Posts tagged anarchism
Anarchism is often portrayed as an isolated group of angsty teens smashing a Starbucks window. However, Anarchism historically has been a vibrant movement active in nearly every corner of the world. In this reading group we will discover the movement that is Anarchism, its history and culture, as a force for total liberation. This is a great opportunity to explore your curiosity about a widely misunderstood ideology and to learn its fundamental beliefs. For this reading group we’ll be reading Black Flam
Black Flame (Counter-Power, Volume 1) is the first of a two-volume set examining the democratic class politics of the worldwide anarchist movement, its vision of a decentralized planned economy, and its impact on popular struggles on five continents over the course of the past 150 years. From anarchism’s first glimmers as a nineteenth-century ideology to today’s anti-capitalist struggles, Black Flame traces anarchism’s lineage and contemporary relevance, outlining the movement’s insights into questions of race, gender, class, and imperialism.
When? Monday, September 24 (Ch. 1 – 3), Monday, October 22 (Ch. 4 – 6), Monday, November 26 (Ch 7 - 8 ), and Monday, December 17 (Ch 9 – 11)
What Time? 6PM on each of those dates!
Where? Libertalia Autonomous Space, 280 Broadway, Providence
To get a copy of the book, call or text Cam @ 401.529.7068 or email providence@commonstruggle.org.
Hosted by Common Struggle / Lucha Común
www.commonstruggle.org
6 notes
A new essay by a member of Black Wave was published to Ideas and Action yesterday — check it out!
Though I don’t believe there is a “death star” type scenario for capitalism – that there is one weak spot – there are definitely strategic areas that we should concentrate on if we want to build a mass movement that is truly popular and representative in nature. Not only that, but I believe it would be foolhardy to attempt to talk about class as if it only applies to the white, industrial proletariat. In combating white supremacy we must fight whitewashing in the workplace, repression in our communities, and strive for multiracial organization at all times. We must stand in solidarity with all proletarians regardless of immigration status and make it a point to be with the most oppressed – the black and brown community – in our struggles. This has practical applications in syndicalism, community antipoverty work, antiracist and antifascist organizing, and antipolice organizing.
An essay from a member of Black Wave Communist Collective that was shared on Recomposition as part of a series on work and sleep.
Even My Dreams These Days Have Work-Related Scenes
by Lou Rinaldi
I
I’m stuck there in a chair in my kitchen. It’s like I can’t move, I guess I really can’t explain it, but I’m looking up at the clock (wait, I don’t have a clock!) and the time changes nearly every minute to something completely different. I’m starting to feel nauseous and disoriented. And then – there it is! The right minute. I’m allowed to go now. I can get up and I leave my apartment and hop onto the bus. It’s strange to me because I don’t remember the bus going right to my apartment before. Oh well, I don’t really have think of how absurd this is because of the overwhelming feeling of dread and nervousness I have looming over me. You see, I’m three hours late for work!
I finally arrive and it’s packed. I work at a restaurant and it’s the busiest night of the week, I promptly get a scolding from each of my coworkers and the manager. I forgot my work clothes, but there are some that fit me just right in the dish room (strange, they have my pants and everything), so I hurry to change. As I punch in I see them all staring at me with a glare that sees right through me – they know I’m afraid. For some reason, they went into three sections before I arrived – they’ve put section two, the largest, aside for me. The customers have been waiting there for hours to eat, waiting for me.
I get out my pad and pen and go up to the first party, there are two tables put together so that ten people could sit together. All of the other tables and booths are packed. I introduce myself with my usual line:
“Hey everyone, how’re we? I’m Lou and I’ll be taking care of you tonight. Our soups are–” I don’t know the soups. Red faced, I scurry over to check. I continue, “clam chowder, beef stew, and french onion. Could I start you off with some drinks and an appetizer?” All ten of them look at me, glaring, and finally one says bluntly, “we’re all set to order.” A give a anxious smile. “Go right ahead.” They start to go around with the usual stuff. It’s a burger cooked medium on rye with fries. A hot dog and relish with coleslaw. Oh no! Each of them tells me the order but I can’t remember it, even as I try to write it down, it slips from memory and I am stuck asking over and over again for them to repeat the order. Each time I only pick up fragments. This is only the first table and my section is full – shit! I move on even though I don’t have the order, the thought goes through my head that I’ll just piece it together when I need to.
This gets repeated at every table I go to. I notice now that the rest of the restaurant is emptied out. I have a full section and the other servers are just sitting around because they don’t have any customers. I’m swamped and about to sink so I ask my coworkers for help, but they shake their heads. My manager comes up to me and tells me I have to go into the basement to stock paper products and it has to be done this very minute! I try to explain I’m busy, but he insists, so I head downstairs. The basement is completely different than what it looks like. It’s a huge warehouse with rows and rows for supplies and it extends so far that I can’t even see the other wall. Nothing is labeled and I start getting really nervous! I haven’t put all my food orders in and besides I mostly just guessed at what they wanted! I start running around like a nut looking for what I need until I run into my manager. He starts screaming at me about everything I’m doing wrong and I’m getting more and more angry. I snap, or something, because before I know it I’ve pushed him to the ground and I’m beating him to a pulp, before I know it the guys dead.
