any meaning at all and cease our mindless marching towards oblivion.

Towards a non-violent society: a position paper on anarchism, social change and Food Not Bombs

by Chris Crass
[the following is an excerpt. here is the full essay.]

Anarchism and Non-Violence:
There have been many concerns raised about whether or not anarchism and non-violence are compatible. We argue that anarchism and non-violence are inseparable.

First, let us look at the historic role of the state. Christopher Day, of the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, writes: "The state - by which we mean the police, the army, the prisons, the courts, the various government bureaucracies, legislative and executive bodies - is the enforcer and regulator of authoritarian rule. The state maintains a monopoly on organized legal violence." Day writes further, "The state has always been an instrument of war. It is impossible to conceive of a society without war in a society still dominated by states."

In the Food Not Bombs book Feeding the Hungry and Building Community, it is explained that, "The name Food Not Bombs states our most fundamental principle; society needs to promote life, not death. Our society condones, and even promotes violence and domination. Authority and power are derived from the threat and use of violence."

The state and correspondingly capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy, concentrate power into the hands of the few, which systematically denies power to the majority of humanity. The denial of power over ones own life contributes to the violence that permeates day to day life. Violence happens in hundreds of different ways, everyday, as a result of this system of inequality. Whether it comes through rent, food with pesticides and price tags that hide the damages done to workers, taxes, jobs working to make someone else rich, malnutrition, police sweeps of homeless people, forced sterilization of women of color, social exclusion of poor people, and the list goes on.

So what is the connection between anarchism and non-violence? We must recover the long history of anarchist resistance and movement that has existed, and we will find that in fact anarchism and the struggle for a non-violent world have a long history.

In her study Native[born] American Anarchism, written in 1932, Eunice Schuster discusses the profound influence Henry David Thoreau had on the development of civil disobedience, calling him, "not only an anarchist in thought, but also in action." Thoreau's act of civil disobedience during the US war with Mexico has forever influenced the theory and practice of non-violence.
Leo Tolstoy took notice of Thoreau, and was developing his own ideas of non-violence. Robert L. Holmes, in his book Non-Violence In Theory and Practice, writes, "Tolstoy pursued this understanding of Christianity to what he saw as its logical conclusion: the rejection not only of the organized violence of war but also of the institutionalized violence of government itself, which makes war possible."

In the introduction of the book, Government is Violence: essays on Anarchism and Pacifism by Leo Tolstoy, it is written, "Tolstoy's suggested means of attaining anarchy were those that have now become well known as civil disobedience and non-violent direct action... Tolstoy advocates unbending moral resistance to authority."

Gandhi writes of Tolstoy in his autobiography, "It was forty years ago, when I was passing through a severe crisis of skepticism and doubt that I came across Tolstoy's book, The Kingdom of God is Within You, and was deeply impressed by it. I was at that time a believer in violence. Its reading cured me of my skepticism and made me a firm believer in ahimsa(non-violence)... He was the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced".

Anarchist ideas also influenced Gandhi's ideas about the future society. In the book Gandhi Today, Mark Shepard explains, "India could become strong and healthy, Gandhi insisted, only by revitalizing its villages, where over four-fifths of its people lived - a figure that still applies today. He envisioned a society of strong villages, each one politically autonomous and economically self-reliant. In fact, Gandhi may be this century's greatest proponent of decentralism - basing economic and political power at the local level."

After Gandhi was assassinated, the person who was known as "Gandhi's spiritual heir", Vinoba Bhave led several major campaigns to reclaim land for the poor. In 1951 Bhave and the many workers from Sarva Seva Sangh (Society for the Service of All), started the Bhoodon (land gift) movement. Many felt that Bhave was a saint in the Hindu tradition, and so when he began walking across the country asking for acres of land from landowners, he received land gifts, which were then given to the poor. One and one third million acres, according to Shepard, were actual reclaimed by the poor (far more than had been managed by the land reform programs of India's government). Bhave was involved with other projects and campaigns to bring about the "non-violent revolution". Bhave was an anarchist.

