Poet’s Corner
By Zach | November 18, 2011
An unsolicited poem was sent to us by Benjamin B. I haven’t a clue what our friend is referring to here. But it’s just too good not to share:
PUT A FORK IN OCCUPY OAKLAND
occupy oakland you broke my heart
i tried to love you from the start
this is not egypt or arab spring
in california we need our own thing
parents, teachers and working types
not those anarcho-libertarians on bikes
thank you black block
for spoiling the fun
narcissistic time and again
yes you’re the ones
food not bombs and ak press
destroyed occupy oakland and created this mess
The bizarre verse was accompanied by this even stranger cartoon. It’s horrifying with all the literature produced and distributed by AK Press that Benjamin and Andy Singer can still be this ignorant.
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On #Occupy: Max Rameau on Occupation and Liberation
By kate | November 17, 2011
I first met Max Rameau, lead organizer of the Take Back the Land occupation of a vacant lot in Miami which would become known as the Umoja Village Shantytown, in 2009 at the City from Below conference in Baltimore, which I helped to organize. I remain as impressed with Max now as I was then — he is an incredible strategist, nuanced, balanced, and thoroughly radical. AK Press will publish his second book (which lays out the movement-building strategy of Take Back the Land) in 2012, and what it book it will be! In between writing chapters of the book, though, over the last few months, he has been engaged in strategic thinking, dialogue and planning with Occupy movements in Miami, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Wall Street. This article is part of a series in which Max explores the potential for movement building within the Occupy movements. A preview of a book to come … Originally published on the Organizing Upgrade site (READ THIS FULL PIECE ON ORGANIZINGUPGRADE.ORG).
Occupy to Liberate: Connecting #occupy to land liberation and eviction defense
By Max Rameau
The last few years have been hard for us: record foreclosures, high unemployment, drastic cuts in social services, and government actively doing the bidding of big business at the expense of regular people.
With a combination of bewilderment and frustration, concerned global citizens had asked one question over and again: when and where are people in the US going to rise up and take to the streets?
Turns out, the answer was September 17, 2011 on Wall Street.
Of course, for all it’s simplicity and elegance, that answer is not entirely accurate. Communities of color, albeit in smaller numbers and with less media, have taken to the streets for years around issues of police brutality and the impacts of the economic crisis, particularly gentrification, foreclosures and evictions.
Since 2007, The Take Back the Land movement has identified vacant government owned and foreclosed homes and “liberated” them by breaking in and transforming vacant houses into homes for families. Our objective is to transform land relationships to secure community control over land and elevate housing to the level of a human right. With the crisis deepening, many more organizations are liberating land or waging eviction defenses with increased success.
This one grand crisis, then, has elicited two very different responses, each strong and each relevant to its core constituency. With the combination of low-income communities of color and working and middle class whites taking to the streets, this society is on the cusp of a major social movement, the likes of which have not been experienced in the U.S. in more than a generation.
Far from homogeneous, this budding movement is evolving towards parallel, but interrelated campaign tracks: #Occupy and Liberate. The two look similar in many regards, but are distinguished by three important characteristics: composition, primary frame, and target/base.
1. Composition. #Occupy has mobilized mainly, though not exclusively, disaffected young and impacted working and middle class whites. Liberate is mainly low and middle income people of color.
2. Primary Frame. #Occupy’s primary frame is the economic system and the injustice it produces. Liberate frames issues in terms of land control and use (such as housing, farming and public space);
3. Target/Base. #Occupy targets those symbols, institutions and persons responsible for perpetrating the economic crisis–the 1%–through the “occupation” of public and private spaces, most notably New York’s financial district, the Oakland seaport and individual bank branches. Liberate’s base are the victims of the crisis, who are protected via land liberation and eviction defense.
Social movements are not single celled creatures on a linear path, but dynamic complex organisms with multiple moving parts, each responsible for a different series of tasks. Such a division of labor must be understood, appreciated and fully embraced. This movement is a complex organism with two tracks, and each track performs unique and critical functions.