II
I’ve been having this dream or other dreams like it for several years now. When I was younger, at my other jobs, I never really had dreams about work, but now I’ve been working at the same restaurant for three years and it is a regular occurrence. I picked this one to describe, because it’s the most extreme one I’ve had. It makes me look a bit nuts and now no one will want to fuck with me probably, because I’m clearly crazy as hell. But seriously, it’s after dreams about work I seriously question the legitimacy of my work. Why is this?
Speaking from my experience, I’ve never had a positive dream involving work. I’m always being scolded or attacked in my work-related dreams. They’re always fantastical, unrealistic, exaggerated, but based in them is a kernel of truth. My subconscious is taking the very real alienation I feel at work every day and running with it. The result, often, is a very bad nights sleep and this scares me. I commute on the bus to work, all and all my commute takes 40 minutes, one way. I consider that to be a part of my work-time, in that it cuts into my reproduction as a worker. Now entire nights are essentially disrupted – I’m doing work in my sleep and I don’t even get paid. A whole new aspect of the theft of my reproduction has just come into my life.
These dreams don’t just exaggerate my own alienation, they take many truths from the real social relations in restaurants – they exemplify why restaurants are so difficult to organize. Despite the fact that we’re a “team” there isn’t really anything unifying about the different sections of a restaurant, or even the coworkers in one part of the house. The servers bitterly compete for shifts and tables. A long-term clique gets the best shifts – I’ve been working there three years and I still can’t become part of the day crew, or become first-in on Fridays or Saturdays. We go to the takeout and ice cream area only to find the counterperson making up an excuse as to why they can’t help you make the twelve sundaes your need. The dishwasher brings up dirty silverware. It’s hard to build past these inconveniences, especially as a server, who relies on being quick, outgoing, and having everything ready for them in order make a livelihood. Bringing out dirty silverware to a customer is embarrassing and they can take note of these things when tipping.
So many of us rely on tips we see the customer as the enemy more than the manager, even though so often we are set up to fail by the boss. Maybe I realized that in my dream and took it to the only logical conclusion I could make in that setting?
I’m not really that surprised, because even if I wasn’t a convinced communist I figure I’d still feel the same off the clock. Work is exhausting, not always physically (though sometimes), it takes a mental toll. Especially in a position where you a “server” – there’s an implied relationship there that, given the way we’re sometimes treated by customers (never mind the boss), is difficult to go back in face day after day. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve got more bills to pay, and that means more time at work. At my worst, I feel so bad that I’ll stay in bed all day until I have to get up to go to work. On a good day, it seems I still don’t have enough time to be productive for my own means and feel fulfilled.
This post is part of a series of stories on work, sleep, and dreams. Lou is the one who originally came up with the idea for this series – thanks Lou. He’s a member of Common Struggle Libertarian Communist Federation and writes a blog of his own.
Chris Hedges Welcoming Committee in Providence
Chris Hedges Welcoming Committee in Providence
by Red Zarathustra
Wednesday April 11th, Chris Hedges gave a lecture at Brown University.
The topics included civil liberties, state repression, and the
so-called “liberal class” and its demise. In light of the recent
article describing black bloc tactics as the “cancer” of the Occupy
movement, a number of Providence anarchists attended the talk.
Throughout his talk these comrades stood up and one by one adorned
black attire and bandanas. Hedges noted, “it seems we have some Black
Bloc Anarchists [sic] here, either that or some people are very cold.”
The point of this action was not to intimidate Hedges or the largely
old, white liberal audience, but to show them just how wrong their
analysis of black bloc is. That there are, in fact, faces behind the
masks – normal proletarians – who are willing to engage in discussion
on tactics. The questions and answers section reflected this, even
though the hosts of the event attempted to deny the anarchists the
right to speak.
Hedges made it quite obvious what his opinion on discussion and
challenging his own ideas are. Simply put, he openly told of his
frustration of going to general assemblies only to encounter chants of
“diversity of tactics” rather than tactical discussion. It was
apparently because of this that he felt there was absolutely no
discussion needed then. He himself merely needed to chant
“non-violence” and the matter was settled. No discussion, no desire
for discussion.
