More required reading from the struggle against the university in California

"How many do you suppose will follow?" said Paul.

"As many people as are bored to death or sick of things the way they are," said Lasher.

"All of 'em," said Finnerty.

"And then what?" said Paul.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

As the ongoing struggle against the university system in California continues, it has produced a lot of very interesting analysis and actions. We've yet to see these ideas and tactics translate across the border to Arizona, but PCWC will be pleased as punch whenever they finally do. While the situation in California looks a lot more like what some have called a "failed state" -- a system in crisis and collapse -- conditions are not that much different here at home. Tuition rises steadily higher, locking some students into decades of debt payments at the same time it locks working class students out, but the leadership of the student movement, what there is of it in Arizona, has proven itself totally unfit to the challenge.

I must say that it's been many, many years since any of us in PCWC has oriented towards student struggles. Generally they have not showed the political depth or militancy that we find necessary and interesting. Too often they have reflected a wimpy liberalism or reformist leftism that offers nothing at all in terms of possibilities for the shattering the misery of every day life on the university, to say nothing of posing any real threat of breaking beyond the ivory tower to articulate any ideas or generate any actions of relevance to those of us on the outside.

Nevertheless, the ongoing capitalist crisis has the potential, as we witness now in California, of radicalizing large segments of the students and workers that surround and participate in the factory of the university. And we know from history (Greece, Mexico, France, etc) that the universities can sometimes emerge at the forefront of the class war against Capital and the state. Will the struggle bust out and broaden? The latest round of occupations, much expanded thanks to the hard work of militants involved in earlier seizures, offers hope.

But if those struggles are to expand and, as we hope they might, grow finally to topple the corpse machine that we call every day life in the US -- and the exclusivity of the university system with it -- those of us within them must recognize the multiplicitous and often duplicitous nature of the enemy that challenges us and take aim, because the potential for failure lies not just in the reaction from the state and the obvious opponents to freedom, but also in the recuperative nature of the student leftist leadership itself. They must be challenged because, within the university context, it is they that stand between us and direct confrontation with Capital if what we want is to bring the class war to school. These gatekeepers, these professional managers of social struggle, will use all manner of excuses, arguments and ruses to maintain their death grip on the movement and we must be prepared to cut that hand off quickly and mercilessly lest we suffer the sell out and manipulation that is their stock and trade.

Thankfully, because of the the general absence of a Left of any consequence in Arizona, student militants here may find themselves at a substantial advantage over their Cali counterparts. The Left here has proven itself quite impotent and, therefore, not difficult to challenge and, honestly, ignore, when need be. That being said, militants must not make the mistake of building the Left as a tool for expressing our will onto Capital. The Left is not a threat to Capital, it is a manifestation of Capital and therefore aims for its preservation. We must understand this. The aim of the militant and the revolutionary, among other things, is to broaden the debate, to expand the mode and terms of struggle, and to push for the furthest reaching attack on Capital possible. This necessarily brings us into conflict with the guardians of the torch of campus activism. We must douse that light.

More can be said about strategy and the theories we need to deploy in the streets and in the university malls if we hope to be victorious, but for now, let's consider this point. Towards that end, I have re-posted below the entire text of an article composed by some of PCWC's California comrades who are currently engaged in the dust up over there. This inspiring piece articulates exactly the difficulties that the Leftist organizer presents for revolutionaries. Until we understand the true role of this counter-revolutionary, we have little hope of success in our fight. Further, this article is unique because it comes from a class war, non-student perspective, providing a fresh way to look at the struggle. Enjoy!

-PI

The Bricks We Throw at Police Today Will Build the Liberation Schools of Tomorrow

"If you're scared today you'll be scared tomorrow as well and always and so you've got to make a start now right away we must show that in this school we aren't slaves we have to do it so we can do what they're doing in all other schools to show that we're the ones to decide because the school is ours."

The Unseen, Nanni Balestrini

Days later, voices in unison still ring in our ears. "Who's university?" At night in bed, we mumble the reply to ourselves in our dreams. "Our university!" And in the midst of building occupations and the festive and fierce skirmishes with the police, concepts like belonging and ownership take the opportunity to assume a wholly new character. Only the village idiot or, the modern equivalent, a bureaucrat in the university administration would think we were screaming about something as suffocating as property rights when last week we announced, "The School is Ours!" When the day erupted, when the escape plan from the drudgery of college life was hatched, it was clear to everyone that the university not only belonged to the students who were forcefully reasserting their claim but also to the faculty, to every professor and TA who wishes they could enliven the mandatory curriculum in their repetitive 101 class, to the service workers who can't wait for their shift to end, and to every other wage-earner on campus ensuring the daily functioning of the school.

