With the debut of Beer and Revolution "Season Two" last night, featuring Anarchy Magazine contributor and editor Lawrence Jarach, it seemed like a good time to get off our asses and put up some more audio from last year's sudsy symposiums. A couple weeks ago I posted the audio to John Zerzan's presentation at last January's Beer & Rev and this week I finally got around to adding the presentation on the Greek insurrection by Sissy, Tasos and Peter (which was a big hit). Below I've embedded the first part of what was a wide-ranging and very entertaining discussion below.
The more I reflect on the Greek tour, especially having spent some time with them (and quaffed more than a few beers together here and in the Bay) and seeing their presentation twice, I think it is very likely that their visit will be remembered as one of the more remarkable and influential events in recent American anarchist history. Already I have heard the "Cops, pigs, murderers!" chant ring out at more than one anarchist action across the country. In a time where police murder seems more and more the norm, I expect to hear it a lot more. I certainly feel lucky to have had the chance to learn from our Greek comrades about their struggle.
Follow the link back to our youtube page for the rest of it (it's almost two hours total). As usual, to get the full experience, you really need to come to the event. Since it takes place in a very social atmosphere, the sound quality on the recording is not always the best, especially during the q and a. All the more reason to come out and join in the conversation yourself! While you're at our youtube page, check out the favorites section, because there's some interesting talks there that we think are worth checking out. We add to it periodically, so check back from time to time.
Last night's B&R with Lawrence drew a little more than forty people and was a raucous affair. I hope to have that online for your enjoyment in a few days if all goes well. As usual, if you're coming to town or if you're already here and have something that you think may fit in the Beer & Rev format, hit us up. Maybe we can work something out. These are irregular affairs, in that rather than stick to an arbitrary calendar, we do them when we think there's something worth talking about. As of right now, we do have another tentatively planned for March or April. We'd love to do another one (or more) before that, so hit us up if you're interested.
One of the things we want to do with Beer & Rev is to encourage the discussion of anarchist ideas and the development of critical anarchist thinking here in Phoenix, and to do it in a social way that breaks out of the stale lecture model that so often dominates the genre, as well as to challenge ourselves and our ideas. Suggestions, tips, criticisms and comments are always welcome.
Showing newest posts with label anarchism. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label anarchism. Show older posts
Monday, October 11, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Beer and Revolution is back this Sunday! Featuring Lawrence Jarach on Anarchism with(out) the Left
Beer and Revolution returns for the eighth installment this Sunday after taking a lengthy hiatus since we hosted our Greek comrades from the VOID Network back in March. We're pleased to have Lawrence Jarach, a long-time anarchist and a regular contributor to and co-editor of the magazine Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. He'll be giving a talk on one of the more influential anarchist critiques of the left-wing, something Lawrence has described as along the lines of "What's this Post-Left Anarchy Thing I Keep Hearing About?"Lawrence has written pretty extensively on the historical roots at the base of the modern conflict between authoritarian socialists and libertarian socialists, beginning with the split in the First International over the question of the state. This conflict is summarized in his essay Anarchists, Don't let the Left(overs) Ruin your Appetite:
The initial place where the rivalry between leftists and anarchists occurred was the First International (1864-76). Besides the well-known personal animosity between Marx and Bakunin, conflicts arose between the libertarian socialists and the authoritarian socialists over the ostensible goal of the International: how best to work for the emancipation of the working class. Using parliamentary procedures (voting for representatives) within a framework that accepted the existence of the state was the main tactic supported by the authoritarians. In the non-electoral arena, but remaining firmly within a statist agenda, was the demand of the right of workers to form legal trade unions. In contrast, direct action (any activity that takes place without the permission, aid, or support of politicians or other elected officials) was promoted by the libertarians. Strikes and workplace occupations are the best examples of this method. The leftists preferred persuasion and the petitioning of the ruling class while the anarchists, recognizing the futility of this approach, preferred to take matters into their own hands: peacefully if possible, more insistently if necessary.The question of the state was just the beginning of a long and contentious relationship between anarchists and the Left, as there have been notable disagreements over other potential "deal breakers" for any anarchist-left unity, specifically over questions on nationalism, self-organization, or political representation. We've seen our ideological differences play out in the battlefields and barricades of a number of revolutions and civil wars in Russia, Spain, Mexico, and Cuba to name a few, as anarchists were attacked, betrayed, and murdered by our "comrades" on the left.
For valley anarchists, we've seen the Left groups dissolve and absorb the popular responses that broke out to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more recently with the immigrant movement, into the electoral process. My buddy Phoenix Insurgent took note of this on his old blog on a few occasions, and regular readers of this blog have probably come across our criticisms of the leadership of the immigrant movement, specifically their ongoing working relationship with the Phoenix PD, who, it should come as no surprise is no friend to immigrants. As throughout history, we have seen in our own struggles and movement those anarchists who continue to defend, and even justify the actions of left-wing groups whose ideas and actions run counter productive to an anarchist or anti-authoritarian vision. So, needless to say I have great interest to see what Lawrence will have to say when it comes to the possibility of an anarchist movement sans the Left.
Come and join us this Sunday for some beer (if beer's not your thing, perhaps some iced tea or water) and politics. I believe this latest installment of B&R promises to be another challenging and engaging discussion for freedom minded people!
Beer and Revolution will be held at Boulders on Broadway, a restaurant and bar located on the NE corner of Roosevelt and Broadway in Tempe. We have the upstairs section reserved, and this is an all ages event. We'll be there at 8:30 and things will kick off soon afterward, hope to see you there!
***
I also want to give a shout out to our friends up north at the Taala Hooghan Infoshop in Flagstaff, the inaugural Root Beer & Revolution is happening this month, a sober take on our own night of suds and politics. Their first installment will see folks from Black Mesa Indigenous Support speaking, it all goes down at 6 pm on Tuesday, October 26. $3 gets you in the door, along with a glass of root beer, as I hear it additional root beer and root beer floats will be for sale as well.
I've always been a Groucho Marxist anyway...Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Words of Disobedience: New publications from Phoenix area anarchist projects
There's a handful of new anarchist print projects from the valley worth mentioning, the first couple come from Stronghold, this self titled zine signals the end of the Survival Solidarity project out of the Tucson area, and the birth of what looks to be a number of interesting and challenging projects in the near future. Following the trajectory of the DO@ bloc and critique, Stronghold continues to build a narrative focused around the attack on colonialism and eco-destruction, solidarity with indigenous and migrant struggles, and fighting all controls and borders.
The first project was quickly followed by a second zine, this one is totally dedicated to the struggle to stop the desecration of the San Francisco Peaks, a sacred site to thirteen tribes in northern Arizona. I'm impressed with the consistent anti-colonialism coming from Stronghold,
and look forward to whatever is coming next from these folks.
Also available is a new publication from our pals at So What If All The Colleges Burn Down?, drawing inspiration from Paul Virilio their latest piece "ACCIDENT or ATTACK?: On Praxis" offers some new thoughts on the "accident" and what this means for insurrectionist attack.
Finally, while not yet available in a pamphlet format, our comrade sallydarity's latest piece "Invasion by Birth Canal? The fourteenth amendment and its opponents’ motivations" is a much needed anti-authoritarian response to the latest racist attack on immigrants and communities of color. Sallydarity deftly tears apart the birthright citizenship arguments offered by anti-immigrant politician Russell Pearce and the John Tanton network of anti-immigrant groups operating under a populist cover of environmentalism, or overpopulation to advance the racist argument for controlling the movement and bodies of non-white people.
Take the time to check out the publications coming out of the various projects in the valley, it certainly is an exciting development to see so many writing projects this summer to match the inspiring resistance we've seen to SB 1070, border militarization, and the attacks on indigenous people over the summer. We look forward to the words, and deeds, of disobedience continuing this autumn, here in this occupied O'odham land.
The first project was quickly followed by a second zine, this one is totally dedicated to the struggle to stop the desecration of the San Francisco Peaks, a sacred site to thirteen tribes in northern Arizona. I'm impressed with the consistent anti-colonialism coming from Stronghold,and look forward to whatever is coming next from these folks.
Also available is a new publication from our pals at So What If All The Colleges Burn Down?, drawing inspiration from Paul Virilio their latest piece "ACCIDENT or ATTACK?: On Praxis" offers some new thoughts on the "accident" and what this means for insurrectionist attack.
Finally, while not yet available in a pamphlet format, our comrade sallydarity's latest piece "Invasion by Birth Canal? The fourteenth amendment and its opponents’ motivations" is a much needed anti-authoritarian response to the latest racist attack on immigrants and communities of color. Sallydarity deftly tears apart the birthright citizenship arguments offered by anti-immigrant politician Russell Pearce and the John Tanton network of anti-immigrant groups operating under a populist cover of environmentalism, or overpopulation to advance the racist argument for controlling the movement and bodies of non-white people.
Take the time to check out the publications coming out of the various projects in the valley, it certainly is an exciting development to see so many writing projects this summer to match the inspiring resistance we've seen to SB 1070, border militarization, and the attacks on indigenous people over the summer. We look forward to the words, and deeds, of disobedience continuing this autumn, here in this occupied O'odham land.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
No state has the right to control movement of free people.
As news comes again today that Democrats are committed to "securing the border" as a prerequisite for immigration reform, I think it's quite fortunate timing that our comrades over at O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective have posted up their compelling piece, "Movement Demands Autonomy: An O'odham Perspective on Border Controls and Immigration". Previously appearing as a pamphlet, this article does a fine job as a primer on understanding the point of view of the O'odham on questions of movement and the border -- a perspective that is sadly marginalized to say the least.
Indeed, we as anarchists, along with the indigenous peoples of this region, are well-placed to call out this bogus pairing of one so-called "reform" with another for what it really is -- a sell out. First off, if anyone has the right to say who can come and go, it is the original people of this land. And, second, the "securing" of the border that Democrats demand is not only a concession to the right wing but it is a betrayal of the various peoples whose traditional lands cross and are crossed by the border, including but not limited to Tohono O'odham territory in the south of Arizona and north of Mexico. Truth is, the people of Arizona should be turning to the indigenous to answer the question of who shall pass through these lands, not the racist settler state government.
