Meant to post this yesterday...
"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce."
-- James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States -- from Ohio
[Shot on July 2, 1881, died 2 months later]
----
In the United States, those who control the volume of money happen to be the private Federal Reserve and private banking corporations.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
This is What Democracy in Ohio Looks Like
Ohio’s democratic/self-determination “infrastructure’
Updated: July, 2009
http://www.afsc.net/PDFFiles/DemocraticInfrastructureJuly09.pdf
From the local to the global, the ability of people to govern themselves is under assault. Some of the major sources of this attack are:
- Business corporations looking to make huge profits by converting what once had been “public” to “private” (“privatization,“ though a more descriptive term would be “corporatization”), including traditional public assets like water and sewer systems, roads, police and fire protection, and now even schools.
- Individuals looking to increase their power, status, and/or privileges by concentrating decision-making from many hands (We the People and government) to few (their own).
- A culture that reinforces notions that public policies are too complicated for ordinary people to understand (thus leaving policy making to experts); that distracts public attention away from self-determination toward the trivial and inane; that worships “the market” as the route to financial and economic salvation which is not to be regulated or controlled; that define certain arenas (economic in particular) as outside the scope of public input; that continues to erase memory of any/all historical examples of citizen control and definition of their lives; that equates anything that is “public” as being inefficient, wasteful, decrepit, and dangerous and anything “private” as efficient, modern and safe; and that keeps people separated to learn from one another and organize to (re)assert meaningful changes.
- Continual legal and constitutional definitions that further “enclose” and redefine “public” arenas as other “Ps”: “private,” “property,” “proprietary,” “privileged”—and thus beyond the reach of public planning, public shaping, and public evaluation.
- A national government that under the guise of “terrorism” has given itself permission to stifle dissent, intimidate dissenters, and interrupt efforts of self-determination.
But there is another side to this – a democratic/self-determination culture or “infrastructure.” In our communities and across the state exist alternatives to corporations, corporate governance and elite control.
Scores of documents, policies, institutions, structures and groups reflecting inclusiveness are in place – examples where those who are affected by decisions and policies have a legitimate role in the shaping and making of those decisions… or could if we made the effort. They are where We the People have a voice … or could have a real voice if we merely flexed our self-determination muscles.
Many of these documents, policies, institutions, structures and groups are built on the notion of the commons, broadly understood historically as any set of resources (i.e. land, water, air) that a community recognizes as being accessible to any member of that community. Implied is that every member of the community with equal access to the commons has a voice in managing or maintaining them.
Not all of these are “governmental,” some are grassroots created and maintained alternative initiatives bypassing corporate and/or top down government versions of the same function. In the midst of dysfunctional, nonfunctional, undemocratic and/or corrupt state or corporate structures, these alternative grassroots initiatives represent “parallel” institutions that currently coexist with state or corporate power but could over time assume greater legitimacy, if not substitution, if they are more effective in fulfilling the needs of people and communities.
All together, this is what democracy in Ohio looks like!
Some of these are unique to Ohio, most are not. They are meant to inform and/or remind us what we may too often take for granted – that documents, policies, institutions structures and groups exist that are, once were, or for the very first time can become democratic/self-determining. When we fail to use them or be involved in them, they will wither and die. By our not being aware of them, they surely will be manipulated, eliminated or replaced by shells or shams controlled by corporations, top down government or the power elite.
The examples listed below are in no way equally “inclusive” or “democractic”—some, in fact, might quite rightly be argued to be at the moment not very inclusive or democratic at all. There are varying degrees of self-determination here, some more so on paper than in practice, some more so depending on the place, condition, and people involved. But all have democratic “openings” or possibilities. Where social change energies should be placed is a separate strategic question. They also reflect a basic human reality – institutions or structures, no matter how democratically constructed or configured, never alone ensure democratic outcomes. The commitment to and will of people in creating and nurturing authentic self-determination may be most important of all – the force needed to drive a wide and deep wedge into even the narrowest organizational democratic crack.
