Venezuela’s Experiment in Popular Power

This is a description of the Communal Councils which are being formed throughout Venezuela. It seems to me to be an important development in decentralized direct democracy and something anarchists should be involved in. In my own city there are Neighborhood Associations and in a more militant situation these associations could be the nuclei of such councils. Needless to say, I am a member of my Neighborhood Association.

Could you describe how the Communal Councils work?

There are now 16,000 CCs, established in six months [since the start of the program this year]. It is a very serious initiative, in my opinion... Another very important thing is that the CC has the opportunity to elect a new leadership … The leadership must be elected by a general assembly where anyone can be proposed. The spokespeople are not the assembly — they are not the organisation. The assembly must ratify the proposals — whether from a committee for housing, or a committee for health. If someone who becomes the spokesperson does not have the confidence of the assembly, the CC will not work.

It is a democratic way to renovate the leadership, and permits the assembly to choose a new leadership. I think the law respects this will of the assembly. I was part of the group that oversaw the formation of the CCs. In the law it is very clear: Where is the power? The power is not with the spokespeople — it is with the general assembly. Why are they called “voceros”? Because they are the voice of the community. If they lose the position of spokesperson, they stop having any power …

I think this is an experimental way of organising popular power. But, for me, it is the future direction we should be taking. This is the basic idea: not from above.

It also depends on the type of problem. There are problems that require the involvement of various CCs, because they are problems of the whole barrio — for example, the water pipes that pass through the whole barrio. This must be resolved at the level of the Barrio Council. The stairs, the lighting, the rubbish — you can resolve these within the CC. These CCs are the base — very democratic; a scheme for participation …

They are looking for ways to prioritise the things the community can resolve: but not to create a kind of “begging” neighbourhood that sees a problem, and just calls on the state to resolve it …

This is how solidarity begins, because you start to see that your problem is wider than your small reality, and you must help others. Thus, the Communal Councils are more of a school for political formation. I think popular power, when it is really democratic, is the best school, because it produces this process.

By Marta Harnecker: …http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/693/35989

Carnival Of Anarchy Launched

Our old buddy Eugene Plawiuk has launched a Carnival of Anarchy and invites all anti-authoritarian minded folks to join.

“What is a Blog Carnival?

A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks. “

For more info see http://carnival-of-anarchy.blogspot.com/

FREE THE SAGODA ELEVEN!

(Ripped from Molly's Blog)
On February 11th, 2006 eleven young people from various areas in the Philippines set out for a hiking trip to a well known camping spot in the mountains of northern Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. The young people, ranging in age from 15 to 24, knew each other from involvement in libertarian groups such as Food Not Bombs and Earth First. In other words they were all idealistic young adults with no knowledge of or affinity for "armed struggle" and a certain antipathy to communist sects.

The truck they had hitched a ride with was intercepted by the police. The eleven were assaulted and imprisoned. Hours after their arrest a member of the local paramilitary organization of the Philippine government arrived and "identified" them as members of a guerilla force that had attacked a military outpost on Feb. 10th. The detainees pointed out during their questioning that the group had been in many different locations on that date and only came together on the 11th for their nature trip.

The guerilla group that they were supposedly part of, the New People's Army, is a Maoist terrorist group active in the Philippines. From the Molly point of view two things have to be said. While not being a fan of Maoists I must say that any Maoist group that recruits young "punks" (as the arrested describe themselves) for military attacks is particularily stupid. The converse is that any person with libertarian sympathies who would do Maoist dirty work would also have to be particularily stupid. Given two almost unbelieveable levels of stupidity the truth is likely to be as the detainees say- they are totally innocent and the victim of a mercenary who denounces people for money.

The detainees were subjected to a number of tortures(I'll spare you the details) and forced to signb false confessions. Their whereabouts only became public because one of the prisoners managed to escape for a short period of time, and he alerted others to what had happened.

