Union of Arsonists: The flammable estates of the rich and the class war fires of liberation

Who says the local news is all crap these days? News Channel 3, always a shimmering example of journalistic excellence, has been kind enough to give us rich-hating anti-capitalists more kindling for the bonfires this week by offering up a guided tour of two of the most expensive homes (estates?) in the Valley.

In the photo gallery below we tour two of the most exclusive (and expensive) properties currently on the market in metro Phoenix. An eight bedroom, 12,000 square foot abode nestled on 40 acres in Paradise Valley and a 25,000 square foot villa with a bargain price of $24.9 million.

Get a look while you can at the wealth of the rich parasites that enjoy the good life while those of us down here suffer foreclosure, precarity, unwanted unemployment, soaring health care costs and repossessions, along with all manner of other humiliations from which the rich are immune. With Arizona now scoring the second highest rate of poverty in the country, it's more enraging than ever to see such opulence on open display.

Enjoy the tour. Take it all in. The 20 car garage. The acres of green grass. The huge master bedroom. Maybe make a few notes on your brief foray into the foyers of the rich and spoiled:

5 acre estate with 35,000 sq.ft.under roof & 25,000 sq.ft. ac/heated. Flooring of 6 ft. marble slabs from Italy, library with $350,000 Pierre Lange mahogany cabinetry, $1,200,000 Avia high tech security & sound equipment, a 13 seat mahogany theatre w/true movie projection & D-box chairs that move with the movie action. 2 swimming pools and 20 car garage including a $400,000 ''show garage''

I was told by someone who would know the other day that the rich and powerful in the Valley often complain that their possessions regularly get pilfered by the many workers required to maintain their irresponsible and exploitative lifestyles. Presumably the quick-handed disappear them when the owner is sunning by his Olympic-sized pool. Or perhaps they return in the summer when those with the money are safely chilling in their beach houses far from Phoenix's scorching weather. If you have more than one home, you can't be in all of them at once. That's a risk you take being rich, I suppose.


Which reminds me, did they ever catch those Paradise Valley "rock burglars"? Last I heard they had successfully managed over 300 break-ins resulting in more than ten million dollars worth of crap that rich people have being re-appropriated from the undeserving dresser drawers of the Valley's spoiled rich. It's nice to know that they get robbed, though, isn't it? Coming in through the master bedroom window, broken with a rock (hence the "rock burglars" name), is apparently the way to go according to the newspapers. There's no security system at that end of the house usually, it seems. Again, that's straight out of the papers. Hopefully it creeps those rich bastards out knowing the proles have rifled through their intimates.

Of course, getting a job working for rich people seems to work just as well as a means of procuring their stuff. Or, if you can hold your nose that long, even just getting to know them works. That was the case for antique thief Matthew Walker, who pleaded guilty this week to acquiring many of the prized possessions of the wealthy in his area simply by hanging around them so much. This guy managed to take prized heirlooms and other items passed down, like their illegitimate wealth, from one generation of rich scum to the next. Good for him. Caught now, unfortunately, but it's still more evidence that the rich are far from secure in their persons and items. When the cops came to his house and matched a stolen serial number to the 52 inch tv mounted on the wall, Walker claimed it was a set up. Nice. Fuck their tv and fuck the cops.

Those who say the luxuries enjoyed by the rich are the just reward for a life of hard work are off their rockers. One doesn't have a hard time imagining that they have never walked a thousand miles to stand on a street corner, ducking la poli-migra, and cleaning pools or mowing lawns in the blistering sun. Or tried to hold a job (which they hate anyway) while on work release from one of Sheriff Joe's gulags, suffering after work the routine indignity of waiting in line at gunpoint to sleep in the summer heat in his outdoor jail, all because Phoenix doesn't have a decent public transportation system.

Maybe they have never slaved away for nine or ten hours in a windowless call center, fielding pointless calls or following shitty leads in hopes of making the rent this month. Or maybe they've never spent ten hours in the cab of a truck passing the endless hours and miles bringing consumer goods they can't afford to the bars and restaurants of the wealthy and their even more spoiled children.

If hard work was the key to success under capitalism, the women fishing coins off dead bodies for twelve hours a day at the mouth of the Ganges River would rule the planet. Or those guys who dismantle the beached ships in Asia. They'd be everyone's boss. And don't forget those kids who rummage through the piles of the West's discarded computers for toxic metals. We'd be cleaning their Ferraris if hard work made the world go around.


Make no mistake, this is not a defense of work. Nor the alleged nobility of the small-headed, broad-shouldered laborer portrayed by communist painters in grand Soviet murals. You know, the worker works, the Party thinks. No, for sure, my sympathies are with the slackers and the shirkers. With the folks who know what "it fell off the truck" means and don't say a word to the boss. And with the ones who clock their friends in and out so they can sleep off last night's party. Long live those who still defend the siesta, sadly long ago now a Southwest memory for most of us, dominated by the boss's time clock as we are. When I worked at the post office the time clock was divided up into one hundred segments per hour instead of sixty. Want to know crazy? Try calculating your 15 minute break in 36 second segments.

Take another example: Domino's worker Jamal Thomas. A trainee for an assistant manager position, he complained that he was jumped by hoodlums outside work one night and beaten. In true corporate form, his bosses accused him of violating security protocols during his beatdown because the front door was unlocked as it took place. Broken in the brawl, Thomas's jaw was wired shut and he couldn't eat solid food or talk for six weeks. He was fired. According to his family he turned bitter at this insult. Understandably so.


But, the police say, Thomas didn't take this affront laying down. Keeping his key and his dignity, Thomas visited various Domino's locations "in uniform claiming to be a member of a secret Domino's unit that measured employee satisfaction." He was scoping out targets. Oh, the irony! And what creativity -- although surely not of the kind his bosses could appreciate. Nope, dressing up and pretending to be an employee satisfaction monitor, visiting various locations and scouting the best targets, and then setting them to the torch -- using their own pizza boxes as kindling! -- that clearly is the kind of creativity that while inspired by Domino's, can never be contained by it.

