The fight continues: A reminder from the Phoenix Class War Council about the struggle in Arizona

Friends in the North American anarchist movement,

I suppose it goes without saying that things here in Arizona have been moving fast and furious since the week or so before SB1070 passed. The resistance continues to broaden. Direct actions and civil disobedience continue to spread in a state where "responsible" leaders on all sides try hard to pretend that such things are not necessary for social change. In the face of the attack, the twin "trust the politicians"/ "trust the political process" mantras that have been repeated for the last several years have become ridiculous to the point of absurdity.

The racist rift that has, for the rest of the country, burst quite impolitely out into the light of day continues to deepen and polarize. In Phoenix, violence has already broken out on at least two occasions, leaving one dead, and we're heading into what promises to be a particularly hot summer, even by Arizona standards. If nothing happens to change it, SB1070 will go into effect on July 28th, when the temperatures march towards 120 degrees. The kind of days where you sweat just sitting still. The forces of reaction, armed and ready, prepare to form up to defend the border again. The National Socialist Movement, who we successfully countered last year, have re-emerged from their holes at long last and are interviewed on television by a complacent, cowardly and pitifully uncritical media afraid to call them the Nazis that they are. Things are in flux and the struggle intensifies. It's too early to call this "Bleeding Arizona", but we do wonder: are we on the verge of an explosion?

It is in that context that we decided to put up this note to our comrades in the state and, in particular, outside it. We know that you rely on us for analysis and news about the class war here. We apologize for not updating the site as much as we have in the past. And for not directly addressing the ever-growing crisis in our backyard with the written word as much as we would like to. It may help you to know that we have begun along with some other comrades a new site to chronicle all the resistance to SB1070. You can get updates on the situation in Arizona very easily there and we add several new articles a day from a variety of sources.

But the truth is, we have been very busy intervening, fighting and organizing, and taking the time to write has not been easy (especially with the Suns in the Western Conference Finals!). Likewise, aside from the pace of struggle, a lot of what is going on cannot be written about for a variety of reasons. We hope you understand. When we get a minute to put something comprehensive together, we will. In the meantime, we hope that our past analysis has helped prepare the way for those interested in acting in solidarity or joining us in the fight.

Along with everyone else, we are running to keep up with events, which is natural in situations like these, where the people show ever increasing signs of pushing past vampiric politicians and professional managers of struggle and making a break for it. The movement leadership here in Phoenix, at least, have failed miserably in their obligation to deliver even the most modest self-defense for migrants in town, not to mention to provide a vehicle for the fight back. This most recent bill (a particularly onerous one indeed, but not the first of its kind in Arizona by any means) has revealed this bankruptcy to many. With each internal movement peace cop and every repeated, failed tactic or strategy, the defeat delivered by mainstream organizers to us all seems more and more clear, which is why more and more people are stepping outside the conventional movement organizations and taking action themselves.

It has been our contention and continues to be that the struggle in Arizona contains all the elements necessary for a social explosion. In Arizona we have reflected the segregationist, colonialist history of America (the Arizona territory was in the Confederacy, for instance, and imposed a regime of segregation after the Civil War).

In fact, there's a semi-famous story about a Nazi officer, a prisoner of war, being shipped across the country to a POW camp during World War II and who passes through Arizona on his way. Among his military police escort is a black soldier. The unit stops at a roadside diner to eat, taking a seat in the dining room. Almost everyone takes a seat there, that is. Because Arizona is a segregated state, the black MP has to eat in the kitchen, with the Mexican staff. That's Arizona in a nutshell: Nazis eat in the dining room.

Of course, there's another story about a cadre of imprisoned Nazis during the war who managed to get a map of Phoenix and to construct a rubber raft while they were held at a camp in the city. A crafty bunch, they got over the wall and to the Salt River, where they expected to float to the Colorado River, Mexico and, ultimately, to the ocean and to whatever Nazis consider freedom. Unfortunately for them, the Salt River had long ago suffered from dry weather and damming upriver. They were quickly recaptured.

So our history isn't everything -- it's also what people bring with them. While we have a racist past to be sure, we likewise have the ongoing settler expansion, which continues to this day as an internal influx of people from other parts of the US. The population of Arizona has more than doubled in the last thirty years, thrusting Phoenix practically overnight from a backwater to the fifth largest city in the nation, and gobbling up land at a rate that quickly gave our city a geographical area larger than LA, bumping uncomfortably up against the two O'odham reservations that sit to the south and east of the Valley.

While many people in states outside Arizona bemoan the backward nature of Arizona politics, it's important to note that given this flood of people from other parts of the US, Arizona's politics are not really just "Arizona's politics". They are the politics of the rest of the country, magnified -- smashed together in collapsing now but once overpriced suburbs and set on fire by long commutes to work in the company of hot-headed right wing radio jocks.

In Arizona, white people who have moved two thousand miles in just the last few years to set up their suburban homestead or to secure their cheap retirement denounce the movement of people who may have only traveled a few hundred miles, or who may have migrated back and forth for generations. Or, it's true, who may have been deported during one of the previous economic crashes, dispossessed of their labor and their meager earnings and deposited across la linea when they became inconvenient to the demands of Capital, just like the Wobblies from Bisbee in an earlier era, the largest part of whom were Mexican.

Perhaps people who move here can be forgiven for not knowing the history of Arizona, but did they not at least look at a map before they piled their possessions in a U-Haul and headed West? That funny shaped thing to our South is Mexico! And Phoenix is in the "Sonoran Desert", a name it shares with the Mexican state of Sonora that borders us. The Sonoran Desert also contains the O'odham pilgrimage site of Magdelena. The rising border fences and military deployments that so many new Arizonans request will impede or even make impossible this yearly voyage. Likewise the demands for papers cannot be met by many traditional people, born outside cities and unable to acquire documents acceptable to law enforcement and border authorities. Sometimes the obvious ain't so obvious to everyone.

But, unfortunately, when these internal white American "immigrants" and migrant workers to Arizona (and what else do you call people who moved here for jobs at Taser International and Boeing that now find themselves foreclosed and dispossessed in the era of the new austerity?) left their crowded East Coast cities and turned West, their RV's and East Coast and Midwest accents weren't all they brought with them: they also brought their racist politics, which finds fertile grounds in the not-so-long-ago-stolen Arizona land.

So, we have the default white supremacist class politics of the white middle and working classes, who substitute their vulgar and petty cross-class alliance with the white ruling class for what ought to be a genuine class consciousness of solidarity, selling the rest of their class out in the process. But we also have a long history of open borders and free movement of peoples. The border with Mexico has, for all intents and purposes, been open for all of human history until just the last few years. And we have a history of indigenous resistance, which stretches back hundreds of years but continues today in the resistance to the predations of corporations like Resolution Copper in Superior and Peabody Coal on Black Mesa.

And we have a history of worker resistance, too. The bitter Phelps Dodge copper strike in 1983 wasn't that long ago, even if the Phelps Dodge Tower sits now victoriously in the heart of downtown, in the "Copper Square" district named for it (and copper's place in Arizona is enshrined on our very flag). But we remember that the very same National Guard units that racist politicians now threaten to deploy at the border in order to satiate the demands of the white working class for the the recognition of their white privileges, dividing Tohono O'odham lands and disrupting their natural right to travel freely, are the very selfsame units that Governor Babbit deployed to break that strike. It's interesting to note that the Bisbee City Council just voted to oppose SB1070, joining Flagstaff and Tucson, so let's never say that lessons can't be learned and that things can't be different. Other cities will, we hope, soon follow.