In fact, when we hear "secure" what we ought to really understand is "militarization". Already T.O. is an armed camp of almost Warsaw Ghetto like quality, with border patrol and local cops (beefed up with Federal money) running wherever they please, harassing locals and denying traditional rights of crossing, not to mention maintaining checkpoints at the points of entry and exit from the rez (not just at border crossing points, which would be awful enough). The same controls and demands that will soon be made on migrants and everyone else the state deems worthy of suspicion are already in full effect on T.O. The surveillance we see here on our freeways originates on those border fences, checkpoints and spy towers. And the demand for their proliferation to the south will only increase them up here in the end. The dreadful situation in T.O. will soon manifest everywhere if we do nothing.
Of course, one can appreciate the bind that many indigenous people are in these days. "Reform" sells them out and the attack of SB1070 subjects them to the same profiling and abuse that it does the Mexican and other migrants who cross their lands, a great many of whom are in fact indigenous themselves. And the status quo is hardly acceptable either. These and other facts naturally dictate that there is no option on the table in the mainstream now which is satisfactory to solving this problem.
The fact is, as we and our comrades in OSABC have been saying for quite a long time now, there is no solution to the question of the movement of people without starting from the position of the indigenous. Not only are they more than deserving of justice given their history and ties to this land, but it is precisely their situation that reveals the bogus deal that is "immigration reform".
Knowing that, no one can in good conscience ignore or put their struggles on the back burner, or treat them as an after thought. If there is no justice for the indigenous of this region, then there is no justice at all. No borders, no State, no papers!
Read OSABC's article here:
Movement Demands Autonomy: An O'odham Perspective on Border Controls and Immigration
Indeed, we as anarchists, along with the indigenous peoples of this region, are well-placed to call out this bogus pairing of one so-called "reform" with another for what it really is -- a sell out. First off, if anyone has the right to say who can come and go, it is the original people of this land. And, second, the "securing" of the border that Democrats demand is not only a concession to the right wing but it is a betrayal of the various peoples whose traditional lands cross and are crossed by the border, including but not limited to Tohono O'odham territory in the south of Arizona and north of Mexico. Truth is, the people of Arizona should be turning to the indigenous to answer the question of who shall pass through these lands, not the racist settler state government.
In fact, when we hear "secure" what we ought to really understand is "militarization". Already T.O. is an armed camp of almost Warsaw Ghetto like quality, with border patrol and local cops (beefed up with Federal money) running wherever they please, harassing locals and denying traditional rights of crossing, not to mention maintaining checkpoints at the points of entry and exit from the rez (not just at border crossing points, which would be awful enough). The same controls and demands that will soon be made on migrants and everyone else the state deems worthy of suspicion are already in full effect on T.O. The surveillance we see here on our freeways originates on those border fences, checkpoints and spy towers. And the demand for their proliferation to the south will only increase them up here in the end. The dreadful situation in T.O. will soon manifest everywhere if we do nothing.
Of course, one can appreciate the bind that many indigenous people are in these days. "Reform" sells them out and the attack of SB1070 subjects them to the same profiling and abuse that it does the Mexican and other migrants who cross their lands, a great many of whom are in fact indigenous themselves. And the status quo is hardly acceptable either. These and other facts naturally dictate that there is no option on the table in the mainstream now which is satisfactory to solving this problem.
The fact is, as we and our comrades in OSABC have been saying for quite a long time now, there is no solution to the question of the movement of people without starting from the position of the indigenous. Not only are they more than deserving of justice given their history and ties to this land, but it is precisely their situation that reveals the bogus deal that is "immigration reform".
Knowing that, no one can in good conscience ignore or put their struggles on the back burner, or treat them as an after thought. If there is no justice for the indigenous of this region, then there is no justice at all. No borders, no State, no papers!
Read OSABC's article here:
Movement Demands Autonomy: An O'odham Perspective on Border Controls and Immigration
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
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
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
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Decolonizing, Destroying Borders and Attacking Infrastructure What side are you on?
I have been very encouraged by the level of analysis and evaluation that has come out of the DO@ organizing this winter. It's great to see people excited about ideas, about exposing those ideas to the real world, and then coming back and grappling with their implications. This is the kind of movement we need: a thinking movement that acts and evaluates itself.
It's also a sign of a democratic movement (in the most positive sense of the word), in that it means we are exchanging ideas and debating direction and ideas in a cooperative and constructive fashion. This kind of interplay of ideas is vital to a living movement, and it's important, in particular, to building the anarchist movement which must, necessarily, be critical and creative and open to debate by all participants.
This, I think, puts in stark contrast the way that anarchists approach movements versus others. Compared to how so many other actors in movements, particularly liberals, that I have engaged with over the years comport themselves, anarchists really struggle with ideas, unafraid to go places that others don't dare to investigate. This is important and something not to let slip away from us. I think it's something that makes anarchy attractive to non-anarchists. The liberals are not going to delve in depth into the roots of ideas.
So, it's great to see another addition to the discussion around DO@ and the projects were all engaged in, this time coming from PCWC's comrades to the South, Survival Solidarity. I have re-posted the first part of their essay and I highly encourage people to follow the link at the bottom to read the rest. Another solid contribution to the discussion. In particular, I'd like to say that I really like the fanatical title of the piece. Drawing lines is important. Props!
Read on!
It's also a sign of a democratic movement (in the most positive sense of the word), in that it means we are exchanging ideas and debating direction and ideas in a cooperative and constructive fashion. This kind of interplay of ideas is vital to a living movement, and it's important, in particular, to building the anarchist movement which must, necessarily, be critical and creative and open to debate by all participants.
This, I think, puts in stark contrast the way that anarchists approach movements versus others. Compared to how so many other actors in movements, particularly liberals, that I have engaged with over the years comport themselves, anarchists really struggle with ideas, unafraid to go places that others don't dare to investigate. This is important and something not to let slip away from us. I think it's something that makes anarchy attractive to non-anarchists. The liberals are not going to delve in depth into the roots of ideas.
So, it's great to see another addition to the discussion around DO@ and the projects were all engaged in, this time coming from PCWC's comrades to the South, Survival Solidarity. I have re-posted the first part of their essay and I highly encourage people to follow the link at the bottom to read the rest. Another solid contribution to the discussion. In particular, I'd like to say that I really like the fanatical title of the piece. Drawing lines is important. Props!
Read on!
Decolonizing, Destroying Borders and Attacking Infrastructure What side are you on?
By: Survival Solidarity
A question that all past revolutionaries have had to ask themselves at critical moments in humyn history: Which side are we on? —Down with Borders, Up With Spring!—Panagioti.
On January 16, Diné, O'odham and Autonomous/Anti-authoritarian (DO@) people answered a call-out from the O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective and Phoenix Class War Council to form the DO@ Block. The bloc, consisting of anarchists and Indigenous people, converged on occupied Akimel O'odham Pi-Posh land (Phoenix) to take part in what was a larger march against Maricopa County, AZ, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio is well known for his racist border politics and strict prison regulations. However this time people were confronting his repression on those that take situations into their own hands and defiantly cross the border without the permission of others.
No deportations, relocation's or foreclosures.
The Bloc's adorning of masks and hoodies was not the only point of contrast between them and other march participants. The DO@ bloc represented the distaste in many people's mouths from endless banal discussions and approaches to the border. It brought the unwillingness to ignore the nightmare of capitalism that socially reinforces the walls that divide us. The DO@ block consisted of those that chose to no longer acquiesce to the displacement of people due to capitalism, colonization and invasive infrastructure projects.
Read the rest at the Survival Solidarity blog.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
This Sunday: January's Beer & Revolution with John Zerzan!
(Click image for bigger version)Sunday, January 31st, Phoenix Class War Council will be hosting its fifth (if we remember right) Beer and Revolution event. This is the first one for 2010 and we're stoked to have John Zerzan, anarcho-primitivist theorist and agitator. John will be speaking on "Anarchism and the Way Forward". Also, Dan Todd from Tucson, coming fresh from his book release the night before, will be giving some opening remarks under the provocative title “One Misapprehension, One Paradox, and Three Disparities”. The talk starts a little earlier than the last few (7 PM), so make sure you get there early. Plus, we'll have our book distro with us as well, so after the talk, please peruse our selection of anarchist and revolutionary books, magazines and pamphlets. Come by and enjoy an evening discussing revolutionary ideas with us at Boulders in Tempe (530 East Broadway). We look forward to seeing you there!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Beer and Revolution is Back: Activism vs. Intervention with Crudo
by Jon Riley
Phoenix Class War Council's Beer and Revolution returns from a brief hiatus this Sunday. We are pleased to announce this month's installment of B&R will be hosted by our friend and comrade, Crudo, from the Modesto Anarcho Crew (MAC).
Our last B&R in September was a roundtable discussion on Borders & Movement, 30 people attended, including perspectives from CAROB (Central Arizona Radicals Opposing Borders) and the O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective. While we've been very busy, we are glad to know that anarchists and anti-authoritarians in the Valley enjoy participating in a political night, and we will try to continue scheduling a monthly night for speakers and discussion.
We find a lot of value in this event, especially as we look for fractures or fissures in our daily lives, and by making a traditionally non-political space (a bar) a temporary political space where liberatory ideas can be discussed openly. We hope projects like B&R inspire others to look for unconventional approaches to challenging the banality and misery of life in modern class society.
We also find inspiration in the projects of our insurrectional pals from California's central valley. The folks from MAC are busy as hell, giving it a go at building unconventional alliances amongst the discontented and marginalized, from hip hop shows against the recent gang injunctions, to supporting the efforts of the local needle exchange (a harm reduction effort for Modesto's poorer needle users that has seen it's members under attack by the police, please read more here), intervening in local struggles against education fee hikes and the nurses strike, publishing the quarterly Modesto Anarcho paper and Crudo's Vengeance journal and blog, and operating an impressive anarchist social center"Firehouse 51." With a higher poverty level than the rest of the state (which is itself a sinking ship these days), Modesto, and other Central Valley anarchists, have their work cut out for them.