The United States has a long tradition of non-violent anarchism. One of the first groups was the New England Non-Resistance Society that denounced government, capital punishment, war, and inequality as inconsistent with Christian teachings. The Society, that included William Lloyd Garrison, was heavily involved with the abolitionist movement that struggled to end slavery in the United States.

When the United States entered World War I, anarchists were at the forefront of the anti-war movement. In 1916 Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and others organized the No Conscription League. They organized rallies, protests, and marches. They issued a manifesto which read, "The No Conscription League has been formed for the purpose of encouraging conscientious objectors to affirm their liberty of conscience and to make their objection to human slaughter effective by refusing to participate in the killing of their fellow men". Berkman and Goldman were arrested for violating the Selective Draft Act. One of the first prosecutions under the Espionage Act, passed in 1918 making anti-war literature illegal, was against a group of five anarchists, including Mollie Steimer. The group had been distributing newspapers by stuffing them in mailboxes at night, and had written up leaflets against the draft. One of the defendants, Jacob Schwartz never made it to trial. He had been beaten so badly by the police during interrogations, that he had to be taken to the hospital, were he died. The group were all found guilty, and were eventually deported to Russia in 1921 for their anti-war activities.

There were others protesting the war, one of them was Dorothy Day. Day along with Peter Maurin, founded the Catholic Worker movement. Nancy Roberts, in the anthology American Radical, writes of the CW, "[it] had a three point plan for radical social action based on Christian values. Maurin envisioned a lay, communitarian, anarchist movement offering round table discussions, forums, and lectures for 'clarification of thought,' houses of hospitality in every urban parish to feed and shelter the poor and homeless, and farming communes which would break down 'acquisitive' industrial society into manageable, organic units where worker and scholar would live and learn in a community."

Ultimately some 200 houses of hospitality were established - no one is sure exactly how many - across the world, mostly in the US The idea behind the hospitality houses is explained by Walter Brueggman as following: "Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt [of poverty and hunger] is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition of humanness." Therefore hospitality in a society structured around profit margins and individualism constituted not only resistance but also offered an alternative. On May 1st 1933, Day helped launch the Catholic Worker newspaper, which sold for a penny a copy (and is still sold for a penny). The paper always linked peace with social justice, and covered that many acts of non-violent civil disobedience committed by Catholic Worker activists and other radical to end militarism. In James Farrell's The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism, he writes that in the "Catholic Worker [newspaper] pacifism, personalism, and anarchism were front-page news, and the paper conscientiously promoted its revolution by ideas." Farrell writes that within a few years the newspapers circulation topped 100,000 and that by 1938, the print run was up to 190,000. During World War II, Day and the Catholic Worker were denounced for their pacifist stance, some activists were beaten in the street while distributing the paper.

For over fifty years Day committed her life to peace, social justice, and non-violent revolution. In their 1983 pastoral letter, US Catholic bishops indicated a historic shift in their teachings about war and peace when they wrote that pacifism is an acceptable moral and political choice for Catholics. Day was singled out along with Martin Luther King, Jr. as one who had provided "non-violent witness" that had "had a profound impact upon the life of the church in the United States."

Dorothy Day, who was once affectionately called the "Head Anarch" by an editor of the Catholic Worker, has been called the "First Lady of American Catholicism", and some are petitioning the Vatican to have her declared a saint. Anarchism in Day's words was "increased responsibility of one person to another, of the individual to the community along with a much lessened sense of obligation to or dependence on the 'distant and centralized state'".

One of the movements that has had the most impact on the United States in recent history, has been the Civil Rights movement. One of the key groups of that movement was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. The group was born out of the sit-in movement that swept across the South in 1960 protesting the apartheid segregation system of Jim Crow Laws. While SNCC never formally considered itself to be an anarchist group, it was structured on an anti-authoritarian, decentralized, radically democratic model and they used direct action in their struggle for an egalitarian society. SNCC played a crucial role in the Freedom Rides, the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign, the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that challenged the racism of the Democratic Party, and they have left a legacy of radical activism and organizing that is of paramount importance to everyone working for social change. Their style of community organizing, their emphasis on empowerment and their non-violent direct action tactics have much to offer FNB groups.