As for us, we continue to believe that another dialog is possible around movement and dislocation, as well as the conditions that cause it, hinder it and seek to control it. In particular we have learned from our O'odham comrades, with whom we have worked very closely over the last couple years, that we must maintain the heat on those who demand immigration reform. Because from our experience such demands usually contain a call for militarization of the border, and we firmly believe that we should not "solve" the question of illegalization by shifting the burden onto people at the border, in particular indigenous people.

We remain committed to the principles laid out in the Din矇, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc statement. The process isn't easy, but the fight to elbow out some room for a broader discussion continues. At the same time, as white revolutionaries, we still take very seriously the admonition of Malcolm X to organize within the communities we come from and amongst white people. The struggle continues to find arguments and to push on contradictions that can open up opportunities for white people to act against whiteness so that a genuine ethic of solidarity can prevail, creating the kinds of conditions that can turn this struggle into a revolutionary one. We will continue to intervene in white movements and to see what shakes out.

In the near future we hope to get together a statement that can offer direction for those anarchists/anti-authoritarians interested in engaging in solidarity actions. Your solidarity means a lot to us, and to those who have been in contact or who have come out already, many thanks. As we said before, there is a real opportunity for anarchist ideas to spread in this context. Much is happening, though, so to list a lot of specific actions is beyond our means right now.

In solidarity from occupied O'odham land,
Phoenix Class War Council

P.S.
Go Suns!

Thoughts at the end of one year of organizing and the beginning of another

Last Sunday was our biggest Beer & Revolution yet. Somewhere around seventy people or so managed to come out, pack themselves into the upstairs at Boulders on Broadway and listen to Eugene's John Zerzan and Tucson's Dan Todd speak on primitivism and the many problems with anarchist practice and presentation in the era of mass society. I'd like to thank John for coming up and delivering the goods, and for being, as expected, such an uncompromising, provocative speaker. I'd also like to thank Dan for both making the night possible, but also for being a supportive comrade and presenting such an interesting talk. We'll have our audio up soon (along with, hopefully, the audio from last November's B&R with Crudo from Modesto Anarcho) so others can appreciate the insightful comments and questions that, as usual, came from B&R's thoughtful anarcho-population.

In a way, it was a great climax to what has been a little more than a year of organizing under the Phoenix Class War Council banner. Has it been only a year?! Many people expressed to me their excitement at the event and the sense that, after the stress of the last few weeks, something like this was needed. I find myself in that same camp. Sunday was a good time and a great success and it was wonderful to look around the room and see so many comrades, both old and new -- people I've shared the pen with, people I've taken the streets with, people I've handed out flyers with, people I've faced down the cops with, people I've traveled with, people I've talked with, people I've read books with and people I've tasted pepper spray with.

In that year or so I've become excited about Phoenix anarchy again and it feels good, especially after at least a couple of years of serious doubts. Indeed, in a lot of ways PCWC was and is an ultimatum: it was this or throw in the towel and become a survivalist. Over the years, seeing so many of the movements and groups we put so much energy into defeated, marginalized or, most frequently, co-opted, was depressing to say the least. But it did light a fire in me to think about how things could have been different. It seems I wasn't the only one.

I didn't want to go down without a fight, but it did seem like we had done a lot of fighting over the years to little affect. When PCWC formed, we vowed that we were going to try new things and, most of all, exciting things. We were going to think hard about how to frame what we wanted to say, to ditch our residual leftism and to think about who we were talking to, and to try to interact in new ways and with movements we previously would have written off or, perhaps, even opposed. We weren't going to be cowed by calls to leftist unity or by reactionary anti-right oppositionalism. In short, we were going to build an anarchy that took Arizona's particular political and historical situation seriously. We weren't going to pretend this was either California, New York or, for fuck's sake, Europe. After all, Phoenix is O'odham land. Our politics should reflect that. So we set ourselves to study. Props, among others to our comrades in O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective and, also, to the deceased Bradford Luckingham, for helping us get a better sense of that.

And we were going to come out of the closet, so to speak, and to embrace the awkwardness of our politics. No more excuses. No more would we apologize for our Luddism: technology is class war. Neither would we hide our race traitor politics: white supremacy is the glue that holds American capitalism together. We would oppose the cadres and mass organization-builders. We wouldn't disguise our contempt for the Left: we have no use for their recuperations and professional activism. We would continue to emphasize that there are no objective economic conditions for revolution: we can burn this down whenever we want (and don't we try a little bit every day?). We wouldn't shirk from our determination to drive a stake into the shriveled heart of this vampire capitalism but we would stick to our conviction that the most likely way to topple the capitalist dictatorship was by attacking the contradiction of white supremacy. Still, we wouldn't be dogmatic about where that struggle would be -- it could just as well be at the border as in the streets. We were going to think hard about how we engaged our enemies and perhaps re-evaluate who we considered our friends. We'd listen hard for sounds of movement we might have otherwise missed. As a political minority, we were going to look for arguments that would have the power to remake movements and to open opportunities for struggle that were libertarian. We were going to look for the weak points in the armor of our opponents. And we weren't going to compromise. The middle ground is the graveyard of movements.

We would take those ideas that were useful, wherever they were, and we would make them coherent and consistent because, after all, they were to us, regardless of whether they were to anyone else. We would show how they were all class war to us. We'd acknowledge a history of anarchist struggle that went back both a hundred thousand years and at the same time to all the dates that the Euro-oriented anarchists celebrate. We'd recognize Ukraine, Spain, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. 1917, 1936, 1956, 1968. Et cetera. We'd dutifully mourn on the correct anniversaries. But we'd also defer to a thousand years of Indigenous living and struggle in the Southwest "U.S." And word up to Chiapas, Argentina and Chile while we're at it. And sweet Greece, our lover still. At the same time, we'd remember Nat Turner, the LA riots, the Underground Railroad, Bleeding Kansas and the San Patricio Brigade. These would not be contradictions to us.

Most importantly, perhaps, we were going to try and show how anarchy can win. How we can avoid boredom and accomplish goals. And we wanted to celebrate a culture of success and reject routine. We want to read, think and attempt. Then do it again. Try something we haven't and see what happens. Push on a contradiction and see how things re-order themselves. Have our hands in a few different pots to see which one seems fruitful.

Considering all that, I can unequivocally say that we have accomplished these goals, and that I am so happy to see so many others in town share both this same spirit and desire. If this year has convinced me of anything, it's that a small group of people, thinking carefully and creatively, can have a huge impact. And that when you might think you're just a small group, it will quickly turn out that you are far from alone. I have learned again that I can inspire and be inspired. That my own conditions can drive me and that the conditions of others can as well. And that both can come together to build solidarity, struggle and, I hope, revolution. I feel lucky to have this kind of movement in Phoenix. This is the spirit that propels me into PCWC's second year.

In the last year we took the streets more than once. We faced down the cops. We revealed the contradictions in a movement that, wrongly, gives one racist police agency a pass even while, rightly, attacking another. We took over the lobby at the Arpaio talk at ASU (while our comrades sang him off the stage) and showed that we can take and hold space. We had articles published in both the right wing Libertarian press and the pro-migrant press -- at the same time! We faced down Nazis in the Inglourious Basterds Bloc and proved that we can stand our ground, even when the liberals run and hide or, even, denounce us. Their arrows bounce off us. We captured the imagination of the press more than once. We challenged the colonialist attitudes of the leadership of the immigration movement. We saw more than once a glimpse of a movement that could truly throw the system into crisis -- but on our terms. And we lust for it again. We put out a newspaper and countless flyers. We saw the police state at the border and tested the limits of resistance to the fontera cops and the bloody wall they defend. We put 'anarchist' back in the google news search for Arizona more than once.

