19297, RE: Misunderstanding Posted by guest, Sat Jan-20-01 10:58 AM
This is a flyer that a friend of mine (he's white, I'm black) gave me a while ago to distribute. typically I e-mail it to people, but I saw it as appropriate here. I will also be posting follow up comments to lot of the things I have read here.
Write Yourself in Next Election! No One Can Represent You Like You Can! by Lynx, of east bay Bay Area Anarchist Alliance (eBAAA!)
When you vote, you give your consent to be governed by whoever wins that election. When the major political parties of virtualy every industrialized nation are so similar - in practice if not what ideology they claim - is it any wonder that so many people do not vote at all? The parties are all similar in that they all claim to represent the common good. They all claim to have a well worked out plan that will solve whatever particular "crisis" the local media is focussing on, and they all claim that using the power of the state is the only way to solve those problems. All of these claims are false. All political parties rely on the flow of capital in order to stay alive. Because of this they will always be more responsive to the demands of that capital than to the voters they claim to represent. This is unacceptable. If we want to succesfully change the social dynamics of our society we are going to have to stop feeding into the corrupt system that oppresses us. Voting for a representative will never do that. Top-down systems of government are inherently flawed. Any program or reform passed by a government would rely upon the same state machine that was created in order to help the wealthy maintain control of the nations economy. Because of the built in biases of that government machine, it can never truly act in the interest of working people. We have to realize that reform from the inside cannot ever bring us freedom. Not voting at all is equaly innefective. If we refuse to participate in the voting proccess, as 60% of US citizens currently do, our non-participation can be misinterpreted as apathy, thus giving implicit consent. It is not enough to simply refuse to participate in the system, we have to ATTACK the system by every means possible. We need to take the tactic of active non-cooperation into their "temple of democracy" - the voting booth - and show that temple off for the sham that it is. Come election day, vote for yourself. It is possible to participate in the voting process in a way which not only does not legitimize it, but actively deligitimizes it. By writing yourself in, you explicitly deny the validity of representative democracy and state that you are capable of planning and running your own life. Democracy is only democracy when it's direct. So make it direct. No one can represent you like YOU can. When large numbes of people begin to write themselves in we will drastically increase the cost of running elections and the amount of time involved. If half of the 60% of Americans that are already making a statement by their refusal to participate begin to actively monkey wrench that system, the electoral college will be forced to give their votes to candidates who have 30% of the vote - assuming that everyone who currently plans on voting for the republicrats continues to do so. The numbers for the politicians would be even lower if everyone who writes themselves in takes the maximum amount of time to register their vote. We are capable of completely shutting down their puppet show, and we don't even have to break their laws to do it. This will expose in clearly unmistakeable terms the dictatorship of the elite class. From there, we can begin to attack the system in a manner more consistent with its true nature, and build a real alternative.
>>>>>>> The Problem with Democracy By chris crews
Listening to the radio while returning from work this evening the announcer was relating the recent Supreme Court ruling that placed the presidency, by a five to four vote, into the hands of George W. Bush. Part of this program included a short clip of protesters who felt that the Supreme Court ruling was unfair, and that they would not give up on Al Gore or making sure that democracy was reclaimed. Reclaim democracy, I thought to myself? The reverend who's voice came over the speakers sounded reminiscent of Dr. King, as the announcer was keen to point out. I couldn't help but cringe. Here was a political protest and the participants weren't being gassed or beaten, and the radio was portraying them as almost patriotic in their actions. It didn't make sense. The final blow was when one person on the radio spoke about mending the tear in democracy after the election debacle. Mend the tear in democracy, I thought to myself, surely you must be joking. How can you mend something that doesn't really exist? The past month's charades have only reinforced my convictions that we truly do not live in a democratic country, regardless of what we claim or preach. In fact, students in Zimbabwe are studying the U.S. elections to illustrate that electoral corruption and politics do not exist only in the so called "third world". What a grand day that students in Zimbabwe are studying the faults of the might U.S., last bastion of democracy and justice! All this has added fuel to the fire for my brain. Why do we continue to fool ourselves into this illusion of participation in our own futures. One only need listen to the pathetic excuses given my interviewees as to why they voted this way or that. "Oh, you know, I thought X would probably be better than Y". "I've always voted this way, why should I change now?" Then there is my personal favorite: "If I voted for Z I would just be wasting my vote". Wake up people. You can vote for X, Y, and Z, it won't matter. Nothing will change. This country is no longer run by "we the people" but now rather by "we the corporate elite". I know, that's not true. Our vote really does still matter. No really, it does still matter, right? I mean, I voted because I think, well, but that's how we've always done it. Besides, there's no other alternatives. What do you want, chaos? This is precisely the logic that I hear every day, and I am sick and tired of it. This we live in a free country dribble is making me sick. Yes, we do live in a freer country than many, but at least there you can see your chains. Here they are as invisible as spider webs, and as strong. Oh yes, you are free, as long as you don't rock the boat too much. Then we'll co-opt you, or worse. Don't you remember, this country is still run by the good old boys.