And isn't that all our experience, in a way? Because no matter how much or how well you do a job like that, your only thanks is more of the same. An assistant manager position, with the small bump in pay and the freedom to play some solitaire from time to time in the office -- that's your prize in this system. No personal development. No chance to control the real substance of your life. No choice in what you make, where you make it, when and how. No control over what's done with it. And the cherry on top is that most of what we are forced to make is crap anyhow. "Time to make the donuts", as the old commercial used to say. Always time to make the donuts. Who wants control over it anyhow? Better to burn it down. Making pizzas at Domino's can never be a fulfilling vocation. In a time of mass layoffs, is it too much to ask for meaningful unemployment?



I can remember a conversation I had -- more like an argument -- with another class war anarchist who had mistaken me for an hardcore primitivist because of a pin I was wearing. Never bothering to see the Durruti pin on the other side, he proceeded to launch into me with a tirade about the dignity of work. How pleased were the janitors he was organizing, he said, when they had finished cleaning a room! What dignity in work! What pride! Bullshit! For most of us, the only dignity at work is ending the day with some intact.

There's a saying that goes like this: "That's an idea so ridiculous only an intellectual could believe it." Well, it's the same with the organizers of the working class. The bosses are right about us. We hate work, we hate our jobs and we hate them. They are right to distrust us. Pride in work as we know it is an idea so ridiculous only a union organizer could believe it because the truth of the workweek is something quite different. Biting your tongue, hiding in the bathroom, grabbing a smoke or pretending to be doing something are the most common activities at any modern job.

Working in a call center and get hung up on? Let it hang there for a few minutes. No need to rush. Just let that dial tone ring for a bit and grab back part of your life a few minutes at a time. That's the reality. Who would want to democratize most of this? Can you imagine the drudgery of the Slurpee committee meeting at the collectivized 7-11? Surely better just to put it to the torch and be done with all illusions. No thanks, budding union bureaucrats: the arsonist is a much better shop steward these days.

And there is no escape for most of us from the drudgery of work and the liberal way it wastes our time and energies. Landlords and grocery stores, mechanics and credit card companies can be strict masters and if you can't refuse work, the best you can do is try to get the most out of it you can, for your own ends. If that's not possible, may as well burn it down. Thomas caused more than a million dollars in damage. As a point of reference, take out the mythic Vail arsons and this guy's up there with the ELF on average and maybe rivals the black bloc rampages through any number of North American streets this year, not that there's anything wrong with them. Different strokes for different folks.


It is natural for us to hate hard work (i.e., compelled work), but for the defenders of the rich, as they always do, to say that it is only hard work that separates the family living out of their car from the millionaire on the mountain is obscene. Likewise the Dominoes assistant manager from the Paradise Valley mansion. Even most the rich don't believe it. The myth of mobility and hard work isn't meant for them. Commenting on why he collaborated with Oliver Stone on his most recent remake of his classic 80's Wall Street attack movie, Anthony Scaramucci, hedge fund director and founder Skybridge Capital said, "[Oliver Stone] believes that the lower quartile of society is suffering in a megalomaniacal capitalist society — and you know, he's probably right on some of the stuff he's saying."

Which reminds me, there were two forklift drivers killed in the last two weeks in Phoenix. Crushed underneath them. This is something close to my heart, having occasion to drive a forklift at work with some regularity myself. Those things are fucking dangerous. But with the slashing of budgets and the paring of workforces, you can bet that the speedup that is work life under the new never-ending crisis is to blame. More work to be done with less workers means doing it faster, cutting corners, or not having proper assistance. Profits are up, payrolls are down, and more of us are six feet under every day. And trust me, crushed under a forklift is not a death that any of those rich bastards on the mountain will suffer, sadly.


But where are the funerals for these "heroes" of the new crisis capitalism? The people who against their will, against their health and against their human desire to be free, make this economy run, despite being largely locked out of its largess and surely denied its mansions and limos, except to clean and maintain them. Workers killed on the job for the most part are lucky to get a blurb that mentions their name in the paper if they meet their end on the clock. No funeral processions, no media helicopters hovering over cemeteries, no grieving husbands or wives. No plastic-featured anchorman breaking into our regular programming.

Not, that is, unless you are a cop worker or a soldier worker. Only the workers that protect the ruling class are worthy of mention or thanks in this country. The only exception perhaps comes from the pandering politicians in election year, hoping as they do that some of us will accept this bullshit title of "hard working American" in exchange for the acceptance of heightened social war on others, often of color, in other countries, migrants, prisoners, et cetera.

But when it comes to the cops and soldiers, we get treated to a fete fit for an angel! There is no investigation. Just how many complaints did that cop have against him? How many civilians did that soldier kill? Quite relevant and related questions these days as more and more of these fucked up veterans come back and join police forces. Once there, their violently short tempers set the tone for the rest of the force. And of course lacking entirely from public discussion when one of these killer-workers gets killed is a critical assessment of the role that cops and soldiers play in the maintenance of everyday order, itself a long, slow murder for most of us. All is forgiven and nothing is remembered when the sacrifice is for the State and Capital.

I know I'm not the only one who looks up at those houses on Camelback Mountain while driving to work and hopes for a landslide or a brushfire or, hell, a meteor strike to erase that whole disgusting scene from my view, likewise relinquishing the stranglehold they have on so many of us. Or maybe, more satisfying, for the fiery justice of a people no longer willing to be exploited, tagged, imprisoned, tracked, beaten, mocked, marginalized and pushed around just so some rich asshole can have a mountainside resort for a second or third home.

We all resist in our own small ways everyday, trying against the odds and against the reality of our no-vacation, low pay jobs, to carve out for ourselves a little bit of dignity and autonomy against a system determined to crush us or -- at best -- to throw us some crumbs if we agree to mind-numbing labor day in and day out. Assistant manager, indeed.