We formed the DO@ bloc, which was truly a history-making event in Arizona. We fought out of self-interest and we fought for solidarity. We did half a dozen Beer & Revolutions. We sold books, set off a First Friday insurrection and formed up the Hip Hop Bloc. We did shows for a variety of causes. We screwed up our courage and interviewed anarchist popular celebrities. We sent t-shirts that we made across the seas and saw them sported by hip hop stars at shows in our own neighborhood. We met new comrades, traveled to Europe and Mexico, and helped to build a renewed statewide anarchist community. We expanded the debate on the Border Patrol checkpoints. We intervened in the fight against the speed cameras. We gave no quarter to those who would seek to manage the struggle for freedom. We felt our power and dispelled as myth the sense of helplessness that the state, capitalism and the Spectacle seeks to impose on us from birth. We can do this. We know it. Even more now.

Still, we have some challenges ahead of us. First and foremost, we must defend our comrades arrested at the anti-Arpaio march (and to call out those who would hang them out to dry). This is a point without compromise. Beyond that, we have a tremendous burden: we must find a way in this next year to press further our initial attempts to dialogue with white people about the necessity of throwing their lot in against white supremacy and with the migrant movement, to challenge them to find connections in their own struggles to the fight of those they incorrectly perceive as alien. We have had surprising success so far. Now we must expand it.

At the same time, we must remain critical of all the forces within movements that seek to marginalize, invisibilize and control. When movements stop moving, they die, and we are tired of movements (de-)composed of grave diggers. We must push for broader arguments, the building of new connections, the expansion of the democratic space within movements and a tolerance for a diversity of tactics. Creativity is our watchword. That which hasn't been done must be done.

We have struck a heavy, if imperfect, blow with the DO@ bloc. Not everything we do will be an unqualified success -- politics is complicated, especially when we're dealing with movements, leaders, vested interests and, to top it off, groundbreaking solidarity and ideas of a kind and combination not seen in Arizona in a long time, if ever. Some will not appreciate it, most of all the media. That obvious fact doesn't get us down. We don't judge ourselves by the predictable denunciations that emanate from the dinosaur left or capitalism's lap dog media. We value much more the words of support that come from unexpected places. But the new reactionary bedfellows -- the leadership of the migrant movement and the racist county attorney Andrew Thomas, all denouncing with equal volume both our arrested comrades and the anarchist movement in general -- speaks volumes, not least about the challenge we represent to the status quo. We should think about that. Imagine the force that could drive them together!

When you're doing something new, it's not always possible to get it totally right. Still, people should not let themselves be misled about the effect of DO@; it was a tremendously complicated thing and it was history making. We accomplished all of the goals that we set out for ourselves. Now we must follow this up, ensuring that voices previously excluded are heard and, importantly, respected, and that the message of DO@ bloc gets the response it deserves. We shouldn't let the liberal left ignore the statement of the bloc by diverting everyone's attention to the quite foreseeable police violence at the march.

This year I hope to expand the impact of our ideas beyond Arizona and the Southwest. I want to get the new magazine out. I'd like Beer and Rev to have a first year anniversary. I would be into expanding PCWC. I want to put out a broadsheet and some new shirts. I wouldn't mind seeing a ten year anniversary of May Day 2000 (May Day Y2k10). I would like to engage more around sports and around the economic crisis. I'd like to be surprised by something (don't get any ideas, coppers, I meant something good!). I'd like to see the freeway expansion stopped. I'd like to see the emergence of a direct action movement around deportations and foreclosures. And I would love to see the direct action movement around the speed cameras return. I want to see anarchists in the news a couple more times. I'd like to intervene in a struggle that we haven't yet intervened in. I'd like to get a new copy machine. I'd like to do more interviews of anarchist and anti-authoritarian musicians. I'd like to put out a positive vision of what we want and where we stand. I want to break a thousand hits in a day on the web page and set a new record for us. I'd like to find new ways to deepen and spread the influence of anarchist ideas.

And, most of all, I'd like to be even more excited about Phoenix anarchy this time next year than I am right now. Cheers to my comrades, old and new. Let's press the attack! Now more than ever!

Arizona: A State of Emergency

Below is a draft of a text that was originally written for an anti-racist blog. I was approached and asked to contribute a piece about the dire situation in Arizona for a national audience, unfortunately this never saw the light of day due to their objections over the centrality of the border and indigenous struggles to the immigrant movement.


By Jon Riley
Phoenix Class War Council

What’s left to be said about Maricopa County? What can I tell you that you don’t already know? Need I mention the racial profiling by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO), the “crime suppression” sweeps targeting immigrants and communities of color, the living conditions in tent city jail, the harassment of rival political figures, the courting of radical anti-immigrant groups, and, of course, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s appetite for the limelight?

You’ve read the condemnation from national news sources, such as the New York Times editorials, and in the constant stream of articles on anti-racist websites and blogs. It is clear that the situation in Maricopa County, and throughout the state, is increasingly hellish for anyone concerned with human freedom. We recognize that the situation on the ground is untenable for organizing. Communities are constantly on the defensive, racist lawmakers are on the legal offensive, and our movement is tired of losing.

For us to resist this state of emergency the movement will have to change.

The desperation is ever present in Maricopa County. Local activists devoted to challenging the racism oozing from the local state legislature and county sheriff are exhausted. The years of symbolic protest and moral appeals to the white citizen majority have failed. Even when Arpaio’s numbers slipped in the polls (he currently is seeing some of his highest poll numbers state wide), support for anti-immigrant ballot initiatives remained at 80%. Other activists and lawyers have sought the intervention of the federal government, and while the Department of Justice has sent a handful of observers to the county to little affect during their 20 month stay. The situation has only grown worse, more families are broken up by MCSO workplace raids, more immigrant workers have been deported, and even more have “self-deported,” fleeing the state that was their home.

Was it just four years ago that we saw the “huelga general,” a real general strike that happened here in Maricopa County. In downtown Phoenix hundreds of thousands of workers marched and rallied for protection from the coming onslaught of anti-immigrant legislation and popular white hysteria that was reaching a fever pitch. Now we’re lucky to see a few thousand marching for immigrants and calling for the end of the era of racialized policing. The dwindling numbers are of no surprise to many of us, for years organizers have stonewalled and marginalized radical voices and tactics, preferring symbolic and moral appeals to power, especially as the demands of the movement are in retreat. Gone are the “somos America, we are America” slogans, now the signs read “We are human,” a plea to the white citizenry to recognize, at the very least, that immigrants are also human beings.

Anarchists in the valley- and more specifically those who have for years resisted and organized against the Sheriff, state politicians, and local laws- are trying new methods in this struggle. We’ve seen the failure of the movement's moral appeal to white citizens, whites are engaged in a political alliance with the elite, one that rewards them with white skin privilege, over solidarity with other working class people of color. Why don’t we redefine the debate by hitting at the system’s contradictions instead? The same Sheriff deputies white people believe protect them from the “evils of illegal immigration” will also be the same agents of the state evicting them from their foreclosed home. Indeed, indigenous people are also facing forced relocation from their traditional lands, in northern Arizona the Din矇 resist the corporations seizing the land for resource extraction, while down south the Tohono O’odham are harassed by the Border Patrol, and removed from their lands for the construction of the border wall. The state dislocates immigrants, American families, and indigenous people from their homes, why aren’t we building a movement that addresses this?

Like the mainstream movement, we too want an end to the racial profiling and the attacks on immigrant communities, but we don’t want to enter a one sided debate with those in power over who can come, who can go, and who stays. Free people, need to move and live freely, we say no deportations, no foreclosures, no relocations!