Last week, the actualization of our communal will gave us a new clarity. The usual divisiveness of proprietorship was forcefully challenged; cascades of hidden meaning rush onto rigid notions of possession and our eyes look past surface appearances. So now when asked, "who does the university belong to?" we can't fail to recognize that the college itself was built by labor from generations past, the notebook paper is produced by workers in South America, the campus computers are the output of work in Chinese factories, the food in the student cafe is touched by innumerable hands before it reaches the plates, and all the furniture at UC Berkeley is produced by the incarcerated at San Quentin. Thus the university, its normal operation and existence, ought to be attributed to far more than it regularly is. To claim that the school is ours requires our definition of ownership to not only shatter the repressive myth that the college belongs to the State of California and the Regents but to also extend belonging past national and state borders and throughout time. It's clear, the entire university, for that matter, every university belongs to everyone, employed and unemployed, all students and all workers, to everyone of the global class that produces and reproduces the world as we now know it. The school is ours because it's everyone's and the destruction of the property relation, with all its damaging and limiting consequences, is implicit in the affirmation of this truth. It's our university...

…but, as of now, in its present configuration, who would want something so disgusting as a school?

The Poverty of Student Life is the Poverty of Capitalist Society

It's now larger than any conspiratorial plot by Thomas Huxley. In fact, he could have never envisioned the extent to which contemporary class society would transform education as such into another separated activity, detached from the totality of life and devoid of any practical worth or good, while, simultaneously, being in perfect accord with the needs of capitalist production.

Learning is now sapped of all its content, education is but another part of the assembly line in the social factory, and the university itself serves an important function within the reproduction of disjointed life in this divided society. While the collegiate apparatus infests countless minds with the logic and technical knowledge of capital, the illusion is being sold that somehow academic labor is divorced from the world of work. Our apologies, but a term paper is not the production of autonomous and creative knowledge, it is work and therefore exploitation. It is human activity animated for the sake of capital not for humanity itself. The conditioning and preparation of students for a life crushed by regimented value creation is the essential purpose of the college: to teach the young how to give and take orders. Nothing about the university is neutral; its role in society is clear. The lines are being drawn.

The Representation of the Student Body Has Become an Enemy of the Student Body

You will always be offered dialogue as if that were its own end; it will die in bureaucracy's stale air, as if trapped in a soundless room. In insurrectionary times, action is the speech that can be heard.
-Slogan written on a Digital Wall


Far before last week's events, we've located them in the enemy's camp. Student activist-leaders shamed, begged, pleaded, and finally began to shriek and scream at us when we ignored their megaphone-amplified orders. In their last ditch effort to see their commands followed, they physically assisted the police in blocking us from occupying buildings and protected the outnumbered cops from our punches and shoves. It's obvious they've chosen their side some time ago. These are the idiots who were telling people who tried to break down the door of California Hall on November 18th that they should not do so because "there was no consensus." These are the same fools who sabotaged the attempted storming of the Regents meeting at UCLA and the occupation of Covel Hall, ruining months of self-directed planning, after declaring the crowd had become too "agitated." The Cynthias, who later that day went on to disrupt the occupation of Carter-Huggins Hall. These are the same politicians, who grabbed the megaphone as students marched in to the President's office in Downtown Oakland, prepared to raise utter hell and instead directed them into a dialogue with middle-level administrators, later issuing an order that the crowd must leave "peacefully." Disgusting, yet typical. The only consensus they want is rallied around the social peace and the preservation of the existent institutions and the only alteration they want of the power structure is their ascent to the top of it. By actively collaborating with the administration and police, by orchestrating arrests, by frittering away the momentum of the angry, they validate the insults we flung at them and they revealed themselves for the "student cops," "class traitors" and "snitches" they are.

For them it's a knee-jerk reaction: challenge their power and they fall back on identity politics. If they don't get their way they cry privilege. When the actions escalate, when we begin to feel our power, the self-appointed are waiting to remind us that there may be the undocumented present – the activist super-ego. Somehow in their tiny paternalistic brains they believe they know what's best for immigrants implying that the undocumented are too stupid to understand the consequences of their actions and god granted the student leaders the wisdom to guide these lost souls. In their foolish heads, immigrants remain passive sheep, black people never confront the police and just enjoy the beatings they get, and the working class always takes orders from the boss.