So thanks to Channel 3 for that kindling. Whenever I see those rich bastards and their gilded estates, it just fires me up even more. Sometimes not every article has to end with a grand philosophical point. Today I just felt like a good ol' rant was in order. Those mansions make me think of a day, hopefully not far off, when it will all explode and we'll look up to a long torchlit march up those hills and to the liberating fires of a new day, free at last from work and those who make us do it. Drinks on them in the rec rooms first, of course.

There's no immigration law like no law at all: On revolution as the necessary conclusion of the migrant movement

A tendency has emerged here in Phoenix that I find very exciting. More and more, as we resist the leftist model, so seductive to others, of building bigger and often disingenuous organizations (instead keeping our relations intimate and small scale), I have found that many of us have converged around a familiar and familial politics that is almost entirely unique in the US. With few exceptions (probably Modesto most notably), a particular strain of class war, race traitor, insurrectionist, and primitivist influenced politics has emerged here. Many anarchists in this town defy conventions, reject orthodoxy and instead take our influences based on what makes sense rather than whatever arbitrary groupings of ideas fall under what predetermined label.

Is it the hot summers? Is it the never-industrialized vastness of the ever-growing suburban wasteland? Phoenix seemed for so long to be like the universe -- vast but always somehow getting fucking bigger. A constantly growing behemoth, ever eating up more desert. Is it the proximity to the border? Is it the fact that Arizona was a segregated state? Is it the fact that you can see the horizon from anywhere in town? Or that the sun sets so brilliantly every evening? Is it because Phoenix was built on blood, for white people and to the exclusion of the native peoples who continue to make this area their home? Is it the malls that provided the plastic playgrounds of our youths? Is it the fact that almost no one living here was born here? Is it the waves of conquest, migration, dispossession and expulsion that define our history? To be from Arizona and also older than ten is a rare thing here, even in this age of economic collapse and foreclosed homes.

One author in particular who consistently writes exactly that kind of analysis publishes regularly at "Chaparral Respects No Borders". A very interesting article has recently been posted there that deserves a wide audience regarding the struggle over free movement, freedom from dislocation and, in particular, the kind of movement that we need in order to settle the questions we face. This most recent article reflects all the characteristics that I find inspiring about much of the writing coming out of Phoenix these days.

The piece uses one of my favorite techniques in writing. It takes a supposition that many people take seriously -- especially one upheld by movement leaders on all sides of an issue -- and subjects it to the real world. That is, for the sake of argument, one takes the positions of one's opposition and one's supposed allies, for instance, seriously and then kind of works backwards with it, showing weaknesses and contradictions along the way. We at PCWC are constantly keeping our eye out for contradictions, and so this approach always gets my attention.

Writing in the most recent piece, "The Best Immigration Law is No Law at All: Some thoughts on the logical conclusion for allies of undocumented migrants", the author smashes apart the presumptions of the movement liberals. The piece destroys the arguments from those that constantly push a legal framework as the solution to the question of free movement. And it lays bare the logical conclusions of those arguments, refuting the idea that the law can offer any answer to the demand of people to travel where they will, when they will. After all, law permits, it does not free: it prescribes freedom's limits. It is the enclosure to the commons.

At the same time, the piece does not spare the Right, pointing out their hypocrisy with regard to the question of class war in Mexico. The racist right in Arizona constantly demands revolution in Mexico, but will they overcome their reactionary ideology to support an anti-capitalist revolution? The forces of the Right hold sway in Mexico, so just who is the Right in the US calling to revolution? And against what? That is a dare that stands before that pathetic movement, and it's a contradiction worth pushing on since it will force them to choose between their reactionary defense of whiteness and colonialism and their supposed commitment to change in Mexico. They can't have it both ways.

The piece is firmly rooted within an anarchist analysis. It deeply calls into question the ability of the State to provide justice, as well as the alliances within movements that serve to maintain that myth. Most importantly, I think, the article recognizes the fact that it will be the people themselves who will organize themselves for their own liberation. It will not be through the hypocritical vehicle of politics that liberation will be delivered. Freedom will come when we are capable of demanding it ourselves, without the needless and regressive mediation of the state, Capital or the managerial activist left.

Read it:
The Best Immigration Law is No Law at All
Some thoughts on the logical conclusion for allies of undocumented migrants

Anarchists, students, and pissed off people come out swinging at Arpaio's ASU appearance

A handful of us from PCWC and O'odham Solidarity Across Borders, along with a couple anarchist pals, decided to hit up the protests planned against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's appearance at the downtown ASU Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The counter-protest was against the "First Amendment Forum," billed as a discussion with esteemed journalists and scholars. Arpaio was already milking it, taking another opportunity to give his usual generic "The law is the law" spiel (and all of the variations on that theme).

For everyone other than the distinguished panelists, the only free speech taking place was on stage, as there was no scheduled Q&A with the audience, and, as if to further screen dissenting views, the forum was for ASU students only. In an attempt to placate non-students the university set up a large video screen and sound system in the plaza outside of the journalism school, the screen streamed a live feed, this effort went largely unnoticed.

Admittedly our expectations for the protest were low, we arrived a little late and a small crowd of 50 surrounded a line of Phoenix police, who in turn were lined around a tiny group of anti-immigrant and pro-Arpaio demonstrators. Security was posted at the door, and organizers had given verbal commitments to respect Arpaio's freedom of speech and not disrupt the event. As one rally organizer stated in an interview with the Downtown Devil:

“We’re not going to roll out the red carpet and allow him to walk on our campus like he does in our communities,” she said.

The protesters plan to rally throughout the event but not to disrupt the conversation, Castro added.

“We are having the utmost respect as educated college students for him,” she said.