When the Border Is Everywhere: Examining the Resistance to Speed Cameras and Border Checkpoints in Arizona.

By Phoenix Insurgent

The last couple of years has seen two interesting convergences in Arizona politics. First, the constantly expanding control grid, consisting of cameras and other measures for the regulation of movement, has finally burst into the popular consciousness in the greater Phoenix area, thanks primarily to the spread of highway photo radar and both fixed and mobile roadside units (including red light cameras). These particular cameras, much more visible than the thousands of smaller cameras comprising the broader surveillance grid that has been set up largely under a similar public safety argument, are contracted out to private – sometimes foreign -- companies by the state and other government institutions, and represent a recurring and concrete intrusion into the lives of drivers.

The tickets issued by the cameras are generally viewed by the population as illegitimate, not leastwise because they are issued by faceless (private, corporate) machines. Secondarily, they are viewed as a sneaky tax by a greedy government intent on getting its hands in everybody's wallets. People receiving the tickets in the mail (the primary method of notification) routinely disregard them and, when process servers are sent out, they sometimes receive violent reactions from the served. As a result, the private firms running the cameras have sometimes resorted to subterfuge in order to deliver the summons, including a famous case in which a server dressed up like a UPS driver. Such sneaky tactics haven't won many friends, it goes without saying. In fact, some drivers have taken to wearing disguises. As reported in the Arizona Republic recently, one man has dodged more than 30 tickets by wearing a monkey mask while driving. Police identified him after staking out his house and following his car as he drove to work.

Monkey-masked driver eludes speed cameras.

In reaction to this expansion of state and corporate power, a resistance movement has risen up, consisting on one hand of above ground, organized, largely right libertarian and constitutionalist activists. These groups, primarily headed up by an organization called CameraFRAUD, have engaged in lobbying, street protests and a ballot initiative in order to stop the cameras. CameraFRAUD emerged from the Ron Paul milieu and represents for the most part the standard ideology of that tendency. In addition to the above ground movement, there have been countless illegal and quasi-legal attacks on the cameras themselves, ranging from vandalism to street theater to the murder of a camera technician. So far, for the most part, those who have attacked the cameras have gotten away with it.

Meanwhile, this has happened in the context of a massive reaction from the Arizona white working and middle class, primarily centered on defending their white privileges against what they have generally mis-diagnosed as an attack from poor and working class Mexicans and other immigrants. This has taken the form of everything from reactionary ballot initiatives to vigilantism and violence. The collapse of much of the middle class in Arizona, hidden for some time due to the proliferation of debt, migration and the housing boom, has become clear for all to see. It is obvious now to them that the capitalist class has sold them out to a large degree, in search for large returns on investments abroad and financial speculation to replace falling rates of profit at home.

So, I say that whites have “mis-diagnosed” the problem because even though there is some truth to the general allegation that cheap immigrant labor does in some instances impact the wages of other “legal” labor, the movements that have emerged to defend the class position of whites has foundered, as has been the case historically, on the borders of whiteness. That is, rather than pointing their rage upwards at the capitalists, politicians and bureaucrats that set different segments of the working class against each other, the white movement has seen fit instead to defend its whiteness and the accompanying privileges. In a real sense, a civil war rages within the working class in Arizona.

As a result of their limited class imagination, whites in Arizona have demanded a massive expansion in the border policing apparatus in the hopes that it will protect their class position, which has become increasingly tenuous in the last decade. As a result of this, checkpoints set up by the border patrol have moved north of la linea and into what are perceived by their white residents as white communities far from the border (up to 100 miles north in some cases). This has caused friction between white residents and the border patrol and has created the conditions for an emergence of an anti-checkpoint movement on the political right. Meanwhile, the encroachment and regular harassment doled out by the border patrol to border communities of color, such as the Tohono O'odham Nation, have generally passed without notice in white communities.

Still, the support for the anti-migrant round ups and police apparatus is not just reflected in terms of an expansion of the number of agents and checkpoints. Support for the technological class war on migrants and immigrants at the border has been strong and has included encouragement for the deployment of cameras and all manner of other Big Brother technics and machinery -- as long as they are pointed south. Such demands have even included the imposition of government controls and bureaucratic approval in order to work legally in the state. Workers now, when applying for jobs, must run their identities through a computerized database which effectively requires state permission for employment. Despite the notoriously libertarian bent of Arizona politics all these police state policies have received broad support, with the notable exception of the freeway cameras.

Considering the Contradiction

What explains this contradiction? In Arizona, as in the rest of the US, the white working class, rather than engage in outright class war with the capitalist class, has over the course of several centuries opted for a cross-class alliance with them. In this relationship, whites receive a special package of privileges that cleaves their political allegiances from other working class people of color and transplants it onto the white ruling class.

Because of the settler nature of the American civilization, combined with its foundations on indigenous and then imported slavery, this alliance was developed in order for the white ruling class to prevent a unified front emerging against their domination of the population and exploitation of the continent's resources. As most Europeans arriving in the “New World” were poor and, often, involuntarily delivered here as a result of the expanding capitalist system of production in England and then other places, class antagonisms were a real and constant problem. In exchange for certain concrete benefits, the English and other European transported working classes in the US built on and expanded this alliance, which we now call “whiteness” or, “being white”.

These benefits are concrete but not always financial. For instance, better access to schooling and other means of social mobility, combined with reduced exposure to the negative effects of policing and to the so-called justice system, make up this package. The flip side of this deal is true as well, because while whiteness has broadened to include a wider section of those generally of European descent, this expansion is framed against others and exists at their expense. In a real way, for instance, the persistence of a police and prison apparatus that primarily targets people of color (including a Border Patrol that almost exclusively targets those perceived to be of Mexican or Central American origin) is the proof of the importance of whiteness to white people of all classes.

In the case of the anti-camera and anti-checkpoints movements, underlying them both are questions of who should and who shouldn't have the right to free movement and therefore who is deserving and undeserving of police scrutiny while doing so. The generally unstated assumption is that as a result of their loyalty to continued white capitalist domination, whites deserve free movement within the country (and not just there, to be honest: into and out of Mexico and the rest of the world, as well – especially when one considers the military as a kind of subsidized travel agency for working class whites). Within both movements, such talk generally operates within the coded framework of “citizenship”. Anti-checkpoint activists on video, for instance, can be seen emphasizing over and over their outrage at being treated like non-citizens, or demanding that their rights as citizens be respected by border patrol. How one can tell a citizen undeserving of scrutiny from an “illegal” foreigner that warrants policing is rarely articulated specifically except on the fringes. Still the relationships are clear. As one border agent recently told me at a checkpoint: “I just need to see everybody's faces.”

This article is an attempt to look at both movements and to evaluate them in terms of their potentiality for liberatory outcomes. I consider what I believe to be their inherent weaknesses and the reasons for them. Likewise, I suggest some alternatives that I think would create the opportunities that I think would otherwise be lost due to the inherent limitations of the actors and arguments being put forward.

The Story So Far

When Thomas Patrick Destories drove his truck along side a DPS photo radar van on the night of April 19th and opened fire, killing 51 year-old Doug Georgianni, the Redflex technician inside, it was a violent culmination to what had been before that many months of creative civil disobedience and direct action by angry residents against the much-hated spy lenses. Previous attacks had ranged from covering cameras with sticky notes and silly string to attacking them with pickaxes, rocks and sledgehammers. And last Christmas Valley drivers received an early present from a jolly band of militants disguised as Santas, who adorned several Tempe cameras with gaily wrapped gifts and festive fabric, disabling them for hours. Just a little over a week after the Santa action, Department of Public Safety Director Roger Vanderpool ordered the threshold for triggering the cameras raised by one mile per hour to 11 miles over the limit.