In pseudo-progressive tongue they speak a state-like discourse of diversity; the groans of the student-activist zombie is the grammar of the dead revolutions of the past. Their vision of race politics ignores the triumphs and wallows in the failures of the 60's movements. The stagnant ghosts of yesterday's deadlocked struggle; they are the hated consequences of the civil rights era that produced a rainbow of tyranny with a Black president mutilating Afghanis, Asian cops brutalizing students on campus, and Latino prison guards chaining prisoners. In this same way, the opportunists act out their complicity with the structures of order. When students defy preset racial categories and unify in order to take action on their own behalf, the student cops attempt to reinforce the present day's violent separations and reestablish governance. They fail to recognize that divisions among proletarians are questioned only within the struggle itself and the festering scissions between the exploited can only be sutured with hands steadied by combat with the exploiters. Like a scalpel used to reopen stitched wounds, the student activists' brand of multi-culturalism is undoubtedly a tool of state repression.

During the scuffle with the police in front of California Hall on the inaugural day of the strike, one of the student cops asked, "What's going to happen when we get into the building?" For us, given the social context of the strike, the answer is obvious, for them, even the question is problematic because of the risk it poses to their position of dominance. In the moment of rupture, their role as managers becomes void. Self-directed action crowds out the programmatic. They forever need to stand on the edge of the reality that something could pop off, because it is in that possibility that they can control the situation and ensure that things do, in fact, move in their way towards nowhere. When things get hot, the self-elected of the student movement are waiting with their trusty fire extinguishers ready in hand because they know that when people act on their own and valorize their self-interest, their authority crumbles and everyone can see how bankrupt their strategy of social containment actually is. The student activist stutter-steps on the path of nothingness. But we hope to turn the mob against them. To seize their megaphones and declare: "Death to Bureaucracy!" Some may ask, "Why have these hooligans come to our campus?" "They've come to ruin everything!" the student leaders will say.

And for once, we agree.

We Are Not Students, We Are Dynamite!

A movement results from combinations that even its own participants cannot control. And that its enemies cannot calculate. It evolves in ways that cannot be predicted, and even those who foresee it are taken by surprise.
-Paco Ignacio Taibo

Many will ask then, why have we thrown ourselves into the 'student movement?' We are not students, at least not now and never in the UC system. It is not feasible for us to attend the UC in the first place, either because of the cost or the lack of desire to live the rest of our lives ridden with overwhelming debt.

We have not come to the university to make demands of the Board of Regents or the university administration. Nor do we wish to participate in some form of 'democracy' where the 'student movement' decides (or is told to do so by student leaders) how to negotiate with the power structure. For us, Sacramento and its budget referendums are as useless as the empty words spewing from the mouths of the union leaders and activists on campus. Nothing about the "democratizing" the school system or forcing it to become better managed or more "transparent" even mildly entices us. No, we didn't join the student movement to obtain any of these paltry demands.

Last week, we began to attack the university not just because we are proletarians scorned by and excluded from the UC, or that we hope by resisting we may reduce costs and thus join the UC system and elevate our class positions. Our choice to collaborate in the assault on California's school was driven solely by our own selfish class interest: to take its shit and use it for ourselves. Occupied buildings become spaces from which to further strike the exploiters of this world and, at the same time, disrupt and suppress the ability of the college to function.

Like any other institution structured by class society, the university is one of our targets. We made our presence in the student movement to break down the divisions between students angry over fee hikes, workers striking against lay offs, and faculty at odds with the administration over cuts and furloughs. These are not separate struggles over different issues, but sections of a class that have a clear and unified enemy. We have come for the same reason we intervene in any tension: to push for the total destruction of capitalist exploitation and for the re-composition of the proletariat towards communism.

And so, ask yourself how could one even go about reforming something as debilitating as a university? Demanding its democratization would only mean a reconfiguration of horror. To ask for transparency is nothing but a request for a front row seat to watch an atrocity exhibition. Even the seemingly reasonable appeal for reducing the cost of tuition will leave the noose of debt wrapped snuggly around our necks. There's nothing the university can give anyone, but last week's accomplishments show that there is everything for us to take. If anything, our actions, as a means in themselves, were more important than any of the crumbs the UC system or the Regents Board might wipe off the table for us. During these days, we felt the need for obliterating renewal give rise to intense enthusiasm. We felt the spirit irradiate throughout campus and press everyone "to push the university struggle [not only] to its limits," but to its ultimate conclusion: against the university itself.