Face off! Freedom lovers argue with anti-immigrant Arpaio supporters

We were ready to abandon ship and head over to a nearby bar for some beers with comrades when it became clear that, aside from a plan some friends had to break out in song during the forum, we were trapped in another ritualized Phoenix protest. Unless... One of us took notice of open lobby and decided that if ASU would shut out those of us who were not students, or like others there who were students at one of the community colleges, or were too old, too young, or too poor, that we ought to just invite ourselves into the journalism lobby and take the damn thing over.

Anarchists taking the initiative.

We got a small crew together and entered the lobby, defying the orders of the university police, others soon followed and five bodies became thirty and then fifty, an intoxicating rush of energy followed as we screamed, clapped, and chanted "no borders, no nations, no police stations!" The lobby was packed, police officers formed a line defending the elevators and the hall to the first amendment forum, while some of the protest organizers stayed outside, but most eventually abandoned the former demonstration and came in to participate.


Inside anarchists initiated a speak out, asking anyone in the crowd with a story of racial profiling with any police agencies to come forward and share them, ten people did, including Yaqui and O'odham indigenous people. As the stories went on, a different scene played out in the First Amendment Forum, Latino student activists released a banner calling the MCSO out on racial profiling, and a group of anarchists prepared to intervene in an entirely different manner.

The lyrics sheet to Immigration Rhapsody

Back in the lobby, musicians from the The Haymarket Squares, the three piece radical bluegrass troupe, set up in the middle of the occupation and played a few songs, dancing and sing-a-longs followed.




While we partied downstairs, an affinity group put their plans into action and interrupted the Forum with their modified version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, prompting Arpaio to leave the stage. The group behind the singing has also put out a statement this week explaining their actions after there was some criticism over their use of "freedom of speech" silencing the Sheriff's voice. We at PCWC have had a good laugh at this hand wringing from these journalists, and we are so very proud of our comrades for shutting Arpaio down, we hope these escalations are a sign to come for those in the valley fighting for the freedom of movement for all.

Check out the video below from ASU's student news service, it's one of the few media outlets to acknowledge the lobby take over.

Protesters against Arpaio at the Cronkite School from Downtown Devil on Vimeo.

Phoenix: Where Anarchists Pack Heat and Send Nazis Packing

by Crudo
Special to Phoenix Class War Council

“Okay, you’re a goon, but what’s a goon to a goblin?” – Lil Wayne

As I looked out from my appropriated aviator Forever 21 sunglasses – I won’t lie, I felt a little uneasy. “That’s a big group,” I thought, as a motley crew of mostly large men carrying American and swastika flags began to goosestep my way. On closer inspection, I realized that the large group that looked to be about 100, was in fact, mostly police. This of course didn’t make me feel any less uneasy…

So here I was, on the front line prepared to throw down against the “National Socialist Movement,” a political party that wants a fascist all-white America. The NSM has attempted to take over from where George Rockwell’s American Nazi Party left off in the 1960’s, and attempts to be a force within the White Nationalist movement as it continues to splinter, fracture, and die. I came to Phoenix hoping that the $180 greyhound bus ticket and the 18 hour ride sitting next to a bathroom door that continued to open (despite the ever so delicately placed blue tape over it) and smell the entire room up with rotten piss, would be worth it. It was – and the success of the confrontational and militant actions on the 7th brings up several things that anarchists everywhere can learn from.



Inglourious Basterds

Several weeks ago, a flyer started circulating on the internet produced by the Phoenix Class War Council (PCWC – say it like, Pee Cee Dub Cee) that encouraged people to confront the NSM at their scheduled rally on November 7th at the Arizona state capital in Phoenix. The flyer included an image from the popular new movie Inglourious Basterds, in which an elite group of American Jewish service men in WW II brutally track down and kill nazis in Europe. The looming showdown of anarchists and nazis created quite a large buzz on the internet, getting coverage on several news sites, in the New Times (the major alternative Phoenix newspaper), as well as being picked up by some of the major Libertarian websites. The call to confront the NSM was followed by a well written piece entitled, “The NSM Offers Nothing for the Working Class but more Exploitation and Misery,” also posted on the PCWC blog and across the internet. The text argued an anarchist critique of the NSM and white supremacy, which was presented as a cross class alliance between working class whites and white elites that breaks up the unity of the working class and hindering possible united class action.

The media and internet was abuzz, and the fascists were stating in the press that they would being out 200 people for their “America First” rally, highlighting their opposition to “illegal immigration.” The stage was set for a showdown on Saturday – with only one side coming out on top.



Desert of the Real

Phoenix is a city divided by race politics and the immigration issue. Unlike many cities on the coast, while a left wing is present in the city, it also boasts strong Libertarian and Constitutionalist scenes, which holds a sizeable influence. Struggles against speed cameras for instance which ticket people for driving over the speed limit, have been headed largely by Libertarian type groups. This context makes organizing in Phoenix for anarchists quite different than say the bay area of California.

Probably the man that everyone has the biggest bone to pick with in town is Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has served as Sheriff since 1993. People fucking hate this guy. You see it on t-shirts, in the newspapers, and in the streets. Sheriff Joe has gained so much scorn because of his ‘tough on immigrants’ stance and his harsh management of prisoners. Under federal law 287(g), which gives Sheriff Joe and his deputies the ability to deport people, raids in the area have broken up families and displaced working class people from their means of existence and their loved ones. But while Sheriff Joe has been going after immigrants, Phoenix in the last few years has been the playground of groups like the Minutemen. One of the figures to emerge from this movement, and also known to hob nob with Sheriff Joe and State Senator Russell Pearce, is former Maricopa County Republican precinct committeeman, J.T. Ready – who also just happens to be a supporter of the National Socialist Movement.