Come out this Sunday for some delicious beers, or perhaps a soda or water for non-drinkers, and some great political discussion, critique, thought, and debate. We wouldn't have it any other way!
The November gathering of Beer & Revolution will once again be held this Sunday, November 8th at Boulders on Broadway in Tempe. The night begins at 8PM, and Crudo will begin his talk at 8:30, come out and have some tasty drinks, meet and mingle with other like minded people, and enjoy another great political social night. See you there!
Phoenix Class War Council's Beer and Revolution returns from a brief hiatus this Sunday. We are pleased to announce this month's installment of B&R will be hosted by our friend and comrade, Crudo, from the Modesto Anarcho Crew (MAC).
Our last B&R in September was a roundtable discussion on Borders & Movement, 30 people attended, including perspectives from CAROB (Central Arizona Radicals Opposing Borders) and the O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective. While we've been very busy, we are glad to know that anarchists and anti-authoritarians in the Valley enjoy participating in a political night, and we will try to continue scheduling a monthly night for speakers and discussion.
We find a lot of value in this event, especially as we look for fractures or fissures in our daily lives, and by making a traditionally non-political space (a bar) a temporary political space where liberatory ideas can be discussed openly. We hope projects like B&R inspire others to look for unconventional approaches to challenging the banality and misery of life in modern class society.
We also find inspiration in the projects of our insurrectional pals from California's central valley. The folks from MAC are busy as hell, giving it a go at building unconventional alliances amongst the discontented and marginalized, from hip hop shows against the recent gang injunctions, to supporting the efforts of the local needle exchange (a harm reduction effort for Modesto's poorer needle users that has seen it's members under attack by the police, please read more here), intervening in local struggles against education fee hikes and the nurses strike, publishing the quarterly Modesto Anarcho paper and Crudo's Vengeance journal and blog, and operating an impressive anarchist social center"Firehouse 51." With a higher poverty level than the rest of the state (which is itself a sinking ship these days), Modesto, and other Central Valley anarchists, have their work cut out for them.
Come out this Sunday for some delicious beers, or perhaps a soda or water for non-drinkers, and some great political discussion, critique, thought, and debate. We wouldn't have it any other way!
The November gathering of Beer & Revolution will once again be held this Sunday, November 8th at Boulders on Broadway in Tempe. The night begins at 8PM, and Crudo will begin his talk at 8:30, come out and have some tasty drinks, meet and mingle with other like minded people, and enjoy another great political social night. See you there!
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Audio of the August Beer & Revolution is now online, listen to Joel Olson's talk on fanaticism
by Collin Sick
An eight part recording of Joel Olson's talk from last month's Beer & Revolution has been posted to the PCWC youtube page and is available for viewing. Thirty people came to the third monthly anarchist social night, held at a bar, to hear Joel drop knowledge on his study on fanaticism, and, of course, to throw back some beers as well. The eight parts cover most of the two hour talk, and the following Q&A, the final thirty minutes were left out because many of the questions and discussion were difficult to understand.
Joel's political study of fanaticism has been covered a few times on this blog by Phoenix Insurgent (and on a talk Joel gave on Abolitionism and Wendall Phillips back in 2006), for us at PCWC, we see the fanatic values of the Garrisonian abolitionists as having the potential to be instructive to the American anarchist movement. Anarchists taking in the lessons of the Abolitionist extremists, and their challenges to slavery and white supremacy, may tell us more about the make-up of the next revolutionary movement in the U.S. than any of the fires of Greece, South Korea, or Mexico can. In short, as insurrectionary anarchists, shouldn't we have an analysis of revolt that is both international in scope, and based in an American historical context? This is a question we'll continue to explore in our politics.
Below is the first part of Joel's talk, click here to go directly to the playlist to checkout all eight segments.
An eight part recording of Joel Olson's talk from last month's Beer & Revolution has been posted to the PCWC youtube page and is available for viewing. Thirty people came to the third monthly anarchist social night, held at a bar, to hear Joel drop knowledge on his study on fanaticism, and, of course, to throw back some beers as well. The eight parts cover most of the two hour talk, and the following Q&A, the final thirty minutes were left out because many of the questions and discussion were difficult to understand.
Joel's political study of fanaticism has been covered a few times on this blog by Phoenix Insurgent (and on a talk Joel gave on Abolitionism and Wendall Phillips back in 2006), for us at PCWC, we see the fanatic values of the Garrisonian abolitionists as having the potential to be instructive to the American anarchist movement. Anarchists taking in the lessons of the Abolitionist extremists, and their challenges to slavery and white supremacy, may tell us more about the make-up of the next revolutionary movement in the U.S. than any of the fires of Greece, South Korea, or Mexico can. In short, as insurrectionary anarchists, shouldn't we have an analysis of revolt that is both international in scope, and based in an American historical context? This is a question we'll continue to explore in our politics.
Below is the first part of Joel's talk, click here to go directly to the playlist to checkout all eight segments.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
PCWC interviews Chris from Propagandhi
A few weeks ago after tabling the show, PCWC got the opportunity to interview Chris, the singer and guitarist for the great anarchist punk band Propagandhi. We had tons of questions in mind for him, but knowing his enthusiasm for hockey, we decided to limit our discussion to sports and anarchy. PCWC has an unofficial anarchist Phoenix Suns supporter group, so we are very interested in the relationship that anti-capitalists have to professional sports.
Our set up at the Propagandhi show
Chris was very generous and even stayed to chat long after our camera's battery died. If you haven't yet, you'd be doing yourself a favor by getting your hands on a copy of Propagandhi's newest album. Unlike a lot of bands from the early Fat Wreck Chords days, they continue to challenge themselves and to put out interesting, quality music.
Anyhow, being anarchists and therefore procrastinators, we have only now gotten around to editing the footage and putting it on the interweb. We hope you enjoy it.
Our set up at the Propagandhi showChris was very generous and even stayed to chat long after our camera's battery died. If you haven't yet, you'd be doing yourself a favor by getting your hands on a copy of Propagandhi's newest album. Unlike a lot of bands from the early Fat Wreck Chords days, they continue to challenge themselves and to put out interesting, quality music.
Anyhow, being anarchists and therefore procrastinators, we have only now gotten around to editing the footage and putting it on the interweb. We hope you enjoy it.
Friday, March 6, 2009
A Venue of Vultures: Where Now For Anarchists and the Immigrant Movement?
By Phoenix Insurgent
Last Saturday’s anti-Sheriff Joe march was truly a very exciting moment in recent Arizona and anarchist history. Especially given the statewide anarchist meeting that happened the following day, which was attended by fifty or so people by my count. There was a real feeling of excitement that I haven’t felt in some time and it was good to see a lot of new and familiar faces in attendance. Further, I think the discussion about tactics and politics was productive and interesting. It showed a broad and sophisticated understanding of both our politics and the political situation –tactical and strategic – in which we find ourselves these days. In that spirit, I think a few things are worth noting about the march and recent political events.
For one, this was one of the first occasions in some time when a relatively large group of Arizona anarchists came together in the street. Indeed, the march moved into the street not because of sheer numbers or because the organizers planned it that way (as was claimed after the fact – despite the obvious discomfort our actions caused them at the time). The throng moved into the street because anarchists actively pushed into the street and held it until enough other people (who obviously likewise wanted to defy the organizers’ silly and humiliating sidewalk march) joined us. The police backed down and we took the street, opening it up for everyone else.
Eventually nearly everyone was on the street and Central Avenue was shut down for a couple hours. Had we not been there, given the omnipresent though perhaps somewhat well-meaning internal protest police actively working to contain the protest (paralleling the efforts of the cops to do the same thing), the odds are that the march would have continued along the sidewalk for four pathetic miles. How sad! This is important to note, I think, not leastwise because it reveals the gulf between the organizers’ conservatism and the much more radical desires of the base. This is a space that can be occupied by anarchists. I’ll come back to this later.
The Movement Vampires Rise Again!
Second, it’s also worth noting that the celebrity of this event drew all sorts of folks, including many people I haven’t seen out in some time, like families and older people. Unfortunately, it also drew the vultures, eager, as they are, to feed on the corpse of a movement for their own petty benefit.
For instance, ANSWER, weakened from the recent death of its previous host, the anti-war movement, and which anarchists here have driven out of town every time they tried to set up shop here returned for the march and were handing out their silly literature. Anarchists confronted them and they seemed a pathetic bunch indeed. The chapter in attendance was obviously from LA and I can remember breathing a sigh of relief that we don’t have to deal with the alphabet soup of leftist cults that other big cities have to.
On that note, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) was also spotted in attendance near the ANSWER banner, hoping no doubt to bore yet another movement to death with its leftist machinations and cult of Che. Also, some people from Bring the Ruckus (BTR) were out as well, hoping to attract the unsuspecting and earnest to their front group the Repeal Coalition (and then to secretly recruit from within that pool). As usual, though, they brought no actual “ruckus” with them and they were largely invisible both in terms of effect and presence.
To the extent that these opportunistic groups remain marginalized, the hope for self-organization remains alive. Anarchists would do well to maintain the marginal status of these groups and, if possible, to shut them down before they can get their skeletal hands on what’s left of the movement. Surely if the leftist parasites have their way the small break we forced last weekend will be the last and things will quickly return to boring, ineffective business as usual.
The Dead Shall Walk the Earth!
The real problem is, however, that the immigrant movement is dead. It had a chance but the dead weight of its own tepid, middle class leadership and the forces of reaction suffocated it practically at birth. The leadership seems to have gotten scared after the first series of really big events here in town and quickly acted to contain things. After the vigorous explosions of the first couple megamarchas, it’s almost as if the bosses of the movement were more comfortable with a smaller, more manageable movement. So they downsized and ran from their base. But this had the unfortunate effect of opening them up to attack. Since that sad retreat anti-immigrant ballot initiatives have passed with overwhelming majorities (over 70 percent in almost all cases), essentially criminalizing all undocumented people in the state. So, while some may be tempted to hail Saturday’s march as a rebirth, in fact it was a wake.