>>>>>>>
We are Anarchists.
This means that we oppose the state, all forms of oppression, and all illegitimate authority.
What is the state? The state is the police department, it is the prison system, it is the INS, it is who you pay taxes to and who uses those tax dollars - not to educate our children - but to incarcerate them. The State is a repressive organization. Most of the problems in our society are directly related to the existence of this monster. Whether the problem is Drugs, lack of work, Police Brutality, food unfit to eat, no health care, or the diseases they give us by dumping toxic waste into our water and air; it is the State itself at the root of the problem. We survive in SPITE of the government and their attacks on us, not because of it and its "protection." The government schools teach our children that we cannot survive without them, but this is a lie! We are the PEOPLE! We have existed since the dawn of time and we will exist long after the last capitalist has been buried. They need us the way a parasite needs the dog it feeds off of. We need to be rid of them just as much as the dog needs to be rid of the parasite. We prove this every day of our lives. Can you think of one thing that the government does for you in your everyday life that is relay necessary for you to Cary out your everyday activities? The fact is that we, as human beings with instincts and a will to live provide for our own basic needs. It is we - the working people - who grow the food, who harvest the food, who ship it to the supermarkets, and who distribute it. It is we who built the factories, make the clothes, and work in the shops. We spend our days looking for and working shit jobs that make rich people richer, and we pay our own bills as best we can, with only police harassment and intimidation to help us do it! That is the aid and the "welfare" of the state! It is a program of humiliation and BULLSHIT, designed to keep us from rising against them. We - all of us - do EVERYTHING that needs to be done, all the government does is disempower and punish! Their agencies are designed to step in and police us, humiliate us, punish us, restrict our freedom, and sap us of our strength and our will to fight. The state is the institutionalization of Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia. It exists to maintain the divisions between those who have and who have not.
How does Capitalism fit into this? The system we have now is a combination of Capitalism and Government. The two are so intertwined they are practically inseparable. The combination of these two monsters is more dangerous than either on their own because within this system the rich make the rules that the state enforces against us. Capitalism is an inherently greedy system that relies on taking out more than it puts in - that is the basic law of Profit. The only way the capitalist system can continue to exist is if the working class, women, and people of color are kept disempowered. This is done by forcing us to work long hours at jobs no one should have to do - McDonalds, dangerous factory work, farmworker jobs that expose our people to toxic chemicals that kill them!) - and making it impossible for us to leave those jobs or work fewer hours for fear of starvation. We spend our lives as prisoners, killing our selves to survive, and making the rich even richer. If we refuse to work for them the only other choices are living on the streets, crime - which tears up our communities, or a degrading and humiliating system of workfare. Capitalism is built on exploitation, and it cannot exist without the divisions of class and race. We produce everything and they make all the money, and then say that the reason we don't have money is because we don't work hard enough! Who works harder, the single mother working two jobs to feed her children and pay the rent, or some corporate CEO who gets paid to sit in a big office and move papers around? Their immense salaries are stolen DIRECTLY from US! We produce everything useful, all they produce is oppression and fear. So why do the police pull people of color over for driving down the street? They do it because they are Racists and assume we are all criminals! We are not the Criminals! It is the Rich that steal from us EVERY DAY! It is the Rich that destroy our environment for their own profit! it is the Rich and their pet police, politicians, and system of oppression that will kill our entire PLANET if we do not rise up and stop them! The upper class is a class of thieves and murderers, and the middle class - the managers, beaurocrats, administrators - are their tools. The people of the middle class are not our enemies, they are oppressed too, but we have to be prepared to fight them to the extent that they remain loyal to our oppressors. Anarchism seeks to unify all our people across all lines of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. By working together without giving anyone authority over others and letting people run their own lives, we can create a world where everyone has the opportunity to enjoy the things that all our hard work has created.