…And So It Must Spread

"It is surely not difficult to see that our time is a time of birth and transition to a new period. The spirit has broken with what was hitherto the world of its existence and imagination and is about to submerge all this in the past; it is at work giving itself a new form."

-The Phenomenology of Spirit

The stench that the university emits has become unbearable and students everywhere are reacting against the institution that has perpetually rotted away their being via an arsenal of disciplinary techniques. At campuses across California the corrosion of life is brought to a quick halt when the college's daily mechanism of power is given the Luddite treatment, and suddenly, studying becomes quite meaningless. Shamefully, the administration, terrified they are losing control and supervision of the pupils they spent so much time training, turn riot police on anyone ripping off their chains. At UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, SF State and CSU Fresno the unlimited occupations display the universal need for free and liberated space. The recalcitrance is spreading. In Austria, students left their occupied territory at the Fine Arts Academy to march on the US embassy in solidarity with the police repression on California campuses. On the same continent, the occupations in Greece have now extended outside the universities into the high schools and even the middle schools. Everywhere, the youth are recognizing the school as a vapid dungeon stunting their growth and, at the same time, they are refusing submission to the crushing of their bodily order. All over, a new generation is seeking the passion for the real, for what is immediately practicable, here and now.

The assaults on police officers, the confrontations with the administration, the refusal of lectures, and the squatted buildings point the objective struggle in the direction of the complete and total negation of the university. That is, brick by brick smashing the academic monolith into pieces and abolishing the college as a specialized institution restricted to a specific segment of society. This will require the instillation of technique known as learning to be wholly subverted and recomposing education as a generalized and practical activity of the entire population; an undermining through which the student shall auto-destruct.

Going halfway always spells defeat, and so, the spreading of movement is our only assurance against this stagnation. Complete self-abolition necessitates that the logic of revolt spill out of the universities and flood the entire social terrain. But the weapons of normalcy are concealed everywhere and especially within the most mundane characteristics of daily life. The allegiance to the bourgeois family structure and interruptions by holiday vacations and school breaks threaten to douse the fuse before its ignition and hinder our momentum.

Let us not lose sight of the tasks before us.

We must forcefully eject the police from the campus. Find their holes and burn them out. Block their movements near occupied spaces. Build barricades; protect that which has been re-taken. We need only to look to Chile or Greece to see the immense advantage movements possess once they seize territory and declare it free of police. Blockade the entrances and gates of the campus as the students have already begun to experiment with at UC Santa Cruz.

We must also denounce and destroy the student Left (the recuperative, the parasitic, the "representative") that seeks to de-escalate the movement and integrate it back into politics. Our venom is not only directed at those who assisted the police in blocking angry students from entering California Hall at UC Berkeley or obstructed the crowds during the Regents meeting at UCLA but also of those who sought to negotiate with the police "on behalf" of the occupiers of Wheeler Hall. It is telling that the police will negotiate with them, because to the cops, they are reasonable. We are not, however, because we seek the immediate annihilation of both the pigs and the activists.

Renew the strikes and extend their reach. Occupy the student stores and loot them. Sell off the computers in the lab to raise funds. Set up social spaces for students and non-students alike to come in and use freely. Appropriate the copy machines and make news of the revolt. Takeover the cafeterias and bars and begin preparing the communal feast. Burn the debt records and the construction plans. Chisel away the statues and vandalize the pictures of the old order. In short, create not an 'alternative' that can easily make its fit within the existent, but rather a commune in which power is built to destroy capitalist society. When faced with a university building, the choices are limited; either convert it to ashes or begin the immediate materialization of the international soviet.

To all waged and unwaged workers – students or not, unemployed, precarious or criminal we call on you to join this struggle. The universities can become not only our playgrounds but also the foundations from which we can build a partisan war machine fit for the battle to retrieve our stolen lives.

And to the majority of the students, from those paying their way to those swimming in debt, all used as collateral by the Regents, who bravely occupied buildings across California and fought the police against the barricades – we say this clearly: we are with you! We stood by you as you faced down the police in the storming rain and defended the occupiers. Your actions are an inspiration to us all and we hope to meet you again on the front lines. In you we see the spirit of insurgent students everywhere.