And as I said, a corpse attracts vultures and the movement is dead. What we see now is an attempt to defend the last vestiges of dignity and to draw a line in the sand, perhaps too late, beyond which we all hope the reactionaries will not cross. Said another way, the immigrant movement has lost the initiative and has become a rearguard action. While I don’t think it’s impossible that the movement could revive, in a hopefully more militant, radical and truly democratic form, in order for that to happen the failed leadership must be toppled and replaced by more creative people from the base.
As far-fetched as that may seem, it’s not impossible. It’d be hard to imagine a situation in which the bankruptcy of the leadership could be any more obvious. After all, hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been deported or have “deported themselves” from this state in the last couple years as the hammer and anvil of state and reaction came down ever harder on them. This sent politicians scrambling to appease the demands from large segments of the white working and middle classes for action on their cross-class alliance with the ruling class. No political force proved up to the task of challenging the attack, not even the Federal government, and as a result the ideas of the extreme reaction to immigrants now dominate the debate in Arizona. That sounds like total failure to me. Meanwhile, the leadership has in many ways carved out for itself a cozy position as chief mediator of the movement with regard to the rest of Arizona society. Certainly there is ample cause to challenge the current leadership as well as good cause to abandon the legislative tactic.
Circle A’s in the Air!
However, returning to the march, I’m proud that Arizona anarchists pushed the tactics a little bit. Anarchists from the Phoenix Anarchist Coalition (PAC), Central Arizona Radicals Opposing Borders (CAROB), Phoenix Class War Council (PCWC) and various affinity groups have been involved locally in the immigrant movement here for many years and it was good to see business as usual downtown disrupted on Saturday. Such reactionary policies must have consequences after all – and the marches even a couple years or so ago took the street quite regularly, even if it was permitted (unlike this most recent march – a new tradition that should be defended). To have stayed on the sidewalk would have been to accept another in a long string of retreats for the movement and would have stood some distance from the heady days of the huelga and megamarchas of 2006. Further, pushing the march into the street put the conservative leadership of the march into an awkward position, which was perhaps revelatory to many participants. I certainly heard many positive comments from non-anarchists once police finally conceded the streets to us.
Perhaps where Arizona anarchists fell off was in the literature department. Our position on the border is in reality the position of the base of the movement, which by definition has rejected that arbitrary line between Mexico and the US, and flyers explaining would have been useful. I had some, but with a march that big, they go fast. Indeed, our position is an easy enough one to defend given that the immigration issue itself centers on the rejection of the border by so many people. This should be the starting point for all our arguments. It’s likewise a good argument for ferreting out the conservative positions of the movement’s leadership.
It’s a sad commentary on the leadership of the immigration movement that they have actively distanced themselves from this obvious fact. Given the congruity between the base and our position on movement and the border, anarchists would do well here to make our politics more prominent, especially if we are going to continue to push the envelope in the street. Lacking that, we do at some point risk being labeled as hooligans or worse, especially since our actions necessarily challenge the leadership of the movement. One of our goals should be to keep the pressure on and hope it opens space for new leaders and tactics to emerge by adhering to this obviously true but, within this context, fanatical position: free people need free movement.
Further, there are opportunities for us given the anti-fascist nature of the campaign against Joe. Indeed, ‘anti-fascist’ in the singular sense, since it seems very narrowly oriented towards Arpaio alone. For instance, when Mesa PD chief Gascón was butting heads with Arpaio, much of the leadership of the movement rushed to his side, despite the fact that he was using anti-gang task force to round up and harass people leaving anti-Arpaio rallies in his jurisdiction.
As anarchists, we can critique this narrow view and make both pragmatic demands as well as provide a revolutionary framework. We can demand that there be firm standards for whoever takes Joe’s job once he’s out (if that ever happens, which is in question given his broad support in Maricopa County). We can demand the closing of the camps, the end of segregation, a return to three meals a day and the termination of the everyday project of humiliation and murder that Joe pushes in his jails. At the same time, we can point out that no matter who comes in after Arpaio, that person will still be a sheriff and he or she will still be prosecuting a war against the poor and working class. We can say that no one will be free until those prison doors open and the demolition crews knock down the last wall. And the immigrant camps are a great example to advance the anti-prison argument. After all, if we can get people to see that immigrants are unjustly held then perhaps we can make similar analogies about the status of other prisoners.
Keep an eye on the right!
Turning to our adversaries on the right wing, there is a real contradiction between the acceptance of camps for immigrants and the fear of them being used by FEMA during the declaration of martial law or some other, perhaps false flag, emergency. These are legitimate fears. An argument that camps for one type of person – especially when they are run under Homeland Security – can just as easily serve as camps for gun owners resisting confiscation or ‘patriots’ resisting Wall Street bailouts can go a long way towards undermining the right wing’s faith in the ICE and affiliated detentions.
Many right-wingers, especially the Alex Jones/Ron Paul set, already recognize the dual and duplicitous nature of the many drills being run by the government across the country, and are deeply suspicious of the creation of proto-martial law formations like NorthCom and the deployment of military forces for domestic operations. This is true even while they may at the same time support such forces acting on the border. Likewise, if foreclosures continue to mount, as they surely will, it will also put the sheriff in a politically uncomfortable position. In addition, rumblings against freeway and other cameras open up other potential linkages to ideas surrounding control over movement. These are all potential fault lines in whiteness that might be exploitable by anarchists who are astute and in tune with the characteristics of that movement and can be bold enough to assert them.
All said, there are plenty of opportunities within what is left of the immigrant movement for anarchists. The question has become, what forces are at play within it and what forces are coming to bear on it? Will the vultures get their hands on it? Will the movement leadership hang onto its position despite (or perhaps because of) its failure? What will the economy mean for the movement? Is it too late? Has the struggle moved out of Arizona to greener pastures?
Time and struggle will reveal the answers to these questions.
Last Saturday’s anti-Sheriff Joe march was truly a very exciting moment in recent Arizona and anarchist history. Especially given the statewide anarchist meeting that happened the following day, which was attended by fifty or so people by my count. There was a real feeling of excitement that I haven’t felt in some time and it was good to see a lot of new and familiar faces in attendance. Further, I think the discussion about tactics and politics was productive and interesting. It showed a broad and sophisticated understanding of both our politics and the political situation –tactical and strategic – in which we find ourselves these days. In that spirit, I think a few things are worth noting about the march and recent political events.
For one, this was one of the first occasions in some time when a relatively large group of Arizona anarchists came together in the street. Indeed, the march moved into the street not because of sheer numbers or because the organizers planned it that way (as was claimed after the fact – despite the obvious discomfort our actions caused them at the time). The throng moved into the street because anarchists actively pushed into the street and held it until enough other people (who obviously likewise wanted to defy the organizers’ silly and humiliating sidewalk march) joined us. The police backed down and we took the street, opening it up for everyone else.
Eventually nearly everyone was on the street and Central Avenue was shut down for a couple hours. Had we not been there, given the omnipresent though perhaps somewhat well-meaning internal protest police actively working to contain the protest (paralleling the efforts of the cops to do the same thing), the odds are that the march would have continued along the sidewalk for four pathetic miles. How sad! This is important to note, I think, not leastwise because it reveals the gulf between the organizers’ conservatism and the much more radical desires of the base. This is a space that can be occupied by anarchists. I’ll come back to this later.
The Movement Vampires Rise Again!
Second, it’s also worth noting that the celebrity of this event drew all sorts of folks, including many people I haven’t seen out in some time, like families and older people. Unfortunately, it also drew the vultures, eager, as they are, to feed on the corpse of a movement for their own petty benefit.
For instance, ANSWER, weakened from the recent death of its previous host, the anti-war movement, and which anarchists here have driven out of town every time they tried to set up shop here returned for the march and were handing out their silly literature. Anarchists confronted them and they seemed a pathetic bunch indeed. The chapter in attendance was obviously from LA and I can remember breathing a sigh of relief that we don’t have to deal with the alphabet soup of leftist cults that other big cities have to.
On that note, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) was also spotted in attendance near the ANSWER banner, hoping no doubt to bore yet another movement to death with its leftist machinations and cult of Che. Also, some people from Bring the Ruckus (BTR) were out as well, hoping to attract the unsuspecting and earnest to their front group the Repeal Coalition (and then to secretly recruit from within that pool). As usual, though, they brought no actual “ruckus” with them and they were largely invisible both in terms of effect and presence.
To the extent that these opportunistic groups remain marginalized, the hope for self-organization remains alive. Anarchists would do well to maintain the marginal status of these groups and, if possible, to shut them down before they can get their skeletal hands on what’s left of the movement. Surely if the leftist parasites have their way the small break we forced last weekend will be the last and things will quickly return to boring, ineffective business as usual.
The Dead Shall Walk the Earth!
The real problem is, however, that the immigrant movement is dead. It had a chance but the dead weight of its own tepid, middle class leadership and the forces of reaction suffocated it practically at birth. The leadership seems to have gotten scared after the first series of really big events here in town and quickly acted to contain things. After the vigorous explosions of the first couple megamarchas, it’s almost as if the bosses of the movement were more comfortable with a smaller, more manageable movement. So they downsized and ran from their base. But this had the unfortunate effect of opening them up to attack. Since that sad retreat anti-immigrant ballot initiatives have passed with overwhelming majorities (over 70 percent in almost all cases), essentially criminalizing all undocumented people in the state. So, while some may be tempted to hail Saturday’s march as a rebirth, in fact it was a wake.
And as I said, a corpse attracts vultures and the movement is dead. What we see now is an attempt to defend the last vestiges of dignity and to draw a line in the sand, perhaps too late, beyond which we all hope the reactionaries will not cross. Said another way, the immigrant movement has lost the initiative and has become a rearguard action. While I don’t think it’s impossible that the movement could revive, in a hopefully more militant, radical and truly democratic form, in order for that to happen the failed leadership must be toppled and replaced by more creative people from the base.