Many people across the world have rallied to the defence of these young people, especially on last Nov 17th and 20th when actions were hels in numerous countries. The prisoners are, at the latest report, being held in the Benguet Provincial Jail. The detainees would appreciate items such as "punk rock memorabilia" and funds for their legal defense. To find out how to send such items and funds contact Solidarity South Pacific at solidaritysp@lycos.com . Bear in mind that these are political prisoners who may have materials sent to them used against them in their trials. Molly would suggest that you behave like she does in her beliefs that the only way to anarchism is gradual and in her granite hard anti-communism. This is evidence for their defense.
To keep up to date on this case watch the Manila Autonomous Media site at http://a-manila.org .

Thanks to Molly”s Blog for this info. http://mollymew.blogspot.com/

Hemp For Victory Video

Hemp for Victory is a black-and-white film produced
in 1942 by the USDA outlining a plan to distribute
400,000 lbs. of cannabis seeds to American farmers
with the goal of producing 350,000 acres of cannabis
by 1943 -- all for the war effort.
http://www.thelastoutpost.com/site/1256/default.aspx 

Green Party, Left or Right?

Much time has been spent in the past year or so debating the nature of the Green Party and whether it is “right-wing” or has “moved right” or not. (1) The Green Party of the 1980's was definitely on the left, being composed of ex-NDP people, anarchists and semi-anarchist environmentalists. The GP branch in my town is still like that. While some of the talk about the GP going right may well be motivated by NDP fears of losing votes, I think there is something to the criticism.

The leadership has attempted to sell the party to “small c conservatives” and distance itself from the left. Its economic policies, while not exactly right-wing by todays standards (more centrist, in fact) certainly aren't radical by any means. These policies are green-sounding enough to maintain the party's base, yet not too meaty to scare away conservatives. (But I will be the first to admit, that if the GP's policies were put into practice it would be a big step forward.)

The GP developed a radical critique of the way the environment was being treated. It also moved way to the left of the NDP on political policy, positing a grass-roots, decentralized vision in opposition to the present elective dictatorship that leaves the people voiceless outside of the quadrennial farce. I note that this radical vision does not get the promotion it used to, and seems to be reduced to plumping for a proportional ballot, a progressive demand, for sure, but a long way from direct democracy.

One thing the GP did not develop fully in its early days was a radical economic policy. But this was also the case for the rest of the left at the time, so the GP should not be singled out for blame. Into this vacuum has moved somewhat conservative elements mixing neoliberalism with Green communitarianism. The problem with the economic vision of the mainstream left in the '80s and '90's was being trapped into a false dichotomy, government ownership/control vs. “private” ownership. Since statism was no longer popular for obvious reasons, most mainstream leftists abandoned nationalization, and having nothing to replace it, adopted a modified and supposedly humanized version of neoliberalism.

The mainstream left (and the leadership of the GP) did not realize a third alternative to statism or corporate capitalism existed. This was cooperative socialism, a form of economy that empowers the people and the community rather than the state or corporations. Cooperative socialism emphasizes worker self-management, seeks to replace capitalism with worker or stakeholder cooperatives. It seeks to replace state services with client-run mutual aid societies. This is the new socialism that you see forming in Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and with the Zapatistas of Chiapas

I would like to see the Green Party move back to being a party of the left. One way they could do so would be to adopt this new cooperative socialism as economic policy and let the NDP be the smiley face of neoliberalism.

1. For the latest critique of the GP see

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/12/elizabeth-may-catholic-grrl.html

Successful Student Revolt in Serbia

Following on the footsteps of Quebec, France, Greece and Chile, Serbian students have risen up and beaten back government attempts to impose authoritarian neo-liberal policies on them. We are seeing the development of an international student movement rivaling anything that happened in the 1960's. “The revolt was spearheaded by the radical left, which is an alliance of socialists and anarchists.” For more information see,

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=10290

Dion Wins Liberal Leadership

So Stephane Dion won. Not that it means much from a libertarian socialist viewpoint, but it was nonetheless a good thing that Ignatiev was defeated. An Ignatiev win would have totally Americanized Canadian politics, even far more than it is already. The Liberals would have become the tweedle dum to the Conservatives tweedledumber, neocon light vs. neocon heavy.