Two intractable images of the housing crisis include the banks responsible for this financial mess and the homes from which families are evicted. This movement must take the fight to the banks, protesting and occupying them on their turf. Those same banks are occupying our communities, neighborhoods and homes. We must end that occupation through Liberation and eviction defense. The crisis simply cannot be resolved by choosing to fight on either one front or the other.
Not only must we both #Occupy and Liberate, but the chances of success for one-track increases exponentially with the actual success of the other. Therefore, the Occupy-Liberate dichotomy is not an antagonistic one; it is complementary.
We must occupy the 1% and liberate the 99%.
That is not the job of one organization, but the mission of everyone’s movement.
There is growing awareness of the two tracks, their characteristics, strengths and limitations. As we struggle to properly understand and define this relationship, we must resist the tendency towards two competing orientations:
The first tendency is to examine both tracks, note their size, frames and composition and conclude that each track actually represents its own separate and unique movement essentially unrelated to the other. The second, and polar opposite, tendency is to remark the similarities in approach and tactics and conclude the tracks are effectively identical and must be merged into a singular monolithic track. Both tendencies are wrong.
We must take care not to expect large numbers of Blacks, Latinos, indigenous, and other oppressed nationalities or immigrants, each with particular historic relationships to the police, to “occupy” banks and financial institutions. In fact, it is not clear that #Occupy could have succeeded if first executed by people of color. We must also resist the temptation to allow 1,000 young white kids to “occupy” historically people of color communities, still reeling from the more onerous occupation of gentrification. At the same time, we must find creative, effective and empowering ways to work together through parallel, supportive and even joint actions and campaigns.
While engaging the dual tracks in parallel actions is a prerequisite to building a holistic and powerful movement, it is not sufficient to guarantee trust and success. Two sets of actions, even during the same time frame and in the same city, will not result in an instant movement.
Forging these dual tracks into a cohesive movement with mutually supportive actions, requires at least three basic understandings:
1. Basis of unity. Why are we fighting and what are we fighting for? Do we want the same things or are we just doing the same thing in order to get to different places. What is the basis of our unity.
2. Framework of unity. How are we working together? How are decisions made? What do we do when one track disagrees with the other?
3. Next steps. What are we doing next? We propose a 2012 Spring Offensive.
We must Occupy to Liberate.
Max Rameau is a Haitian born Pan-African theorist, campaign strategist, organizer and author. He is one of the founding members of the Take Back the Land movement and is currently with Movement Catalyst, a movement support organization, providing campaign development and other support to social justice organizations. You can find his first book, Take Back the Land, at AK Press Distro.
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Friends of the Imagination, UNITE!
By kate | November 8, 2011
A new call to action from our surrealist comrades in Chicago and elsewhere. Please circulate widely!
Friends of the Imagination, Unite!
The Chicago Surrealist Group and friends of the imagination everywhere stand in solidarity with the Teamster Local 814 art handlers locked out by Sotheby’s. In Sotheby’s last auction, the obscenely high prices paid for the work of surrealist artists—among others—were celebrated by the fawning press to show that all was well in the land of dollars.
Surrealism has always been an insurgent movement identified with freedom and with the emancipation of labor everywhere. The anti-worker campaigns of Sotheby’s, an auction house enjoying record sales, are of a piece with the contempt for freedom, dreams, and poetry that drives the commoditized art world. Making beauty an object of speculation, herding the ostentatious rich across picket lines to produce record sales in the hardest of times, Sotheby’s uses the terror of unemployment and the forces of law and order to bully workers.
We are not surprised by such thuggery. The relentless illogic of miserabilism makes Sotheby’s care not at all for the imagination, the labor, or even the paintings on which its profits rest. Nor are we impressed. The shows of force by the employer, and the laughable complacency of art/business reporting, represent nothing like the wave of the future.
In applauding the courageous actions of the Sotheby workers, and the ties of their struggles to Occupy Wall Street, we surrealists recognize that the triumphalist crowing of Sotheby’s and its patrons hollows out on second listen, and sounds much more like a last gasp.