As far-fetched as that may seem, it’s not impossible. It’d be hard to imagine a situation in which the bankruptcy of the leadership could be any more obvious. After all, hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been deported or have “deported themselves” from this state in the last couple years as the hammer and anvil of state and reaction came down ever harder on them. This sent politicians scrambling to appease the demands from large segments of the white working and middle classes for action on their cross-class alliance with the ruling class. No political force proved up to the task of challenging the attack, not even the Federal government, and as a result the ideas of the extreme reaction to immigrants now dominate the debate in Arizona. That sounds like total failure to me. Meanwhile, the leadership has in many ways carved out for itself a cozy position as chief mediator of the movement with regard to the rest of Arizona society. Certainly there is ample cause to challenge the current leadership as well as good cause to abandon the legislative tactic.
Circle A’s in the Air!
However, returning to the march, I’m proud that Arizona anarchists pushed the tactics a little bit. Anarchists from the Phoenix Anarchist Coalition (PAC), Central Arizona Radicals Opposing Borders (CAROB), Phoenix Class War Council (PCWC) and various affinity groups have been involved locally in the immigrant movement here for many years and it was good to see business as usual downtown disrupted on Saturday. Such reactionary policies must have consequences after all – and the marches even a couple years or so ago took the street quite regularly, even if it was permitted (unlike this most recent march – a new tradition that should be defended). To have stayed on the sidewalk would have been to accept another in a long string of retreats for the movement and would have stood some distance from the heady days of the huelga and megamarchas of 2006. Further, pushing the march into the street put the conservative leadership of the march into an awkward position, which was perhaps revelatory to many participants. I certainly heard many positive comments from non-anarchists once police finally conceded the streets to us.
Perhaps where Arizona anarchists fell off was in the literature department. Our position on the border is in reality the position of the base of the movement, which by definition has rejected that arbitrary line between Mexico and the US, and flyers explaining would have been useful. I had some, but with a march that big, they go fast. Indeed, our position is an easy enough one to defend given that the immigration issue itself centers on the rejection of the border by so many people. This should be the starting point for all our arguments. It’s likewise a good argument for ferreting out the conservative positions of the movement’s leadership.
It’s a sad commentary on the leadership of the immigration movement that they have actively distanced themselves from this obvious fact. Given the congruity between the base and our position on movement and the border, anarchists would do well here to make our politics more prominent, especially if we are going to continue to push the envelope in the street. Lacking that, we do at some point risk being labeled as hooligans or worse, especially since our actions necessarily challenge the leadership of the movement. One of our goals should be to keep the pressure on and hope it opens space for new leaders and tactics to emerge by adhering to this obviously true but, within this context, fanatical position: free people need free movement.
Further, there are opportunities for us given the anti-fascist nature of the campaign against Joe. Indeed, ‘anti-fascist’ in the singular sense, since it seems very narrowly oriented towards Arpaio alone. For instance, when Mesa PD chief Gascón was butting heads with Arpaio, much of the leadership of the movement rushed to his side, despite the fact that he was using anti-gang task force to round up and harass people leaving anti-Arpaio rallies in his jurisdiction.
As anarchists, we can critique this narrow view and make both pragmatic demands as well as provide a revolutionary framework. We can demand that there be firm standards for whoever takes Joe’s job once he’s out (if that ever happens, which is in question given his broad support in Maricopa County). We can demand the closing of the camps, the end of segregation, a return to three meals a day and the termination of the everyday project of humiliation and murder that Joe pushes in his jails. At the same time, we can point out that no matter who comes in after Arpaio, that person will still be a sheriff and he or she will still be prosecuting a war against the poor and working class. We can say that no one will be free until those prison doors open and the demolition crews knock down the last wall. And the immigrant camps are a great example to advance the anti-prison argument. After all, if we can get people to see that immigrants are unjustly held then perhaps we can make similar analogies about the status of other prisoners.
Keep an eye on the right!
Turning to our adversaries on the right wing, there is a real contradiction between the acceptance of camps for immigrants and the fear of them being used by FEMA during the declaration of martial law or some other, perhaps false flag, emergency. These are legitimate fears. An argument that camps for one type of person – especially when they are run under Homeland Security – can just as easily serve as camps for gun owners resisting confiscation or ‘patriots’ resisting Wall Street bailouts can go a long way towards undermining the right wing’s faith in the ICE and affiliated detentions.
Many right-wingers, especially the Alex Jones/Ron Paul set, already recognize the dual and duplicitous nature of the many drills being run by the government across the country, and are deeply suspicious of the creation of proto-martial law formations like NorthCom and the deployment of military forces for domestic operations. This is true even while they may at the same time support such forces acting on the border. Likewise, if foreclosures continue to mount, as they surely will, it will also put the sheriff in a politically uncomfortable position. In addition, rumblings against freeway and other cameras open up other potential linkages to ideas surrounding control over movement. These are all potential fault lines in whiteness that might be exploitable by anarchists who are astute and in tune with the characteristics of that movement and can be bold enough to assert them.
All said, there are plenty of opportunities within what is left of the immigrant movement for anarchists. The question has become, what forces are at play within it and what forces are coming to bear on it? Will the vultures get their hands on it? Will the movement leadership hang onto its position despite (or perhaps because of) its failure? What will the economy mean for the movement? Is it too late? Has the struggle moved out of Arizona to greener pastures?
Time and struggle will reveal the answers to these questions.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Our Own Boulevards: Capital's constructions from Van Buren to the Champs-Élysées
Introduction by Phoenix Insurgent
SPECIAL FEATURE ON CAPITAL, RACE, AND THE CITY
There are more people in motion in America now than at any time in recent memory. Immigrants displaced by the forces of reaction; workers dispossessed due to layoffs; families uprooted by foreclosure; inner city residents removed by gentrification. The cities we live in, like everything else in capitalist society, are a reflection of the battle between our limitless desires to constitute our lives, and Capital's authoritarian demand that we adhere to its calculating will.
With so much up in the air, and with a vacuum steadily filling the space once inhabited by Capital, the next few years will surely see the clash of competing visions of social organization. How will we organize? Where will we put down new roots? Where will we stay and fight? Who will fight whom? These questions as of this writing remain unanswered, although we catch glimpses in the factory occupations and riots on one side and the cops, cameras and the army on the other. Though we can't see the future from here, we expect answers soon.
In an attempt to find these answers, we have attached two essays from the past that address the political nature of the city in different ways. Towards understanding them together. below is a new analysis of the two pieces by Phoenix Class War Council member Collin Sick. The first piece is Jean Reynolds' analysis of South Phoenix. The last is from the insurrectionary journal, Killing King Abacus. Both pieces appeared within a year of each other, although they offer different critiques of the city. We hope you enjoy the two together.
by Jon Riley
Below are two pieces that have greatly informed the politics of those of us involved in Phoenix Class War Council.
“South of White Phoenix” appeared 10 years ago as an article in a broadsheet published by the original Bring the Ruckus (BTR) collective, based here in the valley. BTR are heavily influenced by Race Traitor politics, a tendency that sees any revolutionary movements’ success in the United States as hinged upon an attack of white supremacy and an end to the courting of the white working class by the elite.
The author Jean Reynolds’ piece is noteworthy for the dissection of the South Phoenix as a clearly defined political space created solely for the placement of people of color. These were not neighborhoods created by working class white mobs violently evicting Blacks and Latinos from mixed neighborhoods to enforce segregation, rather a mobile conceptualization that crosses streets and river beds as communities of color are moved from one neighborhood to another, largely by the hands of capitalists. Many of the bankers and executives from the valley disguised their racism by calling it simple economics. Take this 1965 Phoenix Point West interview with an unnamed business executive, from Bradford Luckingham’s Minorities in Phoenix (page 174):
This is typical of the cross-class alliance between whites that is needed to enforce segregation on people of color. With segregation breaking down in Phoenix in the 1950s, people of color in the valley were quickly rebuffed by the elite with the creation of “South Phoenix,” virtually ensuring that a defacto housing disparity and widespread poverty would continue in the Valley of the Sun.
The second piece (“In the Distance: Suburbia against the barricades.”) comes from another influential tendency to Phoenix Class War Council, this from the short-lived insurrectionary anarchist publication Killing King Abacus, The unsigned piece analyzes the class geography of Paris and squarely places the blame on Georges-Eugène “Baron” Haussmann, the architect of class war urban planning under Napoleon III. His brutal renovation of Paris became a near blueprint for city planners across the US. Haussmann’s project in Paris took back control of the physical make-up of Paris for the French elite, in order to diffuse the power the small streets held when the insurrections and revolutions ignited and communards and workers rushed to barricade them. Though it achieved this to the relief of the bureaucrats, the capitalists had it their way as well. Haussmann aimed to construct a city that would “detain and fix the rootless and to channel workers into linear movement: from home to work, from work to home (from “In the Distance”).” He would surely be pleased to look upon Paris now, a hub for elite capital, complete with its large boulevards and massive public transportation apparatus, in other words the perfect mechanisms for the transportation of labor.
Clichy-sous-Bois and South Phoenix everywhere
Naturally there are important dynamics to note when comparing Haussmann’s radical restructuring of Paris in order to better facilitate Capital's domination of the new industrial era and the manner in which U.S. planners applied the Haussmann model. Much like the anonymous Phoenix executive quoted above, Haussmann, too, would also not likely have seen any need for a superfluous population, especially one comprised of the immigrants and descendants of indentured slaves from the former colonies, or in the case of the United States from the colony that existed within.
World War II devastated France, and much of the reconstruction efforts came from an immigrant influx from France’s North African colonies. Their efforts were rewarded with the construction of massive public housing estates, the ghettos to house their children and grand children. While white French planners in the era after the massive overhaul of Paris created the ghettos as a self-congratulatory olive branch to the thousands of new immigrants, white Americans simply abandoned the metropolitan city for the suburbs. Their flight was aided by the massive new freeway systems that made it possible to travel to the factory or office miles and miles away. Not only did post World War II American urban planners see it necessary for the suburbs to exist in order to create space and bring a piece of nature to middle and working class whites, but also to function as a release valve easing the wide spread paranoia whites felt as the breakdown of legal segregation saw families of color moving into previously all white neighborhoods.