Ella Baker was the person who helped bring SNCC together and off its feet. Ella Baker had been an organizer for years with the NAACP and helped initiate and build the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of which Martin Luther King Jr. was the president. Ella Baker believed in the need for direct action and participatory democracy. She believed that successful groups must develop leadership that comes from the group, rather than groups coming around a leader: strong people don't need strong leaders. In the book, Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, Carol Mueller includes a chapter on Ella Baker and the development of participatory democracy. Mueller identifies Baker's ideas on participatory democracy as follows: 1. an appeal for grass roots involvement of people throughout society in the decisions that control their lives; 2. the minimization of hierarchy and the associated emphasis on expertise and professionalism as a basis for leadership and 3. a call for direct action as an answer to fear, alienation, and intellectual detachment." The experimentation of participatory democracy in SNCC influenced a broad range of social movements. Mueller writes that "participatory democracy and consensus decision-making ranged from the early voter registration projects of SNCC in Mississippi and Georgia, to the ERAP projects of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in the slums of Northern cities in the mid -1960s, to the consciousness raising groups of women's liberation in the late 60s and early 70s, to the affinity groups associated with the antinuclear and peace movement of the late 70s and early 80s".

In the introduction to the book, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, former SNCC member Julian Bond, looking back, writes of the group, "SNCC's young people were organized anarchists, railing against both the segregated system and the slow-but-sure legal tactics used by older organizations to bring it down... (they were rebels) against unthinking order and despotic authority."

Anarchism and a truly non-violent world are more than just compatible, they are inseparable.

While this section has discussed but a handful of people, groups, and movements, the examples from history are endless, and must be reclaimed and remembered as they offer us insight and inspiration in the struggle for a new world, today. I want to mention that I do not deny the violent moments in the history of anarchism, but they are overshadowed by the examples of revolutionary non-violent direct action; and furthermore these acts of violence must be put into the context of the time and situation so that we can understand them in relation to the institutional violence of systems that profit from human misery. We will never see peace, so long as people are denied power over their own lives.

But anarchism is so unpopular, and misunderstood:
Yes it is unpopular and most often misunderstood, but remaining silent about our politics will do nothing but strengthen the power structure. When people opposed slavery, when people have demanded equality for women and people of color, when people have organized against war, when people have struggled for better working conditions and pay, when people have stood up for their rights as human beings they have been opposed, denounced, ridiculed, attacked, slandered, imprisoned, and even murdered (as they are trying to do to Mumia Abu-Jamal now).

When we allow others to set the standard for acceptability, then it becomes unacceptable to oppose power and privilege (who do define what is acceptable). The Democrats and Republicans, the mainstream media, the corporations, and the state bombard us daily with their standards of acceptability; standards which cause suffering and misery for the bulk of humanity. Popularity by these standards is not what we should be seeking. We must break out of this straightjacketing of ideas and politics. We must define and express ourselves - with defiance for this system of oppression, and with hope for the world we long to see.

In his book, Anarchism and the Black Revolution, Lorenzo Ervin writes, "As a practical matter, Anarchist-Communists believe that we should start to build the new society now, as well as fight to crush the old Capitalist one. They wish to create non-authoritarian mutual aid organizations (for food, clothing, housing, funding for community projects and others), neighborhood assemblies and cooperatives, not affiliated with either government or business corporations, and not run for profit, but for social need. Such organizations, if built now, will provide their members with practical experience in self-management and self-sufficiency, and will decrease the dependency of people on welfare agencies and employers. In short, we can begin now to build the infrastructure for the communal society, so that people can see what they are fighting for, not just the ideas in someone's head. That is the way to freedom."

We can make the ideas of cooperation, mutual aid, solidarity, egalitarianism, and a non-violent society popular, but only through the actions we take and the politics we advance. We can win.

Compassion & confrontation - breaking the cycle of anger starts with you

By Astrogirl

I biked in Critical Mass a couple of months ago here in Berkeley, child on my back pumping my legs to Judas Priest and Iron Maiden as 35-40 of us paraded our alternative transport model around town. I was having an excellent time that within moments developed into an angry assault and an a reactionary extravaganza.