Dispelling the Myths: They say that people are naturally lazy and won't want to work. the truth is that THEY are lazy and don't want to work! We - the People - have always worked to have what we need. In a society where a person gets to keep the full value of their work there is a greater incentive to do quality than in this corrupt system where the boss steals half of what we produce. Not only that, but when we get to keep the full value of our labor, we will live better and work far fewer hours than we do now - maybe four hours a day four days a week, if that! They say that without police our people would kill each other. The truth is that it is their system of poverty and exploitation that creates crime and violence. When we all have access to a decent standard of living, there will be no reason for people to commit acts of violence in order to survive. The police don't protect us from each other, they protect the rich from us and serve as a tool to push us into prisons where our family members are forced to work to (you guessed it) increase the profits of rich people, without even the normal shit wages that a worker outside the prison receives. They say that we need the government schools to "educate" our children. This is pure bullshit. We all know exactly what kind of education our children receive in their schools - racially biased tracking programs, state-mandated indoctrination, police in the hallways, searches of lockers and backpacks without reason or warrants, censorship on campus regarding what students can and can't say, and a curriculum designed to strip us of our personalities and teach our children to take orders without asking questions. In the world we are working to build, schools will be based on cooperative learning with the teachers acting as guides to help all our children reach their full potential. All Students will have full access to good books that don't distort history to reinforce the power of some elite, the campuses will be clean and kept in good condition without having to worry about funding. They say that without capitalism and the state we would be unable to feed ourselves. What they relay mean is that without capitalism and the state they would have no way to force us to feed their lazy asses while we starve! Every year the capitalists destroy thousands of tons of food in order to keep prices high, while homeless people starve in the streets! Every intermediary step that that food goes through on it's way from the farms our people work to the stores where we buy it at hugely overinflated prices causes waste. Not only that, but they take the good food of the earth and process it and package it and strip it of it's nutrition so that by the time it gets to us, it's barely even worth eating any more! Once we have torn down their system we can reorganize society so that goods are exchanged directly from one group of working people to another, without going through middlemen and letting some fat fuck skim off the top every step of the way. Not only that, but we can use urban farming methods to make our cities greener and grow food right where it will be consumed, and eliminate the need to ship it across the entire country and burn fossil fuel that pollutes our air.
Anarchism and AntiRacism All true Anarchists are working people, and this system keeps us down because of it. Right now many of the people who openly call themselves Anarchists are euro-americans, so even though they are oppressed by the state they are not as brutally oppressed as people of color. Something all of us understand is that until all of our people, regardless of color, are free; none of us can be free. For this reason many euro-american Anarchists are committed to using that little bit of breathing room that the system affords them because of their color to attack the system in every way possible. The Race system was created by rich people to divide us from each other, and in order for us to dismantle their power we have to first dismantle the hierarchies of Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, and all other forms of discrimination. We wage our battles against the prison system, the injustice of the courts, the police and their brutality, against politicians that put all the sewage plants and incinerators in neighborhoods of color, against the racism of the school system, and against the forces of Gentrification that are pushing us out of our neighborhoods so that rich people can move in. Anarchism is not identified with any one culture or race. It is the struggle of all people, and of life itself, to break through the barriers that would hold us down and create a better life for our people, our class, and our families.
Where we Come From: Anarchism is as old as our species itself. The small tribes of hunter-gatherers from which we are all descended were anarchistic in their internal power structures. Various indigenous peoples from all over the world have preserved this mode of life right up to the present time. The Pygmy people of Africa live without any rulers or significant hierarchies, and have done so for at least 10,000 years. The Nuer tribe of Africa - one of the largest on the continent - is also anarchistic in nature. Most north american native tribes were also anarchistic, especially noteworthy is the highly structured but decentralized federation of the Iroquois League, which served as on of the basic models upon which the Articles of Confederation - the US's first constitution - was built. The difference between the Iroquois and the Colonies was, of course, capitalism. Because the Colonies were using a capitalist economic system, the articles of confederation were eventually scrapped because they gave power to the local town councils and to the people, and the big business interests of the post-colonial US wanted a more centralized powerful state that they could use to keep the people in check. Anarchism as a mass movement has several distinct sets of roots. In Asia the Taoists - who advocated the abolition of government, harmony with nature, and community based decision making - are the first concrete example of Anarchist thought; beginning around 400 BC and greatly influencing Buddhism, Sunni Islam, and