J.T. Ready first started getting heat for his after hours fascist activity when photos of him at a National Socialist Movement rally surfaced in 2007 and Ready started handing out anti-Semitic and racist texts at the office. Ready was fired after the embarrassment hit the papers and his Republican bosses buckled, but he continued to be a fixture in the local political landscape. In the days leading up the NSM demo, Ready appeared on several television stations, claiming that while he was not a member of the NSM, (which is interesting because his license plate read “NSM USA”), he supports the NSM because it is a “white civil rights organization.” While J.T. Ready has been pushed out of most of the Nativist movement, he still has been welcomed with open arms by many within the far right of Phoenix, and even spoke at Tea Party rally on July 4th. The ability of very vocal neo-nazis to exist within the Arizona anti-immigrant and far right movement shows the degree in which racist ideas have a sea to swim in.



Reich Here, Reich Now?

With their nazi uniforms and flags, the NSM will appear laughable to many people. Despite this, it is worth while to look at them, their ideas, and their strategy. What becomes clear after watching videos online and sifting through NSM texts and literature, is that the NSM has become very media savvy after so much time in the spotlight. Getting time in the media is perhaps one of the only things that the NSM is able to do well – since the whole website designing, video making, and general writing thing ain’t going to well for them! The NSM knows how to work the media, because they are able to walk a line where they refer to themselves as “white nationalists” and “national socialists,” not “nazis” or “supremacists,” terms which they shy away from, and call themselves a “civil rights organization.” They are not “racist,” they are simply “pro-white.” All this is while they parade through the streets with stickers against “spics,” screaming “ZEEK-HAIL!,” and carrying Nazi flags. The media of course, does not call the NSM out on this and seems to take their claims at face value often – however it is clear to anyone who studies the NSM that they are through and through a racist organization. So, while the whole nazi dress up thing gives the NSM the ability to make the press come to them, at the same time they must hide and dodge everything that makes them and their politics who they are. They are a living contradiction and know it and must constantly duck from the genocidal and racist nature of their political ideology. Their strategy in doing these little rallies of theirs seems to simply be to get their name out in the media – hoping that in doing so people will come to them and their movement will grow. In coming to Phoenix, the NSM hoped to make links with the anti-immigrant movement and build their influence outside of the skinhead and white power subculture – an effort that failed horribly on their part.

Image problems aside, a quick read through the NSM positions on their website tells a different story than the simple ‘merica lovers the NSM would like to portray themselves as. While the NSM states that they are “against illegal immigration,” they state clearly in their “25 Points of American National Socialism” that they are against any non-white migration into the United States. Once their party gains power they propose, they will then begin deporting all non-White people and Jews back to their original counties of origin, “peacefully or by force.” Being that the NSM couldn’t even get more than 40 people to show up to their rally (even after they bussed people in from out of state), I have serious doubts if they posses the organizational skills required to carry out such an operation!

As for all the “pro-white working class” rhetoric that the NSM pumps out, they are clear enemies to all working people: black, white, brown, and everything else. According to our would be fuhers, they want to do away with all “Marxist” trade unions, (by that I suppose they mean the ones that exist now?), and force workers to belong to National Socialist ones, ie, unions run by the state. While the NSM promotes a beefed up welfare state (money for schools and health care – not for Jews!), the NSM are not enemies of capitalism. Breathe easy big wigs and fat cats! In fact, despite all their attacks on “communists,” the NSM are bigger fans of the “nationalization” of major corporations than any Obamaites and probably most trustifarian college Trotskyist grad students that you’ll ever met! That’s right, in the state capitalist future of the NSM, you’ll work for a state run corporation, belong to a state run union, and live under the “unconditional authority of [a] political central parliament over the entire nation and its organizations.” Feel like a wage slave now? You ain’t seen nothing yet!

But that’s not all! In order to make sure that the white people who don’t get herded off into camps for having a Mexicano boyfriend or owning a copy of a Howard Zinn book don’t get any big ideas, they’re also going to control everything you read, see, and say! As the NSM wrote, they want their new government to “[Stop] the publishing of papers which are not conducive to the national welfare...We demand the legal prosecution of all those tendencies in art and literature which corrupt our national life, and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand.” All of this of course means total political control, all run by the NSM political elites, which equates to a massive political and military hierarchy that can only be protected and backed up by an extensive police state and massive violence. For all their talk of destroying the “evil empire” of “the jews,” the NSM would replace the very real power of the upper class with their own ruling class.

Let’s go over this again, shall we? Under American National Socialism, you’re still a wage slave. You still will pay rent. You still will pay for things that you and other workers create at work. You still live in a class society of property owners and wage workers – only now, many of those property owners are now part of the government! You don’t work for private businesses, you work for state run corporations. You can’t participate in unions except ones that are run by the state. And, if you happen to have the hots for the foxy Korean woman down the street or happen to peep a gay porn website – you’re fucked! Be careful what you say and write as well, or the all-powerful NSM cadre just might pay you a visit. Despite the NSM’s standard line that they simply want to pressure politicians in the US to “put America first” and “end illegal immigration,” the NSM’s positions are very clear. They want a more bureaucratic and totalitarian version of the modern capitalist system. Think China but totally racist. Furthermore – their movement offers nothing for working people. Why drive across two states to a shitty rally with 30 other people who will probably be locked up for selling meth next week, when multi racial groups of workers are taking action all the time to actually better their conditions? For instance, the workers at the Republic Windows and Glass factory who occupied it together and won back their wages and benefits. I’d rather have ferrets dipped in Tapatio fight in my pants while I stand in line at the DMV than live in the America that the National Socialist Movement wants, but apparently a small amount of people would disagree with me – there in lies the conflict.



“IF YOU WANT BEEF THEN BRING THA RUCKUS – PHX AIN’T NUTHIN TA FUCK WITH!”