As our Austrian friends recently told us, "Take out your hairspray and your lighter"! Tear down the education factory. Attack the Left and everything that it "represents." Attack the new bosses before they become the old ones. Life serves the risk taker – and we're rolling the fucking dice!

FOR ANARCHY AND COMMUNISM!

-Three Non-Matriculating Proletarians

March was a month on the move!

Phoenix Class War Council(ers) are back in the valley after a month of travels, adventures, and politics.

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. March has been a month of movement for us here at PCWC. Collectively, we put out our newspaper (email us for a copy at firesneverextinguished[at]gmail.com for a copy) and distributed the shirts we printed. Aside from that, much of the month was taken up with travels and scheming.

***

Phoenix Insurgent was in Europe again, drinking and touring, and meeting up with anarchos there. France and Spain were mostly occupied with forgetting politics and integrating into the much more laid back French and Spanish lifestyle. A return visit to the great bookstore Alternative Libertaire produced a copy of an biography of Durutti in Spanish, French and English. Ample opportunities to practice French, especially at the bars, led to some great conversations about French politics and, especially, the role of minorities from Brittany to Algeria (you can email PCWC in French, English or Spanish, by the way).

Moving on to London via train, PI met up with some folks from the great journal Occupied London, threw back some beers and Turkish pizzas, and got some great conversation and a better picture of politics in that neck of the woods -- especially the revolutionary green sense of the word. That part of town is slotted for that combination of building boom/demolition/expulsion/colonization that accompanies the Olympics wherever it goes (London 2012), and work is already steadily underway with all the usual characteristics (new sports stadiums, extension of subway lines and the clearing out of old -- or even not so old -- buildings for new ones dedicated to the new capitalist enterprises).

On the other end of town, PI met up with some folks at Freedom Books and then got a great political/historical tour of Whitechapel and the Whitechapel Anarchist Group space. Apparently a political history pub crawl had just taken place recently, sparking all sorts of ideas for similar projects here in Phoenix, especially downtown. PCWC has been reading Bradford Luckingham's very interesting histories of Phoenix lately, revealing just how much we have to learn about our own town and how Capital and politics has shaped it.

As for the WAG space, the Valley would be doing great if it had a space like that here. In what they call the London Anarchist Resource Center, they boast what is probably the biggest anarchist library publically available and have room for meetings, movie showings and an area for the construction of the various accoutrements of protest and struggle, such as signs, banners and the rest. Also, for those that don't know, WAG puts out a great broadsheet in the Class War style (i.e., snotty, uncompromising and graphically appealing). Apparently it gets quite decent distribution, which is a hell of an accomplishment given that the neighborhood they're in is undoubtedly the most conservative Muslim neighborhood in London.

While in London, and searching for pubs that didn't close at eleven (!), PI had some time for seeing the sights, including a trek to Marx's grave. Most notable about the grave are three things. First, and obviously, the head.


Apparently, the sheer and quite ridiculous size of it was even controversial amongst Marxists when it was built. Secondly, it was so big it was impossible to get a decent photo next to it without looking silly. Thirdly, even though communists the world over have declared their opposition to private property (but is it really not private property if the new landlord is the State?), some of them obviously knew vaulable real estate when they saw it, because surrounding Marx's grave are the final resting places of at least a dozen notable communists.



Also, while in London, that trademark British sense of humor was evident in the weirdest of places:


Irony outlasts empire every time.

A walking tour of Notting Hill, following the directions from a Class War pamphlet, revealed George Orwell's house while a meandering tour through the financial district and the surveillance geography of the "ring of steel" put an exclamation point on it. Cameras there cover all entries and exits, and one certainly gets the feeling not only that one doesn't fit in, but that one is at least potentially tracked at all times while in the vicinity.

In terms of tactics and issues that anarchists are having in London, I came away with a warning on "kettling" and police Forward Intelligence Teams. Kettling, not an unknown phenomenon here in the US (PCWC members encountered it as early as 2000 in LA during the Democratic Convention), has become widely known now thanks to the recent G20 protests in London. Kettling basically involves the police attempting to hem in anarchists -- to follow them with massive force and to pen them up, preventing any action to take place. This often leads to violence and detention.