This directory is not meant to be useful primarily from a “consumer” perspective (i.e. in answering the questions, "Where's the nearest food coop?" or “Is there a public radio station in my town?”) but rather from a democracy/self-determination perspective. That is, it seeks to help readers value the democratic / self-determination openings which still exist or could exist with investment of activist energies. It also strives to reinforce the simultaneous need in working for social change to create or nurture alternatives while working to democratize existing laws, constitutions, policies, practices, and organizations. Finally, the goal of this directory is to stimulate awareness of and actions addressing the multiple threats to what are deemed “public” and available for common use by the constant and cancerous corporate and top-down governmental encroachment in the name of “privatization” or “corporatization.”
Democracy/self-determination is not just aims but processes, not just ends but also means. Listed are examples of both – documents, policies, institutions, structures or groups actually reflecting democratic/self-determining values and principles and/or calling for them, even if the callers are not themselves the perfect practitioners.
This directory in many ways reflects and speaks to the need for what is called a “Solidarity Economy” – the growing global movement of people and organizations seeking a new framework for social and economic development based on the principles of social solidarity, cooperation, egalitarianism, sustainability and economic democracy that puts people and the planet before private profits and power. A national organization working in this direction that we plan to support is the US Solidarity Economic Network, http://www.ussen.org
There is no presumption that this list is exhaustive. Huge gaps exist beyond our limited awareness. It’s an ongoing work in progress, meant and, in fact, expected to be amended by readers. Please send additions, feedback, challenges and critiques to GColeridge@afsc.org. Updates will occur regularly.
This is what democracy in Ohio looks like!
Updated: July, 2009
http://www.afsc.net/PDFFiles/DemocraticInfrastructureJuly09.pdf
From the local to the global, the ability of people to govern themselves is under assault. Some of the major sources of this attack are:
- Business corporations looking to make huge profits by converting what once had been “public” to “private” (“privatization,“ though a more descriptive term would be “corporatization”), including traditional public assets like water and sewer systems, roads, police and fire protection, and now even schools.
- Individuals looking to increase their power, status, and/or privileges by concentrating decision-making from many hands (We the People and government) to few (their own).
- A culture that reinforces notions that public policies are too complicated for ordinary people to understand (thus leaving policy making to experts); that distracts public attention away from self-determination toward the trivial and inane; that worships “the market” as the route to financial and economic salvation which is not to be regulated or controlled; that define certain arenas (economic in particular) as outside the scope of public input; that continues to erase memory of any/all historical examples of citizen control and definition of their lives; that equates anything that is “public” as being inefficient, wasteful, decrepit, and dangerous and anything “private” as efficient, modern and safe; and that keeps people separated to learn from one another and organize to (re)assert meaningful changes.
- Continual legal and constitutional definitions that further “enclose” and redefine “public” arenas as other “Ps”: “private,” “property,” “proprietary,” “privileged”—and thus beyond the reach of public planning, public shaping, and public evaluation.
- A national government that under the guise of “terrorism” has given itself permission to stifle dissent, intimidate dissenters, and interrupt efforts of self-determination.
But there is another side to this – a democratic/self-determination culture or “infrastructure.” In our communities and across the state exist alternatives to corporations, corporate governance and elite control.
Scores of documents, policies, institutions, structures and groups reflecting inclusiveness are in place – examples where those who are affected by decisions and policies have a legitimate role in the shaping and making of those decisions… or could if we made the effort. They are where We the People have a voice … or could have a real voice if we merely flexed our self-determination muscles.
Many of these documents, policies, institutions, structures and groups are built on the notion of the commons, broadly understood historically as any set of resources (i.e. land, water, air) that a community
Not all of these are “governmental,” some are grassroots created and maintained alternative initiatives bypassing corporate and/or top down government versions of the same function. In the midst of dysfunctional, nonfunctional, undemocratic and/or corrupt state or corporate structures, these alternative grassroots initiatives represent “parallel” institutions that currently coexist with state or corporate power but could over time assume greater legitimacy, if not substitution, if they are more effective in fulfilling the needs of people and communities.
All together, this is what democracy in Ohio looks like!
Some of these are unique to Ohio, most are not. They are meant to inform and/or remind us what we may too often take for granted – that documents, policies, institutions structures and groups exist that are, once were, or for the very first time can become democratic/self-determining. When we fail to use them or be involved in them, they will wither and die. By our not being aware of them, they surely will be manipulated, eliminated or replaced by shells or shams controlled by corporations, top down government or the power elite.