On November 7th, the anarchists of Arizona, made up of groups from Phoenix, Flagstaff, and elsewhere, numbered between 150-200. The coordination that allowed this to happen was in thanks larger to state wide gatherings that have been organized for several months. Joining the anarchists were Libertarian activists from various groups, as well as various veterans, leftists, queer folks, and Chicano activists. Another large contingent was Native youth, especially from the O’odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective, which was out in force as well as young people from various reservations across Arizona. Carrying huge banners that read, “THIS IS ANTI-FACISM: No States, No Borders,” and “No Foreclosures, No Deportations! Round Up Nazis Not Immigrants!,” and black flags, anarchists were clearly the largest group in vocal opposition. Most of the crowd wore black and covered their faces with masks. At this stand off, anarchists did several things right; firstly, they stayed ahead of the Nazis, and were able to physically attack them with rocks and paint bombs and did not allow the police to arrest anyone. Instead of physically being directly across form the Nazis, the anarchists tried to stay ahead of them in order to try and get into the street and confront them directly.

When the NSM group came up to where the anarchists where, police quickly moved them onto the side of the streets and kept the two sides from getting into the street. Several bottles where thrown at this point. The nazis then moved onto their rally site after having marched from their parking space a couple of blocks away. Hardly anyone was on the street at this point other than police, nazis, and anarchists. Anarchists made several attempts to get in the street and go at the nazis, but police on horses did there damnest to make sure we would not have the streets. After the nazis had gotten to their rally point, police at first attempted to separate everyone from their rally, which was simply held on the grass of the state capital (not on the steps like rallies in other states). This lasted for about 5 minutes, before people as a group said fuck that and rushed “the stage.” At this point police formed a line between the anarchists and the nazis, while brave souls threw rocks and paint bombs. Anarchists were able to use their large banners to create barriers between the prying eyes of the police and the large stones that littered the Phoenix ground and soon found themselves flying through the air. The NSM quickly responded by getting their “shield team” up in front, in an effort to deflect any projectiles on the leadership cadre. Despite the police presence that numbered at about 100, we should also keep in mind that comrades doing surveillance away from the rally also saw undercover SWAT team vehicles, filled with highly armed police that were ready and stomp anyone into the ground if a riot erupted. Even if we could have rolled on the nazis, we must keep in mind that the state holds much bigger guns.

The greatest irony of the NSM rally was that there was no one at the capital! They spoke to no one outside of those who heard their message through the media. The anarchists who surrounded them were so loud that they could barely even be heard. The speakers on the mike also spent most of their time calling the counter-protesters “faggots” and “jews” that they didn’t really have any time to address anything else. The police quickly had enough, and an hour and a half before they had to leave, the police made them take off and walked them back to their cars. Along the way, anarchists again attempted to get in the street and made several attempts to create barricades but quick police response resulted in botched attempts and several near arrests. Quick action by comrades however resulted in freedom for those grabbed by the police – as anarchists pulled their friends back and de-arrested them. The nazis, over half of which were from out of state (lots of Texas plates), got back in their cars and headed out. As we walked back to our cars, someone pulled up and screamed, “The nazis just got into a car accident and they’re outside of McDonalds!” We rushed to the scene to find a speaker for the NSM with a broken leg. Stephen Lemons of the New Times, wrote:

“The only casualty for the NSMers came as a result of their own error, when they caused an accident at 7th Avenue and Van Buren in one of the rental cars they left in after the demo. An unidentified Nazi was rushed away in an ambulance for an injury to his leg. Phoenix Police Sgt. Brian Murray confirmed at the scene that the accident was the fault of the Nazis, whose small white car collided with a large red truck.

None of the Nazis were taken into custody, though the truck's driver was arrested for not having I.D. and proof of insurance. Murray said the arrested driver would be ticketed and released as long as he had no outstanding warrants. The driver of the Nazi car was ticketed as well, but according to NSM spokesman Charles Wilson, the Nazi wheel man refused to sign the citation. Wilson later blamed the accident on the police, saying the cops were supposed to have kept the street clear for the Nazis' exit.”

Probably the best scene of the whole day was when workers at the stores next to the accident came out and laughed at the nazis as they drove away surrounded by police and people in cars passed by laughing their asses off. While the nazis did some salutes to the anarchists laughing across the street, people in cars were heard to be screaming, “Karma’s a bitch! Hahahaha!”



Stay Strapped

Anarchists carried at this event. Meaning: ANARCHISTS HAD GUNS! Out in the open, and it was legal. That’s right, it’s not just nazis and anti-immigrant types who are packing now at protests, it’s our side. In Arizona, it’s legal to openly carry firearms as long as your weapon is legally yours. This is the first time I have physically seen anarchists at demonstrations carry firearms with them – and I have to say that the experience was very empowering to see. Those in states with similar laws should considering getting firearms and doing the same if possible. This is not me fetishizing armed struggle or guns; the way forward is collective action by working people in their workplaces, communities, and the streets. But, if we are going to go up against people like the NSM, we should be prepared to defend ourselves especially if we can avoid legal risks while openly carrying weapons. It should be noted that members of the NSM have been seen carrying weapons while counter protesting pro-immigration marches. People like J.T. Ready have also been known to follow Mexicano people in the local area, often while armed, hoping to deport them.



Next Time

Confronting the NSM gave anarchists in Phoenix and the wider area a large amount of attention and also a chance to come together and act in a confrontational manner against their enemies. We had the chance to get in the street and see what each other were made of. We made plans, evaded and pushed back police, throw rocks, armed ourselves, and stood our ground. We need only take this experience and begin to apply it to the terrain of everyday life. As Stephen Lemons wrote, “Whatever bad rep the anarchists had before Saturday -- deserved or undeserved -- has now been absolved.” Any political capital that the NSM hoped to have gained from the event on the 7th obviously slid from their fingers. They failed to attract anyone from the surrounding area (outside of party members), not to mention white people from the anti-immigration movement. The media was very clear in all their reports that protestors against the NSM out numbered the NSM greatly. They failed to bring out 50 people, much less the 200 that they were banking on. In hoping to use the media to get the National Socialist Movement name out into the world, they have instead given the anarchists a platform due to their triumph over them. The question is, what are we going to do with it?