FIT, however, may be less known. FIT teams gather information of event organizers, leaders and other important information, for the purpose of disrupting actions. Apparently, they can be quite intrusive as well, not being satisfied to gather data passively from a distance. As a result, something calling itself FIT Watch has emerged to counter the increasingly intrusive presence of the police at protests. According the London FIT Watch's blog,

Fit Watch are a fluid group of people who have come together to resist and oppose the tactics of the Forward Intelligence Teams (cops who harass protesters).

We aim to act in solidarity with each other, supporting campaigns by being at meetings and protests, making it harder for the police to film and gather intelligence.

We hope to encourage a culture where their presence is not acceptable and to act when we see people being followed and harassed.

We aim to make it harder for them to photograph and intimidate us by getting in the way of their cameras, taking photos and publishing as much information as we can about them on our blog.

Such tactics, by both the police and anarchists, have made various appearances in Phoenix in the past, especially during the height of the May Day protests in the early 2000's. Nothing particularly matching FIT Watch in terms of aggressiveness and specific aim emerged, however, to counter the cops. Copwatch, of course, routinely documents protests and police activity at them, and so, occasionally, do the ACLU. But neither of these seeks to actively disrupt the activities of the police. As things heat up here in town, we'll surely see the return of the "red squad" to anarchist events, and when that happens, we may look to our comrades in London for some ideas about how to deal with them.

As for kettling in Phoenix, there were attempts during the May Day protests to surround anarchists, but they were often thwarted by going the wrong way down one-way streets, which prevented the po-po from following us with their cars and wagons. In Tempe (which doesn't have one way streets downtown), however, the police brought in bike cops and were more successful in keeping us in place, at least the second time May Day was organized there (after they had received training from the Eugene police department). At the most recent immigration protest in Phoenix, cops did attempt what looked like a proto-kettling operation, but it was foiled by staying in the streets, the sheer numbers and the medians in the streets.

The rest of the European vacation eventually moved to Spain and was aimed primarily at accomplishing two main tasks: (1), relaxing in the sun, and (2), successfully driving a car through southern Spain. Both were accomplished, to varying degrees, with driving coming in a distant second given the insane driving conditions in Spanish cities. Fortunately, driving in Mexico provides preparation to a limited degree for the "devil may care" attitude of Spanish motorists (although it made Mexican drivers look quite sane by comparison).

One thing that is always apparent when traveling in Europe is the total lack of working class Americans. International travel in the US is almost exclusively the domain of five groups of people: the rich and upper middle classes; students (mostly coming from those classes); traveler kids and musicians; retirees; and the military. Almost nowhere does one find folks in their thirties and forties from working class backgrounds that aren't in the military. This is a great tragedy. While recognizing the destructive nature of air travel, it would surely be worth everyone's while to find a way to correct this deficiency. Certainly first class would make a great spot for an open bar, if we could prevent the business class from flying.

***
Collin Sick's been busy as well, traveling across the state, as well as venturing into the Bay Area, and making a trip down to Quitovac, Mexico. March began with the benefit show for the Unity Run that our O'odham friends organized, and Collin was able to help out with. The show raised hundreds of dollars for the run, and collected a sizable amount of flour, coffee, and rice for the runners. Highlights included the spray can artists going to work on massive panels outside, Dumperfoo doing live art, and DJentrification, Optimal, Shining Soul, and The Insects killing it during their sets.


The next weekend saw some frequent flier miles thrown down for the annual excursion to the Bay Area for the 14th annual San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair and the 9th annual BASTARD Conference. This is the fourth yearly trip from Phoenix to the Bay, and sadly the first without PI attending, although to be fair he was in Europe having a wonderful time of his own.

The trip was split between political fun and vacationing with friends, as many old comrades had come down from Portland just for some good ol' fashioned drinking and trouble making. Social highlights included the free admission to the last half hour of the Simian Mobile Disco show, being taken out by the greatest radical queer ladies for a stop at the worker owned Lusty Lady peepshow, and a night out with our homeboy Crudo that saw us hitting up a warehouse party in Oakland and finishing the night at Zeitgeist in the City.

Politically, the trip was full of highs, the annual anarchist cafe was seemingly full of familiar faces. Lots of good discussions that began that night carried over into the next two days, with Saturday's Bookfair, and the BASTARD on Sunday. Although the bookfair has extended to a two day affair in recent years, the trip to Berekely for the BASTARD conference is worth skipping the second day.