Phoenix’s history is unique, as one of the cruelest and polarized urban environments in the U.S, with great amounts of wealth accumulated amidst the stark poverty of the reservations for Indigenous people. But along side this resides an assigned political space/internal containment policy for people of color within the city limits.
BTR is correct to assign the status of South Phoenix as a white supremacist political construction that has for years locked people of color in isolation, suffering the violence of benign neglect from the state. We see the similarities in South Phoenix and in the poverty-stricken suburbs of Clichy-sous-Bois, itself at the center of the insurrections against racism and police violence pervasive in French society. While we agree with BTR that the attack on white supremacy is central to the struggle, we also recognize that the systems of control are so advanced that the struggle for freedom must also be a total attack against the ideology of the city, until it no longer remains a political space dominated and shaped by Capital.
There is little doubt the Haussmann would smile upon the fate of the French Arab, African, Muslim, and immigrant populations stewing in the decrepit suburbs on the outskirts of nearly every major French city. We see the sociopathic legacy of Haussmann’s systems of control reflected in the white supremacist mirror of America. This vision stares back too, as Clichy-sous-Bois and the other ghettos like it continue to explode in rage against exclusion, poverty, and alienation. It is obvious, to even the most casual observers, that a massive crisis is reshaping the economic, political, and social geography all humans inhabit. Where will the “Clichy-sous-Bois”'s of the world develop in this crisis and where are capitalists already planning the next “South Phoenix”?
But we know that the plans of Capital always emerge in response to our own desires to construct our own lives and our own boulevards. We make our own paths. What will they be?
SOUTH OF WHITE PHOENIX
How the North Was Won
by Jean Reynolds
Bring the Ruckus
Why is it that such a large percentage of people of color live in south Phoenix? Is it because people just like to live with “members of their own race,” or are there deeper reasons? A look back at Phoenix history reveals that this segregation came about through government-supported policies. These policies upheld white privilege at the expense of Blacks, Chicanos, and other people of color.
Many of us have heard about segregation in the South. That kind of discrimination was practiced here, too. Prior to the 1950s, whites enforced total segregation of Blacks from Phoenix churches, schools, theaters, and restaurants. Similarly, residents of Mexican descent were forced into the basements of churches, inferior schools, the balconies of theaters, and only allowed to swim in public pools or dance in popular dance halls one day a week. It was a taboo to cross Van Buren and enter the “north” part of Phoenix (except to work) until well in the 1940s. Blacks and Chicanos were denied access to well-paying jobs. Instead, they often took menial jobs such as such as farmworkers, industrial and manual laborers, laundry workers, or as maids for middle-class or rich whites.
Drawing the color lines
But this kind of segregation wasn't the only kind of discrimination that existed. Government policies and local real estate developers enforced another kind of segregation which kept southern Phoenix black and brown, and north Phoenix white. During the 1930s the federal government created the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), which mainly provided financing for homes and business loans. Another program, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), encouraged banks to lend money to prospective home-owners by offering insurance on “approved” homes.
What these programs meant in reality was that many white people in Phoenix bought new homes while most people of color continued to live in substandard housing. Why? because both the HOLC and the FHA relied on certain standards to determine property values. These standards were based on the race and class of the residents living on the property. This is how it worked:
HOLC appraisers surveyed Phoenix to determine the “security” of properties. They crated a map, labeling the best properties with an “A” and the “hazardous” properties with a “D”. The appraisers relied on local real estate standards to grade the properties. Local developers created these standards by ranking people eon a scale of racial desirability. For example, whites of northern European descent were given the highest rating, while Blacks and Chicanos ranked the lowest on the scale. According to Phoenix real estate guidelines, if a non-white family moved into a neighborhood north of Van Buren, property values would begin to decline. Whites, on the other hand, took full advantage of HOLC and FHA programs to move into better homes.
Inventing south Phoenix
South of Van Buren, most neighborhoods were already poor. Federal loan programs and local banks ensured they stayed that way. Before someone could get a loan to buy a house, start a small business, or improve her or his property, their land had to be appraised. The appraisal was based on the HOLC map. Residents of these neighborhoods couldn't get financial help because they lived in areas rated as “hazardous.”
Therefore, people of color were not just excluded from homes in north Phoenix neighborhoods, they were denied money for economic growth and development in their own communities. The makings of a poor “south Phoenix” had begun.
In the 1930s, “south Phoenix” was defined as the area between Van Buren and north of the Salt River, which is now considered downtown. After World War II, many Blacks and Chicanos (and other poor folks) began to move to cheaper housing south of the Salt River, which was an agricultural area outside the city limits until 1960. This is the area we now call “south Phoenix.”
As we can see, “south Phoenix” is not a fixed geographical area but a concept, defined as wherever people of color are concentrated. This concept stillexists in people's minds today and is a direct result of federal policies and local practices that maintain white privilege.
The next south Phoenix
Now the city is planning to develop the Salt River area – from 24th street to 19th Avenues, from Baseline to Buckeye. A plan called “Beyond the Banks” envisions a recreational are, hotels, and other dreams of grandeur. What happens to all the poor, mainly Chicano and Black folks in these areas? They'll have to be removed if the city wants to attract all those visitors and businesses. So, again the past, people of color will be forced to live on some other piece of land unwanted by whites, perhaps out of the city's boundaries. When that happens, yet another south Phoenix will emerge. Unless we do something to stop it.
In the Distance: Suburbia against the barricades.
Haussmann and City Planning: the birth of the human tide
From Killing King Abacus #1
SPECIAL FEATURE ON CAPITAL, RACE, AND THE CITY
There are more people in motion in America now than at any time in recent memory. Immigrants displaced by the forces of reaction; workers dispossessed due to layoffs; families uprooted by foreclosure; inner city residents removed by gentrification. The cities we live in, like everything else in capitalist society, are a reflection of the battle between our limitless desires to constitute our lives, and Capital's authoritarian demand that we adhere to its calculating will.
With so much up in the air, and with a vacuum steadily filling the space once inhabited by Capital, the next few years will surely see the clash of competing visions of social organization. How will we organize? Where will we put down new roots? Where will we stay and fight? Who will fight whom? These questions as of this writing remain unanswered, although we catch glimpses in the factory occupations and riots on one side and the cops, cameras and the army on the other. Though we can't see the future from here, we expect answers soon.
In an attempt to find these answers, we have attached two essays from the past that address the political nature of the city in different ways. Towards understanding them together. below is a new analysis of the two pieces by Phoenix Class War Council member Collin Sick. The first piece is Jean Reynolds' analysis of South Phoenix. The last is from the insurrectionary journal, Killing King Abacus. Both pieces appeared within a year of each other, although they offer different critiques of the city. We hope you enjoy the two together.
by Jon Riley
Below are two pieces that have greatly informed the politics of those of us involved in Phoenix Class War Council.
“South of White Phoenix” appeared 10 years ago as an article in a broadsheet published by the original Bring the Ruckus (BTR) collective, based here in the valley. BTR are heavily influenced by Race Traitor politics, a tendency that sees any revolutionary movements’ success in the United States as hinged upon an attack of white supremacy and an end to the courting of the white working class by the elite.
The author Jean Reynolds’ piece is noteworthy for the dissection of the South Phoenix as a clearly defined political space created solely for the placement of people of color. These were not neighborhoods created by working class white mobs violently evicting Blacks and Latinos from mixed neighborhoods to enforce segregation, rather a mobile conceptualization that crosses streets and river beds as communities of color are moved from one neighborhood to another, largely by the hands of capitalists. Many of the bankers and executives from the valley disguised their racism by calling it simple economics. Take this 1965 Phoenix Point West interview with an unnamed business executive, from Bradford Luckingham’s Minorities in Phoenix (page 174):
“You ask about the Negro problem in Phoenix. Understand now, if you want to know what I really think, I can’t be quoted. I can’t have the company I work for associated with what I say. If you’re going to use my name, then I’ll repeat the standard line – civil rights, education, tolerance, the whole bit. But as a businessman and a taxpayer, I think there’s a real problem. We’ve got all those people down there [South Phoenix] and let’s be honest about it, most of them are costing the rest of us money.
They’re uneducated, unskilled. You can’t hire or use half of them. Their crime rate is way up. They can’t pay any taxes. I’m not anti-Negro, but you wanted my opinion. Just from the standpoint of simple economics, the city would be better off without them.
Another thing, with all the civil rights marching and demonstrating, how long is it going to be before some half-educated crackpot gets these people all excited and we have a first class race riot on our hands? This has nothing to do with prejudice; I’m talking straight economics and the city’s image. I don’t think there’s any question about it; Phoenix would be better off if they weren’t here.”
This is typical of the cross-class alliance between whites that is needed to enforce segregation on people of color. With segregation breaking down in Phoenix in the 1950s, people of color in the valley were quickly rebuffed by the elite with the creation of “South Phoenix,” virtually ensuring that a defacto housing disparity and widespread poverty would continue in the Valley of the Sun.
The second piece (“In the Distance: Suburbia against the barricades.”) comes from another influential tendency to Phoenix Class War Council, this from the short-lived insurrectionary anarchist publication Killing King Abacus, The unsigned piece analyzes the class geography of Paris and squarely places the blame on Georges-Eugène “Baron” Haussmann, the architect of class war urban planning under Napoleon III. His brutal renovation of Paris became a near blueprint for city planners across the US. Haussmann’s project in Paris took back control of the physical make-up of Paris for the French elite, in order to diffuse the power the small streets held when the insurrections and revolutions ignited and communards and workers rushed to barricade them. Though it achieved this to the relief of the bureaucrats, the capitalists had it their way as well. Haussmann aimed to construct a city that would “detain and fix the rootless and to channel workers into linear movement: from home to work, from work to home (from “In the Distance”).” He would surely be pleased to look upon Paris now, a hub for elite capital, complete with its large boulevards and massive public transportation apparatus, in other words the perfect mechanisms for the transportation of labor.