The examples listed below are in no way equally “inclusive” or “democractic”—some, in fact, might quite rightly be argued to be at the moment not very inclusive or democratic at all. There are varying degrees of self-determination here, some more so on paper than in practice, some more so depending on the place, condition, and people involved. But all have democratic “openings” or possibilities. Where social change energies should be placed is a separate strategic question. They also reflect a basic human reality – institutions or structures, no matter how democratically constructed or configured, never alone ensure democratic outcomes. The commitment to and will of people in creating and nurturing authentic self-determination may be most important of all – the force needed to drive a wide and deep wedge into even the narrowest organizational democratic crack.
This directory is not meant to be useful primarily from a “consumer” perspective (i.e. in answering the questions, "Where's the nearest food coop?" or “Is there a public radio station in my town?”) but rather from a democracy/self-determination perspective. That is, it seeks to help readers value the democratic / self-determination openings which still exist or could exist with investment of activist energies. It also strives to reinforce the simultaneous need in working for social change to create or nurture alternatives while working to democratize existing laws, constitutions, policies, practices, and organizations. Finally, the goal of this directory is to stimulate awareness of and actions addressing the multiple threats to what are deemed “public” and available for common use by the constant and cancerous corporate and top-down governmental encroachment in the name of “privatization” or “corporatization.”
Democracy/self-determination is not just aims but processes, not just ends but also means. Listed are examples of both – documents, policies, institutions, structures or groups actually reflecting democratic/self-determining values and principles and/or calling for them, even if the callers are not themselves the perfect practitioners.
This directory in many ways reflects and speaks to the need for what is called a “Solidarity Economy” – the growing global movement of people and organizations seeking a new framework for social and economic development based on the principles of social solidarity, cooperation, egalitarianism, sustainability and economic democracy that puts people and the planet before private profits and power. A national organization working in this direction that we plan to support is the US Solidarity Economic Network, http://www.ussen.org
There is no presumption that this list is exhaustive. Huge gaps exist beyond our limited awareness. It’s an ongoing work in progress, meant and, in fact, expected to be amended by readers. Please send additions, feedback, challenges and critiques to GColeridge@afsc.org. Updates will occur regularly.
This is what democracy in Ohio looks like!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Chilean Anarchists on the Honduras Coup
Statement by the OLC (Organization of Libertarian Communists of Chile) trans. by machine, then cleaned up by LG.
Our organization's position on the military coup in Honduras: ----
1..- Once again the bourgeoisie allied with the armed forces engaged in a coup against a constitutionally elected president in the institutional framework of their own class. It is strange in the eyes of the world an action of this magnitude, even more so when those same national bourgeoisie gabbled about with "Never Again" and other polished phrases after white washing their sponsored dictatorships and waves of coups that ravaged the continent during the second half of the twentieth century.
2. Our organization rejects the oligarchs arguments on the illegitimacy of the "Popular Consultation" convened by a non-binding vote as a motive for the Gorilla Golpe against Manuel Zelay. This would ignore the long history of attacks on people's gains by the bourgeois parties, including the Liberal organization (the organization which was elected Zelaya), the ultimate expression was the law banning holding consultations 180 days before an election, an argument put forward by the bourgeoisie, their parties and their FFAA to make the referendum illegitimate, accusing Zelaya of unconstitutional practice and thus to execute the coup.
3 .- We note clearly that the CIA and the Government of the United States have learned from the failed coup in Venezuela against President Chavez. This time the White House openly rejected the coup in Honduras, which is consistent with the urgent laundering U.S. image in the region in light of its loss of influence and the need to gain ground lost in a continent boiling with popular revolt, while still supporting the old doctrine of national security, graduating senior officers in Latin America's infamous School of the Americas, where the same putschist Honduran officials, graduated with honors including chief of staff Romeo Vasquez Velasquez and Head of Air Force Luis Javier Suazo Prince.
4 .- Our organization openly recognized the government of Manuel Zelaya, as expression of decades of popular aspirations, which in terms of foreign policy is mirrored in alignment with the governments that support the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas ( ALBA), which have been formed in the last 15 years in our continent. We firmly believe that this attitude of the government of Zelaya, placed next to the working people, poor, indigenous and marginalized from Honduras and the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, has been the trigger for the establishment of the dictatorship in Honduras.