Sticky notes on a speed camera.

The post-it notes were an inside joke that referenced an exchange between current Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (then secretary of state) and a Redflex employee who dismissed a state investigation with a curt response delivered via sticky note. The Santas, who posted a video of their antics to YouTube, became a viral sensation, dominating local television and radio coverage for several days, racking up well over two hundred thousand views and more than a thousand comments on YouTube alone.

Up until the killing of Georgianni the public was solidly behind the anti-camera insurgency, filling up web forums with supportive comments and openly offering sympathetic statements to local news, something quite unusual for the law and order city that regularly backs the infamous anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe “Toughest Sheriff in America” Arpaio year after year. Even local media seemed at times gleefully supportive, recognizing the broad hatred for the cameras. “When a man swung a pickax at the metal housing of a freeway speed camera, the clang resonated with untold numbers of Arizona drivers frustrated with the 3-month-old program,” reported the Arizona Republic following the axing (a position they would reverse after the April murder).

Given the nature of the Santas' actions, local Tempe law enforcement weren't even sure a crime had been committed and initially reported not to be pursuing an investigation. A poll conducted by a local news channel showed a super-majority opposed to criminal charges and over 40 percent saying they ought to “get an award.” The light-hearted tone coming out of Tempe PD soon changed after pressure from Redflex, the company responsible for the roadside cameras, but no one was ever apprehended in the case. Likewise, the first pickaxe attack, for which Glendale resident Travis Munroe Townsend was arrested and which later spawned a copycat attack, resulted in only probation and fine, much reduced from the originally threatened three years in prison and $150,000 dollar penalty. Posters on message boards praised Townsend as a true American patriot taking on despotism and the pilfering corporate state behemoth.

The Position of the Politicos

Indeed, there was no unanimity amongst prosecutors, officers or police associations when it came to the cameras. Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas at one point famously challenged the tickets issued by the unmanned cameras while Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu received rave reviews from many anti-camera activists for canceling the Redflex contract in that county. One poster, “IloveBush” on the Arizona Republic's webpage wrote, “Makes me proud to live in Pinal county...FINALLY!!! 8)” That comment was followed by exhortations from other readers for Maricopa Sheriff Arpaio to follow Babeu's lead which, on November 14th, he finally did by signing CameraFRAUD's petition. A photo of the much-hated Arpaio posing with anti-camera activists while making his mark appeared on CameraFRAUD's blog under the enthusiastic title, "Sheriff Joe signs!"

Sheriff Joe Arpaio signs CameraFRAUD's petition.

Justifying his move, Babeu said, “There was only a $12,000 increase in revenue after paying for the salaries associated with photo radar and our accidents actually increased by 16%. So not only did it not have an impact of traffic safety, it almost cost us money." Message boards again filled with encouragement. Even Phoenix Law Enforcement Association President Mark Spencer spoke out against them for a variety of reasons, perhaps recognizing the threat that the automation of police work meant for his rank and file.

At the state level, however, despite some fissures in the legislature, there is stalwart defense of the cameras. Having initially claimed that the Big Brother deployment on state highways and roads had everything to do with safety and nothing to do with revenue, the government quickly did an about face just a year later, pleading poverty and defending the program almost purely on the grounds of revenue generation. Said then-Governor Janet Napolitano, "It wasn't designated primarily for revenue generation but since we have it (and) it works, we want to move statewide." Such statements were greeted skeptically by Arizona drivers, to say the least, but they served to reinforce the perceptions of libertarians that the cameras were primarily a pick-pocketing operation for the state.

The Composition of the Anti-Speed Camera Resistance

The main forces in organized Arizona anti-camera activism are CameraFRAUD and 4409. Both have their origins in Arizona libertarianism and the Ron Paul presidential campaign. CameraFRAUD was founded by D.T. Arneson and 4409 is run by a local activist named Jason Shelton. The two work together and there is much overlap between them. Indeed, Shelton was recently arrested on charges unrelated to his activism and police knew where to grab him – at a CameraFRAUD protest. As such, they adhere to the general tenets of American libertarianism, including an affinity for small government for the most part and a romantic vision of patriotic anti-corporate capitalism. There is much overlap between the two in terms of support and philosophy.

In the same vein, libertarianism in Arizona has a particular white, often xenophobic character that is reactionary when it comes to race. In many ways, then, this libertarianism is primarily concerned with the rights of white people. This, it turns out, is the key to understanding the true nature of CameraFRAUD's argument against the cameras.

So, looking at the analysis being made by CameraFRAUD, we see these tendencies play out. For them, the cameras are first and foremost money-making scams foisted on the citizenry by a corrupt corporate/state bureaucracy aiming to subvert American sovereignty (Redflex is an Australian corporation), to spy on its citizenry, to deny due process and to fatten the wallets of its cronies.

Good things about the organized anti-camera movement

The organized anti-camera movement has shown some creativity that deserves to be recognized. One recent Camera Fraud action involved a “flash mob” of sorts in which supporters on separate occasions rolled up on two parked camera vans, one owned by Redflex and one owned by American Traffic Solutions. Displaying signs denouncing the cameras they warned passing motorists.

Of course, unless the cameras inside the van were actually obstructed, the action itself does nothing that the companies themselves don't do, since both Redflex and ATS place warning signs several hundred yards down the street that put drivers on notice of the oncoming speed trap. Indeed, the weakness of this tactic was perhaps inadvertently pointed out on the CameraFRAUD website by an anti-camera protester present at the action: “CameraFRAUD demonstration signs reduced traffic speeds up to 50%, thereby causing the van driver to soon leave due to an unprofitable location… Perhaps the City of Mesa should contract with us instead.” This parallel with the agenda behind policing is a point I will return to later.

CameraFRAUD demonstrating over a freeway overpass.

Other actions have included regular freeway overpass protests in which signs and banners have been displayed for passing motorists. Such actions serve to get the word out and to bring organized resistance out into the open. The DPS has shown some frustration with such protests from time to time, but in general they pose no threat beyond establishing a visual presence for dissent. The protests do seem popular, however, eliciting honks of support from passing motorists.

Likewise, the movement has reached out into venues that, in particular, anarchists are generally deficient at engaging. Car shows, gun shows and rodeos all appeared on a recent calendar of events on the CameraFRAUD website. Likewise, CameraFRAUD has done a pretty good job of getting its voice out in the media. As the only organized resistance, the media generally goes to them for comment when cameras are attacked. This puts them in a position of mediator between militants and the broader political/media establishment.

Good things about the un-organized, clandestine anti-camera movement

The unorganized, essentially clandestine direct action section of the movement has engaged in all kinds of creative actions. They have not engaged in bargaining with politicians and therefore have maintained an extreme wing of the movement that essentially takes an immediatist, insurrectionist position. Each sticky note and pickaxe attack is a reminder to the political establishment that supports the cameras, both for purposes of revenue, profit and control, of the seething anger and tendency towards militant action against perceived oppression.

Likewise, the attacks serve as a dare to the organized and less radical movement above ground. While CameraFRAUD collects signatures for their ballot initiative, there is always, lurking in the background, the threat of a much less mediated all out assault on them. These actions point the way towards an alternative to politicking. Right now the two are not necessarily in open opposition, but one can easily see a situation where CameraFRAUD, having made alliances with politicos and cops in order to achieve its limited objectives, could be forced to denounce other, more radical actions against the “scameras” in exchange for political legitimacy.