And why shouldn’t it? Hanging out with millionaires and billionaires can’t be good for you. Each day a little piece of imagination withers away, acts of kindness get “lost in the shuffle,” acts of tyranny and cruelty come to the fore, until finally the equation is complete: Other people’s suffering = a larger bank account. The choice between Sotheby’s and the citizenry can be made a thousand times a day in every human action undertaken.
We fervently hope that the day is coming soon when Sotheby’s, Goldman Sachs (and all of their ilk) are recognized as the major sources of our distress. The compass wielded by the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators is pointing the way.
The Surrealist Movement in the United States
www.surrealistmovement-usa.org
November 2011
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New arrival: David Porter’s Eyes to the South
By kate | November 7, 2011
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It’s here! At 582 pages, and weighing almost 2lbs (yes, I weighed it), David Porter’s comprehensive treatment of six decades of Algerian resistance, and its tumultuous relationship with the French radical left is by far one of the most timely works of history AK has published in recent months. More on Eyes to the South: French Anarchists & Algeria
Eyes to the South explores important issues from the last six tumultuous decades of Algerian history, including French colonial rule, nationalist revolution, experiments in workers’ self-management, the rise of radical Islamist politics, an insurgent revival of traditional decentralist resistance and political structures, conflicts over cultural identity, women’s emancipation, and major “blowback” on the ex-colonial power itself. David Porter’s nuanced examination of these issues helps to clarify Algeria’s current political, economic, and social conditions, and resonates with continuing conflicts and change in Africa and the Middle East more generally. At the same time, Eyes to the South describes and analyzes the observers themselves—the various components of the French anarchist movement?and helps to clarify and enrich the discussion of issues such as national liberation, violence, revolution, the role of religion, liberal democracy, worker self-management, and collaboration with statists in the broader anarchist and anti-authoritarian movements. David Porter is professor emeritus at SUNY/Empire State College, where he taught politics and history, including courses on modern Algeria. He is the editor of Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution and an analyst of the recent “leaderless revolutions” of the Middle East and North Africa. Sylvain Boulouque is a historian and author of Les anarchistes franais face aux guerres coloniales (1945–1962).
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“It’s outrageous that someone could be held for so long for something they did not do”
By kate | November 4, 2011
Dominque Stevenson, co-author with Eddie Conway of Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther, speaks out about Eddie’s case, the history of the Panthers, and the continuing struggle against government repression of black activists in the United States. Thanks to Let’s Get Free for this amazing video in support of Eddie’s case. For those who don’t know, Eddie had a parole hearing at the Maryland State Department of Corrections on November 1, 2011. The results of that hearing have yet to be released. Send all of your positive thoughts his way!
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On #Occupy: Margaret Killjoy on the Oakland General Strike
By AK Press | November 3, 2011
AK’s Oakland crew was excited to see our friend & AK author Margaret Killjoy (editor of Mythmakers and Lawbreakers, and author of the new choose-your-own adventure novel What Lies Beneath the Clock Tower) in the streets alongside us at yesterday’s general strike. Margaret posted one of the earliest and most hopeful reports on the events of yesterday on birdsbeforethestorm.net, and we asked for permission to repost it here. Be sure to visit Margaret’s blog to see more excellent images of the strike.
The Oakland General Strike
Reflections from Margaret Killjoy
Holy shit.
More things will be confirmed later, and i’ll post more photos ASAP, but I just want to get my thoughts down about today while they’re fresh.
I arrived in Oscar Grant Plaza a bit after 9am. On some level, it felt like any big, NGO-sponsored demonstration: a sound truck, portapotties, people under canopies promoting whatever this-or-that cause. And then I remembered: this wasn’t a top-down organized event. This wasn’t something that we requested from the authorities. This was something we organized ourselves, for us. This was was held on occupied (actually, “liberated” feels the better term) territory. The only reason we have Occupy Oakland is because the authorities are afraid of what will happen if they try to take it from us again.