His arrogant handling of critique was perhaps a side-note to his
prescribed vaccine to the pathologized black bloc. He purported that
we must acknowledge the police are the 99%, that we must not taunt or
harass the police, nor must we be bold and take actions that could
potentially cause repression. This struck me wrong two-fold. First,
it misunderstands solidarity. It implies that solidarity has
terms, that it is only given when actions meets a check-list and there is no room for autonomy. What this does, leading into my second point, is
disenfranchises significant portions of the 99% – namely people of
color. It enforces what the late Joel Olson called the White
Democracy. Put succinctly by Olson, “When people of color have to
enter a movement on white people’s terms rather than their own, that
is not the 99%. That’s white democracy.”*
At Brown University, Hedges gave an apocalyptic view of the past and
present conditions of resistance to capitalism. Given this and his
inability to have a constructive discussion with the very people he
wishes to call a “cancer” (some of whom have been the backbone of
resistance in the past 20 years!) it becomes more and more obvious
that he stands in the camp of the bourgeoisie. Hedges and others like
him are the same people who would put his enemies against the wall if
he somehow inherited state power. Though he denies being a dogmatic
pacifist he also believes that the black bloc is morally wrong, that
physical resistance to american imperialism should only occur when it
is a minute before midnight and it is seemingly too late. If the
movement was made up solely of people like Chris Hedges we’d be dead
and gone by now.
We hope Chirs Hedges enjoyed his stay in Providence and his welcoming committee at the lecture.
*Whiteness and the 99% by Joel Olson.
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This document, first published in Portuguese under the title Anarquismo Social e Organização and adopted at the first Congress of the Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro in August 2008, seeks to map out the FARJ’s theoretical conception of an organised, class struggle anarchism and, “More than a purely theoretical document, […] reflects the conclusions realised after five years of practical application of anarchism in the social struggles of our people”.
1 note (via fourstaranarchists)
Build Power & Show Power through Mass Participatory Bold Action
To show our power, on May 1st, 2012, we will be organizing for such a mass participatory and bold collective action: a national general strike, mass boycott, student strike/ walk-out and mass day of action. We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there’s no union or the union isn’t supportive- to hold a one-day general strike. Where a strike is not possible, we will be organizing people to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”. Those who are students will be walking-out of their schools (or not showing up in the first place). In the community, we will be holding a mass boycott and refusing to make any purchase on that day.
We, the 99%, will build our power and show our power until we’ve occupied our workplaces, our communities, our schools, our lives, our world… until we’ve occupied everything!
1 note (via fourstaranarchists)
My banner portfolio. 2004 - Present, chronological order.
52 notes (via selfactivity-deactivated2012090 & breeatlast)
CrimethInc’s hostility to organised anarchists and their reluctance to acknowledge workplace struggle combine to make their discussion of Wisconsin one of the weakest parts of the piece. They declare that “anarchists and fellow travelers occupied a university building in Milwaukee in an attempt to spread the unrest; rumors circulated about a general strike”, which is certainly one way of putting it. Another way of putting it might be to suggest that, rather than rumours about a general strike just circulating out of thin air, they might have had something to do with the huge push for a general strike made by the Industrial Workers of the World, including the IWW dual-carders who made two proposals to the South-Central Federation of Labor:
“first, to endorse a general strike and create an ad-hoc ‘Education Committee’ which could instruct affiliated locals on how they could “prepare for a general strike”; and second, to officially oppose all of the cuts that were contained in Walker’s bill. These proposals passed nearly unanimously.”
The IWW’s intervention has been described as:
“what is likely the largest, most concerted, and most successful intervention in a working-class struggle that the IWW has undertaken since the working-class ferment of the 1930s, at least. From mid-February to mid-March, the idea of a general strike was ever-present, such that nearly everyone in Wisconsin had to form an opinion on whether it would be feasible, successful, or justified. Even in many other parts of the country, from New York to California, the notion of a general strike became a legitimate topic for debate outside of the leftist milieu. It is very doubtful whether this would have happened without the activity of the IWW. IWW members from across the union coordinated their activity, and as a result the organization had an impact in the overall mood of the working-class greater than anything in decades.”
Rather than acknowledge that an organisation with many anarchists in its membership intervened in a mass movement to push its politics in a radical direction, CrimethInc just assert that:
“Anarchists of a more insurrectionist bent gravitated to the occupation in Milwaukee, which failed to pick up steam, while anarchists in Madison largely focused on providing infrastructure”, and complain that anarchists in Wisconsin were just “looking on from the margins”.
Since the CrimethInc ideology has decided that formal organisations are useless and workplace struggles are irrelevant compared to seizures of public space, a movement towards a general strike is seen as hardly worth discussing, and if there is anything important about it, it must have arisen spontaneously, so the activity of IWW members isn’t even worth mentioning. For a collective supposedly dedicated to opposing ideology, CrimethInc find it very difficult dealing with events that don’t fit neatly into their worldview.
”7 notes (via hellfireandredredcommunism & selfactivity-deactivated2012090)
A New World In Our Hearts is a network of revolutionary political organizations from North America. As a network we prioritize internal theoretical and strategic development of our organizations, publishing propaganda, popular education and building links between our members. We are focused on the development of direct action oriented, combative, egalitarian, anti-oppressive and directly-democratic movements for a classless and stateless society.
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