5 .- Located on the State of Chile there must be action against against the coup beyond mere declarations of good will. In our view, the minimum action that should be undertaken at the height of the decent people of Honduras, is totally breaking diplomatic and trade relations with the civilian-military dictatorship.
6 .- The resistance that has developed with its indigenous people, community, civil society, tradeunions, in the streets of Honduras is a demonstration that Zelaya's government is backed by the people. In parliament, while the president has no allies, the people in the streets are demanding his return via the demand for a General Strike. We hold that the military coup will not drown all hope of the Honduran people, on the contrary, this event will allow an exponential leap in the development of their political and social organizations, with regard to the maturation of a collective society and the definition of a road beyond the scope of mere democratic reforms. The overthrow of the government of Zelaya, has allowed not only a demonstration of the lack of social support for the bourgeois imperialist project, but has allowed millions to open their eyes not only in Honduras but also in Latin America and the world showing the limits of the bourgeois democratic framework.
7 .- The Libertarian Communist Organization of Chile rejects gorilla coup in Honduras, and is aligned with the honorable people of Central America in the rejection of the puppet government of Roberto Micheletti. We know, and history gives us the reason that dictatorships are not exceptional events in the life of nations, but a recurring weapon of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Today the Honduran people claim in the street what they have chosen at the polls, but we know that tomorrow, the same people in the same streets will build popular power and their liberation.
¡Arriba los y las que luchan!!!
¡¡¡ Venceremos!!!
Original at
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13605
UPDATE
Good article (translated) by Jose Antonio Gutierrez at http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos22877.html
Monday, June 29, 2009
Honduras Coup A Wake Up Call
The era of coups is not over. While the CIA may not have been involved in this one – the US Government seems to be supporting the ousted president – the people who pulled off the coup were certainly trained in the infamous “School of the Americas.” The events in Honduras are indicative of two things. The first is, true to tradition, the Latin American oligarchs believe that any reform is too much reform. President Zelaya is no socialist, or “populist firebrand,” as the news media love to say, but a wealthy rancher, a Liberal who tried to introduce health care and education. With that time dishonoured Latin American tradition, comes political polarization. On the one side you have the reformist government, supported by the mass of working people and campesinos, and on the other the oligarchy. There is no third position, period, point final. If the reform movement is overturned in this polarized situation, the military takes over and repression, terror, “disappearances” are the result.
Hopefully, the Honduras coup will have a positive effect in Latin America – that it will serve to further radicalize the struggle and that people will not let down their guard for a moment with the machinations of the oligarchy and its wannabees.
UPDATE
For an anarchist view of the coup (in Spanish) see
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13596
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13605
http://toparquia.blogspot.com/
Unity, Diversity and Divisiveness In Anarchism
One aspect of anarchism that differs from Marxist socialism is there is less divisiveness and sectarianism. This is not to say we do not have our dogmatists and hair-splitters. We do, but such people make up the minority, increasingly so, it seems as our movement grows and implants itself. Predominately, the trend is for anarchists to work together on projects even when they belong to different tendencies and to not see others as enemies, traitors or fools, just because they have a few different ideas.
One example of many; In France, a land of 50 million people with 55 million political views, Alternative Libertaire (AL) and the Federation Anarchiste (FA) work on common projects. Neither group spends time in their media castigating each other for doctrinal sins. This, in spite of the fact that the AL split off from the FA some years ago and the former is Platformist and the latter Synthesist. (1)
Unity In Diversity
It is possible to divide anarchists along a number of lines, "life style anarchists" vs. "social anarchists", is one possibility. Reformists and revolutionaries another. While these differences exist in theory, in reality it is more complex. Someone may engage in a lot of "lifestyle" activities but be a member of the IWW. Another anarchist might think a revolution in the American context a pipe dream, but see the possibility elsewhere. As long as you adhere to basic anarchist principles such as self-management, anti-capitalism and anti-statism, anarchists have not found diversity to be a problem. When people are willing to work together in key areas such as media, trade unions, community organizations and anarchist gatherings, diversity becomes a strength. Anarchists are divided in a number of ways – type of organizational approach, anti-religion vs, religious anarchists, type of future economy, and favored area of activity. As such, anarchists who favor a more "individualistic" approach will attract artists and poets to the cause, religious anarchists, a conduit for those who take the egalitarian words of ther Gospel seriously and eco-anarchists and anarcha-feminists link us to the environmentalists and women's movements.