The first march was at 10 and I think there were 2,000-5,000 people on it… it stretched for blocks. We checked in with the nearby banks: yup, they were closed for the day. I doubt that was because they support the occupy movement. We went back to the plaza and a huge banner went up: “Long Live The Oakland Commune” on one side, “death to capitalism” on the other. Thousands and thousands of people from all walks of life, none of whom expressed any qualms at the concept of the Oakland Commune or “death to capitalism.” Another march at 12 left the plaza and visited some further off banks, forcing them with out presence to end business for the day. Some climbers with gear went up lightposts and set up an “occupy the banks” banner that lasted hours at least.
At 2pm the anti-capitalist march headed out. The march was led by a black bloc of most likely at least a hundred, mixed into a larger masked/militant contingent of another few hundred and probably around a thousand to two thousand people overall. Of course, the numbers fluctuated greatly during the march. It went back up to visit the banks, but several of the banks lost their windows. Whole Foods, perhaps in response to a reported threat from management to fire any worker who joined the strike, had its facade redecorated with paint.
Immediately after the property destruction began, the debate raged: was this okay? Did this represent “us”? The only violence I personally witnessed was perpetrated by people screaming “non-violence” who attempted to hurt people who had just defaced property, but it was clear that the march was of two minds. Still, when a group tried to split the march (“non-violent go this way, violent go that way”) they were met by apathy and abandoned their plans. What was fascinating to me, though, was I encountered at least as many non-masked participants who were enamored–or even participating–in the destruction than those who felt alienated or betrayed. One man I saw, shouting into the broken windows of (I believe it was) Bank of America at the bankers on the inside: “Do you hear us now? We tried everything: we wrote letters, we signed petitions, we protested, and you didn’t listen. Did you hear that though? Do you hear us now?”
The march returned to Oscar Grant Plaza and the most beautiful part of the day began. There were two marches, one at 4pm and one at 5pm, down to the port of oakland. Longshoremen are unionized but the terms of their contract prohibit striking. Yet they are allowed to feel “unsafe” crossing a picket line and not work, so when they feel the need to strike, they require others to come down and set up picket lines. We obliged.
And interestingly enough, dozens of longshoremen (out of a workforce of around 300) refused work this morning regardless.
I joined the 5pm march and marched into one of the most beautiful l things I’ve ever encountered. The space, miles and miles long, was entirely flooded with people. The cops say 7,000. One journalist I spoke to estimated 100,000. I personally want to say 20,000-50,000 people. People were climbing on trains, trucks, traffic signals… anything. Everyone was festive, there were bands playing everywhere. People of all walks of life, of all ages and races and sexualities and ableness were represented that I saw. Oakland represented, and Oakland represented hard. Tens of thousands of people engaged in a direct action.
By shutting down the city, we’ve expressed to the government, the corporations, to the world, to each other: we are the ones in control. It is we the workers who made this world. It is ours. We have only to reclaim it from those who seek to control us.
I mean none of this hyperbolically. I’ve been a part of demonstrations across the US and much of the “western” world and I’ve rarely felt anything like this: the feeling that we can win this. That people are sick of being mistreated. That we will rise like lions after slumber.
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Angela Davis & Eric Stanley on Captive Genders!
By Suzanne | November 3, 2011
Check out this video of Angela Davis and Eric Stanley’s recent talk at Penn, on Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex and the connections between queer liberation and prison abolition. For those of you who haven’t been lucky enough to catch Eric and other contributors on the recent book tour, this is your lucky day!
Thanks to ReThinkingQueer for filming, and for posting the talk.
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AK Press on STRIKE!
By AK Press | November 1, 2011
You guessed it! AK Press is all out for tomorrow’s General Strike called by the Occupy Oakland General Assembly. We were there in the wee and late hours on October 25th and we’ll be out on November 2nd.
And keep an eye on the AK Press Tactical Media portion of our blog. We’ve already made one pamphlet available and will be adding more throughout the coming weeks. Pass around the link and print out the downloads. And stand with the growing resistance to the shameful greed of capitalism and its protector, the State.