Clearly, we have to shift the discourse away from a liberal, middle class one that is focused on the issue being simply about “hate.” Sure the NSM is hateful, but they are a political group that seeks to overthrow the US system and replace it with one that is much more totalitarian, bureaucratic, and violent. In the NSM’s America, the millions who demonstrated and took over the streets on May Day 2006 against borders would have been shot and deported. The workers at Republic Windows and Glass would have been labeled communists and shot. The student workers who today in California occupy their schools against budget cuts and fee hikes would have been called traitors to the state and shot. We must oppose the NSM not only because they are racist, but because politically they offer only a more monstrous version of capitalism than what we have today. Furthermore, attacking the NSM allows us space to attack Sheriff Joe and the wider system that attacks working class migrants. We can begin to combat white supremacy that seeks to divide the working class in this country, which stops working people from coming together against their class enemies. Furthermore, the NSM is a weak enemy and fighting them is good practice. Let us sharpen our knives, load our guns, and train now, as we look out for bigger and better foes.

Next time around, anarchists will have to be on the defensive much more. The police were slow to respond and make arrests on the 7th, and anarchists could have gotten away with a lot more attacks and rock throwing than they engaged in. As the struggles against the speed cameras, Sheriff Joe, in the traditional O’odham communities against freeway expansion, and a huge looming strike at various Arizona grocery store chains lies on the horizon, the possibilities of intervention for anarchists in Arizona remain. We must also stay on our guard against the NSM – unless of course they crash their cars on the way back to Texas. Now that, would be something to salute!

Valley Metro: Driving Us To Work

Phoenix Insurgent

Providing more evidence of the growing attack by the bosses on us workers (and highlighting the capitalist irony that we don't even want to work in the first place), various news outlets report the impending firing of four light rail operators. Using the (dubious) excuse of increasing costs, the bosses have imposed a literal speed up on drivers, forcing the remaining workers to produce more in the same time. That's nothing new: bosses commonly use bad economic times (although, do we workers really know any other kind?) as an excuse to broaden and intensify their attacks on our lives and the way we organize work.

In the New Times coverage, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433 president Bob Bean lamented the false promises given to light rail drivers: "You held town hall meetings where you preached to these operators about how they were going to be treated, and when asked about continuous work you told them they had no worries."

Valley Metro is driving us to work.

I can certainly sympathize with the position the workers are in. When I was in the APWU, as work volume steadily fell thanks to increasing computerization, the bosses and union politicos called a joint meeting and assured us all that our positions were quite safe. "Don't go getting second jobs," I remember them saying. Of course, the predictable layoffs followed just weeks later.

That was twelve years ago and I was a young, naive anarchist at the time with an incomplete understanding of the true recuperationist role of union leadership and absolutely no idea that Capital used technology to shift control from the shop floor where we workers can use it for our own purposes into the hands of management and a trusted cadre of technicians. Considering Valley Metro's stated plans for a driver-less "sky train" system "connecting" to the light rail and circling the airport, perhaps this is a lesson worth learning. How much power and freedom will train operators have at work once those things take over the entire system?

Valley Metro's proposed driver-less "sky train".

But my union had marched in the Labor Day parade with one of those infamous "workers and bosses working together" banners with the shaking hands and all. That should have been the first clue about what was to follow, but I was glad just for once to be making a decent paycheck. The betrayal by the local as well as some by my so-called "fellow workers" certainly opened my eyes. I'd just signed a new lease on a new, better apartment a month before. The job I got to replace it paid half what the old one did. Of course, I'd still rather not have been working at all. But capitalism demanded I do so if I wanted such luxuries as a roof over my head and food in my body.

The funny thing was, we were losing our jobs to a sort of speed up. A speed up imposed by technology. The computers were doing more and more of the work that we used to do, leaving those of us low on the seniority ladder competing with the careers who regularly (out of proficiency and boredom) did the work of two or three lower level workers. We could have stopped those layoffs if we just stuck to our work quotas, but the union wouldn't have it. In the pocket of management, they lied up until the day we were booted out the door. Now, I wonder if those remaining workers can do anything at all to fight the boss, what with the bulk of the work taking place in the silicon chips guarded in far away server farms. Would a strike be noticed at all under those conditions?

I bring this up because when I hear Mr. Bean threaten to escalate things to a "higher level" if the union isn't satisfied with the reasons for the dismissals, I am deeply skeptical. Why accept the layoffs at all? Nevertheless, an escalation of this class war is exactly what is needed. One thing is for sure, regardless of the politics driving union leadership, the power to do something is in the hands of the train drivers themselves.

Light rail: All about the money.

As Valley Metro's own figures testify, ridership is way up and the light rail has become and integral part of many people's travel to work and back. I've written about the light rail before and the role it serves as both dutiful servant of Capital and handmaiden of the ever-expanding control grid. While we workers may use it on the weekends sometimes (if we have the time) to entertain ourselves, the primary purpose of the new train system is the re-ordering of our lives and the re-making of the city to be more efficient for the business class who sought primarily to link the yuppie parasitic colony downtown with what was hoped to be a complementary yuppie settler outpost in Tempe. The yuppies in the million dollar condos in Tempe could travel back and forth to their cubicles at work without rubbing shoulders with us common folks on the bus. Likewise with the downtown bourgeois class.

Like the trains that crossed the West, bringing war to native peoples and exploitation to workers trudging towards California to escape serfdom in Europe and drudgery in Eastern factories, and likewise moving Capital and resources (now summed up in the succinct phrase, "human resources") across the plains, the light rail remade our city and our relationships.

The yuppies moved in. The rents and house prices went up. Some of us were forced to move out to the dreary plastic suburbs to make room for them. The dreams of the new architects of the "creative class", now as empty as the twin towers that loom over Mill Avenue and the vacant storefronts of downtown Phoenix. They look ridiculous to us now. Of course, we never believed in them anyhow. I guess we were never "creative" enough to see it. Those of us who slaved away our 40 (or 50 or more) hours a week made up for our falling standards of living with credit card debt and rising home prices. Now that's gone too. And here we are, finally talking about a fight back. Let's get to it then!