There also exists a large number, many times more numerous than ideological anarchists, of semi-anarchists. These are people who favor some, but not all, of the anarchist program. These folks will say, be interested in worker self-management or popular power, but not consider themselves anarchist.
It thus becomes possible, as long as you refrain from dogmatism, to create a broad-based movement. One composed of anarchists and semi-anarchists based upon key common goals such as self-management, direct democracy and autonomy.
When the working population begins to act upon these ideas, you have the beginning of a social revolution.
What To Do Next?
What anarchists ought to do next, is a source of division within the movement. Revolutionary change can be made, but can it be kept? The traditional position anarchism had been more spontaneous in nature, encourage the masses to self-organize and the revolution will carry itself. The anarchist defeats in the Russian and Spanish Revolutions caused many to consider a tighter form of program and organization. These are the Platformists. At first there was animosity between the two groups, with the traditionalists accusing the Platformists of authoritarianism and the latter acting in a very divisive manner within the larger movement. But this was all in the past, and today's Platformists are Neo-Platformists, are not at all sectarian, and as shown above, work freely with other anarchists. It should be noted that the Platform is not an attempt to form a party ot organization standing over other anarchists or working people. The function of the Platform is to be a tendency within the broader movement to influence that movement in the direction of greater programatic, organizational and tactical coherence.
1. For The Platform See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platformism
Synthesist anarchism seeks to unite several different anarchist tendencies within the same organization. Its program is thus more general and the different groups making up the federation are free to choose whether to support an action or not.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The War at Home, Up Close
The War at Home, Up Close
by Kevin Annett
East of Main, on occupied land called Vancouver
The iron fence went up quickly around Oppenheimer Park this week, closing off the last remaining common ground left to the people of our community: homeless mostly, half of them aboriginal, none of them with anywhere else to go save a piss-soaked alley, now that the walls have once again fallen and enclosed a green and quiet space.
It's fashionable these days among white folks to talk about "solidarity with native people", now that even the government is babbling about "reconciliation". But when the walls come down, and the killing starts, none of the whites are anywhere near the destruction. Not one.
There's been lots more violence this past week in Vancouver's downtown eastside, now that the park is gone: pimps and dealers beating their women even bloodier than normal, half-conscious Indians whacking away at one another, and the cops everywhere, stoking the crime. It's all how the war continues and drives out the expendables from what will soon be cute little boutiques and fancy condos, tailored to the Olympic hordes about to descend and kill forever this last free and open space for the destitute.
I watched the destruction for a few days, as city workers hammered up the iron fences around two square blocks of former parkland, and lots of people passed by as they moved their few belongings from what had been their home. One of them, Donna, a thin and tottering native woman from northern B.C., paused to talk.
"I hear women screaming most nights in the alleys towards the waterfront. It makes my blood go cold. It's the same noise that came out of that house on Campbell street where a john took me one night and was gonna cut my throat but I kicked him and got outta there. But a lot of girls died in that house."
I said something about cops being involved in the disappearing of women.
Donna grimaced and nodded.
"Everybody knows that. A mountie raped me over and over one night in the back of his car. He said he'd have me snuffed if I ever said anything. I know the same cop done it to a few of the women who Willie Picton had out at his farm, he was out there, he brought the girls out there to be killed and filmed."
I sat in the dying rays of the sun today as they angled red and beaming off the north shore mountains, and lit up for a moment all the tired faces of people suddenly searching for a safe place to sleep. A crowd of do-gooders chose that moment to descend, yet another crowd of concerned white, plump faces just wanting to help. I said to Donna that we should do a walk about their neighbourhoods and hand out candy and condoms to all the rich folks in Shaughnessy and West Vancouver, and stand and gawk at them as they prune their gardens and sip martinis on the veranda, and ask them how we can be of help to them.
She giggled briefly, then asked me if I wanted a blow job for ten dollars, which is enough to keep her in crack for a half a day.