Given their inherently conservative nature, those who defend the cameras will use the emergence of radical or even inappropriate tactics to smear the whole movement and create divisions, even when those actions are justified by the political circumstances. The seeds of such conflict are planted, and we have already seen the chants of righteous indignation from the political elite after the murder of Georgianni. Speaking to the Arizona Republic about the fallout from the murder in an article entitled, “Slaying fuels debate over speed cameras in Arizona”, DPS spokesman Lt. James Warriner said, “Because of (critics’) vocalness, you could almost say they’ve led to this, too — because of their protests, the encouragement of people to strike out.”

The Arizona Republic editorial page lashed out April 21st in a vicious piece following the murder, claiming in bold letters that the “Murder counter[ed] any humor found in camera fight” up to that point. Barely concealing their political agenda in opportunistic black mourning clothes they lectured the city that the fun and games were officially over. The editorial board manufactured a direct relationship (even a false time line) from the pickaxe to the Santas to the murder which, according to them, meant all resistance to the cameras ought to stop immediately. Still, some in the broader population supported the killing.

To their credit, although they did offer a statement of condolence, CameraFRAUD resisted the immediate temptation to accept the ruling class revisionism that attempted to use the murder to discredit other organizers, militants or supporters. In the same article, CameraFRAUD member Shawn Dow said, "They're putting these people in marked police vehicles that are civilians that have no training, no way to defend themselves. We should have trained police officers - cops, not cameras."

This question of police versus cameras is one I will return to in the next section.

Problems with the arguments of the organized resistance

Currently, CameraFRAUD is primarily focusing on pushing a ballot initiative to ban the quasi-police cameras (a gray area that will soon vanish as the cameras are increasingly linked with various real time police databases) from state roads. But make no mistake, CameraFRAUD is not anti-police, and not even anti-police state, despite their professed love for liberty. Speaking to Channel 15 News in Phoenix, group founder D.T. Arneson said, "Basically, what we're saying is that we want more cops not cameras."

Though this may seem a bit surprising, in fact this jibes quite well with the group's praise for Sheriff Babeu and points to an important contradiction in CameraFRAUD's philosophy that, we will see, can only be resolved by recognizing the underlying white supremacist nature of their orientation.

Following Babeu's triumph over the cameras, the Arizona Republic reported his plan for replacing them:

Babeu thinks that putting more deputies on patrol offers the best way to improve safety, instead of relying on cameras that "can't catch drunk drivers" or stop motorists involved in illegal or dangerous activities.

The sheriff has increased his traffic-enforcement unit from two to four deputies, and a fifth will join the team soon. Babeu said the changes were made at no county cost as part of a departmentwide reorganization.

Babeu estimated that the volume of citations issued annually by the Sheriff's Office would increase sharply as a result of having more deputies on the streets. He said the five-member team alone could generate 10,400 to 20,800 citations a year.

Did the libertarian and constitutionalist lovers of liberty object to this blatant connection between their organizing and the expansion of the police state. Not at all. Instead, perhaps as reward for his stalwart defense of liberty, CameraFRAUD gave Babeu the honor of being the first to sign their petition at the press conference announcing the initiative.

Sheriff Babeu signs the CameraFRAUD petition.

Some victory! Certainly not for the people of Pinal County who now suffer both the prying eyes and harassment from more police. And, judging it by purely libertarian principles, it's hard to see how this expansion of the human police state could be a victory in the eyes of CameraFRAUD either. Except, when we look at it this way, we see a startling parallel to the interests of police agencies in general that is quite confusing for those who claim to be defenders of liberty. What is it about CameraFRAUD's politics that make them incapable of seeing the cameras and the police as two facets of the same apparatus of oppression? Why the perceived need to support more police in exchange for reduced cameras? This is a problem we will seek to resolve.

Notorious anti-immigrant lawmaker Russell Pearce speaks at the CameraFRAUD press conference.

Towards that end, it's important to note that also on hand at that press conference was notorious racist and anti-immigrant lawmaker, state Rep. Russell Pearce, author of much of the anti-immigration legislation in Arizona. Pearce received what amounted to a ringing endorsement in a video hosted on 4409's YouTube page, complete with emotional piano background music. The 4409 write up accompanying Pearce's speech links to Pearce's page and describes him in near-glowing terms:

“I've never endorsed anyone besides Ron Paul but I have to say I do respect this man because he takes the time to show up to the legislative District 18 meetings wanting to hear from the people... You will have to decide this election but I think it's a no brainer. Choose the man that shows up to hear you voice your opinion.”

And it's here with this ringing endorsement of a racist, anti-immigrant fear-monger and extremist that we start to get a glimpse of what is truly the unifying, although unstated, common thread underlying Camera FRAUD's analysis: white supremacy and white privilege. This is a pathology common to Arizona libertarianism in general. After all, what else explains a supposedly libertarian movement's support for a a man who supports border cameras as well as powers for local law cops to enforce immigration laws. In essence, it's an endorsement of a two-tiered police state.

Problems with the unorganized anti-camera movement

The unorganized movement that opposes the cameras is harder to nail down, but we see all the tendencies that are prevalent in the organized movement, but even more so. People posting to message boards and comment threads on media articles regularly rely on the language of citizenship and patriotism to describe those that take action against the cameras. Likewise, the argument generally takes place on terms familiar to the organized movement, focusing on the injustice of the tickets or the greed of the state government or the companies contracted to operate the cameras. But quite often, the discussion veers into racist territory. I think this is deserving of special attention.

Looking at the discussion that the Santas action provoked is particularly telling because they were the only group to express a critique of the cameras that went beyond the Big Brother rhetoric espoused by the organized movement. At the end of their video a statement linking the cameras at the border to the cameras on the freeways demanded free movement for all people. As local journalist Stephen Lemons pointed out in a blog entry about the Santa's action:

"Ho Ho Ho! Death to the surveillance state!" declares the video, which just went up today. "Free movement for all people!"

I think this may be the first time I've seen the Orwellian Redflex cameras linked to the border wall. It's a good point, as both are part of the militarization and creeping authoritarianism in our society. The video is even more explicit when it states that Santa will be giving, "Lumps of coal to all those who make it their business to watch and control. From the border wall to the freeway and redlight cameras."

This is, in fact, the classic libertarian point of view, and it is certainly one I can endorse. I hope there are more satirical acts of nonviolent resistance planned. Neither property nor persons are harmed in such actions. After all, if the contracted process servers for these Redflex tickets are dressing as UPS delivery guys, as has happened in at least one case that I know of, folks should be able to fight back against our Redflex oppressors wearing Santa outfits.

But while Lemons supported the action, the response on the message board was more conflicted. One commenter with the obviously Nazi handle, Smirk88, wrote:

All you pro immigration wetbacks can kiss my dick. This country is fucked up because of who we let in here, not who we keep out.

That said, I hate this 1984 shit and good for the Santas! Best xmas gift this country could ever get.

Obviously the Santas linking of the cameras and the border controls hit a chord, revealing the conflicted nature of the argument against cameras being made in many quarters. On the YouTube discussion thread, another viewer wrote, “arrest the beaners. they have no right to be here. keep the cameras on the borders, NOT in every other place inland. case closed.”

Likewise, when the Arizona Republic published an article in late August of this year discussing a reduction in crashes, several posters were quick to dismiss any link to the cameras and instead agreed with one commenter who suggested that “Less ILLEGALS maybe?” was the true cause of the reduction in accidents. Other comments were more blunt in their attacks on migrants, making clear their belief that free movement is something that ought to adhere only to “citizens”.

The White Lie Behind the Anti-Camera Movement

To get at the heart of this, let's take, for instance, a study done a few years ago by the University of Cincinnati regarding DPS and racial profiling in Arizona. The researchers found, among other things, that non-whites were searched when stopped two and a half times more frequently than whites, that they were treated more harshly when detained and that they were held for longer periods of time. This despite the fact that whites were as likely and sometimes much more likely than other groups to have contraband with them. Indeed, and perhaps an important point for Russell Pearce to take note of, undocumented migrants were found to be five times less likely to have illegal materials with them than whites!