We were blocking an intersection in the heart of the Telegraph strip when an irate motorist drove head-on into three stopped bicyclists. I was witness to a driver react with rage in a physically violent manner that could have seriously injured 3 or more people who were directly impacted.

Following that I watched as a slew of people reacted violently, trying to chase down and kick the car. The group then moved on, fueled by adrenaline and anger and behaved in ways that isolated many other people who were hoping for a bike ride not a battle. In the end rather than raising awareness in the community we alienated ourselves and distorted our message.

This chain of events epitomized the lack of empathy and the disconnect between effective communication skills and political engagement. It crystallized anger as an issue of vital importance for me personally, but also as a significant issue for the larger radical community and society at large.

We should all be angry and outraged at the injustice and violence that is killing our kin as well as the ecosystem. From that anger we need to grow something useful, we need to use it as an energy source for anti-capitalist struggle. If we don't try to bring about change from a place of compassion we are only going to replicate the same dynamics as those used by our oppressors. Learning to know ourselves and to deal with our difficult emotions of despair and anger in healthy ways in combination with learning to communicate with others in emotionally responsible ways is a necessary step in creating a cohesive and positive social change movement.

This is not to say that I have always interacted in non-violent ways in my activism, nor that I am advocating non-violence as the only effective means of change. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I identified as militant and fought in front lines like we were going to have a new society tomorrow goddammit! My words were volatile, my spirit was screaming and my actions reflected this. I have no regrets. What I remember more precisely is the quality of the feeling inside of me: despair, rage, destruction, adrenaline, and idealism all mixed up in this maelstrom totally lacking self-discipline and internal balance. Coming from a place of anger fueled positive action but in many ways I blew my load everywhere, too early without much forethought. Speaking of blowing my load, let's consider gender as it stands in relation to anger.

Everyone gets angry but there are often differences in how men and women experience and manage anger. Our culture plays a major role in shaping our behaviors. An angry woman, a loud woman, an assertive woman can easily be invalidated as a crazy bitch or emotionally unstable, but a man with these same qualities is often seen as a powerful champion of an important cause. It is in line with our cultural norms for men to exhibit toughness, violent words and actions, and to seek revenge. Anger in men is often viewed as "masculine". Women often learn to internalize their anger, creating an unhealthy stew of pressure-cooked emotion that eats away at mental health and self-esteem.

In social situations such as critical mass, demonstrations, meetings, and the like it is common for men to externalize aggression while women draw back. While this is not true for every person it tends to be a common manifestation in group behavior. In ten years of activism I have seen woman after woman driven away by overbearing male figures in the movement (including myself). I have been thanked many times by women quieter than myself for being an assertive and fiery voice in situations where they felt uncomfortable or silenced.

It seems that the majority of events and actions in our radical communities that are direct action oriented are often treated as parties or opportunities for reactionary explosions. They are not strategic or thought out attempts to communicate a message or challenge the system, but the expression of feelings and ideas that have not been very well processed or articulated. If we are to educate or inspire or even dream of making a substantial dent in the system we need to start considering what that takes.

What would a less reactionary, more compassionate movement look like and what would it entail? In my vision of a more cohesive and effective movement I see people who have spent a lot of time learning to be emotionally responsible, how to communicate in non-abusive ways and how to manage conflict and stress. I see strong community support for people invested in this type of work. There would be a communal validation of our human experience as scary and confusing in a world that seems to be on the verge of collapse. It would entail individuals working very hard in support groups or with mentors to address issues of privilege, socialization and communication. It is not enough to advocate for issues that are a symptom of capitalism -- it is integral to address the deterioration of community engagement and that is directly related to the erosion of trust for one another.

What does that mean for me right now? I think a great deal about anger, my actions, thoughts and their implications. I try not to allow my anger to propel me forth into action without thought. Most importantly I aim to act out of compassion. Sometimes it's the only thing I can do to create positive change and break the cycle of violence that is consuming our lives, our society and our planet.

From: Slingshot, Summer, 2008.