See you in the streets!
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#Occupy: Suggested Reading from AK Press!
By Suzanne | October 31, 2011
In the spirit of the movement against corporate capitalism that’s sweeping the world (including our bases in Oakland and Baltimore), the AK Press collective has been working extra hard doing what we do best: spreading the written word about the evils of capitalism, histories of grassroots working class resistance, and the potential for truly transformative struggle.
First, the AK Press Tactical Media Squad has released a free pamphlet “Occupy the System!” which we encourage you all to read, download, reproduce, and circulate widely both online and in print. We hope the pieces in this pamphlet will be a valuable contribution to the conversations that are already happening on the ground. And this is just the first of our “Anarchy & Occupy” series—watch for more free pamphlets coming soon!
But we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the many excellent books already in our catalog that will be useful to anyone trying to make sense of what’s going on in the world right now. We’ve collected twenty of our suggestions here.
Since we’re all struggling these days (that’s part of why we’re doing this, right?), we’ve deeply discounted these titles for a limited time to make it possible for more folks to get ahold of them. But whether you buy them from us (get an extra copy to pass around your local occupation!), find them at the library, or borrow them from a friend… just have a look, and let us know if there are other titles you recommend.
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Anarchism and its Aspirations (Cindy Milstein)
Cindy gives a great “Anarchism 101″ talk, and we hear she’s been doing so at Occupy Philly! For those of you in other cities, this book is an easy introduction for anyone in your circles who may be curious about, but wary of, the A-word. Includes a great take on direct democracy, which is an essential component of the #Occupy movement.
Direct Action: An Ethnography (David Graeber)
David Graeber has been right in the middle of the action at Wall Street, and doing some excellent writing about movement and strategy. This book, which Graeber wrote as a “participant-observer” in the Quebec City protests of 2011, serves as a window into the social movement cultures, models, and processes that are now very much in the public eye.
Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States (Edited by Team Colors Collective)
This collection is a great reminder that we’re all in this together—with a wide range of pieces on current activity, organizing, and ideas from all over the U.S. Includes lots of useful thought on the strategy and theory behind our actions, as well as some enlightening reflections from movement elders.
Revolt and Crisis in Greece: Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come (Edited by Antonis Vradis & Dimitris Dalakoglou)
Let’s learn from Greece’s experiences, history, and theory, and make this a true worldwide movement. This book allows us to compare and contrast our specific political and economic situations with the ones in Greece, and draw conclusions applicable to our own “antagonist” movement.
Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (Ben Dangl)
Lessons learned in the Latin American social movements discussed in this book can be a great tool for considering the goals and strategies of our movements in the U.S. today, including their relationship with State power. Author Ben Dangl has also written on the connections between #Occupy and Argentina. The book also considers movements in Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and more.
Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to Now (Edited by Josh MacPhee & Dara Greenwald)
#Occupy movements have already been producing some amazing artwork (such as the image by Favianna Rodriguez shown above, and these other downloadable graphics available on the Justseeds blog). Today’s political posters and graphics draw inspiration from the rich history of movement artwork cataloged in this book. If you’re a movement artist, you need to see this stuff—it will blow your mind (in a good way).
The Conquest of Bread (Peter Kropotkin)
What Kropotkin lays out here is his idea of the most rational, equitable way of meeting human needs—call him utopian, we call him a visionary. In any case, at a time when a small minority of individuals controls the vast majority of wealth and resources, we can all probably learn something from this anarchist classic.
Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader (Edited by Chris Wilbert & Damian F. White)
As we think about how we would ideally like to organize society (now that we know it’s really up to us!), thinkers like Colin Ward can be quite a help. His work goes into everything from urban planning to education to housing, all from an anarchist point of view, at the same time practical and inspiring.
Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, CounterPower Vol. 1 (Michael Schmidt & Lucien van der Walt)
This book looks at class struggle anarchism and its impact on popular struggles worldwide over the last 150 years. Might be a valuable resource for anyone looking to dig a little deeper into the class politics inherent in the #Occupy movement, and anyone thinking about how anarchist theory and praxis fits in.
Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America (Louis Adamic)
The fight between the “99%” and the “1%” is nothing new, even though the numbers may have changed over time. This is a classic account of workers’ struggles, “by any means necessary,” of workers, from immigrant laborers to the CIO, who had exhausted peaceful means in their fight for recognition and justice.
Come Hell or High Water: A Handbook on Collective Process Gone Awry (Delfina Vannucci & Richard Singer)
Whether you’re new to collective process or so old-school that you twinkle in your sleep, you know that those General Assemblies can bring out the best and worst aspects of directly democratic group decision-making. This book is a helpful resource, not to mention that the cartoons will make you laugh out loud.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years (David Graeber)
Another one from David Graeber—his latest lays out the history of debt, how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy. Want to make sense of how we got to where we are, or think through the implications of debt forgiveness as a solution to financial crisis? This will help.
Wall Street: How It Works and For Whom (Doug Henwood)
Okay, so this book was written back when it was still possible for anyone to claim capitalism was “working.” But Doug Henwood has been critical all along, and this book remains a clear and biting overview of how the stock market, big banks, and high finance function. And it anticipates a great stock market crash… oops, guess Wall Street should have listened.
Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown (Max Rameau)
The #Occupy movement is partly about taking space, so it makes sense to learn from land and housing struggles such as the Take Back the Land movement. At Occupy Baltimore, we were lucky enough to have Max Rameau come out and make this connections explicitly. For the rest of you, here’s his book!
Revolt on Goose Island: The Chicago Factory Takeover, and What It Says About the Economic Crisis (Kari Lydersen)
In 2008, days after getting a government bailout, the Bank of America shut down a line of credit that was keeping the Republic Windows & Doors factory operating. The workers, laid off with no notice, took over their factory and refused to leave. We can all learn something from these workers’ victory.
The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know (Michael D. Yates & Fred Magdoff)
This book calls the economic crisis what it is: the expected outcome of a destructive system. Capitalism, when it functions correctly, is based on the exploitation of the majority by a tiny minority in control of business interests. This is why it’s impossible to fight “the 1%” without fighting capitalism itself.
The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (Fred Magdoff & John Bellamy Foster)
Another analysis of the current economic crisis, this book looks at the vicious economic cycle we find ourselves in: financial “bubbles” are our means of overcoming stagnation, but they inevitably burst, bringing economic problems back to the surface, which are in turn countered with bigger bubbles…
Field Guide to the U.S Economy: A Compact And Irreverent Guide To Economic Life In America (Jonathan Teller-Elsberg, Nancy Folbre, & James Heintz)
Easy-to-read (and with cartoons on every page), this is sort of an “economics for dummies” from a progressive angle. It covers everything from workers to welfare, education, health, the prison-industrial complex, and many more hot-button issues. Get a bit of background on how economics plays out in many aspects of life.
Field Guide to the Global Economy (John Cavanagh & Sarah Anderson)
A great companion for the U.S. Field Guide, and in a similar easy-to-follow format, this one is international in scope—covering multinational corporations, outsourcing, labor, treaties and trade, and international institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. Capitalism is a global problem.
Parecon: Life After Capitalism (Michael Albert)
Here’s just one stab at answering that ever-present question: “What do we want?” You can use this as a jumping-off point to thinking about the the many ways of doing economics outside of capitalism. For more on participatory economics, check out Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century.
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The Long Shadow of Algeria on the Arab Autumn
By AK Press | October 28, 2011
A new essay from David Porter, author of AK’s forthcoming book Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria. Order your copy today at a 25% discount, it ships from the printer November 4th!
The Long Shadow of Algeria on the Arab Autumn
While Tunisia had its first post-“revolution” election on October 23rd and Egypt will follow on November 28th, an infamous, but relevant, date in Algerian history is also rapidly approaching. January 11th will be the 20th anniversary of the military coup that cancelled elections and Algeria’s earlier “Arab Spring” and began the 1990s “bloody decade” of military/Islamist civil war. Though no two contexts will have identical sets and balances of social/political forces, even in a limited geographical area such as North Africa, the dynamics of Algeria’s experience of “political liberalization” from two decades ago offer useful lessons for Arab Spring countries of the present.