The day at the bookfair was great, more reunions with old friends; chatting about politics; buying a grip of new books, pamphlets, and magazines; and sharing laughter and gossip on the scandal of the bookfair, the dumping of water on the literature/propaganda of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). The RCP had shown up to the bookfair in a typically sectarian manner, they had not reserved a table space, they demanded to be given a space on the property, and when refused by the bookfair organizers, they continued to protest while their propaganda and materials were moved by attendees to a spot outside of the San Francisco County Fair Building (the space where the bookfair is held). Sometime after this a comrade had heard enough of their complaining that their authoritarian Maoist communist group was barred from tabling, so the person did the sensible act, or maybe just did something that should have been done long before, and took a gallon of water to their propaganda.

Folks gathered outside the bookfair to continue the discussion from Doug's "Importance of Intentions in Anarchist Actions."

Unfortunately the chat ended abruptly when a few "comrades" from the RCP came back to confront the person who allegedly dumped water on their propaganda. Most folks seated leaped to the alleged water dumper's defense and told the RCP off, the RCP responded by retreating, but were later seen wandering around asking bookfair attendees to sign a petition denouncing the water attack. Sadly, a few anarchists actually went ahead and signed their petition, a truly pathetic show of solidarity with one of the worst authoritarian commies groups. PCWC wants to make it clear, we stand behind the person(s) who took action against these Maoist jerks, and share the sympathies of other comrades who have voiced their support for the action.

The BASTARD was a great time as well, Jason McQuinn, the former publisher of Anarchy Magazine did two fantastic sessions, one on Post-Leftism, the other on Max Stirner. Both were really engaging, a note to the organizers of the SF Bookfair: Give this guy a session next year, he's a great speaker.

It was back to Arizona for Collin, with the next weekend paying a short visit to the Dry River in Tucson for a discussion on networking and future statewide meetings with other Arizona anarchists.

The next weekend saw a 4AM wake up call for the drive down to Quitovac, a Tohono O'odham village in Sonora, Mexico. For the second time in two years, the O'odham of Quitovac are resisting plans for a toxic waste dump on the ceremonial lands near the village, they have again been joined by other O'odham and allies from across Mexico and the United States. The O'odham Solidarity Project, in cooperation with O'odham people on both sides, worked to get the word out that last year's victory in shutting down the dump was a temporary win, and that the traditional ceremonial land is in peril once again.

PCWC members have worked in solidarity with local O'odham youth for a few years now (before the PCWC was even kicking), and fully support the O'odham people and their fight to preserve their Himdag, their way of life, both in the Phoenix area as well as in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. O'odham people are struggling not just against the environmental racism and destruction that indigenous people across the Americas are fighting, but also the racism that comes with being a people whose land is divided by the U.S/Mexico border.

This most recent meeting in Mexico produced a resolution calling for support for the O'odham, and demanding the state of Sonora and the government of Mexico respect environmental laws and put a permanent end to this toxic dump. The Phoenix contingent had also brought down clothes, blankets, and school and medical supplies for the village school. The time spent with the kids was a fantastic experience, and PCWC looks forward to continuing to support this community in resistance.

Below are some of the snap shots of this trip, with a few notes.


Blockading the highway outside of Quitovac for traditional O'odham song.


Walking back to the village from the highway, an elder and children from Quitovac joined with those from the other side of the border.


The youth! These kids were great, at one point there was even some beat boxing and a freestyle session. The kids love hip hop!

Saying goodbye. The kids line up at the gate to say good bye.

Back on the other side of that goddamn reinforced line.

"That's one tall cactus on that hill..."(AKA) Camoflaged border patrol spy vehicle.


***

Future projects:

*Be on the look out for a PCWC sponsored anarchist pub night! Taking a cue from New York's turn of the century German anarchist movement, we will be hosting a regular social outing for anarchists & anti-authoritarians at a local bar. Official announcement and more details to follow.

*A new flier and essay are in the works, there's more t-shirts on the way, and a ton of new stuff for tabling. On the way, a new order of books from AK Press and crimethinc.

*Catch us at the Marquee Theatre on Sunday, May 24. We'll be tabling at the Propagandhi show, make sure to come out and support one our favorites acts, and stop by the table and say hi and grab a pamphlet or shirt.

*Look for a return to regular blogging as well.

And, as always, if you want to contact us, hit us up at firesneverextinguished@gmail.com.