So, while the fantasy has faded, the light rail is still there, taking people from place to place day after day. It is a weak spot in the capitalist armor. If local rail workers can strike at the local rail in way that disrupts the ordinary operation of Capital and at the same time broadens the opportunities for riders to control their own lives, they may have a chance at not only hitting back against the bosses' assault at work, but also at making connections that aid the larger fight to control our own lives for ourselves.

Under capitalism, our lives are a blur...

Creative thought is necessary. What if, instead of a slow down, rail workers offered a free day? Perhaps we could have a "general strike" in the form of a city-wide "take the day off and ride for free" campaign. If there's one thing the bosses understand, it's revenue. Deny them a day of their "taxation on movement" (i.e., fares) and offer everyone else a chance to disrupt the ordinary capitalist organization of their day. Watch the bosses cringe as their surplus value disappears for a day. Let's take back the control of our day with the gift of some free movement. Maybe take in a baseball game or something. Maybe go to a park. Maybe go to a museum or the library. Go visit grandma. Maybe hit some bars up and do some delightful day drinking. They all sound better than working. Let's turn this from a labor dispute into a dispute with laboring! If the union bosses don't like it, that doesn't mean we can't still do it!

How about linking demands for no layoffs to a reduction or elimination of the fare? If the train benefits the capitalists, why don't they pay for it? Or how about demand that anonymous travel is a human right and dispense with the security cameras and various other Big Brother technologies that have turned the light rail and it's park and ride lots into just another extension of the police state apparatus? How much would be saved by eliminating those jackboot security contracts? Let's boot Wackenhut from security! How about eliminating management? That would save a lot. No to advertising on the light rail: must every place be covered with the propaganda of capitalism? How about demanding the hiring of more drivers so that you all can work less for the same pay? 40 hours a week is tyranny. Use your imagination. Then think what else you can imagine imagining. What would you really want, if you could get it?

Find connections where possible. Grocery workers have authorized a strike, is there anything that can be done together? Think creatively about tactics. A few years ago I saw wildcat taxi drivers block City Hall by loading Washington Street up with cabs and then walking away, locking their keys inside. Think of the possibilities... and then think where it could lead. Maybe we can do without the boss entirely. Make a struggle creative and broad enough and there is no end to the possibilities.

Our lives belong to us, not the boss. Let the fightback start now! Occupy the light rail: Occupy our lives!

First Friday Transformed! Observers of art become participants in their own lives! Police confronted by mob after raiding the UM gallery

by Jon Riley

First Friday on "Roosevelt Row" took a decidedly confrontational turn last week after undercover Phoenix police officers ran a sting on the UM gallery down on 5th st. PCWC was tabling that night when we noticed everyone in the gallery being pushed out by a handful of uniformed and a couple of undercover cops. The crowd grew in the yard as word spread that they were busted for serving alcohol, particularly angering people as alcohol is prevalent at most of the spaces on First Friday, and to make matters worse the host of the gallery, a DJ, and two artists were held in hand cuffs inside.

Everybody forced out was pretty angry that the police were breaking up the show, so people took photos of both the uniformed and the undercover officers, yelled at the police, and chanted "Let them go!". It was nice to see a united group challenging the actions of the cops, even after the police brought the DJ out in an appeal to the crowd to leave the crowd, people saw through such a cynical move by not leaving, and instead shouting out support and blaming the cops for sending him out. In addition to that a cop came down and tried to talk to someone they perceived as a leader only to have the man cover his ears when the cop spoke, and a local art community big name tried to do one for the cops only to be told off. Everyone wanted their friends freed, right then and there, no compromise, no debate. The handful of cops called in reinforcements, and soon after 30+ cops arrived and cleared the front yard, many people stood their ground and refused to leave, causing a scuffle between a few people and a cop.

The folks inside were eventually released, only after being cited for serving without a permit, and everyone flooded into the gallery to take a last look at the art before the venue shuttered for the night. As we were walking off, word spread that a police car had been tagged, excitedly we turned around to check out a little anti-cop action! We were happy to see a few spray painted tags on the police SUV (one of the many police cars jamming 5th st up), even though one man was arrested.

All in all, a lovely cool late spring night in central Phoenix; an inspiring show of solidarity between young and old, art lovers, radicals, passer-bys, and friends of the detained; and mostly a spontaneous social rupture that Phoenix has needed for sometime. It was rewarding to see the smiles on faces when the police left the gallery with no one in cuffs, to hear people talking about how much fun confronting the police had been, and the crowd of people surrounding the police SUV laughing and taking pictures of the tags while the police stood by wearing grimaces. It was nice to see the police on the defensive! And, best if all, our resistance worked: all charges were dropped a couple weeks later!

We need to remember victories like this and how they happen if we want to defend our own autonomous spaces. When we all stand up in solidarity behind our collective desire to live our individual desires free from the control of Capital and the State, we liberate each other and ourselves. What will we do next time?

Nearly 20 cops stand guard over the gallery in the front yard.

The cops have left, people excitedly return to the UM gallery!

Art is everywhere: A beautiful site in downtown Phoenix.

Benefit show for O'odham Unity Run tonight!

A few of our O'odham comarades are throwing a benefit show tonight for the annual Unity Run, an event that unites the different O'odham tribes though a traditional walk/run from the tribal land in the valley, all the way down to northern Mexico. This benefit will raise the money for much of the flour for tortillas, rice and beans, and coffee needed for therun. The Insects, Shining Soul, Optimal, DJENTRIFICATION, and others will be throwing down the beats and rhymes. BREZ and DUMPER FOO will be painting, in addition to donating pieces that will be available for auction/sale tonight. Show begins at 6:30, check the flyer below for more info.

Support indigenous communities and resistance to cultural death. Support the O'odham Unity Run.