Clichy-sous-Bois and South Phoenix everywhere
Naturally there are important dynamics to note when comparing Haussmann’s radical restructuring of Paris in order to better facilitate Capital's domination of the new industrial era and the manner in which U.S. planners applied the Haussmann model. Much like the anonymous Phoenix executive quoted above, Haussmann, too, would also not likely have seen any need for a superfluous population, especially one comprised of the immigrants and descendants of indentured slaves from the former colonies, or in the case of the United States from the colony that existed within.
World War II devastated France, and much of the reconstruction efforts came from an immigrant influx from France’s North African colonies. Their efforts were rewarded with the construction of massive public housing estates, the ghettos to house their children and grand children. While white French planners in the era after the massive overhaul of Paris created the ghettos as a self-congratulatory olive branch to the thousands of new immigrants, white Americans simply abandoned the metropolitan city for the suburbs. Their flight was aided by the massive new freeway systems that made it possible to travel to the factory or office miles and miles away. Not only did post World War II American urban planners see it necessary for the suburbs to exist in order to create space and bring a piece of nature to middle and working class whites, but also to function as a release valve easing the wide spread paranoia whites felt as the breakdown of legal segregation saw families of color moving into previously all white neighborhoods.
Phoenix’s history is unique, as one of the cruelest and polarized urban environments in the U.S, with great amounts of wealth accumulated amidst the stark poverty of the reservations for Indigenous people. But along side this resides an assigned political space/internal containment policy for people of color within the city limits.
BTR is correct to assign the status of South Phoenix as a white supremacist political construction that has for years locked people of color in isolation, suffering the violence of benign neglect from the state. We see the similarities in South Phoenix and in the poverty-stricken suburbs of Clichy-sous-Bois, itself at the center of the insurrections against racism and police violence pervasive in French society. While we agree with BTR that the attack on white supremacy is central to the struggle, we also recognize that the systems of control are so advanced that the struggle for freedom must also be a total attack against the ideology of the city, until it no longer remains a political space dominated and shaped by Capital.
There is little doubt the Haussmann would smile upon the fate of the French Arab, African, Muslim, and immigrant populations stewing in the decrepit suburbs on the outskirts of nearly every major French city. We see the sociopathic legacy of Haussmann’s systems of control reflected in the white supremacist mirror of America. This vision stares back too, as Clichy-sous-Bois and the other ghettos like it continue to explode in rage against exclusion, poverty, and alienation. It is obvious, to even the most casual observers, that a massive crisis is reshaping the economic, political, and social geography all humans inhabit. Where will the “Clichy-sous-Bois”'s of the world develop in this crisis and where are capitalists already planning the next “South Phoenix”?
But we know that the plans of Capital always emerge in response to our own desires to construct our own lives and our own boulevards. We make our own paths. What will they be?
SOUTH OF WHITE PHOENIX
How the North Was Won
by Jean Reynolds
Bring the Ruckus
Why is it that such a large percentage of people of color live in south Phoenix? Is it because people just like to live with “members of their own race,” or are there deeper reasons? A look back at Phoenix history reveals that this segregation came about through government-supported policies. These policies upheld white privilege at the expense of Blacks, Chicanos, and other people of color.
Many of us have heard about segregation in the South. That kind of discrimination was practiced here, too. Prior to the 1950s, whites enforced total segregation of Blacks from Phoenix churches, schools, theaters, and restaurants. Similarly, residents of Mexican descent were forced into the basements of churches, inferior schools, the balconies of theaters, and only allowed to swim in public pools or dance in popular dance halls one day a week. It was a taboo to cross Van Buren and enter the “north” part of Phoenix (except to work) until well in the 1940s. Blacks and Chicanos were denied access to well-paying jobs. Instead, they often took menial jobs such as such as farmworkers, industrial and manual laborers, laundry workers, or as maids for middle-class or rich whites.
Drawing the color lines
But this kind of segregation wasn't the only kind of discrimination that existed. Government policies and local real estate developers enforced another kind of segregation which kept southern Phoenix black and brown, and north Phoenix white. During the 1930s the federal government created the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), which mainly provided financing for homes and business loans. Another program, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), encouraged banks to lend money to prospective home-owners by offering insurance on “approved” homes.
What these programs meant in reality was that many white people in Phoenix bought new homes while most people of color continued to live in substandard housing. Why? because both the HOLC and the FHA relied on certain standards to determine property values. These standards were based on the race and class of the residents living on the property. This is how it worked:
HOLC appraisers surveyed Phoenix to determine the “security” of properties. They crated a map, labeling the best properties with an “A” and the “hazardous” properties with a “D”. The appraisers relied on local real estate standards to grade the properties. Local developers created these standards by ranking people eon a scale of racial desirability. For example, whites of northern European descent were given the highest rating, while Blacks and Chicanos ranked the lowest on the scale. According to Phoenix real estate guidelines, if a non-white family moved into a neighborhood north of Van Buren, property values would begin to decline. Whites, on the other hand, took full advantage of HOLC and FHA programs to move into better homes.
Inventing south Phoenix
South of Van Buren, most neighborhoods were already poor. Federal loan programs and local banks ensured they stayed that way. Before someone could get a loan to buy a house, start a small business, or improve her or his property, their land had to be appraised. The appraisal was based on the HOLC map. Residents of these neighborhoods couldn't get financial help because they lived in areas rated as “hazardous.”
Therefore, people of color were not just excluded from homes in north Phoenix neighborhoods, they were denied money for economic growth and development in their own communities. The makings of a poor “south Phoenix” had begun.
In the 1930s, “south Phoenix” was defined as the area between Van Buren and north of the Salt River, which is now considered downtown. After World War II, many Blacks and Chicanos (and other poor folks) began to move to cheaper housing south of the Salt River, which was an agricultural area outside the city limits until 1960. This is the area we now call “south Phoenix.”
As we can see, “south Phoenix” is not a fixed geographical area but a concept, defined as wherever people of color are concentrated. This concept stillexists in people's minds today and is a direct result of federal policies and local practices that maintain white privilege.
The next south Phoenix
Now the city is planning to develop the Salt River area – from 24th street to 19th Avenues, from Baseline to Buckeye. A plan called “Beyond the Banks” envisions a recreational are, hotels, and other dreams of grandeur. What happens to all the poor, mainly Chicano and Black folks in these areas? They'll have to be removed if the city wants to attract all those visitors and businesses. So, again the past, people of color will be forced to live on some other piece of land unwanted by whites, perhaps out of the city's boundaries. When that happens, yet another south Phoenix will emerge. Unless we do something to stop it.
In the Distance: Suburbia against the barricades.
Haussmann and City Planning: the birth of the human tide
From Killing King Abacus #1
"Having, as they do the appearance of walling in a massive eternity, Haussmann's urban works are a wholly appropriate representation of the absolute governing principles of the Empire: repression of every individual formation, every organic self-development, 'fundamental' hatred of all individuality."--JJ Honeger 1874(Benjamin, 122)
"But by the any standpoint other than that of facilitating police control, Haussmann's Paris is a city built by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Guy De Bord
Haussmann did not invent city planning, the Romans and ancient Chinese planned cities. Modern cities were planned and built in the British and French colonies earlier than in Europe. Washington DC was planned and built on an empty field decades before Haussmann refashioned Paris. What was different about Haussmann's Paris is that he built his new national capitol on top of the old Paris, a pre-industrial city. Haussmann's Paris reveals more about the architecture of capitalism and of the nation state than L'Enfant's D.C because it shows us what Haussmann chose to destroy as well as what he chose to build. In his demolition of poor neighborhoods and narrow streets we can see what he considered a threat to the new state and economy.
Boulevards were already replacing narrow streets in Paris two decades earlier than Haussmann took office, but on a much smaller scale. During the July revolution of 1830 an ironic twist befell government soldiers. The large squares of granite that were being used to pave new boulevards were dragged up to the top floor of houses and dropped on the heads of soldiers. These stones became a common source of barricade building materials. In 1830 there were 6,000 barricades. Haussmann took office after both the 1830 and 1848 insurrections, in 1853. In an attempt to prevent other insurrections, Haussmann tried to eliminate the construction of barricades by destroying narrow streets and replacing them with wide boulevards. He also built boulevards in order to allow for the easy transport of troops "connecting the government with the troops and the troops with the suburbs" and allowing troops to surround neighborhoods in the city. (Benjamin, 137-8) By paving boulevards Haussmann facilitated the regulated and regular movement of troops.
Haussmann's Paris was more than just a city. It was a symbol; its monuments and boulevards created an image of the capitol of a powerful empire. The fancy new boulevards that were part of this image pushed rents up just like recent "urban revitalization" projects. In 1864 Haussmann gave a speech venting "his hatred of the rootless urban population." (Benjamin, 12). The construction of boulevards drove the proletariat into the suburbs and increased the population of wandering homeless. Working class neighborhoods were destroyed to literally pave the way for boulevards, and when this didn't drive workers out of the city rising rents did. Haussmann's destruction and construction placed neighborhoods that were likely to revolt outside of the city. Boulevards allowed traffic to flow to the center of the city. The movement of workers' homes to the suburbs meant that 'commuting' to and from work was born on a mass scale.
"Hundreds of thousands of families, who work in the center of the capital, sleep in the outskirts. The movement resembles the tide: in the morning the workers stream into Paris, and in the evening the same wave of people flows out. It is a melancholy image...I would add...that it is the first time that humanity has assisted in a spectacle so dispiriting for the people." A. Gravneau, L'ouvrier devant la societe -Paris, 1868 (Benjamin, 137)
Haussmann aimed to detain and fix the rootless and to channel workers into linear movement: from home to work, from work to home, a precursor to metro, boulot, dodo.