There are a lot more white people in the hood these days, new shopkeepers and social workers and lawyers and nurses, doing studies, asking opinions, shoving needles in people, making plans that result in the destruction of our last free space. They call it development. I hear bones breaking and voices crying from alleyways.
The army's moving in, too, double the number of Canadian troops now in Afghanistan: over 4000 troops will be in and around Vancouver for the Olympics, doing what they do, which is to spread violence and fear. Even the transit cops are armed now.
Upstairs, above Co-op radio, a man is screaming his rage as I write this, yelling over and over to the four walls that some cocksucker killed his dog.
It's hard to sleep in the downtown eastside, where the noise and sirens never stop, anymore than does the relentless searching and dealing and conniving along its rat infested streets. I didn't sleep last night, because my friends are out in that mess, and half the night passes in searching for those not seen in days and feared lost. Just today, Harry Wilson, one of the first residential school survivors to tell his story a dozen years ago, sat all bloodied and bruised outside First United church after once more being beaten when he tried to sleep there, while the night staff looked on and did nothing.
Two nights without sleep causes the nervous twitching to begin, the sudden uncontrollable jerking of the muscles, the quick blackouts and long mental blanks as your mind tries to work. Serious heroin addicts can go a whole week without sleep, impossibly, but I've seen it. At three nights without sleep, the vomiting starts, and the hallucinations.
There is no rest for all the men and women evicted from Oppenheimer Park this week. Where can they go? Like the denizens of the Gaza strip, our people are hemmed in to a concrete prison where they are shot at, poisoned, experimented on, injected, milked like cattle and eventually killed off. The government calls it improvement.
I used to try practicing what some like to call "activism" in this battleground, but saw quickly how mere protest means nothing in the face of planned extermination. Yesterday, someone scrawled on the iron fence around the park, "An Insult to our Community", but the cops had ripped the slogan down by the next day. Some of the middle class staffers at nearby community centres are talking about holding a candle light vigil at the iron fence. And so on.
Old habits die hard, especially in those who aren't affected by the violence, and who therefore never have to assess their methods and assumptions, like all the political activists I know. The usual litany of polite petitioning or Saturday afternoon strolls called demonstrations that tie up nothing have less than no effect on the slaughter of our neighborhood and its people: I say less, because after doing nothing, the "activists" go home (they don't actually live down here) feeling they have.
What might stop the killing? Maybe pulling down the whole iron fence one day, and keeping it down. But that means challenging all the sacred cows drummed into our heads, like damaging property and being violent, which I understand are no nos - at least, when the poor do them.
I imagine fifty of us smashing the iron fence to bits and then sitting there and stopping anyone from re-erecting it. That before all else would be to declare that it's we who own this land, and it's we who alone can protect it. For that's the only way enclosures and evictions have ever been fought and ended.
Nobody has pulled the fence down, of course. The destitute are too busy trudging around sleepless, and the activists are too busy talking.
But the war continues, and the casualties mount, and so something must be done, and soon, before we're all locked away or dead somewhere.
I don't think I'll sleep tonight either. Will you?
...............................................................................................
24 June, 2009
Kevin D. Annett is a community minister, author and award-winning film maker who lives and works in Vancouver's downtown eastside. His website is:
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
by Kevin Annett
East of Main, on occupied land called Vancouver
The iron fence went up quickly around Oppenheimer Park this week, closing off the last remaining common ground left to the people of our community: homeless mostly, half of them aboriginal, none of them with anywhere else to go save a piss-soaked alley, now that the walls have once again fallen and enclosed a green and quiet space.
It's fashionable these days among white folks to talk about "solidarity with native people", now that even the government is babbling about "reconciliation". But when the walls come down, and the killing starts, none of the whites are anywhere near the destruction. Not one.
There's been lots more violence this past week in Vancouver's downtown eastside, now that the park is gone: pimps and dealers beating their women even bloodier than normal, half-conscious Indians whacking away at one another, and the cops everywhere, stoking the crime. It's all how the war continues and drives out the expendables from what will soon be cute little boutiques and fancy condos, tailored to the Olympic hordes about to descend and kill forever this last free and open space for the destitute.
I watched the destruction for a few days, as city workers hammered up the iron fences around two square blocks of former parkland, and lots of people passed by as they moved their few belongings from what had been their home. One of them, Donna, a thin and tottering native woman from northern B.C., paused to talk.