And here we get into what would appear to be a major contradiction -- if we weren't beginning to understand the white supremacy that underlies CameraFRAUD's argument against the cameras. Looking at these statistics, it appears that perhaps a person of color traveling state roads would actually be safer from police harassment with cameras rather than the actual police that CameraFRAUD would replace them with. After all, no one traveling under the set limit gets photographed, while merely being black or brown regularly attracts the attention of DPS officers. And yet CameraFRAUD maintains its call for increased cops, which even if we are to assume that they would do their job without racial bias would mean a massive increase in the power of the Big Brother state.

How does this add up, then? Being generally composed of white people, the libertarian movement, of which CameraFRAUD is a part, is totally blind to the racial profiling that comes with increased policing. To the members of CameraFRAUD, the cameras target law-abiding whites unjustly, violating one of the fundamental tenets of what W.E.B. DuBois called the “wages of whiteness”, in this case less exposure to policing. That whites receive these benefits is obviously true to anyone who has studied racial disparities in incarceration, not to mention the disproportionate figures noted above with regard to DPS.

If anyone wondered why CameraFRAUD has the will to call for the abolition of photo radar but not the imagination to call for reductions in police – or at least to refrain from calling for more of them – this is the answer. The activists of CameraFRAUD view their travel as legitimate and, what's more important, they rightly recognize (although don't articulate) that, due to their white privilege, they would naturally be disproportionately immune from the effects of increased numbers of cops – even cops writing tickets. Underlying this is the concomitant assumption that travel by people of color is illegitimate, or at least worthy of suspicion.

This is a common theme in American history. In slavery days a black person, free or not, was a suspect merely for traveling. And this was true in the so-called Free North as well as in the South. A white man had the right to demand travel papers or proof of citizenship from any Black person he encountered. What's more, he was expected to participate in the slave patrols that terrorized escaped slaves that headed north towards the relatively greater freedom of the capitalist North. Further, we know that the promise of Manifest Destiny (which applied to Mexican Arizona, AKA Northern Sonora, it should be remembered) had at its heart both the freedom of whites to migrate west as well as the expectation that local police and military would provide protection from local hostiles.

Knowing this, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to see CameraFRAUD's arguments suffer from the unconscious linkage between race and movement. Aside from the obvious problem with the the racial connotations of the argument, the strategy sabotages its own supposed libertarian ethic because it inherently leads back to increased policing. As such, the argument is a circular one that not only never breaks with the dominant racial dialog, but also reinforces the overall logic of the police state. No argument that CameraFRAUD makes undermines the greater political designs of the police state or the capitalist and bureaucratic elites that hope to use it to suppress and exploit the population, which would be the true aim of any dedicated libertarian. Quite the opposite in fact. They provide a pathway for the recuperation of the movement back into the police apparatus.

In essence, their failure to address the underlying racist nature of their argument makes them incapable of creating a vision of a broader human liberty. Instead, they settle for a limited, white liberty that is inherently reactionary. To be clear: if you make an argument against the cameras that, whatever their flaws, at least offer a relatively egalitarian form of oppression, merely to replace them with a more specific oppression, namely policing on the streets and at the border (from which you expect to be exempted), then you are not a movement truly struggling for liberty at all. You are defending a reactionary policy.

What's more, because this argument further empowers those reactionary forces that seek to reinforce the cross-class alliance between whites, it weakens any movement that would hope to challenge the dominant order. Rectifying this would at a minimum require dropping the call for more police.

Free Movement for White People

In order to get a better picture of why the anti-camera movement, as it is now oriented, is a movement for the defense of white people's special rights of travel at the expense of the freedom of movement of others, we need to consider CameraFRAUD partner 4409's recent opposition to the border checkpoints. Spearheaded in this case by a pastor of a local hyper-conservative, essentially reactionary church, members of the two groups have lately been confronting border checkpoints.

Steven Anderson, pastor at Tempe's Faithful Word Baptist Church, has been the lead organizer of a series of ad hoc protests and aggressive actions at internal Border Patrol checkpoints. One confrontation resulted in his violent arrest, leaving him with eleven stitches. Speaking to the Arizona Republic on April 17, 2009, Anderson said, “I have the right to travel in this country without being stopped and searched and grilled and interrogated.” As we have seen, this is a common position within the libertarian/constitutionalist milieu.

Pastor Steven Anderson confronting Border Patrol at an anti-checkpoint protest.

Anderson regularly posts his videos to YouTube and it's worth considering some of the things being said in them by participants, including himself. As one video opens, we hear Anderson lead activists in a prayer: “Father, thanks for letting us be born in the US.” In another, a woman rants against the Border Patrol, saying, “I think these guys need to go back to school and look at their compasses and figure out that the border is 50 miles south.”

This demand for increased enforcement at the border is common. Indeed, when interviewed about the anti-border checkpoint actions for a local public access show, CameraFRAUD regular Jason Shelton questioned the true intent of the stops. “Is it really about catching illegals? No. Really it's about conditioning the American people to accept this kind of invasion of their privacy.” Continuing, he advised the Border Patrol to “[g]o catch real illegals down at the actual border.”

I don't want to belabor a point here, just point out the congruence between the arguments being made by the two movements, which I think is particularly important given their overlapping and mutually complementary compositions. This, of course, is no coincidence.

In July public discontent with the checkpoints in southern Arizona exploded in several surrounding towns. Complaining of harassment, the ACLU called a series of community meetings to air public grievances. They got quite heated with two arguments emerging, one all-supportive of the Border Patrol and another seeking to dismantle the checkpoints and replace them with increased policing at the border itself. Phoenix Class War Council (PCWC) and our comrades in O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective (OSABC) made a trip down to check one out. Writing on their blog, OSABC described the scene:

This small retirement community was now experiencing the reality of "securing" the border and the end result of the Border Patrol enforcement (harassment). A reality that we as O'odham are all so familiar with and go through on our travels on the Tohono O'odham reservation. Of course, we knew our voice, the O'odham Voice, the Indigenous Voice was going to be overlooked. So we decided to engage the overall "white" crowd. Presenting how we, young O'odham, see the Border debate through a completely different scope. That we see it through the scope of the continuation, of the colonization of our traditional lands, by "foreign" and otherwise "alien" peoples not from this area of the world. Who never consulted the original peoples of this land, the Akimel O'odham and Tohono O'odham, with "their" borders? We shared our history with all the " U.S. " citizens in attendance, and dared to engage their concept of what the borders means to them.

The ACLU presented an overview of authority that Border Agents possessed, much to the audience's dislike. Being that the Border Patrol is entrusted with such power in the name of securing the state. These people were caught in the dilemma of their "own" vision of what America's southern border should look like: a militarized zone, blocking an "inferior, diseased-infested, criminal invasion" (we have heard all of these insulting descriptions of immigrants uttered by anti-immigrants over the years) of their beloved "homeland"; A dilemma which shook their everyday way of life with the elevated enforcement at the I-19 checkpoint between Tucson and Nogales. Leaving them to ask the question, "WHY"? "Why am I subject to the routine stops, out of line questioning and searches too?" "I'm an American citizen!" "I'm a tax payer!"

Here we see the logic of the white anti-checkpoint movement, limited as it is, turned back not only on itself but also on others, just like as we have seen with the organized right wing anti-camera movement. Failing to comprehend that their argument feeds back into the very oppressive system they claim to oppose, they wind up defending their white privileges, sometimes through coded language and sometimes through vigilante patrols. Demanding free movement for whites while opposing it for others has led them into a feedback loop.