certain elements of Christian thought. In Europe the Free Spirit movement, which began around 1200 AD, is the earliest known anarchist movement. The Free Spirit's were christians who incorporated elements of Buddhism (and Taoism) into their religious practices. They denounced the use of money, private ownership of land, the state, hierarchical churches, and declared that each person was in fact an incarnation of God and should thus be the master of their own destiny. They lasted as a movement for three hundred years and liberated huge areas of France before being finally violently exterminated by order of the Pope. A similar movement was inspired in Russia by the work of Leo Tolstoy, who declared that Jesus Christ was himself an Anarchist, and denounced Capitalism, the Church, and the State as attempts to limit the freedom of the people. The Tolstoyans were pacifists, vegetarians, and lived on cooperatively run communal farms. Revolutionary Aanrchism's first major incarnation was in the French revolution within the Paris commune, later it was reincarnated in Ukraine, Krondstadt, and Petrograd during the Russian Revolution, during the Spanish Civil War - when the Anarchosyndicalist labor Union, the CNT, succeeded in liberating over half of Spain and was only crushed by the combined forces of Fascist Spain, Germany, and Italy with backing from US corporations like Ford and Texaco. - and in Korea during the Revolution there. Every time the Communists have sided with the Capitalists, the Fascists, and the other Archists, and every time Anarchists have stood solid with the people against those who would ride the suffering of the poor into power. Our movement is currently undergoing our fastest period of growth on a global scale sine the 1920's, and we have organized the bulk of the visible end of the growing resistance to global capitalism. From urban gardening in inner cities to community empowerment, from pushing for militant on-the-job tactics by union members to organizing militant mass-protests, Anarchists of all colors and genders are at the very center of the growing movement against hierarchy and oppression. Marxism has proven over and over to be a sure path to suicide, capitalism is obviously not working for anyone but the rich - Anarchism, with it's emphasis on direct democracy, accountability, equality, cross-racial unity, and class struggle; is the singe most viable choice available for a world in crisis. Our people have a clear choice. We can sit back and let the Capitalists and their pet politicians continue to rape our planet and oppress our people, or we can stand together against them and all other forms of hierarchy and oppression. It is no longer a matter of talk, the survival of our species is at stake. We don't have any time to waste on Marxist bullshit about dictatorships bringing freedom, the choice is simple - Anarchist Revolution or Death by Capitalism.
What Anarchists Want.
We are sick and tired of the mechanized lifestyle that so many people lead without realizing there is a better way. We refuse to spend our youth in classrooms, our strength at shit jobs that produce crap no one realy needs, and then retire and spend our last days kept alive by a machine. The entire mode of life that people in the developed capitalist nations - especialythe US - lead is a massive waste of resources and potential.
WE ARE NOT PRODUCTS!
WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS!
WE DEMAND A BETTER LIFE!
We want a world based on local level directly democratic control of the economy, the workplace, and the community.
We will destroy the old centralized factory-oriented modes of production and replace them with smaller decentralized cooperatively run shops that produce things that people actually NEED, without harming the environment. We will eliminate monoculture mass-farming and replace it with cooperative community gardens and urban farming using permaculture and organic farming methods to grow food where it will be consumed, and eliminate the need to burn fuel shipping it across the country.
We will eliminate the damns, powerlines, and combustion generators that are killing the fish, the birds, the animals, destroying the air the water and the earth to produce electricity so rich people can forget to turn their lights off at night, and
We will eliminate the unsustainable forms of architecture that require the rape of the forests and the mountains, and replace them with sustainable communities of homes and shops that produce their own electricity - this can be done using already existing sustainable architechture technology - and rebuilding the infrastructure will allow us to dismantle the power grid and cut pollution into virtual nonexistence.
We will eliminate the massive cattle ranches that have destroyed the ecosystems all over the Great Plains and the north west, and bring back the buffalo, the wolf, and the native ecosystems.
We will eliminate the internal combustion engine, the car, the highway, and the death of the planet that they are causing; and replace that whole cancerous mess with a network of electric trains and busses powered through sustainable means, and supplemented by bike co-ops.
We will make our workplaces run cooperatively, directly democratically and without hierarchy.
We will eliminate racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of social hierarchy.
In short, we will create a sane world. A world which in almost every way imaginable is the exact opposite of the direction that Archists - left, right, or otherwise - have been taking our world for the last 10,000 years.
We advocate not a "return" to some mythological "pimitive" state, but a moving forward past the waste and destruction of industrial capitalism. The problem is not science and technology, these are only the proccesses of learning how to build and create. The problem is privatised, commodified, technology for profit. As with everything else the Archists touch, their greed and power-lust has transformed the quest for knowledge into a quest for power over others. We advocate a new technology to help people work together on an egalitarian basis, a new science based on the quest for knowledge and truth - free from the profit motive.