"I hear women screaming most nights in the alleys towards the waterfront. It makes my blood go cold. It's the same noise that came out of that house on Campbell street where a john took me one night and was gonna cut my throat but I kicked him and got outta there. But a lot of girls died in that house."
I said something about cops being involved in the disappearing of women.
Donna grimaced and nodded.
"Everybody knows that. A mountie raped me over and over one night in the back of his car. He said he'd have me snuffed if I ever said anything. I know the same cop done it to a few of the women who Willie Picton had out at his farm, he was out there, he brought the girls out there to be killed and filmed."
I sat in the dying rays of the sun today as they angled red and beaming off the north shore mountains, and lit up for a moment all the tired faces of people suddenly searching for a safe place to sleep. A crowd of do-gooders chose that moment to descend, yet another crowd of concerned white, plump faces just wanting to help. I said to Donna that we should do a walk about their neighbourhoods and hand out candy and condoms to all the rich folks in Shaughnessy and West Vancouver, and stand and gawk at them as they prune their gardens and sip martinis on the veranda, and ask them how we can be of help to them.
She giggled briefly, then asked me if I wanted a blow job for ten dollars, which is enough to keep her in crack for a half a day.
There are a lot more white people in the hood these days, new shopkeepers and social workers and lawyers and nurses, doing studies, asking opinions, shoving needles in people, making plans that result in the destruction of our last free space. They call it development. I hear bones breaking and voices crying from alleyways.
The army's moving in, too, double the number of Canadian troops now in Afghanistan: over 4000 troops will be in and around Vancouver for the Olympics, doing what they do, which is to spread violence and fear. Even the transit cops are armed now.
Upstairs, above Co-op radio, a man is screaming his rage as I write this, yelling over and over to the four walls that some cocksucker killed his dog.
It's hard to sleep in the downtown eastside, where the noise and sirens never stop, anymore than does the relentless searching and dealing and conniving along its rat infested streets. I didn't sleep last night, because my friends are out in that mess, and half the night passes in searching for those not seen in days and feared lost. Just today, Harry Wilson, one of the first residential school survivors to tell his story a dozen years ago, sat all bloodied and bruised outside First United church after once more being beaten when he tried to sleep there, while the night staff looked on and did nothing.
Two nights without sleep causes the nervous twitching to begin, the sudden uncontrollable jerking of the muscles, the quick blackouts and long mental blanks as your mind tries to work. Serious heroin addicts can go a whole week without sleep, impossibly, but I've seen it. At three nights without sleep, the vomiting starts, and the hallucinations.
There is no rest for all the men and women evicted from Oppenheimer Park this week. Where can they go? Like the denizens of the Gaza strip, our people are hemmed in to a concrete prison where they are shot at, poisoned, experimented on, injected, milked like cattle and eventually killed off. The government calls it improvement.
I used to try practicing what some like to call "activism" in this battleground, but saw quickly how mere protest means nothing in the face of planned extermination. Yesterday, someone scrawled on the iron fence around the park, "An Insult to our Community", but the cops had ripped the slogan down by the next day. Some of the middle class staffers at nearby community centres are talking about holding a candle light vigil at the iron fence. And so on.
Old habits die hard, especially in those who aren't affected by the violence, and who therefore never have to assess their methods and assumptions, like all the political activists I know. The usual litany of polite petitioning or Saturday afternoon strolls called demonstrations that tie up nothing have less than no effect on the slaughter of our neighborhood and its people: I say less, because after doing nothing, the "activists" go home (they don't actually live down here) feeling they have.
What might stop the killing? Maybe pulling down the whole iron fence one day, and keeping it down. But that means challenging all the sacred cows drummed into our heads, like damaging property and being violent, which I understand are no nos - at least, when the poor do them.
I imagine fifty of us smashing the iron fence to bits and then sitting there and stopping anyone from re-erecting it. That before all else would be to declare that it's we who own this land, and it's we who alone can protect it. For that's the only way enclosures and evictions have ever been fought and ended.
Nobody has pulled the fence down, of course. The destitute are too busy trudging around sleepless, and the activists are too busy talking.
But the war continues, and the casualties mount, and so something must be done, and soon, before we're all locked away or dead somewhere.