Haussmann planned the construction of railway links between the center of Paris and its outskirts during a period in which the European railways expanded considerably. "Space is killed by the railways and we are left with time alone." -Heinrich Heine (Rice, 207) Space may not have been killed by the railways but high-speed travel has made travel time a greater consideration than travel distance. What Georg Simmel said of money can be said of the modern city. They both allow connections between previously distant things but make that which is close more difficult to reach. While distances were conquered by the railways, the nearby slipped further away. That is, at the same time as transportation and communications allowed one to reach far away places in a short period of time, ones neighbors became more distant: industrialization demanded more hours of work and more travel time to and from work, there was less time to socialize.
Let's not forget that the separation between work and leisure time is accompanied by the separation between living and working spaces. Industrialization and the subsequent proletarianization of large sectors of the population created this separation on a mass scale. Peasants had worked at or near home, those that had worked and lived in separate quarters generally found that the distance between these 2 points increased with industrialization. The increasing partition of time into working and living in separate spaces effected customary meal times, household labor and its sexual division, family relations and leisure activities. This separation began a process of increased dependence on consumer goods for previously home produced items. The creation of suburbs increased the distance of this separation. This separation corrodes the type of relationships that could form a basis for attacks on the established order. This separation organizes the spatial and temporal imposition of consumption and production. The prevalence of the spatial and temporal separation between work and 'life' was born with industrialization but has come to appear timeless and natural. The naturalness of this separation kills the passion for freedom by limiting our capacity to imagine any other organization of space and time than the repetitive constriction which capital imposes on us.
North American Suburbs: the paved dream.
Before World War II, the U.S. was already a highly industrialized country. Thus, the conditions I describe above were already common to North American cities. From the 30s on, the distance dividing living and working spaces increased exponentially as millions of Americans moved to the suburbs, highways were built and millions of Americans bought cars in an attempt to close this increasing distance.
The federal government employed millions in the thirties to build a new landscape. After WWII the Veteran's Mortgage Guarantee Program provided low cost housing to millions of people. From the late 40s to the mid-60s developers built 23 million new homes. Industry followed these mostly white new suburbanites out of the city, partly because unions were weaker there. In the 40s and 50s the government invested millions of dollars on the suburban infrastructure: gas, electricity, roads, sewer systems and highways. They built thousands of roads and highways allowing for easy movement between suburbs and city centers. Poor neighborhoods were unable to resist the construction of highways through their neighborhoods whereas rich neighborhoods had the clout to prevent this from happening. One more recent example of this is the construction of a highway in South Central Los Angeles while the rich of Beverly Hills were able to stop the construction of a highway in their neighborhood.
The defense department spent millions of dollars on freeways after the war. Just as Haussmann's boulevards were strategically useful to the military, highways could potentially be used as runways to land bombers. More significant though was the alliance between, car companies, the oil and rubber industries that lobbied for the construction of highways, and the state. These companies used the coercive power of the built environment to insure the consumption of their products. Suburbanization was a perfect accompaniment to the construction of roads, highways, and mass produced automobiles. Greater distances between work and home along with terrible public transportation (again thanks to the friendship between government and car and oil companies) created a need for automobiles.
Alienation is built into the city and into the suburbs, in its concrete and asphalt. Take the example of Los Angeles, the city built to accommodate cars but not walking human beings. In LA many people think nothing of driving 45 minutes just to go a bar to have a drink. Instead of having neighborhoods where one finds a whole street of bars or cafes, places to socialize are spread out over the city. North American cities lack any pre-capitalist history; they were built from the beginning by the dictates of capital, with government help. The result: urban blights that are more adapted to the automobile than the human being.
Unfortunately cities that predate capitalism can be also transformed into concrete monsters. In Torino, Italy the gigantic FIAT plant began assembly line mass production based on Ford's model decades before the rest of Europe. The result is the same as occurred in U.S. cities: mass production needed mass consumption to perpetuate itself, a cityscape was built that conformed to the requirements of accumulation. Someone had to buy the cars, to make this possible the car companies made sure that roads were built. Torino is a rare European example of the results of the dominion of a car company and its allies over a cityscape. Concrete partitions between seemingly endless apartments and a proliferation of roads have surrounded the walkable narrow streets of the old city. The FIAT plant employed a large percentage of Torino's residents for many decades. The employees were scattered throughout the city while the FIAT was in one location, the result: auto, boulot, dodo.
Back in the U.S.A., the suburban lawn and backyard were offered to a section of the working class and to the middle classes. The alienation from nature they experienced in their new automobiles and at work was compensated for and then hidden by an equally alienated but much more pleasant relationship to nature at home. Forced to buy what they could easily make at home if there were time, watching adventure on TV, the suburbanite resorts to control over nature where he lacks control over his own life. Therefore we observe bushes trimmed into squares, a neurosis for mowing lawns and meticulously planted rows of flowers. Garden stores have proliferated and the suburban yard has become nature as commodity. The suburban yard, the lies on television and 17 choices of toothpaste all helped perpetuate the illusion of the American dream. The American dream is lifeless and as uniform as the suburban lawn; it is produced by the television instead of by subjects that intervene in life in order to transform it. The American dream hides the degrading reality of a processed life from those "lucky" enough to afford it. Where private property reigns the ownership of one's living space, work-space, and just about every other space by capitalists the property poor individual is perpetually constrained. Suburbs conceal alienation from nature and other human beings as well as the lack of power that suburbanites exercise over their own lives at home and at work.
The separate ownership of living and working spaces divides opposition to Capital into labor and rent struggles. On the other hand, the illusion of homeownership (getting bank loans to buy a house) gave millions of workers a vested interest in the system of private property, and diffused any potential struggle against landlords. This has resulted in community action to protect the property values in a given area. Workers have organized to keep other workers out of their neighborhoods. When millions of blacks moved to northern cities, white neighborhoods tried to prevent blacks from moving into their neighborhoods in order to protect their property values. This "community" action" is in many cases the action of illusory communities. The average suburbanite or city dweller doesn't know many of her neighbors. When she chooses to take community action to protect her property value, this is a "community" connection based on money, and seldom on direct human connections.
While Haussmann's Paris served to create an image of the capitol of a powerful empire, city revitalization projects create an image of the new "beautified" city that is sold to us under the guise of community pride. In both of these examples this was achieved through the displacement of the poor. The "community" is sold to us with citywide celebrations, city fairs or official Millennium celebrations. The State and the media help create and perpetuate these imagined communities, that is, communities which lack commonality based on direct human relations but are instead based on an abstract conception of common identity, the most obvious example of this is the Nation. Capitalism destroys human connections but it replaces this vacuum with imagined communities.
Haussmann built boulevards to prevent the construction of barricades and completely destroyed the neighborhoods where insurrection was most likely to occur. These neighborhoods reappeared in a different form in the suburbs. North American suburbs are built so that few direct relationships of the sort that Haussmann paved over ever develop. Communication is as much a threat to state control as barricades. In the suburbs, houses are far from shopping areas, places to socialize, and work places. Meanwhile the suburbanite is sold the idea that she likes this on TV, and is bought off with excessive consumption. The suburbanite is lost alone in a labyrinth of reflections. Unable to find anyone to discuss anything of substance with, she is left with only images for companions. While the suburbs were being designed to placate and stupefy, the inner cities were becoming increasingly marginalized economically. Haussmann destroyed slums to prevent insurrection, but in the U.S. slums sprouted up right in the shadow of the American dream. During the Rodney King Riots, suburbanites watched the adventure on TV.
Sources:
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Eliand, Howard and McLaughlin, Kevin Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity Cambridge:Blackwell, 1990.
Rice, Shelley. Parisian Views. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Alan Moore on V For Vendetta
This is an interesting talk on V For Vendetta by legendary comic writer Alan Moore, he's sitting down with the BBC discussing his works in a series of videos. In this part, Moore breaks down some of the history to on his (and artist David Lloyd's) work V For Vendetta to put it in a proper context, especially when it comes to the story's politics. The American film adaptation is notorious amongst fans of the comic series, as well as anarchists, for gutting most of the best bits of dialogue in addition to the very anarchist politics that define V, not the shallow libertarianism of the American film.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Spring Initiative: Arizona Anarchist Assembly
Spring 2009 Arizona Anarchist Assembly:
A Culmination of lengthening days and struggles.
A gathering for friends, comrades, and those with affinity: Yes, you, you, you, and you too.
The Phoenix Class War Council is celebrating the spring, a time for passion and love, the erection of the Maypole, and shedding dead weight for the birth of the all that is new.
In our celebration, we must also renew our energies and focus on that which hinders human happiness, freedom, and a balance with the natural world. Arizona is a complex of oppression: a system of walls, barriers, cameras, and regulated movements, all of this enforced by the authorities of capital and bureaucracy, matching the blood thirst of a reactionary public.
Anarchists, we challenge these regulations! We've challenged them before there was a name for those who seek total liberation, through the wars and strikes, migration and deportation, the firing squad and the noose, the state and capitalists, the left and the right, we have fought for a world worth living in, it is our history and future.
Arizona is a haven for those seeking the other way, once the home of the indigenous and natural ways, later murderously seized by settlers manifesting their white supremacist "destiny". A centuries old nightmare for those who dream of freedom for all, we know as well there has always been resistance.
The ball is in our court. Let’s chat.
This is an invitation to anarchists from all corners of the state to come to Tempe.
This meeting will be held on the final day of the Local to Global Justice, however this event is not affiliated with the conference, meaning this is not a scheduled workshop. This event is an initiative of the Phoenix Class War Council and is the result of discussions between a handful anarchists who desire a dialogue between those of us in struggle in Arizona. We are not calling for this event with the intent to build a new organization, or to make a series of big decisions, we see this gathering as a mere step in (re)building our presence and our collective strength.
Contact the Phoenix Class War Council with comments, concerns, questions, and complaints at:
firesneverextinguished@gmail.com.
3 PM
Sunday March 1, 2009
Meet at the Farmer Atrium
ASU Main Campus
Tempe, Arizona
http://firesneverextinguished.blogspot.com/
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