We want to live in good homes, to wear quality clothes, to know that our children will have enough. We want access to education, to the great literature, to art and music. We want to dance, to sing, to sculpt, paint, and to create. To live and love to the fullest every moment of every day and not have our lives stolen from us by a boss or a master. We want to breath clean air, drink clean water. We don't want to have to worry about what chemicals might be lurking in the soil, in the paint, in the air. We want to buld all of these things based on cooperation and solidarity, and leave the coercion and exploitation of capitalism behind us. We have no interest in returning to the caves, as the primitivists would suggest, nor do we have any interest in the big-brother politics and mass murder that accompanies Marxist regimes. We know there is a better way. We will buld our new world here. Now. We will become the people we were born to become - free thinkers, lovers, and fighters; and we will destroy their system down to the last brick.
>>>>>
an interview with assata shakur:
Question: What advice would you have for activists in the US? Assata: (Summary) First of all we need to put real democracy on the agenda in the US, because there is no real democracy there now. To go along with the notion that there is democracy in the United States, is like perpetuating the fairy tale that the emperor has clothes on. I also think we need to treat activism as FUN- because it is fun. We need to develop a political style that's interesting and fun and personal. To celebrate together.
Question: Cuba has been fighting against globalization. What do you think the potential for the anti-globalization movement is?
Assata: I think that the movement against the policies of the World Bank, of the IMF, is very important. People are really beginning to see the mechanisms of imperialism. When colonialism existed people could see colonialism. When racial segregation existed in its apartheid form, people could see the "whites only" signs. But it's much more difficult to see the structures of neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-slavery.
I think that the movement against the World Bank, against the globalization process that is happening, is very positive. We need a globalization, a globalization of people who are committed to social justice, to economic justice. We need a globalization of people who are committed to saving this earth, to making sure that the water is drinkable, that the air is breathable.
When I was a child, if someone had talked to me about buying water, I would have thought it was a joke. If we are not committed to saving this earth we will be buying designer air filters and gas masks with little Nike swishes on them. (Laughter, applause)
The people who are running this planet are insane-they are literally destroying it. I don't know where they think they're gonna drink water, breathe air....This planet is a wonderful place, but a vulnerable place. And they are making and implementing policies that are destroying the earth in all kinds of ways.
The movement against the kind of global assassination that is going on, in terms of whole countries-because every African country is facing an ecological disaster in terms
of becoming deserts, in terms of fuel-Africa is one of the richest continents in the world but its people are the poorest in the world. A lot of that poverty is directly related to the policies of the IMF and the World Bank. Ending those policies is very important not only to Cuba but to people all over the world who want to see their children grow up and have access to health care, to live somewhere that is not a desert, where they can drink water, where they can breathe air. So I think that movement against the IMF and World Bank policies is one of the most important, most optimistic struggles that is going on at this moment.
on planning for the future:
Question: In 1965 US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said the Pentagon was planning for 100 years into the future. Most of us don't even plan for 5 years ahead. I don't know how Cuba is coming along with it's planning. But most of us are always REACTING to what the world powers do. What is our pro-active plan for 5 or 10 years from now?
Assata: I wish (laughs) I had those answers. I believe that the first part of planning is to really believe that you can put your plan into practise. And I think that one of the problems that exists in the United States and in many places in the world is that people don't believe that they can make a difference. So a lot of times we're defeated before we even start.
We've become consumers of a world vision, of Kentucky Fried Chicken, of McDonalds, and we're convinced that Kentucky Fried Chicken tastes better than any other thing, or that a hamburger made by McDonalds is something special. Other than a piece of greasy meat and some bread. McDonald's is an idea we've been sold. on. And we've also consumed the idea of powerlessness, of the idea that "you can't fight City Hall"; of "you can't change things, the government is strong, that's just the way things are".
And as long as we continue to have that vision of the world, the planning of a better world is going to be a hard nut to crack. So I think that one of the things as a step towards the phase that WE plan years and years ahead is to actually believe that this world is redeemable, changeable; that we can eradicate poverty, that we can eradicate alienation, that we can eradicate this tremendous consumerism, this disease that we have to buy everything that exists, everything that the television says we have to have.
We have to have a vision of the world we want to make in 100 years. And maybe when we have that vision, when we convince enough people that that is a realistic vision, and that the opposite vision is basically that if we don't do something in this 100 years, a hundred years from now this world is gonna be so destroyed, so raped and ravished that we won't HAVE much of a world to save.
Internalizing the importance of this century, and how much work we have to do, will give us at least some ways to invent a system of planning. I think it's really hard to plan if you don't believe you can implement those plans. I have faith in our ability to transform this world from a hellish reality, to one that will eventually lead us toward heaven. (applause).
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