I don't think I'll sleep tonight either. Will you?
...............................................................................................
24 June, 2009
Kevin D. Annett is a community minister, author and award-winning film maker who lives and works in Vancouver's downtown eastside. His website is:
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
Monday, June 22, 2009
Party, Organization and Social Change.
This is a response to Graeme's question on parties and methods of change.
I. To Party or Not to Party?
While I favour the formation of a party in the mid-nineneeth century concept ion of it – which at that time meant tendency or grouping, I do not favour the creation of what the concept became in the latter half of that century. Typically such parties are top-down and centralized. Such structure means they cannot help but become sclerotic, or opportunist or corrupt. The situation is even worse for parties in the parliamentary arena, where compromise and deal-making are the order of the day. Legislators soon become shut off from their party base, let alone the masses whom they are supposed to represent.
Revolutionaries should not form parliamentary parties, in my opinion, in order to stay true to principle. This does not mean revolutionaries cannot join or participate in a parliamentary party, just that the two groups should be separate.
Rather than a "party" with all the negative connotations of the term, I prefer the development of a Revolutionary Organization. (RO) The function of the RO is to advance the self-activity of the populace, to prevent the take-over of the popular movements by power-seeking groups and to encourage the socialist direction of the struggle. The RO leads by example, by loyalty to the people, by strength of ideas and practice, rather than top-down leadership which is only another form of bossism. In the RO, power flows from the base upwards in the form of recallable delegates. Each RO branch is autonomous – within the confines of the Program and Constitution, I should emphasize.
Three principles of the RO are "Theoretical and Tactical Unity", "Collective Responsibility" and "Social Insertion".
Theoretical Unity" ... an agreement on the theory upon which [the RO] is based. In other words, that members of the organisation must agree on a certain number of basic points, such as class struggle, anti-capitalism and anti-statism, and so on... While... everyone will not agree with everything... it is important to reach as much agreement as possible, and to translate this into action. Once a theoretical position is reached, the members have to argue it in public (even if they initially opposed it within the organisation but they do have the right to get the decision of the organisation changed by internal discussion). (1)
"Tactical Unity" mean[s] that the members of an organisation should struggle together as an organised force rather than as individuals. Once a strategy has been agreed by the [RO], all members would work towards ensuring its success (even if they initially opposed it). In this way resources and time are concentrated in a common direction, towards an agreed objective. (1)
"Collective responsibility" means while recognising each member's rights to independence, free opinion, individual liberty and initiative,[the RO] requires each member to undertake fixed organisation duties, and demands execution of communal decisions." (1)
"Social Insertion" means to be at the heart of the social struggles and not mere cheer leaders... to enhance the social and popular movements, to make them more militant, without trying to make them 'anarchist.' (2) Part of social insertion involves "social weaving" by which the RO reunites community organizations of the oppressed classes... to build solidarity. (2) The RO also works within trade unions and encourages syndicalist ideas and practices, and where possible helps build revolutionary syndicalist unions.
II. Social Change
I do not oppose reforms. On the contrary, nothing would please me more if this system could be peacefully and gradually reformed in the direction of equality and self-management. But through the advancement of neo-liberal policies of corporatization, cut- backs and increasingly authoritarian measures, the ruling classes have "burnt their bridges." Just to return to the mild 1960's style social democracy would require the mobilization of the entire populace. Thus, we have to think increasingly in a revolutionary direction.
I see social revolution coming about in four different ways.
1. A left-wing populist or left-social democratic government is elected and is continuously pushed from below by a mobilized populace. At some point this government is either pushed out of the way by popular power or dissolved into it.
2. Insurrection in the contemporary style. The government and corporations are seen as totally corrupt and unable to reform by the populace. Massive demonstrations, strikes and occupations bring the economy and government to a standstill. The army and police refuse to attack the people. New forms of governance arise based upon existing neighborhood committees and strike committees.
3. Dual Power – "Government From Below." Involves; a. Coordination of popular movements b. Regionalization of struggles, municipalities controlled from below. 3. consolidation of regional grass roots power. (2)
4. Any combination of the preceding.
End Notes
1. The Platform from the Anarchist FAQ
2. The Social Question: Latin America and "Social Insertion" by Micheal Schmidt
See also articles
And Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Especifismo
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