Indeed, probably the biggest single (but not exclusive) reason why Algeria did not join Tunisia and Egypt during the last few months in escalating large-scale mass challenges to its own authoritarian regime was precisely the fact that Algerians went through an apparently similar process from 1988 to 1991―with a horrendous outcome of violence in the 1990s. Civilians not participating in the military/Islamist civil war suffered by far the greatest casualties out of the estimated total of some 200,000 dead, many tens of thousands wounded and some 20,000 “disappeared.” By comparison, such numbers dwarf the casualty rates seen to date in Tunisia, Egypt and even Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.
Over the summer of 1988, thousands of factory workers in an industrial suburb of Algiers and others across the country went out on anti-austerity strikes, defying the neo-liberal regime itself. Two weeks later, in early October, following the precedent of earlier huge urban insurgencies several years before in Constantine, Setif, Algiers and Oran, young Algerians began massive street challenges with demonstrations and riots in the center of Algeria’s capital, Algiers. Motivated by much the same set of factors articulated last Spring in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world, young people felt completely marginalized by the regime―politically, economically and socially.
The political realm was closed off to meaningful grassroots participation and had been since the early years of independence in 1962. Unemployment among younger people (about 3/4 of Algerians were under 35 years old) was astronomical and the large gap between wealthy leaders/ beneficiaries of the military-controlled regime and the great majority without connections was all the more accentuated by austerity measures imposed on Algeria by the IMF and World Bank. Continued scarcity in housing forced youths to remain in tight living quarters with their families, unbearably restricting opportunity for their own social independence. Continual police harassment only added further insult. Algeria was perceived by a large percentage of its youth as a complete dead-end, a constant provocation.
All of this sounds familiar to those who followed closely the grievances of those in the streets of central Tunis or those in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. In the Algiers demonstrations of 1988, just as last Spring in Tunis and Cairo, political Islamists joined in within several days and experienced, with non-Islamists, the massacre of hundreds and massive arrests at the hands of the police and military.
Following intense popular outcries against such repression, the Algerian regime of President Chadli announced major political reforms―apparently aiming to appease the population and further facilitate economic liberalization. From early 1989 through late 1991, Algeria experienced its freest political context since independence―as some now call it, “Algeria’s parentheses democracy.” A new constitution authorized the legal appearance of old and new political parties to oppose the previous monopoly of the FLN. Also permitted were a variety of new newspapers, publishing houses, autonomous trade unions and other “civil society” organizations.
Even more than the longtime oppositional and popular moderate socialist FFS party, it was a new Islamist party, the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) that benefited the most. Bringing together various strands of Islamist activists―previously banned from open political activity, the FIS articulated and mobilized oppositional momentum through religious appeals and grassroots social support among long-suffering and previously voiceless constituents.
Algerian political Islamism had gradually gained political sophistication and growing strength from the 1960s on―in part because, for many, it seemed the only possible oppositional outlet (after all, mosques could not all be closed). In part, the movement gained as well from the regime’s continuous appeasement with measures such as a retrograde Family Code, Arabization in education, the import of hundreds of Muslim teachers from the Middle East and the building of a huge number of new mosques. Political Islamists were also emboldened by Islamist regime changes in Iran and later in Afghanistan. Municipal elections were scheduled for 1990 and national legislative elections for the following year.
This is roughly the point at which both Tunisia and Egypt find themselves today. Following large grassroots insurgencies that forced out long-time dictators and gained promises of political reform (while leaving much of the old regime in place), secular activists now confront growing, newly-legalized Islamist political parties. Elections in Tunisia and Egypt offer a public measure of Islamists’ relative strength. In both countries, as earlier in Algeria, rapid organizational momentum assures for Islamists in both countries a major political role―as already demonstrated in their plurality victory in Tunisia.
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