Border Patrol surveillance towers on Tohono O'odham land.

Interestingly, it is OSABC's argument that breaks the cycle, specifically because it is impossible for the anti-checkpoint militants, regardless of their opinions of so-called illegal immigrants, to deny the legitimate right of native peoples whose lands and relations were split by the border to cross freely. Indigenous peoples' demand for free movement necessarily subverts the white argument of both border controls and internal checkpoints. Their land is divided and their people must travel freely in order to maintain their ways of living. Further, their presence in Arizona obviously predates any white 'nativist'. In Green Valley, this analysis successfully split the audience and opened a new dialog on the free movement that went beyond the limited debate about freedom for whites to travel. In essence, the free movement argument reframed the debate in a new way. This is an example worth learning from and echoes the approach to the cameras taken by the Santas with regard to the cameras. A third argument is emerging in both debates that has much potential.

Free Movement in the Southwest

Movement in the Southwest in modern times has always related directly to white supremacy, the flows of Capital and war. In his book, “Minorities in Phoenix”, Bradford Luckingham cites a newspaper report from 1888 which describes a situation that rings eerily familiar throughout Arizona history.

Forty-Six Mexicans with their families arrived in Phoenix this morning from Altar, Sonora. The whole company counting men, women and children numbered over one hundred, and all came on foot, “packing” their luggage themselves. There was not a horse, mule or burro in the outfit. They are loud in their complaints against the Sonoran government, where they say it is impossible for poor people to make a decent living on account of the impositions of the rich.

Despite the political and economic repression in Mexico, up until the US government began seriously restricting legal Mexican border crossings in 1968, the vast majority of Mexicans who came to Arizona after it became a US territory did so temporarily, generally returning to Mexico.

This mirrored a trend amongst European immigrants to the US as a whole. As noted in his book “Round Trip America”, Mark Wyman points out the temporary nature of a large portion of even European immigration to the US. Immigrants from Europe often found social and political conditions inhospitable in the “land of bosses and clocks,” as they called it. Here in the Southwest, as with the immigration from Europe, economic reasons drove the movements of Mexican migrants. And, paralleling the resistance many European immigrants received from reactionary Anglos on the East Coast, the pressure of regular popular attacks from white nativists, who increasingly settled in Arizona with the spread of the railroads, put pressure, often violently, on migrants. Periodic expulsions, sometimes backed by wealthy whites interested in expropriating Mexicans that owned land made life difficult to say the least.

Whites frequently joined vigilante organizations that attacked poor Mexican farmers and workers, and they were joined in their efforts by police organizations like the Arizona Rangers. While working class whites felt entitled to the many thousand-mile move across the continent in search of work and land, the only movement that many were willing to grant Mexicans was one way. Starting during WWI whites began clamoring for an increasingly militarized border. For some time this has brought the working and middle class sections, more subject to the disciplining effects that capitalist-driven migration can have on wages, into conflict with the rich landowners, miners and industrialists who have benefited primarily from the cheap labor.

The railroads also brought other folks to Arizona, including Blacks escaping from the Jim Crow South. While Arizona was a segregated state, it was seen as an improvement on the neo-serfdom of the post-Civil War South. Likewise, the work on the railroads drew Chinese to the region who set up Chinatowns throughout Arizona cities, notably Phoenix. The experience of these people was similar to that of Mexicans in that their existence was tenuous and generally subject to the two-fold demand from the rich whites for their exploitation and then from other whites that acted in defense of their growing white privileges in the Apartheid Arizona political system. Unlike Mexicans, however, Chinese were far from home. The nearness of Mexico offered Mexicans able to travel a sort of temporary sanctuary from the daily white domination.

Further, European encroachment displaced many indigenous peoples native to the area. To defend their settler encroachments on native lands, whites demanded the militarization of the state, calling for the deployment of the military. Likewise the railroads demanded protection from indigenous resistance, leading most remarkably, as previously noted, to the American attack on Mexico which resulted in the transfer of the southern part of Arizona specifically for rail lines that would deliver labor to the West and raw materials to the East. Interestingly, this final transfer of land between empires had the further effect of dividing the land of the Tohono O'odham, who to this day face increasing restrictions on their traditional ways of life thanks to this arbitrary division.

Indeed, it is precisely the mobile nature of American whites that has obscured a fundamental fact about Arizona. Even setting aside the obvious pre-Colonial history, Arizona has only relatively recently become a white state in terms of population. While the dominant white American elite was quick to set up a racialized system here in Arizona, census numbers show that in terms of numbers this is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Said another way, what is it about a white American that thinks they ought to have free reign of the continent, to move from the Northeast to Arizona, and yet at the same time someone from Sonora, who can trace their lineage to the region back generations, ought to stay right where they are? Many whites will answer that “citizenship” and “sovereignty” are the defining factors. I think what we have seen here is that it's far more complicated than that. White migrations to Arizona have never stopped. From pre-Territorial days to now, whites have exercised one of the fundamental tenets of whiteness: freedom of movement. And they have necessarily sought to deny or limit this freedom for others.

Conclusion

Kudos to Camera Fraud and 4409 for going after the cameras, but as we have seen, merely going after the cameras without taking a position against the proliferation of police forces in general leads to increased oppression for others, particularly people of color and poor, who are necessarily the main targets of police power. In essence, then, stopping the cameras in this context becomes an exercise in “oppression shifting,” in which the desire is to shift the Big Brother state off white people (termed “infringement”) and onto others who supposedly deserve it.

Towards confronting this, it is a positive development to see white people going after the border checkpoints because these are not only the location of a general attack on freedom of movement, but dismantling them would also go a long way towards making free movement across borders possible for everyone. This would obviously reduce the State's attack on migrants.

However, as we have seen, if the argument is merely to take down the checkpoints because “citizen's rights” (a code word for white rights) are being infringed, and therefore that they ought to be replaced with increased controls at the borders (one way, controls, it should be pointed out), the argument not only returns to one that reinforces white privilege, but it winds up making the border patrol's own point with regard to beefing up its budget and expanding its power. And this, therefore only leads to more checkpoints and infringements in the end (that's how we got here in the first place). A test of the this position could come with the checkpoint movement's reaction to the demands of native peoples, whose land crosses the border and are similarly under assault by the Border Patrol and their checkpoints.

Because of this, it's my contention that in order for the movement against cameras and checkpoints to be consistent, and to avoid the pitfall of reinforcing a white supremacist position (that of free movement for whites only), it must demand total free movement for all and orient itself appropriately against increased police on the street and increased border patrol at the border (and everywhere else).

After all, if the demand being made is for travelers not to have to provide documents to the border guards at checkpoints – and the same argument goes for the cameras vis a vis increasing police on the roads -- then this must necessarily mean a return to relying on profiling. This is clearly no victory for freedom, even if it reduces the “infringements” on white people. The only way to avoid this is to oppose police power specifically and to demand free movement generally.

In essence, the infringement that white travelers are feeling is in reality a blow back from their support over the last few years in particular for a broad increase in powers for the border patrol. And enthusiasm for this increase, like the support for replacing cameras with more police, is a reflection of the movement's belief that it can somehow be exempted from this heightened scrutiny. And that belief stems from its desire to maintain its white privilege.

In the end, then, the exasperation and anger of the anti-camera and anti-checkpoint movement is a frustration at the violation of its white privilege. Since this privilege can only be an exclusive privilege, it has no relation to freedom. It is its opposite. Combating this means fighting white privilege, and that means building a movement for free movement for all people on the streets and between nations.

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.